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pjschurchdenver
Feb 242 min read

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. ~ John 15:7–8 


Last summer, I was on a crowded train and had the opportunity (if that’s the word) to overhear a young man in his 20s loudly and confidently decrying how lazy everyone had become. Speaking to his girlfriend, he even denounced people who took a week off work due to illness and declared that not only had he never done so but also his father hadn’t done so either. He declared that top achievers, outperformers and successful people don’t take time off.


At this point, I began desperately searching for my headphones, open windows, available exits—anything to get away from his bravado.


I mention all this because the idolization of productivity is all around us. Yet the Gospel points us in a very different direction in defining fruitfulness. In today’s readings, Jesus offers beautiful organic imagery. He describes himself as the “true vine” and God as “the vine grower,” and he says that those who “abide” in God’s love bear much fruit.


The active verb here is to “abide” in God. It isn’t to achieve in God. It isn’t to outperform or level up to God. Heck, it isn’t even to succeed in God. All Jesus asks today is that we abide and be like trees planted by streams of water, trusting that we will yield fruit in due season.


Today’s readings



Amidst so much talk about efficiency and productivity, what does it mean to abide and bear fruit in God’s time?


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pjschurchdenver
Feb 231 min read

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23

Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. ~ Matthew 5:25


In today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus warns about anger, grudges and simmering feuds. The Jesus we meet here is a practical peacemaker. Rather than trying to resolve conflicts with acts of vengeance or through a shaky court system, he urges his followers to seek a peaceful resolution first, even if it literally means doing so on the way to court.


Biblical scholars frequently note that Jesus was speaking to a society obsessed with questions of honor and shame. While this is a sweeping generalization, it wasn’t uncommon for insults to be “resolved” through acts of vengeance. More striking still is Jesus’ portrayal of the arbitrariness of a judge’s decision and his sense that, whether a party is innocent or not, even the innocent may have to pay dearly. “Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny” (Matthew 5:26).


Jesus is seeking a culture change. He observes how his community keeps spiraling into violence and how a corrupt judicial system rarely achieves justice and instead urges peaceful ways forward. It is practical advice that still feels both radical and resonant today.


Today’s readings


Conflicts, large and small, happen all around us every day. How can we be peacemakers today?


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pjschurchdenver
Feb 221 min read

THURS, FEBRUARY 22


In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. ~ Matthew 7:12


Today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew contains Jesus’ famous moral formula, his “Golden Rule,” which appears across many religions and moral philosophies throughout the world: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12).


In the centuries since Jesus uttered these words, many Christian teachers have reflected deeply on this teaching and have offered their own variations on this theme. My personal favorite comes from the fourth-century theologian Lactantius, who, in his Divine Institutes, considered how Jesus’ teaching touched on public life and justice. Knowing how deeply Roman society valued family, he restated Jesus’ Golden Rule for his culture: “The whole nature of justice lies in our providing for others through humanity what we provide for our own families and relatives through affection.” He asked Romans to provide for vulnerable families what they so freely provided for their own.


Today’s readings 



In many cultures, it is traditional to draw strict boundaries around who we consider family, yet God asks us to consider whether children across the globe are also, somehow, our children. What does it mean to “provide through humanity” for an expanded sense of family?


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