First Reading:
1I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a
life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,
2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing
with one another in love, 3making every effort to maintain
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one
body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your
calling, 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one
God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in
all. 7But each of us was given grace according to the
measure of Christ's gift.
Second Reading:
28One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing
with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked
him, Which commandment is the first of all?
29Jesus
answered, The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord
our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
mind, and with all your strength.’ 31The second is
this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is
no other commandment greater than these.
32Then the
scribe said to him, You are right, Teacher; you have truly said
that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no
other’; 33and ‘to love him with all the heart,
and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and
‘to love one's neighbor as oneself,’ – this is much
more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.
34When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to
him, You are not far from the kingdom of God.
After that no one dared to ask him any question.
What a day to come to worship. We've already gathered together around the baptismal font and in a few minutes we'll gather again around the communion table. One is a simple bowl of ordinary water… the other a table with a simple meal of bread and juice. And yet for us, as people who make up the church, these simple and ordinary things take on a special significance as the water becomes the waters of baptism, the bread and the juice become the bread of life and the cup of the new covenant.
Through the sacraments we come to know Christ within us and among us and we celebrate God's grace and God's faithfulness to us as a community of believers… The waters of Baptism welcome us into the community of faith, they mark us as claimed by God and symbolize our unity with Christ in his death and resurrection. The bread and cup of Communion sustain us on the Christian journey, they mark God's continual sharing of life with us and symbolize that as followers of Christ we take his mission and his life, into our very being… we digest it and it becomes part of us. Baptism calls us to unity… the Lord's Supper calls us to love and serve our neighbor. And by the grace of God both of the sacraments can become avenues for us to know God more fully.
And that's nature of the journey we're on together: to know God more fully in our lives, to follow the way of Christ more closely in our day to day experience so that we can live the commandments Jesus says are the first and the second.
Hear, O people of God: the Lord our God is one. You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind, and with all you strength. And you shall love your
neighbor as yourself.
It's Consecration Sunday today, and out of all the practices and all
the traditions that are associated with the Christian faith, perhaps
there is none as important as consecration when it comes to loving God
and loving neighbor. You see, the word consecration comes from two
Latin roots: the first means with
the second
means sacred.
We can be dedicated to a lot of different
things… to ministry, to a church, to a task, to a cause, to a
job, to an organization, to a country, to a loved one; but there's
only one to whom we can be consecrated, and that is where love begins.
In one of his books, Gerald May, who was a psychiatrist, an author and a theologian, wrote about consecration. He said, consecration means intentionally participating in love and consciously opening ourselves to accept the gifts of God. It requires that we trust more in grace than in our own capabilities. It calls for an attitude of willingness, to give ourselves over to a power greater than our own. To be consecrated, we have to either trust enough, or we have to risk enough to be with God… to participate in God's liveliness and to join in God's ongoing work in the world.
As I read what he wrote, I was struck by the idea of God's liveliness and I began to wonder: When was the last time we stood in awe of the beauty of God's creation? When was the last time we marveled at how our bodies work? When was the last time we pondered the fact that everything in nature comes together perfectly to sustain such a wide variety of life on this earth? When was the last time we gave thanks for being able to experience love, comfort, joy or hope? Those were the things that came to my mind when I thought of God's liveliness. There are certainly more possibilities but when we come in contact with God's liveliness, the source of life, we know that we're alive too because it bubbles up inside us and it starts to overflow…
I've heard it said that the greatest challenge facing Christianity in this generation isn't any particular moral or ethical dilemma but it' s just a plain old lack of passion. We've lost our sense of wonder; we've lost our sense of being alive. People don't see following Christ as life changing journey anymore, they see it as a way to be a good person, or maybe even as some sort of obligation to be filled.
But at its core, our faith isn't based on duty. It's not based in
following rules or trying to be good people.
Not that those
are necessarily bad, they're just secondary (and a distant second at
that) because at its core, our faith is based on being connected with
the God whose character is made known in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus lived in the midst of the ordinary everyday stuff of life and it was there that he did his work… he called fishermen; he taught his disciples as they walked from town to town. He ate meals with friends and with strangers. He used whatever happened to be nearby as object lessons for his teachings… But of course, I can't stand here and pretend that his was an ordinary life because in every moment and in every act, he brought with him awareness of the power and glory of God. What was ordinary became extraordinary. What might otherwise have been extraordinary became miraculous. And wherever Jesus went he brought life because he lived connected with God.
In the letter Josi and I sent out at the beginning of the stewardship
campaign this year I asked the question How can we live faithfully
and how can we give faithfully in a world that's so engaged in
getting, spending, accumulating and filling the calendar?
And the
short answer is: Consecration… being with God in everything we
do… and letting that connection transform us from the inside
out.
Too often, I fear we have a compartmentalized view of our lives… where we set aside time on Sunday morning for being with God, and maybe a few minutes here and there throughout the week… but the rest of our time and the rest of our energy is taken by other things, ordinary things, everyday life. But friends, even if we control nothing else in our lives, we are stewards of where our attention goes. In our daily routine (which may or may not be routine at all) we have the ability to remain connected to the source of life by giving our attention to God's presence and activity: savoring those moments where we're in touch with God's liveliness valuing those opportunities to be a part of God's work in the world. This is part of what it means for us to be consecrated. Because the goal is that we are with God in everything we do. That we are living in Christ, and that we're alive in Christ.
The gifts we bring are ordinary… water, bread, juice… our financial resources, our time, our energy. And when we bring them, we don't have to worry too much about having the right words to say or the right prayers to pray because being with God doesn't depend on those kinds of things… what it depends on is desire, intention and willingness to act for what is better, what is greater, what is more loving and more fulfilling than any of us could dream of, let alone achieve, on our own. But in the presence of God what is ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Consecration is offering what we have and who we are to God; over and over again so that paying attention to the presence of God in the things we do and in the people we meet in our everyday lives becomes for us something that's as natural and as life giving as breathing… and I don't know of anything that is a better explanation of what it might mean to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Amen
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on Consecration Sunday, November 1, 2009.
© 2009 Daniel Holland
