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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Clinging to God |
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Luke
6:36-42 Fourth
Sunday after Trinity June
27, 2010 A
man falls overboard hundreds of miles from shore. Fortunately, someone sees him fall and throws a life ring to
him. What will he do with
that life ring? Will he
discard it? Will he ignore
it? Or will he swim to it and wrap it around himself and cling to
it with all his strength? Will
he not conduct his actions and thoughts in such a way that, whatever waves
and currents and troubles come to him as he passes through the sea, he
will not lose the life ring, because it alone can keep him alive until the
ship returns? Today our cycle of prayer reminds us to cling to God as that
man would cling to the life ring, that as we pass through the temporary
things of this world we will not lose the eternal things of God.
The
Epistle, from Romans 8, reminds us to cling to God by looking toward the
day we will be delivered out of this temporary world into the world of the
Eternal. In that day we will
be free forever from the limits of time and space.
We will be free from all the temptations and sins that now have
such power over us. No more
will we face the trials of life, the questions, the fears, the sorrows,
and the pains. No more will
we know God by faith alone, we will see Him with our eyes, and know His
immediate presence with no veil of flesh between ourselves and Him.
The
Gospel reading also reminds us to cling to God, but it takes a slightly
different approach. It
teaches us to give attention to being like God in everyday life. What does it mean that we know God? What does it mean that we have been forgiven of sins,
restored to His favour, and received into His fellowship?
It means we must strive to be as He is.
In another place Christ tells us to be holy as God is holy.
In Luke 6 He encourages us to be merciful as God is merciful.
The primary meaning is that we are to make a conscious and
sustained effort to be like God. This
is a very important part of being a Christian.
It is so essential to the faith that the Bible says to fail here is
to fail in all. In other
words, a faith that does not lead to serious holy living is a vain, empty,
and useless faith. The Bible
calls that kind of faith, "dead." It
is important to know that the world, the flesh, and the devil are going to
try their hardest to prevent you from even attempting to be godly.
They will put all sorts of excuses and temptations in your path.
Many of their distractions will be things that may be good in
themselves, but become idols for destruction when they come between you
and God. They will also attempt to get you to be satisfied with a
superficial faith. A superficial faith gives assent to the doctrines and moral
teachings of Scripture, without making a serious attempt to seek God or
practice godliness in every day life.
In life we meet many people. Some
of them become dear friends and loved ones, but most are simply
acquaintances. Our
relationship with acquaintances has a certain superficiality, for it
cannot be as deep and personal as it is with our close circle of friends
and family. But
superficiality is a devastating insult when it comes from a person who
claims to be a real friend. I
wonder if you can imagine what an insult superficial
"friendship" with God is to Him. I
will take two Biblical characters as illustrations of what I am talking
about. Their names are Judas
and Paul. Judas was a
disciple of Christ. He spent
three years following Jesus, listening to His sermons, watching Him heal
the sick and raise the dead. Yet
Judas and Jesus never really shared the same hopes or values. Judas never really followed Jesus at all.
Judas had his own agenda, and Christ was only a means of getting it
accomplished. Judas outwardly
appeared to be one of the faithful. But
inwardly his heart was far from Jesus.
Thus, it is entirely appropriate that Judas betrayed Christ with a
symbol of friendship. Paul
was a late comer to the circle of Apostles.
He did not walk with Jesus along the shores of Galilee or on the
road to Jerusalem. He
resisted the Lord, and killed His people.
But one day, while on an errand to capture Christians for trial and
execution in Jerusalem, Jesus appeared to Paul, and changed his life
forever. We all know the
story of Paul's life. We all
know he was beaten and imprisoned and stoned, and many attempts were made
to kill him, merely because he followed Christ.
I want to focus not on those things, but on his single-minded,
whole-hearted faith. He clung
to Christ like a man who thought Jesus was his only hope of forgiveness
and Heaven. He clung to
Christ as though he loved Jesus for going to the cross and forgiving his
sin. He clung to Christ as
though the things of the world would soon pass from his hand, and the only
thing he would have on that day was God. Let
us pray. Holy
God, grant that we, too, may cling to Thee as though one day all other
things will pass and only You are left to us.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
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