2252AFC122322 – No Deposit. No Return.
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Isaiah 52:7 – 7 How beautiful upon the mountains (↔ Music Link)
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.*”
* Some translations read : “Your God is King!”
Psalm 98:1 –
1 O sing to the Lord a new song, (↔ Music Link)
for he has done marvelous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gotten him victory.
Hebrews 1:3-4 – 3 He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
John 1:14 – 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,] full of grace and truth.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. And while we’re at it: Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou, ʻŌmea! That’s our Hawaiian greeting for Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Belovéd! We are very nearly at the end of 2022 with a single additional post remaining for December 30th. These Key Verses from this Sunday’s readings for The Nativity of the Lord (Christmas) Mass during the Day (← Check it out!). Today’s greeting comes from 2 Corinthians 13:14 and contains a couple of my favorite Greek words: Κοινωνία (koinonia) and ἀγάπη (agape). Koinonia is the Grace of fellowship, sharing in, as in Communion. And of course we recognize agape – the pure Love of God which he shares with us in “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” Looking at this collection of Scripture passages we see a prevailing theme: Victory!
How wonderful and exciting it is to hear the Sentinel up on the hill declare that war has ceased and victory has been won! God’s mighty arm has won for us – indeed Belovéd, for us – the Victory over the Ancient Foe: Death. Our God reigns. That alternate translation, “Your God is King” makes our hearts rejoice and sing “Your King is God!” Our God is indeed An Awesome God (↔ Music Link) for who but God could defeat death and the evil that it relies on? It is true that “His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him victory.” What, then, is that right hand and Holy arm? What – or Who – is spoken of in Isaiah 52:10 –
10 The Lord has bared his holy arm
before the eyes of all the nations;
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God.? Who is our Salvation? Our Salvation is the Right Hand of God, his Holy Arm – Jesus, the Christ of God. It is not just the saved who are called to rejoice, to sing in gladness, “Hosanna!” (↔ Music Link) It is the entire world which is called to worship in Psalm 98. Rivers, and hills; streams, and seas; rocks and rills; birds, and trees; all exult in rejoicing, for “He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.” (Psalm 98:9b) Here “judge” (Hebrew: shaphat) carries the connotation of defend, deliver, govern. He will defend, deliver, and govern the World (all of nature) and the Peoples (all the Nations) with justice and impartiality. How can that be? I am speaking like a crazy person here. We know God can and will do that because only God will and can. Jesus is seated “at the right hand of God” because he is the right (and righteous) hand of God. This is why The Apostle Paul says of him:
He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. It is HIS word that will be our judge. We will recall John 12:48-50 – 48 “The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, 49 for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.” In this we see that God has honored his Son during Creation, into and through Salvation, and onward to Transformation. It is not only his transformation we can expect, but also the 
transformation of the World and all within it – including us! Not only will Jesus, the strong Right Arm of God bring us victory, but also he will lift us up to know that Victory. We are reminded of the account we find in Acts 3:1-9. In this passage The Apostle Peter and The Apostle John are going to the temple “at the hour of prayer,” and there they see a man who was lame from birth who was begging for alms. Peter told him, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” Peter extended his hand to help him up, and it was then that the man realized he had been healed. In this case, it was not the man’s faith that brought the healing; it was The Apostle Peter’s Faith! Belovéd, what could we accomplish if we had such Faith? What if there was such a thing as a “Faith Bank?” We have food banks, and money banks, so why not a Faith Bank? Surprise! We do have such a bank. It is called “The Deposit of Faith.” Perhaps that is not a familiar term. We don’t hear about it from the Pulpit often, so, what is it?
These words will surely sound familiar: “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” Here the “small-c catholic” means universal – all of Christendom. Holy – established with and 
in God. Apostolic is the word some folks get hung up on. The Deposit of Faith is the combination of Scripture and Sacred Oral Tradition which is usually called Apostolic Tradition. The Gospels that we read, teach, and preach today were first shared orally among and through the Apostles and their disciples. Jesus told his Apostles that the Holy Spirit would guide them and help them remember everything he had told them as well as everything that was to come (See John 14:26 and John 16:13). That information, that Faith, that Scripture was deposited in them by Jesus and managed in them by the Holy Spirit. This eternal, spiritual, and inviolable Truth came from God to and in the teachings of his Son, Jesus (who did not speak on his own but said only what the Father told him), and was preserved for us in and through the Apostles who were informed and guided by the Holy Spirit.
That’s quite a Chain of Custody! Scripture and Apostolic Tradition are preserved together, and it is the Church’s role to ensure that that Chain of Custody remains unbroken when Scripture and Apostolic Tradition are passed forward to us – the Believers who are the Belovéd. It is a deposit of far greater value than any deposit of wealth valued by earthlings – precious metals, precious gems, precious any physical matter. It is the Deposit of Faith, and from it we are allowed to make investments in our own lives. Did you know that “invest” comes from the concept of clothing a person? Because of The Deposit of Faith, we can expect to be – someday – give our shoes, a crown, and a robe and Walk All Over God’s Heaven. No more moaning and groaning, just shouting our Praise to God. We will return to all that is right, and just, and beautiful, all that is holy, and eternal, and present before God’s Throne.
Belovéd, we often say here, “Honor the Giver by Accepting the Gift.” What happens to us if we refuse this amazing gift of The Deposit of Faith? That little spiritual we just listened to says, “not everyone who’s talkin’ about Heaven is goin’ there.” Jesus said as much himself. Remember when we looked at Matthew 7:21? It says, “21 Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” How, then, do we return to the Lord? In the passage at Psalm 116:12-18, we find this in verse 13: 13 I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. That “cup of Salvation” – as in Psalm 23 – overflows with all the Perfect Gifts and Generous Giving (See James 1:17 again), and the overflow comes from God through the same Chain of Custody as The Deposit of Faith. That is why the Holy Spirit named this post “No Deposit. No Return.” It’s not the Disney movie with David Niven and Barbara Felden. It has nothing to do with soda-pop bottles. It is strictly about the giving and receiving of F.A.I.T.H. as God intended it to be since Before Eden. (← That’s a post for another day.) All of this, Scripture, Apostolic Tradition – and even the Teaching Authority of the Church which gives us a Catechism to embrace and follow – all of these come to us because in the APP God chose to bless us when he planned for that day when the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son full of grace and truth. And you can take that to The Victory Bank! Your Deposit Slip will read YOLO-F.
Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Biblical languages inserts from Bible Hub (Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages) Visit at http://biblehub.com
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
