Lent Devotional 2021 - Pittsburg - Flipbook - Page 36
Perhaps you’ve lived through a loss that left you devastated.
The hard truth is that many people do. Wordless questions
arise. “How can I go on? How could all this have happened?”
In the wake of the unspeakably awful, a strange guilt often
arises to compound the misery. “Could I have done more?
Was I somehow to blame?” Can you identify?
John bears witness to a reality of this human life. Be it trauma
or a chronic, dull ache, suffering is part of our common
ground. Reader take note: it’s precisely into an assembly of
agonized trauma survivors that the risen Christ appears.
He appears first with a greeting that’s also a benediction,
repeated twice for good measure: “Peace be with you.”
Beyond any judgment or blame, the words convey the same
grace as the Father’s greeting to the returned Prodigal (Luke
15:11-32). The timing is remarkable. It comes forthrightly and
clearly to suffering hearts. Remarkable too, that the Risen
Christ confers a directive, an assignment to people at the
very nadir of hopelessness: “As the Father has sent me, so
I send you,” he says. Earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus told the
disciples something very clear about this sending: As he was
sent by the God he called Father, he now sends them “Not
to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved”
(John 17:2-3). Marching orders for trauma survivors. Perhaps
none other than they are so well suited to recognize the
suffering of the world.
The disciples are charged with the care of the same lovely and
sordid, sweet and deadly world through which Jesus moved.
There is no evasion. Conferred with a God-like authority to
forgive or retain sins, they are sent not for condemnation but
compassion. They will move forward on paths they cannot
yet imagine, not on the strength of their own merits but
with the gifts of Holy Spirit. In the steadfast love of God, the
undeniable traumas of life are not the end of this story but a
mysterious beginning.
PRAYER
To you, God of all moments, we lift up our hearts. May we
hear your voice of blessing and empowerment in moments
when our vision penetrates no farther than our suffering.
May we find ways forward when our imaginations and hopes
grow dim. May we find compassion when we are tempted
by the false refuge of cynicism. Remind us again and again
that, in You, life and love are eternal and that all the world’s
unfolding moments are held in Your hands.
The Scripture quotations contained in the lectionary readings
are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible,
copyright 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the
National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
36 Lent Devotional 2021