I will be travelling for the next two weeks, crossing multiple time zones and dealing with Jet Lag, conferences, children and grandchildren. I am now in the habit of blogging the lectionary or parts of it with comments daily, but these are going to be a bit shorter and direct.
It usually takes me about a half hour to put the daily post together. I’ll be using a tablet, in airports and with grandchildren… and may not always have wifi access.
Now to today’s reading.
3 Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt.
4 Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.
16“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. 17Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; 18and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. 19When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; 20for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. 21Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; 22and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 23When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”
If I was just looking at the Matthew reading I would have talked about how this absolutely contradicts prosperity doctrine. We are not promised pleasure and ease. Instead we are told we are going to be imprisoned, betrayed, shut out of towns, and be fleeing from city to city, country to country… even in Israel.
We are promised opposition.
But the text from the psalm reinforces this. Those who are comfortable, those who are at ease… develop sensitive consciences, and in their exquisite sensitivity they oppress.
They will thresh scripture to find non sexist texts but ignore the homeless around them, the women who are having terminations, the anger of women against men, and the other multiple ways in which we hurt each other, which are not merely fashionable but unfashionable.
Now the prosperity movement falls into this camp in another way. Because you cannot be Godly unless you are blessed in this life (a rank untruth) you can, from your point of ease, condemn the person struggling in poverty, in oppression, in illness and in pain.
Both are wrong, and both need correction.