January 18, 2024

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING:

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4.1-6)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

As followers of Christ and disciples of His Word, we are familiar with at least the hearing of Paul’s teaching concerning “faith.” He declared, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.“ Sometimes, I ask myself if Paul didn’t leave something out of the particular teaching on “faith.” I might have added in simple terms the word “yet.” If I did, then it would perhaps give greater emphasis on the substance of faith which transcends our past, overcomes our present and propels us into that most certain future. ”Yet.” Princeton theologian Gerhardus Vos proposed this theological view as a means of focusing on the escatalogical events which are in preparation to be revealed. He stated simply, and then with several works to dive deeper, “We are living in the already, but not yet.” This is the benefit of the cross and its work of salvation which opens the door to being able to embrace the promise of Heaven as our final “resting” place. It is, and always has been, a place of life and not death. The grave is not our home. At the end of time as we know it, especially the time which Jesus called the Age of the Church, all lives will be reanimated and judgment will be meted out accordingly. Eternity is promised for everyone. This world is not our final home. Death, as represented by the grave, is not our final destination. The striving to live the “good” life is innate in all of us. We have that desire which exists deep within us, in the spirit of life which we all possess breathed into us by God with His Holy Spirit, to embrace “forever” or “eternity.” In the days of Jesus’ ministry during the first quarter century of the first center (A.D.), He taught that “spirit of God as is the Kingdom of God is in your midst.” He was speaking of Himself with specificity to Himself being the Word of God. John’s gospel preamble declares this very truth. In those days as Jesus spoke “the word” as no other had before, especially those words concerning “righteousness,” there was the sense of hope that “we were living in the midst of the Kingdom of God already.” For four hundred years, there had not been a prophetic word concerning the Messiah. The hope had been lost in the shadows of oppressors of the people of God. Had God become silent? Was God ignoring His people, Israel? Of course, we know of another four hundred year span in the history of Israel with their exile in Egypt before the days of Moses. We hear of no prophetic word during that time. Yet, God was not forgotten by the people but held as a quiet truth which no one dare speak. That is until God spoke to Moses as He had with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We would also do well to include Joseph because it was his willingness to keep the faith that saved Israel from famine though it lead them into Egyptian servitude.

We might view Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah and Malichi in that line of hope-holding prophets who saw the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Babylonians, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and then then the age of silence where faith was so privatized that the nation could be captured again and ruled over by those who did not know Yahweh Elohim as the One True God. With the birth of John the Baptizer, the age of the Church was being brought to the fore as the domain of the Messiah who was promised and now was coming. To those who kept the faith and manifested it in “loving one another as much as they loved God,” the truth of His coming bore the weight of reality. But, even then, the people were waiting in hopeful anticipation and some with dreaded anticipation for the “yet” of the Messianic presence. We are still waiting even today for that eschatological and apocalyptic time when the “final” kingdom will come to rest and the throne of all creation will be seated by the Redeemer King who is prophet, priest and Lord of all. It is with that longing we hear the declaration “…on that day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.” But, only those who share a “One faith” will realize the kingdom of rest and peace and life. Those whose “faith” is not of “the One” will experience eternal life with hope abandoned and the fruits of the labors rotting on the vine, so to speak. So, I would offer that Pauline teaching on faith as “Faith is substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen…YET.” But, they will be seen. There will be conclusive evidence as to the solidity of the “substance of life” for which we hope. There will be the realized hope of the evidence of things not yet seen being revealed and fulfilled. It is “this hope” that Paul spoke of to the Christ community of faith in Ephesus. it is “this hope” which he called their first love. Their first love predated the gospel of Jesus Christ. Many in that community were not Jewish by blood or by faith. Yet, regardless of their “religion of preference” it included a hope of a better life, a better world and a better truth than what they had experienced before. Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of that hope and defined it perfectly by His faith in God the Father, the God above all gods, Creator of Heaven and Earth and all of life. When the gospel was preached and evidenced by those who believed as first witnesses and then as second generation, they could transfer the hope they had once had to the reality that now existed and pointed beyond that moment to a greater moment. They were living in the “already but not yet.”

And so, too, are we! But, what they “yet” is to be for each of us depends on whom we place our hope. It must be in One Lord, Jesus who is the Christ. He alone is “the way, the truth and the life” which leads through the valley of the shadow of death and into the very presence of God who dwells in His House forever in perfect love and peace. We must commit ourselves to that hope our soul longed for before we could even put words to it. It is as real and yet undefinable as the concepts of beauty, music, joy, happiness. There is “one word” for it all and that is Jesus the Christ. Let that word be in our heart, in our mind, in our thoughts, in our actions and on our lips as we share with others how we are able to live in this world with the “already” of the Kingdom of God as well as the “not yet.” This is our “one hope.”

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit spoke us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit so that others may be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind that we would know that we are Your people and that You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.