December 3, 2015

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” 1 Peter 2:9

“The miracle of the church assembly lies in that it is not the “sum” of the sinful and unworthy people who comprise it, but the body of Christ. How often do we say we are going to church to obtain help, strength or consolation? We forget, meanwhile that we are the Church, we make it up, that Christ abides in his members and that the Church does not exist outside us or above us, but we are in Christ and Christ is in us.” Alexander Schmemann (1921 – 1983) Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, “For All The Saints” volume II, (p. 1247)

I remember the first day I talked to my wife at the church we were attending. At the time we both sang in the choir, and of course she was beautiful and I was the luckiest man in the world to have her attention. Anyway, in the course of time, we married, and soon were introduced to other young couples, with and without children, and these couples became part of our church and social reality. Over the years I have observed the changes that have happened to all of us, all of the couples. They were changes I never thought would happen when we first met, changes that none of us would ever imagine would happen to us. The changes were unimaginable because we thought we were in control of our futures. And in some ways we do have some control. You see, our choices, both individually, and as couples, lead us all down certain roads – but not the same roads.

We will never know where our choices will take us in life, but, as I said in my devotion on December 2, our choices make the future “us”. In the process of making our choices, we should be asking the Holy Spirit to guide us in our choices. And, in the choices we make, we choose who will be in the sphere of our social circles. The church is filled with people, and they are not all righteous yet, and they are not perfect, and they have their flaws, and they have their influence. Remember, as I have said many times this year in my devotions, our collective identity as Christians comes in the fact that G-d has first chosen us through our baptisms. This alone, not the people we socialize with, not the people we worship next to, and not the family we come from, but our chosen-ness by G-d is what marks us as G-d’s people, and we will remain G-d’s people no matter what happens to us along the way of life.

Pastor Dave