Well, this is not the main point of today's text, so I don't have time to develop this idea fully. But I cannot address the remarkable claims of The Preacher's word to us today without stepping back behind the text to invite you to consider this fundamental assumption of our human need on which our text is built. This is a huge undertaking and we had better be sure we get the right one. We must choose very carefully whom to follow. Firstly , the function of the priest to serve the people as mediator means to offer gifts and sacrifices that are acceptable to God.
All cultures have their own rules of relationships.
These are not written down for everyone to see, but they are nevertheless very real. When we lived in the Philippines, it took us a while to figure this out for ourselves. We learned this lesson most often when a conflict arose between our Filipino friends and us. The American way is to go face to face with the person with whom we differ and to have an honest heart to heart talk, eyeball to eyeball. We learned early on that in the Philippines that is much too confrontational.