I’m finding at the moment that I am splitting the comments on what I find with the lectionary posts. Kirk yesterday was about the need to be in a position of worship in prayer.  Not to be just asking for more (which is like what happens with our rulers — we want more but we don’t want to pay).  Now the pastor had been concerned that Jesus had walked past people and left them alone when he healed tPeter’s mother. I reminded him that it was the Sabbath. Good, observant Jews did no work on the Sabbath, and healing was work. They therefore waited to sunset, when the Sabbath ended, and bought everyone there.

But Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, not the Pharisees with their precedent and regulations.

John 9:1-16

¹As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. ²His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ³Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” ⁶When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, ⁷saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. ⁸The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” ⁹Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” ¹⁰But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” ¹¹He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” ¹²They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

¹³They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. ¹⁴Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. ¹⁵Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” ¹⁶Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.”

The first point here is that being blind was not karma, or a curse on the family. The man was born blind… so that he could be healed. Christ is LORD, and this man was born so this would be made apparent. The superstitions we have about the sins of our parents affecting our children or that we are paying now for previous lives are tosh, Rubbish.

The second is one of thest things we struggle with in the Church. For many of us are like the Pharisees: in our passion to do right we make rules, regulations, and precedents. These bind the people of God — they kill life, for they hold the Spirit in contempt. As a result, in many generations, there has been a return to the roots — from the monastic reforms to Luther stripping his churches bare.  The querulousness of the scholastics lives in us all.

And Jesus ignores this, He heals on the Sabbath — because that is what his father does. This is a theological status, like eating sausage on Friday, It is one of the reasons why the Reformed turn to scripture as the definitive rule, and not to the church fathers and tradition.

Over the last two centuries we have learnt — in mission field and concentration camp — to strip the faith back. To hold to life, and let traditions that hold us back go. We must not forget that, for the respite that Christendom has had from Socailism has ended, and the current oppressor (Miliant Islam) is allying itself with the remnants of socailism. We may have to hide the candles, use rough wine, and hide our crosses.

But the church will survive. The enemy will not, nor will our regulations. Christ is the Lord and law of the chuch, not (praise God) committees of the presbytery or canon lawyers.

The Herald today starts with something that sounds like it was written when I was a schoolboy in short pants.

Higher petrol prices, road tolls and even a rise in GST are being dangled in front of Aucklanders as options to pay for a $2.4 billion inner-city rail loop and other transport projects.

Mayor Len Brown today releases a long-awaited discussion paper on transport funding options to stop dodging what he says are the tough decisions to get Auckland moving.

“We just can’t do the same old, same old and just meander along and postpone everything to another generation,” he said.

“We know what we have got to do, but that requires Aucklanders putting some real skin in the game.”

Mr Brown said Aucklanders – faced with a rapidly growing population and an already congested roading network – had to make some hard decisions to meet a $10-15 billion shortfall for a package of major transport projects over the next 30 years.

This is on top of $50 billion of largely road-user charges and rates budgeted to be spent on transport over 30 years.

When I was a kid the Mayor wanted to (this was 40 odd years ago, I remember it)  build a rapid rail system and develop Auckland along that (which is the way London developed: the suburbs followed the railways. The tramways were being torn up and motorways were being built.  It appears that this could occur in my grandchildrens time, but only if Auckland can tax its inhabitants.

The problem is that Auckland city has special legislation… which I can see being extended, and every region doing the same thing. But this is another reason not to live there.

Moving to the Waikato or Northland… or even to the South Island, will be an option. Because people’s wages will not increase to meet these new imposts.