Deep Calls

I think I'd call it "Yes you CAN trust God - 501"

2012-02-20T11:44:00.000-08:00

I have never, not ever, not once .   .   .   n e v e r . . . heard a sermon on the next passage of scripture. You didn't learn it in Sunday School ... again    n e v e r   seen a Sunday School curriculum include this story. Yet I think it may be one of my favorite Bible stories ever. Curious? Let me include it in-total:

1 Sam 19:18-24
                    When David had fled and made his escape, he went to Samuel
                  at Ramah and told him all that Saul had done to him. Then he and
                   Samuel went to Naioth and stayed there. Word came to Saul:
                  "David is in Naioth at Ramah"; so he sent men to capture him.
                   But when they saw a group of prophets prophesying, with Samuel
                  standing there as their leader, the Spirit of God came upon Saul's men
                  and they also prophesied. Saul was told about it, and he sent more
                   men, and they prophesied too. Saul sent men a third time, and they also
                  prophesied. Finally, he himself left for Ramah and went to the great
                  cistern at Secu. And he asked, "Where are Samuel and David?"
                 "Over in Naioth at Ramah," they said.
                  So Saul went to Naioth at Ramah. But the Spirit of God came even upon
                  him, and he walked along prophesying until he came to Naioth. He
                  stripped off his robes and also prophesied in Samuel's presence. He lay that
                  way all that day and night. This is why people say,
                 "Is Saul also among the prophets?"
So ~ what happened here? OK...I have underlined a couple of phrases, and changed the color of a couple of the words to highlight them.

Here is the story: Saul's insecurity has gotten completely out of hand and he has tried every way he can think of to kill David or to get David killed: thrown spears at him; tried and succeeded in marrying David off to one of his lovely daughters to increase his "distraction quotient", shall we say, so he won't be completely on his game; asked for 100 "foreskins" of the Philistines as bride-price for his daughter. Nothing has worked. There is a "top 40 song" that rankles and rings in Saul's ears as -- probably -- even his staff are humming it while they work. Finally David decides he has had enough and runs away. He goes to see Samuel to tell him what Saul is doing. This tells me that David actually got to know Samuel after that dinner where he got called in from the sheep to be anointed king. I suspect that he wanted Samuel to know that he wasn't running out on the job ~ I suspect that Samuel already knew that. So ... why is this one of my favorites? I love it because in this story God is GOD and does ... well ... a "GOD" thing ~ something both amazing a pretty funny to save David and to put Saul firmly 'in his place'.

I do think some explanation may be needed.

The word I highlighted is "prophesy". Today it has come to mean "give [rationally, in a nice normal tone of voice] a comforting, or encouraging or exhorting word to someone with the understanding that the word, or message is from God" .... OK, that is not a dictionary definition...it is an experiential derivative of what I think many-to-most people understand when they hear the word in Christian circles. In non-church circles I think it may mean something along the line of "fore-tell the future". If you have those understandings of the word, the story doesn't make sense. Right? Saul sends men to arrest David and they "begin to give people encouraging messages from God" or to "fore-tell the future" and ... by clear implication of the story ... they are therefore unable to arrest David ? ? ? Nope. By implication of the story, something happened that stopped them from arresting David, right? I mean Saul sent men 3 TIMES, and then finally came himself...and NO ONE arrested David. When I looked up the word, it means "to speak or sing by inspiration" or "to speak ecstatically". In Pentecostal/charismatic circles, people might say, "they were manifesting" ... meaning that they were totally overcome by the Holy Spirit ~ and the story DOES say,  the Spirit of God came upon. So you don't really have to do much 'reading between the lines' to see that these soldiers and finally Saul were so incapacitated by whatever happened to them that they could  not arrest David. God just stepped in and said, "you think you are going to get rid of David? Really? Watch this!!" David did not have to raise one little finger to protect himself.   .   .   . and    .   . . God, pretty much, made a complete fool of Saul. The story says that before Saul even got to Naioth he began to prophesy, and when he got there he stripped off his clothes and lay naked before God prophesying all night long. You KNOW that story got out!! And...David escaped. Wow!

So what would you call this call this lesson from God? Well, I would say that as far as David was concerned it would be "YES, you can trust God - 501" ... or "Advanced Lessons in TRUST". This is not the kind of thing you forget ... Saul ~ naked ~ prophesying all night, and you can just go ride off to safety.

Sometimes, I think, God is just FUN!!!

dodecahedron of death

2012-02-14T18:27:00.000-08:00

OK...I agree ~
That is one of the cheesiest titles ... well .... certainly in a long time. But -- I will bet that you are asking yourself (if you have been reading this series since the Ruth beginning) What do dodecahedrons have to do with David? And...yes...that is a pretty cheesy tongue-twister ~ sorry (sort-of)

OK...WHAT am I talking about? and while we are asking
WHAT is a dodecahedron?

<=== This is a dodecahedron

and this is a dodecahedron ========>

<=========== and this is a dodecahedron

and ... now that that is cleared up ~ what? it isn't ... quite ... cleared up?

OK a dodecahedron is a 12 sided figure. The one above with the stars has twelve vertices and twelve faces. I think they are pretty cool...so, why would I say "dodecahedron of death"??

I am using this image as metaphor for something ("yeah, duh...but what?!" you ask.

So glad you asked!)

I am using the dodecahedron to represent what I think is the deadliest flaw we can have: insecurity. Ok, were you ready for me to say .... anger? maybe ... pride? maybe ... dishonesty? Those are bad. But therein is the reason for the image ... just as a dodecahedon is a single figure with lots of faces, so I think insecurity is a single flaw with lots of faces ~ one is anger, one is pride, one is dishonesty...and they go on and on. Insecure people have one face that is weak, and one that is strong, one that is passive, one that is aggressive, one that second-guesses itself all day long, and another that makes rash decisions boldly and sweepingly. Insecure people live in fear, self-pity, and rage. You never know which face you'll see ~ and I think, they don't know themselves which face they'll show. You can't comfort them, you can't reassure them, you can't be yourself --- they think you are 'showing them up', and what they can not stand is to be shown up. They must be the center of attention, they must be the best.

Insecurity was Saul's fatal flaw. He was a great soldier, but David was better. The song ~

Saul has killed his thousand,

But David, his TEN thousands

made the top ten in the "Top-40" count down and well ... that's all it took for Saul to turn on David.

1 Sam 18:5-9

Whatever Saul sent him to do, David did it so successfully that Saul gave him a high rank in the army. This pleased all the people, and Saul's officers as well.

David was the glory boy! He had killed Goliath, gone with the army to chase the Philistines home, and now was rising in the ranks of the army. The smiling face of the dodecahedron shines on David. Then . . .

When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with tambourines and lutes. As they danced, they sang:

"Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his tens of thousands."

Saul was very angry; this refrain galled him. "They have credited David with tens of thousands," he thought, "but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?" And from that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David .

The only thing that changed was that Saul was now getting second billing ... the galled, jealous face of the dodecahedron flips up. The problem was not in the circumstances...David was not trying to show up Saul ~ he didn't write that song. Saul's insecurity was the problem. And it was a huge problem...Saul begins to give place to the evil spirit and disregard the soothing music of David's harp and "presto-chango" David starts getting spears thrown at him. The dodecahedron of death . . . insecurity!

Reactions ~

2012-02-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

So, you know the story: David kills Goliath. David
~ the youngest son, the one Eliab (David's oldest brother) hated and abhorred ~
does what the rest of the entire army of Israel (yes, including King Saul) will not do: he takes on Goliath and kills him by hitting him in the center of his forehead with a rock from a sling. Then, adding insult to injury David takes Goliath's sword and cuts off Goliath's head. . .and carries it around for a while. Mental picture: really yucky!! Yeah! It is a great story ... so great the it is metaphor for the victory of the "little guy".

So -- by the by -- did you notice that God seems to have "a thing" for the youngest son, especially youngest sons who have a really bad relationship with their older brothers? Jacob...Joseph...and now David. Hmmmmm. . . interesting, don't you think?

but

that is not what I want to write about. I am caught by the reactions. The next few verses turn the camera from David (mostly) to everyone around him. This event changes so very much! Yeah, of course...the loud-mouthed giant is now dead, that is a big deal. But the writer of this account seems to almost rush past that. There is no scene of a wild, crazed, grateful mob grabbing David and hoisting him to their shoulders, no ticker-tape parade. In a few short verses we are given so much foreshadowing...so many reactions.

Reaction 1
1 Sam 17:51-18:5
When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran. Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued the Philistines to the entrance of Gath and to the gates of Ekron. Their dead were strewn along the Shaaraim road to Gath and Ekron. [by the way...go check a map. This is a LONG way!] When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they plundered their camp. David took the Philistine's head and brought it to Jerusalem, and he put the Philistine's weapons in his own tent.

The entire Philistine army ran! Ok, were they all just wimps who had counted on Israel's hysteric reaction to Goliath's rants...and yes, that had worked well for over a month. So did the Philistine soldiers just stop cleaning their swords and stop all archery practice? I suspect that they ran because of the real terror that came when David confronted Goliath, before David slung the rock:

1 Sam 17:45-47
David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give all of you into our hands."

Imagine that you are a Philistine ~
Here comes this kid, no armor, no sword, and most importantly no fear. It is not the "no fear" of arrogant stupidity...it is the "no fear" of actual confidence. David isn't ranting. There is no bravado. David's confidence rings out. Everyone knows the difference. There is a sharpness in the quiet before he even starts to speak, there is a tone in the voice, there is glint of steel in his eyes. I think everyone stopped and thought, (whatever the Philistine equivalent would be of) "oh crap!!" So when Goliath falls like timber to the ground, the reaction of the entire Philistine army is to run! It isn't logical ~ Israel's army has been sitting on their duffs too. And David can't kill everyone! He did have 4 more stones (most sermons on the story note that he probably knew Goliath had 4 brothers...I am not so sure about that ~ what Goliath had with him was an actual army, not just 4 brothers. I suspect David thought that if it took one stone, great. If not...well he could surely kill him in 3 or 4 tries.) So it cannot really be DAVID the Philistines are afraid of. I believe the actual 'FEAR of GOD' hit. David had made it clear ~ I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty...All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give all of you into our hands." I think this day was pivotal to David...not because he killed a giant. I think God wanted this lesson -- God WILL back you -- BRANDED into David's psyche. He knew it...he did take on a giant. But he had to KNOW...cuz soon he would be running for his life, not from enemies but from 'friends'. I think one of things God wants is not just for us to see miracles, but for us to draw the correct conclusions from those miracles, and for us to use those conclusions to make decisions from then on!

Reaction 2
As Saul watched David going out to meet the Philistine, he said to Abner, commander of the army, "Abner, whose son is that young man?"
Abner replied, "As surely as you live, O king, I don't know."
The king said, "Find out whose son this young man is."
As soon as David returned from killing the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with David still holding the Philistine's head. [GREAT mental image, huh!?]
"Whose son are you, young man?" Saul asked him.
David said, "I am the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem."

OK, so it seems that even though Saul had chosen David as his armor bearer and let him play the harp when he went on a demonic rant...Saul never really 'saw' David. You know, we look at things, and people and kind of keep them two dimensional. This conversation between Saul and Abner starts BEFORE David kills Goliath. I think Abner walked out of tent, heard the hush of the crowd, heard David tell Goliath how 'the cow was gonna eat the cabbage', as it were. I think he stood agape as David swung his sling. It must have been one of those 'slow motion' moments: the crackling snap of the leather as the sling released the stone, the intake of breath in two armies as Goliath freezes for a moment and then falls like a redwood. But I think the moment etched with a laser into Abner's memory was when David ran forward and grabbed Goliath's sword and sliced off his head. I can see a slow grin form, and I can see Abner nodding knowingly -- one warrior recognizing another. Can't you see it? Then it is mayhem...running, killing Philistines as fast as you can, running, more killing Philistines, lots more running after fleeing Philistines.

As Abner trudges home much later, amid lots of singing and backslapping, he grabs one of his attendants, "Hey, who's the kid? The one who killed the giant?"
"It is David, the youngest son of Jesse. You know, Eliab and Abinadab and Shammah's brother."
" Right. Wait...isn't he the one who plays ... "
"Yeah, the harp player ~ and the one Saul made armor bearer. Damn! Did you see ~ "
"Come on! We gotta go get him...Saul's gonna want to see him" . . . They find David at his tent. He is dirty and bloody. Someone gave him some old, mismatched armor to wear as they chased Philistines. He is holding Goliath's head, standing in a pool brown, thick blood, just staring. "David? Right? Saul would like to see you. I'm Abner. "
David tears his eyes from the empty stare of Goliath's glazed eyes and the blood dripping to the ground. "Yes sir, I know. ... ummm" David looks at his hands and Goliath's blood. He goes to set the gory head down.
"No, bring it with you! I think you should show it to the king. Joab, go see if you can get some water, and maybe something that fits him and ... that doesn't smell.... So, you're Jesse's son, huh?" I think Abner knew in that minute that he and this bloody kid were going to be friends.

Reaction 3
1 Samuel 18
After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return to his father's house. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.
This is the reaction that I find maybe the most fascinating: I get that Jonathon and David are natural as friends. (There is a great story ... maybe I'll write about it next ... about Jonathon and his armor bearer taking on the Philistine army single-handedly.) But it is the last line: Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.
Jonathon was swearing fealty to David ... he was saying, "You will be the next king, I will not. And I will serve you." This is huge! Did David tell the story about the time Samuel came to dinner? Scripture doesn't say. What ever the case, they became friends and it seems quite clear that Jonathon was OK with David taking the throne .... David was taking the throne from him. David didn't take the throne from Saul ... Saul stayed the 'sitting' king till the day he died. But Jonathon, who was the heir, Jonathon took his own robe ~ the symbol of his authority, and put it around David. He took his sword and bow and belt and gave them to David ... clearly saying, 'I serve you.' WOW!!! This is amazing!! But it is so sad! Saul was a good warrior, but he lacked the key element that would have made him a great king: Saul had no personal relationship with God. Read the story...go back to 1 Samuel chapter 9 and read all the way through to 1 Samuel 13:14. Saul, it seems, wanted Samuel to 'do the religious stuff' for him. 2 Tim 3:5 calls it having "a form of godliness but denying its power." He gave God "lip service"... an exterior, a veneer of relationship; Saul did not have a heart for God, or a personal relationship with God and so real obedience was...well...optional. He did what was expedient, not what was right. It was because of that that God took the kingdom from him. But Jonathon...he did want and have a real relationship with God...or so it seems from the story where he and his armor bearer attack the Philistine outpost. I think he would have made a great king...but his father lost it all for him. And from his reaction to David, it seems, he knew it...and somehow, he was OK with it. Unfortunately, Jonathon died fighting beside his dad. He didn't leave with David when David ran off into the wilderness. I know, there would have been so many 'political' complications had he chosen to be in David's army. Maybe he wouldn't have died...we don't know. It is just sad to me. It is one of those "What MIGHT have been if ... ?"

Reaction 4
Whatever Saul sent him to do, David did it so successfully that Saul gave him a high rank in the army.
This pleased all the people, and Saul's officers as well.

This reaction -- the reaction of the people, but especially the reaction of Saul's officers -- tells me SO much about David. David was young. He was fiery and determined and full of confidence that came from a REAL relationship with God...but he was young. When a young man is promoted over older, seasoned officers and they are PLEASED ... that speaks volumes. Right? It is there that respect must be earned...the scent of Goliath's blood only wafted from David's hands for so long.

The author of 1 Samuel tells us so much about David from these reactions! So although the writer of 1 Samuel turns the camera, as it were, away from David on to Saul and Abner, on to Jonathon, on to the people and the officers of Saul, it is in the reflection from their reactions that we see David.

AND ... what would you do after you had been anointed King, if a giant showed up ?

2012-01-31T11:03:00.000-08:00

                                                                                                This --->
                                                                           is Javier Bardem,
                                                                a young Javier Bardem.
You may have seen him in movies like "Eat, Pray, Love", "No Country for Old Men" This is a picture of him when he was young. I include it because if I was going to cast parts for a movie about these stories, I would cast Javier as David, the lead role.

David is king
                        ...well kind-of.
In the truest sense, by authority given by God and by anointing, he is king. Unfortunately he still lives at home, is the family 'sheep-sitter', and has a side-job working for Saul who, by the by, is the sitting king
                    ...who God has stripped of His authority and Holy Spirit, but has left sitting on the throne.

So Saul is the "real" king, but David is the "true" king.

David must have wondered what the heck was going on...anointed by Samuel, Spirit of God comes on him with power, then ~ nothing! Then one day...
... the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Socoh in Judah.
The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites another, with the valley between them.
Then Goliath, a Philistine champion from Gath, came out of the Philistine ranks to face the forces of Israel. He was a giant of a man, measuring over nine feet tall! He wore a bronze helmet, a two-hundred-pound coat of mail, bronze leggings, and carried a bronze javelin several inches thick, tipped with a twenty-five-pound iron spearhead, and his armor-bearer walked ahead of him with a huge shield.
He stood and shouted across to the Israelis, "Do you need a whole army to settle this? I will represent the Philistines, and you choose someone to represent you, and we will settle this in single combat! If your man is able to kill me, then we will be your slaves. But if I kill him, then you must be our slaves! I defy the armies of Israel! Send me a man who will fight with me!" (1 Samuel 17:1-10)TLB 2

So David worked two "part-time" jobs ~ shepherd for his family, and armor bearer and court-musician for Saul. Scripture tells us that --
David went back and forth from Saul to tend his father's sheep at Bethlehem. (1 Sam 17:15)
Because, I guess, he was on his way to polish some armor, and to sing and play for Saul, David's dad, Jesse, asks David to bring lunch to his three oldest brothers who were soldiers in Saul's army. When David gets there, Goliath is strutting up and down, shouting insults at Israel and at YHWH, in very blue language. We all know the story...little guy, David, takes on big BIG guy, Goliath. David wins! It may be one of the MOST popular Sunday School stories ever. It is famous even outside of "church" circles and a metaphor of the triumph of the good little guy over the BIG bully. I am pretty sure most everyone knows the story. It is such an intriguing story.

When David walks up he kind-of overhears someone talking about how Saul has offered a huge bonus to anyone who takes Goliath out. David turns to someone standing near him and says, "So WHAT is Saul going to give the guy who kills Goliath? Cuz that $#!(*&$$#(!!?& Philistine is defying the armies of the living GOD!" (Ok, literally when you read the story, you will see that David called him an 'uncircumcised Philistine', but when you look up the word, uncircumcised, it is pretty clear that it is euphemism for ... well 'soldier talk'.) This is the point in the story when Eliab, David's older brother, climbs his frame...interesting cuz Eliab knows David has been anointed king, and that David is armor bearer to Saul ~ too bad for Eliab. He is about to find out just how wrong you can be!

Anyway, it intrigues me that David wants to know what he'll "get" if he kills Goliath. It does, on the surface, seem to make David seem mercenary...like his motivation was "what's in it for me?" I don't think so. The fact that he says, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?" (1 Sam 17:26), sounds to me like he had already decided that he was going to take Goliath out. He seems ... well, nonchalant.

Someone hears David talking and goes and tells Saul (probably something like) -- "hey, that kid you like, yeah, the harp player guy, well he is about to go take on Goliath!" Saul likes the kid...he probably says a few choice words and sends for David.

Saul: "So, you are going to ... accept Goliath's challenge."
David: "Well . . . yes!"
Saul: "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth." 1 Sam 17:33
David still stands there with a look on his face that said, "and...so? that affects me . . .how?"
Saul: "Ok, go get me my armor." {maybe David thinks Saul is going to go face the giant himself...not to be outdone, you know.}
Saul: "Go ahead, put it on..."

Of course it MUCH too big and David might have stood there like a fool for a second. Saul is trying to give David a reality check...like, "Get REAL! If you can't even walk around in my armor, how are you going to kill someone twice my size?"

David strips off the armor ~ he is not interested in what is real...he knows what is true. It doesn't matter how big he is or how big his enemy is; it doesn't matter if he is able to walk around in Saul's armor -- what matters is not what he can do...what matters is what God can do. Truth: God has anointed him as king. Truth: he knows how to rely on God's help, no matter what reality faces him. He strips off Saul's armor and begins to tell Saul about being a shepherd --  "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God." (1 Sam 17:34-37)

I think David had come to a very important realization -- TRUTH: he was the king. I think he realized that kings and shepherds have something in common: they should protect the "sheep". If the giant continued to demoralize the army, and the Philistines won this confrontation, it would be HIS kingdom that would be lost. If he was going to EVER have a kingdom, this battle had to be won. I suspect that he thought, well, if I am the king ... I better go act like the king! I think he knew he could...I think God reminded him of the victories over lions and bears
and
David believed God!

1 Giving credit where credit is due: The germ of the idea for this blog came from a teaching done by a man named Graham Cooke.
2 yes, TLB does stand for "The Living Bible" ~ I don't usually use TLB as it is a paraphrase, not a translation, but this paraphrase gives good modern language descriptions for the size and magnitude of Goliath and his weapons

What ELSE would you do if you had just been anointed KING?

2012-01-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

It would seem, you go to work for the king you will replace. NO! That doesn't sound right...in fact that sounds, well, dangerous! But ~ that is exactly what David does.

Oh, it isn't his idea...this is one of God's best, and -- in my "never to be humble" opinion -- funniest set ups. There are, actually, a few things about this story that amuse me.
So, the story.

Unbeknowst to Saul, God has moved on from him, and sent Samuel to anoint David as the king of Israel. There is a saying we all use pretty flippantly: God moves in mysterious ways. This story is one that makes people ~ me for instance ~ quote that saying.

So here are my questions:
1) Why does Saul get to keep the crown and throne?
2) Why did God anoint David, and then ... nothing?
3) Really??? An evil spirit FROM GOD???

I'm rambling...sorry. Here is the story:

So, David is anointed as king, and the next day -- maybe even that same day when dinner was over the dishes were done (yeah, come on...the youngest is always stuck with the dishes, right?) -- David goes back to business as usual. He takes his harp and goes out to watch sheep. The whole embarrassing event...and David...may have been easy to ignore had it not been for the fragrance of the oil . . . check out the 'formula' for anointing oil.
Ex 30:22-26
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Take the following fine spices:
500 shekels of liquid myrrh,
half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon,
250 shekels of fragrant cane,
24500 shekels of cassia — all according to the sanctuary shekel —
and a hin of olive oil.
Make these into a sacred anointing oil , a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anointing oil .
When we think of "anoint" today, even in churches that do anoint with oil ... many don't ... but those who do, usually put a little dot of oil on the forehead of the person they are anointing. That isn't what "anoint" meant in Biblical times. We can see a picture of what anointing was like from Psalm 133:
                       Gen 1:1 - Ps 133:2
                           How good and pleasant it is
                          when brothers live together in unity!
                          It is like precious oil poured on the head,
                                                           running down on the beard,
                                                           running down on Aaron's beard ,
                                                           down upon the collar of his robes.

See, when someone was anointed they had perfumed oil poured on their head. The oil had a very strong, spicy-sweet scent. And, when you have scent added to an oil, that oil and the fragrance is more potent, and stays! It soaks into the hair, and skin and clothing. That is why a perfume, a real perfume, is so very much more expensive than a cologne...perfume is oil based. It takes much much less to give off its scent ~ so imagine a STRONGLY scented oil poured in GREAT quantities on to David. You would have been able to smell him coming. It would have stayed in his clothing...oil is hard to remove, it would have soaked into his hair and skin. Every time he came home, before he walked in the door everyone would have a) known he was coming, and b) been reminded that he had been anointed as KING. So this dichotomy: Nothing changed ~ everything changed. David is still the disliked younger brother who is sent out to watch the sheep...but every time he entered a room for days...weeks maybe, because it would be on his clothes...there was that scent that told everyone everything was going to be different. I wonder what his family thought, but I really wonder what DAVID thought.

Then,
(can you hear the background music change...?)
Then one day someone from the palace arrives asking for David to be sent to see King Saul. It seems that the King has a tormenting spirit from GOD and wants David to come work as a court musician.

{Here is where the story makes me scratch my head, and then laugh and say, "God, You are FUNNY!!"}

1 Sam 16:14-17:1
Now the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.
[ME, scratching my head, "Really? 'evil spirit FROM the LORD' " ??]

Saul's attendants said to him, "See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the harp. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes upon you, and you will feel better."  So Saul said to his attendants, "Find someone who plays well and bring him to me."
[ME, again scratching my head, "So...they tell King Saul that he has an evil spirit from God...like they might tell him that he has a broken wheel on his chariot. 'No big deal, you are just demon possessed...we thought we'd hire a good musician to play music for you.' AND!!! Saul does NOT freak out. 'Yeah, do that...']

One of the servants answered, "I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the harp. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the LORD is with him."
[ME, again scratching my head, and beginning to laugh, "So someone just happens to know about David, the kid who is so insignificant in his own family that they forget to invite him home to dinner when Samuel shows up...someone from Saul's court just 'happens' to know about him and how he plays the harp ~ what, did he play at the local 'Open-Mike Night' at the local coffee bar? ~ and that he is a brave man and warrior ... had he seen David out with the sheep killing lions and bears? I mean how did this guy know??? And ... why WHY does God want David exposed to Saul? Does He want David to see what he is up against...crazed Saul especially? Really God, You have amazingly LONG arms and soooooooooooooooooooooo much up Your sleeves.]

Then Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, "Send me your son David , who is with the sheep." So Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them with his son David to Saul.
[What did Jesse think? Was ANYONE worried ... ? What if Saul finds out that Samuel anointed David?]

David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul liked him very much, [oy!! the PAINFUL irony here...] and David became one of his armor-bearers. Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, "Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him." Whenever the spirit from God came upon Saul, David would take his harp and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.

So WHAT was David thinking all those days? Caring for Saul's armor, playing his harp. Is this when David and Jonathon met and became friends? Was this a warning for David, letting him know, among other things that God sends his Spirit, AND takes it away ? ? ?

God's apprenticeships .... wow!

So ... what do you do AFTER you are anointed as KING???

2012-01-29T10:10:00.000-08:00

So, David gets up one morning...early as usual, like "it is still dark" early...and goes out as he always does to tend the sheep. He grabs his harp on the way out the door and faces what, for all the world, looks like every other day : walk the hills, tend the sheep, kill a bear or perhaps a lion, (yeah...we'll talk about that later), sing and play the harp a bit, tend the sheep, walk the hills. While he is there, back at home a very unexpected visitor has dropped in: Samuel THE prophet/spiritual leader of Israel. He wants to do a sacrifice and have some dinner with the family. Well, that was the official story ~ little did Jesse, David's dad, or anyone in the family   .     .     .     or anyone else but Samuel and God know that there was a much more significant reason.

                        The LORD said to Samuel, "How long will you mourn for Saul,
                      since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil
                      and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have
                      chosen one of his sons to be king."
                     But Samuel said, "How can I go? Saul will hear about it and kill me."
                     The LORD said, "Take a heifer with you and say, 'I have come to sacrifice
                     to the LORD.' Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what to do.
                     You are to anoint for me the one I indicate."
                     Samuel did what the LORD said. When he arrived at Bethlehem,
                     the elders of the town trembled when they met him. They asked,
                     "Do you come in peace?"
                   Samuel replied, "Yes, in peace; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.
                     Consecrate yourselves and come to the sacrifice with me."
                    Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
                                                                                                      1 Sam 16:1-5

So ~ big BIG honor: Jesse and his sons get invited to the sacrifice with Samuel, himself!! Well, most of Jesse's sons. Somehow David was forgotten. We aren't told why. I wonder if Jesse told someone to go and get him, but in all the confusion he forgot to check to see that someone actually DID call David...cuz no one did. One tidbit of information hints at the reason for this 'oversight': David's brother's did not like him. OK...scripture NEVER says: "David's brothers did not like David." but it does record one very significant conversation between David and his oldest brother:

                    When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with
              the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, "Why have you
              come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep
             in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your
              heart is; you came down only to watch the battle."
                "Now what have I done?" said David . "Can't I even speak?"
                                                                               1 Sam 17:28-30

WOW! Right?!! I don't know about you, but I can hear the echo of hundreds of other conversations, hundreds of snide remarks, arguments, caustic exchanges. We aren't made privy to the why and wherefore of this caustic relationship. Why do older siblings dislike younger siblings...the usual reasons: mom and dad raise them differently and older siblings resent that, mom and dad show favoritism and the siblings resent that, the younger siblings are irritating brats and the older siblings ....well you get the picture. From what we see, David was actually a cool kid -- we will see later that he was talented, and strong (bear and lion killing strong). Eliab clearly did not like David -- and David was treated, certainly that day, as if he was not one of the brothers, as if he were not part of the family. And . . . we don't know why! (The exchange above actually takes place AFTER this fateful dinner with Samuel, so being anointed king didn't IMPROVE David's relationship with his brothers. )

Everyone gets ready, dinner is prepared, the sacrifice made, the sons are lined up to be inspected by Samuel...they don't know why. He is looking for someone ... God is letting him choose someone for something, and it has come down to Jesse's sons. What it does not seem that Samuel has told them is that Samuel is looking for a king. God has told him that one of Jesse's sons is the next king.

1 Sam 16:4-11
Samuel did what the LORD said. When he arrived at Bethlehem, the elders of the town trembled when they met him. They asked, "Do you come in peace?"
Samuel replied, "Yes, in peace; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD. Consecrate yourselves and come to the sacrifice with me." Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, "Surely the LORD's anointed stands here before the LORD." But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." Then Jesse called Abinadab and had him pass in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, "The LORD has not chosen this one either." Jesse then had Shammah pass by, but Samuel said, "Nor has the LORD chosen this one." Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, "The LORD has not chosen these." So he asked Jesse, "Are these all the sons you have?"

What an incredibly embarrassing moment! Right? Can you imagine Jesse's face? Can you hear the whispered,
"Eliab! I told you to have someone send for him!!!"
"Dad, I told . . ."
"Well ~ have someone get him NOW!"

So . . . everyone stands around and makes small talk? How were the rejected, "God has not chosen this one, ... God has not chosen this one either" sons feeling as they stood waiting for David to come out from the field, have a bath, get dressed in the good clothes ~ that had to take a while, right? How did everyone feel when Samuel proceeds to anoint David as the next king? What do you do with that little brother you ... well ... that you would clearly rather ignore, when he is anointed as king? From the story it seems that everyone just stayed in "ignore-mode" and ignored that anything had happened. The older sons go back to the army, David goes back to sheep tending .... until a giant Philistine shows up.

[ok, there is one very very interesting event between the dinner with Samuel, and the day with Goliath....next blog, OK]

Next ~

2012-01-19T12:26:00.000-08:00

OK...turning the page ~

Starting a new ... well, not actually new ... focus. You see, my daughter and I decided over Christmas that we would start to tandem-blog: both of us looking at the same theme/story/area of scripture and then each of us writing what ~ well ~ whatever. Then we would put links in our blogs to each other's blog. So...we decided to look at David for a while. His story is crazy long in scripture. To read it all you must look at lots of the books : 1 and 2 Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, of course Psalms . . . .
As we talked we decided to "begin at the beginning" or really, just before the beginning: The book of Ruth. So we did. And now we are on to David. Beth has started already. To read her first 'David' blog click right here. She began with a personal story.

I am going to start by looking at David when he kills Goliath. I warn you, I will probably hop-scotch around a bit, rather than write a nice, neat chronological study of David "from ____________ to _______________". I have found already as I pondered him that my thoughts are kind of all over the show. See, I love this character. He is by NO means perfect. He does some really really really screwy things and makes some really really REALLY bad decisions. But ~ the thing that completely redeems him in my eyes is that he wants, pursues, and lives his life (as much as that life is revealed to us in scripture) in a vital, vibrant, intimate personal relationship with God. He doesn't try to be "good" -- I mean, he is good ~ quite often in the story. He just seems to have an ACTUAL relationship with God -- talks to Him, questions Him, believes Him. God is real to David. I know, I know ~ that sounds so obvious. To me, this relationship makes David real and complex and surprising and ... quite frankly ... helps me in my own relationship with God. I am tempted to say that David is not religious.

(OK, before any of you 'band-wagon' on me and want to digress into a brawl about that word: religion ~ please let me do some defining. When I use the word "religion" I am going to mean "activities that are in some form or another liturgical BUT are devoid of intimacy with God, and are often motivated by manipulation and a desire to force the hand of God in an 'if You will __________________ then I will ______________________.' manner". What I do NOT mean, is any form of activity, especially liturgical activity, participated in by church/synagogue/temple going people that is or is not comfortable to you, as in, "they raise their hands", "they read pre-written prayers from a prayer book", "they kneel", "they sing hymns", .... any of it! Some time I may actually write a blog about religion. Not now though...so, chill on the variety of "religion-definitions" hot buttons, please. O K ???)

So by my own definition I guess what I mean is that David lived most of his life outside of the structured community of the religious activities centered around the temple...yet he (see Chronicles) set us an elaborate structure for the priests and prophets and worship leaders. See? Complex! So
next blog I will begin considering David the boy at the beginning of his story. So, come read with me!
1 Samuel 16 and 17.

observations and questions ...

2012-01-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

I am finished with Ruth. I realized all over again as I mused and meditated on this delightful little book that I love it! For a short book ~ 4 short chapters ~ it is crammed with characters that come to life, with poignant emotion, with STORY, and with truth.

I love Naomi! She captivated my imagination. I have heard sermons about the book, not many ok, but some. The worst I ever heard was something along the line that God had punished this woman and her family because they abandoned Him and Israel by going to Moab and that is why the men in Naomi's family died. It tied the book to the theme scripture in Judges, Judg 21:25:
In those days Israel had no king ; everyone did as he saw fit. NIV
I am so glad that I do not remember who preached that blather, that rot! You can tell, I hope, that I completely disagree! RIDICULOUS!!

In fact, what I saw in Naomi was a woman of faith who was human and very REAL, who loved God, and was driven by faith. God is not 'present or active' as a main character in this little book, but you can ~ as it were ~ see His fingerprints on all the events. Naomi must have lived a love relationship with God vital enough that Ruth says, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17) Something about Naomi's relationship with God translated 'evangelistically' to Ruth: Ruth chooses God because she has seen Naomi's relationship with Him. And, as I said before in the earlier blog...what an amazing woman Naomi must have been to have Ruth beg to come with her, and come with her when it meant the chance she would live in poverty and widowhood in a foreign nation where it was very likely she would be shunned and rejected. I love that Naomi is real ~ I love the scene where she tells her friends "call me Mara"... not sacrine sweet "oh life is good, blah blah blah". She blames God:
"... the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me." (Ruth 1:20-21) Yet we do not see God "retaliating" for the insult with tragedy or loss, in fact from that time every event goes from good to better to best ~ Ruth 'happens' to glean in Boaz's field, he 'happens' to notice Ruth and shower her with care, protection and bounty, Boaz 'happens' to be single and childless and willing to be a kinsman-redeemer. On the first day when Ruth comes home with the extra grain and tells Naomi about her day, you see the heart of Naomi in her immediate praise to God:
"The LORD bless him!" Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. "He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead." (Ruth 2:20)

I love all the "co-incidences". They arrive back at the barley harvest (OK, Naomi may have timed that one...but still), it is Boaz's field Ruth goes to...she didn't know and she might have chosen any field, the whole Boaz notices Ruth thing, the closest kinsman-redeemer IS married and DOES NOT want the deal for the land if it means he must have Ruth in the bargain. I love it! I feel like God is telling me in all this that He is busy "turning all things to the good". God turns things for Naomi ... a great daughter-in-law who marries well and has a son; for Ruth...a wonderful home with a prosperous husband and a son; for Boaz...a young wife and a family; and even for the un-named (I called him Elias but that was just my idea) closer kinsman ~ he might have suffered great shame had Ruth gone to him and he rejected her and Naomi. SUCH a happy ending!! Don't you think this would be a stand-up and cheer movie...maybe it could even be a musical!

I love (OK, this is my interpretation and I admit I am reading between the lines, but ... this is what I think) the subtle picture of a man falling in love. Boaz asks his foreman about her...invites her to lunch, tells his men to keep away from her, tells his foreman to let her glean even in the sheaves and to have the harvestors purposely drop grain for her. Yeah, I think he was smitten. I love the scene at the city gate where he 'sets up' the closer kinsman...such a deal I have for you. I wonder that this has not been made into a movie. Such a great love story!!!

Ok, now questions:
This book is clearly an intro to the David story. The end of the book makes that obvious!

Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. The women living there said, "Naomi has a son." And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.
This, then, is the family line of Perez:
Perez was the father of Hezron,
Hezron the father of Ram,
Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
Salmon the father of Boaz,
Boaz the father of Obed,
Obed the father of Jesse,
and Jesse the father of David. (Ruth 4:16 - 22)

So, why was it so important to write about a Moabite ancestor of David? I get it in the Matthew geneology. Matthew is making a point about Jesus' history and the redemptions and ties to the nations. (You might want to read Beth's blog and also the actual geneology in Matthew, and then cross reference the stories of all the women Matthew mentions. Really ... you should) What I do not understand is why this story made good "press" for David ~ would you want to link a king to a Moabite line? really??? would you want to resurrect the Judah/Tamar scandal? I can see the wonder of it NOW, but then??? hmmm?!?

And then...just a few little questions:
Why did the women in the town get to name Ruth and Boaz's son? The women living there said, "Naomi has a son." And they named him Obed. (Ruth 4:17) Does the "they" mean the women, or does it mean Ruth and Boaz? (I think it is possible that a real Hebrew scholar ~ which I am most definately NOT ~ could clarify the pronoun conundrum) Why did the elders bring up the Judah/Tamar/Perez story as a blessing to Boaz?
Then the elders and all those at the gate said, "We are witnesses. May the LORD make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the LORD gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah." Ruth 4:11-12
I don't have any answers ... I just wonder.

"Such a deal I have for you ..."

2012-01-13T13:55:00.000-08:00

I love this last chapter of Ruth. I am sure Boaz did not sleep a wink after Ruth left. I can see Boaz strolling to the gate of the city early...perhaps as the sun just begins to rise, his eyes full of light as the first rays of the sun crest the horizon.

- - - - -

Boaz walked briskly through the darkness to the house. "Micah...Micah, get up ~ come quietly ~ I need to talk to you."

"Boaz? What is wrong ... what -- it isn't even light?"

"So, what is Elias's wife's name...Mirrim, Mari?? ...isn't his wife with child again? They have, what, two sons, three?"

"Uhh, yes, Mirrim, yes it is Mirrim. And yes, Yaffa tells me that Mirrim thinks this will be a girl, finally. Why? ... OH! Elias!" Micah chuckled. He pulled his cloak around his shoulders and came to stand beside Boaz. "Elias...sooo, isn't he the nearest kin to Naomi?"

Boaz suddenly turned and grabbed a couple of buckets from beside the door. "Come help me. I must get water from the well for a quick bath. I want to be at the gate by sun-up." When Micah did not move from his spot, Boaz added, "Ruth came to me and asked me to be kinsman-redeemer. Come on! I must hurry!"

Micah hugged Boaz fiercely and grabbed both buckets from him saying, "What are you doing here then? Go get your clothes and stoke the fire."

The sun rose to find Boaz in clean clothes, beard still a bit damp, sitting on the wall near the gate to the city. His eyes scanned the crowd as the city woke, and the business of the day began. When he saw him Boaz got up quickly and began striding through the crowd, seemingly aimlessly. Just before colliding with him, Boaz looked up and feigned surprise. "Ah! Elias!! The LORD be with you! Blessings on you and on your house."

The younger man looked up, a bit startled responding, "Good day to you, Boaz....The LORD be with you too."

"Come...sit with me. Good harvest this year, eh ~ a blessing with Mirrim to give you another son this year, yes? What? Three sons now, four?"

"It will be three, the LORD willing -- well, if it is another boy. . . Mirrim prays for a girl."

"Actually, Elias, I was hoping to see you today. I have news. I have heard that Elimelech's fields are to to sold. It seems, Micah tells me, that Naomi has thought to sell. . . she is back; had you heard? And, uh, aren't you her nearest kin?"

"I have been quite busy with the harvests...I had heard she was back. She wants to sell them, hmmm?"

Guiding Elias to a group of ten men, Boaz continued, "Come, I have asked some of the elders to sit with us. Naomi, who has come back from Moab, is selling the piece of land that belonged to our brother Elimelech. I thought I should bring the matter to your attention and suggest that you buy it in the presence of these seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, do so. But if you will not, tell me, so I will know. For no one has the right to do it except you, and I am next in line." (Ruth 4:3-4)

Boaz could almost see the gold he planned to get with the increase in land gleaming in Elias's eyes. "I will redeem it. How can I not?? ... poor Naomi! Elimelech dying there in Moab...coming home a widow."

"Yes, a widow...it is quite sad" said Boaz. "Both widows, actually. That is why she . . ."

"What? Widows? What do you mean?"

"Yes, she and Ruth are both widows. Poor Naomi lost her husband and her sons ~ first Elimelech, then Kilion, and finally Mahlon. So they would be Mahlon's fields, really. Of course, when you buy the land from Naomi and from Ruth the Moabitess, you acquire the dead man's widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property." (Ruth 4:5) Lovely girl, Ruth. She came with Naomi . . .she is young and strong, and she has spent the spring and summer gleaning in the fields to get food for her mother-in-law." Boaz watched as the color drained from Elias's face. They both knew Mirrim would not want another woman in her home...she would be the only wife.

At this, the kinsman-redeemer said, "Then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate. You redeem it yourself. I cannot do it."
(Now in earlier times in Israel, for the redemption and transfer of property to become final, one party took off his sandal and gave it to the other. This was the method of legalizing transactions in Israel.)
So the kinsman-redeemer said to Boaz, "Buy it yourself." And he removed his sandal.

Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, "Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelech, Kilion and Mahlon. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabitess, Mahlon's widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from the town records. Today you are witnesses!" Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the LORD gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah." (Ruth 4:6-12)

- - - - -
The wedding was beautiful -- music and flowers, and food! Yaffa and Naomi outdid themselves. Their joy was only outmatched by Boaz.

Early one morning months later while Ruth and Boaz walked together as the sun rose, Ruth asked "A sandal? Boaz, I do not understand?"

"It is an old custom. You see, it is with the sandal that we walk the land. It is ... well, giving me his sandal was Elias giving me his right to 'walk" Mahon's land. Taking it, I saved him the shame -- to refuse to be a kinsman redeemer, to our people, that is very bad ... had you and Naomi come to the elders and had Elias refused, you would have publicly taken his sandal, and spit in his face. He would have been terribly shamed and from then on he would have been called, 'Beeyt-Chaluwts-Hanaa`al'. For me to come and take the sandal from him...I redeem him from the shame."

Ruth stopped and placed Boaz's hand upon her stomach as the baby began to kick, "A strong boy...don't you think?"

She waited till he slept ...

2012-01-12T01:12:00.000-08:00

Beth, my daughter is doing a wonderful blog. You should go here and read her thoughts on the Levirate laws.

"I don't understand ~ what do you mean 'kinsman-redeemer'? Was he related to Elimelech? Why has he not asked you to move on to his estate, if he is kin?"

"No. He is not 'kin' like that. He is Elimelech's kinsman, but a distant relative...they come from the same clan. No. 'Kinsman-redeemer' ... it is role, um a tradition from the law. You see, Ruth, God owns all the land ~ all of it. He has given it to families based upon which tribe we are from. He did it when we first came to the promised land."

"I thought you said Elimelech had land and you were going to sell it . . ."

"Yes, but you see the land should stay in the family. Even if I sold it to some other family, some other clan, at the Jubilee it would come back to the family. You see? It is God's ~ I cannot sell that. It is more that I sell the right to use it and gain from the crops -- until the Jubilee."

"What does that have to do with Boaz being ... what did you say, "kinsman-redeemer"? Will he redeem back the land at the Jubilee? When is that, soon right. He isn't, well, young."

"No...it is more than the land. You see, here if a man dies and there are no children to inherit the land, then his brother, or someone who is kin, can marry the widow. He gains the land, and their children will inherit in the name of the man who died. His name and his inheritance will not be lost. And the widow will be cared for and have the chance to have a family and live on the land."

Ruth's eyes grew large as it dawned on her what Naomi was saying. "That is what you meant when you said 'really it was finally Mahlon's land. You mean...Boaz...you think . . . but he won't - - - marry me ~ I am a Moabite. Do you think ----?"

"Yes. Listen, he has shown you much favor -- he always sends the "extra" grain, he has you sit with his girls at lunch and feed you from his own table. I do not know why he has not spoken for you. I know -- from the women at the well, they all talk of how you have caught his eye."

"I didn't! Naomi, I never ..."

"Hush Child. They do not criticize you. In fact, everyone speaks well of you now -- no, they do! They have told me again and again how I am bless to have a daughter who loves me more than seven sons. They see you in the fields, how you work, how modest you are. And they speak of Boaz, how he stands and watches you when he thinks they do not see, how ... he smiles now. He had a wife, you know. Her name was Hanni. . . that means "pleasant or lovely" ~ and she was! She was the very sun in Boaz's day. They married and ... such joy, but - well there were no children. Boaz said he didn't care. Then she conceived ---- but the delivery, well...the midwife did her best but...he lost both Hanni and the baby. We feared he would follow her to the grave. He came out of it, but it is rare to see him smile."

"But . . . Naomi, yes he is kind. But he must know this law, this tradition as well as you. He has not spoken. He . . ."

"Ruth, I have a plan. You see, it is the right of the widow to go to the kinsman and ask him to be her redeemer. Tonight is the end of the harvest. There is a feast. Boaz will be winnowing the wheat, and then he will sleep there on the threshing floor. See, I have made you a new dress and here is water for a bath..."

-------

He heart was in her throat. "Can I do this? What if he says, 'no', or laughs, or . . . " Softly, like the breeze from the fields, Ruth crept across the threshing floor to where Boaz slept by the stacks of grain. She gently lifted the edge of the blanket at his feet and layed down, hardly daring to breath, lest she wake him. Just as she settled and closed her eyes, hoping to rest, if not to sleep -- how could she sleep? -- Boaz startled.

"Who ? What...? Who are you, girl. What are you...?

"I am your servant Ruth," she said. "Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer." Her voice was the barest whisper saying the words Naomi had her memorize, and she trembled and hid her face in her cloak, looking down at his feet.

"Ruth? What are you . . . ?" Then he stopped and shook his head. "... kinsman? kinsman redeemer? You are asking . . . ?"

"No, I will go. I do not think anyone saw me come. I am sorry. Naomi said ~ "

He reached for her hand to draw her back. "No, wait. . .wait. You would want me ~ as husband? You are young and so lovely. Did Naomi explain?"

"You are a near kin. She said I could come to you and ask you to . . . . I am sorry. I will go. I tried to tell her you would not want me. I am sorry. I will go."

"Ruth ~ wait. Not want you ? Oh Ruth! Do you want me...I am not young...would you want me? "

"Yes, Boaz, if you would have me. And you are not so old." Their eyes met and they smiled shyly, and Boaz softly laughed. "You have been kind to Naomi, working for her in the fields, caring for her. but . . . The LORD bless you, my daughter," he replied. "This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. And now, my daughter, don't be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character. Although it is true that I am near of kin, there is a kinsman-redeemer nearer than I. Stay here for the night, and in the morning if he wants to redeem, good; let him redeem. But if he is not willing, as surely as the LORD lives I will do it. Lie here until morning."
So she lay at his feet until morning, but got up before anyone could be recognized; and he said, "Don't let it be known that a woman came to the threshing floor."
He also said, "Bring me the shawl you are wearing and hold it out." When she did so, he poured into it six measures of barley and put it on her. Then he went back to town.
When Ruth came to her mother-in-law, Naomi asked, "How did it go, my daughter?"
Then she told her everything Boaz had done for her and added, "He gave me these six measures of barley, saying, 'Don't go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.'"
Then Naomi said, "Wait, my daughter, until you find out what happens. For the man will not rest until the matter is settled today."
NIV

well worth waiting

2012-01-09T23:27:00.000-08:00

we don't know....
how Boaz felt about Ruth, really, before they married
   why this rich, successful, kind, generous man was single and ... it seems ... with out any children
       what transpired behind the scenes as the story transpired

we don't know ~ but here are the colors I am painting to fill in the spaces between the lines

Spring melted into early summer. The barley harvest was finished, beginning in Abib {our March to April} and finishing in Zif {our April to May}. There had been a 60 fold increase and much rejoicing. The wheat harvest was drawing to a close and it too had been abundant, beginning in Sivan {our May to June} and finishing in Tamuz {our June to July}. The days were warmer and warmer -- some hot. Boaz stood looking out at the fields one morning, breathing prayers of gratitude to God for the full barns. Micah walked up, ready to begin the day. "Micah -- alone? I thought you would bring Yaffa and the children today. Reuben has the lamb roasting already." "She will be here soon -- she wanted to bake a bit more bread, and then pack the wagon...you know ~ I'll just ... I'll just..." said Micah chuckling. "Is she here yet?" Boaz turned, and caught the twinkle in Micah eyes. Shaking his head and grinning ruefully, Boaz didn't answer. Micah's teasing about Ruth had increased as the weeks went by. "Seriously, though, Boaz...as your friend...Hanni has been gone ~ how long now?" Boaz's eyes lost their gleam, "12 years." He turned and grabbed his cloak and swept from the room. Micah followed. "Boaz! Stop!! Boaz...listen -- listen to me." Boaz stopped but did not turn to look at his friend. Micah touched his shoulder. Boaz shrugged it away. "The sun already grows hot. I must . . ." "What you must do is LISTEN TO ME! Boaz, Hanni loved you but she would not rejoice to see you alone. You cannot hold her memory like a shield any longer. What excuses do you use today for why you do not speak for Ruth...she is young, you are old? So? She can bear children. You have waited . . . no one speaks to her. You have heard the whispers ~ "... that Moabite..." and that is the kindest thing they say." "Micah, enough. We must see to the harvest." And with that Boaz stormed away.
   Walking to the fields his thoughts were as hot as the wind blowing from the hills. "How dare ... I loved Hanni ~ he cannot understand." When Hanni had died in childbirth the world had been dark...he wasn't even sure how long he sat ... day after day after day, just sitting in the dust and ashes. At the end of the first year, had Micah not run the fields and the harvest and Yaffa not kept the household together ~ he didn't even know what might have happened. One day Micah had invited him to the field during the end of the barley harvest. It seemed his muscles remembered the work more even than his mind. Once he began he seemed to work like a madman. Slowly but surely the smells of the fields, the songs of the harvesters, the exhaustion at the end of the harvests ... his mind had returned and he .   .   . woke to find that he could bury his grief if he woke with the dawn and worked till he dropped. Over the years his land prospered ~ it wasn't the wealth....oh that had come...it was the life: the rhythm of the seasons, the tasks that filled the days and left his body tired and able to sleep at night. It was a couple of years before the matchmakers approached him...this girl, that girl. He said no every time. It wasn't just that he was still in grief ... none of the girls were Hanni. Until he noticed Ruth...he stopped, struck by the thought...until he noticed Ruth he had not so much as seen a woman ~ well, not as a woman. A bitter laugh escaped -- now, now that he was old, now he noticed. He shook his head. There was a harvest to finish. Two, maybe three more days . . . .

worth waiting

2012-01-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

As I have been writing about the Ruth story ... the characters in this wonderful little romance ... I find that as I look at each one of the different people, it is like shifting my view. When you scan a room, what you see depends on where you stand. If you come into my living room from the front door, for example, you will see primarily the back of a couch, a large mirror on a wall and the TV. But if you come in from the kitchen, you will see the red wall with the art work, the front of the couch, and off to the side, the front door. Same room ~ different views. That is what Ruth has been for me.

When I enter the story looking at Boaz I see the landscape of events from a very different viewpoint than when I look at Naomi. Here is a man who is rich. He, it seems, has a large estate with lots of fields. He is well established. But . . . he is old...or older...and he has no family ~ at least the story mentions no wife, no children. I wonder why. Marriages were arranged . . . surely as the years passed there was some young girl of marriageable age there in Bethlehem who the local matchmakers suggested to him as a match. Why is he single? Did he never marry? Did he have a wife who died, perhaps in childbirth ~ someone he loved so much and grieved so deeply that he could not consider remarriage? What ever his back-story is, he is not a bitter man, in fact he seems bright and exhilarated when we see him first in the story.

The actor I would choose if I were casting Ruth as a movie, would be Alan Rickman. Perhaps you know him from his role in the Harry Potter movies as Prof. Snape. Do not see him as Snape. He also played a role in the movie version of Jane Austin's Sense and Sensibility; he played Colonel Brandon, a middle-aged bachelor. That is who I see when I see Boaz in my mind's eye...OK, change the costumes and the hair style, but essentially ... that is how I see Boaz. He is a bit rough looking. He has a brow etched and wrinkled from age and emotion. His eyes are a bit squinty, as if he has a habit of looking off into the distance as he works.

Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, "The LORD be with you!"
"The LORD bless you!" they called back. (Ruth 2:4) Boaz stood looking over the fields. The air was full of the scent of the grain and the music of the harvest ~ the rhythm of the scythes and the songs of the men and women cutting and gathering the grain. He loved the first day, the bustling, the excitement, the wonderful exhaustion of the days full hard work and laughter. 'It is going to be a good year. Even the poor will eat well.' he thought. He scanned the fields watching his harvesters and finally looking to the very edges of the field where the gleaning happened. 'What a wonderful God we serve.' The idea of gleaning had always fascinated him. He knew some of his friends resented the practice, grumbled about the rabble who stole the grain of the gleaning. But he saw it as a blessing. His harvest would yield more than enough grain, and the gleaners took the corners so his men did not have to go back and do the tedious work with the short scythes. Then the final bit of grain inadvertently dropped by his harvesters would be gathered would be gathered by the poor of Bethlehem, winnowed and taken home to their families. The poor worked for the grain, without the indignity of begging ~ and his fields would be harvested. Yes, the wisdom of God!' As he scanned the fields, he noticed one worker, a young woman, alone back even from the gleaners. He stood watching for a moment...he wasn't sure why she so caught his attention. She worked efficiently and carefully...he knew the people of Bethlehem, but not this woman. Then he noticed his foreman, Micah, was standing at his elbow a knowing smile on his face. Nodding toward the young woman, 'She is ... lovely, eh?' Boaz chuckled ruefully, ' Yes . . . Uh ... She works hard, and seems to know what she is doing ~ who is she? I don't recognize her. Whose young woman is that?'
The foreman replied, 'She is the Moabitess who came back from Moab with Naomi. She said, 'Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.' She went into the field and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter. (Ruth 2:5-7)
Later, Boaz was not sure why he had spoken to her personally. He had found himself looking for her throughout the morning, always watching to see where she was, to see how she was doing. "My daughter, (he had said so she would know his intentions were . . . well, fatherly.) listen to me. Don't go and glean in another field and don't go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the girls. I have told the men not to touch you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled."
At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, "Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me — a foreigner?"
Boaz
"May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord," she said. "You have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to your servant — though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls."
At mealtime Boaz said to her, "Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar."
When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain.
Afterwards, he told himself 'It is right for me to look out for Naomi's daughter-in-law...we are kin, if somewhat distant'. He lied to himself as if rehearsing the answer he would give to Micah later. He knew he would face Micah's good-natured teasing later. And he did, 'Boaz, your are not so old as all that. Your eyesight is still good ~ and you are, no Boaz, you ARE still young enough to marry.' Boaz shook his head and added, 'She is a woman alone, Micah. Naomi has suffered so much and this young woman could have simply stayed in Moab and left Naomi to face life here alone. She knows what people think of her . . . a Moabite. Yet she braves the field that Naomi may eat. You tell the harvesters she is to be honored. And ... even if she gathers among the sheaves, don't embarrass her. Rather, pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don't rebuke her." (Ruth 2:15-16)

But even as he said this he sighed and he thought , 'Ah, you're an old fool, Boaz.' She is strong and healthy ... still young ~ lovely, yes, quite lovely. It will not be long until she has caught the eye of Terah, or Joseph perhaps. Their poverty will not deter her and they will gain a strong, pretty wife. Not much of a bride-price will be asked, though Naomi's kin, she is Moabite ... and she will marry ~ she will need a husband.'

"Call me Mara"

2012-01-04T09:38:00.000-08:00

{It is quite interesting to me that my daughter and I are staying on the same page ... she wrote of Naomi too. You should go check out her blog: http://mymusingonlife.blogspot.com}

"Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17)

Have you ever been to a wedding where these words were part of the wedding vows?
I have . . . SEVERAL times. They are wonderful vows ~ so passionate, so all-encompassing. They speak of love that is relentless, committed, faithful. Just perfectly formed as vows for a wedding. These words come from the book of Ruth in the Bible. The thing is though, they are not spoken at a wedding. While they are spoken by Ruth, she did not say them to Mahlon - her first husband who died in Moab - nor to Boaz - the second husband that she married in Israel. They were not marriage vows. They were words she spoke to her mother-in-law, Naomi.

Who was this woman? What kind of woman must she have been to fill Ruth's heart with this kind of passionate love for her? I mean, it is amazing, when you stop to think : Ruth begged to be able to go back to Israel with Naomi. The quote above actually begins with, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you." Ruth clearly loved Naomi. What kind of woman inspires that kind of devotion. Naomi must have been amazing. We see her defeated, leaving Moab alone and arriving back in Israel where she tells her friends who greet her when she and Ruth arrive, "Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me." (Ruth 1:20-21) I think that Naomi was raw with grief at that moment ~ assaulted by the memories of happy days with Elimelech and her two little boys as she stumbled into Bethlehem: there is where the boys played, there is where I first saw Elimelech as I went to draw water early in the morning, there . . . and there.... But I do not think Naomi was a broken woman.
The story of the book of Ruth is a roller-coaster of poignant events. Clearly the story is "about" Ruth, a wonderful Moabite woman who comes to Israel and become great-grandmother to David the King.
But this story is punctuated with characters who are vivid and multi-dimensional. This is a short book, this is a well written book. The writer of this book was a craftsman ... we don't know who he was exactly, but if he lived today I suspect he would have a vibrant, lucrative career as an award winning author. For me, it is the characters that this writer drew that fill this short story with dimension and color.

Have you read the book yet? Really if you haven't ~ really ~ pause now and go take 5 minutes and read it for yourself. It is a delightful book and you can read it in a gulp.

[silent musical interlude while you are reading Ruth]

At first glance this woman, Naomi, seems harsh, acerbic perhaps. She seems brash. She does things that are 'odd' to say the least ~ sends Ruth to go lay down by Boaz in the middle of the night ? ? ? Really? On first read, I am tempted to dislike her. But I like her. The more I read the book, the more I like her.

There is an assignment I sometimes give to students when I am teaching in a class. I challenge them to pretend a movie is going to be made of the story and that they are the casting directors. I ask them to choose an actor who they would cast in the part. For me, giving a face and a voice to a character in Bible stories helps make them 3 dimensional, and helps put a "tone of voice" into the dialog. So...
who would I cast in the part of Naomi? Helen Mirren. I searched for images of her and chose this one, not merely because the hair and jewelry sort of make her seems like a woman from ancient Israel (I do love the earrings, don't you?)

I chose this image because it was one of the only ones where she was not smiling. She has a dazzling smile. But this picture to me is the picture of Naomi, home from Moab ~ old, grieved, shrivelled by the losses. In fact if I were to do a movie of this book I think I would slant the story making Naomi the central character. I would start with the scene of her return to Bethlehem.

She comes with Ruth, likely stumbling with exhaustion into the market place. One by one the women notice and then slowly recognize her, crying out, "Is that ... can that be Naomi? OH ~ look! It is Naomi! Naomi!!" They run to her, embracing her trying to spin with joy, only to have Naomi collapse weeping into the dust of the street. She says, "Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me."
(Ruth 1:20-21)

The story pours out and through flash-backs we see the disintegration of this woman.
~ A young Naomi and Elimelech sitting huddled at a rough table, whispering intensely as their two sons sleep on mats in a loft above. Elimelech's face is intense, pleading. Naomi's face is sad. She bows her head, shaking it now and then at some remark Elimelech offers. We hear him say, "... we must. Not even a harvest enough to feed us." "But Moab? How can we ... ?" Naomi responds, tears dripping and pooling on the table.
~ The young family walking shyly into a small Moabite town, the young boys eyes timid, but intrigued as they take in the sights and sounds of this new place.
~ Naomi, a few years older, walking in the early morning hours to the well with the women who are now her friends. Her eyes light on a lovely, quiet girl drawing water ahead of her. A young man races past, pausing to drop a quick kiss on Naomi's cheek and greet her, before stepping up to the girl and saying, "Morning Ruth. May I carry that for you?"
~ A funeral. Naomi, wailing, "NO no no...Elimelech, what will I do without you? OH God, oh God..." Her sons gathering her into their embrace, holding her, sobbing with her.
~ A wedding, dancing, singing. As the groom, Kilion, and his lovely bride, Orpah, are ushered off to their new home for the wedding night, you see Naomi's eyes rest on Mahlon as his eyes rest on Ruth, the lovely girl from the well. Naomi smiles.
~ A funeral. This time it is Orpah and Ruth her daughter-in-laws who gather in grief with Naomi.
~ Naomi, and Ruth and Orpah packing, preparing to leave Moab and go to Israel. Then . . .

Then she kissed them and they wept aloud and said to her, "We will go back with you to your people." But Naomi said, "Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me — even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD's hand has gone out against me!"
At this they wept again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by, but Ruth clung to her. (Ruth 1:9-14)

Ruth and Orpah were still young. There were no children, so I do not think either of them had been married long before their husbands died. Orpah goes home to her family. But not Ruth. It says she clung to Naomi. Then Ruth says, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17) This quote, for me, tells the story of Naomi. This is why I like her. She must have been an amazing woman. She is a foreigner in Moab ~ an 'enemy' foreigner. Israel and Moab had been notorious enemies from the days of Israel's wandering in the wilderness after leaving Egypt. Yet she comes to live there, her sons marry there. And Ruth, Naomi's daughter-in-law, comes to love Naomi devotedly. What kind of woman inspires that kind of devotion in a daughter-in-law, inspires her to leave her home, and family and culture, going to a foreign country where, likely, as two women alone, only poverty awaited them ~ poverty with no hope of marriage or children? Naomi must have been a strong, loving amazing woman. It is Naomi who has taught Ruth to call God 'LORD', "May the LORD deal with me...".
And despite what she says about herself and God to her old friends when she first gets back to Bethlehem, Naomi's words are filled with faith when Ruth begins to glean in Boaz's field. "The LORD bless him!" Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. "He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead." (Ruth 2:20) And God does not "stop showing her His kindness." She is not "Mara" ~ bitter. She is someone I want to meet and talk to. She is someone I want to emulate.

Ruth

2012-01-02T10:46:00.000-08:00

My daughter, Elizabeth Larkin -- for those of you who don't know her -- is one of my favorite people. She (though she stubbornly argues with me every time I say this) is one of the most insightful people in the world. Even if she were not my daughter, she would still be one of my favorite people on the planet. Why do I bring her up, you ask? {Thanks for asking} Well....

Beth and I have decided for the next season to write our blogs "together" ~ that is, we are going to tackle the same topic and write blogs and put links to each other's blogs up in each of our blogs. (wow...that is an awkward sentence! Hope you get what I mean.)

Beth started first. She actually 'read my mind' ~ I had also planned to mention the first time we, Beth and I, read and studied the book of Ruth and the fun and funny mnemonics we used to remember the funny names in this book. Now I won't of course. You can go read about it in her blog. Here is the link to her blog. http://mymusingonlife.blogspot.com
I guess this is going to be interesting.

So, what we decided to read and write about is the story of David the King. His story is long. One of the things that fascinates me about David's story is that in order to read the whole story you must read several books (And...don't worry, we aren't, going to cover every word of all of these books) in the Old Testament:   1st and 2nd Samuel, 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles, Psalms (of course) . . . and Ruth.
Hummm ~ Ruth? Ruth is the beginning of the David story. Ruth was David's great-grandmother: Ruth was married to a man named Boaz and . . .
Boaz the father of Obed,     [making Boaz David's great-grandfather]
Obed the father of Jesse,     [making Obed David's grandfather]
and Jesse the father of David.
(Ruth 4:21-22)

I wonder how many of you have and know your great-grandparents? I don't. I didn't even get to know my grandparents. But, wonderful to me, my husband's mother IS a great-grandmother. She has 14 great-grandchildren. Just one of the lines (great-grandchild to great-grandmother) goes Lucy, my daughter's daughter; Beth, our daughter and Lucy's mother; Ed and I, Lucy's grandparents; and Lucille Meyer, my husband's mother and Lucy's great-grandmother. Lucy gets to have parents, grandparents and a great-grandparent. Lucille Meyer is in her 80's, but she still lives on her own, makes peanut brittle every Christmas, talks to us regularly on the phone (she lives in Oklahoma). She came a few months ago for a visit to see her little 'name-sake' great-granddaughter. Why do I mention this? Well, I think that in the same way Lucy will get to know her great-gramma, that David got to know Ruth, his great-grandmother. I suspects she may have held and rocked him. I think she may have told him her wonderful story. (grandchildren love it when grandparents tell them stories) I think ~ and yes, I know that it cannot be proven as scripture does not say this ~ but I think that this woman was one of the influences of David's life. I think her story matters and clearly the writers of Ruth did too...the book of Ruth ends with the link from Boaz to David.

And, besides ... Ruth is a great book! It is a charming, multi-layered love story. It is full of drama and poignancy, and sweetness. I love the story, I love the characters. If you have not read it ~ go ahead, do it now. It is a short, easy to read book. You can find it in the Old Testament tucked between Judges and 1 Samuel. You can probably read it with a cup of coffee and finish the book before you finish the coffee. And I bet you'll sit pondering Ruth, and Boaz and Naomi while you sip another cup or two.

Tomorrow...the story begins.

Their 'December 23'

2011-12-23T11:27:00.000-08:00

OK, we have established that we do know that Jesus was not born in December on the 25th at the year zero ~ but that is when we celebrate...so, go with me on this one, OK?!?

It is the 23rd. Christmas morning will be in "two more sleeps". Today and tomorrow will be filled with hustle and bustle ~ crazy, a bit frantic -- OK, at times exhausting ~ but mostly filled with eye-twinkling anticipation because it is CHRISTMAS, right?!!

It wasn't exciting and eye-twinkling for Mary and for Joseph.
"Right now" (which means at this time...2 sleeps before Jesus was born) 2000+ years ago Mary and Joesph were on the road, headed toward Bethlehem. We have crowds, they had crowds too I imagine. If when they arrived there was no room for them in any of the inns (that would be like our Travel Lodge, or Motel 6) there had to be lots and lots of people also on the road headed off to where they needed to register too. Mary was VERY pregnant. I have been there before. Trust me...you are never actually comfortable. Even in modern, comfortable beds you never sleep longer than an hour before you need to turn over (which is a major ordeal), or 'use the little girl's room'. Your back hurts. Getting up and down is a five minute chore. You waddle like an old duck when you walk. I can't even imagine sitting on a donkey and riding mile after mile after mile. Joseph had to be a wreck! He had already been through so much ...
       get betrothed to this darling wonderful girl
plummet to the depths of emotion with the realization that she is pregnant and it is NOT your baby
       struggle agonizingly to the decision that a quiet divorce is the only solution
have a dream ~ and believe!
       finalize the marriage and settle down to marriage and the prospect of raising this child ~ WAIT!

This "child" would be the Messiah...and you are responsible BEFORE GOD to raise this child. I bet that kept him up nights. Every dad goes through a metamorphosis of character, I think, as they lay their hand on the baby and feel the kicking. "My son will be .... I will teach him ... we will ..." Well, Joseph must have spent many dark nights thinking while feeling the baby kick and listening to Mary sleep, "My son will be the Messiah! WHAT can I teach him? HOW do I teach him? What if . . ." What must it have been like for him when the notice arrived and he realized that he and Mary had to travel from Nazareth down to Bethlehem. It was about 80 miles...think of it! 80 long miles walking or riding on a donkey when you are 9 months pregnant. I "googled" it: caravans traveled at a rate of about 20 miles per day. Joseph and Mary must have had to travel slower than that, so somewhere between 4 to 8 grueling days and nights.

If I were Joseph my prayers would have been something like ... "Really God? You could have done 'something' about this. This baby was YOUR idea...YOUR timing. You are GOD!!! How did YOU not know the Romans were going to do this to us??? How do we ... we must go ... but ... what if ... ... OH God!" Then they get to Bethlehem and by now Mary must have begun having contractions. First babies -- labor can be 15 to 24 hours or more. No family, none of the women in her family, no midwife to help, AND no room for them in any of the inns. Joseph must have been FRANTIC! Some kind inn keeper must have noticed that Mary was in labor and given them a place.

Of course we know now that God meant all along for Jesus to born in Bethlehem. We know that God protected and provided ... but for Joseph, living through it must have been so frantic. Such a roller-coaster: get to Bethlehem, have the baby, shepherds show up and worship your baby, Simeon and Anna prophecy over him when you take him to be dedicated, Magi ~ rich, rich KINGS ~ show up and worship and give you these amazing gifts ... then you get another dream and that angel who told you to marry Mary says, "Get up NOW and leave!" Somewhere on the road you hear that Herod had all the baby boys slaughtered. Such a furnace to forge your faith. Joseph had nothing but the protection of God to rely on.

There is a great verse in Isaiah: Isa 43:2-3
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned ;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the LORD, your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

You may have noticed I underlined "when". See, God does not say "if" ~ He says "when". And He says "when you pass through the waters" and "when you pass through the rivers" and "when you walk through the fire". It does not say you will be protected from something. The water will not stop raging, and the fire will not become cool. You just won't die. That was Joseph. Yup ... he is someone I want to talk to when I get to heaven.

Joseph's birth announcement

2011-12-22T13:07:00.000-08:00

Joseph kind of fascinates me. We know so little about him ... but in that I can see so much.
What do we know?
Well, we know that he was from Nazareth. (Luke 1:26-27)
We know that Joseph was in the family line of David the king. (Luke 1:6-16)
We know that he was a carpenter, because Jesus was called a carpenter and sons learned their trades from their fathers. (Mark 6:1-3)
and ...
            really ...
                            not much more.
OH ~ wait!

We know he was betrothed to Mary, the mother of Jesus when she became pregnant with Jesus, and that at the time Mary was a virgin ~ hence, Joseph was NOT the biological father.
We know that when Joseph found out Mary was pregnant he was going to divorce her quietly. (Betrothal was serious business! If you were publicly betrothed, you did not just decide "well, let's not get married"... it was legally binding and to end the relationship you had to get a divorce.)
And we know that he did not go through with the divorce because he got a birth announcement . . . in a dream, where angels talked to him . . . and he believed them!

I have not heard many sermons about Joesph. Have you? We see him standing behind Mary in all the Nativity scenes. We quickly read the verses about him in Matthew and in Luke when we are reading the Christmas story in the Bible. But I got to thinking about this man. He intrigues me. I plan to look him up when I get to heaven...perhaps I'll have some hummus and pita bread with him and chat when we are at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb . . .

OK, this is what intrigues me:
So here is this guy, Joesph, a carpenter from Nazareth. What did God see in him? Why pick HIM to be Jesus dad here on earth? The person God chose ... well, really ~ I mean ~ God was picking someone to 'babysit' for what, 30 years? Who do you pick? Why pick Joseph? Well, he must have been strong I would imagine...you would have to be, to be a carpenter. .... ummm what else do we know? Really, other than the fact that Joseph was from the family line of David the King, nothing directly. We are not told what God saw in this man. Crazy, huh! I mean I understand. The men who wrote the gospel didn't know him; no one was taking notes on him when Jesus was a little boy. Mary, obviously knew about him...yet it seems they didn't ask her for any information, later when they were writing gospels ~ I wonder why... if she talked to John (to whom Jesus gave the care of his mother when he was hanging on the cross ~ John 19:26-27) he didn't leave us any information. There are some little things -- well not really little in the scheme of things -- that suggest that this man was pretty amazing.

When Joseph found out Mary was pregnant, he was going to put her away quietly.
This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph , but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. Matt 1:18-19
Wow! First we are told he was a righteous man, and second we are told that he did not want to expose her to public disgrace...in fact we are told that BECAUSE he was a righteous man and BECAUSE he did not want to expose her to public disgrace ... he had in mind to divorce her quietly. He must have been shocked, confused, certainly betrayed ~ angry maybe? Yet he did not act in a vengeful way. In that day and age during the betrothal, the groom built the house for his bride and when it was done he went and got his bride and they got married. The house wasn't done till the groom's father said it was good enough. (OK, if Joseph was a carpenter, so was his dad...so, thick solid doors hung smoothly, hardwood floors, every wall plumb, good solid furniture...lots of work, lots of time) I can imagine him, standing in the nearly completed home, running his hand across the smooth solid table with tears running down his cheeks and soaking his beard, just quietly saying, "Oh Mary....". Standing there deciding that in the morning he would go to the rabbi. But that night Joseph had a dream.

So now I have a question: Why didn't God tell Joseph early? Why wait? Why even make him contemplate a divorce? Why allow him the agony he must have felt when it became clear that Mary was pregnant? Did Mary try to tell him? We don't know...we do know as soon as Gabriel came to her and told her she would be the virgin mother of the Messiah, Jesus that she went to Jerusalem and spent 3 months with Elizabeth, John the Baptist's mother. Did she come home, beginning to show? She was only 3 months pregnant at the time. Did she simply come home in the glow of joy from her time with Elizabeth and tell Joseph she was pregnant? It wasn't like it would have been any easier then to believe a pregnant young girl say she had spoken to an angel and say that she was still a virgin...she was PREGNANT! AND...Nazareth was a trade town in the north of Israel. I have heard it compared to ... well not exactly Hollywood, but ...

NAZARETH
          The origin of the disrepute in which Nazareth stood (John 1:47) is lot
      certainly known. All the inhabitants of Galilee were looked upon with
      contempt by the people of Judaea because they spoke a ruder dialect, were
      less cultivated, and were more exposed by their position to contact with the
      heathen. But Nazareth labored under a special opprobrium, for it was a
      Glalilean and not a southern Jew who asked the reproachful question,
      whether "any good thing" could come from that source. The term "good"
      (a)gaqo/n having more commonly an ethical sense, it has been suggested
      that the inhabitants of Nazareth may have had a bad name among their
      neighbors for irreligion or some laxity of morals.
(from McClintock and Strong Encyclopedia, Electronic Database. Copyright © 2000, 2003 by Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)

So, girls from Nazareth who showed up pregnant might not exactly
have been believed if they said they said, 'an angel named Gabriel said . . .' So God knew what all this would mean to Joseph, yet He waited until Joseph contemplated divorce to send the angel in the dream. He sent Gabriel early to Zachariah, and to Mary. Why not Joesph?

But, when Joseph did have the dream, he believed God and he quickly married Mary.
But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"-which means, "God with us."
When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. Matt 1:20-25

It sounds as though Joseph did go to the rabbi the next morning, but he went with Mary to finalize the marriage. I love that.

However, it was a dream...ever had a dream? a strange dream? It is not often easy to believe what happens in a dream once you are awake. There are a few stories in the Bible about God speaking to people in dreams ... in Genesis the Philistine king Abimelech (Genesis 20:3), Jacob called Israel by God (Genesis 31:10-13), Solomon the son of David (1 Kings 3:1-15). They all really believed it was God. And now there is Joseph ~ Joseph standing in the middle of these crazy strange events, living through what must have been a tempest of emotions, has a dream where an angel delivers a birth announcement, and Joesph chooses to believe what the angel tells him and chooses to marry Mary, and leave her untouched until after Jesus was born. And it mattered, later, it mattered very much that Joseph could hear the messages from angels sent by God in dreams and believe what he was told. Later when Herod decided, at the time of the visit of the Magi, to kill all the baby boys 2 years old and younger, Joseph again had a dream where angels spoke to him and again he believed the angel in the dream. He again obeyed instantly and saved Jesus' life.

So what do we know about Joseph?
What made him the right man for the job of parenting Jesus?

~ He was a carpenter from Nazareth.
~ He was Jesus 'foster' father.

AND, to me most important:

He believed God!

Blessed is she who has believed that what the LORD has said to her shall be accomplished !

2011-12-16T01:50:00.000-08:00

The birth announcement to Elizabeth and Mary continues. This part of the story is so sweet. Zechariah comes out of the Holy of Holies ~ mute! He tries to use sign language to communicate what had happened, but ... they know something supernatural had happened, but ? ? ? He goes home, and in the 'natural course of events, Elizabeth his wife becomes pregnant. It says she stayed in seclusion for 5 months. However, it never says WHY. I checked a few commentaries ... nothing! OK, some 'drivvel' ~ clearly biased guesses. (sometimes I wish commentators would just say "Wow! don't have a clue!"

That's my answer --- don't have a clue. She wasn't ashamed. She says, "The Lord has done this for me," she said. "In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people." (Luke 1:25)
What we do know is that in the 6th month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, Gabriel ~ the angel who came to see Zechariah in the Holy of Holies ~ goes to see Mary. He tells her that she is favored of God and she will become pregnant miraculously...without 'knowing' a man. The father will be the Holy Spirit. She says, "How can these things be ... ?" too, but the angel does not accuse her of unbelief, as he had accused Zechariah. Clearly hers was ... as it were ... biological confusion. Her question is understandable: who -- really -- who could have thought of a virgin birth except God? Once Gabriel explains, she is IN! "May it be to me as you have said. (Luke 1:38)

Clearly, Gabriel was busy bringing birth announcements.

But then the next part of the birth announcement is made by JOHN who is later called John the Baptist. Remember the Gabriel's promise to Zech? The baby would be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. As part of the announcement to Mary, Gabriel tells Mary that Elizabeth is pregnant. Mary goes to be with Elizabeth. Was it because it would have been QUITE awkward to suddenly show signs of pregnancy that her mom and dad and ... JOSEPH...would find unmistakable? maybe. Was it because she knew her relative, Elizabeth was old(er) and would need lots of help during the end of her pregnancy? maybe. Doesn't say why she went...just that she went.

Mary gets there and John "leaps" in his mother's womb. And Elizabeth knew in that moment ~ instantly ~ that Mary was pregnant with Jesus --- she clearly knew from her speech -- that Mary carried the Messiah. How wonderful that 3 months must have been!! I am sure they talked A LOT! I am sure they planned and projected and day dreamed about their two miraculous sons. I can feel their mutual joy! I think that visit gave both women courage. The days ahead would not be easy: Mary had a visit from an angel...but her parents didn't. Joseph didn't. She needed courage! What I love is that there is no mention of her wavering...not a sound of recrimination toward God. Elizabeth and Mary -- two women facing dreadful difficulty hugged each other and rejoiced! Having someone who believes WITH you, someone who is standing IN the unfolding of the miracle WITH you. . . that make all the difference.

The Next Birth Announcement : Mary and Elizabeth 1

2011-12-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

I hope you realize that I am not doing these announcements in chronological order. In a way, the first one -- the Magi -- is the first chronologically. Balaam did get the Word about the star and the scepter quite a long long time before the time of Jesus' birth. But the Magi who came to bring gifts and worship Jesus, probably they had the last announcement. Jesus could have been as old as 2 years old by the time they showed up.

So the next announcement ... really the time frame of the actual Christmas story...this one is first.

There was a couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth. He was a high priest ... one of the very select few who could enter the Holy of Holies. The Bible tells us that Zechariah and Elizabeth were "well advanced" in years. One translation says they were "well stricken with age". What a great way to say "old". Also, Elizabeth, we are told, was barren. NO hope for a child. This was beyond sad, it was tragic for a couple, especially one in the family of the High Priest. There would be no son to follow in his line. One fate-full day, Zachariah is serving in the Holy of Holies and an angel shows up. The angel tells him,

"Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous — to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." (Luke 1:13-17)

There is quite a bit there, in this message. First, Zechariah had been praying for a child. This seems so obvious -- why mention it? OF COURSE Zechariah and Elizabeth had prayed. To be unable to have a child was such shame ~ Behold, children are a gift of the LORD,
The fruit of the womb is a reward. (Ps 127:3) No child = no blessing from God, no reward. But by this time in their life, they were beyond hope.

Then...an angel shows up. Do you suppose Zechariah wanted to say -- Thanks, but no thanks. I am OLD now. How can we have a baby... when he is 10, will I even be alive? Listen to Zechariah's answer, "Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years." (Luke 1:18) It is like he didn't even hear the rest of the message. Sometimes our reality eclipses all faith and all hope. This was true, it seems for this old priest. He was talking to an ANGEL. The ANGEL was telling him that he and Elizabeth would have a son, that he was to name the baby John, that the boy would be a joy and a delight to him, and that this child would be great in the LORD's sight. It is like Zechariah doesn't hear it -- he has become petrified by the erosion of his hope. . .hardened in his reality, beyond belief. He was a priest -- he of all people knew the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekkah. Had they become to him just stories? It seems so. He doesn't even respond to the rest of the angel's message:

~ the baby must be a Nazirite (Numbers 6:1-12)

~ he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his birth ~ oh my goodness, who wouldn't want a child like that?

~ he will fulfill the promise of Malachi the prophet "See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers (Mal 4:5-6)

All he can say is, "I am an old man . . . ."

He did not realize that God had woven him into a much much bigger story than his own life and reality. God was making him part of the BIGGEST story ever. He gave up hope and became deaf and blind to anything beyond his disappointment. See, when you know God, don't ever give up. You never know when God has a much bigger plan than you do ... ok really God ALWAYS has a much bigger plan than any of us do.

Zechariah says, "How can I be sure of this?" Really? Is that a question to ask an ANGEL?? That is what makes this story so vivid to me ~ so shocking ~ and such a warning. Now, Zechariah did not stop God's plan. Elizabeth DID get pregnant, John WAS born, and he DID go on to do all that the angel had foretold. But to stand at the beginning of a miracle, in the presence of an angel and QUESTION ?!?! The angel responds, "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their proper time." (Luke 1:19-20)

I can hear some of you saying, "of course I WOULD HAVE believed." I hope I would have too. But I want to be very careful. When I am lost in disappointment, when God is late ~ beyond the limits of the boundaries of time that I have set for hope ~ I want to hold on to faith and hope especially tightly then. . . . I want to remember that God ALWAYS tells a bigger story, and ~ well, you never know!

The Second Birth Announcement -- And there were shepherds ...

2011-12-13T10:57:00.000-08:00

Luke 2:1-14

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child,..."

So God had sent a birth announcement to the Kings of the east ~ the Magi ~ long long long long before Jesus was born. It was found, opened and responded to by some men who came, brought gifts and worshiped.

The second birth announcement came to some shepherds. I have heard messages that note that these men were the poor and rejected of society ... the lowest rung ... and that was why God told them. It is true that shepherds were the rejects ~ they were not wealthy, they were dirty and lived "unclean" lives by the standards of the religious. These things are true. And -- I do like the symmetry of God telling Kings (the rich and powerful) and shepherds (the poor and rejected). However I do not think that is why a birth announcement went out to them. . .not exclusively at any rate.

So . . . "there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night." These shepherds, out in the dark field near Bethlehem were shepherds of a very significant flock. The sheep, and most significantly, the lambs of this flock were the Passover lambs. They had to be kept near the Temple in Jerusalem, and watched and cared for very carefully. These shepherds watched the Passover lambs right near where THE Passover Lamb was born. I think that is reason number one why God sent the Angels to tell them.

Also, David, the shepherd boy who became king, shepherded his flocks right there, in the hill of Bethlehem. The clue for me is that the angels do not say, "today in Bethlehem, as prophesied by Micah the prophet" -- they say, "today in the city of David". I think that God, for David's sake, sent a birth announcement to these men.

God sent this birth announcement this way -- for all three reasons I think: the Passover lambs, the legacy of David the shepherd boy king, and God remembered the lowest of the low.

Can you see them?
It is dark
and quiet.
Perhaps a lone shepherd is playing softly on flute. The sky all at once is ablaze of light. You know that terror stole their breath away ~ you know because the first thing the angel says is "Do not be afraid." I always find that kind of funny: An angel is suddenly in front of you -- what else are you going to feel? Who could be blase` about an actual angel? I love that at first one angel addresses these men. It feels like the angels are being as gentle as they can be ... so aware of the fragile and frail hearts of men. I love that it says, "Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God . . ." It is like the choir is excited ... so excited they can not wait one second more ~ they burst into view, exploding into song.

How do you see the angels? I kind of hate the Renaissance pictures of fat baby angels...I don't like the pictures of wan looking feminine-ish wispy angels either. The Old Testament calls the angels the "host" of God. In fact one of God's names is YHWH of Hosts. (That would be LORD of Hosts, in most of your Bibles, but fyi, when it says LORD in all caps, it can be directly translated YHWH.) The best translation of that would be "LORD of armies". Angels are warriors! (yeah, no wonder everyone's first reaction is terror! right??) And...I wonder ~ Bethlehem sits upon a hill and it is only 5 miles to Jerusalem. Did anyone else see the sky so full of light? Did no one hear the choir of angels? Did they just ... turn over, and go back to sleep? Really??

So...close your eyes and imagine an army of HUGE GIANT GYNORMOUS warriors filling the night sky singing at the top of their lungs. OH MY GOODNESS! I so wish I could have been there!

Like the Kings from the east, these shepherds followed the instructions and went to Bethlehem to worship. We are told that these shepherds, "When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child,..." Scripture says they spread the word concerning what they saw; I think most, if not all of them, went to see their rabbis. I mean who else are you going to tell that you saw ANGELS? And again...there is not a word about any priests, any rabbis going to find the child about whom the angels sang.

hmmmmm

Birth Announcements 1 : The Magi

2011-12-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

Christmas -- I love it. I know, you got that from my last two blogs. I've told you how I love the atmosphere and smells and activity. But what I really love is the huge and gynormous story. It is so full of wonder and awe and mystery and pathos and passion. It drips with miracles. Beyond the mind exploding central miracle of God entering the seed of a woman, taking on flesh to become man -- right?! that is huge enough that when I REALLY think about it, I can know it in my mind, but I can't say I can really really take it in -- yeah, beyond that, you can't take a step in this story left, right or center without bumping into a "wow-that's-so-cool" miracle.

So in this blog I am going to introduce the miracle of God sending birth announcements. He did! I just love it. It tells me that he was shaking all over, can't bare to keep the secret, sit on the edge of the throne excited that Jesus was coming. God -- the Trinity : God, Father and God, Son, and God, Holy Spirit -- had crafted this astonishing, flabbergasting, staggeringly amazing plan of salvation. It was wonderful and horrible. The Son, the Living Word of God, would take on flesh ~ he could because man was created in the image of God, so as it were, God could don that image. He would live and grow as a man with all the "God-ness" set aside. That and all that happened in his wonderful life was the wonderful part. But he would come to free us, to die for us, to die the excruciating death of crucifixion and thereby pay our penalty. That is the horrible part. But the horrible part is wonderful too! Because Jesus died, we can all be reunited with God and spend eternity with him ... and more amazing still, become a co-heir with Jesus. That staggers me, shocks me and stuns me. This story tells me how incredibly God loves us -- he was really really willing to walk through unspeakable horror so we could be with him for all eternity. The birth announcement stories ~ especially this one about the Magi ~ shows me that God was excited, excited like a little kid who just MUST tell someone his great big secret!

Sometime after Jesus was born, while he was still living in Jerusalem ~ as we will see from the story ~ when he was somewhere between birth and two years old, Magi came from the East with extravagant gifts to worship him. The story . . . at least the end of the story . . . is told in Matthew chapter 2. It is amazing ~ it is horrible.

Wait...Matthew chapter 2 is the end of the story? ! ? YES! So, I can hear you asking, what is the beginning?

The beginning, as all good stories, both true story and good fairy tales, should begin, starts long ago and far away. (You can, and you should read this for yourself. It can be found in Numbers chapters 22-24) This is one of the true ones ~ keep that in mind because it is full of shocking things that when you realize they ARE true will leave you gob-smacked! So ...

... long ago and far away - - - far even from Jerusalem and Bethlehem where the story ends, far into the reaches of the Old Testament - - - the Sons of Israel had just been freed from Egypt by God. They were in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land, present day Israel. The nations in the surrounding region were understandably unsettled by this nation backed by such a powerful God. I mean, what if this band of freed slaves came and attacked them? If Egypt could not stand against them . . .? Well, something must be done. So Balak, the King of the Moabites made a plan. He sent messengers to this guy name Balaam and want to pay Balaam to speak curses over Israel. Balaam was a prophet-for-hire. I have to admit that Balaam totally confuses me. So if you are prophet-for-hire, you could prophecy anything you wanted to and speak "made-up" curses till the cows came home, right? But Balaam had enough reputation that he was hired by a KING! See, if kings hire you then your 'resume' must be pretty impressive ~ that is, you must be right much more often than wrong and the curses had better work, right? I mean, kings pay good money and if you trick them, or are wrong...? well, it could get ugly really fast, right? So Balak, the king of Moab, hires Balaam to curse Israel. God says, "Don't go!"  Balaam is offered lots of money and he decides to go anyway. God says, "OK ... but you must only say what I have said to say. In the middle of journey Balaam's donkey suddenly and for no reason Balaam can discern turns off the road and walks off into a field; Balaam beats it and they move on. A little while farther the donkey sidles close to a wall of a cliff and crushes Balaams foot; Balaam beats it and they move on. Finally the donkey lies down with Balaam sitting on it. Balaam beats it again and then ... the donkey starts talking to Balaam, (rough translation), "Hey! What the heck!!??!!" Balaam, "You are making a fool of me! If I had a sword I would make donkey shish kabobs!!" Donkey, "you may not, but that huge angel over there DOES, and ..." Right then God opens Balaam's eyes and he sees the angel with the drawn sword that the donkey had been able to see all along. Yeah! Crazy, eh?? First, a talking donkey . . . and the thing I really love is that Balaam, the prophet-for-hire-Balaam, does not see the angel with the sword but the donkey does and secondly, that when the donkey starts talking Balaam seems pretty 'ho hum" about it. He answers him as if...well as if this talking to donkeys stuff was pretty normal. So the long and short of it is ~ Balaam may go to Balak, but he must ONLY say what God tells him to. No matter WHAT the king pays him, he may NOT curse Israel. Fade out . . . fade in. Balaam tries several time to curse Israel, but God only lets him bless Israel. His final blessing is the beginning of the Magi story, the first birth announcement! Here is what Balaam says:

Num 24:15-17
"The oracle of Balaam son of Beor,
the oracle of one whose eye sees clearly,
the oracle of one who hears the words of God,
who has knowledge from the Most High, (yeah, this part flummoxes me:
who sees a vision from the Almighty,         really? God speaks clearly
who falls prostrate, and                              and accurately to THIS guy?)
whose eyes are opened:
"I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near.
A star will come out of Jacob;       THIS is the birth announcement!
a scepter will rise out of Israel.

You get it, right?

"I see him but not now, behold him but not near. A star ... a scepter!!"
Because I know some seers, people that God shows picture to, I think Balaam really saw Jesus, saw him as Messiah off in the future. That is the him ! ! Of course Balaam and Balak did not get that. But God sent this message, this clue, knowing that the Moabites would put this story into their sacred books where it would be tucked away . . . until . . . until the time when Mary and Joseph left Nazareth to go south to Bethlehem because a census had been called . . . until God put a star in the sky. All that time later there were kings who were wise men and astrologers who saw this odd, out of place, HUGE star in the sky. One of them remembered, I am sure, reading something about a star in some old chronicle . . .
"oh...yeah, here it is. "A star will come out of Jacob;"    Oh my!! the next line is "a scepter will rise out of Israel." A scepter...? A king! This star foretells of a king being born in Israel. This king is who Balaam saw. It is now. . . We must go!"

You get it? God sent a birth announcement about Jesus to pagans!! He was so excited he had to tell someone. God invited the world to Jesus' birth. . .and they came. They saddled up their camels, purchased extravagant gifts and made the journey ... a long journey ... to welcome this long foretold king. And...if you were looking for a new born king in Israel, where would you go? The palace of the current king, right? That's what they did. They went to go see Herod -- who had not had a son. uh oh! Herod was a monster. And Herod was sly in the most evil way! And Herod believed the Magi ... he really did believe a new king. a king who was likely the long awaited Messiah, had been born, someone prophesied long ago. What did he do? He had someone who SHOULD know do some research. He called the chief priests and the teachers of the law to find out where the Messiah was to be born. And they did: According to the prophet Micah the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Herod sends the Kings to get an exact address ... "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him." (Matthew 2:8) Can you hear the horrible insidious music playing in the background? God sends the Magi a dream letting them in on Herod's evil plan, so after they do find Jesus and give him the gifts and worship him, they do not go back to Herod. Herod realized he has been outsmarted and is enraged. He figures he can still solve this little problem and calls out the soldiers of Israel and does one of the coldest most evil things. He has them go ... go to the homes of their own people, maybe people they knew, and slaughter every baby boy between birth and 2 years old in Bethlehem and the entire vicinity around Bethlehem.

Can you imagine? Can you see them grabbing babies from their father's arms and . . . no, it is too horrible. God had warned Joseph in a dream and he believed God and had slipped away in the night, racing off to Egypt.

What I find utterly amazing is that first of all the Magi came. They got the birth announcement and they CAME! The didn't understand, but they came. But...just as stunning to me...the priests and teachers of the law DID NOT COME! They were there ... they knew Magi had shown up. They were asked to look for the birth place of the Messiah. HEROD believed and acted! The chief priests and teachers of the law got the answer RIGHT! But . . . they did not believe. They did not go to Bethlehem. They ignored the birth announcement. Wow! Wow! What did they think as they officiated at all the funerals? What did Zachariah and Elizabeth think as they held their little boy? Wow!  Such a huge story!

So . . . when WAS Jesus born?

2011-12-08T11:09:00.000-08:00

SO! News flash: Jesus was not born on December 25th, year 0.

OK ~ for those of you who are freaking out ... yes, that is a fact. And yes, I am sure, and yes ,we can know for sure. HOW can we know, you ask?                                      ... (so glad you asked)

It is like a word problem in math
            what? ... yes, I know, everyone hates word problems in math...don't worry. I will do the work.

To start our quest for when, we go to the gospels. First the gospel of Luke.

Luke 1:5
In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah;

What does that have to do with anything? Well, a long time before that, in the time of King David, the priesthood from the line of Aaron had been split into divisions based upon priests who were high priests and their descendants. If you go to I Chronicles chapters 23 and 24 you will read the story of how David took the descendants of Aaron and in a very precise and orderly way divided the priests into groups and assigned them a very specific schedule of when they would serve in the temple.

1 Chron 24:10
the eighth to Abijah ,

1 Chron 24:19

This was their appointed order of ministering when they entered the temple of the LORD, according to the regulations prescribed for them by their forefather Aaron, as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded him.

So that means the Zechariah, who was from the line of Abijah, served in the eighth week of the year. Now if you are interested, I found a very clever website that gives a really clear explanation of all of this, complete with charts and time breakdowns. It is http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/sukkoth.htm. And quoting from this very clever website:

"Beginning with the first month, Nisan, in the spring (March-April), the schedule of the priest's courses would result with Zacharias serving during the 10th week of the year. This is because he was a member of the course of Abia (Abijah), the 8th course, and both the Feast of Unleavened Bread (15-21 Nisan) and Pentecost (6 Sivan) would have occurred before his scheduled duty. This places Zacharias' administration in the Temple as beginning on the second Sabbath of the third month, Sivan (May-June)."

"And", I hear you ask, "what does that have to do with Jesus?"
Well, Luke goes on to tell us that Luke 1:23-25
When his time of service was completed, he returned home. After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion.

and
Luke 1:26-28
In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary.

So...stay with me..."in the sixth month" means 'in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy' because Luke has noted that Elizabeth remained in seclusion for 5 months and then in the 6th month, the angel went to see Mary. And again quoting from the website:

"Now working from the information about John's conception late in the third month, Sivan, and advancing six months, we arrive late in the 9th month of Kislev (Nov-Dec) for the time frame for the conception of Jesus."

And of course, if you work forward 9 months from then, you find that Jesus was born some time in September of October, which would be in the Hebrew month of Tishri.

See...we CAN know. Thank you, Luke! And if you look at the 'date markers" that Luke gives regarding Mary and Joesph's trip to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus because of the tax levied by Caesar Augustus, and then do a bit of research on line, you can discover that Caesar Augustus had 3 taxations and censuses...the three empire-wide censuses were in 28 B.C., 8 B.C., and 14 A.D. The 8 B.C. date is the only one that could correspond to Jesus' birth and Herod's reign. So ... later church fathers got it a bit wrong and if you mark the separation of history by the birth of Jesus, you are 7 to 8 years off. So we can know that Jesus was most likely born some time in September/October in 7 or 8 B.C.

So ~ WHY do we celebrate Christmas on December 25th? There is a reason. It is not random. It is not a plot made by retailers so there will be lots of money spent at the end of the year. And stay with me, cuz at first you may freak out.

Christmas is in December because that is when Winter Solstice occurs . . . and . . . that is when the pagan world in the Roman era of the early church celebrated Saturnalia. And NO, it is not that the early church father merely wanted to go on celebrating Saturnalia and put a Christian veneer on it. And yes, some of our traditions come from things pagans did at Saturnalia. OK...don't freak out! This one fact, for me, makes Christmas amazing and special and awe-inspiring. Here is my thinking:

In the days of the early church a couple of things were true -- people didn't celebrate birthdays. And, they did not have week-ends off, and they didn't get a regular 2 to 4 week vacation every year. What they did have were the festivals. A big one was Saturnalia. This occurred at the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, and the turn of the year when days began to get longer and longer and the year headed out of winter and in to spring. (quote from Wikipedia) Originally celebrated for a day, on December 17, its popularity saw it grow until it became a week-long extravaganza, ending on the 23rd. Efforts to shorten the celebration were unsuccessful. Augustus tried to reduce it to three days, and Caligula to five. These attempts caused uproar and massive revolts among the Roman citizens. Saturnalia was a time of feasting. In some places people decorated the evergreen trees, since the evergreen was 'sacred' and the tree victoriously stayed green overcoming the power of winter. So you can see, Saturnalia was a BIG deal. There is a lot of speculation about this, and I disagree with the motivation assigned to the early church by a good many of those who write articles about Saturnalia's link to Christmas. In my research I came across quite a few articles that suggest that the early church simply "let" early pagans go on celebrating Saturnalia -- as a kind of concession. This is what I think -- I think the Church Fathers used the fact that people were going to gather and celebrate at the end of December. They took the traditions and symbols already familiar to these people and used them to explain the story of Jesus and the truth of the gospel.

The people decorated evergreen trees -- and the church father (I think) said, 'Don't worship the tree. Worship the Creator. What the tree is, is a symbol of eternal life....these trees don't just stay green in winter, they don't die. Just as the tree conquers the power of winter, Jesus conquers death and gives us eternal life.
And, Jesus hung on a "tree" - the cross - to purchase your salvation, and eternal life for you.' At Saturnalia people lit candles -- to give light in the dark of winter. The Church Fathers might have said, "These lights represent Jesus who is THE Light of the World, in a world darkened by sin and death." At Saturnalia people went from house to house singing...this became caroling. I am sad actually that here in CA, where I live, caroling is a lost tradition. Christmas carols..."real" ones like "Hark the Herald Angels Sing", and "Away in a Manger" and "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" etc are full of Scripture and tell the story of Jesus. And so on and so on and so on. At Saturnalia gifts were given. At Christmas gifts are given -- NOT to create selfishness, and greed in the hearts of our children and to give retailers a boost financially -- gifts are given because Magi came and gave gifts ~ extravagant gifts ~ to Jesus.   And OF COURSE because God gave the best gift of all -- The Father, God, so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. (John 3:16-17)

You see, I think making Christmas be December 25th was something the early church did ON PURPOSE. They USED what the world did, and what the world believed. The took the already established celebration, and the symbols and traditions already in place. They did not fight -- they did not ban the people from a celebration already in place -- they used them to teach and to proclaim the truth about Jesus. And I am CONVINCED that I am right. Let me ask you one question : Do you know any one who celebrates Saturnalia?? ... OK, someone somewhere might ~ but they would be in such an extreme minority that they can, I think, safely be disregarded. For all the world -- Christian and non-Christian -- Christmas is about Jesus. They may have parties, play 'secular' Christmas songs like "Gramma Got Run Over by a Reindeer", decorate with snowmen instead of Nativity scenes. But the world does know Christmas is about Jesus. What the early church did was radical ~ a powerful and VERY successful radical evangelistic act. Yes, it took time. But now...now the WORLD sees Jesus in the manger, see the wise men, sings songs about angels singing to shepherds. Even if they don't love or believe in Jesus, it is like they get invited to his party every year.

I want to honor and continue this wonderful, radical plan initiated so long ago. I want to do Christmas on purpose too. Here is what I suggest. Give gifts -- and tell people, your friends both Christian and non-Christian -- the story of the Magi. Talk to your family -- especially your children -- as you decorate and use the symbols to talk about Jesus:

Put up a Christmas tree and, in a really natural way, talk about evergreen trees symbolizing eternal life, talk about how Jesus gives us eternal life and he died on tree for us. Put up a nativity scene and talk about the trip to Bethlehem, talk about the shepherd and the angels; talk about the star and the wise men. As you string lights, remind them that Jesus is The Light of the world. Give gifts -- and when you give extravagantly -- talk about the Magi, and talk about how Jesus is the greatest gift ever, given super extravagantly by our loving heavenly Father. Give your friends, perhaps especially your non-Christian friends, good CD's of Christmas carols (please make sure they are good!) -- the ones that tell the story of Christmas. Send Christmas cards, if you do send them, that show and tell the Biblical story about Jesus.
Do Christmas ON PURPOSE.

Christmas

2011-12-07T09:06:00.000-08:00

I love Christmas! I love it all:

I love having a Christmas tree.
When my husband and I got married, our first tree had a few little ornaments and I decided to add to our collection each year by just buying a few new ones. Then when we had children, I gave them new ornaments each year so they would have a collection to take with them when they left home. So, decorating the tree is a trip down memory lane ~ "OH remember this one...I love the little church mouse ornament...here's my Santa on a reindeer!"

I love the lights on houses, I love the scent of spices, the scent of pine trees. I love the baking! I love the excitement. I love the frantic rush to finish the wrapping -- I never finish before Christmas Eve and year after year I have spent the wee hours of the morning getting the finishing touches finished, falling into bed for what seems like a couple of winks before there is a knock at our door and the voice of one of the children saying,
"Can we see if Santa came?"
You see, Santa doesn't bring everything ... he only brings one gift. The rest of the gifts are from family. And he is a very busy guy so he never wraps his gift. The Santa Gift is the one surprise, unwrapped gift sitting by each person's stocking. We always go in together so my husband and I can see the reactions when the kids see their "Santa presents and stockings. Then when the Santa Gift has been oooh'd and ahhhh'd over, and stockings have been emptied, we sit in a circle, pass out the family gifts and take turns going around the circle from the youngest to the oldest, with each person opening one gift at a time until all the gifts are open. It is slow and very personal. We all get to see and enjoy the reaction to each gift.
I love it all.

And for me -- even with all the shopping and decorating and crazy-busy-kind-of-franticness -- Christmas is not about commercialism. Christmas is about Jesus! Christmas is about the wonder of the fact that Jesus came and became a man ~ that he was really born in Bethlehem, that angels sang to shepherds, that wise men came with gifts.

But invariably there are those who bemoan the season ~ they hate the commercialism and the hype. I get that I suppose. Usually it is the Christians that I know who gripe, often, the loudest. They hate the "spend, spend, spend" push. They hate the greed. There is a lot of controversy about Santa. And invariably...usually as part of an argument for "why do we do all this Christmas stuff anyway?" ... I hear someone say, "After all, Jesus wasn't really BORN in December!" As if that makes all we do at best a farce, and at worst a sacrilege. So I want to tackle some Christmas things in the next few blogs.

~ Was Jesus born December 25th? And if not (OK...the answer is 'He was NOT!) when was he born, and why IS Christmas celebrated in December? Why do we do things like bring trees into our houses? What about Santa? What do we know about Christmas? Should Christians do all the 'Christmas stuff' ... and if so, why?? Be warned. I am extremely -- as you can probably tell from this blog -- PRO-CHRISTMAS. So my blogs this Advent are going to be "Lets do Christmas -- ON PURPOSE!"

the OTHER one : Blessed are . . . What did you say ?

2011-12-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

Luke 6:12-19
One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.
NIV
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God."
It was getting dark, the last bits of light fading at the horizon. The sky was deep turquoise, the hills and trees a silhouette against the sky. Wrapping his cloak around his head and letting it settle across his shoulders, Jesus grabbed a small loaf of bread and a chunk of cheese left on the table from dinner. Slipping outside, he left the rumbles of his friends chatting by a fire and closed his eyes, listening and probing in his spirit for his Father's voice. A brisk walk up the mountain side, the quiet -- the comfort -- of being alone with just his Father ~ he loved it. The tension and intensity knotted in his muscles melted away with each step and every breath. He didn't stop until he reach the ridge where he could look out onto the surrounding hills, where all the sounds of the village melted away. He breathed in. "Father ~ "

Luke tells us (Luke 5:16) that this was one of the things Jesus did ~ all the time: "But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. " This time he had a very important discussion with the Father: the choosing of the 12. Surely by now he had a good idea which of the men who were in the group of disciples were going to be THE ones ~ the 12 disciples that he designated as apostles. But he went and spent the night with his Father -- it doesn't say this, but I am sure during that night he gained deep insight, God giving him discernment and revelation about each man. We don't know what he heard about each of them . . . I wonder about the discussion. Did they talk about the inevitable conflicts between, say, Simon the Zealot, and Levi the former publican/tax collector? Did they talk about the transformation that was going to change Simon the brash fisherman into Peter the rock? And. . .what did they say about Judas? What ever the discussion, Jesus came down the mountain with a list of names.

When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

How did they feel, as it dawned upon them there in the early morning sun, that they were THE inner circle. They had already left lives and jobs and predictable futures. They had seen stunning miracles. I am sure they were convinced that Jesus was the Messiah of God. But, it is clear from the story of the gospels that they didn't know ... well, they clearly didn't know MUCH more than they did know. And it is certain, they had no idea that Jesus would die, certainly not that he would die on a cross. I suspect that as they scanned the others in the group -- catching each other's eyes, puzzling over the choices in some cases -- to a man, I think, they were thinking, "He chose me! This going to be great!"

Then he takes them up to a hillside to a level place where they can see the crowd that had gathered. I am sure that these new apostles expected to sit and hear one of his sermons. Straightening cloaks and standing just a bit more straight and tall, they waited -- perhaps -- for Jesus to tell the crowd about this momentous decision before he started teaching. But he didn't~ no announcement, no getting the crowd to settle and sit for a sermon. Something amazing, something awesome began to happen instead.

" ... a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all. "

... power was coming from him and healing them all.

Can you see it? A woman who has been blind all her life suddenly sees ~ and for the first time see her mother's face, her husband's face, sees her baby. She begins to sob and cry out their names, the family's voices rising to match hers as it dawns them she can see them. A man who lived in the madness and torment of an evil spirit is suddenly calm and feels joy rise for the first time in years -- his friend who brought him to beg Jesus for deliverance, fighting the hopelessness of the years spent battling the evil, looks and sees his friend, his eyes clear and free. They embrace, tears soaking their beards. A woman sits up, then stands, color rises in the cheeks of her face that had been grey as death from the cancer that had been wasting her life. Her daughter screams in joy, "Mama! Mama!" They spin and dance. A man who came deaf grabs his ears, covering them from the sudden roar of this crowd. And there is a roar, the thunderous roar of women and men and children sobbing and laughing and screaming in joy and shock. It is loud, deafeningly loud. He healed them all. Not one single blind man, not one lame man taking up his bed to walk home through a thick crowd : EVERY ONE! Every blind person, all the demon possessed, all the lame, and the deaf, all those at death's door. The crowd had come to hear Jesus, but they are not listening to him now. No one in that crowd is paying any attention to Jesus or this group of 12 men standing near him. They are ~ each of them ~ isolated in the enraptured moment of the healing they each received.

How did this group of 12 men -- the new apostles -- how did they feel? What were they thinking? Did they think, "This is it now! THIS is what life is going to be like. What do the Pharisees and Sadducee's have to match this? How will Rome stand against power like this?" Did they catch each other's eyes? Did they stand gob-smacked?

Jesus turns, and gathers his men, his new apostles, and he starts this other Sermon on the Mount. (Luke 6:20) Looking at his disciples, he said: ...

This is not a sermon for the crowd. He set these guys up ... it was as if he said, "What are your wildest dreams of life in ministry with me? Something like ~ gesturing to crowd ~ that? What do you think? What do you expect?" Then he begins. It sounds familiar...for 2 words: Blessed are ...
Did they think, "yeah, yeah, ' the poor in spirit, meek...yeah, we know" ? But that isn't what Jesus says. He says

Luke 6:20ff
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.

Did Matthew sit up and think, "Wait...what? Don't you mean, 'poor in spirit? Wait, hunger ... like really hungry, like no food ? ? ~ but you said, 'hunger and thirst for righteousness ... didn't you?" This was NOT the gospel of Matthew Sermon on the Mount. This was not for the crowd. This was "Be an Apostle and Follow Jesus" 101. And then lest they miss the stark message, and try to spiritualize his point...

"But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.

Jesus was pouring this new, fresh, totally unexpected wine into the old settled, established, what-I thought-all-my-life wine skin in their hearts. He had to let the old burst. They had to be clear and know what they were signing on for. They would be poor, hungry, full of grief, and hated! If they wanted to be his disciples there would be comfort and satisfaction and laughter and honor and a Kingdom to inherit ~ BUT it would not be now.

"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Up front ~ black and white. "You will be hated, and I expect you to forgive and bless. Your actions can not be mere reactions. This is what it means for you to be the 12. Because...

"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

This is NOT the Messiah laying out the value system of his Kingdom for a crowd. This is Jesus call his Disciples and being honest right up front.
"You will get to see the Kingdom...you will get to know the power of heaven. But, if you are in it for fame, if you are following hoping for the adulation of the crowd, if you see ministry as a cushy life where you are the center of attention -- think again."

This is the OTHER sermon.

the OTHER one = context

2011-12-01T08:54:00.000-08:00

Before I begin this blog...
I want to give full and unequivocal credit for what I understand about the Luke Sermon on the Mount to my first pastor, George Caywood ~ the man who discipled me and grounded me in scripture. He is the ONLY person I ever heard give the insights about the differences between the 2 sermons. Thanks, George.

The "other" sermon on the mount ...
     other: different ~ contra-distinct: distinguished by opposite qualities.
I think they were different sermons -- not just the same sermon heard and reported differently by two different men. There are practical reasons why I think so ~ one being that, as I mentioned in the last blog, in the Matthew gospel, Matthew was not yet a follower when Jesus preached the sermon. The sermon "happens" in chapter 5, and Matthew is called in Matthew 9. And it is MATTHEW'S account. . .that is, I think he knows when he left the "tables" and followed Jesus. But when you read the context of the Luke sermons, a story develops that shows a stark difference from the Matthew gospel story. In Matthew:

Matt 4:23-25 - Matt 5:1-2
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.  Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying:

Jesus sees that there is a crowd, goes up and sits down with his disciples and teaches...letting the crowd "overhear" as it were. The sermon is long. If you do any investigating at all you can find the strong Old Testament references in all Jesus' points -- he references Isaiah again and again, he virtually quotes Psalm 37. He is using texts that the people knew in order to layout the value system of His kingdom. Matthew prefaces the Sermon with a context and OT passages that make it clear that Jesus is the Messiah, and this is the Messiah's message and opening salvo, as it were.

But that is not what happens in the story in Luke. In Luke, Jesus has been ministering a while. He has done miracles, taught, called specific disciples, confronted the Pharisees. He now has a crowd of followers -- a huge crowd. He is ready to call THE 12. He is ready to begin discipleship -- specific discipleship, with 12 men, in whose hands He will leave the ministry and the gospel, and who He will send out to all nations. When the scholars broke down the gospels into chapters they end chapter 5 with Jesus' "wineskin" dialog:

Luke 5:36-39
He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.' "

Then chapter 6 begins with 2 confrontations with the Pharisees. In the first, Jesus and his disciples eat some grain on the Sabbath, get confronted, and Jesus compares his actions to that of King David and ends the discussion by telling the Pharisees that (Luke 6:5) "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." In the second, Jesus heals a man with a withered hand in the synogogue on the Sabbath. There is no initial confrontation because Jesus just knew what was in the hearts of the Pharisees -- he throws down a gauntlet:
Luke 6:8-10
But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Get up and stand in front of everyone." So he got up and stood there.
Then Jesus said to them, "I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?"   He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He did so, and his hand was completely restored.

And the Pharisees pick up the gauntlet and now ... the fight is on:
Luke 6:11
But they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.

So the context ... the preface Luke sets ... is completely different. A line has been crossed and sides drawn up against each other. Jesus NOW is ready to call THE 12. This is the context of the sermon:

Luke 6:12-19
One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.
NIV

I think this is Luke's introduction to the sermon in his gospel because the way Luke lays out the story, Jesus bursts wineskins ... so the new wine He is about to deliver will have a new wineskin, so that the new wine He brings can last. Go -- read the sermon in its context. I will write about the difference next.

Why did Matt publish that sermon?

2011-11-28T13:47:00.000-08:00

So ... my supposition: the proximate cause of Matthew's abandonment of his life as a tax collector could have been Jesus' first Sermon on the Mount. Ok...lets clarify some terms:

proximate cause:
a cause that directly or with no intervening agency produces an effect

abandon:
(synonyms: relinquish, renounce) means to give up all concern in something. Abandon means to give up or discontinue any further interest in something because of discouragement, weariness, distaste, or the like: to abandon one's efforts. Relinquish implies being or feeling compelled to give up something one would prefer to keep: to relinquish a long-cherished desire. Renounce implies making (and perhaps formally stating) a voluntary decision to give something up: to renounce worldly pleasures.

first
I do think that Jesus preached 2 sermons on hill/mountain sides, two sermons that were different & similar, two sermons aimed at different audiences. I think Matthew went to the first -- "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness..." Matthew 5:6 -- as a tax collector/publican, and the second -- "Blessed are you who hunger now..." Luke 6:21 -- as one of THE 12. I think this partly -- OK, lots of weight for me on this point -- because in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus preaches the SoM in chapter 5, and then calls Matthew from his table as a tax collector in chapter 9.
Matt 9:9
As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
In Luke 6 it specifically says that Matthew was there as one of the 12:
Luke 6:12-16
One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
Looking at his disciples, he said: "Blessed are you . . ."

I think Matthew's Sermon on the Mount is the sermon that changed Matthew's life and confronted him with the reality of who he was and what he was doing with his life. I think solid conviction hit Matthew. I think he repented and turned to and followed Jesus as a result of what happen inside his heart after he heard that sermon. I think he realized that it didn't matter "why" or "how" he got where he was ~ I think he simply realized where he was, and what he had become. Following Jesus was not simply a matter of going on trips that Jesus took. He had already paid the Romans the tax for the district ~ financially it might have been a BIG cost for him. He knew he was hated and just following Jesus would not change people's opinions about him. Becoming part of the 'group' couldn't have been easy. I think Matthew made an "eyes open" choice. He was actually hungry to the point of starvation. His first act as a follower is to "go public" and throw a party for all his buddies: fellow tax collectors and other sinners ... and ... Jesus. He is in ~ boots and all.

Next I want to look at the sermon that Jesus gave as recorded in Luke 6

Matthew / Levi

2011-11-22T09:32:00.000-08:00

OK, I started writing about the sermons on the mountain given by Jesus and recorded in Matthew and in Luke ... and I stalled. Somehow I couldn't do it -- even in my head it kept coming out like "wahwah wahwah wah. . ." Now, don't get me wrong ~ I do love the SoM's -- both of them, the differences, the power statements, the passion of the values Jesus so clearly elucidates. But somehow I just couldn't write it out. I really do recommend that you go yourselves and check out the OT references for the Matthew sermon: Isaiah 60-61, Isaiah 55 especially.

What kept filling my head was Matthew himself. I kept getting caught in the MATTHEW / LEVI-ness of his story. I mean - why did Mark and Luke call him Levi, and yet he called himself Matthew. Was it a nic-name? Mark and Luke were the 'non-disciple' gospel writers. I suspect that Mark was actually there for much of Jesus' ministry and did actually hear Jesus himself ~ but as a 'kid brought along'. When Peter is arrested -- post resurrection -- and Herod intends to kill him, the church gathers at John-Mark's house ... John-Mark IS Mark the gospel writer. And, Mark was Barnabas's cousin. I suspect that the family had been followers of Jesus for a while. They may have been converted at Pentecost...but even so, Mark grew up in the time when Jesus was ministering, and when He died and was resurrected. If the church gathered at his house for prayer...he, Mark, must have known the leaders of the Jerusalem church. So ~ he knew Matthew. Probably heard from Matthew, himself, all about his conversion. Luke traveled with Paul...late. We don't know his 'backstory' -- he wrote everyone else's story. Why did these two call Matthew "Levi"?

I think, and let's be clear: I THINK...I do not know ~ there isn't a lot known about Matthew/Levi. They know he was a disciple who had been a publican ~ that is a tax collector. They know he wrote a gospel. About the rest of his story --- there is speculation and a few tidbits of info from early church fathers...but nothing definitive. So...here is what I THINK happened:

I think they, Mark and Luke, called him Levi because he was from the family line of Levi: the line of the priesthood. Matthew's gospel is decidedly "Hebrew" in style, language, references to the Old Testament, etc. What if he was going to be a priest...but walked away. What if he got fed up with the religiosity and hypocrisy and walked away . . . far, far way. Becoming a tax collector was about as far away from the priesthood as one could go. It showed not just greed, but greed based in vicious disdain ~ at least to me it does.

So this is how "tax collecting" went then. A man would go to the Roman authorities and 'buy' a region ~ that is pay the entire tax bill for a whole region. Then he would go collect taxes from the people to cover what he had paid up front. And -- this is the insidious part -- he could collect how ever much he wanted to. The Romans didn't care. He simply pocketed the difference: Pay the Romans $1000 up front, collect $100,000.00. Of course the tax collectors were hated -- they fleeced their own people and were in league with the hated occupiers: the Romans. But ~ what made a man choose that profession, especially one who came from the house of Levi? (and again, remember, I do not KNOW that Matthew was from a priestly family...I just suspect.)

So lets say I am right. Here is Levi/Matthew. He has cut ties with the Jews, for all intents and purposes. The party after his conversion says that his friends were "tax collectors and sinners".

Matt 9:10-11
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
Tax collectors and sinners! Those were Matthew's friend, not the nice 'squeeky-clean' Jewish, go to synagogue every Sabbath types. But ... he had to have heard Jesus. I imagine him sitting somewhere in the crowd when the "Matthew" version of the Sermon on the Mount was preached. I bet Matthew was intrigued with Jesus. I think it was the confrontations with the Pharisees that caught his eye. I guess he thought, "wow, they don't like him, . . . maybe he has something to say that is worth hearing.". So, he skips work one day, and follows the crowd out to the side of hills. He sits off by himself, under a tree ,and prepares to be cynical. Then Jesus starts in ~

Matt 5:3-6
"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew half listens, looking down across his nose, he scans the crowd.

Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
He thinks, "Really? . . .

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Here he chuckles... "the 'meek' yeah! Have you met any Pharisees, Jesus?? As for 'inheriting the earth' ~ well, you are a local boy, guess you haven't figured out that the Romans have a lock on that commodity."

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
This one hits him. This one silences his inner dialog. The very bedrock of his cynicism, the lever that pushed him to the tax collector's table was a belly full of perverse hypocrisy from the religious leaders. Cynics often are actually hungry ~ starved for ~ real righteousness. I think often they are cynical because they can't stand the servings of blather and phony diatribes about 'sin' from people who talk the talk and will not walk the walk. If he was from the house of Levi, I suspect he had seen way too much of the hypocrisy and way too little righteousness. And once you begin to give way to bitterness, your eyes see all problems and wrongs. But IF he was from the house of Levi, he also had been trained in the scriptures. I suspect that when he heard Jesus say this, he got it and the words of Isaiah 55 reverberated in his spirit:

Isaiah 55:1-3a
"Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.

I think Matthew was hungry and thirsty ... I think he, in the days following the sermon, asked himself again and again, "What am I doing? What do I really want? Why AM I spending money on that which is not bread ... and labor on what does not satisfy??? Riches aren't doing it for me. And cynicism against those religious leaders isn't leading me to what I want ... what my soul really wants. But that Jesus guy. . . hmmmmm."

So, when a few days later, Jesus shows up at his table and says, "Follow me.", Matthew was in, boots and all!

2011-11-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

Matt 5:3-4
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.

blessed: 25.119 maka/rio
pertaining to being happy, with the implication of enjoying favorable circumstances
(from Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domain. Copyright © 1988 United Bible Societies, New York. Used by permission.)

So ~ blessed, to be happy and enjoy favorable circumstances, are the poor in spirit, and those who mourn. So this is Jesus' opening salvo -- hmmmm. Besides those who quote the Bible, do you know anyone who says "poor in spirit"? Yeah, didn't think so. When I am confronted with phrases like that one as I read, I think, "wow -- must be something they all understood and we are missing" ~ and I go do what I can to look it up, cross reference, do some digging. Here is what I found.

"Poor" as in "poor in spirit" means poor. It comes from a word that means to crouch, like someone would if they were begging. OK, I see the picture, but why would Jesus BEGIN a sermon with this kind of statement. Yeah, yeah, I know . . . I have heard lots and lots of sermons that said, "there were lots of poor people in this crowd, and he was comforting them". I think there has got to be something else...some other thing He was getting at, especially since He tells them they will be/are continually happy and in favorable circumstances because they will inherit the kingdom of heaven. And no, I do not think it is just "you are poor now and you will be rich later when you get to heaven." He says "poor in spirit."

So ~ I went to the Old Testament and looked for phrasing that Jesus might have been referencing.
Why? OK, some background. When we say we "know" the Word, we mean we are familiar with the Word ~ like we have heard sermons preached and we read it devotionally ... OK that sounds pejorative, but usually, you know. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew which only has consonants. The vowel sounds (made with a complex system of dots and dashes) have been added by some really smart smart smart guys called the Masoretes. They did this between the 7th and 11th centuries A.D. In Jesus' day scripture was a series of consonants without breaks between words, sentences, paragraphs. It looked like this:

nthbgnnnggdcrtthhvnsndthrth . . . really like this: בראשיתבראאתהשמייםוהארץ

Got it ~ right? OH -- you don't know what that says? It says,
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." How do I know? I knew what I wrote.
See, they knew what it said, cuz they knew what it said. They KNEW the word. My point is that when Jesus made a reference of a word or a phrase from the scriptures (remember they only HAD the Old Testament, right??) the people listening knew the context.

So I looked back in Isaiah, the book Matthew quoted in Ch. 4. I started reading in Isaiah 64 and 65 where God was telling the people why they had been judged and sent into captivity and what the promise of hope was. There are passages like these: (Yeah, there are a lot; go ahead and read them. In fact what I REALLY suggest that you do ~ go get your Bible and read ALL of Isaiah 64 - 66. But here are some pertinent examples that I think refer directly to Matthew 5:3-4)

Isa 64:6-7
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
7 No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and made us waste away because of our sins.
NIV

Isa 64:8-12
8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD;
do not remember our sins forever.
Oh, look upon us, we pray,
for we are all your people.
10 Your sacred cities have become a desert;
even Zion is a desert, Jerusalem a desolation.
11 Our holy and glorious temple, where our fathers praised you,
has been burned with fire,
and all that we treasured lies in ruins.
12 After all this, O LORD, will you hold yourself back?Will you keep silent and punish us beyond measure? NIV

Isa 65:11-12
But as for you who forsake the LORD
and forget my holy mountain,
who spread a table for Fortune
and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny,
12 I will destine you for the sword,
and you will all bend down for the slaughter;
for I called but you did not answer,
I spoke but you did not listen.
You did evil in my sight
and chose what displeases me." NIV

Isa 65:13-14
"My servants will eat,
but you will go hungry;
my servants will drink,
but you will go thirsty;
my servants will rejoice,
but you will be put to shame.
14 My servants will sing
out of the joy of their hearts,
but you will cry out
from anguish of heart
and wail in brokenness of spirit. NIV

Isa 65:17-19
17 "Behold, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more. NIV

Isa 66:2
"This is the one I esteem:he who is humble and contrite in spirit,
and trembles at my word. NIV

Isa 66:12-13
"I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream;
you will nurse and be carried on her arm
and dandled on her knees.
13 As a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
and you will be comforted over Jerusalem." NIV
The people listening to Jesus' sermon were "poor in spirit" and "mourning" because, though they were not in captivity in another nation as they had been in the Assyrian and then in the Babylonian nations, they were in captivity in their own nation. The Romans occupied their land. They were crying out for God to come save them and restore them. Jesus comes with comfort -- but His message is not exactly what they want -- but it is what they need. He promises them restoration and He promises them comfort. The restoration Jesus promises is a restoration of relationship and intimacy with God that will result in them inheriting "the kingdom of heaven" . . . not merely getting to have national sovereignty and calling a free Israel "the kingdom of God".

That is the message of the Sermon on the Mount: you can have freedom IN relationship and intimacy with God, even if you do not have freedom FROM your circumstances. Jesus' message is a message about life in His Kingdom.

The Beatitudes ~ the " be attitudes" : REALLY??!??

2011-10-31T08:45:00.000-07:00

Did I mention that I tutor? I do. So last week I was helping one of my students with her Bible assignment. She is in 6th grade. Her lesson was on the Sermon on the Mount. The title of the lesson was "The Be Attitudes". Yes it was! The main theme of the lesson was that the beatitudes ~ the "blessed are . . ." portion of The Sermon is telling us that we need to have a good attitude and that that is how we will be really happy. OK...6th grade...ok, I get "make it simple for the kids". BUT! I think that all too often when "we make it simple" we don't just make it simple, we strip it of all depth until we are left with a chiffon-thin layer that while meant to be simple, becomes simplistic.

ok Barbara. . .breathe. . . you are ranting ~ calm down...

Ok!

OK, is there any problem with telling 6th graders to have a good attitude? NO! Is there ANY level at which the SotM could be used to talk about having a good attitude. . .sort-of. Yeah I know! We are talking about 6th graders. But here's my problem ~ this doesn't just happen with 6th graders. Somehow all too often when the Bible is taught, in an effort to make it relevant, and cool sounding, and simple, even sermons aimed at adults become thinner and thinner until you can see through the chiffon. And -- yes -- I have heard the same sort basic simplistic teaching about the Sermon on the Mount aimed at adults. One reason is ~ this from my perspective, ok? ~ that modern Americans too too often read the New Testament and only use the Old Testament to make a reference or to paraphrase an already familiar story. That is they don''t READ AND STUDY the Old Testament for the sake of what it actually said to the people to whom it was actually written. People know that Adam and Eve shouldn't have eaten an apple, that Noah spent 40 days and 40 nights on a boat with some animals, that Abraham was the Father of our Faith, that David killed a giant. They do not know the significance of the differences between Genesis 1 and 2. They do not know how long Noah spent on the ark, (do you know? no? go read Genesis ch's 5 - 9. YES all of it!) nor more significantly that that story is introduced with the verse that rips the breath from my being: Gen 6:5-7

                            The LORD saw how great man's wickedness
                            on the earth had become, and that every inclination
                           of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
                           The LORD was grieved that he had made man
                           on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

Were you ever taught that God's response to the sin and evil that saturated creation was grief? Can you even imagine God who is LOVE ITSELF, having His heart FILLED with pain? or did you think God was just mad so He sent a flood. They do not know that Abraham lived 100 years AFTER he was called by God out of Ur of Chaldean's. They probably have the picture of him as a doddering old man holding a tiny baby, but they do not have the picture of the wild, fierce warrior who took 318 men and road the length of Israel following 4 armies and defeating them to rescue Lot, his nephew. Abram was somewhere between 75 and 86 years old at the time. (its a great story...you should read it, with a map to show you the "where" of the story. It can be found in Genesis 14). They have likely not read the story of David in its scope ~ a story that spans the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, AND 1 Chronicles.

ok...still ranting ...

Well, I think you get my point. So what I am going to do is talk about the Sermon that Matthew shared with us. I am going to try to link it back to the Old Testament ~ because I think that was Matthew's point. I think, in fact, that this rendition of the Sermon is Jesus preaching the Old Testament and because He is the Living Word of God, 'rightly dividing the word of truth' (2 Tim. 5:15)

The "who" of the Sermon

2011-10-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

The "Sermon on the Mount" in the gospel of Matthew begins in chapter 5. I want to turn back to chapter 4.

To start, I want to go one step behind the SotM and the gospel and look at the author. (see last blog) I think, as I said in the last blog, that Matthew was called "Levi" because he might have been from the tribe of Levi, the tribe that was chosen to be the priests of God. I wonder if he had grown up preping to be a priest then ... decided money was better. In any case he is VERY familiar with scripture and saturates his gospel with references from the OT. I have a 'general rule' that I use, and I suggest others use when reading the New Testament ~ certainly when reading Matthew: if there is an Old Testament verse given LOOK IT UP and read not merely the verse quoted, but the context of the entire passage.

Matt 4:12-17
When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali—to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah:

"Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, along the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people living in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned."

From that time on Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."

I have never heard this passage included in any sermons or teaching on the SotM. And when ever I have heard this explained, it has been to merely note that Jesus preached in the northern territory of Israel, near the Sea of Galilee. I think this is Matthew's intro. Matthew says that Jesus went to Galilee, specifically to the region of Zebulun and Naphtali to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah.

So, 1) Where is the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, and why is it called Galilee of the Gentiles?

When the Israelites conquered the Promised Land (book of Joshua) land was allotted to each of the tribes. The land in the north near the Sea of Galilee was the allotment for those two tribes: Zebulun and Naphtali.

(map from http://www.iggydarsa.com)

This land was called "Galilee of the Gentiles" because first it was on the northern border and the western border, a place where Gentiles lived and mingled with Jews. It had been Israel, the Northern Kingdom, the place where during the time of the divided kingdom, the northern nation of Israel went into captivity under the Assyrian Empire (2 Kings 17:1-33). What the Assyrians did was deport the inhabitants of Israel to the eastern side of the empire, and transplant people from that region to Israel. So Gentiles had lived in the land from that time.

Now 2) Why did Matthew quote this scripture? I think Matthew had a much larger reason than merely to tell us where Jesus moved. If you look up the passage and read it in its entirety . . . well, why not just do that now:

Isa 9:1-7
Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan — The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.
You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy;they rejoice before you
as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder.
For as in the day of Midian's defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them
the bar across their shoulders,the rod of their oppressor. Every warrior's boot used in battle
and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne
and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.

This part at the bottom ~ the darker, underlined part ~ is a promise of the coming Messiah. The names given: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace ~ these are names that each combine a natural and a supernatural component. Wonderful is a word that could also be translated miraculous, that is counsel that is not just wise but miraculous. Mighty, as in the strength of man, and God ~ pretty self-explanatory. Everlasting or eternal and father. And Prince, a title of human designation, of Shalowm, the kind of peace that comes from God. These terms hint at the fact that the messiah would be, as Jesus was, fully God and fully man. I think by referencing this verse, Matthew was introducing Jesus as Messiah. He was telling us that He was the one who would be the great light, and who was the promised Messiah. This intro gives the sermon that Jesus preached on that hillside context. Matthew was saying, I think, "Listen! The one speaking is not just some clever rabbi who teaches pretty well. He is THE MESSIAH. He is coming to establish the Kingdom. The government of the Kingdom is on His shoulders. What Jesus said in this sermon is not merely "good advise" ~ '' Matthew ends this introduction by telling us that from that time Jesus preached, "Repent for the Kingdom of God is near." I think, in fact, that that is the thesis statement of the entire sermon.

SermonS on the Mount ~ prequel #1: Who is this Matthew guy?

2011-10-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

So ~ here I go. I am embarking on another series: The SermonS on the Mount. Yup! sermonS! cuz, obviously, I think there were more than one, maybe lots and lots, but in the gospels we get at least 2. One of them is found in the gospel of Matthew and a very different one is found in the gospel of Luke. It is kind of a "well yeah ~ duh!" statement, but I will say it anyway: They are so different because they were written by two different men with two VERY different perspectives and purposes. Neither of these writers call the sermons "The Sermon on the Mount" -- we did that, we readers and commenters, teachers and sermon-givers. It's a catchy name, and catchy names tend to last and get used and re-used and re-used till they stick and become so solid people, almost, think they are scripture. I mean like there was NEVER a day when Jesus got up and said, "Wow! What should I call this new teaching that I am going to give? ... 'How to be a Disciple' NO! 'Blessed, Blessed, Blessed' No NO!! ~ OH! I know: 'The Sermon on the Mount' ! Yeah that will stick!!"

Right?!?

So, I begin with Matthew's sermon. And to begin, I begin with "Who is this Matthew-guy?"

We meet Matthew at the time when Jesus called him to come and follow Him. When we are introduced to Matthew in his own account, Matthew calls himself "Matthew", but Mark and Luke ~ telling the story, call him "Levi."

Matt 9:9
As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
Mark 2:14
As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
Luke 5:27-28
After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

There are a couple of interesting things about this for me:
1) Mark calls him "Levi son of Alphaeus". This is the only time that he is called "son of Alphaeus". I had actually never noticed this before I was re-studying Matthew for this blog. Does "son of Alphaeus" sound familiar? It might -- another disciple, James, is the one who is usually called 'son of Alphaeus'. Were they brothers? or relatives of some sort. We don't know ~ scripture doesn't tell us and none of the commentaries I looked at even noted this. In the passage when Jesus chooses THE 12, Matthew gives us detailed information. We are told that Peter and Andrew are brothers. We are told that James the son of Zebeedee and John are brothers.We are not told anywhere about Matthew (Levi) and James, the son of Alphaeus. Since there were two 'James's', likely one was James the son of Zebedee, and one was James the son of Alphaeus. Yeah I get that, but why doesn't Matthew tell us that he also was a son of Alphaeus ? It makes me go "Hmmmm!"

Matt 10:2-4
These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter ) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. NIV
Also did you notice that Matthew, in this verse, tells us that he was a tax collector? He doesn't note any other pre-disciple jobs ~ only his. (although he does note that Simon -- not Simon/Peter -- was a Zealot, and that Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus.) Like he wants us to know his back story so we don't forget what he was called out of. Interesting.

Mark 3:16-19
These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means Sons of Thunder); Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew , Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. NIV
Luke 6:13-16
When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew , Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. NIV
Mark and Lukes' designations of the disciples are slightly different as you can see, but neither of them ~ in these verses ~ call Matthew "Levi", and neither of them note that he was a tax collector. Again, "Hmmmmmm".

2) Matthew was a tax collector, often called a 'publican'. These were men who bought a region from a Roman tax collector, paying all the tax that was due in that region, and then getting their money back by charging the people what ever tax they wanted to -- what ever the market would bear, as it were. OF COURSE the people hated them. These men were considered traitors -- men who were Jews, siding with the Romans and extorting their own people.

3) Mark and Luke introduce Matthew as "Levi", at the time of his call from being a tax collector. Was it merely his "family / at home / Jewish" name? Was he called Levi because there was some sort of affiliation with the tribe of Levi? That is, was Matthew from a family of priests? The Levites were the tribe who became the priesthood. (Numbers 3:5-51) If that is the case, becoming a tax collector would have been worse, I think, in the eyes of the Jews. But if he were from the tribe of Levi it would explain why Matthew's is the gospel that references the Old Testament the MOST. Matthew quotes and references the Old Testament again and again and again. Was he trained to go into the priesthood, knowing the Word WELL, and then for some reason he 'went off the deep end' and ended up a tax collector?

This -- Matthew / called Levi / tax collector -- factors, for me, into why Matthew's 'Sermon on the Mount' is recorded the way it is.

More later. (hopefully ~ tomorrow)

well I meant it when I typed it ~

2011-10-28T00:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, I said "tomorrow"
I meant it when I typed it .   .    . but

well

you know, "life" happened.

But i didn't exactly do NOTHING!

I have been thinking about blogging. Ok, that sounds totally lame   -- but it isn't. Remember when I rambled about the place in my head that is where I 'hear' what I will write? (if you don't, it's ok, cuz who really pays attention to rambling? I mean, who should? Right?) But ANYWAY ~ in that place I have been mulling what I will write next. I started thinking I would make a new jump   .     .     .     since it has been sooooooooooooooooo long since I have written anyway   .     .     .    and leap in to the New Testament and write about the SermonS on the Mount. Yup : sermonS!

There is one in Matthew and then another one ~ quite a different one ~ in Luke. I love them. They are quite powerful to me. Then ... while I was thinking about all this and 'speaking the sentences to myself' ... well I tutor. One of my students had Bible homework and ~ yes, you guessed it: the lesson today was from the Matthew sermon. So ~ I was thinking more and again.

I was going to jump right in and begin with the Matthew sermon...I even began to gather the scriptures to back what I was going to talk about but as I 'told my self about it in my head' I began mulling over Matthew, and thinking about who he is, and why he wrote as he did and it got bigger and bigger inside. I also began thinking about Luke...why his sermon is so different...who HE is ~ you know, rambley stuff.

So the long and short of it is that I will start with "who is this Matthew-guy' who wrote a gospel. I will try to start tomorrow. (See, I am slow but I learn! I said "try".) Till then, if you are interested in reading something you might peruse Matthew starting in about . . . oh chapter one.

It has been a long time

2011-10-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

It is hard for me to explain ~ exactly ~ what it is like for me to write. There is a place inside me where I "hear" what I am going to put into words. There is a sort-of vibration, a reverberation, to the thoughts. When the resonance is right -- I write.

For a while,
for a LONG while ~ nothing.
It has been, almost, as if I held a large magnet and walked toward another magnet with like pole facing me. I feel pushed back, repelled ~ like there is a boundary I cannot cross.

but

Today I felt a gentle beckoning. So, as it were "on tip-toe" I crept into my blog site. Full of trepidation (sounds funny even as I write it, yet, that is what I felt -- like my heart of hearts was warning, "is this still your place? do you belong here anymore?") I came anyway.

I decided to re-read something I had written -- something past and unremembered so I could see with unjaundiced eye if I had EVER written easily. The story I chose randomly was the story of Jehoshaphat sending his worshipers out as the vanguard of his army against the enemies encircling him.

I like it.

So I will try again. . .tomorrow. This is not the empty promise of procrastination. Today I have an appointment and I do not want clock as a task-master rushing me out of thought and clarity.

so = until tomorrow.

I wonder what I'll write?

GENEALOGIES: Context as I begin again

2011-08-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

Genealogies: Those long boring lists of names of people, and the sons born to them, and then the sons born to them, and the sons born to them...and so on and so on. They are sometimes called the "begats" ~ the word used by the King James translation: Adam begat Seth, etc. Do you skip them when you read, like, "what is point of all these names of all these people, let's get back to the story"? I like genealogies. I think there is a lot that can be gleaned. For example here are two genealogies that contain some really intersting nuggets.

Genesis 5
When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died.

When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh. Altogether, Seth lived 912 years, and then he died.

When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan. Altogether, Enosh lived 905 years, and then he died.

When Kenan had lived 70 years, he became the father of Mahalalel. Altogether, Kenan lived 910 years, and then he died.

When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he became the father of Jared.
Altogether, Mahalalel lived 895 years, and then he died.

When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch. Altogether, Jared lived 962 years, and then he died.

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah.And after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. 24 Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech. Altogether, Methuselah lived 969 years, and then he died.

When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. He named him Noah and said, "He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed." After Noah was born, Lamech lived 595 years and had other sons and daughters. 31 Altogether, Lamech lived 777 years, and then he died.

After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Genesis 7
Noah was six hundred years old when the flood waters came on the earth.

Gen 8
By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
Then God said to Noah, "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.

Gen 9After the flood Noah lived 350 years. Altogether, Noah lived 950 years, and then he died.

So ~ here are some things I noticed:

1) Perhaps the most obvious thing is : 930, 912, 905, 910, 895 . . . men lived a LONG time!! (More about that later.)

2) Enoch -- 365. Co-incidental? 365 days in a year = Enoch lived 365 years? I don't know what it means, but it does catch your eye, doesn't it?
2a) Then the phrase, "walked with God". This must be code for "had relationship with/friendship with God. Adam and Eve heard the sound of God "walking in the garden in the cool of the day" after they had sinned -- does that mean before they sinned that they "walked with God" but now they hid, and He walked alone? Then later it says that "Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God ." (Gen 6:9)

3) Then the explanation given for why Lamech named his son Noah : Lamech said, "He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed." (Gen. 6:29) It is so funny to me: Lamech blames the ground, and God for the painful toil ~ but there is no mention of the fact that man's sin caused the curse on the ground. Clearly Lamech knew Noah was special, and gave him this name, but he seems to have gotten it exactly backwards. The labor and painful toil was not caused by the ground that God had cursed . . . as if God randomly cursed the ground and poor innocent man now needed comfort. The painful toil was caused by man when he sinned. And as it turns out, Noah is a comfort to God, not to men. He is the one singular righteous man on the earth. Ironic.

Then there is the next genealogy that follows the line of Noah's son Shem:

Gen 11:10-26
This is the account of Shem.
Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters. (600 yrs)

When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters. (438 yrs)

When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters. (433 yrs)

When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters. (464 yrs)

When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu. And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters. (239 yrs)

When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters. (239 yrs)

When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor. And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters. (230 yrs)

When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah. And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters. (148 yrs)

After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. (Gen. 11:10-26)

After the flood there is a radical change in life span: from 600 yrs, down to 400+ years, down to 200+ years, and then down to 148 years -- from living 950 years to just a shave under 150 years. Wow! That is a huge difference. Whatever else the flood did, it changed the environment drastically ~ the life span of man plummets.
If you do just a bit of math:
Noah was 603 when Arphaxad was born,
                    638 when Shelah was born,
                    688 when Eber was born,
                    702 when Peleg was born,
                    732 when Reu was born,
                   764 when Serug was born,
                   794 when Nahor was born,
                   823 when Terah was born,
                   893 when Abram, Nahor, and Haran were born,    and
                   Noah died when Abram was 57 years old.
CRAZY, huh? Did Abraham meet Noah? Did Haran die, did Terah leave Ur with this family all before Noah died, or after? Was Noah's death a change of eras spiritually? or was all that co ~ insidental, as in just two events that happened, but had no connection? Hmmmm???

Anniversary -- the years turned

2011-06-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

The day was sunny! Sunny like liquid gold pouring out of the blue. Looking out the window now, I realize it was a gift. I woke early ... not that I had slept long. I remember the sense of awe as I realized I was about to make promises I would mean and keep and be kept by. I couldn't get up fast enough.

We had decided on 10:30: I'd have set the time earlier but I was admonished that that would be unkind to the guests: {"Come on! People have to get up, dress and drive!} -- I wanted to BE married all day.

I had a Maid-of-Honor and 4 bridesmaids -- I'd have had more but Ed finally said, "you are DONE!!" I kept telling him, "she has to be there -- she is my best friend." He told me I didn't understand the concept. But they were! One at a time, each one uniquely and separately: best friend.

I got ready at the church -- the bathroom was kind of tiny. Lots of excitement! Lots of laughter. The photographer decided to take the pre-wedding photos of me out in front of the church. It was awesome! I got to greet the guests as they arrived. The poor photographer was quite patient! "No, wait...I'll be right back. It's ______________"
Someone wise told me that to keep from crying as I walked down the aisle (I AM a cry-er) to catch the eyes of the people I knew as I walked toward Ed. BRILLIANT! It worked!!

As we took communion, Ed's sister and a very good friend sang the Lord's Prayer -- hitting the line, "Give us our daily bread" just as we were taking the bread -- people thought it was planned and rehearsed! Well . . . not by us. Another gift.
As he began to say his vows, Ed got choked up and I was still holding my flowers (why?) -- I turned and gave them to my maid of honor and grabbed Ed's hands, holding him tight till he could get control.

We had the reception at Ed's parents house ... we did the wedding on a shoe string, so it was a salad pot luck. It was brilliant -- and sweet! People kept calling saying, "OH! Can I bring something too? I have a great salad." We felt loved and showered with blessings. We have lived doing enough things on shoe strings that we can weave all those shoe strings into a quilt big enough to cover several houses. This memory helps me remember what sweet gifts God gives when your own hands are empty.

And we blinked our eyes and we had been married 33 YEARS!!

Thirty-three -- 33! I love this year. Images, and symbols, and meaning ~ I love them. I love pattern and confluence. So Two 3's : God's number times 2! Cool!! Then it is 7 years (completion...Two 3's plus 1. Biblically that is so significant! Again: cool!!) unit we are at 40 years. ( yup, another number of significance! a generation...so many 40's in scripture!) People mark the 5 and 10 year demarcations. Those haven't been the significant years for me. I remember when we reached 5. I knew it was important, like when a child is finally old enough to go to school for the first time. But I knew our marriage was barely more than a toddler. We, during that year, finally began to learn to read each other. We could finally begin to understand as we sounded each other out. I hardly remember the 20th anniversary, but at the 21st I knew our marriage was mature -- I remember saying "our marriage is an adult". Now -- 33!

Thirty-three years sounds like a long time. And...I know...it is. It just doesn't feel like it. I told Ed this morning that I have lived through days that felt longer than this 33 years. What it feels is rich.

ANNIVERSARY:
Origin: 1200–50; Middle English anniversarie (< Anglo-French ) < Medieval Latin ( diēs ) anniversāria anniversary (day), Latin anniversārius recurring yearly, equivalent to anni- (combining form of annus year) + vers ( us ) turned, past participle of vertere ( vert- turn + -tus past participle suffix) + -ārius -ary.
So : It could be translated according to the etymology as "The years turned" ~ I like that!

JOHN 12

2011-06-07T12:04:00.000-07:00

"No. I won't go. No. I am not afraid and you should not be either. Come, sit with me. Yes, I heard them too. . .and NO! I am not a bit worried. After last week . . . that's the best threat that group of snakes can come up with? It's funny -- yes it is! Don't worry, Sweet. Don't you understand yet? No, I am not sorry I am here -- it's just --, well...

No," he said, staring off at the horizon. "No, not sorry." kissing her hand and touching her cheek. "No, it's just I don't think I'll ever actually readjust. It is a bit like waking from a dream ~ you know, the kind you don't want to leave. Only . . . well, it was more like I had been awake, and I had to come back to . . . not to sleep, but . . . I don't know. Something a bit less real. It is quite disorienting.

I heard Him -- What? What was I doing? Doing? I was . . . there was so much to see and so many people. I saw Simon, whole and eyes filled with light ~ and Mother and Father, of course. And...Tara, her skin soft and clean...SUCH a smile! And . . . I could run! I hadn't run -- you know...just, just for the joy of it since -- I don't even know! I was laughing, and listening, and looking . . . when --

-- but, what was I saying? OH, when I woke I couldn't actually open my eyes. I didn't know why. He said, 'Come forth', but . . .," he laughed shaking his head, "like walking out all trussed and bound was going to be easy. Yeah, that's what we were laughing about. I hobbled out, following His voice. Then He said, 'Unwrap him.', then, well somewhere in those moments -- hands all over me pulling something off -- I thought, 'OH, I DIED!!'

Don't laugh! Yes, but well, as I said, disorienting!!. . . . then I saw His eyes. Then you, then Mary. No, my sweet sister. I do not want wine. It isn't the same...here. I'll wait. He promised me a toast. No, not today. Did you hear Him as He left? Yes, ~ 'See you at the Wedding Supper' ~ that's what he meant ------- His."

Noah revisited

2011-06-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know ~ on the other side of my life ~ I am writing a High School Bible curriculum. Right now I am writing about Noah and the Flood. This story shakes me. Picture clothes on a clothes line (yes, Virginia, there was a time before washers and dryers...) blowing in a strong wind, whipping back and forth, tumbling and twirling, flipping up, snapping down; each garment swirling in and around the ones on each side. The clothes are safe -- anchored with a clothes pin to a taut line. That is what my emotions feel like as I read and ponder and pray my way through the story. It happens every time I read it.

First of all the story is a work of art! Until I began researching Genesis a few years ago, digging under the surface, or I should say under the hardened crust of my modern literary-view based understanding, I just saw the stories. They were too often shellacked in my thinking by the old Sunday School rewrites and paraphrases that were my first introductions to them. Even before I began the first verse of Genesis 6 in my mind's eye there was a cartoon caricature of Noah on the ramp of a boat, beatifically smiling down at duos of camels and elephants and snakes and bears as they ascended the ramp on the way into the boat. Then I read the story -- the whole thing in a gulp. Then I began to read about the story and do some research. The first surprise for me was that the story is told in a literary form called a chiasm or a palistrophe. Chiasms or palistrophes are a structured literary form, come to find out, extremely common in early cultures -- especially cultures strong in oral tradition. Chi in Greek is the letter X. A Chiasm is shaped like the left side of an X. This sounds confusing until you see it. Here is the structure of the Flood Story:

The Structure of the Flood Story *

A     Noah (6:10a)
B        Shem, Ham, and Japheth (10b)
C        Ark to be built (14-16)
D         Flood announced (17)
E           Covenant with Noah (18-20)
F           Food in the ark (21)
G            Command to enter the ark (7:1-3)
H            7 days waiting for flood (4-5)
I              7 days waiting for flood (7-10)
J                 Entry to ark (11-15)
K                 YHWH shuts Noah in (16)
L                   40 days flood (17a)
M                 Waters increase (17b-18)
N                     Mountains covered (19-20)
O                   150 days water prevail (21-24)
P                        GOD REMEMBERS NOAH (8:1)
O’                   150 days waters abate (3)
N’                  Mountain tops visible (4-5)
M’                 Waters abate (5)
L’                40 days (end of) (6a)
K’              Noah opens window of ark (6b)
J’               Raven and dove leave ark (7-9)
I’              7 days waiting for waters to subside (10-11)
H’           7 days waiting for waters to subside (12-13)
G’          Command to leave ark (15-17 [22])
F’          Food outside ark (9:1-4)
E’         Covenant with all flesh (8-10)
D’        No flood in the future (11-17)
C’       Ark (18a)
B’      Shem, Ham and Japheth (18b)
A’     Noah (19)

Do you see how the story is shaped to point to a central and controlling idea : God remembered Noah? In a world where sin had gone viral in an penultimate way, God did not just see mankind. He saw men, and therefore could see one man: Noah. God is able to see each of us, and not write us off with the whole rotten group. Remembered is a powerful word for a Hebrew mind. In the modern context to remember is usually to call data to mind. I remember what is on my shopping list -- I remember the date of your birthday. But in a Hebrew way of thinking, to remember is to know and to act, to act in some one's behalf on purpose, in love. In other words, if I remember your birthday and just call the date to mind I have NOT remembered. I only remember when I DO something. It was not like God got busy elsewhere and suddenly said, "OH Shoot! I left the water running on earth. uh oh!" God remembered Noah means that God got involved, had relationship with him, saved him, drained the flood and brought him back to dry land and a new life. God's love for Noah was more important then God's grief. It is powerful.

Each idea leading to it has an opposite parallel in an idea leading from it. [note the A and A` etc. beside each line] The structure is beautiful, artistic. It is written so that the message of the story is central -- and for those familiar with chiasms -- easily found. Awesome, huh?! We miss this because the Bible we read is written in paragraphs, and divided into chapters.  We also, to be honest, do not always read Bible stories in whole chunks. (When, reader, was the last time you read the entire story of, say, Abraham in one sitting?) We read one verse at a time looking for 'proof texts' to make a point, or we might read a group of verses, or a chapter a day. Also we are taught a style of writing where we put our thesis ~ main point/controlling idea ~ at the beginning and prove it logically, building point on point. We can't see a structure like a chiasm in a restructured, retranslated, reprinted modern Bible. But once we are shown -- wow! It becomes a whole new story!!!

Then actually reading the details made my estimation of Noah rise through the roof! Ask any 100 people how long Noah was on the ark and they will likely say, "40 days and 40 night". Right? (And you can do almost anything for about a month) Well, that answer is WRONG! It rained for that long. But, Noah and his family were on the ark with all the animals for a year. A YEAR! Wow!! And...how many animals? All the coloring pages show 2 of each animal. OK, for 4 year olds, that is a good way to tell the story. But in actuality there were seven pairs (male and female) of each clean animal, and two pairs of each unclean animal. I mean, I do get it ~ Clearly God wanted to ensure a broad gene pool, and over balance the proportion of clean to unclean animals. But put yourself in Noah and the family's shoes. A YEAR on a BOAT with all those animals.

Then another point I missed for such a long time -- perhaps because it had such a shell of "cuteness" from the Sunday School coloring pages -- was the pathos. :
pathos: "quality that arouses pity or sorrow," 1668, from Gk. pathos "suffering, feeling, emotion," lit. "what befalls one," related to paskhein "to suffer," and penthos "grief, sorrow;" from PIE base *kwenth- "to suffer, endure" (cf. O.Ir. cessaim , Lith. kenciu "suffer"). {Dictionary.com}

Here is the verse that snaps my emotion around every time:
Gen 6:5-6
The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
NIV
WOW! Flip a few pages back in your Bible -- Genesis 1 and 2. See God creating a universe and a world. See Him planting a garden. See God lovingly forming man in His image with His own hands, then breathing life into him. See God standing, surveying all He had created and pronouncing it "very good". If you do a rough math problem based in Genesis 5's genealogy, you find it has been about 1600 years and now God heart is FILLED WITH PAIN because He is so grieved that He made man on the earth. God who IS Love, Itself has a heart full of pain. It is almost too much for me. And it amazes me and fills me with wonder that grief is God's reaction to a world filled to the brim with evil when He is good, and He had pronounced His creation "very good" ~ grief and not rage! How do the gods of any other culture (mythology) react to being crossed in anyway. And never mind them, how would you react? Yet God did not torture men, or explode earth and stomp off -- OK, not that we'd be able to consider this, and not that we'd know, of course, cuz we would be space dust. But my point is : God's reaction to sin is grief. It breaks his heart. So -- poetically speaking -- imagine God weeping inconsolably. Of course there was a world wide flood.

* http://www.examiner.com/methodist-in-national/bible-interpretation-101-what-is-a-chiasm

a "from now on" moment

2011-06-01T09:02:00.000-07:00

The unthinkable has happened: Greeks up in Antioch got saved ~ Greeks who were not Jewish Greeks. It is far away, 300 miles away from Jerusalem as the crow flies. I think sometimes the church of today misses and misunderstands the "9.5 Earthquake scale of the shaking" this caused. God had been dropping bread crumbs along a path to tease and tempt the church to walk into the thinking of a new paradigm.
     ~ Jesus told the disciples they would be his witnesses (for that read martyrs) to the ends of the earth.

     ~ On the day of Pentecost, the church grew by 3000 people because the goodness of God had been proclaimed by the disciples in the languages of the known world of that day. {check it out...that would be the 'in Jerusalem' part of Jesus' commission in Acts 1:7-8}

     ~ "Greek" widows are not served dinner

       SO  men are appointed as 'deacons' to do what amounted to
                             'Meals-on-Wheels'
            AND THEN

     ~ when Stephen (one of the "Meals-on-Wheels" guys from Acts)
         "did great wonders and miraculous signs among
         the people." (Acts 6:8), and it got him killed     .     .      .       violently.

     THEN

        ~ the guy who stood at the edge of the crowd looking on and watching the cloaks of the guys who were stoning Stephen to death
                  -- some guy named Saul of Tarsus --
         begins to go out and arrest people, and tries to destroy the church

      SO

         the church is scattered and these people, running from persecution back around Jerusalem,
                                     preach the gospel everywhere they go.
        {that falls under the 'to the uttermost parts of the earth part of Jesus' commission}

AND THEN
God stops dropping bread crumbs and drops the whole loaf of bread!

Then some "over-zealous yahoos"
(OK, the Jews in Jerusalem probably did NOT say that exactly, but I don't know what the Aramaic equivalent would be)
who were from Cypress and Cyrene preached the gospel to some Greeks -- not Hellenistic Jews, that is Jews who were from a Greek culture -- but some GREEK Greeks. And they don't become Jewish first, they just accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. Word gets back to Jerusalem and the leaders of the church back in Jerusalem send Barnabas to check things out. Remember Barnabas? He was the one who had the chutzpah -- when Paul, the "Church destroying maniac", got saved -- to go meet Paul and check out his story and bring him to the leaders in Jerusalem. Yeah, this is someone that people trust.

Barnabas gets up to Antioch and he thinks, "It's cool!" Exact translation would be: When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. (Acts 11:23)

Interestingly, Barnabas does NOT go back down to Jerusalem. Barnabas goes over to Tarsus and finds Paul. It takes about .83 seconds to read the verse ~
Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. (Acts 11:25-26)
NIV

But think about it. Go check out a map and realize there were no air planes, no trains, not even any cars. This took time. He knew Paul was in Tarsus...but he had to find him there. Then he had to convince Paul to move to Antioch to preach to a bunch of Greeks! Paul was not just Jewish -- he had studied under Gamaliel, and he was a Pharisee. If anybody had a paradigm that was solid -- "JEWS are the people of God ~ that's IT!" -- it had to be Paul. Why would Barnabas go there? Why go get Paul? Why not Peter who had already had a paradigm shifting vision from God and who had already preached to a bunch of Gentiles? Well I think Barnabas remembered the call of God given to Paul RIGHT after he got saved.
"This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." (Acts 9:15-16)
NIV
Who wants a word from God like this one?

You are going to preach to the Gentiles
(PAUL: "but I hate them Lord." GOD: "I DON'T, AND I AM GOD, REMEMBER!!???")

and you get to preach to the people of Israel too.
(PAUL: "Whoooo! That's better." GOD: "Yeah -- I'd wait and see before I decided that was the good part..."").

I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.
(PAUL: "Wait! Ummmm did you just say, 'suffer'? That's your opening promise? Not "I will bless you, and you are going to have a huge ministry, and people will all love you now, and you will be the big name at all the big conferences . . ." GOD: {lots of silence that means, 'yeah, you heard Me'} )

Barnabas goes and finds Paul! He knew Paul had gotten a revelation that shifted his heart AND all the paradigms of his life. They go back to Antioch. The church grows. This is the line in the sand. And the fight from then on hinges on the question of whether people will let God set the paradigms or will require God to move only in the little boxes built of old, dead paradigms.

I think it is still the question today ~ by the way.

Back to Acts and paradigms

2011-05-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

I feel a bit like saying, "and when we last saw our intrepid travelers . . ."
It is has been a while since I wrote, and in that interim I meandered off the path of thought ~ so let me recap and regroup. My last series of related blogs were about Barnabas and the effect of the paradigm held in the days of the infant church at the time of the conversion of Saul/Paul and the dispersion of the church because of persecution.
so...
1) We know that the paradigm of that season was that God was the God of the Jews. Salvation meant not merely establishment and/or restoration of a personal relationship with God, it meant becoming part of the Jewish community which in the minds of the community was the intended Kingdom of the Kingdom of God. The Jews were God's people, and to be saved meant first to be Jewish...and then to have relationship with God.

but

2) We know God wanted to change that paradigm. The first clue for me is the discussion the disciples have with Jesus just before Jesus ascends to heaven.

So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in the Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
Acts 1:6-8 NIV

Jesus will not explain nor address the restoration of the Kingdom to Israel. That was not the point any longer, but the disciples had no concept of a salvation that did not include a national salvation ... Rome's control gone and a righteous king ruling the nation of Israel.

So ~ fade out   .    .    .    fade in ~

Peter has become a very significant powerful leader in the church ~ lots of miracles happen, he does lots and lots of traveling. One day he is staying at the home of someone called Simon the tanner in Joppa, a city on the coast of Israel about 40 miles from Jerusalem, as the crow flies. Peter is up on the roof or the house "having his devotions" while he waits for lunch. He is hungry. I love how God uses EVERYTHING. Peter goes into a trance and sees a vision: a sheet is lowered from heaven to earth and it is full of animals, and birds and reptiles. Then God speaks to Peter and says, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat." There is only one problem and it is a very very very big problem: all the animals and all the birds and all the reptiles in the sheet are unclean animals. Now imagine being really hungry, you are ready to eat. You have been smelling the wonderful scents of roasting chicken, and fresh baked bread for about an hour. Someone places a covered dish in front of you and says, "Eat up!" You lift the cover and there is a dish of slimy worms, fish eyes, uncooked cow intestines, lizard heads and ... oh, maybe some chicken brain. Gross enough for you? It would have been bad enough if you were not really hungry, but you expect fresh bread slathered with melting butter ... and you get chicken brain and lizard heads. It was even worse for Peter because these were unclean animals. He had never eaten unclean animals -- he was Jewish. Not only was it gross, it was WRONG. Now Peter had walked with Jesus for 3 years and Jesus had been an 'in your face, let me confront every preconceived idea you ever had' teacher. Peter knew God was up to something...Jesus had a way of making a point with shock-value events. And, remember Peter had blown it big time when Jesus was on trial and on his way to crucifixion. Peter had denied Jesus -- denied he even knew him -- when asked by a little slip of a servant girl if he was one of the followers of Jesus. Was this a test of Peter's resolve? Would he give in to things that were "unclean" just because he was "hungry"? Was this like when the devil tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread just to satisfy his hunger when he was fasting in the wilderness? Peter gives a response that I am sure he thought was right and that would get God's complete approval and applause. "Surely not, Lord...I have never eaten anything impure or unclean!" God responds with a mind blowing statement: "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." This happens 2 more times. Peter did not get it! But he knew that to say something 3 times made it a superlative: like good, better, best. It was like making it bold face, and underlined with exclamation points after it. Right then very unexpected visitors come to the house to see Peter. God tells him, 'three men are here looking for you -- do not hesitate to go with them.' WHAT??? Then he finds out why God has done this weird unclean animals thing ~ these men are from the home of a Roman Centurion who wants Peter to come to his house and talk to him about Jesus. God has been REALLY busy. Way up in Caesarea -- a city that was a ROMAN port, about 40 miles away, God has sent an angel to talk to a Roman Centurion who was one of Italian Regiment. He is not just any Roman, he is a famous warrior, a man of renowned and authority in the Roman Army. The angel tell Cornelius to send for Peter, tells him where he will be -- and Cornelius believes the angel. Now, Jews DID NOT go into the home of Romans. If food was unclean -- Romans were pagan, idol worshiping filth. But God had made a HUGE point, so Peter went. And...sure enough, the Romans get saved. And again, God makes a HUGE point: while Peter is preaching -- before he can give any type invitation -- God fills all the people in Cornelius's house with the Holy Spirit and they begin to speak in tongues. I am sure God did this cuz Peter would have gotten it wrong. He would have insisted that FIRST all the Romans become Jews ~ circumcision! God cut straight to the chase. Peter and the crew are baffled but they kind-of get it. They say 'well I guess we can let them get baptised in water since God has already baptised them in the Holy Spirit.' Again you know God's point is to enact a paradigm shift because when Peter and his crew get back to Jerusalem, the church there does NOT greet them with, "Yeah!!! A whole bunch of Romans got saved!!!" They are in their face for going into a Roman's house -- unclean, unclean unclean. When Peter recounts the whole story the church rejoices, but they still miss God's bigger point.

Again . . . fade out    .    .    .    fade in.

The church continues to grow. All the Christians who 'leave Dodge' when the persecution gets too hot in Jerusalem, of course spread the gospel where ever they go -- spread it to all the Jewish communities where ever they go. But then the unthinkable happens ...

Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.  News of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.
Acts 11:19-23   NIV

WHAT??! Greeks? Scripture doesn't say, but it sure sounds like the leaders in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to find out what was up because surely Greeks weren't really saved. Maybe they sent him up to stop what ever foolishness was going on. Again, remember Barnabas is a man of such integrity that at his word the disciples and leaders in Jerusalem had accepted that Paul's salvation was real and agreed that they would trust Paul and meet with him. So Barnabas goes up to check things out in Antioch -- and the beginning of a REAL paradigm shift is about to happen.

more randomness ...

2011-05-20T09:34:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here getting ready to work on the Bible Survey stuff and my mind is kind of blank. I looked over at my bookshelf and got a craving to grab a book and just go read for a while...like hiding and playing hooky from the work. Skimming over the titles (my book shelves are kind of random ... my daughter tries to organize and catagorize, but I am a little hopeless there) I see the Gulag books and The Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn. You know your mind is in "I am desperate ... hide me" mode when Solzhenitsyn tempts you. Don't get me wrong, I do like Solzhenitsyn ... I do OWN the books ... feeling tempted to read them is like being temptyed to train for a marathon. OK, there is also The Man Who is Magic by Gallico, a variety of Lewis ~ fiction and apologetics...now THAT is like getting a whiff of fresh coffee as you walk by the kitchen, "hmmmm I'd like some of THAT". Oh, there is always Clancy. OH! I could re-read The Hobbit, you know, in preparation for the movie...is that a GOOD or a BAD idea?

NO! I will stop this foolishness NOW! OK, back to Genesis (that's where I am -- chapter 2 and chapter 3 : Creation, both stories, the fall, and the geneology...maybe even start on Noah.

"BE DISCIPLINED!" . . . " ok"

randomness

2011-05-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

So it is spring here. Spring like I remember it when I was little . . .

this morning my daughter, looking out at the drizzly rain said,
"I thought it was supposed to be 'April showers bring May flowers'
not 'May showers brings June gloom' -- but that's what it is"

I like it.
I do love waking to the crisp air and the dull grey sky, the drips of drizzle sliding down the leaves of the bushes outside the window. I love the contrast of the grey sky and the sharp baby green of the spring leaves on the trees. I like the reprieve of cool days before the onslaught of heat that July will bring. I know...July seems forever from now. It isn't.

It won't rain hard. It won't rain all day. Just enough. It feels familar to me ... like a glance over my shoulder at when I was 14. That was long ago...and so far away, even squinting I can only just barely read the street signs over my shoulder. Humm: 14, more like a fairy tale than a memory. Maybe that's why
I like it.

In the ( )

2011-05-16T08:13:00.000-07:00

A new writing project has interrupted my blogging. It is a JOB! I am writing a Bible Survey curriculum for a Christian High School where I used to teach...putting on paper, well computer and then CD, what I taught a couple of years ago. It comes from a very different place in my writing space inside of me. Walking mentally from there to here is/has been difficult. I will likely, it seems, be neglectful of this blog space. I will try to do both but I suspect inconsistency here. This feels like an apology to empty space. It feels like I can hear the echo:

SORRY
                sorry
                                  sorry
                                                                  sorry
                                                                                              sorrysorrysorrysorry

A paradigm shift

2011-05-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

In order to set the context, I think I need to establish some understanding of what was going on in the minds and emotions of the community of Jewish believers -- because right at first the ONLY real accepted believers were Jewish believers. My theory is that at its base, the book of Acts ~

beyond it being a well written story account of the establishment and growth of the early church and the birth and growth of the ministry and missions of Paul and his teams

~ is a view of God's work to bring about a paradigm shift in the hearts, minds and spirits, and thereby into the life and ministry, of His people. "Paradigm shift" -- what is that? Definitions are sometimes a helpful discussion beginner so :

Paradigm and paradigm shift from American Heritage Dictionary (Yahoo version) :

Paradigm: A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes
a way of viewing reality
for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

Definition of paradigm and paradigm shift from The Paradigm Web:

Paradigm: The word "paradigm" was originally one of those obscure academic terms that has undergone many changes of meaning over the centuries. The classical Greeks used it to refer to an original archetype or ideal. Later it came to refer to a grammatical term. In the early 1960s Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) wrote a ground breaking book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he showed that science does not progress in an orderly fashion from lesser to greater truth, but rather remains fixated on a particular dogma or explanation - a paradigm - which is only overthrown with great difficulty and a new paradigm established. Thus the Copernican system (the sun at the center of the universe) overthrew the Ptolemaic (the earth at the center) one, and Newtonian physics was replaced by Relativity and Quantum Physics. Science thus consists of periods of conservatism ("Normal" Science) punctuated by periods of "Revolutionary" Science.

Paradigm Shift : When anomalies or inconsistencies arise within a given paradigm and present problems that we are unable to solve within a given paradigm, our view of reality must change, as must the way we perceive, think, and value the world. We take on new assumptions and expectations that will transform our theories, traditions, rules, and standards of practice. We must create a new paradigm in whichwe are able to solve the insolvable problems of the old paradigm.

http://ag.arizona.edu/futures/era/paradigmsmain.html

The emphasis established, in the above quotes, with underlining and italics is mine. So ~ a paradigm, for the sake of my argument (since this is a word with a linked chain of meaning), is a way of thinking and a view of reality with all the decisions and actions that ensue from that view.

Don't let your brain switch off: paradigms are basic and obvious. We all have them and we all are controlled by our paradigms of life. Paradigms are a bit like glasses that you put on, and from then on you view all of life through the lenses of these glasses. It takes very little time to become so accustomed to the glasses that you are unaware that they are on your face . . . you become "blind" to the lenses through which you see all of life. It seems to me that in that same way more often than not, we are BLIND to our own paradigms, and consequently our paradigms are HARD to change. Before I ever heard the word "paradigm" I encountered one -- racism. When I was growing up, for a time I lived in a foster family. My foster father had been born in the South and he did NOT think he was a racist -- but he really thought that if your skin was white you WERE better and smarter and more cultured and capable than if your skin was brown or black. In his view of reality, he really thought that the smartest, most capable person who was African American in ANY measure could not ever be as smart or capable as an average Caucasian. It was as true for him as the law of gravity or the second law of thermodynamics. The proof for him that he was not a racist was that he would sit at a table with an African American, or work with them, etc. He saw all people and all of life through the "lenses" of his view regarding people and the color of their skin. How he lived, where he lived, all the judgements he made, all his work and friendship decisions were made thought and because of this paradigm. As a teenager I was baffled by him and his view of life. No amount of logic or science or genetics, no examples from real life ~ NOTHING changed his mind.

I think that the Book of Acts is a story where we see God trying very patiently, and with only limited success, to change a paradigm. What was the paradigm of the Jewish community at the time of Jesus' life : to be in relationship with God and receive eternal salvation you MUST be Jewish, either by birth or by conversion. Israel and ONLY Israel = God's people. At the beginning of the book of Acts the paradigm in place said "God is the God of Israel" not "God is Lord of all the earth".

Joseph of Cyprus

2011-04-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

So do you know -- just off the top of your head -- who I am going to write about? Really, there is only one verse where this man is referred to as "Joseph . . . from Cyprus", so this is a bit of a trick question. His story ~ or a bit of it ~ is told in the NEW Testament. He is one of my favorite characters in the post-gospels New Testament story: From Cyprus, a Levite who lived in Jerusalem --- Part of the early church --- Not one of the original 12 apostles --- World traveler . . . ? got it yet?

Barnabas.

"Barnabas" was a nickname. His given name was Joseph. He was a Levite, from Cyprus. The apostles nicknamed him Barnabas, which we are told in Acts 4, mean "Son of Encouragement". This translation ... Son of Encouragement is a translator's decision. The literal meaning is : Son of Prophecy.

                                NT:921 Barnabas (bar-nab'-as); of Aramaic origin
                               [OT:1247 and OT:5029]; son of Nabas (i.e. prophecy);
                                      (Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance
                                     with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright © 1994,
                                      2003 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible Translators, Inc.)

My two cents on the choice to translate the nickname is ~   It seems to me...and I have no proof for this observation...that the choice of the word "Encouragement" (or "consolation" or "exhortation" in some versions) is an indication of what the translators felt/understand about the concept of the prophetic. I have a much bigger concept of the prophetic -- it INCLUDES being encouraging and full of exhortation, but it carries the meaning of hearing and knowing what God has to say and what He feels about any given person or situation or issue, and being able to impart that accurately. I think Barnabas was a prophet who was a giant of integrity, wisdom, and character. Of course he would be an encourager -- one who establishes or re-establishes courage in the hearts of those around him.

Most of the time the focus, for very understandable reasons, is put on the Paul side of the "Paul and Barnabas" team. But Barnabas caught my attention. When you read the potions of the NT that illuminate Barnabas, you see an amazing hero of the faith. We do not have information on the beginning or on the end of his story -- so -- what do we know?

1. Barnabas was a Levite. This indicates to me that Barnabas was pretty well educated. He, at the very least, would have been well educated in "the law and the prophets" -- the "Bible" of that day. In the Old Testament, the Levites (the people of the tribe of Levi: the 3rd son of Israel (Jacob) ) were the tribe chosen to be the priesthood.  {Numbers 1:47-52; Numbers 3:5-15; Joshua 13:33; Deut 10:8-9) They were not given any allotment of land as a tribe, as did all the other tribes when Israel settled into the promised land. They did not get an inheritance in land since "the Lord is their inheritance". Traditionally, many commentators note, Levites did not own land. This must not have been true by Jesus' day because the first thing we are told about Barnabas is that he sold a piece of land and laid the proceeds from the sale of the land at the apostles feet. The context is a note regarding the early church that "there was no needy person among them" because from time to time someone would sell some land and give the money to the apostles for them to use to meet the needs of anyone in the church. So by the first verse about Barnabas we know he is a Levite, prophetic and generous, and that he is likely wealthy. We also know that he was not originally from Jerusalem, but by Acts 4, that is where he lives.

2. OK, all that from a very short note about him in Acts 4. We do not read anything about him again until Acts 9. A LOT happens between Acts 4 and 9: The death of Ananias and Sapphira which leads to some real intensity within the community, amazing growth in the church paralleled with lots more persecution, the set-up and murder of Stephen, the scattering of the believers because of the persecution, the fun "Phillip" stories, (they ARE fun: you should go read them -- Acts 8) and then the conversion of Saul/Paul. I bring all this up because I want to set the stage for what I am going to say about Barnabas. The context is significant if you are going to see my point. This was a season when there was amazing power of God being POURED out:
Acts 5:15-16
" ... people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed."

Acts 5:18-19
" ...They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. 19 But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out

Acts 6:8
" ... Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people."

Acts 8:5-8
" ... Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there. When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed. So there was great joy in that city.

Do you get it?
Peter's shadow passes over a blind man and as Peter simply walks by the man begins to scream: "I can see! I can see!" And by half an hour later EVERYONE in the crowd of people is whole, and well ~ ALL the sick, demon possessed, cancer ridden, blind, lame, etc. etc, ~ IMAGINE! This happened often enough that crowds of people got healed . . . not A crowd --> crowdS!
Angels show up and let men out of prison!
Stephen, a guy whose ministry was like "Meals on Wheels" to the over 70 set in the church, did GREAT signs and wonders -- so...all the old people's arthritis, cataracts, cancer ~ all healed!

But! While there was amazing power and miracles in this season, there was proportional persecution:

Acts 5:17-19

" ... Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail.

Acts 5:40
" ...They called the apostles in and had them flogged . Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.

Acts 7:54-58
When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. ...
At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.

Acts 8:1-3
On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.

What does this have to do with Barnabas? Well, imagine a setting where people were so afraid that all the Christians in a town, except the pastors, MOVED to another city or state. This is not persecution like "you can't pray in school" ... it is soldiers show up and drag you off to jail, you minister to old people and it makes people so upset, so jealous that they have guys frame you with the kind lies that result in you being stoned to death ~ that is a crowd of people is so angry that they throw rocks at you until you DIE. It says "Saul began to destroy the church." He doesn't just keep his persecution confined to Jerusalem ... that would be bad enough. He goes throughout the whole country. Do you get what it means that he went to Damascus? It is like L.A. wasn't enough, he had authority and attacked the WHOLE church between L. A. in southern California and Seattle, Washington. You CAN'T move far enough away.

Then it is whispered that Saul is back in Jerusalem. There are rumors that he got saved while up in Damascus. That was not a day where there were T.V.'s or radios, or YouTube so you could go see what was being said, and find out if there was reality behind it. It was just people talking. So -- would you believe it? Your family had been dragged off in the middle of the night and thrown into a rat infested jail for the terrible crime of believing in Jesus. I mean really ... what better way to get intel on the now running and hiding community of believers than to infiltrate by pretending to have gotten saved?!? I mean read what happened when Saul did get saved and goes into Damascus. (Acts 9:10-19) God, Himself, speaks to a man named Ananias and tells him Saul has been saved. He tells Ananias to go pray for him and Ananias argues with God, Himself! He as much as tells God, "Have you not been paying attention? Saul -- saved? Yeah, right. God, you should go check your facts." So when Saul leaves Damascus...because the Jews in Damascus conspired to kill him...and goes down to Jerusalem ~

Acts 9:26

"When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple."

Ya think?!! The next words of the verse, for me, tell the story of Barnabas.

Acts 9:26-27

"But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus."

Barnabas faced the danger, and went and checked out the story. I wonder if he made the trip up to Damascus and chatted with Ananias and the church there ~ I think it is likely. I mean would he simply have taken Saul's word? At Barnabas's word the apostles accepted Saul. What kind of man must he have been that the apostles took Barnabas's word as enough? I mean think about it? Let's say a rumor hit that Osama bin Laden got saved. What man in the church has enough character, and reputation that AT HIS WORD the whole church world would accept bin Laden and come to hear him preach? Think about it...Barnabas says it is true so we are going to put our lives on the line cuz we know Barnabas and if he says it's true --- it IS true.

Next ~ Barnabas and Paul

Mark ~ Musings on the gospel: Chiasms and Palistrophes

2011-04-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

OK -- disclaimer time:
I am a nerd.

Some of you, those who know me, already know that. Yeah, you are right ~ not exactly a news flash! One of my favorite books, Planet Narnia by M. Ward, is a doctoral thesis ~ OK, a BRILLIANTLY written, and quite easily readable doctoral thesis, but yeah...doctoral thesis none the less. I love etymology (that would be the study of a word's history of origin) ... like, I look up words for FUN! I like Shakespeare -- watching and reading it. I have read several of the plays in their entirety.You get the idea. I wanted to tell you that so you could be warned and be aware that, actually, you might not want to read this blog. You can click out now. I will understand perfectly {yeah, not that I would even KNOW}

I am going to talk about (as the title already warned you) chiasms and palistrophes. I have included several web addresses at the end that most of you, I know, will not want to go check out. But I wanted to show you where I have been in my reading and 'research' this week.

So ~ I was enjoying my perusal of Mark. Delighting in the subtle things that I found 'interesting', 'intriguing' ... like "why did Mark exclude the cool Peter stories?", and "why did Mark ~ and only Mark ~ include that parable about the seed right after the classic parable about the Sower?", and "Did Mark include the miracle of healing a blind man just before the Triumphal Entry in, Mark 10:46-52, just to tell a miracle story -- or was the story placed to highlight the contrast between faith and the blindness of the Pharisees?". I was finding the general commentaries on Mark ... well ... less than riveting. Then I remembered an obscure-ish website I had gone to ~ while reading on something or other some time ago ~ that discussed an example of a palistrophe in Mark.

OK -- I hear you. What? What is a 'palistrophe' or 'chiasm'? One of the websites listed below
(http://www.christviewmin.org/bible.study/bible.studies.literary.patterns.php)
explains them so much better than I can that I STRONGLY suggest you go check out the site now, . . . . ., OK, are you back?
and for those of you who didn't go check it out ....
A chiasm or palistophe -- they are a literary structure used quite commonly in ancient literature. 'Chiasm' gets its name from the Greek letter 'chi' which is the letter X. In a chiasm the ideas are written so there is a mirror-like opposite parallel, where all the ideas lead up to a point and then reverse and return back to the origin, with the phrasing and ideas forming a structure like one side of an X , like an arrow's point.   >    (See ... I recognise them, but that was a ridiculous attempt.) OK, let me show you a VERY simple example:

A Hickory Dickory Dock
       B The mouse ran up the clock
                C The clock struck one                    >

        B` The mouse ran down
A` Hickory Dickory Dock

Now let me show you one from the gospel of Mark 11:13-20
Mark 11:13-21

Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it.
On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written:
"'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'?
But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'"
The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.
When evening came, they went out of the city.
In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!"

Now, here is the passage outlined showing the chiasm

A
Jesus takes authority over a fig tree by cursing it

        B
        Jesus takes authority over merchandisers at temple

                     C
                    My house will be a house of prayer for all nations

                     C'
                    You have made my house into a den of robbers

        B'
       Jewish leaders are loosing their authority

A'
Disciples recognize Jesus’ authority in the withered fig tree

Do you see it? Do you see the mirrored parallels? Do you see how it leads to a point, then descending, emphasized that point? Don't you think it is soo soooooo sooooooooooo cool? Well, I do! (See, nerd. Right?) Well what I discovered in my reading/research were some NOT dry, dull, insipid commentary writers. They had read and studied the whole of the gospel in the Greek and found that the entire gospel is one HUGE chiasm, that is sprinkled with lots and lots and lots of individual chiams. One commentator even said that the gospel is like a chain of pearls : one chiasm following another, following another. From the reading I saw that one of the things that hides this literary structure from us is that we are reading the gospel, indeed the whole Bible, in English and translation hides the paralleled words and word forms that highlight and decorate the structure. Another thing is that we do not tend to use this literary structure in modern literature. But it was common -- very common come to find out -- in ancient literature. We don't see it because we don't see it. Like, I am sure most everyone is familiar with the nursery rhyme I used above. How many people think, :" ah ~ that is a chiasm." ?

For me, one of the strengths of the chiasmic structure is that it reveals the point of the author in the stories he gives us. I love literature. I love not just reading it, but I also love studying the style and structure of literature. Epics, sonnets, haiku and tankas. I am amazed at the writers who can use form and structure AND write story and poetry, using the structure to highlight the point they are making in the story or poem.

Some commentaries hinted that they thought Mark a weak author, his Greek too elementary, mistakes rife in the telling of the stories. It was exhilarating to find this complex literary structure in this little gospel. Reading it now, through the lenses of a chiastic structure, has made me see it anew. It has gone from that "little gospel by Mark" to a work of art.

Can't WAIT to see Mark at the Wedding Supper so I can high-five him!

- - - - - - - - - -

http://bible-discernments.com/joshua/secondchapter.pdf
http://www.christviewmin.org/bible.study/bible.studies.literary.patterns.php
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/veil.html
http://www.preachingpeace.org/2010/04/06/mark_chiasm/

Mark ~ musing some more on the gospel

2011-04-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

This blog will be notes on things I noticed ~

1) As I read and re-read --this time -- I am reading Mark through the filter of my mental picture of Mark and Peter traveling, ministering together ~ Mark listening to the story of Jesus from Peter's memories. I noticed something interesting. From chapter 1 to the middle of chapter 3, Mark calls Peter "Simon"

Mark 1:16-18

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." At once they left their nets and followed him.

Mark 1:29-31
As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

Mark 1:35-37
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you!"

Mark 3:16
These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter);

Now, as soon as Mark tells us in Mark 3:16 that Jesus gave Simon the name Peter ~ from that point on in the gospel, Mark only calls "Simon Peter" "Peter". Even an interesting verse where Jesus calls Peter "Simon", but Mark refers to him still as "Peter".

Mark 14:37-38

Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon ," he said to Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak."

Now I do not know what this means or why Mark did this...but it is interesting. By the time Mark wrote this gospel, Peter is referred to mostly (at least it seems from scripture) as "Peter" -- Paul sometimes refers to him as "Cephas" which is the Hebrew for "Peter". So it seems that in his gospel, before he is called to be one of the 12, to Mark he was still Simon. After that, he is Peter. Hmmmm

2) There are stories in Mark that are part of other gospels -- lots of them. In fact some of the commentators say that Mark used the writings of Matthew and Luke -- like he 'copied' them. The wording is in several of them THE SAME, so . . . maybe. However, there are a couple of stories where Matthew and Luke tell a story where Peter figures prominently in the event . . . but Mark leaves Peter OUT of the telling. Two come to mind.

   A) The calling of the first disciples.

Matt 4:18-20

As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men ." At once they left their nets and followed him.

Mark 1:16-18

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men ." At once they left their nets and followed him.

I have noted the differences...hardly worth noting, right? As a teacher ... if I read these, I would have thought, "OK, who wrote and who copied?" So that means what ever that means...and I do not know what that is. What IS interesting to me, is the part of the story that Luke includes: Jesus filling Peter's boat with fish. It is a GREAT story. To summarize:

One day Jesus is walking by the lake of Gennesaret and he sees Peter's (Simon) boat and asks if Peter will take him out a ways from shore so he can teach. After the teaching, Jesus tells Peter to go out to the deep part of the lake, and once there, to let down his nets into the water to catch some fish. I can see Peter: rough and rugged fishermen (have you ever met any ... have you seen "Deadliest Catch" on TV?) struggling to be polite to this rabbi. Peter is a fisherman -- Jesus is a rabbi who had been a carpenter. Don't you know Peter wanted to laugh in Jesus' face and say, "What the @#&$$*(#!!%   ~ you are a #^%%$!* carpenter, Rabbi, and you don't understand @$&&^(@!%%^ about fishing!" Can't you see the self-control he exerted tightening Peter's jaw as he says, "OK...if you say so..." Can't you see Jesus' eyes full of mischief and passion? So Peter does it and he lets the nets and "When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break." (Luke 5:6-7) This was, as I see it, a money miracle : that many fish was who knows how many days' income...especially when the night before they had caught nothing. But for Jesus to have asked such an odd thing -- fish during the day, after a night when they had caught nothing...No, Jesus had to have been making some 'other' point beyond the provision to a fishing business. Peter "gets it" immediately ~ he TURNS HIS BACK ON THE FISH and falls at Jesus' feet, full of the conviction of his own sin in the charged air of this miracle. In this context "I will make you fishers of men" (or as Luke puts it, "you will catch men") makes so much sense. So! Why would Mark leave THIS story out? Surely Peter told him...or maybe one of the days at home in Jerusalem in the very, very early days of the church someone -- Andrew maybe -- brought it up. I don't get it...

Then

   B) Jesus walking on water.

Again Matthew and Mark tell stories that begin with VERY similar wording. (you can check it out starting in Matthew 14:22 and respectively in Mark 6:45.) Both writers tell the story of the disciples in the boat in the middle of the night, straining at the oars because the wind was "against them"; both tell of the fear, the terror, when they see Jesus walking on the lake, and think it is a ghost they are seeing. However Matthew ~ and NOT Mark ~ includes the story of Peter calling out to Jesus, "Lord, if it's you, . . . tell me to come to you on the water." How Peter does in fact get out of the boat and walk on water. Again, why would Mark delete this amazing story of Peter? Don't get it.

3) One more interesting thing I noticed in Mark. Mark, unlike Matthew or Luke, includes very few parables of Jesus in the recounting of his gospel. But there is one very significant parable that Mark does include, that is not found in any other gospel. Mark does, in Mark 4, include the parable of the Sower that is found also in Matthew and Luke : the one about the sower who sows seed, but depending on where the seed lands, on the type of soil, and on what happens to the seed, the seed either grows, has healthy roots and flourishes, or is weak or dies. (You can ~ and should ~ read the parable in Matthew 13, Mark 4 and Luke 8) BUT in the gospel of Mark, that parable is followed by this very different parable:

Mark 4:26-29

He also said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain — first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."

I think this parable is SO interesting!! In contrast to the more common Sower parable, in this one, the seed grows, kind of 'no matter what'. Jesus uses the phrases : "whether he (the Sower) sleeps or gets up" and "all by itself the soil produces grain". Jesus has given explanation of the images in the other Sower parable just a few verses above ... so, we know, the seed is the Word. This parable seems to indicate the incredible power of the Word (the gospel message? all of scripture?) will be effective without regard to the "work" of the one who sows or to the conditions where the seed is planted. That is a strong theological statement. Isn't it saying, as it were, "Just get the seed -- the word, the gospel -- into soil -- men's hearts -- and it will cause growth and continue to grow until the end -- the time of the harvest." What it reminds me of, actually, is a verse in Romans :
Rom 1:16-17

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

We know Mark spent time with Paul...is this one of the 'Paul' influences?

Makes me muse and ponder. Just find it all so interesting!

In the telling, in both Matthew and Mark, Jesus

Mark ~ musing on the gospel

2011-04-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

I think if the gospel writers were given access to modern technology, Luke might have had a wed-site complete with maps and interactive pictures and links. I think John would have had a blog -- a famous one. Or...maybe he would have done little mini-documentaries. I suspect that Matthew might have had a blog too...albeit QUITE different than John's. Matthews would have had lots of links to the Old Testament literature. But Mark -- Mark would, I think, have chosen Twitter: short, 'this is what we did today' entries. He might have linked to a blog, maybe so he could add longer notes when he chose. Mark's gospel is short and quick. No background stories of Jesus' birth, very few parables. It felt to me as I read it in one setting, rather than reading it in bits and stories and chapters, like a head-long rush to the cross and the resurrection. I noticed, and nearly ALL the commentators I referenced noted, the details Mark includes -- details that would have been noted by someone who SAW these events and then, musing, told the story later. I have copied and included a list of them compiled (thank you very much) by one commentator. {webpage citing at the end of the blog}

James and John leave their father in the boat with
the servants when they heed Jesus' call to follow him (1:20);
James and John go with Jesus and the rest into the
house of Simon and Andrew (1:29);
Jesus takes Peter's mother-in-law by the hand and
raises her to her feet (1:31);
On the evening of the Sabbath, when the sun has
set, the sick are brought to Jesus to be healed (1:32);
In the morning, long before daylight, Jesus gets up
and goes out (1:35);
There are so many people crowded into the house
that there is no room even near the door (2:2);
The paralytic is carried by four men and the roof
is dug out in order to lower the paralytic down (2:3-4)
Jesus looks around at his critics with anger (3:5);
Jesus sits in a boat in the water and teaches the
crowd of people on the shore (4:1);
Jesus is asleep on a cushion in the stern of the
boat (4:37-38);
There are about two thousand pigs into which Jesus
sends the legion of unclean spirits (5:13);
Jesus instructs the people to sit down upon the
green grass in groups of hundreds and fifties (6:39-40);
Jesus puts his fingers in the ears of the deaf and
dumb man, touches the man's tongue with saliva, looks to heaven with a deep sigh and says "Ephphatha" (7:33);
Jesus spits on a blind man's eyes and laying his
hands; the blind man is described as gradually regaining his sight
(8:23-25);
Peter asks Jesus whether he should build shelters
for Jesus, Moses and Elijah (9:5);
Jesus takes children into his arms, blesses them
and lays his hands on them (10:16);
The blind man who is healed in Jericho is
identified as the son of Timaeus (10:46);
Jesus is crucified at the third hour
(15:25);
Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome
bring spices to the tomb very early, before the sun has risen
(16:2). 1

These little things ... Jesus taking Peter's mother-in-law by the hand, Jesus asleep on a cushion in the boat ... these are the details that conjure in my mind an image of Peter sitting at campfire when he and Mark stopped for the night during their travels, Peter and Mark sitting after dinner sipping glasses of wine long into the early morning hours reminiscing. I love this about Mark's gospel. It has the "and then ~" ... "and then ~" feel to the writing.

But I am still digging into Mark. I will continue ~

1 http://www.abu.nb.ca/courses/NTIntro/Mark.htm