Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Life or Death

Passage: Deuteronomy 13


In their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, the Israelites are reminded repeatedly that their relationship with God is a matter of life or death. With God they will live; without God they’ll die. This is the principle that undergirds most of the teaching that God gives his people through Moses in the Old Testament books of the Law. It’s a principle we have to keep in mind when we read passages like Deuteronomy 13.

In this section of his sermon, Moses tells his people how to respond to anyone who presents a religious alternative to the worship of the LORD. Moses says, "If anyone invites you to worship a god other than the LORD, you have to kill that person. It doesn’t matter if it’s your next door neighbor; someone you grew up with; your best friend; your husband or wife. If they try to entice you or any member of your community away from the LORD, they have to be permanently removed from among your people."

This strikes us as harsh. It seems unreasonable. It seems inordinately jealous. Why should God care so much if someone wants a different religion? Is God that insecure?

The answer, of course, is no. God’s not that insecure. But God has gone out of his way to save his people from certain death. In Deuteronomy 7 God’s people are told,

The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.

God wants to save his people. He is their only hope. Any path that leads away from God is a path that leads to certain death. God tells the Israelites, "If you’ve left me for another god, you’re already lost. If your neighbors or your family members have left me for another god, they can only drag others to destruction with them." They have to be removed.


God’s command for the Israelites to kill idolaters, needless to say, no longer applies to us. But our relationship with God is a life or death issue. With God we live. Without God, ultimately, we die. Evaluate your habits and relationships. If anything stands between you and God, set it aside. If you cannot maintain the habit or the relationship without losing your relationship with God, then choose God. Choose life.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

A Blessing and a Curse

Passage: Deuteronomy 11


There’s great tension in North American Christianity around the idea of benefits. The question is raised again and again, “What are the benefits of a relationship with God?” A significant number of American pastors and writers state outright that if you are connected with God, you will prosper. The prevailing view within this prosperity approach is that God wants to bless his people in material – even financial – terms. The promise of prosperity then becomes many people’s primary motivation for pursuing a relationship with God. In turn, many become discouraged in their faith when God doesn’t come through for them. Many are disillusioned when the God to whom they’ve appealed in prayer and with whom they’ve tried to connect on Sunday mornings fails to rain down material blessing. Does God want his people to prosper or not?


Deuteronomy 11 is one of many instances in which God seems to promise his people, the Israelites, prosperity in exchange for obedience. God says,

…if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today – to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul – then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.


What does this mean for God’s chosen people? For the Israelites, God’s promise is this: If you live according to my rules, life will go well for you. Everything will work the way it’s supposed to. This promise has a corollary: If you don’t follow my rules, everything will fall apart. There’s a blessing, and a related curse. God provides the Israelites a template for living successfully as a society. God’s rules are myriad, and they touch on every kind of human activity and relationship – including the people’s relationship with neighboring nations and their relationship with the very land they inhabit. God’s blessing and God’s curse have a spiritual or supernatural component: God states that there are guidelines for living in right relationship with him, and if people can’t live by those guidelines, they can’t have a relationship. Living in right relationship with God has benefits that go far beyond the merely practical or material. But God’s blessing and God’s curse have a fairly simple, practical component, too. God created the world and God created people. He knows how both are supposed to operate, and gives people the gift of insight into how both can work optimally. Living by God’s rules means living optimally. Blessing. Ignoring God’s rules for living has the inevitable consequence of some kind of breakdown. Curse. On this basis, God promises that life will go well for the Israelites so long as they all follow his rules.


How does this translate into the life of God’s people today? God’s people, the church, are no longer a single nation. Rather, we are a community spread throughout the nations of the world. We can’t force the societies in which we’re imbedded to live by God’s rules. That being said, we can create communities that live by God’s rules: the communities of our families and our congregations. It is a lie to say that if you live by God’s rules today, God will make you wealthy. However, it is taking God at his word to conclude that if we, in the communities of our families and churches, live by God’s rules, life will work the way it’s supposed to. Our relationships will grow. Our kids will flourish. Those in our communities who are at risk will be taken care of. Blessing.

We get off track when we think of prosperity in purely individual, and economic, terms. God offers a prosperity that goes far beyond your bank balance. God offers a wealth of relationship, a richness of community, and an overabundance of peace that comes from knowing you’re living the way you were meant to live. That was God’s promise to the Israelites as they were poised to enter the Promised Land; that’s God’s promise to his people today.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Telling the Story

Passage: Deuteronomy 6


The Book of Deuteronomy records Moses’ last words to the people he has led for more than half his life. The Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land. Moses has been denied entry based on an act of disobedience to God. Moses has one last chance to impart to his people the wisdom he’s gained from watching God in action for the past fifty years. Deuteronomy is like an extended sermon – Moses’ version of all the lessons the Israelites learned during their sojourn in the desert.


In Deuteronomy 6 Moses urges his people to hold fast to the rules and principles God has given them. These constitute God’s template for living well – living life the way it was meant to be lived. Moses repeats God’s guarantee: “If you live the way I have taught you to live, things will go well for you in your new life in this new place.”

Moses concludes this part of his sermon with a charge to the parents, and parents-to-be, in the crowd. He says to them, “Don’t let your children forget God’s rules. More importantly, don’t let your children forget what God has done. When your kids ask, ‘Why are these rules important?’, remind them: We were once slaves in Egypt. By his mighty hand God rescued us and brought us to this good place. Don’t let the stories of God’s amazing rescue be forgotten. Tell the stories. Keep telling the stories.”


This continues to be an imperative for God’s people: Keep telling the stories. Countless Christian parents worry about how to raise their kids in the faith – to raise children who grow up to be believing adults. The best way? Tell the stories. Raise them on the stories of God’s people. God’s remarkable call of Abraham. God’s miraculous rescue of his people from slavery in Egypt. God’s unfailing sustenance of the Israelites in the wilderness. God’s unfailing love and faithfulness to a people who fail again and again. God’s rescue of all humanity from our slavery to sin. Start with those stories.

But then tell your own stories. God’s claim on you in your baptism. God’s call on your life as a child. God’s hand at work in your growing-up years. God’s care during some of your hardest times. If you believe in the covenant-making God of the Bible, and have claimed Jesus Christ as your amazing rescuer, then you have stories. Think about them; write them down; tell them to your children. Tell the stories.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Cities of Refuge

Passage: Deuteronomy 4:41-43; Numbers 35:6-33


Deuteronomy 4 makes brief reference to the implementation of a practice God details for the Israelites in Numbers 35. In the latter, God provides detailed instructions for how to deal with people who have killed other people. In this discourse God institutes the provision of “Cities of Refuge” – cities ruled by Levites that represent safe haven for those who have killed inadvertently. At first glance this provision appears to be merely a statement of God’s mercy. Those who have accidentally killed another person are spared the requisite punishment for murderers: death at the hands of a designated avenger. The provision protects the accidental killer from the family and friends of the victim by allowing the killer safe passage to one of the predetermined cities of refuge.


However, there’s a catch. The accidental killer has to stay in the city of refuge indefinitely. If he or she sets foot outside the city, the designated avenger is allowed to take the killer’s life.


This series of regulations is somewhat difficult to understand until we recognize this principle: God takes life and death very seriously. Every human life is precious in God’s sight. God demands that his people never take killing lightly; that they do so only at his direct command; and that they do so not out of principle rather than passion. When one of God’s people dies at the hands of another, vengeance isn’t meted out immediately. Time is taken to determine whether the death has been accidental or the result of a deliberate act. Time is taken to appoint an avenger of blood from within the deceased’s family. Time is taken to pronounce a sentence, and to allow the killer safe passage to a city of refuge should the death be ruled an accident. If the death is ruled a murder, even the execution is pursued not as an act of anger but an act of justice. The avenger finds motivation to kill not from his own hatred but from this God-given principle: Life must be given in exchange for life.

The city of refuge may seem a favorable alternative to death. But it also represents the end of a life. The accidental killer must pick up and leave everything behind. He or she must live out the remainder of his or her life confined to the limits of a small city populated only by ministers and other killers (weird thought). This is still a sentence - a sentence that reflects the severity of the inciting event. A life has been taken. A family and a community have been changed irrevocably. The one responsible party, though protected, is sentenced to live out a daily reminder of the consequences of his actions. Death cannot be undone; death changes everything. God demands that his people hold life in the highest regard, and mark death with profound respect.


God continues to demand this of his people today. Life is to be held in the highest regard. We are held to account for the lives and the deaths for which we’re responsible. Live with care, and treat every life as God’s treasured possession.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Vows

Passage: Numbers 30


A few passages in Numbers address the matter of making vows before God. Numbers 6:1-21, for example, presents detailed instruction for how to make a Nazirite vow. Numbers 30 follows up with a sort of “vows escape clause” for certain people. Specifically, this chapter gives a set of provisos for women who have made vows that the significant men in their lives disagree with.


What’s initially striking about the passage is its unapologetic gender bias. I make no pretense of defending this: the Hebrew and Greco-Roman cultures in which our Scriptures were recorded were heavily male-centric. Within those cultures women were seen either as the property, or at least the unmitigated subordinates, of their fathers or husbands. It should be noted that in both the Hebrew and Greek Testaments women fare much better than in the literature and practice of most other ancient cultures. That being said, we can’t get around this fact: Numbers 30 says men can follow through with their vows regardless of what anyone else says, while women have to check with either their fathers or husbands to make sure what they’ve vowed to do is okay.

Once we get past that, there’s an important principle at work here - a principle that is transferable to our context. God invites his people to take vows of action or abstinence as a sign of commitment during different seasons of their lives. But God recognizes that these vows may have a profound impact not only on the ones making their vows, but also on the important people in their lives. So God says, “After you’ve made a vow, check in with the people closest to you. If they object to the terms of the vow, they have a right to tell you to relinquish it.” God gives significant others veto power, even over a vow made before God.


So doing, God acknowledges that his people have multiple obligations. God demands that his people live out the commitments they’ve made.

Let’s say, for example, that a woman comes home ad tells her husband, “I’m going to take a vow of chastity to honor God.” This would have implications for their marriage. God gives the husband in the situation the right to say, “No, you have an obligation to me that overrides your sense of conviction to take that vow.” Alternately, let’s say a man comes home to his wife and kids and says, “I’m going to take a vow of poverty, quit my job and sell our stuff – to honor God, of course.” Here too, the people to whom the husband has made a commitment have a God-given right to say, “Not so fast. Your obligation to us overrides your sense of conviction in this situation.”

God both invites people to make radical commitments to him, but also holds people accountable to other commitments they’ve made. We live out our faith in community – the communities of our marriages, families, and churches. In Numbers 30 God presents a clear imperative for listening not just to the voice of our own convictions but to the counsel of the people God has placed in close relationship with us. If God is talking to you, trust that he’s also talking to the people with whom you’re closely connected. Listen to them when they encourage you to go ahead and act on a conviction; but listen closely when they say, “Slow down!” or even, “No way!”