22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time – The way you think is not God’s way.
How many of you come to church with an expectation, a determination to be spiritually renewed, spiritually refreshed? And having done so – I wonder how many of you feel you have achieved success or been suitable served when you leave?
The reason I ask is this. So many of us leave church at the end of mass with such long faces and looking so down and depressed – it makes me feel as if you have received the worst news possible and are now going home to struggle with this new dilemma.
The Gospel is called the Good News for a reason. It IS Good News. It is news about our salvation; it is news about God our father being determined to develop and form his chosen people, our faith-ancestors. It is news about our saviour Jesus Christ, the Word of God, coming into our ears, our hearts and our minds with such a huge message of importance and of celebration.
And we can summarise this message into just a few sentences. We can unpick the whole of the New Testament into a few short phrases.
Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and spirit. Love one another just as I have loved you. Love each other just as your heavenly Father loves you. Love – it is all about love.
My wristband sums this up with its four symbols: a heart tells me God loves me: an ‘X’ reminds me that I am a sinner: a cross that He sent his son to save me; and a question mark constantly reminds me to ask myself - What can I do to get closer to him?
God loves me, a sinner. He loves me irrespective of what I do or how many times I may turn away from him and fall down. He is always there to pick me up, to dust me off and to help me start over again when I turn back to him.
He loves me so much that he sent his only Son to live, teach, suffer and die for me, so that I would never have to suffer again. He sent his only Son to take on the burden of my sins and to carry them for me so that I might have eternal life.
So after all of that, what can I do to get closer to him? And that is where coming to church helps; getting involved with your parish helps; getting involved in your town and society helps. We have to move away from thinking just as mankind thinks and look to think how God thinks. What would please him? What would Jesus do in any given situation? How can we use his example to give better direction to our lives? And how – how can we better celebrate his life and his teachings?
We come to mass each weekend and hear repeatedly the same message or versions of that same message. God loves me and because Jesus came to save me – I AM saved. This is the Good News – in fact this is the brilliant news.
This is the news that should have us smiling, laughing, dancing, shouting and singing with such exuberance that we would be in danger of being locked away.
But this is the way that we should be leaving church each weekend – with a song in our hearts and with joy and rejoicing in our spirits.
It is easy – too easy – to get bogged down in life’s dilemmas and catastrophes. We all know that life is full of challenges and barriers, trials and tribulations, family issues and concerns.
But we are Christians who have been saved by Christ and promised and eternity with our heavenly Father. We need to find the ‘good’ in the Good News. We need to find the ‘Christ’ in being Christian. And we need to keep his love for us and our love for him and God always burning brightly in our hearts and minds and spirits and we need to bring that bright spirit with us to church each weekend and share it about. Let others – everyone around us – see our rejoicing, feel our celebration and take part in our shared salvation.
If we all did this – what a service we would have. What a shared celebration would take place and how many smiling and radiant faces would leave the church at the end of the service.
Think as God thinks and not as mankind thinks.