FRIDAY, June 4

Matthew 14:22-36. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!"

Of course, we enlightened children of the twentieth century don't believe in ghosts, and we can look quite patronizingly at those poor terrified Galilean primitives who did. But then--have you ever been in a boat on a rough sea, looked out over the waves, and seen your best friend calmly walking toward you on the surface of the water? If you haven't, don't be too sure about what you would think or say if you did.

Let's give that cry of the disciples a parabolic interpretation. They saw Jesus and thought he was a ghost. Don't many people look at Jesus today and think he is a ghost--an unreal figure, an apparition from another world of reality? They may see him as a beautiful ghost rather than a frightening one, but a ghost, nonetheless: somebody not quite real, too good to be true.

Whether we find Jesus beautiful or frightening, whether we like him or love him or dislike him or detest him, how real to us is he?

Christ becomes real to people in just one way. He becomes real to those who think and live as if he were the ultimate reality of their lives. He is real to us in direct proportion of our being in earnest as his followers. (1976)

PRAY for the Diocese of Honduras (Province IX, USA)

Ps 40, 54 * 51; Ecclesiastes 5:1-7; Galatians 3:15-22

View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.

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