Thursday in the Octave of Easter
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Checking with Jasper
This is the message we have heard from him: God is light, in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (from 1 John 1)
Driving Jasper home after our Tuesday with him this week, Margaret read this passage and then asked Jasper and I what we thought. Jasper didn’t say anything, but perhaps he was thinking about what Grandma said. I started thinking about darkness and light, what they were, or what John thought they were when he wrote this.
Jesus stood in the midst of his disciples and said, “Peace be with you.” But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
Startled and terrified. These responses befit the experience of darkness. Diabolical. Necromancy. Magic. Fools we will not be! But of course we know the disciples were wrong in their thinking. Jesus was patient with them and eased their fears.
Why are you troubled, and why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, see that it is I myself. Touch me, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have. Have you anything here to eat?
 And he ate a piece of baked fish in front of them.
Jesus knew that only his appearance would allow his disciples to move ahead into the future he planned for them. They could not, on their own, see the light that he saw. Now he did for all of them what he had done for the pair walking to Emmaus.
He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. “So Christ would suffer and die, and rise from the dead. Then repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations.”
The disciples will be the ones doing the preaching, and paving the way for other preachers, showing the Way to everyone everywhere.
Driving down Anderson Mill Road toward Andi’s house, we talked about experiencing light when we experience Jesus. Our actions, generous and kind as they may be, if they come from our own effort can do nothing to light the darkness that has prevailed since the Fall. (Pride cometh after the Fall.) But if those same actions are motivated by our repentance (however incomplete) and surrender to the light of God, then light overcomes the darkness. God’s light overcomes our darkness.
If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another.
John’s idea of “fellowship with one another” reminds me of Jesus’ not so casual comment that “When two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them (Matthew 18).” Not magic, but the power of God bringing light into our midst.
Jasper is listening to all of this as we drive him home. Two or three of us. Jesus right there in the midst.
(Acts 3, Psalm 8, Psalm 118, Luke 24)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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