Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter
Today’s readings speak to me of liberation, mercy, compassion, and the extravagant love of God for each one of us. I love the Easter season with its emphasis on hope, joy, forgiveness, and love! I hear the Lord inviting each of us to experience the same kind of liberation provided to the Apostles, and to walk in the freedom of knowing we are free from condemnation. Let us approach our texts today with openness and receptivity to the liberating power of God’s love.
The Apostles are jailed because the religious leaders are jealous and afraid of their bold, evangelistic efforts. This is not the only instance – we find two other examples in Acts 12 and Acts 16. But, just as God’s resurrection power blew away the stone from the tomb, demonstrating Christ’s victory over sin and death, so also an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, indicating that nothing would deter the Good News of Christ’s victory from spreading and propagating. The grave had no victory; attempts to silence God’s people ultimately gained no victory, either. Can you feel the life-giving energy of Christ’s resurrection, can you sense the incredible momentum of the early evangelistic efforts? It’s as if God was saying, Christ Jesus has triumphed over sin, death, and hell, and the Good News of his love, mercy, grace, healing, and forgiveness will not be silenced. In Christ is the ultimate victory!
Do you know this victory in your own life? The resurrection power that moved the stone and opened prison doors is at work within you through the power of the Holy Spirit. Just as it was God’s will to release the Apostles from literal captivity, I believe that God desires to free us from things in our lives that hold us back or keep us captive. Do you find yourself imprisoned in your mind? Maybe self-doubt, negative self-talk, fear, shame, guilt, regret keep you feeling trapped. Perhaps it’s an addiction. Others may have locked the doors to their heart – unresolved grief, feelings of abandonment, experiences of rejection can become entrapments. Whatever it might be for you today, whatever it is for me, can we today ask the Lord to fling open the prison doors, take us by the hand, and lead us out into freedom? Perhaps we can step into the flow of “Easter momentum” as Good News and the power of the Holy Spirit spread like wildfire. Just as the tomb and the jail had no power to squelch God’s activity, neither do the things that seek to imprison us in our minds and hearts.
In our Gospel, we are assured, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned . . .” Feeling condemned is another form of imprisonment from which God would want to free us. God loves us SO much, that God sent his only-begotten Son. Why? So that we might not perish and instead receive eternal life. That abundant, freeing, Spirit-filled life is ours for the taking right here and right now. Eternal life is not only in the hereafter; eternal life is ours right now! The Apostle Paul preached this good news, as well. He tells us, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” (Romans 8:1). If you look within yourself and find any sense of condemnation, please release that to the One who has redeemed you and set you free.
We are Easter people! Just as the face of the earth is renewed in springtime, I pray that each one of us today will experience renewal as God’s chosen ones, deeply beloved and made new in Christ. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all . . . are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18). As one filled with the Spirit, may you walk in the freedom that is yours this day. Amen!
Elizabeth Wourms