February 13 | 1 John 2:1-6

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DAILY READING

1 John 2:1-6

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REFLECTION

Heading In the Way of the Light

by Dan Kidd

Years ago, my wife and I were invited to my high school best friend's wedding in a town in Virginia just east of the Tennessee border. The morning of the wedding we loaded into the car, dressed in our finest, so that we would arrive at the venue with about an hour to spare before the beginning of the ceremony. About two or three hours into the drive, we took a pit stop just off I-77. After that brief stop we resumed the trip feeling great about our early ETA.

Unfortunately, it took us both an hour or so to realize that upon our return to I-77, I had chosen the wrong on-ramp and we'd been headed north for far too long. The on-ramps were only a few feet apart, but the result of missing the correct turn by only a few feet had now put us nearly a hundred miles off course. As a result, we missed the whole ceremony.

This week we began with the passage from Mark where Jesus warns his disciples to be on vigilant guard against the "yeast of the Pharisees and Herod," that is, the corruptive nature of their misguidance. Just like in the baking of bread, a little bad yeast can be a disaster for the end product. One wrong turn, only a few feet from the correct one can, if not course-corrected, can lead us miles from where we intend to be. In today's passage, we've heard from John's first epistle, where John is instructing this early church community about the Gospel of Christ, and how Jesus has freed his people from the deadly grasp of sin.

In John's letter, he warns that those who claim to be in fellowship with the Lord, but who walk in darkness instead, lie and "do not live out the truth." This, in part, is the type of bad yeast that plagued the hearts of the Pharisees and Herod. But, as we walk in the light along with Jesus, we are bound together and purified by his cleansing blood. Which is not to say we are sinless. To pretend we are sinless would be self-deceptive and dishonest, and God's truth isn't in us. So we don't deny the truth that we have been sinful, rather we confess the truth boldly knowing that the faithful and just God forgives and purifies us.

Christ has saved us. He has saved us into a life where we can be led and transformed by the Holy Spirit. John, as any good pastor would, writes to his "children" so that they would not sin and live a life less than what they were saved into, because John knew the fruit of a life lived walking in the way of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit; so that the darkness would indeed pass away from them and that, instead, they might live—truly forgiven, utterly clean—in the bright-shining light of Jesus. As we prepare ourselves for Ash Wednesday tomorrow, let us prepare to put to death and bury the shadowy, sin-filled people we were, and ready ourselves to embrace the newborn, resurrected people God created and saved us to be.

PRAYER

Lord, we pray that as we ready our hearts for Ash Wednesday tomorrow, that you would expose to us the parts of ourselves and our lives that continue on in the shadows of darkness, and that you would, with the breath of the Holy Spirit, take them far away from, as far as the East is from the West. Remind us, again, that you met us, and still meet us, in our mortality, our sinfulness, in our enmity to you, and from there you resurrect us, purify us, and call us your beloved. Thank you God, for rerouting us into the way of Jesus and his marvelous light.