relationship

Luke 11:1-13, in anticipation of the lectionary text for July 28.

It is all about relationship.
Acknowledgement, Respect, Belonging, Giving, Receiving, Healthy Influence, Advocacy.

They were in a bad place.
Spiritually, the Temple Cult Leaders had been so corrupt for so long that any genuine practice among the people would be a struggle to establish in any pure way.
The local government was corrupt at best, and at worst in collusion with empire in exploiting and destroying the people.
The Roman Empire had been the shadow over them for generations and it seemed that that would continue forever.
The people were occupied, oppressed and desperate for deliverance from their plight.
Doomsday scenarios, some religiously apocalyptic and some politically so (some elided, of course), would be floating around as an expression of the deep-seeded anxiety of those already in their trauma producing circumstance for generations.

In came Jesus with a new way - a way of Agape Love and Grace - flying in the face of empire and providing some hope that God had not altogether walked away from them and was bringing in the Kingdom to deliver the people.  At the writing of this Gospel (ca. 90 A.D.), Jesus was gone but this and other Gospel writings reinforced what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for the believers who still followed Jesus' way of Agape Love.

Relationships had to be healed.
A genuine relationship with God had to be re-established.
A restoration of individual lives and bolstering of community for the continued resistance to empire had to be brought to bear on life.

It started with prayer.
It started with prayer to Creator, acknowledging who God is and how God is different from Rome.
It continued with asking God to bring in the Kingdom values that Jesus taught to replace the empire values of greed, lust for power and desire for status.
It included a request for ENOUGH, because they had gone without enough for so long, because empire took what little they had for the gain of those who already had more than enough.
It focused on forgiveness of the debts that had kept the people down for so long, and a healing of the relationships based on indebtedness (and taking what another has) created by empire.
It finished with a request that no further trials be levied on the people, so that they would no longer be held down, back and out by empire... perhaps also a request that the end not come before healthy life be restored.

Jesus then gave a powerful example of living Agape Love (active commitment on behalf of the other), and thus doing the right thing, not necessarily out of warm feelings but because we need to respond to the needs of others and thus do the right thing.
Jesus then explains God's Agape Love for us, emphasizing that it is our example for how to live with one another.

It is about relationship.
Ours with God and ours with one another.
In the Kingdom, they are the same.
In the Kingdom, they are based on Agape Love and Grace.
And the Kingdom, we pray will come, so that we live those values HERE AND NOW, within the Kingdom.
THAT is our prayer, especially in times of occupation by the hateful and greedy, especially in times of the oppression and exploitation of the many for the sake of the few.
We are to prayerfully RESIST participation in those values and live within the Kingdom here and now.

Pray.  In acknowledgement of your relationship with God AND one another.
Learn.  What Jesus taught, commanded and modeled as Kingdom values in Agape and Grace.
Meditate. Consider being within Kingdom, here and now, and look at what that means.
Repent. Change your thinking to be in alignment with Jesus' Way of Agape, so that your words and actions reflect that in the world around you.
Act.  The Commanded Agape Love is committed ACTION on behalf of the other, even stranger and enemy and especially the most vulnerable among us.

By this, Jesus and His followers changed the world that had suffered under empire.
By this, Jesus and His followers could change life in this part of God's Kingdom, here and now.

With God and others around you -
On what are your relationships based?
Greed, power and status or Agape Love and Grace?

The world has already been changed by empire's greed, lust for power and desire for status.
Now, we need to pray and WORK that the KINGDOM COME so that we live out of Agape and Grace with God and with one another.
There is no other sustainable, life affirming way.

It's all about relationship.

Pastor Jamie