Proper 7 / Pentecost 5 / Ordinary Time 12
Devotional
Water From the Rock
Lectionary Devotional for Cycle C
Object:
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
-- Galatians 3:28
If, as Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 5:19, "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us," then this is the picture of that reconciled world. National identity, class differences, and even gender differences are overcome in Christ. This does not mean that the world is to be homogenized but rather that those differences no longer will serve to divide us. The vision of a reconciled world that is to be demonstrated in a provisional manner within the church is a community in which differences are appreciated for their value and no longer serve to divide us. We "are one in Christ Jesus."
Paul spoke of the law once serving as a disciplinarian that protected us until Christ came. "Now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian." How would our lives be different if we could free ourselves from the "oughts" of life and shape our lives as a response to Christ who has set us free? It would not be an undisciplined anarchy because we would not be operating without restraint. Our restraint, however, would be seeking to honor Christ by how we related to each other.
Try to imagine what a church would be like that was liberated from the "shoulds" of the faith and pulled forward by the grace of Christ. It is a rather exciting future for which we are called to be ambassadors.
-- Galatians 3:28
If, as Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 5:19, "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us," then this is the picture of that reconciled world. National identity, class differences, and even gender differences are overcome in Christ. This does not mean that the world is to be homogenized but rather that those differences no longer will serve to divide us. The vision of a reconciled world that is to be demonstrated in a provisional manner within the church is a community in which differences are appreciated for their value and no longer serve to divide us. We "are one in Christ Jesus."
Paul spoke of the law once serving as a disciplinarian that protected us until Christ came. "Now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian." How would our lives be different if we could free ourselves from the "oughts" of life and shape our lives as a response to Christ who has set us free? It would not be an undisciplined anarchy because we would not be operating without restraint. Our restraint, however, would be seeking to honor Christ by how we related to each other.
Try to imagine what a church would be like that was liberated from the "shoulds" of the faith and pulled forward by the grace of Christ. It is a rather exciting future for which we are called to be ambassadors.
