Scripture: Romans 3:22-24
There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Thought for the Day: Paul and I disagree about the mechanics of Jesus’ rescuing work. For him, it’s all about death and blood. That’s fine, he lived in a different time and place, and the imagery of blood sacrifice was important to them. For us though, it’s imagery that trips us up. We get caught in literalism, and even when we try to interpret the idea of Jesus as a blood sacrifice metaphorically, it’s difficult to see the point. Jesus certainly sacrificed his life for the rest of us, because that’s the sort of integrity Jesus had. That’s how a person acts when God is put before self. It creates a new world. The idea of sacrificing for the good of the many is at the heart of Christianity—and that’s a redemptive idea for the world that doesn’t require Jesus, demigod son of an Olympian, to have his blood spilled on the cross. Those ideas come from the Greek mythology that slowly crept into the Christ story over time. It’s time to rescue ourselves from those myths.

Paul and I do agree about the crux of the Jesus story, the truly important idea: that Jesus’ work was meant for every human being on the planet—Jew and Gentile, men and women, free and slave, rich and poor. For a while I railed against the idea that we’re all sinners, because that word too has come to mean something it didn’t in Paul’s era. Now that I understand the idea of sin as a disconnection from right relationship with God, and any activity that separates us from God (such as war or addiction), then yeah, I understand Paul’s idea that we’re all in the same boat, helplessly adrift in a sea of sin from which God sends Jesus to rescue us. Maybe that’s why there are so many other boat analogies in the New Testament as well.

The point is this: We are rescued from this disconnected world when we experience the very real presence of God in our lives. We know it when it happens, because every molecule of our bodies becomes like a pot of water being brought to boil on a stove. We know it is possible, because there have been connected people throughout the ages to show us the way—people just like Jesus.

Prayer: Rescue me, Holy One, from the distractions of the world, from my fear of the unknown, from the dangers of literalism, and from the habits that keep me from knowing you completely. Amen.