A tale of two scoundrels

The first rule of telling an effective story is knowing your audience. Luke says that Jesus is telling this well-known story to His disciples – but the audience Jesus is really talking to is actually not the group of disciples, but the Jewish leadership who are listening in, waiting for the opportunity to condemn Jesus for insulting the religious leadership.

In the story, the manager has been incompetent. His job was to invest his rich bosses’ money and deliver a sizeable return, driving a hard bargain with his suppliers. Clearly, he wasn’t even clever enough to disguise his poor performance, and when he is found out, he looks to buy himself friends for after he will inevitably get sacked. He makes a deal with the debtors. (I wonder if they intend to keep their part of the bargain?)

Again, he is found out. He is summoned to account for his actions – but is astounded when instead of receiving punishment, he is praised for his initiative. His boss has himself achieved his riches through underhand methods, and recognises a fellow thief. The manager breathes a sigh of relief – but doesn’t realise that he is now beholden for ever with the threat of his dishonesty being revealed unless he does whatever he is told. Blackmail on the cards if he ever doesn’t do what his master wants. He’s on the slippery slope and there’s no way back. And through complying with his dodgy dealing, the debtors also become accessories after the fact – they can be blackmailed and their lies made public at any time.

The stories Jesus tells are usually metaphorical, and this is no exception. His hearers – including the Pharisees – know what He is really saying. In the story, the rich man is the Satan; the unfaithful manager is a Pharisee; and the debtors are the people the religious authorities capture into the net of their corruption. The vehicle the Satan uses to ensnare them all is greed. Their love of money blinds them to the sinfulness of their actions.

‘…make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes…’ says Jesus with a touch of sarcasm – the eternal home being Hell. Or choose truth – and live in His Kingdom.

I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief…

Paul doesn’t try to justify his previous actions – blasphemer, persecutor, man of violence. He merely asserts that is deeds were performed out of ignorance of the truth of the incarnation of God’s only Son, Jesus, the promised Christ. Once he met with Jesus on the Damascus Road, he now knows that truth – and in accepting the Christ, through grace, his violent sinful past is left at the foot of the Cross.

Two questions, then. Is ignorance of the Law an excuse for the things people have done? In secular common law, the answer is no. The principle is ‘ignorantia juris non excusat’ – ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse.’

This is reflected in the Old Testament: Leviticus 5:17: “And if any one sin, and do any of the things which Jehovah hath commanded not to be done; though he knew it not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity

And in the New Testament: Romans 1:18-20 provides a foundational text for this doctrine: “… since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
Paul admits he should have known better, but it took the dramatic Damascus Road experience to convict him.

There is no excuse, he says – God is visible in all creation, and we know it if we simply look around us. This is called ‘natural law’. Encyclopaedia Brittanica: ‘Natural law is a philosophical concept that refers to a system of right or justice believed to be morally universal and inherent to human nature, rather than established by societal rules or positive law.’ In other words, we know right from wrong. We don’t have to be told.

This is different to ‘positivist law’ – a set of rules laid down by an authority (religious or secular) which have no integral moral base and are accepted by the society they lead whether just or unjust.

Paul realised that positivist obedience to the human-derived interpretation of the Commandments will never result in salvation. He became aware that he had sinned and was called to repent and ask forgiveness. Like him, we know that the gift of freedom comes only through Christ and the Cross He climbs. The past is past. We walk away from the tomb into freedom. Every time we fail. But then we are given the opportunity to start again.

The second question is more difficult. So, if you are not ‘ignorant’ any longer, if you know the truth but continue to sin, what are the consequences? Are you refusing the free gift of Grace? And if you refuse it, what happens? Dramatic as literary depictions of the fiery furnace of hell might be, I don’t think they describe the reality. Instead, I believe that hell is the consequence of you choosing to be locked out of God’s love, for eternity – finally knowing the truth and realising it’s too late to change your mind. You had your opportunities – many opportunities – in your earthly life. It didn’t matter what you had been, said or done – like Paul, you were given the chance to repent. You didn’t.

er… can I just keep my stamp collection?

No.

Looking for a video for this week’s meditation, I found lots of versions. Most of them were missing a verse. Guess which.

Yup. You got it. The one that begins ‘Take my Silver and my Gold…’

The hymn ‘Take my life’ may possibly be the most difficult in the Hymn book to sing with sincerity. Just look again at what we are asking.

Take my life,
Take my hands,
Take my feet,
Take my voice,
Take my lips,
Take my silver and my gold,
Take my intellect,
Take my will,
Take my heart,
Take my love,
Take myself.

You will notice there are no exclusions. Take my everything, we ask.

Every single thing I am.

So, if we truly offer Him everything, does that leave us with nothing? Quite the opposite. When we give our life to Jesus, it includes the bad bits as well as the good bits. And it is given back to us, sparkling clean and pure. At no cost to ourselves other than a promise to now take on the role of being the body of Christ on Earth, in all we do and say.

And yes, we will find that to be an impossible challenge – but one to which we aspire, with heart and mind and soul (and all the others mentioned above). We miss the mark. Often. Fortunately, and blessedly, we can always sing that hymn again. The Lord will never tire to hear it and respond in unending sacrificial love.

You’re invited to a banquet. There will be people you know, people you don’t. Some will be ViPs – some personal friends of the host; there will be those invited for protocol reasons; some out of gratitude for past deeds. You don’t feel comfortable – you feel you don’t deserve to be there at all. So you want to make a good impression and not embarrass yourself by making a faux pas (or several of them), so you Google ‘Banquet etiquette’, and there are pages and pages of advice (Google returned 17,800 hits), ranging from ‘don’t start eating before the host’ through ‘don’t drink the soup as if it were in a glass’ to ‘don’t wear white to a wedding’ and ‘Don’t move the place cards around so you can sit with people you like’. (More on this last one later)

I know someone who would like to add at least one addition for a serve-yourself buffet – ‘If you’re a carnivore, don’t pig out on the veggie option because it looks tasty and interesting before the actual vegetarians have a chance to grab something – if there’s actually going to be any left’’. (This was spoken from experience).

When Jesus was invited to the Pharisee leader’s house (in itself a significant event, demonstrating that Jesus was taken seriously, not ignored as an uneducated itinerant preacher from the sticks), he sees a game of musical chairs taking place. Local dignitaries are jostling for position to be recognised as significant figures in the hierarchy, and want to be seen at the top table next to the host. They consider themselves more important than the rest of the hoi polloi. We all know people like that. We see them on the 6 o’clock news every evening.

In their self-importance, they think they deserve the best seat at the table and are prepared to elbow their way to their objective. This is true to their belief that they will always enjoy the Executive seats wherever they travel. Not just at the banquet set before them at the Pharisees house, but at the supper at God’s right hand. As the song said, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way, and they consider that they are entitled to be served first.

When they get there they will expect a seating plan with their name in Copperplate lettering, next to their equally ‘important’ peers. But instead they are just as likely to be placed next to me. Or You. Or any one of the millions of others of disciples. The heavenly banquet has only one rule of etiquette – That you accept Jesus , the Christ, as Saviour and Redeemer. And then your place and theirs is at the head of His table, alongside Him.

You know and He knows you don’t ‘deserve’ to be. But He loves you anyway. So your table’s waiting. Enjoy the feast.

Tick-in-the-box religion or love-in-action?

For the most part, the Epistle to the Hebrews does more or less what it says on the tin – but it isn’t addressed to every Israelite, only those who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah. In order for them to gain a deeper insight into their new faith, it explains the doctrinal difference between the Old and New Covenants, and assumes a knowledge of the former on which to base the Christian understanding of God’s relationship with His people. It has been suggested (slightly tongue in cheek, but quite accurately), that the Book of Hebrews was written by a Hebrew to other Hebrews telling the Hebrews to stop acting like Hebrews. It rejects ‘religion’ in its discussion of faith and salvation – that gift comes through grace alone. In today’s readings, it talks about two mountains.

Sinai represents the unapproachable Old Covenant Mountain, on which God gives to Moses the series of laws by which Israel is commanded to live. But it shows that it is demonstrably impossible to live by the law in itself and thus achieve salvation – humans, however pious, are still subject to sin and tremble with fear as they realise the power of the untouchable and unclimbable mountain.

Instead, through Christ, the mountain we are offered is Zion – The New Covenant home, established through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, characterised by the internalization of God’s laws and obedience to the simple commandment to love God and our neighbour as we are loved through Christ.

Luke’s story of the healing of the crippled woman shows the significance of this difference in action. The leader of the synagogue wants to get a tick in the box; Jesus wants to heal. That isn’t to say the Priest is being malevolent – probably, he sincerely feels that Jesus is committing a rebellious – if not even blasphemous – act, that risks undermining his authority and position in the social hierarchy. He is only being true to his belief in the Mosaic Law as the foundation of Jewish society. Unfortunately, that belief has in itself become an idol, an object of worship, a closed-mind barrier to the truth. He can’t – won’t – hear Jesus. His hypocritical behaviour goes back to those Israelites in the foothills of Sinai who persuaded Aaron to make a metal image of a calf for their worship, causing Moses to shatter the stone tablets holding the commandments which God had given him. Through the ages, the story is the same – people want a god of their own design, with empty ‘religious’ rituals they can perform and then get on with their life, rather than the simple (but at the same time difficult) command to put love into action – a life not of religious prestige, but continuous humble service.

A human-designed religion doesn’t work in achieving salvation. Human nature and human sin renders it impossible. Salvation does not ever come through religious practice – it comes through Christ, the only sinless one, whose sacrifice is given as a free gift in love, to those who can’t help themselves. All He asks is that we are open to respond to His word in penitence and faith, and then His amazing Grace lifts us to the Mountain peak from which we go forth as Christ’s body to heal a broken world.

Three readings from scripture – and none of them really suitable for a recruitment poster for Christianity… …just one offering a promise that despite suffering and torture, there will be what has been cynically called ‘Pie in the Sky when you Die’. Not exactly evidence that would stand up in a court of law.

Isaiah says that Israel has been given a beautiful vineyard, but has turned it into a bloodstained wasteland, the consequences of which will be exile. They didn’t learn then – apparently they still haven’t. Neither, to their shame, has the rest of the world.

The writer to the Hebrews gives examples of the potential persecution to be experienced when people choose to live by faith – and that their reward will not be of this world, but when we eventually take our place in the heavenly kingdom. That faith will be tested to the limit, but it will be the only way to survival.

Jesus warns the people that they are ignoring the signs of impending conflict and division, in which families will be torn apart. They consider themselves so clever in wordly knowledge but fail to see the wider picture. The result will be personal disaster.

We look at the world in which we live today, recognise all these situations, and feel increasingly helpless in the face of endless violence and conflict. But we are not. The call from the writer to the Hebrews is a call to faith, and we are challenged to choose to comply.

In faith, we give thanks for the beauty of the vineyard, and accept our responsibility to speak out against those who would destroy it.  

In faith, we look to Jesus and choose to follow Him despite the possible consequence and disturbance of our well-being. We refuse to allow sincere difference of opinion to degrade into prejudice or violence.

In faith, we give thanks for those who have gone before and whose faith inspires us to follow their example.

And most importantly, we ask that our faith is strengthened in the power of the Spirit when it is tested – and that we will have the courage to live as the Body of Christ, who alone offers life.