The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Sunday closest to July 6 Proper 9 Year A RCL
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Psalm 145: 8 - 15
Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 for the texts click here
There’s a story of a man who risked his life to save a boy trapped in a burning building. The doorway was blocked, the room was filled with smoke, and the child could not find his way out. His rescuer stormed into the house with reckless abandon, retrieving the young man from certain death. As the boy was carried from the burning building into the open air, he said, “Thank you for saving my life.”
The man looked deeply into the boy’s eyes and spoke his profound reply: “Just make sure your life was worth saving.”
Just make sure your life was worth saving—that’s something for us all to think about. Is our life worthy of the risk and cost of one who would save it?
What is one life worth? At what point could it be said that too much money was spent to save a life? The answer is at no point can that be said. You cannot place a dollar amount on the value of a human life. We’ll go to great lengths to save one person’s life, because we know how precious life really is. I can’t help but wonder, though, if my life were saved, what would I do to make certain it was worth the effort?
Is it our life worth saving? Are we not, most of the time entangle in a self-spun web of falsehoods and deceit?. Sin, deceit, lies are as old as human kind. Martin Buber, philosopher and theologian believed that we are the authentic first liar in the world. Buber says: A lie was possible only after a creature, man, was capable of conceiving the being of truth.
Here in New York , the act of confession is now an artistic expression. During the first half of 2006, two performing artists named Laura Barnett and Sandra Spannan created an exhibit in a storefront in Manhattan that allowed passers-by to alleviate their guilt.
The two women dressed as 19th century washerwomen and sat in the storefront, one of them underlining the words on the glass—"Air your dirty laundry. 100 percent confidential. Anonymous. Free."—the other painting. Onlookers were encouraged to write their deepest secrets on pieces of paper. When they had disappeared from sight, the women collected their confessions and displayed it in the window for all to see.
The sins and secrets ranged from slightly humorous to sordid:
"The hermit crab was still alive when I threw it down the trash shoot."
"I want to see SUVs explode. Those people are so selfish."
"My girlfriend and I both think Osama Bin Laden has a sweet-looking face."
"I make fun of this one friend behind her back all the time. She just enrages me! But I get freaked out when I think of what she might say about me—I worry this means we're not really friends? Human relationships are infinitely confusing!"
"I haven't slept with my husband in a year and I am about to start an affair with ______."
"I haven't yet visited my dead parents' grave."
"I am dating a married man and getting financial compensation in exchange for the guilt. I'm 25 and he's a millionaire. It pays to be young."
"New York makes me feel lonely."
Barnett told the New York Times that the women are often overwhelmed by the weight of others' sins: "We go there, and the window is empty, and we're wearing all white. And at the end, the window is full, and we're covered with paint, all I want to do is to take a bath.
For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Tells Apostle Paul to the Christian community in Rome of his own inner struggle.
Have we not been there together with Paul, struggling with our own demons? How far is the hero away from the villain? Are we not capable of greatness and selfishness in the same breath? For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
Paul is living in the context of the First century Christianity when the lines of division between Judaism and Christianity were not clearly drawn yet. He was in the midst of the struggle to decide wether the new Christian converts, coming from non-Jewish background were supposed to obey the dietary and other rules of Judaism. Paul preside over the defining moment in which Christianity went from a Jewish sect among many to clearly defined new religious movement.
We always should understand Paul’s letters as a dialogue with both supporters and opponents of his views on the subject. For the Jewish-Christians for lack of a better name, if you followed the Law of Moses, that is the Torah and the rabbinical interpretations of such, you have advanced your standing in front of God. For Paul, such position does the opposite because for him, there was nothing we could do with our own efforts to be blameless in face of God. For him, we all have sinned and stand condemned, and we all who believe are justified, and this because they rest, not on their own faithfulness, in their own striving, in their inner jihad but in the faithfulness of Christ - his "sacrifice of atonement."
We are saved, freed from the self-built cage of sin not because we do anything to be saved, but because God has loved before and in the sacrifice of the cross gives the key to come out of it. Our response to God’s invitation to freedom, is to accepted humbly that without Him we could and we will not do anything.
If you go to an AA or AlAnom meeting they tel you that the way to recovery passes but admitting our inability to shake off addiction by ourselves. Paradoxical, eh? By admitting that we can not beat it, and relying on a Higher power, people have stopped drinking and taking drugs for the remainder of their lives. Here at Redeemer, I met a lady who has been sober for 60 years, she looks like a church lady, but before she was a bar lady.
If we want to come out into the light from our personal self-built dungeon, and be freed from the bondage of sin and death, we need only to hold on to the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. We do not have to practice meditation, or become vegetarians or follow a set of rules, we need only to hang on to Christ’s cross, admitting that we are entrapped and we can not come out on our own.
Someone has rescued us.
Of course, we have all been rescued. Someone paid the ultimate cost to
snatch us from death. That someone is God. The story of our being
rescued by Jesus Christ—and our response to being rescued—lies at the
heart of the gospel.
What is our appropriate response to this ransom? How are we to live
knowing we’ve been saved at such a cost? Peter’s exhortation can be
summed in one word: “Remember.”
Peter says (v. 18), “God paid a ransom to save you from the impossible
road to heaven which your fathers tried to take, and the ransom he paid
was not mere gold or silver, as you very well know.” First Peter says
we’ve all been ransomed by God at a great price. God allowed his
precious Son to die on our behalf. His lifeblood was poured out for
each one of us. Peter urges us to remember with gratitude this act of
redemption. And because Jesus relied on God on the cross, we are
invited to do likewise in our lives.
Because God gave so much to rescue us, we can truly trust God. That’s
what 1 Peter says (v. 21): “Because of this, your trust can be in God,
who raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory. Now your
faith and hope can rest in him alone.” This is powerful, life-changing
news. What an awesome God we have! We’ve been ransomed by the lifeblood
of Christ.
Peter writes, “For you have a new life. It was not passed on to you
from your parents, for the life they gave you will fade away. This new
one will last forever, for it comes from Christ, God’s ever-living
Message to men” (v. 23). God has ransomed us at great cost. In Christ
we have a new lease on life. How will you honor it? How will that cause
you to live differently? How will you make sure your life is worth
saving?
Anne Rice is one of the most widely read authors in the world. Her
bestsellers—most notably, her series of gothic books called "The
Vampire Chronicles"—have sold over 100 million copies. After spending
most of her adult life a self-described atheist, Rice converted back to
Christianity in 1996. She has since focused her writing efforts on
religious-themed works. Her newest book is entitled Christ the Lord:
The Road to Cana. She recently allowed the readers of Time magazine to
ask her whatever they wished for an interactive piece called "10
Questions." When one reader asked about the reasons behind her
conversion, Rice summed up her journey in these words:
Americans like to believe we turn to religion because of an
accident or the loss of a loved one, but in my case it was simply the
culmination of searching. I wrestled with a lot of theological
questions, and then one afternoon, I thought, I love you—I want to come
back to you.
May the Love for Jesus be enough for you and me to make our lives worth saving.
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
The Rev. Canon Juan A. Quevedo-Bosch,
Rector
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Fr. Gilberto "Tony" Hinds has transferred to work as priest-in-charge at the Church of the Resurrection,Kew Gardens, New York, sadly we say goodbye to Tony, you can reach him at this number 718-847-2649
