RonBlog

Sunday 18th July, 2010 Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Sentence
In returning and rest you shall be saved: in quietness and trust shall be your strength.
Isaiah 30:16
Collect
O God, You alone can order our unruly wills and affections: teach us to love what You command and to desire what You promise, that, among the changes and chances of this world our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Amos 8: 1 – 12

This is what the Lord GOD showed me--a basket of summer fruit. He said, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the LORD said to me, “The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by. The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day," says the Lord GOD; "the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!"
Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, "When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat."
The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt? On that day, says the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day. The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.

Psalm 52

Why, you that are so powerful, do you boast all the day long: of mischief done to those that are faithful to God?
You contrive destroying slanders: your tongue is like a sharpened razor, it cuts deceitfully
You have loved evil, and not good: to tell lies rather than to speak the truth
You love all words that may do hurt: and every deceit of the tongue
But God will destroy you utterly: He will snatch you away and pluck you out of your dwelling, He will uproot you from the land of the living
The righteous shall see it and fear: they shall laugh you to scorn and say
‘Here is one who did not take God for strength: but trusted the abundance of riches and found strength in slander.’
As for me I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I will trust in the goodness of God for ever and ever
I will always give You thanks, for this was Your doing: I will glorify Your name before the faithful, for it is good to praise You

Epistle Colossians 1: 15 – 29 (28EPB)

Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers--all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him-- provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.
I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. I became its servant according to God's commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.

GOSPEL Luke 10: 38 – 42

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

NOTES ON THE READINGS

Old Testament
Most old commentators tend to see ‘unrelenting gloom’ in Amos’ outpourings, but I would see things rather differently. In a time of great wealth for some people, the prophet pointed to the great damage that wealth and greed did to a community and nation. Having just had another of the downers from such a burst of greed, one tends to see Amos’ words not so much as a tirage of gloom as an anticipation of collapse! It strikes me that Amos was very close to the bone with his preaching, but undeniably accurate: as were most of those ancient prophets .... and modern ones like John with his apocalypse.
The play on words here is interesting but only available in Hebrew. In that language, qeyts means ‘end’ and qayits means ‘summer fruits.’ So Israel is like a bowl of summer fruits, ready to decay, because of the commercial abuse of people by the use of false weights. So there is nothing new under the sun: high prices for underweight goods. So cash became more important than people, and there is the beginning of the end. As Amos would be the first to indicate, he was not anticipating the end of the world, but rather the collapse of a totally false social, economic and even political situation. Most defeats of a country or culture come from within. And it follows, almost invariably, that when cash becomes more important than the person, then everything will fall apart in the not too distant future.
It is a solemn and strong comment about faith and justice, which is a very common theme both amongst the prophets as it was with our Lord. For those who see ‘religion’ as superstition, it is about time that their blinkers were removed.

Psalm
And the content of this psalm is not far removed from the same subject. It is a tragic fact that, all too often, those who present themselves as most religious can be also the most greedy and usurious.

Epistle
Another sadness for me is the extent to which sincere Christians do not seem to be aware of the power of Paul’s statements in his letters. Instead of being caught up in the ‘holy talk,’ one needs to be careful to understand the enormity of his statements about Jesus. It is all-embracing, with intent for all humans regardless of race, colour and creed, in a world where all manner of competing ‘theologies’ and world views permeated. Jesus, from where Paul sits, is the glue that holds everything – absolutely everything! - together, is the One Who alone makes sense of life. It is not just that Jesus died for me, but that He offers to all humans a way forward from the hugely destructive dilemma in which we all live. And from the Old Testament on, that path has as much to do with living with justice and truth as it does with facing and dealing with other human sin.

GOSPEL
Here, in a brief cameo which always provided difficulty for my ‘Martha’ mother, it is not always terribly easy to pick up on where Jesus was pointing. Certainly, there always needs to be that time to stop and think before actions, especially if that action involves doing something for others – one needs to ponder how such action would affect even the friend. Mind you, I doubt if Jesus was into the sort of activity so beloved by earnest Christians, of hiding away for prayer before any action is allowed. That reduces to pious nonsense, does it not!

NOTES FOR A SERMON

It is naughty of me, I know, but I recall a situation decades ago on a Youth Camp for the Diocese where I was in those days. With a large crowd of eager young people attending, it took considerable organisation to ensure smooth running, especially when it came to housekeeping sorts of activities for meals and clearing up afterwards. Rosters had been distributed well in advance and everyone knew when their jobs were to be done. So I was not impressed when one young couple failed to turn up a couple of times for washing up duty. The second time I asked if anyone knew where they were and the answer was well-known to the young people. ‘Pops, they are off praying for the Camp!’ was the reply, with some of them impressed with the holiness of the young couple concerned.
I disappeared quietly in the direction where I expected to find them: young and in love and holding hands, praying their little hearts out. They were not impressed when I suggested quite firmly that there was lots of time for praying when they were not rostered on. Against their protestations of being involved in far more important ‘work,’ I required them to front up with tea towels at the ready, and not to miss out again thank you very much. They were really quite at odds with me – and maybe are still!

I cannot imagine Amos – or any of the other prophets – hiding away from hard work when the need arose, because they saw that as their prior commitment. In fact, they seemed quite prepared to put their lives and reputations on the line, because of the vast importance of what they had to say. Now that is something of which we see very little in our own day and age, from leaders at all sorts of levels. So perhaps one of the reasons for that disparity is the difference between what those ancients saw as important, and what lesser people do these days. No room for ensuring future election for the prophets and certainly not for Paul. In other words, they needed to be convinced totally of the facts to which they adhered with such determination.

It is interesting to see the different foci, for prophet and apostle, though I wonder if there was really much difference at all. For the Old Testament people, the issues were matters of fairness, justice, truth and integrity. It is surprising to see this, for they lived in a day and age when most of the gods and goddesses were not attributed with any social or moral superiority to the rest of the human race, but JHWH was! A millennium later, the Roman and Greek gods were no further along the road of moral improvement, but the Biblical faith had developed greatly. God was seen as not only the upholder of all that is just and true, but also as guarantor, repository if you like, of those inalienable and unalterable values of life.

Consider the New Testament view, and what do we see? For Paul that focus turns to Jesus, and this fascinating passage from Colossians – reflected elsewhere too! – as the One in Whom all things hold together, first place in everything. That was not a matter of Paul getting excited and talking through his hat! That was a powerful statement of the primacy of Jesus, not just for His followers, but for all humanity. It is another way of saying exactly the same sort of thing that the prophets propounded.

Now let us stop a moment and consider whether there could be any validity in what is being stated here. The real question is to wonder if the position proffered by prophet and apostle will stand up to examination, and the answer is self-evident from the start. As Paul says in his own writings, ‘against such things there is no law,’ when he describes the position of love and compassion, and fairness of living. In other words, whilst the Church has tended to be apologetic about presenting a ‘religion,’ there is no need for apology in offering what is so self-evident. Mind you, there will ever be times in the history of a country or culture when the most obvious best things are downgraded, such as our own time when greed has long been seen as the way to go. So much of Jesus’ problem, so to speak, was in challenging the status quo of the time when He lived and showed that love and compassion offers far better leadership than overpowering and violence and hatred. That is something that even recent regimes could learn from, if they dared.
Is there not quite some room to move in our view of the Faith and process of presenting it to the world at large, in all this? It is not religion; it is way of life and choices of priorities. And singularly, tangibly valid.