The section that we have from the book of Numbers is basically the journey of the people of Israel from Mount Sinai.
This is before the 40 years in the wilderness.
I don't know if you noticed but the people of Israel seem to complain a lot. God is providing for them, but they want meat - so they complain. Aaron and Miriam are jealous of Moses, so they complain. Moses is fed up with the complaining so he disobeys God and strikes a rock in anger rather than speaking to it.
I've been thinking about this. God is giving the people what is best for them. He is leading them to freedom and a land that will be fertile for them. They are heading to a place where they can establish their families and their nation - and yet, they seem to be dragging their heals and complaining the whole way.
I suspect this comes from two sources. The first is that a new land means new ways and new things and that means change and human beings resist change instinctively. The second is that getting to the good things requires some effort, they have to travel, they have to scope out the land, they have to fight some wars. If we are really honest, we would rather have the good things handed to us without having to do any work for them.
So - what is the promised land that God is leading us to? What are we complaining about along the way?
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Bible Challenge - Holiness in all things
This weeks Bible challenge readings start with God striking dead Aaron's sons for offering incense other than in the way that God commanded. It moves on to a whole bunch of rules about what the people of Israel can and can't eat - that form the basis of the Kosher dietary laws that are still used today. It goes from there to lots of rules about dealing with leprousy. And then a whole bunch of rules about not mixing unlike things (crops, fibers etc).
We move into the book of Numbers and get the duties of priests and redeeming a first born son and then dividing up of lands.
Most of these chapters will engender one of two reactions - 1. Yuck!! 2. Huh??. Most of these chapters recount a God that seems very different than the God that we know or rules and practices that make no sense to us today.
One of the things that reading the Old Testament reminds me of is how far God has moved his people over thousands of years. The point of most of these chapters was to outline for the people of Israel what it meant to be God's people - how to be holy (which means set apart for God) and how important it was to be holy.
You see, we don't remember how radical the rules of the God of Israel were for their time. This was an era when most God's demanded human sacrifice for most sins and that the standard response to injury by others was to destroy your enemies and their children and their livestock and everything they owned.
God was moving the people of Israel away from that - a few steps on the road that leads to Jesus and love your neighbor as yourself - but they couldn't go all the way down that road at the time of Leviticus. The thing that is most important to God is that his people are different, and even more importantly are seen to be different. So holiness in all things - even the minor things of life - is the goal and because this is a time of communal life - having unholiness in the community undermines that - so there are strict rules about excluding the unholy from the community.
What would it look like if we strove for our whole lives and everything we did to be set apart for God?
We move into the book of Numbers and get the duties of priests and redeeming a first born son and then dividing up of lands.
Most of these chapters will engender one of two reactions - 1. Yuck!! 2. Huh??. Most of these chapters recount a God that seems very different than the God that we know or rules and practices that make no sense to us today.
One of the things that reading the Old Testament reminds me of is how far God has moved his people over thousands of years. The point of most of these chapters was to outline for the people of Israel what it meant to be God's people - how to be holy (which means set apart for God) and how important it was to be holy.
You see, we don't remember how radical the rules of the God of Israel were for their time. This was an era when most God's demanded human sacrifice for most sins and that the standard response to injury by others was to destroy your enemies and their children and their livestock and everything they owned.
God was moving the people of Israel away from that - a few steps on the road that leads to Jesus and love your neighbor as yourself - but they couldn't go all the way down that road at the time of Leviticus. The thing that is most important to God is that his people are different, and even more importantly are seen to be different. So holiness in all things - even the minor things of life - is the goal and because this is a time of communal life - having unholiness in the community undermines that - so there are strict rules about excluding the unholy from the community.
What would it look like if we strove for our whole lives and everything we did to be set apart for God?
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Bible Challenge - Week Four
Welcome to week four of the St. Paul's Bible Challenge
This week we are reading the end of the book of Exodus and the beginning of the book of Leviticus
The end of the book of Exodus is a weird combination of instructions and regulations and the people of Israel messing up.
Much of the section of Exodus (and all of the sections of Leviticus we have this week) are instructions of how to build the tabernacle of the Lord and what the offerings are to be made of and how they are to be done.
But, in the middle of the rules and diagrams, we have the people of Israel. Moses goes up on the mountain to get God's commandments for the people and in the short time he is gone the people of Israel give up - they ask Aaron to make them an idol - and the part that still gets me - Aaron does.
They worship the idol and have a large party or a small orgy - it's hard to tell from the Hebrew.
That however sets the stage for one of my favorite conversations with God - God says to Moses, "Your people are messing up - go and fix it" Up to this point they have been God's people - but now suddenly they are Moses' people.
It makes God sound like an exasperated parent - you know - "Your son crashed the car". I love those places in Scripture where God sounds like a fed up human - it reminds me that God - while being all powerful and all knowing and all everything - can also be fed up.
This week we are reading the end of the book of Exodus and the beginning of the book of Leviticus
The end of the book of Exodus is a weird combination of instructions and regulations and the people of Israel messing up.
Much of the section of Exodus (and all of the sections of Leviticus we have this week) are instructions of how to build the tabernacle of the Lord and what the offerings are to be made of and how they are to be done.
But, in the middle of the rules and diagrams, we have the people of Israel. Moses goes up on the mountain to get God's commandments for the people and in the short time he is gone the people of Israel give up - they ask Aaron to make them an idol - and the part that still gets me - Aaron does.
They worship the idol and have a large party or a small orgy - it's hard to tell from the Hebrew.
That however sets the stage for one of my favorite conversations with God - God says to Moses, "Your people are messing up - go and fix it" Up to this point they have been God's people - but now suddenly they are Moses' people.
It makes God sound like an exasperated parent - you know - "Your son crashed the car". I love those places in Scripture where God sounds like a fed up human - it reminds me that God - while being all powerful and all knowing and all everything - can also be fed up.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Bible Challenge - the Ten Commandments
Bible Challenge Week Three
We are reading the first 24 chapters of the book of Exodus this week.
If you have seen the movie the Ten Commandments, you basically have the story that we are reading this week.
We start with the people of Israel kept as slaves in Egypt - they call to the Lord and the Lord, eventually, finds Moses.
Moses is the least likely champion of the people of Israel that any one could think of. While he was a member of the tribe of Levi, he had not been raised among the people of Israel - he had really been raised as an Egyptian noble and he had fled from Egypt to avoid the consequences of a murder that he committed.
There are lots of things in this story - but I want to highlight two:
First - at the meeting of Moses with God in the burning bush, Moses asks who God is and God says, what get translated into English as "I am that I am". Hebrew verb tenses are much more fluid than English ones - so this could as easily be translated "I am that I was" or "I was that which I will become" or "I am becoming that which I am". In other words - our God is not defined by time or space.
Second - when you see Christian depictions of the 10 commandments, they usually have 5 on one tablet and 5 on the other. When you see Jewish depictions of the 10 commandments they have four on one tablet and six on the other. That is because the first four commandments are about our relationship with God. The last six are about our relationships with each other.
What do you think?
We are reading the first 24 chapters of the book of Exodus this week.
If you have seen the movie the Ten Commandments, you basically have the story that we are reading this week.
We start with the people of Israel kept as slaves in Egypt - they call to the Lord and the Lord, eventually, finds Moses.
Moses is the least likely champion of the people of Israel that any one could think of. While he was a member of the tribe of Levi, he had not been raised among the people of Israel - he had really been raised as an Egyptian noble and he had fled from Egypt to avoid the consequences of a murder that he committed.
There are lots of things in this story - but I want to highlight two:
First - at the meeting of Moses with God in the burning bush, Moses asks who God is and God says, what get translated into English as "I am that I am". Hebrew verb tenses are much more fluid than English ones - so this could as easily be translated "I am that I was" or "I was that which I will become" or "I am becoming that which I am". In other words - our God is not defined by time or space.
Second - when you see Christian depictions of the 10 commandments, they usually have 5 on one tablet and 5 on the other. When you see Jewish depictions of the 10 commandments they have four on one tablet and six on the other. That is because the first four commandments are about our relationship with God. The last six are about our relationships with each other.
What do you think?
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Bible Challenge Week Two - Jacob and Jospeh
Welcome to Bible Challenge Week Two.
We have the end of the book of Genesis this week - it's basically the stories of Jacob (aka Israel) and Joseph.
This is the beginning of the nation of Israel - Jacob gets his name changed to Israel - which means one strives with God. In Hebrew the word "el" means god, so any name that ends in "el" is something of or with God. Jacob (or Israel) has 12 sons and these sons are the founders of the 12 tribes - that is the nation - of Israel.
Our God gives the name of his people - and thus his own name because he becomes known as the God of Israel - "one who strives or wrestles with God"
And the rest of the story of the people of Israel really is the story of people and a people who wrestle with God - they draw near, struggle, pull away and come back. It's kind of our story too, we all wrestle with God at some points in our lives.
The other point of the story of Jacob is that God can use anyone. Jacob is not a nice man, he isn't a role model. He's a trickster and a liar and a coward - and even so God uses him to found the nation of his people. God doesn't need for us to be good in order to be used for his will.
Then we have the story of Joseph and his brothers. Joseph is, not to put to fine a point on it, a spoiled brat, and his brothers are really pretty nasty too - and yet God manages to turn a real family tragedy into a vehicle to save his nation. God certainly didn't intend the behavior of either Joseph or his brothers or Potipher's wife, come to that, but God manages to work his will in spite of all of them. And maybe that is another part of the message - that God can work his will through us in spite of us.
What do you think?
We have the end of the book of Genesis this week - it's basically the stories of Jacob (aka Israel) and Joseph.
This is the beginning of the nation of Israel - Jacob gets his name changed to Israel - which means one strives with God. In Hebrew the word "el" means god, so any name that ends in "el" is something of or with God. Jacob (or Israel) has 12 sons and these sons are the founders of the 12 tribes - that is the nation - of Israel.
Our God gives the name of his people - and thus his own name because he becomes known as the God of Israel - "one who strives or wrestles with God"
And the rest of the story of the people of Israel really is the story of people and a people who wrestle with God - they draw near, struggle, pull away and come back. It's kind of our story too, we all wrestle with God at some points in our lives.
The other point of the story of Jacob is that God can use anyone. Jacob is not a nice man, he isn't a role model. He's a trickster and a liar and a coward - and even so God uses him to found the nation of his people. God doesn't need for us to be good in order to be used for his will.
Then we have the story of Joseph and his brothers. Joseph is, not to put to fine a point on it, a spoiled brat, and his brothers are really pretty nasty too - and yet God manages to turn a real family tragedy into a vehicle to save his nation. God certainly didn't intend the behavior of either Joseph or his brothers or Potipher's wife, come to that, but God manages to work his will in spite of all of them. And maybe that is another part of the message - that God can work his will through us in spite of us.
What do you think?
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Bible Challenge Week One - God in the World
Welcome to week one of the St. Paul's Bible Challenge. We have started out reading the Torah - the first five books of the Christian Bible - this is what Jesus, and Paul, were referring to when they say, "Scripture says ..."
This week we have the first 24 chapters of the book of Genesis.
These chapters have a lot of the stories that we know: The creation stories (yes there are two), Noah's Ark, Abraham and Sarah, Ishmael, the sacrifice of Isaac and Rebecca at the well. There are also some of the stories that we don't hear very often (like Noah after he leaves the ark).
As I think about this section of Scripture, it seems to me that one of the overarching themes of this section is that God has called the world into being and has begun calling human beings into relationship with himself.
We begin with God literally speaking the world into being and it is good. Then God begins attempting to build relationships with him. We see that in story of Adam and Eve, of Noah and of Abraham. God calls human beings into relationship with him - it basically involves letting him be our God.
These stories show that from the beginning God has sought to be in relationship with human beings and that we have mostly not succeeded very well in responding to God's call to relationship. We mostly fail to let God be our God - but we try to respond to God's call.
What do you think?
This week we have the first 24 chapters of the book of Genesis.
These chapters have a lot of the stories that we know: The creation stories (yes there are two), Noah's Ark, Abraham and Sarah, Ishmael, the sacrifice of Isaac and Rebecca at the well. There are also some of the stories that we don't hear very often (like Noah after he leaves the ark).
As I think about this section of Scripture, it seems to me that one of the overarching themes of this section is that God has called the world into being and has begun calling human beings into relationship with himself.
We begin with God literally speaking the world into being and it is good. Then God begins attempting to build relationships with him. We see that in story of Adam and Eve, of Noah and of Abraham. God calls human beings into relationship with him - it basically involves letting him be our God.
These stories show that from the beginning God has sought to be in relationship with human beings and that we have mostly not succeeded very well in responding to God's call to relationship. We mostly fail to let God be our God - but we try to respond to God's call.
What do you think?
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Things are starting up
I can't believe that summer is almost over - but there is no denying it.
The calendars change to September on Sunday and school starts next week.
The collected school supplies are on their way to students at School 6 - which is also Buffalo Elementary School of Technology. Gifts are heading towards the teachers at School 6 and Harris Hill Elementary and the days are getting shorter.
That means that it's time for programs to begin again at church and we have lots of new things.
We will be kicking off Sunday School on September 8 and 10 a.m. But this year we are asking you to bring not only your backpacks, but your tablets, cell phones and anything else that helps you learn, connect and communicate. We will be blessing all of it - and inviting you to tweet your hopes for the year at #blesstech
The youth group heads to Darian Lake after the service - but this year with the youth from St. Martin's Church on Grand Island. We will be travelling to England with them next summer.
Bible Study starts on Monday the 9th at 10:15 am - this year we are adding a Bible Challenge - a weekly set of readings that will take us through half the Bible this year.
And - of course - there are the changes around the church - we have a new roof, and new siding and new windows and a new door at the Parish Hall and new signs. The church has a new ceiling and new paint and new carpeting are coming. We are looking forward to completing that project by the end of September.
Come and see and be a part of all of the new things that are going on at St. Paul's
The calendars change to September on Sunday and school starts next week.
The collected school supplies are on their way to students at School 6 - which is also Buffalo Elementary School of Technology. Gifts are heading towards the teachers at School 6 and Harris Hill Elementary and the days are getting shorter.
That means that it's time for programs to begin again at church and we have lots of new things.
We will be kicking off Sunday School on September 8 and 10 a.m. But this year we are asking you to bring not only your backpacks, but your tablets, cell phones and anything else that helps you learn, connect and communicate. We will be blessing all of it - and inviting you to tweet your hopes for the year at #blesstech
The youth group heads to Darian Lake after the service - but this year with the youth from St. Martin's Church on Grand Island. We will be travelling to England with them next summer.
Bible Study starts on Monday the 9th at 10:15 am - this year we are adding a Bible Challenge - a weekly set of readings that will take us through half the Bible this year.
And - of course - there are the changes around the church - we have a new roof, and new siding and new windows and a new door at the Parish Hall and new signs. The church has a new ceiling and new paint and new carpeting are coming. We are looking forward to completing that project by the end of September.
Come and see and be a part of all of the new things that are going on at St. Paul's
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