Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, Sunday, September 15, 2013
Fr. Todd Bragg
St. Margaret Anglican Church
Indianapolis, Indiana
". . . according to the power that worketh in us . . ." (Ephesians 3:13ff)
Did you ever have the experience of finding something that did not know that you had or at the very least you found something that you had forgotten about? It's like finding a treasure. Well, I had that experience this week. I finally watched a movie that I had for a long time but I had never watched it until this week.
This movie that I finally got around to watching this week was called "Cinderella Man" which was based on the true story of a man by the name of James J. Braddock, who was a boxer back in the 1920's and 1930's. The movie begins by seeing Braddock shortly before the beginning of the Depression where he did have numerous fights but his career was really not going anywhere. In fact, just the opposite. The beginning of the movie shows a fight where Braddock is fighting with a broken hand and as a result he is not really boxing as well as he should have. Shortly after this fight the boxing commission takes away his boxing license, which of course, is the way he makes a living for his wife and his three small children.
Just as his boxing career is bottoming out, so is the country as it enters into the Depression Era. The movie moves forward to where the Braddock family is now shown living in a very poor basement apartment barely making ends meet. And to be honest, they were not making ends meet at all because both the electricity and heat were turned off in the middle of winter.
It turned out that Braddock became the replacement for a boxer that could not fight one night. And Braddock jumped at the chance to box because it meant money for his family to survive on. One fight led into another fight and so on and even led ultimately to his getting an opportunity to fight the heavyweight champion of the world at that time, Max Baer. Now, in every one of these bouts, his main focus and his main motivation for winning fights was not furthering his career or even winning the title, his main motivation became his family's survival. Every time he became injured and felt that he could not go on, he thought about his family and the struggles that they had. So, for James J. Braddock, the "power that worketh" in him was his family and their survival. He was fighting for them.
We hear in St. Luke's Gospel, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (St. Luke 12:34) For James J. Braddock, his treasure was his family and that is why he put his heart into every round of every boxing match that he was in. He put his heart into keeping his family afloat.
The reason I bring all of this up is because, certainly, in a similar way Our Blessed Lord's motivation for everything that He did was His love for the fallen human race. He became a human out of love. He performed His miracles out of love. He died on the Cross out of love. His motivation was love for us, the fallen human race. We were in His heart. We were His motivation for everything that He did.
"Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God, not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart." (II Corinthians 3:3) What St. Paul is saying here is that faith is not something that we read off of a paper or off of a script or from some book. Rather, our love of God, our faith in the living God, is something that is written down in our heart. It is something internal that is deep down inside of us. And as a result of our faith taking root internally, this faith springs outward and shows itself externally in the way in which we show love to one another and care for one another and minister unto one another. In this way, we are imitating Our Blessed Saviour because the love He has for humanity is not written down in stone or on tablets or in a book but is written in His Heart.
And to the young man who was questioning Our Lord and asking Him about what the greatest commandment was, Our Lord responded: "Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind." (St. Matthew 22:36-37) When we give ourselves over to God, we give ourselves wholeheartedly. We give of ourselves to God with our whole being: our heart, our soul and our mind. And we do this because it was God Who first gave of Himself to us. Our Lord did not just give us a part of Himself and then kept the other part from us. No, He gave everything to us. He gave fallen man His life and even His death! He gave us everything and in return He asks the same from us. He does not ask more from us than He is willing to do Himself to begin with. We are His motivation. We are the reason that He lived as a human being and even the reason why He died. Thus, we can certainly offer our heart to the One who first offered His Heart to us!
Did you ever have the experience of finding something that did not know that you had or at the very least you found something that you had forgotten about? It's like finding a treasure. Well, I had that experience this week. I finally watched a movie that I had for a long time but I had never watched it until this week.
This movie that I finally got around to watching this week was called "Cinderella Man" which was based on the true story of a man by the name of James J. Braddock, who was a boxer back in the 1920's and 1930's. The movie begins by seeing Braddock shortly before the beginning of the Depression where he did have numerous fights but his career was really not going anywhere. In fact, just the opposite. The beginning of the movie shows a fight where Braddock is fighting with a broken hand and as a result he is not really boxing as well as he should have. Shortly after this fight the boxing commission takes away his boxing license, which of course, is the way he makes a living for his wife and his three small children.
Just as his boxing career is bottoming out, so is the country as it enters into the Depression Era. The movie moves forward to where the Braddock family is now shown living in a very poor basement apartment barely making ends meet. And to be honest, they were not making ends meet at all because both the electricity and heat were turned off in the middle of winter.
It turned out that Braddock became the replacement for a boxer that could not fight one night. And Braddock jumped at the chance to box because it meant money for his family to survive on. One fight led into another fight and so on and even led ultimately to his getting an opportunity to fight the heavyweight champion of the world at that time, Max Baer. Now, in every one of these bouts, his main focus and his main motivation for winning fights was not furthering his career or even winning the title, his main motivation became his family's survival. Every time he became injured and felt that he could not go on, he thought about his family and the struggles that they had. So, for James J. Braddock, the "power that worketh" in him was his family and their survival. He was fighting for them.
We hear in St. Luke's Gospel, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (St. Luke 12:34) For James J. Braddock, his treasure was his family and that is why he put his heart into every round of every boxing match that he was in. He put his heart into keeping his family afloat.
The reason I bring all of this up is because, certainly, in a similar way Our Blessed Lord's motivation for everything that He did was His love for the fallen human race. He became a human out of love. He performed His miracles out of love. He died on the Cross out of love. His motivation was love for us, the fallen human race. We were in His heart. We were His motivation for everything that He did.
"Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God, not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart." (II Corinthians 3:3) What St. Paul is saying here is that faith is not something that we read off of a paper or off of a script or from some book. Rather, our love of God, our faith in the living God, is something that is written down in our heart. It is something internal that is deep down inside of us. And as a result of our faith taking root internally, this faith springs outward and shows itself externally in the way in which we show love to one another and care for one another and minister unto one another. In this way, we are imitating Our Blessed Saviour because the love He has for humanity is not written down in stone or on tablets or in a book but is written in His Heart.
And to the young man who was questioning Our Lord and asking Him about what the greatest commandment was, Our Lord responded: "Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind." (St. Matthew 22:36-37) When we give ourselves over to God, we give ourselves wholeheartedly. We give of ourselves to God with our whole being: our heart, our soul and our mind. And we do this because it was God Who first gave of Himself to us. Our Lord did not just give us a part of Himself and then kept the other part from us. No, He gave everything to us. He gave fallen man His life and even His death! He gave us everything and in return He asks the same from us. He does not ask more from us than He is willing to do Himself to begin with. We are His motivation. We are the reason that He lived as a human being and even the reason why He died. Thus, we can certainly offer our heart to the One who first offered His Heart to us!
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