What a Sermon!

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, "Do not waste your time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.” James T. Garrett reminds us about Tim Hansel’s book, Holy Sweat. In the book, Hansel tells of a guest preacher in a rather large church who began, "There are three points to my sermon." Most people yawned at the point. They'd heard that many times before. But he went on. "My first point is this. At this time there are approximately two billion people starving to death in the world." The reaction through the congregation was about the same, since they'd heard that sort of statement many times before, too. And then he said, "My second point..." Everybody sat up. Only 10 or 15 seconds had passed, and he was already on his second point? He paused, and then said, "My second point is that most of you don't give a damn!" He paused again as gasps and rumblings flowed across the congregation, and then said: "And my third point is that the real tragedy among Christians today is that many of you are now more concerned that I said 'damn' than you are that I said two billion people are starving to death." Then he sat down. The whole sermon took less than a minute, but it is in many ways one of the most powerful ones ever given. He was reminding us we are called not to mere piety but to genuine Christian action. We are called to action, not to fancy words. In today’s gospel, Jesus preached a short sermon. But what a sermon! He clearly denotes the kind of ministry He came to pursue. It is to be a ministry to the poor and outcast, the blind and oppressed and to free captives. Jesus made a bold claim today. I am the Christ! Salvation has become real and visible today. What did you hear Jesus say to you today?

Msgr. Mike