Here's the first piece to start the week - William Willimon.
...Barth believed that salvation is not the removal of the threat of judgment but the accentuation and fulfillment of divine judgment. Salvation is to be face-to-face with the loving God whom we have so grievously wronged, which begins to sound somewhat like hell. I'm thinking here of Jesus' parable of the talents in which the master returns and simply asks, "What have you done with what you have been given?" (Matthew 25:14-30). The thought of that question being put to me by Jesus sends shivers down my spine.
Oh my. It would not be just another person asking this question. It would now be Jesus - the one we say we follow. He is asking about our journey and who we have been along the way. Well, what do we say..? We've been stumbling quite a bit...we've been turning this way and that way....we've seen opportunities to serve but had other things get in the way. Now what!?! After writing this I wondered about how important it is to be truthful. We do not make excuses - we tell the truth. That shows that we know a bit of the Reign of God and how we fall short. I also wonder about the Judge. The Judge is the one with us even when we are not with the Lord...even when we turn and walk away. So there when asked that question we are not there to save ourselves...we are there to be the ones Jesus saves and the ones unafraid of truthfulness - no matter what it might say about us.
Connection: In each of our lives, we are handed times in which we become judge. It would be good if we too made sure that truthfulness would be respected and honored even as we had to correct and re-train or re-envision the path.
When you promise to judge all, O God, it is different from the ways we would judge one another. Therefore it is easy to try to come up with ways to justify ourselves. And yet, you long for truthfulness for in that action by your community the day may open up in new ways. Amen.
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