Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
From life on the bondage of sin to life in the freedom of the Spirit
From the darkness of chaos to the light of Christ
From gloom to glory
From judgment to redemption
From death, shame, sin and trouble, to life, glory, righteousness and joy
Lead us O Christ into your Kingdom.
When I worked in New York in the office of a venerable publisher we had a venerable slogan – from the venerable institution, Oxford University, of which we were a part.
In the office one day my boss’s secretary turned to me and whispered, “Do you know what this means?”
She pointed to the Latin motto on our seal, our corporate logo: Dominus illuminatio mea
Which I read as Dominus illumina tio mea ... thinking of what it could possibly mean, using my high-school Spanish.
And responded, “God illumines my aunt.”
Lydia laughed; she knew about my aunt.
Well of course it means more than that: Dominus illuminatio mea – the motto of Oxford University and of Oxford University Press – is the beginning of the 27th Psalm, and it means
God is my light
So in that light we go on in the sure and certain knowledge, that dispels all fear, quells all chaos, answers all anxiety:
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?
This is the light that enlightens the nations, the light that came to the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, the light that Christ brings with him into the world, the light that he asks us to share in rekindling, reflecting his glory in our lives and our life together.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul exhorts Christians to be united – to have the same mind and the same purpose. We are to proclaim the Gospel, and the cross of Christ; to tell the good news, the message about the Cross, which to those who believe is the power of God. Unity in Christ: in mind and purpose, thought and deed.
Our common life is to show God’s glory – to shine his light in a still-darkened, sin-gloomy, world.
In the gospel we have an extraordinary story – at an extraordinary time. Jesus has just learned that the baptizer, John, has been imprisoned. How does he react? Does he run away, go on the lam, seek shelter, and take the story underground?
No. From this time forward – this time, a time of darkness, chaos, gloom, despair, uncertainty and danger – from this time, Jesus begins to proclaim the coming of the glory of the Lord. The kingdom of heaven is at hand – is right here!
He embodies the good news Isaiah had so long ago proclaimed, and brings it forward into the present moment.
Jesus begins to call people individually and to gather them into his fellowship. He calls us from darkness and death to light dawning, the kingdom of heaven right here among us.
Freedom comes with the call to discipleship.
Jesus calls people into obedience and into life in the spirit, life together in Christ himself.
He calls us into common life, under a common Lord. He calls us into common prayer and common purpose.
Our Father – he teaches us to pray – ours, not just theirs or yours or his or mine: ours, together.
Thy kingdom come – in us, around us, with us. Make us your helping hands. Make us reflectors of your glory. Make us shine with your light. Make us instruments of your peace – your peace – that we may show the world your kingdom is here.
Jesus began to proclaim the good news. He began to walk among the people. Along the lakeshore he walked. And he came to the fishermen at their nets, in the midst of their daily occupation, and said to them, “Follow me. I will make you fishers of men – I will transform your good work into the transforming power of God in the world. Proclaim with me the good news.”
The fishermen left their nets, followed him, and became disciples of Jesus. So may we. So may we.
“Drop what you’re doing!” it sounds like something out of a Laurel and Hardy movie. But that is what they do.
They put aside all other tasks as secondary to the one true thing that matters: following Jesus where he leads, and going where he sends.
Together, Jesus and the newly called disciples went through the region of Galilee, the one they knew so well, and the began the work:
Teaching, in the places of prayer, where people went to perform their religion in pious gathering, where now they would encounter the living God.
Proclaiming, the good news of God.
Curing and healing the sick, showing and embodying the truth of the good news that they brought with them.
In word and deed, the disciples and Jesus showed the good news of the kingdom, showed forth the light and life of God.
What had come before was simply preparation, prologue. What was beginning now was a new order of the ages.
God has come to us and is revealed to us in his Son: Emmanuel, God is with us.
God is with us. How do we see it? How do we respond, to this good news?
Before it may have seemed that God and religion and grace were simply to be consumer goods, something passively to be received. Now with Jesus in their midst (and ours) the message of the coming Kingdom requires an active faith.
Immediately they dropped their nets and followed him – and began to fish for people.
Once, back in New York, I went shopping for some cheese and some bread – pumpernickel, at Zabar’s Deli. The place was full, and the cashiers had long lines ahead of them. So over the loudspeakers came an announcement and an invitation: there are more cash registers upstairs. Never been up there. It’s where the kitchenware and pots and pans were. Downstairs you could buy stuff you could simply take home and begin to consume. What was upstairs – the tools for cooking – required an action on your part. You had to begin to act, to cook –
Up I went. Halfway up the stairs, I saw someone (who loved the place) showing a guy around her favorite deli. I heard her say, as they gained the top landing, this is where the fun really begins.
This is where the fun really begins. Where we become not just passive recipients of the largesse of God, consumers of bread, but active participants in the preparation of the life-giving sustenance of God for his people, and for the world.
We become in Christ the bread the world needs. We become bread for the world. But only as we are broken with Christ, shared with Christ, given with Christ, to the world he has come to redeem. For that is the work he has called us to do – and that is the work we are doing, when we answer the call of discipleship: to become the good news of Christ to the people of the world among whom we find ourselves. How we do this – in Edmonds, in our lives, in our life together – is up to us, and the spirit in us.
“He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old by the lakeside He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word, ‘Follow thou me,’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands, and to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship; and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.” (Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 1906)
He comes to us as of old by the lakeshore he came to the first disciples; and he calls to us: Follow me.
And we shall learn who he is – and who we are, as we follow him.
May we…
http://www.frederica.com/writings/the-historical-jesus.html
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Showing posts with label 1 Corinthians 1:10-18. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1 Corinthians 1:10-18. Show all posts
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Sunday, January 27, 2008
God illumines my aunt
In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
One day in the office my cubicle neighbor turned to me and whispered, "Do you know what it means?" She pointed to the corporate logo: an open book with seven seals, and the motto written on the pages. I looked at it. I wasn't sure. I don't read Latin. So I ventured a guess: "God illumines my aunt?"
Lydia laughed.
The motto of our company, Oxford University Press, was very old, dating back before Columbus, back before Richard II (who signed off on it), back before Christ. It was:
Dominus illuminatio mea: The LORD is my light.
The beginning of the 27th Psalm, our psalm today.
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? *
the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?
The light that illuminates me - and you - is the Lord.
In the 10th Century before Christ, the prophet Isaiah gave good news to the people of northern Israel, people who were being over-run by the Assyrian empire.
Even they, distant from Jerusalem, far in the north, on the shores and on the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee, would experience a vindication, a salvation. For along the road to the sea, where they lived, the light of the Lord would shine:
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness-on them light has shined.
This is the land where Jesus walked, at the beginning of his ministry. Herod Antipas had arrested John the Baptist, and Jesus left that territory and moved north toward Nazareth, the place where he was raised. He made his home in a larger town, new and busy, down by the lakeshore: Capernaum, where fishing was the industry. It was along that ancient trade route, the road to the sea; Via Maris, it was called now. Traffic passed along, goods were transported, from Damascus to the west, and to Egypt.
And there, after the voice of the 'one crying in the wilderness' had been silenced, Jesus began to spread the good news himself, and to call to the people to turn away from the reign of the rulers of this world, Herod and such, and leave aside their own follies and past sins.
Something new is beginning, a light is dawning, & the reign of God is at hand.
Jesus begins to call his disciples. And his call to them has two parts:
Follow me.
And.
And I will make you fish for people.
There is a call, an initial response of faith, and an action. They do something, right away. Later Jesus will call Matthew from the tax tables, and put him to work, at something much greater: gathering in, no longer, tax monies for the overlords, but gathering in the people of God to bring the kingdom of God.
Now, it is follow me, and.
Later, one of these fishermen, Peter, will answer a question, "What must I do to be saved?" and his answer, again, will begin with an initial response of faith: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved."
But that is, generally speaking, not the end of the answer: beyond this initial act, there is an action. "Believe, and be baptized." Believe, and ---. Believe, and act to make it real. Make the salvation not a thing of head only but of heart, not of words only, but of deeds. Act it out with your body. Go and be baptized. Go and sell all you have, and distribute the proceeds to the poor: then you are really following me.
And Jesus reveals to the fisher folk what it means to follow him. First he said, "Follow me," but he continued, "and I will make you fish for people." I will make you fishers of men. Together.
And they dropped what they were doing, right then and there, said good-bye to their families, and went. That is when they found out what it meant to 'fish for people.'
Jesus led them up into the hill country and throughout the region. He proclaimed the good news. And he enacted the kingdom of heaven, embodied the reign of God - by curing every disease and every sickness among the people.
Here he gives a clear sign, an early warning, quite distinct, that something new is happening. The Messiah, the light of the Lord shining forth from one person, is the dawning of the new day for Israel, the day of the Lord. The Lord's anointed, the Messiah, the Christ, leads the way.
He calls to Simon Peter and Andrew his brother, and to James and John the sons of Zebedee, to follow his way. And -
He calls us.
The apostle Paul, in speaking to those exemplary Christians at Corinth - examples of so much that we recognize as behavior of the church - makes an appeal to them as his own brothers and sisters in the Lord, and he makes it in the name of Jesus: be in agreement, let there be no divisions. Don't fall apart into factions or parties, as if your identity lay in anything less than in the Lord.
He gets a little caustic: "Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" What he is doing is reminding them of their true allegiance, the only one that really matters in the end: they are the people of God, the people redeemed by the Lord and baptized in the name of the Savior.
His primary task is not the initial plunge: it is to proclaim the gospel, to preach the good news, so that the power of the cross of Christ - that paradoxical sign of the power of God - the cross might be revealed as the sign of glory.
And that the people of God - you and I, and they - the Corinthians - might know that in Christ alone is our salvation and our hope and our identity - and our mission.
They are not to divide themselves up into little camps, or tribes.
They are to stay together, focus on mission, and move forward in the name of Christ.
Follow me and.
Believe and.
What is left for us? Two things:
A great commandment.
A great commission.
The first is about staying together. The second is about focusing on mission. And they both are about moving forward in the name of Christ.
We will encounter these again later in Matthew's gospel, as the year goes by.
First,
The Great Commandment (Matthew 22:37-40)
Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets.
And second,
The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20):
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Together, these two directives, great commandment and great commission, form us into the people of God, shape us as a church, and remind us of what we are doing. So we pray,
Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
--------------------
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Jesus (accessed 5:12 AM Sunday, January 27, 2008)
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 27, 2008
Year A, Revised Common Lectionary (RCL)
Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27:1, 5-12
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23
Psalm 27:1 (Page 617, BCP)
Dominus illuminatio mea
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? *
the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?
One day in the office my cubicle neighbor turned to me and whispered, "Do you know what it means?" She pointed to the corporate logo: an open book with seven seals, and the motto written on the pages. I looked at it. I wasn't sure. I don't read Latin. So I ventured a guess: "God illumines my aunt?"
Lydia laughed.
The motto of our company, Oxford University Press, was very old, dating back before Columbus, back before Richard II (who signed off on it), back before Christ. It was:
Dominus illuminatio mea: The LORD is my light.
The beginning of the 27th Psalm, our psalm today.
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? *
the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?
The light that illuminates me - and you - is the Lord.
In the 10th Century before Christ, the prophet Isaiah gave good news to the people of northern Israel, people who were being over-run by the Assyrian empire.
Even they, distant from Jerusalem, far in the north, on the shores and on the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee, would experience a vindication, a salvation. For along the road to the sea, where they lived, the light of the Lord would shine:
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness-on them light has shined.
This is the land where Jesus walked, at the beginning of his ministry. Herod Antipas had arrested John the Baptist, and Jesus left that territory and moved north toward Nazareth, the place where he was raised. He made his home in a larger town, new and busy, down by the lakeshore: Capernaum, where fishing was the industry. It was along that ancient trade route, the road to the sea; Via Maris, it was called now. Traffic passed along, goods were transported, from Damascus to the west, and to Egypt.
And there, after the voice of the 'one crying in the wilderness' had been silenced, Jesus began to spread the good news himself, and to call to the people to turn away from the reign of the rulers of this world, Herod and such, and leave aside their own follies and past sins.
Something new is beginning, a light is dawning, & the reign of God is at hand.
Jesus begins to call his disciples. And his call to them has two parts:
Follow me.
And.
And I will make you fish for people.
There is a call, an initial response of faith, and an action. They do something, right away. Later Jesus will call Matthew from the tax tables, and put him to work, at something much greater: gathering in, no longer, tax monies for the overlords, but gathering in the people of God to bring the kingdom of God.
Now, it is follow me, and.
Later, one of these fishermen, Peter, will answer a question, "What must I do to be saved?" and his answer, again, will begin with an initial response of faith: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved."
But that is, generally speaking, not the end of the answer: beyond this initial act, there is an action. "Believe, and be baptized." Believe, and ---. Believe, and act to make it real. Make the salvation not a thing of head only but of heart, not of words only, but of deeds. Act it out with your body. Go and be baptized. Go and sell all you have, and distribute the proceeds to the poor: then you are really following me.
And Jesus reveals to the fisher folk what it means to follow him. First he said, "Follow me," but he continued, "and I will make you fish for people." I will make you fishers of men. Together.
And they dropped what they were doing, right then and there, said good-bye to their families, and went. That is when they found out what it meant to 'fish for people.'
Jesus led them up into the hill country and throughout the region. He proclaimed the good news. And he enacted the kingdom of heaven, embodied the reign of God - by curing every disease and every sickness among the people.
Here he gives a clear sign, an early warning, quite distinct, that something new is happening. The Messiah, the light of the Lord shining forth from one person, is the dawning of the new day for Israel, the day of the Lord. The Lord's anointed, the Messiah, the Christ, leads the way.
He calls to Simon Peter and Andrew his brother, and to James and John the sons of Zebedee, to follow his way. And -
He calls us.
The apostle Paul, in speaking to those exemplary Christians at Corinth - examples of so much that we recognize as behavior of the church - makes an appeal to them as his own brothers and sisters in the Lord, and he makes it in the name of Jesus: be in agreement, let there be no divisions. Don't fall apart into factions or parties, as if your identity lay in anything less than in the Lord.
He gets a little caustic: "Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" What he is doing is reminding them of their true allegiance, the only one that really matters in the end: they are the people of God, the people redeemed by the Lord and baptized in the name of the Savior.
His primary task is not the initial plunge: it is to proclaim the gospel, to preach the good news, so that the power of the cross of Christ - that paradoxical sign of the power of God - the cross might be revealed as the sign of glory.
And that the people of God - you and I, and they - the Corinthians - might know that in Christ alone is our salvation and our hope and our identity - and our mission.
They are not to divide themselves up into little camps, or tribes.
They are to stay together, focus on mission, and move forward in the name of Christ.
Follow me and.
Believe and.
What is left for us? Two things:
A great commandment.
A great commission.
The first is about staying together. The second is about focusing on mission. And they both are about moving forward in the name of Christ.
We will encounter these again later in Matthew's gospel, as the year goes by.
First,
The Great Commandment (Matthew 22:37-40)
Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets.
And second,
The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20):
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Together, these two directives, great commandment and great commission, form us into the people of God, shape us as a church, and remind us of what we are doing. So we pray,
Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
--------------------
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Jesus (accessed 5:12 AM Sunday, January 27, 2008)
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 27, 2008
Year A, Revised Common Lectionary (RCL)
Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27:1, 5-12
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23
Psalm 27:1 (Page 617, BCP)
Dominus illuminatio mea
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? *
the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?
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