RonBlog

Sunday 2nd October, 2011 Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Sentence
The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing and it is marvellous in our eyes. Matt. 21:42

Collect
Almighty God, Your Son Jesus is the stone rejected by the builders and has been made the chief cornerstone; grant that, by the power of His Spirit working in us, we may become living stones built up into Your dwelling-place, a temple holy and acceptable to You; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Exodus 20: 1 – 4 ; 7-9 & 12-20

Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work--you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.
Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.
When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, "You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die." Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin."

Psalm 19
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament declares His handiwork
One day tells it to another: and night to night communicates knowledge
There is no speech or language: nor are their voices heard
Yet their sound has gone out through all the world: and their words to the ends of the earth
There He has pitched a tent for the sun: which comes out as a bridegroom from his chamber, and rejoices as a strong man to run his course
Its rising is at one end of the heavens, and its circuit to their farthest bound: and nothing is hid from its heat
The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul: the command of the Lord is true, and makes wise the simple
The precepts of the LORD are right, and rejoice the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, and gives light to the eyes
The fear of the LORD is clean, and endures forever: the judgements of the Lord are unchanging and righteous every one.
More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold: sweeter also than honey, than the honey that drips from the honeycomb
Moreover, by them is your servant taught: and in keeping them there is great reward.
Who can know their own unwitting sins?: O cleanse me from my secret faults.
Keep your servant also from presumptuous sins: lest they get the mastery over me: so I shall be clean and innocent of great offence.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight: O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.



Epistle Philippians 3: 4b – 14

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.
More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

GOSPEL Matthew 21: 33-46

Jesus said, "Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance." So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."
Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls."
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.
They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

© 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
It is almost impossible to know where to begin (and even to finish!) with this most formative of Biblical passages, not only for Christians but far more for Jewish people. Here is no negative statement as abhorred by many, but one of the most freeing of concepts.
Sadder for Anglican Christians, in a way, is the fact that, until a handful of decades ago, each and every one of them would have known the Decalogue off by heart. At every celebration of the Eucharist, these ancient words were repeated. Sunday by Sunday, the code was embedded deeply into the psyche of everyone. Sadly, though, not a lot of explanation was offered with it. I remember one dear Bishop of mine pointing out, 40 odd years ago, that the prescription ‘was never designed to be a rod with which to beat people, Ron, but rather a pointer showing the way towards life at its most creative and redemptive.’ We ignore the whole thing to our peril as humans, and one would have to add that recent Australian – and world! –experience indicates the chaos that ensues from disregarding the Ten Commandments.

Psalm
In the light of a Christian (?) world that has done little but castigate the sinner, this rather lovely and thought-provoking psalm offers a balance that rather too few manage to espy or embrace. This author did not see God’s rules of whatever source as demanding, restricting and damaging, but rather, like the rules of a game or sport, giving shape, substance and direction to life as experienced by all humans. Yes, there are boundaries, but they are redemptive and freeing, --- and that is no play on words. The Decalogue is a fuller expression of the Shema Israel which focuses on the call to love God and love one’s neighbour.

Epistle
Because we do not live in the world of the First Century AD, it is not easy to understand the dichotomy through which Paul passed to understand Jesus. For him in his Pharisaic life, Law was everything; the Decalogue and the rest of the Torah, was all there was. One needs to say at this distance, that such a ‘religion’ is little less than a distortion of the faith into a life-and-death competition. (Very sadly, centuries of Christians have tended to reduce the living faith into something remarkably similar.)
Notice the strong language that Paul uses, not so much about the then current Judaic Faith, but about its distortion. In this translation the word used is ‘rubbish.’ Make no mistake about it; the Greek original uses the word ‘excrement’ – sh1t, if you don’t mind. Here is no impoliteness; rather it is enormous emphasis.
Now catch sight of the huge relief and promise that Paul saw in the Person he had heretofore despised.

GOSPEL
There would not have been a Jewish person present on the day that Jesus offered this parable who would not have known the genesis and emphasis of this tale. From Isaiah on, this story was taken up a number of times over the centuries, indicating first the prophets, and then Jesus, in their attempt to get Israel sit up, listen and respond to what, in their heart of hearts, they knew to be true.
Here is one of the tragedies of the human will and mind, that what appears more amendable at the time tends to be seen as superior to whatever truth was being conveyed. It is small wonder that the real progress of the Gospel is so minimal and slow.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

Early in this Long Weekend of October 2010, as I wrote all this, news broke of the utter waste and tragedy for several families as four or more lives were lost in a road accident at Bilpin in the mountains west of Sydney. It would appear that the driver of a car went out to overtake on the bending and narrow Bell’s Line of Route, that I have travelled often. One assumes that a double line was crossed, and the accident occurred. How often do people take that sort of risk, getting away with it. But why is the solid line there?
The answer is that such warnings are not there to limit people’s freedom, but to extend the safety of all of us. Road rules, I kept saying to schoolchildren in Scripture classes, are not there to limit BUT TO FREE. If we were allowed to travel on whatever side of the road we liked, the human road kill each year would be geometrically larger than it is. Believe me.
Or I used to use the discussion of why netball and football and cricket have rules, as do all sports. It is not easy to play a game of no rules and no limits, for the outcome would be quite dangerous chaos. Kids recognized that, even in Primary Scripture classes. And one of the most remarkable and positive short statements of what is important in life (not just in religion!) is the Shema Israel. The Two Great Commandments. At least that remains as important in the Anglican Liturgy, thanks to our Hebrew predecessors.

It was not always thus: that passage from Exodus reveals, to me at least, that the children of the exodus still had a lot of catching up to do. In their day and age, the gods were to be feared, or so they thought, as did everyone else back then. Whilst, like younger children, they needed to be surrounded by protective rules, they would discover as time went by, that response needed not to come from fear, but from understanding: if I cannot trust you, and you cannot trust me, then life becomes rather fearfully chaotic. And God and chaos are contradistinctive.

Only this afternoon, my middle daughter, my wife and I had a strong discussion about the Faith. Actually not so much about the Faith as about some Christians turning this living faith into a set of rules, which like the laws of the Medes and Persians cannot be changed. You will have encountered, surely, the unbending and rigid approach to life and relationships posed by some so-called Christians. (Unless you fit my sausage-skin, you are out!!!!) This has nothing to do with the faith; this has everything to do with control, and rigid control at that. It is that sort of ‘religion’ that the Apostle turned his back on, for at last he saw it in its real colours. If I have to kill you to prove that I am right, then I have done nothing but prove the exact OPPOSITE.

The real point at issue is that the ancient document of the Decalogue is really very far from passé, but remains remarkably relevant in spite of the passage of millennia. It may feel so for some who regard God as irrelevant but even then my tentative answer to such folk is to consider truth and justice and compassion with God, for that is what He represents, let’s face it. In that situation, the arguments simply fade away, do you see?

The terrible human reality is that the further people move from God, the more they move from each other. And the more they move from each other, the closer comes the chaos that even the ancients feared. I have just listened to a radio report on SA ABC of a home invasion in a suburb south of Adelaide. This apparently random attach was vicious, and totally careless of the people robbed. It would seem, too, that the attackers must have had no concern or pride in themselves. With the rapid increase in such events, there seems to be increasing evidence of that claim I have just made. I consider myself most fortunate to have grown up in a very different world indeed, where, while Church-going might not have been all the prevalent, the values of Church and faith were held by the vast majority of people.

So I suggest that anyone who knocks the Ten Commandments would need to have some remarkably solid grounds for doing so.