By Colleen O'Sullivan
Brothers and sisters: If you were raised with Christ, seek what is
above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on
earth. For you have died, and your life
is hidden with Christ in God. When
Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. Put to death, then, the parts of you that are
earthly: immorality, impurity, passion,
evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry… anger, fury, malice, slander, and
obscene language out of your mouths.
Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with
its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for
knowledge, in the image of its creator. (Colossians 3:1-5, 8b-10)
But woe to you who are rich, for you have received
your consolation. But woe to you who are
filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe
to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for
their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.” (Luke 6:24-26)
Piety
Heavenly Father, in baptism you name us and call us
your beloved sons and daughters. Help us
to live as those seeking what is of Christ, that one day we may appear with him
in glory.
Study
The more things change, the more they stay the same. We may have been to the moon and back, we may
have the technology to know what’s going on anywhere in the world at any given
moment, but all that aside, people haven’t changed much since Paul’s day. Look around you on the street where you live,
the place where you work, within your circle of family and friends. Look inside yourself, if you dare. Everything Paul, in the first century, said
needed to go, seems alive and well almost 2,000 years later. Everywhere we turn, we hear and use bad
language. We gossip about others and
malign their characters. We see the
horrendous results of anger unleashed on others or turned inward on
ourselves. We give in to our greed for
bigger and better possessions or our desire for power or our love of
praise. There isn’t a single earthly
behavior the apostle mentions that isn’t still alive and well today!
In the waters of baptism, we die to our former selves and emerge as new
persons in Christ. Whether we’re
baptized as infants or as adults, we spend the rest of our lives attempting to live
that new life in Christ. It’s far from
easy to give up our attachments to the ways of this world. Jesus knew that, just as Paul did. As Jesus preaches his Sermon on the Plain in
today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, he warns us against getting too comfortable
here and being too attached to life as we know it in Northern Virginia in
2013. This isn’t our eternal home, and the
“woe to” section of his sermon is addressed to those of us who are content with
life as it is. The “blessed are” lines
exhort us rather to lives that are rooted in Christ.
Action
In what ways are you attached to the things of this world? How can you re-orient your focus to the
things that are of God?
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