cairns

This Coming Week In Worship
“A Godly Family: Harmony in the Home”
It is all too common for siblings to fuss with each other during their formative years. Immaturity and inexperience in life can cause kids in the same family to fight over everything from toys to food. But sadly, all too often it does not subside. This way of relating can carry into adulthood as jealousy, thoughtlessness and unforgiveness creating distance or alienation between brothers and sisters. This weekend we will again consider a patriarchal family in Genesis to learn lessons about how practicing the presence of God in the family will create more satisfying and fulfilling relationships. (emphasis added)

Feel free to comment first! I am beyond words. peace

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A few more thoughts on the ark. Maybe they should be obvious, or maybe others will disagree. But, these seem like part of what would become a sermon.

I have also read a lot of nonsense about what gave the ark its special powers. One even claimed that it was a nuclear device because of something in the tablets Moses brought down from the mountain. The text says the power was the holy presence of God.

So with everything they remind us of and cause us to contemplate;

the wood — nature, the power of earth — is not the power,

the gold — wealth — is not the power,

the law — instruction in the ways of God — is not the power,

the manna — souvenir and memory of God’s provision — is not the power,

the presence of the angels — the aid of powerful warriors of heaven itself — is not the power,

the mobile nature of the ark — moving, doing, serving, the work of heaven (so easy for me to mistake as the goal!) — is not the power,

only the presence of God; witnessed by the glory, the cloud, the fire; but not the glory, the cloud, or the fire — the very presence of very God brings the power. Because God is the power.

Compared to the presence of God, the rest is an intriguing antique.  When we meet, do we bring each other into that presence?

peace

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I am now reading through the book of Numbers.  Much of this text seems to present considerable difficulty for the liberal view that most of these ancient books are myth explaining later traditions and doctrines.  The detailed accounting of tribes, relationships, and census numbers reads most logically as what it is presented to be — an accounting of the original people who came out of Egypt. 

I have recently read material from authors who say that the physical evidence does not support the arrival of this group within the time frame reported by the texts in any sort of cataclysmic event to the new land which would resemble the battles in the texts.  This view asserts then that these texts are not history, but myth. 

My first problem with this interpretation as I read Numbers is that I have never encountered tribal or national myths from any other setting that appear anything like these census counts and detailed instructions.  Tales of lone vigils on mountains to speak with the divine may sound similar in different traditions.  But, where else is there this kind of mind numbing naming and counting within a setting of tradition and myth?  That is meant to be a real question if T or anybody else does know of a similar tradition in another setting.  Perhaps my knowledge base is too small to make judgements.

The other problem I have is that the discounting of these texts as being what they claim to be seems to proceed from an argument of lack of evidence.  Since there is lack of evidence of general warfare and destruction in the area of Israel archaeologically dated to match the texts, it is assumed the texts are not history.  To be fair it could be stated as the evidence which is dated to match that period shows a period of peace rather than the lack of war.  But, as of yet I am not convinced that our lack of finding support in the dirt negates the witness of the texts.

In short, many of the sections of text seem friendlier to my literalistic friends who take things as what they are than to those who would work to make them something different.  To me they read as history and census.  What I will grant to the traditions more liberal than my upbringing is that they certainly do NOT read as manuals for current life and practice.

peace

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I can’t stop laughing. Next time I take some silly turn which plants me in the middle of these folks, I think I will just start reading.

“The priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the lobe of the right ear of the one to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot.”

I can hardly wait to hear the “currently relevant” “applied to our lives” “America is the promised people” sermon on that one! But, maybe I am just in a mean mood. Its just that after all the years, after all the theology and theory, the dogma and the arguments, the sermons and the mission trips, I am finally rereading the source material. And I am embarrassed. So much silliness for so many years with such serious results in the condemnation of others and failure to love.

Time to focus on walking in present Truth and Love as Grace chooses to reveal them today.

peace

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OK, if any of my common background folks still think we are supposed to read the whole Bible as written literally and to us, start in about chapter 21 and re-read this stuff! 

There you will find the worth of slaves, the price to be paid for having your way with a young girl, how to treat a girl you buy and decide you don’t like anymore, commands on all the people you are to kill including all witches …

 I already knew this.  But, it still blows me away each time I read it anew.  How did we ever maintain with a straight face that all this applied to us?  Of course we did what good followers of American Christian fundamentalism always do!  We claimed the ability to pick and choose which parts were for those tribal Semites and which parts were God speaking directly to us.  Never-mind the verses in between or even if we chose part of a verse and ignored the rest!

I would laugh if it didn’t make me ill — that we wasted so much energy in arguments about things that have nothing to do with us (at least in the literal sense) — that we have national leaders still using like logic to set social, military, and ecology policies — that we said it was all God and yet held ourselves to be different from and superior to the cultures of the world which most closely resemble the text.

Happy reading!   peace.

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