The Marvelous Light of Gods Grace

Communion Meditation

May 5, 1996

1 Peter 2:9; John 14:1-14; Acts 7:55-60

  1. Who Peter tells us that we are, and
  2. What such names or titles imply:
    • We belong to a New Creation that begins with the Second Adam (chosen race)
    • We have the assignment of saying "God is GOOD!" (a royal priesthood)
    • We have great dignity/authority in this work (holy nation, God's own people - ambassadors of Christ)
  3. Like Thomas and Judas, not Iscariot, (in John 14) we do not always know what we know! This is profound stuff!

    "Where I go ye know, and the way ye know!"
    (Significance to me of "ye" as opposed to "you.")
    "No we don't!"
    "Yes you do!"
    "Show us God!"
    (God is TOO big to be seen— no one has seen him)
    "Look at ME!"

  4. LOOK AT JESUS - WHAT WE SEEK TO DO IN WORSHIP

    Particularly in the sacraments -
    But also particularly in letting the New Creation/Risen Lord live in us!
    "offer spiritual sacrifices"= saying "No" to the way this world thinks/does, and saying "YES" to the Holy Spirit within...

  5. TWO WAYS TO THINK OF GOD'S GRACE
    • as over and above— to be reached for on special occasions in need— to keep us alive in a hostile environment
    • as permeating all of creation and life: to be aware of Christ's Presence and to celebrate. Worship as reminder in liturgy and fellowship that grace "goes before"
  6. Stephen's LIFE (confronting) and DEATH were demonstration of his RACE, and his PRIESTHOOD (sacrifice/intercession) and AUTHORITY (God's own people) — in that with great power God used Stephen's life to reach Paul and reach even us today. Consider using all or part of the following quote (courtesy of an Australian pastor studying this same lectionary this week:)

TS Eliot, preface to Part II, 'Interlude', "Murder in the Cathedral".
Apologies for the sexist language.

"Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate at once Our Lord's Birth and His Death but on the next day we celebrate the martyrdom of His first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and in the Passion of Our Lord, so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.

Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who has been killed because he is a Christian; for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world's is. A Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man's will to become a Saint, as a man willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways.

It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr. So this as on earth the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand, so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, and are seen, not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being."