This week’s memory verse: Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. — Isaiah 41:10
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, grant me the heart of the Samaritan, that I may love and bring people to You.
Should we be
afraid?
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us.
Every year we go through these two weeks that mesh so well together.
This week we celebrate the Solemnity of Brotherly Love. This Solemnity only occurs within our Holy Church, nowhere else.
This Solemnity recalls the power of brotherly love. It is the antidote to every form of evil. It heals where there is destruction. It provides hope in the midst of despair. It saves.
The Solemnity was first established In 1906 as our Church gathered for a Special Synod due to attacks against our young denomination from both within and without the Church. As the delegates gathered they decided to not respond in kind. Rather, the lay and clergy delegates instituted the Solemnity of Brotherly Love. We would emphasize Christ’s teaching of love toward one another and even love toward our enemies.
So it is today. Just because our Church isn’t under attack as it was in 1906, does not mean we should just relax on our love.
Perhaps that’s the problem with Christians. The old saying was: ‘the blood of martyrs is seed of the Church.’ The martyrs’ faith and sacrifice drew others to the faith. People saw that kind of courage, faith, and confidence and said, ‘I want some of that; I want to be like that. No fear.
Today, not so much. Many congregations have gotten comfortable. They have flush bank accounts, around the same amount of people showing up each week. They may even do a few extra things in the community, a little charity here and there.
Here, we do things a lot differently. We, like over 10,000 other churches across the country, are participating in Back to Church Sunday next week. Rather than be complacent, we have put our faith in Jesus because He is the One who changes hearts. We have put our feet and voices into action by inviting people to church. We have been and must continue to be their Good Samaritan.
This is of great import. It is key to the Christian life. We must give people a reason, an example, a way to say: ‘I want some of that.’ The most interesting things about being that Samaritan is having no fear in doing what is right. That much will be the one necessary action that saves someone.
This week’s memory verse: And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” — Mark 16:15
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, drive me, repeat Your call, and grant that I may evangelize many for the salvation of their souls and bodies.
How do you do
religion?
He responded, “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”
Welcome to September, a time of change and transition. We move from the activities of summer to pumpkin everything, apple cider donuts, and crisper air.
Our scriptures today are about essential change. Moses starts out with a long dissertation about the new Law of God. The people were to observe it, were not to change it, and in honoring the Law, they would find themselves the envy of nations and peoples. In honoring, maintaining, and keeping the Law, the people of Israel would show a unique wisdom and a very special closeness to God.
It seems kind of obvious to us, at least at first glance. God gives us something remarkably special, and if we have any sense at all, we honor it and respect it. We would want to brag about it, ‘look at what God has done for me.’ We would follow the dictates of whatever God has given us. Who would hide what God had done for them? Who would ever want to go against God? To do so, we would show ourselves as the opposite of smart.
Similarly, St. Paul speaks of the great gifts we have received. He was the biggest bragger of all – look what we have, look what God has done and revealed. Let’s live it large: welcome the word, be doers of the word, don’t delude yourselves.
Jesus brings this all together. He chastises the Pharisees because they had let the Law become only a series of doing – not living. They not only did that, they didn’t evangelize God’s word. They kept it all locked up and just for them. Jesus said on other occasions that they: “shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces.†And in another: “you have taken away the key to knowledge. You have hindered those who were entering.” Not only were they failing to live God’s commands from the heart, going against them, they were hiding away His gifts.
Our call is to do religion right. Let us honor God with our lips and our worship – and from there do evangelization. Right religion means changed living – faith from the heart, showing God’s gifts, putting it all out there for the world to see. Tell the great gifts. Show them off. Listen to that little voice that prompts you to stop, turn, and invite.
We will be holding a Polish Dinner on Saturday, September 22nd from 4pm – 7pm at the Parish Hall, 1040 Pearl St., Schenectady. Dinner includes: Kiełbasa, 2 Pierogi, Kapusta, Gołąbki, Rye Bread, and a Drink for $14. Polish pizza and homemade desserts will also be available.
You may purchase pre-sale tickets here:
This week’s memory verse: Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. — John 15:13
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, humble me. Draw me into faithful service. Keep me faithful to Your call to sacrifice as You sacrificed.
Say what?
Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord… As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word… So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
Modern sensibilities are often troubled when we get to these passages in Paul’s letters, today from his letter to the Church at Ephesus. Paul seems to pick at sensibilities all the time, and I imagine it felt that way, even in his allegedly unenlightened time. The Church, in picking readings for today, offers an alternative, a shorter Epistle without all that nasty ‘wives should be subordinate’ stuff. I guess sensibilities were upset.
One of the problems we face in understanding Paul, his text, and the communities he preached to, is that we layer our sensibilities, based on our experience, over what Paul was trying to say. For instance, a little study of the economic realities and relationships of Paul’s day would help us understand that when Paul spoke of slaves he was not referring to a slavery of horrors as was lived in America. There were different forms of slavery in that time, and in certain instances it was no more than an economic relationship between a worker and boss. More important than the form of slavery was how Christians were to treat each other.
Paul’s message was always countercultural. Slaves and masters were to treat each other differently because they had to live a new life in Christ. Both the slave/worker and master/employer were to act in accordance with their new life in Christ.
Today, Paul speaks of subordination and love. These are not to be mutually exclusive things, but in fact a unified whole. Wives and husbands, as with masters and slaves, are to live differently because of Jesus. The complete subordination, an emptying of oneself for the other, is key to life in Jesus. Give up to each other, don’t give in to evil.
This self-subordination, self-sacrificial love, is to mark the lives of Christ followers. Today’s Gospel clearly illustrates that. Many of Jesus’ disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
Exactly! Say what? Self-sacrifice, subordination, handing over one’s life to the community of faith offends modern sensibility. Let’s show today how wrong it is.
This week’s memory verse: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. — James 1:27
8/19 – Galatians 5:13
8/20 – 1 Peter 2:2
8/21 – Ezekiel 18:7
8/22 – Proverbs 29:7
8/23 – 1 John 2:3-4
8/24 – Hebrews 5:12
8/25 – 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, break the chains that bind me. Free me so I may do Your will. Destroy the enemy who prowls about.
The days
can be…
Brothers and sisters: Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil.
St. Paul was not speaking of anything new, at least in part of his letter to the Church at Ephesus. In a certain way, everyone had and has heard it before: the days are evil.
The roman poet Cicero wrote “O tempora o mores” a little over one hundred years before Paul was to write to the Ephesians. It translates literally as ‘Oh the times! Oh the customs!’ The inference is that the times and the customs are far worse today than the old days. Edgar Allen Poe used Cicero’s quote as a title for one of his poems. It appeared in the movie (staring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur) Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. Politicians used the phrase in recent elections.
There is quite the history and tradition of looking at the evil of the day, not seeing the evil of yesterday, thinking that tomorrow will somehow be different, and giving up with the saying: the days are evil or “O tempora o mores”
The second part of Paul’s letter offers the antidote: be filled with the Spirit, address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, sing and play to the Lord in your hearts, give thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.
In other words, living the life of Jesus is the antidote. There is a way of living, speaking, singing, playing, and thanking that destroys evil. We have to be different.
There is a great contemporary Christian song: Chain Breaker by Zach Williams. In it, the composer recounts how Jesus is the difference maker. Jesus takes away pain, makes a way, breaks prison bars, and breaks the chains that bind us. The wisdom in the song starts when the composer confronts us with our reality: We’ve been walking the same old road for miles and miles. We’ve been hearing the same old voice tell us the same old lies. We’ve trying to fill the same old holes inside. He then tells us that Jesus’ better life, really the best life, makes the difference.
Certainly, the days are what they are – evil – but there is a way out. It is never the way the days or certain people are, but what we can be in Jesus. Jesus explicitly tells us: the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. That is huge. We have to feed on Jesus, be part of Jesus, hold faith in Jesus, and live Jesus’ life daily.
This week’s memory verse: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?†— Matthew 6:26
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, grant me to grow each day as You feed me. Grant that I may recognize Your great gift.