Genesis 19-21, Psalm 7, Matthew 7
The reading from Genesis today is filled with crazy stuff. Old ladies having sons, cities destroyed by fire and sulfur, men trying to have sex with angels, daughters getting their father drunk and having sex with him...Crazy stuff. I honestly don't know what it all means. Especially the story of Lot's daughters. So I choose to focus on the rest of Jesus' sermon on the mount. If anyone else wants to comment on the story of Lot's daughters, feel free.
Jesus says we will know false prophets "by their fruits". It was a few days ago that I was asking how we are to know what's real and what's not. I mentioned then the idea of hearing God's call in community, but here Jesus gives us another way of knowing which prophets are real. Look at what they're doing. This comes in the same sermon where we learn the Golden Rule ("In everything do to others as you would have them do to you") and are told "not [to] judge, so that you may not be judged." I suppose, then, that the fruits of a true prophet would be in sync with these rules.
I was talking the other day with my friend Patrick about people and their habits or dispositions. I noted that I used to believe that people could change, but I am finding that at their core level people are one way. People don't really change. You can change small things like your eating habits, or your sleep patterns, or you can stop biting your nails, but at your core, you don't change. I think that's what Jesus is saying when he says "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit." Perhaps that's rather Calvinistic of me, but we're all good trees or bad trees. We have to look for the thorns. Using Jesus' metaphor or the house built on the rock, we need to look toward the good trees with a firm root system embedded in the rock, or holding fast to God.
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