I learned an important lesson last week. If you kiss a llama you will grow a
beard. It was a good thing we didn’t
have Mrs. Frederickson kiss it!
I
want to focus on two points from our readings today. First, St. Paul summarizes the heart of Christ’s mission in
that “love is the fulfillment of
the law.” Imagine
the game of basketball. Basketball
has all sorts of rules—you can’t run while carrying the ball, double dribble,
foul, run out of bounds or throw the ball to the other team. Yet when a basketball player is on the
court, is he thinking “I can’t mess up…I can’t travel…I can’t double dribble…I
can’t miss”? No! He plays to excel, to win. As the most recent PepsiMax commercial
says, “It’s all about buckets”.
That’s
like our faith. We have the
commandments which we shouldn’t do, but we shouldn’t freak out about not
failing. We should live. We should strive for excellence and
play well on God’s team.
And
the heart of this life is love. Part of this love is renounce—or sacrifice—what
we have in order to help others. In
fact, Jesus says, “…everyone of you who
does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”
I’d
like to share two examples from our own students who renounced something in
order to help someone else. First,
one of our fourth graders recently had a birthday. He asked his parents, friends and family not to give him
presents. Instead he asked them to
make a donation to buy chickens in Kenya in order to feed people. He renounced the chance to receive his
own gifts to help others in need.
Second,
a sixth grader bought a used bike at a garage sale. He likes tinkering with bikes and is good at fixing them up
to make them better. A few weeks
ago he presented this bike to one of our first graders who outgrew his old bike. This student put his own money and time
into a bike that he gave to another.
We
pray this morning to live out the fulfillment of the commandments and to love
God and our neighbor.
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