Thursday: The Christian Accepts the Material
WEEK 11
THURSDAY
THE CHRISTIAN ACCEPTS THE MATERIAL
Genesis 1:4, 12, 18, 25, 31
We ended yesterday on the attempt to run away from the material. To the degree it has been tried in India, it has left that portion of its life in material and spiritual ruins. We are not made to be disembodied spirits trying to live disembodied in a material world. The attempt to be either immersed in the material or to become immune to the material ends in frustration.
There is only one workable way, and that is the Christian way of accepting the material as God-made and God-given, and to use as much of it as will make us more physically, mentally, and spiritually fit for the purposes of the kingdom of God. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Christians took the third way.
They accepted the material. The material was God-created and God-approved. God looked on it after creation and “saw that it was good”—good, not perfect—good for the purposes involved, namely, to provide an environment for the making and development of character. Moreover, the center of their faith was the incarnation, where the Divine Word became flesh—mind you, flesh. The Docetists, feeling an aversion to the material, said that Jesus, the Divine Word, became spirit. But John, protesting, said, “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come as a human is from God, and every spirit that doesn’t confess Jesus is not from God” (1 John 4:2-3). The Christian faith was planted firmly in material relations by the incarnation.
The followers of Jesus therefore made the material an agent of the coming of the kingdom of God and a part of its demonstration. Take the simple fact that the account says, “While they were eating together, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised” (Acts 1:4). “While they were eating together”—the most material thing we can do—“wait for what the Father had promised”—the most spiritual thing we can do. They were not incompatibles but com-possibles. When the Holy Spirit came, the breaking of bread, as distinct from the Communion, was made into a sacred ritual: “And they devoted themselves . . . to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42 RSV).
Dear Lord, show us how to make every meal a sacrament and every relationship a revelation and every deed a devotion. May we make all life live. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: All my material relations will be demonstration points of the kingdom.