Category: Lectionary Ramblings

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

July 29th 2014 Luke 21:5-19

Read Luke 21:5-19 here

“By your endurance you will gain your souls”

At any given time, if we were to study the world news carefully, we would find Christians being persecuted. As things are at this particular moment, this reading feels especially apposite. I’ve already written this week about standing with those who are suffering for the Gospel – it is one of the primary tasks of faith I think, something which we in the UK are largely blind to. Often we are told that this is merciful, or a blessing and, certainly, I’d rather have the life I have, for myself or my family, than those experienced by those who are displaced, injured or even killed for their belief in the person of Jesus and His good news. However, Jesus is unequivocal here, we gain our souls through our endurance for the gospel. I wonder if this means that, if we are not sacrificing or suffering in some way as a result of our faith, we’re somehow not doing it right. I’m not saying that this is a positive, or perhaps even helpful message, and I could well be way off, but if my faith doesn’t challenge my life, if it doesn’t cause me any kind of difficulty at all, is it real faith?

Don’t go out and seek to be a martyr for the sake of it today, but seek ways to endure, to be refined, to be challenged. Ask questions, rail against injustice, think of others before myself. These are my challenges to myself today. Join with me?

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July 28th 2014: Luke 20:41-21:4

Read Luke 20:41-21:4 here

We begin a new week with the reminder that Jesus, the Messiah, is nobody’s son but God’s. This will hopefully help us to remember the security of our trust in the life, works and authority of Jesus.

Verses 45 and 46, for me, have a particular resonance as I become used to being a curate. Just because we wear the clothes of Christian leadership and authority, we have no right to anything special. Don’t become a follower of Jesus, or a Christian leader, if you want respect, status and to be valued in the eyes of society. You might get all of those things for a time. Your Church might even like you (!) but actually we serve a great God who is jealous for His bride to be grown, nurtured and protected. That’s quite a task, quite a responsibility. All of us will answer for the fruit our lives have, or have not, produced. It’ll not matter a jot if we were popular while we were living, if the fruits of our lives and hearts were unjust, or self-serving. That’s bound to be a pretty uncomfortable, to say the least, conversation.

It’s no wonder, then, that Jesus comments on the “widow’s mite” next. Here is someone who, in seeking to honour God and seek His kingdom, gives all she has, without holding back, and without wishing to be seen to be doing right. Are we willing to do that today?

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July 27th 2014: 1 Peter 4:7-14

Read 1 Peter 4:7-14 here

“Above all, love one another deeply”. This is what we are asked to do this morning. As we serve, work, proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed, we are primarily called to love one another. The hardest command of Jesus, in my view, is to love God with everything we have, love our neighbours, and love ourselves. As I’ve said before here I think, some of us think we’re ok at 1 or 2 of those, but not many of us, if we’re honest, really cope with loving ourselves, others and God all at the same time. And yet this is what we’re asked to give our lives to.

What does it look like to love one another deeply? Well, ultimately I think it means to do everything we can to point one another to Jesus. This might be a wise word, a sermon or whatever, but more likely it’ll be the small act of kindness, the sacrificial giving, the offering of time, a listening ear. Time is the greatest gift we humanly have to share I believe. Not many of us are used to people giving of their time just to see how we are, to encourage and challenge, stretch and strengthen us. Jesus, though, died and rose so that we could spend eternity, unlimited time and space, with Him, and He with us. For us to truly love, and to be loved, we need to see that people are more precious than activities, that loving each other deeply is to prioritise seeing the work of God in another, or in a group of people,. drawing alongside them and asking God to help us to experience, and perhaps even to be, the sacrament of the present moment in the life of another.

As this passage goes on to suggest, and as we see all too often and easily in the present time, suffering is part of the Christian life and experience. As we deplore the treatment of Christians in Mosul and other, less publicised parts of the world, this morning, let us pray for them as they share in the sufferings of Christ, that they might know his presence and peace and, for us, that whenever we are brought into places and times of suffering for our faith, that we might faithfully love one another, love God and love our persecutors, deeply.

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July 26th 2014: Luke 20:27-40

Read Luke 20:27-40 here

Many people take this passage to be about the resurrection from the dead and marriage, but I’m not entirely convinced that it is the main point. I think the key here is Luke’s reminding of his hearers/readers that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. So, in fact in asking Jesus about marriage after the resurrection, it is possible to suggest they were making fun of Jesus, or trying to trap Him in to making a fool of Himself. After all, if they don’t think the resurrection will happen, why does it matter to them who is married to who? If you don’t think they are truing to, at best, be funny, read verses 28-33 fast a few times and see if you manage not to get confused.

Jesus, as normal, gets to the heart of the matter.Verses 34-38 include a key teaching for all of us to hold on to – those who are deemed worthy (because Jesus died for them, rose for them and intercedes for them at the Father’s right hand today, we could add now, although His hearers at the time could not) are chidden of God, “since they are children of the resurrection”. Jesus moves beyond questions of marriage, and asserts there is a resurrection, where relationship with God matters more than anything else. More than this, He beats the Sadducees at their own game by showing that it was all in the teachings of Moses too.

For us, it is very easy to cynically question whether there is life after this, or whether this is all there is. Some of the key thinkers of our age attempt to narrow our field of vision to simply this life, this time, these places. It is not for us to have to bend to the logic of the age, however, just as Jesus did not bend to the logic, or fall into the trap of the Sadducees. Wen have a promise of life, today, tomorrow and for eternity to share with the world. The world can never take that away, however hard it tries.

 

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July 25th 2014: Luke 9:46-56

Read Luke 9:46-56 here

Who’s the greatest? At different times we’ve all asked that question. Perhaps it was in the playground as a child, perhaps it was on a sports field or court, perhaps it’s when vying with another for the romantic affections of a stunning person. We like to compare ourselves to others and we like to win. As I write this (on Sunday 20th) we can see all over the world the need of groups of people, governments, faith communities, nations to prove that their cause is right and just, that they deserve to win, to take a lead. It might be due to greed, a perceived call of god, or even fear of what will happen if another is allowed to lead (and there are a lot of other reasons people seek to raise themselves over another which I haven’t mentioned here). Of course the ultimate, sad irony of it all is that being the “greatest” in our culture is only fleeting, transitory. What is on top one moment, say a football team, a pop song or a political party, is in the gutter the next. We take great delight in bringing the “other” down, I think humans always have.

This is something which even the disciples of Jesus indulged in, so it seems it’s human nature. As they’re feeling pretty good about themselves, having ministered powerfully in the name of Jesus (exercising the authority we were talking about earlier this week) an argument amongst them ensues. They want to know which of them is the best. And look at the answer of Jesus!

“Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he said to them,“Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.””

The child here symbolises one who is not worth much. Certainly, it is not the answer the disciples were expecting, just as it isn’t the answer our society expects in asking the same question. Will we walk alongside those who are the least, living on the same level as them, not out of charity or sympathy, fear even, but out of the knowledge that they are worth just as much as we are? Will we seek to make ourselves the least, like Paul did in Corinth, so that he might win some of the people of the city for Christ? All our puffed up notions of ourselves and our own importance can be blown apart in a single second. If it doesn’t happen in this life, I imagine it most certainly will as we stand before God to give account for what we have done with the gift of life which we have been given. It might not be cool, but wouldn’t it be great to be known in the places in which we lived as ones who were so humble, so little about ourselves, that we let nothing hinder the shining out of the love of God and its impact on those we meet? Our world might run on a different system, but I believe this is the economy of the age to come. It would do us no harm to start, or return to, trading in its currency today.

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July 24th 2014: 2 Corinthians 3

Read 2 Corinthians 3 here

This is a rich and vibrant passage. I would encourage you to read it more than once today. The joy, almost exuberance, Paul shows in his writings to the Corinthian Church are something to behold and to delve deeply into. For today though, I want to focus on the last three verses. Here they are:

“But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

If we turn to the Lord, the veil (the inability to see/perceive/feel/know the truth) is taken away from us, and as far as we are able to, we can grasp on to the majestic wonder of what God has done for us in Jesus and what is on offer to us. Many of us who have been in church a long time may have grown tired of phrases like “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”, but how gloriously true it has been since before the foundation of the world and how gloriously true it remains. The freedom of the Lord is exhibited in us as we are made more and more like Him. We are made more and more like Him every single day, whether we feel it or not. The deposit of the Spirit has already been placed in us when God made us in His image, designed to be like Him, know Him as far as we are able, and to be known by Him. God causes us, every day, to be made more and more like Him. He does it because He wants to. He declares worth over us which leads Him to welcome us in to Himself. In this way we can live out having been made one with Christ.

The Spirit of the Lord is with you, in you, beside you, before you, behind you drawing you on. So, when we say that there is freedom where the Spirit of the Lord is, what we are really saying is that there is freedom for all, should they choose to receive it. What a gift to be given. What a gift to share with the world. Because of Jesus, we have freedom today.

Do you feel free? What’s helping or hindering you in living out your freedom this morning?

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July 23rd 2014: Luke 20:1-8

Read Luke 20:1-8 here

This morning we return to the chronology of our previous story, and find Jesus teaching about the Kingdom of God in the Temple. He is challenged by the Teachers of the Law – what authority does He have to be teaching here and in this way? We should remember that this is the same Jesus who has already claimed that the power to grant freedom to captives has been given to Him. The Pharisees know who they think Jesus thinks He is. They are trying to trap Him in to blasphemy so that they might capture and silence His troublesome ministry. Jesus, in His own enigmatic way, is far too clever for them, rhetorically running rings round them, keeping Himself alive and free (for now) to speak the truth of the Kingdom and, I would imagine, impressing His audience with the speed of His mind and wit.

We live in an age which is obsessed with rights. What gives us the right to do this or that? What gives the government to look here or demand this of us there? We know that Jesus’ authority was clear and special – He was God, come from God to complete the task that the Father had set before Him, and He would not be denied. This was victory on a cosmic, eternal scale, not merely an earthly one, played out before the eyes of an unsuspecting and uncomprehending world. These days it seems to be much the same. What right do we have to believe that God exists, that He is love, that He’s worth taking notice of and, more than that, that we think everyone should take note of Him and the life offered in Jesus? It’s an easy time to be spiritual. An easy time to be dogmatic, to spring to judgement, as society, each one of us, consistently colludes in remoulding and reshaping the moral codes by which we live in such a way as to make ourselves feel as superior (or even just adequate) as possible. Check yourself and how you think today. We all do it, I promise.

But here’s the exciting thing for today. Jesus knew who He was, what He had been called to do, and that He was going to complete the task set before Him, so when He was challenged, He answered without answering. Our commission to go and make disciples is not from this world, it is from Heaven. As we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, love ourselves and love our neighbours, let us constantly make sure that our first priority is God and the families and communities He has placed in to our care. With this focus in mind, questions like the one asked of Jesus here become a lot less important or powerful. We have all the authority we need. You have all the grace, mercy, love and peace you need, available to you today. Go out in to all the world and share it. I dare you

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July 22nd 2014: Luke 8:1-3

Read Luke 8:1-3 here

Today, thanks to the vagaries of the Lectionary, our gospel reading jumps from the rather exciting Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem of yesterday to the beginning of Luke 8, and the pre-amble to the parable of the sower. In 3 verses, we’re told quite a lot:

Jesus is travelling from village to village proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

There are a lot of people with Him, including some women who have been cured/delivered of all sorts of things.

These women are supporting the men from their own means.

What is the meaning of the women supporting the men of their own means I wonder for us today? I think it speaks of the way that ministry in whatever form or sense, is a team sport. Jesus and the Disciples were the ones who were, perhaps, up front, but without the crowds who followed and supported them, continued ministry, perhaps even existence, would not have been possible. In all the fashionable arguments we find ourselves involved in about the validity of ministry of different sorts by different people and social groups, it is easy for us to forget that we need each other for this task of partnering in the growth of the Kingdom of God, the task with which we have been entrusted. In the diaconal role taken on by the women in this passage, we see Jesus turning upside down, as usual, the social conventions of His time and His culture. What a shame, if we as contemporary Christians become so pharisaical about our traditions and wonts that we forget the simplicity of giving our lives to, literally or figuratively, to travel from village to village proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?!

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July 21st 2014: Luke 19:28-40

Read Luke 19:28-40 here

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” Today’s reading gives us a stark picture. Jesus has his disciples steal a colt (it seems) as He and His followers come in to Jerusalem. No-one seems to mention whether or not this is morally ok!

Jews knowing prophecy might well have perceived His entering of Jerusalem on a donkey as fulfilment of prophecy (Zech 9:9). It’s likely that the crowd who cried “hosanna” were expecting a powerful political or militaristic saviour to wrest control of Jerusalem from the Romans. The disappointment and resentment the Jewish authorities were able to stir up a few short days later as Jesus was handed over to Pilate may well stem form the subverting of expectations which Jesus’s “triumphal” entry in to Jerusalem almost certainly would have been. Jesus came not as an all-guns-blazing political usurper, but as a servant king. Even though this was not what Israel wanted at this point, it was what it, and the whole world, needed. Jesus “failed” in order to succeed. He did so whilst remaining in complete control of Himself and what He was doing, and trusting His Father with His life.

Sometimes it is easy for us to demand of God that He show the strength of His arm, that He gives us victory, superiority, vindication or anything else. Jesus was due these things and more as the perfectly righteous God-man. And yet. And yet, He chose to give Himself for us all. God has given us everything we could possibly need. We are not called to run society, not given the right to be heard, to be powerful or anything else of that ilk. We’re called to serve, to humble ourselves and put the needs of others before ourselves, as Jesus ultimately modelled for us in the final week, which begins with this story. As we begin a new week, let’s ask God to bless us with the courage to humble ourselves and serve, so that He might be served and glorified.

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July 20th 2014: 1 Peter 3:8-18

Read 1 Peter 3: 8-18 here

Two parts of this passage really jumped off the page as i read this passage this morning. The first is verses 8 and 9: “Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. “

In our society there is a lot of talk about compassion, particularly at the moment. What we seem to have taken it to mean currently is that we take a view as to what the best kind of life we can imagine for ourselves and one another, and seek that for others, politically, economically, ethically, morally and so on. This is, in a sense, empathetic, but it could also be borne out of fear of difference. We far a narrative that we’re all supposed to be equal or the same, but we can only be so in the eyes of God. Our society, in this age, is not built, does not wish and will not allow, actual Kingdom equality to take place. So, instead, how are we to be compassionate? I think verses 17 and 18 at the end of this passage might hold something of the answer:

For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.

Annoyingly for us who don’t ever want to suffer or to see suffering, it is a part of life. We can go round and round the mulberry bush about whether God causes, allows, abhors or even ignores our suffering. Everyone has a different perspective. In a sense though, in spite of the narrative at play in our culture at the moment I’m not sure it matters who is the agent causing the suffering. Here, Peter is saying that, if we follow God’s way, and (unsurprisingly) suffer in whatever sense, it is better to do so for doing good. So, returning to my earlier question, I believe compassion in our culture is to unstintingly and unfailingly seek to do good, good not in the eyes of culture or society, but good in the light of the life, death, resurrection and love of Jesus Christ. He suffered for us, not so that we don’t have to, but so that the final victory of peace, joy, hope and love is won for all. We are not showing true compassion to anyone, in any sense, in my view, unless something of how we are and how we live points them to the life and love of Jesus Christ. Don’t misunderstand me though, good works are crucial in all of our lives, and we are, it seems to me, regularly given opportunities to undertake them. The point I think Peter is driving at this morning though is that good works alone are not enough, everyone can do those. Let’s find ways to be known as people of love, grace and compassion today.