Midweek Musings for Sunday, May 17, 2015

 

Seventh Sunday of Easter  
 

This week's reflection comes from Rev. Dan Rumfelt

Chaplain Lutheran Social Services

Southwest Conference Dean

 

Reflecting and Dwelling in the Word
Prayer of the Day                           

Gracious and glorious God, you have chosen us as your own, and by the powerful name of Christ you protect us from evil. By your Spirit transform us and your beloved world, that we may find our joy in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. 

Gospel:                                                             

John 17:6-19

      

"I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth." 

 

Reflection

A potter might take a lump of clay, center it on the wheel, soak it with water, set the wheel in motion and begin to shape. A chalice rises under his artistry. The chalice is fired and glazed and one day is placed upon an altar, set apart for holy use. The pastor raises it before her congregation and consecrates it to God. For the first time of many to come she fills it with wine and begins to speak Gospel: "On the night in which he was betrayed..." Ordinary clay, that always belonged to God, now transformed by a craftsman, sanctified back to God.  And from this cup the blood of the resurrected Christ is poured into the world that the world itself might be transformed.

 

So it was that, on the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus prayed and sanctified back to God the very men and women whom God first gave him. And from the holy cup of these human lives Gospel poured into the world. The ordinary clay that shapes this cup has come to include people of every tongue and race, male and female. The clay has often worn thin, cracked and been shattered against the rough places of the world. But under the vigilant guardianship of God the broken cup has been soaked anew in the baptismal waters, reshaped in Christ, and fired in the kiln of the Spirit. Lifted for the umpteenth time the cup again pours out truth upon the rough places. New clay is transformed by Gospel, soaked and smoothed, shaped by grace and sanctified back to God into the completion of joy.

 

Thanks and glory be to God.


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