Hear the messages that Father Jeremiah delivers each week
to the congregation of Grace Anglican.
It is easy for us to reduce Jesus’ call to discipleship to a mere way of following him. The reality is that the discipleship that Jesus demands of us is one that will lead to our deaths! His call is one that is utterly beyond our abilities. He wants to us realize our complete need for his grace and his death so that we can be enabled to walk the path before each of us.
Image: Christ Carrying the Cross, Titian, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Jesus taught a group of people about honor and shame and humility in today’s Gospel lesson from Luke 14. He saw guests vying for better seats of honor and told them a parable about what happens when you claim honor that you do not have. Instead, one should pursue humility and the lowest place that you can be exalted in the eyes of all.
Image: Picture taken by Mark Freeth, license CC BY 2.0, cropped. Image location: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/326821
When we think of being a disciples of Jesus, our thoughts often turn to what we must do in our discipleship. But what if we consider what Christ has done to change us into the right kind of disciples? Father Jeremiah speaks to the reality of Christ bearing our cross in his own cross to enable us to carry ours.
Image: Woodcut of Christ carrying the Lamb, illustration from the prayerbook of Martin Luther, Sebald Beham, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Image Location: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luther-prayerbook-Beham-1527.jpg
Jesus said that whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. How does this come to apply in our own lives? Who is doing the humbling and who is doing the exalting? The who of that question is more important that we ever realize.
Image: Humility and Pride from BL Royal 19 C II, f. 52, Public Domain. Image location: https://jenikirbyhistory.getarchive.net/media/humility-and-pride-from-bl-royal-19-c-ii-f-52-e57bc8
Discipleship is all over the Bible. Too often though we think of it as gaining more and more knowledge without considering other changes that should happen in our lives and our very being because of the discipleship. Father Jeremiah considers this and the order that discipleship takes in the changes that it makes.
Image: Photo by MarcFrasere1958 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] Found at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Luke%27s_-_The_Bombed_Out_Church_-_Liverpool.JPG
Jesus speaks a parable about people vying for places of honor instead of considering others of higher standing than themselves. The source of this behavior is pride and the answer to it is humility. How does one, though, accomplish, humility? Can it be done in your own strength or must Another accomplish it for you that you might live in humbleness?
Image: Image from page 506 of A Dictionary of the Bible…(1887) No known copyright restrictions.
Grace Anglican Church, Sundays @ 10:30 AM, 800 Robinson Rd, Gastonia, NC
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 551081, Gastonia, NC 28054
