RonBlog

Sunday 8th August, 2010 Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Sentence
Watch and be ready, for you do not know on what day or hour your Lord is coming.
Matt. 24:42
Collect
Kindle in our hearts, Father, the same faith that impelled Abraham to leave home and safety and to pilgrim in a foreign land. May we, like him, look for the city that none but You can design and build; keep us watchful for Your Son’s coming so that we might be faithful stewards of all that You have entrusted to us. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Isaiah 1:1 & 10 – 20

The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation-- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Psalm 50: 1 – 8 & 23 -24
The Lord our God, the Mighty One has spoken: and summoned the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting in the west
From Zion, perfect in beauty: God has shone out in glory
Our God is coming, He will not keep silent: before Him is devouring fire, and tempest whirl about Him
He calls to the heavens above: and so to the earth, so that He may judge His people.
‘Gather to Me My faithful ones: those who by sacrifice made a covenant with Me
The heavens shall proclaim His righteousness: for God Himself is judge
Listen My people and I will speak: O Israel, I am God your God, and I will give you My testimony
It is not for your sacrifices that I reprove you: for your burnt-offerings are always before Me

O consider this, you who forget God: lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to save you.
He honours Me who brings a sacrifice of thanksgiving: and to him who keeps My way I will show the salvation of God.
Epistle Hebrews 11: 1 – 3 & 8 – 16

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old--and Sarah herself was barren--because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, "as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore." All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

GOSPEL Luke 12: 32 – 40

Jesus said, "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

© New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
Copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the
Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission. All rights reserved

NOTES ON THE READINGS .......

A SPECIAL NOTE TO START
You may not be familiar with the rather great dichotomy that seemed to come to the fore in Israel periodically between the performance or apparent uselessness of what commentators used to call the Sacrificial System. That form of worship that entailed the sacrifice of animals was both condemned as mere ritual that avoided involvement, and admired as the epitome of Jewish worship until the destruction of the Temple. Part of the reason for the divided opinion lay in the way in which, as in most cultures, sometimes the rituals are undertaken as little more than ‘going through the motions.’ If and when that approach emerged, the prophets and even psalmists tended to be condemnatory. On the other hand, when it was far more than ritual, it was seen as hugely important as the expression par excellence of Israel’s awareness of itself.
As an Anglican, I would dare to say that the problem was not necessarily Jewish. Sadly, our forms of worship (as with any liturgical Church) can become little more than bland routine. In that case the liturgy (or rather its participants) have failed. Properly expressed and understood, liturgy is designed to express all that needs to be expressed in worship, and to enable the participant to grow in their understanding of God and of the Faith.

Old Testament Lesson

It may be news (but should not be) that there were at least two and possibly three Isaiahs in Old Testament Israel. The first prophet was active in the period leading up to the fall of the Northern Kingdom, and from Chapter 40 it is obviously from 150 years later as the Exile became the harsh experience of Israel. Do not be dismayed by this: there are several conundrums that have arisen since the study of Scripture, OT & NT, arose in the past 150 – 200 years or so, and thank heaven for that.

Isaiah is a stunning example of one of the Major Prophets, and Chapter 6 tells of the man’s call to be a prophet of the Lord. This person who was one of the elite in both religious and political circles of his day was confronted suddenly by the God Whom he had known from youth, but now faced the Reality. It must have been a vast learning curve to move from the ‘spin’ circles of politics to the real and utterly honest world of the prophet.
Part of that transition was the recognition that ‘going through the motions’ of worship was almost as bad as avoiding it. To express one thing in worship and another in real life was tantamount to the blasphemy that affects to much of normal human relationships right up to this day. Mind you, Isaiah saw that if one were to move from the shallow to the real, then all of life could and would be remarkably different, and not just in the religious sense. Notice the great emphasis that the prophet places upon relational matters, especially for those who were the dispossessed of the time. Never overlook the ‘spiritual’ necessity of justice, truth and compassion. What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

Psalm

If you perhaps thought that this psalmist was indulging in spin and propaganda, please think again. What he is saying may sound rather ‘over the top,’ but when you consider that the author was very aware of the fact that the Hebrew perception of God, and of the Divine emphases, you will see that the Jews had the game all sewn up. For them, religion was not a matter of rote or ritual, but a matter that affected every section of human life, especially in the matter of fairness with each other. (Sadly, though, the vision did not often reach the reality. But how could we dare to condemn those ancients? God –as we have known since Jesus – looks for ‘sincerity and truth’ in worship – and we dare not forget it.

Epistle
Perhaps we focus on faith too much, dare I say, in the light of today’s cluster of readings. We may well admire Abraham for his long-lasting acts of faith, but please do see what we are talking about. Here is no starry-eyed religionist, but someone far more virile.
Almost certainly, old Abe began life in the Euphrates Valley as a moon worshipper, coming from a nicely settled, very well off family. So what could possibly have induced the man (and Sarah his wife) to leave the comfort zone and go, literally, to God knows where? The simple answer has to be that for this remarkable and inquisitive, unsettled man, that his old religion did not meet him where he lived, and had no answers for the real issues of life. He must have been searching for a while, and I have a sneaky suspicion that God was looking for someone just like him to tap and the shoulder and say ‘How about it, fella?’ Thank God those two people followed their dream and inspiration. (Who knows how man other Abes God had tapped, without any response, or significant response?)
Now, do you see, this is what faith is: not believing some proposition, but sticking one’s neck out to follow wherever truth seemed to be leading.

GOSPEL

And is not this the direction to which today’s Gospel points? Stick your neck out, without reserve and see where that gets you! Be certain that the Lord knows what He is doing, get on side, put your head down and tail up and get on with it. Notice how long it took for Jesus to get that remarkably slow and slow-witted Twelve to get moving. Discipleship is no static business; it is and always will be a pilgrimage. Whenever Israel was on the move, they were learning. However when they settled in their own land, it all became rather too much, and settledness became ennui.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

Stop me if I have told you before of a certain call to the priesthood that happened to me when I was around 17 years of age. After the first thrill of that call, came the realisation that it would ‘condemn’ me to being in Church, for heaven’s sake, and what could be more boring than that? Three or four years’ study on top of that, and then into parish life or whatever. The thought of such boredom became threatening.
To cut a long story short, that boredom never happened, and although part of that nexus was broken by being appointed to a parish half the size of South Australia, I began to learn the lesson of Abraham. It soon became very apparent that, if I stopped pilgrimming in my faith, then both the calling and this person would become boredom incorporated. In reality I needed to explore the Faith as much as I explored the Outback, and I had quite a number of robust men not afraid to tell me if I was talking @#$%^ in sermons, because it would not fit their real life in the open-cut coal mine in the Far North of this fair State. In fact even that Diocese to which I had been appointed, surprised the living daylights out of me. I had been told to expect rather dead High Church clergy who had not a clue. The reality was High Church enough, but the addendum could not have been further from the truth. Those clergy, or most of them at least, were on the same pilgrimage as I, and still are, those who have not passed into the presence of their Lord.

It has been a fascinating business, helping people to see that to follow Christ is not to be dragged down by a series of rules and regulations that take all life out of existence, but quite the opposite. It is to face the harsh and significant realities of life and living and to see what that Lord of ours has in mind for all the creation, human and other. And it all stands up to examination and to life, though it certainly has its risky parts. Never forget that Jesus was executed because He attempted the upset of the status quo, especially when it comes to creative forms of leadership.

There is not a lot of room for complacency or even for going through the liturgy with eyes and ears shut. That is a waste of time, but when you understand, or have someone help you understand where the liturgy is taking you, asking you to ponder, and encouraging you to learn from, boredom disappears, I kid you not.
I remember, as a choir boy, long before all the above happened, singing in the choir at St. John’s Church, Beecroft in Sydney, having recited the prayer of thanksgiving, along with the rest of the congregation, suddenly faced with the fact that I had said it all word-perfect, and not realized what I was doing until the end of it. I doubt very much if God bothered to listen that day! Nor should He have.

So if you find worship a boring experience, (and it still happens to those who do not attend a liturgical Church!) please either get someone to open the door for you, or do some searching for yourself. It will widen your perception to such an extent, I would suggest, that you may never quite be the same again.