20 Pentecost
The Reverend Noel E. Bordador

“Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Let me begin my reflection this morning with a favorite a meditation written by John Henry Cardinal Newman.

"God was all-complete, all-blessed in Himself, but it was His will to create a world for His glory. He is Almighty, and might have done all things Himself, but it has been His will to bring about His purposes by the beings He has created. We are all created to His glory--we are created to do His will. I am created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created; I have a place in God's counsels, in God's world, which no one else has; whether I be rich or poor, despised or esteemed by man, God knows me and calls me by my name."

"God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission--I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his--if indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work: I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling."

"Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me--still He knows what He is about."

The late Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, once remarked that each human person is an “unrepeated term of God’s creative love,” each human being born is a unique expression of God’s creative love. No one is ever an accident or freak of nature, that each one of us born into this world has been loved into existence by a loving God. And we also believe that we were brought into the world for some definite purpose, work and mission that would manifest God’s creative love for the world he created. All of us have been endowed with innate gifts, abilities, talents, skills and equipped with grace in order to do precisely the mission God intends for us to carry out.

A few years ago, I happen to stop by an antique store, and I saw a rather old wooden crucifix, perhaps a couple of hundred years old. On it was an image of the crucified Christ, but because of the antiquity of the image, it has lost its legs and arms. It reminded me what that formidable woman of faith, the sixteenth century mystic, Teresa de Jesus, once said: “Christ has no body now but yours, 
No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks
compassionately on this world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” We are all vicars of God, we are all vicars of Christ on earth. Through us, with us and in us, God seeks to manifest his redemptive love for his beautiful but broken world. Life is a grand occasion, a great opportunity for us to be bearers of that divine love to a world that sorely needs it. Our life then is to be lived not solely for our own benefit but also for the service others. We do not live isolated lives, but God calls us to community. We live not only for ourselves, we live also for others, sharing in and carrying one another’s crosses and burdens.

This is the point of the Gospel today. We are called to some form of service. God was born into this world as human being in order to serve us, offering his life for the sake of the world. Likewise, to be like God, to be like Jesus, we must rejoice in the fact that God has given us life for a specific purpose and mission which each of us must discover for himself or herself. But our life must be lived as an offering for the service of God and his created world. For life to be great and meaningful and purposeful must involve this call to serve others.

It is through your service that God’s love for the world is shown. It is though your service that the world experiences God’s love. It is through your service that those in need among us feel the care and providence of God. Let me end with this story from the Muslim tradition.

A deeply spiritual man was praying and as he was saying his prayers, he saw a poor man dressed in filthy and ragged clothes. He continued his prayers, ignoring the poor man. Then, his prayers were interrupted again, this time by a struggling blind man who passed by. He took note of the blind man, but ignored him, and continued his prayers. The third time, he was interrupted by the sight of sick man. By that time he was bothered by the suffering he saw in the world that he cried out to God: “O merciful and beneficent God, if you are truly great and all compassionate and loving, why don’t you do something?” Then out of the deep silence came the voice of God: “I did do something about it… I made you.”