What do people hear when we speak?

Are some of us navel-gazing instead of helping to proclaim the Gospel?

No, we were not among the original eleven Apostles (Judas was out of the picture) to whom Jesus spoke these words (Matthew 28:16-20, emphases mine):

The Great Commission

 ¹⁶Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. ¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

No, not all of us are meant to be ordained. However, that does not absolve us from showing more of the Christian example in our speech and deeds.

Yesterday, I excerpted a sermon from the Revd P G Mathew, a former scientist turned Reformed clergyman. This is what he had to say about putting our own preoccupations aside more often and asking the Holy Spirit for guidance and fortitude as Christians:

What if you are already a Christian, but you have only been speaking about your cars, about your children, about your back pain–about everything else but the gospel of Jesus Christ? Would you this day determine and purpose to be filled with the Spirit so that you may proclaim Jesus Christ to a sinful person? Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to come upon you with such power and might that you may be filled and speak forth the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ to all the world. If you pray like this, God will help you. Amen.

That doesn’t mean we cannot talk about our personal lives or secular reflections, only that sometimes they can monopolise too much of our thoughts. And what we think about, we talk about.

What are people mainly hearing from or seeing in us? Our personal aches and pains, our materialism or the comforting life we live in Jesus Christ? One to ponder, especially during this lengthy season of Pentecost (‘Ordinary Time’, sadly, for post-Vatican II Catholics).