In God there is no change, but we must change for the better.

In God there is no change, but we must change for the better

- reading : Acts 17:22-31


17:22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 17:23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

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The tension between God and humans is there from the very beginning. We could think that it is a mutual tension, but even this thought may show us the very problem of our thinking concerning our relationship to God and with God.

A mutuality would premise the existence of equal parties, which premise is the ancient temptation from the tempter who said in the Garden that you will become like God. We are constantly changing in our body and in our soul without a pause even for a single moment. However in God there is no change, as Apostle James says: not even the shade of changing. In him there are neither waves of anger nor waves of love, decrease or increase of anything, different layers of depths or highs.

God is ultimately not human. We can not argue or quarrel with him, even our whole imagination is not capable to scope him. That is why we talk about him as if he were a human, an old man with white beard, something like a Santa Claus figure, and also that is why he had to send us messengers, like angels, patriarchs and prophets to intermediate and teach us to understand the creation and the universe, the earth and the heavens, calling us for truth, justice and love.

In the Bible, Isaiah says, as if God were a human bridegroom of his fiancé, that “let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.” It is a symbolic speech about God's love, which is really strong, really powerful, because it never changes.

His love never changes, but still Isiah was talking about God also as a punisher, breaking down walls and cities, commanding deadly droughts making the unfaithful vineyards devoured. We should understand again that this picture about the destroying God is a symbolic speech too, just like the parables told by Jesus.

However ridiculous it is even to think that humans could attack, hurt, injure God, Jesus was very aware of that as the smallest sin is also a disobedience against God, the main wickedness of man wants to dethrone God the Father and conquer his kingdom.

The parable of Jesus was given to the disciples about the mutinying workers in the Father's vineyard, as the workers killed all the messengers of the King, the owner of the whole Earth, sent to the vineyard in order to supervise the workers. As it is written in the parable: that after other messengers, finally God “sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.”, which means they want to rule the heaven.

The retaliation is announced by Jesus in an Isaiah style saying: “ Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."

Because of the language of the parables, it is still a symbolic speech, like God would be a revenging or retaliating human person, but actually he is not.

Then what is happening? Humans just can not touch God. Thus what they do, they hurt themselves, because breaking the law is like a sharpened metal boomerang. The blade hurts the person too who throws it.

The judge or the tool of the retaliation is the law in itself as Jesus said it in the Gospel of John:

“The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, … and I judge no one, ... on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge.”

It means that we are the very punishers of ourselves. What does it mean on the earth: For example they say that Montreal is a crumbling city, where sometimes overpasses are collapsing, tunnels are caving in, bridges are eroding, buildings are falling apart, often leaving behind dead and injured people because of human negligence, omissions, lack of staff and supervision, cheapness of the construction etc,. Usually the situation in general on Earth is getting worse, as we harm ourselves harvesting the fruits of our deeds and omissions.

On the planet if we cut the breathing belt of rain-forests and we pollute the oceans and the air, then we and the next generations will have to drink this man filled cup of poisons. Just in the last century because of lack of love, compassion, understanding, care and normality we had two global wars and perpetual local wars since then with hundreds of millions of casualties altogether, and it is probably still not over.

We reap what we sowed, as we sow our deeds and our omissions.

We need law or even laws to regulate our earthly life. Without law or even laws we may live in Anarchy or in Chaos, in Dark Ages. We need a ruler or even rulers to enforce the law, if it is required. In modern democracies it is even told that in general it must be the rule of law.
In the eyes of the first congregation of the Jesus followers in Jerusalem, who were explicitly Jews and followed an extensive Jewish system of rules and regulations called the Halacha, in order to serve God in a Jewish Way.

Nonetheless they also maintained that also every other nation must obey an after Flood minimum set of laws, the so called Seven Laws of Noah. It was told also that the Baptized Gentiles, mostly converted by The Apostle Paul and his circles to Christianity that they must keep these laws in order to be accounted among the Jesus followers.

These Seven Laws of Noah are the following: Not to worship idols. Not to curse God. Not to commit murder. Not to commit adultery, bestiality, or sexual immorality. Not to steal. Not to eat flesh torn from a living animal. To establish courts of justice.

According to the sages, they agree that the seven laws were given to the sons of Noah. Six of the seven laws are derived right from Book of Genesis, with the seventh being the establishing of courts to settle disputes instead of blood revenge or wars. The Flood came because humanity was so wicked that they not only killed each other, but they also ate each other.

The simply set Noahide laws were given to humanity to improve their ways by observing it. However it did not happen. From the stone-age up to now we can see several forms of human governing system. Most of them are the rule of a few strong or wealthy with influence. It is much better than a complete anarchy, but it is still oligarchy, which means, that a few exploit the many using the artificially established law and the arbitrary law enforcement.

They attempt to justify the oppressing systems by a couple of theories like social evolution, the natural inequality, talking about the brainpower over the hand-workers, about the natural superiority of the white collar existence over the crowds of blue-collars, the migth of the armed knights over the peasants. Kings, presidents, prime ministers who serves a state which has an oligarchic system, they serve the exploitation of the crowds by a few influential and mighty.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is right by saying in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10 that: “Among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. ”

In the wholeness of the human history, thousands of years, there are a handful, just so few, wonderful exceptions only, especially the Iroquois Confederacy and the Hopi. Mostly the human society since its beginnings has been based on open or hidden slave-work. You can call the slaves peasants or factory workers, typewriters or employees on low wages, we can do it, but they are slaves, they are working for water and bread, roof and bed, minimum wage or food stamps.

You can call the slave holding masters multinational companies, land-owners, shareholders elite, landlords, moneychangers or you can call the slave-drivers bureaucrats, politicians, bankers, brokers, CEO-s, under their masks they are what they really are.
Nowadays despotism and dictatorships are often camouflaged by a skin of democracy. Even ancient Greece were created on the sweat and tears of the slaves. The free voters of ancient Athen, the example of ancient democracy, they were slave-owning free citizens. Around half of the population were slaves. In the Roman Empire, whose legislation is taught in all universities through the world, around two-third of the population were slaves.

It is hilarious and sad, the State of North-Korea calls itself the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. In Auschwitz you could read on the gate of the death-camp that working hard makes you free. Very cynic, both, though at least the fatal despotism and its cruelty was / is visible.

In the western hemisphere the greedy and brain-washing despotism is often hidden behind the curtain of parliamentarism. People can vote sometimes for preselected candidates giving power for parties who often execute the background agendas of the oligarchy namely mega-banks and mega-corporations against the will and real interest of the constituents, of the people.

Jesus admitted, that it is known and usual, nothing is unheard of it. It was always so, at least among the Gentiles, that rulers are mostly ruling for the interest of the elite, as it is written that their great ones are tyrants over them.

However he added, that you, his followers should not do the same.

Among you, which means among us, there should exist an other rule, and it is the Gospel. Among us there is an other ruler, and he is Jesus. As He says: “Whoever wishes to become great among you, must be your servant.” Not a tyrant but a servant, the opposite of a despot.

Some scholars assert that several codes and constitutions, laws were established in the human society only to defend and preserve the possessors' right to possess their wealth. This statement may be a bit oversimplified, but one thing is certain, that rules and regulations organize a society around the production of the national wealth and the dividing of the national wealth, the method of sharing or excluding.

Somehow almost always, like gravitation, the greatest share of national wealth slips into the hands of the violent and of the shrewd from the hands of the working and producing people.

It happened in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Persia, in Greece, in Rome, almost everywhere.

Usually the codification of laws carved into marble the right of the violent and the shrewd, of innumerable generations of clans and influential families to create hidden or open slavery.

This process on the pathway of greed always culminate in conquer, colonization, periods of wars, returning circles of bloody fights, local, continental and world wars.

Our Lord says, this is the way of the world, we know it well, but it shall not be yours.

The rule of the Gospel differs from the world, and Jesus as King differs from all of the other rulers as it is written: “The Son of the Man came not to rule but to serve.”
Among us we could have done it long ago, thus still we have to create an alternative, let us say, a really Christian Way of Life on Earth according to the Gospel, having Christian methods for the management of conflicts, a Christian economy, Christian Self Defense, because the Lord says that our ways and methods should differ from the wicked and the greedy.

Thus we need Christian companies, Christian farms, similar the Kibbutzes in Israel. We should create Christian communities with common ownership of the land, of the natural resources, of the forests and waters, as it was the law in the best parts of America before the conquest.

We should establish Christian firms, companies aiming real and creative production, paying fair wages, conducting fair trade, having profit sharing packages for workers, using the power of cooperation rather than competition, working for the nutrition of our children and for the poor of the countries. We need Christian banks and credit unions for lending money to the needy without interest rates. We need Christian media independent from the politics, the pundits and tycoons.

We need real Christian legislation to ensure that the Gospel rules.

We should show working ways of the real Christianity, in which we should share all of the resources we have, share the workload which should be done, and share the wealth according to our rule, which is the Gospel, and according to our ruler that is King Jesus Christ, in order the eradicate poverty at once and for all. The Rule of the Gospel is the end of all oppression.

Since the history of this civilization in the enslaved societies we lived and we live as separated units, individualized and divided, and this is the old trick of the tyrants. Divide and impera.

In the artificially created world of greedy competition, people act as enemies, opponents, competitors to each other, or at least like contestants in a cruel and permanent war for bread and gold, or maybe roof and beer, influence and power.

The Christian way differs. It must differ. We believe that we are brothers and sisters in Christ.

The congregation shall act as a family, and the world Christianity shall act as an extended family, as we are all children of one Creator. Imagine the cope of Christianity which is on paper the biggest religion on Earth, having 2.4 billions of followers. We should have changed the World for the better long time ago. Regarding mere numbers we could have easily done it, or we still could do it. Normally in a family, even in an extended family, we do not fight or kill each other. In a family, if someone is hungry we do not ask whether you have money or not, yet we share the food, roof, even money, because the family is the community of true and organic love.

As the Lord says in the Gospel of John: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Following Jesus, we have to follow the measures of his love toward humanity, in order to live in the communion of God who is our Father by the Holy Spirit as it is written: “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. “
We have to live according to our call to amend this world, by Faith and Grace, in order to inherit the World to come.




AMEN