The tutor that leads us to Christ

The last several days' readings for me have been all the specifications for sacrifice--what to sacrifice and when, what kind of animal to select, how to prepare it, how to deal with the parts of its body once it has been sacrificed. It's fairly graphic stuff, and while I'm not the most squeamish person, all that talk of the caul of the liver combines about three things I'd rather not contemplate. But I think it's been good for me to read. I keep thinking that if I had to select and kill an animal on a regular basis to atone for my sin, I bet I would be a lot more mindful of what I'm doing. It reminds me of negative reinforcement or something. The sheer unpleasantness would give a person pause. But then I remember what I believe about Christ's sacrifice, and I feel convicted about the low view I often take regarding my sin and how easily I can forget what was required in substituting the Just for the unjust: a much greater lamb, who takes away the sins of the world. In church right now, the pastor has been preaching through Galatians, so I've been thinking a lot about Galatians 3 as I read through the Pentateuch. In my reading, it definitely lends greater significance to laws, which I feel fairly removed from otherwise. (I'll quote the Galatians passage here in the KJV because, well, that's what we're doing. But I like the American Standard Version too, which calls the law our tutor.)

Galatians 3:24-29

But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. Amen.

Perpetuity

I love Matthew 28:20b.  I love when Jesus tells his disciples, and us, "and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."  It's comforting.  It's perpetual. It's not will be, not would be, not can be...but am.

On a side note, what's up with "alway" as opposed to "always"?  Modern translations seem to add the "s."  But I kind of like the awkward and antique feel of "alway," don't you?

A Change of Heart

Despite my purchase the other week of that gorgeous edition of the KJB, I was still woefully behind on my reading some time later.  However, this meant that I ended up powering through large chunks of Genesis in one fell swoop.  This, for me, was really good since I've noticed patterns this time through that I've not noticed in the past. I started this post a long time ago too, but am just getting back to it (even though I'm now well into Exodus.  Alas. Caught up on one thing, behind on oh so many others).

The thing that stood out most to me in my readings in Genesis was Abram/Abraham's change of heart.  He, like myself, and maybe like you too, dear reader, likes to be in control.  God promises that He will "make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Gen 12:2-3).

But then Abram goes off to Egypt and worries that because Sarai "art a fair woman to look upon" (Gen 13:11), he will be killed so that the Pharoah can have her.  So, they say that Sarai is his sister.  Of course, God just promised to multiply his nation and so one might think that God will also protect Abram and Sarai here.  But Abram takes it into his own hands and the Pharaoh pays a price for sleeping with Sarai.

This happens again when Abram goes and sleeps with Hagar, conceiving Ishmael for his heir when he and Sarai refust to believe that God will provide them an heir through Sarai.  This reaps consequences for Hagar who is treated harshly by Sarai after she conceives.  But, God provides for her, promising here--and again later when she and Ishmael have left Abraham and Sarah and are on the point of death in the desert in Chapter 21)--that he will "multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude" (Gen 16:10).

It keeps on happening (Abraham even does the "she's my sister" schtick again) until God commands him to sacrifice Isaac.  To me, this is when that "No, no.  Let's do this *my* way" bit would want to really kick in.  But instead, "Abraham rose up early in this morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him" (Gen 22:3).  He obeys without question.  He seems to have reached a point in his relationship with God where he knows: obedience is the way.  And, he has faith that God will provide another option, telling Issac, "God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering" (Gen 22:8), which, of course, He does.

To me, this change of heart is encouraging.  I hope that, like Abraham, my faith and my obedience too will increase over time and that I will learn that my way is not the best way.

Holy Vestments

Holy garments for beauty and story

Curious girdles and bonnets for glory

Cunning work and fine twined linen

Ouches of gold, Urim and Thummim

Beryl and onyx, emerald and agate

Resounding hems gold and pomegranate

Engraved signets and wreathed chains

Unrentable openings like habergeons

A priest for the people held on his heart

Perfect High Priest glimpsed in textile art

Your One Stop Tabernacle Shop

Reading Exodus 37 and 38 today, my high school Bible study days came back to me in a Proustian rush. Our minister conducted what seemed like a three year Wednesday night series on the tabernacle, and he could go an hour on a single verse. Acacia! Cubits! Tabernacle! Fever! Catch it!

In my memory, these lessons are every bit as riveting as my description makes them sound (which is to say, not very).

But...with an adult's hindsight, here are some things I thought of while reading the passages today.

1. My old minister was a carpenter. Why didn't this click for me when I was in high school? I mean, to someone who wanted to use his hands to hold books instead of hammers, these passages seem needlessly detailed. But looking back, I can see why the cat was fascinated. I don't think he ever built an tabernacle (we didn't have any spare cubits of gold lying around), but he did make us a self-contained stand to sell fireworks in.

2. I imagined a blog project not unlike ours wherein the goal was to document building a replica of the tabernacle. I didn't find it, but I did find this!

3. How long is a cubit? 20 inches, or the length from the elbow to the end of the middle finger. The lower forearm cubit? 12 inches, or the length from the elbow to the base of the hand.

He made the waters stand as an heap

The reading plan I’m following has me in Exodus among other places. This morning amidst crossing the Red Sea, I pondered the rioters and demonstrators way down in Egypt-land, seeking relief from yet another heart-hardening oppressor. Wouldn’t they rejoice to see the waters “stand as an heap” if only in solidarity with them. Actually, that phrase “stand as an heap” had me puzzled as to where it was, for as much as I remembered it when I thought of the story, I couldn’t find it in the Exodus account, nor in Moses’ song, nor in Miriam’s song. I was pretty sure this was not something I had made up, so I went hunting in the Psalms, and sure enough Asaph uses that phrase in his depressing history lesson in Psalm 78. A strange correlation by the way, with what I witnessed outside my window this morning in the wake of the blizzard last night: waters stood in wave-like wind-swept heaps of snow everywhere! And my kind Canadian neighbor, puffing all the while on the cigarette between his lips, valiantly sought to stand the waters in even higher heaps so as to allow us all passage on dry ground, only to break the shovel. I became aware of all this as I was reading. Funny, no?

Speaking in (and listening to) Tongues

No one told me that the King James Version of the Bible was the “right” translation. I grew up in a church that exclusively used the KJV, but it did a lot of other things that were exclusive too—for instance, demanding that men always wear long pants in public. Choosing to champion the KJV seemed relatively normal by comparison.

The church I grew up in could loosely be called charismatic, but that would be like saying that southern summers could loosely be called sweltering. The label was accurate, but somehow didn’t quite capture the experience

We were tongue-talkers. We were holy-rollers. I could quote Acts 2:38 before I learned to read. Acts 2 is to Oneness Pentecostals what Romans 8 was to Calvinists: the Bible’s defining chapter, the storehouse for thousands of sermons, and the motivation for millions of clapped or raised hands. We even made jokes out of its language. Q: What kind of car did the apostles drive? A: A Honda. Acts 2 says they were all “with one accord in one place.”

But Acts 2 is fascinating for one reason that I don’t think I ever heard a minister mention. It basically authorizes vernacular translation. The originary moment for the church AS church involves lots of people learning to speak in languages that aren’t their own, praising God in that tongue, and then having both the miraculous form and edifying content combine to spark a mass conversion.

I never considered this when I was a Oneness Pentecostal, but one of the church’s chief ironies is that they valorize glossalalia to the point of making it essential for salvation yet remain wary of newer Biblical translations.

This manifested itself particularly in the charismatic gift of tongues and interpretation, a rare worship treat that would often happen in a revival service or on a particularly fiery Sunday night service.

The set up was this: a worship song would end and the crowd-clapping and general God-adoration wouldn’t stop. And then there would be this eerie silence as one voice started talking over everyone else in some language that clearly wasn’t in English. In fact, it wasn’t clearly anything. I never heard a public tongue-talking that was in any language I could remotely identify. (When I was in college, I thought several times of recording the language and then taking it to a linguistics professor to identify the tongue. But the recorder seemed to ensure nothing happened, as though I were the cameraman sent to capture the faces of people who believed that cameras steal souls…only to find myself without film when I arrived). Upon hearing the louder voice, everyone shut up. Suddenly the church was a cavern filled with the voice of a prophet. The tongue-talking would last for a minute or two, would cease, and then slowly the fader would be pushed up and then general crowd noise would re-enter.

We were thanking God, but we were also biding our time, waiting for the interpretation. Then a voice would ring out over the crowd, but this time, it was speaking English. Often the interpreter would be the SAME person who did the tongue-talking. I have since realized how suspicious this was, but at the time it seemed like letting the farmer who planted and reaped the crop get to enjoy the first bite of the harvested corn.

The important thing was the WAY the interpreters spoke. Maybe my memory has skewed the numbers, but I am positive that at least 40% of the English interpretations of tongue-talking moments were in King James English. “Thus saith the Lord…” they often began. It says so much that when I was in high school, this diction only lent the interpretation more authority. There were always urban legends floating around about parishioners who had abused their power: “Thus saith the Lord, ‘I shall roast thee over hell like a hot dog.” Stuff like that. Looking back, I am amazed that those sorts of wacky moments didn’t happen more often.

Ever since, I’ve been a sucker for any comedy bit that used KJV phrasing. The Holy Hand Grenade section from Monty Python’s The Holy Grail. The soliloquy at the end of Woody Allen’s Love and Death. But it’s only because I know how much power the language has that these bits are hilarious, that almost as a defense mechanism against the powerful use of language represented in Acts 2, we had to make a groan-worthy car pun out of its 1^st verse.