DAILY BYTE
Have you ever been unfortunate enough to be rejected or broken up with in a letter? They call them ‘Dear John’ or ‘Dear Jane’ letters – it’s when someone is too afraid to break up with you in person, and so they write a letter delivering the bad news.
I remember receiving a ‘Dear John’ letter once. I was barely a teenager and had been going out with this girl for the grand total of 2 weeks. But these two weeks were intensely draining – there were constant tears and drama, and an endless pit of emotional neediness.
And that was just from me! You should have see how bad she was.
Anyway, she eventually decided that enough was enough and that the best way to get rid of me was to write a hastily scribbled note of rejection. This note was delivered by her best friend, who I must say, looked absolutely delighted to be the bearer of bad news.
This ‘Dear John’ note broke my 13 year old heart! She really should have known better though, because it only took another 7 years or so before someone else snapped me up.
Our focus reading for this week is taken from Matthew 7. 18-29 and at their very centre is this rather chilling sentence: “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
As we read these words, we may be tempted to think – 'Is Jesus saying that one day God is going to send out a whole lot of Dear John letters? That God is going to unexpectedly break off his relationship with certain people?’
Now, I don’t think that is what this text is meaning at all. However, these words from Jesus are hard and challenging precisely because he meant them to be. They are not the kind of thing we generally expect to hear Jesus say, and yet there they are there, recorded in black and white in Matthew’s Gospel.
This means we shouldn’t move too quickly onto other more comforting Jesus sayings, pretending that Jesus didn’t actually say this. Jesus meant to shock us with these words because he wanted us to stop and wrestle with them in an attempt to find their meaning.
So that is exactly what we will spend the rest of this week doing. In the meantime, take some to read around these words as you ponder their meaning. As these words are part of Jesus’ conclusion to his Sermon on the Mount, you might want to read from the beginning of that Sermon (from Matthew 5).
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, we pray that your Holy Spirit would fill us all as we wrestle with and ponder your meaning in this particular teaching. May you grow and deepen our faith throughout this week’s journey. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Matthew 7. 21 NRSV
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord , Lord,‘ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
