Nothing Can Separate Us
Tuesday, July 8 -- Week of Proper 9
Today's Reading for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 975)
Psalms 5, 6 (morning) 10, 11 (evening)
Numbers 35:1-3, 9-15, 30-34
Romans 8:31-39
Matthew 23:13-26
Romans 8 is among the most exhilarating sections of Paul's writings. He cries out in passionate conviction that nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Paul's experience of God's love through the radical acceptance of Jesus is ultimate for him. Even though Paul was foundering and feeling lost, he realized that God's love was absolute and freely offered. Now, having lived with that love now for many years, he knows that nothing can overcome love -- "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." What a triumphant hymn!
In Paul's writing, he often contrasts this conviction of triumphant love with his former state of bondage. He often described that as living under the law. Paul was trying to earn his own place with God through the anxious business of moralism.
Matthew's gospel reading today is a section of woes directed against the Pharisees and scribes, but you can also hear him speaking in warning to the church. Do not become like the moralists! "Woe to you, blind guides..."
The passage urges us to resist the religious temptation of practicing piety and morality while neglecting "the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith."
Justice is most centrally observed in the Biblical tradition as the defense of the weak and the poor from the oppression of the powerful and wealthy. Mercy is an active compassion that embraces all, especially the sinner and outcast. Faith is trust in God; trust that God's love, justice and mercy will triumph over all.
This afternoon's Psalm 10 gives voice to the tradition:
"Surely, you behold trouble and misery;
you see it and take it into your own hand.
The helpless commit themselves to you,
for you are the helper of orphans.
Break the power of the wicked and evil;
search out their wickedness until you find none.
God is sovereign for ever and ever;
the ungodly shall perish from the land.
God will hear the desire of the humble;
you will strengthen their heart and your ears shall hear,
To give justice to the orphan and oppressed,
so that mere mortals may strike terror no more."
Nothing will be able to separate us from God's love. The oppressors and moralists will not have the last say. Let us put our faith in God to accomplish God's divine justice and mercy through love.
Lowell
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Audio podcast: Listen to an audio podcast of the most recent Morning Reflections from today and the past week. Click the following link: Morning Reflection Podcasts
About Morning Reflections
Morning Reflections is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.
Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html
The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.
Visit our web site at www.stpaulsfay.org
Our Rule of Life
Lowell Grisham, Rector
Audio podcast: Listen to an audio podcast of the most recent Morning Reflections from today and the past week. Click the following link: Morning Reflection Podcasts
About Morning Reflections
Morning Reflections is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.
Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html
The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.
Visit our web site at www.stpaulsfay.org
Our Rule of Life
We aspire to...
worship weekly
pray daily
learn constantly
serve joyfully
live generously.
worship weekly
pray daily
learn constantly
serve joyfully
live generously.
Lowell Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Fayetteville, Arkansas
posted by Lowell @ 7:38 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I think the "woes to yous" apply equally to the blind amoralists who might occupy positions of power in the church as well. It should be a reminder to those on either side of our hotly debated issues that they need to recognize when they are wearing their blinders.
"moralists"
How would you define this?
Last week Archbishop Rowan Williams preached a sermon for the English synod that reflects on some of these questions. Here's a quote, in part:
One of the desert fathers remarked, 'And how very easily we laid aside the yoke of Christ and burdened ourselves with the heavy yoke of self-justification' - There's a phrase to ponder – a heavy yoke of self-justification. That's the law, that's the curse. That's the waterless pit indeed - where we struggle ceaselessly, unrelentingly, to make ourselves more right, and to lay hold upon our future. We lay upon ourselves a heavy yoke, from which only the grace of Jesus Christ can deliver us. In a nutshell, we lay upon ourselves the yoke of desperate seriousness about ourselves.
And Christ's promise is so difficult because it's so simple. 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', as the novelist says, that is what Christ offers to us: receiving it is hard. Naaman of Assyria when he came to Elisha to be healed of his leprosy, could not believe that the answer was easy. There must be something complicated for him to do. There must be some magic to be done. The word alone, 'release' is not enough. We long for, we are in love with the heavy yoke of self justification. Naaman wanted to go away from Elisha, able to say, 'Well I had some part in that – I did the difficult things the prophet asked me'. And Elisha, in the name of God, tells him to do something simple, to immerse himself in the mercy of God. And when Jesus says, "Our yoke is easy and my burden is light", that is what he says, to all of us as individuals, to us as a Synod, to us as a Church, to us as a society, to us as a human world: lay aside the obsession to possess the future, receive the word of promise, here. And that's why, as Jesus himself says in the gospel, that's why only some people really do hear the word easily - only the tax collectors and the sinners.
--
The whole sermon can be accessed at http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1881
Lowell
D'oh! Now why didn't I think of that. Thinking too much, of course.
Should we search for any moral?
It seems like you are saying we shouldn't have a single moral, even discuss morality because that makes me a moralist. Even a personal search might end up with the discovery that there is a Biblical moral.
Haven't you laid down a moral challenge to the Bush Admin in your prior commentary?
Isn't accepting homosexuality a moral? Of course it is.
I agree that a moralist won't keep us from God. But I am not convinced that the moral itself won't.
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