RonBlog

Sunday 17th October, 2010 Twenty first Sunday after Pentecost

Sentence
Will God not grant justice to those who cry to Him day and night? Will He delay long in helping them?
Luke 18:7-8
Collect
Lord, tireless guardian of Your people, teach us to rely, day and night, on Your care. Drive us to seek Your justice and Your help and support our prayer lest we grow weary, for in You alone is our strength. We make our prayer through Your Son Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Jeremiah 31: 27 – 34

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD. In those days they shall no longer say: "The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.
The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Psalm 119: 97 – 104

Lord how I love Your law: it is my meditation all the day long
Your commandments have made me wiser than my enemies: for they remain with me for ever
I have more understanding than all my teachers: for I study Your commands.
I am wiser than the aged: because I have kept Your precepts.
I have held back my feet from every evil path: that I might keep Your word
I have not turned aside from Your judgements: for You Yourself are my teacher
How sweet are Your words to my tongue: sweeter than honey to my mouth
Through Your precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate all lying ways.

Epistle 2 Timothy 3: 10 – 4:5

Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.
Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.
GOSPEL Luke 18: 1 – 14

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.' For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'"
And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."

NOTES ON THE READINGS

Old Testament
It almost beggars imagination as to how one might comment on this most significant of passages. It is important for modern readers to realize how steep the learning curve was for those worthy ancients, and a learning curve that left previous experiences for dead. Modern readers need to be aware of the enormous evolution of the faith that took place over centuries and millennia, from Abraham to the time of Jeremiah. Please realize that this was a period of close to 2,500 years. From search for truth, to settledness of law, to – in this passage – the awareness of responsibility of each person and the availability of conscience in the making of moral and other choices. I doubt if there is any other religion or ism that contains anything like the breadth of exploration of life and God than that reflected in Judaism over that time.

Responsibility and conscience. As Paul put it, the Law was the ‘school-teacher’ to bring us to Christ. As with our own children, we begin by telling them what to do and how to do it, but as they grew and matured, we parents stepped back allowing mistakes because young people need to see that being human equals being responsible. My own eldest daughter thrilled me to pieces when, late in her teens, she thanked me for allowing her to make her mistakes. That she saw that was great enough; that she was grateful was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

Psalm
Had you asked me to comment on this psalm when I was young, my response would have been caustic. Baloney, I would have said. But when one realizes that the genius of the Hebrew faith was – as mentioned above – then one’s view changes radically. Justice and truth and integrity is, even in this day and age, the only sensible way to go. And the old psalmist was spot on.

Epistle
As one comes to expect it, the Epistle stands on the shoulders of the earlier readings, underlining what has been said heretofore, but adding the factor that such an approach of faith and integrity in the real world is most likely to encounter strong and constant resistance. We do not live in an ideal world; we live in a rough-as-guts world where the old verities are despised and rejected. Small wonder that the Lord of life was similarly despised and rejected. Do not be surprised that there will be strong and sometime violent resistance to the Gospel, even to the Gospel properly understood and preached and lived. (I am not talking ‘religion,’ which word I dislike intensely because Christianity is not about ‘religion.’

GOSPEL
In fact, today’s Gospel reflects the difference between religion and Christian reality. That second cameo reflects ‘religion,’ which misses the point and looks only at boosting the ego of the participant. The Faith has nothing to do with ego-boosting. It has everything to do with persisting in the direction one knows one needs to head, and getting on with the job, regardless of contrary resistance. This fact certainly does tend to show the difference, may I express it as, between the men and the boys. (Ladies, I imagine that the same distinction obtains for you also. Maturity is a necessary reality.)

NOTES FOR A SERMON

I seem to manage great discussions with quite some of my friends from decades past, whenever the subject of evolution comes into focus. Part of the reason for the debates tends to arise because I was once right where they were, and I have to add that that situation arose largely out of ignorance. Science and evolution, in the ‘40s and early ‘50s where I lived, were mortal enemies to faith. As I look back to then, and to my Biblical ignorance, I wonder at my gall at taking such a position. (Since I have seen little disagreement between real science and Scripture (properly – which means Jewishly) – understood, I am amazed that such old battles continue, even though the grounds are rebutted.

What is more to the point in this context, is that a close look at Hebrew/Christian Faith reveals exactly the same process of development and growth, over a period of millennia. The Old Testament Lesson for today underlines that process, and – as the notes above indicate – that underlining continues through the rest of those readings. One of the remarkable things about the Hebrew Faith is, that as far as I can see, it emerged over that long period because Hebrew Faith developed as those ancients pondered life as they lived and experienced it. This means that as experience grew and outlooks widened, people’s move from the last gasps of superstitious paganism to a far more mature outlook emerged. Perhaps the best and clearest example of that progress is one that has long been the tool of antagonists of these faiths.

I have memories going way back of arguments against the Faith, because of the bloodthirsty view of God held by those in early Old Testament times. The punitive, retributive God Who is said to have demanded the deaths of Achan and his family, and other perpetrators of such periods, was really the hangover from the ancient fear of the unknown that translated to the fear of God. (Are you aware of the extent to which the first Creation Story in Genes 1:1 – 2:4a changed perception radically. There was only one God to worry about, not multitudes! That was an enormous leap forward. It was such a leap forward that millennia afterwards, the very discoveries of science were rendered possible. If there is one God, then one can expect to find order in the universe!)

Back to Jeremiah. “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” It is a rather common, present furphy that our bad points come to us through our genes, or through our environment. In Jeremiah’s day, it was common to blame your parents. (You have heard that one yourself surely!) It is interesting to note, while on the subject, that in the Ten Commandments, those who disobey can, so to speak, blame their parents to the third and fourth generation. This is a limitation of impact, please note, not an excuse for me to blame Mum and Dad. On the other hand, those who are faithful have the comfort of thousands (of generations) of beneficial effect.
The real issue that Jeremiah was raising was the business of personal responsibility. As one of my Bishops once commented to a vastly erring young man at our Rectory after a night fleeing from police, ‘Bill, you are human; ergo you are responsible.’ Bill did all he could to refute the charge, but +Bruce left him no room to move. It is an important point: without personal responsibility, our humanness is reduced to penury. With it, the sky is surely the limit.

As if to underline the direction of this development pointed to by the prophet, he went on to promise what, I suspect, has always been true. Deep within our psyche, Christian or otherwise, we are aware of what is just and true, honourable and compassionate, regardless of our background, genes or parents. In fact one of our late departed Archdeacons of decades past used to pontificate on how, in his early years, whenever someone did wrong and erred from the straight and narrow, they knew it, and expected the repercussions. Those outcomes may result from Court action, but mostly they stemmed from bent consciences, traumatised by their sins. Nowadays, I wonder whether our almost innate dishonesty and failure or refusal to face our responsibilities is one of the factors that lead to breakdown and disintegration. (I am always grateful for the confession and absolution in our Anglican formularies; they are not there to drive us into breast-beating, for heaven’s sake. They are there to free me up to be able to face my errors and glitches, and learn from them. If I do not need to hide them from God, then I do not need to hide from them myself. If you cannot handle my failures, then I still know Someone Who can!