Rev elations

Lazarus at the Gate (Luke 16:19-31, see below) ·         What motivates you and I to act in a Christian way towards our fellow humans? ·         Which persistent excuses do we use to avoid doing the things that we know we should? The story of Lazarus and the rich man at the gate is crude to a certain degree, but its crudeness is intended to cut through our sophisticated reasons for avoiding acting with mercy, generosity and compassion. So, one of the things that this story asks of us is to look quite starkly at our own reasons for avoiding doing the things that we know we should be doing. Which neighbours whose suffering we are well aware of are we avoiding? In what ways are we trying to get out of our obligations to our fellow humans? Which reasons and excuses do we most often use? But the other thing that the story does, which is more complicated, is to analyse our motivations for doing the right thin...

Last week we were thinking about how to place our lives, both individual and communal, before God. For this reason we thought through the importance of the practice of seeking His presence in all of our experiences , both good and bad. I encouraged us all to ask: ‘where is God in this?’. This week, I would like us to reflect upon a different question together, and that is: ‘Who am I before God?’ One of the primary lessons we learn from Scripture, right from the beginning, is the ‘jealous’ nature of our God – he looks at us with pride and it seems a sense of ownership: you are mine. Yahweh of the OT is angry when the people turn to other Gods; the covenant that he has made with them requires faithfulness and constancy. In our passage from Luke (14:25-33) we hear Jesus talking in a different way about the sort of faithfulness that his Father in Heaven requires of his followers. Jesus talks about hating father and mother, wife and child and he does so in the context of a few ...