The Right Road--February 2, 2024

The Right Road--February 2, 2024

"May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this." [1 Thessalonians 5:23-24]

Here's something you can stake your life on: the same Lord who calls us will not bail out on us or abandon us.  The Love that calls you by name to follow is the same Love that will not let us go.  The same Jesus who dares us to place our trust in him is the One who is uniquely trustworthy.

That's why we can do it--any of this life of faith.  We can dare to go where Jesus leads us, to risk kindness when it would be easier to be cold or indifferent, to cross boundaries and include outsiders, and to risk our comfort for the sake of doing justice and mercy, all because we believe that the same Jesus who has called us to do those things is there beside us.  He doesn't leave us out on a limb, fending for ourselves. "The one who calls us," the apostle Paul tells us, "is faithful"--he will do what he has promised.

But maybe it's worth a moment's time to pause and to be clear about just what this Lord of ours has--and has not--promised us.  Sometimes we want to write checks that Jesus has not committed to cashing, after all.  And when Paul was writing to the church in Thessalonica, he didn't have in mind that Jesus would make them all rich, or keep them from sickness or famine.  God has never promised the church that we would be comfortable or have positions of prominence or power (and, to be honest, things rarely go well when have those).  And Jesus has not offered to be our genie, answering prayers like granting wishes, either.  So just so we're all clear, when we're told that "the one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this," the "this" isn't a blank line you can fill in with whatever you want.  I can't say, "I've always been wanting that Mercedes, and I know God will give it to me, because, you know, God is faithful and he will do it."  I can't wield this verse as a promise to get my party or candidate elected, and I can't recite it to open up a good parking space when I'm headed into the grocery store.  Not how it works.

But Paul does say that we can count on God to keep us "sound and blameless" in our complete selves while we follow Jesus.  God will "sanctify us entirely"--that is, God will make us wholly holy, as we live out our lives as disciples.  The same Lord Jesus who has called us into this life will keep us in it and won't let go, while making us into new creations.  The same One whose voice called us by name and pulled us into faith won't abandon us when it gets tough (and that means recognizing it will get tough).  The same One whose love has accepted us as we are, jagged edges and selfish streaks and all, is also the same One who bears with our rough places, smoothing them with care and skill like a woodworker sanding and polishing a fine piece of craftsmanship.  God will not leave us unfinished. God will not leave us incomplete.  

Maybe, in the end, the promise we can take to the bank is that God will not give up on us.  We are not what we will be, but God is committed to making all things new--and that includes us.  Or, as our older brother in the faith Martin Luther said it:

“This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”

We aren't all the way home yet, in other words, but we are on the right road--and God has promised to walk with us all the way to the door.  For whatever else comes along the journey, we can count on that.

Let's go.

Lord Jesus, you have first called us to yourself and have it in mind to make us into embodiments of your love. So give us the confidence to know you are working on us and will not give up on us, so that we do not give up on ourselves, or each other--even those we have the hardest time loving.