Refreshment Rocks

Water from the rock! A life-saving intervention by God in history, or a sign that there can be miraculous refreshment even in the driest stretches of life's journey? It could be both of course, but the point is that we can be sceptical about miracles in ancient history without losing the meaning of the story.

 

What does need to be credible, though, is the hope that God will indeed provide refreshment. Perhaps even more important is the need to go beyond scripture and assert that God was not merely interested in giving life-saving refreshment to those people at that time, but to all who cry out in need.

 

I nearly wrote 'cry out to him', but held back for two reasons. The first was that I baulked at gender-specific pronouns, and will try all sorts of grammatical tricks to avoid them. The second was that so much desperate need is felt by people who have no real idea that there is a God to call on.

 

In 1st Corinthians 10, St. Paul writes that the rock was Christ. The nomads in the desert had no idea of that, of course, which means that large numbers of people in today's world really do have something in common with them. Throughout history, perhaps even within the Church, Christ has often been present as or in the unrecognised stranger.

 

Unrecognised partly because he empties himself of his glory in order to serve us. Within the church, we are used to the thought that his life is poured into bread and wine for us. Elsewhere, he is recognisable in his works.

Our Dedication

One hundred and eighteen years ago this week, All Souls' was dedicated as a house of prayer. Today, we thank God for all our blessings and ask that those who seek God here may find God. That is the starting point of our life as a church. For part of the continuation, it is worth reading Christian Aid's September Reflection.

'Everywhere we look in the world at the present time, we seem to see conflict - local, national and international. From the crisis in Gaza to the horror sweeping across northern Iraq and the tragedy that is Syria, the Middle East is engulfed in conflict and the humanitarian situation is grim, with the poorest and most vulnerable suffering the most as always. 

'In these difficult days, the Epistle readings for September are a salutary reminder of the ways in which Paul urges the young churches to live together and address their differences. 

'He reminds us that 'Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law' (Romans 13:10). And he offers challenging words on judgement and reconciliation, even in times of trouble. For in war, justice is the first casualty - and without justice, there can be no true peace...'

For the remainder of this reflection, please visit: 

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/resources/churches/reflections/reflections.aspx 

Fulfilling the Law

Romans 13.8-14, Matthew 18.15-20

St. Paul, like Rabbi Gamaliel, simplifies the Law by subsuming what are sometimes known as the ‘ethical commandments’ under a general instruction to love one another, and adding that love is the fulfilling of the law. It is attractive partly because of its simplicity, partly because it is a positive instruction rather than a series of bad deeds to avoid, and partly because love is such an obviously desirable virtue. It reaches the parts of life that other commandments can’t reach.

Today’s gospel reading comes in from a different angle. Talking about how to deal with sin in the community—specifically, someone who sins against you. There’s a graded list of procedures for reconciliation, starting with a personal conversation and culminating in an appeal to the whole church. If it all fails, the last resort is to treat the offending party like ‘a gentile or a tax-collector’.

The last resort is the most puzzling. It speaks volumes about the setting in which the first gospel was assembled and taken as authoritative, and about the background of early Christianity. Essentially, gentiles and tax-collectors are those who don’t belong, agents of a foreign power, or both.

There have always been parts of the church which have understood this as St. Matthew might have meant it: in the end, there are some people who must be excluded, perhaps even ostracized. It’s at this point that I remind myself how Jesus treated gentiles and tax collectors, and that we are called to be Christ-like. About 50% of the population of Scotland will need that inspiration a few weeks from now.

Knowing God

Exodus 3.1-15, Psalm 105, Romans 12.9-21, Matthew 16.21-28

How does God become known to us? The story of Moses and the burning bush suggests that first hand experience would be ideal, along with a family recommendation. God speaks directly to Moses from the bush, and introduces himself  as the God of Moses’ ancestors. When Moses mentions the problem of how to identify God to a third party, he is given the cryptic ‘I am that I am’.

Classical Hebrew has only two tenses: the perfect, indicating completed action, and the imperfect. Consequently, God’s name has sometimes been translated as ‘I will be what (or who) I will be’ - an indication, perhaps, of a God who can’t be pinned down and labelled.

The same risky dynamism is expressed in Jesus’ famously worrying saying about losing ones lives in the effort to save it. Life, like God, cannot be pinned down and labelled: it can only be lived, and living always carries some degree of risk. There is, perhaps, a fear that using one’s life might mean ‘using it up’, but this is the point of the other half of the saying: it’s only in using our lives that we actually have life.

The greatest risks we might face, and which are faced by Christians and others, involve direct threats to life. In the face of the ultimate danger, St. Paul urges the Christians in Rome not to repay evil for evil or to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. Only by doing so is the life of God made known.