RonBlog

Sunday 14th November, 2010 Twenty Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Sentence
May the Lord of peace Himself give you peace, at all times and in all ways 2 Thess 3:16

Collect
Almighty God, Whose purpose none can make void; give us faith to be steadfast amid the tumults of this world, knowing that Your Kingdom shall come, and Your will be done to Your eternal glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Isaiah 65: 17 - 25

See, I am creating new heavens and a new earth! The past will no more be remembered nor will it ever come to mind. Rejoice and be for ever filled with delight at what I create; for I am creating Jerusalem as a delight and her people as a joy; I shall take delight in Jerusalem and rejoice in my people; the sound of weeping, the cry of distress will be heard in her no more.
No child there will ever again die in infancy, no old man fail to live out his span of life. He who dies at a hundred is just a youth, and if he does not attain a hundred he is thought accursed! My people will build houses and live in them, plant vineyards and eat their fruit; they will not build for others to live in or plant for others to eat. They will be as long-lived as a tree, and my chosen ones will enjoy the fruit of their labour. They will not toil to no purpose or raise children for misfortune, because they and their issue after them are a race blessed by the Lord. Even before they call to me, I shall answer, and while they are still speaking I shall respond.
The wolf and the lamb will feed together and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and as for the serpent, its food will be dust. Neither hurt nor harm will be done in all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

For the Psalm Song of Isaiah

Behold, God is my salvation: I will trust and not be afraid
For the Lord is my strength and my song: and has become my salvation
With joy will you draw water: from the wells of salvation
On that day you will say: “Give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name
Make known His deeds among the nations: proclaim that His name is exalted
Sing God’s praises, Who has triumphed gloriously: let this song be known in all the world
Shout and sing for joy, you that dwell in Zion: for great in Your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Epistle 2 Thessalonians 3: 6 – 13

These are our instructions to you, friends, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: hold aloof from every Christian who falls into idle habits, and disregards the tradition you received from us. You yourselves know how you ought to follow our example: you never saw us idling; we did not accept free hospitality from anyone; night and day in toil and drudgery we worked for a living, rather than be a burden to any of you-- not because we do not have the right to maintenance, but to set an example for you to follow. Already during our stay with you we laid down this rule: anyone who will not work shall not eat. We mention this because we hear that some of you are idling their time away, minding everybody's business but their own. We instruct and urge such people in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down to work and earn a living. My friends, you must never tire of doing right.

Gospel Luke 21: 5 - 19

Some people were talking about the temple and the beauty of its fine stones and ornaments. Jesus said, "These things you are gazing at--the time will come when not one stone will be left upon another; they will all be thrown down.” "Teacher,” they asked, "when will that be? What will be the sign that these things are about to happen?” He said, "Take care that you are not misled. For many will come claiming my name and saying, "I am he," and, "The time has come." Do not follow them. And when you hear of wars and insurrections, do not panic. These things are bound to happen first; but the end does not follow at once.” Then he added, "Nation will go to war against nation, kingdom against kingdom; there will be severe earthquakes, famines and plagues in many places, and in the sky terrors and great portents. But before all this happens they will seize you and persecute you. You will be handed over to synagogues and put in prison; you will be haled before kings and governors for your allegiance to me. This will be your opportunity to testify. So resolve not to prepare your defence beforehand, because I myself will give you such words and wisdom as no opponent can resist or refute. Even your parents and brothers, your relations and friends, will betray you. Some of you will be put to death; and everyone will hate you for your allegiance to me. But not a hair of your head will be lost. By standing firm you will win yourselves life.”

NOTES ON THE READINGS. …..

As I mention year after year, as you see reference to the Second Coming or the apocalyptic passages of the Gospels you can rest assured that Advent draweth nigh! And so it is – just a couple of weeks away. So be prepared.

Old Testament
Is there or is there not quite something of a gulf between Isaiah’s stunning picture, and life’s realities! That is not a question as much as a statement. Nor is this some sort of failed hope, nor lost chance. Two things need to be said as we consider this passage.
The first is that Isaiah was writing for his own people of his own time. This highly picturesque image of what may be called the New Jerusalem of the late 6th Century BC was an imaginative cast at what might possibly be if and when the People of God respond to God and life in a real and true manner. Now, please, - this is not literal, this is figurative, imaginative. Life was designed to be far less damaging and stressful than we experience it.
The second is nearer to where we are: the goal of life, God’s goal for humans, is not some sort of final whimper that opens into a void. Whatever the circumstances, and Isaiah had some horrifying ones in his own day and age, God still leads His people as they attempt to show, to others, something of what life is meant to be by Him Who created it in hope. That wolf and lamb bit, I repeat, is not literal: you know people who are wolves, and others who are lambs. This image expresses the hope for reconciliation even between people that far apart.

For the Psalm
There are those who see ‘religion’ as something like whistling in the wind! A nothing going nowhere, or at best an attempt to escape reality, which is too harsh. Both the Hebrew and the Christian faiths are far more virile and real than that.
Basically, Judaism is the faith that has grown and deepened quite simply on the basis of Israel’s long experience of JHWH among them. It is faith based on real-life experience. It is, if you like, faith based on the encountered nature of God. There is a solid foundation to it all. And here the song of Isaiah expresses that. Never loose sight of that fact.

Epistle
If you think it is difficult coping with Christians, wayward and otherwise in this day and age, do stop and take some thought for poor old Paul. There are always people ready to misunderstand, take the blessings and advantages of faith, and make an absolute mess of it all. Even Paul had that problem.
One of the dangers, then, of preaching Parousia was that some people would decide to sit on their proverbials and wait for the day to come. No point working if Jesus is about to appear out of the clouds. Lazy sods. Paul’s directive is quite clear: no work = no tucker. Get off your proverbial and be part of the community. In other words, do not get the story wrong. Mind you, Paul was rather more gentle with the Thessalonians than I suspect I would have been.

Gospel
Once again, people are far more interested in spine-tingling end-of- the-world stuff than facing the realities. Notice how Jesus diverted attention away from doom and gloom to the very realities people wished to avoid. They wanted the Day of the Lord stuff, convinced that Messiah would solve all problems without any effort on their part. That’s what messiahs are for, are they not? Well, no!!!!!!! Read again this fascinating Gospel, noting first that here is no ‘end of the world’ scenario, but the challenge to remain true to the Faith in spite of all pressure to the opposite.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

Surely I have told the story before, of the ructions that followed on the release of the first draft of liturgical reform in the early 1960s. Not only was the dropping of ‘Thee’ and ‘Thou’ met with unmitigated horror, but the changes to the Lord’s Prayer were met with explosive response. How dare anyone translate ‘give us this day our daily bread’ and turn it into ‘give us today our bread for tomorrow?’ Worse still was the response to ‘save us from the time of trial!’ Most people seemed to prefer the somewhat odd ‘lead us not into temptation,’ as if God would be party to such an action.
However, the reality is that the original Greek in the New Testament requires (and always DID) those apparently unpopular words. Who knows who watered it all down in the previous translation. Save us from the time of trial. Phew.

It is not until the People of God stop to realize that the reason for the existence of Israel was to be a light to the nations, a nation of priests, (Exodus 19: 3ff.) A priest cannot be a priest unless there are people to whom he or she priests. Israel’s calling, reiterating the Abrahamic call, was to the rest of the world, their world, there and then. Israel was to be outward looking, evangelistic if you dare, an icon for anyone looking for meaning, value and purpose in life. That was Israel’s calling, and remains the Church’s calling. And that was to be expressed – almost invariably – to a world that considered that faith once delivered to be a lot of hogwash.

So can you catch sight of the rather wonderful description that Isaiah offered in today’s OT lesson? God’s longing is for His People to offer the world population a vision of what life is meant to be like. So it is no escapism here, but the offering of an enormous challenge to people to see where lies the solution of all their bad issues. However, as most Christians are seeing now, it is a matter of trying to push wind uphill, and answer all manner of opposition and derision.

There is nothing at all new about this – read your history, and in particular, read your Bible. So this ‘save us from the time of trial’ is a prayer that we are not caught up in such crises of history and faith as to have our loyalty and faith tested and questioned. It is a serious matter. And it will always be so. Our time in history, with its enormous challenges to Church and Faith are nothing new. We are actually emerging from a remarkable time in history when such challenges were rare and somewhat ineffective.

Now you can see clearly why Jesus, when the question arose for the Twelve, diverted their attention from any ‘end of the world’ scenario to the not-quite-but-almost immediate present. ‘You will see all sorts of pressure to renege, you will have all manner of pressure to waver, and you will have all sorts of idiots wanting to lead you down all manner of unproductive garden paths.’

This pressure to relinquish the Faith comes in all manner of guises. Simple questions about the Faith are likely, and issues that some Christians see differently are others. Sadly many of the issues raised will seem unanswerable by Christians unprepared or unaware of the realities.
My email inbox tends to get overloaded by people who have – sadly indeed – responded to these threats of agnostics and atheists by getting back behind what seem to them to be impenetrable walls. That retreat is into fundamentalism. It appears the safest path for far too many, ‘But the Bible says’ is no answer to those antagonists, especially when the proffered argument from Scripture betrays little more than evidence of a misunderstanding of what Scripture says. It does not even begin to meet the challenges that are offered, and make not the slightest sense to those antagonists. Retreat into some dark and hopefully safe past does nothing for either side of the debate.

I recall reading of the kerfuffle caused by Darwin’s theories over 150 years ago. It still amazes me to find people of today hiding behind a refusal to face possible issues. Those Bishops of old were reported as saying that they preferred to Biblical view to the concept of being related to monkeys. Then I read Griffith Thomas’ commentary on Genesis, written around 1904, getting people to stop and realize that truth is truth wherever it comes from and to begin to understand the Creation Stories the way that most Jews had always done. There is no huge chasm between science and religion. But olde worlde Christians need to come to terms with life’s realities. It is a matter of understanding God through experiences of life, rather than limiting Him to what are after all only man-made doctrines, tenets and theories.

Perhaps the most fundamental means whereby the Christian needs face contemporary society with the value and purpose of the Faith is to underline and point to the various aspects of life that are least evident in today’s world. If we can get past the tunnel vision of olde worlde faith, we should be able to see that the reason Israel was to be a light to nations, is because for the fist time in history, the Faith was seen to focus on human relationship issues of justice, truth, integrity, love and compassion. I continue to punch this drum, in spite of its apparent unpopularity even among Christians. Stop and see how often Scripture itself, Jesus Himself, pointed in this direction, and while we need to face the fact that the crucifixion of Jesus had a great deal to do with the refusal of His contemporaries to want to know, both He and we can offer the world what it needs, if not wants.

Save us from the time of trial has to do with the almost certainty that in our own day and age the struggle will not be about faith and unfaith, but about truth and untruth; justice and injustice, self-giving and selfishness.