Sunday Services

Sunday School - 9:30 am

Holy Communion - 1st, 3rd, and 5th Sundays, 10:30 am

Morning Prayer - 2nd and 4th Sundays, 10:30 am

Thursday Services

Evening Prayer/Bible Study, 7 pm

Reaching out to the least, the lonely, and the lost

Holy Communion Service at Friendship South

2nd and 4th Sundays, 2:30 pm

Thoughts from the Lectionary: The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

From the Gospel Lesson: St. Luke 18:9 - 14

Here in Scripture we see the well known parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. A Pharisee was a very strict religious leader and a Publican was what we would now call a tax collector. Christ here relates the prayers that both of these men lift to God while in the Temple. The strict religious man thanked God that he wasn’t like all of the sinners around him including the tax collector. Believing himself to be perfect, he places before God in prayer his “achievements” in righteousness. It is as if he feels that he has to remind God of his “perfection”. Meanwhile, across the room, the tax collector, aware of his wretchedness, won’t even lift up his eyes to Heaven (as was the custom in his day when in prayer). Christ goes on to say that the man that went away forgiven of his sins wasn’t the Pharisee but the Publican. What we see in this passage is that God alone is righteous. We are justified before Him only when we see that we cannot justify ourselves but must rely on Christ to clothe us in His righteousness.

When the Holy Ghost shows us who we truly are we realise that apart from God we are lost in our sins. None of our works can make us just before the Holy One. We must cast ourselves on Him and Him alone if we are to be saved. Are you relying on your works to be justified before God? Only the work of Christ can do that. Turn to Him in humility like the Publican and be saved.

Blessings,

Fr. Duane+