+ ‘No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness’
What is going on here? St Paul has been unleashed on us, in the second reading, at his most obscure. Why do we have the readings we do?
Most churches in the world use a three year lectionary, or series of readings. In Year A, as we are, you get Matthew’s Gospel, in Year B, Mark and in Year C Luke. Each gospel is read through almost completely, and John is fitted in in Eastertide and to supplement the short Mark. So if you are at Church each Sunday over three years you hear almost all the words of the gospels. Then in the second reading, over three years, you get most of what is in the letters of Paul and the other NT letters, hence the second reading is sometimes called the Epistle. Occasionally Acts and Revelation are used, especially in Eastertide. We also get selections from the Old Testament chosen to connect to what is in each Sunday’s gospel – have you noticed that? Finally, also from the Old Testament each Sunday is also given a psalm, which we sing, and over three years most of the 150 psalms are sung.
That’s a lot of Scripture. In Church on Sunday over three years we hear most of the New Testament, most of the psalms and a lot of the Old Testament. This is a real privilege. When I was a monk we heard the Bible read each day in Church and at meals and I found that even if I was distracted much of the time it seemed to seep into my mind. It became part of my way of thinking, my mental furniture. Even without daily personal Bible reading, if we’re here on Sunday the Bible still seeps into your soul. This is a good thing, it gives you a way of looking at the world – a way populated with good Samaritans. It helps you avoid passing by on the other side, it helps you to treat others as you would like to be treated, it reminds you that God is love when love seems to have departed from the world.
You are formed by what you take into your mind, this is physically true as the electronic pulses pass through your brain but it is also morally true. Control of the media to control the population is a staple of dictatorships from Mao’s China to Putin’s Russia. There are more subtle forms of control in our society today, a society where the teaching of Jesus is draining away from the common mind. Our task is to resist this, to steep our minds in the gospel, to share it with others and not be afraid of talking about Jesus.
But what happens when you come to Church and get the strange set of readings we have today. What did you make of them? Let’s end by having a quick look at all of them to see what they mean.
The first lesson has the prophet Jeremiah speaking to the prophet Hananiah in Jerusalem. It is chosen because in the gospel Jesus says ‘whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet receives a prophets reward’. Jeremiah says may Hananiah’s prophecy of peace come true BUT all previous prophets have prophesied doom so I’ll believe it when I see it. Jeremiah knows from God that Jerusalem will soon be destroyed. Jeremiah teaches us not to believe everything we hear, to question what we hear in the media and to listen to the voice of God.
Then we come to the psalm, psalm 13. As so often the psalmist is having a bad time. Depression grips his soul, sorrow pierces his heart night and day, someone’s out to get him, it feels like God has forgotten him. It could be Jesus in his passion speaking or us when times are tough. But then in the midst of his depression comes a ray of light and he feels trust in God’s lovingkindness. The psalms hold up a mirror to our pain, and, if we let the psalms into our mind, in this bleak realism they help us value the little sparks of hope.
Paul knew this darkness and in our second reading he speaks about being controlled by sin, a slave to sin. Putin is a slave to sin, he sent a guided missile into a pizza restaurant, but on a much smaller scale we can get into habits of badness, perhaps hoarding our money or bullying someone to drive them into the darkness the psalmist sings about. In each case the human will is turned to evil, our emotions and passions then come to serve it and make our members, the bits of our body including the tongue that speaks, do evil things. Paul teaches us that evil begins in the human heart and if we are horrified at what Putin is doing, the fightback starts here, in our hearts. If you know your Bible you will know that there are only two choices: good or evil. As Paul says, ‘the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’.
Finally, in the short Gospel passage, Jesus speaks of welcome. How welcoming are we here at Holy Cross? Today, at Portree on the Isle of Skye, in St Columba’s Church, the preacher will be speaking about the Holy Cross welcome statement on the back of your pew sheets. How do we live up to that? But it is actually very simple. Jesus says if you give someone a cup of cold water you will not lose your reward. The gospel is not complicated. Let the Bible form your mind. From these unpromising readings today we have learned: Listen to God; be critical of the siren voices of the world; make sure love not sin reigns in your heart; and act in love. It is as simple as giving a thirsty person a cup of cold water.
