How Long God?

How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

These are the opening words of Psalm 13, a desperate prayer for help, to a God that doesn't seem to be there. 

The psalmist is undergoing intense pain and sorrow and has come to the end of the road. We are not given the source of the author's trials, but it is the silence that is the most devastating.

So the psalmist cries out, "Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!" daring to believe that God has a personal interest in his or her plight, begging God to answer before it's too late; before his or her "eyes sleep the sleep of death...and the enemy prevails."

The psalmist in the end turns to Yahweh's hesed, his steadfast love, promising praise in recognition of God's deliverance.

But this Psalm is not formulaic, and does not promise that if we start at one end of the prayer and come out at the other, all doubt and pain will be replaced by trust and joy.

That is not the intention of the prayer, nor the reality of life. The Psalm is a voice for our deepest fears and our most painful moments and breaks us from the illusion that faith solves all of our problems.

It gives us permission to exist in the "in between," allowing us to embrace the tension of speaking to God both in language of lament and praise, of being abandoned and delivered, of hope and despair. 

For a scholarly treatment of Ps 13 see, Mays, J.L. Interpretation, 34 no 3 Jl 1980, 279-83.

MLK Jr.'s How Long

I found this in my research for today's post:

Bring Back My Donkey

Torah scroll

When you come upon your enemy's (Hb. ayav) ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. Ex 23.4

Bummer. I really wanted to keep it. Oxen and donkeys were extremely valuable in the Ancient Near East. 

One could use them for transportation, to plow, haul goods, and at least with the oxen, for hides and food. In this way, they would have a value similar to a car or truck today.

The laws of the Hebrew Scriptures sometimes seem very strange to us, but it is important to keep in mind that these laws helped an ancient, extremely superstitious people, grow confident in what they did and didn't need to do, to please their God. 

The laws made them less vulnerable to marginalization by the elites, who commonly used laws sent down from the gods to extort people. The laws also showed that Yahweh was concerned about even the most intricate details of daily living.

But how does a verse like this relate to us? The letter of law is tough to apply, as most of us don't daily encounter stray donkeys, but the spirit behind it is certainly transferable:

How many of us go out of our way to help people with whom we are at odds? How many of us, if we see misfortune befalling people we don't like, spend time justifying why we shouldn't help, instead of actually helping?

Take a read through the laws of Torah sometime, attempting to first see how they applied to the ancient Israelites, and then ask how they might apply to you today.

Be Moved

I find this trailer incredibly compelling, especially the line at the 0:37 mark. The line is from Norman Foster, whose work is the subject of the film:

Architecture works in terms of all the senses....and if you like, the spiritual dimension, which is rooted in all of the senses, and which you can't measure, but you know it's there. It moves you. It moves your spirit.

We are co-creators with God (Gen 1.28); made with intention, and when we participate in the things that move us, that move our spirit, we are tapping into what it means to be most fully human. 

The trailer led me to ask myself: Am I participating in things that move me? In things that envelop more than just my senses, but my soul as well? 

When we are doing those things, we are in harmony with both the Creator and creation, and those are the moments when the world is the most beautiful.

God Changes His Mind

Yesterday's post introduced the story of Exodus 32, where the Israelites infuriate God by turning to idols. Today we will highlight God's role in the story.

God saw what they were doing and said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have acted perversely!....Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation."

Moses responds, imploring God to be merciful, "O Yahweh, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?...turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind (Hb. nahem) and do not bring disaster on your people." 

Embracing tension

What Moses said worked: "And Yahweh changed his mind (nahem) about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people." 

Does God change his mind? It would certainly appear that way from passages like this, and others such as Amos 7.3, 6 (cf. Gen 6.6, 7).

But what about 1 Sam 15.29 "Moreover the Glory of Israel will not recant or change his mind (nahem); for he is not a mortal, that he should change his mind (nahem)?"

People fight to harmonize these passages in all sorts of ways. What may be most important though, is to hold them in tension.

The text says that we serve a God that changes his mind, and we should respect that.  God is genuinely affected by our actions, he is not fixed and stale (cf. Jer 18.8; Gen 18.22ff). It should also be pointed out, that he always changes his mind toward mercy, never the other way around.

But he also stands outside of space and time, and is "the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Heb 13.8), and "does not change" (Mal 3:6). These texts are intended to comfort us by highlighting God's reliability. He remains faithful even when we are not (2 Tim 2.13).

Holding these passages in tension is very difficult, but necessary for honest Biblical interpretation, as well as honest life interpretation. If the Bible doesn't teach you that life is messy, and tension is necessary, life certainly will.

Fan the Flame

Exodus 32 records one of the most fascinating stories in the Bible. Moses was meeting with God, receiving guidelines on how God wanted his people to live, now that they were no longer slaves in Egypt.

But his meeting was taking too long. The people had been disconnected from God for longer than was healthy, and so they grew impatient and built an idol: an image that falsely represented God.

The idol the Israelites fashioned was a calf or young bull, which symbolized strength and fertility and brought with it illicit sexual practices (32.6). 

This act infuriated Yahweh. How could the people he had just delivered from bondage, so quickly turn their backs on him and return to the enslaving practices they knew in Egypt? 

Being made in the image of God, we each have a spark in us, that when fanned by connection with God, lights up our entire lives. This is where we experience the most substance and life.

But we are also capable of letting the spark grow dim, allowing darkness to enter our lives and rob us of the life we should be living.

This element of the story is a great reminder of the dangers of disconnecting from God. Tomorrow we'll use this passage to ask: "Does God change his mind?"

Messiahs Don't Die

An empty tomb

There was tremendous messianic expectation in Israel during the time of Jesus. The Jews had been living under foreign rule for the better part of five hundred years, and they were ready for deliverance. 

Their Temple, an institution designed to protect the oppressed, was now the chief proponent of oppression.

Those who scoured the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures, put together a list of attributes they expected the messiah to have, and for all intensive purposes, Jesus didn't fulfill any of them.

Sure he healed some people and had a couple picnics where he fed some large crowds,  but he didn't do one very important thing: expel the Romans and restore the kingdom of Israel.

To make matters worse, he was killed, in a brutal and shameful public execution, by the very people he was supposed to magnificently overthrow. The tragedy at this point for his followers, was that once he died, he ceased being the messiah altogether (Lk 24.21).

New creation

But that's not where the story ends: Jesus resurrects, not just coming back to life, but coming back to new life (2 Cor 5.17).

Almost all Jews in Jesus' day believed in an event at the end of time, where all who had died would be resurrected and judged, and God would start a new creation (Jn 11.24).

But no one expected it would happen in the middle of history.

But it did, inaugurating an age where God's saving rule became the new reality, providing an opportunity for all people to partner with him as he reclaims, restores, and renews all of creation.