Faithful in Little

Faithful in Little

September 22, 2013

Old Testament – Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

This lament of Jeremiah over Judah captures the prophet’s pathos with intensity similar to the narratives like Jeremiah 32: 1-44. The rhythms of the poetry keep pace with the anguish of God and the human community of Jeruslam.

The speaker, God,  through the prophet Jeremiah shares the strong pathos that comes with the people’s failings and plight.

The people asks whether there is a balm in Gilead, a place known for the tree that made a soothing ointment, a balm.  The old gospel song begins with this Jeremiah text but answers the question affirmatively “There is a balm in Gilead”

Page 375 in your Hymnal starts like this:  There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

Sometimes we feel discouraged and think our work’s in vain; but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.

Psalm 4

Answer me when I call to you,
    my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress;
    have mercy on me and hear my prayer.

² How long will you people turn my glory into shame?
    How long will you love delusions and seek false gods^[b]?^[c]
3 Know that the Lord has set apart his faithful servant for himself;
    the Lord hears when I call to him.

⁴ Tremble and^[d] do not sin;
    when you are on your beds,
    search your hearts and be silent.
⁵ Offer the sacrifices of the righteous
    and trust in the Lord.

⁶ Many, Lord, are asking, “Who will bring us prosperity?”
    Let the light of your face shine on us.
⁷ Fill my heart with joy
    when their grain and new wine abound.

⁸ In peace I will lie down and sleep,
    for you alone, Lord,
    make me dwell in safety.

Things to remember from this psalm today:

Have mercy on me and hear my prayer….

The Lord hears when I call to Him.

Trust in the Lord

 Let the light of your face shine on us.
⁷ Fill my heart with joy

⁸ In peace I will lie down and sleep,
    for you alone, Lord,
    make me dwell in safety.

 

Epistle I Timothy 2:1-7

The Christian Community of Timothy’s time was persecuted for proclaiming the new revelation of God in Christ Jesus.  They were not an accepted part of the social fabric in Gentile or Jewish communities.

How much easier it would have been, under the threat of persecution, to withdraw from society to live a “quiet and peaceable” life! 

Yet they desired the opposite.  They wanted to live fully within their world in order to fulfill the proclamation of God’s radical desire of salvation for all and Christ Jesus accomplishment of that Salvation through giving himself as ransom for all.

There is one God; There is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all.

Perhaps we could consider salvation as a journey toward wholeness through the experience of knowing God, rather than assumption of correct doctrine, catechism, or intellectual belief.

Gospel Luke 16: 1-13

The parable presents as the model for our faith, someone whose life is the complete opposite of everything Christ ever taught.

Jesus weaves a story in which the main character is a shyster – a lazy, conniving, self-centered manager of someone else’s treasure.

He is out for personal gain, to save his own skin.  We listeners lean forward to the end because we want to see this scoundrel get what is coming to him, and when the master finally speaks, we are shocked.

Here is another way to look at this parable.

Among those in the crowd to whom Jesus  addresses this parable are the Pharisees, whom Luke’ s narrator characterizes as “lovers of money” (v.14).

Leaders of the chosen people, keepers of the treasures of God, they were like the dishonest steward.

They had lost their vision of who God had called them to be.  They had traded their call to be God’s people to become servant of the treasures of the present day.  Controlled by wealth, by money, even complacency, they had blended into society and lost their vision.

To these Jesus says, to paraphrase verse 13, “ You can either serve this present age and love its treasures, or you can love God and serve him in this present age.  But you cannot do both.  One leads to death. The other leads to life.

The parable warns that the children have lost that eternal perspective of who God is and who we are in relationship to God.  Too easily we separate life as it is now from life in the future kingdom.

Another way to look at this parable is this:

Jesus is somewhat confounding here, but not because he is giving a wholehearted endorsement of the wealthy and their managers.  Jesus goes on to imply that the master’s wealth was “filthy” in the first place, and we know from other passages that all wealth presents some sort of difficulty in Jesus’ eyes.

One instance was His statement that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:25).

True to Jesus’ point, it does seem that the manager had a hard time behaving morally in the first place. He was so accustomed  to money and possessions he was not about to consider other options….

Like finding another line of employment or asking a friend for a loan or a gift, the manager was pulled down a slippery slope upon which one dishonest deed followed another.  In his mind he could not do without wealth.

Jesus does not doubt the power of wealth or the wealthy to alter the world – for good or for ill.  Certainly , he asked the disciples to drop what they were doing immediately and follow him, and we know at least one well-to-do person walked away from him sorrowfully when told that to follow Jesus would mean to give up everything and come away.

We have to imagine there were others.  Still as a good Jew, Jesus would have known that Deuteronomy 15 did not demonize wealth but made the wealthy morally obligated to help the less fortunate.

 

Moreover, in Luke 12 Jesus calls the wealthy not to burn their money to cinders but to be “rich toward God” instead of storing up “treasures for themselves” (v.21); a wealthy man being tormented in Hades because he did not use all of his “good things” to help Lazarus the beggar, to whom poverty had brought “nothing but evil.” (V.25)

Today we are far from poverty.  We all have stuff and money or access to money to do the things that we want.  Its ok to have money and things. God just doesn’t want things and money having us.

The bible points out to us that even though we may fail at times we need to stop and Be Still and know that God is God. All of the material blessings we have are blessings from God.  We just cannot let these blessings consume us so much that we allow it to come between our relationship with God. We must be faithful in little