St Peter’s Bexhill
Evensong 7th June 2015 www.stpetersbexhill.org.uk
Jeremiah 6 v 16-21
Romans 9 v 1-13
Romans 9 v 1-13
Walter
Waggerin is the author of a fabulous book simply called ‘Paul’ written as a novel. I really like the way Waggerin presents Paul. He
doesn’t have him sitting studiously over a table but rather pacing up and down
as thoughts tumble out and his scribe is doing his best to keep up and capture
everything correctly.
Paul
is a man of great passion and enormous energy and creativity.
We
see evidence of that in the Letter to the Romans, what some have referred to as
Paul’s Magnum Opus, his great work.
We
do need to be very careful with passages like this however. Sadly over the
years some Christian’s have taken a text out of context and made it a pretext.
In
living memory we recall those who twisted Scripture into a swastika and found a
way to legitimize the slaughter of the innocents, God’s holy and ancient
people, the Jews.
Paul
here is speaking as a good well educated Jew and pours out his passion for his
people because they didn’t recognize the day of visitation. They failed to see
in Jesus the promised and longed hoped for Messiah.
The
word that shines out of this passage and many other of Paul’s writing is that
of grace.
He
reminds them that Abraham was elected by God by grace. He reminds them that
Isaac, the younger was blessed over his older sibling.
The
challenge Jesus put before his people was that they had failed to live out and
up to what God had called them to be and to do.
Through
Abraham all nations would be blessed, would know God’s favour, would seek to
emulate how God’s chosen people lived, to set store by their laws and ways of
being in the world.
Jeremiah,
one of many, many prophets who came with a message, a radical message. Radical
in as much it was a call back to God’s original plan and purpose that somehow
had got lost and blurred.
Hear, you earth:
I am bringing disaster
on this people,
the fruit of their
schemes,
because they have not
listened to my words
and have rejected my
law.
or sweet calamus from
a distant land?
Your burnt offerings
are not acceptable;
your sacrifices do not
please me.”
God’s
people were called to be a light to the Gentiles and Jesus calls them blind
guides because they lay heavy burdens upon people.
Their
yoke is a heavy one and hard one to bear, Jesus’ yoke is easy and full of grace
and love.
Paul
saw in Jesus Israel personified.
If
you look carefully at the Jesus story you will notice that he lives and fulfills all that God had originally purposed for his people.
Jesus
is a child of promise, a grace child coming through Mary, ‘Hail Mary, full of
grace, the Lord is with thee.’
He
enters the Jordan on the East Bank and walks across, is baptized, and emerges
on the West Bank, just as Joshua had done as the Israelite's entered the Promised Land.
Jesus
grace chose twelve disciples, not on any merit of their own, but as a divine
choice. Twelve disciples, a new Israel is being called into being by grace.
Jesus
feeds people with manna from heaven, he offers living water from the rock, he
raises the dead, and he has authority over the forces of evil and over the
forces of nature.
Jesus
lives an authentic human life as God first intended.
Pertinent
to our reflection on the subject of welcoming people is Jesus’ tirade in the
Temple.
If
we see this incident wholly about turning the temple into a market we have
missed the point.
For
a brief and yet significant moment Jesus halted the burnt offerings and the
incense, the ‘work’ of the Temple.
The
Temple, the place where God could be approached and accessed.
But
who could draw near to God?
The
High Priest could get right up close and personal – but that only once a year.
Good male Jews could get a bit closer. Woman could enter the court of woman and
then the Gentiles in the outer court with a sign forbidding them to go any
further on pain of death.
The
courts of the Gentiles were the market was, the closest place those who were
not God’s chosen people could get had become a market place.
Remember
the curtain of the temple being torn in two as Jesus died.
Galatians
3.28-29
There is neither Jew
nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor
female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then
you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.
Why
is this important?
I
don’t suppose for one moment somebody from God’s ancient people suddenly came
up with an idea of exclusivity. The idea that creeps upon people who begin to
think they are something special. From there it is but a short step to think we
have come to this exalted position by our own merits and devotion and
dedication to the law and to the worship of Almighty God.
Well
meaning, well intentioned, but says Jesus; you have missed the very point and
purpose of your being called as God people, to be a light to the Gentiles. To
demonstrate to a watching world how a people should live in accordance with God
good providence.
Instead,
says Jesus, you have made yourselves an exclusive club, and even within that
club you have a hierarchy.
I
come says Jesus, and I will embrace and bring wholeness to a woman troubled
with an issue of blood. Then to demonstrate that the power and authority of God
still rests and resides in me I will go straight from there to bring a young
girl back to life.
Why
does it matter and why is it important?
Because
little by little we as part of God people of grace can just as easily form an
exclusive club. We can kid ourselves and claim to be inclusive, however we need
to tread carefully and examine closely.
Have
we made the worship of God so particular and peculiar that it excludes people
who don’t know what to do and how to conduct themselves?
Is
our language strange and foreign to visitors and strangers?
This
isn’t too dumb down our acts of worship or for them to be devoid of mystery.
However perhaps we need to pay attention to the temple with its various courts
and offer ways people can engage with God at different stages. But never, ever
excluding anybody from anything. It can
be valuable to engage with God as profound mystery exemplified perhaps by a
High Mass. Equally important is the opportunity to engage on a deeper more
personal level, perhaps with contemporary style worship and music.
And
always, always remembering we gather in Grace as a people of Grace to be filled
with yet more Grace that we may be people of Grace out in the world Monday to
Saturday.
GRACE
= God’s Riches At Christ’ Expense.
