Eucharistic meditation, First Sunday of Lent

3 John 5-6: Beloved, you are acting faithfully in whatever you accomplish for the brethren, and especially when they are strangers; and they bear witness to your love before the church; and you will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God.

The conflict between Gaius and Diotrephes was many-sided. It was a conflict between submission to the apostles and defiance of the apostles. It was a conflict between humility and pride, between service and ambition. At the center of the controversy was a question of how traveling brothers were to be treated. Gaius received them openly; Diotrephes wanted to keep them away.

This might seem a minor dispute, on the order of disputes over the color of the carpet in the new church building. It might seem that this is a sign that people were just as petty and small-minded in the early church as they are today. No doubt, that’s true. But this is not some minor argument or debate.

The central question is how we are to enact the gospel. The gospel announces that strangers who once were distant from God, estranged from Him, without God in the world, are now brought near through the blood of the Son of God. Gaius was simply acting out that gospel in his treatment of strangers. He received them, as God had; He gave them what they needed, as God had; he sent them on their way “in a manner worthy of God.”

This is precisely what the Lord does for us every week. We are all strangers, far from God in our sin, who are invited to draw near. God extends His hospitality to us each week, gives us what we need, and sends us out “in a manner worthy of God.”

In this way, worship sets the pattern for our lives. Worship is molded to the shape of the gospel, and worship is supposed to mold us so that our lives take an evangelical form. God welcomes you, a stranger, as a son and brother; He feeds you at this table; He sends you out with blessing. And He says to you His children, Go and do likewise.