Aloha Friday Message – October 18, 2024 – Second to All

2442AFC101824 – Second to All

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Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace and Peace to each of you from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus the Christ, in the Power of the Holy Spirit. On this, the 28^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we continue with our preparation for the Feast of Christ the King on Sunday November 24^th, 2024. The following Sunday with be the First Sunday of Advent. The elections will be over, we hope, Christmas will be “just around the corner, and before we really even catch our collective breath, it will be 2025. Thank goodness it isn’t the year 2525 (↔ Music Link) – although I confess what’s happening this year makes it sound like 2525, and all the really scary years that follow in that song. It was a remarkable “one-hit-wonder” for 6 weeks during the summer back in 1969. It covers 10,000 years of changes. Many of those changes, I believe, have arrived well ahead of the dates assigned in those lyrics.

Even more apparent and more-easily recognized, is the tsunami of evil that is no longer coming toward us. It has washed over us and swept away nearly all that was and is good while leaving only wreck and ruin behind. The cancel culture of death mongers gobble in whatever power they can find – Power of Evil as well As Power of Good – and mash it all together so that one cannot tell which is which. Everything is as mire. Whenever we dip out hands into it, we flutter our hands and try to fling the filth away. Nonetheless, we are soiled by everything we touch and we cannot avoid touching it because it swamps all that we have and all that we are.

Almost.

The earthling who fears the Lord, the earthling who pursues justice, ministers with mercy, and serves because of humble obedience, that earthling sheds corruption like a rock sheds water. That earthling diligently prays for his needs so as to fill the needs of others. Answers to her/his prayers are evident to everyone. Their lives are filled with happiness because they know and love the Lord and demonstrate that by knowing and loving his commandments and every word that comes from the mouth of God. God is like a Father to them and they are his joyous children who revel in his compassion and marvel at his just ways. All their works are committed in harmony with the unity of God’s creation, and the song of that harmony is heard in their voices. They know and understand that we must:

“Always seek, expect to receive, and accept

the greater gift — the opportunity to give.”

(A repeat from Terrific Tuesday, if you were there.) There is a remarkable Power that fills –indeed rules – the lives of all those who “Trust in the Lord and do Good.” It is, however, not the power of authority or might. It is the Power found only in those who have the Spirit of Service within them. We call them Service Leaders.

Service Leaders are few and far between, it seems; but still, we know they are among us by the Good that they bring to Earth. Maybe it’s just because I’m old and foggy, but I cannot think of a single thing that is an act of Goodness, truly and Act of Charity, that does not result from the desire to serve someone. Servant Leaders know, without a doubt, that DEI stands for Divine Eternal Integrity. That is what I call The Most Elemental Quality of God. From the Beginning we have been told “The Lord our God is One.” There is no greater integration than to be fundamentally, profoundly, exceptionally, exclusively  ONE. Yet we hold fast to the Trinitarian dogma of God IN THREE PERSONS. Because God is GOD, there is none greater in existence. And yet we are told, “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” Well, then, is God our servant, the slave of all?

Note that the passage says among you. Therefore it applies to all earthlings, i.e., all living flesh that is human. Jesus was fully human and fully Divine. As a human, he was indeed the Servant of all and yet he was at the same time Master of all. Our title says, “Second to All.” To whom was Jesus Second? I submit the answer is The Father. Consider Matthew 24:36 – “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” And who searches and knows the ways of The Father? Why, Wisdom, of course! Take a quick detour here and look at Proverbs 8:22-31. Go ahead. It takes less than 60 seconds.

Isn’t that beautiful? I find it just remarkable that the first thing, the first aspect of Fundamental Existence – Divine Eternal Integrity – is Wisdom! And God, in his Wisdom, made his Creation on a hierarchy of service: God above all and all in service to him and to their neighbors. This is why he says, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul. and all your mind, and you must Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love. What is its purpose? Why did God create us with the capacity for Love?

We have that capability of Loving – I’m talking ἀγάπη, agapē – here; Divine Everlasting Love (as in Perfect Integrity, Endless Mercy, Everlasting Love, And Eternal Salvation) through Christ, our Lord. The purpose of Love is to serve The Other. As we see in Jesus’ explication of The Law in Matthew 22:37, we must allow Christ’s Law of Love to be the foundation of all our relationships. That’s the meaning of God’s Creation – relationships. He has a relationship with us: Creator. We have a relationship with him: Creation. We have his Spirit of Life in us, and we are us because God made his earthlings to be “fruitful, and multiply, and subdue the Earth.” “Subdue” in this command of God does not mean to overwhelm, to crush, to suppress, or to subjugate, vanquish, destroy, or to reduce his Earth. God intends for us to tame the Earth, and to use the creatures which he created for our well-being with dignity and restraint. We are given the Gift of Stewardship of all that he created for us here on Earth.

What a tremendously generous Gift that is! It gives us the opportunity to serve him by serving each other. One does not have to be Ordained as a Pastor, or Priest, or to submit to a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience to be a Minister to the Lord! “All” we have to do is love and obey him, and in the same manner love and responsibly preserve all else he has created. Easy to say; very tough to do! Unless we know the greatest Minister of all Eternity.

The Apostle Paul tells us in the Key Verse above that we have a Great High Priest – a Minister above all others – who has passed through Heaven to be with us to serve us by revealing to us all that God expects – and in addition, he tells us how to do what God requires by doing it himself. God himself came to serve us by teaching us how to serve God. Take a moment and let that sink in.

GOD HIMSELF CAME TO SERVE US BY TEACHING US

HOW TO SERVE GOD.

In my experience, that tops the list of Servant Leadership. God blessed us – made us happy and joyful – by being one of us! What a Blessing! He did that so he could teach us how to bless each other by following him (↔ Music Link). You see, Jesus paid it all (↔ Music Link), and all we have to do to be his followers is to accept that Gift of Beatitude – his own Blessedness. He serves the Father by serving as the Atoning Sacrifice for our sins. for our sake he took on the just judgment against us thereby freeing us of sin and reconciling us with God. It is our responsibility, our sacred duty, to sacrifice our lives to bring justice and obedience to whomsoever has rejected God’s Gift of ἀγάπη, “For [even] the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” As we’ve stated here before, that word many means multitudes, in great numbers – pollōn in this passage. The meaning is plain and frank. Many will benefit because of what he did.

Reflect again on what he did: came not to be served but to serve. If I, if you, if we want the Discipleship of service, we must bear in mind Jesus’ command in John 12:26 – ²⁶ Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. Jesus himself said that even he came to serve. Who? His Father. How? By serving for us in our place at judgment. By voluntarily, willingly accepting the consequences of our sin, he wiped away our guilt so that we receive Pardon – the freely-granted Grace of the forgiveness of our sins by nullifying the requisite punishment, and Forgiveness – the completion of redemption and removal of all limits to reconciliation between the offended and the offender. That, my dear friends is a REALLY BIG DEAL! It’s also a really good deal. We have an example in our Key Verse from the Psalm, reporduced for you below:
Psalms 33:18-19 –
¹⁸ Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
    on those who hope in his steadfast love, (checed)
¹⁹ to deliver their soul from death,
    and to keep them alive in famine.

God sees everything we do, knows everything we think, hears everything we say, and when all of that is performed as a commitment to serving him, then we are the beneficiaries of his beneficence – his steadfast love, his mercy and kindness, that Everlasting Love we so desperately need – then he delivers us from death. Here we also understand that it is not just physical famine and death – a scourge seen often across the Earth – but also spiritual famine. This is the famine, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, that he promises to all who are nourished by his Word and his Promises through his Endless Mercy. All of this vast overabundance, more than we can ever fathom, is ours for the mere pittance of trust and obedience, for in these small things of service (all  of me in trade for ALL of HIM) there is the promise and capacity for eternal reunion with him where he is, has been, and will be. Something much greater than “a pearl of great price” is ours in exchange for loving God and neighbor enough to be their servant.

Everyone who enters into and keeps that covenant relationship with her/his creator will enter into everlasting Love, Peace, and Joy. This is only possible because of God’s promise that he gives us in his devoted Servant of whom he says with whom I am pleased, will bear the punishment of many and for his sake I will forgive them. Jesus did indeed lead a life of suffering. Every hour of every day he resolutely, willingly walked toward the immense suffering at the Cross. Along the way he had no home, no possessions, no desire to do anything other than to serve his Father. Let us pray to God that we will have no desire to anything other that the serve the Father and his Son while diligently serving one another.

You’ve heard this before, but will you let me be your servant? (↔ Music Link)

Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!

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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

About Chick Todd

American Roman Catholic reared as a "Baptiterian" in Denver Colorado. Now living on Kauaʻi. USAF Vet. Married for over 50 years. Scripture study has been my passion ever since my first "Bible talk" at age 6 in VBS.