Daily Liturgy and Scripture

The message of Jesus is truly bizarre without the understanding given by the Spirit. Peter preaches it, though, and the Spirit that showed up at Pentecost began opening minds and hearts. This isn’t just a story told to impress people, this message has meaning. That meaning brings wholeness, just as the bodily wholeness of the lame man was given.

Jesus is the first, last, and best Word we have to offer. I have heard it said, "The Word of God is the only way for us to know and see God, so the Word became flesh." This was surely true for Peter as he stood up at Pentecost and testified. That power that came through Jesus was what enabled the apostles to do what, at other times, they had been unable to do.

Pentecost is the work of God just as the Tower of Babel was in the Old Testament. As Babel was made to divide the people, so is Pentecost made to bring the people together in the Spirit. This was always God's plan. Making a community in the Spirit took time, but God's timing is always right.

The body of prophecy surrounding Jesus goes beyond just him, it extends to his team of apostles. Jesus was intentional in assembling that team, and so it was important to preserve its structure after he ascended. While there is no "book of Matthias," it must have been amazing to have been Matthias and be added to the twelve apostles. 

The thing that makes Christianity unique is Jesus. Not just that he came and taught the people and died on a cross, but that he lives again. He lives now, as we say now, "seated at the right hand of the Father." This is his position of Lordship forever, and it cannot be taken from him. This is the Savior we serve.

The little book of 3 John has a neat glimpse into one aspect of the early church: traveling teachers. With John’s calling out of those who receiving them both poorly and well, we also get an idea of the way churches needed to work together in those days. There was no email, no telephone. Letters such as John’s were expensive to write and commoners probably seldom did this. To correctly pass along the good news (and remember that there were also false teachers), it was important to have teachers who spoke the Word correctly move around. Seems like we have it much easier!

2 John is one of the shortest books in the Bible, but its repeated themes from 1 John really reinforce the struggle that the earliest Christians faced: who Jesus was. It probably became somewhat fashionable to come up with an alternate version of Christianity, especially one that might have been easier to understand than the Jesus that has come to be understood through the centuries. Don't take the easy road, though. Knowing Jesus is knowing the process of formation, and that means allowing our understanding to be changed.

The life in the Spirit hinges on our belief in Jesus. Not only as a person who actually lived and died on earth, but as the giver of eternal life. That life has started now: it is eternally in the Spirit, through the Son, with the Father.

Love is the thing that God most richly gives us, so of course we are called to share it as his people. Of course we should love God, but as this verse points out, that's empty if we don't love others. Not only because we are God's creation, but also because the love of one we can't see is practiced on those we can.

Not being an "antichrist" requires being filled with the Spirit of Truth. That is good for more than just making us correct. If we are filled with the Spirit, the acts of the Spirit become our own. Just as sin cannot live with the Spirit, neither can ignoring those around us. God is love and the Spirit is God, so we have access to those divine qualities in addition to the truth.