Walking the Walk

Reverend Sue
Jul 23
5 min read

The life of faith is not a once only decision but the journey of a lifetime. Again and again, we find, that the life of faith means walking the walk not just talking the talk. Paul, or someone in his name, writes: “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith.” (Seventh Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 12 (17). Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-15; and Luke 11:1-13.)

You may like to read my take on these readings three years ago when I went with the growth theme.

The people of Israel were already the chosen people but that did not mean that their behaviour was overlooked or that God was fooled. We have heard over the last few weeks the message as delivered by Amos in the south (plumblines and baskets of summer fruits) critiquing the lack of justice and mercy. Now we hear – and see – the words and actions of Hosea in northern Israel. Hosea is called upon to not only speak but to act out the message of God. That is, the relationship between Hosea and his wife who is unfaithful, is a metaphor or allegory, for the relationship between God and Israel.

This is a very provocative and difficult story for us as 21^st Century people of faith to hear. It does test how we read Scripture. If we think we can read ancient texts ‘literally’ we find ourselves with a horrific story in which a woman, her children, and indeed their marriage, is sacrificed in order to show the people their error! Rather I, and many, read it as sacred literature of a genre in which this message is part history and part parable or metaphor or allegory. However we read it the message is fairly clear that the chosen ones were not being faithful and that there were to be consequences. We can read those consequences as punishment coming from judgment or as natural consequences of not living in a just merciful way as a community.

What we may miss is that the prophet Hosea’s message, although harsh, is in the language of marriage rather than parent-child (although by the end of Hosea’s work it is back to the language of children of the living God). Indeed, in portions of the book just after this week’s text, God describes his concern and availability to Israel in the language of passionate pursuit: “Therefore I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her … There she shall respond as in the days of her youth …” (Hosea 2:14-15) We can reflect that God desires the chosen people of Israel, and our company, as does a faithful spouse, who despite hurt desires the restoration of the relationship for the love for the beloved has not been extinguished by difficulty.

In the gospel we then have some different but also disturbing metaphors for the nature of God’s willingness to respond to us – that of the grumpy neighbour?!I think that in either case it can be read as “ if we, who are like unfaithful partners, grumpy neighbours, and fallible parents know how to be good and generous gifts – and we do – then how much more God knows how to be loving and faithful and wants good things for us.”

And we who know ourselves called to the life long journey of faith are reminded of some of what it means to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. For me the image of walking the walk is not simply about believing right things or even doing great deeds but the daily way we go about living in our relationship with the divine and our neighbour.

The gospel begins with the request for a prayer for those who are followers. While the Luke version of the Our Father is somewhat different to the version we know better from Matthew’s gospel, it does teach us all we really need to know about the daily walk. As any who have read the expanded versions of this prayer by Neil Douglas Klotz and others, based on an exploration of what the original Aramaic words might have been, will know there is a depth and breadth in this simple prayer that says all that might need to be said.

Beginning with remembering in reverence that we live and move and have our being in the presence of our God, our source, the giver of life. Everything we do and that happens does so within the embrace of the one who brought all into being. Nothing can take us out of the presence of God except our unawareness of it.

We pray that God’s kingdom, God’s way of living, become our way of living. And desiring that God’s way be our way we attend to the large and small, the occasional and the habitual, things and ideas that prevent our awareness of the kingdom within. We pray that all the small and large things and the people we need to attend to in our day be recognised as coming from God and being of God.

And we pray for open and renewed hearts – set free from our sins and free from holding onto other’s sins! For the problem of sin is not so much the legalistic wrongness (it has been and can be forgiven) as it is the distance and distrust that can build up between ourselves and God. We need to develop the daily practice of letting go of our failure and letting go of others.

While this sounds simple I find the moment by moment demands of living out of the knowledge of the presence of God – as though the love of God actually makes a difference to how one lives! – incredibly elusive. While this may sound demanding it is what the metaphor of marriage as a description of our relationship with God implies – it is about the minutia of daily life, the dance of the ordinary as well as extraordinary, the companionship of the journey, the walk home at the end of the day.

Even so, come Lord Jesus the Christ, come walk with us each step of the way and may we find life eternal in each moment as we realise we are never not in your presence.