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Dear Friends/Colleagues of the Presbytery of San José,
Grace and peace in the name of Jesus Christ in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit!
At a recent monthly meeting I had with my executive coach/mentor, we were reflecting upon the presence of the sacred Ancestors. In ministry and, indeed, in the entirety of life, I’m keenly and humbly aware of what Hebrews 12:1 calls “the cloud of witnesses” and what the Apostles’ Creed calls “communion of saints.” Over the last 12 months, some of my loved ones went home to rest in the eternal realm of the Ancestors, in whom our living and loving God abides. The Spirit of the living God connects us to the Ancestors, bringing to our mind and heart their living testimony, and the struggles for which and in which they lived in their time, and which we now engage. It is humbling, it is sacred, it is blessed. Think of the mother and father figures in the faith, heroes and heroines, those who may be known in books and many more who are largely unknown to the wider world but whom you know and who are known by our God.
This Sunday’s Gospel text in the Revised Common Lectionary is Luke 13:10-17. Jesus heals an unnamed, unknown woman. Jesus’s dissenters seek to cancel, silence, and subdue Jesus’ act of mercy and healing. For Jesus, his words and acts are about love and justice. Both are like hand and glove – love necessarily means justice (to make things right, to make relationships right), and justice embodies love. Love-Justice seeks the flourishing of all of God’s creation. Period. Full stop. Jesus seeks for this unnamed, unknown woman who had been neglected by society, community, and the religious leaders, let alone the political and economic leaders and systems. His word and work dignifies the woman as a precious, beloved child of God. Hers is a testimony and testament of divine-human love and justice. And all that Jesus’s dissenters did was cancel, silence, and subdue love and justice. The story ends with this description:
When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him. (13:17)
I am grateful for whomever this unnamed, unknown woman is. She is in that cloud of witnesses, in the realm of the sacred Ancestors. Hers is a story of love and justice.
In the ordination and installation service of deacons, ruling elders, and teaching elders/ministers of Word and Sacrament, is this part of the constitutional questions that are propounded to all:
and in your ministry will you try to show the love and justice of Jesus Christ?
We, then, respond: “By God’s grace, I will.”
That question, while asked of ordained officers of the church and its councils, is actually one that is connected to the whole church, to the church’s calling, to the church’s purpose. Because what we see in our Lord’s life – one committed to love and justice – becomes the calling of the church.
Consider all those ways you, in your own life, in your own slice of the world, can and do embody the love and justice of Jesus Christ. How are you being called by the Lord to labor in and with the sacred Ancestors for the healing of the nations, for the comfort of the sick, the protection of the vulnerable, the advocacy for the disempowered, the feeding of the hungry, the de-centering of those with power and privilege, peacemaking for the war-torn/war-ravaged?
At the conclusion of an ordination/installation service, the following is often used as the Charge to all those gathered. Feel free to use this in your congregation and worshipping communities this Sunday and/or whenever God’s people are deployed to embody the love and justice of Jesus Christ:
Go out into the world in peace;
have courage;
hold on to what is good;
return no one evil for evil;
strengthen the fainthearted;
support the weak, and help the suffering;
honor all people;
love and serve the Lord,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
In Joy and Justice,
Neal D. Presa
Executive Presbyter
408.763.5004 | Neal@sanjosepby.org
#CalledToCommunity
#CommittedToJustice
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