Honey wafers

Galatians 3:6-14

          So there is this Deacon of the Roman Catholic faith who has a good heart (really he does, but he hides it well). On one particular Thanksgiving he decided, with the permission of the Pastor, to make the hosts for the Eucharistic Feast.  This man is extremely scrupulous about everything.

Perhaps beyond that, he's fanatical. Whatever possessed him to add a small amount of honey to his 'hosts'? Well somehow, it got out that the host were not made by some miraculous official formula and then the drama came, the controversy and the so called scandal. We did not really receive communion! some shouted. He should be thoroughly routed said others. (ok, I made that one up because it rhymed)

What gives? Was it malicious? Was he lead astray by the Devil?   And the Pastor? Well, he allowed it.  Call the Bishop! Send a letter to Rome! Such nonsense. It's as if some magical incantation turns the host into the body of Christ.

        You'd think common sense eluded everyone so outraged. It's difficult for me to believe that with this passage alone, people still feel they are justified by the law. Follow all the laws and you shall be saved! There are practical laws and laws that help guide us but in reality the laws are not what justifies us. When I started attending the local Friary, the brother had noted the number of newcomers to the chapel. He apparently felt compelled to tell everyone that they could do nothing wrong. Miss up a word or two here or there, fail to bow one's head, it was all ok. He was saying it is not by those man made words and those man made gestures that we are justified. Had this passage been the reading for the day he would have had a ready made sermon.

          Our justification comes from our faith that Jesus Christ as the son of God who came to earth, lived among us as one of us and offered up himself willingly to death for us, and an excruciating death it was.

           I understand that Jihads, Holy wars, Inquisitions and Reformations have been begun over the basis for Holy justification but really, isn't our faith and the extension of that, love, the most important?

           If we have no faith we are hollow. If we have no love we are not alive. If we have rules and simply obey them we are robots.

           I vote for faith and love in the name of our creator who loves all of us. Let us never forget his unending love for us.

Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.’ For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.’ Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law; for ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’ But the law does not rest on faith; on the contrary, ‘Whoever does the works of the law will live by them.’ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’— in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.