When Will They Ever Learn?
Commentary
Are you paying attention? Or are you paying attention to the wrong stuff? A voice that sounds a lot like Wisdom as we met her in Proverbs begs us to learn from past experience, so as not to spend money when we can get free stuff. The first generation liberated from Egypt died in the desert because they didn’t learn. And when the people pointed with oohs and ahhs towards current events, Jesus asked them to learn from the past to recognize that some things are not as significant as the eternal choices.
Isaiah 55:1-9
When will they ever learn? The prophet cries aloud with the voice of wisdom, the woman in Proverbs who calls out to us and asks us to come home to common sense! Why, we’re asked, should we spend good money on things we can have for free. The image of food and drink in the marketplace is used, but what is really being given away is real life, true life, in God. There is a long covenant history involving God’s steadfast love and faithfulness and our own response of sometimes half-hearted worship and tepid devotion, if not downright failure to honor the Lord’s commands. But here is another chance offered to us! Come back. God’s gift is still free! God’s offer is still on the table — for now.
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
When will they ever learn? Paul retells our story — even though many of the people to whom he wrote, Gentile converts in Asia Minor — had nothing to do with the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt centuries before. The story of liberation and Passover and the ten plagues, and the parting of the Red Sea, or the disobedience and murmuring in the desert, and God’s faithful response throughout, was not one they grew up with. But by telling the story, teaching the scriptures, and inviting his hearers (for Paul’s letters were read aloud in the assembly and the first “readers” were actually hearers) to live the story — and learn from it — and do better!
As Paul makes clear, this story is not only something we have in common, learning from it is doable. Their lives can serve as an example to us, just as they were to the Corinthian Christians. The testing we experience is common to all humanity, and together we can prevail against our worst nature and triumph through out better nature.
Luke 13:1-9
I remember how, in college, I opened a box of newspaper articles I’d clipped as a high school student. These clippings were barely five years old. On the back of one of them was a list of best selling books. None of them were significant anymore. They’d had their day. But there were any number of books I’d read and enjoyed that never made a best seller list that were still being purchased and were still changing lives. That was decades ago, and I find the same is still true. Good things last.
The people call Jesus’ attention to a current event — a massacre of Galileans at the hand of Pilate, probably as part of a tax revolt. Jesus in turn points to another current event — the collapse of a tower, perhaps because of weather, perhaps because of shoddy construction. In both cases people died. Yet Jesus suggests that their lives were significant not because of the particular current events that surrounded their deaths. They had eternal significance because of eternal choices.
When will we ever learn? The news cycle gets shorter and shorter, and the clamoring that surrounds it can be deafening — so that like the tree in the parable, concluding this section, we fail to produce fruit. But we have an advocate — the gardener, who seems to have plenty of Jesus in him. Just as Jesus was not afraid to do a filthy job, washing the feet of his disciples, in order to demonstrate the quality of servanthood to which we are called, so the gardener in the parable offers to get his hands filthy dirty, working manure into the soil with his bare hands in an effort to save the tree. We’re worth it to God. Are we worth it to each other?
Isaiah 55:1-9
When will they ever learn? The prophet cries aloud with the voice of wisdom, the woman in Proverbs who calls out to us and asks us to come home to common sense! Why, we’re asked, should we spend good money on things we can have for free. The image of food and drink in the marketplace is used, but what is really being given away is real life, true life, in God. There is a long covenant history involving God’s steadfast love and faithfulness and our own response of sometimes half-hearted worship and tepid devotion, if not downright failure to honor the Lord’s commands. But here is another chance offered to us! Come back. God’s gift is still free! God’s offer is still on the table — for now.
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
When will they ever learn? Paul retells our story — even though many of the people to whom he wrote, Gentile converts in Asia Minor — had nothing to do with the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt centuries before. The story of liberation and Passover and the ten plagues, and the parting of the Red Sea, or the disobedience and murmuring in the desert, and God’s faithful response throughout, was not one they grew up with. But by telling the story, teaching the scriptures, and inviting his hearers (for Paul’s letters were read aloud in the assembly and the first “readers” were actually hearers) to live the story — and learn from it — and do better!
As Paul makes clear, this story is not only something we have in common, learning from it is doable. Their lives can serve as an example to us, just as they were to the Corinthian Christians. The testing we experience is common to all humanity, and together we can prevail against our worst nature and triumph through out better nature.
Luke 13:1-9
I remember how, in college, I opened a box of newspaper articles I’d clipped as a high school student. These clippings were barely five years old. On the back of one of them was a list of best selling books. None of them were significant anymore. They’d had their day. But there were any number of books I’d read and enjoyed that never made a best seller list that were still being purchased and were still changing lives. That was decades ago, and I find the same is still true. Good things last.
The people call Jesus’ attention to a current event — a massacre of Galileans at the hand of Pilate, probably as part of a tax revolt. Jesus in turn points to another current event — the collapse of a tower, perhaps because of weather, perhaps because of shoddy construction. In both cases people died. Yet Jesus suggests that their lives were significant not because of the particular current events that surrounded their deaths. They had eternal significance because of eternal choices.
When will we ever learn? The news cycle gets shorter and shorter, and the clamoring that surrounds it can be deafening — so that like the tree in the parable, concluding this section, we fail to produce fruit. But we have an advocate — the gardener, who seems to have plenty of Jesus in him. Just as Jesus was not afraid to do a filthy job, washing the feet of his disciples, in order to demonstrate the quality of servanthood to which we are called, so the gardener in the parable offers to get his hands filthy dirty, working manure into the soil with his bare hands in an effort to save the tree. We’re worth it to God. Are we worth it to each other?
