Above:  Jephthah

Image in the Public Domain

Liberty to Love Each Other in God

JUNE 6 and 7, 2022

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The Collect:

Compassionate God, you have assured the human family of eternal life through Jesus Christ.

Deliver us from the death of sin, and raise us to new life,

in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  Amen.

—Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 39

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The Assigned Readings:

Genesis 22:1-14 (Monday)

Judges 11:29-40 (Tuesday)

Psalm 68:1-10, 19-20 (Both Days)

Galatians 2:1-10 (Monday)

Galatians 2:11-14 (Tuesday)

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The upright rejoice in the presence of God,

delighted and crying out for joy.

Sing to God, play music to his name,

build a road for the Rider of the Clouds,

rejoice in Yahweh, dance before him.

–Psalm 68:3-4, The New Jerusalem Bible (1985)

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Liberty in God is freedom to love God and our fellow human beings, to glorify God and work for the benefit of others, especially the vulnerable, those who need it the most, in society.  We are responsible to and for each other, regardless of whether we acknowledge that fact and behave accordingly.

The readings from Judges 11 and Genesis 22, which concern human sacrifice, are troublesome.  The famous and infamous story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, his father, is a tale of a man who interceded on behalf of strangers yet not his son.  Abraham failed the test of faith; he should have argued.  The less well-known story from Judges 11 is the tale of Jephthah, who spoke before he thought.  Thus he ensnared himself in an oath to sacrifice his only child.  He, unlike Abraham, went through with it.  Among the lessons these stories teach is that Yahweh does not desire human sacrifice.

More broadly speaking, God does not desire any form of human exploitation.  Rather, God condemns all varieties of human exploitation.  They are inconsistent with interdependency and responsibility to and for each other.  That is a fine standard by which to evaluate any human or corporate action or policy, is it not?

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MARCH 4, 2016 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF PAUL CUFFEE, U.S. PRESBYTERIAN MISSIONARY TO THE SHINNECOCK NATION

THE FEAST OF SAINT CASIMIR OF POLAND, PRINCE

THE FEAST OF EMANUEL CRONENWETT, U.S. LUTHERAN MINISTER, HYMN WRITER, AND HYMN TRANSLATOR

THE FEAST OF SAINTS MARINUS OF CAESAREA, ROMAN SOLDIER AND CHRISTIAN MARTYR, AND ASTERIUS, ROMAN SENATOR AND CHRISTIAN MARTYR

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https://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/liberty-to-love-each-other-in-god/

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Above:  Saint Paul Writing His Epistles, by Valentin de Boulogne

Image in the Public Domain

Judges and Galatians, Part II:  Obligations

JULY 13, 2023

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Blessed Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

–The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 236

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The Assigned Readings:

Judges 13:1-25

Psalm 61 (Morning)

Psalms 138 and 98 (Evening)

Galatians 2:1-21

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The call of God on one’s life imposes some obligations and lifts others.  This theme plays out in Judges 13, the account which culminates in the birth of the judge Samson, designated to end the Philistine oppression of the Israelites.  He was supposed to obey rules governing hair and wine.  Yet the lifting of the obligation of male circumcision is a prominent part of Galatians 2.  The mandate to care for the poor remains, however.  Our justification is in Christ, Paul wrote, so “saving justice” does not come from the Law of Moses.  This principle did not apply to Samson for reasons of chronology.

We are not our own; no, we belong to God. Sometimes God’s call on our lives requires us to abandon certain traditions, such as the prohibition against table fellow ship with Gentiles in Galatians 2.  Yet, when one reads the other account of the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, one finds some old rules which continue to apply:

…to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from illicit marriages.

–Acts 15:29, The New Jerusalem Bible

But circumcision ceases to be obligatory.

As I have written already, male circumcision is a traditional part of Jewish identity.  Recent (as of 2012) international disputes regarding the practice reinforce this point.  But an outward sign which few people will see is not more important than public acts of compassion, such as caring effectively for the poor in the name of God.  A hokey song whose music and shallow, repetitive words I despise does at least convey a simple truth nevertheless:

They’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Amen.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JULY 27, 2012 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON, EPISCOPAL PRIEST

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http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/judges-and-galatians-part-ii-obligations/

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Above:  A Scene from Passing Through Gethsemane, a 1995 Episode of Babylon 5

Sin, Consequences, Remorse, Repentance, and Forgiveness

The Sunday Closest to June 15

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost

JUNE 12, 2016

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The Assigned Readings:

1 Kings 21:1-10 (11-14), 15-21a and Psalm 5:1-8

or 

2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15 and Psalm 32

then 

Galatians 2:15-21

Luke 7:36-8:3

The Collect:

Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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Some Related Posts:

Prayer of Praise and Adoration:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/prayer-of-praise-and-adoration-for-the-fourth-sunday-after-pentecost/

Prayer of Dedication:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/prayer-of-dedication-for-the-fourth-sunday-after-pentecost/

 1 Kings 21:

https://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/week-of-proper-6-monday-year-2/

https://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/week-of-proper-6-tuesday-year-2/

2 Samuel 11-12:

http://adventchristmasepiphany.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/week-of-3-epiphany-saturday-year-2/

Galatians 2:

https://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/week-of-proper-22-wednesday-year-2/

Luke 7-8:

http://lenteaster.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/devotion-for-the-eighteenth-day-of-easter-lcms-daily-lectionary/

http://lenteaster.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/devotion-for-the-nineteenth-twentieth-and-twenty-first-days-of-easter-lcms-daily-lectionary/

https://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/week-of-proper-19-thursday-year-1/

https://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/week-of-proper-19-thursday-year-2-and-week-of-proper-19-friday-year-2/

https://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/week-of-proper-19-friday-year-1/

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The Old Testament options are stories of perfidious people (one alleged to be a man after after God’s own heart), each arranging for the death of an inconvenient person.  Naboth had no desire to surrender his vineyard, nor should he have.  And Uriah was a good commander and a loyal husband.  In each case there were divine judgment and consequences.  Ahab’s dynasty fell.  Jezebel died.  David faced internal political troubles.  And the first child of David and Bathsheba died.  That an innocent suffered troubles me; one does not ask one’s parents to conceive one.  But at least David, when confronted, expressed remorse.

The sinful woman (not St. Mary of Magdala, by the way) in Luke 7 was both remorseful and repentant.  Her act of gratitude was sincere, if not dignified.  Yet she did not care about appearances, nor should she have.

In Pauline theology faith is inherently active.  In the Letter of James, in contrast, faith is intellectualized.  This need not prove confusing.  Choose a word–such as “faith” or “day” or “believe,” O reader.  How many meanings do you attach to each word?  And how many ways have you heard others use those same words?  Biblical writers did not always attach the same meaning to a given word either.  Anyhow, as I was saying, in Pauline theology faith is inherently active.  As a person thinks, so he or she behaves.  So, in Pauline theology, faith saves us from our sinful selves and grace–God’s unearned favor–justifies us with God.  So, after we have sinned, we still have hope.  That is excellent news.

Yet do we forgive ourselves?  God forgives the remorseful and repentant.  Many of our fellow human beings forgive us.  And do we forgive those who have expressed remorse and who have repented?

As Brother Theo, a Roman Catholic monk and a character in Babylon 5 (1994-1998), a wonderful series, said in Passing Through Gethsemane, a profound episode, said of forgiveness,

I don’t anything can ever be more difficult.

Theo continued,

I believe you were saying that forgiveness is a hard thing but something ever to strive for, were you not, Captain?

Here ends the lesson, and I need to learn it at least as much as many others do.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JULY 12, 2012 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF DESIDERIUS ERASMUS, ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGIAN

THE FEAST OF SAINT JOHN GUALBERT, FOUNDER OF THE VALLOMBROSAN BENEDICTINES

THE FEAST OF NATHAN SODERBLOM, ECUMENIST

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http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/sin-consequences-remorse-repentance-and-forgiveness/

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Above:  A Checkmark

Checklists and Life

OCTOBER 5, 2022

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Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010), of The Episcopal Church, contains an adapted two-years weekday lectionary for the Epiphany and Ordinary Time seasons from the Anglican Church of Canada.  I invite you to follow it with me.

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I have expanded the first reading to encompass the entire second chapter of Galatians.–KRT

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Galatians 2:1-21 (Revised English Bible):

Fourteen years later, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and we took Titus with us.  I went in response to a revelation from God; I explained, at a private interview with those of repute, the gospel which I preach to the Gentiles, to make sure that the race I had to run and was running should not be in vain.  Not even my companion Titus, Greek though he is, was compelled to be circumcised.  That course was urged only as a concession to certain sham Christians, intruders who had sneaked in to spy on the liberty we enjoy in the fellowship of Christ Jesus.  These man wanted to bring us into bondage, but not for one moment did I yield to their dictation; I was determined that the full truth of the gospel should be maintained for you.

As for those reputed to be something (not that their importance matters to me:  God does not recognize these personal distinctions)–these men of repute, I say, imparted nothing further to me.  On the contrary, they saw that I had entrusted to take the gospel to the Gentiles as surely as Peter had been entrusted to take it to the Jews; for the same God who was at work in Peter’s mission to the Jews was also at work in mine to the Gentiles.

Recognizing, then, the privilege bestowed on me, those who are reputed to be pillars of the community, James, Cephas, and John, accepted Barnabas and myself as partners and shook hands on it:  the agreement was that we should go to the Gentiles, while they went to the Jews.  All they asked was that we should keep in mind the poor, the very thing I have always made it my business to do.

But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong.  For until some messengers came from James, he was taking his meals with gentile Christians; but after they came he drew back and began to hold aloof, because he was afraid of the Jews.  The other Jewish Christians showed the same lack of principle; even Barnabas was carried away and played false like the rest.  But when I say that their conduct did not square with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas, in front of the whole congregation,

If you, a Jew born and bred, live like a Gentile, and not like a Jew, how can you insist that Gentiles must live like Jews?

We ourselves are Jews by birth, not gentile sinners, yet we know that no one is ever justified by doing what the law requires, but only through faith in Christ Jesus.  So we too have put our faith in Jesus Christ, in order that we might be justified through this faith, and not through actions dictated by law; for no human being can be justified by keeping the law.

If then, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves no less than the Gentiles turn out to be sinners, does that mean that Christ is a promoter of sin?  Of course not!  On the contrary, it is only if I start building up again all I have pulled down that I prove to be one who breaks the law.  For through the law I died to law–to live for God.  I have been crucified with Christ:  the life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in my me; and my present mortal life is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.  I will not nullify the grace of God; if righteousness comes by law, then Christ died for nothing.

Psalm 117 (Revised English Bible):

Praise the LORD, all nations,

extol him, all you peoples;

for his love protecting us is strong,

the LORD’s faithfulness is everlasting.

Praise the LORD.

Luke 11:1-4 (The Jerusalem Bible):

Now once he [Jesus] was in a certain place praying, and when had finished one of his disciples said,

Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.

He said to them,

Say this when you pray:

“Father, may your name be held holy,

your kingdom come;

give us each day our daily bread,

and forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive each one of us who is in debt to us.

And do not put us to the test.”

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The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Some Related Posts:

Week of Proper 22:  Wednesday, Year 1:

https://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/week-of-proper-22-wednesday-year-1/

Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated, Lord, to Thee:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/take-my-life-and-let-it-be-consecrated-lord-to-thee/

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Galatians 2 begins with an account of the Council of Jerusalem.  Paul’s version is older and more pointed than the account one reads in Acts 15:1-29.  The Luke-Acts version postdates Paul’s death by perhaps two decades, a fact I find interesting because of my fascination with history.  As a student and teacher of history, I know well that historical memory is not static.  Obviously, what happened, happened.  Yet how we humans remember it is flexible.  The Bible is a sacred anthology, but it is also a product of human beings.  So yes, one who reads the two accounts of the Council of Jerusalem extremely closely will detect minor discrepancies, but the descriptions are much more similar than not.  Anyhow, the Pauline retelling of that Council brings up the theme of Christian liberty  from certain details of the Law of Moses, such as male circumcision.

I am trying not to get ahead of myself, to let Galatians unfold from chapter to chapter as much as possible.  Yet I must jump ahead a little bit.  We read in Galatians 3:24 that the Law of Moses was a disciplinarian.  The Greek word for disciplinarian indicated a household servant who kept children from getting into trouble.  So the law, to use Paul’s analogy, was in place to keep people in the straight and narrow–certainly a positive role.  But coloring inside the lines cannot give us a right relationship with God.  We can have that state of justification

only through faith in Christ Jesus,

that is, through grace and self-sacrifice, now that Jesus has come.

A well-written checklist can be essential; we all need our “to do” lists.  And knowing what to avoid can be just as valuable.  But these are means to an end, not the end itself.  My reading of late Second Temple Judaism and the Law of Moses tells me that the Law was never meant to become the legalistic tool some people treated it as being.  The Law was supposed to promote social justice, not cover up greed and justify economic injustice.  And it was not intended to constitute a checklist for the checklist’s sake.  Yet that was how some people treated it.

Embedded within the Law of Moses are the commandments to love another as one loves oneself (Leviticus 19:18) and God fully (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).  These are the sources from which Jesus pulled his summary of the Law of Moses in Mark 12:28-31.  And Rabbi Hillel, a contemporary of our Lord, summarized the Law of Moses with a simple formula:

Here, O Israel, the LORD your God is one.  You shall love the LORD your God with all of your heart, and mind, and strength.  And you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Everything else is commentary.  Go and learn it.

Hillel and Jesus agreed on that point.  So may we refrain from stereotyping the Law of Moses and late Second Temple Judaism falsely.

Paul also wrote of faith.  He meant something far more substantial than lip service or intellectual assent to doctrine.  No, for Paul, faith was inherently active.  In contrast, faith in the Letter of James was more intellectualized, hence that epistle’s fixation on justification by works.  Paul and James really agreed, and one ought to realize this fact after reading each in context.  These subtleties matter to me, one who pays close attention to nuances in many settings, especially Biblical texts.

So God has given us guidelines, some of which are culturally conditioned.  Many literal details in the Law Moses have no bearing to me, given the fact that my lifestyle and technology is far removed from that of the ancient Hebrews.  And I refuse to stone anyone or even to remove the blends from my wardrobe, actions which a hyper-literal reading would require of me.  (And, living in football-crazy Athens, Georgia, I note that the Law of Moses forbids touching a pigskin.)  Yet I recognize that the spirit of overall Law of Moses transcends time and circumstances.  Hillel and Jesus got it right:  focus on the love.  And Paul agreed in Romans 13:8-10; loving one’s neighbor fulfills the Law.  Jesus has, by his example, set the bar high.  and he did not die for nothing, as Paul reminds us.  Jesus died for us; may we live for him.  And, if martyrdom is our vocation, may we also die for him.  But, whatever we do, may we do it for him.  In that is life.

KRT

http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/checklists-and-life/