Month: May 2017

The Bible in a Year – 18 May

First of all, apologies if you have been following this series and wondered why it stopped at the 17th May.  Had I given up on reading the Bible?  No! It’s just that I was somewhere without internet access for a week.  Now back online.

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

18 May. Jeremiah chapters 14-17

At the start of this reading Jeremiah predicts a severe drought (14:1-6). Such things may seem natural to us who think we understand earth’s climate, and we may mock those who say “do the skies themselves send down showers? No, it is you, O Lord our God” (14:22) and who understood drought and flood alike to be God’s punishment for human misbehaviour.  But in an age when the climate becomes increasingly unpredictable, and then when scientists as well as environmentalists link this to our over-consumption of earth’s resources, maybe the ancients were right: it is in living in harmony with God and his creation that we have the best chance of a favourable climate.

 

The drought may have inspired Jeremiah’s contrast in chapter 17 between the man who trusts in other men and lives in a salty desert, and the one who trusts in God and is like a tree by streams of water.  The same image is used in the Psalms, and also reminds us of Jesus’ parable of the two men who built on the sand and the rock, and only the latter survived a flood.  Both images, of drought and of flood, portray the idea that God is the  source of the life in us. Drought and dryness in the Bible can be a metaphor for the spiritual dryness that makes life seem drab, difficult and unbearable, whereas the tree by the stream is an image of a life that can cope with all extremes – plenty and want, floods that threaten to overwhelm us and barrenness that threatens to drive us to despair – and still flourish.

The Bible in a Year – 17 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

17 May. Jeremiah chapters 10-13

Much of these chapters is the same basic messages as the preceding ones: the folly of idolatry, the sin of the people and their leaders, the coming destruction and the hint of a faithful remnant who will return. But each time the ideas return they are expressed in different ways, like the variations on a theme in a piece of classical music.  If a message is important then it deserves repeating in a variety of eays. Jeremiah certainly had a vivid imagination, or rather was open to vivid imagery given by God.  Like any good preacher with an eclectic congregation he must have hoped that each re-telling would appeal to a few people and catch their imagination.  Imagery here includes shepherds, nomadic tent-dwellers, arable farming, vineyards and olive growing, and even iron-smelting, along with the repeated metaphor of prostitution (are the sayings about Judah being like a woman having her skirt lifted and being violated addressed to women or men?)

 

We also see here  for the first time in this book an acted parable – that of burying a clean loincloth and retrieving it dirty. There is also the first rumour of opposition, as Jeremiah hears that his own people are plotting against him.  For those who speak truth to power (even telling the King that his crown will fall, 13:18) rarely get away without facing strong opposition, such is most people’s reluctance to accept criticism and face up to their sins.

 

The Bible in a Year – 16 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

16 May. Jeremiah chapters 7-9

In these chapters, Jeremiah the prophet experiences some of the tensions that any minister, or particularly parish priest must feel as they go about their patch – for the parish system in the Catholic and Anglican churches means that our priests are given a responsibility for the spiritual care of everyone living there, not just those who attend church.

 

One of these tensions is that between proclamation and response (or lack of it). “So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you” (7:27). A prophet has visions, or hears voices, or otherwise understands the will of God, the love of God, the urgency of Gods call. He (or she, for there were and are many women with the gift of prophecy) cannot but tell people what they believe God is saying, and yet even the most eloquent prophet finds that there is little response.  Only a small percentage of people ever get the idea, understand the message and turn to God.

 

The other is whether it is right to pray for the sinners around us.  God tells Jeremiah, “As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you” (7:16). The message is, don’t bother asking me to forgive them for this time they have gone beyond forgiveness.  Yet Jeremiah persists in praying for the people, for that is the burden God has laid on him. “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land … For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me … O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!” (8:19,21; 9:1). But there is no response – this time not even a suggestion of a remnant. It must have weighed heavily on him.

 

The result is that Jeremiah wishes he could get away from it all: “O that I had in the desert a traveller’s lodging-place, that I might leave my people and go away from them! For they are all adulterers, a band of traitors” (9:2). Priests, prophets and other ministers are prone to burn-out and need time away from the demands of their ministry, whether it is a short retreat or an occasional longer ‘sabbatical’.  Some churches expect this of their clergy, others at least allow it.

The Bible in a Year – 15 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

15 May. Jeremiah chapters 4-6

Jeremiah lived in the time before Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, and his prophecies in these chapters grow increasingly urgent.  Again and again the message God gives him for his people is that their sins (compared, as in Isaiah, to adultery or prostitution) were so grave that the people and their city deserved destruction. After centuries of being sent prophets to turn them back to God, still they persisted in ignoring his calls to worship him alone and show justice and right living.

 

In 4:1-4 there is one final call to repentance, with the startling call (not to be imagined literally!) to “remove the foreskin of your hearts”. The metaphor means that it is not having gone through a religious ritual of commitment that matters, but having the heart (emotions and will) dedicated to God.

 

But this last call is also ignored. This time they have gone too far – the rich as well as the poor fail to show any evidence of faith, the educated as well as the peasant, priests as well as laity.  Just twice there is a hint that a remnant will be saved – “The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end” (4:27), “But even in those days, says the Lord, I will not make a full end of you” (5:18)

 

 

The final straw, before God sends the Babylonian horde in, bent on destruction and ethnic cleansing, is this: “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule as the prophets direct; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?” (5:30-31). It is when even religious leaders are apostate that there is then no hope for the people.

 

If there are difficult times ahead for our nation, it may be due to any number of factors – economic, political or environmental – but there is at their root a spiritual cause.  If large numbers of people genuinely turned to God and sought to live their lives by his standards, there would be less inequality, more justice and truth in politics, more concern for the environment.  But is it the fault of the Church? I don’t think so.

The media in the UK often like to quote statistics of declining church attendance and prophecy the “death of religion” or similar.  But they ignore what I see within the Church, which is an increasing desire on the part of priests and ministers, and also lay people, to renew their own spiritual lives, as well as praying for the conversion of others. There are more people living in religious communities than for a long time (although they look very different from traditional monasteries), more people going on retreats, practising meditation, joining nurture groups. As traditional denominations have to cut numbers of paid clergy, more people are coming forward to train as lay leaders or self-supporting ministers.  We can never be complacent, but although the Christian church in Britain may be shrinking in numbers, it seems to me to be in good spiritual health.  And we may take comfort from the Bible that God will not overlook the faith of the few.

The Bible in a Year – 14 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

14 May. Jeremiah chapters 1-3

Like Isaiah and other prophets, Jeremiah had a clear call from the Lord.  Even more than other spiritual gifts, true prophesy is something that cannot be imitated or made up.   It is different from preaching (which is taking the scriptures along with common sense and a degree of specialist knowledge, and applying them to everyday life) and evangelism (persuading people of the truth of a particular faith).   Prophesy is always something that God puts in someone’s mind and heart and mouth, a message for a specific situation or person or group that applies directly to them.

 

As both Isaiah and Jeremiah found, receiving a prophetic word to speak to one’s contemporaries is very challenging.  Not only is the word likely to be rejected by many of them as too difficult or even offensive to accept, but the prophet himself is made to feel sinful by delivering it.    Both these great prophets had to feel that God had touched their mouth in order to make it clean enough to deliver his message.

 

Jeremiah’s message was, in one sense, nothing new: throughout the history of God’s people he was constantly challenging them about worship of other ‘gods’, spirits or idols.  Unlike other sins such as lust, anger or greed which can afflict even the most faithful of believers, and be repented of, the sin of idolatry – believing that there is something that is more deserving of worship than God – is a fundamental betrayal.

 

That is why the form of Jeremiah’s words is so hard-hitting.  Many times over in different ways he uses the image of Israel and Judah as women who have committed adultery, not just with one lover but as prostitutes with many.  What man would accept his wife back in such circumstances?  Why would God ever accept his people again?

 

Israel and Judah had indeed gone so far from true religion that they would be banished from the land.  But God never gives up completely, and even in these opening chapters (2:11-18) there is the hint of a future restoration.

The Bible in a Year – 13 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

13 May, Isaiah chapters 64-66

The final climax of Isaiah’s prophecies continues in the apocalyptic style that I described yesterday, describing events that could be related to the immediate rebuilding of Jerusalem, or to its second destruction in 70CE and the subsequent spreading of Christianity as the new worldwide religion, or to the future and final ingathering of all God’s people on the last day.

 

Some interpreters would also add the renewal of the nation of Israel from 1947 as part of this vision. There remains controversy within the Church as to whether that was a fulfilment of prophecy, part of God’s plan, or merely a political phenomenon of our time.  Was it part of God’s plan that there should be Jews living in Jerusalem in order that it can feature as the central location of his final act of redemption (whatever that might look like in practice)? Or is the worldwide church – messianic Jews as well as gentile Christians – the ‘new Israel’ with God’s presence in the risen Christ in all places, and Jerusalem no longer anywhere special except as a matter of historic interest? The site of the Temple, of course, is now a mosque, so God is still worshipped there but in a different way.

 

These are not easy questions, and Isaiah may have understood nothing of the circumstances of the 21st century. What we can say with certainty, though, is that these final chapters of the longest and most profound of the books of Biblical prophecy leave the reader in no doubt that what matters to God is not forms of worship or religious allegiance (66:1-4) but an openness to the work of God’s spirit in “making all things new”.  Since the first day of creation the Spirit has been working, creating, constantly and restlessly seeking to bring all things to perfection, and only those who are open to the Spirit of God will have a place in paradise.

The Bible in a Year – 12 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

12 May. Isaiah chapters 59-63

Towards the end of this book of prophecy, the style becomes ‘apocalyptic’. Which does not mean it is all about terror and vengeance (though there is some of that, in chapters 59 and 63).  But like other apocalyptic works in the Bibles such as Daniel and Revelation, there seems to be a conflating of the way God was working in the prophet’s own time, and what will happen at the end of history, the day of judgement.  Some of the descriptions of ‘Zion’ here refer to the earthly Jerusalem, being rebuilt by those who had returned from Babylon.   Some are clearly references to the future Kingdom of God when day and night have ceased to be, and God himself is the light of his people.  That is the vision of St John at the very end of the Bible, and Isaiah caught it too.

 

We see more clearly than ever now that when God comes to rescue his people from either external oppression or their own sins, whether in the ‘here and now’ or at the final judgement, he will restore ‘justice’ (more than legalism, rather fairness, wholeness and harmony), a word that occurs throughout Isaiah and especially in these chapters. At those times, two things always happen: those who are open to God’s justice and have repented of their sins will experience his coming with joy and a sense of liberation.  And those who have resisted justice and ignored God, and have let sin take over their lives, will experience it as terrible judgement – God “treading the grapes of wrath” (63:3, one of those well-known quotations that I had not realised was from the Bible until I came across it here).  There is no chance given at that time to change sides – we will be judged on our relationship with God as it has been until this moment.  That is why there are many verses in the Bible along the lines of “now is the day of salvation” or “seek the Lord while he is near”. The old billboard sign “repent, for the end is nigh” may be a simplistic and in many ways negative way of summarising the Gospel message, but it is still true.

 

In between these two visions – of the rebuilt worldly city of Jerusalem and several centuries of prosperity, and the final day of judgement – comes Jesus.  Of course he is not named here, except in the sense that his very name Yeshua means something like ‘God saves’, which is a good summary of these chapters.  But it is recorded by Luke that at Jesus’ first sermon following his baptism in the Spirit, he read the beginning of chapter 61 of Isaiah (“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed …”) and told people that it was being fulfilled even as they listened.  He knew that he was the Messiah, the suffering servant that Isaiah had seen in his visions, and that his role was indeed to bring in the “year of the Lord’s favour” in anticipation of the end times when justice would finally be brought to bear.

 

So, if you have not already turned to Jesus, now is the time to do so, to experience the day of God’s favour, and be ready for when he comes again in glory.

 

The Bible in a Year – 11 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

11 May. Isaiah chapters 54-58

Once again we are presented with a full five chapters of Isaiah, when even a few verses from almost anywhere in them would be enough material for a reflection.

 

The broad brush approach is that in these chapters God promises to the small number of Israelites who would return to Jerusalem that although they may have felt like widows or childless women (i.e. lacking support and with no hope for the future), in fact in the fulness of time God would provide them with many descendants – not just in the literal sense, but as God’s promises of mercy and redemption would be extended from Israel to the rest of humanity.  The covenant first made with Noah (one family) and that with Abraham (likewise) would be renewed with this small band of people.  Every time God brings judgement, he leaves room for a small number of faithful people to be the seeds of new life, both physically and spiritually. It was only with the death and resurrection of Jesus that the promise could be fulfilled, but like so much of Isaiah there is a message both for the people of his own time and for future generations.

 

In and among these great promises, though, are some passages condemning the leaders of Israel for their idolatry and other sins. Isaiah saw that even with God’s promise of starting with a clean slate and the offer of forgiveness, it would not be long before people started to live in a selfish, greedy and godless way.  Such is fallen human nature. The true remnant were those who returned in humility, willing to live by the law of love and not just the ritual law.

 

Such is the overall message. But I also want to pick out one of the many sub-themes running through these chapters.  “everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” (55:1). “Is not this the fast that I choose: … to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?” (58:6,7)  “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness” (58:10).

We don’t need to interpret those verses as a parable or metaphor. They are a clear command: generosity, hospitality and sharing are at the heart of God’s kingdom.  It is no coincidence that one of the clearest signs of revival in a church today is when its members get involved in local food banks, “junk food” projects, or soup kitchens; or in the Fairtrade movement which seeks to ensure that people across the world who produce the food an other goods we consume are fairly treated, well paid and enabled to build up their own communities.  For food and hospitality are at the heart of what it is to be human, and what it is to belong to God. Be generous to those in need, and he will be generous to you.

 

The Bible in a Year – 10 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

10 May. Isaiah chapters 49-53

This is a lengthy passage of verse, beginning and ending with two of the “songs of the Servant”. These are usually identified as prophecies of Jesus Christ, and chapter 53 in particular is seen as describing his crucifixion, which Christians believe was a willing sacrifice by a sinless man, according to the will of God who lived in him, to settle with God the debt owed to him by all people for their sins.  There is far more in them than I can look at in detail now. Many books have been written and sermons preached to try and explain this – the commentary I am following devotes 21 pages to these chapters – but few as poetically as the “second Isaiah” (whoever that was) writing over five hundred years before the event.

 

Many of the phrases in these chapters have been used by composers over the years, from the sublime music of Handel in his “Messiah” (“he gave his back to the smiters”; “surely he has borne our griefs an carried our sorrows”; “all we like sheep have gone astray”), to contemporary songwriters (“how beautiful upon the mountains  are the feet of him who brings glad tidings”; “led like a lamb to the slaughter in silence and shame”; “the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion” [=Jerusalem]) – and many more.  For the promises here are not only the restoration of the tribe of Israel/Judah to the Holy Land for a second time, but of the reconciliation of all creation to God once and for all time.

 

In between these servant songs are words addressed, at least in part, to the people in captivity in Babylon. Did they rush back to Jerusalem at the first invitation of God? No, it seems they needed much encouragement.  To many of them who had been born there the “old country” held no attractions; like all refugees, they were crushed and in despair at ever being a free people or having their own home again; the journey seemed daunting, and much hard work would be needed to rebuild the ruins.  Despite those setbacks, it was their only hope.

 

But these passages contain many hints that it is not only the Jewish people who were being addressed, but the whole world.  People would flock to join them from all directions, and would together become witnesses to the Servant’s redeeming love. Together they would be a renewed Israel that would be a “light to the Gentiles” (a phrase repeated when Jesus was dedicated to God as a baby).  This is what we mean by the Church – all those who have been drawn from whatever held them captive, by the love of God shown in his suffering servant, to join his people in the new Jerusalem.

 

Like the captives here, people rarely walk into a church the first time they hear of Jesus and ask to be baptised and join the community of the redeemed. The Christian faith seems strange to those who were not brought up in it, it needs to be explained with many words of encouragement, and for many it is a journey of many years.  Yet we equally believe that Christ is the only way to God, and that those who make this journey to faith in Jesus will find themselves in the “new Jerusalem”, the Kingdom of

The Bible in a Year – 9 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

9 May. Isaiah chapters 45-48

These chapters reveal explicitly what has only been hinted at in the preceding ones: that God would use another foreign ruler, Cyrus, to do his bidding in releasing Israel from slavery.  He is called ‘anointed’ which is actually the word for ‘Messiah’, a title of many kings of Israel/Judah before it was applied supremely to Jesus.  This shows that God can in fact use anyone, even a pagan king, and not just those of “his religion”, to bring about his will.

 

This is an important point in the run-up to our parliamentary elections – you will find Christians who consider Conservatives “un-Christian” for their social policies, others who consider Labour “un-Christian” for their socialist roots, others who find the Liberal Democrats rather too liberal when it comes to matters of morality. But all the parties have some politicians who profess to be Christian and are upright in character, others who profess faith but whose faults are evident, and others who make no claims to faith.  Yet any of them could be used by God to bring about much needed changes in our society.  Deciding who to vote for is never a simple matter of “one is good and the others are all evil” and as usual the Archbishops and other faith leaders are calling most of all for people to use their right to vote and not neglect it.

 

The remainder of this passage is a contrast between the Babylonians who relied on their religion (a mixture of idol-worship and astrology) to keep themselves as the dominant power in the region, and the remnant of Israel who appeared powerless and in captivity but who would in fact be freed by their invisible but all-powerful god to rebuild Jerusalem by the very “Messiah” who at the same time would destroy the Babylonians in the name of the God of Israel (or rather, of the whole earth).  Whoever is elected to govern our country should be humble enough, and a person of faith, to recognise that it is God who ultimately directs a nation’s fate, in accordance with the way that its people live and worship.  It may seem now that the Conservatives with their “strong and stable” leadership are here to stay, and maybe it is God’s will that they are in charge for the time being, but the time could suddenly come when that all changes.