09 October 2011

One of the toughest question we face as people of faith concerned with justice and peace, is how to hold together the invitation of the Gospel with the confrontation that God’s reign brings against personal and corporate sin and evil. But, as tough as it may be, we do not have the luxury of avoiding this question, and this week’s Lectionary brings us face to face with it in dramatic and helpful ways.

May our worship this week invite us deeper into God’s reign and confront the places in our lives where we refuse God’s reign entrance into us.

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16 October 2011

The readings this week bring together two powerful and complementary ideas. In the continuous Old Testament reading, we are invited with Moses to seek God’s glory and to rely on God’s presence to empower and guide us we interact with our world. In the Gospel Jesus challenges us to "render to God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s". In the intersection of these two ideas lies an amazing call – to enter the world in intimate connection with God, such that God’s glory is revealed through us in all times and places, even as we seek to discern as clearly as we can what is "God’s" and what is "Caesar’s" – in other words, maintaining a clear distinction between our role as people of faith, and our role as citizens of the world. The struggle for us is to work out how to maintain an appropriate separation between "church" and "state" while still operating in our world completely as followers of Christ.

May God reveal God’s glory to us and through us as we worship, and may we learn, a little more, to give God what is God’s and Caesar what is Caesar’s this week.

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23 October 2011

Two significant passages form the basis for worship this week in the Lectionary: The Great Commandment and the death of Moses. Depending on whether you are following the Gospel or the continuous Old Testament readings, you may focus on only one of these, but the connections between the two are also a wonderful springboard for this week’s worship. In so many ways Moses, who struggled with the people of Israel for so long, is a challenging example of what it means to love God and neighbour.

However we may approach it, though, this week we will be unable to avoid the challenge to love better, to love more widely, and to love more passionately.

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30 October 2011

God’s salvation is once again an important feature of this week’s readings, but coupled with another theme that shows how God’s salvation is made visible in human experience – integrity. It is when God’s people – through whom God works God’s salvation – live out faithfully what they believe, that life and wholeness is brought into the world. It is this call to integrity that forms the basis of our worship this week.

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