Lent 2
Devotional
Water From the Rock
Lectionary Devotional for Cycle C
Object:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!
-- Luke 13:34
If Jesus is the head of the church and the church is his body, then what do we do when the church fails us? The church becomes the mobile Jerusalem for Christians. Jerusalem exists wherever two or three are gathered in Christ's name. This mobile Jerusalem often can be mean-spirited and judgmental or so caught up in its organizational concerns that it squeezes the Spirit right out of it. If the church is the mobile Jerusalem destined to be the center of holiness, then we have to hear that it has by its behavior often scattered its own children. We have watched the church kill the very prophets through which God seeks to speak to it, and we have seen the church stone the victims of our society's prejudice whom God sends to the church for healing.
Many people have tried to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior but reject Christ's body. The result has been that they keep trying to carry a head around that is severed from its body. Jesus' understanding of the necessity of going to Jerusalem and his compassion for Jerusalem challenges any temptation to dismiss institutions in favor of an individualistic approach to the faith. There are certainly miraculous things that Christ can do in the world outside the church. Christ's Spirit does cast out demons and performs cures. But the goal of Christ's work still finds its center in Jerusalem, that killer of the prophets. Christ, like a mother hen, desires to gather her brood together in the one body, but the church keeps alienating itself into factions and scattering Christ's brood. Jerusalem, the center of Christ's work, needs a conversion that shifts its focus so that it can say, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord."
-- Luke 13:34
If Jesus is the head of the church and the church is his body, then what do we do when the church fails us? The church becomes the mobile Jerusalem for Christians. Jerusalem exists wherever two or three are gathered in Christ's name. This mobile Jerusalem often can be mean-spirited and judgmental or so caught up in its organizational concerns that it squeezes the Spirit right out of it. If the church is the mobile Jerusalem destined to be the center of holiness, then we have to hear that it has by its behavior often scattered its own children. We have watched the church kill the very prophets through which God seeks to speak to it, and we have seen the church stone the victims of our society's prejudice whom God sends to the church for healing.
Many people have tried to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior but reject Christ's body. The result has been that they keep trying to carry a head around that is severed from its body. Jesus' understanding of the necessity of going to Jerusalem and his compassion for Jerusalem challenges any temptation to dismiss institutions in favor of an individualistic approach to the faith. There are certainly miraculous things that Christ can do in the world outside the church. Christ's Spirit does cast out demons and performs cures. But the goal of Christ's work still finds its center in Jerusalem, that killer of the prophets. Christ, like a mother hen, desires to gather her brood together in the one body, but the church keeps alienating itself into factions and scattering Christ's brood. Jerusalem, the center of Christ's work, needs a conversion that shifts its focus so that it can say, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord."
