RonBlog

Sunday 11th July, 2010 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Sentence
Do to others as you would have then do to you. Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Luke 6:31. 35

Collect
O Lord we beseech You mercifully to hear the prayers of Your people who call upon You, and grant that we may both perceive and know what things we ought to do, and also may have the grace and power faithfully to fulfill them, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Amos 7: 1 - 17

This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the LORD said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said, "See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword."
Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, "Amos has conspired against you in the very centre of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said, 'Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.'" And Amaziah said to Amos, "O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom."
Then Amos answered Amaziah, "I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel.' Now therefore hear the word of the LORD. You say, 'Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac." Therefore thus says the LORD: 'Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be parcelled out by line; you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go in away from its land.'"

Psalm 82

God stood up in the council of heaven: in the midst of the gods He gives judgement
‘How long will you judge unjustly: and favour the cause of the wicked?”
Judge for the poor and the fatherless: vindicate the afflicted and oppressed.
Rescue the poor and the needy: and save them from the hands of the wicked.
They do not know, they do not understand, they walk about in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are shaken
Therefore I say ‘Though you are gods: and all of you children of the Most High
Nevertheless you shall all die like mortals: and fall like one of the princes.
Arise O God and judge the earth: for You shall take all nations as Your possession

Epistle Colossians 1: 1 – 14

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father. In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God.
This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit. For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

GOSPEL Luke 10: 25 – 37

A lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbour?"
Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”
Jesus asked, “which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

NOTES ON THE READINGS

Old Testament
This insight into the role of the early prophets is fascinating, for – as mentioned before often, - there is no parallel in other cultures or religions to this function some people held. One can imagine something of the enormous difficulty encountered by these people as, without much in the way of precedent, the responded to inner compulsions to do what they understood to be the work of the Lord. (Never, never compare these people with the idiot fringe who are ‘convinced’ that they are told to do ridiculous things.)

Amos came from the southern kingdom to preach in the northern, and while I doubt he would have been popular in either realm, he was certainly unwelcome in the north. It was a time of increased wealth and even (comparative) opulence and the widening of the gap between rich and poor. It is important to note that the real issues for these people who became prophets were issues of justice and equity, and the imbalance that ensued from such tensions. The matters are not essentially religious or esoteric; they are down to earth and very basic issues. (Having recently had a series of tirades from atheists in the Advertiser about religious superstition, I admit to considerable delight in refuting their rather ill-informed challenges. I would have thought that they knew rather better!)

Psalm
As if to underline the significance of the prophet’s emphasis, even the psalmist gets up on the same bandwaggon. It is a strange sort of scene, and obviously early in OT times, but the nail is really hit on the head as the ancient worthy tears strips off ‘other gods’ because they have no brief about the ordinary necessities of life. It is a fascinating if short statement of where the realities of faith should operate.

Epistle
Although the same strong sentiments may not be all that obvious here, it may be helpful to note how the Apostle describes the matters the previous authors have been dealing with. They talk about justice; Paul talks about ‘powers of darkness.’ And, of course, he draws the distinction between those of the faith and those who are not. That may well have been because in the cultures amongst which Paul worked, a real superstition operated, not unlike some of the so-called New Age views of things.

Gospel
And here is one of the clearest pictures of all, where real justice is seen in the offering of assistance to someone in need, regardless of the religious, political or class divisions we humans like to indulge in. This parable of the Good Samaritan tends to lose much of its impact for us to whom the bigotry between Jew and Samaritan of those days rings no bells. (C/f Jew and Palestinian today and you get the picture!) This parable must have blown up in the face of the holy ones of the time, for it was a devastating critique of their isolationist and very selfish outlooks. One hardly needs to make much comment on this very familiar passage.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

I may have told the story before of a man of mature years who oft related the story of his conversion. He had been a long and constant attendee at an Anglican Church somewhere in western NSW., until he was in his late thirties. Then for the first time in his life, at some other Church or group, he heard (what he called) the Gospel preached. He responded to this new teaching with huge delight and joy and became a member and later Pastor of that sect. I guess in one way it was a nice story, but the more you heard that man speak and preach, the more I wondered what sort of Gospel has attracted him. It had more to do with getting to heaven than it had to do with being one of God’s people here.

It is possible to express the overall emphasis of the Christian Faith fairly simply. And it has rather more to do with living out life right here and now than it does about waiting for the next life. What is more, it focusses on resolving life-issues that really do tear human beings apart, which is one of the reasons it has been despised, oddly.

Take a long hard look (or not so long or hard!) at life and she is lived and the very thing that hits the most airspace – surely – is the almost constant tension and conflict that mars human relationships at every level. Whether it is kids growing up, or pressures between parents and families, or within communities, countries or internationally, it is always headline news. And it is always unavoidable. This has been the permanent blot on the landscape since history began. And to my knowledge, no one has been able to stop it, even though there have been ideas that offer some hope.

It is into such a maelstrom that the Christian Faith proffers a solution that can be a way forward, but sadly much of its sting has been drawn because the solution has been turned into a religion rather than the way of life it pointed to. The offer has been constant yet growing and developing over millennia – evolving if you are game! And today’s readings point to quite some of that evolution over at least one of those millennia.

Right from the start, Hebrew Christian Faith saw that the problem was a human one. Very human one. And the problem lies in the fact that we each determine to be boss, and to force others into submission to me. Genesis 3 has the story, the myth, the situation. So when the perceived problem is of human determination to control, then it is possible to respond to such tactics by proposing a different reaction. Instead of control, there needs to be service; instead of self-aggrandizement there needs to be self-giving. Instead of war, let there be love. As a sort of general summary, one might refer to the Two Great Commandments, to love God and to love neighbour. (If anyone has problems with the ‘God’ thing, I would suggest that they simply see that such a statement is making it clear that the impetus to operate in such a way is of universal significance, and maybe they would like to find their way to express that.)

As one looks at the history of this development of the Faith, Hebrew and Christian, I find it interesting that the rise of the prophets brought that element of justice and integrity. It strikes me as a move that stopped the response being ‘religious’ and pointed to the real and existential situation in which one needs to respond to others. If I say I love you and reduce it to some sort of emotional level, it is possible for me to avoid the real need to be fair dinkum with you. Love requires justice and integrity for it to be real. Tangible, measurable. If I act towards you without being fair, I am being very shallow indeed, and any protestation of love is rendered meaningless.

With the coming of Christ, the whole business of reality of faith was earthed to a remarkable degree. Although Jews were fairly clearly the most religious people then around, they had managed (as ‘religious’ people often can,) to turn it into yet another form of competition against hoi polloi. Sadly, that is often the outcome of ‘religion,’ but it is far from its real purpose and point.