SPACE RUBBISH AT TIPPING POINT NASA WARNED

This blog provides a meditation on the daily readings of the Episcopal Church along with a headline from world news

James 4:13-5:6

13 Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ ¹⁴Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’ ¹⁶As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. ¹⁷Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin. 5Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. ²Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. ³Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. ⁴Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. ⁵You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. ⁶You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. 

There used to be a critique of socialism which said that any attempt to build the perfect society was doomed because human beings are sinful and must always be controlled by the checks and balances of conservative governance. Now, I think something like the same argument can be turned on the kind of market liberals who rule the U.K. Human beings, and in particular, rich human beings are wicked and cannot be trusted. They must be subjected to the severe checks and balances of governance that insists on social justice and ecological balance. Otherwise, I guess, they will continue to defraud their workers and to condemn and murder the righteous one. Those who have wealth are, I fear, conscious of looming disaster, and are laying up for the last days not only treasure but also weapons, so that they and their nations will come out top in the coming struggle for water, food and power. The reader may think these reflections a little gloomy. Perhaps James’s rich readers thought the same. Yes, I am gloomy about the future of the earth and all its creatures. I do not think we can afford the superficial clowns who rule most of us at present. We should not wait until our grandchildren are conscripted to fight in oil wars before we demand a more just and rational politics.

Mark 15:22-32

22Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). 23And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it. 24And they crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take.25 It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. 26The inscription of the charge against him read, ‘The King of the Jews.’ 27And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. 29Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30save yourself, and come down from the cross!’ 31In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, ‘He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.’ Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

Evil people mock those who have opposed them unsuccessfully. “You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.” (see above)  Mark is bent on showing that Jesus’ non-violent battle, his refusal to abandon the rule of God, is utterly misunderstood by the careless passers-by, the vengeful chief priests and scribes, and even his fellow victims. Jesus alone stands firm for God’s love, justice and wisdom when all, including even God himself (see tomorrow’s gospel) seem to have abandoned them.

If we want to say that Jesus’ battle on the cross is political as well as spiritual, that it is a struggle for the rule of God; we ought also to remember that our contemporary political battle is also, and perhaps even primarily, a spiritual struggle which demands we take up the cross ( the sign of contemptuous opposition to evil power and its threats) and follow Jesus.