This week’s memory verse: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Psalm 119:105
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, grant that I may see in You the only roadmap for my life and that I may walk Your gospel path each day. Have mercy so I may hear only You calling my name. Amen.
My roadmap.
But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook people’s sins that they may repent.
Thank you for joining us this Sunday as we testify to the great salvation we have in our Lord and Savior.
Imagine if you will a great roll of writing paper. You take that roll and stretch it throughout your house. You start in the kitchen, run through the living room, dining room, through the halls, up the stairs, into the bedrooms, back down the stairs, back into the kitchen where you finish.
On this great scroll you write out the history of the world, the great and small events in twenty-year generational segments. You get to the modern age, and there is you – your birth and the important moments of your life.
Once finished, you step back and survey it all. Your roadmap. Now you can pick from these moments and see in each of them several things.
In these moments, we find causes for joy and sorrow, reasons for hope and despair. We also see across the great arc of history God’s abiding presence and call to His people, to you and me. We see where we have failed to heed His call to faithfulness. We also recognize the times we joyously returned to Him.
Today we have cause to consider return, the very reason we all join in this place of holiness and prayer, this place of encounter with Jesus and the moment where we repent and welcome Him into the house of our very bodies, hearts, and souls.
Jesus is journeying to Jerusalem to carry out His Father’s will. The last town He comes to is Jericho. You may remember that the man robbed in the story of the Good Samaritan was journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho. It was a well-traveled route, and the one Jesus would take.
Jericho was the place! It was the most perfect of cities. Temperate weather year-round, balsam trees, feathery palms, low slung sycamores, roses. It was a fragrant place. It was wealthy because it stood along this major trade route. Everyone was there. Yet in this very perfect place you’d find tax collectors and robbers.
Among the tax collectors was Zacchaeus, Zacchai, little Zach, a man with a name that means ‘the just, pure, innocent one.’
Imagine, like you, little Zach stretched out a great scroll around his grand home. There he considered his life in the span of history. Among his wealth and comforts derived from being unjust, Zach recalled his parents who named him the just, pure, and innocent one. Struck by the contrast of who he was to be, who God wanted him to be, and what he was, he ran out to meet Jesus. So here we are as well. We know what we are called to be, we know we fall short of God’s call, and our reality. So, we are here to meet Jesus.
We have our timelines and no matter who we are it ends right now. We do not know what the next minute will bring. So like Zach it is imperative that we meet the Lord, turning our lives to Him, changing as we must, for He is the only roadmap to salvation. May we hear Him calling our name – for He knows us. May we welcome Him into the temple of ourselves and live up to who He wants us to be.
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 that I may live in the confidence You have graced me with. May I trust fully in Your salvation and justification because You are my Lord. Amen.
End of the rope.
The Lord will rescue me from every evil threat and will bring me safe to his heavenly kingdom.
Welcome, thank you for joining us this Sunday as we testify to the great salvation and confidence we have in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
We have all heard the old saying: When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
If we think but a second, we see that this saying is about self-reliance. I am slipping down the rope and I need to have the presence of mind to tie that knot for myself and hang on. In our great American tradition, we can connect with that. I need to make my way and take care of myself.
God asks us to think differently, to see His provision for us. To know that He has us and is with us constantly, the essential truth that we do not have to worry at all.
God does what He does, and attempts to show us in varied way, throughout salvation history, how His people can rely on Him, how our end of the rope is never the end or disaster because He has us.
Our first reading from the Wisdom of Ben Sira, or simply Sirach, gives us groups of wise sayings. We might say, how nice, it is good to have wise sayings we might live by, until we see that this is the wisdom of God Himself passed onto us by the prophet.
Sirach loved the Lord’s wisdom and was dedicated to His worship because He saw how God made a difference in the lives of the people. A person who has that kind of love and devotion for God places their reliance on the Lord because He has proved Himself.
For us it seems obvious. God’s ultimate sacrifice for our salvation and well-being is well known. As we study and worship Him, we connect to the fact that in this loving relationship we have ultimate protection by His promise. No one and nothing, as St. Paul would say, takes us away from the love of God. Nothing can overcome it. For us here, we have seen it in the life of this Kingdom family. We are surrounded and infused with His salvific power. We own that.
In the Epistle, Paul speaks of his persecution before the Roman authorities. Even to this day, as we learned at Holy Synod, our people, clergy, and parishes are the targets of persecution – but it does not bring fear. It does not cause us to shrink, but to stand forth faithfully because God has us in the palm of His hand. We trust. We stand. As Paul tells us, it would be inconsistent to fear for we live in the strength infused in us by our faith made most present in Jesus.
Finally, Jesus sets forth the example of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the self-righteous and the sinner. This brings it all together. The Pharisee was tying ritualistic knots in his rope, fully confident he was saving himself, yet he was slipping away. The tax collector, like all of us, sinners though we are, trusted completely in and only on God. God justified him, declared him not guilty, saved him, and like all of us he lived in confident reliance on the God Who saves. He will never let us slip and fall.
This week’s memory verse: Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
Romans 12:12
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, grant that I may always be active in prayer, centering my life in You. Allow me to leave behind a heritage of faithfulness, a testament to Your unceasing goodness. Amen.
Prayer and loyalty.
Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.
Welcome, thank you for joining us this Sunday as we testify to and act on our faith in our Lord and Savior.
If we listen carefully to the liturgical Propers for today, we will hear these words in reference to prayer: loyal, ever, constant, always, persist, patience, at every opportunity, watch, persevere, never cease, steadfast, call. All these words are action words, none are passive.
These words apply to the woman seeking a just judgment in today’s gospel. She was an engaged individual; she would not let the wicked judge off-the-hook even though she knew he was wicked.
The woman seeking a just judgment had something the wicked judge did not have. While not plainly said, she was a woman of faith who combined her faith and respect for God and others with action.
Jesus really wants us to focus on action, and the primary action we will study this and next week is the action of prayer.
There are five key components to prayer – to making prayer real and effective. It is these actions:
Offer up our desires to God. We are called to pour ourselves out to Him. This seems like the easiest part. We are good at doing this.
Surrender to God. Just as Jesus taught us in the Our Father and in the Garden: God’s will be done, and His will is to be ours. This is harder.
Enter Conversation with God – it means we not only talk, but we also listen. We seek God and attend to His presence and desire for us.
Practice the presence of God. I want to be in God’s presence, never apart from Him. This is about the time and effort we make to seek God’s face, not compartmentalizing Him, but having Him ever before us, permeating our lives.
Own the peace of God. It is in prayer that ultimately, despite all things and in all things, we find peace.
It is key, we churchgoers, that we pay close attention to this, for prayer is our heritage. We come here to do as Jesus asks, joining in fellowship to offer, surrender, converse, practice, and own. Do we do it perfectly? Could our lives be more fully in God’s presence? Could we be more active? Of course! And we should get at it. But we have the start and the commitment, and in the end we will be heard. We are like the woman seeking a just judgment – and you know what? – God will give it to us.
Now I must be very honest with you. Some come to me who would never think to darken the doorway of a church. An emergency, disappointment, a tragedy – please pray for me. This isn’t people trying, but those who won’t until… I do pray in hope that they will be convicted and converted. Almost none are. I often wonder why. Thus, Jesus’ warns: “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” May He find each of us loyal, active, and wholly His in prayer.
This week’s memory verse: So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
Romans 12:5
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, grant that I may see the bond of family within my Kingdom life. Help me to be thankful each day and to work diligently to increase the Kingdom. Amen.
Living as God’s own.
Did you not know I had to be in My Father’s house.
Welcome and thank you for joining us this Sunday as we testify to our faith in our Lord and Savior, join in fellowship in His Holy Name, and celebrate the entire family of faith which is all of us who dwell in the Kingdom.
As I have occasionally commented, our Church takes this time, about mid-October, to transport us into the Christmas season as we consider the childhood of Jesus and His life within the Holy Family; as we consider our lives within the family of faith, the Kingdom of God.
It seems sort of funny, our Church was ahead of the current day Christmas rush as far back as 1914 when this Solemnity was established at Holy Synod.
On this occasion, with its focus on family and a kind-of Christmassy theme we may feel transported back to our own childhoods, the lives of our children and grandchildren, especially in their earliest years, our families, the love, events, and even trials we have shared. Family – and the idea of Christmas – we connect with all that, and that is good. For most people it is the place good is first felt.
Considering all that we experience and share in our own families, how do we feel, what do we think, when we consider, hear about, and ponder the family of God, the Holy Church, the Christian Family?
We could consider a gamut of thoughts and feelings. Just as in any family, there will be those who say all things must change, those who say we need improvements, those who say nothing must ever change. There is a whole range of opinions from one end to the other. However, lets step away from all that and consider something completely different – our Lord’s words: Did you not know I had to be in My Father’s house.
Jesus’ incarnation, birth, and young life in the family ushered in the very thing He preached. It was the message He was meant to bring: The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, believe.
In ushering in the Kingdom, in drawing us into one family, Jesus seeks an essential change in us, His Kingdom dwellers and workers. We are called to now focus our priorities and lives on the new reality, the Kingdom reality. We are now to live as God’s own family with the Father at the head and Jesus as our brother, united in the Spirit.
In our new reality, the strictures and structures of family have vastly expanded. Relationship has evolved. We have become a new people, reborn, regenerated, and connected one to another. Being there, we have cause to proclaim: Did you not know I had to be in My Father’s house. Saying so, and truly living as a family, we join in carrying out our responsibilities in our Kingdom work of evangelism, fellowship, and worship. We rejoice as family, as God’s very own.
This week’s memory verse: For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
Romans 10:10
Pray the week: Lord Jesus, grant me complete acceptance of Your gifts of power, love, and self-control. Assist me by Your Holy Spirit to use these gifts to live Your gospel life and do all You ask of me. Amen.
Accepted and used.
For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.
Welcome and thank you for joining us this Sunday as we testify to our faith in our Lord and Savior and join in fellowship in His Holy Name.
God gives – isn’t that a wonderful statement? God has placed gifts in us, as St. Paul tells Timothy, a spirit of power, love, and self-control.
These gifts from God are a sure antidote to the things that humans face every day – weakness, anger and hatred, and a lack of control over both ourselves and our surroundings.
The interesting thing about gifts is the choice of the one receiving them. The receiver has the choice of accepting and using the gift, accepting the gift and leaving it unused, misusing the gift, or just ignoring it.
Growing up, I, like you was trained to be thankful for gifts, and to accept them with grace. We were also taught that we must not waste what we were given. Perhaps in some ways that accounts for some of the clutter we all have – what to do with that ceramic chicken table setting someone gave us?
God only gives needful and useful gifts. No ceramic chickens from God. We have these gifts of power, love, and self-control but now we must apply them. As professing Christians, that is what we are to do.
Jesus shows us how we are to apply these gifts in everyday situations, during the ordinary of our lives. We are to use our power, love, and self-control as His servants and servants of each other. We are to see with faith, the size of a mustard seed, how God’s gifts intertwine and bind our relationships with Him, our brothers and sisters in the Kingdom, and all of God’s creation.
Jesus wants us to use these gifts in doing all He commands, that is, to walk the gospel path where we give completely of ourselves, where we clothe and feed those in need, where we visit those alone, and where the beatitudes mark our life. We can all look those up.
To those given more, Jesus calls for more. For all of us in relationship with each other, we are to be a representation of Jesus’ dwelling with us, His abiding presence. Look on each other and see Jesus abiding; His gifts ready for application.
Today, as we pause to consider the pets we love or have loved, we see in a special way the implementation of God’s gifts. We recognize a dependency in the ones given to us, for care, for companionship, for a recognition of their innocence and their sharing of unconditional love which we need to reciprocate. God thus uses creation to illustrate in the simplest of ways how the accepted gift is to be used. May we ever show how we have accepted the spirit of power, love, and self-control placed in us and how we have used them as His servants.