Attending sunday mass
Introduction
This week we combine the story of the baptism of Jesus with the thoughts about coming into a New Year. I chose as my focus the ideas around hearing the voice of God, but there are many other themes in these passages which are just as rich. Through the readings, the idea of hearing God's voice recurs, and another connection to explore is the relationship within the divine of God's voice and the Holy Spirit. We can also ask questions of ourselves in terms of our hearing of God's voice and our speaking in a way that is true to the Spirit or inspired by the Spirit. There's also the question of human judgement, and those times we choose to follow a person, either a ‘Paul' or an ‘Apollos', rather than using our own judgement and conscience to follow Christ through the voice of God as we hear it.
Whichever direction your preparation for worship takes, it is my hope that the people gathering may find hope and comfort in the voice of God as they think, sing and pray together with worshipful hearts.
Genesis 1:1-5
My thoughts for this week focus on the beginning of verse three: "Then God said". I wonder what role we think the voice of God had in these creation stories. Was it a command to some powers unseen? Or was God's voice the creative force itself? Do we have any other way in which to interpret God's voice in this story? Or is it cut and dried? The conflict between religion and science in the 19th century has not been entirely resolved in the 21st. Does the concept of the ‘Voice of God' as a creative force necessarily negate scientific theories, such as the Big Bang? Or is it possible to have a perfectly logical and theoretical scientific model for which the biblical stories provide a metaphorical understanding? I don't propose to answer these questions this week – but they are an interesting background to the power of the voice of God, as described in the story of the baptism of Jesus.
Psalm 29
In this psalm, God's voice is powerful and full of majesty but it is also destructive. "The voice of the Lord […] breaks the cedars of Lebanon." Where we might be inclined to view weather as a dispassionate and scientific planetary system, in fact we know that weather is also connected to human activity through our impact on the climate. Can the human beings who live on this earth affect the weather in the same way as God's voice? If so, what do we understand when we hear that God also affects the weather? Are we free of any implication in that event? If the forests are stripped bare, do we see this as demonstrating the glory or strength of God? Or, is it a judgment on the emissions of CO2 over the past 150 years caused by humans?
Looking back to the Genesis reading there was a reference to the "wind from God" (v2), which was creative in force; in this psalm God is in the thunder and wind with a destructive force – how do we understand this today in a modern context?
Acts 19:1-7
This is our only reading this week not to reference the voice of God directly. Instead we hear of disciples in Ephesus who were baptised with the ‘baptism of John' and had, therefore, not received the Holy Spirit. It appears from the text that this was out of ignorance of the baptism they might receive in the name of the Lord Jesus. Once they learned of the difference, Paul baptised them and they received the Holy Spirit, spoke in tongues and prophesied. In a neat balance with the disciples who followed Jesus, we are told that there were about twelve of them. Why do we give this number of twelve significance, especially when the writer of Acts adds a qualifying ‘about' to the number?
I wonder how far we believe that we can access or indeed be a vehicle for the voice of God through the Holy Spirit? Is speaking in tongues part of our experience of God's voice? Or is prophesy? How do we judge that a voice from God is genuine? How do we enable ourselves to see what is repentance and what is redemption – what do we consider to be the difference between the two?
In the previous chapter, in Acts 18:24-28, we are introduced to Apollos, another teacher of "the Way of the Lord", who also knew only the baptism of John. In this story it is Priscilla and Aquila who take him aside and set him straight. Apollos goes on to teach and help people who had become believers. He is mentioned again by Paul in the first Letter to the Corinthians as a person who should not be set up as a competing voice to Paul's, nor should the infant church develop sects of leadership devotion rather than devotion to Christ. Again, the question of discernment comes to the fore, hearing the voice of a teacher or preacher is not to be confused with hearing the voice of God.
Happy Sunday Everyone..May the LORD BLESS US ALL!
Wishing you a beautiful and blessed day...Thank You Lord For Everything!🥰😍
*Have A Wonderful Sunday To All Of Us!🤗😍
THANK YOU FOR ALWAYS SUPPORTING MY BLOGS!💖🥰