Lent For Everyone Reading Plan
The reading plan continues for the week after Easter. The reading for Thursday after Easter is Matthew 6:25-34. (If you want to listen, scroll to the bottom of that page for the audio links.)
Wright says “Now, in Easter week, try reading the whole Sermon on the Mount as a blueprint for how Jesus’ Easter-people should live. Now at last, with Jesus leading the way through death to new life, we see what it might mean to be poor in spirit, to be meek, peacemakers, and so on. Now, already, the mourners are being comforted, the pure in heart glimpsing the living God in Jesus himself. Now at last, as well, those who follow Jesus will be persecuted because of their love for him and the new world of justice and joy which he has opened up, which challenges the old world to its core. Now, at last, we can see the sense in the demanding new way of life which he has launched.”
“Then, as the Sermon reaches a kind of climax, we have this passage about worry — or rather, about not worrying. Modern life, of course, thrives on worry. . . And Jesus tells us — the Easter Jesus tells us — not to worry about any of them. He could give that instruction already, during his ministry; how much more can he give it now that he is raised from the dead, now that he has overthrown the greatest worry of all, death itself? One of the chief notes in the life of the early Christians was joy: joy because a new way of life had been launched, new creation had begun, and it was clear that God had commenced his reign and could be trusted to bring it to completion.”
“Worry and Easter, then, don’t go together. Someone once asked that great teacher and saint, Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, whether he was an optimist or a pessimist. ‘I am neither an optimist’, he said, ‘nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!’ He had learned the Easter lesson which brings the Sermon on the Mount to life. Our life.”
An oldie but a goodie Seek Ye First
And a less oldie, but still a goodie Blessed Are You
