Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Tone 6. Beginning of the Indiction, that is, the New Year. Our Holy Father Symeon the Stylite (459) and his mother Martha. Synaxis of the Most Holy Mother of God of Miasenes.
Polyeleos Feast.
2 Corinthians 4:6-15. Matthew 22:35-46.
Read 2 Corinthians 4:6-15
In 1915 Coca-Cola commissioned its bottlers to design a bottle so distinct that it could be recognized lying broken on the ground. Competitors were imitating the name and packaging of the popular soft drink. They needed a way to assure customers that they were getting the real thing.
Looking at the apostle Paul, some Corinthian Christians had begun to wonder if what they received in such a package could be the real thing. He did not appear as impressive as those who were leading them astray – afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down. We may sometimes feel that way looking at ourselves and our spiritual leadership and institutions.
But Paul told them to take closer look at the package – he was not crushed, not driven to despair, not forsaken, and not destroyed. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.”
Paul’s gospel and his living of it are indeed the real thing. The brokenness of his “earthen vessel” still certified its contents. It is our assurance that we are getting the real gospel, one that reflects in our earthly life the eternal life to come – our resurrection with Jesus Christ.
Just as our eternal hope is that, “He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into His presence,” so also we are called to live manifesting the reality in our lives now, that “we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” When we feel ourselves cracking and breaking, that doesn’t mean that the light of the gospel inside us isn’t real, it is an occasion for grace to glorify God.