The desire to care for the self as the primary unit is ultimately and completely what it means to be fallen. The care for the self as the primary sense of human action is fundamentally a witness to our broken-ness from the community of faith. Self-survival, self-well-being, self-health is our first idolatry. Christ, himself human, is first and foremost tempted with the will to survive (MAKE BREAD FROM STONE). However, in Christ the will to survive is supplanted by the life rooted not in the self but in the FATHER.
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The very nature of being human is ultimately rooted in the will to survive. Humans, Aquinas argues, are essentially self-serving, I focused creatures. Levering drawing from Aquinas shows that Christ is not only the model of ethical practice but becomes in this the model of love itself.
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I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” Jn 15:9-17 NRSV And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you abide in my love. In this book Levering, a professor of Theology at University of Dayton, places in relation the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham alongside the Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ.Īt one moving point in the text Levering, an Aquinas scholar, exegetes John 15:9-17 “Sacrifice and Community: Jewish Offering and Christian Eucharist” today. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”įinished reading, Matthew Levering. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Walk with me and work with me-watch how I do it. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. But I’m not keeping it to myself I’m ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen.Ģ8-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does. This is a unique Father-Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. “The Father has given me all these things to do and say. Yes, Father, that’s the way you like to work.”Ģ7 Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. You’ve concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people. However, I will do my best.Ģ5-26 Abruptly Jesus broke into prayer: “Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. However, please know that it is easier for me to converse in person or on the phone than it is in this format.
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If you have questions or would like to talk I would love to converse with you. If you don’t that is okay- just stop listening. I hope some of you will enjoy my thoughts and words.
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Here is my Sermon from this morning the Text is Matthew 11:25-30. Search for: Contact Me If You Like or Need to: