DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS
Galatians 6:11-18
(11/8)
Epistle for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
Looking Good: Galatians 6:11-18, especially vs.18: “Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
Amen.” And there
you have the alternatives: looking good (vs. 12) or having the
Lord’s grace in your spirit (vs. 18). Amen, as the Apostle says (vs.
18) - so be it. And that
truly is the way it is in this present existence we call life - it is
one way or the other. It may be
possible to have the grace of Christ in our spirit (vs. 18) and, at the same
time, to make “...a good showing...” (vs. 12); but God knows that
both at once are very rare and momentary.
As Christ our God said, “'No servant can serve two masters; for
either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the
one and despise the other. You
cannot serve God and mammon'” (Lk. 16:13). The honest truth is that it comes down to
where we invest our energy, to what we make our top priority
day-in-and-day-out, to what really counts in our estimation.
In the earliest days of Christianity, the
Faith looked very much like one more sect within Judaism. Some Jews believed in Jesus as the
Christ and some did not. That was
the case until the Apostles began sharing the Faith with Gentiles. Peter was virtually summoned from Joppa
to Palestinian Caesarea, to the home of the Roman Centurion, Cornelius, who
could not have been anything but a pagan by birth and culture (Acts 10:1-8,
21-23). After sharing the Faith
with Cornelius’ household, it was evident that “...God gave them
the same gift as...when [Peter and the others] believed on the Lord Jesus
Christ...” (Acts 11:17). So Peter ordered them baptized.
Now maybe Cornelius kept the kosher food laws,
maybe, even, he was circumcised, which is the usual way a non-Jewish man - a
Gentile - expresses his conversion to Judaism. However, when
God, after all, discerns what is in our
hearts, even if we fake it with other people by our outward appearances
(Heb. 4:12). True Christianity is a
matter of the heart, of least of having a heartfelt desire to please God, even
if we do not do a great job of walking according to the new creation
(Gal. 6:15) as the rule in our life, so that peace and mercy [is]
upon [us] (Gal. 6:16). God
be merciful to us! All of us
fail. The Apostles did. The Saints did, but they persisted in
the end, and to the end. They
stayed with the struggle. Maybe
they had moments when they worried about appearances, about looking good,
yes, even Saint Peter did that (Gal. 2:11-13). However, the beauty of their lives in
Christ was the ability to weep and correct their behavior when they were wrong
(Lk. 22:60-62), and the Lord Jesus forgave them (Jn.
21:15-17).
So, we come back to where we started - to the
alternatives - looking good or opening our hearts, our spirits,
to the grace of Christ for correction, cleansing, deep forgiveness, and
strength to live the new creation.
“And...walk according to this
rule...”(Gal. 6:16). Let us
be reminded of what Saint Paul says in this passage - it is not a comfortable
word, but a necessary message to hear and embrace: “...God forbid that I
should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world
has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14). May we be honest! Crosses are not
pretty! They are painful modes of
execution - agonizing ways to die.
Get crucified and you suffer.
When we choose to stop looking good and to seek the grace of
Christ in our spirits, it means taking up our crosses; and may the Lord
Jesus give us His grace.
We all have sinned against Thy compassion;
yet do not overlook us, O Merciful Christ.
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