28th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
Is he enough?
Rev. James Wickersham
There is a line from St. Paul today that I keep coming back to. He says that he has learned how to live with abundance and how to live with want. I find that remarkable. I can preach that much more easily than I can live it, unfortunately.
Most of us probably have a sense of how we think life is supposed to go. We hope the people we love will be okay. We hope we will have enough. We hope the world will stay reasonably stable. We hope the things we count on will still be there tomorrow. But do things always work out as we think they should? What if something really does fall apart? I don’t particularly like that question. I can come up with all kinds of things I hope never happen. I suspect most of us can.
Then Paul says, “I have learned the secret.” I think that is what catches me. He learned it. He learned how to have much without letting it own him. He learned how to go without and still remain with Christ. I am still learning that.
Maybe that is part of what the Christian life is. We get to the living of life. The daily grind if you will. Then life changes, mostly in small ways but sometimes in great big ways, and the Lord asks us again: am I enough for you?
I’ve always wondered about that line in Psalm 23. If the Lord is the shepherd, why does he let the sheep walk through the dark valley at all? There are times when I would much rather the Lord simply lead me around it. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he doesn’t. I think we all end up in one of those dark valleys. If you are, I don’t think I have some clever explanation for why you are there. I would be very careful about anyone who thinks they do.
In the midst of that dark valley the psalm tells us: “You are at my side.” There are times when that has to be enough. Maybe that is also what Paul learned. He did not learn how to control what happened to him. He learned that Christ was with him. That is a very different kind of security.
We can spend a tremendous amount of energy trying to make sure that nothing bad ever happens. Of course we should be responsible. We should take care of ourselves and the people entrusted to us. But eventually something happens that we cannot control. Then we are confronted with the fundamental question: is Christ enough?
I would like to be able to answer that with certitude and faith every time. I’m not sure I can. Maybe that is why we keep coming back here. Week after week we come to this altar. Sometimes life is going well. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes we are praying easily, and sometimes we are hanging on by a thread. Christ the Lord continues to give us himself in the midst of our highs or lows, our joys and our sorrows.
Perhaps over the course of a lifetime, that is how we learn what Paul learned. The things around us change. Sometimes they disappear. Christ remains. And over the course of a life lived in faith, with the help of grace, we begin to believe that he really is enough.