Thursday, June 4, 2015

Be excellent to each other.

Sometimes I wonder who we think God is.   Is he  angry like us?  Hungry like us?  Ill tempered and bitchy like us?  To put it the way a charactor in a play called "Noises Off" did, "Very pleased he'd taken his valium"?  I do my devotions in the morning after I get up and while I'm having my coffee, because God cannot be expected to put up with me before I've been caffienated.   He does.  Put up with before caffiene that is.  I need to have at least begun to make the effort to be presentable though.

Psalm 50:12 
If I were hungry, I would not tell you, *for the whole world is mine and all that is in it.
13 Do you think I eat the flesh of bulls, *or drink the blood of goats?
14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving *and make good your vows to the Most High. 
The psalmist for this morning's readings has God making it very clear that he is not like us. He doesn't need us to feed him.  Not with the flesh of bulls or the blood of goats.  He doesn't need us in that sense at all.  He doesn't need his valium.  He doesn't need us to sacrifice a chicken and sprinkle the blood counter clockwise under a full moon dressed in white with little red flowers in our hair.   God does not need us at all.  God wants us to be grateful, and love him.  Period.

Coffee or no coffee.  

No chickens have to die.

Deuteronomy 16:18-20
18 You shall appoint judges and officials throughout your tribes, in all your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, and they shall render just decisions for the people. 19You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. 20Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
Play fair.    Don't take a bribe.  Even if the customer brings you donuts, you can't give them extra discounts they don't deserve.  No, not even then.  You have to go out of your way to help even the mean, non donut bringing customers when they have a problem.    Always do the right thing if you can, even for people you don't like. 
So far, God wants me to have a grateful heart and offer thanks, and be fair when I'm in a position of power.  (I do take donuts.  Insurance ladies will take most food offered to them by people who aren't plainly crazy.)  I try to do that.  Even for people I don't like.

Luke 18:1-8
Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2He said, 'In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, "Grant me justice against my opponent." 4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, "Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming."' 6And the Lord said, 'Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?'
 The overriding idea I'm seeing in the scripture readings here is that God is very interested in justice, and fairness, and people paying attention to their relationship with Him.   Again and again, we are pointed to a just God.  A kind God.  A God that doesn't need our goat's blood and beef stroganoff and really wants something incredibly simple from us.

Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.


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