8th October 2023
Reflection (readings are below)
The Ten Commandments in Godly Play are named as the Ten Good Ways as this comes across as being less dictatorial and more about wise guidance or wisdom. I too renamed my Rule of Life – I am a Franciscan tertiary – My Way of Life. The former felt too rigid, too black and white, and given human frailty, guilt inducing.
Perhaps in all these things, it is not the prescription that is so important as the outcome, the fruits, they deliver. If the Ten Commandments lead us to live in a good way, then they fulfil their purpose what ever their name.
The Ten Commandments – God’s commandments – did introduce the people to a new and better way of living. Their former life had been lived in slavery. They had been not people but property owned by the Egyptian rulers. But God has rescued – released – them from slavery. Now they were God’s people. Where as before they had been subject to the rules of human masters, now they were invited to commit themselves to living according to God’s rules, God’s ways – ways that would ensure their wellbeing and fulfilment. And so far in the story of Exodus, we have heard how God had protected them from the Egyptian army, had provided them with bread and meat – as much as they needed- and with fresh water.
Nevertheless, the people’s experience of encountering God was filled with fear and awe – and within that spectrum, respect. God wasn’t saying that living a good life was easy or effortless, rather that to live life well required focus, dedication, discipline and effort, but that equally it brought its own rewards. This is picked up in Psalm 19. The psalmist reminds us that all of the natural world recognises and in its own way praises God – and we should do likewise. And furthermore that the law of God is something to delight in and stick too because it is good for us. It rewards us with lives of sweet delight!
Paul writing to the Philippians knows and proclaims that there is nothing better in life than knowing Jesus as Lord. Paul is determined to know and follow Jesus as completely and as closely as possible. Nothing is of more value, can bring him greater benefit or joy, than the way of Jesus.
Today’s gospel has a parable that must have made for very uncomfortable listening for the religious authorities of the day. And perhaps therefore we should not be too glib in thinking that the days when the religious leaders – and not just the leaders but those who worked within the system – got God’s message so wrong, have past. I am sure in our hearts we know we in the church have got things wrong, and when in the future we look back, we may be surprised how blinkered we were.
What the owner of the vineyard is asking for, is the harvest that the vines have produced. The harvest God seeks are the fruits of the kingdom – the positives outcomes from living a way of life built upon the corner stone of Jesus’s teachings.
Looking back over the previous chapters of Matthew’s gospel, we have that way shown to us in the Beatitudes. We have the exhortation to be salty, to be a light shining forth from the lamp stand. We are reminded of the enduring value the law and the prophets which can be summed up as “in everything do to others as you would have them do to you”. We are told to love not just our neighbours but our enemies too. We are told not to seek retaliation, not to serve two masters, not to store up wealth. We are told to be not just hearers but doers too! And the fruits we will see can be amazing – the blind see, the lame walk, the dead are raised, and the poor receive good news. The kingdom will be like a tree where every bird has a place to roost. It will be exemplified by flourishing and bounty – five loaves will feed 5000!
Are we as Christians, following in the way of Jesus? Are we seeking to live according to God’s Good Ways? Are we shaping our lives according to the value of the kingdom of God? Are we being generous in returning to God and God’s creation the fruitfulness of the kingdom? Are we seeing lives being changed in ways that amaze us, or are we still seeing lives subject to the unjust rules of human making?
Earlier this week it was reported that in Gaza, soldiers shoot at the legs of protestors, often aiming to shatter their ankle bones. Many inhabitants are to be seen with crutches, having lost the use of their feet. Now we have seen this lack of peace escalate explosively – Lord forgive us.
Of the 2 billion instances of blindness in the world, half are preventable or treatable, and disproportionately more of these cases are in the poorer nations of Africa.
Yet in 2022 it was reported that ‘the ranks of the global ‘ultra high net worth’ (UHNW) individuals swelled by 46,000 last year to a record 218,200 as the world’s richest people benefited from “almost an explosion of wealth” during the recovery from the pandemic.”
In the UK 100,000 households live in temporary accommodation including 130,000 children. The distribution of food parcels by food banks has doubled over the last five years, and some 6.7 million households are affected by fuel poverty.
This year Oxfam reported on their analysis that the richest 1% of Britons hold more wealth than 70 per cent of Britons, while the four richest Britons have more wealth than 20 million Britons”.
It seems as if the workers in the vineyard are still reluctant to hand over the riches of the harvest.
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Then God spoke all these words:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work.
Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.
When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.”
Psalm 19
1 The heavens declare the glory of God, *
and the firmament shows his handiwork.
2 One day tells its tale to another, *
and one night imparts knowledge to another.
3 Although they have no words or language, *
and their voices are not heard,
4 Their sound has gone out into all lands, *
and their message to the ends of the world.
5 In the deep has he set a pavilion for the sun; *
it comes forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber;
it rejoices like a champion to run its course.
6 It goes forth from the uttermost edge of the heavens
and runs about to the end of it again; *
nothing is hidden from its burning heat.
7 The law of the Lord is perfect
and revives the soul; *
the testimony of the Lord is sure
and gives wisdom to the innocent.
8 The statutes of the Lord are just
and rejoice the heart; *
the commandment of the Lord is clear
and gives light to the eyes.
9 The fear of the Lord is clean
and endures for ever; *
the judgments of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.
10 More to be desired are they than gold,
more than much fine gold, *
sweeter far than honey,
than honey in the comb.
11 By them also is your servant enlightened, *
and in keeping them there is great reward.
12 Who can tell how often he offends? *
cleanse me from my secret faults.
13 Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins;
let them not get dominion over me; *
then shall I be whole and sound,
and innocent of a great offence.
14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my
heart be acceptable in your sight, *
O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 21:33-46
Jesus said, “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?
Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realised that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
The Green Tau 