Looking Like a Million Dollars
I'm not sure how the punishment
Described by Jesus fits the crime -
The killing and the burning here
Should not be told in children's time!
But those who will not recognize
The lavish gift of every day
Are doomed to miss the best of life,
And find themselves, in time, dismayed.
It's not so much the underdressed
Wore shorts, say, but that they were short
On caring for why they'd been called,
And thus, God's purposes would thwart;
In Christ's an invitation to
A life that's clothed by love, transformed,
So that your heart is made anew,
And garbed for grace for all, your norm.
Scott L. Barton
Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom
of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He
sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but
they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have
been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have
been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But
they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business,
while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king
was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their
city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were
not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to
the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all
whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was
not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in
here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless.Then the king said to the
attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness,
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but
few are chosen.”
+ + +
Matthew 22:1-14
Emile Nolde: Dance Around the Golden Calf (1910)
[Note: This poem highlights how important it is for the
reader of the text in worship to speak with conviction, with surprise at the
news proclaimed, and most of all, a palpable sense that the reader believes
this stuff he or she is proclaiming. The reader in the poem was one of my
daughters, Lindsay Barton Cassidy - who, by the way, is getting married in the first picture above!]
Unforgettable Reading
She must have been just eight years-old,
I asked her if she'd read that day;
Her voice, so strong and so controlled,
I hear it in my mind's replay
(An octave higher than 'tis now)
It woke the people up, so clear!
With bold expression, furrowed brow,
Her Moses pleads the LORD might hear,
And change his mind! But grace not cheap,
Her rising voice described the scene
Of reveling and dancers' leaps,
And Moses, hot - not church serene! -
With tablets smashed - and calf all burned -
To powder, ground - and then in rage -
The most bizarre - how Israel learned
No idol can our thirst assuage!
I love the passion of that day;
No age can take such faith away.
Scott L. Barton
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the
mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods
for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up
out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to
them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons,
and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold
rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them,
formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are
your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron
saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said,
“Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” They rose early the next day, and
offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people
sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.
The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom
you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been
quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for
themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and
said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of
Egypt! The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they
are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may
consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” But Moses implored the
Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your
people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a
mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he
brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the
face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not
bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your
servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will
multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I
have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it
forever.’“ And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to
bring on his people.
[Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, carrying
the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both
sides, written on the front and on the back. The tablets were the work of God,
and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets. When Joshua
heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a
noise of war in the camp.” But he said, “It is not the sound made by victors,
or the sound made by losers; it is the sound of revelers that I hear.” As soon
as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned
hot, and he threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the
mountain. He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it
to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.]
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