Lenten Meditations from Our Parish Family
Beginning on Ash Wednesday, we invite you to journey through Lent with daily meditations written by St. John’s parishioners. These reflections offer honest, thoughtful voices from within our community—meeting us right where we are in this season of prayer, repentance, and hope. Meditations will be shared by email, posted on Facebook, and available as printed weekly copies at the church. Be on the lookout, and let these shared words accompany you as we walk the Lenten road together.
Thursday of Holy Week
April 2, 2026
Rom 8:1-11
I interpret today’s verses as distinguishing the limited capacity of man’s law from the comprehensive and freeing law of the Spirit of life in Christ. Man’s law is designed to settle daily matters of humanity. It is fine for adjudicating offenses, wrongdoings, and errors, but it does not guarantee any pardons for mistakes.
You may live by man’s law, but you may also die by man’s law. In contrast, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ frees us entirely from sin and death with a pardon in the form of grace for anyone who will accept it. Such grace gives us freedom to look beyond measuring ourselves and others by the formulaic elements of man’s law – we don’t have to jockey for position or keep score of who is right or wrong. God’s grace frees us to love and serve each other just as Christ has done for us. I recently watched the 1973 western move: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (starring Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn), which seems to illustrate the message of today’s reading. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid are old friends who live by different laws.
Billy lives a full life as a carefree outlaw always grinning and always ready to help his friends. At one point, Garrett quizzically asks Billy, “Are you having some kind of fiesta?” to which Billy responds, “no, we always live like this. You ought to visit us more often.”
Garrett, on the other hand, is a loner determined to live into old age in wealth and comfort. Towards that end, Garrett accepts a job as Sherrif to do the bidding of big cattle ranchers seeking to rid the territory of outlaws and consolidate their power.
As requested by the ranchers, Garrett hunts down Billy to rid him from the territory, and the two old friends find themselves face to face. Knowing that Garrett intends to kill him, Billy nevertheless welcomes Garrett with a grin, just before Garrett shoots and kills him. As Sheriff, Garrett attains the wealth and comforts that are important to him, but he is miserable with these things. His wife says to him, “You are dead inside. I wish you never put on that badge.” Later in life, Garrett, a cynical old man, is himself shot and killed while attempting unlawfully to break the terms of a land lease.
Garrett and Billy are both full of sins and wickedness. Garrett enforced the ranchers’ laws, but only to attain wealth and human comforts. In seeking these ends without the Spirit of life in Christ, he destroys himself and dies an angry old man. Billy is an outlaw, but he lives a carefree life of humility and willingness to help others. His life ends in contentment with a grin on his face. God’s grace prevails for those who accept it.
Jim Beck
