This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readings along with aheadline from world news:
Greece tests the power of capital: prices tumble.
Alexis Tsipras refuses to compromise
Leviticus 26:1-20
Rewards for Obedience
26You shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no carved images or pillars, and you shall not place figured stones in your land, to worship at them; for I am the Lord your God.2You shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.
3 If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully,4I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.5Your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and the vintage shall overtake the sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and live securely in your land.6And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land.7You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.8Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.9I will look with favour upon you and make you fruitful and multiply you; and I will maintain my covenant with you.10You shall eat old grain long stored, and you shall have to clear out the old to make way for the new.11I will place my dwelling in your midst, and I shall not abhor you.12And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people.13I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be their slaves no more; I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.
Penalties for Disobedience
14 But if you will not obey me, and do not observe all these commandments,15if you spurn my statutes, and abhor my ordinances, so that you will not observe all my commandments, and you break my covenant,16I in turn will do this to you: I will bring terror on you; consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. You shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.17I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down by your enemies; your foes shall rule over you, and you shall flee though no one pursues you.18And if in spite of this you will not obey me, I will continue to punish you sevenfold for your sins.19I will break your proud glory, and I will make your sky like iron and your earth like copper.20Your strength shall be spent to no purpose: your land shall not yield its produce, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.
The God whom Israel worshipped was not a God of compromise: if they worshipped him loyally, he would bless them with victory and prosperity; if they did not he would curse them with famine, defeat and death. No messing, as Glaswegians say. It takes balls to commit yourself to such a God, and even more to stay committted when as inevitably will happen your loyalty is not rewarded and you experience famine and defeat in spite of it. Even then the prophets of Israel tended to exculpate God and blame the people or their rulers. Of course if you look for faults you’ll always find them, but there are indications in the scriptures that the basic theology of blessing and cursing began to wear a little thin when there was so much more cursing than blessing. The book of Job concludes that its hero is ultimately too small to question the purposes of God, even while God conceals the fact that he has thrown Job to the wolves to maintain his honour among in the heavenly court. Chapters 40-55 of Isaiah propose the radical solution that sometimes righteous people suffer on behalf of the unrighteous. Christianity has concluded that in this world as it is, loyalty to God cannot be fully rewarded but it shall be fully rewarded in God’s new world. Christians who share the sufferings of Christ will also share his glory.
The issue is more clearly put if we say it’s a question of how those who believe in a just God understand the good and the evil, the happiness and the sorrows of their lives. The books of Israel’s law express the fundamental conviction that God gives good things to those who honour Him and keep his commandments but brings disaster on those who don’t. I wish it was true.
Matthew 13:18-23
The Parable of the Sower Explained
18 ‘Hear then the parable of the sower.19When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path.20As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy;21yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.*22As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.23But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.’
This is less the explanation of the parable of the sower as in itself, a parable of the soils. God in his desire to create goodness is not omnipotent: he is limited by the nature of the human beings whom he has also created to whom he has given the capacity to choose fruitful life or not. In fact in this parable, all want to be fruitful but only some choose so definitely that the seed of goodness gets a chance to grow. When it does, the result is spectacular. This is a sober story of how God’s wisdom succeeds and fails to succeed in bearing fruit on earth. My own interpretation is that all the soils are part of my character: there are many areas of my life where God’s goodness is given no chance to grow, but when it I allow it to grow, it is fruitful beyond expectation.
Emmock's Blog 