“Who Is This Christ, Who Interferes in Everything?”

“Who is this Christ, who interferes in everything?”

These words were written by the Austrian poet and novelist, Rainer Maria Rilke, who lived during the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th.

“Who is this Christ, who interferes in everything?”

I love the truth and power of these words. I feel a kinship to them. Do you know what I mean? Accepting Christ’s invitation to “Follow me” can lead us on adventures we’d never dreamed of taking—and some for which we’d never have volunteered. For disciples in the 1st century or the 21st, Christ’s call to follow eventually means the transformation of our assumptions, intentions, motivations, and just how far in life we’ll be willing to go because of love.

In the gospels, when the Lord Jesus appears post-resurrection to the disciples who are in hiding, he shatters their ideas of how life works. Jesus has been dead, but now is alive and capable of things beyond what they have known of him before.

Jesus returns to them, announcing peace—wholeness, shalom—and commissioning them to lives of being Christ to the world. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” These shocking words, empowered by the Holy Spirit, call them to ministries of forgiveness and reconciliation. He breathes into them a new way of experiencing the world.

It’s like Jesus is saying “School’s out! Time to get your marching orders as witnesses and workers in God’s Reign.”

It’s time to admit that without the inner work of God in our lives we can’t do much.

But with God at work in us? Well, God might just use someone like you and me to overturn the world’s notions of what life is all about, too.

Grace and peace,

Bob Guffey

Consider: How might you resist hearing God’s calling? What notions of ours might God want to overturn? What new thing is God trying to awaken in you and me?

A Template for Praying: God, help me resist the temptation to only want a tame and comfortable gospel. Let your Holy Spirit work in me that I will be able to embrace your call and claim on my life, whatever and wherever that may be. Amen.