Sunday 2 July 2023 - Ordinary 13

Theme(s): Welcome / Identification between God, Jesus and disciples / Death versus eternal life/ Slaves to God

Sentence: 'You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God (Romans 6:18)

Collect:

Almighty God,
grant that we your children
may never be ashamed
to confess the faith of Christ crucified,
but continue his faithful servants
to our lives' end. Amen.

Readings: related

Jeremiah 28:5-9
Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

Commentary:

Jeremiah 28:5-9

Here (looking ahead to our gospel reading), a prophet's life is a perilous one. To the extent that this ministry is one of anticipation and prediction of the future, a prophet's ministry depends on words today being matched by outcomes tomorrow. Jeremiah's ministry is a running battle between himself claiming one thing and other ('official') prophets claiming another, each with such specificity that both cannot be right.

Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18

A celebration of God's 'great love for ever' (1) makes a supporting point to the gospel reading when it speaks of 'reward'. The ones who are 'blessed' are those who 'have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, Lord.' 

This state of blessedness is not so much a reward at the end of some labour, like a bonus payment for a worker, or a holiday at the end of a year of effort, but a continuing state of benefit: walking in the light of God's presence is its own reward.

Romans 6:12-23

Continuing Paul's response to the question whether the abundance of God's grace means we may sin as much as we like after discovering we are recipients of God's grace, Paul clearly lays down a principle for Christian living, 

'do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires' (12, effectively repeated in 13).

Verse 14 brings us to an associated principle: life is lived under some kind of lord or master. To keep on sinning is to live under the mastery or lordship of sin. For a Christian,that is, for a confessor that 'Jesus is Lord,' this cannot be so.

Verses 15 to 18 expand on the principle laid down in verse 14 and verses 19-23 offer further comment in a slightly different vein. In the latter case a theme from verse 18 is taken up. The opposite of being slaves to sin is being slaves to righteousness. 

Verse 22 underlines the importance of living out this form of slavery: only slavery to God leads to holy living with the result of 'eternal life'. 

Verse 23 is then a summary of the argument: the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life.

Matthew 10:40-42

It could be easy to (mis)read this message in a kind of social sense: "We, the church, need to be a welcoming body of people." We do, but is that the primary importance of this passage? The focus is actually on the welcome the world gives the church rather than the other way around! Themes here are discipleship, mission and christology.

The context (recalling last Sunday's gospel) is the 'cost of discipleship.' Now Jesus turns the emphasis in a new direction: disciples need not uniformly expect a bad reception, some will welcome them. To these good outcomes Jesus offers encouragement, both to the disciples and to the ones who welcome them.

First, since true disciples are representatives of Jesus, missioners in the mission he has commissioned, a welcome given to the disciples is a welcome given to Jesus himself, embodied in them. In turn, reflecting the relationship between Jesus as one sent from God and God as sender, the welcome to disciples is a welcome of 'the one who sent me' (40).

Implicit here is some kind of reward for welcoming God! To an extent verse 41 makes this explicit, except that we have no idea what a 'prophet's reward' or a 'righteous person's reward' is! Digging deeper into the passage we can get some sense of what is meant. From verse 40 we bring a strong identification, God/Jesus/disciple to verse 41. If we see a similar identification, God/prophet and God/righteous person, then the one who welcomes the prophet welcomes God and the one who welcomes a righteous person welcomes God and in each case the welcome is a form of identification, welcomer/prophet and welcomer/righteous person. Thus a prophet's reward belongs to the welcomer, ditto for a righteous person's reward. In each case the reward (taking into account other talk in Scripture of 'reward') is the privilege of being a participant in the life of God and standing securely in the presence of God.

In verse 42 Jesus moves from the general case of prophets and righteous people being welcomed (which hearkens back to the history of Israel) to the specific case of his disciples (looking around in the present and looking ahead to the future expansion of the kingdom). Even a cup of cold water to a quite ordinary disciple (i.e. one who may not also be a notable prophet or a distinctively righteous person) leads to reward. Given the general expectations of hospitality in the Middle East (food and accommodation), Jesus is signalling here that the slightest of welcomes counts.

Disciples may have some expectation of welcome and not persecution. Welcomers of disciples are welcomers of God and that carries with it rewards of a special kind. Disciples in mission move forward as fast as the welcome accorded them.

Secondly, woven through these verses is a very important christological note, one which undergirds the distinctive christology of John's Gospel with its great themes of the oneness of Father and Son and of the Son as the sent one from God. Jesus is God in human form: when we welcome Jesus we welcome God. When people welcome followers of Jesus they welcome Jesus and thus welcome God into their lives.

Through last week and this Sunday as well is a strong theme (expounded to the fullest in John's Gospel) of Jesus as the Agent of God and disciples as agents of the Agent of God.

 

Sunday 25 June 2023 - Ordinary 12

Theme(s): Discipleship / Being disciples / Cost of discipleship / Abounding grace / Mocked for Jesus' sake?

Sentence: Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:39).

Collect:

Holy God, grant us the beginning of wisdom
and love to cast our every fear:
that we may grow more brace,
more ready to hear,
more ready to obey,
the teaching of Jesus,
doing so through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Readings: (Related, rather than Continuous)

Jeremiah 20:7-13
Psalm 69:8-11 (12-17) 18-20
Romans 6:1b-11
Matthew 10:24-39

Commentary:

Jeremiah 20:7-13

Jeremiah has just been brutally treated, beaten and placed in stocks (20:1-3). After his release Jeremiah has denounced his tormenter, a man named Pashhur (20:4-6). But our verses are at odds with Jeremiah's external confidence in this denunciation. They seem to give us a sense of the internal feelings of Jeremiah. Speaking to the Lord, Jeremiah says that he feels as though he has been enticed and overpowered by the Lord because his words have led to him becoming 

'a laughingstock all day long' (7).

Yet, Jeremiah goes on, this painful experience of derision (8) is not able to be stopped by ceasing to preach the word of the Lord. He cannot suppress the word which is burning within him (9a),indeed he has tried but the effort (like all suppression of raging feelings!) is too wearying. It must come out.

Despite the denunciations he experiences, Jeremiah is confident the Lord will see him through (11-13).

Thus Jeremiah is a prototypical disciple for the kind of 'tough' commitment Jesus expects of his own disciples in today's gospel reading.

Psalm 69:8-11 (12-17) 18-20

The psalmist (likely David, according to the superscription) seems to be in a similar mood to the prophet Jeremiah! He too has 'borne reproach' (7). Thus our passage begins in v. 8 with the psalmist feeling that his zeal for the Lord's house (9) has become the occasion for alienation from his own family.

David is bowed down (9-11), even broken (19-20). He cries to the Lord for help (13-18). As with many prayers in the Old Testament, his hope for answered prayer rests on the character of the Lord: 'your steadfast love ... your abundant mercy' (16).

Romans 6:1b-11

In the unfolding argument of Paul in Romans, on the nature of the gospel of grace, logic requires Paul to take up some inevitable questions. In this case, if the grace of God is so abundant as to forgive all sin (see, e.g. 5:20-21) then

'Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?' (6:1b).

That question might not quite be our question today, but we may - at least implicitly - have similar questions: God doesn't want me to be perfect does he? A few little sins don't matter, do they? Oh, well (as we succumb to a tasty temptation) God forgives us, doesn't he?

Paul is decisive in his summary answer - I will print it in caps for effect: 

BY NO MEANS!

Even shorter would be, 'NO!'

But implicitly his readers press him to give a reason - parents experience this with their children, 'But why?' So Paul - as a spiritual father to his Roman children - sets out his case for answering, 'By no means!' It goes like this:

1. A Christian is a changed person who has died to sin through baptism in order to walk in newness of life (2b-4). To sin now, for a Christian, is a form of ignorance. It betrays a misunderstanding of what being a Christian is all about.

2. Expanding on 1, a Christian is a dead person walking, dead people are free from sin (7) and so a Christian is to live 'no longer enslaved to sin' (6b). To continue sinning, for a Christian, is to live oppositely to the work of Christ which sets us free from such slavery.

3. Lest any Christian think, perversely, 'Well, I will just keep dying and being set free,' Christ died only once, 

'The death he died, he died to sin, once for all' (10) 

and thus we are to 

'consider [ourselves] dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus' (11). 

That is, our baptism into Christ's death (4) is a once and for all experience, a death we are to live out for all time. We by no means keep on sinning, and certainly not to invoke the abundance of God's grace, because we are dead to sin.

(Although beyond the scope of this week's passage - in fact part of next week's passage, 6:12-14 acknowledges the dual reality of Christian life: spiritually we are dead to sin, physically and mentally we remain prone to sin so we are not to let 'sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies' (12) nor to continue presenting 'your members to sin as instruments of wickedness' (12).)

Matthew 10:24-39

This is a challenging compendium on discipleship for preachers.

Challenge (1) is the painful cost of discipleship in this life.

Challenge (2) is choosing whether to say something about each topic within the passage, attend to just one or two verses, or attempt to generally speak about the cost of discipleship.

The context (see the beginning of Matthew 10) is sending out the Twelve to 'the lost sheep of the house of Israel' (6). In this mission they are to travel lightly (9-10), efficiently (11-15), wisely and bravely (16-23).

Now Jesus reminds them that 

- he asks nothing of them which he has not experienced himself (24-25), 

- to have no fear save for fear of God (26-31), 

- to never be ashamed of him (32-33), 

- to recognise the divisive nature of the gospel they bear (34-36), 

- to belong exclusively to Jesus with relativised family ties (37), 

- to be willing to die, knowing that life is found when it is lost for the sake of Jesus (38-39).

Within this compendium of instruction and advice, note the value placed on the disciples (30-31). 

Sunday 18 June 2023 - Ordinary 11

 Collect for 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Bountiful God,
with a generous hand you sow the seeds of the Kingdom.
Grant us the grace to cultivate your saplings,
that all might find shade in the forest of love.
All this we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings for 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time ("related")

Exodus 19:2-8a
Psalm 100
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:8

Comments:

Exodus 19:2-8a

These verses set out the special relationship between God and Israel. That relationship lies behind the restriction Jesus places on his commission to the twelve in the gospel reading below.

Psalm 100

This psalm does not need to be explained. It needs to be sung! Perhaps in response to reading Romans 5:1-8.

Romans 5:1-8

Paul begins this chapter with "Therefore" which compels us to look back to what he has been saying in the previous chapter or chapters. Effectively those chapters are summed up in the phrase "we are justified by faith" (1) (note 4:22-25). So, Paul says, since this is true, therefore "we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1). In a new, healed relationship with God "we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast of our hope of sharing in the glory of God" (2). In other words, Paul having charted the path to salvation in Romans 1-4 now begins to tackle the question of what salvation means and what the saved can expect in this life. We the saved are in a new, wonderful relationship with God, beginning to experience the blessing of God, though its fullest experience is yet to come.

In the meantime, we will experience sufferings and Paul reflects on what that means (3-5).

Then, Paul, perhaps with his mind full of how we came to be saved, reverts to the theme of chapters 1-4 and again, but more briefly, rehearses the gospel story of how Jesus died for us, as proof of God's love towards us (6-8).

We  have much to be thankful for!

Matthew 9:35-10:8

Well, after the special interests of Eastertide, Pentecost and Trinity Sundays, what better thing to do as we corporately read the Scriptures than to get down to brass tacks in the mission of God, in which we are graciously invited to participate.

In this reading, Jesus goes out in mission (9:35-38), and that means Matthew is telling us about it as an example for us, not just as a bit of "history of mission."

What do we learn?

1. The mission of Jesus was extensive, going everywhere in Israel.
2. The mission was in word and in deed.
3. The mission was motivated by compassion.
4. The need for the mission was great but missioners were in short supply. Prayer to God for supply was required.

We then find the mission of Jesus is extended - as though answering the need addressed in v. 37-38 - to include "the twelve" (10:1-8).

Their mission is pretty similar to Jesus', a mission in God's name of word and of deed (7-8). But they are not Jesus so they need "authority" in order to beat the power of the evil one as "unclean spirits" do their damage in the world (1). Authority  "over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and sickness" (1) is, of course, nothing less than divine authority, the authority of God now invested in them.

As Matthew tells the story of the commissioning of the twelve for mission he uses the narrative to also tell us their names (2-4). Don't miss the fact that he describes them in this context as "apostles", that is, as "sent ones" or "missioners." Later the church will look back on the twelve as "The Twelve Apostles" with potential to make "apostle" mean "senior leader." The twelve were the senior leaders in the early church but primarily they were commissioned for mission and not for leadership.

A challenge for us as readers lies in two places:

1. Verses 5-6 where the mission is narrowly focused on Israel and "not Gentiles, not Samaritans" though they were near at hand. Why wasn't Jesus more, well, inclusive? Over the whole of Matthew's Gospel (e.g. noting 28:16-20) we see a vision unfolding for an inclusive mission to the whole world. 

Here, perhaps, we might think of Matthew reporting to us that Jesus had concern for the Jews as the special people of God, the ones first called through Abraham and Moses into covenant relationship. Many Jews had lost their way before God. They are now called back to God before the mission extends to the Gentiles and to the Samaritans.

2. (if we extend our investigation from v. 8 to vss. 8-10, or vss. 8-15) This mission of Jesus is to be conducted with minimal resources (i.e. nothing), no pay, and a huge faith in God's provision (e.g. via hospitality (11-12). What does this mean in our day?

Sunday 11 June 2023 - Ordinary 10 / Te Pouhere Sunday

Readings for Te Pouhere Sunday (resources for Te Pouhere Sunday at www.anglican.org.nz/Resources/Lectionary-and-Worship )

I am a little caught out at the beginning of this week, being away from my laptop (easier to compose a post than on my iPad) and realising that this year has an Ordinary 10 Sunday after Trinity when previous years of this blog have not (i.e. 2020, 2017, 2014). So, for now, at least, I offer two pictures from the lectionary to give the readings and then a few thoughts for the readings for Te Pouhere Sunday.

TE POUHERE SUNDAY - the Sunday we are invited to reflect on our constitution, the constitution which makes us the “Three Tikanga Church” or one church with three cultural streams.

Isaiah 42:10-20
2 Corinthians 5:14-19 or Acts 10:34-43
John 15:9-17 or Matthew 7:24-29 or Luke 6:46-49 or John 17:6-26

Te Pouhere Sunday is our collective opportunity in ACANZP to reflect on what it means to be "this church" rather than any other church (noting that no church in the South Pacific has a constitution - Te Pouhere - such as ours which attempts to share the power and authority of episcopal leadership and synodical governance in a manner which is equalised between three tikanga within our church, Maori, Pakeha and Pasefika.

One reflection could be that Te Pouhere is our way of imitating the Trinity as a community of love between the Three Persons of the Godhead.

We could critically reflect on our life together: are we any reasonable kind of imitation of the Trinity? What could we change to better be what we seek to be?

We could thankfully reflect on our life together: for all that is good about our way of being church, let us give thanks to God (even as we simultaneously lament our shortcomings and repent of our mistakes).

We could prayerfully reflect on our life together: for all that is yet to be done, let us pray for God's wisdom and strength; for all that we do not yet understand, about God and about ourselves (in our difference and in our diversity), let us pray for knowledge; for resolve to be united in our diversity and to foster diversity in our unity, let us pray for courage and faithfulness.

ORDINARY 10

Collect:

Lord of the church,

You have called us to witness to every nation;

May we do your work and bear your cross,

await your time and see your glory.

Hear this prayer for your name's sake. Amen.

Readings (related)

Hosea 5:15-6:6

Psalm 50:7-15

Romans 4:13-end

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Let's start with the gospel reading, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 to which the Old Testament reading and the Psalm are "related" (on this choice of lectionary readings, rather than the "continuous" cycle).

The great and obvious theme here is "mercy". Matthew, a despised tax collector is called to be a disciple. More despised tax collectors and other "sinners" gather for dinner and Jesus graces the gathering with his presence. Challenged by the (essentially strict keepers of the Law of Moses) Pharisees, Jesus responds with a quote from our Old Testament reading, Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." The verses missing from our reading, Matthew 9:14-17, pose a different question for Jesus-the-one-who-often-feasts, about (not) fasting, and this question is raised by the friendly disciples of John the Baptist rather than the hostile Pharisees. When we continue reading into verses 18-26 we are reading a miracle story (albeit two miracles) but it is also a story of mercy in action: Jesus abruptly changes plans to respond to a request for help, and, along the way, heals another person in meed of help, a woman with an illness which would have cast her to the edges of her community.

What mercy are we being called to demonstrate in word and action today, this week? Is there any danger of us being modern Pharisees - people who earnestly wish to do the right thing but miss the main point of God's work among us?

Conversely, thinking of the distraught father and the marginalised woman, are we afraid that if we bring our lives and their troubles to God we will encounter an uncaring being who demands (more) sacrifice from us? Can we receive this passage as an encouragement to trust that God's essential attitude and approach to humanity is merciful and compassionate?

Hosea 5:15-6:6, then, is a background passage to the gospel's opening verses. God is merciful yet, we should note, desires our repentance. Mercy does not mean "do what you like, I don't care, I'll love you anyway" (much as the Israel to whom Hosea prophesied might have liked that); rather, mercy means, "I love you, I want to be in relationship with you, turn away from your wrongdoing and your worship of false gods, and let's start again with a renewed relationship and a new desire to love and enjoy one another's company."

Note, in passing, Hosea 6:2 as likely one of the passages which Jesus used to teach the disciples about his resurrection being forecast in Israel's scriptures (see Luke 24).

Psalm 50:7-15 then underlines the stance taken in the Hosea passage.

The epistle reading in the lectionary cycle of readings does not have to cohere thematically with the gospel reading but in this case Romans 4:13-end does cohere well because it is a part of Paul's great argument through the first eight chapters of this epistle that God saves us through Jesus Christ sacrificially dying then rising again in our place, bearing the punishment our sins warrant, and fulfilling the requirements of the Law of Moses once and for all.

In other words, God is merciful to us through Jesus Christ, and asks of us that we have faith in Christ in response.