Tuesday: day two
Enjoying the brouhaha around NFL and NCAA about players leaving their NFL contracts to return to college and play a fifth year. Not that my opinion matters, but I don't have an opinion, I'm just watching. Seems like these young men are graduated or graduating seniors who would rather have stayed in college and play another year if the opportunity had been available earlier. My sympathy tends to be with the players, whoever is the least powerful in the scenario.
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Last evening we had supper at the new restaurant across the street, Basil Asian Cuisine. They've spent a heavy investment in renovation, are really welcoming, trying very hard, and our food was good, the sushi dishes were well prepared and attractively presented, my soup was excellent, and the fried calamari was the best I've ever had. I had the grilled squid too, for the first Time, and am not a fan though the sauce was nice.
They offer a huge menu: I don't see how they can afford to carry all the ingredients for all those dishes all the Time, they are offering too much, with prices already fixed on the menu leaving no flexibility, and they have too deep a degree of specialization that might be okay for LA or NYC but that will be difficult to sustain in St Andrews or even the Greater PC area. I hope it works for them.
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September 2: second day of Birthday Month, my treat was small servings of the cake slices we bought at Velvet in Lynn Haven. Treat for tomorrow, lunch with clergy, changed late today when Linda had a call offering her an appointment she had been waiting for, that's at the same Time as the clergy luncheon. We do life together almost without exception these days, so I'll be missing the clergy lunch but maybe stop by Tally-Ho for fried chicken livers after her appointment, and lunch here at home, will be my treat for Day Three. When you get to this age you'll find that it's up to you to make "Life Is Good" true, and that you need to be flexible, because things change moment to moment and if you don't live into it you'll get bus left.
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Here's our gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday:
Matthew 18:15-20
Jesus said, “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
"Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
"Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
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First I'm going to say that this, formal organizing and laying down strict disciplinary rules, including castigating tax collectors and Gentiles, does not sound like what we would expect from Jesus; and, sure enough, Jesus did not say this. This is Matthew or later church leaders needing to provide guidance in a later Time when there was the need to establish policy, procedures, rules for handling disputes among church members. Jesus was an itinerant preacher, the church of Jesus did not exist in Jesus' Time: it's indisputable that Jesus did not say it.
The part about bringing witnesses is from existing Hebrew law.
Scholars of The Jesus Seminar point out that some of the passage is also in Luke, indicating that Matthew took it from sayings gospel Q.
So, if we've "disqualified it as not from Jesus" (!), how to preach it? It's important to remember that no matter what we might say from a scholarship point of view about the text's origins, it nevertheless is holy scripture canonized for us as The Gospel of the Lord.
The church consists of sinful humans, and the words about God binding in heaven what we bind on earth has, over the Christian ages, enabled the church to assert authority that has not always been administered with lovingkindness.
I love the promise that Jesus will be present wherever two or three of us gather in his Name, but the promise that God will do whatever we ask rings hollow to many Christians who, over the ages, have relied on fervent prayer to move God to intervene in human affairs. The theodicy issue comes into play here, the problem of an all powerful and all loving God allowing the suffering that so many humans and other creatures endure in life.
So, preaching the gospel passage presents its challenges. We'll see how our preachers do on Sunday morning. Me, I'm retired from preaching. Besides, anyTime this gospel came up during my active ministry, I probably preached on the Exodus story instead, nomesane?
Exodus 12:1-14
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you.
Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn.
This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.
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Trying always to be mindful that the Old Testament is Heilsgeschichte, holy stories about the relationship between the Jewish people and Adonai Elohim their God over the ages of ages, told from the Jewish perspective, experience, and memory: though God may severely punish Israel's sins at Times, when it comes to Israel versus Israel's enemies, in the long view, God is always on the side of his chosen people the Jews; and someTimes the vengeance that God wreaks on Israel's enemies is difficult for anyone but Jews to appreciate. Here, the story of God's angel killing the eldest in every Egyptian household is an example!
Even so, Life is Good, and
God is Good
all the Time.
RSF&PTL
T90