More than checking the box: Homily for Monday, August 26, 2024

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More than checking the box

It can be easy sometimes to take comfort in checking off boxes. In other words, we do the right things and boom, things will magically appear to be wonderful. If we just do this and this and this and this, then it doesn’t matter how much we really follow God in the rest of our lives. So if I say my morning prayers or my evening prayers, I can check those off the box.

But Paul gives us a different vision of what it means to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. For Paul always extends the gift of peace to the people to whom he is speaking. The purpose of the moral law is not to constrain us, but to free us in true freedom, acting because we understand the Lord God in our lives, acting because we know what we should do, acting because we recognize that all that we do for the good is only because of God’s grace.

And because Paul sees this in the Thessalonians, he gives thanks to God for them. The Pharisees are constrained. They’re constrained for legitimate reasons in some ways. I’ve said before that the Pharisees believed the Messiah would not come until the people of God were faithfully following the Lord in everything.

Although their intent was good, the way in which they lived that intent was not so good. It reduced following God to simply following a set of sometimes arbitrary rules. Jesus came so that we might have life and have it in abundance. Jesus came that we might be free in being who it is that God has created us to be. Jesus came so that we might come to know that in the power of our relationship with Jesus, we can become the persons that God has created us to be.

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