Eucharistic meditation

1 Peter 2:12: Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

As Pastor Sumpter has reminded us today, God visits us in many ways. Whenever He visits, God comes to judge, to condemn His enemies and to deliver His people.

Every Sunday, we anticipate the visitation, the advent of the Lord Jesus.  In confession, in the Word, in the Supper, Jesus visits us to inspect and judge.

He visits us as the flame of God’s love so that He can burn off the dross; He visits us with the sword of the Spirit so that He can strip off the flesh that seeks to kill the soul; He visits us as the great king who mows down the wicked like grass.

This seems to make worship depressing.  If we gather for inspection, for judgment, for visitation, how can we be joyful?  No discipline is pleasant: How are we to rejoice at the disciple of the weekly Supper?

We have to grasp what Jesus is doing when He visits.  He does all this to make us flourish even more.  Unless the dross is burned off, the gold won’t shine; unless the flesh is removed, we will be encumbered and weighed down toward death; unless the king mows down the weeds, new growth will never appear.

Days of visitation are days of destruction, but without that destruction there is no new life.  Without that destruction of the flesh, stagnation and decadence will be the rule of the day.  Jesus visits us to kill, but He kills us in order to give life.  Jesus visits so we can share in the cross, which is the path to resurrection life.