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By Such Stripes Are We Healed
by Jack Shaver

©The United Church of Canada, 1985
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-88622-196-X
7M/12/85/APL
Used with Permission

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Monday of Holy Week
Unfinished business

Romans 8: 22-39

For Holy Week I have selected scripture readings which make clear reference to the unfinished nature of our life in Christ as the New Testament portrays it. I was a young adult when that came clear to me for the first time. I had undergone several serious commitments to Christ, each time thinking there must have been something wrong with the former one and resolving that this time it would be for real. I heard the Bible teaching me that it was futile to keep trying to be good. Rather, I was to give myself to God and then my life would be victorious and abundant - like the Apostle Paul's. I was starting to believe that the promised experience was not for real.

I can almost name the month, day, and year when those words from Romans 8 first came through to me. "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." Remember it is after his conversion and after many years of dedicated ministry that Paul says this. Sighs too deep for words, because we don't know how to pray, are the mark of a spirit-filled Christian.

Throughout the New Testament, the new creation we have in Christ Jesus is seen as an earnest, a down payment, a first harvest, a seeing through a glass darkly. What keeps us going is not that we have arrived, but that he who has begun a good work in us is capable of finishing it.

The eighth chapter of Romans holds a special place in my formation. It opened a whole new way for the New Testament word to address me in my reality. It led me to the discovery that what I was experiencing placed me in excellent company.

At anyone time, you and I are far from believing the gospel in its depth. I want to get out from under the world's sin. I am not looking to find God there. We don't have much of a hold on such a God. But what counts is God's hold on us.

Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
(Ephesians 5: 25b-27a)

Confession
Gracious God
We have trouble making a good confession,

Hear our sighs, too deep for words, and empower us to come before you:

With our actions, those called for and those made in righteous haste; With our postponements, those acts put off because of fearfulness

and those put off because of a tender heart;

With our bad conscience, that which arises from your word

and that which, arises from the punishment we inflict on ourselves to avoid your word;

With our good conscience-lest our zeal to be blameless

blind us to our culpability;

With our hurting, that which comes from love of the world,

and that which comes from self pity;

With our bravado, that which rests on faith in you

and that which comes from a hardened heart;

With our failures, those due to sloth and those which come from undertaking what is called for.
God, we bring us,

and the matters of this day, and every day.

Have mercy upon us.
Straighten us out.
Grant us your peace.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen