Tagged: child

Hey, bro.

Signpost for Sunday 31 March 2019 (4th Sunday in Lent): Josh 5:9-12; Ps 32; 2 Cor 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3,11b-32.

 Luke 15:12 contains some words I bet most of us hardly notice every time we read or hear this well-known story. Those words are, “So he divided his property between them.”

Here’s what I have never realised before: when the younger son asks for his share of his inheritance, maybe the older son also gets his larger share there and then. If that is the case, then it occurred to me that one of the things that happens in this by now very famous story is that both sons get the money, both sons get lost and both sons are found again.

Let me explain, in a roundabout sort of way. First though, let’s try to imagine we are first century Jews, because that might help us hear what they heard.

As a first century Jew my ears would have pricked up as soon as Yeshua aid, “There was a man who had two sons.” I’m pretty sure I would immediately have thought about the fact that Adam had two sons, Abraham had two sons, Isaac had two sons. And in all those old stores, the younger son comes out better off. Cain got the bad deal, Ishmael got the bad deal, Esau got the bad deal.

But in Yeshua’s story, the younger son is the one who ends up in the pickle. At first, anyway. He’s the spoilt little brother who goes off and squanders his property in dissolute living (Luke 15:13).

When he comes to his himself again (verse 17) we could ask ourselves, who was he before his spell among the piglets? Well, he was the spoilt younger son who could get his own way whenever he wanted. So when he decides to go home, confess his sinfulness, and grovel, maybe he’s just being his old self again, hoping to soften his old man up, then ask for a job.

Whether that’s true or not, he doesn’t need to soften up his dad. His father flings his arms around him, and kisses him; he’s so overjoyed that his son who was lost is found again and home. The family is complete once more.

Now it’s big brother’s turn to get lost. Not quite so literally as little bro did, but equally distressingly for Dad. Big bro won’t join the party and he sulks outside. His beef is not that his younger brother has come home. What gets his goat (almost literally) is the party. He’s never even been given a young kid to barbeque with his mates.

He really lashes out in verse 30. First he disowns his own family: “This son of yours” – not my brother. And This son of yours wasted your money on prostitutes! Hang on, who said anything about prostitutes? There’s no mention of prostitutes anywhere else in this story.

Now the real question is, what does Dad do? He does the same thing he did with little bro actually. He brings him back into the family by immediately calling him son (or ‘child’ in some translations). And he shows big bro that everyone counts, no matter how they behave, or how they live. We are all in this together. We all deserve to feel like one of the family. We all need to experience the grace of unconditional love. After all, a little later on Luke writes that Jesus “came to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

Paul

Divorce and the kids.

Signpost for Sunday 7 October 2018: Job 1:1;2:1-10; Ps 26; Heb 1:1-4; 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16.

It’s so often the kids that suffer when the subject of divorce comes up, isn’t it. And if you are reading the King James version of the bible you’ll actually have those famous and misunderstood words on the page (Mark 10:2:14): ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.”

Worse, there are bound to be divorced people who read or hear this passage and feel it’s against them. But I think that would be a misunderstanding.

The thing is that almost all of this week’s reading could be misunderstood if we take it at all literally. Think about that for a minute. Why do the Pharisees even raise the subject of divorce now? Yes, it’s part of a series of attempts to catch Jesus out, but why divorce and why now?

The answer has to be geography. Which we won’t be aware of because the lectionary misses out verse 1 of chapter 10. That first verse tells us that Jesus is “in the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.” That means he is slap bang in the land ‘ruled’ Herod Antipas.

These sneaky Pharisees are trying to trick Jesus into the same predicament that John the Baptist had found himself in earlier (Mark 6:17-28 ). This question about divorce puts Jesus in the same position that had led to John the Baptist’s execution.

And, Mark has already told his readers and listeners that the pharisees are in cahoots with the Herodians (Mark 3:6).  So if the pharisees can get Jesus to say something that amounts to a criticism Herod Antipas’s own divorce, then surely Jesus would deserve the same punishment as John.

But Jesus is, as usual, too smart for them, and surprisingly for us he’s not about to condemn divorce as such. Look carefully. He does not actually say divorce should be prohibited. His reply is more radical and, for us, more positive than that.

He doesn’t directly challenge the Mosaic law, which invented divorce for the Jewish people. Instead Jesus makes the case for the fundamental equality of men and women in the marital relationship.

Jesus is going against the common view held by almost all Jews in the first century. A Jewish man simply could not commit adultery against his wife. Adultery was defined as only ever taking place between a married woman with a man who was not her husband.  And a man who had sex with a married woman who was not his wife was deemed to be committing adultery against that woman’s husband, not against his own wife.

The scholar, John Petty says this: “Jesus invokes God’s intention in creation which is that relationships be equal and unbroken.  He subverts the dominant patriarchal worldview that only men could get divorces, and only women could commit adultery against her spouse.  His teaching recognizes the profoundly wrenching experience of divorce, as anyone who has been through it can attest, and also recognizes the reality of divorce and the importance of maintaining justice in its application.”

But what about the kids? The famous passage that follows the divorce discussion is often taken by people to mean something like, we should all have unquestioning trust and the “simple faith” of an innocent child.

The King James version seems apt here. Suffer the little children seems to reference the fact that children are the most vulnerable members of any society, and they need special protection, nurture and love. Is Jesus saying that we adults need that protection, nurture and love too, but arrogantly, often we can’t admit it? I think he me might be.

Finally, if you’re wondering about this week’s the gnarly Old Testament reading, here’s the way I see it. Job 1:1, 2:1-10 reads like a Greek myth. It’s full of ‘the gods’ looking down on humans and wagering among themselves. Why? Because 5000 years ago, that’s the way most people on earth understood their concept of God; even, it seems, the Jewish people who introduced monotheism into the world could not get away from the idea that God was up on a hill somewhere or in the heavens somewhere and looking down upon us. This week’s reading does nothing to dispel the fact that this is an ancient myth. So we’ll have to wait for the next few week’s readings to find out if it’s still has any relevance and truth for us in the 21st century.

Paul

 

For and against. The eyes have it. As do the feet and the hands.

Signpost for Sunday 30 September 2018: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10, 9:20-22;Ps 124; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50.

What’s going on here? Jesus has more or less just told off the disciples for squabbling over who is the best disciple (Mark 9:33-37) and then John seems to be changing the subject all together. But is he really?

No, what prompts this disciple, John, to talk about an outsider casting out demons in Jesus’ name is surely the fact that just twenty verses earlier (Mark 9:18) the disciples had been unable to cast out the demon from a young boy. These disciples are jealous, because the man who was casting out demons was not ‘one of us’ but was casting out demons “in your name.”

The immediate answer that Jesus gives is, whoever is not against us is for us. (By the way, remember how George W. Bush twisted that quote when he said after 9/11, “Whoever is not for us is against us.”) But then he seems to go off at a tangent; he starts railing against anyone who causes ‘one of the little ones’ to sin, and he finishes by saying you have to be prepared to cut off your hands and feet and pluck out your eyes. Yuck.

What on earth has set Jesus off? Probably nothing. It’s just as likely that this passage isn’t about telling you or me that we have to amputate our naughty bits. It’s highly likely to be about the problems in the early church really. After all, the author ‘Mark’ is believed by most scholars to have been one of Paul’s companions on his travels, and we know he writing this gospel for the new Christians in Rome. I reckon, therefore that Mark would have almost certainly be familiar with what we know as 1 Corinthians 12:12-31. And it’s highly likely that’s what he’s referencing here in response to the Roman followers of the way who were dealing with people in their group who weren’t following ‘the way’ and people outside their group who behaved as if they were following ‘the way’.

Reminds me of discussions I’ve had with people who say you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian, and equally about the fact that not everyone who goes to church is much of a Christian really. I bet you’ve had conversations like that too.

Paul

 

The Good Wife (before the TV series), and kids, doncha love’em.

Signpost for Sunday 23 September 2018: Prov 31:10-31; Ps 1; James 3:13–4:3,7-8a; Mark 9:30-37.

Here is one long Proverb about a good wife. How cringe-worthy it seems in the 21st century. If you don’t want to upset your wife or your fiancé or any other woman, just quote Proverbs 31:29: ‘Many women have done excellently, but you outdo them all.’

The Good News Bible translation of Psalm 1:1 is handy. I keep getting emails from people inciting (not inviting) me to invest in Bitcoins, but, “ Happy are those who reject the advice of the wicked.”

The only problem is that I do not meditate on the Law of the Lord day and night. Most of the time it’s once a week when I sit down to write a Signpost

Here’s the bit I responded to this week from Mark’s gospel; it’s in verse 37: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

Jesus has been talking about greatness and who wants to be first, then he suddenly picks up a child and sits that child on his knee, just like any father, grandfather, or favourite uncle might do. Just like I do with my three and a half year old grand-daughter.

And do you know what? She is the greatest. I have absolute faith in her ability to be wonderful. I don’t know yet what she will achieve in life, but I love, and will always love, spending time with her. And no matter what she goes through in her life, though I cannot protect her from what may come, I will always believe in her. Of course that’s exactly how I feel about her mother and her mother’s sister, my own children.

I welcome them in Jesus’s name, not because I’m a Christian but because I endlessly thank whoever or whatever created we creatures and the love that can exist between us. Therefore, whether I believe in every single story in the Bible or not, I welcome the one who sent Jesus. If you happen to think that the primordial soup eventually sent us Yeshua bin Yosef, that’s fine too. If you happen to believe the ingredients that made up the primordial soup are where the homo sapiens Yeshua bin Yosef eventually came from, that’s also OK in my book.

This whole thing started somewhere and recently I was reading The Owl who liked sitting on Caesar by Martin Windrow. I like his way of looking at things: “Whatever first cause you believe in – whether it be intelligent creation or chemical accident – logically all sentient life must be the product of the same prime event, and thus all living things must be connected.”

Paul