RonBlog

Sunday 27th June, 2010 Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Sentence
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for Jesus’ sake, will find it.
Matt 10:39
Collect
O God, the light of the minds of those who know You, the life of the souls who love You, and the strength of the thoughts that seek You: help us so to know You that we may truly love You, and so to love You that we truly serve You Whose service is perfect freedom, Jesus Christ our Lord Amen

Old Testament Lesson 2 Kings 2: 1 – 14

Now when the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, "Stay here; for the LORD has sent me as far as Bethel." But Elisha said, "As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you." So they went down to Bethel.
The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?" And he said, "Yes, I know; keep silent." Elijah said to him, "Elisha, stay here; for the LORD has sent me to Jericho." But he said, "As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you." So they came to Jericho. The company of prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?" And he answered, "Yes, I know; be silent."

Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here; for the LORD has sent me to the Jordan." But he said, "As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you." So the two of them went on. Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground. When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you." Elisha said, "Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit." He responded, "You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not."
As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha kept watching and crying out, "Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, "Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?" When he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.

PSALM 77: 1 – 2 & 11 – 20
I call to my God, I cry out toward Him: I will call to my God and surely He will answer
In the day of my distress I seek the Lord, I stretch out my hands to Him by night: my soul is poured out without ceasing, it refuses all comfort.

I will declare the mighty acts of the Lord: I will call to mind Your wonders of old
I will think on all that You have done: and meditate upon Your works
Your way, O God, is holy: Who is so great a God as our God?
You are the God that works wonders: You made known Your power among the nations
By Your mighty arm You redeemed Your people: the children of Jacob and Joseph
The waters saw You O God the waters saw You and were afraid: the depths also were troubled
The clouds poured out water, the heavens spoke: and Your arrows darted forth
The voice of Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind: Your lightnings lit the world, the earth shuddered and quaked
Your way was in the sea, Your path in the great waters: and Your footsteps were not seen
You led Your people like sheep: by the hand of Moses and Aaron




EPISTLE Galatians 5: 1 & 13 – 25

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

GOSPEL Luke 9: 51 - 62

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.
As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

NOTES ON THE READINGS.....

Old Testament
It may come as some surprise just how many common expressions in English derived from the Scriptures. Today’s passage about Elijah and Elisha have one such: about the passing on a mantle. It is a shorthand sort of way of having a significant role passed on to a successor. And here is the original.

One would be a little hard up to provide all the detail of this somewhat unusual tale of the departure of Elijah. However, it provided ancient Israel with quite something of a mythology about this first of the prophets. When someone is lifted from this life to the next, there is the opportunity both of presenting the importance of the person, and (like any good TV programme) a chance of resurrection so to speak. ‘Before Messiah, Elijah must first come,’ for instance.

On the other hand, it will bear repetition to underline that Elijah was the first in a hugely significant line of people who were the prophets in Israel. To my knowledge, there is no other religion that produced such a distinguished line of people who were both enormously aware of the real direction of the Hebrew Faith, and were exquisitely capable of pointing to where that truth led. In spite of the sad distortion by some of what those ancients worthies produced, their aim and direction were remarkably unanimous: and focussed on truth and justice, on the God Who was working in and through His people, however disobedient, and that all pointed to a salvation the like of which would be far more all-embracing than ever before.

Elijah’s successor was painfully aware of his need for charisma to continue in his master’s footsteps, which was why he chased the old prophet all over the countryside. And whilst Elisha continued along similar lines, it has to be said that he never quite equalled his predecessor.
It is rather naughty of me, but the final act in today’s reading is not quite as remarkable as it may seem. Anyone who has seen photographs of the River Jordan will know that it equated some of the rivers in this State – the flow of the stream was neither wide nor very deep at all. A creek may well have a better flow.

Psalm
Before you get all thingy and turn your eyes from this Psalm because it sounds like a good old-fashioned whinge, do stop and see what was happening. In good old traditional Jewish manner, the author was certainly bemoaning his fate, but then read on. His answer to his problem was to look back and see all that God had done both in his life and in that of his nation. All Jewish understanding of God, all its theology, stemmed from watching God at work in their history almost before looking to nature. In other words, the fascinating thing about Hebrew theology was that it was (still is, I would venture to guess) tested in the fires of ordinary human life and existence. If it did not fit there, then it was no longer relevant. Not a bad way to go at all.

Epistle
There is a remarkable dichotomy in what Paul was writing about here, and it is a message that bears a good hard look in this post-modern day of ours. If there is one thing that seems to resonate with most people today it is freedom. And with that there can be little dispute. However, freedom today tends to leave everyone else out of the picture. My ‘freedom’ tends really to mean my control over you. And that is never freedom but a refined form of slavery. Several times the Apostle returned to this particular subject. The added ingredient, which stops my freedom becoming your slavery is good old fashioned genuine love. And that love is agape, neither eros nor philadelphia. Ponder that for a while, eh?

In this lovely passage Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit, against which there is no law.

Gospel
Do not be too harsh on the Samaritans, bastardized Jews as they were. For them, Jerusalem was as much a swear word as their own existence was to the Jews. Alienated, and yet aware that Jesus had something for them, did not want the centre of Judaism taking their new Master.
Mind you, the disciples had not come far in Gospel when they decided to belt the living daylights out of the so-and-sos. Small wonder they earned Jesus’ rebuke. In his own inimicable way Jesus underlined how is own disciples would feel the sting of isolation as time went by.
The challenge offered to Jesus to that line of wannabes reflected the real position: it had to be all or nothing, and there could be no delay until the olds passed away, nor deflections as some sort of excuse in other directions. Either you were in or you were out. (Not a popular path to travel these days now is it!!!!)

Notes for a sermon
One of the recurrent themes that seems to emerge in discussion and debate about ‘the way things are going’ is the perceived need to act with strength and overpower the wrongdoer(s) and press them into submission, This is the path chosen by political leaders in response to international terrorism, or even to the road toll and the Gang of 49. In fact it is a path chosen increasingly often by ordinary people as they seek to resolve problems with neighbours or other people a little further from home.

Sadly, it looks like the best path to travel, provided one has the necessary superiority, with all the promise of resolution – with a chance of some peace. History itself shows fairly clearly that violence has never yet provided any peace, unless you call suppression of people a phantom of peace.

Sadder still, is the assumption that people used to make about God, Who (they stated unequivocally) had it in His almighty power to stop wars and other destructive things. Conversely, when such a force was not brought into being to deliver the required outcome, it became obvious to rather too many that either God is impotent – or perhaps does not exist at all. Q.E.D.

Pardon me for being a stirrer, but there is another path that can be travelled, - should be travelled! – if real resolution and reconciliation is hoped for. That path is far from easy, and rather longer and more exhausting than some we have used, but it is likely to be less fatal for a rather wider number of people.

If you think that I am talking through my hat, then I offer a down-to-earth situation that is capable – at a small level – of bringing some sort of resolution. The illustration stems from quite a number of years as Prison Chaplain. If there is one thing that loomed large when any discussion either of the Gospel or of the process undertaken by most Correctional Services, it is the vast distance between what may be called the Mission Statement of such Departments, and the actual process that is involved. Chalk and cheese hardly describes the difference. Said Mission Statement, or at least the one printed in the Guard House where I was working, for all to see, talked about restorative justice and preparing inmates to be absorbed back into the community. The reality of that process was (and may well still be) a thousand miles from there. While it is not from the hands of all warders and staff, the harsh, punitive, ‘shut up and do what you are told’ regime is the one that holds sway. Violence is the first resort, by word or action, and don’t tell me it doesn’t happen for it has been tried on me as well.

Once prisoners experience that sort of force (and I have to say that for quite some of them, it is the only language they understand because it is the only language they have ever come across,) there may be no other starting point. But I have to add that – in my experience – acting in fairness and honesty with such men does often result in a refreshingly different outcome. I could point to quite some numbers of prisoners who have matured greatly under a regime of fairness, discussion of issues and problems and the start of resolution of those problems. It does not happen overnight, as the saying goes, but it does happen.

Perhaps you may well have some experience similar yourself. If there is a matter for argument at home, and your spouse or your children respond with truth and fairness, the issue is capable of solution very rapidly, however serious the problem. I find myself that, in an argument, if I am listened to, the first thing I find is that anger evaporates simply because I am being heard. And understood. I guess it does not take a degree in science to see the reality of this.

Now pardon me for now bringing an edge to this subject that is already thousands of years old. Yes, it is Jesus, and yes it is the Gospel, but the process predates our Lord. Many of the Old Testament prophets held to very similar views and theologies, Isaiah in particular drawing the clear conclusion that when the Servant of the Lord appeared, his whole modus operandum would circulate around the gentle, persuasive approach. ‘A bruised reed he will not break, a smouldering wick he will not quench.’ And although this approach will result in the death of that Servant, the process of restoration will begin and endure. And in Isaiah’s view, those who follow the Servant will continue to work towards such reconciliation.

One needs look more than a little closely at the life and ministry of Jesus, to see how He responded to life and to people with that same patience, love and compassion. While it did not work for and with everyone, it did offer the rest of the world a means of regaining a lost equilibrium. It is almost bitterly ironic that large numbers of professed followers did not and do not see any trace of the path He puts in front of us.

And Jesus followed that path because that is the way His Father operated and operates. Sure, in the early pages of the Old Testament you will find constant references to a harsh and retributive God, but that is only because those ancients, in their own evolution in understanding God, still had the somewhat pagan baggage that could only think in terms of overwhelming power. It took many centuries, a millennium or two, for those old saints to realize that this God of theirs was operating on a very different wave-length.

Neither time nor space will enable an exhaustive look at this wide-ranging but hugely important aspect of life and of faith. Dare I say it may take time for some readers to kiss goodbye to some of the old baggage that they carry. Fear not; Rome was never built in a day, and the journey is a fascinating and rewarding one.