e-vo for week of April 2

Dearest e-votees-

For the world Easter is done and Mother's Day and Memorial Day are bearing down on us. In the church we are just getting started celebrating the empty tomb. May your week be blessed as the risen Christ blows the Holy Spirit into your days.

Peace,
Karl

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If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God. Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

1 Peter 1:17-23, NRSV

Our text starts out with a stern warning. If we are going to invoke God’s judgment on others we best make sure we are living well. We ought to be reverently fearful about what might happen to us before we call on God to give them their just desserts. If we expect others to endure “God’s righteous frown” (as many of us just sang about recently in “What Wondrous Love is This”, LBW #385) are we willing to endure that same scrutiny? I doubt it. This way of trying to live holy enough lives and deflect attention to others when we falter are some of the “futile ways inherited from [our] ancestors”.

Thanks be to God we have been liberated from that hopeless downward spiral. We weren’t saved by silver or gold or an interest rate adjustment by the federal government or by a wise investment on our part or a gracious benevolent insertion by grant agencies or caring parents. Money and possessions don’t do much when it comes to our souls (although they can serve as pretty good barometer now and again). What our souls needed was what only Jesus could bring to pass.

• It is in Jesus that we have faith and hope.
  
• Jesus is the truth that we are learning to heed
  
• It is in Jesus that we are born anew
  
• Jesus is the spotless lamb who heals our blemishes
  
• It is in Jesus that we encounter the living and enduring word of God
  

Since all this has happened through Jesus’ faithful work we are able to grow in responding in mutual love (the Greek word is “philadelphia” literally “love of brother”). We can love one another as siblings because we have all been graciously adopted into God’s family. None of us deserve to be here. As to those who we may say are not in God’s family (do we really presume to know such things?—we ought to regard that stern warning again)—perhaps we ought to regard those folks as adoptees in the process of coming in and offer them mutual love as well.

The parallel track of “mutual love” (literally “love of brother”) is “hospitality” (literally “love of stranger”) which can both be found in Hebrews 13:1-2:

Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

Hebrews 13:1-2, NRSV

God, you have paid for the whole world in the precious blood and innocent sufferings of Jesus. Help us grow in our love to you and to all. Help us entertain angels and everyone else we encounter—since we have trouble sorting them out very well—to your glory. Help us learn to give away what you have so generously given to us—your beloved Son, Jesus. Amen.