Mtr Kelli Joyce

"...I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith."

Friends in Christ,

We are members of a faith that has a decidedly mixed heritage. Christian history contains care for the poor, widowed, and orphaned, and it contains crusades and inquisitions and powerful people striving to use the Church to become more powerful still. It contains works of staggering intellectual achievement, and patterns of anti-intellectualism that deny truth when it threatens the perspective of those in power. Our history contains the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control), and it contains the works of our most fallen human impulses.

I will confess, friends, that I am sometimes ashamed of the Church, and of the title "Christian" that goes along with it.

But as I read today's Epistle reading, I realized something: I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. The Good News, as badly as we humans may mangle it, is still worth proclaiming. Humans, created to know, love, and enjoy God forever, became subject to sin and death, and could not free ourselves from the web of selfishness and hurt in which we had become caught. (An illustration of our conundrum, courtesy of The Simpsons.)

God was unwilling to abandon us to the sin-sickness that had infected the world. God - immortal, infinite, all-powerful - chose to become a mortal, finite, powerless baby, born like every one of us. Jesus of Nazareth was God incarnate, and his life and death were a divine and free gift to us, so that the whole world could be healed from the wounds caused by evil and death. He came to proclaim good news to the poor and release to prisoners - he healed the sick and welcomed outcasts. And then finally Christ, to use a metaphor, Trojan-horsed death itself - "death seized a body and found God," in the words of John Chrysostom. In our baptism, we are not only buried with Christ, we are incorporated into his resurrected body and given the hope of eternal life.

This is the gospel. It is true, and it is good news, and we do not have to earn what it offers. So when, as happens all too often, humans fail to properly represent God-in-Christ, let us remember that the gospel is unchanging, and it does not depend on us - it is the power of God for the healing of everyone who believes.

Peace,
Mtr. Kelli