Perfect sacrifice

-->

My life is already being poured away as a libation, and the time has come for me to be gone.

I have fought the good fight to the end; I have run the race to the finish; I have kept the faith; all there is to come now is the crown of righteousness reserved for me, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that Day; and not only to me but to all those who have longed for his Appearing.

2 Timothy 4:6 - 8

There was once a time, in my memory, when anxious discussions on the rapid growth of secularism were held in our church communities. The anxiety related to the fear that the values that marked our Christian faith would be lost. Values related to knowing the person of Jesus, the sacredness of marriage, to honouring our ancient forms of worship, to respect for life itself from conception to death. I’m not referring to the clerical church that has so disappointed us, but to our mums and dads and grandparents and great-grandparents who built our churches and were our churches.

Suffice to say, that secularism we so feared has come to pass. The links we had with our past, with our history tenuously clinging to a perilous present, have left us struggling with relevance, purpose and meaning. We have become so inured to media-generated disasters that harangue and plague us through our television screens and to the pain of the generations of abused, alienated, disenfranchised fellow human beings, that we are able to disconnect ourselves from reality.

Paul’s letter to Timothy carries his exacting and powerful message about what a faithful life looks like and feels like. He challenges that disconnection. To be faithful is to place all you are and all you have into God’s hands, in order to be a perfect sacrifice or libation. The life of faith makes it possible to transform the ordinariness of our daily lives, into lives that proclaim the life and death of Jesus and helps reorder and reconnect us to the pain of others, so that we might be compassionate.

Not many I know want a return to the pious and devotional rituals of our forebears, but in our desire to make meaning of our lives we need to identify, acknowledge, give expression to, and celebrate new rituals and rediscover what really worked for past generations.

While we must live in the present, we need to keep our eyes on the horizon to the future and our ears firmly attending to the past. Life is worth fighting for, it is a race worth winning and for those who remain faithful there awaits a crown of righteousness.

The transformation can begin today. It begins with acknowledging the presence of God in your life, uttering words of thanksgiving, praise, seeking understanding, knowing him, loving him and living and working each day as if your life was already complete.

The Lord is close to the broken-hearted;

those whose spirit is crushed he will save.

The Lord ransoms the souls of his servants.

Those who hide in him shall not be condemned.

Psalm 32:23

Persistent prayer

I lift up my eyes to the mountains:

from where shall come my help?

My help shall come from the Lord

who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 120: 1-2

The myth that we are all equal before the law has long been debunked. We kid ourselves that our legislative and judicial systems have blind eyes when it comes to citizenship, gender, sexual preference, social status, education, upbringing and wealth. They don’t. Privilege given to any person or group is inequitable unless it addresses an imbalance or provides for support that will raise and enhance a person’s or group’s opportunities, protect the weak and vulnerable. There is a raft of anti-discrimination acts promulgated by commonwealth, state and territory legislatures that attempt to do so.

In Tasmania the sentence for Gunn’s John Gay for insider trading was $50,000. He sold $3.1 million of shares. The maximum sentence was a fine of $220,000 or 10 years imprisonment. A week before Gay was sentenced an Education Department employee in Hobart, Sandra Johnson, was jailed for four years for stealing $400,000 over a period of several years. Is justice blind?

Luke (18:1 – 8) tells the story of the widow who pesters an unjust judge until he relents in case she worries him to death. This is the story of a disempowered woman, of lowly status and of little income, who persists in seeking justice. It is her persistence that brings success. Jesus tells this parable to highlight ‘the need to pray continually and never lose heart’. This is ‘the cry of the poor (Proverbs 21:13)’. Before God we are indeed equal, though we are constantly assured that the poor, children, the disadvantaged, the dispossessed have a special place. It is quite imaginable to envisage this widow praying Psalm 120: who will help me? It will be the Lord. It is so much easier to give up, to accept less than what is right and just. Our persistence must be in both in prayer and action. The widow doesn’t just leave her prayer for justice before God, she is strengthened by and nourished by her prayer that propels her into action.

The psalmist’s beautiful trust in God is a constant reminder that in God’s eyes, we are all loved, no more and no less than one another. He is our guard and our protector when all around us desert us, or when human justice and compassion fail.

May he never allow you to stumble!

Let him sleep not, your guard.

No, he sleeps not nor slumbers,

Israel’s guard.

The Lord is your guard and your shade;

at your right side he stands.

By day the sun shall not smite you

nor the moon in the night.