🦁 Lent 6-5
Readings: Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 45; Hebrews 10:4-10; Luke 1:26-38.
Reflection
Good morning. This is Tim Tribble, broadcasting from Sacramento, California. Today's readings come to us from Isaiah chapter seven verses 10 to 14, Psalm 45, the book of Hebrews Chapter ten, verses 4 to 10, and the Gospel according to Luke, Chapter one versus 26 to 38.
Luke's Gospel today is the what we call the Annunciation of Christ. This is where the angel comes down and tells Mary that she is going to be the mother of Christ, is going to be the virgin birth. And it also mentions that your cousin Elizabeth is already six months pregnant and she was thought to be too old. This is the Elizabeth who is son of the mother of John the Baptist, who, of course, we will hear about later. Cousin of Jesus, who was the wild man in the wilderness verse was the one who baptized Jesus to begin his ministry. But what I want to talk about today is the reading from Hebrews. The book of Hebrews was written to the Hebrew people and this is a discussion. And this is Paul telling us about the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. And this is something that is this is why Jesus came. This is why he had his ministry. This is why he was here on Earth. And this is what he left us with. And we as followers of Christ, followers of the way. Later on, the term Christian was coined.
This is why we are who we are, where we are now.
Originally we had the original covenant with Abraham, who became Abraham after the Covenant. He was renamed, taking on a new name. It was the sacrificing of burnt offerings. So they would they would bulls and goats, whatever they had. It was always the first pick of the litter, that type of thing. Always that and goes on to say that, you know, you took no pleasure. And then I have come to do your will. Oh God. And the scroll, the book is written for me. So this goes back to Isaiah and other foretelling of a messiah who was going to come and save the nation of Israel and the Jewish people.
And now we have the New Covenant where he abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And this by God's will. We've been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. We're done. There is no more need to make sacrifices any longer. And the way in the old traditions and this is where we get our new covenant, which is love God with all your heart, all your mind and all your soul and love your neighbor as yourself. Upon all these all needs to hang all the laws and the prophets. Everything that we do revolves around loving God and loving our neighbor. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the New Covenant. That's the new commandment.
Not saying, you know, this is not getting rid of the principles that we had in the old covenant. That's that's not what it means. The Ten Commandments are still valid. That's why he says on these to hang all the laws and the prophets. So now we are challenged to conduct ourselves in a way that shows love towards others. This was Jesus's message, and it's been kind of changed over the years because this is a very, very, very difficult thing for us as human beings to do.
Our survival instinct from years and years, from all the way that we have come up has been self-preservation, self-preservation. Action flies in the face of self-sacrifice. But that's what we're called to do. When we served. We were supposed to look out for and help those around us. We've all I don't I don't care what branch you served in, what your MLS or job rating, whatever it was in the military was. All of us got the same thing. You're responsible for the person in front of you, the person to your left, the person's your right and the person behind you. Whatever it was we were always supposed to watch out for and take care of each other.
Self-sacrifice. When you look at the citations of those who are awarded the Medal of Honor, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star. Every single one of them, those soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines did something for those around them. They sacrificed themselves for the good of those around them. And that's what we are called to do as Christians, as we are to sacrifice ourselves for those around us. We are to take care of them. We are to watch out for them. We are to help them. We are to love them.
And that becomes very, very difficult with all the things that we have in the world today and all the stuff that's going on. And some people make themselves very difficult to love, and it's always difficult to draw that line in where are we doing it? How are we doing things and trying to understand what love is? And then we throw in phrases like tough love and things like that, and it gets all convoluted. But we should follow the examples of what Jesus did everywhere Jesus went during his ministry and as He walked around the Sea of Galilee, Jerusalem, that area in there, the land, the Kino he taught.
He healed. He fed. He forgave. Seven times. Seven times. Seven times 70. And all the he stopped and cared about those he felt are emotions. He wept when his best friend Lazarus was died, even though he knew he would bring him back to life, it was still hard to had to weep because he saw the depth of the emotion and how that feeling of losing someone that meant so much to him.
So as we go on this Holy Week, we look at the love that Christ gave for us and what He did and sacrificed as the ultimate and perfect sacrifice so that we can have the New Covenant where we love God with all our heart and all our minds and all our soul, and we love our neighbors as ourselves. Amen.
