THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION
Revised Common Lectionary Texts:
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40
Reference: http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=274
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
1:1 The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
1:10 Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!
1:11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.
1:12 When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more;
1:13 bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation-- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
1:14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.
1:15 When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
1:16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil,
1:17 learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
1:18 Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
1:19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;
1:20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Luke 12:32-40
12:32 "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
12:33 Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
12:34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
12:35 "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit;
12:36 be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.
12:37 Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.
12:38 If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.
12:39 "But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.
12:40 You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."
THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION/ MEDITATION
“Beyond sense perceptions”
by Frank J. Hernando
As a child, I thought God was as angry as my parents.
We know for a fact that human beings go into biological maturation from being a baby to early childhood, middle and late childhood. Instinctively as children we depend on our parents, especially our mothers for sustenance such as food, warmth, love and care. When we reach middle and late childhood, the time when we undergo cultural learning, our parents would always find mistakes in what we do. It is at this stage of childhood development when we dichotomize what is good from bad and our sense perception has been colored by the cultural and moral perceptions of our parents.
When we fall from our parents’ expectations, we are warned, yelled at, or disciplined by sort of physical or psychological punishment. As children we developed self-critique and judge our actions either as good or obedient and needs to be reinforced with some money for school or a new pair of shoes and other material things. On the other hand, when we disobey our parents’ instructions, we believe we fall from grace of our parents, even to the point of instilling into our minds that we have done evil. In a similar vein, when we try to learn about God, although our Sunday School teachers taught us that God is love, yet, we associate our parents’ anger as God’s wrath.
Prophet Isaiah of the 8th BCE biblical history was true to his calling as a prophet, that of assuming the role as God’s spokesperson. Not everyone can become a prophet in the Old Testament times because those who would like to become one must undergo a training under the prophetic guild of Israel. This means that prophets have to study the Scriptures or better known as Torah that consisted of the first five books of our present Bible. Another qualification for a prophet was to have a good grasp of the purposes of God in the nation’s history and interprets this on the contemporary situation. That’s the reason why he hear very similar prophetic utterances from the 9th to the 6th century BCE and in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, now all compile in the New Testament Scriptures.
Prophet Isaiah sounds angry with the nation of Israel and despised their sacrificial offerings and their worship and all that relate to the unheeding actions of the people. There was a crisis and there is urgency in the utterances of the prophet as revealed in our reference text. The crisis was on the impending invasion of Assyria on Israel, that would bring about insurmountable destruction and cost the lives of many. Dennis Bratcher, a reference for this meditation mentions the imminent danger of invasion from Assyrian army. He said, I quote:
The threat of Assyrian conquest loomed ominously over Judah during the entire career of Isaiah. But it was to the religious attitudes and moral condition of the people in the face of this continuing crisis that Isaiah addressed some of his most impassioned messages. Isaiah constantly found himself at odds with popular theological-political views fostered by an elaborate cultic system, a distorted sense of election, and an unqualified monarchial theology that all combined to promulgate the idea of unconditional promise and blessing. It was the task of Isaiah and his contemporaries, especially Micah, to reinterpret the national-popular theology in the face of changing historical circumstances. As the account of his summons into prophetic service indicates, he was commissioned to interpret to the people the imminent intervention by God into the affairs of the people (6:11-13). (unquote).
The prophet was at odds with the popular theological-political views of the leaders and the monarchial theology that God will bless them in spite of the inconsistencies between what God expects them to do and actual situation of the nation. He analyzed that at the time Assyrian invasion, Israel will not be able to defend itself and the most vulnerable people such as the women and children will suffer the most. As we hear the prophet’s words, we hear that God must be angry to the point of despising their sacrificial system, their festivals and God would not listen to their arrogant and complacent prayers. God tells them in 1:17, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. God is telling them to do what they have failed to do. The neglect and failure of what God expects them to do is the very casue of instability and consequently, the fall of the nation.
Here we go again, many go after wealth but not showing a bit of empathy
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” is one of the most quoted saying from the Bible and that this is always taken to express people’s disgust on those who put so much emphasis on acquisition of material possessions such as money, jewelries, real properties, and many other things, but neglect to attend to more important things in human relationships. Jesus gave instructions to the disciples to be on alert just like those attending a Middle Eastern wedding celebration who are dressed up for the occasion, have enough oil for their lamps and ready to meet the bridegroom and the bride when they arrive at night time.
This instruction is rather focused on the imminent coming of the kingdom of God. The details of what it is all about was not very clear to the disciples. The urgency of the coming of God’s kingdom was felt by the disciples but what that really means today may not be clear to us today. The soon to come kingdom of God must be met with alertness and renouncement of wealth, “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” It is but logical for Jesus to tell the disciples to renounce their wealth for those who were wealthy or to those who aspire to gain material possessions for themselves. I believe that the giving of alms was one alternative for sharing of wealth to those who did not have enough to live.
Using the contemporary business word ‘investing’ in the kingdom of God means is to fill our minds and hearts with the values of God’s kingdom such as love, service to others and forsaking the values that are inconsistent with the purposes of God for human beings and creation. Jesus urges his listeners not to be lulled by the acquisitive values and tendencies that prevent persons from valuing the important aspects of human life even the contemporary understanding of empathy or the ability to listen, feel, help and support those who are in difficult situations. Empathy characterizes Christian compassion and love for people in difficult circumstances and the most vulnerable classes of people especially the homeless, jobless, the poor and the marginalize people in society.
There is more than sense perception
Prophet Isaiah despised the ritualistic tendencies of his people and emphasized the importance of doing justice and mercy by the monarchy that represents God’s reign among the people. His prophetic words remind us that God demands more than the well established manner of expressing religiosity and piety or of understanding the impending crisis from sense perception, that of understanding situations based on accustomed culture and values. He stressed that obedience to God is to perceived reality from the point of view of those who suffer and that destruction of the nation will be prevented when inter-tribal solidarity have been firmed-up and consolidated.
Briefly, let me share the meaning of perception I gathered from Wikipedia: Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs. For example, vision involves light striking the retinas of the eyes, smell is mediated by odor molecules and hearing involves pressure waves.
Perception is not the passive receipt of these signals, but can be shaped by learning, memory, and expectation. Perception involves these "top-down" effects as well as the "bottom-up" process of processing sensory input. The "bottom-up" processing is basically low-level information that's used to build up higher-level information (e.g., shapes for object recognition). The "top-down" processing refers to a person's concept and expectations (knowledge) that influence perception. Perception depends on complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively seems mostly effortless because this processing happens outside conscious awareness.
External or Sensory perception (exteroception), tells us about the world outside our bodies. Using our senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, we perceive colors, sounds, textures, etc. of the world at large. There is a growing body of knowledge of the mechanics of sensory processes in cognitive psychology. Mixed internal and external perception (e.g., emotion and certain moods) tells us about what is going on in our bodies and about the perceived cause of our bodily perceptions. (unquote)
In conclusion, both prophet Isaiah and Jesus emphasized to understand and respond to God’s will more than our sense perception of reality in our world today. By doing so our faith in God will be comprehensive and will have far-reaching impact in the lives of people in our world today. Amen.
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References:
1. http://www.cresourcei.org/lectionary/YearC/Cproper14ot.html, accessed 10 August 2013.
2 .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception, accessed 10 August 2013.
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GUIDE QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
1. What does it mean to you to renounce or put less importance on material possessions?
2. What are the anticipated impact of living in God’s kingdom on your lifestyle?
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