Hey Jude!

Jude 1:22New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

And have mercy on some who are wavering

Jude is a book in the New Testament that is 25 verses long.  Not chapters, verses.  Same length as the equally short, Philemon.

It's not one that pops up regularly in the lectionary, and not one you probably generally study in Bible study groups.  It's a letter written to one of the churches of the emerging Christianity in the late 1st/early 2nd century dealing with one of the newer problems the church faced.

Unlike the early churches brought together by a primarily Jewish population that dealt with how to incorporate (or not) Jewish identity with the new Christian movement, and unlike later churches dealing with heavy persecution, the church Jude writes to has a different problem.  They were facing a subversion of the Gospel from the surrounding Greek Hellenistic culture.  These churches fought pressure and temptation to accommodate Greek pagan thought: a philosophy that ran in huge tension to the work of God's restoration and redemption that the Christian gospel proclaimed.

In other words, the Christian church Jude is writing too is dealing with temptation by the larger culture to be more like it than like the Christian community that was being formed.

Things haven't changed all that much, have they?

The larger culture if the world is still the greatest competition to the gospel of Christ and to our hearts and minds.  

Causes some wavering from time to time...

I've heard lots of bemoaning of the loss of the good old days from folks who long for the Christian community they remember as children.  I've probably bemoaned myself a few times.

But the truth is that from the very beginning we've been dealing with a competing culture that runs up against what the gospel of Christ stands for.  And like our early counterparts, we've over the years found ways to accommodate practices from the larger culture into our churches.  Maybe even some of those wonderful things you remember from your childhood.

Yet we have this assurance - this blessing - to have mercy on those of us who are wavering.

It's easy to see the big wide world and all it offers and feel the pull of it.  It's even easy to take some of that world and bring it to our churches.  Sometimes it even becomes a good thing.

But sometimes it causes us to waver and doubt and feel drawn away from the Gospel.

And still God showers mercy on us!

That's what Mercy does.  That's what the Gospel is.  

May you find yourself part of a community that lifts that up!

Merciful God, help me to know and dwell in your Gospel of love and thank you for holding me fast when I waver and am pulled away.  Draw me ever nearer to you always!  Amen.