FRED’S PASS (NORTHERN TERRITORY)
PRDINARY SUNDAY 9 / SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
(2nd JUNE) 2013
Psalm 96
Galatians 1.1-12
Luke 7.1-10
Over the last couple of hundred of years, if not for ever, the absolute will of God has been a not altogether popular doctrine. I suggest possibly for ever, since we find Abraham having a few difficulties with God in Genesis 18, as he attempts to negotiate on behalf of the city of Sodom, but possibly that’s stretching my bow too far. Perhaps we should limit ourselves to the modern era, since the time when the earth was rolled up into a ball and our home became no more than an infinitely small bit-player in an infinitely big universe.
There is a paradox, there, for at one level, as
the sun stopped circling the earth and the boundaries of creation spread
further and further away from down-town Rome (or Jerusalem, depending on your
slice of history), humans took less and less cognizance of the Psalmist’s “what
is a person, that you should be mindful
of her.” Humanity, floating around an unimportant star in an insignificant
galaxy in a spreading universe, placed itself at the centre, and flung the Creator
out beyond the abyss, taking absolute will with him – or her. Humanity decided
God was unimportant and decided to call the changes on the universe.
In other words, for at least three hundred years
we have not been fussed with the idea “your will be done / on earth as it is
done in heaven.” We’ve become less and less fussed with the idea of heaven,
too, but that is in part a different story. We have gradually re-written the
psalm to become “what is God, that we should be mindful of him, her it … ?”
Ahab had similar problems. His people had some
allegiance to their God, but the gods of Baal were sexier, and they were kind
of keen to have them, too. The God of Judaism and Christianity tends to be, as
the scriptures put it, a jealous God, and wasn’t too fussed about sharing human
hearts with bronze cows and orgiastic fertility gods. It’s probably not just
since the modern era to be honest, but we too have done a fairly good job of
flirting with orgiastic gods, trivializing the Creator (rather than seeing that,
in an expanding universe, the creativity of God and the compassion of the God
who cares for a falling sparrow is greater and greater to behold).
As the current Royal Commission will
demonstrate, there have been far too many in our midst who have failed to
believe in a God who might judge us by our actions, far too many who have
forgotten to remember the stern words of Jesus about children and millstones.
Far too many who have replaced God by putting themselves at the helm of the
universe. This of course is to over-simplify, for
readings of history tell us it was ever thus, but this is no excuse. We have
fallen at the feet of Baal.
We have tended to forget about a God who created
at the beginning of time and a God who judges either at the end of time or
throughout time, depending on our comprehension of time (and mine is highly
un-linear). The Royal Commission that
will shine its torch through our corridors – the corridors of the church in all
its forms, will do us good. We can only weep and say sorry for the victims of
abuse that have not necessarily been my victims or your victims but are all our
victims. And when we hear of abuse it becomes nigh-on impossible to speak of
the will of God, for to suggest it was the will of God that a child should
suffer so at the hands of those who claim to be Christ-bearers is sick beyond
words. Where was the God who wills the
centurion’s servant to be well?
For those who suffer, either at the hands of
humans or at the hands of nature, I suspect we have no words, only the actions
that pray God may speak louder than words about a healing, resurrecting God. I
can only pray that those who suffered may judge us all kindly, for one day, in
my theology, it is the victims who will on behalf of God judge the
perpetrators. It is a solemn thought, and one I have long held, tempered only
my equal and opposite belief that one day all, even the most evil of humans,
might learn to surrender to the love and healing of the wounded Christ.
These, then, are just musings, not as it were an
unpacking of our scriptures. But they are not unrelated. Ahab finds those who
want to keep God as a convenience but their own hedonistic lifestyle – the
attractions of Baal – and is not altogether kind to them. They have removed the
question of a stern and judging God from the equation of their lives, and the
implications of that choice are unattractive. We need to learn from them: God
and the conscience he gives us may be slowly silenced in our lives but the risk
of doing that is high. We can shut God up, killing those divine whispers in our
ears, but we do so at great peril of our humanity. Jesus, like God, commands
creation to obey his will, but we are not God.
How then does this leave us as we seek to
stumble in the way of the Cross in 2013? It leaves us – or it should – refusing
to play games with the gospel. We are called to be servant followers of Jesus,
as he was and is a servant revealing of the heart of God, the servant king. We
are called to find ways to express our love for God and for one another and for
our neighbour in actions of service. God may be the one who heals by a simple
word, but we need to know we are not God. Few of us have too many difficulties
with this, until it comes to being servants of one another, or, more
accurately, of Christ in one another. We prefer to control with our cheque books
or our words, trying subdue God to our will, trying to reduce God the creator
to the level of a good time Baalite god.
Instead we need to recall that it is God, not
we, not you or I who is the boss, who commands the servant’s demons to release
him, and raise him from the death bed. We are less glamorous, I suspect, and
can only look for opportunities to serve one another – to serve and never abuse
or exploit – as we seek to be the body of the Christ.
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