Reflection by Frances Flatman on next Sunday's Readings:-
Given the present climate of the times in the UK with the Tory selection of a new PM, and the appalling sniping that goes on as MP’s strive to select the ‘best person’, it’s worth our while to look at things from God’s point of view. I am reminded that in answering a query Jesus once remarked that ‘No one is good except God alone’. Our problem is that we like to think that we can sort ourselves out ,and whilst we do bear responsibility for our actions we should never assume that we can ‘do it our-way’. In the end our reliance is all upon the redemption bought by the death of Christ.
I find it fascinating therefore that our Reading from Genesis (18:20-32), harking back to Israel’s prehistoric memories, explores this issue. We have to remember that Abraham (recently Abram and a pagan) is just beginning to explore his relationship with the one God and here we have him cheerfully haggling with the divine as one might in a Souk, gradually bringing the price of an item down as he explores the extent of divine forbearance towards the wickedness of human beings which he created. The to-be-patriarch realises the insufficiency of his ancestor’s patterns of ‘revenge ethics’ which cheerfully slaughtered hundreds of enemies to get their way, and is gropingly finding out that this newly discovered God is a God of infinite mercy. What a pity that it all subsequently got clogged up with so many laws! Although I suspect this more ancient valuation is retained within the work of Prophets and Psalmists. Here, in contrast to all that later accumulation of do’s and dont’s, he meet’s the realisation that God, this God is absolutely faithful to his people, and will meet them precisely in this eternally loving outreach. God, unlike so many of the gods of the Near East, is not to be worshipped or placated with sacrifices, either human or animal but reaches out relationally to his chosen.
This is precisely what we meet over a millenia and more later in the Letter of Paul to the Christians of Colossae in South Western Turkey. (Colossians 2:12-14) Now we know that Greco-Romans, like their forerunners in Palestine, could be a judgemental and litigious lot, resorting to law suits or even the brilliantly illustrative lead curse tablets we meet on so many archaeological sites, imploring the deities to strike with sleeplessness, death, disease or other trials those believed to have offended or stolen from the person who initiated the curse. Paul the Pharisee had come a very long way from his Law based Judaism, but in a curious way has met up with ancient Abraham and is taking that story to its final revelation in the understanding of the human life and death of Christ, God’s Son, with its shattering revelation of our destiny in God.
The English language can be a dull thing in comparison to the Greek of the New Testament which really goes to town to bring out the intimacy, the closeness of our relationship with Jesus our Redeemer in whom, through our Baptisms we are ’co-buried; co raised; with Jesus through our belief in the power of God, who “Raised him from the dead”. We, as the text goes on, are not as the Jerusalem Bible has it, ‘Brought to life’, but are ‘co quickened with Christ’. The juxtaposition of life and death status is truly staggering; as sinners and uncircumcised, former pagans like the Colossians are dead men, but now in Christ, quickened with that self-same power which raised Jesus from the dead, the Law has been overridden. Where previously they were damned and without hope, they are ‘forgiven’, or as the Greek has it, they are now Xarisamenos, from the root of grace. They, we, all sinners are now enfolded in grace. Again, the Greek puts it in beautifully explicit terms, where the Jerusalem Bible simply speaks of the overriding of the Law and the cancelling of any record of our debt to God, the Greek speaks literally of the ‘Wiping of the handwriting against us’, that legal document which could be nailed up in public and which ruined lives and families and was such a common feature in ancient life. There are many glorious passages in the New Testament about the Christ event, but this surely rates amongst the most explicit and beautiful, the story of our redemption in Christ, and where the ancient Jewish journey to redemption was to find its meaning as the believer is taken into a whole new reality.
Luke (11:1-13) gives us a real insight into how this all works with his wonderfully down to earth illustration of the Lord’s Prayer, in which we regularly pray for the coming of God’s kingdom and the forgiveness of our sins. Here a different verb, afes, relating to our human behaviour where neighbour was regularly indebted to neighbour or those more powerful. My guess is that Theophilus, and all those so well versed in the client-patron relationship, knew to their cost precisely what a binding relationship this was and whilst no one could simply throw off this multiplicity of shackles, if he did it meant he was totally without support and doomed to beggary, the duties and obligations it imposed upon high and low alike were never to be escaped. Jesus, by appealing to this understanding speaks of God the Father, the Super-patron who does continually listen to our pleading for help and responds with kindness and superabundant generosity. Other patrons might well give but at a price, calling in favours and obligations years later, as even some very famous men from history found out to their cost. Yet in God, the super-patron Jesus reassures his listeners. There is always a willingness to respond, no strings attached but simply ‘Grace upon grace’.
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