Patrick Comerford
Next Sunday, 30 August 2020, is the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XII).
The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland, are in two sets, the Continuous Readings and the Paired Readings.
The Continuous Readings: Exodus 3: 1-15; Psalm 105: 1-6, 23-26, 45c or Psalm 115; Romans 12: 9-21; Matthew 16: 21-28.
There is a link to the Continuous Readings HERE.
The Paired Readings: Jeremiah 15: 15-21; Psalm 115; Romans 12: 9-21; Matthew 16: 21-28.
There is a link to the Paired Readings HERE.
Introducing the Readings:
There is a wonderful contrast in the Gospel reading and the Epistle reading between the Apostle Peter, who gets it wrong, and the Apostle Paul, who gets it right.
On the previous Sunday [23 August 2020], in the Gospel reading, we saw how Saint Peter could get it right with his confession of faith, a rock-solid faith that had firm foundations.
This week, Saint Peter becomes a stumbling block because he thinks Christ has come to defeat those he sees as the enemies of the people, and he wants to share in the victory he hopes Christ will win. From rock to stumbling block in the space of a week.
Saint Peter is going to share in Christ’s victory, but it is not that kind of victory. It is a victory won not by killing enemies, but by forgiving them. It is a victory won on the cross, and Saint Peter will share it when he is ready to take up his cross and follow Christ.
On the other hand, Saint Paul, who once used rocks and stones in another way – at the stoning of the first, early Christian martyrs – now provides us with his own concise summary of Christianity faith, life and love. It reads like his own retelling of the Sermon on the Mount, or Christ reading in the synagogue in Nazareth (see Luke 4: 18-22).
Saint Paul tells us: ‘Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour’ (Romans 12: 9-10).
Exodus 3: 1-15:
The story in the first reading (Exodus 3: 1-15) is a reminder that God’s love is expressed in just the same ways that Saint Paul in the New Tewstament reading describes the love that we should have and that reflects God’s love.
Moses is forced to flee Egypt after it becomes known that he has murdered an Egyptian slave-master and Pharaoh seeks him. Exodus 2 tells how he flees to Midian in the Sinai Peninsula, and marries Zipporah, daughter of the priest Jethro. Meanwhile, back in Egypt, the Pharaoh has died, and the people in slavery cry out to God for help.
This reading begins while Moses is looking after Jethro’s flock beyond the wilderness. At Horeb, near Mount Sinai, a messenger from God, or God himself, appears to Moses in the form of fire in a bush that refuses to burn up. Moses leaves Jethro’s sheep, and hears the call of God.
Moses is reluctant and refuses four times. Yet he believes God is sending him: ‘Here I am.’ Removing his footwear is a common form of respect at the time. God reveals himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Moses hides his face from God in fear.
This God is compassionate and hears the cry of the enslaved people in Egypt. He promises to deliver them into freedom, into a new land. God commissions Moses to lead the people. But Moses has an excuse, and asks, ‘Who am I’ to do this? God answers: ‘I will be with you.’ The people are to be led into freedom so that they are free to worship God.
But Moses still finds excuses. What if the people ask who is this God, ‘what is his name?’ To know someone’s name was to have power over him. God’s answer is enigmatic, ‘I am who I am … I am has sent you.’ The Hebrew is unclear hear, and the name translated as ‘the Lord’ in English translations is the tetragrammaton, the four-letter word YHWH from the Hebrew, meaning to be, become, or come to pass.
God has seen the misery of the people, has heard the cry of the oppressed, knows their suffering, wants to deliver them from slavery and to bring them to freedom, and wants what is best for them. He emphasises that he has heard their cry (verse 9), and he wants them to be free.
In freedom, and only through their own choice, can they worship God freely, become free to be consumed in his love.
It is only then, after a long experience and a long dialogue, that God reveals God’s name, ‘I am who I am’ (verse 14), ‘I am’ (Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν). God makes himself known in his promises of love, and then, only then, does he reveal his name. First of all, he says what he does, then he says who he is. And he is who he is, faithful for ever.
God’s love for us, like the bush that is blazing on the mountain, never burns out. It is a flame that is never quenched, that never burns up.
Later, back on this mountain, God is going to tell Moses who God is once again, ‘… merciful and gracious, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin …’ (Exodus 34: 6-7).
Those words are echoed in Saint Paul’s words in the Epistle reading.
The Belfast-born writer CS Lewis (1898-1963), best-known as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, the Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity, also wrote The Four Loves (1960).
In a lecture on The Four Loves some years ago in Cambridge, the great Orthodox theologian Metropolitan Kallistos Ware spoke of the Holy Trinity as the model of mutual love, and the fountain and source of love. He said if God is love (John 4: 8), then God cannot be one person loving himself, and a circle of two persons would be closed and exclusive.
The Trinity shows us that love should not only be mutual, but that it should be shared. The doctrine of the Trinity is a way of saying that God’s eternal being is self-giving.
God is God, and we are truly human, because of our ability to relate to others, to love others. We are what we are only in relation to other persons. There is no true person unless there are two or three persons in communication with each other.
In other words, love is at the centre of our understanding what it means for God to be God, and what it means for us to be human. We love like this because God is like this.
If we keep it all to ourselves, it is not love. When we put love into action it becomes genuine. It rejoices and is patient, it looks out for the needs of others, it welcomes the stranger. It hopes, it prays, it rejoices with those who rejoice, and weeps with those who weep. It does not repay evil with evil, it lives in peace with all, it gives food and drink to those who are hungry and thirsty, without discrimination, and it overcomes evil with good.
And that is love that lasts far longer than the summer of love. That is love, like Moses experiences it, that is love that is never quenched, love that never burns out.
Psalm 105: 1-6, 23-26, 45c:
We read from portions of Psalm 105 just a few weeks ago (Psalm 105: 1-11, 45b, 26 July 2020, the Seventh Sunday after Trinity).
Psalm 105 was probably written for a major festival, and verses 1-15 are largely reproduced in I Chronicles 16: 8-22.
In Jewish tradition, this Psalm is recited on the first day of Passover, verses 8-10 are part of the prayers recited at the naming of a boy at his brit milah or circumcision, and verses 8-42 are repeated in the Amidah or principal prayer on New Year’s Day, Rosh Hashanah.
Psalm 105 recalls the events in Israel’s history, from Abraham to the entry into the Promised Land, that show God’s fidelity to his covenant, culminating in the giving of the Law.
Verses 1-6 invite the people to worship and to recognise God’s deeds with joy and gratitude. God is to be praised for his judgments and for his wonderful works.
God’s judgments are for all people. He first promised the land to Abraham, confirmed it to Isaac and to Jacob, and made it part of an everlasting covenant.
The second portion of this psalm, verses 23-26, recalls God's delivery of the people from slavery in Egypt: Ham (verse 23) is a poetic name for Egypt. Although Pharaoh and the Egyptians hated the people and reduced them to slavery, they were led to freedom by Moses and Aaron.
Originally the psalm began as it ends, with the words ‘Alleluia!’ or ‘Praise the Lord.’
Psalm 115:
Psalm 115 is warning of the impotence of idols and a reminder the greatness of God.
Other nations worship impersonal objects or forces in a way that eventually dehumanises a culture and those who are part of it, ending with the sacrifice of human lives on the altar of high, yet imperfect, ideals. Idolatry is the worship of the part instead of the whole, one aspect of the universe in place of the Creator of all who transcends all.
We are to trust in the Lord God alone, who helps and defends us, who blesses all who fear him, ‘both small and great.’
But we do not own the earth; we hold it in trust from God, and there are terms and conditions attached to that trust: we must respect the earth’s integrity and the dignity of the human person, honouring God’s laws.
Romans 12: 9-21:
There are different kinds of love. But, sometimes, we are afraid to, we are threatened by, exploring what we mean by love.
Perhaps we feel too embarrassed to explore what we mean by love because, in some Victorian way, we think this involves private emotions and feelings that should not be discussed in public or in polite company.
Perhaps we return to teenage feelings of blushing and being unable to find appropriate mature language to discuss what love truly means beyond our own emotions.
Perhaps because of past experiences, we can confuse attention with affection, affection with love, and so go on doing things to gain attention so that this compensates for a lack of affection and for not being fulfilled in our needs to be loved.
Few of us grow up being taught how to think about love and what it is, in its broader, theological, spiritual and psychological meanings.
What does the Apostle Paul mean by love in this New Testament reading?
On the one hand, Saint Paul’s idea of love means something very different from Saint Peter’s love of our own that turns to hatred of the other. And, on the other hand, his idea of love means something very different from a love-in in San Francisco the Summer of Love.
In his book The Four Loves (1960), CS Lewis identifies the four loves as: affection (στοργή, storge), which he calls the humblest love and which is unmerited; friendship (φιλία, philia); eros (ἔρως); and caritas or agape (ἀγάπη).
In this reading, Saint Paul draws on three of these words, so that he talks about love in all its fullness. He talks about ἀγάπη (agape, Romans 12: 9), and the need for it be genuine, without duplicity. He refers to the word στοργή, unearned or unmerited love, when he talks about φιλόστοργος (philostorgos, verse 10), honouring one another and loving without counting the cost. He talks about φιλαδελφία (philadelphía), mutual love for one another that is so much more than the affection described in the English translation and so much wider in scope than ‘brotherly love’ which is often used instead (verses 10 and 12).
He gives a balanced and considered approach to what love is. And yet there is not one word in it about marriage, sex or gender.
Rather than offering mere words that label love, Saint Paul provides practical examples of how love is expressed, how it is not just a feeling but is only genuine when it is put into action.
He tells me that love is mutual, shows honour, is the best way to serve God. I must rejoice, be patient, pray for others, give to others, welcome strangers, bless those I see as threats and as enemies and never to curse them.
I am to rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. I am not to be a social or an intellectual snob.
I am to live in peace with all, and let God take care, in God’s own way, of those who do me wrong. I am to feed the hungry, give something to drink to those who thirst, I am to respond to evil with good.
What a different Church we would have today if these were our priorities when it comes to mission.
Matthew 16: 21-28:
Christ has been teaching the disciples about their mission and how to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God. Now, as he prepares them to go up to Jerusalem, his emphasis shifts to teaching them that he must suffer, die and be raised from the dead on the third day.
The Apostle Peter has already grasped in the previous Sunday’s reading that Christ is ‘the Messiah, the Son of the living God’ (verse 16, see Matthew 16: 13-20, 23 August 2020). Now, however, he fails to grasp or refuses to accept the concept of the Messiah suffering and dying, rather than leading them to freedom glory.
There is a harsh, terse response from Christ: ‘Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
Peter who is a rock becomes a stumbling block, literally a scandal (σκᾰ́νδᾰλον, skandalon; see Leviticus 19: 14); Peter who has attempted to walk on water does not grasp what it means to walk with Christ on the road to Jerusalem; Peter who is to receive the keys of the kingdom fails to grasp the key to understanding Christ’s Messiahship; later, Peter who is present at the Transfiguration, is also going to deny Christ three times at his passion.
Christ then talks to the disciples about the cost of discipleship. To be his followers, we must be willing to take up the same cross, we must be willing to devote our whole lives to God, denying ourselves, giving up physical comforts and safety, accepting even death if necessary.
Jesus then asks a rhetorical question. Nothing that we can gain can add to the value of our future with God.
There will be a time of reckoning, when Christ comes in glory at the end of time, on the Day of Judgment, when Christ comes, ushering in his kingdom.
Matthew 16: 21-28 (NRSVA):
21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ 23 But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
27 ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’
Liturgical Resources:
Liturgical Colour: Green (Orinary Time, Year A).
The Collect of the Day:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you are always more ready to hear than we to pray
and to give more than either we desire, or deserve:
Pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy,
forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid,
and giving us those good things
which we are not worthy to ask
save through the merits and mediation
of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.
The Collect of the Word:
O God,
whose Son has shown the way of the cross to be the way of life:
transform and renew our minds
that we may not be conformed to this world
but may offer ourselves wholly to you
as a living sacrifice
through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God of compassion,
in this eucharist we know again your forgiveness
and the healing power of your love.
Grant that we who are made whole in Christ
may bring that forgiveness and healing to this broken world,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Suggested Hymns:
Exodus 3: 1-15:
325, Be still, for the presence of the Lord, the Holy One is here
262, Come, ye faithful, raise the strain
331, God reveals his presence
321, Holy, holy, holy! Lord God almighty
336, Jesus, where’er thy people meet
323, The God of Abraham praise
679, When Israel was in Egypt’s land
Psalm 105: 1-6, 23-26, 45c:
321, Holy, holy, holy! Lord God almighty
679, When Israel was in Egypt’s land
Psalm 115:
668, God is our fortress and our rock
Jeremiah 15: 15-21:
384, Lord, thy word abideth
Psalm 26: 1-8:
343, We love the place, O God
Romans 12: 9-21:
517, Brother, sister, let me serve you
219, From heav’n you came, helpless babe
455, Go forth for God; go forth to the world in peace
520, God is love; and where true love is, God himself is there
312, Gracious Spirit, Holy Ghost
523, Help us to help each other, Lord
300, Holy Spirit, truth divine
525, Let there be love shared among us
57, Lord, for tomorrow and its needs
503, Make me a channel of your peace
507, Put peace into each other’s hands
531, Where love and loving–kindness dwell
Matthew 16: 21-28:
666, Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side
561, Beneath the cross of Jesus
645, Father, hear the prayer we offer
588, Light of the minds that know him
59, New every morning is the love
108, Praise to the Holiest in the height
599, ‘Take up thy cross’, the Saviour said
285, The head that once was crowned with thorns
605, Will you come and follow me
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
The hymns suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)
Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.
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