Why is Christianity the Good News? Scripture and the 39 Articles of Religion show us that in our natural state we are enemies of God. We want to go our own way. We are "dead" in our trespasses and sinful choices unless God intervenes. That's the bad news, and the good news is God has indeed intervened in the person and work of Jesus Christ. By trusting faith in him, and in him alone, we can become children of God, right in position because of what Jesus has done for us.

The parable of Jesus recorded for us in Chapter 22 of Matthew's Gospel, the parable of a wedding banquet, fully encapsulates the Christian Gospel. When those invited fail to come, the King sends out his servants into the world to bring in people called and chosen for the Kingdom of God. They are called as a free gift of the King. They are clothed by faith in the proper wedding garments, just as we can be clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

The terrible storm and flooding that hit our country, in tandem with the warfare and violence afflicting Israel and the Mid East, bring deep sorrow and pain to our hearts. Our response should be sincere and energetic prayer for those matters and all afflicted by them.

Jesus's healing of the palsied man shows the miraculous power to God to heal. Beyond medical science and beyond personality, God's power heals the soul.

September 29 is a day marked for honoring Saint Michael the archangel. Saint Michael is a warrior angel who led the defeat of Satan in the celestial battle between the forces of cosmic rebellion and the beings loyal to God. Father Andrew speaks to this and to the many ways in which Angles act for God and minister to us.

In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis had a chapter on Pride, what he calls "The Great Sin," the sin that underlies all other sins like a poison. Jesus repeatedly shamed the proud and in the Gospel of today from Saint Luke declares that those who exalt themselves will be brought low and it is the humble will be exalted before God

Saint Paul cautions us about "being the right way" and "doing the right things" without doing them from the right motives, motives of agape love for one another.

Today's Gospel lesson speaks to the requirement that we love our neighbor as ourselves. Many passages of scripture talk about the love of God, and our duty to love one another. In modern culture it's not so much God is love, as "love is God, a distortion of the biblical picture of love.

The Gospel account of Jesus' miraculous healing of the man who was deaf and of impaired speech inspires us with the calling to reach out to others.

As Christians we are called to see those around us who need to hear about Jesus.