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Posted Monday, July 26, 2010:
The readings this week call us to a deeper relationship with God –
the God who has always nurtured us and will not give up on us. We so
foolishly place our trust in things and miss the richness of God. We
are able to set aside all the things that have claimed us and
divided us, because we have a new life in Christ.
Hosea 11:1-11
After a series of Old Testament readings in which God condemns the
actions of the nation and threatens to sever relationship with the
people, this beautiful text is filled with yearning and pathos,
telling of a love deeper than our sin. God’s love for Israel is
rooted in the earliest memories of Israel’s childhood.
The text is corrupted and scholars have pieced the evidence together
in varying ways. More recent translations opt for the overwhelmingly
feminine imagery of the God who is like a mother lifting her child
to her breast, bending down to feed him. God is like a mother who
eagerly reaches out to support her child’s first steps. God’s tender
care is not acknowledged by a people who “did not know that I healed
them”. God’s fierce love for us is rejected, by a people who are
“bent on turning away from me”.
Our rejection of God is inexplicable in light of God’s steadfast
love for us. God’s words in Hosea call to mind the anguish of a
mother whose child has forgotten her, of a father, whose love the
prodigal has abused. The nation’s idolatry is acted out at every
level as the people turn to other gods, the leadership engages in
schemes which result in war, and the oracle -priests do not speak
truth. Even as the sword rages, consumes and devours, God speaks of
a love which will not give up on Israel.
The sheer weight of God’s love for Israel is overwhelming. God is
presented in anthropomorphic terms as a parent, in anguish over the
pain of a wayward child. Following this intensely intimate picture
of God, like a mother caring for her infant, the word of grace is
that God is not mortal. God’s love far transcends human love. God is
the wholly other. God’s compassion outweighs God’s fierce anger and
God chooses to be for us the Holy One in our midst.
The glorious homecoming promised in the final two verses shifts the
imagery away from human centered to that of the created order. It is
as if the Divine love is drawing us beyond the realm of human
affairs into a larger, almost cosmic realm. God is described as a
lion, strong and beautiful. God’s people are like birds, doves, who
return from the far places of the earth with the promise of peace.
Colossians 3:1-11
On one level, this reading could lead a preacher to expound on the
value of positive thinking. If we set our minds on things that are
above then we will be given strength to get rid of the “earthly”
things – evil desires, greed, sexual immorality and the like.
However, our ability to reject “earthly” vices is not a matter of
our own skill at setting our minds on “higher things”, but rather,
is rooted in the new life we have in Christ. We have, quite
literally, died with Christ and Christ has become our life. To the
listener who wants to say, “Surely you mean figuratively, as a
manner of speaking”, the writer of Colossians hastens to add that we
live the resurrection life which for the present, is hidden with
Christ in God. It is real in the present, but not yet fully
revealed.
In this text, greed is equated with idolatry. When we grasp at
things, we set them in place of God. Our greed tears at the fabric
of a trusting relationship with God. Christians are told to get rid
of anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive language and lies, as if
this were an easy thing. We struggle with these and often find it
almost impossible “to put them to death.” The writer simply expects
us to do so, in complete confidence that we can and will succeed,
because we have been given a new self. We are being renewed in the
image of our creator. All the divisions between us have been
shattered and in Christ we are one, because Christ is all in all!
Luke 12:13-21
An inheritance can tear a family apart, or give them hope for the
future. Families can erupt into open warfare over a small amount,
and when a family business or farm in involved and the future hangs
in the balance, the issue of inheritance can be all consuming. Jesus
refused to arbitrate in an inheritance battle between two brothers.
Instead he told a story.
We focus on the wrong things when we set our hopes on that which
will vanish. The church I served in Iowa farm country had recently
built a new sanctuary. The money was pledged to pay the mortgage,
but there were months when the congregation struggled to make the
mortgage payments, because much of the pledged amount was sitting in
silos and storage bins, waiting for the price of corn or beans to go
up. It makes perfect business sense to build bigger barns, put your
money into improving the farm and provide the capacity to store the
harvest until the market is good. What might make business sense,
does not make sense on a spiritual level. In Jesus’ parable, the
farmer is basically stingy. He clings to his goods in an
opportunistic way. He rejoices in the security his success has
bought him and is blindsided by the fact that nothing we do can
provide us with real security. The farmer thought everything was
going fantastically well, when in point of fact he was, in the words
of the hymn “rich in things and poor in soul” (God of Grace and God
of Glory).
When American Christians return from mission trips or interactions
with Christians who have far less than most of us, they witness that
the Christians who have so little have a wealth of soul visible in
an infectious gratitude and joy. Jesus’ story has been used with a
heavy hand in some stewardship sermons. In point of fact, the story
has little to do with how we spend our money and far more to do with
our basic attitude toward God and neighbor. Jesus points us to the
fact that when we are possessed by our wealth, we miss being rich in
relationship with God. When we seek security elsewhere, we cannot
find the deeper joy which comes knowing that we are secure in God’s
love.
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