Make Every Effort

Psalm Reading: Psalm 117

First Reading: Isaiah 66: 18-21

Second Reading: Hebrews 12: 5-7

Gospel Reading: Luke 13: 22-30

 

 For many Christians today, offering praises to the Lord is a given.  There is no question or debate that we, as in the Psalms 117, shall praise the Lord and proclaim his love and faithfulness towards us.

In the first reading, we see the people of Jerusalem, tired with no sign of optimism in their struggle to rebuild their city.  In these passages from Isaiah, God pulled them out from misery by reaffirming the people that all efforts would never end in vain. People were reassured of God’s faithfulness and again felt a very close connection with God.

God’s love can also be felt in slightly unexpected situations, like what can be found in the second reading. When we are put in a situation where we are receiving the consequences of our careless actions or wrong judgments, most of us would either fail to recognize that the Lord is teaching us something important, or turn away from God thinking He is being too harsh on us. However, Luke 5-7 reminds us that when God gives us a nudge of discipline, He is expressing His love for us, His children.  This reminds me how it is better to be confronted by people for having hurt them, may it be intentional or not, than sensing apathy towards me, making me feel that whatever I do or say does not matter.  Accepting God’s discipline is a child’s submission to a parent.  In circumstances of receiving God’s discipline, we are being taught to be wiser, not being attacked to feel weaker.

Now knowing how God is faithful and loving to us, we have more than enough reasons to praise Him.  But is praising Him through our traditional and conventional means sufficient to be saved? In Luke, a Jew asked Jesus a similar question – “Are only a few people going to be saved?” (13:23). Jesus answered, to a group of people He had been travelling and teaching with, that “many will try to enter and will not be able to”. (13:24) To these people, who were believers, Jesus said that they should “make every effort to enter through the narrow door” for they could still be left outside the closed door, denied of entry despite tireless knocking and pleading to be let in.

This teaches us that even though we have declared ourselves Christians and have been involved in various church ministries, we should not sit complacent. Entering the narrow door means exerting our best efforts in following Jesus’ ways. In following Jesus, not everyone will be welcoming. We should not be content in seeking for all the answers in our respective denominations.  Let us not trap ourselves in the confines of our churches.  We should liberate ourselves and seek out the Lord’s message and commission to us – through the people in the highs and lows of communities and through our different experiences of joy and struggle.  We might have felt so sure about our salvation for a long time, but let us check with ourselves – “Is this the best effort I can ever give in following Jesus?” Let us remember that Jesus Christ our Lord, walked and lived with the poorest of the poor, with the oppressed and the marginalized.  Another thing we need to realize is that we must not procrastinate in entering the narrow door.  When “the owner of the house gets up and closes the door” (13:25), we might regret in the end how we kept saying, “I really promise this time that I’ll put more effort tomorrow.”, then have repeatedly pushed it back.  Now is the time to go out. Reach out to the depths of your capability.  Influence up to the stretch of your network.

We have proven again and again God’s love and faithfulness to us.  Singing praises in the church is not wrong, and in fact is very important.   However, following Him even though the door may be narrow, yet pressing on knowing that our best efforts will not end in vain, and that He will redirect us when we swerve away from the right path — isn’t that a louder proclamation of our obedience, faith, and love?##

 

 

Isay R. Brown

Kalipunan ng Kristianong Kabataan(3KP)

Which door had I chosen to enter?

21 August 2016

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

15th Sunday after Pentecost

 

Isaiah 66:18-21

Psalm 117

Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13

Luke 13:22-30

 

Luke pictures salvation as a place where those who wish to be saved need to enter by a narrow door. The door is guarded by the Master, Jesus himself. It is a place of abundance and joy.

The first reading reminds us that God’s offer of salvation is given to all: “I am coming to gather the nations of every language. They shall come to witness my glory” (Is 66:18). This offer of salvation is to be proclaimed to all; it is good news that is meant to be shared and not to be kept for one’s self (Psalm 116). Proclaiming this good news of salvation means living a life of righteousness like that of the prophets. A life lived in righteousness like the prophets is proclamation, merely talking about God’s salvation, even if it were in a booming voice, is not. It is this very same life of righteousness that is the key to entering by the narrow door that leads to salvation; solely having been in the company of Jesus or having been at table with him does not necessarily merit one a passage to salvation. This means being a member of the Church does not guaranty that the Master shall let us through the narrow door. As followers of Jesus today, a life of righteousness means fashioning our life after him: a life founded on an intimate relationship with God (Jesus’ Abba), nourished and sustained by prayer, and characterized by selfless service especially to the poor and those left by the gutters by society.

It is easy to preach about salvation. However, to proclaim salvation by means of a life that is fashioned after Jesus is not. Preaching about salvation is what many do because it is convenient. We see this in the simple tweets on Tweeter to the shared messages on Facebook about Jesus up to the grandest sermons in churches and to the eloquent speeches in the halls of government that promise us a better life. However, that is not what we need today, in fact, we have had enough of that already. What is needed today are people who choose to be inconvenienced in order to proclaim God’s salvation, willing to sacrifice one’s life and not someone else’s just as Jesus did. This is what it means to choose to enter by the narrow door. There are many out there who have chosen to do this. We do not know them because they do not tweet on Tweeter or share on Facebook what they do, they just proclaim God’s salvation by means of their life no matter how simple it may be.

Let us ask ourselves: which door had I chosen to enter?

 

Joey Ganio Evangelista, MJ

Malita Tagakaulo Mission

Roman Catholic Diocese of Digos

 

Fr. Joey Evangelista, MJ

435 S Occidental Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90057

 

A Just and Lasting Peace

Psalm 40:2-4

Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8, 9

Hebrews 12:1-4

Luke 12:49-53

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 14, 2016,  20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 14th after Pentecost

This week’s lectionary readings seem to tell the story of one who is a political prisoner just released.  The Psalter is a song of gratitude and praise of someone who has been rescued from the “desolate pit,” a metaphor for the grave.  The account in Jeremiah is of the prophet’s personal experience of literally being thrown into a muddy yet waterless cistern and left to die as punishment for a trumped-up charge all because he denounced his government’s collusion with the imperial powers.  The Hebrews text talks about how the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” has endured persecution and shameful death on the cross in the struggle against all that was sinful.  The Lukan text tells us that the kind of peace Jesus brings is one that will disrupt known social relationships and social orders.

What is a political prisoner?  Why are there political prisoners in our day and age?  How are today’s lectionary readings seeming to tell a story of a political prisoner?  In order to cull what these readings mean for us today, let us study what these texts might have meant for the early hearers.

Indeed Psalm 40 is a thanksgiving hymn for deliverance and a plea for help.  It connotes one’s utter trust in God, the source of this help.  The sufferer who is now delivered is drawn up from a “desolate pit,” a “miry bog.”  This imagery is known from Mesopotamian literature where a person, accused of wrongdoing, is cast by his or her enemies into a river for judgment.  If one survives, then it is an indication of innocence.  Obviously, the singer of this hymn has experience of deliverance from Sheol, the grave, death.  This is a report of how God has helped, hence this song of thanks and praise.  Happy are those who trust in the Lord.  A happy person in Hebrew literature is one who is seen and envied by others as blessed.  Indeed it is a blessing when one is rescued from imprisonment and death.

Trusting and waiting upon the Lord implies that a dark period continues, as one waits patiently and expectantly.  Our country’s political prisoners have been waiting patiently and expectantly for their deliverance.  But despite their being in this “dark period” of imprisonment, they have not wasted time in sharing the good news of peace with other prisoners.  When they talk peace, they mean a time and a dispensation where there will be equitable distribution of the country’s and the world’s resources, where farmers will have land to till, workers will receive just wages, human rights are respected, economic sovereignty and national patrimony are asserted, everyone benefits from social services, and where there will be no more prisoners, political or otherwise.

This Psalm was written during the Babylonian Exile.  On a national level, the exile is the context for the “desolate pit” and the time for a “new song” corresponds to the people’s deliverance.  When will the Filipino people, exiles under neo-liberal economic policies in their own country, sing a new song?  Let us trust in God for deliverance, while doing our part in proclaiming and working for this deliverance.

The Jeremiah text tells precisely this story of destruction and exile.  This happened during the siege of Israel in 588-587 BCE.  We read in the preceding chapter, Jeremiah 37: 5ff, that the Chaldean/Babylonian army had militarized the capital city Jerusalem and had encamped there.  The Babylonian army only withdrew when they heard that the Egyptian army who were Jerusalem’s allies were coming to the rescue. The king, Zedekiah, consults Jeremiah but is told that the Babylonian enemy would still eventually wipe them out because Egypt will cease to help them.  Because of the prophet’s words of doom, the Jerusalem officials torture and arrest him on trumped-up charges of treason, citing that he was defecting to the Chaldeans/Babylonians.  He thus becomes a political prisoner.  Despite this, Jeremiah’s word never changed.  He pleads to be released, and the king releases him and places him in the court of the guard who acted as his “guarantor” by providing him food every day.

Jeremiah continued to prophesy that if the officials and the people would surrender to the Babylonians, their lives would be spared.  These pronouncements were perceived to be detrimental to the national welfare and infuriated the officials who were pro-Egyptian.  They demanded for the prophet to be killed. This gives a clear indication of what the powerful elements of Judean society expect of their prophets: they must uphold the status quo and toe the line, otherwise, they are punished and silenced.  Sound familiar?  The king hands Jeremiah over sans due process, making him a soon-to-be statistic of extra-judicial killings, a soon-to-be martyr for witnessing to the word of God.  He was thrown into the muddy waterless cistern and left for dead until Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian eunuch palace official, rescues him.  It is interesting to note that a non-Jew becomes a channel of God’s deliverance from imminent death.

The Hebrews text talks about those who have gone before us: the people’s martyrs.  Jesus and them and are the models of faithful endurance of hardship.  As Christians who profess to follow Jesus, are we willing to do all we can so that the Good News of deliverance from all that is sinful in this prevailing system is eradicated?  Are we willing to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and do his ministry?  This text in Hebrews says that we can and we should.  We must run the race.  Race here means the ministry to testify to the good news of God’s grace (Acts 20:24).  The imagery of athlete is common in Hellenistic and early Christian exhortations.  The race that the addressees run with Jesus in a stadium filled with the heroes of the past is a race of faith.  Victory is assuredly ours because Christ our Leader has already won the prize by overcoming death with his resurrection.  In our struggle against all that is sinful, can we be like Christ and the martyrs that have gone before us and resist “to the point of shedding our blood” (Hebrews 12:4)?

The peace that Jesus advocates is not easy, according to the Lukan reading.  To attain this peace, God’s people must undergo trial by fire.  The peace that prevailed in Jesus’ time was the peace brought forth by the absence of war: the Pax Romana.  The peace that Jesus brings disrupts the status quo.  When Jesus said “I came to bring fire”, it means that he has come to purify the earth and its systems: to destroy the dross that cause people’s misery in order that the sterling Reign of God’s Peace can shine through.  Jesus’ brand of peace surely causes division: many do not agree nor espouse it, especially those who have interests of wealth and power to protect.  Those who advocate this peace can easily be silenced.  That’s what happened to Jesus.  That’s what happened to all the martyrs in the early years and the martyrs of today.  And that is why there are political prisoners.

Political prisoners are anathema in a time of democracy.  The Philippines is supposed to be a democratic country, and yet right now we have 543 political prisoners, 88 of whom are sick and elderly  languishing in jail.  Today’s political prisoners need to be released.  They need to be allowed to continue to prophesy: to denounce the evils in our society and to announce the extreme possibility of deliverance from these evils.  They need to be released in order that they can proclaim and work peace.  We all must be advocates of God’s peace so that we all might be rescued from the desolate pit of the world’s prevailing unjust system.  We must be willing to work hard for it.  We must be willing to shed our blood for it.  Jesus did.  The martyrs did.

It is our prayer and our hope that any day soon, our political prisoners will be released.  Any day soon, especially as those who are consultants to the Peace Talks have very important work to do—to negotiate for God’s peace, a just and lasting peace.##

 

Melinda Grace B. Aoanan

United Church of Christ in the Philippines

11 August 2016

 

Photograph: People’s Hope for Genuine Change and a Just and Lasting Peace

Active Waiting

August 7, 2016,
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 13th Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 33:1, 12, 18-22
Wisdom 18:6-9/ Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19
Luke 12:32-48
In our local church, first Sunday reflections focus on stewardship and I believe that Chapter 12 of the Gospel of Luke is an appropriate text to discuss. But particularly for today’s reflection, Luke 12:32-48 introduces a characteristic of a good steward — faith. The Gospel shares a slightly similar message with the letter to the Hebrews, particularly in chapter 11, which mentioned “ancients” that were commended for their faith. This faith is said to be faith which was translated into action.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us to wait in faith. He spelled out the what (40), the who (42), the why (37, 43-44) and even the how (35-36) of waiting in faith. I have been to several bible studies and Sunday schools that has this set of verses as the central topic. In at least two or three of those, I noticed that the verses discussed were limited to 35-48. The central theme is that of waiting, anticipation, of being vigilant, watchfulness, of being on guard, of readiness and being prepared.

Jesus couldn’t stress it enough that He even used two parables for this, that of the waiting servants and the watchful homeowner.

Wait. Everyday, we are made to wait.

• As commuters, we wait in long queues to be able to ride the jampacked trains.
• Wage earners labor and wait for the week’s end to get their meager pay.
• Women wait and pray for their spouses who went out to fish in disputed seas, eager to see them back safe and with food to bring to the table.
• A mother waits for nine months before she could embrace a precious gift from God.

Many of us do not like waiting but we still do. We wait because there’s a fulfilment of promise in waiting.

Our Gospel today starts with such reassuring words for those who wait and wait in faith.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” Luke 12:32

So, prepare ourselves and live in readiness for His return.

As we are faithfully waiting, let us remind ourselves not to be naive of the present context that we are in. We have the Bible which we can draw inspiration from, of what it entails to be called His faithful steward.

Active-Waiting.

It is not enough to wait. We need to be critical on why the “waiting” could be too long like the long queuing in an almost forever anticipation of the coming of LRT/MRT. The Biblical text must not be a justification for “passivity” or resiliency. The lack of social services must be critiqued on why people are made to “wait” unjustly. It is one thing to “wait patiently” and it is another to be denied of better social services.

The Gospel reading teaches us about ACTIVE-WAITING.

• Do not be afraid. Do not be too anxious. God knows us and our needs. Seek His Kingdom and righteousness. Worry not if we follow Him. His is the genuine Daang Matuwid.

• Sell that which you have and give to the needy. It invites us to consider a radically faith-filled approach to wealth, money, possessions and property. It reminds us of charity. It would be too much to ask you to give up everything but Jesus must not be joking. The option is still given to all his believers.

• Provide purses that will not wear out, treasures that will never fail. Here, charity is further emphasized as if it is a way of storing wealth in heaven. But, let us remind ourselves that doing charity work will not buy us salvation. It is only God who knows the intent of our heart and only He knows and gives the reward for the good that we do.

• Store treasure where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. Treasures today can be easily stolen or destroyed. Tensions, civil unrest, terrorism even state terrorism and war claim lives as well as it destroys properties and resources. Money and wealth are lost due to corrupt practices, unstable economy, climate change impact, disasters and other natural and human-induced hazards. Faith, Hope, Love are the undefeatable TREASURES.

Amidst all these, we are called to wait in faith cognizant of the situation we are in. We wait in faith for His return but with much vigilance and participation in His kingdom here and now.

With the promise of blessings to those who wait in faith, the Scripture today ends with “from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

Have you done any reflection on Christ’s return? Do we wait for him?

We wait for the coming of God’s Kingdom. The moment when JUSTICE AND PEACE will reign. We wait for its final realization. We wait by participating in its realization. The believers of God’s Kingdom are actively engaged so that we create what we want to behold- God’s Kingdom. There are many interpretation on the second-coming. It becomes a “terror message” among theologians and pastors who would like to impose on the people to believe God according to their definition and image. They send message of fear that “second coming” would mean punishment to those who do not subscribe to the standard of definition of God according to “imposed” definition. But lo-and behold, God is always with us even in the most critical and arduous struggle, in birthing for the reign of God manifested in the personal, wholistic and people’s collective fullness of LIFE. What second-coming do we still anticipate when God is already with us? The second coming would mean the rebirthing perspective about the seeking love of God. Everyday and every moment that we discover the wisdom of revelation about God, Life and Relationships is a “second-coming.”

Does your view or belief of it manifest in your actions today?
Faithful waiting must manifest in our actions today because preparing to meet Him in the “second coming” must be filled with eager anticipation…
…like my kids, for those simple treats that I bring them when I come home at night;
…like those in the countryside, waiting for development that is equitable and for benefits from resources in their locality;
…like the farmer who will finally own the land;
…like progressive workers realizing a just and humane society;
…like peace-makers who shall see social justice at work.
To us Christians, the fruition of His promise is the Second Coming. Let us wait in faith!
Live, Jesus is in our hearts forever!##

Levi Viloria Albania
CC, The Lord Almighty UMC
Faculty, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde

 

 

Photo grab: http://aphotoaday.blogspot.com/2011/07/click-photo-for-full-size-image-photo.htmlhttp://aphotoaday.blogspot.com/2011/07/click-photo-for-full-size-image-photo.html