Tomorrow is Michaelmas, or as we know it today, the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. Here are some of my thoughts.
I find it interesting that this year, Michaelmas falls on the same day as Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. St. Michael is a figure that is revered by Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions and appears in the scriptures of all three traditions. Beyond God and the patriarchs, this is rare.
In scripture, Michael is an archangel and appears as one of the "chief princes" and the "chief leader of the army of God" He is mentioned by name in the book of Daniel (in chapters 10 and 12), in the book of Jude (1:9) and in Revelation (chapter 12). He also appears in the Koran in Sura 2 (verse 98). In all of these references, Michael appears as a military leader who is constantly engaged in a battle as the protector of God's people (it is only in Christian scripture that the Devil or Satan are named explicitly). Rabbinic tradition takes Michael's role a step further, placing him as the rescuer of Abraham from the furnace, the messenger who tells Sarah that she will have a baby boy, an advocate for Israel before the Exodus...these are all different ways in which the Rabbis have identified the work of the angel, Michael, within the story of the people of God.
But this is what I like most about the archangel Michael...his name says a lot about his identity. Michael is from the Hebrew "Mikha'el" which means "who is like God?" In the Talmud, this is considered a rhetorical question and connotes a humility before God. And we see that in the scriptural references to Michael. In Revelation, Michael and the angels win victory over the devil, but it is God who gets the glory, not Michael.
In an age of awards and achievements and people yearning to be known famously throughout the world, we have an example from biblical history of the leader of God's army, whose victory caused praise and glory to be given to God. What a world we would live in if that happened more often...if everything that we accomplished ended with praise and credit being given to God. The world would be an incredible place!
One of my closest friends is a crew member for a professional racing team. I have had the privilege of getting to go see them race on a few occasions, and though I haven't been there for an overall win, I've been there for round wins and I have seen overall wins broadcast on television. What does an archangel have to do with racing, you ask? The driver (who, ironically, is named Michael) always gives glory to God first after they have succeeded on the race track. Mike's humility has made him well known at events as one of the classiest drivers in that particular pro circuit...and I believe that it's all because his perspective is based upon a focus on what God has blessed him and his crew with. And it makes sense, because in the end, everything we have comes from God. And when we hit hard times, God sends us a protector to help us get out of the mess into something better.
Thanks be to God for St. Michael.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
“Turn, then and Live”
Pentecost 15A
September 25, 2011
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
On September 11th, I was scrolling my Facebook feed on my iphone while waiting for the flight that took Chris and I to Orlando, Florida on our honeymoon. While doing this I came across a comment posted by someone I’ve known since high school. The post was about how proud she is in regard to how this country has been unified since the attacks on America 10 years prior. My first thought was yeah, we did pull together for a little bit, but then we fractured big time. It wasn’t two days after the attacks when Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were blaming the attacks on the Gays, Feminists, the ACLU, Pagans, etc. In the years that have followed we have blamed this person and that for the attacks…some saying blaming all muslims, others saying that the CIA must have known something was up…others still blamed the Bush administration, claiming a relationship between the Bush family and Bin Ladin. The list goes on and on…and still, 10 years later, as we enter another election cycle and the third possible occurrence of a major budget crisis in a year had appeared, it is clear from news reports, facebook and twitter, that as a nation, we are still pointing fingers, blaming this person and that person for the state our nation is in, rather that putting in the effort to come together and seek ways in which we can do better for our nation and the future of our nation.
There was a lot of finger pointing going on among the Israelite exiles in Babylon, too. Instead of pointing the finger at others among them, though, the fingers were pointed towards the ancestors and towards God. Our reading from Ezekiel this morning was written around the time that the first group of exiles had been taken from their home in Israel to Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had ordered the capture of 3,000 people from Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel…as well as the removal of the King of Judah from the throne. The rest of the people were left to be workers for the Babylonians in Judah. The exiles were not too thrilled with their situation in Babylon, mostly because they didn’t think that they had anything to do with becoming exiles and therefore there wasn’t anything they could do about getting out of exile. Their thinking comes from a couple of sources.
First, there is a writing in Exodus that appears again in Deuteronomy in which God says that God will visit the sin of the fathers on the children and the third and fourth generations of those who hate him…in addition to this, the writers of the books of Kings and Chronicles had made it abundantly clear that by re-instituting pagan worship during his reign, which took place about a hundred years earlier, King Manasseh had sealed the fate of Israel for generations to come. A final element that needs to be noted for the context of Ezekiel and his audience, is that they lived in a poly-deistic society…for them, the God of Abraham or the other gods like Baal, let you know how pleased they were with you by how things went. To them, drought which yielded bad yields of crops, floods, damaging winds, and other natural events of the sort, were all acts of the gods to get your attention.
And so, when you add all this up, the visiting sins up future generations, the well known sins of Manasseh and their beliefs about natural phenomena, the 3,000 Judean exiles in Babylon decided that it was unfair that they had been taken from their homes, their livelihoods, their families and been taken to this place. And we can all agree with them on that…it isn’t fair when people are forcibly taken from their homes, families and livelihoods. But in their eyes, what made it even more unfair was that they felt that they were completely innocent and had done nothing to deserve the situation that they were in. God had exiled them, taken them away from everything they had as punishment for what their ancestors had done. So why bother doing anything, we can’t fix the situation we’re in…so the exiles spent their days repeating an old proverb “the parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” It was a proverb that expressed their feeling that their situation in exile was completely the fault of the parents and grandparents and, for them, absolved them of any guilt involved with the exile.
And this is where Ezekiel steps in.
Ezekiel had been taken into exile with the rest of the group…but Ezekiel was also a prophet who had a message to bring to the exiles. It was a message from God that called them out on the finger pointing and showed them a different way of looking at things. First, God forbids the use of the proverb used by the exiles and in the verses that are missing from this passage, God uses Ezekiel to explain to the people that they have wrongly interpreted the passages form Exodus and Deuteronomy. Ezekiel tells them that when God looks at an individual, he doesn’t see the sins or the righteousness of the parent or the grandparent, but God looks at the person him or herself and judges everyone accordingly. But if there are generations after generations of folks who hate God, then yeah, there might be consequences.
In general, however, who we are in the eyes of God is not defined by the past acts of our ancestors, but by who we are…and going further, who we are is not defined by who we were before, but who we choose to be and what we choose to do now. This is how God works! We can think that we are storing up righteousness for a rainy day…or think that all the bad things we’ve done in the past will be held against us…but that’s not how God works. God gives us a chance every day to choose who we are going to be and how we are going to act. The past does not define us, nor the future, only the present.
And yet, along with the Judeans in exile, we are often tempted to look out at the world and see how things are, throw our hands up in the air and say “why are you being so unfair, God?” When we do that, though, we are ignoring that there is a difference between the worldly order of things and God’s order of things. In the worldly order of things, everything that we do affects the people around us…if I don’t go grocery shopping regularly, my husband and dog will have nothing to eat…if we as a congregation don’t join together to serve with LINK, Family Promise and the food pantry, people who really need our help won’t get that meal or that place to sleep. If we as a nation don’t peaceably work out a solution to our economic problems, our children and children’s children will be affected by this. This is the worldly order of things, the cause and affect of physics is very much how the world works. As Homer Simpson once said “how come my actions always have consequences?”
Fortunately for us, God knows all to well how the world works. God has been looking over us from the beginning but because he is an all loving God, God knows that he can’t force us into anything…not into loving him and not into choosing to do the right things every day. But that’s why God does give us a choice every day…God allows us to choose every day who we are going to be and what we are going to do. We can choose to follow God and listen for what God has for us to do, or we can choose to ignore it and go the other way. But with that choice comes and admonition, to get a new heart and a new spirit, to turn and choose life! To try every day to be better people for God and for the world…it’s not easy, but we know that it’s possible. We know this because we have the example of the one who was in the form of God but chose humbled himself to the point of death on a cross. Jesus wasn’t afraid to call out the Pharisees when they pointed fingers and he’s not afraid to call us out, either. Sure it’s uncomfortable…but in the end, it what helps us to grow and thrive.
And so we have a decision to make today and every day…in this world of fractured people, finger pointing and unfairs, who are we going to be? Are we going to be the people who throw our hands up in the air and give up? Or are we going to be a witness to the world of how God does things?
September 25, 2011
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
On September 11th, I was scrolling my Facebook feed on my iphone while waiting for the flight that took Chris and I to Orlando, Florida on our honeymoon. While doing this I came across a comment posted by someone I’ve known since high school. The post was about how proud she is in regard to how this country has been unified since the attacks on America 10 years prior. My first thought was yeah, we did pull together for a little bit, but then we fractured big time. It wasn’t two days after the attacks when Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were blaming the attacks on the Gays, Feminists, the ACLU, Pagans, etc. In the years that have followed we have blamed this person and that for the attacks…some saying blaming all muslims, others saying that the CIA must have known something was up…others still blamed the Bush administration, claiming a relationship between the Bush family and Bin Ladin. The list goes on and on…and still, 10 years later, as we enter another election cycle and the third possible occurrence of a major budget crisis in a year had appeared, it is clear from news reports, facebook and twitter, that as a nation, we are still pointing fingers, blaming this person and that person for the state our nation is in, rather that putting in the effort to come together and seek ways in which we can do better for our nation and the future of our nation.
There was a lot of finger pointing going on among the Israelite exiles in Babylon, too. Instead of pointing the finger at others among them, though, the fingers were pointed towards the ancestors and towards God. Our reading from Ezekiel this morning was written around the time that the first group of exiles had been taken from their home in Israel to Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had ordered the capture of 3,000 people from Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel…as well as the removal of the King of Judah from the throne. The rest of the people were left to be workers for the Babylonians in Judah. The exiles were not too thrilled with their situation in Babylon, mostly because they didn’t think that they had anything to do with becoming exiles and therefore there wasn’t anything they could do about getting out of exile. Their thinking comes from a couple of sources.
First, there is a writing in Exodus that appears again in Deuteronomy in which God says that God will visit the sin of the fathers on the children and the third and fourth generations of those who hate him…in addition to this, the writers of the books of Kings and Chronicles had made it abundantly clear that by re-instituting pagan worship during his reign, which took place about a hundred years earlier, King Manasseh had sealed the fate of Israel for generations to come. A final element that needs to be noted for the context of Ezekiel and his audience, is that they lived in a poly-deistic society…for them, the God of Abraham or the other gods like Baal, let you know how pleased they were with you by how things went. To them, drought which yielded bad yields of crops, floods, damaging winds, and other natural events of the sort, were all acts of the gods to get your attention.
And so, when you add all this up, the visiting sins up future generations, the well known sins of Manasseh and their beliefs about natural phenomena, the 3,000 Judean exiles in Babylon decided that it was unfair that they had been taken from their homes, their livelihoods, their families and been taken to this place. And we can all agree with them on that…it isn’t fair when people are forcibly taken from their homes, families and livelihoods. But in their eyes, what made it even more unfair was that they felt that they were completely innocent and had done nothing to deserve the situation that they were in. God had exiled them, taken them away from everything they had as punishment for what their ancestors had done. So why bother doing anything, we can’t fix the situation we’re in…so the exiles spent their days repeating an old proverb “the parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” It was a proverb that expressed their feeling that their situation in exile was completely the fault of the parents and grandparents and, for them, absolved them of any guilt involved with the exile.
And this is where Ezekiel steps in.
Ezekiel had been taken into exile with the rest of the group…but Ezekiel was also a prophet who had a message to bring to the exiles. It was a message from God that called them out on the finger pointing and showed them a different way of looking at things. First, God forbids the use of the proverb used by the exiles and in the verses that are missing from this passage, God uses Ezekiel to explain to the people that they have wrongly interpreted the passages form Exodus and Deuteronomy. Ezekiel tells them that when God looks at an individual, he doesn’t see the sins or the righteousness of the parent or the grandparent, but God looks at the person him or herself and judges everyone accordingly. But if there are generations after generations of folks who hate God, then yeah, there might be consequences.
In general, however, who we are in the eyes of God is not defined by the past acts of our ancestors, but by who we are…and going further, who we are is not defined by who we were before, but who we choose to be and what we choose to do now. This is how God works! We can think that we are storing up righteousness for a rainy day…or think that all the bad things we’ve done in the past will be held against us…but that’s not how God works. God gives us a chance every day to choose who we are going to be and how we are going to act. The past does not define us, nor the future, only the present.
And yet, along with the Judeans in exile, we are often tempted to look out at the world and see how things are, throw our hands up in the air and say “why are you being so unfair, God?” When we do that, though, we are ignoring that there is a difference between the worldly order of things and God’s order of things. In the worldly order of things, everything that we do affects the people around us…if I don’t go grocery shopping regularly, my husband and dog will have nothing to eat…if we as a congregation don’t join together to serve with LINK, Family Promise and the food pantry, people who really need our help won’t get that meal or that place to sleep. If we as a nation don’t peaceably work out a solution to our economic problems, our children and children’s children will be affected by this. This is the worldly order of things, the cause and affect of physics is very much how the world works. As Homer Simpson once said “how come my actions always have consequences?”
Fortunately for us, God knows all to well how the world works. God has been looking over us from the beginning but because he is an all loving God, God knows that he can’t force us into anything…not into loving him and not into choosing to do the right things every day. But that’s why God does give us a choice every day…God allows us to choose every day who we are going to be and what we are going to do. We can choose to follow God and listen for what God has for us to do, or we can choose to ignore it and go the other way. But with that choice comes and admonition, to get a new heart and a new spirit, to turn and choose life! To try every day to be better people for God and for the world…it’s not easy, but we know that it’s possible. We know this because we have the example of the one who was in the form of God but chose humbled himself to the point of death on a cross. Jesus wasn’t afraid to call out the Pharisees when they pointed fingers and he’s not afraid to call us out, either. Sure it’s uncomfortable…but in the end, it what helps us to grow and thrive.
And so we have a decision to make today and every day…in this world of fractured people, finger pointing and unfairs, who are we going to be? Are we going to be the people who throw our hands up in the air and give up? Or are we going to be a witness to the world of how God does things?
Sunday, September 4, 2011
“God Doesn’t Charge a Baggage Fee…He Passes Over It”
Pentecost 12a
September 4, 2011
Exodus 12:1-14
One of my favorite websites to peruse every now and then is OldLutheran.com. They have a wonderful selection of products full of puns intended for Lutherans. You can get socks that say ‘Here I Stand’ or get shorts that on the left side of the back say ‘Left Behind’ and any number of other things that help you boldly proclaim your Lutheran heritage in a lighthearted manner. One year, after purchasing some items for a reformation party, I received a free gift from Oldlutheran that I now carry my knitting stuff in. It has the words “this is my Lutheran baggage” on it. And while I thought the pun was funny, it also got me thinking about the baggage that we carry…and I’m not talking about the baggage that Delta airlines charges you $20 a bag to check when you go on a trip, I’m talking about life baggage. We’ve all got life baggage, good and bad, things we’ve done, things we didn’t do, things that people have done for or to us or have just plain forgotten to do. Some of our life baggage lifts us up while some of it weighs us down.
The Israelites in Egypt were certainly weighed down by the baggage of the slavery that had been imposed upon them by the Pharaoh who didn’t know Joseph. For generations, the Israelites had been oppressed, worked to death and been tread upon by the Egyptians, who had taken them as slaves because they feared that the Israelites would rise up and defeat the Egyptians by use of military force. And now God is going to set them free.
Before the point where we enter this story, God has raised up Moses and Aaron as leaders of the Israelites and has sent them to Pharaoh with demands to let their people go. Even after nine plagues, Pharaoh has still not had a change of heart. However, now that we have entered the story, we see God instructing Moses and Aaron on how to make preparations for a meal that will take place the night of the tenth and final plague, a plague which will claim the lives of all the firstborn of Egypt, from the house of Pharaoh to the livestock. Now, if you read the narrative of the plagues, which begin in chapter 7 of Exodus, you will find the details a little bit lacking as far as specifics of the plagues themselves…and that’s what makes our passage for this morning so important.
The writer of this portion of Exodus wanted to make sure that the details of the Passover meal were laid out so that his readers could grasp the importance of what was going on at this moment in time. Freedom was at last in their line of sight and now God was giving the people instructions as to how to celebrate and remember their liberation from the hands of the Egyptians. And God is very specific as to how they were to go about this. On the 10th of this month, every family is to take a 1 year old male lamb from the sheep or the goats…if a family is too small for one lamb, they are to share it with their neighbors. On the 14th of the month, at twilight, everyone is to slaughter their lambs and put blood from the lamb on the lintels and door posts. Then roast the lamb over fire, organs and all, and serve with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. If anything is left over in the morning, burn it. And, by the way, eat the meal quickly, and be dressed as if you would be ready to leave at any moment. All of this was to happen on the night that God was to send the tenth plague upon Egypt, striking down the first born, with the exception of those in houses with lambs blood on the lintels and doorposts…them God would Passover.
The details of this narrative are very important to the writer of this part of Exodus, because they tell us about the beginning of God’s giving the Israelites a new and fresh start. People have said that the reason they had unleavened bread was because there was no time, but there were at least 4 days in which to make bread…and here’s the thing about yeast…it carries over the old with the new. So if you want to make bread that is totally new in character, without any traces of the old, you leave about the yeast. And if you want to cook something in a manner that leaves nothing of the old when you’re done, you use a fire instead of boiling. God was giving Moses and Aaron instructions of how to signal to the people that they were going to get a totally new start.
But what about this whole lamb’s blood on the doorposts and lintel deal? Seems a little gory, doesn’t it. Think about the rainbow from the story of the flood in Genesis, though. God told Noah that the rainbow would be a sign for both Noah and God that would help them both remember the covenant that they had made together. In a similar manner, the lamb’s blood on the doorposts of the houses of the people of Israel, while not as pleasant as a rainbow, served that dual purpose, to remind the people that they have received life and to remind God to Passover those houses, leaving those first born untouched by the plague.
The story of the Passover is considered to be the climax of the Exodus narrative and one of the most important and celebrated stories in the Jewish heritage. It is the story of a God who sides with the slave, the outcast, and the downtrodden…a God who does not leave God’s people behind but seeks ways in which to bring them something better. Each year on Passover, our brothers and sisters in the Jewish community gather to remember the night in which God liberated the Israelites from their oppressors.
Around that same time, we in the Christian community gather to remember the night in which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was betrayed and what happened in subsequent days with Jesus’ arrest, trial, death and resurrection. But we don’t just remember the events of Holy Week during holy week, every time we come to the table and celebrate the Eucharist we remember how God has passed over our sins and liberated us from the sin that oppresses us daily. There may not be blood on the doorposts, but the blood in the chalice still is enough to remind us of the life we have received. We remember how God looks at the baggage that we carry, especially the stuff that weighs us down…the things we didn’t do that we should have; the things we shouldn’t have done, but did anyways; the times we didn’t follow Jesus’ instructions to hold our brothers and sisters accountable when they have sinned against us, but instead either made it public or held grudges…God looks at that baggage and then passes it over, freeing us to live in ways that Christ would have us to live, released from the bonds that sin has over us.
When we were baptized, as Reed and Natalie will be today, we were marked with the cross of Christ. It is a mark that we carry with us on our foreheads for the rest of our lives. It is a mark that reminds us of who we are and whose we are. It’s also a reminder that we have been given life. We are God’s beloved children, called and claimed and washed…the baggage that weighs us down has been removed so that we can be free from sin and free to live. And so today we remember, we remember the day of our baptism, we remember the sacrifice that Christ made for us when we come to the table, eat of his body and drink of his blood, we remember that God has given us a new start, totally from the from old weights that drag us down so that we can live and be free to love, to loose and to live. Amen.
September 4, 2011
Exodus 12:1-14
One of my favorite websites to peruse every now and then is OldLutheran.com. They have a wonderful selection of products full of puns intended for Lutherans. You can get socks that say ‘Here I Stand’ or get shorts that on the left side of the back say ‘Left Behind’ and any number of other things that help you boldly proclaim your Lutheran heritage in a lighthearted manner. One year, after purchasing some items for a reformation party, I received a free gift from Oldlutheran that I now carry my knitting stuff in. It has the words “this is my Lutheran baggage” on it. And while I thought the pun was funny, it also got me thinking about the baggage that we carry…and I’m not talking about the baggage that Delta airlines charges you $20 a bag to check when you go on a trip, I’m talking about life baggage. We’ve all got life baggage, good and bad, things we’ve done, things we didn’t do, things that people have done for or to us or have just plain forgotten to do. Some of our life baggage lifts us up while some of it weighs us down.
The Israelites in Egypt were certainly weighed down by the baggage of the slavery that had been imposed upon them by the Pharaoh who didn’t know Joseph. For generations, the Israelites had been oppressed, worked to death and been tread upon by the Egyptians, who had taken them as slaves because they feared that the Israelites would rise up and defeat the Egyptians by use of military force. And now God is going to set them free.
Before the point where we enter this story, God has raised up Moses and Aaron as leaders of the Israelites and has sent them to Pharaoh with demands to let their people go. Even after nine plagues, Pharaoh has still not had a change of heart. However, now that we have entered the story, we see God instructing Moses and Aaron on how to make preparations for a meal that will take place the night of the tenth and final plague, a plague which will claim the lives of all the firstborn of Egypt, from the house of Pharaoh to the livestock. Now, if you read the narrative of the plagues, which begin in chapter 7 of Exodus, you will find the details a little bit lacking as far as specifics of the plagues themselves…and that’s what makes our passage for this morning so important.
The writer of this portion of Exodus wanted to make sure that the details of the Passover meal were laid out so that his readers could grasp the importance of what was going on at this moment in time. Freedom was at last in their line of sight and now God was giving the people instructions as to how to celebrate and remember their liberation from the hands of the Egyptians. And God is very specific as to how they were to go about this. On the 10th of this month, every family is to take a 1 year old male lamb from the sheep or the goats…if a family is too small for one lamb, they are to share it with their neighbors. On the 14th of the month, at twilight, everyone is to slaughter their lambs and put blood from the lamb on the lintels and door posts. Then roast the lamb over fire, organs and all, and serve with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. If anything is left over in the morning, burn it. And, by the way, eat the meal quickly, and be dressed as if you would be ready to leave at any moment. All of this was to happen on the night that God was to send the tenth plague upon Egypt, striking down the first born, with the exception of those in houses with lambs blood on the lintels and doorposts…them God would Passover.
The details of this narrative are very important to the writer of this part of Exodus, because they tell us about the beginning of God’s giving the Israelites a new and fresh start. People have said that the reason they had unleavened bread was because there was no time, but there were at least 4 days in which to make bread…and here’s the thing about yeast…it carries over the old with the new. So if you want to make bread that is totally new in character, without any traces of the old, you leave about the yeast. And if you want to cook something in a manner that leaves nothing of the old when you’re done, you use a fire instead of boiling. God was giving Moses and Aaron instructions of how to signal to the people that they were going to get a totally new start.
But what about this whole lamb’s blood on the doorposts and lintel deal? Seems a little gory, doesn’t it. Think about the rainbow from the story of the flood in Genesis, though. God told Noah that the rainbow would be a sign for both Noah and God that would help them both remember the covenant that they had made together. In a similar manner, the lamb’s blood on the doorposts of the houses of the people of Israel, while not as pleasant as a rainbow, served that dual purpose, to remind the people that they have received life and to remind God to Passover those houses, leaving those first born untouched by the plague.
The story of the Passover is considered to be the climax of the Exodus narrative and one of the most important and celebrated stories in the Jewish heritage. It is the story of a God who sides with the slave, the outcast, and the downtrodden…a God who does not leave God’s people behind but seeks ways in which to bring them something better. Each year on Passover, our brothers and sisters in the Jewish community gather to remember the night in which God liberated the Israelites from their oppressors.
Around that same time, we in the Christian community gather to remember the night in which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was betrayed and what happened in subsequent days with Jesus’ arrest, trial, death and resurrection. But we don’t just remember the events of Holy Week during holy week, every time we come to the table and celebrate the Eucharist we remember how God has passed over our sins and liberated us from the sin that oppresses us daily. There may not be blood on the doorposts, but the blood in the chalice still is enough to remind us of the life we have received. We remember how God looks at the baggage that we carry, especially the stuff that weighs us down…the things we didn’t do that we should have; the things we shouldn’t have done, but did anyways; the times we didn’t follow Jesus’ instructions to hold our brothers and sisters accountable when they have sinned against us, but instead either made it public or held grudges…God looks at that baggage and then passes it over, freeing us to live in ways that Christ would have us to live, released from the bonds that sin has over us.
When we were baptized, as Reed and Natalie will be today, we were marked with the cross of Christ. It is a mark that we carry with us on our foreheads for the rest of our lives. It is a mark that reminds us of who we are and whose we are. It’s also a reminder that we have been given life. We are God’s beloved children, called and claimed and washed…the baggage that weighs us down has been removed so that we can be free from sin and free to live. And so today we remember, we remember the day of our baptism, we remember the sacrifice that Christ made for us when we come to the table, eat of his body and drink of his blood, we remember that God has given us a new start, totally from the from old weights that drag us down so that we can live and be free to love, to loose and to live. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)