Credit: Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/en/dome-of-the-rock-jerusalem-israel-207989/)
This daily post is designed to help you live into our New Room Society covenant of practicing daily prayer together. Below is this week’s theme and daily practice.
Week 29: Grounded
What does it mean to be spiritually formed? What things tend to draw you toward or away from becoming the person God intends you to be?
“As Jesus continued on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at a kiosk for collecting taxes. He said to him, ‘Follow me,” and he got up and followed him.’” Matthew 9:9, Common English Bible (CEB)
Let’s start with something we can all agree on: Jesus is a Jew.
Jewish teachers have the unique idea that we act our way into a right way of thinking, not the other way around.
This is one of the ways that the rabbis are different than, say, Aristotle. When Aristotle wanted to teach his students, he told them, “Sit down and let me talk to you about life.” When the rabbis want to teach their students, they say, “Follow me, and let me show you how to live.”
So, when Jesus calls Matthew to follow him, the call isn’t into an intellectual discourse about the efficacy of faith. It is into a new way of living. It is a call to be formed into new practices and grounded in new way of being. It is a call to be reformed away from the practices of Empire and mammon (which Matthew was well versed in as a tax collector) and into the practices of kingdom and communion.
Rabbi Jesus forms and grounds the life of his disciples in his practices his being because this is how he is saving us: by restoring us into the image of God by inviting us into God’s way of being.
By being grounded and formed in the life of Christ, by following him and doing what he does, we begin to look like the one we follow.
Sunday: Worship in Community
“One Sabbath, as Jesus was going through the wheat fields, his disciples were picking the heads of wheat, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.…”. Luke 6:1, Common English Bible (CEB)
Much of Jesus’ time with his disciples is spent walking and talking about what they experienced together.
After worship, go for a walk with a friend (new or old). What did they hear from God today in worship? What do they need prayers for? Share what you heard and prayed for, as well.