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Grace, mercy, and peace, be unto you from God, our Father and from our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

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Amen.

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The text is the text that was read earlier

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so I won't repeat it here.

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But focusing on those words of Koinonia participation fellowship with

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the Father and the Son.

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Well, in the Gloria patri, that accompanies every Psalm and liturgy.

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We say, glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy

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Spirit, right?

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As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end.

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Amen.

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And we append this to the Psalms to demonstrate that

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the Psalms are ours. That they're ours as Christians, their authored

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by the same

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God who brought everything into being and still sustains

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it.

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This has been the consistent message

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of the church that, which was from the beginning is now and ever shall

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be world without end.

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So our text from first John is reminder a reminder that we need to

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take the Long View in life, especially when this whole world starts

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getting us down and people are just too much to take

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as one put it. We definitely already living in an age that is tense,

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worried woke struggling and all of it

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just weighing us down.

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I've just about had it with wearing masks, you know worrying about who

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I might have infected or getting infected

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myself.

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You know, it's a difficult time that we live in as the church as well

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as a church experiences attacks from everywhere.

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But if we're honest, we recognize that every age has been this way, or

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at least some version of it.

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Ever since sin entered into the world.

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That's the historian and neither wants to look back and recognize

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there is nothing new under the sun.

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But that doesn't make it any easier, you know, sin is the gravity that

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is always looking to pull us down.

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It's looking to pull us away from the glory

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that is yet to be revealed in us.

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And we struggle with it day in and day out and one of the reasons sin

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is so dangerous.

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Is that it takes our eyes off of the author the perfecter of our faith

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the very Creator who brought us into this world.

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It distracts us and causes us to wonder what is man that you are mindful

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of him and the son of man that you visit him.

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I mean, why would the Father of all creation or his Son frankly want

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to have fellowship with this lot, you know with with any of us

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frankly.

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The sin in our lives reminds us

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that we are not worthy of that fellowship

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and that is a devastating realization.

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What are we to do?

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What is God to do for that matter?

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You know, Athanasius a 4th Century Bishop, I had to bring him

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in here.

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You know, he he recognized in his writing on the Incarnation that God

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faced a dilemma is what he calls it.

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It's a Divine dilemma and he wonders, you know when God sees sin in

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the mess that we've caused his world and his creation.

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He wonders, what's God's going to do?

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What is God going to do about it?

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And so he paints a picture, he refers to the one who was from the

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beginning as a kind of artist who brought creation into being so that

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it wasn't just good or agatos

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but it was beautiful.

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Kalós.

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Athanasius speaks about the Divine, dilemma that confronted God when

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his creation went awry.

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Specifically, when the crown of his creation human beings rebelled

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against him, with the fall into sin humanity, he says, lost its

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knowledge of God and also became subject to corruption.

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Yeah, the image of God was lost.

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So what was God to do?

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And he talks about this by using the image of an icon, a figure

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painted on wood that has been left outside and gotten all dirty.

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Here's what he says.

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He says for us, when a figure painted on wood has been soiled by dirt

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from outside.

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It is necessary for him, whose figure, it is to come again so that the

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image can be renewed on the same material. Because of his portrait

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even the material on which it is painted is not cast aside, but the

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portrait is re inscribed on it.

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In the same way,

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He says the all holy Son of the Father, being the image of the Father

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came to our place to renew the human being made according to himself

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and to find him as one lost through the forgiveness of sins.

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As he himself, says in the gospels.

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I came to seek and to save that which was lost.

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Athanasius, not only talks about the image that has been lost

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devastated covered over and obscured by sin.

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He also talks about the artist, the one in whose image, the work was

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created. He says this artist comes back and fixes what was ruined in

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order to bring out and bring back the original beauty

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that was there, and I just love that image.

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It's similar to another image that we see in this very Chapel, you

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know, you look at these stained glass windows, that are that are

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stunning, that are beautiful.

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Each window is made up of these broken pieces that on their own look

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random, and without any order or purpose.

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When all these broken pieces are put together a beautiful picture

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emerges and the artists work

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becomes clear.

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But until that time we see through a glass dimly, shall we say.

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In your life and mine is filled with a thousand broken pieces.

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Things that happened years ago and things that happen yesterday.

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People

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you've lost things you've done or said, or didn't do.

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That's all part of your life

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and it's part of mine, too.

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And God knows every piece of it.

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But instead of throwing his artwork way, he comes to repair it.

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He takes the ugly, the broken pieces of our lives and makes them into

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something new, something, wonderful.

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Something that is beyond what we could ever even imagine.

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And the most amazing thing of all is that he's not even, he's not even

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through with you yet.

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You know, he's still got a lot more work to do.

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There's a whole other age yet to come that John speaks about that

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still awaits us.

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Mud right now

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we see through a glass dimly Paul says, but then we shall see face to

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face.

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And I love to think about that future Glory sometimes especially when

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life gets kind of difficult say and I'm I'm reminded of that recent

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SpaceX flight when Captain Kirk right aka William Shatner from Star

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Trek fame

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went up into space. And his reaction on reaching the edge of our

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atmosphere

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for real was sheer wonder, sheer amazement.

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He just didn't have words for it

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even.

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It's kind of like a kid in a candy store.

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He was privileged to get a different perspective on things

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as he escaped the hold of gravity itself and look back on the

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planet and then look forward out into space.

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We need experiences like that every now and then. We need reminders

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that this is not all there

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is that there is much more that awaits us just beyond the horizon.

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The undiscovered country, if you will. The disciples got a glimpse of

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that

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while Jesus was on this earth. When they saw him, they heard him

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they touched him, some of them were even

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allowed to experience his glory for a bit.

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When they were up on that Mount of Transfiguration.

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Peter James and John, got to feel what it was like to have fellowship

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to have Koinonia to even participate in that divine nature of Jesus.

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If only even for a moment.

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What a moment.

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Peter would have loved to just stay there.

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Stay there and bask in the divine presence of Jesus and his Father.

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These disciples got to experience while still here on Earth

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something

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we're going to all get to experience one day.

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And this is one of the reasons we celebrate All Saints Day and this is

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what I'd like to leave you with.

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It's a reminder of those who have gone before us and who are already

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participating in and experiencing that beatific vision.

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That fellowship that participation with the Father, the Son, and the

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Holy Spirit.

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It's a reminder that there is more much more that awaits us. The

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glorious company of the Apostles, prophets, martyrs, friends, moms

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and dads, kids. The whole company of Heaven that is outlined in that

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transept window over there, you know that reminds us of that day which

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is yet to come.

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That is really just over the horizon

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if we can just hang on because we have a God who came to this earth to

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save us to live die and rise again.

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So that we might rise with him to that beautiful Glory, that awaits

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us.

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And so as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be made be so

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for us world without end.

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Amen.

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And the peace of God, which passes all human understanding, shall keep

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our hearts and minds through faith in Christ in

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Jesus unto life Everlasting.

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Amen.