RonBlog

Sunday 15th August, 2010 Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Sentence
‘Is not My word like fire,’ says the Lord, ‘and like a hammer that breaks rocks in pieces?’
Jeremiah 23: 29
Collect
Everliving God, Your son, Jesus Christ, gave Himself as living bread for the life of the world; give us such a knowledge of His presence that we may be strengthened and sustained by His risen life, to serve You continually; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever Amen

Old Testament Lesson Isaiah 5: 1 – 7

Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?
And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!

Psalm 80: 1 – 19

Hear, O Shepherd of Israel, You that lead Joseph like a flock: You that are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine out in glory
Before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh: stir up Your power and come to save us
Restore us again, O Lord of Hosts: show us the light of Your countenance and we shall be saved.
O Lord God of Hosts: how long will You be angry at Your people’s prayer?
You have fed them with the bread of tears: and given them tears to drink in good measure.
You have made us the victim of our neighbours: and our enemies laugh us to scorn
Restore us again, O Lord of Hosts: show us the light of Your countenance and we shall be saved.
You brought a vine out of Egypt: You drove out the nations and planted it in
You cleared the ground before it: and it struck root and filled the ground
The hills were covered with its shadow: and its boughs were like the boughs of the great cedars
It stretched out its branches to the sea: and its tender shoots to the Great River
Why then have You broken down its walls: so that every passer-by can pluck its fruit?
The wild boar out of the woods roots it up: and the locusts from the wild places devour it
Turn to us again, O Lord of hosts: look down from heaven and see
Bestow Your care upon this vine: the stock which Your right hand has planted.
As for those who burn it with fire and cut it down: let them perish at the rebuke of Your countenance
Let Your power rest on the man at Your right hand: on that son of man whom You made so strong for Yourself
And so we shall not turn back from You: give us life, and we will call upon Your Name.
Restore us again, O Lord of Hosts: show us the light of Your countenance and we shall be saved.

Epistle Hebrews 11: 29 – 12:2

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace. And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets-- who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.
Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.
They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented-- of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

GOSPEL Luke 12: 49 59

Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!
Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? Thus, when you go with your accuser before a magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle the case, or you may be dragged before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny."
© 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

Old Testament
If this passage is not well known to you, then it ought to be. Not only does the passion of Isaiah come through, and the passion of God, but there is the added and very clear position of why God does not do all sorts of things for people and nations. There is so much drivel preached about how God operates, and sadly people ignore the fact that the Scriptures have made it clear from a very long time ago. The ancient Israelites were far from stupid as they drew their theology from observation in the real world. And here is the result of some of that.
If you ponder this passage (and much more of Scripture,) it becomes clear that God expects people to take responsibility for their actions, and to face the consequences of their folly! As has been indicated before in these notes, God is like any sensible parent: He expects people to learn from their mistakes, and not to blame anyone or anything else. This is the only way to develop maturity in anyone!

Psalm
Here may well be one of the ‘exercises’ that led Israel to consider deeper as they looked at their history. On the one hand, there was the clear perception that God had chosen them. For some, that seemed to mean a protected future without any input from themselves. Such thinking is disastrous in any situation. So if God is not some great protector, then what is going on? And there can only be two directions emerging from such a search: either God is a figment of imagination or He is doing something fairly serious!

Epistle
This letter to the Hebrews is not the most easily understood of the NT books, and that is partly because it is so very Jewish in its presentation. In this long passage, one of the main issues is the nature of faith (or read faithfulness!) as people commit to loyalty and responsibility as People of God. There was little expectation of any easy life, or disappointment at violent reactions to their faithfulness. So there is the long-term living out of what they saw to be as their true faith – and thank God for them. Many more could have been listed, as one might imagine.




GOSPEL
If anyone ever had the misconception that the Christian Faith was all about being lovey-dovey, and God making sure that everything went smoothly, then that one would need to look again at passages like this. There has never been, in Biblical literature, the slightest semblance of ‘nice, soft, getting on together, feel good’ stuff.

Jesus was always quite aware of the fact that His ministry would produce a rather violent reaction from those whose concern was to maintain the status quo. ‘I have come to bring fire to the earth’ is an unequivocal statement; there are no signs of spin or latent falsehoods here. It may seem rather ironic that He Who came to offer reconciliation is also the ‘cause’ of division. But note that such division stems, not from what the Gospel offers, but from people’s refusal to see what is true and real, and to turn away from it. The choice belongs to each person.

Perhaps it is surprising that Jesus seems to make it quite clear that any person is able to read ‘the signs of the times,’ in order to establish what is true and what is false. While that may not be exactly so, it is certainly indicative. For instance, anyone who said that the recent Global Financial Crisis took them by surprise has to be blind and foolish. All the evidence was there, and in most cases, continues to be because no one seems ready to learn from the experience. Greed is always destructive; the only question is the extent.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

‘Is not my word like fire?’ says the Lord.
What a grand starting off point for a pulpit-thumping sermon to make everyone sit up and take notice. Sadly, such jumping up and down does little but to raise the hackles or the goose pimples of people. There is rarely much in the way of solid response. But then, that is humanity – never really wanting anything but to be left in peace, even if that is the peace of death.

Because of that refusal, not many people learn a great deal from life’s ups and downs. Although that is a generalisation, it has to be said that some exceptions to that rule were visible in Israel’s history and especially in their growing understanding of God. They observed ordinary life and they pondered: they worked on the principle that what happened in real life was an indication of what was important and what not. We need to grab more of that attitude ourselves. Failure to do so is to miss the important aspects of life and of living.

I am rather proud to be linked, however tenuously, to one of the world’s great economists who, despite other faults and failings, had a clear grasp of what was important. John Maynard Keynes, cousin to my grandfather, was not only the person who offered the world a long hard way out of the Great Depression but did something far less well known in the Versailles Meetings after World War One. Those who were party to the demand for reparations from Germany, generally, were determined so to depress Germany by vast demands, that they would have destroyed the nation entirely. Along with one other, Maynard Keynes pressed for far less demands, precisely on the grounds that to continue in the current path would lead, quite precipitately to another World War. So few listened that Keynes resigned from the Conference, for he could see no other path. Sadly, Keynes was quite correct in his prognostications, and –as they say – the rest is history. The world could have done without the scourge that was Adolph Hitler, could it not!

Responsibility, not doom, is the keynote. And responsibility is the recurrent theme in Scripture, Old Testament and New. This is part of the Gospel, and is very much part of the Old Testament theology as well. One cannot play fast and loose with issuers of justice and truth, and expect to win the day or last for very long. Chickens come home to roost, as they say; what goes round comes round; and people these days talk a lot about karma as if the concept is something new. It is not.

I am in fairly constant correspondence with people of atheist conviction, not because of their views, but because of their strange misconception of religious people being superstitious. However, my point is not to convert said atheists but draw their attention to the fact that superstition has little room in the Biblical faith. The real issues there are about justice and truth and integrity, not in life to come but in the right here and now. In most cases, those to whom I have spoken are somewhat surprised for their conception of the Faith has stemmed, largely but not entirely, from false information. Sadly there are those who claim to be Christian who are rather more close to superstition.