Dai­ly Reflec­tion
May 16, 2025

Today’s first read­ing ref­er­ences the “God-fear­ing” to whom the mes­sage of sal­va­tion had been sent.  The dis­po­si­tion of one’s heart mat­ters.  A dis­po­si­tion of rev­er­ence, respect, and humil­i­ty pro­vides open­ness that per­mits the Word to pen­e­trate and work effec­tive­ly.  A con­trary dis­po­si­tion of closed self-sat­is­fac­tion makes our hearts hard and imper­me­able to the Word and even the works of God in our midst.  In the econ­o­my of heav­en, won­der and humil­i­ty beats cer­tain­ty and self-suf­fi­cien­cy every time, as we deceive our­selves when we fail to rec­og­nize the con­di­tion of our need for God and all His gifts, par­tic­u­lar­ly His mercy.

Today’s psalm includes a cou­plet that also riffs on this theme:
And now, O kings, give heed;
take warn­ing, you rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice before him;
with trem­bling rejoice.

To our mod­ern ears, we recoil from “fear” and “trem­bling”.  We pre­fer com­fort, secu­ri­ty, and famil­iar­i­ty, which is reflect­ed in our man­ner of dress and in the way we relate to oth­ers, includ­ing those in author­i­ty.  But the Psalmist here was address­ing the high­est lev­el of ancient soci­ety – kings and rulers – who were pre­sum­ably used to def­er­ence, respect, and hon­or from oth­ers.  This respect­ed cohort is being told how to behave before an even greater Lord than they are: serv­ing with fear and trem­bling, yet still rejoicing.

Is it pos­si­ble to rejoice while trem­bling?  Per­haps we can find deep truths with­in this appar­ent con­tra­dic­tion.  God is tran­scen­dent, not com­mon and famil­iar.  Until the appear­ance of our Sav­ior, God’s imma­nence was large­ly hid­den.  John’s gospel pro­claims, “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” (John 1:18).   By enter­ing our world in the flesh, born of the Vir­gin Mary, God was able to show love and mer­cy in ways that were extra­or­di­nary and unfa­mil­iar.  Lov­ing one’s ene­mies, endur­ing injus­tice, embrac­ing the stranger and out­cast, showed us that God’s ways are dif­fer­ent from our own.  As we are taught in the Nicene Creed, Jesus was con­sub­stan­tial with the Father.  Despite emp­ty­ing him­self to become a ser­vant (Phil. 2:7), Jesus pos­sessed the full­ness of the divine nature.  His life and words tes­ti­fied to this oth­er­wise inef­fa­ble nature and relat­ed it to us in a way that we might grasp it, albeit imperfectly.

The read­ing from John 14 reminds us that Jesus is the bridge to the Father, allow­ing us to cross the chasm to the tran­scen­dent and going ahead to pre­pare a place in that tran­scen­dent real­i­ty for us to dwell.  Jesus tells his fol­low­ers that they will dwell in the Father’s house, with the impli­ca­tion is that this house will be our Father’s house, too.

Lord, help us to live in a state of holy respect and awe for your name, rejoic­ing in the love, good­ness, and mer­cy that you have so lib­er­al­ly admin­is­tered to each of us, and which we cel­e­brate in this holy East­er sea­son.  Thanks be to God.