Day 272: are our hands clean?

Ezekiel 9-10, I John 4, Psalm 74 OR Sirach 27

“He said in my hearing, ‘Pass through the city after him, and kill; your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. Cut down old men, young men and young women, little children and women.'”

Reading Ezekiel 9 against the backdrop of reports of ISIS killing children in Iraq, against the backdrop of what many are calling the martyrdom of James Foley, the journalist murdered by militants; reading Ezekiel against the background of our condemnation of the extremism of our enemies is about as uncomfortable as it gets.

We discussed at the beginning of the prophet’s book the mystical nature of his writings. Now we see the dangers of literalism.

I John says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

This is not to say that Ezekiel is a false prophet; but that those who cherry-pick verses of violence and read into them their own commandments to kill have lost their way; they have forgotten to test the spirit of interpretation against the commandments of love: Thou shalt not kill.

“Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brother or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

Of course, the warning does not belong to radicals alone, but to each of us that seeks to justify our prejudice, our grudges, our resentment and hatred; we suburban and domestic extremists, rationalizing our unloving with the twisted words of scripture, hardened into swords where they should hang like poetry, twisting in the wind.

 

Day 271: speechless

Ezekiel 7-8, I John 3, Psalm 73 OR Sirach 26

I’m finding that the jaw-dropping imagery of Ezekiel is leaving me kind of speechless, which is interfering somewhat with blogging; I am somewhat comforted in the anti-perfectionist assurances of John:
“…and reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts…”

Day 269: illustrated prayer

Ezekiel 3-4, I John 1, Psalm 71 OR Sirach 24

Ezekiel becomes the bodily illustrator of the troubles befalling Jerusalem. Just as his actions are symbolic, his descriptions of them should not be over-literalized. He is speaking, acting and writing in signs and metaphors. Such, sometimes, is prayer.

How does your body, your posture, your choice of time, place and position, illustrate your approach to scripture and to prayer? Is it time for a change of scenery?

Day 268: encouragement

Ezekiel 1-2, II Peter 3, Psalm 70 OR Sirach 23

With the advent of Ezekiel, we are in for a wild ride. Writing during the exile in Babylon, witness from afar to the destruction of the Temple, Ezekiel was forced to rethink some of the conventional wisdom around election, the Promised Land, and the chosen people of the covenant.

Ezekiel believed in the covenant, and he believed in God’s promises to God’s people. What he realized is that our view is limited, and that life is more complicated than a zero-sum reward and retribution scheme can describe. He was a mystic, who saw beyond the present time and situation to understand that God’s promises are everlasting, and Jerusalem a sign of something more than the city that the Babylonians destroyed; the eternal Zion.

Writing visions and strange prophecies, he can be hard to understand, but that is because he has seen beyond the veil. At the heart of his message is faith that God is real, and true; God’s faithfulness everlasting.

The author of the second letter of Peter likewise encourages us not to give up on reading difficult scriptures. Citing Paul, he says, “There are some things in [Paul’s letters] hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, since you are forewarned, beware that you are not carried away with the error of the lawless and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

Maybe we could have done with this advice before reading the Pauline corpus; but I have no doubt that it will come in just as handy for interpreting the strange and wonderful work of Ezekiel.

Day 267: siege

Lamentations 5, II Peter 2,  Psalm 69 OR Sirach 22

I know that skipping Saturday’s blog is becoming a little too regular; this week I had an excuse as I was moving my son into college. Be assured that I am still reading!

Anyway, although today we read the last chapter of Lamentations, I do want to pick up also on a verse from Saturday: “Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger, who pined away, stricken, by want of the fruits of the field.”

Often, reading the Bible or historical accounts of our world, we reflect on how barbarous our ancestors were and how civilized we have become, with our targeted drone strikes and tactical interventions. Yet siege, that medieval word, is still a reality of our world.

Those of us of a certain age will think of the Siege of Sarajevo, for which war crimes prosecutions have been pursued. Yet siege per se is not against international law (http://www.crimesofwar.org/a-z-guide/siege/).

Those of us who remember the stories, who read Lamentations and weep, might pass a thought and a prayer for those living under the Gaza blockade, which some would say is a siege by any other name. I invite you to research and make up your own mind about the civility and humanity of such a strategy (see, for example, http://www.globalresearch.ca/maintaining-the-unlawful-siege-of-gaza-is-a-crime-against-humanity/5395417) .

How far have we really come, O Lord? And how far have we fallen? Art thou exceedingly angry with us?

Day 264: lamenting in place

Lamentations 1-2, I Peter 5, Psalm 67, Sirach 20

The Book of Lamentations was written, according to tradition, by Jeremiah to lament the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. It is difficult to overestimate the impact of the temple destruction on the people of Judah. It was their heart, their home. 

Over quarter of a century has passed since I visited the western wall, the only part left standing of the second temple, built to restore and replace that destroyed by the Babylonians in 587BCE. The new temple fell to the Romans in 70CE. The wall has become a place of pilgrimage, of prayer and lamentation. It remains the only building made with human hands that I have experienced as truly alive; as though the centuries of prayer whisper through the wall, and the hands and heads that rest against it share one heartbeat with the living stones.

We are a people of place. Each of us has touchstones that we would revisit; most of us know where we would like our bones buried or our remains released when the time comes. Place matters.

For the people living in and around Jerusalem, and especially in the nearby Gaza strip, there is plenty to lament in these days. The signs all around the city in various languages invite us all to pray for the place which, whether we have visited it or not, holds sway over our religious imaginations:

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Day 263: stewardship

Jeremiah 52, I Peter 4, Psalm 66 OR Sirach 19

My NRSV translation of I Peter 4:10 has,

“Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.”

We tend to use “stewardship” as a euphemism for “giving” or even “fundraising;” but the biblical notion of stewardship is administration of the gifts of God. A steward is a servant in the household, responsible for things that do not belong to him or her personally, but which are entrusted to his or her administration, disbursement, conservation. A steward serves the householder’s bounty to the house’s guests, and does not stint, because nothing is his own to hold back. She does so without envy or regret, because it is not her own that she is giving away.

“Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.”

How do you think about, pray about, do stewardship?

Day 262: hope

Jeremiah 50-51, I Peter 3, Psalm 65 OR Sirach 18

“Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence,” advises the author of the first letter attributed to Peter.

What is your hope? How do you defend your hopefulness in a world in which the internet memes declare that “if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention” (with, it has to be said, some justification)? What is the hope that is in you? Will you share it with us?

Day 261: repent

Jeremiah 48-49, I Peter 2, Psalm 64 OR Sirach 17

First, a side note: the men writing in the Bible could think, apparently, of nothing more terrifying to happen to a person than labour and childbirth. Good thing we women have that covered, then, isn’t it?

On a more serious note, I am writing this as the city of Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, is struggling through its second week of troubles following the shooting death of a black teenager at the gun of a white police officer, with all of the power disparity and racial discomfort that such a sentence implies. Reading Jeremiah’s litany of destruction, I wonder how we could ever have thought that we could be exempt from the judgement that befalls the nations that are too proud, too cold, too haughty to care for their own, their little ones, their children. The prophets speak of infidelity and idolatry; we too are guilty of blasphemy when we disown, disparage, demean by our words, by our actions, by the actions of our systems, the systems that we uphold with our money and our votes and our blind eyes; we are guilty of blasphemy when we disinherit or disavow anyone who is made in the image of God.

Thus says Jeremiah: their shouting is not the shout of joy. 

Will we repent? 

Day 260: wisdom and folly

Jeremiah 46-47, I Peter 1, Psalm 63 OR Sirach 16

I must admit, I have been underwhelmed by the gathered wisdom of Ecclesiasticus, or Sirach. It seems simplistic at times, and appears to be undermined by normal human observation, that good is not always rewarded nor evil defeated. So what to do with such a collection of “wisdom”?
Last night, I watched the final episodes of the third season of Rev, available on Hulu and other avenues (especially if you’re in the UK, where it was made). Adam, the protagonist, is having something of a breakdown, and at the end of his own, personal stations of the cross experience, he deposits a large, wooden cross at the top of a hill, and has a bit of a hysterical moment. A shabby, presumably habitually drunk, man in a knitted hat comes and joins in. He sits down with Adam and offers his wisdom, which is along the lines of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and other such platitudes. Adam, momentarily hopeful, begins to turn away in cynical disgust and despair, until the stranger addresses him by name, telling Adam that he will always be there for him.
Turns out, the shabby stranger who looked a lot like Liam Neeson under his hat and who was full of platitudinous wisdom, was Jesus, the Word and Wisdom of God.
So what is Adam to take away from the encounter?
The wisdom, perhaps, is in the search for wisdom. The foolishness of God, we are told, is far beyond the wisdom of humanity (perhaps that’s what the writers were trying to convey in this strange little scene). The final words that truly spoke to Adam were his own name, his soul addressed by God.
Perhaps the wisdom of Sirach is a diamond covered in dirt, which needs dusting and sifting and searching with a magnifying glass to find the still, small voice behind it all, calling us by name, into wisdom, into God.