Lent Devotional 2021 - Pittsburg - Flipbook - Page 14
DEVOTIONAL
SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 2021
What patience God has with our unbelief! Jesus has healed
a sick man physically and spiritually and been repaid with
persecution from a group of Jews. Blind to the grace and
mercy we readily see in Jesus’ acts toward the man, they have
called Jesus to account for performing work forbidden on
the sabbath. We enter the middle of Jesus’ response to their
accusations confident that we side with him and anticipating
his delivery of a theological coup de grace.
The Rev. Anthony Hita ’13
Thank God, that is not what Jesus does. Instead, he affirms
that he has no power of his own. Like them, he must seek
the will of God to be empowered. In a subsequent debate
(John 8:14-16), Jesus will claim that he can testify rightly to
his own actions, but here he submits to the human standard
that requires the testimony of others. He reminds his accusers
of the witnesses that testify to them about his identity:
God his Father, John the Baptist, the works the Father has
assigned to him, the Scriptures, and the law of Moses.
Submission to God in love and faith are all that is necessary
for them to recognize the truth of their testimony.
Jesus’ word to his opponents is also a word to us. We may
hear it echoed in the directive to believers in James 1:5-7.
God gives wisdom—the ability to recognize and respond
to God’s truth—generously and without hesitation to those
who ask for it in faith. When, like Jesus’ accusers, our study,
prayer, and worship are shaped more by our devices and
desires than by the love of God, we must not expect to
receive anything from the Lord.
This word to everyone who claims a relationship with the
Father is both hard and full of grace. God does not hesitate
to call out whatever constitutes our doublemindedness, but
in Christ he simultaneously invites us into loving relationship,
thus proactively making his will and way available to us by
faith through the Scriptures, the testimony of the saints, the
fellowship of believers, and the sanctifying work of the Holy
Spirit. Lent grants us time and space to see where we stand
in response to God’s invitation.
PRAYER
Thank you, Father, that in love you have revealed yourself to
us in Jesus and invite us to know you more and more by faith.
Match our desire to know you and do your will to your desire
for us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
SCRIPTURE
Jeremiah 5:20-31
20 Declare this in the house of Jacob, proclaim it in Judah:
21 Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes,
but do not see, who have ears, but do not hear. 22 Do you
not fear me? says the LORD; Do you not tremble before me? I
placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier
that it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot
prevail, though they roar, they cannot pass over it.
23 But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; they
have turned aside and gone away. 24 They do not say in their
hearts, “Let us fear the LORD our God, who gives the rain in
its season, the autumn rain and the spring rain, and keeps for
us the weeks appointed for the harvest.” 25 Your iniquities
have turned these away, and your sins have deprived you of
good. 26 For scoundrels are found among my people; they
take over the goods of others. Like fowlers they set a trap;
they catch human beings. 27 Like a cage full of birds, their
houses are full of treachery; therefore they have become
great and rich, 28 they have grown fat and sleek. They know
no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with
justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper, and they
do not defend the rights of the needy. 29 Shall I not punish
them for these things? says the LORD, and shall I not bring
retribution on a nation such as this? 30 An appalling and
horrible thing has happened in the land: 31 the prophets
prophesy falsely, and the priests rule as the prophets direct;
my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the
end comes?
DEVOTIONAL
In 1961 Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University,
wondered how seemingly normal everyday people in
Germany could have followed monstrous orders given to
them by their Nazi superiors. Milgram noted that at the
Nuremberg trials the most common defense was, “Just
following orders.” So Milgram developed an experiment
wherein participants were instructed by an authority figure to
give electric shocks of increasing intensity to a person, placed
out of sight in another room, whenever he or she answered
a question incorrectly. Unbeknownst to the participants, the
shocks weren’t real; moreover, someone else was also in that
other room—an actor, wailing as though the shocks were
putting him in mortal danger. Despite the audible agony, 65
percent of the participants followed the order of the authority
figure by, in the end, administering the highest, supposedly
fatal shock.
Milgram concluded from this test that otherwise normal
people will follow the orders of perceived authority figures
14 Lent Devotional 2021