Doing differently.

Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high? And thus were the paths of those on earth made straight.

Welcome and thank you for joining us this day in our worship of, and dedication to, the Lord.

A couple weeks ago we talked about the difference between hearing and listening. Last week we heard God’s call to humility and away from pride. Today we cover the difference between knowing and understanding.

We can certainly connect with historical personalities, even in our families, who wished to know God. We saw them spending their lives focused on prayer and working toward a deeper knowledge of God which would then blossom into understanding.

That kind of dedication to knowing God is a movement toward true intimacy with God, a kind of love evidenced by such a closeness that nothing can get between the individual and God. This is a truly beautiful state of being, to understand God not in the academic sense, but in in a close and personal way.

Today’s reading from Wisdom speaks of all that confounds our growth toward God. Yet God will not let the burdens of self and earth stand in the way. He grants wisdom by His Holy Spirit to lead us on the right path – the path to knowledge, understanding, and intimacy with Him.

Well, what if I have not spent my whole life in prayer growing closer to God? What if my scripture reading isn’t what it should be? Maybe even my churchgoing hasn’t been what it should be? Am I cut off from knowledge, understanding, and intimacy with God?

No, of course not, and here’s a bit of a shortcut. To know and understand God is to accept the fact that He does things differently and calls us to be so as well.

St. Paul provides us an example in the Letter to Philemon. Paul comes to know Philemon’s runaway slave, Onesimus. He brings him to knowledge of Jesus – and then as Roman law requires – he sends him back to Philemon. But now something is radically different, the relationship has been changed, because of a God Who sees and does differently, makes us different to the core of who we are. So, Philemon and Onesimus must be different in Christ Jesus.

In the Gospel we hear more of Jesus’ hard sayings. Reject that which binds you down, even if it is possessions or family. Take up your cross. Follow me.

Jesus in revealing His Father to us calls us to a radically different life. He does not want us to just know we should be different, but to understand and with intimacy be different. We are to proclaim our intimacy with God in lives that show our closeness to and trust of God as we take the risks God asks of us in building the Kingdom. The One, Who is intimately with us, empowers us in this work and will blesses us for it.

Called to Live Anew.

“Give, and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

Anew – Life Anew in Christ is exhibited especially when we call people to know, love, and serve the Lord and His Holy Church right here at this parish.

Today we enter the second week of this Pre-Lenten season. This season is one in which we prepare ourselves for the rigors of the Lenten season because it is between now and Easter that we endeavor and strive at the vast changes we need in our lives.

Jesus certainly speaks of vast changes, a true upheaval in our lives. Jesus calls His followers to radically different lives. If we were once silent and demure we must now speak up boldly.

In this discourse on living radically different lives Jesus alludes to measures – the weight of our obligation and the generous weight of God’s response.

Certainly, many of us have baked. Perhaps it is only out of a Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines box. Perhaps it is from scratch.

If we have cooked from scratch, consider how the measurement and handling of flour can result in such different weights. A cup of sifted flour seems light while a packed down cup of flour can be quite dense and heavy. As we shake that cup down, we can always seem to add more.

Consider how those weights might represent our call to life anew, to the inner changes we need and our call to drawing others into worship and fellowship right here. 

It is a serious obligation to live as Jesus says we must: loving people who hurt us, giving our all and without expectation of repayment, foregoing judgment and accusation, and forgiving.

We draw people to Jesus because our lives are so different from that of the world. Jesus is saying the cup of our work can always be shaken down more – and that we must put more into it.

In return, Jesus makes an awesome statement. We will be repaid equally. As radically different as our lives are, so radically will God give unto us. What we pack in will be poured into us.

Our Kingdom lives are so vastly different and so amazingly blessed. As St. Paul tells us, the image of the earthly and worldly man in us – the place we came from – is vastly changed because we now bear the image of Christ Jesus. We therefore must give our all and still more for the advancement and growth of the Kingdom because we are the image of the heavenly.

Put the image of God’s generous outpouring into our mind’s eye and pour into the places we go a heavy, not a sifted, weight of our own life in Jesus.