C239 Pentecost 13

[00:00:05] Speaker A: You're listening to by the well, a lectionary based podcast for preachers recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri people. [00:00:16] Speaker B: Hi, we're in Pentecost 13. I'm Adrian Jackson and today I'm joined by Sandy Berdeen. And we've got four readings we're going to be jumping into from Jeremiah 18, 1:11, Psalm 139. There's 1:1 to 21 in the lecturing, but it is actually the whole book, Luke 14:25-33. So let's just jump straight into Jeremiah reading. What's happening in this reading, Sandy? [00:00:44] Speaker A: Well, before we do that, I just want to remind people that you could also do the Season of Creation. [00:00:49] Speaker B: Ah yes, tell us about that, Sandy. [00:00:50] Speaker A: So this is, this is a, an ecumenical movement that, that for, for either one service in September or the whole encourages us to think about God as creator and God's creation. So in fact, the first two readings today would allow you to do that with the lectionary. But if you're one of the congregations that likes to do the seasons of creation, there's plenty of good resources out there. Common Grace, for example, provide resources for the lectionary. If you Google Seasons of Creation, you'll find the ecumenical resources as well as Uniting Church specific resources for seasons of creation. And there will be some on the Victas Resources, Worship Resources page as well. But we'll link to all of those things in the show notes. But, but your question about Jeremiah leads me to say, I wonder what Jeremiah tells us about God as creator and God's creation that might be useful. [00:01:48] Speaker B: Yeah. In broad picture terms, what is going on in this passage here, Sandy? [00:01:53] Speaker A: So this is, this is a, a passage from a prophet. Jeremiah has used the image of pottery and used all this imagery about the turning away from God and turning back to God over a much longer set of passages. And this is one of them in the middle where we have a very specific look at the prophet Jeremiah imagining going into a workshop. It's a workshop of a potter and watching the potter working the clay and thinking about the nature of who God is in relation to how he works the clay, which I think is a really interesting image. [00:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, I know for me this passage gets a kind of 1990s worship song in my head, which is completely wrong compared to this passage. You know the song I'm talking about, right, Darling Jack Potter's Hand song. And you got the pan flutes going on and all that, which is the ear worm now. [00:02:54] Speaker A: Thank you very much. [00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So apologies for everyone who remembers that song. But the theology in that song is not, not what's found in this passage. Who is being molded? [00:03:03] Speaker A: Well, that's a good question, isn't it? Who is being molded? It seems like it's God's people, the whole. What it's calling the house of Israel. So it's the whole of God's people who are responding to God in a certain way. And you get this kind of imagery of when the people turn away from God, God reworks them. And when the people turn back to God, God's able to work with them. So it's really about the relationship between God's people and God. So there's an interesting idea to start with that God. God doesn't. God is not just an immovable God who decides that this is the way things are forever. God actually interacts with God's people and changes God's mind dependent on how the created ones, the. In this case, it's. They're named as the house of Israel, the people of God, how they behave. Isn't that an interesting way to think about God? [00:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think this is a. Like the theology of this passage is not of a God who has predefined outcomes. [00:04:09] Speaker A: Absolutely not. This is a God who is constantly engaging with God's creation. [00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And there is this clearly this call for repentance of the people and this opportunity to not end up being brought to destruction. [00:04:23] Speaker A: So in this passage, it uses languages of turning and turning back, which of course you use the word repentance. And in fact, that is what repentance actually is, isn't it? That's what that word means. It means to turn back to God. And you know, the Latin word religare becomes the word religion. It's all about turning, turning to God and then that. Defining how you engage and how you behave. So in this case, you. God declares that when, when the people turn back to God, then God will listen to them and work with them. And when they turn away and. And do evil in their sight by not listening to God's voice, then God will destroy them. [00:05:07] Speaker B: Now this concept of God doing good, God doing evil. I find, like, I think some people might read God doing evil and have a little bit of an alarm go in their head. [00:05:18] Speaker A: Well, true, they might. And I guess, I guess my point, the point is that God. It's about how we behave and God calling us to behave well, God calling God's people to behave well. And then God shines upon that. He's wanting to shape the people of Jerusalem to become good people. [00:05:39] Speaker B: I'm not entirely sure why the translators choose to use evil as the translation of this word. It can also be bad or destruct. Like there's a few meaning. Like that word has a lot of meaning. So it's. It's not evil is in God acting against moral right and wrong. It is a bad outcome for the nation. Well, God. [00:06:04] Speaker A: Well, the people have behaved badly. And God's saying, actually, that's not okay. And I'm going to. And I like that. If you're thinking about the language of re. Throwing a pot or changing the pot, the clay doesn't get destroyed and thrown out. What happens when you. If you get halfway through on a pottery wheel and you're halfway through throwing a pot and it goes wonky, you then kind of mold it all back down and you start again. So God has a relationship with God's people that calls them back to repentance and calls them back to. To doing the right thing and to amend their ways and their doings, as it says at the start of the passage, so that God can continue to. To work with them. And I think, you know, one of the things about the story of God and God's people throughout the entire Old Testament is that God keeps calling them back into relationship, no matter how many times they muck up. How many times, if you can, across the whole Old Testament, it's hundreds and thousands of times that Israel, the people of God, muck up and God keeps calling them back to repentance, keeps rethrowing that Pottery Revolution, rethrowing that clay and remolding them. [00:07:16] Speaker B: And this is an important thing about this is this is not an image of the clay as an impartial actor in this. The clay puts up resistance. The clay has a say in how it's being shaped. [00:07:28] Speaker A: Oh, it's. It, yeah. Well, yes. I mean, this is perhaps where people. This is where the metaphor falls down and people are different to clay. So clay puts up resistance. But people can actively choose to go against God, can't they? We see it happen all the time. And. And so this is saying people choose, people make choices, and God responds to people's choices about how they choose to behave. [00:07:52] Speaker B: And in our favorite thing to do on this podcast, a bit of electionary criticism, they cut off at verse 11, the parik of he finishes at verse 12. And in that, we have this verse that most commentators seem to believe that Jeremiah writes it back in later, after the original passage is written. And this is clearly the prophet's gone. Okay. And they just decided to be stubborn and not follow along. But there is this, there is this clear notion that the nation has an opportunity to respond. [00:08:26] Speaker A: That's right. [00:08:27] Speaker B: So before we move on to our next passage, what would you preach out of this? [00:08:31] Speaker A: Oh, what would I preach out of that? I would be talking about our choice, our choices and the choices that we make and the way that God shapes us. Can I just say that intergen, which produces intergenerational resources for the ones for this week. I've written the six weeks around this and not this particular one. But there is a beautiful activity for this passage which invites you to play with some clay and to make to mould a person so out of the clay. And if everybody's sitting there molding persons, thinking about who they are and how God acts on their lives, you could have a lovely contemplative all age interaction where people are thinking about their relationship to God, where they need to turn around and turn back what God calls them to. [00:09:16] Speaker B: And that will sit really well with Psalm 139, which we'll jump to in a moment. It would. I would offer two other two related ways we could reach from this. This is clearly a call for nations to change their ways. And in today's geopolitical context, I think this is actually a message. There's a message in here for us not forego the conclusions of what different countries are going to do. So there's a tendency when we read foreign affairs or whatever to go, they're a good country and they're a bad country and to kind of go, well, their past needs to shape how they respond. But this is a passage at any. [00:09:56] Speaker A: Point in time we could always change our minds and choose to behave differently. And I think that might be, you know, as peacemakers and hope builders, people of hope, as Christians, we would be hoping for changed outcomes and for people to turn around and turn back to God and think about their behaviour. And that applies to countries as much as to humans. [00:10:16] Speaker B: And in a text that's written where church and state are the same, we could also apply the same to our foregone conclusions about the church. [00:10:22] Speaker A: We sure could. Did you know you could join our Facebook group by the well for extra content and discussion. [00:10:34] Speaker B: So we've got a couple of a part of Psalm 139 here. I would encourage people, if they are going to read this, to actually just read the whole psalm. It's not that long. [00:10:44] Speaker A: I love this psalm and I and, and I think using the psalms in worship is a wonderful opportunity to listen to God's words to us and our words to God. And this is a particularly beautiful example. So again, the, the activity I just suggested would fit with this psalm and that's in the intergen resources. I also like a thing called the Sandy Tales and Sandy Tales is a YouTuber thing. It's got nothing to do with me. And it's, it's. If you google, if you go onto YouTube and you look up Psalm 139 Sandy tales, you'll find these. This guy using a light box with sand on it and some music behind it. And he creates this psalm in images with music behind it. And I've used that in worship as part of a, a kind of early word with the kids to have a concrete thinking about this and having the kids sitting there looking, watching this two minute video of this psalm playing out in images wrapped in wrapped attention. And of course the adults love it too because it's beautiful and visual. That's a really lovely way to enter into this psalm and to use it in worship. Maybe not as a preaching moment, but as a moment to think about who is this God that knows us intimately at the very core of our being and created us as we are. [00:12:03] Speaker B: Yeah, a couple of exegetical notes here. This is a psalm, so don't try and draw strong theological conclusions from your psalms, but particularly in this one, there are a lot of words here that we don't have other attestations to. So be really careful in kind of just driving in on a particular turn of phrase or whatever. Go and read a commentary or go read a, well, footnote, study Bible or whatever. Because you will find there are quite a few times in this passage that it's like we're taking educated guesses. And also there are times just for the palatability of the English, the word is not what's like there's. You've got that bit where it's like innermost part is literally kidneys. So like, yeah, God creating us in our kidneys is just a little bit of a. Just doesn't sit quite as well with our modern biology. [00:12:56] Speaker A: But anyway, our core of our being maybe just feels a bit more esoteric perhaps. Can I say, also speaking of reading commentators, that friend of this program and a member of the by the World team, Howard Wallace on his blog, if you look up his commentary on this, talks about ways that you can use this liturgically in your worship service and suggests picking it up either in the words of a prayer, of confession. Search us. Oh God and know our heart, test us and know our thoughts, or using the words instead, perhaps in an affirmation of faith or an absolution. O Lord, you have searched us and known us. You know, when we sit down and when we rise up, you discern our thoughts from far away. So it's worth. If you're going to look at a commentary, looking at Howard's commentary and thinking about ways that you could use this psalm liturgically in your worship service. [00:13:51] Speaker B: And this is absolutely a message about divine interest in human lives. But also, don't miss the fact that the psalmist is disturbed by that interest. There is definitely an element here that the psalmist is wanting to be able to hide stuff away almost, and is kind of tormented by the fact that no part of their innermost being is able to be escaped from God's watchful gaze. Yes. [00:14:18] Speaker A: There's a. There's a moment of contemplation to have in a service. What do I want to hide from God? [00:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so we have get to have a look at the whole book this week. [00:14:35] Speaker A: Doesn't happen very often, does it? [00:14:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:14:37] Speaker A: And you're right, it's almost the whole book because it leaves off the bit at the end where he says, hey, can you prepare a guest room when I come to visit? And don't forget my fellow. My fellow mates here who are in prison with me and pray for us all. Oh, and grace and peace be with you. And, you know, does the blessing at the end. But apart from that footnote bit, we have the entire book, all of the context of this story in the reading. [00:15:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And we've got some words here that are just not common in English. So we got Philemon, Philharmon, Philemon, whatever you want. Just don't. Don't labor the point of how you pronounce it. [00:15:12] Speaker A: Well, I said to Adrian earlier, so you just say it confidently. If you say Philemon confidently, everyone thinks, oh, that's how it's said. You say onesimus confidently, everyone will assume, oh, that's how it's pronounced. So I just. That's my word of advice. And if someone else says it differently, it's just because it's potato, potato. And we say things differently. [00:15:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So one of the things, like, we know, we're pretty sure, like, this is one of the authentic polls. Like, there's no debate about this being the. The Paul who wrote Romans and all of that. But fascinatingly, in this, Paul doesn't do his usual but I, an apostle, kind of call to authority, and I Think that's a really key thing about what's going in on in this book. [00:16:00] Speaker A: Well, he's trying really hard to convince Philemon to do something that Philemon is a powerful slave owning man is unlikely to want to do because it's, you know, he's got power and he's got, he's got power and he's got authority over his world and his family and his, the people that live with him. And to say, hey mate, can you let your slave go? Offends his dignity. And so Paul's got to find a different way to convince Philemon to do what he's asking him to do. He's got to kind of appeal to his better nature. [00:16:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And there is, we have other evidences of this kind of social construction in ancient texts. There is a whole, whole nother letter which uses similar kind of rhetorical plays to make a very similar argument about like slave transactions. So, and so this actually kind of gives us a little bit of an insight into how Paul is thinking about how the Gospel changes social constructs. True. [00:17:05] Speaker A: So, and another clue into all of this is that Onesimus's name, if we, if we understood the language, we would know that Onesimus name means useful. So Onesimus being called useful implies that he, his entire kind of reason for existence is to be of use to his slave owner. It's not like he's a human being who has use in and of himself or has, you know, intrinsic value, as we'd like to assume that human beings have. And in verse 11, right in the middle of this, Paul says, formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed both useful to you and me. So he's claiming that he's talking about ansimus really as being, being a product, an object, a thing of use. [00:18:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think this also is a kind of passage that kind of sits in a lot of the other challenges to social norms that we see throughout the New Testament of the Gospel. Changes the power dynamics between you and. [00:18:19] Speaker A: I. Yeah, so, so what he's suggesting is, is that he, you actually free him and he becomes somebody who can be useful in between us and can actually be an equal to us. So he's actually suggesting a total change not just in, from being a thing to being a human being and being acceptable. We had an interesting chat beforehand where you pointed out that this, we, we do know something about what might have happened to Onesimus in, in another book we see letter, we see something about this. [00:18:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So in Colossians 4:9, we hear he's coming with Onesimus, the faithful and beloved brother who is one of you. So that may actually indicate to us that Philomen has gone over and beyond what Paul's exhortations here lend to. It's almost like Paul kind of does this whole kind of rhetorical thing of like, this is my case, but I'm not going to overstate my argument. And then just kind of in like verses 17 on. It's almost like, yeah, come on. Like you can do a little bit more, knowing that you'll do more than I say. [00:19:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So he's inviting. He's inviting Philemon to do the right thing, to actually show love to his brother and to actually treat Onesimus not as a slave, but as a human being who can go between the two of them and can interact differently. It's a wonderful invitation. Can I say, I have used this with a group of children in a Godly play store. It was actually in a Korean church and I used a godly play version. I can't remember whether I rewrote that myself or quite how I did it. You could check with me if you wanted to see it, but you could use Godly play as a way into this. And some wonderful wondering questions that I had at the end of that when I wrote it and that you can speak about with kids and adults alike to get them to imagine what it might be like and what the implications. Implications of this story are. [00:20:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And this is a kind of story that does really work well for kids. Like, I remember reading a whole book that was written as if from Onesimus perspective of being. Coming a free person, counting the gospel and all that kind of thing. But yeah, like, I don't think we need to. To labor the whole slavery issue in our preaching, like I think. [00:20:54] Speaker A: But you can, you can talk about the value of the person and treating him as someone who has value. And we could think about how we treat the people around us and whether we treat everybody that we know as. As being of equal value to us. [00:21:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's clear that Paul sees in the church that that whole class divides get ripped down. And I think it is a challenge to us even today to kind of think about where class sits inside of our ch churches that we carry over from society. [00:21:26] Speaker A: Who do we include? Who do we. Who do we leave out? You know, we talk about inclusion as being a really important value in worship and, and you know, we don't always include everybody. Not everybody is welcome, much as we like to say they are. So this is. This, this Little letter challenges us all to think about who an SMS might be in our current context. [00:21:49] Speaker B: All right, so we finish up our readings today in Luke chapter 1425-33. [00:22:02] Speaker A: Now this, this is one where you might want to remember what came immediately before it. Context is everything and it comes in the mid. It comes at following on from a passage where we have the line, blessed are those who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. And then we get that parable about banquet and who's invited to the banquet and the people who are invited don't come. And so they go out into the streets and lanes and call other people in. So they're including people who might have been on the outside and are invited in to become part of the heavenly banquet. And then Jesus turns to the large crowds who are traveling with him and speaks to them with this passage. [00:22:46] Speaker B: Now, if you're familiar with Matthew and you're used to, when you hear words of crowds being kind of indications of power, etc. That's not what's going on in Luke. Luke sees the crowds as a source for possible disciples. So anyone in that crowd could be a disciple. But as we'll see in this passage, not all disciples are equal. [00:23:10] Speaker A: So we've got a choice thing going on again here, which is reminding me of our conversation about Jeremiah. When you become a, quote, disciple of Jesus, you have to make some choices and you have to decide whether you can stay the course and whether you can actually make the journey or not. [00:23:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And we have this whole thing about, like the dynamics that happen in families about the choice to follow Jesus. And in some, we don't see this too much in Western culture as today, but in other parts of the world, you do still see where someone chooses to follow Jesus, they may lose their inheritance. Inheritance. [00:23:49] Speaker A: Well, I may. And they may lose their relationships with their family. So it's not, it's not a thing about emotions and feelings for our family, but it's about making where at the end of the day, where is your choice going to take you? Are you going to choose following Jesus or are you going and doing the things that Jesus calls you to do? The actions, the agape, love, actions of following Jesus, or are you thinking about the things that pertain to, to being in a family? I also think those other two little mini parables that are in this, that aren't in any other gospel are also quite interesting. So you've got the, the one about the building the tower. If you're going to start building a tower, then you've got to be. But got to know once you've laid a foundation and you're not able to finish it, people ridicule you, saying this person began to build and was not able to finish. So you, you know, you've got, if you're going to start following me, he says to the crowd, then you've got to be prepared to see this thing through. [00:24:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And we still see that if you've traveled Israel or Jordan today, you have this whole thing of, like, you, you can't go into more depth than what you have. And so you often see unfinished buildings. And I can imagine that brings a bit of social shame. But it's this message of like, if you're going to follow Jesus, be fully aware that this is going to cost you the rest of your life. [00:25:23] Speaker A: And if you're going to. And, and what king going out to wage a war doesn't sit down first and consider if he can actually afford to go to war. Now that's kind of a bit in our face today considering some of the conversations that are going on. But you know, if you consider that you're going to follow Jesus, what is it going to cost you? Can you actually afford to bear that cross? Bear that cost? And of course, you know, he does talk about. Because doing this means that you have to bear your cross. Carrying your cross and following me now that's, that is nothing if not a costly activity. [00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And in the NRSV we got the heading the cost of Discipleship. Like, obviously that's an editorial edition. So yes, read the text from its own terms. But there is absolutely a message here of, like, be prepared to make sacrifices to follow Jesus. And this is not the gospel should cost us all something. [00:26:24] Speaker A: Well, and I think that's, you know, that's interesting in a wealthy church and in a church that where we, you know, we, many of the people sitting in our pews, you know, well, well, often able to afford things that this is, you know, what, what does it cost me to follow Jesus? What, what am I giving up in order to, to really take this seriously? Or do I just come on Sunday and listen to the Gospel? It's an interesting way to think about it. What is God calling us to do and be. [00:26:54] Speaker B: And the things that cost us aren't all financial either. We do need to remember that, like, we might have other forms of wealth or privilege of like, social status, social capital. And we see that in the Philemon passage of Paul, spending his social capital. [00:27:13] Speaker A: On behalf of onesimus in order to include him. So if we were to be a church that was to include difficult people, people who struggle with life, people with difficult, less ability with disability. If we were to be a church that was about being there for the marginalized and the poor, it would change us. We would have to give up something of who we are and be changed in who we are in order to be inclusive of others. [00:27:42] Speaker B: So Sandy, you might be turning to writer a certain man. What's, what's what, where are you looking? [00:27:50] Speaker A: Oh goodness. I, I, there's so much richness in this. I suspect if it was me, I would be doing something with Philemon because I really love that book and there's. We have very little opportunity to do it. On the other hand, I'm really quite convicted by that Jeremiah passage and I really would like to play with that idea of the potter and the clay and God being a God that continues to, to change and create and what that means for us as God's created beings. I think there's so much richness in these passages. Plenty to choose from. [00:28:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd be, I'd be similar, I'd be keen to like, I'd probably be using Jeremiah and Luke and just kind of something about how the Gospel compels us to change and to, to respond to the call of God on our lives. Either as individuals who are following following Jesus or as churches or countries or communities, we have the opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and to, to follow in the way of Jesus. [00:28:56] Speaker A: To turn around and to turn back to God. [00:29:00] Speaker B: Well, thanks for joining us today, Sandy, and to all of our listeners, feel free to have a look in the show notes for some stuff around the season of creation and we'll see you next week. [00:29:12] Speaker A: Thanks. Bye bye. The well is brought to you by Pilgrim Theological College and the Uniting Church in Australia. It's produced by Adrian Jackson. Thanks for listening.