Reflection for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021

Strength of Faith

Yet we are courageous, and we would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord. Therefore, we aspire to please him, whether we are at home or away.

Over the next twenty-six weeks we are going to focus on how we live out the Christian faith, how we can walk in Strength of Faith.

In the text of today’s Epistle, we hear Paul say that we aspire to please him [i.e., God], whether we are at home or away. Hearing that immediately took me back to the days of family vacations. At home or away.

The first family vacation I remember was to Florida, Coral Gables, and my Uncle Frank’s house. Both of our families had been touched by tragedy, the loss of my dad and Frank’s loss of his wife, his children’s mom. This was still a pretty fresh memory for all of us.

This time gave us some freedom from those thoughts. I recall each thing we did, the visit to the breach, the salt water of the ocean, shells, going to the Venetian Gardens and its beautiful pools, running away after taking a wedge out of the green on a very nice golf course (I think they’re still looking for me). Being with my cousins. Visiting Ma Easter, an in-law to Uncle Frank, a great, very funny, and vivacious southern woman. Going to the planetarium and seeing moon rocks.

Some of this was culture shock, most just plan fun, and parts even scary. Life is like that, and the overriding question is: How do we approach life? Paul was writing about how we are to live. He boils it down to living in the strength of faith.

The love of God encompasses everything. Grounded in God’s love through Christ’s grace and the Holy Spirit’s communion, we can be what we have been called to be; commending ourselves with confidence to everyone regardless of circumstances, regardless of where we are.

In fact, all that we do while we are in our bodies will be manifest before “the judgment seat of Christ” – the moment when Christ, coming in power, will judge all. This reference to Christ’s “judgment seat” and how we are to live is not a threat or something we should fear, but rather a promise and an expectation of the fullness of the kingdom for those who live in strength of faith.

Although we live in a world where tech savvy, wealth, power, and the call to constant conflict with neighbors seem to override and even wipe out thoughts of God’s steadfast love, justice, and righteousness, we can be confident that God, and we who live His way, will prevail in the end. 

Our “transformation” into Christ’s image takes place not in some otherworldly place, only at the end, but here and now in how we live. Here is where we need to live and act in strength of faith, to go the way of Christ when we feel the pull to conflict, greed, the need to repost criticisms, to finger-point, to REACT. God’s grace is sufficient power to overcome, to live in strength of faith and to be truly Christian.

Reflection for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2017

How do you
say it.

We give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father, knowing, brothers and sisters loved by God, how you were chosen. For our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.

I was looking at a list of songs about love – I must have been in one of my romantic moods. From Stevie Wonders’ I Just Called To Say I Love You to Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You, song writers and poets have crafted thousands of ways to say, ‘I love you.’ Hallmark makes money on helping people say, ‘I love you.’

Today, St. Paul in writing to the Church at Thessalonica, opens with a lovely introduction full of thankfulness for the people of the Church. He commends the Thessalonians prayerfulness, their work for the faith which is a labor of love, and their endurance in the face of persecutions. He calls the people of the Thessalonian Church the ‘loved of God.’ He remembers how the gospel, God’s word, came to them. It wasn’t merely by hearing, but in a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

When did we ‘receive the word?’ When was the Holy spirit poured out on us? This question has lots of opportunities for good storytelling: I remember that day at Kurs Youth Camp, at our Biennial Youth Convocation, at a Mission and Evangelism conference, at Synod, on a quiet hillside, at a time of crisis, during an unexpected encounter, or one Sunday in church. In that moment, we joined the loved of God.

In joining the loved of God, we accept the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We recognize that He clothes us as He clothed the Thessalonians. We too are clothed with His gifts. He looks to us to be the new prayerful, the new workers for the faith, new laborers of love, the strong and enduring for the sake of the kingdom.

We often think that the Epistles of the first century marked something extraordinary – and we would be right in thinking that. We would however be wrong in thinking that the people, the loved of God of the first century were the last of the line. Indeed, they were the first.

Now we stand in their place, and hopefully we are not just standing. We, from Schenectady, Albany, Troy, Saratoga like the Thessalonians have been chosen to live out the gifts of the Spirit. Our receiving of the word is made evident by our work of faith and labor of love. The word in us is shown in the way we say, ‘I love you’ and help others to do so. We may do it in music, we may do it in poetry, but most of all we must do it in prayer, word, and power.