RonBlog

Sunday 26th June, 2011 Second Sunday of Pentecost

Sentence
The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord Rom. 6:25

Collect
O God, Your Son has taught us that those who give even a cup of cold water in His name will not lose their reward; open our hearts to the needs of Your children and in all things make us obedient to Your will, so that in faith we may receive Your gracious gift, eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Genesis 22: 1 – 14

After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you." So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him.
On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you."
Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, "Father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.
When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place "The LORD will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided."

Psalm 13

How long O Lord, will You so utterly forget me: how long will You hide Your face from me?
How long must I suffer anguish in my soul, and be so grieved in my heart day and night: how long shall my enemy triumph over me?
Look upon me, O Lord my God, and answer me: lighten my eyes lest I sleep in death
Lest me enemies say ‘I have prevailed’: lest me foes exult at my overthrow.
Yet I will put my trust in Your unfailing love: O let my heart rejoice in Your salvation.
And I will make my song to the Lord: because He deals so bountifully with me

Epistle Romans 6: 12 – 23

Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
GOSPEL Matthew 10: 40 – 42

Jesus said, "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple--truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."

© 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

Every now and again you may well wonder what the connection between readings is supposed to be; frankly I cannot find any, unless you want to talk about sin. And even that is a vague connection.

Old Testament
This story of Abraham is well-known surely, it having been embedded in my Sunday School lessons of over 70 years ago. It is a moving picture, made more emotional as little Isaac twigs to what is likely to happen. One commentator drew attention to the fact Scripture does not record any further conversation between Abraham and Isaac after this staggering event!
On the other hand, this may well have marked the point at which old Abe managed to leave at least a little of his pagan baggage of child sacrifice behind. And of course it all prefigures the coming of Christ, although the imagery still needed quite some adjustment eh! Jehovah Jireh!

Psalm
There must have been lots of times when people of all periods in history have felt like this poor old psalmist. I am unsure whether his pain had to do with his sinning, although I suspect he could have coped better if that had been the case. Most people find greatest difficulty with perceived isolation from God when they have no idea what caused that position. That is hard to cope with. However, as the psalmist indicates, answers lie in recalling the nature of God, even if there are no other clues to assist.

Epistle
I have more than a sneaky suspicion that, of all of the passages and subjects in the New Testament, this one has suffered worst at the hands of evangelists and others. Only a week or so ago, a local Baptist Church was trying to convince its locals of their sin, quoting Scripture, and I doubt if any but the most Biblically literate readers had a clue of their point. Mostly such ‘point’ is to stand in judgement and threaten eternal damnation to whoever ignores the threat (or promise.)
What really is being said here? Not that Hell stands in front of most of us. It is that if one lives in s self-centred or self-obsessive manner, [Adamic, remember?] their hopes of great satisfaction and contentment is most unlikely of fulfillment. In other words the presumed promise of living in such a manner tends to produce quite the opposite that a person might expect.
To live Christ-like, that is, self-giving, concerned for others, caring about truth and justice and compassion, then the far more likely outcome is a settled and worthwhile life, having direction and purpose and value. Never having been wealthy, it has never appealed, though I admit to being far better off now than I had expected at this stage. Life certainly has its difficulties as a Christian, but I would not swap them for the opposite for love nor money.

GOSPEL
And there is today’s Gospel pointing me in precisely the direction I have just mentioned and just as I experience constantly. We are not isolated individuals, but part of a community. And when individual assumes priority over the community, that latter falls apart into disintegration. I kid you not. Look outside for it is happening already all over the place.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

It was many years ago now – I was quite young and had experience with the Billy Graham Crusade(s) and found that the then-normal ABC approach to the Gospel did not really get to the bottom of things for people. One youngster, as I counselled him, seemed to have all the answers, and I asked him if he had given his life to Christ before. A wide grin covered his face: ‘Often,’ he said – ‘each Sunday night in Church.’ He was not being silly. He had become convinced that this was the only way to go when such an altar call occurred.
Another part of being a young theological student in those days was to follow up the Follow Up cards that were received by the various Churches and parishes. I was saddened to find that in 100% of cases, those I called on in what was called ‘Follow Up,’ were totally embarrassed by what they had done at the Showground and did not want to take anything the slightest degree further. They simply wanted to return to anonymity.
Certainly such results were not the complete picture, but it was in my experience. And that led to quite a re-think not only of the so-called ABC Gospel process, but also of what the Gospel is really all about. And it is not about punishment of sin and avoiding an eternity in Hell. If you find that hard to stomach, please get in touch.

All this is not to dilute the sin concept by any means. Life with it is sufficiently ugly and hurtful not to see that is one of the real issues. But there is no simple blasé formula that solves the issue. SO what is?

I report some of my issues that I had with ‘elders and betters,’ even from teenage years. Most of this issue revolved around the apparent and clear (to me) injustice of a God Who was said to condemn sinners to an eternal hell when, at worst, their sinning could only have occurred over the usual ‘three-score years and ten.’ On top of that, the contemporary wisdom was that if you had received Christ, you were forgiven and heaven lay ahead of you and welcoming. So what to do with the rest of your life? Apart from spruiking the same Gospel it was a matter of sitting on your bottom and waiting for the end of your life. That struck me as mere refined form of selfishness, and out of sync with the Jesus that I was getting to know.

Sin. So what the hell is it? Rebellion, we were told. Nasty naughty things we were told. Things that made one’s soul black – we were told. And yet there were lots of things that Christians were doing that really did a lot of damage. Things like being terribly judgemental. Isolating people, making them feel put down.

The more I thought the more I discovered, and when finally I realized that the Faith was not about being religious but being fair dinkum, and that Genesis was not about some irremediable event in the distant past that Adam did and so we were all sinners, but about what has gone wrong in life and history, and from whence comes a remedy, things began to look up. Genesis 3 is not about judgement; nor is Genesis 4! It is the recognition that - very sadly – human misbehaviour does enormous damage, to the perpetrator as well as to others, and that anyone who looks for a move away from the root causes will find a far better path to travel, a more valuable sort of life to live. (In spite of that awful tale of Cain and Abel, Cain was not condemned but offered alternatives, and also the assurance that God would keep an eye out for him. The tale might sound naïve, but – like all of the creation sagas, -there is strong hope for the future.

The problem with sin is not so much that it is naughty, but that it is damaging. And if and when I step over the mark, it is you and someone else that gets hurts. And I am responsible.

So when we come to today’s Epistle, the death that is spoken of there is not hell, but that dying within us of care, concern or interest in the effect I have on others. The life that it speaks of is the benefit to others when ‘I turn from my wickedness and live.’ Eternal life, if you understand that.

It has long been a bother to me that so much of the ‘gospel’ preached by some over-keen ‘evangelists’ has more to do with escaping hell than it has with positive choosing in life. Will you understand me when I suggest that to choose to follow Christ because of the apparently ugly alternative, would have to make my discipleship remarkably questionable? It would be the result of moral or emotional blackmail, and that does not correspond to the Biblical picture either of Jesus or the Father. In fact, it is a picture that jars at the deepest level.

The Gospel, in Biblical terms, is the offer to choose life, not for myself but for life that challenges me to be open to all other people. Love is the basis of it all, and love that bears all. It is a challenge but it is also remarkably positive and with limits removed.

The wages of a false choice offered to us is that minimizing and limiting of life, mine and anyone close enough to me; it limits my view of what is worthwhile to a starkly selfish horizon, It may well suit people, and obviously it does, but it brings the horizons in from a long way off to so close to me as to be stifling.

As I mentioned in a letter to the local Atheist Foundation, even if there is no life after this, I must follow Christ, because He is the only one Who makes sense of life, and offers real and solid alternatives. And thank God He does.