In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
It is easy, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, to like the good sides of the Gospel, the pleasant sides as I define them. Healing comes and I am attracted to the Kingdom, Christ dies for me that I may rise with him to new Life and I am hooked in, Christ commissions me to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19) and I am flattered.
[T]he sons of the Kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.
And I am panicked—even being a son of the Kingdom, a member of the Church, is no guarantee of salvation. And I am forced to consider the words of the Lord in the previous chapter,
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in Heaven.
Matthew 7:21–23
Many will say to me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name?’
And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness!’
The Lord, in today’s Gospel reading, is contrasting those who have nothing except Faithfulness with those who have everything except Faithfulness.
Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such Faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven.
And I must, therefore, answer the question, “Do I rely on my membership of Orthodoxy or on my membership of Christ?”
Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness,
First Corinthians 1:23–25
but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
Is Christ the centre of my Faithfulness or not? Because if he is I too am invited to sit at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to enter the Marriage Feast of the Bridegroom, to be a co-ruler in the Kingdom.
My dear brothers and sisters, neither our ancestry nor mere membership of an organisation brings to us the promises given to Abraham through Jesus, but our Faithfulness—which is to say fidelity and loyalty—to Christ. And when we see Faithfulness outside the Church we should not dismiss it, rather we should rejoice that the Lord is glorified. And then we have the opportunity to invite others to a deeper knowledge of God, a more full experience of the divine, entry into the Church of the living God who loves us, died for us that as many as are Faithful to him may have eternal Life.
To our crucified and risen Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who by Faithfulness reveals to us the Father, be all glory, honour and worship, together with his unoriginate Father and the All-holy, Good and Life-giving Spirit. Amen.
Brethren, having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But then what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
— Romans 6:18–23
At that time, as Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, beseeching him and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress.” And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion answered him, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go, ‘ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come, ‘ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this, ‘ and he does it.” When Jesus heard him, he marveled, and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.” And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; be it done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.
— Matthew 8:5–13