Humbled to be change

The lives of the people who interact with the mission of Jesus and His followers are shown to be challenged and changed in the texts today from the Roman Catholic Lectionary. The jailer, who is given custody of Paul and Silas, in the text from the Acts of the Apostles, needs to deal with the penalty of failure which meant that to die at his own hands was preferable to the expected punishment. The call of welcome from the prisoner for the jailer marks the beginning of a new approach to living for the jailer and his family. The change comes from celebrating Life by the Apostles in the midst of apparent tragedy and it brings Life to those humbled by circumstances of the world in which we live. The psalmist proclaims the nearness of God to the humble and the necessity of distance from the proud. The glorification of Jesus in the Gospel of John is His total Love expressed as the apparently failed “King of the Jews” on the Cross. The image of His departure from the disciples through humiliation, rejection and death at the hands of the people to whom He brings the invitation to Life is very difficult for His followers to accept. Jesus insists on the glory of this moment and of the central importance that He send the Holy Spirit, Advocate, to them to teach, reveal and remind them of His Love as testimony they will bring to the world which deals with sin, righteousness and judgement. For John, the sin is the refusal to believe in Jesus. The righteousness of Jesus Way will be evidenced through the Holy Spirit in the lives of Jesus followers. The judgement of the Holy Spirit concerning evil in the world is that it is defeated by Life in Jesus. We, like the jailer, witness events which call us to the challenge of change. The Spirit provides the power to be transformed.