Monday, May 6th:
- Acts 1: 15-17, 21-26These verses certainly do not prescribe gender as the criterion for choosing contemporary church leaders. The account gives no attention to the character of the two candidates, Joseph and Matthias. Nor is there any consideration of leadership experience or standing among the one hundred and twenty. Certainly, no attention is given to inclusivity of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or social status, given the dismissal of the women who accompanied Jesus through his ministry. Leadership must reflect the diversity of the community and embody the all-inclusive grace of a loving God.
Warren Carter
Tuesday, May 7th:
- Psalm 1“Like the foundation in a house, the keel in a ship, and the heart in a body,” so stands Psalm 1 in relation to the rest of the Psalter, according to Basil the Great (330-79), a fourth century bishop.
One might think of this psalm as an extended beatitude. In fact, the beatitudes of Matthew and Luke echo the opening words of this psalm in the Greek Septuagint: “Happy” or “blessed is the one…” In a manner characteristic of the Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures, Psalm 1 establishes a strong opposition between the way of the righteous and the folly of the wicked.David Gambrell
Wednesday, May 8th:
- 1 John 5:9-13It is very difficult even for lifelong Christians, or those who have received our teaching only in caricature, to hear anything other than the evangelical guarantee or purchase of eternal life, provide that we believe or affirm the right set of facts. This makes the faith a matter of right thinking, not right living.
In the Gospel of John and in this letter, however, eternal life is present now in Christ, and right thinking about God cannot be separated from right living with one another. Eternal life is life lived in mutual love of God and one another.Mark Sturgess
Thursday, May 9th:
- John 17: 6-19It is not clear we Christians have ever figured this balance out – to be in but not of the world. Christians who overemphasize the “in” part end up falling in altogether, looking no different from their neighbors. Christians who overemphasize the “not of” part can look down their nose with disdain on their neighbors. The Gospel of John presents Jesus as falling into neither trap. He loves the world. He eats and drinks and befriends and teaches and luxuriates in all the goodness of creation, for which he will die and which he promises to make new.
Jason Byassee
Friday, May 10th:
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being…
During life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
