Our God is an awesome God
who reigns from heaven above
with wisdom, power and love,
our God is an awesome God!

 

When God saw that the man and the woman
had been disobedient
and had eaten the fruit from the tree
which God had forbidden them to eat from,

God did not rise up in anger
and destroy what God had created.

God allowed the man and the woman
to speak for themselves.

And speak they did.

Adam blamed the woman God made,
as it is was at least partially God’s fault to begin with.

Then the woman blamed the serpent.

 

And it was only the serpent who God cursed.

The man and the woman would be banished from paradise,
but they would remain God’s beloved.

 

Our God is an awesome God
who reigns from heaven above.
 

The psalmist today cries out:

With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.

The psalmist knows that though he is a sinner
and in need of forgiveness
that with the Lord is kindness
and with him is plenteous redemption.

The psalmist knows that God will redeem Israel
from all their iniquities.

We, too, know what the psalmist knows.

We know God’s mercy
even more than the psalmist,
for we know Jesus the Christ

Who shed his precious blood for our redemption.

 

Our God is an awesome God
who reigns from heaven above
with wisdom, power and love.

 

Like St. Paul,
we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus
will raise us also with Jesus
and place us in God’s presence.

We know that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people
will cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God.

Therefore, we are not discouraged…

We look not to what is seen but to what is unseen.

We know that we have a dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven.

 

Our God is an awesome God
who reigns from heaven above.

 

We also know what the relatives of Jesus did not know at the time.

We know the whole story.

We know that he was safe, even when the crowd was surrounding him.

We know that God was always with him.

We know that he was not possessed by Beelzebul,
but by the Holy Spirit
who worked wonders throughout his life,
and even raised him to new life after he was put to death.

 

And though we know all these things about Jesus,
we often forget what he says about us.

We are his brothers and sisters and mother.

We are closer to Jesus today
than his mother and brothers and sisters where
so very long ago
when they came to rescue him
from the dangers they saw all around him.

We who gather here around the table of the Lord,
we who listen to his words day after day and week after week,
we who do the will of God in our lives,
we are brothers and sisters and mother to Jesus.

 

Like the man and woman in the first reading,
we aren’t always faithful.

We sometimes sin and disobey the will of God,
but because of what Christ has done for us
by his death and resurrection,
we are truly blessed.

 

Because we eat his Body and drink his Blood,
we have become his Body
and his Blood flows through our veins and arteries.

We are blood relatives of the Christ
sons and daughters of God,

 

Our God is an awesome God
who reigns from heaven above
with wisdom, power and love,
our God is an awesome God!