RonBlog

Sunday 31st July, 2011 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Sentence
The Lord is near to all who call on Him in truth. He fulfills the desire of all who fear Him, hears their cry and saves them. Psalm 145: 18
Collect
Almighty God, Whose beloved Son for our sake willingly endured the agony and shame of the cross; give us courage and patience to take up our cross daily and follow Him, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Genesis 32: 22 – 31
The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." Then the man said, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed."
Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Penuel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved." The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle.

Psalm 17: 1 – 7 & 16
Hear my just cause, O Lord, give heed to my cry: listen to my prayer that comes from my lips.
Let judgement for me come forth from Your presence: and let Your eyes discern the right
Though You search my heart, and visit me in the night-time: though You try me by fire, You will find no wickedness in me.
My mouth does not transgress, like the mouth of others: for I have kept Your word on my lips
My steps have held firm in the way of Your commands: and my feet have not stumbled from Your paths.
I call upon You, O God, for You will surely answer: incline Your ear to me and hear my words
Show me the wonders of Your steadfast love, O Saviour of those who come to You for refuge: Who by Your right hand deliver them from those who rise up against them

And I also shall see Your face, because my cause is just: when I awake and see You as You are, I shall be satisfied.

Epistle Romans 9: 1 – 8
I am speaking the truth in Christ--I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit-- I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all Israelites truly belong to Israel, and not all of Abraham's children are his true descendants; but "It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you." This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants.

GOSPEL Matthew 14: 13 – 21
Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves."
Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." And he said, "Bring them here to me." Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

© 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
Modern readers may not be aware of what preceded this passage in Genesis, and a fill in may be helpful. Jacob and his family were returning to their home country, and Jacob had heard that Esau was on the lookout for him. Having been a cheat and supplanter himself, Jacob was afraid that Esau was going to cheat him out of all he had. Hence the ‘protection’ of his family and herds and flocks.

This cameo of the struggle between Jacob and the angel was another step in Jacob’s learning curve. The most interesting parts of this tale are first that it increased Jacob’s understanding of God, and second (to me it is far more significant) the ‘renaming’ of Jacob to ‘Israel,’ You have striven with God and with man and have prevailed.
This is a very revealing aspect of Hebrew Faith. We have mentioned before something of the emergence of this Faith, and this incident heightens it remarkably. You have striven - indicating that the emergence of the Hebrew Faith, right over its long history, has come as an out come of the struggling search for reality. Is there any other way to go?

Psalm
In some ways this is an odd little psalm and may be seen by some as self-justification for whoever wrote it – and whoever took it literally so to speak. My main point is that I would not be able to be so self-assured that I was without sin to that extent.
However, the real point to be noticed, and it is a valid one in this day and age of relative as opposed to ultimate, that the author was completely confident of the nature of God and of His consistency with truth and justice. One of these days, moderns will come face to face with the extreme shakiness of relative values, which being so changeable and unreliable leave people out in the cold. If you ever wonder why so many people lose their way these days, then here is one of the reasons – ‘where the hell are the boundaries?’

Epistle
Do not be surprised if you find Paul’s exegesis of Scripture somewhat hard to follow (or swallow!) He was a product of his age, and yet what he comes up with is remarkably close to what you might, studying Scripture. (Mind you, Isaiah reached this same point quite a few centuries before!!!)
One can imagine the sadness for the Apostle who was quite prepared to suffer exclusion from God if it could mean the inclusion of all Israel. That is an astounding self-offering, and like his Lord’s. And it has to be added that not all of Christendom is Christ’s, for the same reasons as Israel.
What I delight in, pardon me, is that stunning recitation of the benefits that Israel had received, and largely ignored. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen In our own day and age, the Christian Church has all the exact same gifts and benefits, and so often even committed people ignore them and look for something else. To my mind, Anglican in particular have all of these and somehow manage to avoid receiving the benefits. Please look closer and deeper at all you have and value it all.

GOSPEL
Please ever read the gospel stories imaginatively – and do not be wooden about it. Too often miracles are treated as something Jesus did and we cannot, and the real point is missed. Jews loved their stories and pondered them at great length.
Who else fed people on (or at the foot of) a mountain? And why? And what was the outcome? Moses of course, - well God actually, but you get the drift. Manna and quail. And only just enough for that day, remember?
And here was Jesus saying ‘do it yourselves,’ and from the tiny amount the disciples had, there was far more than enough with all those basketsful left over. In abundance. Galore. Nothing stingy about God, eh!


NOTES FOR A SERMON

This may well be a matter of trivia for you, but I would like to report on one of my really quite steep learning curves, that shows up in this morning’s OT Lesson.
I also report that I have been part of Sunday School, Bible Class and Youth Group since I was in three-cornered pants, and that makes it about 70 years or more. Then theological college, and Bible Study Groups for most of the years since. And it was not until this passage burst on my slow brain – many years ago now! – that the name ‘Israel’ means ‘you have striven with God and humans and have prevailed!’ That came to me with striking force for it sums up what really is required of any questioning believer: faith does not come drifting down on you like some sort of warm blanket, nor is it a matter of quietly accepting whatever is served up to you. It is a matter of struggling with the issues until you find your feet on firm ground. Struggle. Search. Even prove sometimes. As I often say to folk, faith is a choice a person makes on the basis of the evidence in front of them.

In that remarkable saga of Jacob, if you stop and think about it, the first struggle he had was with himself. Even in that long-past and somewhat unsophisticated time, it is hard to imagine that Jacob was unaware of his shortcomings, strengths and rather awful weaknesses. His clash with Esau opened some vast wounds, the results of which are still with us in the enmity still being expressed between racial groups in the Middle East. Then there was the comeuppance he experienced with the father of his wives. It was a neat but nasty trick played upon him – and it cost him quite a percentage of his life span.

And the struggle was with God as well. The incident in last week’s OT Lesson and the realization that God was not bound by areas of influence like other gods. And the same God would have been at work in the man dealing with the manifold issues to be faced, as you experience yourself.

And that is the point: faith and life is a struggle. And that is the way it should be. Often enough I have commented that I – like you no doubt! - learn more from my mistakes, especially the massive ones, than ever I do from things I manage to do right and well. And learning, of course, is the real point; no learning, no progress. Just marking time, Brothers we are treading where we’ve always trod.

When I entered College all those donkey’s years ago, I was foolish enough to consider that I knew the Faith pretty well and needed no lecturers to point me in the right direction. Pride, they say, comes before a fall, and great was the fall thereof. What followed in that four years of preparation was the almost total destruction of my remarkably naïve (view of the) faith, and the raising of questions that I had never – never - asked. That was quite frightening, I assure you. There you were with your feet dangling over the abyss, and as one asked the rather more pertinent question, very much more solid answers came. And more questions. One person I read of then wrote about the exhilaration of getting to the top of a mountain of question, and seeing a vista of unimagined beauty – as well as a further range of questions well overtopping where you had just reached. And the confidence that arose from reaching that peak left you looking forward to the next exercise of questioning and exploring, and discovering. It also left you quite fearless of any outcome. For in the end, if this faith we profess can not cope with any question put to it, if our Lord is not able to cope with little old you and me putting Him under the microscope, and it is all lies and falsehood, then the sooner that is established the better. I am totally uninterested in following and false god, no matter how sacrosanct.

(Now, that’s enough hard work for one sermon, is it not?)