9 June 2010
Psalm 72; Eccles. 9:11-18; Gal. 5:1-15; Matt. 16:1-12

The book, The Road Less Travelled, begins with a simple sentence, Life is difficult. Solomon says it isn’t just difficult, it isn’t fair and it isn’t logical. You can’t figure it out because it doesn’t work the way it is supposed to work, there is a problem with the system so the race isn’t always won by the swift, intelligent people aren’t always the richest or most successful people, etc. We know the answers to what is wrong with the world but we don’t always like them because they don’t favor us, sin is the answer to all the ills of the world. Sin means those who cheat sometimes win instead of the best, it also helps us to understand the values of the world being out of whack. Why should someone who can hit or throw a ball with accuracy make millions while one who helps feed the homeless has little? We can’t change the world but we can allow God to change us and that is a start.

Sometimes the disciples must have felt like utter imbeciles when Jesus spoke to them. You have to believe that the Pharisees and the disciples wanted to know what was the “sign of Jonah” of which Jesus spoke, no one would have believed that it meant that he would rise from the dead after three days. When he spoke to them in the boat of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees they were completely confused, thinking He meant something about not having any bread, in spite of the fact that He had just miraculously provided bread for the multitude. The yeast is that corruption that breaks down the dough and causes it to rise and expand, each year they had to make a sweep of their homes to rid themselves of the old yeast that had fermented and start all over at the Passover. Jesus’ warning was to not let them be corrupted by the teaching of the experts in the law who had made everything complicated rather than teaching on grace inherent in the law, God’s desire to be in covenant and to forgive sins. Paul would certainly come to know the influence of the yeast of the Pharisees.

Circumcision is the mark of the old covenant, the sign to God and to others that you have chosen a particular way of life for yourself and when you choose that life, when you choose to enter through that door, you are liable for all the law and therefore the penalty of the law. In Jesus, the cross is the sign of the covenant, God’s sacrificial love for us to pay the penalty for us by fulfilling the law and yet accepting the penalty for sin, our sin. If we take the obligations of the law, we set aside the forgiveness of Christ, we take it upon ourselves to keep the law for our own righteousness. In accepting His sacrifice we make confession that we can’t do it ourselves but we recognize that He has and His sacrifice of Himself once offered is sufficient in the eyes of God for the sins of the entire world. Paul warns, however, that we are not saved in order to live lives of self-indulgence but rather lives of Christ-indulgence and other-indulgence, we are free to live completely for His sake and His glory and we are His alone, not beholden to any other. We have the command to be love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves and we have the right to not be hypocrites, but to confess that we are forgiven sinners, making no pretense to a righteousness of our own.

Blessed be the Lord, the God,
who alone does wondrous things.
Blessed be his glorious name for ever;
may his glory fill the whole earth. Amen and Amen.