THAT IS EVERYTHING

JULY 11, 2010

SCRIPTURES:  Amos 7:7-17 & Luke 10:25-37

            In a world that tells us that no one has a right to judge us are we willing “to love and to obey a God who, in love, judges us?”

          In our Old Testament lesson from Amos 7, we read about a time just after the glorious days of King Solomon and the United Kingdom.   Israel in the north has rebelled against Solomon’s son and set up a separate kingdom and instituted places of worship and a priesthood that is not of the family line of Aaron as ordered by God when the Tent of Meeting and orders of worship were first established.  Amos tells the people that he has seen a vision in which God holding a plumb line says that He will judge Israel and that the king shall die by the sword.  The priest tells the king to reject Amos and his warnings. 

“The church, like Israel before us, lives under the judgment of God. We are accountable, not simply to our own opinions about what is right and what is not, but to God's judgment. The prophets of God say that we shall be liable to judgment, a judgment not derived from our own sense of righteousness, or by the general standards of the society around us, but rather from God. “ (Abingdon Preaching Annual 2010)

In Luke 10, we are confronted with a lawyer’s question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus enters the debate and draws out from the lawyer the traditional answer “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”  When Jesus approves and says, “Do this and you shall live.”  He is asked, “Who is my neighbor?”   And we receive the parable of the Good Samaritan.

“The theologian Karl Barth said that we are judged by Christ's resurrection as much as by his cross. The resurrection is God's final "verdict" upon our sin. God "judges [the world] with the aim of saving it" (Church Dogmatics, IV, 1, p. 309).”