7 November 2011

Psalm 80; Neh. 9:1-25; Rev. 18:1-8; Matt. 15:1-20

Worship always includes re-telling the story. When I was a kid, the first prayer I knew by heart was grace at meals, beginning, “God is great, God is good…” Here the worship is characterized by the same beginning. They separate themselves from foreigners among them and weep and mourn over their sins and then they pray beginning with an ascription of greatness to God, He made heaven and earth and all that is in them and He preserves them and all of heaven worships Him. They continue by recalling God’s goodness to their fathers, remembering all He has promised and His faithfulness to keep those promises in spite of the unfaithfulness of the nations. He has been true to His covenant even though they have not. Our worship is the same, we confess we have not loved Him with all our heart and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves, the two commandments Jesus gave us, and then we confess in our Eucharistic prayer that He has been faithful to us in sending us His Son who died for us that we might be forgiven and rose that we might share in eternal life.

Can you imagine anything Jesus cared about less than, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?" It was never His intention to curry favor with anyone on earth, so why did the disciples think He would care that He offended the Pharisees? We are not to be respecters of persons, we need to tell the truth about ourselves and others who would speak for the Lord, whether it offends them or not. We are witnesses to Him in all things and we often focus on the wrong things when we think about sin. We must not be afraid of confessing our sin or having the Holy Spirit bring them to our hearts and minds, our objective must be to be the righteousness of God and that only happens when we deal honestly with sin. The law can be a barrier to that aim by causing us to focus on external observance rather than inward things.

John is shown the demise of the great city of Babylon. It would have been difficult to imagine such a wondrous city no longer existing, as difficult as it would be today for us to imagine New York, London, Paris, or Moscow falling to ruins. The reality is that Babylon certainly did lose its place among the great cities of the world and in the end, all things will cease to have their allure. That which captivates a world broken by sin will lose its power to seduce when the glory of the unspoiled new creation is seen. We cannot imagine what is to come as its wonder and splendor will outstrip anything we have ever known. We know only the fallen world we have created from God’s glorious creation and we are in love with it, can we imagine true beauty? Sin has not completely destroyed God’s work and yet it has marred it beyond hope of restoration.