New Vestaments

This fire consumes everything.

This ground itself cries out.

Do not look on the face of this new God,

Climb this mountain top to bring back His riches.
Believe, and we will toss this mountain into the sea.

Our mana comes at a cost.

It will be a dead thing tomorrow.

We will see the smoke by day and the fire by night.

Let us trade Aaron’s turban and sash

for a clear plastic faceplate and self-contained breathing apparatus

Behold this ephod, made of tyvek.

Don, these new vestements,

You, our high priest.

to our confusion and ambition, our insight and our fear, our consumption and our conservation.

Dressed thus, only,

shall you enter into our latter day holy of holies.

For it was a nonchallance like Uzzah’s known at Three Mile Island.

And a despair like David’s felt after Cheronobyl.

This new God.

Will not speak sotftly to the prophet at the precipice.

Or send his declarations on tablets.

Perhaps even the troops dressed for battle will be shocked by his ruthlessness, though.

And maybe, something, deep within

will remember.

Moses Failed the Test

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IT’s often remarked on that Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land.   This was the result of his not following God’s commands as he was bring water to the Isrealites.

Given all that he did and sacrificed, it’s hard to not view this as rather petty on God’s part.  But I had this thought today about it.

I’m just beggining to contemplate this; I’m not arguing so much for this as a theological position as I am swishing this metaphorical taste in my mouth, trying to determine if I want to swallow it.

The thing I’m thinking about is this:

There’s an important distinction between punishing someone for an action and using a decision as a sort-of litmus test. 

It’s clear that God was engaged in this profound act of social engineering with the Isrealites.  He was trying to recreate a community in His image.  Anybody, whether they are God, a cult leader, a socialist revolutionary, a genuis or a fool… anybody who is trying to set up a new society has to contend with the fact that we carry our upbringing with us.

It’s like that cheesy adage says: “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.”  In other words, if you relocate the same broken people into a new context, usually they just start replaying their own foolishness.

There ends up being a different tenor to God’s decision to block Moses from entering the promised land if it isn’t so much a punishment as that Moses demonstrated, through this action, that he wasn’t going to leave the old, broken ways behind.

As I contemplate heaven, I often contemplate a parallel fact.  I can be pretty stupid, sometimes.  If you took me as I currently am, and put me in a perfect place, I would pretty much ruin it.  And the truth is, this is similarly true for nearly every person I know.

So help me decide: should I swallow this idea down, or just spit it out?

If God kept his distance

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I’ve been reading through the book of Ezekiel.

I know that the book in the bible that everybody complains about is Leviticus, but I think maybe that book is easier than Ezekiel. (At least Leviticus has all those nasty skin-disease description to keep the images popping through my head.)

Quite suddenly, Leviticus shifts gears.

The whole first thirty-something chapters are really variations on a theme.  There will be several pages describing how horrific things are going to get for Israel.  And then a couple sentences describing how groovy everything will be for Isreal after all the suckiness.

Things change when a man/angel seems to be taking Ezekiel on a guided tour of the temple.  I’ll have to do some homework on this.  (If you’ve got some information, please leave me a comment.)  My assumption is that this is for the new temple, Babylon having destroyed the original.

The thing that jumps out is how precise the description is.  There are quite exact measurements for just about everything you can think of: Doorway sizes, wall widths, etc.  

Honestly, this isn’t a whole lot more compelling than the prior chapters.  (The bible isn’t here for my entertainment and  I’m not saying it should be.  I’m just being real about how intersting I found it.)

I did get interested at chapter 43.  God shows up.  God has been talking to the prophet through the whole book.  But he’s suddenly there, in all his glory, in a new way.

And in chapter 43, God says that Ezekiel should share these plans, down to the smallest detail, with the people of Israel.  He emphasizes that this is the place where people meet up with him.

I had this ah-ha moment, as I read this.

The first thing I realized was that if God were a God who kept his distance, then our sin would be less of a big deal.  If God kept his distance, then we would have more of an excuse for not knowing what to do.  Furthermore, if God kept his distance, our sin would impact Him less.

The second thing I realized is that we tend to locate God in the improvised, creative, and spontaneous.  And while God is certainly in these places, God is also in geometry, math, and architecture.  God is in the details as well as the big picture.  He is the long-term plan as well as the moment.  I’m not denying that it’s an act of worship within each moment to dedicate ourselves to him.  I’m saying that dedicating ourselves to every tiny little details, in advance, is important too.

Uhhm, God? Remember that old offer? Is it still on the table?

Much of the second half of the Old Testament is story after story of the Israeli’s betraying God, repenting, being forgiven, and betraying God all over again.

It’s easy for me to get all self-rightous about this.  Until I’m reminded that their story is my story.  The reason that we’re told this history is to apply to it our own lives.  To recognize that most of us live by these same patterns.

I read Numbers 14 today.  It’s as good an example as any of this.

One member of each tribe is sent to check out the land that is promised to them.  They come back reporting that there are amazing things in that land– but also fierce warriors.  Only two of the spies– Joshua and Caleb– want to do what God says to do.

The rest of them lead the whole nation and are preparing to stone Moses and Aaron.  God shows up.  Moses seems to talk God out of destroying the entire nation and starting over with him.

God explains that of all the people who were alive when they left egypt, only Joshua and Caleb will actually enter into the promised land.   He says that the whole nation will spend one year in the wilderness for each day the spies spent in the land– in other words, 40 years.

The nation, at this point, decides they’d like God’s original offer back.  God tells them not to do it, but they don’t listen.

Here’s some things that resonate with me about this:

#1) God’s offers come with expiration dates.  To obey God after the fact is really to disobey him.  Sometimes, it seems, that he might have protected us and been with us if we did what he wants in His time.   When we try and do things in our time, we do it with out his support, guidance, and protection.

#2) We don’t protect our kids, God does.  The nation cites protecting their children as the reason for disobeying God.  God, with a brutal sense of irony, delivers the kids and only the kids to the promised land. 

#3) Sometimes, when we’re filled with fear and the promise of consequences, we start moving before we think about what we’re doing.  Before God showed up, they wanted to do nothing.  But once he does, when these people are looking at forty years of hard labor.  In their panic, they try to go back to God’s old deal.

#4) I wonder if you could apply the whole denial-rage-bargaining-acceptance  thing to all this.  These are the stages we go through when dealing with a loss.

It seems to me that the whole nation begins in denial.  Denial that Egypt was that bad.  Denial that God’s in charge.  Denial that they’d be smart to obey.

When the spies come back they are so enraged at Moses and Aaron that they nearly kill them.

When God shows up, they attempt to bargain with him, “We’ll take you first offer, God.”

And acceptance?  Well I guess that’s a little later.

God’s house, Solomon’s house

It’s funny, being comitted to Christ and deeply dedicated to my church but not having grown up in one.  I stumble on observations and understandings on my own.  Sometimes, the only thing that prevents people from saying “No Duh” Is that they are to nice.  Other times, people find gentle and loving ways to tell me “No way” and they explain the glaring details that I’ve missed. 

Once in a while, though, I happen upon things that I don’t think I would have if I didn’t have fresh eyes with which to see things.

I need others help in figuring out which my observations are going to be, usually.  This observation isn’t an exception to that rule.  I have no idea if I’m dead wrong, stating the obvious, or maybe on to something unusual.

In this post I shared some observations about 1 Kings.  The gist is that the tradition of describing how God doesn’t want us to be part of an empire can be seen in the empire that Solomon created.

Since then, I’ve begun to wonder about the (human) writer of 1 Kings.  Was he living and writing in a place that he could state his feelings explicitly?  Becuase it seems like there is a couple possibilities.  One is that I’m seeing stuff that isn’t there.  The other is that this guy was very sly… and not a big fan of Solomon’s.  The Holy Spirit, of course, would use this all for greater purposes.  But that doesn’t change my basic point.

One thing I’m clear on is that the Hebrew Scriptures demonstrate mastery of parallelism: saying things in a certain way and then tweaking it just a bit for effect.  Is parallelism going on in chapters 6 and 7 of of 1 Kings?  I think maybe.

Chapter 6 “And 480 years after the Israelites come out of the land of Egypt… he (Solomon) began to build the Lor’d house.  The length of the house Solomon built for the Lord was sixty cubits, it’s breadth twenty, and its height thirty cubits… So Solomon Built the temple buildings and finished it, and roofed the beams and boards of cedar… Now the Lord came to Solomon, saying “Concerning this house which you building, if you will walk in my statutues, execute my precents, and keep all My commandments to walk in them, then I will fufill to you My promises which I made to David your father.”

Chapter 7 “Solomon was building his own house thirteen years and he finished all of it… it’s length was a hundred cubits, it’s breadth fifty, and its hieght thirty cubits… He made the porch for the throne where he was to judge, the Porch of Judgement… His house where he was to well had another court behind the Porch of Judgement of similiar work.  Solomon also made a house like this porch for the Pharaoh’s daughter”

The first thing I notice is that chapter 6 starts off stating that it took the Israelites nearly five hundred years to give God a house.  Chapter 7 starts off stating that it took Solomon just thirteen to build his own.  (And presumably he already had a posh set up before.)

The second thing I notice is the dismentions.  Everybody seems to focus on how grand the temple was… But I’ve never heard anybody focus on the fact that it’s smaller than Solomon’s house!  It seems that Solomon actually builds three houses: the first one is described in detail, the second is behind the throne of judgment, and the third is made for his wife.  The implication is that each is close in size to the first house.

Lets bust out a little bit of elementary school geometry.   Volume is calculcated by multiplying length, width, and hieght.  The temple is 60 X 20 X 30 = 36,000 cubic cubits.  Solomon’s first house is 100 X 50 X 30 = 150,000 cubits.

Solomon’s first house– all by itself– is roughly FOUR times as large as the temple!!! 

But moreover, in the portion where the tremple is discussed God himself comes to speak.  The portion about Solomon’s house describes how Solomon had (2?) thrones built from which he would judge.  Is it anchronistic to see even this as a contrast between God himself speaking and Solomon seeking to set himself up as a God?

Later, in 8:10-44 there’s another interesting occurence.  It’s enough to get me wondering, certainly not something I would bet the farm on.  But it begins “When the priests had come out of the Holy Place, the cloud filled the Lord’s house.  So the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord’s House.  Then Solomon said …”  From there, Solomon more or less preaches this big sermon.  He starts off by focusing on what an awesome thing that he (that is, Solomon) did, that even his father David wasn’t allowed to do it.  But this isn’t the detail I’m focused on.

The detail I’m focused on is that the priests appear paralyzed by the Glory of God.  Solomon doesn’t.

If God showed up in some big way: if the Glory of God was present… who seems holier: the person who is so overwhelmed that he can’t do anything or the person who starts talking about God?  Following this speech is a week of feasting and celebration. 

By the way: Does scripture ever give Solomon, David, or the Kings the right to act in a way that appears to be like priests?  They aren’t out of the tribe of Levis.  (That’s a real question, not a rhetorical one) 

At the end of chapter 8, Solomon (not God) calls an end to the feasting, celebration and sacrifices.  Scripture says that the people blessed the king and went to their tents.  Solomon appears to have enjoyed some political benefits to this whole deal.

And the beginning of Chapter 9 contains the last thing I’ll remark on for now: “When Solomon finished the building of the Lord’s house and the king’s house and all that he was pleased to do…”

Those last three words are so interesting to me.  “All that he was pleased to do.”  On the one hand, we should be pleased to do what God wants us to do.  But on the other hand, I find myself wondering: is the writer trying again to emphasize the idea that Solomon was playing God, pursuing his own agenda, acting as if he runs the show.

I know that there are tremendous issues of context and translation running around in all this.  I think as we interpret Solomon’s character an important part of all this is Ecclesiastes, which is absolutely  the most under-rated book in the Old Testament. 

I’m looking foreward to comments on all this to help me wander through what it all means.

 This post was linked to Marty’s Monday Moments.  Click here to read some more great stories in this blog carnival.