People who use sacred texts have often found ways of selecting passages appropriate to their needs. Disciples of Confucius used a complex system of hexagrams, chosen by lot, to find images and comments suitable to their time, place and situation. In classical and medieval times, the writings of Virgil and Homer were used in a similar way. Sometimes the Bible was accessed by lot or dice or random procedures. The Church responded to the need to select appropriate wisdom from the Bible, by the daily lectionary, a selection of readings for every day in the year, which was originally used in monasteries, but has for some time been used in daily mass in the Catholic Church, and for private devotion in others. Obviously the choice of passages reflects a theology and the Christian calendar, but it also has an arbitrary element. It asks the reader, “Can this wisdom be applied to your soul, your community, your place, today?” This blog follows the daily readings and hopes to uncover some wisdom.

 Reading 1, Daniel 9:4b-10

4 I pleaded with Yahweh my God and made this confession: ‘O my Lord, God great and to be feared, you keep the covenant and show faithful love towards those who love you and who observe your commandments:

5 we have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly, we have betrayed your commandments and rulings and turned away from them.

6 We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our chief men, our ancestors and all people of the country.

7 Saving justice, Lord, is yours; we have only the look of shame we wear today, we, the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the whole of Israel, near and far away, in every country to which you have dispersed us because of the treachery we have committed against you.

8 To us, our kings, our chief men and our ancestors, belongs the look of shame, O Yahweh, since we have sinned against you.

9 And it is for the Lord our God to have mercy and to pardon, since we have betrayed him,

10 and have not listened to the voice of Yahweh our God nor followed the laws he has given us through his servants the prophets.

Gospel, Luke 6:36-38

36 ‘Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate.

37 Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.

38 Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap; because the standard you use will be the standard used for you.’

 It seems that the fictional book of Daniel was written by an orthodox Jew in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the Seleucid successors of Alexander the Great, in the second century BC. It uses the story and visions of Daniel to encourage the religious opposition to Greek imperialism. It makes use of history in way which had become familiar to Jewish believers in the wake of the destruction of their temple in 586BC. The whole people is judged as guilty of idolatry, which has been punished by God through the conquest of their lands by the Assyrians, the Persians and then the Greeks. Bible readers are so used to this interpretation that they don’t notice how strange it is. God is so reckless that he almost destroys his people, the innocent with the guilty, because they have dishonoured his name. One has to ask, if the name of such a tyrant-God could be any more dishonoured, than by his own actions.

 A particular kind of religion is being advanced by condemning much of the nation’s past. We do not know if worship of the one God had ever been truly national until the time of Ezra, and even then it may have been a central concern for a religious minority rather than the whole people.  Daniel’s prayer expresses this thinking in the form of a confession.

 Jesus’ words come from another realm of faith: For him, God is compassionate, as indeed He was for the greatest prophets of Israel. Faithful people are to model themselves on God. There is however, a hint of the strictness of God’s love. Just as God permits us, out of love, to choose wrong and to do it, so also he permits us to be judged by our own standards. If we shut out generosity to others, we shut ourselves to it as well. If we condemn others, we expose ourselves to condemnation. There is, as it were only one river of love: if we block its flow to other people, it will not touch us either.

"The standard you use will be used for you...."

 In Indian religions this is called karma, the iron law by which we will be refused, what we have refused to others; but we will get what we have given. The rewards and punishments of Dante’s Divine Comedy are based on the same principle: we always get what we (really) want. (Sorry, Mick Jagger). If we want love (for all) we shall get it for ourselves. If we want brutality for others, we shall get it for ourselves. God, in his love, will always offer forgiveness but will never force us to accept it.

On second thoughts, we might prefer to go back to the bad-tempered God of Daniel, rather than this God of Jesus!