Let us Pray - Creator and maker of us all - bless the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts - grow thou in us and show us your ways and inspire us to live by your truth. Amen
Promised Land - across and through the Jordan
- think of this in terms of metaphor
- through death into the eternal realms of God - into heaven
- to the place where the saints dwell forever
- to the place where death is no more....
But crossing the River into the Promised Land was not always seen as a Metaphor for dying/rising
Rather - at the time of Moses - the time of Joshua - from whose book we read today, the Promised Land was a real place - a place in which the people looked forward to living now - It was a place where the land flowed with milk and honey, where the people could not only cry "Free At Last - Free at Last" - but also cry - At home at last - At home where God promised he would lead us - in the place which God promised he would give us. The Promised Land is the rich and abundant land God promised to Abraham - and to his children after him - the place promised to Isaac and to Jacob - the place of which Moses spoke as he led his people out of Egypt. It is the rich and abundant life promised by Christ to all his followers.
The Promised Land was - and is a real place -- located in our space - and our time. As Caleb and the others who spied out this land for Moses - reported - it not only was a rich land - a blessed land - but it also was a land so real - so good - that others occupied it -- it was a place of cities and of towns - of warriors and giants -- not all of whom would prove to be friendly - but all of whom - with God's help - would be overcome - that the people might truly be blessed in their occupation of that land.
All of us long for this kind of land - this kind of place - this kind of life - where our enemies are overcome by the power of God - and where our needs are met with unheard of abundance - where the fear and the awe of the wilderness in which we wander is replaced by the joy and the celebration of life lived in a place like unto Eden itself.
And God promises to us - as he promised to the children of Israel just such a place. Just such a way of life. And as he did with the children of Israel - he guides us through the wilderness towards it - he leads us to the very edge of the place - and shows us the way to enter into it.
Today, in the third chapter of the book of Joshua we see the final stage of the people's wandering in the wilderness - the stage where they are finally called into the promised land - we see them cross through the Jordan and into the land of promise.
The details of the story are instructive for our own entering into the land - the state of being - that God has promised to us in Christ Jesus.
First we must understand about the River Jordan - the largest river in the region - no bridges across it - the Kings highway from Egypt to the Euphrates, from the land of the Pharaohs to the land of Assyria and of Babylon never crossed the river - but ran along side it - it is normally a murky river - slow moving and muddy - even so it can be easily crossed at certain places - that is if you don't mind stepping into a river whose bottom you can't easily see, if you don't mind getting the feet wet, and much more....
Crossing a river, even when you have a bridge, represents a big event in life. Rivers epitomize a big obstacle in the itch to be mobile. Indeed the symbol of crossing the river flows deeply in our faith history.
Sometimes, the symbol of the river means a roadblock. As it most surely meant to the people of Israel on the day appointed for them to cross the Jordan. It is one thing to put your feet in a gentle stream and another to step into roaring flood waters. Which, according to verse 15, is what the Jordan was like the day the people crossed over it.
Not only was the river in flood - but - according to verse 4 of today's passage, the people are not familiar with the place where they are about to cross the river - they have not been there before - they do not know what it will be like.
Joshua and the leaders of the people tell the people that they are to enter the promised land by following the priests (who carry the ark of the Covenant - the sign and symbol of God's presence with them - into the river) and that the river will part for them to make their passage through it possible.
I think it is very significant that one has to step into the roaring waters before they are parted, rather than waiting for them to first be parted. Very significant indeed. It was when the soles of the feet of those bearing the ark touch the water that the waters part. Not before.
In verse 15 through 17 we hear the conclusion of the matter:
"As soon as the feet of the priests touched the water, the river stopped flowing, and the water started piling up at the town of Adam near Zarethan. No water flowed toward the Dead sea, and the priests stood in the middle of the dry riverbed near Jericho while everyone else crossed over."
In the faith journey, there comes times when it looks like you are backed up against a barrier, a river at flood stage. The promised land is on the other side of the raging river.
As followers of Christ, as a people whom have been promised a new land, a new life, we are called to step out in faith - before the circumstances seem to be ready - that we may enter into that land - that we experience that life. We called to cross the river, to enter the turbulent and muddy flood waters so that we may receive the fullness of what God has promised to us and to those who follow us.
It can be a frightening proposition....
But we - like the people of Israel - have God with us. And as we step forth - carrying God with us - as we hold in our hearts the precious name of God - as we trust in God's living presence even though the circumstances do not appear to favour us - the waters will part.
What today's story tells us - with it's mention of how the priests led the way for the people into the river - is that God goes before us into the flood waters of life. God stands in the middle of the murderous waters, and God watches us pass safely to the other side.
The story is one of salvation. It affirms that God loves you and will not let anything stand in the way of his divine love and salvation for you.
The hymn "HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION" sings this faith in verse 3:
"When through the deep waters I call thee to go, The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow; For I will be near thee, thy troubles to bless, And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress."
Fear not my brothers and sister-in-Christ - take the plunge - step out in faith -get your feet wet - and God will bring you safe to the other side of the Jordan, to the land and to the life that he has promised to all who follow him.
This is the message of the Gospel that we proclaim.
As Paul writes to the church in Thessalonica this message is not a human word, rather it is God's word - able to work in those who believe.
Trust in it. Trust in God - and step forward - and God will make straight your path and bring you into the promised land. Blessed be the name of God - now and forever. Amen
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Ruth 2:1-13; 4:13-22; Ezra 9:10-10:5, 10:15; and Matthew 22:34-46
Let us pray – Creator and maker of us all – bless the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts – grow thou in us and show us your ways and inspire us to live by your truth. Amen.
Can love be wrong?
In my humble opinion, the Book of Ruth is one of the most beautiful books in the Bible. To me it is a beautiful story; it is a story that contains in it so many different elements. It is a story about life and death, famine and feast, love and loss, and love regained.
I would encourage you to read the story for yourself sometime this week. It is a very good story, it is a good story, if you got a good translation, will give you and your family entertainment, and to top it up, it is just as good, if not better, than a good television show.
In my sermon of today, which incidentally, is a story sermon, I would like us all to look at the love between Ruth and Boaz and what it might mean to our faith – in other words, what it might mean to how we are going to love our neighbours and our God.
I want to start off by telling you the story of Jonathan, that mysterious person whom we have been hearing about in today’s Old Testament from the Book of Ezra.
To give you a bit of background to the story, I will like to remind you that what happened in the Book of Ezra actually took place over five hundred years after what happened in the book of Ruth.
Even before Jonathan got to the corner of the Old Inn he could already hear someone praying in the square right in front of the house of God.
He knew immediately that something special was happening. Within the city of Jerusalem there was an unusual quite (imagine Causeway Bay being quite during a business day), and apart from the quietness, he noticed that for the last hour he had seem groups of people drifting towards the direction of the temple.
What finally aroused Jonathan’s curiosity and caused him to put down his tools and headed towards the temple was due to the unusual quietness and the movement of the people.
However, he could hardly see anything when he finally got to the temple square as there was already a huge crowd gathered there. All he could see was people everywhere.
Jonathan was very persistent, and after a couple of minutes, having moving first this way, and then that, he finally came to a place where he could see between the adults who were in front of him and over the heads of the children who were also present. And when he finally could see, he saw Ezra, the priest, on his knees before the temple in the middle of an intense prayer.
Ezra had torn his clothes and his tunic. He was also weeping and rocking back and forth. He was rocking back and forth, as he prayed to the Lord God of Israel, and in his voice, a voice which carried clear and loud over the square, Jonathan heard in the voice of Ezra the sound of grief.
Jonathan listened with all the people in the square to the prayer, and heard Ezra confesses to the Lord that his people had sinned, he heard Ezra expressed his fear that God’s people would sin once again, and that they would once again break the commandments of God and become unfaithful to Him. Ezra expressed his fear that the people would once again make treaties with corrupt nations and marry people from countries that scorned and despised both the laws of God and His chosen people. Jonathan as well as all present at the square witnessed Ezra weeping. He heard the anguish in Ezra’s voice, as he prayed that the people of Israel will not be acting the same way that they had been acting in the past. He prayed that they will not again run the risk of total destruction by loving those whom they should not love, and as a result binding themselves to foreigners, to people who worshipped other gods.
Jonathan felt deeply moved upon seeing and hearing the prayers of Ezra.
He too grieved for the glory that Israel once had and now lost. He too mourned for the Israel’s loss of innocence, for the time when David was King, and not only the true faith, but the entire nation was strong.
Jonathan knew, as did all the people present at the square that day, that some kinds of love are simply wrong.
He knew, from the history of Israel that some kinds of love were very dangerous to the nation and to the true faith, and Jonathan felt greatly tempted to join in his voice to those of all the other people who began to weep bitterly with Ezra over the sins and plight of Israel.
He was also tempted to take the vow that they were taking, after Ezra had finished praying. The vow that Shecaniah proposed while everyone was weeping:
- the vow to divorce those whom they should have never married;
- the vow to divorce them and send them as well as their children to the lands to which they originally came from, back to the lands of corruption from which they first came.
As the people around him wept and lifted up their voices in agreement with Shecaniah, Jonathan was tempted to join in with them, but something inside him would not allow him to do so.
Something held Jonathan back from joining the people that day. He was not certain what it was that held him back from that day, but as he walked away from the square with the other people. With a heavy heart he thought about it, and what he was going to do when the people were going to be gathered again in three days time to take action on Erza’s words and to fulfill the vow that had been made.
Jonathan thought about how from the very beginning the people of God had been warned about intermarriage.
Moses had told Israel that it would surely lead to idolatry, and that foreign women would corrupt the faith of their husband, and teach their children to love and worship other gods, until finally the day would come when the nation would perish, because it no longer worshipped the Lord God of Israel.
As Jonathan continued on working in his shop during the next two days, he kept on recalling how Ezra had claimed that the destruction of Israel and of Jerusalem and of the temple happened because the people of Israel had ignored Moses’ warning and their God.
He kept on remembering how Ezra had explained to the people that the current poverty and weakness of Israel was due partly to the same problem, that the people were suffering because they were once again contaminating the nation by marrying foreign women; and that they had weakened themselves by loving the wrong people.
The more he thought about it, Ezra’s words seem to made sense to Jonathan. He was not sure as to hwy he had held back from taking the vow. After all, he did not have a foreign wife, and he nothing to lose personally by going alone with what to all appearances seem to made sense.
Different traditions often do not mix well.
Different faiths more often than not conflicted with each other, and in such a conflict, both faiths normally perish, for a faith that is changed is a faith that is lost.
There were other people besides Moses and Ezra who said that if one truly loved God with all of one’s heart and soul and mind and strength then they would not risk their faith by marrying foreigners, or by loving a person from a different culture and belief.
That kind of love could not help but be dangerous; it could not help but being wrong, and it could very much be like inviting a wolf to come and live inside a sheep pen, no matter how kind the wolf seems to be, and how loving the sheep are, nature would end up having her way.
Jonathan kept on thinking about these things, and he felt confused and disturbed by his reluctance to take the vow – a reluctance he continued to feel despite all the arguments that he had thought of regarding the taking of the vow. It was in this kind of a state of confusion raging in his mind when he went up to the temple square on the third day with all the men of Judah and Benjamin.
His state of mind was exactly the same as the weather of the day – as it was a miserable rainy day. He sat in the square with several thousand other men, trying in vain to stay warm and dry as Ezra mounted the temple steps to talk to them.
Jonathan suddenly felt a measure of desperation when Ezra began to speak.
He still did not know what she should do when Ezra called out for all the men of Israel to renounce their foreign wives. He did not know that if he could agree to the action that would be legislated that very day.
But then, just as Ezra spoke he suddenly what was bothering him.
As Ezra once again proclaimed to the people that the men of Israel had been unfaithful to God because they had married foreign wives, he suddenly understands what had been bothering him all this time. He realized why he had not taken the vow proposed by Shecaniah, son of Jehiel.
It was all because of Ruth.
He remembers that his mother had often told him the story of Ruth and Boaz, about how Ruth had followed Naomi from Moab to Bethlehem, after the death of her first husband. He remembers hearing of how she had worked in the fields gleaning the wheat left behind by the reapers so she could care for herself and for her mother-in-law, until one day Boaz had noticed her and shown her his favor by instructing the harvesters to leave some sheaves for her.
Jonathan remembers how his mother had always loved the story of Ruth, she delighted in telling of the cleverness of Naomi in arranging things so that Ruth would meet up with Boaz again, and how Boaz had won Ruth from the relative who should have married her as according to the law of Moses by getting him to renounce his claim in public.
Jonathan’s mother had dearly loved the story of Ruth and now he realized that it was the story or Ruth that had prevented him from taking the vow of Shecaniah.
Jonathan knew that some kind of love are dangerous, but he also knew as well that all kinds of love can be used by God, it can be used by God, and it can be blessed, even if it may seem to be wrong to have that love.
Jonathan realized that the reason for his hesitation in the square three days ago was because he had known somewhere in his inner being that although it can be a dangerous to love a sinner, however, that love does not necessary end in disaster.
Jonathan remembered what Ezra and Shecaniah seems to have forgotten.
He remembered that Ruth was a Moabitess, she was a foreigner, she came from a tribe who were famous for corruption and idolatry.
Despite Ruth’s switch of faith; despite her proven loyalty to Naomi, Ruth was a like an Irish Protestant marrying a Roman Catholic; Ruth was like a black person marrying a white person in the United States way back in the 1930’s; Ruth was like a prostitute marrying a church elder.
Ruth was the leopard that according what Ezra said about foreigners, could not change its spots; she was the one who led to the destruction of the first temple and the defeat of the nation.
According to Ezra, she was the one, who even now, was destroying the people of Israel.
Jonathan, as he sat huddled down in the square, with the rain pouring down on him, suddenly felt a thrill ran through his body as he remembered how the story of Ruth and Boaz ended, and he thought about what would have happened if Boaz hade to take the vow of Shecaniah.
You see, after Ruth and Boaz got married, she became the mother of Obed, and Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of David, who became the king of Israel, the very king out of whom was to come the Messiah, the very king who had made Israel a great nation and the God of Israel famous throughout the known world.
If Boaz had not loved Ruth, who was a foreign woman, and it was supposedly wrong to love, then all the right things would never have happened. There would have been no king David, no king Salomon, no temple, no glory, no kingdom, no power, no might…nothing!
As so as Jonathan sat in the rain and watched Ezra and the people of Jerusalem weep again for all their sins, and decide to send away all the foreign women that they had married. He praised god for the love that they called wrong, for the love that had given to Israel its greatest king and which would soon give to the whole world the Messiah that the world desperately needed.
He praised God, and he, along with three other men present in the square that day, refused to agree with what Ezra proposed. He refused to be in agreement that the love of Ruth and Boaz had been wrong.
May His Name be Blessed day by day. Amen!
Can love be wrong?
In my humble opinion, the Book of Ruth is one of the most beautiful books in the Bible. To me it is a beautiful story; it is a story that contains in it so many different elements. It is a story about life and death, famine and feast, love and loss, and love regained.
I would encourage you to read the story for yourself sometime this week. It is a very good story, it is a good story, if you got a good translation, will give you and your family entertainment, and to top it up, it is just as good, if not better, than a good television show.
In my sermon of today, which incidentally, is a story sermon, I would like us all to look at the love between Ruth and Boaz and what it might mean to our faith – in other words, what it might mean to how we are going to love our neighbours and our God.
I want to start off by telling you the story of Jonathan, that mysterious person whom we have been hearing about in today’s Old Testament from the Book of Ezra.
To give you a bit of background to the story, I will like to remind you that what happened in the Book of Ezra actually took place over five hundred years after what happened in the book of Ruth.
Even before Jonathan got to the corner of the Old Inn he could already hear someone praying in the square right in front of the house of God.
He knew immediately that something special was happening. Within the city of Jerusalem there was an unusual quite (imagine Causeway Bay being quite during a business day), and apart from the quietness, he noticed that for the last hour he had seem groups of people drifting towards the direction of the temple.
What finally aroused Jonathan’s curiosity and caused him to put down his tools and headed towards the temple was due to the unusual quietness and the movement of the people.
However, he could hardly see anything when he finally got to the temple square as there was already a huge crowd gathered there. All he could see was people everywhere.
Jonathan was very persistent, and after a couple of minutes, having moving first this way, and then that, he finally came to a place where he could see between the adults who were in front of him and over the heads of the children who were also present. And when he finally could see, he saw Ezra, the priest, on his knees before the temple in the middle of an intense prayer.
Ezra had torn his clothes and his tunic. He was also weeping and rocking back and forth. He was rocking back and forth, as he prayed to the Lord God of Israel, and in his voice, a voice which carried clear and loud over the square, Jonathan heard in the voice of Ezra the sound of grief.
Jonathan listened with all the people in the square to the prayer, and heard Ezra confesses to the Lord that his people had sinned, he heard Ezra expressed his fear that God’s people would sin once again, and that they would once again break the commandments of God and become unfaithful to Him. Ezra expressed his fear that the people would once again make treaties with corrupt nations and marry people from countries that scorned and despised both the laws of God and His chosen people. Jonathan as well as all present at the square witnessed Ezra weeping. He heard the anguish in Ezra’s voice, as he prayed that the people of Israel will not be acting the same way that they had been acting in the past. He prayed that they will not again run the risk of total destruction by loving those whom they should not love, and as a result binding themselves to foreigners, to people who worshipped other gods.
Jonathan felt deeply moved upon seeing and hearing the prayers of Ezra.
He too grieved for the glory that Israel once had and now lost. He too mourned for the Israel’s loss of innocence, for the time when David was King, and not only the true faith, but the entire nation was strong.
Jonathan knew, as did all the people present at the square that day, that some kinds of love are simply wrong.
He knew, from the history of Israel that some kinds of love were very dangerous to the nation and to the true faith, and Jonathan felt greatly tempted to join in his voice to those of all the other people who began to weep bitterly with Ezra over the sins and plight of Israel.
He was also tempted to take the vow that they were taking, after Ezra had finished praying. The vow that Shecaniah proposed while everyone was weeping:
- the vow to divorce those whom they should have never married;
- the vow to divorce them and send them as well as their children to the lands to which they originally came from, back to the lands of corruption from which they first came.
As the people around him wept and lifted up their voices in agreement with Shecaniah, Jonathan was tempted to join in with them, but something inside him would not allow him to do so.
Something held Jonathan back from joining the people that day. He was not certain what it was that held him back from that day, but as he walked away from the square with the other people. With a heavy heart he thought about it, and what he was going to do when the people were going to be gathered again in three days time to take action on Erza’s words and to fulfill the vow that had been made.
Jonathan thought about how from the very beginning the people of God had been warned about intermarriage.
Moses had told Israel that it would surely lead to idolatry, and that foreign women would corrupt the faith of their husband, and teach their children to love and worship other gods, until finally the day would come when the nation would perish, because it no longer worshipped the Lord God of Israel.
As Jonathan continued on working in his shop during the next two days, he kept on recalling how Ezra had claimed that the destruction of Israel and of Jerusalem and of the temple happened because the people of Israel had ignored Moses’ warning and their God.
He kept on remembering how Ezra had explained to the people that the current poverty and weakness of Israel was due partly to the same problem, that the people were suffering because they were once again contaminating the nation by marrying foreign women; and that they had weakened themselves by loving the wrong people.
The more he thought about it, Ezra’s words seem to made sense to Jonathan. He was not sure as to hwy he had held back from taking the vow. After all, he did not have a foreign wife, and he nothing to lose personally by going alone with what to all appearances seem to made sense.
Different traditions often do not mix well.
Different faiths more often than not conflicted with each other, and in such a conflict, both faiths normally perish, for a faith that is changed is a faith that is lost.
There were other people besides Moses and Ezra who said that if one truly loved God with all of one’s heart and soul and mind and strength then they would not risk their faith by marrying foreigners, or by loving a person from a different culture and belief.
That kind of love could not help but be dangerous; it could not help but being wrong, and it could very much be like inviting a wolf to come and live inside a sheep pen, no matter how kind the wolf seems to be, and how loving the sheep are, nature would end up having her way.
Jonathan kept on thinking about these things, and he felt confused and disturbed by his reluctance to take the vow – a reluctance he continued to feel despite all the arguments that he had thought of regarding the taking of the vow. It was in this kind of a state of confusion raging in his mind when he went up to the temple square on the third day with all the men of Judah and Benjamin.
His state of mind was exactly the same as the weather of the day – as it was a miserable rainy day. He sat in the square with several thousand other men, trying in vain to stay warm and dry as Ezra mounted the temple steps to talk to them.
Jonathan suddenly felt a measure of desperation when Ezra began to speak.
He still did not know what she should do when Ezra called out for all the men of Israel to renounce their foreign wives. He did not know that if he could agree to the action that would be legislated that very day.
But then, just as Ezra spoke he suddenly what was bothering him.
As Ezra once again proclaimed to the people that the men of Israel had been unfaithful to God because they had married foreign wives, he suddenly understands what had been bothering him all this time. He realized why he had not taken the vow proposed by Shecaniah, son of Jehiel.
It was all because of Ruth.
He remembers that his mother had often told him the story of Ruth and Boaz, about how Ruth had followed Naomi from Moab to Bethlehem, after the death of her first husband. He remembers hearing of how she had worked in the fields gleaning the wheat left behind by the reapers so she could care for herself and for her mother-in-law, until one day Boaz had noticed her and shown her his favor by instructing the harvesters to leave some sheaves for her.
Jonathan remembers how his mother had always loved the story of Ruth, she delighted in telling of the cleverness of Naomi in arranging things so that Ruth would meet up with Boaz again, and how Boaz had won Ruth from the relative who should have married her as according to the law of Moses by getting him to renounce his claim in public.
Jonathan’s mother had dearly loved the story of Ruth and now he realized that it was the story or Ruth that had prevented him from taking the vow of Shecaniah.
Jonathan knew that some kind of love are dangerous, but he also knew as well that all kinds of love can be used by God, it can be used by God, and it can be blessed, even if it may seem to be wrong to have that love.
Jonathan realized that the reason for his hesitation in the square three days ago was because he had known somewhere in his inner being that although it can be a dangerous to love a sinner, however, that love does not necessary end in disaster.
Jonathan remembered what Ezra and Shecaniah seems to have forgotten.
He remembered that Ruth was a Moabitess, she was a foreigner, she came from a tribe who were famous for corruption and idolatry.
Despite Ruth’s switch of faith; despite her proven loyalty to Naomi, Ruth was a like an Irish Protestant marrying a Roman Catholic; Ruth was like a black person marrying a white person in the United States way back in the 1930’s; Ruth was like a prostitute marrying a church elder.
Ruth was the leopard that according what Ezra said about foreigners, could not change its spots; she was the one who led to the destruction of the first temple and the defeat of the nation.
According to Ezra, she was the one, who even now, was destroying the people of Israel.
Jonathan, as he sat huddled down in the square, with the rain pouring down on him, suddenly felt a thrill ran through his body as he remembered how the story of Ruth and Boaz ended, and he thought about what would have happened if Boaz hade to take the vow of Shecaniah.
You see, after Ruth and Boaz got married, she became the mother of Obed, and Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of David, who became the king of Israel, the very king out of whom was to come the Messiah, the very king who had made Israel a great nation and the God of Israel famous throughout the known world.
If Boaz had not loved Ruth, who was a foreign woman, and it was supposedly wrong to love, then all the right things would never have happened. There would have been no king David, no king Salomon, no temple, no glory, no kingdom, no power, no might…nothing!
As so as Jonathan sat in the rain and watched Ezra and the people of Jerusalem weep again for all their sins, and decide to send away all the foreign women that they had married. He praised god for the love that they called wrong, for the love that had given to Israel its greatest king and which would soon give to the whole world the Messiah that the world desperately needed.
He praised God, and he, along with three other men present in the square that day, refused to agree with what Ezra proposed. He refused to be in agreement that the love of Ruth and Boaz had been wrong.
May His Name be Blessed day by day. Amen!
Sunday, October 16, 2011
I Thessalonians 1:1-10 and Matthew 22:15-22
O Lord, we pray, speak in the calming of our minds and in the longings of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
It is a sign of poverty to conceive of everything in terms of what you already know or think you know; a sign of destitution to evaluate everything and everybody according to categories that will admit nothing new because those categories are already fixed in the concrete of what you believe to be true.
The Pharisees were some of the best church people of their day, but some of them were very poor. Their understanding of the world and of God was boxed in and confined by what they had learned and what they expected to be true.
Because they were like this, as so many people are, when they looked at Jesus and listened to him they were alarmed by what they saw and heard.
Jesus taught many things about the Kingdom of God that they could agree with - things like God will judge evil doers and condemn them, while rewarding the righteous with good things, yet Jesus associated with people who were obvious doers of evil: prostitutes, tax collectors, adulterers and the like - and spoke of God's forgiveness of them and of God's desire to give them new life.
The Pharisees could not understand that.
They were also uncertain about how to classify Jesus because He taught that obedience to God and his law was necessary - that in fact they needed to obey it from their hearts and souls, yet he healed people, and allowed his disciples to pick corn on the Sabbath day, and he touched and blessed those persons their faith told them should not be touched nor blessed.
Jesus disturbed many of the Pharisees and the religious authorities of his day. He upset the world they had created by their beliefs. And because what he said and did would not fit into their neat little boxes, those boxes which defined for them what was from God and what was not, they ended up rejecting Him.
2000 years ago a philosopher by the name of Epictetus said,
"Men are disturbed not by things that happen but by their opinion of the things that happen."
This is the problem of some of the Pharisees.
Their understanding of events tell us more about who they are than it does about who Jesus is.
One day, after having decided that Jesus was a danger to the true faith of Israel, the Pharisees, who were Jewish Nationalists, combined forces with the Herodians, who were a group that counselled collaboration with the Roman Government, to trap Jesus in his own words - so that either the people would reject him or the Roman authorities would arrest him.
They decide to ask Jesus if paying taxes to Caesar is lawful, knowing full well that if he said NO - then the Roman authorities would arrest him, and that if he says YES - then the common people would reject him.
Their question was exceptionally clever. It was the kind of question that gets a person no matter how they answer it, a question like the old chestnut that asks: "have you stopped beating your wife yet"?
The scriptures say that Jesus knew their evil intent and said to them;
You hypocrites - why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin that is used for paying the tax.
Hypocrisy is defined in dictionaries as claiming a virtue one does not have. It comes from the root word in the Greek - to play a part or to act on the stage.
The part, or role, that the Pharisees were playing was the role of being learners of God. They, with the Herodians, pretended to be in interested in what Jesus had to teach, but in reality they were more interested in finding him at fault than they were in learning from Him, they were more interested in protecting their own understanding of what God was like, and making sure that everybody else fell into line with their views, than they were in seeing if, in fact God was doing a new thing through this prophet.
Jesus, by calling them hypocrites, suggests that they are not really people who want to know God and understand his law. That they would rather live out what they already think they know about the living God and God's will and purpose - than to actually encounter that God and do what that God wants them to do in the here and now - in the reality of what is happening around them - in the place where God is - in the time when God can be found.
Are we a people who believe in a living God and a living word?
Do we have a relationship with God - a relationship with the Christ - that is current, that is up to date?
Or are we a people who believe certain things about God - and try to impose those beliefs on others - without thinking about how God might be doing something new - how God might even now be in our midst healing and helping, teaching and commanding, warning and leading, much as he did in the past as he did through those whose teachings we quite rightly value so highly.
Are we willing to see God where we don't think God will go?
Are we able to hear God in the voices of those we think are misguided?
Are we able to know the presence of God even in those whom we know to be sinners?
There is a story in the Old Testament about how God spoke to a prophet through his donkey - well, that isn't the actual word that is used - but you understand - and that the prophet, though he was in the hire of the enemies of the people of Israel, was able to hear the word of God from this dumb animal and did what that word asked of him.
Do we shut out the voices of the donkeys around us because - as everybody knows - donkeys can't speak, and thus miss the message that God wants us to hear - the message we need to hear?
One the major problems that we have in this life is that we tend to value comfort over truth, that we prefer the world to work according to the formula that our experience has provided us, rather than to have to adjust our expectations and our ways of doing things according to what is happening.
We tend to live out our expectations and impose them upon others so that the things will work as they we think they should work - rather than allowing the world - allowing God - to shape us and to work for us.
What tremendous gifts we miss out on because of this side of our human nature.
Jesus once said to the religious teachers who gathered around him and who were criticizing him for breaking the law of God as they understood it by healing on the Sabbath Day - and by daring to say that God was his Father.
"You diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. And it is the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life"
As it was then - so it is now.
Our knowledge of God - our understanding of the scriptures - our traditions - our formuli for what makes for life all has great value to it - but the risk is that we will not look up from what we already know to actually see God working around us - the risk is that we will immerse ourselves so deeply in those things that are meant to help us encounter God - that we will miss God even when he walks up to us and calls us by name and seeks to gift us with his presence.
We sing here each week before the scriptures are read a verse from the hymn "Open My Eyes That I May See".
We ask God to open our ears that we may hear voices of truth that he sendest clear.
We ask God to illumine us - to show us His will - to set us free. Free from our preconceptions. Free from our judgements. Free to see what is really real - and to live by it - and adapt to it - and to share it rather to simply hear and see and do the same old thng.
Our traditions - our teachings - our understandings - they have great value, like a road map has great value. They help to guide us - they tell us where we are.
But they should not be allowed blind us to the beauty of countryside around us; or to the actual conditions of the roads upon which we are called to travel - or to who is travelling with us.
They should not become a substitute for the actual experience of loving God and entering into a relationship with the living Christ and loving one another as he loves us.
Jesus responded to the question put to him by the Pharisees and the Herodians by giving them an answer that was not an answer that could be turned into a formula - though many have tried ever since.
Just as the words "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's" did not allow the Herodians and the Pharisees to rouse the crowd or the Romans against Jesus - so those words do not tell us exactly what we should do when the demands of the country we are living in seem to contradict the demands of our God.
What they do tell us is that we need to struggle with and pray about every situation in which our civic duties seem to be leading us into activities where our duty to our brothers and sisters is imperiled.
Each person here is made in the image of God. Each one of you "belongs to God".
And God - if you allow it - belongs to you.
Not as a fixed possession that you can box up and use as you see fit when you see fit, but as a partner - a friend - a lover - a companion - who fits you perfectly - one who challenges you to change your ways when you are going astray and who loves you and seeks you out when you have wandered away - one who encourages you when you are down and lifts you up when you fall, - one who works with you - not against you - even when they are rightly angry with you - one who forgives you before you even ask - and who expects and hopes and prays that you will love them in return.
God is here in our world.
God is here in our church.
Christ is in our midst.
In our hearts - if we allow him and in the person next to you - if you will see him.
May you see God where God is to be found and give Him what is due to him.
Blessed be the Lord our God, and Christ Jesus His Only Begotten, And the Spirit that works to make us one. Amen.
It is a sign of poverty to conceive of everything in terms of what you already know or think you know; a sign of destitution to evaluate everything and everybody according to categories that will admit nothing new because those categories are already fixed in the concrete of what you believe to be true.
The Pharisees were some of the best church people of their day, but some of them were very poor. Their understanding of the world and of God was boxed in and confined by what they had learned and what they expected to be true.
Because they were like this, as so many people are, when they looked at Jesus and listened to him they were alarmed by what they saw and heard.
Jesus taught many things about the Kingdom of God that they could agree with - things like God will judge evil doers and condemn them, while rewarding the righteous with good things, yet Jesus associated with people who were obvious doers of evil: prostitutes, tax collectors, adulterers and the like - and spoke of God's forgiveness of them and of God's desire to give them new life.
The Pharisees could not understand that.
They were also uncertain about how to classify Jesus because He taught that obedience to God and his law was necessary - that in fact they needed to obey it from their hearts and souls, yet he healed people, and allowed his disciples to pick corn on the Sabbath day, and he touched and blessed those persons their faith told them should not be touched nor blessed.
Jesus disturbed many of the Pharisees and the religious authorities of his day. He upset the world they had created by their beliefs. And because what he said and did would not fit into their neat little boxes, those boxes which defined for them what was from God and what was not, they ended up rejecting Him.
2000 years ago a philosopher by the name of Epictetus said,
"Men are disturbed not by things that happen but by their opinion of the things that happen."
This is the problem of some of the Pharisees.
Their understanding of events tell us more about who they are than it does about who Jesus is.
One day, after having decided that Jesus was a danger to the true faith of Israel, the Pharisees, who were Jewish Nationalists, combined forces with the Herodians, who were a group that counselled collaboration with the Roman Government, to trap Jesus in his own words - so that either the people would reject him or the Roman authorities would arrest him.
They decide to ask Jesus if paying taxes to Caesar is lawful, knowing full well that if he said NO - then the Roman authorities would arrest him, and that if he says YES - then the common people would reject him.
Their question was exceptionally clever. It was the kind of question that gets a person no matter how they answer it, a question like the old chestnut that asks: "have you stopped beating your wife yet"?
The scriptures say that Jesus knew their evil intent and said to them;
You hypocrites - why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin that is used for paying the tax.
Hypocrisy is defined in dictionaries as claiming a virtue one does not have. It comes from the root word in the Greek - to play a part or to act on the stage.
The part, or role, that the Pharisees were playing was the role of being learners of God. They, with the Herodians, pretended to be in interested in what Jesus had to teach, but in reality they were more interested in finding him at fault than they were in learning from Him, they were more interested in protecting their own understanding of what God was like, and making sure that everybody else fell into line with their views, than they were in seeing if, in fact God was doing a new thing through this prophet.
Jesus, by calling them hypocrites, suggests that they are not really people who want to know God and understand his law. That they would rather live out what they already think they know about the living God and God's will and purpose - than to actually encounter that God and do what that God wants them to do in the here and now - in the reality of what is happening around them - in the place where God is - in the time when God can be found.
Are we a people who believe in a living God and a living word?
Do we have a relationship with God - a relationship with the Christ - that is current, that is up to date?
Or are we a people who believe certain things about God - and try to impose those beliefs on others - without thinking about how God might be doing something new - how God might even now be in our midst healing and helping, teaching and commanding, warning and leading, much as he did in the past as he did through those whose teachings we quite rightly value so highly.
Are we willing to see God where we don't think God will go?
Are we able to hear God in the voices of those we think are misguided?
Are we able to know the presence of God even in those whom we know to be sinners?
There is a story in the Old Testament about how God spoke to a prophet through his donkey - well, that isn't the actual word that is used - but you understand - and that the prophet, though he was in the hire of the enemies of the people of Israel, was able to hear the word of God from this dumb animal and did what that word asked of him.
Do we shut out the voices of the donkeys around us because - as everybody knows - donkeys can't speak, and thus miss the message that God wants us to hear - the message we need to hear?
One the major problems that we have in this life is that we tend to value comfort over truth, that we prefer the world to work according to the formula that our experience has provided us, rather than to have to adjust our expectations and our ways of doing things according to what is happening.
We tend to live out our expectations and impose them upon others so that the things will work as they we think they should work - rather than allowing the world - allowing God - to shape us and to work for us.
What tremendous gifts we miss out on because of this side of our human nature.
Jesus once said to the religious teachers who gathered around him and who were criticizing him for breaking the law of God as they understood it by healing on the Sabbath Day - and by daring to say that God was his Father.
"You diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. And it is the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life"
As it was then - so it is now.
Our knowledge of God - our understanding of the scriptures - our traditions - our formuli for what makes for life all has great value to it - but the risk is that we will not look up from what we already know to actually see God working around us - the risk is that we will immerse ourselves so deeply in those things that are meant to help us encounter God - that we will miss God even when he walks up to us and calls us by name and seeks to gift us with his presence.
We sing here each week before the scriptures are read a verse from the hymn "Open My Eyes That I May See".
We ask God to open our ears that we may hear voices of truth that he sendest clear.
We ask God to illumine us - to show us His will - to set us free. Free from our preconceptions. Free from our judgements. Free to see what is really real - and to live by it - and adapt to it - and to share it rather to simply hear and see and do the same old thng.
Our traditions - our teachings - our understandings - they have great value, like a road map has great value. They help to guide us - they tell us where we are.
But they should not be allowed blind us to the beauty of countryside around us; or to the actual conditions of the roads upon which we are called to travel - or to who is travelling with us.
They should not become a substitute for the actual experience of loving God and entering into a relationship with the living Christ and loving one another as he loves us.
Jesus responded to the question put to him by the Pharisees and the Herodians by giving them an answer that was not an answer that could be turned into a formula - though many have tried ever since.
Just as the words "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's" did not allow the Herodians and the Pharisees to rouse the crowd or the Romans against Jesus - so those words do not tell us exactly what we should do when the demands of the country we are living in seem to contradict the demands of our God.
What they do tell us is that we need to struggle with and pray about every situation in which our civic duties seem to be leading us into activities where our duty to our brothers and sisters is imperiled.
Each person here is made in the image of God. Each one of you "belongs to God".
And God - if you allow it - belongs to you.
Not as a fixed possession that you can box up and use as you see fit when you see fit, but as a partner - a friend - a lover - a companion - who fits you perfectly - one who challenges you to change your ways when you are going astray and who loves you and seeks you out when you have wandered away - one who encourages you when you are down and lifts you up when you fall, - one who works with you - not against you - even when they are rightly angry with you - one who forgives you before you even ask - and who expects and hopes and prays that you will love them in return.
God is here in our world.
God is here in our church.
Christ is in our midst.
In our hearts - if we allow him and in the person next to you - if you will see him.
May you see God where God is to be found and give Him what is due to him.
Blessed be the Lord our God, and Christ Jesus His Only Begotten, And the Spirit that works to make us one. Amen.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Exodus 20:1-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4(b)-14
O Lord, we pray, speak in the calming of our minds and in the longings of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
Today we celebrate, with our brothers and sisters around the world the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
In some places it will be called "The Eucharist" - in others it will be called "Communion" - in others it will be called "The Love Feast", in still others it will be called, "The Table of the Lord" or "The Lord's Supper" - and as varied as the titles are for what we do today - so will be the means by which our brothers and sisters come to the table - and the kinds of bread and wine offered - and the understanding that people and their pastors, priests, ministers, will have of what they are doing.
Some will come forward to receive as we will do today and receive unleavened bread in the form of a wafer into the palms of their hands. They may or may not then sip from the cup - which may be wine - or unfermented grape juice - or even some other beverage in those places where grapes are unknown.
Others will tear a piece of bread from a broken loaf - and then dip it into the common cup.
Still others, like we often do, will be seated in their pews and will have individual cups and unleavened bread passed from person to person.
Still others may do these things as a part of a full meal - seated at a table in a sanctuary of God's presence - or in a church hall - or a home - or a school building - or simply sitting in a circle in a hut or in a clearing in the midst of a jungle or forest or in the middle of a place of sand and rock.
Some today will regard the bread and the wine - after the word's of consecration are prayed - as being fully and actually the body and blood of our Lord and Saviour. Others will regard the entire sacrament as an important "memorial" - and see Jesus as being being spiritually present in special manner - but deny his physical presence in the elements.
Indeed, there will be differences, some of them quite profound, in how our brothers and sisters around the world view the sacrament. Some will think that their way of doing what they are doing is the only proper way to do it. Some traditions will welcome only those persons who have made a public profession of their faith to the table, while others will welcome very young children, even babies to the table. Some will insist that each person must belong to the denomination and the community where the sacrament is being observed - others will have an table open to "all those who love the Lord and desire to walk in his path".
There will be a tremendous variety of practices and understandings this day as we celebrate the Lord's Supper - but one thing will stand out above all the differences of opinion and practice, and that is that all of us will consider what we are doing as important, so important that we might even risk argument with one another about it's meaning.
So what do we make of that?
What is our communion with one another when we have such a wide variety of practices and understandings? What is our communion with one another - and with God? Another way of putting this is to ask - Where, given our differences, is our "Commune - ity"
Some years I read a book by Tex Sample, a Professor of Church and Society. It is a wonderful book about doing "Ministry in An Oral Culture". In a section of the book titled "Tradition and Social Change" he cites an observation made by a colleague, that goes like this.
'What is common in community is not shared values or common understanding so much as the fact that members of a community are engaged in the same argument... in which alternative strategies, misunderstandings, conflicting goals and values are thrashed out."
Think about that for a minute.
What helps to define us as a community - both the community that we have here in this church, and the community that we share with our fellow believers around the world - is the fact that we are all engaged in the same argument - that we all view ourselves as followers of the Christ and engaged in working out the best way, the right way, for some the only way, to order our lives as his people in response to his calling.
Part of what makes us a World Wide Communion - is not that we agree with one another in everything - but that we believe that the discussion we have are of importance.
The Apostle Paul, in discussing the differences of opinion in the Church in Rome over the Holy Days that they should celebrate and whether or not, people should eat or not meats that had been purchased in the market place - which generally came from the animal sacrifices that were offered at various pagan temples, writes :
One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
The important thing that Paul is telling us in this passage, is that - "each of us should be fully convinced in our own minds" as to what is important - and do all that we do - or don't do - with thanks to God and in the realization that Christ is Lord of all who serve him - both the living and the dead.
There is nothing wrong with our differences of opinion as to what is right and what is wrong, what is good - and what is not good, what is true and what is not true.
Our common argument in fact helps to define us as a communion - as the people of God, as brothers and sisters of one another.
Think of your own families for a minute - families of flesh and blood and how they function.
Is there perfect agreement among you?
Are there not members who believe, sometimes quite passionately, that the family should do this or that thing while others in the family hold forth for something else - something entirely different?
And yet - while there are these kinds of disputes - if we are yet a family - do we not sit down together at meal time - and eat as one that which has been prepared for us - some taking more from a particular dish as their tastes and their inclinations lead them - others more from another?
Do we not, if we have any sense at all of being a family, gather on special occasions and join together at the table that has been set and give thanks to God for providing us the opportunity to be together and providing the food that we eat - even if our diets are different?
Do we not seek to bless one another and pray that they may live long and prosper - that they may do God's will and know God's mercy and help each day - without demanding that they do exactly what we do or think exactly the way we think?
The church around the world today is a family. We are the family of God - a family formed by our common desire to follow Christ Jesus, who is both our brother and our Lord.
We are the people of God, called together and given life, through Christ Jesus our Lord.
We are ones who trust in Jesus - and, with Paul and all the apostles and the saints strive to follow him faithfully and to keep the special law he gave us - the commandment that we love one another as he has loved us.
How do we commune today? Where is our community with God and one another?
It is in all the things we share that are of God and are fully agreed about - and in the those things that we share that are of God that we differ in.
It is in Christ Jesus - whom we seek to follow in varied scheme and practice - and in God our Father - who sent Jesus to open the way to life for all people and to make us one family.
Our communion is a mystic communion - one not limited by time or space - but rather realized where-ever men and women and children have sought, and are seeking, and will yet seek to do God's will.
It is a mystic communion that comes to us a gift from God, the God who wills that we love him with our whole heart, mind, strength and soul, and that we love one another as we love ourselves and who is able us to do that when we turn to him and trust in him and strive to do what he asks.
It is communion that is realized - one that is known deep inside us - when in humility and with gentleness and patience, we bear with one another in love and accept God's gifts with grateful and humble prayer.
God is with us, Christ is with us - and with all our brothers and sisters who call on his name today.
I can see them now - all around the world - eating and drinking what God has provided and each praying, as we have prayed, that God's will be done here on earth as it is in heaven; - that it be done here in our midst as his people - and here within our individual lives as his unique and precious children.
Praise be Our God - to Christ Jesus his Son - who has called us here today and invites us to commune with him and with one another in love. Amen
Today we celebrate, with our brothers and sisters around the world the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
In some places it will be called "The Eucharist" - in others it will be called "Communion" - in others it will be called "The Love Feast", in still others it will be called, "The Table of the Lord" or "The Lord's Supper" - and as varied as the titles are for what we do today - so will be the means by which our brothers and sisters come to the table - and the kinds of bread and wine offered - and the understanding that people and their pastors, priests, ministers, will have of what they are doing.
Some will come forward to receive as we will do today and receive unleavened bread in the form of a wafer into the palms of their hands. They may or may not then sip from the cup - which may be wine - or unfermented grape juice - or even some other beverage in those places where grapes are unknown.
Others will tear a piece of bread from a broken loaf - and then dip it into the common cup.
Still others, like we often do, will be seated in their pews and will have individual cups and unleavened bread passed from person to person.
Still others may do these things as a part of a full meal - seated at a table in a sanctuary of God's presence - or in a church hall - or a home - or a school building - or simply sitting in a circle in a hut or in a clearing in the midst of a jungle or forest or in the middle of a place of sand and rock.
Some today will regard the bread and the wine - after the word's of consecration are prayed - as being fully and actually the body and blood of our Lord and Saviour. Others will regard the entire sacrament as an important "memorial" - and see Jesus as being being spiritually present in special manner - but deny his physical presence in the elements.
Indeed, there will be differences, some of them quite profound, in how our brothers and sisters around the world view the sacrament. Some will think that their way of doing what they are doing is the only proper way to do it. Some traditions will welcome only those persons who have made a public profession of their faith to the table, while others will welcome very young children, even babies to the table. Some will insist that each person must belong to the denomination and the community where the sacrament is being observed - others will have an table open to "all those who love the Lord and desire to walk in his path".
There will be a tremendous variety of practices and understandings this day as we celebrate the Lord's Supper - but one thing will stand out above all the differences of opinion and practice, and that is that all of us will consider what we are doing as important, so important that we might even risk argument with one another about it's meaning.
So what do we make of that?
What is our communion with one another when we have such a wide variety of practices and understandings? What is our communion with one another - and with God? Another way of putting this is to ask - Where, given our differences, is our "Commune - ity"
Some years I read a book by Tex Sample, a Professor of Church and Society. It is a wonderful book about doing "Ministry in An Oral Culture". In a section of the book titled "Tradition and Social Change" he cites an observation made by a colleague, that goes like this.
'What is common in community is not shared values or common understanding so much as the fact that members of a community are engaged in the same argument... in which alternative strategies, misunderstandings, conflicting goals and values are thrashed out."
Think about that for a minute.
What helps to define us as a community - both the community that we have here in this church, and the community that we share with our fellow believers around the world - is the fact that we are all engaged in the same argument - that we all view ourselves as followers of the Christ and engaged in working out the best way, the right way, for some the only way, to order our lives as his people in response to his calling.
Part of what makes us a World Wide Communion - is not that we agree with one another in everything - but that we believe that the discussion we have are of importance.
The Apostle Paul, in discussing the differences of opinion in the Church in Rome over the Holy Days that they should celebrate and whether or not, people should eat or not meats that had been purchased in the market place - which generally came from the animal sacrifices that were offered at various pagan temples, writes :
One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
The important thing that Paul is telling us in this passage, is that - "each of us should be fully convinced in our own minds" as to what is important - and do all that we do - or don't do - with thanks to God and in the realization that Christ is Lord of all who serve him - both the living and the dead.
There is nothing wrong with our differences of opinion as to what is right and what is wrong, what is good - and what is not good, what is true and what is not true.
Our common argument in fact helps to define us as a communion - as the people of God, as brothers and sisters of one another.
Think of your own families for a minute - families of flesh and blood and how they function.
Is there perfect agreement among you?
Are there not members who believe, sometimes quite passionately, that the family should do this or that thing while others in the family hold forth for something else - something entirely different?
And yet - while there are these kinds of disputes - if we are yet a family - do we not sit down together at meal time - and eat as one that which has been prepared for us - some taking more from a particular dish as their tastes and their inclinations lead them - others more from another?
Do we not, if we have any sense at all of being a family, gather on special occasions and join together at the table that has been set and give thanks to God for providing us the opportunity to be together and providing the food that we eat - even if our diets are different?
Do we not seek to bless one another and pray that they may live long and prosper - that they may do God's will and know God's mercy and help each day - without demanding that they do exactly what we do or think exactly the way we think?
The church around the world today is a family. We are the family of God - a family formed by our common desire to follow Christ Jesus, who is both our brother and our Lord.
We are the people of God, called together and given life, through Christ Jesus our Lord.
We are ones who trust in Jesus - and, with Paul and all the apostles and the saints strive to follow him faithfully and to keep the special law he gave us - the commandment that we love one another as he has loved us.
How do we commune today? Where is our community with God and one another?
It is in all the things we share that are of God and are fully agreed about - and in the those things that we share that are of God that we differ in.
It is in Christ Jesus - whom we seek to follow in varied scheme and practice - and in God our Father - who sent Jesus to open the way to life for all people and to make us one family.
Our communion is a mystic communion - one not limited by time or space - but rather realized where-ever men and women and children have sought, and are seeking, and will yet seek to do God's will.
It is a mystic communion that comes to us a gift from God, the God who wills that we love him with our whole heart, mind, strength and soul, and that we love one another as we love ourselves and who is able us to do that when we turn to him and trust in him and strive to do what he asks.
It is communion that is realized - one that is known deep inside us - when in humility and with gentleness and patience, we bear with one another in love and accept God's gifts with grateful and humble prayer.
God is with us, Christ is with us - and with all our brothers and sisters who call on his name today.
I can see them now - all around the world - eating and drinking what God has provided and each praying, as we have prayed, that God's will be done here on earth as it is in heaven; - that it be done here in our midst as his people - and here within our individual lives as his unique and precious children.
Praise be Our God - to Christ Jesus his Son - who has called us here today and invites us to commune with him and with one another in love. Amen
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Matthew 21:23-32
Let us Pray: Breathe on us, O God, that we may be filled with your Spirit - and led by your living word - Jesus Christ our Lord. Bless the word of my lips and the meditations of our hearts. We ask it in his name. Amen.
Listen to these words, words that are recited in many traditions of our faith almost every day of the year as part of the gathering prayer in the gathering psalm of the faithful.
O today that you would harken to God's voice!
Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as on that day at Massah in the wilderness when your forebears tried me and put me to the test though they had seen my works.
Forty years I loathed that generation, and said, they are a people whose hearts are perverse, for they give no heed to my ways. Therefore I swore in my anger that they shall not enter my rest.
For many years I puzzled about this portion of Psalm 95.
I wondered
- why is it so harsh?
- why does the judgement of God come down so hard upon the people of Israel at Meribah?
- what significance did the event there have?
They are difficult passages, these stories of Meribah and Massah, they are passages that deal with God's judgement and that is always hard for people to deal with.
I want us to today to think about the story of Meribah and Massah. And, as we do so, I would like us all to ask ourselves the question: "are the people described in these stories a people like us?" Or, put another way, "Are we like them?"
Let us begin by looking at what happened at Meribah.
The book of Exodus tells us that after miraculously escaping from Egypt and from Pharaoh's army at the Red Sea, the people moved from place to place in the desert of Sina, just as the Lord commanded.
When the people hungered and demanded food, God provided them with food, both quails and manna.
When the people thirsted and demanded water, God provided it - first by showing Moses how to sweeten the bitter waters at Marah and then by leading Moses and the people of Israel to the 12 springs of Elim.
The people had ample experience of the power and the love of God.
One day, as Exodus 17 tells us, the people arrived at a place called Rephidim, and there was no water to be found there.
The people, as they had before, began to quarrel with Moses. They ask him to provide water for them. They question him and God, saying:
"why did you bring us out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst"
Moses is frustrated and he asks the people "why do you put the Lord to the test?" and then he asks God, "What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me"
And God - as we heard this morning - tells Moses to walk on ahead of the people, taking with him some of the elders of the people & his staff and to stand by a particular rock, and hit it with his staff.
Moses does as he is commanded, he goes to the rock with the elders, he strikes it, and water flows forth; it flows abundantly, and the people are satisfied.
Moses then names the place associated with this event Meribah - which means quarrelling and Massah - which means testing.
A simple tale, yet one that is mentioned several times in the Old Testament.
Now - ask yourselves - what is the great sin committed at Meribah? Ask as well - do we commit that sin? Are we like the people there?
As you think about these questions let me tell you another story, a story that is more contemporary, a story that has happened to many people, perhaps even to you.
A certain child lived off the income of its parents. It is, after all the natural way that children are nurtured. He received food, clothing, shelter and education. He got an allowance, and finally, when he went to university, his parents sent him money each month to pay his room and board. The child used to communicate each week with his parents, but, as his life got busier, he would forget to write or call, and he would not be home when his parents called him. Each month however his cheque arrived in the mail. Over time, as the child need's grew and he spent more money on things he wanted, he found that it was very difficult to meet his payments for books and clothing and food. Finally, desperate and afraid, he wrote his parents and asked for more money.
The parents either couldn't or wouldn't send the desired money and told him so. They soon received a terse reply from their child.
Do you love me or not?
Did the parents love the child?
That is Israel's question to Moses at Meribah and Massah, and through Moses it is their question to God.
Another question, however, can be put to these two tales,
Did the child love the parents?
Did Israel trust God to do the right thing?
Did Israel love God?
This too is a question we need to ask ourselves in relationship to our faith in Christ. Do we love Him. Do we really trust him?
The people of Israel, in their wanderings in the desert, continually sought for new proof of God's love. When things did not go their way, when what they wanted did not appear immediately, or in the fashion that they expected, they began to doubt God and accuse Him of not caring for them.
The great sin of Meribah and Massah is not the sin of asking that their needs be met by God for that is not a sin at all, it something we are encouraged to do, "give us this day our daily bread", rather the sin of Meribah and Massah is the sin of unbelief, the sin of doubt and of grumbling against God within that doubt,
Psalm 95 calls this sin "hardness of heart" which is nothing more than the refusal to believe in God's love and to trust in God's providence, despite all the evidence, despite all the good things that God has so clearly done.
Think about what has God done in your life. And thinking about it, ask yourself, do I doubt God's goodness when I am in trouble? Do I complain about God and his intentions towards me when I get into trouble?
The sin of Meribah and Masseh is hardness of heart.
The miracle of Meribah on the other hand is not the fact that Moses got water to flow from a rock. It is that God, despite their grumbling and complaining provided them with what they needed.
But there is a catch to this tale of grace and love.
God does provides those who test him with what they need, as he provided for his people at Meribah, but God, after a while, can become frustrated with us.
God knows what people need. He knows and he provides.
But in the face of their continuous doubt, in the face of the their continuous refusal to believe in Him, despite all the things that he has done for them, God finally allows the people to wander in their errors.
He allows them to wander in the desert of loneliness, fear, and doubt until they finally learn what they should know, what they need to know.
God cares for us. But we - like the people of Israel, cannot enter his rest until we understand that he cares, and embrace him as they have been embraced by him.
People who continually test God, people who continually demand proof of his love, simply will not reach their promised rest. They will not reach it, because they themselves reject it.
As the Scripture says, "They are a people who err in their hearts".
If our hearts stay closed. If we refuse to trust in and believe in God and his goodness, we run the risk of missing the goal of our faith, we run the risk of wandering around in the wilderness even though the promised land is so very very close at hand.
That, my friends, is why Psalm 95 has a call in it. That is why it has an invitation, like that of a person asking his or her lover to come back and be loved.
The psalmist cries, because he knows what is at stake
"O today that you would harken to his voice, Harden not your hearts as at Meribah and Massah.
God calls us to trust in him, He calls us to believe in his goodness, so that we might enter into his rest. So that we might not have to wander in the wilderness.
Are we a people like those at Meribah?
Do we quarrel with God and demand from him proof of his love when the going gets a little tough? Is our faith conditional on getting everything we want when we want it?
What kind of people are we?
Are we grumblers and complainers? Or are we a people who truly believe in the Son of The Living God? A people who believe that God is with us in Christ - leading us on the way to the promised land - much as he was with Israel in the cloud by day and the fire by night - leading them on the way from bondage in Egypt to the land of milk and honey that he had promised to them.
Think for a second of the old story about the day that fortune knocked on a fellow's door. The problem is that the man didn't hear it because he was over at a neighbours telling a hard-luck story.
Today harken to His voice - Harden not your hearts as at Meribah and Massah - this is the call of God to us all.
Harden not your hearts, instead believe - for I love you - says the Lord.
And this is where we turn to Peter, the apostle who first believed that Jesus was the Presence of God, and God's salvation to his people Israel, and to the whole world.
Peter saw what Jesus did, and by the miracle of the Holy Spirit who seeks to lead us all to truth, he saw that God was in Jesus.
Peter decided, in an act of faith, that God was acting in and through Jesus, and because he saw, because he was willing to see, he received power from God.
Peter received the power to speak for God, the power to give life to others, and the power to enter into the rest that is promised to all people of faith.
This church today is testimony to Peter's faith. It exists because Peter and others like him, trusted and believed in God, despite the circumstances about them, despite the hostility of the religious leaders of their time, despite the persecutions unleashed upon them by the Romans, despite the lions that were unleashed upon them in the Coliseum, and the roadside crucifixions that were practised throughout the Roman Empire.
We know of course that Peter questioned God, and that at times he feared more for his safety than he trusted the Lord but still, in the end - Peter turned to Christ - and
trusted in God - this even when he knew that a cross awaited him because of it.
Faith is a gift of God.
That is part of the meaning of today's new testament reading where we are told that is the Spirit of God who reveals to Peter that Jesus is the Promised One, the Messiah, the Son, of God.
But it is a gift that is given by God freely to all - to all who desire to be set free from their bondage to all who desire to enter into the promised land, into the rest of God.
But faith, as a gift, needs to be exercised if it is to avail us of those things God has prepared for us.
The story is told of a great university which once built a fine new library. It was a monumental structure with tall while columns and beautiful marble and ornate furnishings. As students and faculty took visitors around the campus they proudly pointed out "that this is our new library". Thousands of people came in fact to admire the fine building - and all spoke well of the designer and the builders.
Finally the librarian could stand it no longer and he posted a sign in front of the building which read,
"This is not the library, the library is inside".
We have to be willing to enter into our faith, into the heart of God if we are to have the rest God has promised to us.
When we do so - when we claim the faith of Peter and allow ourselves to see in Christ, the living God who cares for us and looks after us and is with us to lead us into the kingdom of God then we, like he, receive the power to bind and to loose, to forgive and to curse.
Harden not your hearts rather give praise to our living Lord and to the glorious name of God for he is with us to lead us - in safety - to an even better place than the place, which we in faith, or in even in doubt, long for. May His name be praise day by day. Amen.
Listen to these words, words that are recited in many traditions of our faith almost every day of the year as part of the gathering prayer in the gathering psalm of the faithful.
O today that you would harken to God's voice!
Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as on that day at Massah in the wilderness when your forebears tried me and put me to the test though they had seen my works.
Forty years I loathed that generation, and said, they are a people whose hearts are perverse, for they give no heed to my ways. Therefore I swore in my anger that they shall not enter my rest.
For many years I puzzled about this portion of Psalm 95.
I wondered
- why is it so harsh?
- why does the judgement of God come down so hard upon the people of Israel at Meribah?
- what significance did the event there have?
They are difficult passages, these stories of Meribah and Massah, they are passages that deal with God's judgement and that is always hard for people to deal with.
I want us to today to think about the story of Meribah and Massah. And, as we do so, I would like us all to ask ourselves the question: "are the people described in these stories a people like us?" Or, put another way, "Are we like them?"
Let us begin by looking at what happened at Meribah.
The book of Exodus tells us that after miraculously escaping from Egypt and from Pharaoh's army at the Red Sea, the people moved from place to place in the desert of Sina, just as the Lord commanded.
When the people hungered and demanded food, God provided them with food, both quails and manna.
When the people thirsted and demanded water, God provided it - first by showing Moses how to sweeten the bitter waters at Marah and then by leading Moses and the people of Israel to the 12 springs of Elim.
The people had ample experience of the power and the love of God.
One day, as Exodus 17 tells us, the people arrived at a place called Rephidim, and there was no water to be found there.
The people, as they had before, began to quarrel with Moses. They ask him to provide water for them. They question him and God, saying:
"why did you bring us out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst"
Moses is frustrated and he asks the people "why do you put the Lord to the test?" and then he asks God, "What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me"
And God - as we heard this morning - tells Moses to walk on ahead of the people, taking with him some of the elders of the people & his staff and to stand by a particular rock, and hit it with his staff.
Moses does as he is commanded, he goes to the rock with the elders, he strikes it, and water flows forth; it flows abundantly, and the people are satisfied.
Moses then names the place associated with this event Meribah - which means quarrelling and Massah - which means testing.
A simple tale, yet one that is mentioned several times in the Old Testament.
Now - ask yourselves - what is the great sin committed at Meribah? Ask as well - do we commit that sin? Are we like the people there?
As you think about these questions let me tell you another story, a story that is more contemporary, a story that has happened to many people, perhaps even to you.
A certain child lived off the income of its parents. It is, after all the natural way that children are nurtured. He received food, clothing, shelter and education. He got an allowance, and finally, when he went to university, his parents sent him money each month to pay his room and board. The child used to communicate each week with his parents, but, as his life got busier, he would forget to write or call, and he would not be home when his parents called him. Each month however his cheque arrived in the mail. Over time, as the child need's grew and he spent more money on things he wanted, he found that it was very difficult to meet his payments for books and clothing and food. Finally, desperate and afraid, he wrote his parents and asked for more money.
The parents either couldn't or wouldn't send the desired money and told him so. They soon received a terse reply from their child.
Do you love me or not?
Did the parents love the child?
That is Israel's question to Moses at Meribah and Massah, and through Moses it is their question to God.
Another question, however, can be put to these two tales,
Did the child love the parents?
Did Israel trust God to do the right thing?
Did Israel love God?
This too is a question we need to ask ourselves in relationship to our faith in Christ. Do we love Him. Do we really trust him?
The people of Israel, in their wanderings in the desert, continually sought for new proof of God's love. When things did not go their way, when what they wanted did not appear immediately, or in the fashion that they expected, they began to doubt God and accuse Him of not caring for them.
The great sin of Meribah and Massah is not the sin of asking that their needs be met by God for that is not a sin at all, it something we are encouraged to do, "give us this day our daily bread", rather the sin of Meribah and Massah is the sin of unbelief, the sin of doubt and of grumbling against God within that doubt,
Psalm 95 calls this sin "hardness of heart" which is nothing more than the refusal to believe in God's love and to trust in God's providence, despite all the evidence, despite all the good things that God has so clearly done.
Think about what has God done in your life. And thinking about it, ask yourself, do I doubt God's goodness when I am in trouble? Do I complain about God and his intentions towards me when I get into trouble?
The sin of Meribah and Masseh is hardness of heart.
The miracle of Meribah on the other hand is not the fact that Moses got water to flow from a rock. It is that God, despite their grumbling and complaining provided them with what they needed.
But there is a catch to this tale of grace and love.
God does provides those who test him with what they need, as he provided for his people at Meribah, but God, after a while, can become frustrated with us.
God knows what people need. He knows and he provides.
But in the face of their continuous doubt, in the face of the their continuous refusal to believe in Him, despite all the things that he has done for them, God finally allows the people to wander in their errors.
He allows them to wander in the desert of loneliness, fear, and doubt until they finally learn what they should know, what they need to know.
God cares for us. But we - like the people of Israel, cannot enter his rest until we understand that he cares, and embrace him as they have been embraced by him.
People who continually test God, people who continually demand proof of his love, simply will not reach their promised rest. They will not reach it, because they themselves reject it.
As the Scripture says, "They are a people who err in their hearts".
If our hearts stay closed. If we refuse to trust in and believe in God and his goodness, we run the risk of missing the goal of our faith, we run the risk of wandering around in the wilderness even though the promised land is so very very close at hand.
That, my friends, is why Psalm 95 has a call in it. That is why it has an invitation, like that of a person asking his or her lover to come back and be loved.
The psalmist cries, because he knows what is at stake
"O today that you would harken to his voice, Harden not your hearts as at Meribah and Massah.
God calls us to trust in him, He calls us to believe in his goodness, so that we might enter into his rest. So that we might not have to wander in the wilderness.
Are we a people like those at Meribah?
Do we quarrel with God and demand from him proof of his love when the going gets a little tough? Is our faith conditional on getting everything we want when we want it?
What kind of people are we?
Are we grumblers and complainers? Or are we a people who truly believe in the Son of The Living God? A people who believe that God is with us in Christ - leading us on the way to the promised land - much as he was with Israel in the cloud by day and the fire by night - leading them on the way from bondage in Egypt to the land of milk and honey that he had promised to them.
Think for a second of the old story about the day that fortune knocked on a fellow's door. The problem is that the man didn't hear it because he was over at a neighbours telling a hard-luck story.
Today harken to His voice - Harden not your hearts as at Meribah and Massah - this is the call of God to us all.
Harden not your hearts, instead believe - for I love you - says the Lord.
And this is where we turn to Peter, the apostle who first believed that Jesus was the Presence of God, and God's salvation to his people Israel, and to the whole world.
Peter saw what Jesus did, and by the miracle of the Holy Spirit who seeks to lead us all to truth, he saw that God was in Jesus.
Peter decided, in an act of faith, that God was acting in and through Jesus, and because he saw, because he was willing to see, he received power from God.
Peter received the power to speak for God, the power to give life to others, and the power to enter into the rest that is promised to all people of faith.
This church today is testimony to Peter's faith. It exists because Peter and others like him, trusted and believed in God, despite the circumstances about them, despite the hostility of the religious leaders of their time, despite the persecutions unleashed upon them by the Romans, despite the lions that were unleashed upon them in the Coliseum, and the roadside crucifixions that were practised throughout the Roman Empire.
We know of course that Peter questioned God, and that at times he feared more for his safety than he trusted the Lord but still, in the end - Peter turned to Christ - and
trusted in God - this even when he knew that a cross awaited him because of it.
Faith is a gift of God.
That is part of the meaning of today's new testament reading where we are told that is the Spirit of God who reveals to Peter that Jesus is the Promised One, the Messiah, the Son, of God.
But it is a gift that is given by God freely to all - to all who desire to be set free from their bondage to all who desire to enter into the promised land, into the rest of God.
But faith, as a gift, needs to be exercised if it is to avail us of those things God has prepared for us.
The story is told of a great university which once built a fine new library. It was a monumental structure with tall while columns and beautiful marble and ornate furnishings. As students and faculty took visitors around the campus they proudly pointed out "that this is our new library". Thousands of people came in fact to admire the fine building - and all spoke well of the designer and the builders.
Finally the librarian could stand it no longer and he posted a sign in front of the building which read,
"This is not the library, the library is inside".
We have to be willing to enter into our faith, into the heart of God if we are to have the rest God has promised to us.
When we do so - when we claim the faith of Peter and allow ourselves to see in Christ, the living God who cares for us and looks after us and is with us to lead us into the kingdom of God then we, like he, receive the power to bind and to loose, to forgive and to curse.
Harden not your hearts rather give praise to our living Lord and to the glorious name of God for he is with us to lead us - in safety - to an even better place than the place, which we in faith, or in even in doubt, long for. May His name be praise day by day. Amen.
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