I Give My Heart To
“On the evening of the first day of
the week Jesus stood among them and
said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he showed the disciples his hands and his feet.” He then told them that he was sending them
out as the Father had sent him, and here is the important part, “He breathed on
them and said, ‘receive the Holy Spirit.’”
Not a bad gift to receive from Jesus on the day of His Resurrection.
“A week later he appeared to them
again, and Thomas, who had not been with them the first time, was there with
them. If you remember the story, you remember that Thomas had boasted that he
would not believe until he put his fingers in the nail holes and his hand in
the hole in Jesus’ side. When Thomas saw
Jesus, his response was simply, “my Lord and my God.” Jesus’ response was important not only to
Thomas and the other disciples but to us as well. “You believe because you have
seen, but more blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”
As God sent Jesus to bear witness to
God and to lead us back into right relationship with God and Each other, Jesus
promises us the Holy Spirit to empower us to lead others back into these two
right relationships, to by co-workers with Jesus in building the kingdom of God
on Earth as it is in heaven. This is
truly our calling to be the Body of Christ in the World. To do the business Jesus did in the world. And what is that business? Do you remember what the 12 year old Jesus
told his parents when they finally found him in the temple? That’s right, “Do you not know that I must be
about my Father’s business? And what is
that business? The prophet Micah tells
us that that business is “to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with
our God.”
This business involves speaking “truth
to power,” as Jesus did, because the truth is the “Good News,” the Gospel which
Jesus came into the world to teach, but more importantly, what He came into the
world to do and to show us how to do.
Our business as the body of Christ is to move ourselves and others from lies
to truth, from greed to generosity. Living
into this truth can be difficult or dangerous as we see in the life of Jesus,
but it can point the way to many wild and exciting possibilities.
It may mean standing up to our
government, to our churches and other religious institutions and to our friends
who do not understand us or why we are doing what we do. The truth to which we are led by the Holy
Spirit will allow us, or perhaps force us, to let Jesus out of the box we
sometimes put him in. This truth will
prevent us from creating God in our own image so that God hates the same people
we hate and likes the same people we like.
This truth will take us back again and again to Jesus’ first sermon in
his hometown Synagogue.
The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to
the poor. He
has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the
blind, to let the oppressed go free, to
proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’(Lk 4:18-19)
The Holy Spirit leads
us into all truth, but it also appears that this truth involves right living
and right acting as well as, or more so, than right thinking and right
believing. Truth involves the true
meaning of the Latin word for belief; Credo, I GIVE MY HEART TO.
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