January 11th, 21

Today’s reading is from Genesis 27-28; Psalms 4 and Luke 11. We are reading through the New Living Translation.

He’s angry, these teachers are a bunch of fakes, he’s angry because these teachers of His word ought to be offering the people something real something true.  He’s angry because they’re a bunch of religious, self-righteous, self-serving hypocrites, and Jesus is not happy about it.  

They’re telling lies about God, and the main one is a lie of separation.  God is separate, he’s distant, and he’s angry. Angry until you perform the right religious duties, until you wash your hands the right way, until you wash your cup in just the right way. until you give the right amount of everything, tithing even the smallest amount of everything you own, even the herbs in your Garden, and a thousand other things like this were all used as a way of ensuring that you knew this lie, that God was separate from you.     

And this message of separation served these guys well.  They leveraged it for coercion and control for power and money.  They used this lie to become important in the eyes of those in power.  They liked to walk around with their flowing robes in the marketplaces.  They liked when important people, powerful people recognized them and honored them.  All the while the people suffer.  Jesus looked at this, and declared, hogwash!  He called them hypocrites, snakes, vipers.   In effect Jesus says, “You say that you speak for God, but you don’t know God, says Jesus, if you knew God, you would know HIS justice, not yours, which is so rarely just.  You would know HIS love.   His love which declares that God is not separate, rather that God is here! God is with them,  us.   And God is for all people, for all of humanity.

He is wanting his people and his priests, people who use his name, tell the truth. to demonstrate the love and justice of God. To live in the reality of the God is with them, the God who is their present King.   Because it’s true, and the world so despeartly needs it. 

If you read the bible and you are left with a God who is separate, distant, petty and angry, more concerned with how much turmeric you tithe than he is about loving your neighbor and knowing that you are loved, you being set free from all the lies that keep you distant from him, from truly knowing him, than you have completely missed the point of who he is. Because the point of his word is to show us that God is for us, not against us, that God is good, that God is not petty, but abounding in grace and mercy, that God is Present, and he is full of love. 

You are loved!