Words 10.22

 Words Twice a Week         10.22 

(at camp and still using older computer.  Hope it all works!)

Some thoughts about some of this Sunday’s lessons -

Ps 90.1-6, 13-17

+and this is kind of serendipitous – as I was getting started on this I was thinking that there were springtime images in the psalms and (song of) songs, but I wasn’t recalling autumn images, and then here comes Ps 90 – we are like grass, in the morning it flourishes; in the evening it withers!  Welcome to “withering time”!

+2 sections – the first, indicative (human describing God and humans [in less than positive terms – humans, that is]), the second, imperative (the human imploring God to relent, have pity.)  Note both use the word “Turn”.  Vs 3, “Turn back, O man” – I always heard that as “turn from sin to righteousness” (Godspell?), but really here it says “turn from life to dust”!  And vs 13, the human asks/tells/suggests God to turn from God’s intention.  Gutsy!  No wonder we call this a psalm of Moses, with whom God spoke “face to face”!

+“a thousand years are like yesterday”  -  God’s existence is, has been, will be forever (vs 2); ours is “3 score and ten”, they are soon gone and “we fly away”(vs 10).

+O God our help in ages past….  Time like an ever flowing stream/bears all it’s sons/daughters/”who live” away; we fly forgotten as a dream dies at the break of day.

+the psalm ends with “establish thou the work of our hands” – a wistful hope that we might leave something of ourselves behind.

Deuteronomy 34   Death scene of Moses

+from top of Mt Nebo (Pisgah?) God shows Moses the Promised Land, Moses dies and God buries him.  Why didn’t Moses get to the Promised Land? – well, because he didn’t.  So then the theologians and biblical writers had to come up with the cover story – “he must have sinned – O yeah, when he said he would bring water from the rock without giving God the credit.”  Do we sometimes do the same when we try to come up with answers to “why questions”?  In the Chapter a Day book (We have Always Lived In the Castle) the young girl tries all kinds of magical words and actions to make things happen or keep them from happening.

+God will give the land to Israel.  As we have said over and over, this gets extremely problematic.  What if some other god had given it to some other people?  What if God really did give the UP to the Anishinabe, and then we showed up?  Quoting from distant memory, didn’t Chief Seattle (or his scriptwriter!) say something like “How can you own the land?”

+Joshua takes on the leadership, but “God knew Moses ‘face to face’”.  I read once about the importance of having “larger than life ancestor heroes.”  They inspire us, but since we can never match them, it’s ok when we don’t live up to their standards.  Who holds that place in your life?

+and finally, it’s a death scene, but the focus is on the vision of the future.  As we think about death – our own, our families, our congregations, our species – what vision of the future keeps us going?  The Sacred Demise/Collapsing Conscientiously lady simply says “Live what you have left with love and integrity”.  Is there more?

1 Thessalonians 2.1-8

+Paul did not have a good time with the Phillipians, but he continued on (to the Thessalonians!) because he was operating on the basis of God’s word and vision, not human acceptance of acclaim.  Have you had times like that?  

+Not flattery nor greed but comfortable affection forms the most effective context for sharing the Word.

+Working for God is different than working for humans.  Contemporary illustrations?

Matthew 22.34-46   “Final Answer”

+What is the greatest commandment?” and “Whose son is the Christ?”  Note these are really two separate incidents and stories – Luke separates them by 10 chapters!

+the great commandment – 1) love God, and 2) love neighbor.  The vertical dimension is primary, but it entails the horizontal.  Does it go both ways?  Does loving your neighbor entail loving God, or can you do it without knowing anything about God, or does loving your neighbor teach you about God?

+”worship (public, private)...becomes the target of prophetic critique when it is divorced from the weightier matters of the law – justice, mercy, faith.”

+Jesus asks “Whose son is the Christ?”  Parsing out words, he could be a constitutional scholar, maybe even a Supreme Court Justice!  We watched What The Constitution Means to Me and heard about the justices (old, white guys) spending considerable time clearing their throats and talking about women’s rights and whether “shall” means “shall”.  When you get into that realm, you are pretty much distancing yourself from reality.

+So Richard Swanson notes that this is not only the “final answer”, it is the last time anyone asks Jesus a question.  (And it’s a throwaway question at that – one which any good Jew would be able to answer.)  Which is a tragedy if what we (us and God) are really trying to do is have a conversation.  Conversation entails question and answer – and not always agreement.  He quotes a colleague from the banking industry saying one of the first rules of leadership is “If you and I agree on everything, one of us is unnecessary”!  So – why do you think people stopped asking Jesus questions?  What question would you ask him?

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