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

AMOS 9: 5-10

PUTIN SAYS ALL CRITICISM OF HIS PARTY COMES FROM FOREIGNERS 

The Lord sees all nations

Are you not the same to me, says the Lord,

As the Ethiopians, you men of Israel?

Was it not I who brought up Israel

Out of the land of Egypt;

And did I not bring the Philistines from Caphtor,

And the Assyrians from Kir?

See, the eyes of the Lord God

Are watching the sinful kingdom,

And I will wipe it off the face of the earth.

Nevertheless, I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob.

It is the Lord who declares this.

See, I, the Lord, am commanding that the house of Israel

Be shaken among all the nations,

Like grain shaken in a sieve.

Not one good kernel falls to the ground

Of all my sinful people.

10 All those who say, Disaster will never touch us

And can never threaten our security,

Shall be killed with the sword.

all people are chosen people

This prophecy throws a grenade into the bolthole of comfortable Israeli theology: God brought them up from Egypt and gave them the land; therefore they will enjoy his favour for ever. Not so, says Amos, God brought other nations to their present lands also. Israel is no different from them.

This is a very radical utterance, requiring a wholesale revolution in Israeli faith, which even today rests on the uniqueness of Israel in the  plans of God.

It would be the equivalent of saying that Jesus died for the whole world and not just for Christians (!); or even that He died for the whole world and not just for human beings(!!). Good grief, if someone took that sort of thing seriously we might ask ourselves if there’s any advantage in believing. Why believe in a God who gives you no advantage? Ah well, we’d have to ask Jesus that question.

Matthew 23:13-26

13 ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. 15Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

16 ‘Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” 17You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? 18And you say, “Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.” 19How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; 21and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; 22and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

23 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others. 24You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

25 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean. 

Matthew depicts Jesus as giving no quarter to the Pharisees. Scholars have suggested that the later separation of Jews, especially the Pharisees, from Christians has influenced the way the gospel writers recount the words of Jesus. Perhaps, but what is recounted is certainly sharp enough to have come from Jesus. Here are people who cross land and see in an evangelical crusade and make converts “just as fit for hell as themselves” Their pettifogging playing with scripture texts is typical of fundamentalist religion and their focus on externals while leaving their own characters unclean reminds us of the sad case of many priests who systematically abused children.

Hypocrisy is never far from people of strong belief. I have not always practised what I preached. Jesus taught that God’s not interested in lip-service.