[Propertalk] Proper 22 a 2017 - part 2

[Robert P Morrison]

Part 2

	 What fills me with such sadness is when I heard someone say, “I
was in my twenties, just out of college, and so on, and I discovered
God; or I discovered the Bible; or something like that.” And it
became quite obvious that, no matter how many decades have passed
since then, that person is still living at the place of that
discovery. That person hasn’t grown. 

	 Don’t get me wrong. God may well have brought exactly the right
thought, the right experience, the right nudge for what was happening
in that twenty-year-old’s life – AT THAT TIME. I’m absolutely
convinced that this happens way more often than we may realise. But,
especially when one is dealing with the way in which we and God
interact with one another, if there’s one constant about absolutely
everything in life, it’s that things ALWAYS change, especially the
way we think about and relate to one another. No matter in which
decade of life we happen to be waltzing through right now, I can
guarantee that it’s not the same as how we experienced God and
God’s will a decade or two ago. Nor will it be how we experience God
and God’s will in another decade or two. There IS only one thing
that doesn’t change, and that is that God’s love for you and me,
God’s Presence with you and me, is a certainty which we can take to
the bank. 

	 “The heavens,” whispered the author of the nineteenth Psalm,
“The heavens declare the glory of God,” There must be very few
who’d disagree with that. Even an agnostic or an atheist might well
be overwhelmed with the spectacle of a universe or cosmos seemingly
extending beyond the human imagination. 

	 “The heavens declare the glory of God,” yet the heavens are not
God, simply part of God’s humour and joy declaring itself, and
waiting for us to pick up on the details. The heavens, the universe,
the cosmos – call it what we will – they impinge on our minds and
our imaginations, waiting for them to explode with the realisation
that there’s incredibly much more to God and how God hopes that
we’ll live. 

	 Possibly that’s why the psalm’s author ends “Let the words of
(our) mouth(s) and the meditation(s) of our heart(s) be acceptable in
your sight, O Lord…” We don’t really have the ability to know
enough to understand that what we say, what we do, even what we think
about in the silence of hearts; we don’t even know enough to be able
to say with certainty that our best and highest desires are in line
with what God wants. We simply have to work on this, to search within
ourselves; to listen to what’s being said and see what’s being
done around us; and to be prepared for God to reach us, sometimes to
correct us, to say that that’s NOT what I said.  

 I’M SURE YOU’VE COME ACROSS THE EXPRESSION, “I KNOW YOU THINK
YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU THOUGHT I SAID BUT I'M NOT SURE YOU REALIZE
THAT WHAT YOU HEARD IS NOT WHAT I MEANT.” THAT WAS ALAN GREENSPAN.
OR WAS IT GOD? THEN THAT WAS FOLLOWED UP WITH, “I GUESS I SHOULD
WARN YOU, IF I TURN OUT TO BE PARTICULARLY CLEAR, YOU’VE PROBABLY
MISUNDERSTOOD WHAT I SAID.” 2

	 That might well be God talking too! 

	 And, just for good measure, how about this, “There are errors in
this book. I do not know where they are. If I did they wouldn't be
there. But with close to two hundred thousand words my probabilistic
mind tells me some are wrong.” 3 

	 All of which may be as good a way as any to address the issue of the
content of the first reading, because that’s one of the passages
with which some people choose to beat people up the side of the head. 

	 The whole point of the entire Bible is to demonstrate the Love of
God and to show how our ways can fall behind God’s so much. One of
the problems we and others have with this passage is that we tend to
respond to them with fear, just as the first hearers did. But that’s
to miss the point. 

	 The commandments were given so that people would “fear” God in
the classic sense of understanding God’s greatness and how far
beyond our understanding God is. God never did – nor does God ever
today – want people to go to bed scared spitless about what might
happen if they don’t wake up the morning. Nor does God want us to be
equally terrified when we DO wake up. God was and is simply pointing
out what it takes for society to be regulated in such a way that
absolutely no one is deprived of the possibly of experiencing God’s
love. God wants us to delve behind those commandments. Who ARE our
parents? Who has given of their all to ensure that we’re given the
best possible chance to celebrate life? How can we possibly thank
them?  

	 What IS life, if not the most perfect gift we could be given,
therefore we mustn’t do ANYthing to mess that up – for ANYone,
even if we don’t know that person. We are to BE Love, just as God is
Love, so obviously, that means that we must look constantly to see
what are the needs of everyone. Just as God is constantly making
greater and greater self-revelation to us; just as the universe is
constantly expanding, challenging us to imagine what limitless
experiences there are in it. We grow closer and closer to God through
the way that we continually change our understanding and how we
continually interrelate to everyone. 

	 A commentator on Exodus and the Ten Commandments describes how we
must engage and reengage in how we treat people. It’s a process of
learning and developing, day after day. 

	 “Love your neighbor as yourself” – what does it mean? The
author wrote, “Here is what it means to me. To try to feel inside me
what another human being is feeling. Empathy. Sympathy. Compassion.
  “That feeling is foreshadowed near the beginning of the Bible’s
story. Abraham’s seed are to act in a way that will bring blessing
to all earth’s families. Can we not all take on the role of
Abraham’s seed? Not just Jews. Not just Christians. Not just
Muslims. 

	 “That feeling is expressed in the reason for treating the alien
right: ‘because you know the alien’s soul.’ So we are commanded
to love him or her. The last of the Ten Commandments is: you shall not
covet. So the Decalogue too ends in a command about feeling. And, for
the record, let is not forget how the Ten Commandments begin: ‘I am
the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.’ _They
premise the whole thing on the exodus from Egypt!_” 4 

	 The next time someone says, “The Bible says, and this is what I
believe; it is this on which I base my life, my opinions, my abilities
to make judgements”; when this happens, then we are compelled by OUR
beliefs to say, “What Bible? How old were you when you came to that
conclusion? What’s happened or not happened to you since then?
Because the God who’s always been a part of my life is showing me
that I don’t need to be afraid to go further down the road that I
may not have been aware that it existed just a few months or years
ago. The God who loves me, and to whom I’ve made a commitment,
continues to nudge me to think that those things which were once taken
as absolutes may look completely different today, and will, almost
certainly, be quite different tomorrow.” 

	 As someone suggested this week, “Maybe this is where churches and
other religious institutions step in to offer quiet places of
reflection, spaces in which people can come and lay down the burdens
of their own lives and the lives of others so that they don’t carry
them home alone.” 5 

	NOTES: 

	[1]  _“Flight 1549 Pilot Tells of Terror and Intense Focus”_ by
Michael Wilson, _New York Times, _February 9, 2009, quoted in_ “Why
Doesn’t God Do More to Restrain Evil and Suffering? Part 1”_ By
Randy Alcorn, December 19, 2012 

	http://www.epm.org/blog/2012/Dec/19/restrain-evil-part-1 [1] 

2 ALAN GREENSPAN QUOTES (AUTHOR OF THE AGE OF TURBULENCE) - GOODREADS
[2] HTTPS://WWW.GOODREADS.COM/AUTHOR/QUOTES/1334.ALAN_GREENSPAN [3] 

	3 _“The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World [4]”_ by
Alan Greenspan at site op. cit  

	4 _“The Exodus”_ by Richard Elliott Friedman, © 2017. HarperOne,
an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Pages 215-6. 

	5 _“__Tending to Our Spirits in Times of Tragedy”_ by Kaitlin
Curtice [5] 10-03-2017
http://go.sojo.net/site/R?i=dGLfVDo1fIEFHODmPCnlHA [6] 

	  

Links:
------
[1] http://www.epm.org/blog/2012/Dec/19/restrain-evil-part-1
[2]
http://mail2.spectrum.net/HTTPS://WWW.GOOGLE.COM/URL?SA=T&RCT=J&Q=&ESRC=S&SOURCE=WEB&CD=2&CAD=RJA&UACT=8&VED=0AHUKEWIJMLO42CBWAHUG3WMKHTDSB6GQFGGRMAE&URL=HTTPS%3A%2F%2FWWW.GOODREADS.COM%2FAUTHOR%2FQUOTES%2F1334.ALAN_GREENSPAN&USG=AFQJCNEECL_C9ZLVX3FH0ZNSQSM-DU5F7W
[3]
http://mail2.spectrum.net/HTTPS://WWW.GOODREADS.COM/AUTHOR/QUOTES/1334.ALAN_GREENSPAN
[4] https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1203801
[5] https://sojo.net/biography/kaitlin-curtice
[6] http://go.sojo.net/site/R?i=dGLfVDo1fIEFHODmPCnlHA

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