Friday, March 9, 2012

RonBlog

Sunday 11th March, 2012 Third Sunday of Lent

Sentence
God spoke these wards and said, “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. Exodus 20:1

Collect
Lord our God, by Your Holy Spirit write Your commandments upon our hearts and grant us the wisdom and power of the Cross so that, cleansed from greed and selfishness, we may become a living temple of Your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Exodus 20: 1 – 17

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.

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 1 Corinthians 1: 18 – 25

The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

GOSPEL John 2:13 – 22

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!"
His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

© 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
Call me out-dated and old-fashioned if you will, but I find it rather sad that the Decalogue, these ancient Ten Commandments, are ignored, broken and despised by so many of our contemporaries. I doubt if anyone could really call me a wowser, nor even terribly religious (a term which I hate!) but am rather a Christian realist, and aware of the enormous value of this rune of words.

People familiar with these notes will know most of my illustrations on the issue: but it bears repetition that the present-day refusal – generally speaking – to take the slightest notice of these important rules, is leading and will almost certainly lead to the complete and utter breakdown of society. I kid you not.

In spite of screams to the opposite, the Judaic-Christian Faith is not about enduring present existence for the sake of some future bliss. The reality is that the Jewish faith stemmed from the increasing awareness that the real problem of life is here and now, has to do with human incorrigibility, and that there must be an answer somewhere. While it took a very long period of time, first to get past old religious baggage, and then to try out new theories and perceptions, the outcome has been remarkably solid and sound, and of course (a word to the sceptics) those ancient worthies took on board ideas and concepts of other people. (it surprises atheists and others that the emergence of Hebrew Faith – and Christian – parallels the emergence of science: first an idea then a theory and then a testing. Actually the process was Hebrews first and science later!)

So the Decalogue: the first few clauses underline the need for respect for God. If that is too much for unbelievers, then simply read ‘truth and justice’ for God. In other words, while we may be free to bugger around with the ancient verities, we are never free from the outcomes of our choices.
Parallel to that is respect for each other. Sure, the Commandments may seem a little marred by the apparent concern about wives being ‘property’ – but we have all moved forward from that! But just as the first section calls for respect for God, the second section concerns respect for each other. Sure, respect is something earned, not necessarily given, but if I do not respect me, that I am certainly not giving you any value either. And that leads to chaos very smartly.

Actually, you have your sermon already do you not?

Psalm
This is truly a magnificent psalm, and is one which every person could well ponder and value and respond to. When it comes to this cosmos in which we live, one has a choice: either it is random and meaningless, or it is as ‘cosmos’ suggests – has design and purpose. Choose chaos, and you must accept utter stupidity and purposelessness. I will stick with sense, thank you, for that is where most of the evidence points.

Epistle
What a significant passage is this! Jews seek signs and Greeks seek wisdom. And Paul requires his readers to consider the basis of their views of the Faith. It is something that each generation needs to consider and respond to, but there are traps along the way. The folly to which Paul refers lies most largely in the unexpected and apparently feeble approach of the Gospel to the human dilemma. Most humans respond with force to perceived problems, even though they are aware that force rarely (if ever!) achieves its purpose, but rather aggravates the issue.
However you respond to this passage, I suggest that you do so in the real world situation. Here is no holy talk but realism at its sharpest edge. You will be aware of the rather sad human capacity to avoid issues by what is presented as sense but tends to be obfuscation. (There is a rather vivid Aussie expletive if that is easier to understand.)

GOSPEL
In his own inimical way, John sets this incident at the start of Jesus’ ministry, rather than follow the Synoptists where it is placed on what we call Palm Sunday. That is no great matter – rather it is an emphasis of John’s.
As with each of the other readings for today, here the emphasis is on being true to reality and not avoiding issues. The Cleansing of the Temple is a powerful statement in the ministry of Jesus, Who was made very angry at the distortion of worship by the goings-on at the Temple. What was meant to be worship had become a money-making business, distorting completely the picture of what should have been going on. One does not readily algin this picture of the angry Jesus with the traditional picture, but it is as well to include it. Be angry and sin not is one of Paul’s words to people – and anger, after all, like pain from a wound, is there to make clear that there is something quite wrong taking place. Without such a warning, great damage could occur to a person before they were aware of it.

On that apparently enigmatic statement of Jesus about rebuilding the Temple, modern readers need to be quite aware of the rather fascinating Hebrew penchant for imaginative comments such as this. It is a wide-ranging sort of comment, having to do as much with the demise and rebirth of the ‘faith once delivered’ as it has to do with Jesus’ forthcoming experience of death and resurrection. Notice again if you will, that very Jewish penchant for signs. Those people were often demanding such ‘clear’ evidence from Jesus for His authority for saying or doing what He did. Mind you, in very typical style, said Jews either missed or avoided the very ‘signs’ that Jesus actually offered them. How often does dogma produce blindness in those who claim most to be adherents of a faith or ism?


Notes for a sermon

Have you ever wondered what are the categories for certainty you have for the faith you profess? I recall having great concerns for a then young Christian whose confessed grounds for faith lay on what she claimed to be miracle. Whilst she has gone on and grown in her faith long since then, I felt at the time how shaky was such a base for something so hugely important. Mind you, even as an adult her faith is (to my mind) tragically naive. Recent Catholic emphasis on Mary McKillop and her’ miracles’ is part of my same concern.

This will be a partly personal story, but as I have mentioned several times over recent years, it has always been a concern to me that my perception of the faith and my understanding of God needed to have such empirical evidence as to be able to stand up to the inquisition of people I met and wanted to know why I believe. (Mind you, I prefer ‘follow Christ’ to ‘believe’ as the latter tends to be read as simply a personal choice one makes.)

From early years, as a teenager (though we were not know as that back on those days,) I saw the need for a faith based on reality rather than froth and bubble. Yes, even then there were those who seemed satisfied with what appeared to me to be foundationless faith, and as you might imagine, most of those fell away as days weeks and months passed by. Trying to be true to conventional wisdom, I had the personal experience of someone who wanted to become a Christian. Following then conventional wisdom I ‘preached’ that gospel of sorts. It made sense to the person initially, but took only a few weeks for the whole thing to fade. Parable of the soils perhaps, but I doubt if, in reality, my efforts even reached first base.

The Judaic-Christian Faith is nothing if it is not solid, sound and down to earth. As I often say to people, this faith to which we are heir emerged, not because people went off into some sort of cloud-cuckoo land and mused, but because they faced life’s realities both good and bad, and found their understanding of life and others and God from the vicissitudes of ordinary existence. History was the great teacher; life as it panned out!

Oddly enough, as mentioned above, the search for truth among the Hebrews from Abraham on, was really quite similar to the search for truth that impels scientists to look past where they are. There are no tenets nor dogma in this Faith of ours, in spite of the attempts of leaders to instil them. In my view, as soon as dogmatics enter the fray, listening tends to go out the window.

For anyone who remains cynical, I offer the following suggestion: you may not be old enough to know that in times not all that distant past, one could be quite certain – in this country at least – that you could trust people around you. Perhaps not totally, for there are always those you do not know. But homes were not locked, and neighbours were neighbours, and in my grandparents’ day, one’s motor vehicle did not even have a key. There was either a switch or a handle to ‘wind up the old girl’ at some risk to your wrists. Also, I recall a day, coming home from High School [1948] and spending a penny to buy the evening paper, totally shocked, like everyone else, that a murder had been committed in Bankstown (NSW.)

Although it must be said that the number of Churchgoers then was relatively more than today, the general attitude and actions of people around were quite closely linked to the Ten Commandments. It was not a response of fear – of God or Hell, for back then both were questioned, even by me at early teenage. It was the simple recognition that the old Decalogue contained quite some fine sense and value, even if the occasional Commandment was looked at a little askance.

In those days, of course, community was a reality even in the big city. We knew the people around us (in fact 60 years later I emailed my brother to name the families around us for quite some distance, and we were kids then. Community! Today, our neighbours are either totally unknown or very tense in any contact or conversation. Respect has flown out the window, trust is dead as a dodo, and one needs to be totally sure that the house is locked and as impregnable as possible. Even the car has immobilisers. What an awful world in which to live.

It would take a very long sermon to provide all the evidence a person might need – but this scratches the surface in pointing towards both the validity of the Decalogue, the significance of the Faith, and its view of the importance of the right here and now.

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