Open-ended,
Life-centred,
Gospel-Focused Explorations of Hebrew Bible Readings from the
Australian Prayer Book.
Deuteronomy 30:9-14... 7th S after Pentecost, Year C .... (For LK10:
25-37
scroll.)
NOTES: 1]Read the Hebrew Bible in the light
of our Christian understanding of God revealed in Jesus.2] Deuteronomy (Greek for 'second
law')
centres on 'the old cultic & legal traditions relevant
for their time' [von Rad, DEUT, p.23]. The book of DEUT appears in
2K22:8
& 23:24-5 (c.622BC), & Ezra reads it to the
people in NEH 8. DEUT may have reached its present form during the
Exile in 6th C. Babylon. 3]
The legal
expert who quizzes Jesus in LK 10 would know this passage.
WARMING UP: Have we all
had a good day today?
TREASURES OLD & NEW:
Identify God at work in anything this week?
ENTERING INTO THE STORY:
9-10 Do we normally associate prosperity with
keeping God's Law; that if we keep that Law, God will make us prosper?
Is that just pre-Jesus teaching? How might
prosperity & keeping God's Law have become so disconnected in
Christian circles when they were so intimately connected in Jewish
eyes? What is true prosperity? Is there anything wrong with material
prosperity? Are we
comfortable with churches that preach a 'prosperity Gospel' - common
among a certain type of church these days? What if our idea of
prosperity is
disconnected from a moral code such as we have in both Judaism &
Christianity? What do we make of what Archbishop Philip Freier of
Melbourne says in an address to his recent Synod: "Christians have lost
sight of the spiritual
dangers of wealth," & "Christians have allowed consumerism to
make them self-contented & too concerned with their own comfort
& economic security."
Is 'turning to the Lord
your God with all your heart & with all your
soul' the engine room of our daily life? What does that have to do with
any
prosperity we achieve in any sense?
11-14 In what
Yahweh God says here through Moses in vv.11-12, are all the objections
we
normally raise, all the complaints, all the excuses we make for not
keep keeping God's Law rather demolished at one stroke, or just some of
them? Now we
have seen Jesus demonstrate God's Law to be a Law of Love, not legal
nitty gritty, can we still say it's too hard, too far away? Can
there be any heaven up there
somewhere if we aren't creating it by living out God's Law of Love here
on
earth, here & now? What are the greatest barriers we have to break
down if we are to take God's Law seriously enough to actually do it? Would we be better off,
God's Kingdom be better off, if we stopped talking about 'keeping' that
Law & actually started doing
it?
What's the connection
between God's Law (of Love) being in our heart & in our mouth? Might we be more
like the legal expert who quizzes Jesus in the Gospel than we would
like to think? And less like the 'Good Samaritan'? If we were able to
quiz Jesus, "What must we do to reverse any such likenesses?" what
response might we get?
