Bound To Christ In Love And Hope

Each year, the Spiritual Life Committee, led by Ellen Hoke, meets to consider a theme for the year. The theme drives our formational offerings, most especially our Advent and Lenten retreats and the five Wednesday Evening Lenten Supper series. It has always been such a useful exercise for me because it gives me the opportunity to hear from parishioners about where each of them is on their faith journey, where we are as a congregation, and which areas of our common life need our best attention and focus in the coming year.

After much prayerful deliberation, we chose this theme from the many that were suggested: Bound to Christ in Love and Hope. This theme reminded me of the hymn "I Bind Unto Myself Today," commonly referred to as St. Patrick’s Breastplate. We sing the hymn on many occasions, including ordinations.

But whether at ordinations or any other Sunday, the hymn's point is the courageous and faithful act of binding ourselves to Christ; it is the hopeful act of placing ourselves in the Savior's embrace, and the act of grounding ourselves in God. This is the act that helps us situate ourselves in God alone, because that is how our battles become God’s battle. It is the act of wearing the breastplate.

The image of the breastplate appears in Ephesians, where St. Paul talked about the breastplate of righteousness. The breastplate is a spiritual symbol of armor that is meant to shield us, protect us, secure us, and comfort us - not with any false sense of protection but the kind of protection that dilutes our trust in ourselves.

The unimaginable confidence of St. Patrick, to whom the original text of the hymn was written, wrote this:

Christ be with me,

Christ within me,

Christ behind me,

Christ before me,

Christ beside me,

Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me,

Christ above me,

Christ in quiet,

Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

These words are a stark reminder, not only of Patrick’s confidence in Christ, but also of the fact that those who soak themselves in the blood of the Lamb of God do not have to fight life’s battles alone, but should always look to God to fight their battles.

Here’s a story of Jehoshaphat. He was the king of Judah and Jerusalem, and he had to face the Ammonites, Moabites, and Meunites in battle. The armies of these three nation-states was so vast that Jehoshaphat didn’t know what to do. In some sense, he thought that Jehovah God had abandoned them.

In the midst of this turmoil, he knew what to do. He sought help from the God who had been Israel's breastplate and the friend of their ancestor Abraham. The confidence in the breastplate was enough for Jahaziel, upon whom the Spirit of the Lord descended to make this declaration: “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s.”

This reassuring confidence and faith in God led Jehoshaphat and his people to win the war without firing a single arrow. The people of Judah and Jerusalem didn’t have to kill anyone. The three nations of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir fought among themselves, killing each other. All that Jehoshaphat and his people had to do was to gather the plunder from the Ammonites, Moabites, and Meunites.

It is with this same confidence in God that we bind ourselves to Christ in love and hope - for the battle is not ours to fight, but God’s.

Over the past several months, we have been working with the diocese on a new initiative. This initiative is geared towards helping healthy and thriving congregations with the support that they need to effectively serve their people. After much prayerful deliberation, Christ Church has called a full-time Associate Rector who will begin a new ministry with us on October 1, 2026. As I said last Sunday, this is a leap of faith. But we embrace this leap because, just as Jahaziel declared, “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s.”

The Spiritual Life Committee chose this theme because we believe we bind ourselves to Christ in love because love is the active agency through which God shows that self-sacrifice is the highest form of being in a relationship and in community with others.

We bind ourselves to Christ in hope because, as St. Paul reminds us in Romans 5, hope does not disappoint; hope regenerates; hope gives; hope redeems; hope restores; hope perseveres; hope builds up; hope doesn’t shame us; and hope believes in the impossible. For without hope in the God who binds us unto the Godself, what would our lives look like? And what would our world look like?

Here is a parable of a brilliant and talented tailor who was summoned by the king and asked to take the most expensive silk fabric and weave it into an exquisite cloak for his majesty. The tailor returned after a few months, but someone who really didn’t like the tailor told the king, “I suspect this Jewish tailor stole a little bit of the fabric.” They measured the fabric, and sure enough, some was missing. The tailor was thrown into prison and sentenced to death for treason.

But before he was sent to prison, the king asked, “What’s your final wish?” The tailor responded, “If the cloak and a pair of scissors be brought to me.” When they were given to him, he started to cut. That enraged the king, who shouted, “Stop! What are you doing?” The tailor then said, “I have not stolen even a centimeter of his majesty’s fabric, but to prove that to you, I need to be able to undo the entire garment. Bringing it back to the way it was at the beginning, and then you can see that every thread can be accounted for.”

Like the silk fabric, we are enmeshed in God’s eternal cloak, and we don’t need to be cut from it to determine whether a part of us has been stolen.

The confidence in choosing to bind ourselves unto the Christ who continually invites us unto himself is a stark reminder that our battles are not ours, but God’s. And so long as the battle is God’s, we need not fear nor should we be afraid.

For the one unto whom we bind ourselves in love and hope has not only conquered the world, but we wear his breastplate.



Blessed Fall,

Manny+