Thursday, January 31, 2013

God with Us



            “The cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”  Those are two important lines.  Why did we wade through chapter after chapter of specifications and building plans?  Because Israel’s God was making arrangements to dwell in her midst.  This is out of character for ancient gods.  Remember the Greek gods and where they lived—high atop Mt. Olympus, far removed from the toils and travails of human life.  Sure, they’d come down once in a while, often working mischief when they did, but their life and desire was somewhere else.  But not the God of Israel!  Although He is the creator of heaven and earth and although the whole cosmos cannot contain Him, His desire is to be in the presence of His people.  Forty years later, when Israel is finally ready to enter the land the Lord promised them, Moses will comment on this, “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him” (NIV Deuteronomy 4:7)?
            God dwells with Israel in the tabernacle.  But consider the wider story.  The creation is cast in some ways as God creating a ‘temple’ for Himself, a place in which He may dwell side-by-side with His beloved Creation.  The Fall into sin is, in a sense, man’s destruction of that temple.  But the Lord stays close, speaking to Noah, Abraham, and Jacob.  Here in Exodus He instructs Moses in how to build a ‘replica tabernacle’ in which He may graciously dwell.  Almost 500 years in the future , Solomon will improve that replica in a permanent temple in which the Lord will also graciously dwell.  And the dwelling of God with man will come to its climax when the Son of God adopts human flesh and dwells among us, revealing His glory in miracles, in the grace of the cross, and in the resurrection.  Then, read ahead to Revelation and see what God’s ultimate plans are:  a new heaven and a new earth, a new temple for His dwelling with humanity.  In that vision, there is no temple, because the whole creation again is a temple. 
            Our God wants to dwell in our presence and wants us to dwell in His.  He delights in us.  With that in mind, we might find an acceptable answer to why we have so much detail about this tent in the wilderness.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Meticulously Building the Temple



            Today’s reading is a head-scratcher.  It is a detail by detail telling of how exactly Bezalel and the craftsmen of Israel built the tabernacle.  The thing is it reads like a publishing error; it reads like someone accidentally repeated chapters 26, 27, and 30.  What are we to make of that?  Let me suggest three things.
            First, ancient writings are often very repetitive.  It’s simple an aspect of ancient style—not just in the Bible but in other writings contemporary with the Bible.  Part of this may be because the cultures transmitted most of their information orally and repetition served as an aid to memory.  So, we should just get used to the fact that Moses wouldn’t be winning any Pulitzers among us, but by the standards of his day he writes just like he’s supposed to.
            Second, and more importantly, we ought to note that what we have here is a relatively rare occasion of Israel living up to her vocation.   She was called to be God’s peculiar people and that uniqueness was supposed to be expressed in her obedience.  We have all sorts of examples of Israel’s failure, her disobedience.  Here we have an example where she did exactly what the Lord had said—exactly.  We could get all cynical and say, “Well, they’re so ashamed of the whole golden calf thing that of course they’re over compensating.”  I suppose you could make that case.  I’d rather see it that with the tabernacle, the place where their God was going to meet with them and forgive them, they saw something that was too important to mess up.
            But the most important aspect of the exactness of the tabernacle’s construction is an aspect that finds its focus in the New Testament.  Consider the sweeping ‘phases’ of the Bible’s story.  Israel’s early life is dominated by the tabernacle; the tabernacle is eventually replaced with the temple in Jerusalem; and both find their fulfillment in Jesus.  The Gospel of John draws on both images in John 1-2 to describe Jesus.  John 1:14 says that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”  The word translated ‘made his dwelling’ is a form of the word ‘tent/tabernacle.’  Literally the verse says, “The Word became flesh and pitched his tent/tabernacle among us.”  Then in John 2, John records the cleansing of the temple and identifies Jesus’ body with the temple.
            “Fair enough,” you say, “but what does it have to do with this repetitive reading?”  It seems to me that the tabernacle, like the temple after it, needs to be built ‘on spec’ because it is an institution that foreshadows Jesus, who does all things well, who is completely faithful to His Father, who is the perfect human being.  In the grand scheme of biblical theology, the tabernacle is meticulously constructed because it will draw us forward to the One who is Himself God’s meticulous remaking of our race and who is Himself meticulous in His devotion to the Lord.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Tabernacle Offerings



            It would be hard to read these two chapters and not think about stewardship.
            The first thing that stands out is that Exodus does not say that every Israelite brought a gift for the tabernacle.  It does say that everyone who was willing brought a gift.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think the Lord is condoning that there were those who were not willing, but I do think there’s an important lesson there, namely, that not everyone is in the same place with their faith.  Some just aren’t ready to make those commitments of time and treasure that are signs of a growing and deepening faith.  While we should present the faith in such a way as to encourage taking that step toward generosity, we should not judge those who aren’t there yet.
            The second thing that stands out is that those who did bring gifts kept on bringing them and eventually had to be stopped.  I wonder what exactly that line means in Exodus 36:3.  It might mean that the same people kept coming back with more and more gifts, or it might mean that new people became motivated by their neighbor’s generosity to give gifts of their own.  Both are good lessons. 
            In the first instance, I’m reminded of Paul’s statement in Galatians 6, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”  Sometimes it can get discouraging when it seems like the same people are providing all the support and doing all the work in the church.  Paul’s advice is to keep at it, and you can make a case that that’s just what the Israelites did.  It’s a mistake to evaluate our expression of faith in light of someone else.  The question ought not be, “What did someone else do?”  It ought to be, “What am I doing?”
            In the second case, I think that a good outcome is when the generosity of time and treasure motivates others to step up in a similar way.  Good examples are important and they can be effective.  In terms of modern church life, I’m not quite sure how to make those examples public.  I mean, we are a pretty close people when it comes to our money.  (Back in the day, churches used to publish who gave what in the annual report.  You can imagine how that would fly today!)  I do like the practice of testimonials, when people simply tell their stories about maturing in the grace of giving and the differences it made in their lives.  Good examples, well presented, can motivate others.
            Finally, I’d just note the last bit of the story.  I think I speak for pastors everywhere when I say that most of us would love to have the problem of too many offerings!  Because churches struggle to make ends meet so often, it is comforting to think that there is at least one example of having too much.  So, bring those offerings on.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Faces Aglow



            First, a thing I can’t explain.  In Exodus 33:11, the Lord spoke to Moses face to face; in Exodus 33:20-23, Moses can’t see the Lord’s face and live so that Lord shows him His back.  In Exodus 34, Moses glows because He has been in the Lord’s presence.
            One of my professors suggested no man, sinful as we are, can stand in God’s unmediated presence.  However, in Moses’ case (and a few other cases), my professor suggested that the Lord ‘dialed it back,’ so that Moses saw a portion of God’s glory.  It’s as good an explanation as any, and it fits will with Isaiah 6, where the prophet worries that he will die for seeing God, but an angel announces his forgives and therefore his ability to stand in God’s presence.  Whatever we make of it, the one point that is unmistakable is that Moses spent time in the presence of God and everyone in the camp knew it.
            Now, let me suggest that as Christians, we ought to reflect in this direction:  we, too, are blessed to be the people who stand in God’s presence and see His glory.  The preface for Epiphany (the part of the liturgy right before the consecration of the elements in the Lord’s Supper) gets at this.  It notes that in Jesus the Lord has revealed His glory in human flesh, and the connection with the Real Presence of Jesus’ Body and Blood in the supper means that in bread and wine we see the glory of God.
            I don’t know how often we think of that.  Moses had his tent in which He met the Lord.  That same Lord walked and talked among His people in the person of Jesus.  And that same Lord inserts Himself into our lives in the Supper.  In all three cases, humans are blessed to have God in their midst.
            So, my first reflection on this little story:  how blessed we are to have a God who continues to dwell in our midst and show His glory—the glory of His saving grace—to us.
            My second reflection is more an exhortation:  wouldn’t it be nice if our faces ‘glowed’ after we had seen the Lord?  Sometimes with the Lord’s Supper it’s is just mechanical ritual; we’re going through the motions.  But it’s meant to be more than that.  It’s our encounter with the living God; it’s our union with Him.  In bread and wine, Jesus lives in us.  The Supper communicates forgiveness to us, but it also communicates Christ’s new life to us.  That new life ought to be like the ‘glow’ on Moses’ face; we ought to come out of our encounter with our God radiating—radiating the joy of being forgiven, the joy of granting forgiveness, the joy of being loved, and the joy of loving.  Would that we had to cover our faces because the reflection of God was so bright on them!

Friday, January 25, 2013

Lessons from the Incident of the Golden Calf

Exodus 32:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex%2032&version=NIV1984

            What a fascinating account!  Notice first that the people are impatient.  Moses was on the mountain 40 days, and they assume him missing or dead.  In the absence of immediate leadership and against such a “long” delay, the people demand progress.
            I’ve thought about that in terms of church work a lot.  I’m a pretty driven guy.  I like to get things done.  I like to plan opportunities for spiritual growth and measure results.  So, you can imagine that sometimes church work is frustrating:  things don’t grow, they don’t have the impact desired, people leave because ‘not enough is getting done,’ there’s greater conflict instead of greater maturity.  Then, I’m forced to wonder if all of my planning is just erecting a golden calf, a god of my making.  The concept of patiently enduring is so common in the Scriptures; perhaps sometimes it would just be healthier if I set my plans aside and waited.  I don’t know.  I do think that using the brains God gave us in service of His kingdom is pleasing to Him, but I also think that sometimes our plans result from our impatience in getting things done and turn into idols.
            That thought is furthered by another phenomenon in the story.  The Hebrew word for “God” is the exact, same form as the word “gods.”  So, there’s this ambiguity.  Did the people of Israel demand ‘gods’ or and image of ‘God’?  It seems they weren’t entirely clear on that point.  Aspects of the grammar favor the way NIV translates, “Make us gods!”  On the other hand, Aaron declares a feast for Yahweh, the “God” of Israel (v. 5).
            I’d remind you that ancient societies were polytheistic and it’s very likely that the people of Israel were polytheistic, too.  Their God made claims about His superiority to every other so-called god, but they likely would have heard those claims as this way:  “There are lots of gods in the world, and our god is demonstrating his superiority to those gods.”  The point is that in building their calf Israel wasn’t completely rejecting their God; they were doing what all sorts of ancient people did and putting their god together with imagery of the other gods out there.
            We do that, too.  Whenever we assume that the Triune God means prosperity or power, we’ve done the same thing.  We’ve put the gods of the world—power/prosperity—together with our God and called it the same thing.  In terms of my church work analogy, it works the same way:  I can put my desire, my god as it were, to be successful and important together with doing the Lord’s work and without even realizing it—bam! golden calf.  I’ve built an idol and excused it by calling it God. 
            So, in summary, idolatry isn’t always obvious, and sometimes it results from a convenient marriage of our desires, our timing, and our god.  Sometimes, idolatry claims the name of the true God.
            The other thing that jumped off the page for me is that the Lord is completely ticked off about the situation.  He has good reason for it!  Afflicted Pharaoh, led Israel out of slavery, parted the Red Sea, gave them a new national life, revealed His desires for them as clearly as could be hoped—and this is the thanks He gets!  I get a charge out of the Lord’s statement to Moses (v. 10), “Begone!  Leave me so I can stew and work up a really righteous anger!”  But the thing that is even more powerful is Moses’ response.  1) You destroy them, you waste your work in bringing them out; 2) you destroy them, the Egyptians mock you; 3)  you destroy them, you’ll have failed to keep your promises.  Now that’s the way to pray!  Moses prays on the basis of God’s past actions, on the basis of His glory and honor in the world, and on the basis of His promises.  Martin Luther used to talk about prayer as rubbing God’s promises in His ears.  Prayer is the child’s reminder to its parent, “You promised!”  And if there’s one thing we should take to the bank about our God, it’s that He keeps His promises!
            There’s more here, but a warning about the subtleties of idolatry and a short instruction on prayer is pretty good for one day’s reflection.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Once More with Furniture

Exodus 30-31:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2030:1-31:18&version=NIV1984

            Among other things, these two chapters bring us the remainder of the tabernacle’s furnishings—the altar of incense and the basin.
            The basin actually sat outside of the tabernacle proper.  That is, it was in the ‘courtyard’ around the tabernacle, meaning the tent itself.  It served a very obvious function, namely, cleaning up.  Many of the offerings brought to the Lord in the tabernacle involved blood sacrifice, and the basin provided a source of water for literally washing.  That washing also had a sort of extended meaning, too, as Exodus 30:19-21 indicate.  The priests were to ceremonially wash their hands and feet before doing the Lord’s work.  Peter alludes to this in his first letter:
. . . and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:21).
Now, I always feel compelled to point out that Peter says the water of the Flood is a symbol (actually he calls it an anti-type, a counterpart, a foreshadowing) for Baptism.  He does not say Baptism is a symbolic act.  Baptism, according to Peter does something: it saves.  Whatever.  We’ll deal with that in when we read the New Testament.  My point is that the basin in the tabernacle’s courtyard serves a deeper function.  The washing of hands and feet in some way prepares the priest to be in the presence of the Holy One of Israel.  There’s a baptismal overtone to it.  (Of course, in the New Testament every Christian is baptized and every Christian is equally a priest who enters the presence of God.)  Finally, we may hear some echoes of Jesus’ claim to be the water of life here, too (John 4), although the stretch there is that the water of the basin is not for drinking, but for washing.
            The other piece of furniture described today is the altar of incense.  Relatively small (18 inches square and 36 inches high), it was designed to have incense burned on it twice a day.  Now, I used incense in worship in college a few times.  You don’t need a very big fire or much incense to produce a very large cloud of smoke.  So the dimensions are adequate for the job.  Incense had a very practical function.  Consider that many sacrifices included the spattering of blood, and you can imagine that the tabernacle smelled bad.  The incense would have masked some of that.  However, the bigger significance of the incense is the much more common assertion that the Bible makes about it, namely, that it represents the prayers of God’s people ascending before Him (Ps 141, various places in Revelation).  In terms of a Jesus connection, there’s that, too, since the New Testament teaches that Jesus’ constantly intercedes for us  before the Father’s throne (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25).

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Tabernacle Furniture--Ark, Table, Lamp



            There are so many things to comment on in the tabernacle, it’s hard to know how to get it all in.  As the pastor of a local church, I am tempted to comment on the sheer extravagance of the thing.  (Perhaps I’ll make it into a stewardship thought in a few chapters—when the offerings come in.)  We’ll have a chance to talk about God’s gracious presence in the tabernacle in a few days when we read about its completion.  For today, let’s focus on the furniture.
            Today, three pieces of furniture are described for the tabernacle.  The first is the ark.  Ark is not some technical word.  It simply means a box.  (That’s right, Noah floated on the waters in a ‘box.’)  The first hint that this ‘box’ is different comes when its cover is described.  It has an ‘atonement cover,’ or, as older translations have it, a ‘mercy seat.’  There are two substantial elements here.  First, the cover is going to be important in the forgiveness of sins.  We won’t know this until later, but on the day of atonement, the high priest will approach the atonement cover, and sprinkle it with the blood of the sacrifice to make atonement, that is, reparation, for the sins of the people.  Honestly, this could hardly be easier to connect to the great Christian hope, namely, that Jesus, the great and final sacrifice would pour out His blood before the Father on the cross and make atonement for the sins of all humanity.  The second aspect is that it’s seat.  Someone, presumably, sits on it.  That someone is the Lord God, Creator of heaven and earth.  The ark is God’s ‘throne.’  He seats enthroned between the cherubim (Ps. 99:1), both in His ‘heavenly’ throne room (cf. Isaiah 6) and in His tabernacle.  The significance of this is that the God of heaven and earth dwells uniquely in the midst of His people Israel and the purpose of His dwelling there is to proclaim forgiveness and reconciliation through the blood of the sacrifice.  (More on that next week.)
            The second piece of furniture is a table with bread on it.  Bread is an important, basic food for much of humanity and human history.  The presence of this table is a reminder of several things.  First, it is a reminder that the Lord is the one who provides food to the people of the earth (Ps. 145:16) and that He is the one who has provides for Israel especially through the provision of manna.  More, the presence of the bread before the Lord reflects on Israel’s unique place in God’s purpose.  They are a sort of firstfruits to the Lord, the first portion of the harvest, already presented before the Lord as a new humanity.  I do think it’s significant, too, that Jesus declares Himself the Bread of Life, the bread from heaven.  He provides the life that never ends, the life that humanity most desperately needs, and He is the truly ‘new human,’ who ushers in the renewal of humanity through His death and resurrection.
            Finally, today’s reading describes a lampstand.  There are many resonances here, too.  The Lord’s first act of creation was to call light into existence.  He Himself lit the way for Israel as a pillar of fire in the Exodus.  So there is the enlightening presence of the Lord in play here.  More than that, Israel is called to be a light for the world.  In the same way, Jesus declares Himself the light of the world (John 1 and 3 and 8 and 9 and 12), and He calls His Church to be a light for the world, too (Matthew 5:14).
            These pieces of furniture, then, have great significance as metaphors for the greater story of God’s dealings with Israel and with humanity.  The tabernacle is a visual reminder that the God of Israel created the world and humanity, that He originally dwelt within and with that creation, and that His earnest desire is still to dwell with human kind.  The tabernacle and its furniture becomes a foreshadowing of Jesus, the ultimate dwelling of God with men, and of the final Christian hope, the restoration of paradise and the dwelling of God with men in eternity.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Random Commands?



            A random list of commands—that’s a reasonable summary of Exodus 21-23.  I’ll be the first to admit that it’s hard to find any kind of organizing principle in there.  Partly that’s because Exodus is a very ancient book.  I keep coming back to this in Bible class, but it’s really important.  Remember how hard Shakespeare was when you were in high school?  And the Bard lived only 400 years ago and wrote in our native language.  Exodus is nine times older than that, have been written around 1400 BC.  It’s not really fair to expect something that is that far removed from our day to make the same kind of sense we’d find today.
            And the apparent randomness shouldn’t blind us to some other things that are here.  For example, we look at these laws and some of them seem really harsh to us.  But, if we read them against their own historical background, we find out many of them are actually quite liberal.  For example, on Saturday we read Exodus 21:24, “an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth.”  Now, we hear that as a principle of retribution, but I’d suggest that it is originally a principle of limitation.  That is, it’s not a demand that vengeance must be collected; it’s a limitation on the amount of vengeance that can be collected:  “You may only take an eye for a lost eye; you may not take the whole head.”  Things that sound harsh to modern ears—statements about vengeance, slavery, etc.—sometimes only sound that way because the ears that hear are modern!  Let some of the commands that are easier on modern ears serve as the filter for the harder ones.  For example, note in today’s reading the call for returning your enemy’s donkey (23:4) and providing justice for the poor (23:6).  Clearly, they offer protections that didn’t exist before.
            What else shall we notice?  We should pay attention to the fact that Israel is called to a distinctive life as God’s holy people.  That peculiarity is part of the laws, too.  The uniqueness is demonstrated in today’s reading with the Sabbath commands.  Let’s face it:  when you live a subsistence life, when your existence is often in doubt, when famine is a reality and you don’t know if you’ll have enough for your children the next day—when that’s your life, a day off is a little counter-intuitive.  But Israel is to resist the despair in so much of ancient life.  She is to rely on her God, to count on His providence.  And, in a practice unique among ancient people, they are to set aside a day for rest and the worship of their God.
            As we work through the laws of Moses in Exodus through Deuteronomy over the next several weeks (we’ll finish Deuteronomy right about Easter on our current schedule), we’ll have those moments when things appear just plain random.  We’ll be well served if we can try to keep the bigger picture—that these laws are often about Israel’s uniqueness—in mind, and if we can try to imagine what they might mean in the ancient world—that they are actually quite broad-minded and move Israel toward a more merciful approach to the world.

Friday, January 18, 2013

A Treasured Possession, A Priestly Nation



            Of all the things that I could comment on today—the theophany at Sinai (that is, the manifestation of God’s promise in thunder, lightning, and smoke), the Ten Commandments (how they’re numbered, special emphases in them), the notion of the holiness of God—of all those things, I’d like to direct your attention to Exodus 19:4-6, “You will be for me a treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
            First, a treasured possession.  I’ve made a career of pointing out how important Genesis 12:3 is to understanding Israel, that God’s purpose was that she would be the instrument through which He would bring salvation to the nations.  I’ve made a point of undermining Israel’s claims to be the object of God’s affections.  Here’s a small clarification:  Israel is not the sole object of God’s affections.  Israel might be God’s instrument, but she is the instrument for His greatest project and you can understand if He feels a special affection for her.  Here’s a silly example:  I have several hammers—16 ouncers, 20 ouncers, brad hammers, mallets.  I might even have a sledge, though I’d have to check the garage to be sure.  They’re all instruments of construction (not the sledge so much), but I have a favorite—a fiberglass-handled sixteen ounce hammer which fits my hand and for which I always reach.  I need all the hammers because they’re all different and for different purposes; and on principle I refuse to throw a good tool away.  But I do have a favorite.  The world is the object of God’s love, but Israel is His treasured possession.
            I’d make at least these two points.  First, it’s God’s affection for Israel that makes her constant rebellion so heartbreaking.  I mean, when things get to their climax and Jesus is on the scene, who pushes for His crucifixion?  The leaders and people of Israel, and that’s a tragedy.  Second, though, I’d point out that the Lord continues to have a holy people, and in the New Testament that is His Church.  We are His treasured possessions.
            I addressed the priestly nation a little bit yesterday, but it deserves a special mention, too.  There are two key aspects of priesthood.  First, a priesthood stands before God and makes sacrifices on behalf of the people.  So, Israel (or, in the New Testament, the Church), as a whole, stands before God on behalf of the peoples.  Their life is an ongoing sacrifice to God.  In the New Testament we talk about our sacrifices as prayer and praise—praise of God’s saving acts on behalf of the earth and prayer for the application of those acts to the whole earth.  Boy, do we miss that in our understandings of worship!  I hear all the time critiques of worship that go along the lines of, “I don’t get anything out of it.”  On the one hand, I want to say, “If you hear the good news of Jesus, then you got something out of it.  Maybe you just didn’t appreciate it.”  On the other, I want to say, “Well, worship is just about you and what you get out of it.  We worship on behalf of the world, offering praises to a God who richly deserves to be praised on behalf of a world that ought to praise Him but doesn’t.”  In the first instance, worship is a gift; in the second instance, worship is a responsibility, our representing our fallen race before God’s throne, just as Jesus, the perfect Man, stands there and represents our race.
            Second, at its best, priests don’t just represent the people before the God; they also represent the God to the people.  That also is part of Israel’s (and the Church’s) priestly calling, to represent the Lord to the nations, to speak His words, embody His values, share His hope.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

The Jethro Principle

Exodus 18:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex%2018&version=NIV1984

            In the late-Eighties/early-Nineties, church growth consultant Carl F. George used Exodus 18 to promote what he called “The Jethro Principle.”  It was a principle that said, spiritual care of a large group of people is too much for one pastor; the pastor must devolve that care to smaller groups of people.  That was Jethro’s advice to Moses: subdivide, delegate, push responsibility further down the chain.
            Let’s be honest:  lots of Lutheran pastors (my friends!) didn’t much care for George’s advice and they may have had good reasons.  I haven’t read George in years, but as I recall George doesn’t much understand the means of grace and he moves pretty easily from ancient Israel’s system of justice to a modern, pastoral ministry—a move fraught with interpretive challenges.
            Be that as it may, I think George was on to something for several reasons.  First, there is a limit to the personal care that a pastor can give.  I figured one time that weddings and funerals took about 12 hours of my time.  If an average pastor in an average sized church did 5 funerals and 2 weddings in an average year, that adds up to two full weeks of his time—without accounting for follow-up care to the grieving family, which can be substantial.  Add in shut-in calls, hospital calls, and other crisis care, a pastor can quickly find himself heading in the same direction that Jethro saw Moses going, “You will only wear yourself out.”
            But I think there’s a better reason for pushing that kind of spiritual care down to smaller groups.  We Lutherans have talked about the priesthood of believers from the time of the Reformation.  Originally, it was Luther’s way of saying that laity—not just clergy—had a responsibility for the church, and he used this doctrine to advocate for laity to advance the cause of reformation—advocating for true doctrine, calling faithful pastors (even if the church hierarchy resisted).  C. F. W. Walther, the first president of the LCMS, also made this case, arguing in Church and Ministry that ‘laymen also have the right to judge doctrine.’
            Unfortunately, it seems to me that one of the things we have done is to reduce the priesthood to administrative and ‘temporal’ functions.  (I notice that in our synodical book of rites, the installation of officers in a congregation uses precisely this language: the temporal affairs of the congregation.)  That is to say, we want  the one who is an accountant in daily life to take care of the accounts of the church; the one who is in IT Monday through Friday to do IT run the church’s website; and we want the HR person to take responsibility for reviewing benefits packages.  Now, I get that.  People have skills; it’s good when they use them for the benefit of the Lord’s ministry.
            BUT, the Christian accountant, IT guy, and HR gal—they’re all Christians!  They’re not just defined by one vocation.  They also have a vocation, a calling, to be a light for the world, salt for the earth.  They have a vocation to love one another as God in Christ has loved them.  That means that they have a vocation to provide spiritual care to one another within the congregation.  Sometimes when we act as if spiritual care is just the pastor’s job, we are robbing everybody else of a precious vocation.
            So Jethro’s advice is worth thinking about, and frankly George’s “Jethro Principle” is worth thinking about—both because the pastor can’t do it all and because the Lord has called each of us to a precious and holy priesthood, a priesthood of service to one another and of constant prayer and care for one another.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Thoughts on Baptism

Earlier today, I linked through to a post from my good friend, Pastor Eric Tritten.  He was defending the practice of infant baptism against those who (sometimes fiercely) advocate for what is called 'believer's baptism.'  The latter position basically says that in order for baptism 'to count', the one baptized must have be old enough to profess their faith.  Now between a Lutheran position and that position are a host of other concerns--original sin, the nature of faith, baptism as a means of grace, just to name three biggies.

Eric did a nice job.  I'm not taking issue with anything he said.

But more needs to be said.  Several years ago, I had a running conversation with a couple.  He had been raised Lutheran; she some variety of Protestant (I forget which).  They were debating whether their children would be baptized.  It was an eye-opening exchange because it helped me see how our conversation partners understand us.

In short, she thought that we had some superstitious, magical view of baptism.  She understood us to mean, "Once wet, always saved."  As I thought about it, I thought, "You know, you could easily get that out of the way we talk about Baptism."  She had a valid point.

So, without taking anything away from the great gifts that the Lord gives in Baptism, I'd like to suggest that we take the fullness of Jesus' command in which Baptism is instituted (Matthew 28:16-20) a little more seriously.  Here's a more literal, wooden translation than we sometimes get in our English Bibles:  "As you are on your way, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit , teaching them to keep all that I've command you."  Notice two things.  First, there's only one command here, namely, to make disciples.  Second, the means by which one becomes a disciple are twofold, baptizing and teaching.

I understand this to mean that Baptism only makes sense in the context of an ongoing life of listening to God's Word in a variety of contexts--home, church, Sunday school. It's an imperfect analogy, but one could compare Baptism to an acorn.  The whole tree is in there; at a genetic level an acorn is as much an oak tree as a century-old tree in the forest.  Without sunlight and water, the acorn will not become a mighty oak.  In the same way, we want to rejoice in the fact of what God has planted in us in Baptism; salvation, forgiveness, rescue--they're all there.  But without the nurturing of the Word, they will not thrive and they might possibly die.

So, I'd like to suggest that we need to balance.  On the one hand, let's not cede any territory to those who would make Baptism simply into a human work of response.  That's a denigration of the Sacrament that can't be Scripturally supported.  On the other hand, let's insist that Baptism only makes sense as a part of a whole life of discipleship in which Baptism is partnered with teaching in its various forms and locations.  If we talk about Baptism apart from that teaching context, we run the serious risk of making it nothing more than superstition.

Responses?

The Tyranny of the Urgent

Exodus 16-17:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex%2016-17&version=NIV1984

            I struggle professionally with the tyranny of the urgent.  I know that I’m better off when I am working and planning ahead.  However, things pile up and what usually happens is that I spend most of my time on stuff that has to get done right now.  Several problems with that:  urgent problems have to get dealt with urgently; there’s not much space to do things excellently.  Such an approach tends to be high stress.  And when everything is done urgently there’s not much sense that you are working coherently towards larger goals.
            What in the world does that have to do with Exodus 16-17?  Israel, newly freed from slavery in Egypt, is trapped by the tyranny of the urgent.  More specifically, the urgency of their wants and needs has this terrible though predictable effect that they completely lose sight of what their God has done and is still doing for them.
            It’s pretty easy to sit at our desks or breakfast tables or couches—wherever you read these chapters—and feel all smug.  “If God had walked me through the Red Sea, you wouldn’t find me being so ungrateful,” we think.  But I’d beg to differ.  One of the easiest things in the world is to forget what the Lord has done for you.  It’s so easy to panic over the right now.  The challenges and problems of the moment always loom largest in our minds.
            Look, my favorite part of what I do is Sunday morning—love preaching, love church, love Bible study, always go home feeling good about ministry.  And part of that is because hearing the Lord’s words, receiving His grace in the Sacrament, and singing His praises focuses me on the meaning and purpose in life.  It reminds me of the big picture in which is live and in which life makes sense.  But Monday comes and there’s a hundred things on my desk and administrative tasks to get done and services to plan and articles to write and it’s pretty easy to get so bogged down in the urgent and the minutiae that I forget the big picture that gave me such joy.  (And, you know, it’s better for me than for many of you.  My vocation at least puts me in the presence of the Lord’s word throughout the week!)
            So, let’s not be too hard on Israel and their terribly short memories about the Lord and His goodness.  That forgetfulness, that surrender to what is urgent—that’s just part of our fallen nature.  If we’re tempted to be critical of Israel, perhaps these stories of their grumbling should remind us to take a look at those (too frequent!) moments when we too worry and fret about the issues that seem so large before us that we let them completely obscure the presence of our gracious Lord and God.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Pacifism and the Violence Inherent in the System



            I have to admit that I have a hard time with passages like Exodus 15 and its rejoicing in the violence that the Lord has afflicted on His enemies.  It’s not like the notion that the God of Israel is a mighty warrior is an uncommon theme in the Old Testament.  In Isaiah the Lord returns from Edom spattered in blood (Is. 63:1); in Revelation the blood of the Lord’s enemies flows for miles (Rev. 14:20).  But I find it uncomfortable these days.
            It wasn’t always that way for me.  There was a time—not that long ago—that I found the image of the Lord as a warrior kind of manly.  But I’ve had a change of thinking over the last several years, and I find myself deeply drawn to a pacifistic understanding of the faith.  That is, I tend to see things more through the lens of “Turn the other cheek” and the non-resistance of Jesus to the injustice inflicted on Him.  I tend to see any expression of violence as a symptom of sin.
            I don’t think I have many pastor-types who read this, but I can imagine their response.  They would say something like, “Well, Stowe is living in an idealized world and he doesn’t understand the Lutheran understanding of the two kingdoms very well.”  Well, I admit that I live in an idealized world.  I think that both Jesus and Paul expect that the Lord’s people will strive to live up to the vision of a renewed humanity that they cast.  I’m realist enough that I don’t expect we’ll ever actually, fully live up to it, but I’m idealist enough to think that we ought to keep striving for it.  As far as the two kingdoms (the teaching that God deals with the world two ways—through his ‘left-hand,’ that is, the power structures of the fallen earth still providentially accomplishing His purposes, and through his ‘right-hand,’ that is through the Gospel), I get that, but I do think that we Christians are sometimes a little too conscious of our citizenship in the left and a little too oblivious to the ways that citizenship is in tension with our citizenship in the right. 
            Many of you probably just glazed over at that last paragraph; sorry about that theologian talk.  Pastors, if you want to interact on that, let’s do it privately.
            Anyhow, getting back to my main point:  I’ve trended toward pacifism over the last few years, and I’ve been troubled by the rejoicing over the Lord’s judgment of His enemies.  I have two small solutions.  First, I suppose a little Schadenfreude (rejoicing over my enemy’s demise) is understandable.  The Egyptians had oppressed Israel for years and they were bent on even more violence and oppression, so it’s understandable that the Israelites would rejoice over that destruction.  We might do better to focus not so much on the destruction of the Egyptians and the establishment of God’s justice and the granting of freedom that goes with it.  But still, it’s understandable that the oppressed would rejoice over the downfall of those who had oppressed.
            Second, I’ve come to realize that we ought to feel uncomfortable with the judgment of even the worst of our enemies.  Lutherans talk about the two works of God—His proper work, the work that He loves to do, which is the bringing of blessing, and His alien work, the work that He does when humans force Him to it, which is the bringing of calamity.  If the Lord doesn’t want to bring trouble (Lamentations 3:33:  “The Lord does not willingly afflict the sons of man.”) and if He takes no pleasure in death (Ezekiel 33:11), it’s certainly appropriate that we His people feel the same way:  happy over the establishment of God’s justice; sorrowful that it took such violence to accomplish it; eager to convince the world that the Lord’s ways are better, if for no other reason than to avoid such terrible consequences.
            I remember teaching Bible class in September, 2001.  People were angry; people were out for blood; people were talking in terms of a war between religions.  And I said that the appropriate Christian response was to pray for Osama bin Laden.  It wasn’t a popular suggestion.  On the one hand, the government of the US, an instrument of God’s left-hand rule, needed to engage in war to bring these men to justice and to protect its citizens.  As a member of that kingdom, I supported those actions.  However, as a citizen of God’s right-hand rule, I also saw other factors at play, and as a servant of that rule, I advocated that God’s people should strive to live up to that calling.
            In a violent world filled with violent men who use violent means to accomplish their ends, it’s hard to live lives at peace.  I guess I’d ask us to just be aware that for God’s people peace is an option and more than that a high calling.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Exodus, Jesus, and Baptism

Exodus 14:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2014&version=NIV1984


            A little bit of good luck with today’s reading, at least for those readers who are Lutheran and whose congregations followed the assigned lectionary this weekend!  Here we have the original exodus and in the lectionary we had the baptism of Jesus, which was, in some ways, a re-enactment of the exodus.
            The exodus was Israel’s defining national event.  It was their Bunker Hill.  It was the moment in their history that they looked backed to as the moment that revealed their character.  Just like Americans looked back to Bunker Hill and said, “That was the day we proved that citizen militia could stand up to the might an empire,” so Israelites looked to the Exodus.  The imagery of the Exodus, that is, passing through the waters, and the claims of Israel’s God, that He was one who brought them out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm—those images and claims come up time and again in the Old Testament.
            Of course, over the years, Israel experienced a certain shift in understanding.  They lost sight of the fact that the Lord rescued them because He had plans for them for the whole world, and they began to think of the exodus as proof that the Creator God loved them better than the rest of the world.
            1400 years later, enter Jesus.  John the Baptizer was at the banks of Jordan, calling Israel to repentance and a renewed life as God’s people.  Israel, John said, needed to go back into the wilderness to be purified by God (Hosea 2).  Then, they needed to go ‘through the waters’ again, re-claim the land the Lord had promised them, and become God’s unique people.  When Jesus presented Himself for baptism, at least part of what He was doing was accepting John’s call on behalf of Israel.  Israel may have lost their sense of vocation, of calling, but Jesus had not.  He took that calling to be a blessing to the nations on Himself.  “If no one else in Israel will,” Jesus seems to have reasoned, “I will for them.”
            So Jesus’ baptism becomes a sort of re-enactment of the first exodus.  He passes through the waters to become the one who would bless the nations.  Other things would have to be said to fully understand Jesus’ baptism and His vocation, for example, the unique way that He appropriated Isaiah 53 as the lens through which to understand Israel’s calling and His own.  But for now, it’s enough to realize that the Lord delivered Israel through the Red Sea because He had plans for her and that Jesus passed through John’s baptism in the belief that through Him God would accomplish those plans.
            In a sense, too, our Baptism is a re-enactment of that first exodus.  We pass through the waters and are delivered from oppression—the oppression sin, death, and the devil.  I know we still sin after our Baptism; I know that we still die after our Baptism; and I know that the devil still works for our demise after our Baptism.  But Paul is clear in Romans 6:  those things no longer have mastery over us.  Sin is not our master.  Death cannot hold us.  Satan is ultimately defeated.  And we are redeemed for a purpose, too—to reflect the glory of the Lord into His fallen world as an invitation to His renewed light.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Plundering the Egyptians

Exodus 11-12:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=exo%2011-12&version=NIV1984

            In Exodus 11, the Lord commands the Israelites to ‘plunder the Egyptians,’ to ask for articles of silver and gold.  In Exodus 12:35, after the angel of death has killed the Egyptian firstborns, that’s exactly what they do.
            It’s a small incident, but worth reflection.  First, there’s an issue of justice involved.  The Egyptians had benefitted from Israel’s ‘free labor’ (or at least her unpaid labor!) for a long time.  Israel had paid a high price in her toil and in the loss of her children.  This ‘plundering’ was, in that sense, just restitution for what she had lost at the hands of their slavemasters.  Second, there is a sense in which the Lord is planning for the future.  Israel had been in slavery for a long time; they would need seed money to build a new life in the land the Lord had promised.
            Now, on that issue of justice, that’s an issue that comes up again and again in the Scriptures.  The theme goes like this:  God’s people suffer at the hands of this world, but the world itself is their inheritance.  So, Jesus says that the meek will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5), and a major theme of the gospel of Luke is the reversal that the Lord will work (cf. the Magnificat—Luke 1—in which the poor are filled, but the rich are sent away empty; or the parable of the rich man and Lazarus—Luke 16—in which a poor man is gathered to Abraham’s bosom but the rich man has already had his reward).
            So, often Christians bemoan their place in the world.  “We’ve been kicked out of schools,” we cry.  “We’re given no honor in the public square.  People mock our values.”  I do get that, especially since we have had such a privileged position in the West for so long.  On the other hand, there’s a certain ‘desiring the flesh-pots of Egypt’ in that.  We forget that the Lord will give us the ‘plunder’ of the fallen world when His great restoration is worked.  Said another way, it wouldn’t do for the Israelites to stay in Egypt and enslave the Egyptians; the Lord’s plan was that they would take the wealth of Egypt with them to a new land.  In the same way, we are slated not to run a broken world, but to inherit a new one.  Whatever we’ve lost during our slavery in a fallen world, the Lord will make sure we take the best of this world into a new world.
            There’s another aspect to think about, too.  St. Augustine, perhaps the most influential theologian of the Western church for 1500 years (he lived at the beginning of the 5th century and his ideas still set the table for much of our theology), looked at the plundering of Egypt and allegorized the snot out of it.  He basically argued that Christians ought to plunder the pagan world of ideas.  Here’s a quote:
For, as the Egyptians had not only the idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments, which the same people when going out of Egypt appropriated to themselves, designing them for a better use, not doing this on their own authority, but by the command of God, the Egyptians themselves, in their ignorance, providing them with things which they themselves, were not making a good use of [Exod. 3:21-22; Exod. 12:35-36]; in the same way all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely and unlawfully prostituting to the worship of devils. These, therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men, ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. Their garments, also,—that is, human institutions such as are adapted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life,—we must take and turn to a Christian use (On Christian Doctrine).
Now, as I read that, I think there’s some danger there, especially that last line about institutions.  (You may have noticed in my previous comments that I think it’s precisely our institutions that we need to be most careful about.  They tend to be institutions based on the wrong principles.)  However, the idea that Christians can ‘mine’ the best ideas of the fallen world and still discover something of God in there is a good one.  For example, I’m a fan of Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers.  When I was in college, I had classmates who were surprised I didn’t like Christian contemporary music.  My reply was that Jimmy Page and Duane Allman were better guitarists.  That doesn’t mean I shared their values, just that I appreciated their music.  In the same way, I don’t like the assumptions that many scientists bring to their work—assumptions about a godless universe—but I still enjoy the blessings and benefits they have brought to my life.
            Consider this about Israel.  On the one hand, it’s true that the silver and gold of the Egyptians allowed the Israelites to build a horrible golden idol at the foot of Sinai (Ex. 32).  On the other hand, those same gifts allowed them to build the most beautiful tabernacle for the Lord’s worship.  In the same way, there are aspects of the art and learning of our fallen world that can be a major temptation to sin.  But they have opened up other avenues of faithful Christian use.
            So, on the one hand, we Christians ‘plunder’ the world around us, putting the things of the world—its art, its technology, its ideas—to work for the Lord and His glory  On the other hand, we handle all of those things carefully, recognizing that ultimately our goal is not to master the things of this fallen world in order to run this fallen world.  Our ultimate goal is to rule with God over His restored heaven and earth.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Natural Catastrophe or Miracle? Why Not Both!



            Today’s readings contain six of the ten plagues with which the Lord afflicted the Egyptians.  On those plagues, it’s interesting that many—nine out of ten—of them can be explained as natural phenomena.  The reddening of the Nile evidently can happen when a certain alga blooms.  This natural phenomenon explains why Pharaoh’s court wizards were able to replicate it.  However, even if there’s a natural root, we shouldn’t lose sight of the really miraculous aspects:  it’s not just the river; it’s all the water sources in Egypt.  It might look ‘natural,’ but the timing and the intensity are all the Lord’s!
            The same thing is true with the plagues recorded in chapters 8-9.  If the Nile was so polluted with algae, no wonder the frogs came out.  Loss of frogs would mean the growth of insect populations (gnats) and dead frogs everywhere would mean the birth of flies.  Certain biting flies could transmit a disease like anthrax—deadly to cattle (plague 5) and causing painful boils on humans (plague 6).  Again, though, natural explanations only get us part way.  They might grant an insight into why Pharaoh was so resistant; he may have been looking at the evidence and thinking, “This is unfortunate to have this happen so intensely and in such quick succession, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.”  Still, Pharaoh had Moses’ word that these things were happening with a timing and intensity set by the God of Israel, and we ought not deny the miraculous in them.
            Identifying the hand of God can be challenging in our day.  I find myself most reluctant to ascribe events to the work of God, not because I don’t think God can do incredible things but because I’m scared of the way that we attach reasons to those works of God.  (As a pastor, I’ve had the conversation that begins, “Why would God . . .” many times, and I’m always wary of it.  Too often it ends with a sort of “God is punishing me for . . .” and my question is, “On what word from God are you basing that?”)  So, I’d suggest that the plagues offer this warning for a man with my dispositions:  be careful that you don’t miss the hand of God, directing and causing events, both good and bad, in the world.  And, they offer this warning when we try to find meaning in those events: be careful that you have a clear word from God that allows you to identify cause and effect in the world.  Without that word, leave room for God’s purposes to be more complex than you might think.
            There is lots more that could be said about the plagues and the ways that they undermined Egyptian confidence in their gods and in their Pharaoh, who claimed to reign divinely over the nation.  I’d invite members of Divine Savior to Bible class on Sunday for that discussion.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The Hardening of Pharaoh



            One of the more troubling lines in the whole Bible came up first in Exodus 4:21.  There the Lord declared to Moses, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.”  The line is repeated in today’s reading (7:3) with two attendant notes that “Pharaoh’s heart became hard.”  Now to be fair, in the next chapter (8:15), Pharaoh hardened his own heart.  But that doesn’t solve all of our difficulties.  Here’s how it seems to be:  the Lord threatens to harden Pharaoh (twice!), twice Pharaoh’s heart ‘becomes’ hard without reference to who does the hardening (so far God’s the only one who’s said He’ll do some hardening), finally Pharaoh hardens his own heart (though we’re set up to think that he does that only because of the Lord’s prompting).  See, it would be easy if we could say that Pharaoh hardened his heart first and that the Lord just left him to his own devices, but that doesn’t seem to be how it works early in Exodus.  It troubles us, I think, because it seems like the Lord is destining Pharaoh for damnation, and we don’t want to think that the Lord works like that.
            Paul brings up the hardening of Pharaoh in Romans 9, and our Lutheran Confessions use the example of Pharaoh in the article on election.  Let me just say that Romans 9 is a notoriously hard chapter—especially given the way we tend to read the Bible—in small bits and in English translation.  Sometime in 2014 we’ll get to Romans and you can hold my feet to the fire about Romans 9 then.  You can look at what the Lutheran confessors said here:  http://bookofconcord.org/sd-election.php (see paragraphs 84-85).
            Here’s my take on the phenomenon in Exodus at least.  It will be immensely helpful if we realize that Exodus is not talking about Pharaoh’s personal salvation.  Let me repeat that louder:  Exodus is not talking about Pharaoh’s personal salvation!  It will help, I think, if we use Psalm 2 as a reference point instead of personal salvation.

Psalm 2 (NIV; 1984)
2 Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?
        2 The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One.
3 "Let us break their chains," they say, "and throw off their fetters."
        4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.
5 Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
        6 "I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill."
7 I will proclaim the decree of the LORD: He said to me, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father.
        8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery."
        10 Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling.
        12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

In Exodus, Pharaoh is the representative of the nation that is oppressing God’s holy people.  The Lord will cause Pharaoh to resist the Lord’s command to let His people go so that the resistance of the nations to the will of God is revealed in all its foolishness and futility.  Ultimately, the nations of the earth, in revolt against the Lord, will be brought to heel.  Pharaoh’s Egypt is the first of those nations to have that presented to them.  The result is that the God of Israel will be glorified by demonstrating His power over the nations and His superiority over all of their false gods (cf. Ex. 14:4).  If we understand Pharaoh against the background humanity’s rebellion against the Lord and the Lord’s determination to face down that rebellion, I think we’ll find this ‘hardening’ language a lot easier to get a handle on.

Monday, January 7, 2013

When Doing the Right Thing Increases Your Trouble




            Remember that Moses did not want to go to Pharaoh.  He spent two chapters (Exodus 3-4) trying to talk his way out of the job.  Finally, he knuckled under and went to meet the Israelites, who believed and worshipped the Lord because he had seen their misery (Exodus 4: 31).  So far, so good.
            But the initial meeting with Pharaoh didn’t go nearly so well.  Pharaoh refused to recognize Israel’s god and figured, “If they have time for a three-day vacation, they have too much time.  Let’s increase their workload!”  (You thought your boss was demanding!)  And, of course, the Israelites blamed Moses for their increased misfortune.  This seems to be proof of the old adage, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
            One thought that occurs to me is that Israel’s faith was barely skin deep.  In one instant, they were worshipping and believing; in the next, they were shooting the messenger.  I think that there’s an important insight that helps us here.  We often assume that ever since the days of Abraham Israel had had just the one God, that they were thorough going monotheists.  However, Abraham himself had come out of a polytheistic family; Rachel (the wife of Jacob, Abraham’s grandson) was a polytheist (remember she stole her father’s household idols, Genesis 31:19); and Israel lived in a thoroughly polytheistic world.
            Now, in the ancient polytheistic world, gods were not all-powerful.  Individual gods were powerful in their specific arenas and in their individual territories.  And military loss usually meant either that your god wasn’t as strong as someone else’s or that your god turned his back on you.  So, the Israelites probably viewed Yahweh (that’s their god’s personal name, usually rendered lord in our English translations) as one god among many.  One of three things was probably going on when Moses came and told them Yahweh had remembered them.  They might have forgotten all about their ancestral god.  (It had been 400 years since Jacob’s death, after all!)  They might have assumed he was angry at them and had abandoned them, in which case they were grateful he was thinking of them again.  Or, they may have assume that their god just couldn’t exert any influence in the face of the Egyptian gods.  (I suspect Israel’s reality was a mix of all three; the last one, in particular, will help explain some of the plagues that are coming in the next chapters.)
            The other thought that occurs to me is the frustration that Moses gave voice to in Exodus 5:22-23.  It’s as if he’s saying, “I didn’t want to go; You made me; now, things are worse!  I did the right thing, and it didn’t help!  What gives?”
            That happens to us, doesn’t it?  We try to do the right things, and sometimes they just don’t work out.  I remember a conversation with an aggressive person I had many years ago.  There was lots of accusation in the air.  I thought about my psychology training and tried very hard not to counter-attack.  I went out of my way to use non-threatening “I” language.  (That’s a communication strategy in which one avoids saying, “You cause these things,” and tries instead to describe one’s own experience, “I feel . . .”)  Anyway, I remember the conversation because the other person looked at me and said, “I, I, I!  It’s not all about you!”  In that case, trying to do the right thing to defuse a situation actually caused it to blow up!
            Look, I didn’t give up on “I” language after that incident.  I recognize the wisdom of a style of conversation that tries to avoid accusation and yet speaks honestly.  It’s a good strategy, even if it doesn’t always work out like I want.  And here’s the lesson:  we do the right thing because it’s the right thing—even if it doesn’t have the results we expected.  We’d sure like it if doing the right thing always worked out, but it doesn’t always.  Jesus always did the right thing, and that got Him rejection, suffering, and a cross.  Yet, the Father used that less-than-optimal response to work salvation for the world.  Do the right thing, and trust God to bring something good out of it—in His time and in His way.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Saving an Unlikely Savior

Exodus 2:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex%202&version=NIV1984

            The Egyptians persecution of the Israelites grew to an epidemic of infanticide.  Yesterday we read about Pharaoh’s command that Israelite baby boys be drowned in the Nile.  When Moses is finally ‘thrown into the river’ it is in a basket made of papyrus reeds, covered in tar and pitch.  Now, if you read the footnotes in your Bible, you realize that the word translated as ‘basket’ is actually the same word as is translated ‘ark’ in other places.  The words for tar and pitch are different than the ones in Genesis 6, but the allusion is there.  Clearly we are meant to think about Noah and his ark and the way that God saved him from deadly waters in order to keep His promises intact and moving towards fulfillment.
            A second interesting wrinkle—and this one anticipates tomorrow’s reading—is that Moses is saved for a purpose, namely, to save Israel from the oppression of the Egyptians.  Now, in his youth, Moses kills a man who was beating a fellow Hebrew.  Notice that Moses has no word from God about his own role as Israel’s savior; that act of violence is completely on his own.  He tries to be a deliverer in the ways of the world, trading violence for violence, and he ends up in exile.  In tomorrow’s reading, the Lord calls Moses to deliver His people Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Moses does everything he can think of to get out it.  Having tried it his own way once and having paid the price, Moses is unwilling to try it God’s way (a way, incidentally, in which Moses has no violent role to play).
            So, it’s a pretty obvious move to see in the Flood and in Moses’ rescue on the Nile, an adumbration, a foreshadowing, of Baptism.  In that Sacrament, we ‘float’ on destructive waters, since the water of Baptism drowns the old man and yet produces a new life in us.  (I’m not just making that up; St. Peter makes the connection between the Flood and Baptism in 1 Peter 3).  We have this ‘being saved’ in common with Moses.  And, while we are not called to such an extraordinary purpose as Moses, we are called for God’s purposes—to be a light to the world, to make His grace known in word and deed. 
            Like Moses, I think that sometimes we’d rather serve God’s purposes in our own ways, rather than in the Lord’s ways.  Unfortunately, our ways are too often just like the ways of the world.  We don’t mind serving Him as long as we don’t have to learn whole new ways of being.  But to serve God’s purposes means just that, learning new ways to live.  The world teaches us to value independence and strength; the Lord teaches us to value dependence on Him and on each other and to value humility and weakness.  Those things call for a colossal realignment of our ways of thinking about God’s world and our place in it.
            I struggle with this constantly because I am constantly measuring my efforts by the lights of the world.  As a pastor, I really want to lead a growing church, and it aggravates and vexes me when we’re not ‘powerful.’  I want to lead a church of influence in the world, and when the world rejects the ways that we’re trying to influence it or when members aren’t committed enough to how I think that influence ought to be exerted or a bunch of other factors remind me that God’s people are strangers and pilgrims in a foreign land, I struggle to accept that.  But there’s the core challenge:  will you be God’s kind of people, operating from apparent weakness yet trusting in a God who demonstrates His strength in that weakness, or will you be your own kind of people, grasping for power and trying to solve the world’s problems in your own kind of way?
            The rescue that Baptism works addresses this challenge.  It reminds us, first, that we have been saved to be God’s kind of people.  As a matter of fact, it drowns our old tendencies and creates God’s new and gentle life within us.  And, second, it reminds us of the forgiveness and new beginning that the Lord gives us every day—especially when we’ve tried to go our own way and ended up in trouble on account of it.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Lasting Impact



            Among all the things that could be commented on in this chapter, this in particular struck me:  “Joseph and all that generation passed away . . . Then a kind, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power.”
            I think everybody wants to be remembered.  We want our works to endure, and we want our descendants to carry on in our paths.  I could give you chapter and verse on all sorts of Bible passages that think that through.  I could also give you chapter and verse on all sorts of passages that reflect on the basic hopelessness of that.  The book of Ecclesiastes is a particularly depressing place to turn, with its refrain of ‘Meaningless!’  “You live, you die, no one remembers,” is a decent summary of Solomon’s mood in that book.
            What do you do in the face of that?  I mean, it can lead to despair if you really think those things through.  What’s the point of doing anything, if it’s not going to have a lasting impact?  Wouldn’t it be better to just look out for number 1, take pleasure in what you can, and let it go?  (There was an ancient school of philosophy that thought just that!)
            Let me briefly suggest three approaches.  First, integrity ought to be its own reward.  We do the right things because they are right.  If we do the right things because we hope for something in return—whether its reward or remembrance—then our motivations are misaligned.  Second, we can take comfort in the fact that God remembers, even if no one else does.  (Isaiah 49:15, “Even if a mother might forget her child—unlikely as that is—I will never forget you.)  Third, we can take comfort in the fact that God somehow incorporates our works into His own plans.  In Joseph’s case, if things hadn’t gotten unpleasant for Israel, they might have stayed in Egypt, so ‘Pharaoh forgetting Joseph’ moved God’s plan forward.  In the same way, the Lord takes our works up into His own plans, and, even if we have no idea about their lasting impact, we can trust that He’ll make something out of them.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Receiving Forgiveness


            Yesterday we read in Genesis 47:28 that Jacob lived in Egypt for 17 years.  Throughout almost two decades Joseph and his brothers lived at peace—or so Joseph thought.  It turns out that Joseph’s brothers had a different opinion.  They thought that Joseph was biding his time until Dad died.  Then, they thought, Joseph would finally have his revenge.  Perhaps it reveals something of their hearts; perhaps they were accustomed to hold grudges like that.  Perhaps it just reveals the fear and guilt that dominated them.  Perhaps it was a little of both.
            This is a story that hits a lot of us right where we live.  Sinful humans that we are, we do keep a catalogue of sins.  We talk about ‘forgiving and forgetting,’ but we know how very difficult it is to forget.  Hurts leave scars and, even long after the wounds have healed, the scars remind us of the pain we once endured.  Two things help.  First, Psalm 130 says that the Lord keeps no record of wrongs (verse 3).  There is something empowering about knowing that he forgets our misdeeds.  If God, who knows all things can forgive so thoroughly, if He can ‘remember our sins no more’ (Jeremiah 31:34), then we have a fighting chance at setting aside the pains afflicted on us.  Second, it helps if we understand what forgiveness is.  Forgiveness does not deny that a wrong was done; it is a conscious choice to set aside the debt owed to us because a wrong was committed against us.  Said another way, forgive is the decision to live and act as if we have forgotten.  That means that forgiveness is an ongoing discipline.  Whenever old hurts flair up, forgiveness says, “No, that is in the past; that is gone.”
            It hits us right where we live for another reason, too.  Sinful humans that we are, we have a hard time accepting forgiveness.  Sometimes people will say they have a hard time forgiving themselves.  I’m not sure that’s exactly right.  I think it’s probably more correct to say that we have a hard time believing people have actually forgiven us.  After all, if we struggle to grant forgiveness, others must similarly struggle.  “Maybe,” we wonder, “they were just showing good form when they said they forgave us.  Maybe they didn’t really mean it.”  In terms of the Lord’s forgiveness for us, there’s no need to doubt.  He means what He says and does what He says.  It is a mind-boggling thing to think that God so completely let’s go of the chains that bind us, but He does.  In terms of the forgiveness that is exchanged between humans, we have to learn to live with the messiness of good intentions and inconsistent follow-through; it means taking people at their word and not holding it against them if they fail to live up to what they’ve said.  Perhaps the best discipline to help us receive forgiveness better is to grant it better.
            Joseph and his brothers give us insight into the trickiness of living forgiven.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Three Thoughts



            Pardon me if this post doesn’t have a unified message, but there’s some really interesting things in these two chapters that may or may not have much to do with each other.
            First, you probably noticed in the last couple of days’ readings that the Egyptians had a hang-up with shepherds.  I’d have to check a commentary on why that is.  I know that Egyptians were a settled, agricultural society.  So, perhaps the prejudice had less to do with raising sheep and more to do with a nomadic lifestyle.  (Most people don’t know that the word ‘Hebrew’ was most likely an ethnic slur to denigrate nomadic people.)  Anyhow, I think it’s interesting that Joseph, knowing the Egyptians’ prejudices, used those prejudices to keep the people of Israel apart.  Goshen was on the eastern frontier of Egypt, removed from the population centers.  Since Israel’s distinctiveness and unique purpose in God’s plans was so important, it was important that Israel not assimilate to the culture around them.  (This issue will come up later in the Bible when Israel takes possession of Canaan, too.)
            Reading the story of Israel—even from her earliest days—reminds us that we Christians need to strike a difficult balance.  On the one hand, we can’t just cut ourselves off from the world:  how can you be a light for the world if you never come in contact with the world?  On the other hand, we need to maintain a sense of our own distinctiveness apart from the world.  That’s a difficult balance to maintain—in the world but not of the world—and it’s not as simple as settling in the land of Goshen!
            Second, I can never read the second half of Genesis 47 without being simply amazed at the tax policy that Joseph instituted.  I mean, it’s really harsh.  First, he gets all their money; then their livestock; then their money; then their property; then he puts a 20% tax on them.  Talk about socialism!  Pharaoh owns the means of production and demands a significant cut of the proceeds.  (Of course, I write this in the wake of last night’s 11th hour deal that raises some tax rates to 39%, so maybe I should just be careful.)
            I guess the lesson I’d suggest here is that an awful lot of governance decisions are left to human discretion.  To try to find biblical support for particular political positions seems to me to be an ill-conceived endeavor.)
            Finally, you may have noticed that Joseph is still his father’s favorite.  Usually the firstborn would get a double portion of the father’s estate.  So, with 12 sons, the firstborn would get 2 out of 13 shares.  Now, in the case of Jacob’s family, it was actually the fourth-born, Judah, who became the principal heir, because Reuben, Simeon, and Levi had behaved badly and gotten themselves passed over.  Now, here’s the kicker:  Jacob ‘adopts’ Joseph’s two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.  The effect of this is that Jacob now has 13 heirs, Judah gets two-fourteenths, and Joseph also ends up with two-fourteenths (one for each son).  Talk about a kick-in-the-shorts for Judah.  (At least he’s still the one through whom the line will continue!)
            Lessons?  Well, the Lord doesn’t play favorites.  The people of Israel long thought of themselves as God’s favorites, but Peter shuts that door decisively when the family of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, is brought under the reign of God (Acts 10).  He declares, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism!”  A good lesson for us!  Grace isn’t contingent on anything in us; it is God’s pure gift.  We do well to think on that in our churches and in our personal dealings.