From broken cisterns to springs of living water welling up unto eternal life, and from conversations about how to behave at dinner party and whom to invite, our readings today cover it all.
Through the prophet Jeremiah God speaks to us today in the language of the courtroom.
The people of Israel are being put on trial, and God, who is both accuser and judge finds them lacking. The counts are spelled out:
- The people have strayed from God.
- They have followed worthless idols and so become worthless themselves.
- They have forgotten the God that brought them out of Egypt and led them
through the wilderness in safety and brought them to a good land.
- They have defiled that promised land and even their priests do not seek
the will of God or his presence among the people.
It all comes down to two things, says God in verse 13:
"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."
Serious charges and yet imagine just hard it is to bring these charges and to actually have them heard and hearing them is what is all about.
God is not interested in condemning his people, that is not why he kept his promises to Abraham and Sarah and raised up a people, and that is not why he led those people from bondage in Egypt and gave them a rich and fertile land. God wants his people to prosper. God wants his people to live. Indeed - in the language of today's gospel reading - God wants his people to feast in heaven with him.
And for this to happen we must listen to God. We must stretch out our hands to receive the invitation he extends to us, and, using the resources he has given us - we must ready ourselves for the day that is coming.
But sometimes it is hard to get people to hear what God is saying.
The land of Israel in the time of Jeremiah, was much like the land of Israel in the time of Jesus and much like we, in this modern world, are today, despite variations in the particular political and economic conditions of each.
People worked hard for a living, they married and raised families they sought, as best they were able, a piece of the pie, and some had more of it - much more of it - and some had much less, but all in all the dynamics of living are the same from one time in history to another.
We are social creatures with a social pattern We are creatures of flesh, with fleshly needs.
And these can conflict with the other thing that we are which is a people of God made in God's image, beings of the Spirit with a spiritual destiny.
All the sins of Israel came down to two things: - forgetting God and his goodness; - and relying upon their own efforts, their own concepts, their own patterns of behaviour, to live life, relying upon cisterns that they dug themselves to collect droplets of life giving water, rather than upon receiving what they need from the living springs that God has provided.
In dry land - a land like Israel, cisterns are often a necessity - that is, unless you are near a spring, a spring like that which watered Bethsaida, and that which lay in the heart of Jersusalem at one time; a spring like that which gushed from the rock in the wilderness after the people complained to God about his lack of care for them.
"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
You know the sins of Israel at the time of Jeremiah, and the sins of Israel at the time of Jesus, and our sins, are kind of the same. We allow our social conditions and patterns, and our nature as physical creatures to rule over us and imperil the fullness of life that we could be experiencing, the life that God created us for in the first place.
We try to capture mere drops of life giving water through our technology, our labour, our institutions, and our understanding of what is right instead of wading out into the middle of the springs of living water that God provides in his word by his spirit.
We need to hear this charge, this inditement from time to time, so that perhaps - we can give our head a shake, our backside a boot, and get ourselves back on track, get our world back on track.
So it is that Jesus talks today to the guests at a dinner being held by a prominent Pharisee about peculiar things like where they should expect to seat themselves at a dinner, and who it is they should invite to their feasts and parties if they want to be blessed by God.
I could go into a whole thing on humility here. About how we try to put ourselves first in most things - rather than going with the flow and allowing our host, our God, to decide who is first and who is last.
I remember one experience I had in a store during the time when I was still using credit cards. I had my purchase on the counter. The clerk had swiped my credit card through the bank-card gadget. Abruptly an anxious, overbearing woman demanded of the clerk: "Take me first...."
She did not look at me or offer an apology or give a compelling reason as to why my transaction should be interrupted. She did not ask if I minded, she simply commandeered the clerk. I said nothing. As I exited the shop, the woman was just yards ahead of me. She had saved ten seconds time.
Simply bad manners? No. This is a modern example of what happened in today's gospel.
People trying to make themselves look more important, people placing themselves first, people looking for the best seats rather than letting go and letting God give them their seats.
The counts against us haven't changed much from age to age in the courtroom of our God.
But remember, God' doesn't charge us so he may condemn us - but so that we may hear, and in hearing - that we may find our way to his living water - to his marvellous feast.
The second portion of the Parable of the Dinner Party comes even closer to us, especially if we are not ones who like the best seats and the preferred places in life.
It comes closer because it names our habit of doing things the natural way, the way that common sense tells us to do them, the way our biology and our society normally does them.
The message of the second part of today's gospel reading is that we need to learn to start doing things for those who can do nothing for us in return. Our love is to be poured out to the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
The wonderful book of sermons, Bread of Angels" by Barbara Brown Taylor talks of this very eloquently. Spend time with God by spending time with children - no paybacks, no status, no influences, no income.
"It is what you do when you think no one is looking, with someone who does not count, for no reward, that ushers you into the presence of God.... If you want to enter this kingdom [of God] there is a way; go find a nobody to put your arms around and say hello to God."
The message of Jesus is about openness, and about trust, it is about reaching out beyond our natural reach to embrace others, to embrace life, to embrace God.
The sad truth is that most people reach out only to those that came within their reach. They do, in other words no more than anyone else does - anyone with half a heart.
Think about it. Do we not favour our friends, our family, our co-workers, those we play with? For the most part everyone else is "outside"
- "outside" our pattern of thought and concern,
- "outside" our care and attention
- "outside" and forgotten.
We have only so much time it seems. And that time should go, we tell ourselves, to maintaining the important relationships that we have - and to doing those things that help us achieve our goals.
When was the last time you invited a stranger to your table? A panhandler? A transient? Someone from a nursing home or, worse, a group home? When was the last time you even talked to a stranger about more than the time of day?
Have you ever met someone who issued an invitation in the street for people to come to his son's wedding banquet? Or retirement party?
Mind blowing idea is it not?
But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."
We have difficulties with this kind of thing for some very good reasons - reasons I will not condemn - but do we even stop for those broken down on the highway or pray for strangers we see rushing by in an ambulance?
When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."
Strong words. Strange words.
A call to think beyond the boundaries that we normally think within.
It is a call to spend the kind of time that we would not naturally spend with others, those who can't return blessing for blessing, perhaps even those who can't even speak a word of gratitude, or those whom we think will just use us, as they have used so many others.
A friend of mine got ticked off earlier this week, a traveller came through town looking for board and food money. He had a good story of unplanned need and a line about being willing and able to do good in return and my friend helped the man, - to only discover later that this person was a scam artist, working his way around the region, paying his rent and his food on a regular basis by coming onto churches with his tale of woe and his look of integrity.
As my friend thought about the matter in the next day or so, he became ticked off.
"Why, oh why", he said to himself, "was I ticked off at the traveller and myself?"
Isn't this a sign that he attached importance to the money and to the thought he was being really helpful than someone else did to the fact that God is in charge and will make it all come out right in the end?
Or was it a kind of pride that caused him to resent being made a fool even though this scam artist did right in coming to a church, or a series of churches, he did right in that it he assumed it was a kind of place which would help such as he, were his need legitimate?
And then again - wasn't his need in fact legitimate? Did he not need to eat? To have money to pay for his boarding?
I felt God convicting him. Suggesting to him that in his reaction to this stranger that maybe he is still relying upon the cisterns that he and other people have dug, instead upon his living water
The sins of Israel are the sins of Adam and of Eve, the sins that you and I have.
And God knows we need to hear that message from time to time, not so that we might be condemned, but so that we might receive new life.
A final thought for today.
Someone suggested regarding the gospel text for today that they were "uneasy" about the motivation that Jesus holds out for changing our conduct with regard to the seats we seek at a banquet or who we invite to parties of our own. That person siad:
The passage tells us important things about how to live. But our motivation... I am not so sure I like what it seems to say about that.
You know about doing good so we might have rewards in heaven. Being generous to those who can't pay back because we know a greater payback is coming later.
I have some sympathy for this concern, it is true our motive for things ought to be love, not self-interest, and our method of doing things guided by a humility of spirit, but what's wrong with remembering what is at stake?
What is wrong with remembering when we begin to lapse into our natural behaviour - the behaviour determined by the bonds of family and friends, workers and playmates, that life is far more than what is can be found in simple survival, more even than that which can be found in power and prestige and wealth - and health.
That there is a spring of living water that can satisfy us forever, a spring that makes puny our own cracked and broken cisterns.
There is a God. There is a blessedness to being with God. And there is an eternity. It seems to me that we should seek it!
And it seems to me that God speaks the word that he does to us, that he indites us in his courtroom and pleads with us from the rooftops and on the street corners, so that we might hear and hearing - remember that he is good, and turn to him and drink from his springs of living water.
Praise be to God, day by day. Amen
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