22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 17), Year A

​Peace can only be built on truth. A peace that is just and sustainable requires we tell the truth of who all people are as beloved, the truth of what creation is as beloved. And then peace requires we act on this truth – not alone, but together with each other and with our communities.

Honoring all life as beloved; balancing our competing desires; being honest and giving our self - our God-given gifts and vision - to a future where actual flourishing is possible is the life to which we are commanded as followers of Christ and it takes grace and practice…and more grace.

The Christian way is grounded in truth telling. Our tradition exists to help us remember the grace we have and the patience it takes to go this way together. It nourishes us and holds us and sends us to enter peace making with each other and with our communities. God has placed a vision of peace, a desire for peace, a truth about what peace looks like not just in us, but in also in the communities of which we are a part. Learning and growing and helping each other discern how to act on the truth of who we all are - a creation that is beloved - takes all of us. If we impose our vision of peace on others without their participation, we dishonor the truths they know and the beloved creatures they are.

Come to worship beloved and remember who you are. Come be nourished by God’s grace. Come take your place with God’s people over time so that we might have what we need to be able to turn to each other and to God’s world with the love, the grace, the patience, the openness to the stories of others that we need to build peace.

Readings: Exodus 3:1-15 † Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26 † Romans 12:9-21 † Matthew 16:21-28
 
About the Art: Wesley, Frank, 1923-2002. Moses and the Burning Bush. from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59185 [retrieved August 29, 2023].

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