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Sunday 9th October, 2011 Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Sentence
This is the God for Whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation Isaiah 25:9

Collect
Almighty God, in Your wisdom You have so ordered our daily lives that we must walk by faith and not by sight; give us such a trust in Your fatherly care, that in the face of all perplexities, we may give proof of our faith by the courage of our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Exodus 32: 1 – 14

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."
Aaron said to them, "Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me." So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mould, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!" When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD." They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.
The LORD said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshipped it and sacrificed to it, and said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'" The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, how stiff- necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation."
But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth?’ Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, 'I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'" And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Psalm 106: 1 – 6 & 20 – 24

Praise the Lord; O give thanks to the Lord for He is good: and His mercy endures for ever
Who can express the mighty acts of the Lord: or fully voice His praise?
Blessed are those who act according to justice: who at all times do the right
Remember me O Lord, when You visit Your people with Your favour: and come to me also with Your salvation
That I may see the prosperity of Your chosen: that I may rejoice with the rejoicing of Your people, and exlt with those who are Your own.
We have sinned like our ancestors: we have acted perversely and done wrong

At Horeb they made themselves a calf: and bowed down in worship to an image
And so they exchanged the glory of God: for the likeness of an ox that eats hay
They forgot God Who was their saviour: that had done such great things in Egypt
Who had worked His wonders in the Land of Ham: and His terrible deeds at the Red Sea
Therefore He thought to destroy them: had not Moses His servant stood before Him in the breach, to turn away His wrath from destroying them.

Epistle Philippians 4: 1 - 9

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

GOSPEL Matthew 22: 1 – 14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, 'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.' But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.
Then he said to his slaves, 'The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.' Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen."

© 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
I have often wondered why some people seem to desire or even demand the office of Bishop! I am sure that Moses would have been quite glad for someone else to lead that recalcitrant Hebrew mob! Like most moderns, their patience was non-existence and demanded immediate answers to their problems. And before anyone these days mocks the idolatry of those ancients, it must be said that like impatience, idolatry is alive, well and thriving in today’s world too. Few realize that this is why prices are so huge and houses so vast – and SUVs and 4WDs flood city streets.

[Before you take to heart the concept that ‘God changed His mind,’ please stop and see that such a comment comes from the perception of those who recorded the incident. So much of the problems people seem to have with the Old Testament presentation of the nature and activity of God stems from the perception of the time. It takes most humans quite some time to let go of their baggage and move forward.]

This is not a pretty picture of Israel, but then, like the rest of us, they were not exactly faithful nor reliable. In spite of all that had been done for them, they remained intransigent. Small wonder that they spent that generation or two in the desert. (I would have left them there forever!!!!!)

Psalm
Thank God for people like those who wrote the psalms, or more particularly, those Old Testament prophets, who spent rather more time thinking and praying and pondering about life and God and all that happened. A very different position and possibility emerges from those old writings. Thank God for people who stop and ponder, eh!

Epistle
For anyone still struggling with the Ordination of Women, please ponder these words of the Apostle. Most of the issues that required change and development in New Testament times did not have rules and regulations to require growth. The process was rather – like psalmist and prophet – to express the situation and the value of it.
Oddly enough, no one to my knowledge has any difficulty with the second paragraph of this beautiful epistle. Whatsoever is true, honourable, just and so on surely must resonate in every human heart that reads this – and each time it comes up before me, I still see how much further along that road I need to travel -- don’t you?

GOSPEL
Now please do stop and see that parables are parables, and are not hide-bound. That angry King is not to be compared to God, but to what one would expect of ‘royalty’ of that day and age. The point of the story is simply to underline the extraordinary capacity of human beings to ignore the important and prefer the mediocre. You have seen that constantly, have you not? Perhaps you have even travelled that path.
And that business of the wedding robe may need some explanation as well. The story goes that at such a wedding, all the guests were given wedding robes by the host; and that indicated that this guest was unwilling to accept the robe, requiring attendance on his own terms. Hence the position of host was assumed by the guest, and that was not an acceptable option. Invitations, as in the Gospel, are by grace not by demand, so the interloper was cast out - in the story.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

In the world in which we now live, there is an increasing distance from what we older people may describe as the way things were. None of us are sufficiently naive as to imagine things were totally acceptable then, for that is far from the case. But – as I think I have inferred in previous weeks – the ancient verities were acknowledged by the greater part of the population. There was little dispute about where truth and justice lay, and honesty could be expected from other people. None of us were much better off than others, at least as I encountered people, and in those days even houses were not locked unless we were on holidays. Go back far enough, and early model motor cars did not even have keys for doors or ignition. (This is post World War II mind, not the Dark Ages.)

Except in fairly rare instances, even idolatry was not an issue. In fact, even as children and young adults, we would look back to OT times and wonder how people could be so stupid as to worship things!!! That matter has resolved in the affirmative for a long time since those halcyon days.

How did all this arise? Well, after some thought on the subject, it seems to me that today’s readings – a little like last week – focus on issues that are of huge importance to the Christian person, but of rapidly decreasing value to – dare I say the usual person? I guess there is some unfairness there, but so much of today’s society seems bound to the direction of ‘gimme, gimme, gimme,’ that things assume a far vaster value than people. Mind you I find it hard to understand why even some Christians these days follow the ‘gimme’ path, to their detriment as well as to others around them.

In fact it may not be too much to suggest that Generations X and Y would regard today’s readings as naive and passé and valueless. So are we chasing the wrong dream? To my mind, closer examination would suggest strongly otherwise.

If I want to get on top of you, to use you to my own advantage, or even to make sure you get out of my way, then it may be the case that current ways of operating would produce the best results. Mind you, the outcome would be the breakdown of any relationship or connection between us, but if I am selfish enough, that would not matter. But if I wanted my family to remain connected and communicating, if I was interested in maintaining connection with neighbours and others around about, then it would mean that I would have to operate in a very different way indeed.
Different. Now there is a word. Are you aware that that ancient and well-used (or was once) word ‘holy’ has as it root meaning different. Not different as in snotty-nosed; but different in terms of not the human norm. That is why Isaiah reports of God that ‘My ways are not your ways’ – not because God’s ways are unapproachable, but because they are unexpectedly true and honest and compassionate. Certainly they are not normal human ways.

So that idolatry of Aaron’s time had to do with the expectation that Israel deserved and demanded immediate action from whatever god was available, and bugger the realities. Old-time religion – real old-time - saw itself as being able to manipulate the gods and goddesses to do what the worshippers required. It was ‘cargo cult’ sort of stuff. That in my lifetime used to be the province of natives of New Guinea or somewhere else like that. Actually I suspect that they caught it from ‘advanced’ societies, like the USA. Or from Australians.

So as Christians we are called to be different, again not to be smarmy or snotty-nosed about it, but because we are aware that the idolatry of the present age does nothing other than draw huge lines of division between rich and poor, haves and haves not, between developed countries and less-developed. And as in OT idolatry, it is worshipping that which is not nor never can be gods. It is living the lie. Sadly there is only one outcome from such a direction.