Week 2

“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week …Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”
John 20:19,20

Jesus, the Risen Lord
When Christ breaks into our lives – the Risen Christ – nothing is out of bounds. Everything is open and ready to be transformed and transfigured by his risen life.

-Br. Geoffrey Tristram

Transcript:

“The Word became flesh.” What difference has that made in your life? It certainly utterly changed the lives of those first disciples. Listen to these words: “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” I love that story. The image of those disciples frightened and huddled together. The great 17th century divine Lancelot Andrews used the phrase, he said, “They were drooping in a corner.”

Well, into that sad place Jesus breaks through, into the place and into their lives, the Risen Lord comes into their midst. The Lion of the tribe of Judah breaks into their lives and bounds into their midst with joy, and with hope, and with peace. And that same Lion of Judah breaks into the locked places of our lives and our hearts. It breaks into our fears, into our sins, our despair, and stands in our midst and says to us, “Peace be with you.”

When Christ breaks into our lives – the Risen Christ – nothing is out of bounds. Everything is open and ready to be transformed and transfigured by his risen life. And I think the challenge is for us to leave the locked places of our lives, the familiar and the comfortable, and to always be ready and open to embrace the new life that Christ is always hoping and longing for us.

And so two questions today perhaps. First of all, “Where are the locked places of your life?” And secondly, when the Lion of Judah – Aslan, the Risen Christ – bounds into your life and says, “Come, follow me,” will you say yes?

We invite you to share your answer in the comments below or using #MeetingJesus

“And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.”
I John 4:14

Jesus, the Savior
I think it’s true that none of us show up on the scene ready to go, fully complete. Our first instinct, as soon as our lungs are cleared, is to cry out for help as loud as we can.

-Br. Jim Woodrum

Transcript:

In the first week we began to explore the love of God. And this week, we’re learning how that love of God has been manifest in our lives through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

A few years ago, I got into an argument with a friend when I made the statement that I didn’t believe in the “self-made” man. He pushed back a little bit, and he said, “But Jim, your success as a musician has been the result of your hard study and your hard work in the practice room, and in your courage to take an audition when there were many other people who could play the part just as well as you.” And whilst some of that is true, I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize that there were many people in my life who actually nurtured my love of music, who taught me how to read music, who taught me how to practice efficiently and how to showcase the ways that I could perform the part that was unique to me, and that might win the audition.

As a matter of fact, I think it’s true that none of us show up on the scene ready to go, fully complete. Our first instinct, as soon as our lungs are cleared, is to cry out for help as loud as we can. I believe that this is what the Johannine community was witnessing to when they wrote, “And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.” I believe we never really fully outgrow the instinct to cry for help. But how the love of God is made manifest in our life is by the fact that Jesus has come into our lives and into our human condition, to be with us, to guide us, to walk with us and to help nurture the things that we need in order to be fully alive, to be more completely who God has created us to be.

So maybe in your prayer life, maybe you would want to focus on: “What in my life needs help? Where can I not go it alone? Where do I need God’s help and love and provision in order to take the next step?” This is how God is waiting to meet us in our lives. All we have to do is ask.

We invite you to share your answer in the comments below or using #MeetingJesus

“If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”
John 13:12-15

Jesus, the Teacher
When I consider Jesus as teacher, I often think of him as a kind of guru: a spiritual teacher that teaches more by their presence or by their actions and not perhaps as much by their words.

-Br. Nicholas Bartoli

Transcript:

In Week Two of the series, we’re exploring what it means for us for Jesus to have been the Word of God made flesh and how Jesus shares God’s love of the world through that. Today specifically we’ll be looking at what it means for Jesus to be in the role of teacher. The scripture that we’re looking at today is John chapter 13, verses 14 and 15: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you.”

When I consider Jesus as teacher, I often think of him as a kind of guru. A guru is sort of a spiritual teacher that teaches more by their presence or by their actions and not perhaps as much by their words. We can see in this scripture, for example, that Jesus is teaching by the example he sets for his disciples. In Jesus’ case, he was the Word made flesh. He became an incarnation of God’s love and presence in the world, helping us to more fully live into that role ourselves. When Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, he was giving them a concrete example of what God’s love made manifest in the world might look like. In this case, simply a desire to serve out of that love.

Jesus gives for us an example of what the Word made flesh, this intersection between the spiritual and material, might look like in our lives. He’s our example. He’s our role model, our teacher. We’re invited, like Jesus, to embody God’s spirit of love and mercy in the world and to share that love in the world by virtue of our presence and by our actions, serving others out of love, as Jesus did. So I encourage you this week, this day, to include in your prayers a prayer to let God help us more fully embody God’s love in the world, to let God live through us, as Jesus did.

We invite you to share your answer in the comments below or using #MeetingJesus

“Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Bethzatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids, blind, lame and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’”
John 5:2-6

Jesus, the Healer
Perhaps at times, like me, you have questioned the value or importance to God of your personal well-being or of your health in body, mind, or spirit. You’ve found yourself unable to believe that the love of God could include you.

-Br. Jonathan Maury

Transcript:

This week as we meet Jesus in John’s Gospel we reflect on the Word made flesh who lived and lives among us. Today our focus is on the Word made flesh in the person of Jesus, the healer. Perhaps at times, like me, you have questioned the value or importance to God of your personal well-being or of your health in body, mind, or spirit. You’ve found yourself unable to believe that the love of God could include you and the fullness of your being as important as anything else in the world.

In a life-long struggle with clinical depression, I found myself at many stages finding this feeling and turning away from God. From adolescent resignation to the feelings as being just part of human existence to later frightening and destructive thoughts and actions, I have at times lost a sense of God’s love for me. Yet, we have before us today the story of the man at the pool of Bethzatha. This has become a touchstone for me, a touchstone of a means by which I gradually and gratefully accept the compassion and love of Jesus to heal me, to heal me as I need in any given moment and time in my life and in my illness.

It amazes me that Jesus – in hearing a litany of complaint and hopelessness from the man to his question “Do you wish to be healed?” – can hear deep inside this a feeble desire for that healing, a hope for that healing. Jesus does bring about his physical healing to that man who walks again. Now, the same man is later confronted by the religious authorities and fears the consequences to himself of Jesus’ loving action toward him and so he betrays Jesus to those authorities. But this does not negate the freely-given, sacrificially-given love of God and Jesus for this man’s healing and wholeness. That love, that sacrifice, now abide in this man to be renewed in the future, to be renewed for his continued healing, his wholeness in body, mind, and spirit and his well-being of soul at just the right time for him.

I bid you today to pray with me to remember those instances in which you have perhaps been reluctant to accept or even refused the loving kindness of God for healing that Jesus has come to you to offer. Then turn gratefully and vulnerably toward that Jesus who offers that loving kindness to us in ways beyond our imagining – to us and to others around us, and through those others around us to us as well. Live in the gratitude and knowledge of Jesus’ continuing love for us, that the Word made flesh indeed dwells in our flesh, continually healing, forgiving, restoring us to well-being at each moment along the way just as we have need – not as we may believe we have need, but as we truly have need. Then offer your gratitude and loving kindness back to God for this gift of healing in Jesus’ life.

We invite you to share your answer in the comments below or using #MeetingJesus

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
John 1:14

The Word Was Made Flesh
In Jesus, God took on the totality of our humanity, which means that he was just like us in every way. He had the same emotions that we have. He knew pain. He knew anger. He knew anxiety, and he needed human affection as we do.

-Br. Geoffrey Tristram

Transcript:

During the first week we have been looking and praying, thinking about how much God loves each one of us. During this second week we are looking at the way in which, as it were, God broke all the bounds of generosity when he sent Jesus into the world as a man: the Incarnation, this great gift of God. There’s probably nowhere in scripture which proclaims with such magnificence this wonderful, generous gift of God out of his enormous love for us than the beginning of Saint John’s gospel.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” The Word became flesh. John doesn’t say the Word became a man or a body. He uses a quite startling and almost shocking word: flesh, the Greek word sarx, to say without any doubt that in Jesus, God became flesh and blood just like us. In Jesus, God took on the totality of our humanity, which means that he was just like us in every way. He was shaped by a family like us. He grew and had to learn. Luke tells us that he grew in stature and in wisdom. He had the same emotions that we have. He knew pain. He knew anger. He knew anxiety, and he needed human affection as we do.

For me, this is incredibly important, the fact that he experienced everything that I experience. He knows how I feel and he knows my deepest thoughts, my deepest fears, my deepest hopes. It tells me, and this is so important for my life, that there is no part of my life which I cannot bring to Jesus in prayer. I think when I was first a Christian my prayers were probably very pious. I used to pray about the sort of things I thought God wanted to hear. I think I censored an awful lot. As I’ve grown in the Christian faith, as I’ve come to understand this deep mystery of the Incarnation, that God loves me so much that God longs for me to bring every part of myself to God in prayer, even the parts that I’m not particularly proud of or that I don’t like to actually think about myself. God says “Bring them to the surface. Bring them to the light, into my presence, and allow me to transfigure and redeem everything that you are. That is how much I love you.”

So perhaps some questions we might ask today are “How honest am I in my prayers?”, and then secondly to perhaps hear God’s invitation to bring the deepest parts of our humanity up into God’s searching love, that we might be healed and redeemed and set free. That is how much God loves us.

We invite you to share your answer in the comments below or using #MeetingJesus

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1:1

In the Beginning
Jesus is God’s way of speaking to us – God’s Word, you might say.

-Br. Mark Brown

Transcript:

The theme for this second week is God’s love as it is revealed in and through Jesus Christ. The topic for today is “In the Beginning”. I’ll read the very first verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of John. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

This, of course, has echoes of the very beginning of Genesis. John is consciously rhyming with that beginning of Genesis. It’s also mysterious and paradoxical and ambiguous. It may be the most mysterious, paradoxical and ambiguous verse of the Bible. If you read very closely and if you translate closely it gets even stranger. If we translate very closely it would be “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was toward God and the Word was God.” No translator knows quite what to do with that, so we have “the Word was with God”.

Then, a few verses later we read that this Word, which was with or toward and was God, was made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. The Word comes into being into the world as a human being, as flesh, as fleshly human being. Jesus is God’s way of speaking to us – God’s Word, you might say. We might say God, who is love, speaks the word of love in Jesus Christ. We also read in this very first few verses of the Gospel of John that through Christ, through the living Word, light comes into the world, life comes into the world. Not only grace, but grace upon grace, comes into the world, and truth comes into the world through Jesus Christ. This is a huge, huge chapter of the Gospel of John, a huge, huge opening verse of the Gospel of John.

I think we could pray with this in multiple ways. Maybe the wisest is simply to sit silently before the great mystery and paradox of God. Or, we might reflect on our own humanity as made in the image and likeness of God, in the flesh, incarnate as Jesus was incarnate in the flesh. We might ask ourselves if there’s one word spoken by my life in this world, what would that word be? Does my life speak love? Does my life speak light? Does my life speak life or grace or truth? These are all possibilities. What is the word that your life is speaking?

We invite you to share your answer in the comments below or using #MeetingJesus