Read Today's Scripture
1 Peter 4:7–11
John 15:26–16:4a
Not an Interruption but an alarm
Both today’s Gospel and Epistle readings begin in a similar way. In fact, they complement each other and reveal to us the times from God’s perspective. Thus, when Jesus says, “when the Counselor comes” it’s the same as Peter saying, “the end of all things is at hand”. In other words, Pentecost, the outpouring of God’s Spirit upon the Church inaugurates the end of times. What does this mean? In our careers and purchases, our marriages and births, our eating and drinking, we often find ourselves in maintenance mode—striving to maintain life and thrive. We see things like death, disease, even a pandemic, as an interruption to life maintenance. To be told that the end of all things is at hand sounds untimely and unencouraging, a bit of a downer. But that’s because we are so used to seeing time from within the perspective of our lives. We track time, and teach our children to track time, from birth onwards to whatever achievements we are told has value in our day and age. But God tracks time differently. And he wants us to track time according to his perspective. What’s his time? That Satan and death were defeated, and his coming is imminent. Disease, pandemics, etc. are interruptions but like sirens and alarms to wake us up and reorder our lives according to God's time—to prepare for his second coming. We are to live like, and to teach our children that as they grow and mature, the greatest achievements are not careers, college degrees and who we marry, but how we and they live before Christ returns. To use Peter’s words: to have an unfailing love for others, to practice hospitality ungrudgingly, to use gifts as God’s stewards, so that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. This is not the first interruption to our lives, and it won’t be the last. But the greater we feel interrupted, perhaps the more we need to be snapped back onto God’s time and live like we are citizens in his kingdom.
Collect
O God, the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven; We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us un-to the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.