Lessons for Feb 28, 2016: Third Sunday in Lent

There are two occasions when fig trees figure in the Gospels. In the

second Mar_11:12-14 Jesus curses a tree that, out of season, failed to

provide him with fruit to eat. Jesus is rather hard on fig trees. In

fact in the second entry Jesus appears rather petulant and vindictive

raising, in my mind at least, the question as to whether God in the

person of Jesus can commit a sinful act.

There is an entire school of thought that holds that financial success

and good fortune are the fruits of right living as if such things can be

earned through faithfulness to God. The corollary is that bad fortune is

retribution for wrong doing. What did those who suffer bad fortune do

wrong to deserve such punishment.

Today's lessons, in part, confront the issue of bad things happening to

'good' people. The reward and punishment modality described above is

very good Old Testament Deuteronomic Theology. In the opening verses of

Luk_13:1-5 Jesus makes clear that the people who died in the situations

cited were no better or worse than those in the audience in front of him.

God's salvation as enbodied in Christ is freely given to all who

believe, it cannot be earned. On the other hand it is not a get out of

jail free card. Repentence means turning away. Confession and

forgiveness is not licence to go out and do it again.

We are also faced with the paradox that salvation is not a thing that

can be earned by good deeds BUT in response to God's gift of love Good

Deeds should follow or the reception of God's act of salvation is rather

hollow. Jas_2:14-18

To return to the question of bad things happening to good people it

seems clear that life in the Kingdom of God on this earth does not guard

one from the perils of this world nor does it protect or ward us from

the consequences of our decisions. What it will do is provide us with a

relationship that will comfort and sustain us no matter what may betide

and a community of support to come to our aid in need.

Pentecost II

And so begins the season of ordinary time or Sundays in Pentecost which began with Trinity Sunday last week. It is a period of instruction and meditation that extends until Christ the King Sunday next November. We have moved from John back to the concise texts in Mark for our Gospel and to II Corinthians for our Epistles. Jesus has selected his Apostles and has started upon his ministry of teaching and healing. Just as we are entering a season of learning so the Apostles are being prepared for the ministry before them.

For our first day of classes we tackle no less a topic than sin.

Gen 3:10  The man answered, "I was naked, and when I heard you walking through the garden, I was frightened and hid!"
Gen 3:11  "How did you know you were naked?" God asked.

The Genesis Myth purports to explain so-called original sin and blames the original temptation on 'The Snake' to explain what seems to be our instinctual antipathy to these creatures. What is important here is not how sin came into the world but the effect of this loss of innocence. Man felt naked before God and hid, as if that were possible, and not only did not confess his transgressions but  blamed them on his wife. From the beginning sin brought guilt that separated man from his God and since this is the Old Testament punishment follows and it is dire.

Psalm 130 is a lamentation for the sinful nature of mankind:

Psa 130:3  If you kept record of our sins, no one could last long.
Psa 130:4  But you forgive us, and so we will worship you.

God's forgiveness restores our bond with the Creator.

The Epistle speaks of our physical  being which is subject to transgression and our spiritual being which is eternal and resides with God.

And so to our Gospel where Jesus touches base with home bringing his followers with him. As word of this miracle worker who could heal the sick and cast out demons spread people flocked to him creating a circus-like atmosphere. A prophet being famous everywhere but in his home town Jesus' own family sought to rescue him from himself hence the response:

Mar 3:35  Anyone who obeys God is my brother or sister or mother."

Temple authorities attempted to discredit him.

Mar 3:28  I promise you that any of the sinful things you say or do can be forgiven, no matter how terrible those things are.

In contradiction the verse following introduces the concept of blasphemy or unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit which opens up an entirely different can of worms. If we reject our own souls, the spirit of god within us, are we eternally separated from the God? The church once thought so refusing to bury suicides on holy ground.

Jesus brought forgiveness of sin and as the presence of God on earth embodied that forgiveness.  Our acceptance of the Holy Spirit's gift of belief in the Kingdom of God which cannot be seen grants us life eternal and oneness with God. Rejecting that gift separates us from God. We can only  be made right with God if we accept the Holy Spirit's gift of forgiveness. We cannot be forgiven if we believe ourselves unforgivable. We have to forgive ourselves before we can believe in God's forgiveness.

We cannot escape our sinful natures but we can repent and with contrite hearts seek God's forgiveness and rejoice in the God of our salvation.

Forgive my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me. After Mat_6:12

Trinity

Trinity Sunday in the church's lectionary has become an afterthought. We now refer for the rest of the church year to Sundays in Pentecost, not Trinity. Indeed the lessons appointed for this Sunday hardly seem appropriate for Trinity and my commentary for Pentecost has already exhausted the subject.

Just as a single person can be someone's daughter, another's sister, and a mother as well so too we can look at the one God from different perspectives. However we approach him he is worthy of our duty and praise. It should also be noted that God is neither male nor female but displays qualities of both. Whereas God may have been said to have created man in his own image we conceive of God in our own image and an all-powerful god needs must display masculine traits it seems.

Today's lessons speak more to our relationship with this god than about his nature.

Once more we return to the OT for our first lesson:

Isa 6:5  And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

This passage would not be out of place in Revelation.

Psa 29:2  Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.

Psa 29:11  May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!

Rom 8:14  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

Our Gospel tells the story of the Pharisee Nicodemus' visit to Jesus and culminates in the famous:

Joh 3:16  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Joh 3:17  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him

The Father and the Son are one. The Epiphany did not occur with the intention of starting a Jesus Cult. The Son became man to demonstrate God's Redeeming Love. At his Resurrection he became one once more with the Father and last Sunday we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit which opened the minds of the Apostles. God in three Persons, Blessed Trinity.

I would take issue with Father Luther. God is a God of Love. He is not to be feared. Fear enters the relationship when like Adam and Eve we transgress and fail to repent and turn away from our sins and feel naked before God.

Pentecost

As Christians we conceive of a triune God in three aspects or persons:

God the Father Creator
God the Son Redeemer, and
God the Holy Spirit Communicator Comforter

This is the one Sunday a year devoted entirely to this third aspect of God's Nature.

God's Spirit is symbolized by a descending dove, a mighty wind or breath, and by tongues of fire.

One could say that the Holy Spirit is active as we study his Word the Bible and inspiring me as I write this commentary as we believe it inspired those who recorded the words we read in the Holy Bible.

God's Spirit was said to be active as God created the universe and when God breathed the breath of life into the clay that became mankind.

It is said to have descended as a dove when God claimed Jesus as his beloved son.

It is said to have appeared to many in dreams and to others in the form of angel messengers.

At Pentecost it is said to have filled all the room in which the Apostles hid like a mighty wind and burned atop their heads like tongues of fire. It inspired them to overcome their fears, self-consciousness and stage freight to go out and preach the Gospel seemingly in  languages even they didn't understand. To this day when someone has a new idea we place a light bulb atop his head representing the fact that he has seen the light.

Our ability to have faith itself is said to be a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holly Spirit that claims us as God's own and imbues us at Baptism.

When we pray the Holy Spirit is active within us.

Our spirit is said to light up our eyes and enlivens our being and is expressed as our aura or soul--that which animates us. It is that aspect of our being that is eternal and returns to God at our death. It is that which make us human. In a sense it is God indwelling within us.

Western philosophy and culture has centred on logic and scientific method.

1Co 1:22  For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,

Native Americans and others have conceived of a more animistic approach to the world in which everything in creation has a spirit even what we perceive as inanimate objects such as rocks and trees. In failing to honour that animism we commit environmental suicide.

The Holy Spirit is testimony to the fact that we can believe in things that we cannot prove to exist by touching or seeing them or conceiving of them logically with our minds.

In the end we must remember that God is one being. He was made man in the person of Jesus the Christ who made manifest God's Love for mankind in his very being. Because we believe the testimony of those who claim he lived we are called Christians but we worship God the Father Creator not his human aspect the Son. So to the Holy Spirit is our expression of God communicating with us his creation. When we sense God's love his spirit is active in our lives as it is when we express that love in praise and thanksgiving to God and in expressions of caring for his creation our fellow man and the world around us.

We are one with every theological expression of the creator's presence in our lives that yearns for the good of his creation. We need to acknowledge that there is more than one way of expressing God's Truth and learn to seek those things that unite us rather than those that divide us. Love conquers all.

Easter VII

On this last Sunday in the Easter Season we get a Catechetical Lesson in the True Nature of God. Theology is the study of the nature of God and God's relationship with Man and the rest of his creation. So let us look at that relationship.

In the Old Testament Paradigm  God was a God of Law who expected obedience. Obedience was rewarded and disobedience, sin, was punished. The Law of Moses summarized in the Ten Commandments was interpreted and expounded upon by Talmudic Scholars until the codex totaled nearly 1000 closely packed pages. God was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob whose relationship with his people Israel was epitomized by his mighty acts in bringing them out of bondage in Egypt. This formula is repeated over and over in prophetic writings. In this modality it was important to be seen to do the right thing.

The paradigm shift in the Good News or Gospel is the fact that God cared so much that he became man to demonstrate that it is not sufficient that we be seen to obey the law but more important that we mean to obey it. We do this by responding in love to a God who loves us and in our loving relationships with our fellow man and the universe we inhabit. Our motivations become as important as our acts themselves. In effect God doesn't punish sin; by our sinful acts we drive a wedge between ourselves and our God and each other and that separation from the love of God is in effect its own punishment. This concept was so threatening to the Jewish authorities and Roman rulers of the day that this God-man Jesus was crucified on the cross. Allowing himself to be so-treated was interpreted as a supreme demonstration of God's love for his people hence the cross has become a symbol of God's love.

To summarize the Old Testament paradigm treated God's people as immature children who were punished whenever they didn't obey. The Gospel says that as mature adults we are capable of internalizing God's Law so that we act out of love rather than fear of being punished for disobedience. Too often church hierarchies have lost sight of God's love and reverted to fearing a God of vengeance and punishment.

Today's lessons talk about Jesus' relationship to the Law and the Prophets, the validity of his life and ministry and our part in keeping the message going.

If a man love me he will keep my word, he will keep my word. And my father will love him, and my father will love him and make his home in him and make his home in him. Joh_14:23.

Easter VI

Today's lessons are in essence a continuation of last Sunday's when we talked about the relationship between God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and we his mortal believers. We live in him and he in us and today the emphasis shifts to the nature of that loving relationship.

Faith, as we have learned in the past is a gift of the Holy Spirit. To receive that gift we have to be open to allow that love into our lives.

The irony in this relationship is that in submission we find freedom, in giving we receive, in loving we are overwhelmed with love, in abandoning anger and resentment we receive joy, in dying we receive life.

Once more we learn in the first lesson from Acts that the Gospel is for all people, Jew and Gentile.

Psalm 98 reminds us that it is good for the soul to give God thanks and praise. All creation praises the God of its creation.

God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son are one. In baptism we are claimed by the triune God.

The central tenet of the Good News is that God loves us and we respond to that love in love not because we fear punishment if we disobey but in joyful response to that love. Jesus was made man to make manifest God's love. We respond to that love by loving the God of our creation and salvation and our neighbour as ourselves. Let us not forget the corollary of that equation. To truly love others we must believe ourselves worthy of that love in return. To love others we must love ourselves. We are made lovable by God's forgiving love.

Easter V

Last Sunday was Good Shepherd Sunday. Today is Grape Vine Sunday. Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, God is the vine grower.

Next to olive groves and possibly figs vineyards were the most basic crop in Palestine. In a land where water was often not safe to drink wine was an essential staff of life. Grape vines require constant care. Water, weeding, trimming the branches, grafting, fertilizing, watching out for parasites and fungus. Vines require constant maintenance lest the wild root stalk reassert itself, to trim unproductive branches and unhealthy growths.

Jesus uses an analogy familiar to his listeners to explain essential truths about life in Christ.

First, once again we return to Acts for our first lesson. Let it be noted that Philip was sent to meet with a Gentile. Eunuch was a common term for government official much as we refer to infernal revenue today. The passage that was being read was Isa_53:7-8, often referred to as the suffering servant passage. This is, of course was applied to Jesus and used as a pretext to expound upon the Good News culminating in a baptism.

The Psalm avows that God lives in us and we in him. God is not a cure-all for every ill to which man is prone but neither is he deaf to our concerns but we must trust in him and make our needs known.

The Epistle reaffirms that the greatest of these is love. Love one another as I have loved you.

The Gospel expounds upon the Psalmist's concept of an interactive relationship with God the creator. The Christian Life is not a one-time conversion experience. Our Christian faith must be tended and nourished for if it is not growing and producing it will become moribund and dead. We live in Christ and he in us. We are nourished by our life in Christ's body the church. We are not redeemed by our good works but our response to God's love will be reflected in the fruit we produce expressed in love for each other.