Prayers in the
Temple?
I am honoured to
worship with you this morning and explore Jesus teaching for us
today... and
today we will explore one of Jesus favourite theme’s, one which he
returns to
again and again and again...
Having said that let
me start by asking you a question!
Why are you here this
morning?
Is it out of
·
Loyalty
·
habit
·
tradition
·
expectation
·
need
·
guilt
·
your parents made you come
·
or perhaps your partner
did you come to
·
enjoy the music
·
catch up with friends
·
catch up with the opposite sex
·
give thanks for blessings in your life
·
ask for assistance in your trials
Without
making it sound too negative or make you too uncomfortable let me
acknowledge
that your presence here at worship testifies to your intent and your
desire to
meet with Christ and God. Your attendance here reveals your devotion
because
behind such a motivation of attendance lies your statement of
relationship with
God. In other words, just to be here makes a difference in your life.
It makes a
difference as you come and gather around the Lord’s Table because here
we can
celebrate God’s grace and as we do we deepen our relationship with God.
Let me
tease this theme out in our readings.
In both
readings today we encounter the issue of relationship with God.
1)
in our first reading of Jeremiah 14:19-22
Jeremiah pleads with God on behalf of Zion
He
pleads with God as an equal in covenant though he always sees himself
and all
of Judah as subservient to God he none the less claims the rights of
relationship and God’s protection and blessing founded within the
covenant.
So Jeremiah intercedes in and invokes the Covenant
relationship between the people and their God.
2)
In our second reading Luke 18:9-14 Jesus
weaves his parable in order to disturb the religious self righteous;
who in
their prayers look down on others to satisfy their ego’s by believing
that they
are better than others or at least being thankful that they aren’t.
Jesus
uses the image of the proud Pharisee and the humble Tax collector to
explore
the issues of right relationship with God. For instance both the
Pharisee and
the Tax collector rightly share their journey with God in prayer. (It
has
shades of the prodigal son)
Jesus in his parable interjects in and expresses counter
covenantal understandings of the nature of right relationship with God.
Jesus is stating “How
we conduct ourselves is a direct reflection
of our relationship with God. Not just in church but every moment of
every
day. The tax collector is only justified
because he at least acknowledges his sin to God but he also exposes his
inability to have corrected his behaviour. In fact Jesus is not holding
either
character up as right or good rather Jesus is saying that all of us
fall
short of the glory of God! But our
willingness to be transparent in that relationship helps.
So there
is a difference here between being justified (as Jesus shares the tax
collector
is) and being in right relationship with God.
Simply put
Jesus is not teaching us how to pray in the temple!
Let me
highlight then Jesus’ focus with this parable.
Jesus is
not teaching us to pray he is challenging us to enter into a
relationship with
God.
Jesus is
not teaching us to pray he is educating the listeners of this parable
(both
then and now) to the heart of the Jewish understanding of Covenantal
relationship with God. He is tearing at the legal approach to their
Covenant
relationship with God and replacing it with the Grace of God;
He
is destroying legality and replacing it with relationship (Which,
believe it or
not, was the intent of their covenant in the first place, Jeremiah 7:23 says “Obey me, and I will
be your God
and you will be my people!” Though we tend to hear this command to
“Obey me” as
an If... If you obey me I will be your God and you will be my people!).
In
this parable Jesus highlights the issues of our human
self-righteousness. In
that state we justify our understanding
of fulfilment (that which we believe is required) but no more
and Jesus
is saying that this doesn’t cut the mustard. It is not how the
relationship
works.
Perhaps
the Jewish covenant can be understood not as an “if” but a “when”.
I will be
your God and you will be my people when you obey me. Walk in
all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you.
When...
·
we live with love and discover we are able to
embrace everyone as equals; as brothers and sisters.
·
we understand grace and share it with
everyone (including ourselves)
we
will know that we are loved children of God and we will be fulfilling
the
covenant without worrying about it..
Richard
Rohr (American Franciscan Monk) puts it this way
The “real work” is always soul work.
When we move to the level of the soul, externals like skin colour, age,
career,
status, religion, and nationality are not the important things.
Rather, the
question is, “Who am I before I am any of those things?” Soul
recognizes
soul. Soul reads reality at the level of soul, and not merely persona or
personality.
Jesus
reveals the Pharisee and the Tax collector in this state of soul. Jesus
sees at
Soul level. He see’s everyone as a child of God.
When we
reach this state of grace our prayers will move beyond Jesus parabolic
examples! (I sure you’ve said your share of prayers like “I’m a worm”
and
“thank God I’m not”) When we reach this state of grace our prayers will
become
like Jesus’ prayer.
That
prayer goes like this,
Our
Father, who is in heaven,
Praised be Your name.
Your Kingdom come,
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For Yours is the kingdom,
the power
and the glory,
for ever
and ever.
Amen.
Jesus challenge for us all to day is
an invitation to embrace a relationship with God.
It
comes in the form of a question posed in a parable is “How are you
conducting
yourself every day?
It
comes into our souls as a question “are you living you life in your own
strength or are you working from a relationship with God?
Jesus
wants you to know of God’s grace and desire to be in relationship with
you.
Jesus
is revealing the nature of God that is not judgemental or condemnatory;
rather
God’s nature is to be with us and to have us be with God.
In
fact the whole Gospel story is the revelation of the lengths to which
God will
go to be with us.
Christ
is inviting us all to lower our buckets deep into the well of his love
and
drink of his forgiveness.
Come
before God in a state of self awareness, in honesty, and dwell in his
forgiveness.
Come
to God and know that you are God’s child, loved, embraced and restored
into
righteousness, not by your hand or anything you’ve done. But by God’s
grace and
in so doing receive the Holy Spirit and be the reflection of God’s good
news,
that God wants to be in relationship with us all.
Amen.
Jeremiah 14:19-22
19 Have
you rejected Judah completely?
Do you despise Zion?
Why have you afflicted us
so that we cannot be healed?
We hoped for peace
but no good has come,
for a time of healing
but there is only terror.
20 O
LORD, we acknowledge our wickedness
and the guilt of our fathers;
we have indeed sinned against you.
21 For
the sake of your name do not despise us;
do not dishonor your glorious
throne.
Remember your covenant with us
and do not break it.
22 Do any
of the worthless idols of the nations bring rain?
Do the skies themselves send down
showers?
No, it is you, O LORD our God.
Therefore our hope is in you,
for you are the one who does all
this.
and Luke 18:9-14 with a theme of
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
9To some who were confident of
their own
righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this
parable: 10"Two
men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax
collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about[a] himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other
men—robbers,
evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12I
fast
twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
13"But
the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to
heaven, but
beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
14"I
tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified
before God.
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles
himself
will be exalted."
My name is “We are”
Recently
I have had one of Richard Rohr’s sayings stay with me.
It goes like this...
God
is
not a being, but being itself!
My mind
seems to be churning over this reality and the endless possibilities of
this
statement and in no large part due to an epiphany I had earlier this
year.
While
meditating on God and God’s name (the name of “I am”) it suddenly
dawned on me
what my name is. My name is “we are”.
It hit me
like a bolt of lightning, if God is the initiator of life as “being
itself” or
as the bible states it, the “I am,” then my presence can only be
described in
relation to or in relationship
with the original “I am”. Therefore
there is God and me and the ‘me’ while seeming like an “I am” is
actually a “we
are”.
I am beginning to suspect that
this unity
with God throws light onto the reality
of sin which may be best understood as thinking and acting as an ‘I am’ instead of a ‘we are.
Living as “I” lets
us do to others! Living as an “I”
lets us play at being God and therefore
eliminating the reality of God altogether! Living as “we” dissolves the
issue
of the ‘other’ in and through unity.
Unity in turn lets us celebrate our relationships with everyone
and
within the “I am”.
Is this then Kingdom? God’s
Kingdom where everyone
is encompassed within God and accounted for like the sparrows of the
air (Mtt
10:29)?
My
meditation on God as “being itself” and
the original “I am” then extended
from God and me to the ‘we’ of church and family and beyond to
incorporate all humanity
as that which God so loves and ultimately on to the statement “We are” all loved by God!
May ‘we’ rest in the deep
awareness that “we are”!
We are all God’s children.
We are all loved by God and we can all share
that love with everyone we meet in our daily lives!
Remember the Peace of God is
within you!
Scott
It’s
so simple it might just work
How often do we project our own issues into
situations that aren’t about us?
How often do we react when asked to do a
simple thing?
How often do our relationships suffer
because of our assumptions and reactions?
Thanks
to this Sunday’s readings 2 Kings 5:1-2,7-15c and Luke 17:11-19 we can
explore some
cures for our narcissistic and therefore societal ills.
The
first cure requires some effort on our part and would look like this
When you
think people are having a go at you, halt your reactions long enough to
ask
questions for clarification (you’ll find it isn’t all about you!) (2 Kings 5:7-8)
When
in conversation with others suspend your opinions long enough to
consider what
is being offered to you (you’ll find method in others madness) (2 Kings 5:11-13)
When
we experience a gift from another suspend our selfishness/embarrassment
long
enough to say thanks (you’ll discover a friend) (2
Kings 5:15 Luke 17:16-18)
To
become better skilled at employing just one (if not all three) of these
techniques offers better relationships with everyone you meet. But this
too has
a darker side if we only treat others better so that we have a better
life
ourselves. To that end let me share with you cure number 2.
The
other cure requires true humility on our part and a recognition that we
can’t
thrive in life by our own strength!
In times of distress
and challenge be willing to seek God for support
(2
Kings 5:1, 3-4 & Luke 17:12-13)
In times of selfishness
and tantrums be willing to listen to Christ (and others) for help
(2 Kings 5:8, 8 & Luke 17:14)
In times of
experiencing freely given grace be willing to give thanks and
acknowledge the
Holy Spirit as its source!
(2 Kings 5:15 & Luke 17:15-16)
To embrace seeking, listening and trusting God with
all of our life; seeing everyone as ourselves as a child of God; seeing
all of
creation as God’s gift of life means that we will start living by the
first
cure for our ills without even trying and with little or no regard for
what we
receive in return, just the love of God, the forgiveness of Christ and
the
presence of the Holy Spirit to share around and in so doing build
relationships
that will last.
All this with no selfishness, works, or
narcissism involved.
Trusting in God... It’s just so simple that it might
just work.
Remember the Peace of God is within you!
Scott
Our world has turned to the god
of economic
justification (then again has it ever turned from it?).
Every cent must be accounted
for; auditors and accountants
pour over occupational documentation searching for the lost revenue,
the
frivolous spending, the ways around tax laws.
In a time were economic growth and stimulus are the main stay of
community and personal greed on the stock exchange or an investment
portfolio
brings a never ending hunger for more till it all comes crashing down.
When our
companies outsource jobs to 3rd world economies to keep
costs down
and profit margins up; when families work longer hours for less pay
only to keep
their job or buy that next latest and greatest thing, one has to ask
... where
will it all end?
Both Amos (8:4-7) and Luke
(16:1-13), this Sundays
readings, reveal that this issue is not new to our world or its
economies. Amos talks about the greed and
corruption of
the retailers while Luke uses a teaching of Jesus that highlights the
greed and
scruples of a manager to show the true nature of business to his
disciples. Simply
put any business transaction is an extension of relationship.
Intentional miss-managed,
miserly or unscrupulous
dealings on the part of retailers/contactors reveal a nature of
selfishness and
greed. Similarly always looking for the
bargain and a way to get more out of a deal on the part of a miserly
customer/purchaser
reveals the same nature of selfishness and greed. (On that note I never
understood why the federal government was attacked over
“miss-management” of
the schools and insulations programmes when the intention was good and
it was
more often than not greedy contractors or operators who wrought the
system and
the Government and in so doing stolen from us the Australian people and
cost
lives!!! But I digress). So what are these readings all about? Simply
stated
any interaction between people can either build or destroy
relationships.
So how are you conducting
yourself? Are your
transactions building relationships or destroying them?
More to the point are your
actions (at any time with
anyone) building or destroying relationships?
Remember we reap
what we sow! (Galatians 6:8-9 and 2Corrinthians 9:6)
Know that God’s
peace is within you!
Scott.
Amos 8:4-7
4 Hear this, you who trample the
needy and do away with the poor of the
land, 5 saying,
"When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath
be
ended that we may market wheat?"-- skimping the measure, boosting the
price and cheating with dishonest scales, 6 buying the poor with silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with
the wheat.
7 The LORD has
sworn by the Pride of Jacob: "I will never forget anything they have
done.
Luke 16:1-13
1 Jesus told his disciples:
"There was a rich man whose manager was
accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked
him, 'What is
this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you
cannot
be manager any longer.' 3 "The
manager said to himself, 'What shall I do
now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and
I'm
ashamed to beg-- 4 I know what I'll do so that,
when I lose my job here, people will
welcome me into their houses.' 5 "So
he called in each one of his master's
debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' 6 "'Eight
hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied. "The manager told him, 'Take
your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.' 7 "Then he
asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?' "'A thousand bushels of
wheat,' he replied. "He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight
hundred.' 8 "The master commended the
dishonest manager because he had acted
shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with
their
own kind than are the people of the light. 9 I tell you, use worldly
wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you
will be
welcomed into eternal dwellings. 10
"Whoever can be trusted with very little can
also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little
will also
be dishonest with much. 11 So
if you have not been trustworthy in handling
worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been
trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of
your
own? 13 "No servant
can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other,
or he
will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both
God and
Money."
The character of Moses is an
interesting one; here
is a man known for his relationship with God yet scripture reveals how
often he
takes matters into his own hands and gets it so wrong.
There is much to be reflected on here
particularly for those of us who proclaim, like Moses, that we have a
relationship with God (Christ and the Holy Spirit).
The assurance we have is that God stood by Moses
even when he got it wrong as God will with us.
Today’s reading of Exodus
32:7-35 reveals a human
struggle between issues of grace and judgement; obedience and
disobedience;
life and death. It does so by focusing on a) Moses, b) the people and
c) Aaron.
Today however I want to focus on Moses.
How then is this paradox
resolved?
Its how God worked with Moses,
reflectively we need
to ask ourselves “do we?”
In the Exodus
story, thanks to Moses, 3000 people are denied the opportunity for
repentance;
they had their lives terminated. For their part (and God’s) there was
no tomorrow;
no time for a relationship with God, no space for repentance and no
experience
of forgiveness. It is Moses’ zeal that
accomplishes this heinous act and as such it is the example of our
human
propensity towards judging one another and the worst expression of
religion.
History reveals
again and again that we judge in terms of “It’s
right or wrong / it’s now or never / you’re either in or out / it’s
your way or
mine.” It is our way of judgement which is exposed in this most
fear
instilling and blood thirsty expression of religious fervour in the
Bible save
Christ’s crucifixion. Is it any wonder some reject Christ for their
fear of God;
though I think it is not God who is to be feared!
Jesus himself faced
this same Mosaic rhetoric from the religious leaders in his time. In
Sunday’s
reading of Luke 15:1-10 we read that Jesus is under scrutiny for eating
with
tax collectors. For my part I see Jesus as God’s revelation of Exodus
32:34. Jesus
is God’s revelation of judgement. This is how God deals with those
deemed by
religion as “sinners”.
God’s way of
judgement is... wait for it... to go and
look for them!!! This is how God judges, God judges with love,
grace and
forgiveness. God reaches out to all through a relationship with Jesus
Christ. With
God there is time to rebuild relationships of love, the compulsion to
act with forgiveness
and the desire to celebrate life with everyone.
Is this an image of God to be feared? I think not!
Through Sunday’s parables Jesus
invites those of us
who know God to be part of the celebrations when others embrace God in
faith.
Jesus’ parables offer insight to ‘not judge’ those that are at a
different
stage of their relationship with God. We as Christians are encouraged
to embrace
all and in time celebrate with those who experience Christ’s revelation
of
life. It’s just like the parable of The Prodigal Son, only this time we
are the
servants of the father. I don’t know
about you but I would rather celebrate with Christ the reunion of a
brother or
sister than judge, condemn and murder another (we do it with words
today rather
than the sword).
I pray that by our actions we
will be known as
people who are in relationship with God and in our celebration of
Christ’s
grace, forgiveness and love share with everyone the Holy Spirit’s
infectious
way of life.
God’s Peace is within you!
Scott