Part Four of What God Asks!

I began, part one of three, with, the issues presented in Luke 13:10-17, where Jesus was teaching in the synagogue. It was the sabbath.  When he noticed a crippled woman and he healed her.  The religious leaders were indignant!  They basically  scolded him for healing on the sabbath.

The reference is about the need of resting on the sabbath. A historic command from God.  It is a holy law to the Jewish people.  And the Jewish people have religiously upheld that tradition for centuries.  It had, like many old traditions, caused great debate and misunderstanding about what people of faith are to do, to think and not to do.

Jesus calls the synagogue leaders “hypocrites.” 

"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? 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?"  

That is where I wondered off on Isaiah’s announcement in chapter 58.

I am adding a fourth part to the three! 

Today I will take up where I left off; because Jesus makes all of those instruction from Isaiah a bit more clear.  This will be just my take on the situation. 

It goes something like this, it is when you do all that work, thinking you can earn salvation.  That is, when you do it simply to impress God in order to get to heaven.  It won’t work!

It is like the old saying!  “It is not whether you win or lose that counts.  It is how!  Actually why!  you play the game.”

Jesus is very careful to explain this in John’s Gospel!  

First, Jesus came to adjust the traditional work ethic.  The idea that the Religious Leaders so passionately preached.  He did that adjusting in many ways, concerning various Jewish rituals and traditions, during his short ministry.  

He did this by reminding them of their source of power for living God’s way. Reminding them that it is their hearts that God wanted to do his work here on earth. 

It goes like this:  

He ask of them to surrender their wills to his.  

Then he provides the source of energy, and attitude, to do it.  To do his will in a world that asked them to compromise.  

The source of power, God gave, was God’s own Spirit.  Who graciously provides both the ability and the heart to do the “work” of worshiping — serving — God.  

They were to do, this serving, by surrendering their need to be God.  That is surrendering their need, for the power and position, of being all wise and all knowing.

From the very beginning, of Creation, God has tried to make this entire issue of “work” verses “grace” easy.  It began in the garden with the command not to eat the fruit on the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  

It would surely been a whole-bunch easies if they had listened!

That was the first clue.

Then later, when he set down the Ten Commandment we get the second clue from Exodus. 20:

“I am the Lord you God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.  You shall have no other god’s before me.”  

Then he goes on:  “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I am the Lord you God.  A jealous God!”

God seems to want just one thing of them!  That is to acknowledge God as God!  And God alone!  Giving God all the credit for who they are, and what they did, and how they did it, and why.  Putting God first, and between, all the did, thought and felt.

And, by the way, God wants the same from us!

I have found that the simplest way to do that is through this little prayer: “Thank You!”

Does that sound too simplistic?

Think again!

That thank you is, first of all, an acknowledgement of God’s all knowing wisdom.

Secondly, it is the acknowledgement of my need of God to make me right.

Thirdly, it is the acknowledgment that I have faith that God can, and will work within me, enabling me to do this salvation work; even with  the temptation to compromise confronting me on every curve.  

Salvation work is all about, and only about, a very precious connection— relationship — between God and all of God’s creation. 

God’s creation, of you and me, who are created in God’s image.  Created to know that God is all mighty.  Created to do God’s bidding, by honoring God enough, to care for his creation.  And by letting God be God, our very source of life, by being God’s love to the world around us.

And we do that through the continuous display of gratitude.

10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 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. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 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." 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? 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?" 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.(Luke 13)

What God Asks of Us! Part three

A comment about the Isaiah 58 came from a curious mind.  

“It seems like it is an awful lot of work to be right for God.  It seems like it takes a lot of work to get God’s attention or acceptance.”

I invite you to take a another look at Isaiah 58 below.  You will fine two words, I would like you to focus on, "If" and "then." 

According to Isaiah it does take a lot of work to be one of God’s people.  

    

The “work” is:  To surrender godship  The “work” is:  To worship only one God.  The “work” is:

                                   Admission of neediness!

Admission of lack of wisdom!

The “work” is the admission that there is One more powerful, more wise, more capable than you and I.

It is “work” because surrender of power is extremely — extremely — difficult work for our human egos.  It brings us to our spiritual knees in worship, awe and amazement.

 Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself?

So Yes, the conditions for salvation are work; in the most spiritual way.  

Not pointing fingers of Judgment!  

    Ceasing to speak evil gossip about another!

        Attending to the poor, homeless and hungry!

            No more pursuing our own interests at other’s expense.

Just following God’s Great Commandment!  By putting God and God’s ways first!

"Then," Isaiah says!  Then "if" you do that, you will be a hard working child of God.

Here is the key!   

“If” our heart is not on God!  "If" we do what we do simply to impress!  "Then" our doing is for naught.  

“Then” our impressing is only empressive to our neighbor.  Not to God!

In my understanding, God neither asks for, nor needs, to be impressed.  God wants us to acknowledge him as God.  God already knows that we can do all those good works.  After all, God made us quite capable beings.

God want us to ‘do’ because in the doing we honor him.  ‘Doing" because God created us to do!  Because, what honors God is honoring his creation.  Taking care of, being careful with, his creation.  Showing compassion and gentleness to our environment, and our sisters and brothers, “in his name.”  Not our own name!

Our doing then stems from our gratitude for what God has already done for us, and in us.  The very source of our doing.

God asks us to surrender the glory!  The credit!

How many of us don’t think that is hard work?

What we fail to remember is that when God asks of us! God gives us the ability, the heart, to do this work.  

We surrender!  God provide the source of energy and attitude to do it!

It is as easy as that! 

The Muslim Quran has this line to explain how we react to God’s activity in our lives:

“There was a chance for you to be grateful.”        

       Or, “There was a chance for you to be guided aright.” 

1 Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. 3 "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. 4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. 5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? 6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? 8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10 if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 11 The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. 12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. 13 If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; 14 then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.(Isaiah 58)

An Intriguing Conversation!

Between last week and today I have had an interesting interruption in the three part blog on On Isaiah 58 and Luke 13:10-17.  A reader has presented me with some intriguing, thought provoking,  opinions.  What I have decided, is to share these various thoughts with all of you. I tried to use different colors for our comments but the blog auto correct doesn't like my idea(;  So I will identify them by our initials.   It does get wordy!  But Hey!!

Comment number 1

(M) My first question is how can your disregard the silver?

(C) I don’t disregard the sliver, but try to put it in a context of what happened before and the two thousand years of since.  I couldn’t understand any of it any other way.  To take Christianity, without question as born fully formed, is impossible for me.  The complex cultural environment, and all that followed in developing and synthesizing Jesus’s teaching into an actual thing called Christianity took a few hundred years.  HUNDRED YEARS - that’s a long time.  Think of all that influences any idea since 100 years ago.

For a few hundred years after Jesus’s life, small villages with competing interests and understanding had been ‘interpreting’ Jesus’s teachings (and those of his disciples) within the context of and influenced by their priorities and interests; depending on old conflicts and competition. 

Finally the time came for a coalescing of the lessons etc into a tome called The Bible and having it make sense with the Torah. This also took a very long time (I don’t recall that, but people have studied the precursors to the various ‘chapters’ and know this. 

(M) I have never thought of Christianity as-already-long- ago formed!  What ever gave you that opinion?  It has evolved from the time of Jesus until now. It will continue on into tomorrow with even more cultural changes. 

(C) Bottom line, things didn’t happen all at once in one beautiful statement after another shortly after Jesus died.   Just didn’t happen.  I remember listening to Diane and Ray’s son up at Holden talking about all he was learning in seminary in Berkeley and how blown away he was from his growing up lessons in Sunday School.  

(M) In most mainline seminaries students have his same epiphany.  I certainly did!

(C) People decided how to tell the story.  They were compelled to make it fit the prophesies of the the Old Testament relate to all the mysteries to be ‘explained’.  When that couldn't actually work, they included views to honor the many views on the subject. That’s a big reason for conflicting passages in the Bible. Depended on the point of view of the teller.  

(M) That is very true!  Just as preacher and writers do today.

(C) So yes, I see that few hundred years in a sliver within a broader context of human development and spiritual awakening in humans.  The context is critical considering how much language and thought has changed in two thousand years.  I can ignore this when a teaching is confusing, contradictory, or seems a bit superficial or idealistic.  I don’t discount the teaching but I can’t ignore the rest of the context. I simply am curious to want to know how much more I can learn. 

(M) Context, language and tradition are all important to my exegesis .  Most especially the languages! 

(C) What if one view of a particular aspect of our country was the only view accepted or viewed as acceptable or The Only Truth?  Can you imagine? Impossible.  Two thousand years from now, the curious would search for a little more information about us and that aspect of Only Truth.  

(M) I can imagine!  I also think that 2000 years from now there won’t be so much separation in religions and/or denominations.    

(C) I will continue with your next question in another email.

Comment #2 

(M) My second question is, who ever said that prophets no longer speaks?

(C) I think I may have misstated my idea.  My intended question was, why do we no longer recognize wisdom we receive as from a ’new' prophet.  No new statements are revealed any more in magical ways of the past (dreams, visions, etc). If those were real, I could ask why not?  We could sure use a few booming lessons from heaven.  To me such magical visits were a vehicle of oral tradition to make lessons memorable. And fear filled when necessary.  

 Today if someone believes God has spoken to them directly, or an angel has appeared to guide them, they are frequently ignored and considered psychologically challenged. 

(M) When I read this I felt that we were on the same page.  It made my heart glad!

I do believe that God still uses dreams, and angels to give us thoughts, ideas and inspiration.  It took me a long time to admit that God communicates with us still today.  For the very reason you mentioned above. I believe it is the Holy Spirit moving our minds, guiding us into new truths.  I have personally experienced such communication. The stories might get a bit long, to include here.  If you’d like to hear one, let me know.

I also think that prophets speak today.  I'm almost sure that I have even written a blog on this somewhere along the way.  It is also true that some people use God as a tool to make prophesies and predictions; that are possibly not from the Holy Spirit.  But that is a conversation for another time.

(C) That is what lead me to the idea about people actually feeling inspired to do their work etc.  We don’t speak in terms of angels descending to tell us what to do next.  We feel inspired from within.  We feel the impulse from our core.  

(M) Totally agree here!  

(C) I do believe every person on earth can and many do serve as an angel for someone else.  I do not believe in winged angels and big storms rushing in to inspire anyone.  These are the stuff of story.  I do not believe they happened literally 2000 years ago.  If they did, why haven't these legitimate visits continued?

(M) Agreed!  And, to be vey clear, I am not a protonate of literal thinking when is come to biblical interpretation. People who take the Bible literally have created many misunderstanding and  problems in the past.  That continues today.  I will guess that is why, as a child, you had some huge issues with what your Sunday School teacher taught you.

(C) What I do believe is that we have even more wisdom available to us than the lessons of the prophets from that limited time and place in the past.  The world is FILLED with wisdom to access.  And I believe that is what the Unity is all about.  

(M) The writer of Ecclesiastics would not argue with that!  Neither do I!   

Comment number 3

(C) I suppose my last email (2) addresses this.  I have seen as largely non-existent the leap from the theology to actual action in some people.  That’s why I could never hang around a church for long. I felt too much of that with some folks (NOT our group) visiting with them in the food lines at Holden.   It’s as is if some people don’t make a connection. As if their church was their most important identity and how much better theirs was because some minister didn’t satisfy.  

(M) That mentality often is born in the literal arena.  At least that is mostly where I have found it.  However, in most denomination each congregation is a mix of those who quote the Bible word-for-word as literal; and those who don’t.

(C) I really liked your latest blog describing your time in New Orleans.   That’s people-to-people community action responding to needs.  Finding a fellowship where you can do this in a dozen ways every day of the week has been amazingly exploratory for me.  Step in and step up.  Get off the pew and go do.

(M) You just described  the theology of the Generation X and Millennial generation.  They want to do what Jesus asked us ‘to do’.  And, not doing that very thing is what has kill the integrity of the Christian church.  That is why pews are empty in most mainline churches today.

The ELCA is working very hard to change its mode of operation. I am on a synod committee working on just that.  You might be interested in reading some of the books I have been digesting the last two or three  years. Hayden Shaw’s Generational IQ is one.  David Kinnamann’s You Lost Me is another.  And my most recent read is, Dwight J Zscheile’s The Agile Church.

(C) I know I haven’t listened recently to sermons in a Christian church.  So I know I'm missing much of what is happening today.  However, I appreciate hearing probably the vary same lessons (without Biblical text as a reference) of a sermon from actual people DOING these things, KNOWING these things in depth, LIVING these things instead of the old traditional way of giving the lesson.  Usually offering invitations of specific ways to become involved to help, rather than simply shaking one’s head and sending prayers off for God to do it. 

Comment number 4

(C) You said it best.  The Bible is one tool.  However you suggest if it didn’t exist there would be no other tools available.  That’s not correct.  Wisdom on this planet abounds.  In many forms. 

(M) Okay let me restate my thought.  I do think I mentioned other biblical writings of the ancient texts. I believe there are about 400 or so known to be in existence .  But the Bible, is the only one easily available to, the ordinary person’s inquiring mind.  That is does not have a library like the theological schools do.  Ancient texts are not well know in most circles.  And very few libraries put them on their shelves.  

Comment number 5

(C) Good good.  That is why you are who your are and live the life you are inspired to live.  That is why you help those trying to believe again what they learned as children and what they are struggling with as adults.  I appreciate that you have listened to me patiently and tried to answer my questions from your faith and deep beliefs.  

I don’t mean to offend you or your beliefs by rejecting such a possibility for me. To believe only the Jesus story and requirements is simply one way, one possible explanation for me.  I suppose it’s the requirements that stop me quickest.  It excludes.  I can’t fathom this from a God of love.  It is conceivable to me that Jesus on occasion has been misquoted.  

I would expand your last idea: I can believe just as deeply that God’s way has done this over and over with the many peoples of this beautiful earth.  Yes, Jesus story is a way.  But I am convinced to my core that the exact same core ways of how to live a loving live are lived fully and well by those who have never heard of Jesus or the Bible.  Or who have, but found them lacking. The people of this world have found additional places that reflect Truth. 

(M) I am not at all sure that Jesus “excludes.”  If you mean that just staying with what Jesus taught, then yes, it may seem to exclude other sources.  But what I mean is that it is Jesus who puts it all together for me. Jesus helps me to know, have faith,  that God is a God of mercy, grace and love.  

You may, or may not, be aware that the folks who want to claim biblical superiority, those who take the Bible literally, without error — as I mentioned above -- quote the Old Testament and the Apostle Paul, and very little about what Jesus taught and modeled.  

I hope that helps!