Year A, Lectionary 145
We are all God's chosen. We bear God's image and are called to reflect God unto the world. May we not see our identity in worldly status, wealth, or our egos but, instead, know we are God's children and live this out.
“You can leave God but God will never leave you”
“I still remind you as scripture says, our help ultimately comes from God and God can use any instrument to bring about that that he wants to bring about in your life”
“We need popes, bishops, priests, all of us, to know God is God and there is no other”
“We are not first made in God's image and then, almost as an afterthought, given a task to perform. Our vocation flows from our identity. We are God's image because we have been entrusted with God's work.”
“What Jesus is essentially saying to the Pharisees in response is, 'you can give your money to Caesar but you need to give your life, yourself to God'”
“God gives willingly. God wants us to give. God does not have to be begged or bribed to bless us. God gives lavishly.”
“Life is not meant to be spent fearfully gathering up trappings our culture claims we need like security, money, wealth, power. Life is not to be hoarded, it is to be poured out.”
“What glorious gift shall we render to our sisters and brothers and to our God?”
“Do we respond with timidity or do we respond with justice? Do we respond with the prophetic voice that the Holy Spirit gives to us? Do we remind Caesar that the earth and everything that's in it is the Lord's?”
“where are we putting our energy? Negativity is heavy. Negativity draws a lot of energy and most of the time the negativity is not worth or worthy of our time, our attention, our energy.”
“We cannot limit God's power, but we can limit our willingness to receive what he offers”
“What would it look like to do what Jesus did? To name what actually belongs to God instead of accepting the binary we've been handed by the world?”
“The Kingdom does not get built with violence, manipulation. The Kingdom gets built with love.”
“If human greed interchanges the dignity of the planet with the pursuit of the coin, do we lose sight of what belongs to God and what belongs to empire?”
“Yes, scripture says our help comes from the Lord, but God is at liberty to choose the channel through which he would like to get the freedom, the help, across to us”
“If we truly believe that we are created in God's image, then our calling is to allow that image to become visible to others. And it should be evident in our work, in our families, in our communities.”
“We are chosen by God. And the God who chooses us has a dream for us, the individual us and the collective us, that surpasses the imagination of empire.”
“I hope that everybody that leaves the church house today comes thinking about one thing: what am I giving to God?”
“Can you hear the voice of God when God is calling you? So often times, when we get upset or entrenched or we've been hurt, we can't hear anything but our pain.”
“Sometimes we forget that God can use anybody”
