The View from the West Mesa

In Job, often considered the first book written in the Bible, we are introduced to the accuser. In the introduction to the book, it is the accuser who accuses Job of being righteous and faithful to God only because of the blessings that God has given Job. We find the accuser again in Zechariah 3. The High Priest Joshua is standing in front of the Lord in filthy clothes, and the accuser is making accusations. The Lord rebukes the accuser and then says that he will cleanse Joshua.  Then in the New Testament, we see the appearance of the Advocate. The Spirit, we are told, is sent to walk beside us, to be a witness, to be an advocate for us. The accuser challenges us, questions our faithfulness, and questions our integrity as people who are supposed to follow God as His people, His disciples. This is an entre for being blamed and shamed. But God comes alongside us and advocates for us. We are told too that Jesus is our mediator with God. Jesus defends us and explains us to God so that ...

In his essay "Mishpatim: Healing the Heart of Darkness*," Jonathan Sacks makes the argument that tribalism can, and usually does, give rise to acceptance, compassion, and social bonding but also to fear, hate, and demeaning others. Those in our group give and receive the former from us, those outside our group receive and often give the latter. We humans have the capacity of empathy toward those like us but we also, being finite beings, suffer from fear and that fear too often translates to hate of those not like us.  Sacks then reminds us that Israel was told not to hate the outsider, the one who isn't in our group. He quotes two passages from Exodus: "You must not mistreat or oppress the stranger in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt." (22.21) "You must not oppress strangers. You know what it feels like to be a stranger, for you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt." (23.9) Sacks then...

Israel has been in captivity in Egypt, Moses has completed his contests with Pharaoh, and the People of Israel have been expelled from Egypt. The death of Egyptian firstborn children and livestock has compelled their removal into the wilderness. At the end of Exodus 12, God institutes the Passover in remembrance of the Angel of Death passing by the homes of Jews on the night the Egyptian firstborn children were killed. Notably, they were spared if in a house with blood around the door.  The Passover is established for Israel herself, including their slaves who have been circumcised. If a sojourner wants to celebrate the Passover with you, he can after he circumcises all males with him. I suspect that pretty much eliminated any visitors participating. In chapter 13, the protocols include redeeming Israel's firstborn. In this discussion, God says your firstborn belongs to God, and you must redeem your firstborn or you must kill it. God has redeemed Israel's firstborn by the blood...

Overheard in class: God blesses Job after Job prays for his friends. This is an interesting observation about this text: And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. (Job 42.10a, ESV) Job has just revealed his contrition regarding why God would cause him such sorrow and God had lectured Job's friends for their misunderstandings about God and Job's situation. God then tells the friends to ask Job to pray for them, and they do. They bring sacrifices and they ask for Job's intercession on their behalf. Get this picture. Job is, presumably, still sitting in ashes, covered with sores that he scrapes with a potsherd. He has suffered the loss of his children and his physical wealth, and his wife has suggested that he should just curse God and die. He has just sat through 40-ish chapters of being lectured by these same friends and finally, challenged by God. ...and his friends show up with sacrifices for themselves, asking Job to pray for them. Put...

We have all heard the phrase “None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” Many, including most Protestants, take this to be a universal, divine description of humanity. Well, it isn’t; at least not as either Paul or the writer he's quoting meant it. In our chapter 3 of Romans, Paul is speaking to Jewish disciples in Rome. He has recently eliminated any claim to the priority they might have presumed based on having the Law or circumcision as signs of being ‘in.’ Then he moves to a rhetorical question, ‘If we are God’s people, is he unjust to punish us?’ Paul’s answer is that God is not unjust to punish Israel or Jews. He even has to address a silly assertion that we will have seen multiple times. It is this, should we sin more so that God can show even more grace? Paul’s answer is an understandable ‘Nope!” Then we get the next question, ‘Are we Jews any better off – because we are Jews?’ Again the answer is ‘nope.’ Why is that? Paul is going to justify...

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." (Romans 1.16-17, ESV) There are various renderings and understandings of the phrase as it is used here, "faith for faith." Both words for faith derive from pistis, with the first being pisteos (genitive) and the second, pistin (accusative) . Faith, we are told, begins in faith and leads to faith. The import of this origin and fulfillment is found in the next sentence above, the righteous shall live by faith (genitive). We might word this as "already held or possessed faith will result in or lead to faith. As it is written, the one who has faith will parlay that faith into a salvific faith. Faith held by the believer will lead the believer to greater or more complete faith, resulting in her s...

Introduction:  Paul's letter to the Roman house churches has become so 'specialized' that many understandings of it are severely limited to only a few options. Perhaps the most popular understanding of the letter is as Paul's magnum opus of grace/faith versus works . A close second is the Reformed use of the letter to emphasize Divine sovereignty in salvation , specifically, unconditional election . Leaving aside whether these themes appear in the letter and in what forms, they tend to overly simplify the letter. As a result, our understanding of the letter is anemic and at least slightly wrong-headed. Situation : Paul has never been to Rome; he did not establish the church there. He does know some of the people in Rome, however, and has heard of their situation. The Jews had been evicted from Rome (AD 40-51?) but were now returning to the city (AD 54?)  after their exile. During the Jewish disciples’ absence from Rome, Gentile disciples had led the house churches, a...

       In chapter 16 of Matthew, Peter ‘makes the great confession’ - Jesus he says is the Son of the Living God. At Covenant, when someone wants to become a member or to be baptized, we ask them who Jesus is and we expect this response. Peter is correct when he says this, but it is not clear that Peter (or the other disciples) understood the ramifications of his statement. Following Peter’s statement we find a series of incidents that make us wonder just how much Peters actually believed what he had said.      In the first instance, Jesus compares Peter to Satan. Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem and there he will die. Peter exclaims that he will not let that happen; Jesus will not be killed. Peter is expecting great things from Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God on behalf of Israel and he cannot fit Jesus dying into his hope for a greater Israel under this Messiah. This cannot happen, he reasons. Jesus’s response is a harsh re...

  Jesus comes from the Wilderness where the Spirit has driven him for testing, announcing the imminent coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. His message to the crowds calls them to repent because the “Kingdom is at hand.” The kingdom or the effective rule of God has come upon Israel and Israel’s expected response is to return to her God. A number of passages tell us the sorts of things God has against Israel or at least her leaders. They have the form of the People of God, but not the substance. He will call those opposed to him “white-washed tombs” to describe their religious and moral corruption. They look good but are dead. He calls these people to repentance, to return to “their first love,” to actually live as though they are the People of God. In another place, he will tell them that while they do well to tithe mint and cumin, they have missed the larger point of caring for people. In the judgment scene, he describes sending into a place of gnashing of teeth those who failed to gi...

“So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matt 18:35, ESV) This phrase, this warning, this admonition comes as the conclusion or the point of the parable about the unforgiving servant. This servant has been forgiven a huge debt rather than being put in jail and having his family given in payment. This servant then goes out and finds someone who owes him a smaller amount and assaults him to gain the payment owed and has that person thrown in jail. Jesus explains this parable by the statement we began with—if you don’t forgive other people, you cannot expect God’s forgiveness for you. But there’s more here. Look at the last phrase: “from your heart.” Throughout Scripture and even though God provides a number of rules, we find that what God is after is not first of all, a keeping of the rules. So we have a wrinkle here. Sometimes we will hear something like, “I forgive you ‘because God’ forgives you.” For immature discip...

  In Matthew 23:11-12 Jesus says for at least the fifth time, “The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (ESV) Sometimes the phrasing is a bit different with masters and servants taking the place of exalting and humbling but the point is the same. We have heard echoes of these ideas from the beginning of the Gospel too. Jesus’s responses to his temptations in the wilderness require that he set his pride aside, reject the power and the wealth offered him, submitting himself to the Father. The Beatitudes reflect one who is humble and who seeks the things of the Kingdom even in the face of power and oppression. We see it when we are told to be righteous but not to practice righteousness to be seen doing it. We can feel it a bit in the statement “I desire mercy and not sacrifice” and how that flows from the teachings on forgiveness. Forgiveness requires humility because, without it, our egos would...

 I have mentioned Lauren Winner’s Mudhouse Sabbath before. The book has a number of poignant and insightful observations. The following is appropriate for our community because many of us share the reality of being older than the average American. In the chapter on aging, Winner writes this: The elderly are asked to age well, and the communities that support them are asked to help them do just that. (Rabbi Zalman Schecter-Shalomi has dispensed with the gerund “aging.” He speaks instead of “eldering.” I’ll admit a certain squeamishness with the term—it strikes me as a little twee, and every time I think of it, I have to adjust. But there is something vigorous about it too. To age is to be passive, to sit like a bottle of wine—you just sit there and time passes and age happens over you. To elder—or, in another of Reb Zalman’s clever infinitives, “to sage”—is to try to shape the last years of one’s life with intention.) Aging is not just a process of physical decline. It can also ...

J esus meets the woman while the disciples are off getting something to eat. She is there to get some water for the day and stumbles over him. You know the story from here most likely. They have a conversation, and we learn that she has had several husbands and was currently living with someone to whom she was not married. As his part of the conversation, Jesus tells her (and us) that if she would just ask, he would give her refreshment, springing perpetually in her. Then she goes to tell her community what has happened, and they come out to see who this man is. These are Samaritans which underscores a bit the significance that Jesus spends days with them.   Photo by  Jeremy Bezanger  on  Unsplash One thing we do not see in this story is Jesus telling this woman to clean up her act before he will talk with her. The woman caught in adultery he tells to go “and sin no more,” but this woman he does not. He simply offers her this spring of perpetual refreshment. We often...

“And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” [1]     Peter and John have been arrested and are being interrogated by the Jewish leaders. They have healed a lame man and have drawn the attention of the crowd. The commotion eventually gained the attention of the authorities. During their interrogation, Peter replies with one of his speeches which apparently was pretty well done. He rehearses the recent history of Jesus and Israel in these words: 8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. 11 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 And...

I n a disturbing turn of events, after declaring his fidelity and wielding a sword in defense of Jesus, Peter denies even knowing Jesus not once, but three times. It is curious that Peter will attack a member of a mob with a sword, but when confronted by a servant girl, he nearly swears his denial. I guess in the heat of the moment, brave (even if ill-advised) action is easier than after we’ve had a chance to cool off and seemingly face the reality of defeat. But I digress. This thrice denial by Peter is one of the most famous stories from Sunday School and it is somewhat confusing because Jesus says that whoever denies him, he will deny before the Father. But Jesus welcomes Peter back and commissions him with a teaching position for the people of God. What’s going on? Is this just an example of forgiveness for a guy who we all know was a little rash in his behavior? Peter’s denial was a denial under pressure and resulted from a concern for his personal safety. If he hadn’t felt so...