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November 1
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[media presentation below]
GospelThink
Friday, November 1, All Saints
MATTHEW 5:1-12a
A summary of the moral life for a follower
of Jesus.
Prayerthoughts
a. Jesus addresses
the words to the crowds and therefore to me. Do I truly listen to all of the words that the Lord gives me?
b. Poor in spirit:
do I allow material things to dominate my life?
c. Mourn: there is pain in my life, but Jesus and what he teaches is the
answer to that pain.
d. Meek: this is a direct statement against power and the people who want
more power. Do I try to be more important than others?
e. Righteousness: do I really work at prayer and closeness to the Lord, and
desire to be a holy person?
f. Mercy: do I reach out to the hurting people around me and help them if I
can?
g. Clean of heart: am I honest, sincere, chaste, and do I lie to protect
myself?
h. Peacemakers: do I really try to reconcile the factions that divide us?
i. Suffer insult: I should expect criticism for
trying to be a good person, but I should be a good person anyway.
j. My prayerthoughts…
Today, I will read
1 John, chapter 3, and write
an
important thought from it.
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Some
Thoughts on the Liturgy
THE MASTER DESIGNER
The Gospel reading
is a familiar one to every Christian, namely St. Matthew’s version of the
Beatitudes. Why is the reading so important? It introduces the major
teachings of Jesus which Matthew gathers together
in chapters 5-7 of his Gospel. It becomes a master design of living for the
believer with Jesus being the Master Guide, that is, the person who is in charge of the direction of life.
Seen from the
perspective of faith, our lives become fine tapestries that God and we
prepare together. Each life then becomes a fabric planned and fashioned
with God’s care. Part of the mystery in the weaving of a cloth is that we
may not always see just how the weavings intertwine, but we must trust the
Master Designer, the Master Guide. God can view the cloth that has been
woven from the upper side, so to speak, and see a perfect pattern. You and I
look at it from below, and from that vantage point, often the pattern is
only a mishmash of threads and single strands.
As we look at the
design from below, we cannot understand it, especially that part called
suffering in whatever form it comes. The Christian—and this can only make
sense for a believer—must be able to take that strand of suffering and
continue to weave, continue to form the fabric called living. Our
Master Designer has told us that this is the way to live and begin to view
the cloth that we are weaving called life from God’s point of view, from
the upper side, and see a perfectly woven piece of beautiful material.
The plan that God
has in mind will only be known once we have weaved our part of it here on
earth. It is our faith that the saints have their own plans now, while we
are still living the plan, weaving our cloth. As the Saints did, we must
continue to take all of the dark strands of thread
and weave them with the silver and the gold of life, realizing that all of
this life is a pattern that the Master Guide and we are continuing to work
out.
When one deals with
the lives of the saints, we realize that there were always silver and gold
threads among the dark strands. They managed to take all
of the dark strands of their lives, and work with them to produce
positive characteristics that can easily teach us how we should weave the
dark strands in our own lives. As we study those characteristics, we
realize that there are many things that we can learn.
This idea of a
Master Designer is such an important idea. We do not know what God has in
mind. We simply do not understand enough. We only know God’s basic plan as
outlined today by Jesus in the Beatitudes. God knows that the plan of Jesus
as Master Designer is what is necessary to make our lives make sense. We
will continue to weave our part of the fabric and God will always weave
God’s part and the design will always come out well, no matter what. We
celebrate such a fact with the saints that we celebrate today.
No matter who we are
or where we are on the pathway of life, we all must begin to view our own
lives from the point of view of being guided by God. As we study the lives
of all the saints of the Church on their feast day today, we can learn that
and perhaps learn to weave our lives together with God a little better.
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MEDIA PRESENTATION
Movie: "All Saints" --
final session
GOD'S WAY IS A SLOW WAY
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Jesus said: “This is how it is with the
kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would
sleep and then rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he
knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade,
then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he
wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.”
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With the help of Ye Win and the refugees from Burma and even the
most reluctant members of All Saints Episcopal Church in the movie "All
Saints," it seemed that God's Will was about to bring about success. The
church members had decided to build a farm around the church to allow the
Karen to do what they knew how to do--farm for profit. And it seemed to be
what God wanted. But, after ups and downs, successes and failures, the
opposite soon became clear. Even though it seemed that God's Will would be to
keep the church open to serve the congregation with all the bills paid, no
amount of work or personal sacrifice of Michael Spurlock or Ye Win could save
the church. It would take the personal sacrifice of the bishop himself to
keep the church open.
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We believe that God
is always present to us, always bringing good out of the situations in which
we find ourselves. In terms of one of Jesus' stories, the seed is sown--we
can count on good coming from it. But often we do not see it work, that is,
we wonder whether the presence of God is really bringing about good all the
time. But the presence of God is always there--growing, even though, as Jesus
says, we know not how. We achieve the harvest, that is, we see that God will
always bring about the good that is necessary for our lives.
The glory of the movie "All Saints" is the ability to see how God's
Will is working in every circumstance. At first, the church should have
closed, then through Fr. Spurlock and his dream, it seems that God's Will is
to keep it open for the refugees to worship and work. With individual
miracles, the farm begins to happen, the crop comes, and once again God's
Will seems to be to allow the church to function. But then tragedy happens,
the dream is destroyed, and the people accept God's Will that the church
simply could not work out. The congregation even "celebrates" its
closing. Then in the last minute, God's Will again is to keep the church
open. It is important to see in every turn that God was present. Just as the
seed in Jesus' story grew without anyone realizing it, so the presence of God
was always at work in the ups and downs of life.
Sometimes God's way is a slow way. And being slow, we may not recognize the
presence of God that is truly part of life. We want God to work with sudden
miracles, and when we do not see them, we conclude that God is not at work
for the good. We cannot see how good can come from certain negatives of life.
But just as we know with certainty that the seed is growing in the earth, so
we have the certainty that God is working for the good of the moment. Our
faith is such that we too must slowly see that everything that happens is for
the good of the people involved.
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