Year C Proper 14 8 August 2010
Isaiah 1: 1, 10-20 Psalm 50: 1-8, 22-23 Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16 Luke 12: 32-40
We are exhausted. We are broken. We’ve been taught that it is quite common to have “break downs” and not unusual to find ourselves not coping. We and health authorities give us permission to “care for ourselves”, and “take it easy for awhile” and we’ve become pretty proficient in this skill. But this week we find the Gospel message warning us we must not run out of steam.
Luke 12: 35"Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him.”
How can we be dressed ready for service? I believe that we have gotten bogged down in the traditions of men. We are weighed down by burdens that we think are God given, but are not. We are dressed and ready for service when our minds are renewed so that we understand what God requires and identify those burdens from which He has set us free. That is, put off the clothing of burden and put on the wedding clothes of the bride of Christ.
Isaiah 1: “14 Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.”
We understand from the passage from Isaiah that even God becomes weary when burdened by the traditions of men. However the passage presents a problem in that we understand that the Israelites were obeying God in their sacrifices and believed themselves to be justified by their actions. They figured that they could do whatever evil they wanted and then so long as they presented the prescribed sacrifices they figured themselves to be okay with God. Ba-Bong! They were wrong!
The traditions of men are a burden to us too. To start with I should say the traditions of men and women.... because we supposedly live in an evolved and perfect world where all is equal... and supposedly changing our language is the first step. Personally, I have a really bad habit of shortening names and words, and when I’m talking to the children at school I sometimes address the girls and boys with, “hey guys....” A-oh!
Really I don’t think the language is the issue. – Many people do and a lot of energy has been wasted over the decades in the church just fighting about the language. Let me strive to show you that God has set us free from all this. He said that there is no longer, Jew, nor Greek, male nor female – as we are all one in Christ Jesus. Note that there actually are Jews and Greeks and there are males and females, but as far as the church SHOULD be concerned – this is where there should be true equality..... not in word, but in DEED.
I’ve probably really confused you now as I seemed to have flipped from one side of the argument to the other.... I haven’t. What I am saying is that we waste time worrying about our roles as males or females in the church and this reveals that we, though possibly even indwelt by the Holy Spirit are not being led by the Spirit – we are keeping people burdened and enslaved... people who God has set free and ordained for his good work. Do you know how discouraging it is to be told you can’t do something? Now imagine that the only justification is that you are a female.... And we wonder that the church is losing credibility!
This particular issue is not the crux of the message for this week. It is just one example of how the traditions of “men” – which we think are God given (and maybe in some form or for some place and time they were!), are exhausting and crippling the church.
The way in which the church needs to dress herself for service is to be not only indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but actually led by the Spirit also. The Holy Spirit is the one who encourages and empowers. I remember an occasion many years ago when I was helping with a state high school RE day in Rockhampton. I was praying about what to say and what particular message to present. The message came back pretty strong that I was to tell them that God loved them. Now I don’t know if you know much about teenagers in schools, but to think of going in and saying, “God loves you” is pretty much the grounds for crucifixion.
Somehow during me telling the students about my faith journey I did end up telling them about my experience of praying and asking God what to say to them.... I told them.... and you could have heard a pin drop. At any other time I would not recommend this. I wouldn’t do it again – UNLESS the Spirit directed – and that is my point. When we follow the leading of the Spirit and encourage and empower people – not censoring with our minds but with the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, life is created and people are set free.
To be dressed ready for service we need to understand that we are forgiven and united to God. When we hold on to our sins, thinking that God couldn’t really forgive, then we are not free to truly love and we, once again, cripple the church. We find some very important words in our first reading from Isaiah1: “18 "Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
These words were addressed to people whom Isaiah addressed as Sodom and Gomorrah – they were evil, evil people. AND they were two faced. They sinned and then went to the temple with their sacrifices and assumed themselves justified. Maybe we sometimes feel like hypocrites.... others might not know our sins, but we do and maybe we feel undeserving. Let me attempt to show you the truth, and hopefully by it, you will be set free: We are not justified by our sacrifices. Going to church and giving lots of money or gifts of service will not justify us. If this is where you are at, you will already feel the burden of never feeling that you can quite do enough. We are justified by this simple, simple thing of God’s word. God says we are forgiven. Jesus paid the price and made perfect once and for all us who are being made holy.
It is such Good News that we can’t comprehend it. How can it be that I am justified when I have done nothing to deserve it? We are told in the Bible that we are justified by faith -in others words, by believing God. When God says we are forgiven and we believe him, we are justified. Our second reading explains what faith is, as some often confuse faith with an irrational jump – a leap of faith – it is nothing of the sort.
Hebrews 11:1 “1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2This is what the ancients were commended for.”
Being SURE is not “blind faith” or “strong believing”. It is more, and I can hear you asking,“ how you can be sure?” The answer is again in that thing that I keep emphasising since Easter – the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God within us and it is God communicating with us that enables us to be sure.
Now that we understand these things we are dressed ready for service... we keep our lamps burning – the lamp of the Holy Spirit burning within us, by prayer and constant communion and submission to God – by remaining in God. We have many helps for this as the gifts of the Holy Spirit help us. We needed to be connected to the church and other Christians as the Holy Spirit gives us differing gifts and we need each other.
Luke 12 has another warning: “38It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. 39But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.”
What house is being broken into and what is being stolen?
Because we have become burdened by the traditions of men and our lack of understanding of the Good News, the joy and life that God had intended for us has been stolen. Possibly even worse, some of His children have been stolen due to discouragement and our lack of ministry – due to our discouragement. We can’t let this continue.
There is yet one more warning in the Gospel reading. The warning: Luke 12: 40 “You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him."
You’ve got to admit we’ve all become somewhat blasé about Christ’s 2nd coming. We know it will happen someday, but surely a long time away yet. While this is possibly true, for each of us there is a personal day of Christ’s coming and we don’t know the time, we need to always be ready. Joe had said that he was fortunate to have time to prepare, but it isn’t that way for most.
I want to finish with that verse from Luke that we began with and add a strange story of something that happened to me this week – maybe it is just crazy, or maybe it is something we need to take notice of.
I was on the computer late at night and just before I logged off I again checked my emails. One had come through marked as being from Joe. I was, at the time, on Joe’s computer and so I assumed that somehow I had done something to have it accidentally sent to myself.... and this is most likely as I was trying to send emails. However, the email came from Joe’s account to my hotmail account and had a sheet music file attached. The sheet music was for a kids song that I had found about a month or two ago. The words of the song are: “Behold, behold I stand at the door and knock, knock, knock..... and if anyone hears my voice..... and will open, open, open the door I will come in.”
Now re-look at that verse from Luke’s Gospel:
Luke 12: 35"Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him.”
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