The Road to Redemption: the Prophets

    So who were they? So who were these men and women that we call the prophets? For many of us the names that come to mind are the big three: Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. On occasion we recall that there are the other Minor Prophets such as Daniel and Joel. The interesting thing about the Biblical story however is that is chocked full of prophets. There are groups of prophets who wandered the countryside in the time of Saul and David. There were professional prophets who worked for the king (telling him exactly what he wanted to hear) and short term prophets like Amos who took a few weeks' vacation from their vocation (shepherding) to deliver a message of truth to the powers of the time. Their stories are buried deep in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, Kings and Chronicles as well as being highlighted within books bearing their own names. Throughout the history of Israel the prophets played critical roles which assisted the people of God along the Road to Redemption.

    The first role that the prophets played was that they were to speak truth to power. One person described this task as "forth-telling." Forth-telling was the task whereby the prophets shined the light of God's law and purpose upon the actions of the people of God. There were times when the forth-telling was for a single individual. This was the case when the prophet Nathan made King David aware that David's adultery with Bathsheba and David's subsequent murder of Bathsheba's husband was known by God and a price would have to be paid. David would have to face up to his sins. There were times when a prophet would shine a light on an entire nation. This was the case with prophet Hosea. Hosea was told to go and marry a prostitute in order to demonstrate to God's people that they were playing the prostitute in their relationship with God (in other words the people of God were running after and worshipping other gods, rather than being faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). The message of Hosea was also, to offer a more positive note, that God was going to remain faithful to God's people even when they were not faithful to God. This calling was an attempt to keep the people on task; to remind the people that they were part of God's larger plan of redemption.

    The second role that the prophets played was that they were "fore-tellers." Fore-tellers are those who speak to the future. At this point I want to stop and make clear a few things about prophets and speaking to the future. First, the prophets were not soothsayers predicting the future of individuals for a fast buck. If they were predicting someone's future it was always in reference to God's plan for that individual (God was going to anoint someone King or eliminate someone because they had done great harm to God's plan and people). Second the prophets were not those who were trying to predict specific dates and times for the coming of Jesus. Over the centuries the church has tried to tie virtually every prophetic prediction to Jesus. While Jesus was ultimately the culmination of the God's redeeming work, the prophets spoke to many other events along the way (such as the people being carried into Babylon in exile as well as their eventual return). Finally the prophets were those who gave hope to the people by fore-telling about God's redemptive plan. While this fore-telling was not always specifically about Jesus, it was about the fact that God's saving action would culminate in one who would be the suffering servant, giving his life for God's people and for the world. In the end then all of the fore-telling was another way of keeping God's people on the road to redemption.

    You and I are the beneficiaries of both prophetic roles. The words of the prophets while spoken to people more than two thousand years ago can still speak to us today. First they remind us that we are to live as God's redeemed and redeeming people. We have a task before us to live out the love and grace of God in our everyday lives. The words of the prophets keep us aligned with God's plans. Second the prophet's words remind us that God is still at work redeeming the world; that even in the face of tough times we are not to give up on God, because God has not given up on the world.

    

The Road to Redemption: Kings

    Two of the most prominent characters in the entire Bible are two of the Kings of the united nation of Israel; David (1000 – 961 BCE) and Solomon (961 – 922 BCE). David is famous not only because he occupies a transitional role in the story of God's people but because he also had a great biographer. There were kings who reigned longer (Uzziah 783 – 742 BCE) or were more famous in their day (Most foreign nations referred to the people of Israel as the people of Omri (876 – 869 BCE) and not David) but never rivaled David in terms of the sheer volume of material in the scriptures. If we include the many Psalms which are attributed to David his hold over the Bible is even greater. David's son Solomon also manages to occupy a significant section of the book of I Kings. He is noted for his wisdom (supposedly having written both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes) and wealth. With so much material devoted to these two figures, as well four entire books to the other kings, we might assume that the Bible considers their appearance on the scene as a positive event. If we did we would be only minimally correct.

    While the rise of the kings plays a pivotal role in the road to redemption their appearance is not one that is whole heartedly endorsed by the tellers of our Biblical tale. There are two schools of thought (within the Bible) about the kings. The first school is anti-monarchy. This school is clear that God is the only king that the people of Israel need. Any other kings are mere pretenders who will abuse the people through taking their sons for the army, their daughters for serving girls and their money in order that the kings live a lavish life-style. The pro-monarchy school implies that it had been God's plan all along to name kings who would be the earthly representative of God. While God would still be in charge God wanted there needed to be an earthly ruler to guide and direct the people. These two conflicting views are held in tension throughout the books of Kings and Chronicles.

    Fortunately there are two places where these schools converge and provide for us a way forward on our road to redemption. The first convergence is that they are each clear that the kings do not have absolute power. All Kings rule under the authority of God and the Law of Moses. In other words there is no divine right of Kings to do whatever their please. The kings only possess limited power. This is a significant step in the life of the people of God. It is significant first because it makes clear that there is only one God. Unlike most of the nations around them Israel and Judah (the two nations which came into being after the death of Solomon) never assigned divinity to their rulers. While Egypt, Babylon and Rome among others worshipped their leaders as gods, the children of Israel would never do so. There was a clear delineation between the One True Living God and human beings. This allowed the people to continue to focus their worship on YHWH and YHWH alone.

    The second convergence where these schools provide for us a way forward on our road to redemption is that the kings were to understand themselves as servants of the people. Their role was to care for and provide for the welfare of the people. The kings were to insure that there was proper worship. The kings were to insure that the people were protected. The kings were to insure that syncretism did not overtake the people. In other words the kings were to model for the people what a savior ought to look and act like. Thus the image of David as the liberator and protector of God's people became the archetype for the coming messiah. This is one reason why the Gospel of Luke takes such great pains to locate Jesus' birth in the city of Bethlehem, David's ancestral town. This image of the servant ultimately shows up in the writings of the prophet Isaiah and in Jesus' understanding of his vocation as messiah.

    Though the road to redemption was a bumpy one with many twists and turns, it was ultimately made possible by the work of very fallible kings who none-the-less insured that it was YHWH and not themselves who were at the center of the life of God's people.

    

The Road to Redemption: The Judges

    Over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at God's movement toward the ultimate redemption of the world. Needless to say God is taking God's good time in bringing this about. If we consider that Abraham (the one to whom the original promise of redemption was given) lived about 1,200 years before Christ, that means God has been at this redemption business for about 2,300 years. In a society like ours where the only thing that matters is what happens today (or how things go this quarter) this long term transformation can seem a bit frustrating. The good news however is that along the way we can witness God at work in our midst advancing God's plan. We are able to catch glimpses of redemption. This is case with the time of the judges.

    For those of you who are not familiar with the time of the judges, let me do a recap. The stories about the judges are contained in the seventh book of the Bible, appropriately named, Judges. The historical setting was the time between the arrival of the people of Israel in the Promised Land and the kingships beginning with Saul and David. This was a time of great trial for God's people. Though the previous book of the Bible, Joshua, implied that the Hebrews had completely conquered the Promised Land and could therefore live in peace, the reality on the ground was very, very different. The Israelites were no more than a loose confederation of tribes who had taken control of small parts of the hill country in what we would now think of as Israel. The plains and the coasts belonged to more established and well-armed nations including the Canaanites and Philistines. Those peoples had better weapons, better organization (kings) and better fortified cities. This made life very difficult for the lightly armed and disorganized Hebrews. What followed was several hundred years of conflict in which the Hebrews often found themselves "outgunned" and out guided.

    This is the point in the story where the judges appear and play their part in God's redemption story. The judges were both men and women. Some of their names are familiar to us; Gideon, Deborah and Samson. Others are not familiar at all: Otheniel, Ehud and Shagmar. What binds these people and their stories together is that they were charismatic leaders who received a specific call from God, in a specific moment in history to perform a specific task, the liberation of God's people. Without their efforts the Hebrews would have vanished into the mists of time, along with the redemptive task to which they were called. We can see this in the way that the writer of the Book of Judges always casts the call and efforts of the judges as part of God's long range plan for world-wide redemption.

    The recurring theme of Judges is that "The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and worshipped the Ba'als." The Ba'als were the nature gods of the Canaanites and Philistines. When the people of Israel would go astray and follow the Ba'als God would give God's people over to their enemies. Ultimately the people would cry out to God (just as in Egypt) and God would send them a judge. These judges would then rally the people, defeat the enemies of Israel and bring the people back to God and to their true calling; being the people through whom God would liberate and redeem creation.

    A second way for us to see the importance of the judges is to see them as prefiguring Jesus. Jesus would be the one called and sent by God to liberate humanity from the powers and principalities of this world. While the manner of liberation would be different, a sacrificial death rather than war and armed conflict, the results would be the same; God's people would be free to once again turn their lives over to following the living God and the way of life God offers. My hope is that both of these stories, that of the Judges and that of Jesus will encourage us to look for signs of God's redemptive work in the world, and be an encouragement for us to do our part in this amazing work.

    

The Road to Redemption: The Law

 

    This past Saturday night Cindy was watching the 50s epic, The Ten Commandments. As I was passing through the room (it is not one of my must see movies) I heard Moses (aka Charlton Heston) telling Pharaoh (aka Yul Brynner) that he needed to let the Hebrews go so that they could be ruled by Law and not by a tyrant. This is an interesting statement considering Moses knew nothing of Law until the people of God had reached the wilderness. God had not tipped off Moses that the 10 Commandments would be forthcoming. For those of you who may be curious about why the writers of the film would make such a gaff about the Law being mentioned so early in the story we need to remember that this film was as much about critiquing communism as it was about telling the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Interestingly enough however the writers got their theology right even if they got their Biblical history wrong...which we will get to in a few paragraphs…but first a few words about Law.

While many of us may think of the 10 Commandments as something new and unique, it was not unprecedented. Over the more than a thousand years prior to the Exodus (usually dated in the 1200s BCE) various Middle Eastern rulers (Urukagina, Hammurabi, Ur-Nammu of Ur, and Lipit-Ishtar of Isin among others) produced law codes. These codes were designed to restrain governments (including kings) in their abuse of citizens and offer guidance in settling disputes between individuals. They point to an understanding that while the supreme ruler may be considered a god, as was often the case, this status was not an absolute license for action. It was a reminder that even "a god" needed a contract with his people or the "god" could be overthrown.

     What is remarkable about the Torah, or the Law of Moses, is that it is a contract between God and humanity, not between human rulers and those they govern. The Law begins by clarifying the relationship between the people and God (including religious rituals), then goes on to deal with relationships between human beings in areas as diverse as hygiene and sexual activity (again from a religious point of view). As a series of laws formulated during the time when Israel was still a loose knit agricultural society they do not deal with many of the issues dealt with by other law codes such as large scale commerce and the rule of kings. At the same time however there are similarities between the Torah and the other law codes such as when they deal with civil penalties and divorce.

    Now back to the ways in which the writers got their theology right.

The first is that Law directs the allegiance of people towards God as the law giver. It is a reminder that no human being should ever be given ultimate rule over the people of God. The true "king" will always be God. This understanding in and of itself was always a restraint on the power of the Israelite kings. Thus the orientation of the people will be to worship God and not the kings (which was not the case in Egypt, Rome and most of Mesopotamia where kings were often worshipped as gods).

    Second, the Law restrains evil. The Hebrew Scriptures make it clear that the God of creation is a God of order and not chaos. Therefore if people are to be truly free and redeemed, they need to live within life giving parameters. Chaos, or the lack of law and structure, leads to death and so needs to be restricted by the use of law.

    Finally the law points us toward the good. It offers us models of appropriate behavior in difficult circumstances…thus insuring order in God's world. All three of these uses of the law move us toward being the redeemed people of God…which is why Jesus made it clear that the law would never disappear.

    

The Road to Redemption: Freedom

    As human beings we are always caught between two forces; togetherness and separateness (this comes from the work of Murray Bowen, M.D.). On the one hand we want to be connected to others; to family, friends and community. Biblically we could speak of this as God's having created us to love God and neighbor (you can't love others without being connected). On the other hand we want to be independent; to have the ability to make our own choices and decisions. Biblically we could speak of this as the ability God has given us to "Choose this day whom you will serve…but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord." (Joshua speaking in Deuteronomy 24:15) While seemingly contradictory drives each is a gift of God that enables us to be fully human. They allow us to balance our lives between loving others (togetherness) and loving self (separateness). In order to work appropriately however each of these forces needs the exact same condition, freedom.

    It is freedom that allows persons to be truly together and separate. Loving togetherness, whether emotional or sacrificial (Biblical "agape" love) cannot be forced or coerced. While the use of force may create what appears to be loving togetherness (living in community or doing for others), it is in fact not love but coercion. This is forced togetherness. In the same way and perhaps more obviously we cannot be separate without freedom. Without freedom we cannot exercise the ability God has given us to make our own choices and be responsible for our own lives.

    Unfortunately we live in a world in which coercion and forced togetherness has often ruled the day. Human history is replete with nations, tribes and religions coercing, bullying and killing others in order that everyone conforms to the norms and beliefs of the dominant group. There are any number of reasons we could give for this tendency; fear, arrogance, pride and so on. Regardless of the reason such limitations on freedom are a violation of God's plan for the world. We can see that this is so in the scriptural stories in which God insures humanity has the freedom to exercise both drives.

    We first witness this gift of freedom in the opening stories of Genesis (Chapter 3) in which God gives Adam and Eve choices. God has created a marvelous place for them in which they can live in loving relationship with their creator. At the same time God leaves them free to choose how close, or distant they desire to be (the metaphor of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). Even when they make the wrong choice God continues to allow the forces of togetherness and separateness to function.

We see God's desire for freedom again in the great story of liberation we call the Exodus. God's people have found themselves enslaved in Egypt as an inferior race. God's people cry out to God. God hears their cries and sends Moses and Aaron to act as their liberators. Through a series of plagues and miracles God's people are free. As the people enter the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land God once again desires loving togetherness (through the giving of the Law) but allows the people be separate by giving them the ability to choose how close or how distant they desire to be to God.

    We see God's desire for freedom in the gift of God's son Jesus of Nazareth. As the Apostle Paul tells the story each human being's will is enslaved to the powers and principalities of this world (in other words our natures are aligned against God and the life God offers). That being the case it is impossible for human beings to fully choose (exercising separateness) the ultimate good of loving God and neighbor (exercising togetherness). In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the power of sin was broken thus giving us the ability to choose to be loving (togetherness) and independent (separateness). Through Jesus then we become capable of balancing the forces with which God imbued us; thus allowing us to be fully alive and fully human. This balancing act is one of the keys which makes redemption possible.

The Road to Redemption: Abraham

    So what is God going to do about the mess the world is in? That is the central question that leaps out at anyone who reads the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, or who turns on the evening news. The first eleven chapters of Genesis begin well and end badly. Genesis begins with God's marvelous creative activity and God declaring that it is all good. Things begin to go south immediately thereafter. Adam and Eve want to be like God. One of their sons murders his brother. Evil expands so greatly that God decides to begin again with Noah and his family…though even after God saves them from the flood Noah gets drunk and his son…well let's just say the Bible does not go into all the details but it isn't pleasant. Finally humanity returns to the original sin of wanting to be like God and tries to storm heaven. With that kind of behavior (even in metaphoric story) little wonder the world is in the shape it is in.

    As chapter 12 opens everything changes. We move from a world which seems almost mythic (meaning stories intended to explain spiritual truths) to a world very much rooted in history. While there has been an ongoing debate about the historicity of Abraham (just as there has been much debate about the historicity of much of the Bible) the language of the Abrahamic stories is ancient. Words and names which are used in this portion of Genesis are not used again. The cultural norms described fit well with what historians and archeologists have discerned about the time in which Abraham would have lived. In other words, I believe, we can with relative certainty know that by chapter 12 we have moved into the realm of the historic and out of the mythic. I believe that is important not only because of the role Abraham plays in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths, but because of the promises that God makes to Abraham.

    The Abrahamic story begins with a call and a promise from God. God asks Abraham to risk everything in exchange for three things; land, offspring and blessing. While much of the world today focuses on the first promise, land (this is at the heart of the fight over the land of Israel in the Middle East), we ought to be focused on the second and third promises. We will begin with the third promise first. The third promise is not only that Abraham himself will be blessed but that he will be a blessing to the entire world. "And by you all of the families of the earth will be blessed." (Genesis 12:3) The concept of blessing is not simply that someone will be healthy, wealthy and wise, but that they will be whole in every aspect. This means they will be whole in their relationship with God, neighbor and creation. Thus through Abraham, God is going to restore this broken creation.

    The second promise to Abraham, offspring, is one that offers us a glimpse into how great God's blessings will be. Abraham is told that his offspring will number more than the stars in heaven and the sands on the seashore. In other words, God's blessings which will somehow come about through Abraham will impact not just a small group of people (the Jewish people who are biological descendants of Abraham) but a massive swath of humanity. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Rome makes it clear that anyone who believes in Jesus is included in those offspring (more about that later).

    Where this leaves us then is with two important points. The first point is that God is not going to allow sin and evil to have the last word as regards God's great creation. Instead God will work toward the redemption of the world. The second point is that God is going to use ordinary human beings as the means of this redemption. God will neither start over (as with Noah) not will God simply wave God's "hand" and make everything better. God is going to get down and dirty with humanity in the process of redemption. Over the next several weeks we will look at the slow, yet steady work of God as God works with humanity toward the redemption of the world.

Sin: Brokenness Due to Anti-Semitism

The word anti-Semitism was first coined in 1860. It was used to describe the attitude throughout Europe at that time which argued that Semitic races (especially Jews) were inferior to Aryan races. While it would be comforting to think that this kind of anti-Jewish sentiment was new to that time, it wasn't. The Jewish people had been the victims of oppression, expulsion and death for more than two thousand years before this. From the Babylonians who tried to destroy the Hebrew nation and society in 587 BC, to Antiochus IV Epiphanes who tried to destroy Judaism around 267 BC, to Roman persecution between 70 and 130 CE, to crusader slaughters in the Middle ages, to expulsion from Spain and Portugal in the late 1400s and to ongoing pogroms in Russia, Jews were abused and oppressed long before 1860.

    Helen Fein, a Holocaust scholar defines Anti-Semitism as "a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions – social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence – which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews." This sense of Anti-Semitism is reflected in stereotypes of Jews that have been used across the centuries: greedy, untrustworthy, desirous of world domination, genetically inferior, and ultimately as Christ killers. These stereotypes and latent hostility have been used to marginalize, brutalize and ultimately attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.

    Christianity has taken a leading role in this anti-Jewish effort. While it is not as pronounced today as it has been in the past (Henry Ford once published an anti-Jewish paper entitled "The International Jew") there are still those who want to diminish the Jewish people and their relationship with God. A first group teaches what is called "Replacement Theology." Replacement Theology states that because the Jews rejected Jesus, they were replaced as God's people by the church. Thus the Jews are outsiders to God's promises. Others who teach premillennial dispensational theology (these are the people who believe all faithful Christians will be "beamed" into heaven before the end times begin) while rejecting Replacement Theology still proclaim that the church and the people of Israel are two entirely separate entities. And while God may have plans for the Jews in the future the Jewish people are essentially irrelevant until the end times. While neither of these views is overtly antagonistic toward Judaism they each express an attitude that somehow the Jews are no longer God's people and thus once again attempt to marginalize the Jews as people.

    The sin which is at the heart of anti-Semitism is the dehumanizing of a particular people. This is an extension of human communities' tendency to divide people into insiders and outsiders (insiders being good and worthy, while outsiders are evil and unworthy). By so doing we marginalize men, women and children who were created in the image of God and in whom the very breath of God lives. Additionally with Judaism it means to ignore Israel's place in our own scriptures. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Rome (11:1-2) put it this way. "Has God rejected God's people? By no means…God has not rejected God's people whom God foreknew." Paul makes it clear that while some Jews have rejected Jesus this does not mean that God has replaced Israel with the church. In fact Paul later speaks of the church (Gentile believers) as being grafted into the root of God's people in Judaism. Thus the church is merely an extension of Israel and not its replacement.

    The challenge for us as Jesus followers is twofold. First it is to acknowledge our gratitude toward the Jewish people. It was God's originally called people who kept the story of God alive and became the incubator for our Jesus' faith. Second it is to build relationships with our Jewish brothers and sisters to acknowledge that we worship a common God and share common aspirations (to love God and neighbor). By so doing we honor God who desires reconciliation and peace among all peoples.