I had a good day Saturday, starting early, getting and all day ticket, and riding around on Manchester’s trams. Good to see and hear how there’s a different ‘feel’ in different parts of the city. I do like it.
Next Sunday’s lectionary is here.
The Isaiah passage seems to echo last week’s from Micah. That bit of Isaiah is said to be about the time after exile – the people need to learn to live with integrity. But their corporate life seems to be dis-integrated – they worship avidly, but treat one another like dirt. This will not do. “58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 58:7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” … For ‘your own kin’ here, my belief is that with the coming of Jesus the people of God is not defined by a gene but by a meme – the good news of God’s love in Jesus. To me, my ‘kin’ is at least everyone who follows Christ, and probably much wider than that, too, everyone whom God loves, I must love too.
In Matthew, what caught my eye was this, Jesus says … “…5:20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” How high is that setting the bar? Look at the what precedes it, and the answer is probably ‘very high’. But being a Christian is partly about learning to live with the fact that we don’t always do right, and stand in constant need of forgiveness – and not just from God, but also from our nearest and dearest, and from people far away and from those whose pain we do nothing about even though we can.
In the news last week, here’s a statement from Nike made before the recent stuff about running shoes that confer an unfair advantage … ““We respect the IAAF and the spirit of their rules, and we do not create any running shoes that return more energy than the runner expends,” a spokesperson said before the change.” Well, I’m glad to know that Nike respects the laws of thermodynamics. We wouldn’t want them to be creating any perpetual motion machines.