Faith

"If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
(John 8:31-32)
As Jesus has said elsewhere, all of the law hangs on serving God and loving your neighbors.  The way that we become disciples of Jesus is by becoming disciples: respectful followers.  As long as we adhere to Jesus' teachings about loving, we will be near to Him.  There is no amount of money or family lineage that will make us any closer.  As Martin Luther taught, we are saved by our faith in Jesus.  The way we have faith is by truly following our Lord.

Action

Today, we honor John Wycliffe, a notable translator and theologian from the Middle Ages.  Through his life, we learn that God calls us to action.  Indeed, "the sower sows the word," (Mark 4:14) speaking of Jesus, but we must nurture that word in our hearts.  Wycliffe took action and preached about how the church is not about how much money one has, but how much spiritual money it has.  He taught that the church depended on the people.  One of the ways he brought the church to more people than the rich was by translating the Bible into English.  Of course, he was ostracised by the Roman Catholic Church because of his actions and teachings, but that's what we must do.  Jesus preached about the corruption among the pharisees and gave us a solution to these problems.  In fact, Jesus gave us a very simply stated instruction: follow God.  When we put all of our talents to God, we glorify God.  When we glorify God, we bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.  So, let us take our time to think about our talents: teaching, listening, preaching, writing, volunteering, cooking, dancing, acting; and then we can put them forth to God to make earth the New Jerusalem.

The Soul

"So give for alms those things that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you." (Luke 11:40)
Before God, there will be no faking.  God will see through the mismatched colors, the cargo shorts, and the flannel shirt.  God sees what is deep within.  God sees the glitter and the fabulousness that is within.  So, before we go about living a life that is "clean" on the outside but "dirty" on the inside, let us come forward to God.  Let us give to God all that God has given to us.  Let us take off our mask that we use to get by and praise God with our whole heart, mind, and soul.  Just as Jesus made sure to make the unpopular and the downright ugly righteous and holy, so shall we make what is seen by others as detestable a glorification of our Lord of all.

The Gospel Centered Life

"But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." (Ephesians 4:15)
Here's the simple message from Paul, this time, which calls us to love.  The only way we can grow into Christ is through love.  It's simple because the only way we learn anything is through careful practice.  As a musician, I feel like I know this all too well.  For starters, one must practice so much to be good. However, mindlessly spending hours on things only makes a habit, as opposed to perfection.  My teacher always says that I must focus whenever I practice.  Therefore, playing through the things I'm good at only reinforces the things I'm good at, and, consequently, makes everything else glaringly bad.  However, when I focus on a certain issue for a given amount of time, I make my playing all the better.  In the same way, the only way we can make our lives closer to the Gospel is by living in love.  However, we cannot just practice loving those we already love or those who already love us back.  We must practice loving those who may not be easy to love.  We must love those who have hurt us.  We must love those who preach against us.  We must love those who don't understand us.  By practicing what Jesus already did and what God teaches us daily, we will live a truly gospel centered life.

United We Stand

"Every kingdom divided against itself becomes a desert, and house falls on house." (Luke 11:17)
This is a universal ideal that we need to embrace.  When we divide ourselves against each other, we become weaker.  Indeed, we still bear our family names.  When we say certain people of the LGBT community are not for us, we make ourselves smaller, weaker, more vulnerable.  We need to unite with one another.  We need to accept the diversity of our family.  We need to accept each other's personality.  We need to unite in the love of God.  God will deliver us. We need to be ready for God's coming.

Love

In today's gospel, Jesus tells us the main message: love God and love your neighbors.  However, despite the fact that this is a reiteration of levitical law, Jesus adds one more statement: upon these hang all of the laws.  God's law is a law of love.  Anything that gets in the way of our loving relationship with God is sin.  Anything that gets in the way of our love for our neighbors is sin.  When we welcome our friends, strangers, and enemies, we are living for God.  When we devote ourselves entirely to God, we are indeed living for God.  When we take the position of God, we are separating ourselves from God.  When we start to punish others because of our own misunderstandings, we are no longer living for God.  Instead of pointing fingers, let us join hands, for we all live under the grace of God, and we live to praise God: our creator, our redeemer, our sustainer.

Asking

"If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give tho Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13)
This comes at the end of one of my favorite passages.  Jesus tells us to be direct: ask and you shall receive.  There are no ceremonies or rituals that we need to do.  We just need to ask.  We need to establish a connection between God and ourselves.  How do we get friends? Do we not communicate.  Do we not start with a simple, "what is your name" or, "how are you?" We need to ask of God, for God has so much in store for us.  God asks us if we are ready.  All we need to ask is, "What do You need of me?" With God's reply, we will get our mission, our talent, our ministry, and the means by which we can accomplish our mission.