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Sunday: 9th September, 2018

1st reading: Isaiah 35:4-7 Psalm 146
2nd reading: James 2:1-5
Gospel: Mark 7:31-37

James 2:3,4 And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?

One of the easiest things to do is to shift blame and point fingers at others as the perpetrators of particular actions. Discrimination, as Saint James mentions, is one thing that the body of Christ is always quick to say ‘we are not a part of’. However, his words of bring this a lot closer to home than we would expect and encourages us not to look too far.

Using a very practical example, Saint James reminds us of how easily it is to use double standards. We may not be doing so voluntarily, but we can be caught in the Web of ‘speaking against’, when we are in it ourselves. In a way that depicts setting water aside to quench the fires of nearby fields while our own farms are on fire; we have taken ourselves out of the very equation when discrimination is mentioned.

Even better still, in the words of Jesus, the body of Christ has forgotten to take the log out of our eyes and are busy getting the speck out of the eyes of others. Beloved, the call today is not to lose sight of our sense of discernment, and fall to the wayside caught up drawing lines between between people. We are meant to bridges, anchors and pillars of love: that is the call of the Christian so we want to ask ourselves ‘how true have we been to this call?’

Remember # don’t easily draw lines between people- build bridges.

#sly