Topic: Faith

If we are not willing to love when it is difficult, or inconvenient, or when it requires us to show charity to those we do not particularly like (perhaps even to love our enemies!) then we have not love at all, and our relationships will suffer as a result. The evidence is of course abundant in the breakdown of marriage and the family, but the same is true of our relationship with God - we face similar temptations to reduce it down to a feeling or a transaction.

Let us thank God for keeping us safe in the midst of trouble and let us not forget how He comforted our waste places in the past. Perhaps today you still find yourself navigating the wilderness. Whether now or in the future, when we wander through those desolate places, we must never forsake to answer the question that matters most: “Who do you say that Jesus is?”

Keep justice. Do righteousness. Keep the Sabbath. Keep your hand from evil. We acknowledge our failures in all these things as we worship every Sunday, and once we are made clean, we all receive the same wafer - same size, same shape - and drink the same wine, receiving the same Grace from Christ Jesus. This is the source and summit of our Christian lives.

Think back to all of life’s storms you have endured in the past. How often, in the heat of the moment, when you are being tossed around by the waves, does it seem like there’s no way you will ever make it through? Yet every time, Jesus is there to catch you with his strong arm. So why do we refuse to step out in faith when he calls?

Disquietude is an unusual word, is it not? Certainly not one you hear every day. Disquietude refers to a state of anxiety or uneasiness. Understood this way, today we together pray for eyes of Faith to behold the Transfigured Christ, in light eternal, to transport us from the anxieties and trials of our daily lives, the darkness of our temporal world.

Here is the key for us today: all of us have been commissioned in the priesthood of believers as planters for the kingdom of God. Not only does that mean the preaching of the Gospel, but it means the seed of our own faith as well - perhaps that more than anything else.

If Christianity is the true Faith, then what does that imply about every other religion? It means that every other faith is a false faith. This is not easy for us to hear, nor is it easy for the secular world to hear - but we cannot shy away from the Truth just because it is difficult. Trinity Sunday therefore reminds us that a profession of faith in God as Trinity is to assert the exclusivity of the Gospel message.

Here’s the great preoccupation of Americans: We do everything in our lives to avoid mortality. Are we not all going to die, however? We can’t avoid mortality, but we can enjoy eternal life in the presence of God, like the Samaritan and like Ruth, if we simply put our trust in Jesus Christ to save us.

With the passing of Queen Elizabeth, we lose one of the final links in the chain of history which binds us to the storied history and tradition, and indeed the greatness of Western Civilization, blessed by God and founded on Judeo-Christian principles, to which we owe nearly every comfort and luxury which we enjoy today. Listen as the Rector reflects on the life of Queen Elizabeth II.