30 Northumberland Square | North Shields | NE30 1PW
Weekly Update #30: Sunday 11th October 2020
From the Minister Putting our trust in…
Nowadays, many people still recognise the phrase, “golden calf”. Fewer know that it comes from the biblical story of when Israelites ran out of trust in God, and God’s representative, Moses. Instead, they decided to put their trust in gods they could create for themselves. They pooled their resources to create a golden calf as the focus for worship, but it all ended in anger and tears. When the going has been rough for a while it’s natural for a people to look to themselves for solutions – old time religion, nostalgic memories of wartime victories, or world-beating technological fixes. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with calves, gold, history, or modern technology. Treating them as substitutes for God, though, rather than gifts from God, whose use should reflect the just and loving nature of their giver, is liable to lead to disappointment.
Trevor
Photo: Heil, Fri. Dancing Around the Golden Calf, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. [retrieved October 6, 2020]. Original source.
Prayer
Gracious God, your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness!
Do not leave us to faithless wondering ways, but shepherd us,
So that we take right paths, and know your presence in difficult times. Amen.
To be able attend to attend the 10.00 a.m. or 11.15 a.m. service, contact Alison Drew between Monday morning and midday on the Friday in the week before the service. (Contact details below.)
No doubt about it, Jesus’s parable about a wedding banquet is a strange one! It includes potential guests who murder those who deliver their invitations (we’ll take that as a “no”) and an affronted host who retaliates by killing not only the murderers, but also by burning down their entire city. That king doesn’t sound like God, as represented by Jesus Christ. You would hope that picturing religious folk as having no time for God was similarly surreal, but I’m less confident about that. Someone who invites everyone from the streets, both good and bad, to share in a meal (21:9, 10,) does sound a lot more Jesus / God-like. Hopefully we look more like people who are happy to share space with the good and bad, all at God’s banquet.
