REFLECTIONS FOR TRINITY 2 At first sight today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 10.24-39) seems very hard. Our Lord is moving around Galilee, healing, preaching, teaching, making disciples. This passage is a selection of some of his teachings, and yes, it does seem very hard. He instructs, he exhorts, he commands his disciples - and us - to follow him whatever the cost. He even goes as far as to say that if we love our family above Him we are in trouble! He also says He has not come to bring peace, but a sword, which seems completely contrary to what we understand by the Gospel! Our Lord seems to be rearing himself up for the coming conflict with the authorities in Jerusalem. But on the other hand He tells us God knows the number of hairs on our head and also knows when common little birds like sparrows fall to the ground. We are surely more important than sparrows. We find these ideas very challenging indeed. How are we to live this out in our daily lives? It seems that, in order to take up the cross and follow Him, we simply have to strip ourselves of our pride, our desires and our earthly concerns, even our human relationships, and centre our lives full square on the Lord Jesus Christ. It is so frightfully easy to say that, but it takes a life-time to achieve. This means of course that we must be aware where our true loyalties lie - to Jesus - each day of our lives and not be complacent. We are not complacent in this lockdown. It offers us ample opportunity to focus on Jesus our Lord through prayer, through reading the scriptures and strengthening our ties with our fellow-Christians, even through the dreaded Zoom! I really feel we have managed to make Jesus the centre of our lives in our parishes, but this is an issue we must all re-visit daily. At the end of the reading Our Lord brings the issues down to our personal relationships and eases the seriousness. The image of giving cool water to one of these little ones is the Jesus we know and love and want to follow. In our time of lockdown, even as it is eased, this acts as an encouragement to us to continue reaching out to others, because ‘truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.’ PRAYER Lord Jesus, we thank You for the assurance we receive in scripture that we must not be afraid but simply follow You: deepen our faithfulness to You and inspire us with the good news of the Gospel; for You are alive and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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AuthorCanon John Green Archives
May 2021
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