Scripture: Proverbs 27.19
As water reflects the face,
so one’s life reflects the heart.

Reflection: Getting to the Heart
The Park Forum

Our hearts, like fine instruments, need to be tuned. Proverbs warns, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” This may have been what Jesus was thinking of when he said, “…for out of the overflow of the heart, (the) mouth speaks.” Our heart sets the course for our life. If our heart is envious, entitled, impatient or pleasure-seeking, everything in our life will be marked by these traits.

Legalists suffer from myopic focus on behavior. If a person is angry, legalists demand the person control the outputs of anger. Don’t lash out. Pause before you react. In contrast, the target of the gospel is the heart — it address a person’s actions by moving directly to the root.

For example, is a person angry: (1) because he feels superior and sees others as a nuisance, (2) because he lusts for success and lashes out when things get shaky, or (3) because something happened in the past and he now responds disproportionally under the same circumstances.

In the first case, the root of the anger is entitlement — and the root is likely fleshing itself out as he belittles people who work in service positions or spends large amounts of money on things that refine his image. Multiple sins often draw life from the same root.

In the second case, the root is the idol of success. The person might use peers to scrape his way to the top — taking credit for other people’s work and shifting blame for failures. He could also be ignoring relationships that don’t seem to benefit his bottom line.

In the later case, the root of his anger is likely either guilt or bitterness. If the person is full of guilt, he may not have forgiven himself or walked through the necessary steps to seek forgiveness from those he has hurt. If he is bitter it’s possible he is delaying the journey to forgive someone who has hurt him.

When we get to the root issues of the heart we begin discussing motivations rather than just actions. Focusing solely on actions is like a doctor handing throat lozenges to a coughing patient who is really suffering from pneumonia.

In some ways it’s more comfortable to deal exclusively with actions rather than addressing heart issues. After all, if it’s simply an action that’s our core problem, we can often provide the solution on our own — willing ourselves into change.

Seeing God’s grace as the primary means of change doesn’t mean we stop working on our will. True change happens when a person responds with all of their heart, all of their soul, all of their mind and all of their strength. In his book, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’ Essential Teachings on Discipleship, Dallas Willard clarifies, “Grace is not opposed to effort, it’s opposed to earning.”

In this, we seek to live dedicated lives of faith empowered by the Holy Spirit. After all, what person can change their own heart? Tell two people in love to stop their hearts from loving. Tell an envious person to have a content soul. It can’t happen. When the gospel drives at our heart it takes us beyond our own sufficiency to our need for a Savior—someone who can change our heart.

Prayer: The Call to Prayer
I will lift up my hands to your commandments, and I will meditate on your statutes.” — Psalm 119.48

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Proverbs 27 (Listen – 2:43)
2 Thessalonians 1 (Listen – 1:52)

Scripture: Luke 23.43, 45
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
…And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

Reflection: Sewing Up the Veil
By John Tillman

One week ago, as Christ was dying on the cross, the scriptures tell us three times—in Matthew, Mark, and Luke—that the veil of the temple was torn in two. Mark and Matthew add the helpful detail that it tore “From top to bottom” implying heavenly agency in its destruction.

According to the Talmud and other sources, the veil was quite large and heavy—requiring 300 priests to move when it needed to be cleaned. It is not hard to imagine them now, a week later, hundreds of them, working to repair it.

It would be easy for us to smugly shake our heads at those priests. Couldn’t they understand the meaning? Couldn’t they let go of their rituals? Why set back up the barrier that God tore through?

But are we so different?

We don’t have a literal Temple veil, but we each stitch up a veil of our own cultural assumptions, religious rituals, and precious objects. These form our ideas about what it takes to approach God.

When we come to God, we must bring nothing but Christ with us. Any ingredients, or any previous qualifications of our own, will poison and corrupt faith. — Thomas Wilcox

Anything that we think we can’t be a Christian without, is a stitch in the veil.

“You can’t be a Christian without supporting _________.”
“You can’t be a Christian without abstaining from __________”
“You can’t be a Christian without __________.”

We’ve all got something in the blanks.

Whenever I’m tempted to put something in those blanks, I try to turn my mind to the thief on the cross. I think of the criminal who watched Jesus die, got his legs broken to hasten his suffocation, and whose body was—more than likely—dumped, naked, in a mass grave.

Anything we put in those blanks should disqualify that thief on the cross. But there is no one, in all of scripture that has a more direct and unambiguous promise of being resurrected to live with Christ in Heaven than this criminal who did nothing—nothing but believe.

Paul wrote to the church at Corinth about how the Jews carried a veil over their minds that kept them from the truth of the Gospel. We are subject to the same tendency and only in Christ is this veil removed.

May we resist our tendency to repair the veil Christ removed, while looking with grace and compassion on those who labor, stitching up their veils.
May we unveil our faces and turn to Christ—like the thief—with our hands empty and incapable.
May our unveiled faces shine on others, that they can see, not our great works or piety, but God’s grace to us.

Prayer: The Request for Presence
I have said to the Lord, “You are my God; listen, O Lord, to my supplication.” — Psalm 140.6

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Proverbs 24 (Listen – 3:47)
1 Thessalonians 3 (Listen – 1:44)

This Weekend’s Readings
Proverbs 25 (Listen – 2:56) 1 Thessalonians 4 (Listen – 2:24)
Proverbs 26 (Listen – 2:37) 1 Thessalonians 5 (Listen – 2:37)

Scripture: Proverbs 23.18
There is surely a future hope for you,
and your hope will not be cut off.

As we continue in the season of Easter, contemplating the resurrection and our Lord’s appearances, we share this beautiful poem from Christina Rossetti. Here she intimately acknowledges that there is no part of our lives that does not need to be resurrected with Christ. May we be quickened, may we rise with Christ to manifest his love in the world. — John

Reflection: A Better Resurrection :: Throwback Thursday
By Christina Rossetti (1865)

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perishing thing;
Melt and remold it, ‘til it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

Christina Rossetti , “A Better Resurrection,” Goblin Market and Other Poems (1865)

Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise. — Psalm 51.16

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Proverbs 23 (Listen – 3:39)
1 Thessalonians 2 (Listen – 2:53)

Scripture: John 21.15
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

“Christ, you know I love you.” — The Crowd and Disciples, Tim Rice, Jesus Christ Superstar

Reflection: Learning from Judas
By John Tillman

Jesus Christ Superstar, from creators Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, has always been controversial. However, if we stop trying to sync it up to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and instead make note of its contrasts, its factual and theological errors can be instructive.

The most important fact of the Gospel—The Resurrection—gets left out of Jesus Christ Superstar. But the show gives a very revealing look at our culture’s ideas about Jesus because it is told from the perspective of the disciple of Jesus with whom our culture has the most in common—Judas.

The production shows Jesus’ last week of ministry as the looming failure that Judas must have perceived it to be. The show, of course, is fictional and expands the narrative beyond what the scriptures tell us of Judas. But many of the show’s implications about him can be defended scripturally.

As portrayed in the show, Judas is a disciple who has little use for religion without tangible effects and tangible rewards. Judas is focused on outward appearances, on being politically expedient, on social justice (from his perspective), and on public shows of religious charity.

Judas would be a great prosperity Gospel theologian. Judas would be quick to endorse or stand behind a corrupt political candidate if promised concessions from the government. Judas would attack the character of those who disagreed with him.

The great value of viewing Jesus Christ Superstar as a Christian is not to condemn Judas, but to see how like him we are.

How we long for Jesus to only say and do the things we are comfortable with him saying and doing!
How we long for Jesus to take down our enemies and lift us up!
How we long for recognition for all the difficult work we do “in his name!”

His practicality, his self-righteousness, and his faith in political maneuvering make Judas a disciple as fit for our modern age as his ancient one.

What we are called to is so much greater than the political deals we are willing to make and the causes we want to campaign for.

The Judas of Jesus Christ Superstar gives us a chance to see, and perhaps repent of, whatever it is that we would be willing to trade Christ for.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. — Matthew 5.6

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Proverbs 22 (Listen – 2:59)
1 Thessalonians 1 (Listen – 1:27)