25 October 2010
Psalm 41, 52; Ecclus 19.4-17; Rev 11.1-14; Luke 11.14-26

There are two basic warnings in the Ecclesiasticus passage, don’t gossip and go to the source. We are warned to guard our lips and refrain from repeating what we have heard. Gossip is one of the great temptations in our world and our society thrives on information without respect to whether it is true. In the information age in which we live it is perhaps worse than in the time the writer lived as the gossip can travel further faster than ever before. James was deeply concerned with this sin as it seems to have a way of infecting nearly every church because it infects nearly every Christian. It takes effort and discipline to overcome this tendency, a part of working out our salvation. The second warning is like the first, when we hear that a friend or neighbor has reputedly done or said something we need to go to them and confirm it before we make assumptions. Either way, true or false, this is good practice as it allows them to speak into it if it is false and allows them to repent if true. (Only if we do it by way of query rather than accusation however.)

There are three basic ways of working out who Jesus is: true belief, determining his powers come from elsewhere, or asking for further proof when none is needed. All three of these are present in this story. Some believed, some said it was the power of satan himself working through Jesus and others asked for more signs. Jesus responds only to the ones who attribute His work to Beelzebub (literally the lord of the flies) and He responds logically. Does it make sense for satan to overthrow satan? The expression “finger of God” relates to the Exodus when Pharaoh’s magicians cannot duplicate the plague of gnats and the use this expression to attribute the work not to Moses but to God, they believed and testified. There are only two options Jesus says, you are either with Him or against Him, agnosticism and atheism are alike in the eyes of God.

Nowhere in the Revelation does it say that the two witnesses are Moses and Elijah but that is the traditional interpretation as the authority given to them relates to the ministries of these two men. They may cause drought and bring plagues on the earth, the works these men did in their lives. The law and the prophets testify to Jesus and these men, present at the Transfiguration, represent all the law and the prophets. Their deaths will be a source of comfort to the world as their reign will be part of judgment and yet death is not final, they are resurrected as a sign and then called to heaven yet the world still rejects this sign.

I am like a green olive tree
in the house of God.
I trust in the steadfast love of God
for ever and ever.
I will thank you for ever,
because of what you have done.
In the presence of the faithful
I will proclaim your name, for it is good.