Confession and Commitment
The Sunday of the Samaritan Woman: St. Luke 6:17-23
This Sunday, I gave the second a series of homilies designed to help prepare the First Confession class for their “Second Baptism.” It introduces a facet of love that has been largely forgotten by our culture: commitment. Love is not based on feelings, but on the service and care for others; even when it goes against out feelings. The Church, and especially its local manifestations in the family and the parish, is a training ground for true love; a love that is grounded in complete commitment to God and neighbor.
Christ is Risen! Krishhti Unjall! (Vertet Unjall!) Khristos Voskres!
Introduction: You are preparing for your first Confession, the time when you take responsibility for your actions, and most especially for your relationship with the Great God who made you and who loves you completely and without any reservation; in short you are getting ready to recommit yourself to God and His Holy Orthodox Church. As you do this, I challenge you to spend more time in prayer, to spend more time helping your family, and to pay special attention during Liturgy and Sunday School; all these things will help prepare you for the great and wonderful step you are about to take. In these homilies, I will teach you the most important aspects of our faith, about how this world works, and about you – and your Confession – fit into it.
The Most Important Thing: God is Great – and He loves you!
Just to remind you, the most important thing you need to know – the thing you must never forget – is 1) that God (the one who made this world – and you) is all powerful, He knows everything, and there is nothing bad in Him; and that 2) He loves you with all His powerful, all-knowing, and perfect heart. He wants you to be holy and good, and He will offer you His power, His knowledge, and His perfection to help you do it.
Just to remind you, the most important thing you need to know – the thing you must never forget – is 1) that God (the one who made this world – and you) is all powerful, He knows everything, and there is nothing bad in Him; and that 2) He loves you with all His powerful, all-knowing, and perfect heart. He wants you to be holy and good, and He will offer you His power, His knowledge, and His perfection to help you do it.
Recap of Last Week: Creation and Stewardship
In last week’s homily, we started at the beginning of the Bible, with the verse “In the beginning…”. You learned that God was like a great artist who took all His joy and expressed it by making this world and everything in it (to include you!). That He loves you so much that He set apart a special part of it for us, and then He gave it to use so that we would enjoy it and take care of it. Like a parent who did the same for his child by giving them a room, he wants us to clean up after ourselves and keep it clean. Sometimes we get distracted and leave it messy, so we say we are sorry and work to make it right. Sometimes the messes we make are so big that we cannot clean them ourselves, and after we apologize, we ask Him to help us fix everything.
In last week’s homily, we started at the beginning of the Bible, with the verse “In the beginning…”. You learned that God was like a great artist who took all His joy and expressed it by making this world and everything in it (to include you!). That He loves you so much that He set apart a special part of it for us, and then He gave it to use so that we would enjoy it and take care of it. Like a parent who did the same for his child by giving them a room, he wants us to clean up after ourselves and keep it clean. Sometimes we get distracted and leave it messy, so we say we are sorry and work to make it right. Sometimes the messes we make are so big that we cannot clean them ourselves, and after we apologize, we ask Him to help us fix everything.
This Week: More on God’s Love (Commitment)
Loving a Puppy
God is Perfect Love. He wants us to join Him in His love. In order to lead us toward Him, He gave us two rules: love God with everything you are, and love others as yourself. But what does that mean – does it mean what we usually mean when we say we love something, but only more of it? I don’t think so.
God is Perfect Love. He wants us to join Him in His love. In order to lead us toward Him, He gave us two rules: love God with everything you are, and love others as yourself. But what does that mean – does it mean what we usually mean when we say we love something, but only more of it? I don’t think so.
Loving a puppy: more than a feeling – it is a commitment that must endure despite the waxing and waning of our feelings. What if we stopped caring for a puppy when it made us angry, or there were more interesting things to do? [More so for a baby! – You were once a baby, your parents had such strong warm feelings for you… but what if they stopped caring for you once those feelings were replaced with exhaustion on the revulsion of dirty diapers?]
This is how God loves: He didn’t just make us, He is committed to doing everything to give us what we really need to sacrifice everything to give us what we really need. He did not abandon us when we got dirty and did bad things, but did everything to lead us back to righteousness.
Eating Ice Cream – or Helping Around the House
Being good, being holy, becoming like God, is not about getting your own way, but about doing what needs to be done. I really enjoy eating ice cream. I have a job – for that job, I get paid. So I have money. If I trusted my feelings, I would just buy a lot of ice cream (and nuts) and I would spend all my free time eating ice cream. That is what I really enjoy. And while I am eating ice cream, I would put on a movie that I really like. And that is what I would do all the time. Just eat ice cream and watch movies. Because that is what I like to do. But would that make me holy? Would that make me good? Would that make me more like God (FWIW: God is not THAT kind of great!)? No, its not about what my feelings tell me I want, it is about doing what is right. So we do those things first, and on a good day, we might have enough money, time and energy to eat a little bit of ice cream before we go to bed. We give up what we could do – even what our feelings tell us we WANT to do – in order to do what we should do. This is what love is about: it is about commitment even when it is hard. If you only love something when you want to, when it feels like the right thing to do, then you have no commitment – you show that you love nothing but yourself and your own feelings. This is not the way God is, and it is not good enough: you have to try harder (e.g. St. Matthew 5:46-48; St. Luke 6:32-36).
Being good, being holy, becoming like God, is not about getting your own way, but about doing what needs to be done. I really enjoy eating ice cream. I have a job – for that job, I get paid. So I have money. If I trusted my feelings, I would just buy a lot of ice cream (and nuts) and I would spend all my free time eating ice cream. That is what I really enjoy. And while I am eating ice cream, I would put on a movie that I really like. And that is what I would do all the time. Just eat ice cream and watch movies. Because that is what I like to do. But would that make me holy? Would that make me good? Would that make me more like God (FWIW: God is not THAT kind of great!)? No, its not about what my feelings tell me I want, it is about doing what is right. So we do those things first, and on a good day, we might have enough money, time and energy to eat a little bit of ice cream before we go to bed. We give up what we could do – even what our feelings tell us we WANT to do – in order to do what we should do. This is what love is about: it is about commitment even when it is hard. If you only love something when you want to, when it feels like the right thing to do, then you have no commitment – you show that you love nothing but yourself and your own feelings. This is not the way God is, and it is not good enough: you have to try harder (e.g. St. Matthew 5:46-48; St. Luke 6:32-36).
The Bible puts it this way (and I am paraphrasing);
“Have the same kind of attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though He was God (surrounded by all the wonderful things in heaven – all the angels and light, and beauty), He was willing to give up these things – things He had rightly earned, things that were His due – He was willing to give them up to live in the dust of the earth as a man, and to suffer insult, torture, and death on the cross because it was what needed to be done. He was willing to give up everything out of His love for you (paraphrase of Philippians 2:5-8).”
God is love – He does what is right and needful, despite the costs. He is committed to making the world into a perfect place and each of you into perfect people. But to participate in this, you have to learn to really love; you have to learn commitment. This is only possible through Christ.
Time, Money, and Effort
How can you tell if you are committed? How can you gauge how well you are loving things – or whether you are still being selfish? You can tell what people are committed to – what they love – based on how they spend their time, their money, and their effort. Good people spend their time, their money, and their effort being good; selfish people spend their time, their money, and their effort on themselves. As Christians – people devoted to becoming like God – we offer up the first part of every day to God in prayer and the first part of every week to God in worship, then we spend the rest of our time doing everything else that needs to get done (to include helping others in need). Only then do we spend time on ourselves. As Christians – people devoted to becoming like God – we offer up the first part of all the money we earn to God, then we spend the rest of our money doing everything else that needs to get done (to include helping others in need), and only then do we spend money on ourselves. In short, we put all of our effort into being good.
How can you tell if you are committed? How can you gauge how well you are loving things – or whether you are still being selfish? You can tell what people are committed to – what they love – based on how they spend their time, their money, and their effort. Good people spend their time, their money, and their effort being good; selfish people spend their time, their money, and their effort on themselves. As Christians – people devoted to becoming like God – we offer up the first part of every day to God in prayer and the first part of every week to God in worship, then we spend the rest of our time doing everything else that needs to get done (to include helping others in need). Only then do we spend time on ourselves. As Christians – people devoted to becoming like God – we offer up the first part of all the money we earn to God, then we spend the rest of our money doing everything else that needs to get done (to include helping others in need), and only then do we spend money on ourselves. In short, we put all of our effort into being good.
Conclusion: the glory of being good
If all this sounds boring and no fun, then it is only because you have not trained your feelings to want the right things and because you have not learned how much more wonderful it is to be good than it is to be selfish. [today’s Gospel: Living water vs. the things of this world].
If all this sounds boring and no fun, then it is only because you have not trained your feelings to want the right things and because you have not learned how much more wonderful it is to be good than it is to be selfish. [today’s Gospel: Living water vs. the things of this world].
Being good brings far more joy and happiness than being selfish. Remember how the Bible described how Jesus was living in heaven with all the wonderful things that were there, and how He was willing to give all that up to help us here on earth? He gave up a lot more than time or money (or ice cream, or video games)! Well, now I want you to listen to how that part of the Bible ends: it describes what happened next (again, I am paraphrasing);
“Because He did what was right and acted out of love for us rather than Himself, God the Father elevated Christ Jesus to the place of highest honor and gave Him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (paraphrase of Philippians 2:9-11)
God the Father blessed His Son, Jesus for being so good and holy and for loving the people God gave Him to care for; he has blessed your parents for their commitment to Him, His Church, and to you; and He will do the same for all those who reject selfishness and learn to love.
In short, He will bless you. Confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior and live a life of love.
