It’s easy for Christians to fall into a rut: Church is a thing you do, prayer is a box to check, and faith seems far from “the real world.” This fall we let Jesus himself confront our ruts. “Do you believe this?” he asks (Jn. 11:26).
To believe in Jesus is to experience him. It’s more than logic, argument, and doctrine. It is intimate knowledge of God himself. This fall, let Jesus himself speak to you in his seven “I AM” statements in the gospel of John. How is he changing you? What response is he inspiring in you? To believe in him changes everything.
Invocation
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Ponder:
Today we ponder the I AM statement: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Ponder the ways that Jesus is a shepherd. Look up descriptions of a shepherd on the internet. Search for videos on You Tube that show a shepherd and sheep. Ponder how Jesus is a “good” as a shepherd, as opposed to a hired hand.
Word
John 14:6
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
Meditation: Finding the True Way by Megan Roegner
I’m teaching Dante’s Inferno right now, and my students love it. They like to joke that the Divine Comedy is “self-insert Bible fanfic.” In the Comedy, which is a work of literature, not theology, the poet Dante tells the story of the character Dante who finds himself lost in the middle of his life. He suddenly realizes that he’s plagued and beset by sin at every turn. Seeing his despair, his love Beatrice, who now resides in heaven in the company of the Virgin Mary, St. Lucia, and Rachel from the Old Testament, sends Dante his literary hero, the ancient Roman poet Virgil, to guide Dante through the torments of hell and purgatory until Beatrice herself guides him through heaven.
Dante begins Inferno in with the famous lines
Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood. …
How I came to it I cannot rightly say,
so drugged and loose with sleep had I become.
when I first wandered there from the True Way. (Inferno, 1.1-3, 10-12)
What feels so true and timeless about these lines is that Dante doesn’t realize he’s left the path of the True Way until he’s well and truly lost. It’s like he’s been sleep walking for years and wakes up too late to save himself from corruption. Later in the first canto, Dante sees hope in the form of a gleaming mountain, but he can’t make it there because beasts representing the sins of indulgence, violence, and fraud block his path. He realizes that he can’t reclaim the True Way on his own.
What follows is thousands of lines of poetry as Virgil and then Beatrice show Dante the power, justice, and mercy of Divine Love. There’s a moment in Inferno when Dante questions why he’s been deemed valuable enough for this rescue mission:
But I—how should I dare? By whose permission?
I am not Aeneas. I am not Paul.
Who could believe me worthy of the vision? (Inferno, 2.31-33)
I, too, would likely ask the same question if I were selected for such an act of redemption. And yet…I was. We all are.
We may not have classical poets and long-lost loves acting as our spiritual guides to find the True Way, but, frankly, we don’t need them. Dante’s greatest fiction isn’t the monsters who populate the Inferno but rather the suggestion that we need anyone but Jesus to find us when we are lost. In fact, no matter how many times we wander, he is always steadfastly next to us, an ever-present Way.
At the end of the Divine Comedy, in Paradiso, Dante has a glimpse of God. Because he is still a mortal human being, it is a fleeting moment. He grasps for just a moment what it means to be with God for eternity but can’t retain every part of his vision. And, yet, he’s been forever changed. The Comedy ends with the following lines:
…already I could feel my being turned—
instinct and intellect balanced equally
as in a wheel whose motion nothing jars—
by the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars. (Paradiso, 33.143-146)
Jesus, thank you for your presence. Thank you for never leaving us, even when we leave you. Forgive us when we stray, and help us to always return back to your True Way. Amen.
Prayer
Jesus, you said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” There are so many voices that lure me to danger. Tune my ears to hear your voice. Be good to me. Shepherd me away from trouble and toward green pastures. Amen.
Benediction
May the love of Jesus draw us to himself;
May the power of Jesus strengthen us in his service;
May the joy of Jesus fill our souls;
May the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon us always. Amen.