RonBlog

Sunday 13th February 2011 Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

Sentence
Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the way of the Lord Psalm 119:1

Collect
Almighty God, You gave the Law to guide our lives; grant that we may never shrink from Your commandments but, as we are taught by Your Spirit, may fulfill Your law in perfect love; through Christ our Lord and Master, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Deuteronomy 10: 12 – 22

O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.
Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the LORD your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the LORD set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.
Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the LORD your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.

PSALM 119:1 – 8

Blessed are those whose way is blameless: who walk in the law of the Lord
Blessed are those who keep His commands: and seek Him with their whole heart
Those who do no wrong: but walk in the way of our God.
For You, Lord, have commanded us: to persevere in all Your precepts
If only my ways were unerring: towards the keeping of Your statutes
Then I should not be ashamed: when I looked in on all Your commandments
I will praise You with sincerity of heart: as I learn Your righteous judgements
I will keep Your statutes: O forsake me not utterly.

EPISTLE 1 Corinthians 3: 1 – 9

Brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? When one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apollos," are you not merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labour of each. For we are God's servants, working together; you are God's field, God's building.

GOSPEL Matthew 5: 21 – 37

Jesus said "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not murder'; and 'whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.
Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.
It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.' But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be 'Yes, Yes' or 'No, No'; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

NOTES ON THE READINGS

Old Testament Lesson
If you are game to come with me, there are some fascinating insights into the development of Jewish theology. This is Deuteronomy – which is Greek for Second Law. This ‘edition’ was rather later than the original Torah, and may well have been into the 7th or 6th Centuries BC.
I find it interesting that the emphasis here in this passage is on the ‘Chosen People,’ a narrowing down of the Abrahamic call to be a blessing to all nations. Is this evidence of the reduction of Judaism from a way of life to a religion, for this is the usual process. What is also beguiling is the reference to the fact that God ‘is not partial and takes no bribe.’ I would venture a solid guess that there would be few other situations in life then when bribes were not the order of the day, so for God to be seen as pictured here must have come as some huge relief.
Deuteronomy – generally – is a good example of development of a Faith, but it does show some slippage in theology, does it not!

Psalm
The story goes that, in the early stages of the reformed Church, clergy would leave the congregation reciting this longest of psalms whilst they went through the village rounding up the recalcitrants. It would cost a shilling if you refused attendance. Bit of a fund-raiser for these days?
This very long psalm has quite a lot of interesting tips and views – not least the recognition that God’s Law is worth responding to. There is also the clear recognition that keeping the Law has its difficulties as well. It is well wroth stopping to look at these matters: most Christians seem to have over-responded to Paul’s constant attack on the Law, the Torah, but in doing so miss a valuable factor.
Without law we are without direction. In a world where anything goes, the outcome is that nothing goes anywhere, and the outcome is chaos. If you wonder why the (modern) world is the way it is, the answer lies in the anarchic view of life held rather too generally for anyone’s safety or progress. And never forget it!

Epistle

If Paul’s assessment here is correct, then most of us have a very long way to go. Mention was made several weeks ago that the Corinthian Church was no paragon of virtue, and here we see it was no paragon of maturity either. This is not to stand in judgement, but rather to see that both of those directions are important ones to follow, develop and grow.
‘Milk, not meat’ fascinates me, for one of my great hassles as priest has been to hold in front of people the enormous potential in a growing, developing and deepening faith. In my experience, rather too many present-day Christians are rather too content to mark time.
‘Like a mighty tortoise moves the Church of God,
Brothers, we are treading like where we’ve always trod’
and that brings nothing to the glory of God or His Gospel.




GOSPEL

Part of the genius of Jesus was to bring that Torah, that Law, from the realm of action to the level of that which precedes but rather dictates action – one’s thoughts and – dare I say it? – lusts. Actual murder is brought down to nasty thoughts about the victim, here described as brother or sister. Is not the real issue in homicide the fact that the victim is depersonalised – just as the enemy is, during wartime. Adultery and divorce come under the same sort of examination, and whilst the strictures may seem severe, in each case there is no room left for that process of depersonalising.
It really does underline much of the Biblical values, especially that of community. The concept of the individual in Biblical situations is a rare event, and it should be noted where most Biblical translations seem to point to ‘you’ as an individual, please note that the original Greek may better have been translated as ‘you altogether.’ In old English ‘thou’ was the singular; ‘you’ was plural. Later useage has blurred the edges somewhat.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

We Anglicans are living in the hard times of the shadow of those people who have taken advantage of young children who have been abused. Part of the horror has been the discovery of the extent to which this horror has been exposed, permeating the entire society in which we live. It is no help to us, or to those outside, that the Anglican perpetrators may have been few in number. The damage is almost irredeemable.
Other denominations have suffered likewise; and I even take some encouragement from the fact that a certain Premier, not long ago utterly caustic at the slow response of the Church, suddenly fell remarkably silent when it was revealed that State public servants had been just as or more guilty of terribly extended abuse of children in their care. The real problem lies, in Church or State or elsewhere, in the gradual erosion of moral values; paralleled one suspects by that similar erosion of the recognition of God. It is a common situation: once I deny the existence of God, and my response to Him, then my value for you drops rather terribly quickly, and you become threat rather than brother or sister.
The readings for today may well be seen by some as oh! so terribly olde-worldly, passé, naïve. The reality is quite otherwise. May I repeat a story often told in this situation?
It was in a Scripture Lesson at Primary School where the focus was on the Ten Commandments. Being aware that such rules and regulations were held in low esteem, I began where young kids tend to be focussed indeed. I asked what sport they played: answers came thick and fact, and included football (no comment on the type), netball, and one or two other lesser-known ones. Then I posited a situation where Rugby (well, it was NSW!) was played with a medicine ball, and netball with an AFL football. No lines marked on the ground, for there were no limits, no umpires for there were no restrictions, and when you got tired, you had to transfer to a swimming pool. The further I went in that lists of non-restrictions, the louder the noise from the class. Gradually, the noise turned to quite some anger. ‘You are being stupid, Pops!’ was the final response of the kids. I confessed that they were totally correct. So why did you even begin to head in such a silly direction?’ And so I told them. Rules are designed to help, not hinder.
That sort of scenario is what so much of society posits today. Rules do not matter; the ultimate focus of human behaviour needs to focus on what people want, what makes them happy, and nothing else matters. As the whole lesson began to sink in, and the kids began to see the chaos being presented as the panacea for life, their response to rules started to change significantly.
I pointed outside to the Highway, and asked about while lines, double lines, road rules. If people were free to drive on whatever side of the road they chose, ignore the position of others sharing the highway, road deaths would multiply geometrically. It is only if I regard the road rules as significant, regard other people as of equal importance to myself, only then can they and I drive safely.

What the Torah offered to Israel of old may well be marred somewhat by matters simply cultural of the time, but the overall raison d’etre was hugely important and valuable. Not only were the Ten Commandments a gift from a very distant past, that Decalogue itself was based on the even more ancient Code of Hammurabi from around Babylon. Rules and regulations may well suffer from overbearing imposition from above a measures of control, but that does not invalidate the need for some containment of human tendency to step outside something that is designed for all.
It has even been so and will ever be so. It remains true that no country or parliament can legislate against human stupidity or recalcitrance, nor stop people attempting to counter the clear sense of rules and laws. But the need for the community to protect itself from those who would step outside the law will always be an important factor for peace .