The grace of God

As we continue to think about the Christianity Explained series our theme this week is the grace of God and some readings are: Hosea 14:4–7;Psalm 85; Ephesians 2:4–10; Luke 18:9–14 (if you are looking for the Commnon lectionary Readings they are here for all All Saints Day; or here for The 31st Sunday of the Year)

What the grace of God assures us is that God's love for us is so great
that he will do everything he can to bring us into the fold of the loving relationship
We are so perverse that we often seem to think
that God will only love us
if we are good enough
or if we are worthy.
The truth is that God loves us
not just when we behave,
or when we have totted up enough brownie points
to merit being loved.
God just loves us!
That love is not bought or sold
it is freely given.
We are often told that the Greek word for 'grace'
is closely related to the word for gift.
God's gift of love is a "grace"
and is truly and freely given.

So we see exposed in the Gospel we have chosen today (Luke 18:9-14)
the story of two men
who stand before God.
One, a religious man, an upstanding man
stands before God
and tells him what a good person he is.
And, I suppose he is, not humble but 'good'
We also see he seems arrogant
and we would probably say
there is a a lot of 'self-justification'
The question , it seems to me, about this man
is what need does he have of God,
he seems to think he is doing OK by himself.
We can all be a bit like this.
BUT if we are honest we should also recognise
that this sort of self-righteousness
is rather shallow, and not entirely truthful.
None of us can entirely justify ourselves because we cannot undo the wrong we have done.
The murderer, however repentant, cannot undo the murder;
nor the one who has hurt another with unkind words and actions
cannot make up for the hurt

So there is a contrast with the other man
who is actually crushed (it would seem) by the mess he has made of his life
His response is not to try and point out that he is not really all that bad
but rather to throw himself on God's mercy.
There is no other choice.

The truth is that the first situation
the self-righteous justification is actually a deception
and the second, that all have sinned and fallen short
is the reality.
The story tells us that it is the sinner who opens himself to God's mercy
who goes away put right.
Because God gives him what he cannot earn.

We find this pretty hard.
We don't like the realisation
that we cannot force God to like us by being good.
We have all really been mis-taught that if we are good enough
then we will 'get into heaven'
The truth is that god gives eternal life to us freely
we do not have to earn it.
In fact it is this trying to earn it that often seems to stand in the way!!
Our self righteousness and self justification
(often aimed at saying how bad others are
as much as how good we are)

This week
Instead of trying to bribe God be being God
can we think about what God might be trying
to give us that we don't think we are worth of?
Can we also try to model this in our relationships with others?
Instead of trying to give people the impression that if they
behave as we want them to then we will love and like them
can we rather give the impression that we are trying to love
unconditionally. This is hard and radical stuff.

There were these two men.....

Readings for Sunday 28 October Proper 24 of Year C the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. Joel 2:23-32 and Psalm 65 [or[Sirach 35:12-17 or Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22] ]and Psalm 84:1-7
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Luke 18:9-14

One of the great delights of being an Anglican is the permission we have to be different!

This may seem strange to those who are not of this stock, but is probably fairly familiar to the modern person. We treasure the right to be different and to have our say.

The gospel story this week tells of two men who are worshipping and praying at the same time.

Though they are engaged in the same activity, the story highlights that they are coming at it from radically different standpoints.

One is well-schooled in the language and practice of prayer and stands boldly and, I suspect, thankfully, in the presence of God giving thanks for all that he has been able to receive at God's hand.

This is not usually the way that we view this man..who we generically and almost always disparagingly refer to as The Pharisee.....we are inclined to say that this man is pompous, and a poor representative of what true faith is supposed to be. And he is. Well we all are.

But he is, unfortunately, a typical product of the faith machine...he is rather like you and me

He has, no doubt, struggled for many years to make his faith work and to get it right. he then is able to stand up and say....I know something about what it means to be a person of faith and he slides into

'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.'

He may indeed have understood something of what it means. But we all see that he has actually missed the essence. He has not understood about: humility, about not being judgmental, about recognising the need for dependence on God, even about being cautious in self-assessment, and even more cautious in ascribing motives to other people. He has not understood about learning gently from others

We get this because it is contrasted with the desperation of a man in real trouble. And we see in the heartfelt prayer something authentic, that is lacking in the prayer of the Pharisee. His fault is not so much that he is harsh, but that he is blind.

This is what is called in literature a cautionary tale designed to warn us about what might happen to us if we are not careful.
We can become well-pleased with our own efforts.
In our affluence and ease, We can be blind to the pain in others life caused by poverty and abuse.
In our comfortability we mistake an easy life for God's blessing and sink into apathy and mediocrity.

How do we heed this in our life today?
How do we heed this as church?

THIS WEEK

• Try to identify a situation where we are tempted to be judgmental, and ask how it also invites us to view things differently
• Where have we sunk into apathy and self righteousness, and miustaken this for faithfulness and blessing?
• Where is God inviting us to change and to be more compassionate?
  

Disturb us gracious God when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, gracious God, when with the abundance of things we possess we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim.

Disturb us, gracious God, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love. Attributed to Sir Francis Drake, 1577

YOU TUBE PRESENTATION

Seeing it like it is!

Readings for this Sunday 26th August 2007 (proper 16) include:

Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Psalm 71:1-6; or (Isaiah 58:9b-14 and Psalm 103:1-8)
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17

FOR YOU TUBE REFLECTION ON THIS WEEK'S THOUGHTS

Religious people can be such gooses
so often we just don't get the sheer joy
of what it means to be alive in God
and what a great gift faith is
so we are often cast as hypocrites
and self-righteous know-it-alls
and, indeed, with some justification!

We have in these readings a very strong healing story perhaps one of the strongest

13:10 Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.

13:11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.

13:12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment."

13:13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

13:14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day."

13:15 But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?

13:16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?"

13:17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

It is not difficult to understand what is going on here, though it is deceptively simple.
My initial reaction to this story was to wonder where I have been chronically crippled
Where have I carried a wound for 18 years or more?
I can find a couple of places
and I know that although there is a certain sense of self-indulgence in chronic oppression, possession, depression...however we choose to name it
---that is, we learn to live with it
and in a way perhaps we are frightened to live without it---
we also want to be free of it.
More than that
we need to be free of it.

Liberation on this sort of scale for human beings
is in the realm of desperation and fundamental hope.
When it is all said and done
we know where we need to be fixed
and we know when we want it....NOW!

It is unimaginable that Jesus would have said to this desperate woman
"Come back when the Office is open tomorrow, I'm at Church today!"
To be sure we say this sort of thing
But this is not how we imagine Jesus reacting.

Where is Jesus calling us to act, and calling us now?
Where do we hold back, for what ever pious reason, when Jesus is inviting us forward?

THIS WEEK

• Ask the Spirit to show you where you need to be healed
• Invite the Spirit to allow you to open your life and trust the healing that God wants to give.
• Pray for that healing to happen

FOR YOU TUBE REFLECTION ON THIS WEEK'S THOUGHTS