Tag: god’s deliverance

Justice Remembered (Exodus 12:1-13, 21-28)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
Passover Seder, by Melita Kraus

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. 

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 

They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn with fire. 

This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord. I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt….

Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go, select lambs for your families, and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood in the basin.

None of you shall go outside the door of your house until morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike down the Egyptians; when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over that door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you down. 

You shall observe this as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children. When you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this observance mean to you?’ you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.’ ” And the people bowed down and worshiped.

The Israelites went and did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron; so they did. (New Revised Standard Version)

The Exodus, by Yoram Raanan

Today’s story of Passover is the highlight of Jewish history concerning both God’s judgment and God’s justice. It is a continual reminder that God is concerned with the divine Name; with his people; and with providing them what they need.

The Lord’s tenth and final plague against the Egyptians was the ultimate judgment of taking their firstborn children. At the same time, the Lord extended great justice to the Israelites by removing the oppressive obstacles which hindered them from having their basic human needs met.

Both God’s judgment and God’s justice were to be annually remembered through rituals established by God. These remembrance rituals of Passover are meant to be brought perpetually to Jewish minds, so that they will maintain a high view of Gods’ Name, and also never be a nation who acts like the Egyptians.

Passover and Exodus constituted a new beginning and new life for Israel. Slaughtering the Passover lamb was the start of liberation for the people; along with the eating of unleavened bread. Both the blood of the lamb, and the absence of leaven, together communicated freedom to the Israelites from God.

Even today, nearly four millennia later, Passover is still celebrated amongst the Jewish community as a great festival of freedom. The primary ritual in this celebration is the seder, an evening meal which involves eating several symbolic foods.

The purpose of coming together to eat special foods is to relive the experience of the Exodus from Egypt. It is a time of passing down the people’s communal memory, as well as reflecting upon God’s divine redemption for them.

The Passover rituals are the root of Christianity’s celebration of communion at the Table. For Christians, the final seder meal of Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper in the Upper Room is remembered and relived, so that believers may contemplate the Cross of Christ as the ultimate divine redemption.

Table fellowship for both religions – Judaism and Christianity – has a central place in ritual remembrance. God is acknowledged and praised as the great Liberator from oppression. Justice is memorialized. Past events are remembered in order to live justly and rightly in the present.

Deliverance of people from both physical and spiritual slavery is a grand theme throughout all of Holy Scripture. People of freedom are never to let themselves again be placed in bondage. The New Testament puts the matter this way:

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1, NRSV)

The yearning for freedom from oppression and injustice lies within the breast of every human on this earth. It’s why people will go out of their way to use whatever means they have of standing against abusive powers.

It is more than ironic that there are people today who espouse themselves as Christian, yet are hell-bent on using whatever means they have to oppress and abuse others into submission. Such persons are not demonstrating care for the Name of God, especially not the Name of Jesus Christ. Instead, they have another agenda – one that has nothing to do with liberation and freedom.

This is one big reason why we need rituals. Rituals keep us remembering the things we need to remember, and help us forget the things we need to forget.

Earthly power is not the summum bonum of life. Rather, real power is Love. Again, quoting the Apostle Paul from the Book of Galatians:

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. (Galatians 5:13-15, NRSV)

Indeed, all that really counts for us in this life is “faith expressing itself through love.” (Galatians 5:6)

Remembering true freedom, and it’s real cost, through established rituals, is perhaps the best way of ensuring that the oppression and injustice of empires like Egypt and Rome do not happen in our present day.

Therefore, if we lose connection with important and seminal events of the past without ritual remembrance, we are setting ourselves up for terrible injustice to occur.

We are better than that. Redemption and remembrance can help show us the way.

Great God of all justice, righteousness, and redemption: Continue to break the yoke of Pharaoh in our time, and forever shatter the bonds of human oppression.. Hasten the Day when we shall all be free, at the coming of your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit are one God, now and forever. Amen.

An Advent Message of Suffering and Deliverance (Micah 4:8-13)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
The Prophet Micah Exhorts the Israelites, by Gustave Doré, 1866

As for you, Jerusalem,
    the citadel of God’s people,
your royal might and power
    will come back to you again.
The kingship will be restored
    to my precious Jerusalem.

But why are you now screaming in terror?
    Have you no king to lead you?
Have your wise people all died?
    Pain has gripped you like a woman in childbirth.
Writhe and groan like a woman in labor,
    you people of Jerusalem,
for now you must leave this city
    to live in the open country.
You will soon be sent in exile
    to distant Babylon.
But the Lord will rescue you there;
    he will redeem you from the grip of your enemies.

Now many nations have gathered against you.
    “Let her be desecrated,” they say.
    “Let us see the destruction of Jerusalem.”
But they do not know the Lord’s thoughts
    or understand his plan.
These nations don’t know
    that he is gathering them together
to be beaten and trampled
    like sheaves of grain on a threshing floor.
“Rise up and crush the nations, O Jerusalem!”
    says the Lord.
“For I will give you iron horns and bronze hooves,
    so you can trample many nations to pieces.
You will present their stolen riches to the Lord,
    their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.” (New Living Translation)

A lot of people don’t understand much about the Bible, especially many parts of what some call the Old or First Testament of it. It seems to them like it’s all either nonsense or gobbledygook.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I have read the entire Bible not once, but hundreds of times. And there are still many places within Holy Scripture which are an enigma to me.

Part of the reason the Bible can seem so difficult is that, at times, the perspective being written about is so expansive, so large, and so wide that it nearly defies human comprehension.

The Bible reveals a God who is so transcendent that the Lord is able to see the past, the present, and the future all at once, because God is actually above everything, including time.

None of this talk on my part is meant to discourage anyone from reading scripture. Rather, it’s meant to encourage you to keep on reading it, listening to it, talking about it, and exploring its contents.

Instead of a being an impossible puzzle we cannot put together, the Bible is, instead, a deep treasure trove of knowledge, wisdom, and insight into the human condition and the human purpose for being on this earth.

The reason the biblical prophets came along – and included into the canon of Holy Scripture – is that they called people back to their original purpose for being here in the first place.

In every prophetic book, the culture, the society, the religion, and the politics of a people had strayed so far from their reason for existing, that it took what seems to us as extreme language in order to get them back on track.

There were some cases so bad that the prophet’s message to people was inevitable doom. And yet, even then, there was a nugget of grace, showing us that no matter how terrible things may get, the arm of God is not too short to pull the faithful from the brink of annihilation.

Examining the Book of Micah, there is nothing easy about it. The prophet wrote at a time when Assyrian power was dominate, and about to swallow up the northern kingdom of Israel. Yet, he spoke directly to Jerusalem in the southern kingdom of Judah.

Much like a woman in labor and about to give birth, Jerusalem’s cry of suffering will be transformed into a cry of deliverance and freedom.

But we aren’t talking about something that will happen in a few days or even a few years; the prophet was giving the people a panoramic sweep of centuries.

Eventually, the Babylonians come, take the people out of the city into exile to Babylon. It is a cry of pain. Micah was speaking about events which would not occur for another two hundred years.

Yet, at the same time, Micah was talking about his own present generation of people in Israel and Judah. What the people were doing, at that time, was leading to a future of great pain. And there would be a great crying out for salvation from it.

Injustice always creates a state of distress for some, while the ones perpetrating the unjust ways become wealthy on the backs of others who are miserable.

Babylon represented both the place of punishment and of liberation. Out of the exilic darkness, a new age bursts into the light.

Born into a time where many people were longing for God’s deliverance, centuries after the destruction of Jerusalem, after the exile and return to Judea, and after the days of the Maccabees, Jesus subversively entered human history.

Despite all of the human sin, the degradation and oppression of others, the injustice and abuse extant in the world, grace comes in the shape of a baby; mercy enters the world in the form of a child.

The God whom all things depend upon, became dependent, needing a mother to clean him up after a filled first-century diaper. Few people knew at the time that this little baby would be the one to clean up a massive spiritual and metaphorical diaper, full of the world’s nasty stinky injustice.

Presently, it is clear that the nations do not know they will be beaten and trampled – that all who are now in power will be answering to that subversive child born two millennia ago.

Each life may be a mere speck in the scope of history, and yet, at the same time, each life is precious enough to warrant attention from the One who stands above all time.

How you live makes a difference. How you are, matters.

God of both judgment and grace, we pray for all nations, that they may live in unity, peace, and concord; and that all people may know justice, and enjoy perfect freedom. Embrace the most vulnerable members of our society; end the growing disparity between the rich and poor; and grant us courage to strive for economic justice, so that all might know your mercy, and not your wrath. Amen.

A Prayer of Confession and Contrition (Nehemiah 9:16-25)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment

But they—our own ancestors—acted arrogantly.
They became stubborn and wouldn’t obey your commands.
They refused to listen.
They forgot the miracles you performed for them.
They became stubborn and appointed a leader
to take them back to slavery in Egypt.
But you are a forgiving God,
one who is compassionate, merciful, patient,
and always ready to forgive.
You never abandoned them,
even when they made a metal statue of a calf for themselves
and said, ‘This is your god who took you out of Egypt.’
They committed outrageous sins.
But because of your endless compassion,
you didn’t abandon them in the desert.
The column of smoke didn’t leave them during the day,
but it led them on their way.
The column of fire didn’t leave them during the night,
but it gave them light to see the way they should go.
You gave them your good Spirit to teach them.
You didn’t keep your manna to yourself.
You gave them water to quench their thirst.
You provided for them in the desert for 40 years,
and they had everything they needed.
Their clothes didn’t wear out, and their feet didn’t swell.

You gave kingdoms and nations to the Israelites
and assigned them their boundaries.
So they took possession of the land of Sihon,
the land of the king of Heshbon,
and the land of King Og of Bashan.
You made their children as numerous as the stars in the sky.
You brought them into the land you told their parents to enter and possess.
Their children took possession of the land.
You defeated for them the Canaanites, who lived in the land.
You handed the Canaanite kings and their people over to them
to do whatever they wanted with the Canaanites.
The Israelites captured fortified cities and a rich land.
They took possession of houses filled with all sorts of good things,
cisterns, vineyards, olive trees,
and plenty of fruit trees.
So they ate and were satisfied and grew fat.
They enjoyed the vast supply of good things you gave them. (God’s Word Translation)

The Jewish people had experienced the Babylonian Captivity. The walls of Jerusalem had been torn down, and the Temple was ransacked and destroyed.

Years later, the Persians overthrew the Babylonians, and many of the Jewish captives were allowed to return to Judea. One of the returning groups was led by Nehemiah, who was a cupbearer to the king.

Nehemiah engaged in an ambitious project of rebuilding Jerusalem’s wall and securing the city. It was a large undertaking. Yet, even more daunting was restoring the Jewish people’s worship of Yahweh, and following the Torah, God’s law.

Today’s Old Testament lesson takes place in the fifth century B.C.E. Nehemiah, along with the religious leader Ezra the scribe, organized a public assembly. The people listened to the Torah being read, and were fasting, confessing, and repenting of the ways they had neglected God’s law.

A group of Levites (the priests) stood up and said a long prayer of confession. Our verses for today are a part of that extended time of confession of sin and profession of faith. The people’s past history was very much a part of their present circumstances.

The Levities emphasized that it is God’s nature to be full of faithfulness and steadfast love. So, the Lord preserved the Israelites and rescued them out of Egyptian slavery through a series of miraculous wonders.

While their ancestors were out in a desert sojourn, anticipating entry into the Promised Land, God was faithful to provide for the Israelites both physical and spiritual food – Torah and manna.

And yet, despite the incredible rescue from Egypt, and miraculously escaping through the Red Sea, the people were rebellious. Their disobedience to God in the golden calf experience prevented that generation from entering into the promised rest. (Hebrews 3:16-19)

Every generation has its “sinners,” those who seem to have a bent toward selfish behavior, and refuse to see the needs of the entire group. They only serve God if it serves their own self-centered purposes. And they stubbornly refuse to bend to anyone’s wishes, including God’s.

Unfortunately, that sin of pride and arrogance gets passed down to the next generations. It’s not only, in some ways, taught; this sort of stubbornness also appears to have a genetic component, as well. Whenever our minds and hearts are rewired with injustice toward others and disobedience toward God, that wacky wiring gets passed down to the next generations.

It is quite likely that past trauma has a lot to do with skewed minds and hearts.

Epigenetics is a scientific field which investigates how environment influences our genes. Trauma does not alter our actual DNA sequence; but it does impact how that sequence is read and utilized in our body.

When an individual experiences trauma, their body may adapt by adjusting gene expression, and some of these changes can be passed on to their children. It’s like passing on genetic notes to our progeny – which means that these notes can be rewritten (and rewired) by our own life experiences and actions.

I am not a genetic scientist, yet this may be something akin to the divine warning about generational sin, arising from a generation’s trauma experience, after being enslaved and mistreated for 400 years in Egypt. In giving the Law to Moses, God then said:

“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7, NIV)

Whether any of us knows anything about genetics and epigenetics, or not, there yet remains the need for a prayer of confession. It is necessary to acknowledge our own sins, as well as the sins of our ancestors.

In their prayer of confession, the Levites in Nehemiah’s time acknowledged and confessed their own guilt, and the guilt of their ancestors, of being the following:

  1. Obstinate. They stubbornly presumed God would be with them, then obstinately did whatever the heck they wanted.
  2. Stubborn. They were “stiff-necked” and refused to obey God when they didn’t want to.
  3. Forgetful. Not an accidental forgetting, but a purposeful neglect to remember what God had done for the people.
  4. Idolatrous. It was the people’s impatience with waiting for Moses on Mount Sinai that led to the golden calf idol disaster. Failing to accept God’s timetable will always lead to a bevy of bad behavior.
  5. Disobedient. The most sinister form of this is obeying halfway, and believing that you have completely done your duty for God, i.e. the sin of one person, Achan, affecting the entire community. (Joshua 7:1, 10-12, 20-26)
  6. Complaining. Murmuring and grumbling is the dissatisfying attitude and speech of ingrates. When directed at God, it is a failure of faith, replaced with a belief that God is mean and/or capricious.

Confession and repentance are the remedies to both individual and communal guilt. And that is exactly what Ezra and Nehemiah organized the post-exilic Israelites to do, publicly.

Not only did they offer a prayer of confession and repentance, but they also acknowledged and believed God’s faithfulness and mercy to forgive, renew, and restore.

Indeed, God’s grace is greater than all of our sin.

The Levites were not simply offering a mechanical liturgical formula for corporate confession. They were crying out with heartfelt confession to the God they believed was listening and would respond.

As the Levites led the people in confession and repentance, they pointed to the following attributes and activities of God which they put all of their trust in:

God forgives.

He made known his ways to Moses,
    his deeds to the people of Israel:
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
    nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
    or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:7-12, NIV)

God guides.

He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake. (Psalm 23:3, NIV)

God provides.

He has caused his wonders to be remembered;
    the Lord is gracious and compassionate.
He provides food for those who fear him;
    he remembers his covenant forever. (Psalm 111:4-5, NIV)

God sustains.

I lie down and sleep;
    I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. (Psalm 3:5, NIV)

When all is said and done, the centrality of God is humanity’s ballast. As we orient all of life around the Lord, this is what makes all the difference in coming to grips with our past, present, and future.

May it be so, to the glory of God.

Mercy Is Coming (Micah 7:8-20)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
“Justice Tempered with Mercy,” an oil painting by Emil Bisttram, 1936

Do not rejoice over me, my enemy,
        because when I fall, I will rise;
            if I sit in darkness, the Lord is my light.
I must bear the raging of the Lord,
    for I have sinned against him,
        until he decides my case and provides justice for me.
    He will bring me out into the light;
        I will see by means of his righteousness.
    Then my enemy will see;
        shame will cover her who said to me:
            “Where is the Lord your God?”
    My eyes will see her ruin;
        now she will become something to be trampled,
            like mud in the streets.

A day for the building of your walls!
        On that day, the boundary will be distant.
        On that day, they will come to you from Assyria and the cities of Egypt,
            from Egypt to the River,
            from sea to sea,
            and from mountain to mountain.
And the earth will become desolate because of her inhabitants,
        because of the fruit of their actions.

Shepherd your people with your staff,
        the sheep of your inheritance,
        those dwelling alone in a forest in the midst of Carmel.
    Let them graze in Bashan and Gilead, as a long time ago.

As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt,
        I will show Israel wonderful things.

Nations will see and be ashamed of all their strength;
        they will cover their mouths;
        their ears will be deaf.

They will lick dust like the snake,
        like things that crawl on the ground.
They will come trembling from their strongholds to the Lord our God;
        they will dread and fear you!
Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity,
        overlooking the sin of the few remaining for his inheritance?
    He doesn’t hold on to his anger forever;
        he delights in faithful love.
He will once again have compassion on us;
        he will tread down our iniquities.
You will hurl all our sins into the depths of the sea.
You will provide faithfulness to Jacob, faithful love to Abraham,
        as you swore to our ancestors a long time ago. (Common English Bible)

The prophecy of Micah was directed to the people because of the nation’s messed up social and political relations. Unrighteousness had thoroughly drenched the land. In this situation, the nation groaned; Micah responded to them and interceded for the people; God agreed with it all; and Micah concluded with a theological reminder of who God is and what God is like.

The nation of Israel was in a bad way during the eighth century B.C.E. because of their injustice toward one another. The leaders only thought of themselves, and not the people as a whole. Unfaithfulness ran so deep that not even one’s closest friends or relatives could be trusted.

To be a faithful and righteous person during that time required a resolve to wait for God’s deliverance – because there was no way any one person or group of people could fix any of it.

And this is the nature of hope – it can only be understood and realized by knowing, sensing, and feeling hopelessness in all of its despair. We do not hope for something we already possess.

The prophet Micah recognized the situation of the nation for what it was, as well as the consequences to having injustice throughout the land. Yet, he also looked forward to a time when God’s wrath will move from God’s people to the people’s enemies.

It may seem as if the Lord is either slow, not paying attention, or doesn’t care; but God’s timing is not the same as ours. Divine deliverance will come when divine deliverance will come.

The circumstances of Israel’s national sins were ripe not only for God’s judgment, but also for Micah’s prayers on behalf of the people. He called on the Lord to shepherd Israel, while at the same time, to put Israel’s enemies in their place.

And God, out of the storehouse of divine mercy, granted an assurance of pardon.

But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from everything we’ve done wrong. (1 John 1:9, CEB)

Micah affirmed the grace and mercy of God. He had the confident expectation that the Lord would cast all of Israel’s sins into the depths of the sea. Guilt, shame, and despair will not have the last word; the final word belongs to mercy.

Into a world full of cynicism and sarcasm, hopelessness and despair, it is vitally important that we have faithful and godly individuals who have a settled hope. This is what it means to be a remnant, a small minority of people who hold onto that which is just, right, and good.

We are to quietly go about our business of bringing justice, mercy, and love to this world with a quiet and confident expectation that God’s grace will overcome and overwhelm everything in its path.

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.