Today is Sunday and when I looked at my phone calendar I see that I am on call. I have no scruples on such: my contract includes covering and supervising emergency care on a regular basis, and the patch one covers from Dunedin runs from the Waitaki (river) to beyond the Clutha river.

I rested yesterday: for today I am on call.

And caring for the greatly sick does honour God. And, before I read the passage today, I wrote this, which leads into the passage for today.

Susan, my motto is that of Joshua: for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

Yield to the state? More like accommodate it on non essentials. If they get to nasty, vote the bastards out. If they will not leave, kick them out.

As I was trying to say yesterday, we should learn from history. Trust God, and do our duty. Regardless of the pressure placed upon us. And that is to serve God, and not another faith.

The Covenant Renewal at Shechem

Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel. And they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac. And to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. And I gave Esau the hill country of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. And I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in the midst of it, and afterward I brought you out.

“‘Then I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea. And the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. And when they cried to the LORD, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians and made the sea come upon them and cover them; and your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. And you lived in the wilderness a long time. Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan. They fought with you, and I gave them into your hand, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you. Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and fought against Israel. And he sent and invited Balaam the son of Beor to curse you, but I would not listen to Balaam. Indeed, he blessed you. So I delivered you out of his hand. And you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, and the leaders of Jericho fought against you, and also the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And I gave them into your hand. And I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before you, the two kings of the Amorites; it was not by your sword or by your bow. I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant.’

Choose Whom You Will Serve

“Now therefore fear the LORD and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

(Joshua 24:1-15 ESV)

Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

(Mark 2:23-28 ESV)

Now, doing our duty is not often pleasant. I would rather not be on call: I would rather be slothful. I would rather not be on a diet, not need to hit the gym. It would be easier to be a cheap Christian, saying that since I am saved and can ascribe to lawlessness. But that is wrong. As Paul said, may it never be. We live and die by the mercy of God, true, for we have all fallen short of the standards of God and the (much lower) standards we ourselves aspire to.

Those who remain faithful in these things will get their reward, but it will not be while the earth is in this temporary, fallen state.

Here Zippy’s reflection on his church state (He’s Roman) is helpful.

There is an important distinction between immigration law and sacramental doctrine: the former is a matter of positive law, which can be changed; while the latter is not.

The position of most of the American bishops on illegal immigration ‘works’ by distinguishing between what the positive law requires and de-facto practice. Illegal immigration may be formally against the law, but the de-facto practice of the powers that be has encouraged it. People have settled in and built their lives in the place where they were encouraged to do so by the people in charge. The proposed just solution, then is some iteration of an amnesty for those who formally broke the law, followed by a change in the law, so that they can remain in the homes they have made for themselves.

Whatever one thinks of all that, the same sort of approach will not work with admission to the Sacraments. The hierarchy has winked at divorce and annulment for long enough now that, in a kind of doctrinal parallel of illegal immigration, many Catholics “know better” than to take explicit sacramental doctrine on marriage seriously.

But unlike the case of illegal immigration, granting sacramental amnesty to heretics and adulterers – even heretics and adulterers who have settled in the home they have because of the winking and encouragement of the powers that be – literally cannot, per impossibile, be followed by a change in sacramental reality.

They may well have walked into a trap set by negligent and even wicked elites and leaders. But springing the trap on them won’t save them from the predicament.

Amen, brother. The way the Catholics deal with divorce is say that it should not happen. At all, and annulment should be rare. But they have expanded Annulment to include those without a perfect love for the other, or with carnal desire. As if carnal desire is not part of marriage.

And they now have people who have been wed thrice.

The reformed are in the same boat. We allowed divorce on two grounds, adultery and abandonment — not cruelty, and have annulment as well (cousin marriages and other forms of incestuous union) But we warned that the grounds should not be allowed to expand: and then they did.

But what Zippy gets correct is that our society can be corrupt. It can be both anarchistic and incredibly restrictive, simply by having multiple laws and refusing to enforce three-quarters of them three-quarters of the time.

But God is not that unjust. He sees who is doing their duty, even in part: he knows who does not.

And do not be one who does not their duty do.

Which is why the cellphone is within 10 feet of me for the next 24 hours.