Daily Lesson for March 13, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from John chapter8 verse 33:

They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”

One of the greatest obstacles to our own personal transformation is the pride we have in our racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups. It is very difficult -- even impossible -- to see our need for grace, redemption, and restoration because we have done such a superior job of convincing ourselves we are better than everyone else.  This pride must "goeth before the fall" and the fall must come before the redemption can take place.

The interlocutors Jesus was speaking to in today's lesson were part of the socio-religious establishment in Jerusalem and understood themselves to be God's "chosen people"; but their sense of chosenness was based on superiority and exclusion.  They took great pride in seeing themselves as the "sons of Abraham".  But Jesus reminded them that Abraham had two sons -- one born freely to Sarah and the other born to the slave-girl Hagar; they were living as the children of Hagar, Jesus implied, and the only way to freedom would be to come to terms with their own enslavement.

We saw it again this week with this University of Oklahoma SAE racist bus chant. As they sang with glee at about the exclusionary nature of their fraternity, we watched and could see their own enslavement to the sin of ego and pride of race.  That pride has now been stripped, and made a public spectacle of, and as painful as these days must be for those young men and their families, this is the moment of transformation --  when two sons who thought they were born in freedom to Sarah but were actually born in slavery to Hagar, can now see that by the grace of God we are all born sons and daughters of Abraham.

I pray it happens.