Good News - Week of 3/11/2018

PRAYER OF THE WEEK
Thank you, God, for your promise of grace and your commitment to me. Amen.

Resurrection

NOTES ON THE SCRIPTURES

Jeremiah 31:31-34: God promises a new covenant in which God’s law is written on people’s hearts, and in which no one needs to instruct another, because all people will know God, will be forgiven by God and will automatically follow God’s ways.

Psalm 51:1-12: A psalm asking for God’s mercy and forgiveness, and for God to wash the psalmist clean, restoring to him the joy of God’s salvation and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Hebrews 5:5-10: Jesus has been appointed by God as a priest like Melchizedek. He suffered for God’s people, crying out to God in his anguish, and God heard him because of his devotion and obedience. Now he is the source of salvation for all.

John 12:20-33: Jesus teaches that a grain of wheat must fall to the ground and die in order to produce fruit, and that those who try to save their lives will lose them, but those who give up their lives will guard them for eternal life. Then he asks whether he should pray to be delivered from his hour of suffering, but recognizes that this is what he came for, and that when he is lifted up he will draw all people to himself.

Reflection
No relationship can be sustained without fairly regular “dying” experiences. The single person must die to become united in a relationship or marriage. The couple must die to give birth to a family. The family must die to release the children to their own journey into love and growth. The same is true for community. The small group must die to become a community. The community must die to become an organisation. Every season of growth, creativity, change or re-orientation, requires a losing of life in order to save life. In ministry, this call to die is, perhaps, most keenly felt. The church cannot hold on to its own life if it is to be Christ’s instrument of healing and justice in the world. Rather, the church must die to its own needs, to its own agenda, and to its own self-preservation, giving itself for the sake of those around it, or it loses its life and becomes an irrelevant “club”. But, if we embrace our deaths, following Christ to the cross, we discover true, abundant life as we serve others. On a personal, individual level, the same principle applies as well. When we seek to save our lives – refusing to become vulnerable to others, refusing to release our own desires, agendas and perspectives – we lose our lives, and end up alone and bitter. But, when we willingly let go of our own life – giving ourselves for the sake of connection, family, friendship and intimacy – we find ourselves rich and alive with connections, love and support. It is, perhaps, one of the greatest challenges in our increasingly individualist and self-centered world to learn to die to the false life of an idolized self in order to find the true, lasting life of intimacy and community.
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