Tuesday, July 6, 2021
After the unbearable heat
the cool summer mornings
give life to our hearts, minds and spirits.
We are not out of the woods yet though,
more heat is on it’s way!
Jeremiah 29:7
Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Matthew 5:13
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
Words of Grace For Today
Jesus sends the disciples out into the world to share the Good News, that God has sent Jesus to demonstrate God’s love, forgiveness, grace, and favour bestowed on all peoples.
We are out in the world, now in a world that ‘does not need God’, has no room for God, and pretends that everything is fine (without God.) The Good News is needed more than ever before.
How is this sending by Jesus different than God ‘exiling’ the people of Israel to foreign cities, cut off from their homes? It is done by force, first of all, against the people’s will and established by the sword of a alien ruler, not of faith in God. When Jesus sends the disciples, they choose to follow Jesus and they choose to obey him as he sends them. The exiles are not able to travel ‘back home’. The are captives in the foreign city. The disciples go out and they return ‘home’ to follow Jesus as he goes about the Galilean countryside.
How is Jesus sending the disciples the same as God ‘exiling’ the people of Israel to foreign cities? The passage for today from Jeremiah provides the link: in both sendings God’s people are to seek the welfare of the places and cities where they go. The exiles are more permanent, perhaps life long, and even many generations long. Their well being is intricately tied to the well being of the cities to which they are exiled. The disciples bring nothing with them, so their welfare is tied to the welfare of the places they go as well. The difference for the disciples is that at some point they get to leave the welfare of the places the visit and reclaim the welfare of home as their own, perhaps … if the welfare at home is controlled by people who will welcome them home.
The passage from Matthew ties it together nicely: the quality of one’s life as a disciple of Jesus, as a person of God’s people is not determined by the prosperity of one’s surroundings. Rather one’s life is determined to be of the greatest quality because God has adopted us as children. No matter what comes our way we remain God’s children.
Like salt we do not change as the surroundings around us change. We remain salt.
The danger to our lives is not prosperity or poverty. Each we can deal with easily enough, poverty perhaps more easily than prosperity because in prosperity it is too easy to forget from where the goodness of life comes. We too easily attach goodness to the things of luxury and comfort, rather than to the essentials of life provided always by God’s goodness and grace. Soon we start to assume that we can make it well through life without God’s blessings, grace, forgiveness and guidance. In poverty we do struggle to remain alive, though there are few reasons to doubt that the goodness of life comes not from things, but from God, because so often without any goods or things to divert our attention from God’s blessings we immerse ourselves (in order for life to continue) in giving God thanks for all the goodness that pours over us each day.
We are God’s children. Simple and easy. Like salt it’s not complicated. Like salt too much stops life, but the right amount preserves sustenance through the sparsest of times.
When we lose our saltiness, our simple dependence on God for everything, and our ever present gratitude for everything, then we become useless. We lose grace and have no Good News to share. There is nothing left but to make up nonsense about life. We see so much of that, so much more than we could imagine civilization can endure and still survive.
To this saltiness-lost-world Jesus sends us with Good News.
To this saltiness-lost-world God exiles us to live out the Good News.
Wherever we are or go God walks with us, and guides us to share and hear anew the old, old story of Jesus and his love, for us and the whole of creation.
One step at a time today, again; not towards our goals, but towards God’s will for us.