July 28th 2019 Philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe

PROPER 12 (17)  Seventh Sunday after Pentecost  Year C  July 28, 2019

• Hosea 1:2-10 and Psalm 85   •  Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)  •   Luke 11:1-13

Recently a friend of mine received a slightly riotous response from her post on facebook.  She posted a picture that contained the headshot of many high profile “Christian” leaders.  The accompanying statement was; “Don’t get your Theology from these False Leaders – avoid them”. 

 The riotous response was because most names on the post were well respected and notable leaders who’ve an established and credible ministry.  These are people like Joyce Meyer, who wrote the series of books, “Chicken soup for the soul” and Rick Warren who wrote and developed the book and program, “The Purpose Driven Life”, and also Brian Houston who is the founder and senior pastor of the Hillsong Church.  Is my friend completely losing the plot in her post, or is there something we can learn?

Our first reading comes from the prophet Hosea.  God told him to go and take a prostitute for a wife.  Now, the first lesson for us to learn is, that nothing is ever what it looks on the surface.  On the surface the lives of the prophets often looked like they were either slightly, or way left of the centre.  The exception to this was King David who was popular, respected and although a might warrior and king, gave us the psalms which were often prophetic.  Many prophets had an element of “Not quite fitting in with the mainstream”, yet each prophet, though rejected by many, had a vital message for God’s people and God’s people needed to hear them. 

In the case of Hosea, God chose to figuratively show his relationship with the nation of Israel by using Hosea’s relationship with his wife as a parable. The nation of Israel who had experienced the dynamic salvation of God gave allegiance to all manner of false Gods.  Over and over, God proved himself to them, but they predicably turned again and again to falsehood.

We read the stories and we can be amazed at the infidelity of the Israelite nation and we find it hard to fathom that they turned away to these hollow and empty gods, but let us look more closely at the subtlety and we may just find that we have been in danger of doing the same.

The idolatry in which the Israelites were engaged, originated from King Jeroboam.  He had been made king after King Solomon’s son had decided to harshly tax the people. The people revolted and followed Jeroboam instead and kingdom of Israel was divided and became two Kingdoms -  the kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of Israel.  Then in 1st Kings 12:26 we read:  “Jeroboam thought to himself, “The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David.  If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam.”

After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”  One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.  And this thing became a sin; the people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other.”

Basically he gave the people simplicity.  He didn’t want to risk losing his position of power and popularity and so he compromised. 

Do you recall another person who made a golden calf?  Aaron and the Israelites made a golden calf while Moses was on the mountain of God receiving the law.  After a little research, it seems that neither Jeroboam, nor Aaron intended the calf to represent anything other than Yahweh.  They simply felt that the people needed a visible expression of their God.  The calf was the obvious choice as the zodiac symbol of Taurus was understood at the ruler – ie… in their minds this represented Yahweh. 

Over the years there have been and are still many who use the zodiac to predict and understand the world around us.  It is said that this is how the three wise men came to be looking for Jesus.  We would assume then that there is some truth within this, but beware, God’s initial response to the Israelites who created the image of the calf was to completely wipe them out and build his nation from Moses instead.  Seems an extreme response to something we would think as trivial – therefore we need to sit up and take notice.

These people had just been led out of captivity in Egypt by incredible miracles and tangible signs such as the cloud that went with them (God’s presence), leading and protecting them.  Why would you seek the signs in the heavens for direction and ask the stars of the heaven when you have direct access to God almighty?

In our Gospel reading we are told; “"…Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

This follows the disciples request for Jesus to teach them how to pray.

Jesus answer to the disciples is what we all know as The Lord’s Prayer.  He starts by addressing God as Father.  This is significant because it tells us the relationship we have with the almighty God is a loving and personal one.   “Hallowed be your name” – a reminder that while we can be close and familiar with God, God is God, holy and honoured.  We also should pray for God’s will over all – in other words, that God’s kingdom come.  This is something we need to pray for ourselves… that God’s kingdom reign in us.  It is an essential element for Christians in prayer to submit to the Lordship and sovereignty of Christ. 

God is concerned about our day to day needs and so we pray, “Give us each day our daily bread”.
Now for the tricky one; “and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”  God has forgiven us, but wants us to remember we need to therefore be forgiving to those around us.  Our forgiveness of another does not depend on the other person’s repentance.  It is about realizing that we too have failed to be perfect and have been forgiven much.  We need to comprehend that others are complex being that we can’t possibly hope to understand and simply let go.  This is a very difficult subject because we need to understand that forgiveness does not mean we allow these people to continue to abuse us.  It does mean understanding that we are all limited in our ability to do good.

Finally we are exhorted to pray, “And do not bring us to the time of trial."  A reminder that there will be a time of divine judgement and in this there will be a time of persecution.  It brings to mind a reality that some are martyred for their faith.  It reminds us to be sure about who we are and whose we are, and acknowledges that we are not able to stand the trial except by the grace of God…. A humbling acknowledgement.

In all of this I’m certain The Lord’s Prayer was not meant to be formulated, such that it becomes something one parrots and thinks they’ve attained a perfect prayer, yet a quick google search shows that some believe there are special requests granted by saying certain prayers a certain way for a certain amount of times. The internet is full of what prayers to pray for a miracle.  Prayer does bring about miracles but not because of the prayer…. But because of the person to whom the prayer is addressed. 

It seems that as humans we have a natural tendency to twist the good things of God and not quite understand.  Just like the Israelites who though well-intentioned, made the golden calf, and looked for answers in God’s creation, we can get caught in the trappings of structure and tradition, thinking that these are the way to spirituality when God is there all along wanting us to simply come to him… as we would a child to a father.

Our second reading which comes from Colossians 2 tells us; “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.  See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.” 

Are there philosophies and empty deceits that take us captive?  Just doing a quick search on a book written by one of the men on my friend’s list, Brian Houston and I see the title is; “YOU NEED MORE MONEY”.   Sounds pretty good, and I know that there is this thing called “Prosperity doctrine”.   Don’t get me wrong, God does desire good for us, but there has been a section of Christianity that has pushed this philosophy and converted many influential young business people.  In fact these churches greatly appeal to that demographic and all their leaders are between certain ages and look a certain way – which should straight away raise the red flag of danger.  One of the reviews on the book said this:  “There are many interpretation problems in this book. The author has not seriously studied the Scriptures, but simply read into them whatever he so desired. There is not one reference to any commentator in the whole book or any other scholarly resource. The author has greatly disrespected Scripture. He has skewed interpretations of the parable of the prodigal son, numerous verses in Proverbs, the rich young ruler, etc.  I would suggest to not buy this book, because that way, you'll have more money!”

When we don’t have a strong understanding of God’s word or of theology we can very easily be led astray.  Many good and genuine Christians have followed these philosophies and I am probably insulting many right now by saying what I am, but to soften the blow a little, let me also say, any of us can get it wrong and from day to day we do get it wrong.

My apology to Brian Houston as a person, because I assume that he is a well-intentioned person and has probably led many to faith.  There are many things I don’t know and can’t judge, but then again, I also assume King Jeroboam was well- intentioned when he built the calves.   After all, it was a prophet who anointed him as King and foretold of his kingdom.  Surely, in Jeroboams mind, to keep the people unified in his kingdom was a good thing.  BUT it was a vile perversion of God’s truth.

There are many other “Sacred Cows” in our modern philosophy.  We’ve explored the problem and what we need it the solution.

At the conclusion to our Gospel reading Jesus mentions the Holy Spirit.  It seems to be almost out of place with the rest of the text, but its position there is a climax and once I realize, then I need to go back and make sense of the whole text according to this new piece of information.

The Holy Spirit is uniquely involved in effective prayer and it is a gift that Jesus says is good.  But in order to show how very willing God is to gift us with the Holy Spirit, Jesus tells the story of someone who goes after midnight to a friend, and asks for 3 loaves of bread.  Jesus shows that even a selfish man will grant the request.  There is a misleading word – Persistence.  A better translation, according to my research, is actually “shamelessness”.

There is a certain amount of humility in asking for help.  Not only do we acknowledge our need when we ask for help, but we acknowledge our failure and inability to be self-sufficient.  Do we sometimes fail to ask God for the Holy Spirit because we are too proud to admit that we need such help?

Jesus told his followers that he would send a helper… the Holy Spirit.  Have we actually asked God to give us the Holy Spirit?  I know we are all anointed with the oil at our baptism and confirmation, but have we asked for, and sought the Holy Spirit?  The Holy Spirit was sent because it was absolutely necessary that we have this help.

There are many, many, many empty philosophies that come through society and the church and we take these on as Gospel.  One long held one is that we need to love ourselves before we can love others.  It is only a slight twist but it puts the emphasis on ourselves instead of God and others.  In other verses Jesus says that we are to love others as he loves us.  We love others because God has first loved us.  As far as a focus on self – we are told to consider ourselves dead to sin – therefore as far as our “self” is concerned the focus is to consider it crucified with Christ – yet understand that so great is God’s love for us that he willingly suffered and died on the cross.

A more contemporary pop culture making its way into the church is that Men are from Mars and women are from Venus – Our scriptures tell us that in Jesus all are one.  It is psychology and not theology, but these things become so accepted that Christian people take it on as fact.  Genesis tells us that woman was made from man – therefore we are of the same substance and any lack of understanding needs to be faced in the truth that we are essentially all more alike than we are different and should be striving to understand each other in the way that God directs. 

It was a Christian that brought us the books about love languages.  Maybe we do show love in different ways, but if someone doesn’t understand that what you are trying to express is love, I suggest you really are not loving or considering the other person at all.  On street Chaplaincy people know that we love because we are there and we don’t need to say anything – our actions convey the message.  If we use the excuse that someone doesn’t know we love them because their love language is different, then we are possibly not truly loving at all, and this book has just given us an excuse instead of a challenge.  And I call it a hollow philosophy and an empty deceit. 

And then we heard about the law of attraction otherwise known as the secret…  The key phrase of the philosophy of the secret with its law of attraction is “Ask, Believe and Receive”.   Sounds kind of familiar doesn’t it?  Sounds kind of scriptural, and we do well to remember that Satan masquerades as an instrument of light, with counterfeit philosophies that seem good, wholesome, and sound a lot like God’s words.   Many Christians take on ways of prayer that sound just like this, innocently thinking that they are doing things correctly.  Hopefully we can see that all these philosophies lead us away from honest communicating with God.  They are all about finding a way to control without submitting in humility to God, relying on and trusting in him.

Every now and then a simple philosophy that seems good and right comes along but who can we trust to tell us what is right and wrong if all those wonderful Christian leaders have been led astray at some point?

Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find… The man who gave bread to his neighbour gave grudgingly, but this highlights the difference between what we expect and the reality of God’s way – God gives us the Holy Spirit eagerly and the Holy Spirit helps us to discern what is good and true, and what is not.

If we are overly critical of everyone we might not hear the wisdom they have to offer.  Every Christian with the Holy Spirit has the ability to be taught directly by God – therefore we need to listen to each other, but we are not meant to blindly believe. 

Both the word of God and the Holy Spirit are needed and without one or the other we will surely be led astray.  Jesus who is the physical “word of God” told us that HE is the way, the truth and the life – no one comes to the father except through him.

There will be persecutions and hardships in the end times, but I suspect we might already be in them.  This is a time where those who quote the Bible lose their contract and parts of our country have passed laws to terminate life, seemingly on a whim.  Our simplistic morals are challenged and the very nature of nature is questioned.  We might not be thrown to the physical lions but there are golden calves in every corner. 

The golden calf claims to represent truth – and even represent the one true God, claiming that we all worship the same God, but there is only one way to really discern and that is by shamelessly, (humbly) asking God for the gift of His Holy Spirit.  He gives it willingly, freely and eagerly.  Just ask.