I went to synagogue this morning. That was quite the experience but I'll leave that for another place and time. :-)
I was reading Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews this afternoon. It just so happened that I picked up right with the historical setting of the writing of Deuteronomy. I thought I might share some of what he says here.
The Assyrian empire was dominating most of the civilized world at that time. The lands they hadn't taken over, they had forced to become "vassals" meaning the leaders had to sign a treaty declaring their allegiance and a huge portion of their income to Assyria. Obviously, a lot of nations were resentful of the Assyrians, so rebellion was always lurking right beneath the surface.
King Hezekiah, at the prompting of Isaiah, refused to take either option. Judah neither accepted Assyria's demand that they sign a vassal treaty nor allied with the rebels. King Hezekiah, instead, rebuilt the temple and declared allegiance to God. Through a miraculous series of events, Jerusalem was seized and then abandoned by the Assyrians, and Hezekiah was able to rule in peace.
His son, Manasseh, as you probably know, was a terrible king. The Assyrians never forced their religion or culture on the nations they conquered, but Manasseh willfully embraced them. He "paganized Judah with a conviction fed by tenacity and will." Pagan worship abounded. Manasseh also ignored Isaiah's warnings and signed a treaty to be a vassal to Assyria.
Eventually, Manasseh died and Josiah became king. He turned back to God. When he asked that the scribes bring the scroll to him and read, it was Deuteronomy that they read. They "found" it (or brought what was written during Hezekiah's reign out of hiding where it had been while Manasseh was king). Rather than merely directing that people turn their hearts to God rather than the gods of the Assyrians, Josiah (through the reading of Deuteronomy) centralized the worship of the people. He ordered the destruction of all places of worship outside of Jerusalem.
In rejecting the religion and culture of the Assyrians, the people were publicly declaring their allegiance to YHWH rather than the Assyrians. This was an act of war.
According to Chaim Potok, "this treaty [Deuteronomy] forever changed the relationship of the people to YHWH." I especially like this statement:
"Cultic allegiance began to shift from the local sacrificial altars, which were everywhere in the land, to the temple in Jerusalem. Since more of the tribe of Judah lived outside Jerusalem, this reform made possible the ultimate allegiance to a mode of worship whose focus was a book, the covenant, and a liturgy devoid of the act of sacrifice."
This morning, as I sat through an impossibly long recitation in Hebrew of blessings and curses, I wondered where this all came from. I like Chaim Potok's answer. This is a people signing a treaty with their god that declares their allegiance to none other than YHWH. It is a declaration of who they are ("my father was a wandering Aramean") and the consequences greater than any enemies can exact, both negative and positive, of staying true to that declaration.
What became of Josiah's act of war against the Assyrians? This scroll was "discovered" in 622 B.C. By 605 B.C., through internal strife and external attacks, the Assyrian empire had been utterly destroyed. A few hundred years later, when Alexander the Great came through the land, his army marched just a few miles south of what had been their wealthiest city without even knowing it had been there.
Them there words is powerful stuff, I'd say.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
This is Jill's (and it is brilliant)
(Marissa mentioned that she'd been reading Isaiah 53 with fresh eyes. Beyond just being a description of Jesus, this chapter literally is talking about the Servant of the Lord. This passage is a kind of blueprint for anyone who wants to serve God. With that understand, I re-wrote and paraphrased the chapter.)
What does it mean to be the servant of the Lord?
Be the evidence of life
growing in the middle of death.
Forget about beauty or using your appearance
to attract people to you.
Be prepared to be hated and rejected
Brace yourself for suffering, make pain your friend.
People will think you are nothing
and look away when you are near.
But for those same people -
take their pain and suffering on yourself.
Even though they will say that your torture
if a punishment from God.
God with help you hurt.
Let the evil of others beat you down
for the sake of their peace. Accept their just punishment
it will heal them.
Everyone thinks he knows what is best
for his own life
Yet everyone misses the mark.
If you would be the servant of God
The price for this failure to do what is right
you will take on yourself.
And you will not complain
Though you are abused
exiled
stepped on
harassed
ridiculed
killed.
And you will be.
Who will stand up for you?
You will be all but invisible, as if you were already dead
All this
for the people God loves.
After you are cheated out of what's fair
over and over
- even though you have done nothing wrong -
You'll be buried with the wicked and the rich
The God you serve wants this for you.
But because you allowed Him to make your life
an offering for sin
You will see your legacy
You will cause good to flourish.
In the end
You will see the light of life
and it will have all been worth it.
What you know will allow others to live
because you have taken their sins on yourself.
God will not turn away from you
He sees you
As much as your life is poured out
so the spoils of heaven and earth will pour on you,
because you stood in the way
of destruction
for people who neither deserved it
nor cared about you at all
Become one of them.
Save them.
What does it mean to be the servant of the Lord?
Be the evidence of life
growing in the middle of death.
Forget about beauty or using your appearance
to attract people to you.
Be prepared to be hated and rejected
Brace yourself for suffering, make pain your friend.
People will think you are nothing
and look away when you are near.
But for those same people -
take their pain and suffering on yourself.
Even though they will say that your torture
if a punishment from God.
God with help you hurt.
Let the evil of others beat you down
for the sake of their peace. Accept their just punishment
it will heal them.
Everyone thinks he knows what is best
for his own life
Yet everyone misses the mark.
If you would be the servant of God
The price for this failure to do what is right
you will take on yourself.
And you will not complain
Though you are abused
exiled
stepped on
harassed
ridiculed
killed.
And you will be.
Who will stand up for you?
You will be all but invisible, as if you were already dead
All this
for the people God loves.
After you are cheated out of what's fair
over and over
- even though you have done nothing wrong -
You'll be buried with the wicked and the rich
The God you serve wants this for you.
But because you allowed Him to make your life
an offering for sin
You will see your legacy
You will cause good to flourish.
In the end
You will see the light of life
and it will have all been worth it.
What you know will allow others to live
because you have taken their sins on yourself.
God will not turn away from you
He sees you
As much as your life is poured out
so the spoils of heaven and earth will pour on you,
because you stood in the way
of destruction
for people who neither deserved it
nor cared about you at all
Become one of them.
Save them.
Mishpatim
From a teaching by Rabbi Boruch Leff entitled God Knows Best...
In Exodus 21, the Jews agree to do and to hear God's command to them...without even knowing all of it! How foolish! No one signs a contract (no wise person anyway) without first reading it. Rabbi Leff says, though, that when you make a promise to God, you make a promise you know you can fulfill and will be in your best interest:
So here goes nothing.
I will soar on wings like eagles, which is to say falling into nothing and trusting the wind to carry me upwards.
In Exodus 21, the Jews agree to do and to hear God's command to them...without even knowing all of it! How foolish! No one signs a contract (no wise person anyway) without first reading it. Rabbi Leff says, though, that when you make a promise to God, you make a promise you know you can fulfill and will be in your best interest:
You don't have to ask God for details if He is making you an offer. You trust that God has your best interests in mind, and you know that saying "yes" to God, without knowing any of the details, is the only compelling course of action.I especially like that phrase, "the only compelling course of action." This is why I put this on my blog here and now. Even though I don't know what the other side looks like, I am leaving my life in Denver behind and moving forward to seminary in Kansas City because "saying 'yes' to God...is the only compelling course of action." There is nothing better I can do, no higher purpose to propel my life torward.
So here goes nothing.
I will soar on wings like eagles, which is to say falling into nothing and trusting the wind to carry me upwards.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Life Together Chapter 1
I'm reading Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If you don't know, the dude was intense. Tons of people wanted him to stay safe, so he could continue his writing, but he chose to return to his home in Nazi Germany because he felt like that's where God was calling him to go. He was put in a concentration camp and shot less than a month before the Germans surrendered to the Allies. So when he talks about Life Together, he's serious. He says some great things I wanted to share with you. Here are some of the highlights of the first chapter.
We have community through and in Jesus Christ.
That's what it's all about. Nothing more than a bunch of people seeking to follow a man who lived in Galilee a long time ago. Nothing less than a bunch of people seeking to give away their lives in service to the creator of the universe, through whom nothing is impossible. Above all, this is what we have in common: lives that have been and are being redeemed. "Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us."
Because this is who we are (nothing more, nothing less), "we thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise...And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace?...Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ?"
Our community is not a collection of people who have shared hobbies or habits; it is a community of people who stand under the Word of Christ even when it's hard or uncomfortable - for us or for the people who have to put up with us.
And "If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ."
This community is not an ideal but a divine reality.
This isn't something we come up with in our heads. In fact, Bonhoeffer says that is the greatest danger, "the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood."
He goes on to say, "Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves...Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both."
We're not called to live in a place that is not real. Maybe by its very realness, we learn to live the life that God is calling us to - even when we are outside of the church where selfishness, insincerity, divisiveness, gossip, slander, backstabbing, etc. abound.
The difference between what's happening outside the church and inside is the presence of God. Not to say that God is not present outside the church, but there is something powerful that happens when even two or three people are gathered together seeking God. "Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate."
This community is not a human but a spiritual reality.
Sometimes that is hard. We - in good faith - really want to help people. But, we in our humanness simply cannot save others:
"As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life...[Spiritual love] will not seek to move others by all too personal, direct influence, by impure interference in the life of another...It will rather meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be reay to leave him alone with this Word for a long time, willing to release him again in order that Christ may deal with him."
And so we are called to pray for one another: "Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ." How difficult is that?
Conclusion
"There is probably no Christian to whom God has not given the uplifting experience of genuine Christian community at least once in his life. But in this world such experiences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community life. We have no claim upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Christians for the sake of acquiring them. It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood that holds us together, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together. That God has acted and wants to act upon us all, this we see in faith as God's greatest gift, this makes us glad and happy, but it also makes us ready to forego all such experiences when God at times does not grant them. We are bound together by faith, not experience."
We have community through and in Jesus Christ.
That's what it's all about. Nothing more than a bunch of people seeking to follow a man who lived in Galilee a long time ago. Nothing less than a bunch of people seeking to give away their lives in service to the creator of the universe, through whom nothing is impossible. Above all, this is what we have in common: lives that have been and are being redeemed. "Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us."
Because this is who we are (nothing more, nothing less), "we thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise...And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace?...Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ?"
Our community is not a collection of people who have shared hobbies or habits; it is a community of people who stand under the Word of Christ even when it's hard or uncomfortable - for us or for the people who have to put up with us.
And "If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ."
This community is not an ideal but a divine reality.
This isn't something we come up with in our heads. In fact, Bonhoeffer says that is the greatest danger, "the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood."
He goes on to say, "Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves...Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both."
We're not called to live in a place that is not real. Maybe by its very realness, we learn to live the life that God is calling us to - even when we are outside of the church where selfishness, insincerity, divisiveness, gossip, slander, backstabbing, etc. abound.
The difference between what's happening outside the church and inside is the presence of God. Not to say that God is not present outside the church, but there is something powerful that happens when even two or three people are gathered together seeking God. "Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate."
This community is not a human but a spiritual reality.
Sometimes that is hard. We - in good faith - really want to help people. But, we in our humanness simply cannot save others:
"As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life...[Spiritual love] will not seek to move others by all too personal, direct influence, by impure interference in the life of another...It will rather meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be reay to leave him alone with this Word for a long time, willing to release him again in order that Christ may deal with him."
And so we are called to pray for one another: "Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ." How difficult is that?
Conclusion
"There is probably no Christian to whom God has not given the uplifting experience of genuine Christian community at least once in his life. But in this world such experiences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community life. We have no claim upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Christians for the sake of acquiring them. It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood that holds us together, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together. That God has acted and wants to act upon us all, this we see in faith as God's greatest gift, this makes us glad and happy, but it also makes us ready to forego all such experiences when God at times does not grant them. We are bound together by faith, not experience."
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