Ordinary Time 
Pause
We are his witnesses: Christ who was dead is now risen!
God raised him up on the third day from death’s dreary prison.
Now we proclaim: All can have life in his name.
We have been freed and forgiven.
from “We Are His Witnesses” by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette (2015)
Listen
See what kind of love the Father has given to us in that we should be called God’s children, and that is what we are! Because the world didn’t recognize him, it doesn’t recognize us.
Dear friends, now we are God’s children, and it hasn’t yet appeared what we will be. We know that when he appears we will be like him because we’ll see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves even as he is pure. Every person who practices sin commits an act of rebellion, and sin is rebellion. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and there is no sin in him. Every person who remains in relationship to him does not sin. Any person who sins has not seen him or known him.
Little children, make sure no one deceives you. The person who practices righteousness is righteous, in the same way that Jesus is righteous.
1 John 3:1-7
Think
“What we are” held in tension with “what we will be” is the centerpiece of today’s text.
“Now we are God’s children (3:2),” means we are a part of a Divine family. We are children of God, bound together as a community of faith.
We also look to the future, “It hasn’t yet appeared what we will be” (3:2). We wait, we hope, and we pray, “Thy Kingdom come.”
We live in the tension between what is and what will be.
1 John reflects the mindset of a community that existed decades after Jesus’s life. As generations passed, believers continued to wait for Jesus’s return, but they were starting to wonder how long they would have to wait! They needed a pep talk and a way to remain hopeful. This is a community discerning what it meant to live faithfully while waiting.
What is it you are waiting for? What do you need in this present time to sustain you while you wait?
Katie Cashwell
Pray
Author of Life, help me to remain in you as you remain in me. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. Amen.
Go
We in the church have a message beyond all comparing:
Christ is alive and brings life to the lost and despairing.
He takes our sins! Easter assures us God wins!
Ours is the good news for sharing.
from “We Are His Witnesses” by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette (2015)
