{"id":1839,"date":"2012-03-05T07:00:38","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T06:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/?p=1839"},"modified":"2012-02-27T11:46:32","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T10:46:32","slug":"lent-devotions-2012-monday-5th-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/2012\/03\/05\/lent-devotions-2012-monday-5th-march\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent Devotions 2012: Monday 5th March"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSimon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’\u201d John 6:68<\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s why we (should) come to church or read Scripture \u2013 Jesus has eternal life for us, and it is particularly accessible to us in those places.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, many biblical verses are embedded in our church liturgy. These include: \u201cyou have the words of eternal life\u201d, which form part of the Alleluia in between the epistle and the gospel readings. This positioning reminds us that what we’re about to hear read out is not ‘only’ Scripture but the actual words and deeds of Jesus.<\/p>\n

And Jesus is not just flesh like the other people in the Bible \u2013 He is man and God. Peter’s explanation of why he \u2013 and we \u2013 need Jesus is an acknowledgment of spiritual poverty. We can help ourselves not at all. We come to church because we realise that we are not enough by ourselves. As Jesus said a few verses earlier: \u201cIt is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all.\u201d (v.63).<\/p>\n

In those verses preceeding our text, Jesus’ hearers were offended by His teaching of His own divinity. He taught that their own righteousness or ancestral pedigree were not enough. Some therefore deserted Him. Jesus asks Peter if he will go too. Gloriously, this is one of the points where Peter really gets the point. His reply \u2013 our text – is akin to G K Chesterton’s insight: ‘It’s not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it’s that it has been found difficult and left untried.’ Peter does not demand that the Christian life must be easy for him to follow it, simply that there is no other show in town.<\/p>\n

It is when we lose sight of Peter\u2019s declaration that Jesus\u2019 words are the words of eternal life that we run aground: when we focus more on flesh than Spirit, more on us than Jesus. We all constantly fall back into our old errors and sins \u2013 and chief among them, trust in ourselves rather than in God. We need to participate in liturgical statements like this, week in and week out, to help drag us back to a right understanding of our own sufficiency (zero) and of God’s (infinite).<\/p>\n

You have the words of eternal life
\nYou are Jesus Christ the Lord.
\nHosanna to the Son of David
\nHosanna to the King of Kings
\nGlory in the highest heaven
\nFor Jesus the Messiah reigns.<\/p>\n

(You are the king of glory)<\/p>\n

Amen.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSimon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’\u201d John 6:68 That’s why we (should) come to church or read Scripture \u2013 Jesus has eternal life for us, and it is particularly accessible to us in those places. Fittingly, many biblical verses are embedded in our church […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent-devotions-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1840,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1839\/revisions\/1840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}