Tag: spiritual life

The Need for Partnership and Participation (Malachi 3:5-12)

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

“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.

“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.

“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’

“Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.

“But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’

“In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty. (New International Version)

Return To God

God and God’s people were at odds with each other. The Lord was weary of the people’s constant complaining. They had a wrongheaded notion that God was absent, just because circumstances were not going their way.

Yet it is important to keep in mind that belief in God’s presence and God’s inherent goodness is absolutely essential to a faithful and good life.

If you think God is absent, then the best place to find God is at the outskirts or margins of a society. The Lord is there to protect the weakest persons and those who have been neglected by others.

The needy in Israel were on the outside without any power or a voice, which is why the prophet Malachi called the people to repentance – to change and amend their ways. They should return to God.

But what does a return to God look like? Since the people generally did not think they were doing anything necessarily wrong, they didn’t have a clue how to do this returning to God. They didn’t have the sense to know they were on the outs with God – which is why the prophet Malachi was speaking to them.

To the people at that time, and practicing the injustice that they were practicing, God responded that they should return by stopping their robbery of God.

Tithes and Offerings

Specifically, the people should reinstate the full mandated practice in the law of tithes and offerings.

Please understand that these tithes and offerings have nothing to do with modern capital fund campaigns for building churches or establishing new ministries. Rather, these words have a specific context that we must pay attention to.

The “tithe” in Israel was the temple tax, paid to the Levites, because this was the tribe of Levi’s only source of income. (Numbers 18:20-30)

An “offering” is a general term, referring to all the sorts of sacrifices offered at the temple as a part of Israelite worship. And once again, the Levites depended upon these offerings in order to eat and live.

Thus, tithes and offerings in Israel had a synergistic purpose of providing the people an opportunity to worship God and center their communal life around the Lord; and also providing for the Levites, so that they could make their living.

And then, the priests who attended to all the temple functions would use funds from the tithes and offerings to help the poor and indigent in the community.

So, a failure to provide tithes and offerings was an injustice, because it was neglecting to care for fellow members of society who needed help.

People could starve and die without practicing God’s law concerning tithes and offerings. And that is why it angered God so much whenever people reneged on their duty toward the temple practices.

Cooperation, Not Competition

Therefore, repentance and returning to God would happen only when the priests and the people cooperated together. Then, God’s faithfulness could be made effective and manifest itself among the entire social structure of Israel.

The entire society was built upon a divine/human cooperative. It required both human action and divine blessing working together.

None of this was a contract or a deal in which people do the right thing, and then God automatically blesses, like some divine slot machine that persons put coins into.

Instead, it is a system in which the laity work together with the clergy; and then all the people work together with God. In other words, God’s ideal is partnership and participation.

God will bring a great produce. But the people would have to do the hard work of planting and harvesting the crops. This is very far from any sort of name-it-and-claim-it theology in which a person prays for whatever they want and God will give it to them. That is not how an abundant life is produced.

Abundance comes wherever there are partners who participate with each other. If that system breaks down, then people are in a world of trouble.

So, people must take the social justice of God quite seriously – with its specific requirements about caring for one another.

Although we may not have the same particular system of Levites and a Temple, God’s heart for justice, for people’s basic needs to be met and satisfied, has never changed. That value still stands the test of time throughout all of human history.

Almighty God, who created us in your own image: Grant us grace to fearlessly contend against evil, and to make no peace with oppression. Enable us to reverently use our freedom, in the establishment and maintenance of justice in our communities and among the nations, to the glory of your holy Name. Amen.

Divine Intervention (Isaiah 1:24-31)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem, by David Roberts (1796-1964)

So now, listen to what the Lord Almighty, Israel’s powerful God, is saying: “I will take revenge on you, my enemies, and you will cause me no more trouble. I will take action against you. I will purify you the way metal is refined, and will remove all your impurity. I will give you rulers and advisers like those you had long ago. Then Jerusalem will be called the righteous, faithful city.”

Because the Lord is righteous, he will save Jerusalem and everyone there who repents. But he will crush everyone who sins and rebels against him; he will kill everyone who forsakes him.

You will be sorry that you ever worshiped trees and planted sacred gardens. You will wither like a dying oak, like a garden that no one waters. Just as straw is set on fire by a spark, so powerful people will be destroyed by their own evil deeds, and no one will be able to stop the destruction. (Good News Translation)

Judgment does not mean that you need to leave a part of yourself behind in order to be accepted or belong. Judgment isn’t about stuffing down emotions and denying certain thoughts about things because you were told to.

Rather, judgment – divine judgment – is for those leaders, and the persons who support such leaders, who tell people they have to live a particular way, be a certain way, and think in the same way the leaders say you have to think.

Isaiah’s prophecy is first and foremost directed toward leaders – political leaders and religious leaders. Indeed, the nation of Israel had gone down a path of worship that God never condoned nor wanted.

And the Lord put the primary blame squarely upon rulers who led their people in unacceptable ways by telling them things that God never wanted. As a result, the nation as a whole, lived unjustly and unrighteously.

God was determined to do something about the situation of bad leadership: Replace the rulers and advisers. Get rid of them, just like a metallurgist gets rid of impure and worthless dross.

A lot of things in life rise and fall because of leadership. The character and competence of a leader is of upmost importance. God raises up particular people to lead. So, leaders and rulers are expected to fulfill their mandated duty with all diligence and decorum.

The city of Jerusalem fell to the invading Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. All of the Old Testament prophetic books are related to that seminal event in one way or another.

Jerusalem’s destruction, according to the prophets, had a direct relationship to the failure of political kings and religious priests to lead the people according to God’s law. And that failure was specifically tied to the lack of religious piety and leadership performance amongst the rulers of the land.

Indeed, individuals are responsible for their own thoughts and words and actions. Yet, at the same time, the leaders of a city and a nation are also responsible for whether they are leading the people into ways of justice and equity, or injustice and prejudice.

People in responsible positions of authority are to take ownership of the sort of culture they develop. And when people, as a whole, have rude and irresponsible words and actions, such behavior isn’t only on individuals – it’s on the leaders, as well.

God will hold everyone accountable – especially leaders = for what they have done, and not done, to foster a just and right society.

In the time of the prophets, the majority of those in authority led the people into a degenerate state. It had become so bad that divine judgment would intervene in order to burn out the evil, and remove the worthless dross of incompetent and inconsiderate leadership.

Only through the wholesale replacement of rulers and advisers could restoration and regeneration ever take place.

Fortunately, the Lord is a God of justice, mercy, and grace. The Lord is a redeeming God. And the theme of redemption runs throughout the Book of Isaiah. Yet, for a nation to be redeemed, it will require an elimination of rebellious evil.

The wrath of God exists precisely because of the love of God. Since the Lord has a steadfast, committed, and covenantal love for the people, God will render judgment, purging hate and injustice from the land.

When God decrees something, no one can stop it. And when God decrees destruction upon the material things which promote illegitimate worship and public injustice, you can be absolutely sure that it’s going to happen.

No one, no city, and no nation is truly autonomous, in the sense that they can do whatever the heck they want to do, regardless of whether it is right or just, or not. There is no person and no government who is free to indulge in their own selfish agenda.

We have a purpose and a mandate as people on this earth, to care for this world – the people and the environments we inhabit.

All of the ways in which individuals, groups, and governments cheapen and degrade human dignity and environmental worth, puts everyone at risk of survival and a good life on this planet.

Unjust and dysfunctional systems and structures must be purged of their impurities. And that means, in many cases, a new order of things must occur.

If we cannot learn to play well with one another, then playtime will be over; and God will call us back into the house and make us sit in the corner for a long time – or worse.

Whenever leadership fails to be neighborliness, then we have a huge problem.

Our world suffering divine devastation of all the things we know and love may not be far behind. And, quite frankly, it will be our own damn fault – and not somebody else’s.

However, in the prophetic biblical tradition, devastation and destruction never have the last word. There is always hope – a confident expectation that good, right, and just forms of social, economic, and religious communities will function yet again.

There are good leaders waiting in the wings. It’s just that no one yet sees or knows them. But God will raise them up at the proper time, to accomplish good purposes in communities, churches, families, and governments everywhere.

A divine intervention will make the last be first, and the first be last.

May it be so, for the blessing of the world, and to the glory and praise of God. Amen.

Immortal God and Mortal Humanity (Psalm 90)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
Digital artwork by Bruce Butler

Lord, you have been our dwelling place
    in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth
    or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
    from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You turn us back to dust
    and say, “Turn back, you mortals.”
For a thousand years in your sight
    are like yesterday when it is past
    or like a watch in the night.

You sweep them away; they are like a dream,
    like grass that is renewed in the morning;
in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
    in the evening it fades and withers.

For we are consumed by your anger;
    by your wrath we are overwhelmed.
You have set our iniquities before you,
    our secret sins in the light of your countenance.

For all our days pass away under your wrath;
    our years come to an end like a sigh.
The days of our life are seventy years
    or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;
even then their span is only toil and trouble;
    they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Who considers the power of your anger?
    Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.
So teach us to count our days
    that we may gain a wise heart.

Turn, O Lord! How long?
    Have compassion on your servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
    so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us
    and as many years as we have seen evil.
Let your work be manifest to your servants
    and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us
    and prosper for us the work of our hands—
    O prosper the work of our hands! (New Revised Standard Version)

All of the psalms are prayers. Most of them are prayers of David. Today’s psalm is a prayer of Moses.

Moses acknowledged and affirmed that God is eternal, and we humans are not. We are frail and in need of God. We are dependent upon God for health, hope, and happiness in life.

There are observations to notice in today’s Psalm lesson, that are then followed by prayerful petitions which arise from those observations.

First Observation: God Is Eternal

God is immortal. God has always been, and will always be. Therefore, the Lord’s rule and reign existed way before this world was ever created, and shall extend way beyond the lifespan of creation. God’s dwelling place is without beginning or end – which means that God isn’t going anywhere. That is a great comfort to me.

Second Observation: Humans Are Finite

Whereas God is immortal, we humans are mortal beings. We are creatures with limited time on this earth. We all eventually die. Everyone returns to the dust from which they came – which isn’t even a blink of an eye when compared to God’s eternal existence.

This isn’t meant to be a downer for us, but rather to help us. It is necessary to work within our limitations while living in this world. To live as if we are immortal has grave consequences (pun intended).

Third Observation: The World Is Broken

Our world is fundamentally messed up. Another way of saying this is that everything in creation is under a curse. Things are not as they should be. And that’s on us, not God. Because of our own human proclivity to sin, our world is beset with a great deal of suffering and toil.

Hopefully, in the best scenario, people learn to understand the brevity of life, and gain wisdom on how to live a humble, just, and good life with one another, and with their God.

Now notice the petitions which Moses offered to God, based upon the observations of God’s nature, human nature, and the world’s situation.

First Petition: Turn, O Lord!

Moses was pleading with God to turn away from divine judgment and wrath, which was more than deserved for a group of people who were chronically complaining and disobedient. Moses was well aware of all Israel’s sins, and was counting on the Lord’s mercy for God’s covenant people.

Second Petition: How long, O Lord?

Moses was asking one of those questions that we ask, knowing that he wasn’t really going to get an answer. Yet, in the asking, there is an understanding that human misery won’t go on forever. Our suffering is temporary.

In this petition of Moses, he was also calling for a change, for God to deal with the people in a different way. Moses wanted gladness to replace affliction, and the sufferings of this life to give way to the joy of living in a good world.

Third Petition: Prosper the work of our hands

This wasn’t a petition for God to simply make everyone healthy and wealthy. It was a focused prayer that God’s work and our human work would be one seamless activity. That is, this is a prayerful longing for what we do in our lives to completely synchronize with God’s law in this world we all inhabit together.

Whenever we sin, we cause damage, not prosperity. Yet, with a divine/human cooperative in which we acknowledge and affirm God’s sovereignty over our lives, and take up our own human responsibility, then humanity thrives and flourishes in the goodness we were meant to enjoy as God’s creatures.

Christian Observations

In Christianity, the immortal and invisible God comes to us in the mortal and visible life of Jesus. In Christ, the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of humanity is not only synchronized; it is perfectly united and harmonized so that there is deliverance from the power of evil and from God’s judgment.

God’s steadfast love is brought to us with skin on.

For the Christian, Jesus is the answer to the prayers and petitions of Moses. Christ is the prophet foretold by Moses who was to come:

I [Yahweh]will raise up for them [the Israelites] a prophet like you [Moses] from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. (Deuteronomy 18:18, NRSV)

The incarnation, life, ministry, crucifixion, death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification of Jesus Christ has dealt with the weeds and overgrowth of guilt and shame that has taken over the garden of this world.

In Christ, we can begin to hack through all the stuff, in order to see the beauty underneath all of the spiritual neglect which has occurred for so long.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the steadfast love of God the Father, and the encouragement of the Holy Spirit be with you, now and forever. 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.