Day 358: the story

Zechariah 12, Luke 3, Psalm 141 OR 4 Maccabees 9-10

So since it’s the last week of the challenge, and I’m a bit behind on the blogging anyway (although not too bad on the reading), I may get around to some comments on the scriptures this week, but I also want to reflect on the reading of scripture as a spiritual discipline in and of itself. In part, because I’m hoping that one or two people might be prepared to share their own testimony at Sunday’s celebration; but also just because.

The Bible is what brought me to the church. I was baptized at five or six months, although my parents called it “christening”, and I remember being in church at least once after that. I must have been very young, because I couldn’t read the hymns, but sang along at the top of my voice anyway, whichever nursery rhyme best fit the rhythm, standing on the pew. By contrast, I remember when the prayers were said I was told to be quiet and perfectly still – so much so that I asked my mother, in all seriousness, if I should hold my breath. She thought I was being cheeky, but I meant it.

Anyway, it was at school that I heard the stories and prayed the prayers that would lead me through life. I remember a series of assemblies when I was six or seven explaining the Lord’s Prayer line by line – what does “hallowed be thy name” mean to a child, or even an adult, without any kind of reflection?

When we moved from England to Wales in 1975, for me it was like entering the Twilight Zone. The only thing that stayed the same, from my real life, apart from Fudge the cat (which explains a lot), was the reading of Bible stories and the Lord’s Prayer that I heard during assembly time at school. They were my lifeline, my road back to reality. I remember clearly walking home form school one day considering, Where do you go to get more of these stories about God? Oh, I know: a church!

When my mother got home from work, I told her I wanted to go to church. I’ve been following the story ever since.

To be continued…

Day 354: fun facts about donkeys

Zechariah 9, Mark 16, Psalm 138 OR 4 Maccabees 4-5

Ok, not so many fun facts about donkeys: you can google those for yourselves. But here in Zechariah we find the prophetic underpinnings of Palm Sunday:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt the foal of a donkey.

The prophet, a poet like so many others, employs the conventions of Hebrew parallelism, a poetic technique in which the same thing is said twice, the call answering itself in an echo. So, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!” is not a separate instruction from, “Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!” They are the same daughter, the same city; it is a poetic parallel.

Where we get to giggle at the gospel writers is where Matthew, misreading the poetry as prose, has Jesus straddling a donkey and her foal for his humble and triumphant entry into Jerusalem:

they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.

Don’t be like Matthew. Remember Hebrew parallelism. Jesus riding into Jerusalem was not a circus act, but a fulfillment of joyful prophecy.

Day 352: martyrs

Zechariah 5-6, Mark 14, Psalm 136 OR 4 Maccabees 1-2

No, I haven’t forgotten; it’s just been really busy around here. I’m still reading, there just doesn’t always seem to be much to add to the words already read …

Anyway, for those of us on the Alternative Apocryphal track, we are opening our last book in that series! 4 Maccabees has pretty much nothing to do with the Maccabees; rather, it is a kind of book of Jewish martyrs, dating from sometime around the turn of the calendar from BCE to CE (that’s BC/AD in old money). The trusty old New Oxford Annotated Bible offers that, “While it is unlikely that 4 Maccabees was known to any New Testament authors, the book’s interpretation of martyrdom is representative of the theological milieu in which early Christians attached atoning significance to the suffering and death of Jesus.” (NOAB, 363 Apocrypha)

As such, I thought I’d offer this little poem that I wrote in the lead-up to a sermon entitled, “Who do you say that I am?”

Day 344: Many Esdras

Habakkuk 3, Mark 7, Psalm 129 OR 2 Esdras 3-4

Although my Bible presents a book named “2 Esdras”, its introduction explains that the book “is actually a composite work made up of three separate writings” (New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd edn (OUP, 2001) 320 Apocrypha).

We read one whole section on Saturday, which may be a Christian creation written in the manner of the older prophets to proclaim the Christian inheritance of the mantle of the chosen people of God.

Another begins today. “4 Ezra” is contained in 2 Esdras 3-14, and is a first century BCE book of visions. Again, it draws on older traditions and sets its story in the time of Exile. Tradition and contemporary events collide as Rome is euphemized as Babylon, and the perennial theme of why bad things happen to God’s chosen people is explored (NOAB, 320).

The last two chapters of the book are different again; but we’ll get there by and by.

Day 340: pink elephants

Nahum 3, Mark 4, Psalm 126 OR 2 Maccabees 5

Three times the narrator whips up the tension of the anticipated destruction of the Jews: three times the elephants are made drunk; three times the king is so drunk he barely knows what is happening – he is “seeing pink elephants” himself! The contrast between the sober faithfulness and steadfastness of the Jews and the worldly and capricious Ptolemy is drawn further and deeper until the chapter climaxes with a scene that we can only touch on with our pictures of the bull runs in Spain, or the stampedes of the Lion King.

But as usual, all is not as it seems. From Nahum’s prophecy of destruction of the Assyrians, to Jesus’ proclamation that, “they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand,” so the theme of God’s special revelation to God’s chosen people is exemplified by the narrator of Maccabees: “For to the Gentiles it appeared that the Jews were left without any aid, because in their bonds they were forcibly confined on every side. But with tears and a voice hard to silence they all called upon the Almighty Lord and Ruler of all power, their merciful God and Father, praying that he avert with vengeance the evil plot against them and in a glorious manifestation rescue them from the fate now prepared for them. So their entreaty ascended fervently to heaven.”

When we are faced with danger, do we follow the fatalism of the Gentile world view, or do we follow the faith of our spiritual ancestors, from whose line Jesus came to instruct us that we, too, are chosen of God, and send our fervent entreaties up to heaven?

The Jews prayed; they expected deliverance; also expected death. The two are not necessarily always incompatible. What do we expect will happen next?

Day 339: history and other stories

Nahum 2, Mark 3, Psalm 125 OR 2 Maccabees 3-4

According to The New Oxford Annotated Bible, “The title of the book known as 3 Maccabees is a misnomer, for it is not  historical account of the Maccabees, but a fictional story about Egyptian Jews under Ptolemy IV Philopater (221-204 BCE), half a century before the Maccabean period.”

Rather than a history, it is, according to the commentator, a narrative along the lines of Daniel and Esther, in which Judaism is threatened with despoilment and destruction, but divine intervention saves the people of God either directly or through the actions of a divinely-appointed hero.

The character of the wicked king is drawn out in the third chapter, wherein even those willing to give shelter to a Jew is subject to death and torture. In the post-twentieth century world, it is impossible not to hear echoes of the genocide of the 1930s and 40s. For faithful Jews, then, this story may have been one of faith and a test of perseverance. For twenty-first century Christians the question is no less sharp: what would we have done? How far would we go out of love for our neighbours? How would we love ourselves if we let them down?

Falling back

Why yes, I am way behind with the blog – but almost up to date with reading! So here’s the message I sent out on facebook and at church this weekend:

Are you still reading in the last month of this Bible Challenge? You don’t have to be up to date to celebrate – it should really be the “Reading the Bible FOR 365 Days” rather than “IN 365 Days” if you ask me – the discipline is in the reading, not the finishing. (Although if you’re up to that – woot! Go you!) On Sunday, November 30th we will read ceremonially the last remaining chapter, Malachi 4 (the Luke and Psalm are repeats, and the Apocrypha ends the day before) and celebrate with certificates for year-long participation and/or completion. Are you in? If so, add your name to the comments below!

No, you don’t have to be bang up to date to celebrate. Yes, effort counts! No, not blogging doesn’t always mean I’m not reading. Yes, I do have a couple of days’ catch-up to do. See? We’re all in this together!

More meaningful blogging tomorrow, for sure – for now, keep reading, and add your name to the comments to join in the end-of-year celebration!

Day 328: a bedtime story

Jonah 4, Matthew 22, 119:33-72 OR 2 Maccabees 11-12

“I love you to the ends of the ocean.
I love you to the depths of the sea.
I love you to the belly of the whale and back.
I love you more than this tree.”

Happy Saturday.

Day 327: poetic justice

Jonah 3, Matthew 21, Psalm 119:1-32 OR 1 Maccabees 9-10

Poetic justice is rarely pretty, is it?
Thinking about the contrast between Nineveh’s repentance and Antiochus’ apology and the vastly different outcomes: of course, the authors of either book is interpreting events theologically, but don’t we, then, get to do the same? Why do you think Nineveh escaped punishment and Antiochus did not? How does your thinking about these two ancient stories inform your hearing of the prophets of doom today?

Day 326: enough

Jonah 2, Matthew 20, Psalm 118 OR 2 Maccabees 7-8

No doubt, terrible tortures and trials were employed by conquering forces in places such as Jerusalem. The story of the seven brothers and their mother, however, may be legendary; the number seven is a holy number in Jewish accounting, even from the first seven days of creation. The seven brothers and their mother give up their lives and even their progeny to the hope that God is with them even in this destruction and death.
Even today, in Iraq for example, martyrs are made out of those who trust in God rather than the whims of tyrants. What would we do?
But, “Let this be enough, then, about … the extreme tortures.”