Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday After Trinity
“Friend, go up higher”
There was a healing done on the Sabbath before hostile eyes. There was a parable spoken in the face of resentful silence; a parable told to counter our presumption and hypocrisy. Jesus speaks and acts. He teaches. At issue is whether we will be teachable. Only so can we ever hope to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith [we] are called.”
For make no mistake, we are called. There is our common vocation. We are called out of ourselves and called to God. We are called to the service of God in our life together with one another in the body of Christ. It is really the purpose of our being here today, a purpose which extends into every aspect of our lives.
St. Paul reminds us of the qualities of that vocation, about how we should seek to be and about how we should act: “with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” These qualities arise from the doctrine – the teaching – which has been given to us and without which these qualities cannot live in us. “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all and in you all.”