August 4 Lk. 12:13-21, Hos. 11:1-11, Col. 3:1-11
I have long been taken by the remarkable portrait of God in Hosea. Here, we get a picture of God as a confused parent. All the right steps have been followed, but the child is rebellious and determined to make a hash out of life. Anger wells up, as does the desire to punish and even wash one’s hands of the impending disaster, but wipe them off the face of the earth. god relents, no, the divine is better than some human tantrum.Last week Rev. Riley gave me the opportunity to do a grief workshop at Northminster church and another unit on congregational transition as they will be enfolded into a new church.we spoke of the image of God we hold openly and also ones that are more covert. No, the divine frustration emerges not from thwarted power but from love. this is no distant, unfeeling, clockwork God, but one motivated by love. This is the god of connections, of bands of love.(is this swaddling?)
Colossians gives us good reason to see God’s frustration. We are given a vice list and a virtue list. for some reason, we continue to grab at the vice list with both hands and reject the e virtues for the new life.Again notice how the virtue list allows relationships to flourish. today notice how the vice list corrodes relationship and dulls the sense of virute from within, so its posion works from within and without.Let’s look at envy a moment. I understand it as to want someone to lose something they have, because we feel that we should have it we deserve it. It bears relation to greed, that gnawing sense that no sufficiency, no satiation, no satisfaction exists, only the squeal for more, more, more. It seems that the writer equates greed with idolatry, the replacement of God with another deity. Just as in idolatry of old, greed replaces God with human artifacts.we get our word invidious from latin for envy. Avarice of course is latin for greed.the word could also be coveting, as in letting nothing stand in the way of insatiable desires.Dante had the greedy ascending through purgatory with their eyes sewn shut to not covet.If eyes are the mirror of hte soul, they often desire what they see to become personal possession.
Jesus too seems frustrated in Luke. Again, someone asks jesus to become their ally in a private dispute. this time, ti is about an inheritance. we have all probably seen the absolute craxiness that can engulf a family over an inheritance or the reading of a will.My aunt labored for a long time to detail the list for her childrne to distriubte the different good knickknacks she had acqured in later years. the children ignored her details almost completely.Again, Jesus won;t do it, as he seems to wish us to reconcile face to face. Again, he gives some advice about the root fo the is pure, and this time it is the question of possessions leading us away from God.why is the man in the story a fool? Is it that he is successful? I think not. He may be a fool for 3 reasons: One he talks to himself and does not include other relationships, including prayer, into his calculations. Second, he trusts planning too much. the world can be manageable but it is often filled with random events that lay waste to our best-laid plans and carefully plotted projections.third, I love this phrase, “not rich toward God.” With little reason, other than stereotype, our church is seen as a rich church. Our church is blessed with some folks with substantial resources, and many us of live in relative comfort. I do wonder if our comforts have bought us being rich toward God.In the end our possessions are pale substitutes for the restless yearning we have for God. Time to grow away from our toys and welcome the Love at the heart of our universe.
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