🦁 Lent 1-3

Readings: Psalm 25:1-10; Psalm 32; Matthew 9:2-13. 

Reflection

Good morning. This is Tim Tribble, broadcasting you from Sacramento, California. Today's readings come to us from Psalm 25, verses 1 to 10, Psalm 32 and Matthew Chapter nine, verses 2 to 13. Psalm 32 is a called a mass skill of David, which is probably a musical or liturgical term, and the Jewish world and it's called Blessed Are the Forgiven. And this talks about God's forgiveness and His mercy and how we can ask for forgiveness, and he will give it to us. I want to talk today about the reading from Matthew. There's a couple of things to take away that we can use in our daily lives here and something that talks about the character of being Christlike. The beginning. We start with one of his first miracles, his first healings, when he was brought up paralyzed man. 

And they said to him, Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven. There were some scribes and Pharisees there and they didn't like that. They thought he was blossoming. But Jesus, of course, knew what they were thinking, says, Why do you think evil in your hearts for which is you say your sins are forgiven, or just say Rise and walk. And he goes on to say so that, you know, I have the authority on Earth to forgive sins. And then he turns to the paralyzed man, says, Rise of your bed. Go. 

Jesus walked amongst us. The most important thing in life is being forgiven. Do we have any idea how being forgiven heals us? 

We make mistakes. We do things that were wrong. We don't treat people the way we should. We there's there's a litany of things, especially those of us who served in the military and those of us who work in EMS in medicine when we have to make choices and do things in it. You wind up in these situations where you don't have time to sit down and analyze, well, let's look this up. We've got to act now. We try to have poor CEO Spears and Standing Orders and ROIC and all this type of stuff that we put in place to try to help. But it comes down to you have to make a choice. And you may make a choice that is hard for you to live with. 

God says, that's okay, I forgive you. And being forgiven and being able to have that burden taken off of you is very, very, very healing. And I cannot stress that enough. I know in my own personal life, I done plenty of things I should not have done. And it's okay. God has forgiven me. And I move forward in the spirit of love and don't do those things again. 

Then after they're Jesus, she's Matthew, the tax collector. And this is where we start talking about what does it mean to be Christ like in character over the last couple thousand years? Being a Christian has become a status symbol. And I, you know, I remember back in the seventies, we had the I founded movement. We know I'm saved or you saved from what we were anyway. 

There was this you know, you get dressed up in your Sunday best at all and it became, you know, what church you went to even take it even further. Which one of the churches were you going to? Because the know one was better than that one. The other is all became of being a Christian is a status symbol. It's not it is about humility, is is about serving. It is about loving. Living here we have Jesus comes up to a tax collector, tax collector, the Roman tax collectors. And they were not looked upon. I mean, hey, do we love the IRS? Probably not so much. They weren't. And they had a reputation because they were poorly paid that they would collect a little extra tax for their pocket, make sure they were. And there's just this whole stigma around tax collectors. 

And again, the Pharisees and the scribe Jews are seen as these the other the Jewish elite religious people. And they're saying, look, they can do disciples. Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? 

Jesus heard that turns around and says those who are will have no need of a position, but those who are sick go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice for I came not to call the righteous but sinners. 

Being a Christian is not a status symbol. Being a Christian does not make us better than anyone else. Being a Christian means that we live a life of humble servitude to those around us. It means that when Sunday comes, I happen to belong to the Episcopal Church. I belong to Saint Matthew's mission in the Arden Arcade area of Sacramento County, and we sell all or welcome and we mean all everyone. We have homeless people that come in. We have people from several different ethnic groups that come in. Nobody's wearing a suit and tie. Nobody. We are all two there together for one purpose to worship God and uplift each other. Of course, you know, we all an Episcopal church. I don't know any church doesn't have food. After the service, we sit down, we break bread together every Sunday. This is what being a Christian is. This is accepting people as they are reaching out, the people in our society who hurt the most, who can't defend themselves, who have no one speaking up for them, has no one who cares about them. 

You know, one of the things in our history of the United States military, we have a long, storied history of that going back, three soldiers and children. And we would, you know, use pictures in Europe. There's pictures in Vietnam. There are pictures in Korea. There are pictures in the Middle East of American soldiers and sailors and Marines and airmen with children. We're giving them candy. We take care of the medic. We used to do a lot of the even though it wasn't wartime, we had an operation where we went out down in Central America and we took care of the local people as a reach out to try to, you know, stop the flow, Communism, hey, we'll help you guys out. And then you won't, you know, be seduced by the communist government type stuff. So there is this there's this whole thing we've always done that. That's one thing. You know, it's the military is not just we go out and kill everything we see. That may be a very small part of our mission. Their biggest thing, United States Air Force does is humanitarian relief. Those guys that I used to call Military Airlift Command, I know they've changed the monikers now like we did in the Army. That does them. That's what they do. The C-5, the C-17, is the one thirties are going out there and they're they're bringing relief. You'll see the boxes. U.S. aid on the side. And we take those all over the world, all over the world and bring help to people. That's what being a Christian is. That's what's living the Christ like life is. It's not that I'm better because I go to church and I'm saved. And all of this it is we are here as humble servants to others, especially those who are on the margins of society. Those who don't have don't have a voice for themselves. That is what we are called to do. Amen.