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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion April 4, 2005 Still Trying to Catch Up |
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FRONTLINE DEVOTION FOR MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2005 by Fritz
Foltz
John
20: 11-18
It has been 2000 years, and we are still trying to catch up with Jesus. Anyone
who carefully reads the Gospels realizes Jesus opened up many roads to a better
world that the Church has chosen to ignore throughout most of her history.
For instance, after reflecting on Jesus’ life and resurrection, Paul claims
“in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no free or slave, no rich or poor, no
male or female”. It has been 2000 years, and the Church still has terrible
problems following Christ in every one of these areas. In the beginning she
believed everyone had to be a Jew before they could be a Christian. Until rather
recently she found reasons to support slavery as an economic system. She still
has not completely overcome sexual divisions. Much of the established church
refuses to allow women to be pastors or priests, claiming Jesus never chose a
woman to be an apostle. That is as absurd as claiming all pastors have to be
Jews, because after all Jesus never called a non-Jew to his band. We all are
still trying to figure out what this means for homosexuals. And of course, it
will be a long time before we overcome the class distinctions that result from
wealth and poverty.
It has only been in my lifetime that the liberation of women was started. It
came out of the blue, almost as a gift. However, when we read the Gospels we see
Jesus doing the unexpected and unacceptable with women all the time in his
ministry. He certainly did not allow society’s prejudices to get in the way of
his relationships with women. The Holy Week and Easter stories just make this
more vivid. They certainly give women all the ammunition they need. It seems
pretty clear that the men ran and the women stayed at the crucifixion, at the
burial, at the resurrection. In many ways the women stayed with Jesus or when
separated chased after him. On the other hand, Jesus had to go after the men who
were moving in the other direction.
Our lesson is the only one that includes two men at the empty tomb. It sounds at
times as if the men wrote themselves in later. They seem to be jostling to be
the first to witness the resurrected Christ. But when they looked into the
tomb they only saw emptiness. When Mary looks in she sees two angels in glory
and then meets Jesus himself. The Gospels are very clear that the first
resurrection appearance was to Mary Magdalene.
We can make all sorts of arguments why only men appear in the official list of
witnesses in I Corinthians 15, but the fact remains that women were omitted and
the Church has tried to omit them as best she could throughout most of her
history. You can see that conflict when Peter asks in a couple of Gnostic
Gospels why Jesus loved Mary Magdalene more than the rest of the disciples.
To say all this is not to castigate the Church. It is to remind us that Jesus
commissioned us to carry on his work and to a great extent we are stilling
trying to catch up with what he did 2000 years ago. We all have a lot to learn
and even more a lot to do.
As you live this day to the glory of God, make Jesus’ teachings your goal.
Don’t worry too much that you do not come up to his standards. The Church has
never done that. In many, many ways we are still just trying to catch up with
him. Make that your goal today: to simply try to catch up a little more with
Jesus.
Let us pray: Forgive us our slowness in carrying on Jesus’ mission, Father.
Make us uncomfortable in our rationalizations. Stir up this day a new desire to
go where Christ went and to do what Christ did. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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All are welcome to join and share in our Devotional Ministry on the "Frontlines" of the world. Frontline Devotions are sent via email daily. Sign up by clicking on the box to the left. Pastor Dave welcomes feedback. Contact him at pastordave@goodshepherdonline.org. |
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