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This week puts us on the cusp of the back-to-school / back-to-normal schedules that brings normalcy to the family rhythm while sounding the death knell to Disney Land and Mt. Rushmore. Our passages are disparate from each other, though Psalm 81 and Jeremiah 2 do share in common God’s faithfulness in sharp contrast to Israel’s dreary unfaithfulness. The epistle and gospel lessons both offer great advice to the back-to-school crowd-from honoring leaders (teachers?) to humility.

PSALM 81:1, 10-16-DEPENDENCE OR RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM?

This psalm anticipates and complements the first lesson. The psalmist cites chapter and verse for moments when God came to relieve the burden and free the hands of God’s people in trouble. But though a rescued people, a well-provisioned people, Israel opted for rugged individualism over dependence on God. Still, the psalmist holds out hope that even yet if God’s people would repent, God might relent from judgment and again "satisfy [them] with wild honey from the rock" (v. 16).

JEREMIAH 2:4-13-CRACKS IN THE CISTERN

In this passage God charges Israel with unfaithfulness to the covenant. "They have worshiped foolish idols" (v. 5), God says, instead of anticipating God’s intervention and deliverance (v. 6). The brief review of Israel’s unfaithfulness reveals that Israel has in effect, traded God like a baseball card for other more enticing gods. Who has ever heard of such a thing-"exchanging its gods for another god, even though gods are nothing" (v. 11)? Such behavior are like deep cracks in the cistern-no one can hold a relationship together with such unfaithful behavior.

HEBREWS 13:1-8, 15-16-FINAL INSTRUCTIONS

The Hebrews writer sums up his homily with a call to Christian love as it is expressed through hospitality, prison visitation, faithfulness in marriage, a freedom in relationship to money. We need to rely only on God for our satisfaction for, as the writer quotes from the Law, "I will never fail you nor forsake you" (v. 5). Last minute instructions also tacked on to the closing remarks remind the congregation that leaders should be honored, that every Christian should be on guard against novel gospel innovations, that they should be courageous followers of Christ-even to the point of suffering, and that Christians should be walking praisers of God’s glory, always being mindful to share with others.

LUKE 14:1, 7-14-POWER HUMILITY

This has got to be one of Jesus’ most humorous teachings! Jesus sees everyone at an rsvp dinner all stacked up near the head table-borrowed glory-we suspect! So Jesus turns the table around and shows how ludicrous such glory-mongering is. In the end, Jesus tells them how to really throw a party, by deliberately inviting folks who can’t possibly reciprocate-"the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind" (v. 13). "Then at the resurrection . . . God will reward you for inviting those who could not repay you" (v. 14).