Jeremiah 31.7-14 After spending several weeks in Isaiah, we get this text from Jeremiah, which echoes much in the second half of Isaiah, namely that God is calling back the exiled people of Israel to be one nation again. God will provide for them, particularly the weak and marginalised, and they will be made whole as a nation.
Psalm 147.12-20 This psalm refers back to the text in Jeremiah, noting that the good fortune and peace being realised under King David is due to the promises of God made to Jacob and his descendants, who make up the twelve tribes of Israel.
Ephesians 1.3-14 The theme in Jeremiah alluding to God's chosen people being part of God's beloved family continues here, noting like the psalm that all good that comes to us originates from God. It refers to Jesus as the one who both reconciles us back with God and also made God’s will known to us. We are inheritors, as adopted children, of God’s grace and mercy, and the reconciliation is intended to spread throughout all people and the rest of creation.
John 1.(1-9), 10-18 The first nine verses set the tone for John, establishing that all beings were spoken into existence by God. It also speaks of the man to whom the Gospel is attributed, explaining that he, like Jesus, is sent from God. In the second half, the text adopts the images of light and family to describe both what Jesus brought into the world (the light that enlightens everyone) and that he was the living expression of God (the Word) in order for us to come to know God intimately.
Ephraim – A son of Joseph, who was a son of Jacob. Ephraim represents one of the two tribes of Israel descended from Joseph; the other is Manasseh. Joseph is the only of Jacob’s sons from whom two of the twelve tribes of Israel are descended.
Light – Of course you know what light is, but it's important to understand why this Gospel uses this imagery to describe God in particular. This text was written last of the four Gospels (near the end of the first century), and it was a period when a religious strain called Gnosticism was gaining popularity. Gnosticism proposes that God is a ‘divine spark’ within the enlightened, but that it is inborn, only in God’s chosen. So the contrast of John's Gospel claiming that God is the ‘light that enlightens everyone’ is a direct challenge to the particularism of Gnostics.
It’s interesting one of John's primary messages is to subvert the idea that God is to be possessed by a particular few, or that God shows favouritism. Consider that, until Jesus came along, the Israelites considered themselves to be particularly favoured by God. Jesus’s mission to reach out to Gentiles, or non-Jews, was one of the more controversial components of his ministry.
The text in Ephesians plays a little bit of a balancing act, still touching on the theme of chosenness, while also establishing that we (meaning all of us) were chosen by God to be part of this family in which God sees us through the eyes of love, rendering our sinfulness impotent.
Another contrast between the themes in Ephesians and John and the themes in Jeremiah and the Psalm is that God's forgiveness, love, or light has nothing to do with the current state of things. In the prophecy and the psalm, the promises of good news is a sign of God's favour. In the latter two texts, God's wide-open forgiveness and decision to relate to all of us in a parental sort of love is the good news.
When we have, through Christ, obtained mercy for our persons, we need not fear but that we shall have suitable and sustainable help for our duties. John Owen
1 As with gladness men of old
did the guiding star behold;
as with joy they hailed its light,
leading onward, beaming bright;
so, most gracious God, may we
evermore be led to thee.
2 As with joyful steps they sped
to that lowly cradle-bed,
there to bend the knee before
him whom heav'n and earth adore;
so may we with willing feet
ever seek thy mercy seat.
3 As they offered gifts most rare
at that cradle rude and bare;
so may we with holy joy,
pure, and free from sin's alloy,
all our costliest treasures bring,
Christ, to thee, our heav'nly King.
4 Holy Jesus, ev'ry day
keep us in the narrow way;
and when earthly things are past,
bring our ransomed souls at last
where they need no star to guide,
where no clouds thy glory hide.
5 In the heav'nly country bright
need they no created light;
thou its light, its joy, its crown,
thou its sun which goes not down;
there forever may we sing
alleluias to our King.
Never was a book so full of incredible sayings – everywhere the sense of mystery dominates; unless you feel that mystery, all becomes prosaic – nothing about God is prosaic. Florence Allahorn
1905: Sometimes God changes the noblest of plans. That was the case with Thomas Barnardo who had intended to be a medical missionary to China but ended up as the founder of homes for poor children.
Born in Ireland in 1845, Barnardo was converted in his teens to a deep faith in Christ, and right away he began working with poor children in Dublin. Hearing missionary Hudson Taylor speak of the China Inland Mission, Barnardo decided to study medicine and then travel to China. While studying at a London hospital he became aware of the urban poor, especially children. Encouraged by some Christian friends, he gave up his plans for China and in 1870 opened the first of what would be called “Dr. Barnardo’s Homes” in London. When he died on September 19, 1905, there were 112 of the homes in Britain, and more than 100,000 children had been rescued from the streets. The homes’ motto was “the ever-open door.”
London was full of orphans and “strays,” children detached from families, and many of these often turned to crime (a story familiar from Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist). The Barnardo homes took in these children, fed them, clothed them, and prepared them for useful occupations. Barnardo owned a sixty-acre rural tract which he used to create a model village for some of the children, building cottages that eventually housed more than a thousand. Collectively his homes were known as the National Association for the Reclamation of Destitute Waif Children (which explains the briefer and more familiar name “Barnardo’s Homes”).
The homes emphasized religious instruction with provision made for two “faith traditions”—the established Church of England and the Nonconformists (Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, and others). As for the children’s physical health, Barnardo found his medical training to be of great use. Barnardo’s is still an active charity in England, the legacy of a man who had a heart for the most vulnerable members of society.
Back before we had portable screens and streaming media, (cue for old guy music) we played with less sophisticated toys. One of my favourite activities was to take a jar out and hunt for glow-worms. Yes they are technically a beetle, but I'm not writing a science piece here.
Part of the fun was running around trying to predict in the darkness where they'd next glow next. The other trick was getting new ones in the jar without letting the others you'd already caught get out. On a good night, I'd go home with a jar full with about a dozen of these acting like a weird sort of living night-light in my room. While my friends were content to pull them apart and smear their phosphorescent juice on their faces like war paint. I loved these thing, I wanted to keep them.
I would do anything I could do to make them feel at home in the jar. I would put little caps full of water in there along some grass or maybe even a flower. I had no idea what they ate, but I figured the blades of lawn I had there would do the trick. But as careful as I was with them, I would wake up in the morning to a jar of mostly motionless bug carcasses. It always bothered me, but not apparently enough to stop me putting them in there.
After dealing with my post-mortem angst for one too many times, my mum explained to me that these were wild animals, not meant to be captured and kept. But I had been a good bug dad I insisted. What more did they need?
What they needed to survive was that thing I couldn't give them, that was freedom. They were made to wander, to cast their glow on other kids, in other people’s back gardens, too. The thing I had to come to terms with was they weren't mine. While I could appreciate them, I couldn't possess them for myself. In doing so, the very thing I claimed to love died and was extinguished.
The urge to hunt them has never completely gone, (admittedly harder to do where I am), but to capture them has. This forty four year old still has a thrill from seeing one on a dark evening. But if I want others to see what thrills me, I have to resist the urge to own it, just rather let other know of the wonder I have seen as well.
Help me be a light-bearer instead of a light-possessor. Amen
First off apologies for these, but here are some answer to the “How many x does it take to change a light bulb?” joke. From a J John piece.
Charismatic: Only 1 - Hands are already in the air.
Pentecostal: 10 - One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.
Presbyterians: None - Lights will go on and off at predestined times.
Roman Catholic: None - Candles only. (Of guaranteed origin of course.)
Baptists: At least 15 - One to change the light bulb, and three committees to approve the change and decide who brings the potato salad and fried chicken.
Episcopalians: 3 - One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks, and one to talk about how much better the old one was.
Mormons: 5 - One man to change the bulb, and four wives to tell him how to do it.
Unitarians: We choose not to make a statement either in favour of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that light bulbs work for you, you are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your light bulb for the next Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.
Methodists: Undetermined - Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or tulip bulb. Bring a bulb of your choice to the Sunday lighting service and a covered dish to pass.
Nazarene: 6 - One woman to replace the bulb while five men review church lighting policy.
Lutherans: None - Lutherans don't believe in change.
Amish: What’s a light bulb?
No comments:
Post a Comment