Delivered by Rev Dr John Evans
on Sunday 21 February, 2010
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13
Today we begin two journeys.
The first is our annual Lenten journey with Christ into his passion, death and then at Easter his resurrection. We are called again to reflect on what this means for us – who we are as his followers; what it means to be his church. This year however, we commence another journey – a journey to our congregation’s 150th anniversary – which we will celebrate just the Sunday after Easter on the 11th of April. On that journey, what have we learnt from the past that might guide us into the future? Through this season of Lent we will refer to both of these journeys, and endeavour to draw inspiration for our life today from both God’s grace shown to us in Christ’s own journey to Jerusalem, and our journey as a congregation.
Our readings today, for this first Sunday of Lent, neatly set the scene and set some basic principles for this journey we will make together. To shortly state those conclusions: our history here in Carlton is important. God remains with us. We are not alone. However, God’s grace continues to surprise and challenge. Are we open to our history and what god may be saying to us?
The Old Testament reading is a wonderful historical narrative or summary.
History, the writing of history, is of course problematic. Much ink is spilled today over whether one can actually write history – is there in fact, historical truth? Isn’t all history just tainted with the biases and the prejudices, or world view of the writer? So there might be the “black arm band” of Australian history with its imperial theme and its savage treatment of indigenous people; or, so the argument goes, a more balanced, less jaundiced view of Australian history exists. Perhaps a more significant question however for our Old Testament passage, and indeed ourselves, is how do we use history whether it is perfectly or imperfectly told.
Some believe that only by understanding the past can a nation or a society come to terms with its own identity and its own future. Francis Bacon, for example, was of the opinion that “histories make men and women wise.” On the other hand, the Victorian writer Charles Kingsley believed that “history is a pack of lies”. A view of course made famous by Henry Ford, when he said “history is bunk”. Which is perhaps just another way of saying we do not use history well. The celebrated philosopher Georg Wilhelm Hegel laid down this pessimistic axiom:
“What experience and history teach is this—that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
Or as George Santayana wrote, those who “cannot remember their past are doomed
to repeat it.”
The Old Testament, especially with respect to the book of Deuteronomy and that great history of the books of Joshua through second Kings (excluding Ruth), is however, clear on this issue The basic assumption is that the memory of the community of faith not only allows each generation of God’s people to relive God’s great deeds of redemption in the past, but opens them up to God’s continuing activity in their own lives. What is more, it is through their common memory that the integrity, the wholeness, of the community is retained across the generations. Our historian says
“Recite [the traditions of Israel] to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” (Deut. 6:7)
Deuteronomy knows that when a people forgets its past, it loses both its present and its future.
It is no accident that Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History contain three important passages that many scholars believe to have been creedal statements originally spoken in a context of public worship. As such, these texts provided the ancient Israelite with an opportunity to re-impress on himself or herself, and on his or her family, an awareness of the presence of God in their lives and an awareness of who they were as people. Today’s reading is one of these texts. (Notice also Deut. 6:20–25 and Josh. 24:1–28).
The setting for Deut. 26:1–11 is the springtime harvest festival, an occasion for celebrating God’s gift of the fruitfulness of the earth. According to the instructions at the beginning of the passage, the worshiper is to come to the sanctuary bringing as a gift to God a basket containing a portion of the actual harvest. In effect the worshipper returns to God a small part of that which God’s grace has bestowed on them.
The heart of the passage is a recital of Israel’s history, beginning from the time of Israel’s earliest ancestors and continuing until the settlement in the Land of Promise. Throughout this brief but revealing text, emphasis is placed on the grace of God, who, in response to
the cries of the people, saved them when they were unable to save themselves. From a situation of danger and oppression in an alien land, God brought them to safety in their own home. The basket of produce in the hands of the worshiper is itself evidence of God’s continuing care of the people in their land.
Thus the moment celebrates the past. It also rejoices in the people’s future under the benevolent rule of their God. This history reinforces within the community of faith its
its own identity. And in like manner the Christian faith is also based on the collective memory of the people of Christ (1 Cor. 11:24), and it goes without saying that the
church’s memory—its creeds, if you will—celebrates God’s saving deeds of the past and God’s continuing promise to redeem now and in the future. This in fact is our Lenten discipline to recall such a story and what it means. This is all very important for us in this individualistic age, when we seemed to have forgotten our identity, our history, even our identity as the church within our own land Australia.
There are however, several caveats I would want to suggest. . . and these also come from our readings. The first is that one’s history can become triumphalistic and exclusive. There is the case that one can recall one’s history too vividly, and thereby become enslaved to it. An arrogance develops. There is then no case for listening to the history of others – of their struggle, of their hopes arising from their past. The story of others are dismissed – or that one’s own story becomes so entrenched that no change, or adaption, or new future, is possible. “We’ll be right, we have history on our side” is the cry of many disasters – we know only too well. Or another way of saying this in the church – is we give no room for God to act.
For in a sense this is the issue that Paul is dealing with in our passage from Romans. Our text – which asserts central tenets of the Christian story:
“if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Rom 10: 9)
is actually addressing a wider issue of the relationship of Judaism and Christianity. Our passage from Romans falls within that section of his letter of how Paul is to understand his own Jewish heritage and this new, emerging Christian story. In these chapters 9-11, Paul is not wanting to say that the Jews have it wrong, and thus must be repudiated. Far from it. That would make God strangely inconsistent and untrustworthy. The Jews do indeed have the covenants – he asserts – but there is now more to the Jewish story, than previously understood and believed. This Jesus is in fact the Christ – the Messiah. The previous history is not wrong – it has just got bigger, much bigger. God, because of all of this, is God for now, not only the Jew, but also of the gentile.
“For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, and is generous to all who call on him,” (Rom 10:12)
Here was a case, at least according to Paul, that a history was well remembered, but perhaps too well. It becomes limited to just a framework that was known and familiar. The grace and love of God becomes domesticated and that knowledge of God within this history is called in aid for one’s own purposes.
The third temptation of Christ, is relevant. Christ, according to Luke, is taken to Jerusalem, to the religious heart of the nation, the temple. Psalm 91, our psalm for today is quoted to him:
“God will command God’s angels concerning you, to protect you . . on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone” (Luke 4: 10-11 from Psalm 91: 11-12)
The temptation is that in your history, your story, all one need to do is, call on your God and your very wish will be granted. Indeed go back to our Deuteronomy reading. The Israelites say, “we cried to God, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction” (Deut 26: 7) and of course they were saved.
Jesus however, rejects this interpretation of his story. This is tempting, testing the very grace of God. It assumes we can discern the mind of God, we can pre ordain God’s love and God’s grace. . . even though with hindsight we may have seen God acting in our lives. Again quoting from scripture, Jesus says “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (Luke 4: 12 quoting from Deut 6:16) Rather, what Jesus is saying about Psalm 91 is that at all times be assured God’s grace is with you. You are not alone. As Paul elsewhere in Romans asserts – “nothing will separate you from the love of God.” Psalm 91, or if you like our history, is not about our ideas for God – it must be about God’s grace for us now and into the future. And as Paul in our passage from Romans shows can lead us into new paths, new understandings which may seem shocking, surprising, but are all the same a part of our evolving story. For a good Jew to be told there is no distinction between themselves and a Greek in terms of their relationship with God, and that God is generous to all, was a different, new and very difficult chapter in their story.
Here at the Church of All Nations we are obviously part of a wider community, national even divine story, but our very own story is important. As we begin this journey to our anniversary it is important we grasp our continuity with those saints who have gone before us, and in this story discern we are a part of a larger history. We too could may be able to say we have “A wandering Aramean as our father “ in our own story. We however, as we approach this time of celebration, must be careful we are not one eyed, overly triumphalistic, and even overplay who God is for us now and into the future. We must not tempt God. We can be assured God has been present through our history, but as we look to future – there may indeed be a need for us to repent and confess our failings over the generations and well just wait on God. Have we like Paul says in Romans, in fact limited our story and our future by not being open to the “everyone” who calls on the name of the Lord.
There is much to learn form our history, and from Christ’s history too, as we today begin our two journeys . . then perhaps they really are just the one journey: ours here and Christ’s.
