Above Boltby
Maundy Thursday Eucharist in the tiny hamlet of Kirby Knowle. An excellent sermon and surprisingly good hymn singing by the congregation of three.
Fr. Stephen De Young (via @ReaderJohn ):
God loves you. Jesus said so. St. John’s Gospel, the Father Himself loves you. He is not angry at you. He does not want to destroy you for your sins. There is no power of justice that commands Him to do so. No one commands Him to do anything. He loves you. He wants you to find salvation, but salvation is a thing you have to actually do. He wants you to do it. The Bible says so. God wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. But you have to do it. He empowers you to do it. He forgives you when you mess up trying to do it. He heals you when you damage yourself trying to do it and failing. He is entirely on your side. The God who created the universe is entirely on your side and the saints are on your side and the church is on your side. Everyone is on your side. Christ is advocating for you. Everything is set up for us.
When Saint Paul says to us, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” you don’t stop there like Kierkegaard did. Read the next verse because it is God who is working in you to will and to do according to His pleasure. We continue on and we work out our salvation because we know that God is on our side and empowering us to do it and loving us and loving other people through us. We need to pray about that. We need to pray it. We need to repeat it. … We need to say it out loud. We need to say it to each other. We need to say it to everyone who will listen right? That God loves you and wants you to find salvation, wants you to be healed, wants you to be set free from sin. He wants all these things for you. It doesn’t mean you have nothing to do. That doesn’t mean you’re fine just the way you are. You know you’re not fine just the way you are, right? But it means that he is there to help you to grow to be transformed into the person who you need to be and want to be. The person he created you to be for eternity. That’s the actual message of Christianity. Don’t accept any substitutes for that, ever at all, for any reason.
Happy Easter.
I love a lot about this piece from Dana O’Driscoll:
The principle of living low is simple: living in a way that prioritizes time as the most valuable resource over money, prioritizing one’s wants and needs, and living in a way where one is providing as many of their own needs as possible. And remember- every step you take towards living low and collapsing gracefully is a step towards your own resilience and creating buffer zones between the collective insanity that is continuing to ramp up.
I do my civic duty, showing up, making calls to my representatives, and staying informed. But beyond that, I am not giving my energy or soul to this system. I am, instead, redirecting that energy to building a better world and making sure my family and friends are on the path of meeting their own needs too. And you know what? That also reduces my fear, it reduces my anxiety, and it gives me purpose.
However, I also want to say that living according to our values isn’t just about hammering on the door of politicians (though that’s important). Living out those values in my own community is its own form of activism.
Easter flowers.
