2025 08 03 Proper 13 Year C Pentecost 8
Hosea 11:1-11 Psalm 107:1-9, 43 Colossians 3:1-11 Luke 12:13-21
At an in-service for Religious Instruction teachers, I was running
a session on Images of God in the Old and New Testament. All went well until an elderly lady gushed
that God is love and is gentle and kind.
That riled up a man who said that God is a mighty and powerful God, who
is just and makes judgements. This
really upset the lady who was keen to re-state her position about God’s
love.
Generally, people think that the revelation of God in the Old
Testament was one of a wrathful God of judgement, and in the New Testament we
find the love and compassion of God, yet we are told that God is the same,
yesterday, today and forever. So, what
is God really like?
The Old Testament Prophet, such as Hosea, proclaimed God’s
word and warned the people that they were going astray. In all these God still expresses His love for
his people. This does not mean that it
doesn’t matter what we do. God has an
impossibly high standard, but his call is to goodness, love and compassion. Both the lady who understood God’s love, and
the man who understood God’s judgement, were both correct.
God is completely good.
The law of God reveals a high standard of perfection because this is who
God is…. Good, perfect and completely loving!
God is also a God of justice.
Justice and mercy might seem like two opposite attributes, but peace is
made between the two in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In Jesus, God shows both his justice, and his
great love for us. That same intense and
immense love was always there, God so loves his people, yet his people refuse
him.
Those Israelites were
still being unfaithful to God. Our
reading begins;
When Israel was a child,
I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. Hosea’s
hearers would have immediately recognised what he was saying was a messianic
prophecy. Isreal was in slavery in Egypt
and was delivered by the most amazing series of events, including the parting
of the Red Sea. Jesus also spent some of
his young life in Egypt to escape from the King who sort to kill him as a
babe. It is this line from Hosea that is
quoted in the Gospel of Matthew, when Mary, Joseph and Jesus returned to the
land of Israel.
Hosea tells us; “The more I called them, the more they
went from me;...” This nation
belonged to God. They had God’s law, and
they knew that they were called to love God, with all heart, mind, soul and
strength, but they broke God’s law – constantly, and mostly, they did this
unwittingly.
How are we at keeping that first commandment? Even back in the Garden of Eden, mankind was
given just one rule, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Note that at that time they could eat
from every other tree. Coincidentally,
that included the tree of life. Satan in
the form of the serpent put doubt in their minds about the rule and indicated
that mankind could be like God if they ate from that fruit. Therefore, he planted a desire in them to be
God, to be powerful and rebellious.
Satan also planted doubts about God’s love and care for them. Mankind lived in paradise, with everything
they could possibly want or desire, and they had the tree of life, meaning that
they could live forever, but somehow this was no longer enough.
To love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength,
means to be completely trusting God. The
Israelites started sacrificing to the Baals and offering incense to idols
because they didn’t trust God to provide for all their needs. The first and great commandment was broken,
over and over, and the Israelites are not the only ones who broke God’s law….
we still break it. In fact, I suspect we
don’t really even understand how to keep it.
A man built bigger barns so that he could eat, drink and be
merry, but he didn’t get to enjoy any of it.
He spent his time working at getting more. We don’t do that, do we? We don’t skip church because we are too busy
with our life and getting ahead with it all, do we? We all make God and our church family a
priority… after all, we are here!
Our Gospel reading warns us; “Take care! Be on your
guard against all kinds of greed, for one's life does not consist in the
abundance of possessions." And
this is explained by the story of a man who experiences great prosperity. This was because two brothers were disputing
their inheritance - A thing that you
don’t earn – but inherit– and therefore don’t deserve. In the story that Jesus told, the land of a
rich man produced an abundant crop. It
was the land that produced that harvest.
God that sends the rain. No doubt
man had a part in it, but our reading clearly states that it was the land that
produced that crop. The man was blessed
with prosperity from his harvest, and from God, but what is the man’s response?
It is important that we understand that many of the father’s
of our faith were abundantly blessed with prosperity. Abraham, Job, King David and King Solomon are
just a few who experienced God’s divine blessings which made them
materialistically rich. Our letter to the Colossians tells us; “Put to
death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: sexual immorality, impurity,
passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is
coming on those who are disobedient.”
Greed is idolatry. It
is that desire to have more and be more and it is the sin that crouches at the
door. It is idolatry because in greed we
desire more - , more power, influence and security in our delusion that we are
in control and have no need for God - just as in the Garden of Eden when Adam
and Eve desired to be more. The creation
wanting to be their own God! But here is
the incredibly crazy thing…. God still absolutely loves us.
The only way to explain it is like a parent and a beloved
child. The child is limited in
understanding and disobeys the parent.
The parent loves unconditionally, but the child doesn’t show love in
return, but like the daughter of a friend of mine, leaves that parent and goes
to live with another and lives as in enmity with the birth parent who loves
her.
What is a parent to do?
Well God said… “I know, I’ll show them my love by sending my Son to show
them. This is a love that will die to
give them eternal life.” (Last week I
spoke about how the Spiritual realm has laws. The spiritual price for sin is
death…. And God respects our free will…)
There is a spiritual price for our disobedience to God and
Jesus paid that price with his life. We
now, through our baptism and free will, choose to belong to God identify with
Christ. We are considered to be clothed
in Christ – meaning that we identify with Christ. The spiritual purity and spiritual
law-keeping of Christ, becomes our own.
Now that we have this new life in Christ, we are urged to make our
earthly life match our spiritual life.
Our pure spiritual life does not slander or speak abusively etc.. and so
we aim to clothe ourselves with the attributes of God who created us, as we
grow in knowledge of him and His ways.
The reason that a baptism traditionally has the candidate
dressed in white is to symbolize being clothed in Christ. We become a new creation, and we no longer
think of ourselves as Greek, or Jew or Maltese or Australian or English or anything
else. Our truest identity is only in
Christ. The old self is gone – it is
buried with Christ. But the life we live
now is because of the risen life of Christ.
He is in us and we in him. By His
Holy Spirit and with the permission of our free will, Christ lives his life
through us. This is how we can say, “We
are the body of Christ”.
From the point of our baptism forward we can choose to live
either of two ways. We can strive to “be
good” and get our physical self to match the spiritual reality of our life in
Christ, or we can allow the life of Christ to live through us by the Holy
Spirit. To do this is an act of our free
will. Spoiler alert; choice number one
will only see you frustrated because only Christ can live the Christian
life. Take choice number two where we rest
because we simply allow Christ to live through us and to create us into the person,
he designed us to be.
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