Open-ended, Life-centred,
Gospel-Focussed Explorations of Australian Prayer Book Psalms.
Psalm 50:7-15....PENTECOST PLUS 4 (A)
.... (For the
Gospel, please scroll)
INTRODUCTION: 1] Psalms
are poetry for singing;
personal, depending not on rhyme, but on developing an idea,
contrasting it, etc. They date from pre-1000 BC (David)
to mid 400s
BC. Being of their day, we may
find attitudes in some PSs abhorrent. 2]
For the APB text see the reverse of the PB's title page. 3]
After Pentecost, the PSS in BK are the alternatives. 4] v.7 starts with God as
'prophet'. 5] The Prophets IS
& MIC see God not requiring animal sacrifices at all.
WARMING UP: What do we need - or not need - in this life?
TREASURES OLD & NEW:
Identify God at work in anything this week?
ENTERING INTO THE STORY:
7 How attentive
are we to what God may be trying to tell us? Are we sometimes more
attentive to what a prophet or saint might say in some passage than to
what God is saying to us in the totality of Scripture? (see 2TIM3:16)
Is this how factions lock themselves into interpretations of Scripture
that match their view of God? 8-9
Do we make sacrifices, of any kind, for which God might reprove us
rather than approve us? What do we make of what someone once said::
"only when you saw your animal going up in smoke did you know how
costly sacrifice was"? How costly are any sacrifices we do make to God
in any sense? Is what God is going on about here perhaps more the
spirit in which sacrifices were / are offered than the fact of such
offering? How constant are any kinds of sacrifices we make to God, or are they likely
to be occasional, seasonal, etc.? Is the issue here & in the
following vv. not so much the fact of people's sacrifices but, a) the
spirit in which they / we make them? or b) a lack of understanding of
what they / we're actually doing in making them? (See N.5)
10-13 How strongly do we
recognize God's ownership of all there is, animals, birds, & all,
even the pests? How much does our view on this matter, whether
everything is God's or ours (as God's stewards?) affect our attitude to
animals, etc., our keeping them as pets, our eating habits, etc.? How
much of what God is on about here is to do with His not needing sacrifices to feed
on (like pagan gods were supposed to need) as distinct from them as
acts of reverence & worship?
14-15 What's the
difference between, say, an animal sacrifice & a sacrifice of
thanksgiving, a eucharistic phrase in our Prayer Book? What is a 'sacrifice of thanksgiving'?
Given the protestant reformers built on this idea to denounce 'the
sacrifice of the Mass' (the doctrine that Jesus was bodily sacrificed
on a church altar in Mass as distinct from being 'sacramentally'
sacrificed' have we moved so far from that being an issue that we've
lost any real 'sacrificial' emphasis in today's eucharists? Have we
gained or lost anything from such a shift in emphasis? Or is that kind
of controversy best left in the past? Do we see any connection between
sacrifice & calling on God today?
PLUS: Can we spot any
connection between PS50 & today's Gospel (MT 9:9-13, 18-26)?
