huddled in fear | John 20.19-20
MONDAY
This week’s reading: John 20.19-31
REFLECT
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. John 20.19-20 | ESV
Then evening fell on that day of days, that first day of the week. The doors had been sealed tight – locked, bolted, and chained – the disciples huddling behind them in fear, terrified that they would be the next targets of the religious powers that be. And then, poof!, right in the middle of that huddle of fear stood Jesus – and before they even had time to react he breathed the words “Shalom alecha!” meaning “Peace be with you” or in every day lingo, “Hello there!” No sooner had he breathed the greeting than his hands were on display right before their faces showing the tell-tale marks of crucifixion, and then he lifted up his tunic, exposing a nasty wound in his side marking the impact of that lethal spear thrust. Fear beat a hasty retreat before the joy that now flooded the soul of each of the disciples – they saw the Lord, and one look was all they needed! MAV (Mike’s Amplified Version)
RECEIVE
This is so us.
Huddles and puddles of fear.
We live in a nation that spends, what, $500 billion annually or whatever amount on defense? Let’s not go all political here, but we tend to become reflections of the prevailing culture around us. We seek the security of locked doors, impenetrable walls, building defensive works in our lives more elaborate than those of the Japanese on Iwo Jima.
Yes, we are all huddled with the disciples behind those locked and barred doors. And what a high cost our imagined security extracts! The beauty of this upper room moment is that Christ doesn’t “stand at the door and knock.” He just pops up right in the middle of our insecurities, saying, “Peace, y’all!”
We so desperately need to be infiltrated.
We so desperately need to let ourselves be infiltrated.
By peace.
Hope.
Joy.
Presence.
By the reality that John many years after this upper room moment celebrates in his letter to later huddles of fearful disciples:
God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first. 1 John 4:17-19 | MSG
RELATE
Where in your life right now do you sense you are huddled in fear? How might Jesus already be popping up in your own circle of fear, announcing his peace? How can you embrace him and his peace?
RESPOND
Lord, I welcome you into the midst of my huddle and puddle of fear today. Give me eyes to see your wounded hands – wounds not only now healed, but healing. And let that glimpse of you make all else beat a hasty retreat before me. Through Christ.
donkey | John 12.14-15
WEDNESDAY
Reflection 153 of 240
REFLECT
And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,
“Fear not, daughter of Zion;
behold, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey’s colt!”
John 12:14-15 | ESV
Meanwhile Jesus looked for the most appropriate vehicle for him to ride in this impromptu patriotic, martial parade: he found a wee donkey and straddled it – actually right on ancient prophet’s cue:
People of Jerusalem, Zion’s daughters, have no fear!
On a little donkey he comes, your leader draws near!
MAV (Mike’s Amplified Version)
RECEIVE
What kind of car would Jesus drive? That question is often asked in our cultural debates over environmentalism and consumerism. “Surely it wouldn’t be a shamelessly extravagant sports car or a gas guzzling SUV!” And while that debate can and will continue to rage on, this Palm Sunday tale would seem to make clear that he wouldn’t, at any rate, at least on this occasion, have driven an armored car or an impressive black limo reserved for heads of state.
It would have been more like a beat up VW bus with peace signs spray-painted on it.
Warriors and conquering kings (or wannabe ones) rode in chariots or mounted upon white stallions, in their armor, clutching their sharp iron sword. Now, to be fair, Jesus is pictured as riding on a white horse in those apocalyptic visions of the book of Revelation – though notice that the only sword in the picture is the one coming out of his mouth.
There’s still no place for a weapon in the hands of Jesus – even when he shows up in apocalyptic scenes for his showdown with the Beast. His business was and remains that of beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.
Each clop of the donkey’s hoof beat out a rhythm of peace, not of war and aggression.
And, significantly, when Jesus did enter Jerusalem, as the other Gospel accounts inform us, it was not the Roman fortress of Antonia he assaulted, nor the Greek theater, nor the sports center that was the hippodrome. It was the tables of the religious establishment he overturned in symbolic gesture, defending the worship space of the very Greeks who came to fill it and who ultimately sought his face.
This is the journey of the donkey, not the charge of the Light Brigade.
And for cross-bearers, it’s the journey of the donkey still.
RELATE
What would it mean for you to ride into whatever conflict you might face today riding a donkey (as it were) rather than a white charger? How can you “beat swords into ploughshares” in your life today?
RESPOND
Abba, empower me to ride the donkey today, despite all expectations within and without to the contrary. Show me what it means to be a peacemaker. Show me how you would have me beat swords into plowshares that I might sow true peace in this world rather than just more of the same. Through Jesus.
The Other Road | Galatians 5:22-23
THURSDAY
Reflection 59 of 70
Reflect
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23 | ESV
The alternative? The path your higher Spirit-led self would lead you into? Organic. Personal. Fruitful. You can’t make this stuff up! It’s what grows in you, through you, around you. It is the way of love that sees people, that stoops to wash their feet; the way of boundless, contagious, off-the-wall joy; of radical, risky peacemaking; of seeing endless possibilities in the most impossible people
and…..waiting…. for…… it; of a deep-seated kindness that cannot be contained; of an active goodness that continually flings open the pantry doors to all comers; of seeing divine possibilities and believing in them despite all evidence to the contrary; of a yielding spirit that totally works around the needs of others rather than asserting its own agenda; of a heart reined in under the reign of God. Connection. Ultimate. Wondrous. We can’t get enough of it – and even the Law is gobsmacked by the Glory. Galatians 5:22-23 | MAV
Receive
The “fruit of the Spirit.” Nine qualities that are frequently turned into a nine-session sermon series. And while that can be a productive exercise, such handling of this fruit can miss something very crucial. It is one fruit, with nine aspects or sides to it (notice it’s the fruit of the Spirit, not fruits). In the oldest manuscripts, these nine qualities would have been written out as one long word with no punctuation marks: lovejoypeacepatiencekindnessgoodnessfaithmeeknessselfcontrol. When ancient writers made lists, if they wanted you to pause over each item they would essentially insert “and” between each, the “and” serving as a signal to linger over each successive item and weigh it carefully. With no “and” you were intended to see the list as something of a composite sketch. And so here we have a composite sketch of the spiritual life with nine aspects of “shading” – or, alternately, a portrait of love as the fruit of the spiritual life with eight attributes filling out the picture of love and making it 3D. It is the whole picture we must linger over. There is a direction, a momentum of life-giving connection we are meant to catch here. And that is the other crucial bit to grasp: this is fruit. We really can’t make this stuff up. Our lower religious self loves to turn fruit into imperatives, into commands that kill on our latest “to-do” list. The one imperative here is connection. To be connected to the tree is to have its nourishing sap flowing through you, and the result is, ultimately, fruit. Turning a fruit tree into an assembly production line = a bad business.
Relate
Which aspect of the fruit of the Spirit do you find most challenging? What is the way on – the way to seeing this fruit borne more richly in our lives?
Respond
Spirit of God, breathe into my nostrils the breath of life and let me become a living soul in you. Bring your fruit to full, rich, deepening maturity in my life. May many freely eat from the branches of my life, and may the leaves be for the healing of a broken world. Through Jesus.
Additional Reading
The whole text this week is Galatians 5:16-26. Read it daily in it’s entirety from a few different translations if possible.
For all of this week’s resources on Galatians including this week’s DG video on Galatians, check out the Vineyard website.
REFLECT | RECEIVE | RELATE | RESPOND 