“Together Free Under Christ’s Dominion”
July 6, 2014
The 4th Sunday In Ordinary Time/Kingdomtide/Time of the Church
Zechariah 9: 9 – 12/Psalm 145: 8 – 13/Romans 7: 21 - 8: 6/Matthew 11: 25 - 30
The Very Reverend (Monseñor) Father Roberto "Obet" M. Jorvina
Archdiocese of Manila
the
National Church in the Philippines
and the
Territorial Church of Asia
International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church
This is the day that
the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it! It is not just a
day. This is the day. Each day God creates is a
blessing for all of us, for each of us. Particularly on Sunday and
gathered as the people of God, we affirm what He has established from the
beginning. We affirm His presence in our lives. We declare today,
Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, the day when God said to the
darkness, “Let there be light.” It is the day when Christ broke through
the chains of death, hell and the grave. It is the day that Christians
established from the beginning as the day of the Lord. It is not a day
for outings; it is not a day for going to the malls. These things we may
do, we can do, but we must never ever miss on the true meaning of the day –
that this day God created and made that His people can continually be renewed
in His saving presence in our midst, His wonderful acts in our lives. It
is a renewal of what God has done from the very beginning. It is a
commemoration of the great acts of God and His love for His people in this day
that He has made.
A Biblical action and
principle states that the presence of God is always manifested in visible and
tangible signs. This presence is always our call to worship Him; to
present ourselves vulnerable; to present ourselves open to God’s presence so
that the same presence can now be made incarnate or enfleshed in our
lives. God uses every day, ordinary situations and things to show and to
manifest His presence. He used the burning bush to Moses. He used
David’s rod. He used David’s staff. He used Gideon’s fleece.
He used the fourth man in the fiery furnace. He used Elijah’s still
voice. He used all of these things in order that the people of God
can be aware, “I am with you.” Saying, “The Lord is with you,” is
not just a liturgical experience or saying. It is real. Yet many times,
we have ignored these physical manifestations of God saying, “I am always with
you.”
When we wake up in the
morning and we see ourselves in the mirror, this is a sign of God’s
presence. You are alive! You have another day blessed by God. When
you see your brother, sister or spouse in the bedroom, you say, “I am
alive!” There is a charismatic song that we sing, “I Love You with the
Love of the Lord,” and we say, “I can see in you the glory of my
King.” We may not feel that glory. It is not a matter of
feeling. Worshipping God has nothing to do with our feelings.
Worshipping God is a proclamation of the great saving acts and presence of God
in our lives. Every time we gather here or when two or three are
gathered, Jesus says, “I am with you.” He is here with us!
The problem with
today’s society is we have succumbed to a form ofnihilism. Nihilism is a philosophy of
nothingness. All is “Wala lang” (nothing.) “Why are you getting
that?” The answer is, “Wala lang.” “Why did you do that?”
One says, “Wala lang.” “Why
are you here? The answer, “Wala lang.” This is nihilism; this is our mind
set. We always do not find meaning in the things that we are doing, and
so we take that same attitude in our relationship with God. In many churches
today in Christianity, people come and go. Have our lives changed?
Do we say, “I met God today! I can feel the presence of God!”
We base our evaluation on the things that we say during the Mass on our
feelings. “Did you feel God today?” We say, “No.” Does that
mean that God is not there? God said, “I will always be with
you.” He did not promise, “You will always feel Me.” He did not
promise, “You will always feel that I am with you.” He said, “I
will be with you.” There are days that some of us don’t feel like being
Fathers or Daddies. Does that mean that a man is not a Daddy or a Father
anymore?
We have to realize that
worship is not about feelings. Worship is about the work of God in
our lives. It is all about God. It is all about what He has
done. God’s promise is that we will never be alone. He promised
that He will never leave us nor forsake us. This is what God has done in
our lives. As we gather, God promised that He is here. Whether you
feel Him or not, He is here! The effect in us will depend upon how much
we can open ourselves to that truth and accept that truth in our lives.
This is what we see in
Matthew 11:20, “Then Jesus began to reproach the cities in which most of His
miracles, His works of power were done because they did not repent.” Imagine that Jesus did miracles in
these cities and yet He did not see a response from the people. This is
why He said, “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!” At that
time when the spies were sent to the Promised Land in Numbers 13, ten came back
to give a bad report and only two gave a good report. God called Moses
and Aaron to Him and said to them in Numbers 14:11, “How long will they not
believe in Me despite all the signs which I performed in their midst?” Every week, we see a miracle take
place: bread is changed into the body of Christ; wine is transformed to
the blood of Christ. Every week, we see a miracle. Every day,
we encounter the presence of God. God wants us to affirm that presence as
we come and gather, as we know His saving works. He is ever present in
our midst.
There is the necessity
of understanding the joy of the work. The reason why we do not experience the
joy is because we have lost the meaning. We have become nihilistic. We have become a people without
anything – no future; nothing. We are just bound with the events of the
day without any foresight to the things that we have in our hands. We
must begin to be a people demonstrating the mighty works of God.
In our gospel, it opens
with Jesus saying, “I thank Thee Father that You have hidden these things
from the wise and from the intelligent.” We must realize that knowing
God is done in a different realm and plane. From the day we entered
school at probably age four or five and to the day we graduated in college
probably in our twenties, in all those years, we were taught the things of the
world. Probably, many of us or most of us were never taught that these
things of the world were pointing to the greatness of the God we serve.
Maybe, none of us were taught that one plus one equals two is because of what
God has done. It is true because God said it so. We were
never taught that the earth rotates and revolves, going around its axis
twenty-four hours a day that in one day, you have travelled a thousand of miles
and you are moving. The constancy is there. It never changed its
speed. We were never taught that all of these things were signs that
pointed to the greatness and the saving works and the presence of God in our
midst. Many times, we only look at things not realizing that behind these
things is the meaning given by the Great and Mighty God whom we serve.
Our task, as God’s
people, is to learn that. The gospel says it is not for the intelligent
and the wise; it is for those who are babes; those who have emptied themselves
of any inhibitions and have come without any preconceptions, any prejudices,
and have come before God to see Him. 1Corinthians 1:18 says, “The message of
the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But to those who are being
saved, it is the power of God.” How many times do we make the sign of
the cross? What does that mean to us? Is it nothing or is it the sign of
the power of God in us, the power to dispel sickness? Our default is not
the drugstore, but our default is always to the Word of God. Let us
default to our factory settings because we have been set in a factory of God’s
throne, made in His image and likeness.
This is our factory
settings, Church, and yet many times, we succumb to the realization that we are
just human and we succumb to the weakness of the flesh which St. Paul had said
in Romans. This was the dilemma of Paul. “Wretched man that I am, who can
deliver me from this body of sin? Thanks be to God, through Christ, that through
Him I have deliverance!” Many times, we have a problem
conquering the difficulties and the situations that we have. “Wretched
man I am, I am in deep difficulty.” Many times, we fail to realize
that we have the ability. Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, now, because
of that, we have no condemnation when we walk with Christ.” This is
because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the
law of sin and death. We are not bound by the law of sin and death.
For centuries, man has
been bound by the Law of Gravity. Gravity says what goes up must come
down. We are bound by this law until one day, some people discovered that
there is another law which has been in existence but has been untapped.
This law is called the Law of Lift that says, “When you are moving in a certain
speed, you will defy gravity and become airborne.” The Law of Lift
has set you free from the Law of Gravity! In the same manner, the law of
the spirit of life in Jesus, which is present in each of us, has set us free
from the law of sin and death because we have the power of God in us!
1Corinthians 21 says,
“For since in the wisdom of God, the world, through its wisdom, did not come to
know God.” We will not know and discern the things of God, His presence and
His ways, if we solely based it on our training which we got from the
world. We have to realize that there is a higher law that governs our
lives from the time that He has created us. God has given us a grace and it
abounds saying, “This man or woman is marked for Me.” In Baptism,
when the Bishop lays his fingers on the child with a cross, he says, “You are
now marked as Christ’s own forever.” Don’t ever think that for any
moment, we don’t feel God. It is like God is not there! This is
your feeling and it is not a gauge for the truth because God has called us to
be His.
Jesus said that we must
come to know Him. This knowledge comes from a revelation in Matthew 11:27
that says, “All things have been handed to Me by My Father; no one knows the
Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and
anyone to whom the Son will reveal Him.” It
is God’s good pleasure to reveal Him in our lives. He shared His life with
us. We must realize that because He is the Source of everlasting peace
and contentment. This is why Jesus said, “Come to Me, all of you
who are weary and heavily laden because I am going to give you rest.”
There is no rest for those who are not walking with Christ in this world.
In recent statistics,
about 30,000 tons of tranquilizers a day are consumed by people. There is no
rest in a world that is separated from God. God is making His presence
felt and yet, we have rejected that presence. We have ignored that
presence and we have not given it the attention that God desires from us.
We must begin to see and learn from Christ because the gospel says that He is
meek and gentle and humble of heart. Meekness has nothing to do with
weakness. Many times, we say, “That guy is a gentleman.” He is just
sitting only, not walking, and almost having no life. But a man who is
rough in his ways, we don’t consider a gentleman. We have associated the
word “gentle” with being quiet, being weak and being meek. Meekness is
the same word which Jesus used in Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek for they
will inherit the earth.” Meekness is inner strength; the fruit of the
power within. It is an inward grace of the soul that yields and submits
to God’s leading and His dealings without resisting or disputing. We
readily submit to His dealings. We readily submit to His grace.
God said, “I have given
you power!” We submit to that. “Yes, Lord.” God says, “I have
healed you from your sickness!” “Yes, Lord, I submit to that. I
acknowledge that!” We are not there trying to figure out, “Lord, You
don’t understand. In the 21st century,
we studied in Biology, in Medical Technology 101 that all of these things, when
the protoplasm is attacked…and the white blood cells and the red blood
cells…” We will explain all the signs we know just to say, “Lord, I think
You made a mistake.” The bottom line is that the body is still the hero
and the body was not made by Medical Science. The body was made by God. The
body was created by God to defend itself. Yes, there may be a few
problems. Yes, there may be some difficulties, but those few problems
were many times caused not by God, but by eating too much sugar or drinking too
much Coke or taking all of these things. We then say, “My blood sugar is
high!” God says, “Stop! Balance everything! Don’t drink Coke in the morning!”
We must realize that
God has given all these things in order for us to say that we have that inner
strength, that inner ability in us and those infinite resources. Meekness
is not weakness, but rather a reliance on and a faith in the infinite resources
of God in our lives. It is the only and genuine “unli” in our
lives. The other “unli” are not true that after fifteen minutes, it gets
cut off or the signal goes off! The true “unli” is the infinite resources
of God in us. This is meekness. When we have that, Jesus said, “I am
that. I am meek. Learn from Me. Follow Me. I am the Way. I am
showing you how life will work. I did not come to parade Myself as the Son of
God. I came to parade Myself before you as an example of what man can do
in this earth despite of what we call limitations.” We can still
change water into wine; we can still be lord over all of creation. All of
these things were done in order to demonstrate the potentials, the
possibilities that man has in his life.
Zechariah 9:9-12 talks
about the power of God. It is not about the things that are there that God
says, “All of these things are nothing and futile in comparison to the power
that I have given you.” Verse
10 says, “I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, the horse from Jerusalem,
the bow of war will be cut off. And He will speak peace to the nations; and His
dominion will be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.” In all of these things, the power and
strength that man thought he had apart from God, God says, “I am going to cut
it off.” We will find it out one day, if we have not discovered, that
whatever things we have amassed, whatever things we can be proud of, whatever
accomplishments we have are of no avail if God is not with us.
Remember this, Jesus
said, “Without Me, you can do nothing!” Yes, you can do. You can
work. Jesus said, “Without Me, you can work. Without Me, you can go to
school. Without Me, you can buy all of these things. Without Me, you can
live every life. Without Me, you can wake up tomorrow morning. You
add all of these up, they will all amount to nothing! Without Me,
you can do nothing.” He is in dominion over our lives and that is what we
must really see in us.
Jesus said, “Take My
yoke upon you for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” The yoke of
God is easy. This does not mean without conflict. We look at this
verse and sometimes we use it and say, “Come to Christ and He will give you an
easy life.” We think that the word “easy” is something that will not
involve problems and conflicts that when problem comes, we stumble. “I
thought Christian life was a life of bliss. I thought Christian life was
easy.” Easy does not mean without conflict. Easy is better
translated means “well-fitting.” Exact; well-fitting. Where
you are, what your life is today, it is exact for you; it is well-fitted to
you. We don’t say, “I hope I am like that…” If you are not like
that, it may be that it is not fitted for you. The boss may say, “Right
now, you are a janitor. This is just right for you. This is the yoke that
I am giving to you.” This is fit for us because this is what God
has created us. We may not stay there. He may promote us depending
on His plan and purpose, but whatever we are, at any particular point in time,
we are to bloom where we are planted. We are the planting of the Lord
that He may be glorified and honored because He has given life and life abundantly.
Let us begin to realize
the greatness of our God, Church. It is not just a fairy tale. It is not
just some concept. It is not just something nice to hear. His presence is
always with us. It is never nihilistic because that is not God. He
created something out of nothing and He is not a God of the “wala lang”
(of nothing). We must realize that He is our all in all. And to
borrow the phrase that the Bishop uses, this is how it is in the kingdom of
God!
LET US CONTINUE OUR REFLECTION
WITH
CARDINAL OF HOLY MOTHER CHURCH
AND
VENERABLE PRIMATE
OF THE PHILIPPINES
THROUGH
THE WORD EXPOSED
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