Pentecost + 18 A
Oct 8th 2017
A & C Ex 20 Ps 19 Phil 3 Mt 21 33f
We’ve just heard the readings together. Yes Peter, I hear you say. We do that every week. But something I came across during the week reminded me that the public reading-out-loud of scripture in our tradition is something we’ve done ever since that time at Mount Sinai we just heard about; that’s very important.
When Moses gathered the people who’d escaped slavery in Egypt to read out the 10 C’s to them, it gave them a new story of themselves; a new identity. They weren’t slaves any more; they were God’s, and God’s alone. In this public reading, they heard there was a new way of living as God’s free people – living with God, and living with each other. It was like a public reading of a brand new constitution; an agreed statement of purpose, belonging and identity; a pivotal moment in the story of our people. It happens to be the first time in our tradition that there was a public reading of Holy Scripture. We continue to do that week by week. And each time we do that, it grounds us again in who we are, who we belong to, and why we are the people we are. We must never forget how significant it is to read Scripture aloud.
In Exodus today, ten words – Ten Commandments – were given to a people who God still wants to be a shining light to everyone on Earth. Those ten words are all about relationship; about loyalty, about respect for God and each other, about self-care, integrity and honesty. The ten words describe how free people can choose to live; so different from the way a slave has to live if they want to survive. The three best habits of survival for a slave are pragmatism, pragmatism and pragmatism; whatever it takes for you to survive.
For slaves, the Ten Commandments wouldn’t have been workable; they wouldn’t have been fair until these slaves had been set free. That’s still true for many people today; captives, refugees, oppressed minorities, people living under occupation, people in very poor countries. When the leaders of the free world say that such people should respect laws, these leaders are doing something God didn’t do. God set people free before holding them to standards that free people should live by.
God set the Israelites free. But how hard was it for those escapees from Egypt to make the transition to a new life? In one sense, Moses was asking them all to hand in their old habits and leave them at Mt Sinai. But particularly when you travel, your habits seem to travel with you, unless you deliberately choose to leave them behind. For many of us on our faith journey, that’s a choice we must make daily.
The Hebrew people did come to love the Law that God gave them – they let it shape them. That much was clear from today’s Psalm.
7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul:
the command of the Lord is true, and makes wise the simple.
8 The precepts of the Lord are right, and rejoice the heart:
the commandment of the Lord is pure, and gives light to the eyes.
New life for the soul, wisdom, joy, enlightenment; what more could you want as signs of spiritual growth? Apparently quite a bit. God has never been content to let people settle into good habits or attitudes and just leave it at that. Getting rid of bad habits isn’t an end in itself. It’s a way of freeing ourselves from slavery in order that we might become, and go on becoming what God wants to make of us; agents of blessing and givers of new life. So the freedom and the gifts of this beautiful Law point to something more. They were never meant as an end in themselves.
Freedom, revival, wisdom, joy and enlightenment – these were all given so God’s chosen people might be able to fulfil their call: the call Abraham received on behalf of his descendants that they would become God’s means of blessing to all families of the earth. Gen 12.3b Maybe this helps us understand some of those scandalous things we heard Paul say about the Law today – that his achievements in obeying the Law to the letter were no more than rubbish. He’d become habituated to think his purpose in life was to be a good Pharisee; someone who knew the Law inside out; someone who made sure he was absolutely blameless before the Law.
But now he sees this wasn’t his purpose at all. He wasn’t meant to dedicate his life to cultivating good habits – some sort of spiritual elephant-stamp collector. Knowing the God who is revealed in Jesus was the important thing; not being better than other people. And knowing God wasn’t an examinable discipline; it was a gift. Jesus sought him out to give it to him on that Damascus road. All Paul was called to do was to show people that Jesus is looking for us too; all of us. We owe a huge debt to Paul for breaking his good habits.
In our last reading today, we meet Jesus in a feisty mood. He’s just cleared the temple precinct of people who were turning God’s grace into a commodity to sell, and he’s in dispute with them now. He challenges them in his parable, portraying them as being like tenant farmers who’ve fallen so far into the habit of being the custodians of God’s good gifts that they imagine they own them outright.
Jesus tells in the parable how they risk becoming the sort of people who would murder the owner’s slaves and finally even his son to assert this false ownership. Then he asks, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” His indignant listeners dig themselves in deeper. They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
This is one of a series of three parables which challenge complacency; challenge habits; assumptions: challenge us to look again at what we take for granted as ours.
So we’ve heard the readings together, and they have called on us to think together about the way we are to be shaped for our vocation as Christ’s free people.
We need to think about what the Scriptures today call us to not so much as individuals, but as a parish. What new ways are there for this Parish of Stirling to be a blessing to the people amongst whom we are placed – the people God has entrusted to our care?
How might we help to set slaves free, revive shattered souls, make hearts rejoice and bring light where once there was only the fog of fear and slavery?
Amen