Today I am preaching on 'grace'.  I had planned to do 'sin and grace' - how stupid there is too much material in one of those, let alone both, for one service.  But first, a quick reflection from the Lectionary...

Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

A strange mixture!  The ten (plus) commandments, the Psalm we have been pondering for a few days, Paul's introductory words to the Corinthians about the foolishness of the cross, and John's clearance of the Temple - here not in Holy Week but right at the start of Jesus' ministry (whether this is a clever literary device, or whether he knew of a second incident, or whether he just doesn't care about chronology, I leave you to decide).

It is interesting to juxtapose the Exodus and the John... a list of thou shalt/shalt nots and the total chaos in the Temple.  The religious authorities would have claimed they kept the Law to the letter but they had missed the point, it had become a stumbling block (to nick a phrase from the letter of Paul), more important not to have 'mucky money' than to have a space for worship; more important to tithe your mint and rue than to feed people who are hungry, more essential to point out fine details of the law to others than to love them...

I just wonder, if Jesus walked in to my congregation today what it is that would cause him to overturn the table, drive out the zealots.  I wonder who it is he would affirm and who condemn.  I wonder...

Loving God

Lead me from legalism to love

From proof texts to principles

From self-righteousness to right-living

Show me the

Tree trunk

In my eye

Then

(gently please!)

Pull it out

So that I can see

My lovely

Neighbour

Whom

You call me

To love

It's Saturday morning, I'm due out for a day's walking and I've already handled a couple of 'crisis' emails (friends not church), so what readings are in store for me in my state of rush today?  I honestly have not looked until now:

Psalm 19
Exodus 19:16-25
Mark 9:2-8

Well... just read them (this is the ultimate in live blogging!)

Exodus 19 has Moses up a mountain with God, and everyone else forbidden from trying to break through the cloud to see God.  Mark has Jesus up a mountain with Peter, James and John and being transfigured.  because its Mark we get the familiar 'don't tell anyone'  Psalm 19 is still Psalm 19, lovely as ever.

Today I am off out walking.  I will be away from church (though not away from church people, it is after all a Churches Walking Club), I will be away from the laptop, I will be away from the phone.  If not impossible, it will be less easy for the everyday to 'break through', as the NRSV phrases it in the Exodus reading, I will have more opportunity for rest and/or reflection and/or encounter with God.

Perhaps that's what I need to hear today.  Perhaps for me it is the 'come apart for a while' that is the message.

Come away with me

To a quiet place

Shrouded in silence

Hidden from noise

And be

But Lord, my friends needs me

There is work to be done

Calls to make

Emails to send...

Come away with me

To a quiet place

Let nothing break through

The cloud of presence

And be

But Lord, my mind is whirling

There are sermons to prepare

Prayers to pray

Visits to make

Ironing to be done...

Come away with me

To a quiet place

Empty your busy mind

Enter the stillness

And be

But Lord..

Be

But

Be

...

Be

Well, today's readings are a slightly odd mixture:

Psalm 19
Exodus 19:9b-15
Acts 7:30-40

I know it's rather irreverent, but the Exodus reading left me bemused and feeling more than a little mischievous.

The LORD said to Moses, "I will come to you in a thick cloud, so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will believe you from now on." Moses told the LORD what the people had answered, and the LORD said to him, "Go to the people and tell them to spend today and tomorrow purifying themselves for worship. They must wash their clothes and be ready the day after tomorrow. On that day I will come down on Mount Sinai, where all the people can see me.  Mark a boundary around the mountain that the people must not cross, and tell them not to go up the mountain or even get near it. If any of you set foot on it, you are to be put to death; you must either be stoned or shot with arrows, without anyone touching you. This applies to both people and animals; they must be put to death. But when the trumpet is blown, then the people are to go up to the mountain."  Then Moses came down the mountain and told the people to get ready for worship. So they washed their clothes, and Moses told them, "Be ready by the day after tomorrow and don't have sexual intercourse in the meantime."

Exodus 19: 9b-15 GNB

It is the closing sentence that struck me: "Be ready by the day after tomorrow and don't have sexual intercourse in the meantime."

The NRSV renders it thus:  ‘Prepare for the third day; do not go near a woman.’

The KJV thus: 'Be ready against the third day: come not at your wives.'

The NIV thus:'Prepare yourselves for the third day. Abstain from sexual relations.'

It appealed to my sense of mischief, because I could envisage some old-style hell-fire preacher choosing this as his text.  In the GNB choice of words, no sex in 'the meantime' carries a whole heap of potential misappropriation following on from my recent sermon series on 'active waiting' as 'life in the meantime'.  As you can, those readers who've known me longest, I am still sat firmly on the 'silly settee'

But actually, when I be a teeny bit more serious, I am left with the fact that actually, there was no way Moses or anyone else could prove categorically that anyone other than themselves had obeyed this command, short of some extremely dodgy behaviour.  There had to be some kind of trust exercises, some kind of acceptance that we have no right to be privy to every part of people's lives, no right to ask certain questions of them.  We have to leave it between them and God.

All of which leads me into the verse or two from the psalm which struck me as I read them this morning:

But who can detect their errors?
Clear me from hidden faults.

Psalm 19:12

This is not talking about wilful disobedience to some (arbitrary) set of rules, it is about self-awareness and its limits.  This is not about me concealing my misdeeds from other people, but about being unaware of my shortcomings.  It reminds me that, no matter how obedient I am to the rules I have chosen to live by, I am not thereby made perfect or free from sin.  It reminds me that the transforming work of Christ in me is, temporally, if not theologically, incomplete.  It reminds me that I am, at best, 'work in progress'.

God of Sinai

Unapproachable

Untouchable

Issuing frightening words

Who can ever measure up?

Who can be truly clean?

Who can be properly free of the taint of sin?

If I confess the sins I know of,

The things I have done or failed to do

The attitudes I have cultivated or failed to cultivate,

I still fall short

Because my self knowledge in partial

I may think to lowly or too highly of myself

I may be unaware (blissfully?) of the way others see me

I may be ignorant of the consequences of this word or that action

My hidden faults

The 'unknown unknowns' of my imperfection

How can I confess what I do not know?

How can I be forgiven for what I cannot name?

Yet you forgive

You make me shiny and new

You give me umptieth chances

Not merely to do right and eschew wrong

Not simply to be good and avoid evil

But to grow

To grow -

In knowledge of who I am

In Christ

And what I called to be

With Christ

As your Spirit breathes life,

Abundant life,

Fulfilled and fulfilling life

Into my lungs.

A little later posting today, have been out enjoying some ministerial privilege as a PAM mentor, meeting with the PAM entrusted to my, woefuilly inadequate, care.

Today's readings:

Psalm 19
Exodus 19:1-9a
1 Peter 2:4-10

Each of these is, I think, quite well known, and each is rich in metaphor and symbol - the comparison of the sun with an athlete, God with a mother eagle, believers with the stone blocks from which a building is constructed.  Each of them combines near poetry with some stern statements, each of them combine wonder with awe.

The 1 Peter is where I want to go today, partly because our Thursday afternoon Bible study group has spent some time reflecting on this letter, and partly because there are verses in it that confuse me...

Come to the Lord, the living stone rejected by people as worthless but chosen by God as valuable.
Come as living stones, and let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple, where you will serve as holy priests to offer spiritual and acceptable sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ.
For the scripture says, "I chose a valuable stone, which I am placing as the cornerstone in Zion; and whoever believes in him will never be disappointed."  This stone is of great value for you that believe; but for those who do not believe: "The stone which the builders rejected as worthless turned out to be the most important of all."  And another scripture says, "This is the stone that will make people stumble, the rock that will make them fall." They stumbled because they did not believe in the word; such was God's will for them.  But you are the chosen race, the King's priests, the holy nation, God's own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvelous light.  At one time you were not God's people, but now you are his people; at one time you did not know God's mercy, but now you have received his mercy.

1 Peter 2: 4 - 10 GNB

The bit that puzzles me, and I have never heard anyone attempt to explain is this "This is the stone that will make people stumble, the rock that will make them fall."  I find this more than a tad perplexing... the idea that Jesus Christ is a stumbling block, a means of tripping people up as they endeavour to draw nearer to God.  I find it perplexing because I can only hear it in conjunction with Jesus stern words in Matthew 18 regarding people who put stumbling blocks in the path of the 'little ones'

‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of stumbling-blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling-block comes!

Matthew 18:5 - 7 NRSV

There seems to me no easy way of holding these two together, without some serious mental and theological gymnastics... either being a stumbling block to another is a bad thing or it's not; either God predestined some people to unbelief, and that's somehow OK, or God did not.  I cannot make much sense of this.  Maybe some more spiritual or more theologically equipped reader can tell me how it all hangs together within the context of a belief in a God who is love (e.g. 1 John 4), who does not want any to be lost (2 Peter 3:9), and who entered our world with the purpose not of condemnation but salvation of the whole cosmos (John 3:16-17).

Twice in the past I have posted the hymn/poem stumbling blocks and stepping stones, so I won't repeat it  (but you can find it here and here).  I like the idea of transforming the things that make us stumble into stepping stones to new understanding, new believing, new ways of living and being. 

Might it just be, that when we feel that Jesus trips us up, it is because we have failed to notice the rut in the road or the tree trunk lying across it or the precipice for which we are headed?  I don't know.  I still don't 'get' the idea of Jesus causing people to stumble, of wilfully tripping them up.

Puzzled, God, I'm puzzled:

I don't understand these words

Canonised as inspired by you.

I don't understand how or why

Jesus becomes a stumbling block

An obstacle to understanding.

I don't mind being puzzled,

Don't mind being pulled up short and made to think

I don't mind the fact that it is beyond my intellect

To understand what it is that you are saying

I don't mind that it's all beyond me

But

I can't see how

You

Who are love

Whose purpose in incarnation

Was to redeem and restore

All things

Might trip us up in our quest for you

Might it be

That we are walking backwards,

Looking the wrong way,

And collide with you,

Lose our balance

And fall over?

Might it be

That once we have stumbled

You reach down

Take our muddy hand

Lift us up

Clean our grazed knees

Kiss away the tears from our eyes

Then,

Gently, if firmly,

Redirect our feet in your path?

I'd like to think so, God,

To hope so

To be assured that all is not lost

Nor can be lost

Lead me on,

Lead us on,

Hobbling and limping

Halt and lame

(as a former generation would express it)

Wounded walkers

Seeking to step forward

A day at a time

With you.

Amen.

One of my blogging-buddies, who I have never met in life, but who demonstrates my hunch that there are far more genuine blogs than not, is known online as Perpetua.  Another pseudonymous, but genuine blogger, Archdruid Eileen  observes that today is the festival of SS Perpetua and Felicity.  So a very happy saint's day to P, and thanks to both of you for being the demonstration that the blog world, if sometimes necessarily pseudonymous, is more good than bad, true than false, authentic than fake.