ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
June 16, 2024
Today in worship, we are going to enjoy a good word from the book of Deuteronomy, where we read:
“A father and a mother may have a stubborn and rebellious son who refuses to obey them even after he has been punished. If a son is like that, his parents must drag him to the town gate… [and] the men of the town will stone that son to death.”
Doesn’t that warm your heart, especially on this Father’s Day. Though there might be some jokes around a passage of scripture like this, I doubt we will find anyone this morning at Cypress Creek Christian Church who, upon hearing these words read, will say, “Amen! About time we get to the good stuff.”
A lot of faithful folks come across passages of scripture like this and try their best to ignore or dismiss them. One of the more common responses is for people to say, “That’s the God of the Old Testament.” Yet since there is only one God, and as the scriptures suggest often, that God never changes, then the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. Of course, our Jewish friends have been struggling with some of the more challenging passages of scripture longer than Christians have. And maybe there is something for us to learn, as there is often a library of thinking and debating around each of the difficult passages. And there is not one summarized belief on the topic, but stories and poetry and humor that attempt to show a great history of understanding that is forever expanding.
The very universe in which we live, O Lord, is continuing to expand. Keep me from falling into a faith that is stagnant and stuck. As both the universe and my faith are expanding, I believe you are the one beckoning it all forward in love. Amen.
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