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Transcript of Homily
Oooh, this will be a short sermon, I hope...
with a little luck.
The, that first reading, rather.. Let me
back up..
Just a refresher, it’s a sort of a new
year, new school year... Fall happens..
This afternoon..
Let us remember what we are here for.
In Romans, St. Paul’s letter to the Roman’s,
8th chapter he says, “Those who ( ? ? ?) Predestined to be conformed
into the image of His son that he may be the first of many brothers and
sisters.”
In other words, God’s purpose in your
life is to adopt you as His son or daughter for us who are Christian...
it is more than Heaven when you die, it is to become apart of that family
which is God...that is your purpose in life.
The purpose which we gather in this building,
to be rightly related to God.
So... St. Paul goes on to say, same letter
to the Roman’s, “Do not be conformed to this present age. But be transformed.”
I don’t know anybody who doesn’t need
a little bit of transformation.
You dye your hair, it’s a settle omission
that you need transformation.
Try to lose five pounds...I could use about
fifty-sixty pounds of transformation.
“Do not be conformed to this present
age. But be transformed.”
Well, here’s the important part of that
sentence, a lot of us want to be transformed by a miracle..
Or by being dragged out of the situation...
and you know , I believe in miracles, I’ve seen too many to not believe
in them...
But God’s work of transforming you, turning
you into His son or His daughter, is not accomplished by miracles.
Do not be conformed to this present age.
But be transformed by a renewal of your mind.
In otherwise, God needs to change the way
you think about things.
The way you understand things.
In the world we live in, I know love is,
I know what truth is, I know what virtue is...
And God’s holy spirit says, “no you
don’t. No you don’t.. I’m going to be spending a lifetime teaching
you.”
Do not be conformed to this present age.
But be transformed by a renewal of your mind.
In other words, God wants us to get to
the situation, where we say “You know, God, you were right all a long,
I was wrong.”
Takes a lifetime to figure that out.
Even in our growing up in the world.. You
know, my father was not that smart when I was sixteen, when I got to be
thirty, I Found him to be a very intelligent man.
He learned a lot in those 15 or 16 years,
no?
That’s a very thing when you think about
it, our parents much smarter – listen up kids, our parents are much smarter
now when we’re old..
And frequently, they’re not here to tell
them..
You know you were right..
But as we grow into our sonship with the
Father, that’s what it means. It’s, you know God, about my second,
third, fourth ending marriages, you were right.
About this habit, that sin, that... that
tendency, you.. You were right.
That’s what it means, to be transformed
into the image of Christ, so that we can be addopted by God.
And today, in the second reading, St. Paul
says “Have among yourselves, or have within yourselves, that mind which
was in Jesus.”
And then he describes the mind that was
in Jesus.
He was in the form of God.
He did not regard His equality with God
to be grasped.
But He emptied Himself into and took the
form of a slave.
He appeared in Human likeness, He humbled
himself, He was obedient until death, until death on the cross..
There are three words I’d like to talk
to you about.
The first one is “slave”
IT’s a funny word...whenever you see
the word “servant” in the bible with very few exceptions in the New
Testament, it is the Greek word... well, I haven’t taught you a Greek
word in a long time, so...here ti goes, we’re gonna get through today.
(???) It meant a slave, Mary said, Behold
( ? ? ? ), no, she said, “Behold, I am the slave of the Lord.”
Moses was called the slave of the Lord.
Slaves do not get days off.
They do have no vacations, they do not
have retirement plans.
They can be sold.
With or without their families.
A slave is someone who has no right.
So Jesus emptied himself and became like
a slave.
He humbled Himself.
In that word Humble, I’ve shared this
with you, it’s the work ( ? ? ? ? ?), ( ? ? ?), which means, Mary said
in her magnifca, she said, “Behold, I am the slave of the Lord, the Lord
has looked upon humility”
Below, it really meant the commonness.
The commonness.
That’s... He made Himself common.
I believe, if you get inside a time machine,
and
go back to Nazareth, you wouldn’t be able to pick out Jesus and Mary
out a crowd of four.
They were so ordinary.
In what way?
IN what way did He empty himself?
That’s another word “empty”.
Have you ever felt really empty? You have
worked and worked and worked, and no one has said thank you, it has no
worked out ,you did because you know you should..
You empty yourself, Jesus emptied himself.
This is the mind that God wants to achieve
in us.
This is what he wants us to think about.
He, Jesus became so empty that He was absolutely
ordinary.
The kind of ordinaryness, St. Paul goes
on, “He humbled Himself becoming obedient to death.”
You know... this is going to be a grim
sermon, it’s kind of a Fall day, that’s alright.
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