We provide indications specific to the readings for each week as part of our Sunday bulletin. This is what our bulletin last week had to say about three of the readings for this week:

The prophet Isaiah has much to offer those seeking remedy for the many troubles of life in the world. This text points to a key insight. Knowing God is the foundation for a full experience of life’s meaning and purpose. We may seek that meaning and purpose along other avenues and so lose our bearings, inheriting consequences that are neither desirable nor beneficial.
 

The Psalm picks up on the centrality of coming to a knowledge of God as the key to living well in the world. The poem speaks of an intense desire by which the poet is led forward into the experience of God’s presence and guidance. Reading such words we may well ask about our own priorities and commitments. Are they directed to the discovery of God’s way and purpose?

Luke presents a small story to illustrate our responsibility before God. Our individual and collective life is ordered by God to accomplish a purpose. That purpose has to do with a spiritual identity characterized by a peaceful heart, a thoughtful mind, and a committed will. We are perhaps eager to realize these purposes in our own experience. To do so requires only a willingness to let go of dispositions and assumptions that are shaped by our anxiety in view of the world’s troubled circumstances. While we remain responsible in all the material aspects of our being in the world, our primary determination is the discovery and practice of spiritual insights by which we are made able to bring relief and remedy into our own lives and from there into all of our relationships.  

My take on the passage from Luke is that Jesus is emphasizing the urgency of his call to his 1st century hearers to repent / change / bear fruit, or else they too will perish at the hands of the Romans.

In their situation the potential for near-immediate national (and therefore personal) calamity seems clear. I don't see any clear parallels with our own situation. Perhaps I am too shortsighted?

Is this like a modern day call like Martin Luther King etc.?

It seems to me that MLK, while not making reference to this text explicit, brings its essential word into clear modern focus. Taking creation as the vine we may wonder if it has a future. MLK makes it clear that we must determine new priorities. He serves as one who by his passionate words and deeds digs around the roots and provides the kind of nourishment that will stimulate growth into fruitfulness.

Do you really not?

I can identify things that I personally should turn away from as I try to turn my life more towards God. I can identify "ills" in Canadian society that we would do well to turn away from. I believe God is calling us to make such changes, as individuals and as a society.

But I really don't see any specific national calamity looming over us if we do not change our ways. Not in the obvious way that the Roman army posed a threat to 1st century Jewish rebels.

If you see something, I am willing to admit to short-sightedness (or even blindness). Do you see something specific?

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If you see something, I am willing to admit to short-sightedness (or even blindness). Do you see something specific?

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The number of children starving and the number of homeless in our streets. Not the same but not so different either.

Yes, I agree. I did claim to see some of our problems. I only claimed not to see the calamity that is threatening us if we do not address them.

For example, I do not foresee a revolution (as Czarist Russia or royalist France), nor occupation by a foreign power (as Assyria, Babylon or Rome in ancient Israel), etc. Perhaps I am missing some obvious threat to Canadian society?

We pray, "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven", and we are surely called to commit ourselves to this goal. We can hardly pray the Lord's Prayer without hearing it call us to repent, to change, to work for God's kingdom. However, it seems to me that Luke 13:1-8 goes further. It says repentance is urgent - asap - or else ...!

For Jesus audience in Luke 13, I take his warning to be "repent or else the Romans will destroy you". Is that how others interpret it?

For our society an analogy would take the form "repent or else <blank>". I don't know how to fill in the blank! Is it important? Is that a reasonable way to try to interpret Luke 13 for our society?

Sorry. More questions than answers here.

The western social economy is now suffering the effects of incremental fluctuation. The spiral of crisis grows exponentially deeper with each occurrence. We are now in an exhale cycle. The next inhale will cause grief beyond measure, with increased police power to protect the interests of power. As Leonard Cohen says so well: "I have seen the future and it is murder."

Here is a clue. We have a prime minister who has publically declared that the judgments of God matter more to him than the judgments of history. This reflects a Calvinist commitment informed by an  ideological bias. That bias is for the continued expansion of capital interest at home and abroad. The prime minister, in Copenhagen, made it clear that Canada's concern for the well-being of money trumped concern for the environment.

It seems that the service of money has been considered congruent with the service of God in the prime minister's understanding. This mirrors the pattern at work in Jerusalem where Herod posed as God's anointed king, blessed by a priesthood well served by Herod's political concerns. Think of the fundamental voice in the constituency that endorses and encourages the prime minister's agenda: more police, more prisons, and harsher punishments for the broken poor.

Lent is a time of preparation as the unimaginable approaches.

Thanks GeoFee. Yes, such an economic collapse would certainly fit with the passage.

Now that you prodded me to think that way, I could also see environmental collapse as an alternative (or even additional) form of "perishing", unless we repent.