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11/28/2014 0 Comments The Final TestPsalm 93 Matthew 25: 31-46 Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost Reign of Christ November 23, 2014 In a Bible class, two men were called upon to recite the Twenty-third Psalm. One was an accomplished speaker, trained in the techniques of speech and drama. He intoned the Psalm with great beauty and power:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul. He leads me in the path of righteousness for His Name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. When he had finished, his audience applauded with enthusiasm and asked him to repeat the verses that they might again hear his wonderful rendition. Then the second man recited the same words: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want ..." But when he finished, not a sound came from his audience. Instead, the people sat quietly, in a deep, mood of prayer and devotion. Then the first man rose and said, "I have a confession to make. The difference between what you have just heard from my friend and what you heard from me is that I know the Psalm; my friend knows the Shepherd." The Parable of the Last Judgment in today's Gospel Lesson confronts us head-on with one of the great paradoxes of our Christian faith. It is one which many of us have yet to grasp even though we have been members of the Church all our lives. To put it as simply as possible: the very best way to know and experience the Presence of the Lord who is our Shepherd, the very best way to make the inward journey to God, is through the outward journey to others. Or, as one of the early Church Fathers put it centuries ago, "The prodigal son cannot fully experience the Father's love until he has walked the Jericho Road with the Good Samaritan." Jesus said, "... the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many" (Mt. 20:28). He did this throughout His entire life and, ultimately, on the Cross. And He made it clear in His teaching that those who are His followers are to be women and men for others also. This teaching appears most powerfully in the "Parable of the Last Judgment" which we have just read from the Gospel of Matthew.
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11/14/2014 0 Comments A Matter of Life and DeathPsalm 138 Matthew 25: 1-13 Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost November 9, 2014 A freelance writer in New York City was talking about his childhood. Before his tenth birthday the family had moved five times, each time to a new community. His most vivid memory of each move was seeing his mother cry, always in the new house. He remembered his mother's "broken-hearted weeping" (as he put it) as she unpacked the boxes. He remembered his father saying to him, "Your mother will be all right, son. She is saying good-bye to the friends she has left so she can make new friends here. We must let her grieve." There is a profound and valuable Biblical principal at work in this simple incident. One of the clearest statements of this principal is found in John's Gospel -- the "Resurrection" Gospel. John's Gospel divides into two parts. In the first part, John builds the story of Jesus' public ministry around resurrection signs. The very first of these signs occurs when Jesus changes water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana. The miraculous transformation of water into wine was a sign of God working in our lives to transform sorrow into joy, despair into hope, death into life. Again and again in John's first eleven chapters we find references to resurrection. The climax comes in the eleventh chapter with still another great resurrection sign: the raising of Lazarus from the dead. In the midst of this episode Jesus says, "I am the Resurrection." Then there is a change: from chapter twelve on, the Apostle John tells the story of Jesus' own death and Resurrection. Set in between these two sections of the Gospel, like a diamond in a beautiful setting, there is a saying of Jesus taken from the world of nature. It reads, "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit" (Jn. 12:24). All of nature witnesses to the Divinely created cycle of death and rebirth. And in His own death and Resurrection, Jesus witnesses to the cycle's presence in our own human condition. |
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