Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
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Have you ever been walking around and seen someone wearing a specific outfit and immediately realized, “this person belongs to that religion”?
Some people wear their religion, literally, on their backs. We’ve all witnessed this in the world. There are some people that you just know what they believe because of the clothes they wear and thus how they present themselves to the world, even if you know nothing else about them.
Now for most of us, this is not the case. Aside from maybe our jewelry, there’s not anything that marks us as different from those with no faith or belief.
This is an insight Bishop Gutiérrez gave me recently, and it’s not a call to go out and buy new “Christian looking” clothes. It’s a call to think more about how we can show others whose we are and what we believe.
That is what all of our readings are all getting it: how do we know that we belong to Christ Jesus and how do we show that to others?
We are marked as Christians, as we hear in all of our readings today, by Jesus’ presence in our hearts. That’s a presence God sees, as we hear in Acts. When we have that presence of God in our hearts, the world has the potential to see who we belong to too, as Jesus tells us in John.
The world only sees it, though, through our testimony. That testimony, that word, is given not only through what we say, but what we do. As representatives of God, we do God’s work in the world.
In 1 John, we hear of the gift of life we have been given. Last week, we heard why we receive that gift. We have been given life because God loved us, and we are called to share that love in return.
If you want to go out into the world and have others recognize your faith in you, share this love. You don’t have to stand at the street corner and speak about Jesus to do it. But your love does need to be noticeable. I’m not talking about a billboard or a news story about your deeds. Those deeds, instead, have to be filled with real compassion that people just know when they see it. And when people ask why you are being so kind, then you tell them about our Lord Jesus.
My hope, as well as our Bishop’s, is that you live your life in such a way that those around you cannot but know that you belong to Christ Jesus. That way we can spread the love that Jesus first showed us. That way all might know our Jesus through the gift of your presence in the world. That way your lives, your hearts, and your being will be such that others cannot but know that you belong to Jesus.