November 30, 2010 – Sirach 12-13

You can get a real sense of the world before Christ.  The world is without a real sense of Godly love and hope.  Especially the first part of Chapter 12.  No good come to him who comforts the wicked, refuse the sinner.  This is not Christ message.  We cannot read the Old Testament and disregard things like this as obsolete because it appears to contradict what Jesus taught.  This shows a view of the world before Christ.  Love your enemies was not on their radar.  Turn your cheek, forgive 7 times 70, this was not the religion that they believed in.  Jesus came out of this tradition and fulfilled what they taught, but the rules set down before Christ were rules to protect the Israelites from sin because they did not have Christ salvation to save them if they fell into sin.  Christ is a net that gives us new life when we fall.  Sirach knew nothing of this net, so his advise is to stay as far away from evil and sin so that you won’t fall, because if you fall, there was not the redemption we know today.

When reading this I was reminded of Jake Spoon.  (If you don’t know who that is you really need to watch Lonesome Dove.)  He was a man who went along with wrong crowd just to get from point A to point B.  He didn’t do anything wrong himself, yet paid the penalty for being with them when they were caught.  It is very important that we be diligent about the people we spend our time with. 

If 13:21 isn’t about the most true statement in the Bible, nothing is.  When a rich man speaks, people will support him, even if is odious (highly offensive; repugnant; disgusting).  How often do we see people of power saying whatever they feel, wrong, right, or even malicious and getting away with it.  They are held up because they are rich and powerful, we don’t even care what they say, only that it was said by somebody rich and important.  There are few out there who stand up to correct the rich and powerful and the ones that do, we don’t trust because they are rich and powerful to and we think they are lying for their own good.