Readings

Old Testament: Exodus 16:10-22
Psalm 18:1-20
Gospel: John 15:12-27
Epistle: 1 Pet. 2:11-25

Devotional
I (Soren) long for freedom right now. Everything in me desires to be out, to resume normal live, to be unconstrained by rules and laws and the silent (or noisy) judgement of the social media mobs. I am the sort of person that sees laws and rules as suggestions, even when they aren't; it is tough to be my boss, because the thing I want more than anything else is freedom. Freedom is a good thing... isn't it?

Unequivocally yes. Peter makes it clear that God has set us free, having paid our ransom (1 Peter 1:18). But the biblical idea of freedom, the idea of freedom that Peter talks about in our reading today, is very different from the American idea of freedom. When we think of being free, we often think of being able to do what we want. It's this kind of freedom that I find myself thirsting after right now. I want to be able to go where I want when I want to; I want to be able to wear what I want when I want to; and on and on. But when the Bible speaks of us being free, it doesn't mean being allowed to do what I want; instead, it means being able to do what I ought. Before we became Christians, we were unable to conceive of serving anything except ourselves. This isn't as evil or malevolent as it sounds; after all, why wouldn't we do what was basically best for us? Sometimes that even includes doing what is best for the community or the world, to help us live our best lives now.

Jesus has set us free from doing what we want, by giving us a different master (God) and a different goal (the glory of God). We have a new factor to take into account now- not just what we are allowed to do, but what we have been enabled to do when God opened our eyes to his purposes (1 Peter 2:16). This means that sometimes, being free to serve God will mean forsaking our desires, and serving others (1 Peter 2:11-15). Put simply, the goal of Christian freedom is not to be able to do what we want; its the ability to do what we ought to, even when we don't want to.

In the coming days, there will be many discussions about freedom, and there should be. As citizens of a democracy, it is right to discuss the role of government in our lives. My hope is that, as Christians and as citizens, we use our freedom to serve others, even to the point of suffering unjustly. May we take our obligations more seriously than our rights.

Hymn
O Christ Our King Creator Lord

Prayer
O God, who for the salvation of the world brought about the paschal sacrifice, be favorable to the supplications of your people, so that Christ our High Priest, interceding on our behalf, may by his likeness to ourselves bring us reconciliation, and by his equality with you free us from our sins. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Divided By Space, Connected By Mercy

Readings

Old Testament: Exodus 15:22-16:10

Psalm 13

Gospel: John 15:1-11

Epistle: 1 Pet. 2:1-10

Devotional
You probably know what it’s like to move to a new city. Along with the excitement of new places and experiences, there’s the impending dread and fear of not having “your people” anymore. Perhaps it was your childhood friends, or maybe it was friends at work or at church that you had to leave for a new setting of loneliness. It can be really difficult to move to a place where you hardly know anyone. Hopefully, you’ve also experienced the inverse of this. In your new environment, someone reaches out to you to do the thing that you wouldn’t have been able to do yourself: they include you in something. And by this inclusion, you begin to meet others. You form new shared experiences. It’s not just the fact that you are around people that makes it feel special. It’s being part of something bigger than just you.

Peter is writing to a group of people who are dispersed. Though the nature of ours is different than the first century church, the idea of dispersion is familiar to us in 2020. We’ve been dispersed of our routines, our comforts, and so much of what we love. Yet the promise he iterates to them is that being reconciled to God also means being reconciled and inseparably connected to others. “You were not a people, but now you are God’s people.” There’s a collective nature to the church. It isn’t just a group of individuals. It’s a body. You’ve been welcomed into “your people.”

The interesting thing about the context into which Peter is writing is that in this encouragement of unity, their experience has been anything but. Yet amidst displacement, they find solace in the comfort of one another. And the central theme of this unity, says Peter, is mercy. “You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” In other words, the primary link for all Christians is not geographic. Rather, it is the transformative reality that in the sin that was killing us, God showed us mercy by uniting us to His Son in salvation. This is good news in a quarantine, isn’t it? Even though we are separated by location, we are still united in the Savior and mercy that gives us structure. We can mourn the distance of the physical church that we all miss at the moment, but we can still rest in the unwavering hope of being united by mercy. And mercy can’t be stopped by a virus.

Hymn
O Christ Our King Creator Lord

Prayer
Pray Psalm 12 aloud.