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Challenge to preachers and all Christians

Fr. Tom Konopka
Mar 3
2 min read

The following thought struck me this morning. What would happen if we changed the first reading a little. The quote from Isaiah is:

Hear the word of the LORD, princes of Sodom!

Listen to the instruction of our God, people of Gomorrah!

What would we feel like if we changed Sodom to our name, the name of our church, our state, our nation, whatever…..and did the same thing with Gomorrah. According to the commentary on the Universalis app, his use of these cities is to drive home the point that the people of Israel had strayed from the covenant and the exile would result. Lent can be a time for the Christian community to take stock as to how the community as a whole is living the Gospel. Do we reflect the Gospel values? Do we stand out to the world as witnesses of Jesus? These are tough questions but important.

The Gospel is also a challenge to those, specifically in leadership. As someone who preaches on a regular basis, I have am sensitive to this. I know my own humanity very well, but I hope that how I behave reflects Jesus more than not. Those of us who are called to leadership, whether bishop, priest, deacon or lay ecclesial leadership are called to serve the community of faith as Jesus did. We are to embody the teachings of Jesus by the way we live, not by what we say.

This Lent, the more I read the Scriptures, the more I realize that Jesus’ teachings are plain. Sometimes I complicate it, but Matthew 25 is not complicated. It is quite clear. The same holy true with the Sermon on the Mount.

My prayer today is that I can live what I am called to preach. I pray for you to live as the Scripture calls you to. As hard as the readings today are, they are necessa

ry to remind us who truly are: disciples of Jesus.

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