The Peace Pulpit

This is one of those Sundays when, if we listen to the lessons very carefully, especially the first lesson in the gospel lesson, we will come to see how Jesus so clearly fulfills what had been revealed to people through God's chosen people in the Old Testament. In that first lesson, as I mentioned in introducing it, we discover someone who has a very profound insight into God. This person has come to know God very deeply and shares with us the kind of God that we worship: "Because you are Almighty, you are merciful to God."

As we reflect on the readings today, I think it’s important to begin with what happens at the end of the Gospel, where Jesus says to the man who was cured -- the one among the 10 who came back -- he says to him: “Your faith has saved you.”

There is a passage in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah that I have always thought of as a very marvelous, extraordinary way of showing who God is and how God acts in relation to us. This is from the 30th chapter in the Book of Isaiah and it time when the prophet has been preaching to the people, who are threatened with an invasion from the north, not to enter into an alliance with the Egyptians and not to go to war. The prophet is pleading with the people "Seek peace and only peace." But they reject the prophet's message and they go to war. They are defeated, but then the prophet says these extraordinary words, speaking for God: "God is always waiting to be gracious to you. God comes to show you compassion." I have always thought of this as a very beautiful expression of who God is. God is always waiting, waiting to be gracious to us. No matter how we have sinned, rejected God, God is waiting. That is a very reassuring revelation about God.

Obviously, in our lessons today -- God’s Word that we are listening to carefully -- we are being instructed about humility. This is a virtue that I think many of us have some trouble with -- even though in our first lesson the writer of that Book of Wisdom tells us that the greater you are, the more you should humble yourself and find favor with God. It is the humble that give God glory. We hear that, but we still wonder about being humble because many of us, I think, have an understanding of humility that it somehow means putting yourself down.

We gather together obviously with great joy to celebrate the feast today: the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. Mary, according to the feast that we celebrate, went immediately through death to new life without her body falling into decay and being buried. And of course it was a significant blessing for her -- a sign of her unique place in the whole story of our salvation -- and so we rejoice in this and celebrate.