Sunday 13 March

Leviticus 26:14-27:34

This final section of Leviticus (not that I’m delighting in the fact that it has finished, of course) starts to sound a little more like a book of prophecy than a book of law.  The reward for obedience outlined yesterday is diametrically opposed to the punishment for disobedience that is outlined today.  What is fascinating is that while God has regularly prescribed the death penalty for a ream of personal sins, he just doesn’t seem to have the same appetite when it comes to disobedience on a corporate level.  God layers five levels of disobedience on top of each other - “if you will not listen...if after this you will not listen...” and at each level you think that it surely must the end of the game but each time when the punishment is meted out, the covenant relationship is still left standing.  There is something significant in this.  God’s covenant and his mercies seem to be applied not at the individual level but to the people as a whole.  God seems perfectly willing to change the exact make-up of the people - with presumptuous individuals and stiff-necked generations being swapped out for humble aliens and God-seeking foreigners - but God is not so flexible when it comes to his people; the whole Israel project could never be abandoned (at least at this point in the story).  So here is the challenge for us.  How ingrained in us is the idea that it is the whole church that God is deeply impassioned for?  How much do we see ourselves relating to God as one of a people rather than just as an individual?  It is certainly true that God loves us and has wonderful plans for our lives but the biblical focus is on God’s love for Israel and his love for the church, on his plans to come into the midst of Israel and come into the midst of his church.  In our individualistic society I think it is crucial that we cling doggedly to the biblical teaching that we are in this together with others and God’s desire is to see us all, together, moving deeper into him.

Luke 1:1-25

It’s useful to remember that each of the gospel writers has organised the material about Jesus in a certain way to make certain points.  Matthew shows has Jesus embodying all that Israel was meant to be and then defining the new Israel as the followers of “the Way”.  Mark seems to me to be a missionary pamphlet possibly used by Paul to give a flavour of Jesus to the gentile churches - no nonsense in style and arresting in content.  Luke pretty much nails his colours to the mast at the kick off of his gospel.  He says that he assumes knowledge of Jesus and a seeking of God and is aiming to bring certainty and clarity to a developing faith.  We would therefore expect his gospel to be very carefully considered in tone and lay-out, alert to the various ideas that are flying around and tackling them by showing the true emphasis of Jesus.  I love the fact that each gospel brings its own slightly different slant to things.  Some people point to the slight discrepancies these slants inevitably bring but I think that is disingenuous.  We have a bible that is so rich in character and so diverse in approach that every personality type seems to be represented.  Praise God, and I mean really praise God that we don’t have a rigid, uniform, expression of the divine but a varied and liberating mishmash of thoughts and ideas and language and intentions all of which together somehow allude to the awesome majestic creative nature of our God.

Proverbs 7:1-5

If you ever worry that you are preaching at your children then take heart! If you haven’t elastic banded pages of the bible to their digits then you have not gone as proverbs suggests!