Season after Pentecost | 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45:10-17 or Song of Solomon 2:8-13; (Zechariah 9:9-12; Psalm 145:8-14;) Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Wearing God, by Lauren F. Winner
I read Lauren Winner's new book with the sort of joy one feels when watching someone utterly hit their stride.
In Romans 7, sin seems to have at least as much agency as Paul does.
One way to approach the epistle text for this week is to talk about the spiritual discipline of saying yes and saying no, an idea I was first introduced to by M. Shawn Copeland. (I find The Message translation of this passage helpful here.) God created us with the freedom to say yes and say no. But as Paul reminds us, we don’t always know how to use this freedom very well.
We learn to be Christian not when we succeed at perfection but when we realize that we will always fail.