The lectionary reading for the so-called ‘Last Sunday after Trinity’ as we near the end of Year A is Matthew 22.34–46. Having had three symbolic actions from Jesus (entering the city, overturning the tables, withering the fig tree) and three parables (the two sons, the wicked tenants, the wedding banquet), we have now reached the third of three hostile questions to Jesus. The third asks for a summary of the law, before Jesus turns the tables and poses a question to his opponents.
How he answers, and the question he asks, offer fascinating insight into our own reading of Scripture and understanding of Jesus.
Come and join Ian and James as they explore this.
The difference between this interaction and that in Luke 10 is that here it is Jesus who gives the summary of the law and in Luke 10 it is the teacher of the law.
Thanks! I didn’t have the parallel texts in front of me when I commented—though I do analyse that in the relevant posts on the other gospels.
Apologies that this is O/T here, but are the C of E Bishops beginning to stall on ‘Prayers for LLF’? If so, is this just temporising, or are they feeling the pressure from London and elsewhere on finances and the open rejection of the bishops there? Has the letter of dissent from evangelical bishops had its impact?
If so, this is the time to keep up the pressure, not to relent. Parishes must STOP paying into the dioceses and must organise their own orthodox leadership. London is showing the way in this.
I read recently (I think it was in Psephizo!) of the astonishing increase in central staff in dioceses over the years, while parochial posts have been axed and parishes merged. This has to end. These diocesan posts add very little to the work of the diocese but are a huge financial burden on parishes. Keep up the pressure. Redirect the giving to gospel ministry.
Not O/T at all. As Gandhi said “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Well I never want to hear another word about that paedo who slept with pre-pubescent and teenage girls in his bed. If he wants to judge me as a Christian I’m happy to judge him as a human adult male. And he needs cancelling.
Yes, those disclosures 20 years or so ago about “Mahatma” Gandhi sharing a bed with young girls to “prove his purity” came as a great embarrassment to the promoters of the Gandhi cult that existed when I was a school child and then was revived by that awful hagiographic film.
His political instincts were as poor as his grasp of Christian theology.
Meanwhile, India’s Supreme Court has rejected same-sex marriage as incompatible with “Indian values”.
India is Hindu majority not Christian and not western either. Albeit homosexuality is legal there even if not same sex marriage
Simon T1 I am very aware that India is Hindu, then Muslim, then Christian (3%?) – although it must be added that the modern Western values notionally espoused by the Indian state (equality, freedom etc) are Christian in origin, not Hindu, and are a oriduct of the Raj. But it is significant that its top judges all found same-sex marriage contrary to Indian history and values.
Contrary to Hindu values one presumes but that has no relevance to a non Hindu majority nation like ours, even if we do now have a Hindu PM
If evangelicals think they will get away with that then be warned, the liberal Catholic backlash will be hard and uncompromising. Already Ben Bradshaw MP and Peter Gibson MP have written to the Church Commissioner demanding to know why the Bishops are backtracking on the prayers of blessing for homosexual couples in the established church the majority of Synod voted for and for details of the letter from evangelicals.
https://x.com/BenPBradshaw/status/1716467419315614107?s=20
If evangelical churches wish to deny liberal Catholic Parishes the right to perform prayers of blessing for loving homosexual couples within their Parishes then fine. If some evangelicals want to withhold payments into Dioceses fine, they can leave the C of E altogether if needed and go independent, the C of E has billions in assets and can survive without being blackmailed. Evangelicals have an opt out from homosexual blessings, they don’t have to perform them.
I do agree though on redirecting resources direct from dioceses to Parishes
Simon T1, Ben Bradshaw has been grandstanding about homosexuality for years because he is homosexual himself and wants to force everyone to agree with him, instead of searching his own heart and seeking the grace of God. The poor man is obsessed with his own sexual desires and cannot accept that he is wrong. But politics is full of petty tyrants like Bradshaw who want to control the lives of others. They are the worst kind, and they get increasingly bitter as they age,
Many years ago I met Chris Bryant when he was still a curate. His vicar told me that he expected Bryant to “go far in life”. He turned out to be right but he should have added “in the wrong direction”. Bryant abandoned the Christian ministry and the Christian faith in the pursuit of his own materialistic and political ambutions.
In your limited (and extremely parochial and absurdly political) understanding of Christianity you consistently fail to understand what is at stake in this issue: it is about the very de-naturing of Christianity and its transformation into something else. Chris Bryant’s loss of faith should be a warning to you, if you can understand it. I’m not sure you can, yet.
Anyhow, Bradshaw will soon be political history as he is not standing at the next General Election, or so it has been reported.
The Church of England as the established church is obliged to bless the relationships of homosexual couples married in English law in its Parishes. That is what Bryant and Bradshaw believe and if the blessings for homosexual couples Synod approved are delayed beyond the next general election then be assured they will seek to use the likely Labour majority to get Parliament to force through those blessings or maybe go further and full homosexual marriage on the Church of England as established church whether evangelicals like it or not.
Given the Church of England already married divorcees and has women priests and bishops despite Bible passages against that it is hardly based on biblical purity in all aspects now anyway. If you want that you should leave the established church and become Roman Catholic or Baptist or independent evangelical
Ah, we are all to be subject to the subjective shoulds of Simon.
I shouldn’t think so. Nor should I do so.
Simon, why on earth are you importing discussion about sexuality into a completely unrelated blog post? You seem rather obsessed. Can you engage with the issue at hand please?
Tell James who started the O/T discussion
Yes, off topic! Can we stick to the topic here…?!
Good comments from you both on the different summaries of the law and on the relationship between the summaries and the details (Law and prophets). My progressive friends seem to use the gospel summary ‘love’ to disregard the biblical detail, but they then import their own detail, definitions of love and details of how to live, from other sources. Lots to think about. Thanks.
Yes, that is a common tendency—and not what Jesus is encouraging here!
I think I agree, but with considerable caution. Culture can be understood as; ‘not just what we look at, but how we look’. That applies to my reading of the Torah as much as anything else, I import stuff, progressive or not. Paul prays for his Philippian church that they might overflow with love and that they add knowledge and full insight; to be blameless we must not just love, but grow in insight as to how we love in practice. It is not easy, it is not binary, it is not cost neutral, nor is it following the rules. Paul says that once I have become free from rules, I find myself bound by the demands of love, which might bind me more tightly and constrain my freedom, more than the rules. So if I think loves equals freedom I am mistaken, but if I think the rules equal blamelessness I am also mistaken. Progressives might stumble over the first but conservatives might be crushed by the second.