26 March 2012

Psalm 31; Exod. 4:10-31; 1 Cor. 14:1-19; Mark 9:30-41

Aaron was the first Cyrano, who speaks for his less eloquent friend or brother in this case.  The Lord was angry with Moses for saying, “Here am I, send someone else.”  Moses was chosen by God and had this incredible personal encounter, how could he say this?  He remembered what happened forty years earlier and has no confidence but his confidence is still in self.  Moses has apparently forsaken the law of the Lord concerning circumcision concerning his son.  He cannot go and represent God to the people if he is not completely identified with them and, more importantly, with the Lord.  Apparently Moses was incapacitated from performing the circumcision himself so Zipporah does the procedure and then touches Moses’ feet (euphemism?) to connect him with the circumcision in the same way a worshiper was to lay hands on the animal prior to the sacrifice.  When he and Aaron go to the people, they find that God was right, the people believed and worshipped.

It always amazes me that after the few saw the Transfiguration and they all saw their inability to do anything about the boy with the demon who wanted to kill him that only Jesus was able to deal with that they are arguing about which of them was greatest.  Why, pray tell, did it matter?  Jesus should have been their only concern and yet He wasn’t. To be honest, it sounds like us arguing over preachers or teachers when our eyes should be on HIM.  In response, Jesus says the way to greatness is the kingdom is through service to one another, no longer seeking greatness.  The parable of the child and the words that end this passage are at one with another.  To receive Jesus is to receive the one who sent Him and to receive one whom Jesus sent is to receive Jesus Himself.

The gift of tongues can indeed lead to an inward curvature and to pride.  It is such an unusual gift in the sense that it is obviously a gift that it can become a badge of honor.  Many gifts can come and go and leave room for doubt, all are not healed, prophets should have some humility about their ability to discern all things, those with the gift of interpretation don’t always get the interpretation, etc., but tongues is, well, different.  Paul puts the gift into perspective here by elevating the other gifts.  Tongues, for whatever reason, has always been a problem in many places.  It sometimes becomes the “must-have” gift to validate someone as possessing the Spirit and yet Paul says the gifts that edify the church are more valuable to the kingdom.  Moses started with some signs to validate him to others but moved on from those “tricks” to speaking to the people for the Lord.  In all things let us seek to edify others rather than self.

Oh, how abundant is your goodness,
   which you have stored up for those who fear you
and worked for those who take refuge in you,
   in the sight of the children of mankind!
In the cover of your presence you hide them
   from the plots of men;
you store them in your shelter
   from the strife of tongues.

25 March 2012

Psalm 118; Exod. 3:16-4:12; Rom. 12:1-21; John 8:46-59   

What the Lord speaks to Moses is simple.  He gives a command to go and gather the people and tell them the time has come to fulfill the promise of giving them the land.  He also says that the people will believe Moses and that the elders of Israel will go with Moses to ask for a three day journey to sacrifice to their God.  Moses, however, says that they will not believe him, after the Lord has promised they would.  Because of his unbelief the Lord gives him signs to authenticate his commissioning by God.  The Lord promises Moses that He will be with him and will teach his mouth what to speak.  Of whom is Moses afraid?  It is not Pharaoh but the people of Israel that Moses fears. 

Certainly Jesus’ experience of speaking to these people confirms Moses’ fears.  The problem, however, isn’t His eloquence but their hearing.  The Lord can be with our tongue teaching us what to say but if He isn’t in the hearer also it doesn’t much matter what we say.  Their retort to Jesus is one that proves that an ad hominem attack is the last refuge of those who have no argument at all, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”  The one thing they always purport to know is that Jesus is a Galileean, so the Samaritan card is ludicrous.  It would seem that God’s definition of the word “death” has always been somewhat different from our own.  Jesus uses it here to say that “if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”  It is perfectly obvious to everyone then and now that death comes for us all and yet Jesus must be speaking truth.  In Genesis 2 the Lord said that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “you shall surely die.”  Adam and Eve did not die in the sense that their lives ceased when they ate.  Death must have more to do with separation from the source of life than with the cessation of physical processes.  Will we embrace His definition or continue using our own?

We need to be transformed to live as Christians and that begins with the renewing of our minds to know the good and acceptable and perfect.  Paul tells us to abhor what is evil and hold fast that which is good and that sentence should cause us fear.  We need to be in prayer to know what is evil and what is good.  The original sin was seeking to know these things apart from God Himself and so we should proceed on that path with great caution.  The passage ends with an admonition Cain should have heeded, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  Sounds a good bit like the warning God gave him, “If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”  We must humble ourselves and come to the Lord to understand anything truly in this life.

It is better to take refuge in the LORD
   than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD
   than to trust in princes.

You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;
   you are my God; I will extol you.
Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
   for his steadfast love endures forever!

24 March 2012

Psalm 107:33-43, Exod. 2:23-3:15; 1 Cor. 13:1-13; Mark 9:14-29

The people groaned and cried out for help.  The Lord heard and He remembered, He saw and He knew.  Those verbs are incredibly comforting to know that we have such a God as this.  The rest of the story of the Exodus, beginning with the burning bush is the story of God’s love, it could be reduced to a few words, God acted on behalf of those He loved.  His work starts very small, a bush burning but not burning up, a fire that does not consume, a spectacle for the benefit of one man.  A metaphor for the life to which he is being called in many ways, set on fire for the Lord but not being consumed or destroyed by that fire.  On this same mountain when he returns with the people he will definitely know in a much more powerful way that this is indeed holy ground.  Again we see those verbs from before, “I have seen, I have heard, I know, and I have come down to deliver them.”  Remember the question I noted yesterday, here Moses asks the Lord the same question, ““Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”  For forty years he has been haunted by that question and now he gets the chance to do what he thought was his birth right and he has to know the answer.  Now, he gets his answer, “I AM.” Uncreated, eternal Being, life, the one who can only be described with respect to what He has done has sent him.  What do you say to that?

He has just revealed or been revealed in glory to the three disciples who seemingly always accompanied Him and now in another way Jesus is revealed to a crowd of people as greater than anyone living.  He stands above His disciples in His ability to heal.  He understands something they seem not to understand, that the power to heal comes not from a gift given them for all time, but from prayer.  When Moses undertook to help the people in his own power and without being sent or empowered for the task he failed.  The disciples have had such success before and now it seems they have taken for granted that they can do something.  Belief is never to be in self or in the gifts we have received, being connected to the vine is always critical.

When this passage is read at weddings I always think, “Good luck with that.”  This is a supernatural kind of love being described, no one is able to love this way unless they are truly born again and utterly reliant on the One who is the embodiment of love itself.  We can’t will ourselves to be that loving it requires the Holy Spirit to come close to this ideal.  Paul knows something of love and of human nature and knows that nature has to be conquered before true love, selfless love, can emerge.  For a wonderful exposition of the poverty of our earthly love, read CS Lewis’ Great Divorce.  Love and life requires constant prayer, abiding in Him, the great I AM.  The character of our love for others will reveal who has sent us.

Let us praise, and join the chorus

Of the saints enthroned on high;

Here they trusted Him before us,

Now their praises fill the sky:

“Thou hast washed us with Your blood;

Thou art worthy, Lamb of God!”

Hark! the Name of Jesus, sounded

Loud, from golden harps above!

Lord, we blush, and are confounded,

Faint our praises, cold our love!

Wash our souls and songs with blood,

For by Thee we come to God.

Tune

23 March 2012

Psalm 102; Exod. 2:1-22; 1 Cor. 12:27-13:3; Mark 9:2-13

What did Moses’ mother think would happen when she put her son in the basket and set him adrift on the river?  She clearly loved this child so it seems unlikely she thought he would die in the basket.  His sister Miriam hid and watched to see what would happen.  The rabbis say this is where Miriam got her reputation as a prophetess, she knew what would come next and prepared herself to be part of God’s plan of keeping Moses united with his mother for nursing, so he would know his true identity.  How did Pharaoh’s sister know that this was one of the Hebrew children?  Circumcision must surely be the answer.  Later, most sources say around forty years, Moses identifies with the suffering of his people and attempts to intervene on their behalf.  He finds that they aren’t particularly thankful for his efforts, something he will truly know for forty years in the wilderness.  The question the other Hebrews ask is something that clearly plays on his mind for the next forty years, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us?”  He will not willingly or easily presume to be prince and judge over these people, he will require a good bit of convincing and this question will have to be answered before he is willing to go back.  It seems that the best place for a male of this race to find a wife is always at a well and interesting that the young women assume Moses is an Egyptian.

Peter didn’t know what to say but he, being Peter, had to say something.  How did he know that the other two there were Moses and Elijah, it isn’t like there were pictures to go by.  It had been over a thousand years since these men had died and yet they seem to know immediately who they are.  Jesus’ transfiguration tells us that the veil is lifted to display His glory, the glory of the One and only Son.  Moses wore a veil to hide the fact that his glory was fading in the times in-between his visits with God.  Jesus’ glory was veiled during His existence and yet John and Peter both reflected on this moment in their writings as a defining moment in their faith journey.  When the voice from heaven speaks, suddenly these others, representing the law and the prophets, are gone and Jesus alone remains as the one to whom they should listen, the Word.  They don’t understand about the resurrection from the dead but how could they?

The gifts are to be used for mission and ministry but they are to be used in light of the Great Commandments of loving God and loving our neighbors.  Too often pride enters the picture and we use the gifts out of a love for ourselves and a desire to edify ourselves.  Moses surely knew his own story and thought he had been God’s chosen instrument for alleviation of the suffering of his people, living as a child of the royal family, but he wasn’t to intervene, only to intercede while God worked on their behalf.  He had to learn to love the people in spite of their rejection of him, their grumbling about him, and their disobedience before he was of true value.  Jesus’ death on the cross, indeed His righteousness, was based in His love for the Father and for the people.  Motivation matters.  Think of Jesus’ words with the woman caught in adultery, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”  That could have been a triumphant declaration to let him go first but love motivated Him to lay aside His own claim in favor of forgiveness.

Let us wonder; grace and justice
Join and point to mercy’s store;
When through grace in Christ our trust is,
Justice smiles and asks no more:
He Who washed us with His blood
Has secured our way to God.

Tune

22 March 2012

Psalm 69; Exod. 1:6-22; 1 Cor. 12:12-26; Mark 8:27-9:1

(I have no idea why the lesson would begin at verse 6)

Although Egypt became wealthy and mighty under the economic leadership of Joseph that was of no consequence to this new Pharaoh who determined that the Israelites posed a security threat to his kingdom.  His response to the perceived threat was to persecute and enslave them, a strange strategy for making someone more favorably disposed to your cause.  Pharaoh’s fears are two-fold, that because they were so numerous it was a danger if they became even more so because they could then join with his enemies and fight against them and afterwards “escape from the land.”  They had been given permanent holdings in Goshen, not penned up there, so what would it mean to escape from the land?  The Lord had given Israel favor in fruitfulness to fill the land and now Pharaoh sought to oppose the work of God in destroying that fruitfulness but the midwives and the Lord would not work with him in this wickedness.  For their faithfulness the Lord blessed the midwives.  We are not intended to be faithful to anyone but Him nor fearful of any man. 

Peter proves he is infected with the leaven of the Pharisees.  He is still thinking in terms of an earthly kingdom and it makes no sense that Jesus would be killed by the leaders of the nation of which He would be king.  Peter is tempting Jesus in the same way satan tempted Him, to an earthly, time-bound kingdom of popular acclaim.  The leaven of the Pharisees is always a temptation to measurables and earthly recognition.  In his rebuke of Jesus Peter shows that He is still too earthly-minded and has far to go no matter that he recognizes Jesus as Messiah.  He, and the other disciples, have to learn to be willing to lose their lives for the sake of the kingdom before they can be of true value.  They have to know without doubt that there is a resurrection from the dead to eternal life in order to be prepared to sacrifice this earthly life for something greater.

There is something truly glorious and wonderful about the idea of a church that equally values and celebrates the gifts of all its members.  One of the difficulties of that is not other people but, often, us.  We tend to celebrate ourselves rather than humbling ourselves.  Those who have gifts of service are often overlooked in the larger picture and we resent being overlooked.  Those with “up-front” gifts like speaking publicly are often exalted beyond measure and we tend to like that.  In the story from Exodus today the heroes are mid-wives, people who have a single function, helping women give birth and they are important at that moment but generally work in relative obscurity, but they were an integral part of the growth of the nation and they were singled out and blessed for their faithfulness by God.  Let us serve faithfully where we are called and using our God-given gifts and do so for Him alone.

Let us love the Lord Who bought us,
Pitied us when enemies,
Called us by His grace, and taught us,
Gave us ears and gave us eyes:
He has washed us with His blood,
He presents our souls to God.

Tune