Sunday, October 6, 2019

27^th Sunday in Ordinary Time/Proper 22/17^th Sunday after Pentecost

First Reading: Lamentations 1:1-6
Psalm 137 or Lamentations 3:19-26
Second Reading: 2 Timothy 1:1-14
Gospel Reading: Luke 17:5-10

The liturgical color for the day is: Green

This is World Communion Sunday.  World Communion Sunday is a tradition started by a Presbyterian, Hugh Thomson Kerr, in 1933 at Shadyside Presbyterian Church.

It is also the Sunday that the Peace & Global Witness offering is received.

A mustard seed.  A grain of rice.  A taste of bread.  A drink of grape juice.  A sip of wine.  Could we have some more?

We want more than just a taste of Jesus.  We want the fullness.  We want more than just a morsel of Christ’s presence…we want it all. 

We want more than just a little bit of God.  We want all of God.

And we have it. 

It is not about how much faith we have.  It is about the faith that we do have that enables us to see the faithfulness of God lived out in Jesus the Christ.  In him the full weight of death was cast and God, in God’s faithfulness, raises him up to resurrected and eternal life.  God is faithful.

So, with the world, we go to the table.  Go to the table with your grain of faith—and use that faith for it is enough to see there a vision of the future.  It is not just a remembrance.  It is no funeral for Jesus.  It is a vision of that time and place that is coming where all will come from north and south, from east and west, and will sit at table in the Kingdom of God.  All of us.  All who have gone before, with all of us now and all of us who will come after—God is faithful.

God’s faith is what it is about.  And we see in the cross, that God is faithful.

That portion of faith that we have…it is enough…

Rev. Dr. Daris Bultena
General Presbyter and Stated Clerk