Give me Freedom and Give me Autonomy, Recognition, and Power

            When we think of people who we identity with I wonder how many of us think of Jesus. Maybe he is too perfect and humble for us, and I wonder if we would even have liked him if we had been able to meet him in person. While we admire many of his characteristics most of the time, they are not the characteristics that we pursue. We like to have autonomy, recognition and power, but how did Jesus handle the desires of these three characteristics?

            When we look at Jesus’ story, we find out that yes, his birth was humble, as in poor. His mother was away from home when Jesus was born and Mary and Joseph had to flee for their lives when Jesus was still just a baby. But poor is not the same as powerless. By the time Jesus was ready to start his public debut, he spent forty days in the wilderness and there he met one of his adversaries. His adversary’s job was to see what Jesus was really all about, what kind of a character he was when things were not going well.  He did it by putting Jesus to the tests of autonomy, recognition and power.

            Someone asked me the other day if the tests that Jesus faced came at the end of the forty days or if they lasted the whole forty days he was in the desert. That is a very interesting question and one that we can make an assumption about if we read the gospels closely. In good literature the introduction of a story sets the stage for what is to come. The story of Jesus being tested is the same, it should prepare us for what is to follow. If, as I think this first story of Jesus’ testing sets the stage for the rest of his life, then it seems that the tests were ongoing and did not start nor end after the forty days. Rather, they changed into different forms of the same basic elements of autonomy, recognition and power.

            We read the story as in Matthew 4 and Luke 4. Here we are told that Jesus spent forty days in the desert being tested. As we read about the forty days in the desert, we should be thinking about the forty years Israel spent in the desert and failed in all their testing. At the end of Jesus’ forty days the tests were amplified by the devil coming and giving us some concrete examples of Jesus’ testing.

Tombstone

            The devil took Jesus up a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world. He told Jesus these would all be his if only he would bow down to the devil. In the gospels we read all about God’s kingdom which Jesus was bringing. So what is the difference between the kingdom that Jesus was bringing and the one that the devil offered Jesus? Jesus’ kingdom in many ways looks very weak. It is the place where the poor and humble are honoured. It is a place where the last shall be first and the first shall be last. It is a kingdom where Jesus died because he refused to raise an army and pick up a sword to fight his enemies. On the other hand, we can assume that the kingdoms of the world that the devil showed Jesus were kingdoms like the Roman empire of Jesus time. We know that the Roman empire became great by the use of the sword. It was built on what was best for the Romans. As long as the wealth of the world flowed to Rome the kingdom worked. Therefore, Roman rule had everything to do with wealth and power and autonomy. The Ultimate Weapon the Romans used to control the people they ruled was the cross. The cross was a warning for those who thought of rebelling against Rome.  If they tried to rebel the cross was where they would end up.

            For Jesus to have chosen the kingdoms of the world would have been to choose the way of autonomy.  He would have been in charge and would have made all the rules. When Jesus spoke of God’s kingdom he was speaking of a kingdom where even Jesus did not do what he desired, but what God desired. What God wants is best for the whole world instead of what is only best for the elite ruling class. To choose God’s kingdom means submission in contrast to the elite of the world’s kingdoms who make rules that will only benefit themselves. Jesus came to serve instead of to be served and therefore he did not choose the kingdoms of this world. As Carey  Nieuwhof says, “The heart of the Christian faith isn’t about satisfying yourself, it’s about dying to yourself.” If Jesus had chosen the kingdoms of this world, it would have given him the autonomy to do whatever he liked. He would have been his own boss but he would have lost, because the kingdoms of this world in the end are defeated by the one who died on a Roman cross. To choose the kingdoms of this world is to go back to the story of the garden of Eden where the snake asks, “did God really say that?”

            We face this same temptation today. One example of this is, wearing masks. “If I have to wear a mask when I don’t want to I have lost my freedom, and nobody has the right to tell me what to do.” I get this. I don’t like people telling me what I can or cannot do. But if we use Jesus as an example then we will be more concerned about other people’s safety than what we see as our rights. This has been a struggle throughout all of human history. If we place ourselves in the garden beside the first man and woman, we too would have eaten of the forbidden fruit. We as humans like to be in charge of our own kingdom. Just watch a new born baby. When they are hungry or uncomfortable they will let us know what they think about that.

The smaller they are the more they rule

            Another temptation Jesus faced was that of recognition or popularity. The devil took Jesus to the highest point of the temple and asked Jesus to throw himself down. If Jesus would have done this God would have rescued him and all the people would have seen Jesus for what he really was, the Messiah. Jesus would have had acceptance and recognition. This would have given him an instant in. His life would have been easy from there on. Jesus lived in an honour and shame culture. If Jesus had done this he would have been honoured everywhere he went, and that would have been his reward. Instead Jesus chose the opposite route. When Jesus healed people, he told them, “don’t tell anyone that I did this.”  To tell other people what Jesus had done for them seems natural and right for us, but during Jesus time that would have been repayment for what had happened. The point is simple, what Jesus did he did freely and not for the reward it would bring.

            We as humans like to be recognized for who we are. I like people to recognize the gifts that I have. I don’t think that is bad, but when the goal of my actions is to impress others with how gifted I am, then I am doing it for the wrong reason and I have missed the point of imitating Jesus who came to serve instead of being served.

            The final temptation was the turning of stones into bread. At the end of forty days Jesus would have been very hungry and have needed food. For him it would have been a simple thing to turn stones into bread, but he didn’t do that. Again Jesus didn’t use power for his own end. Power used for a one’s own gain works against them in the end. If we look at the political systems that we live in they seem to favour the powerful ones, but that power in the end fails and someone else takes over.

            When we look at Jesus, we see he had power and he used it. We see this in the works he did by giving bread to the five thousand who followed him into the desert. But Jesus did not use his power for his own gain. The natural human tendency is to use power for our own ends, but our calling is to use it for the greater calling of using it for others.

Bread to share

            Right now in our story we can be a part of using the power we have been given to better the lives of those who have been oppressed for years by slavery and racism, or we can oppose the movements, by posting things on Social Media like: it had nothing to do with me, or all lives matter instead of Black Lives Matter (when it is people of colour who are being oppressed), or I worked hard for what I have, why didn’t others work as hard as I did? I am always disappointed when I read statements like this because I know that those people, like me have gained from what has happened in the past. I see those people as fearful of losing the power they have instead of using it to free those who are oppressed.

            All three temptations that Jesus faced of autonomy, recognition and power are closely tied to each other and they are all temptations that we all face in our daily lives. The big question is how will we deal with them? It matters a great deal at this point because our actions in this time of pandemic, and social unrest have the potential to either better and save lives or hasten death and keep others in bondage.

Who is the Wonder Woman of Proverbs 31?

Today I am honoured to have my niece share a bit about her story and how she has chosen to rethink life.

By Robin-Taine Brownell

About 5 years ago, as I was wandering through the religion section of my local bookstore, I came across a book with a cheerful, bright yellow cover.  A picture of a smiling woman had been photoshopped to look as though she was sitting on the roof of a house. The book description, which told of the author’s yearlong experiment to live out biblical instructions for women in as literal a way possible, sounded crazy in the best possible way.  I dove into “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” as soon as I got home and into the brilliant mind of its author, Rachel Held Evans.  This book did not disappoint.  It was by turns hilarious, challenging, poignant, and in pulling apart scripture and examining it from alternative angles, so beautifully inclusive and instructive that I found myself in tears several times.

https://rachelheldevans.com/biblical-womanhood

The chapter on the Proverbs 31 woman was particularly mind-blowing. https://www.bible.com/bible/116/PRO.31.10-31.NLT The 31^st chapter of Proverbs, a book of wisdom, reveals a superwoman.  This woman is up before dawn and not back in bed until long after dark.  She makes killer business deals making her household wealthy.  She is strong.  She tends to the poor.  She is prepared for every eventuality because she is never lazy.  Her husband and children call her blessed.  The Proverbs 31 woman is awe-inspiring. She is the subject of Mother’s Day sermons, the name of women’s ministries and the subject of devotionals and books.  She is often held up as the ultimate example of biblical womanhood.

In her research, Rachel Held Evans discovered that a literal or prescriptive reading of Proverbs 31, a common approach used by many churches and people, me included, is antithetical to the traditional Jewish reading of this passage.  In Jewish tradition, Proverbs 31 is a poem and it is intended for men! It is memorized and recited or sung by men on Sabbath as a blessing on their wives and mothers.  I had never heard of this version of Proverbs 31.  A blessing and not some sort of to-do list?  The 31^st chapter in the book of wisdom is meant to be a teaching on, get this, wisdom!  This new approach, this alternative perspective, completely changed the trajectory of Proverbs 31 for me.  I cannot overstate just how jaw-dropping this was.  And I couldn’t help but wonder if other parts of the Bible had been as poorly understood and taught.  I hardly realized it at the time, but a thread in the certainty of my faith tugged loose.  The writings of Rachel Held Evans were to become a catalyst of spiritual change, a disruption, one of several I would experience in the coming years.  Disruptions in my life and faith that would lead me headlong into a full-on faith deconstruction.

Deconstruction is a strange place to be.  To take apart my faith, the anchor point of my life, and re-examine, well, everything.  To tear down the spiritual framework I was raised with.  To figure out what no longer serves my spiritual growth.  To find new ways of understanding God.  It is an expansive journey.  It is challenging and exhilarating, but I admit that I feel completely unqualified, sometimes frightened, and often very lonely.  A wilderness experience of sorts, where everything is both familiar and completely new at the same time. 

I am comforted, though, that disruptive wilderness experiences are nothing new.  The Bible, front to back, is full of them. As a nation, Israel had many disruptive wilderness experiences, from slavery in Egypt, to the Babylonian exile, Israelites over and over are forced to re-examine their understanding of, and relationship with God.  Nearly every major character in the old testament from Abraham to Job had great spiritually disruptive experiences.  The whole New Testament is a disruption, first with Jesus upsetting nearly every religious and cultural establishment of His day, to the book of Acts and beyond where the first generations of Christians had to re-examine everything they’d ever known for sure in order to figure out what direction this new understanding of God would take.  Transformation has always been the language of God.

My favourite disruptive stories are in the gospels when Jesus interacts with women.  Women, who in that steeply patriarchal 1^st century culture, had no rights of personhood, were largely uneducated, and were considered both religiously and culturally to be the property of their husbands or fathers.  It is interesting then, that according to Luke 8:1-3, it was women who financially supported Jesus’ ministry.  In Luke 10:38-42 Jesus gives religious and educational equality to Mary and Martha. 

Jesus in Mary and Martha’s house. Copyright free

Women, who were considered too unreliable to give legal testimony in courts of law, were, according to each gospel account, the first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection.  In one of His earliest public moments, John 4 tells of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman.  Jesus crossed both racial and cultural divides to speak with her.  This woman who had either been widowed or divorced (keeping in mind that only men at that time could sue for divorce) 5 times, and was likely considered to be a source of bad luck by her community, someone to be avoided, became the first person Jesus commissioned with His good news.  Verse 39 tells us that her witness caused many Samaritans to come to Jesus and believe.  This was totally counter-cultural.  In fact it is Transformational!

The Samaritan woman at the well. Copyright free

Jesus challenged every bit of religious certainty, every cultural norm.  Any line that separated “them” from “us” was a line that Jesus walked right on over.  Jesus was a radical, a subversive.  Dangerous.  But then, God has never played by our rules.  He has always been a disruptor.  As believers who understand that God’s word continues to be alive, we really should not be surprised that the Holy Spirit continues to disrupt our lives today.  We should not be shocked when our religious certainties are shaken up and a wilderness experience looms large.  So, if like myself, you find yourself in a spiritual wilderness, lean into it.  Trust that a transformation experience is waiting.   Trust that God will meet you there because He loves you.  You are a beloved child of God.

 Trust that a transformation experience is waiting.   Trust that God will meet you there because He loves you.  You are a beloved child of God.

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Robin-Taine Brownell has been married to Mike for 28 years and they have 5 amazing kids.  She has lived most of her life in Alberta but has also lived in all 4 western Canadian provinces as a child.  She has never gotten over living in the mountains.  Robin’s daily life involves lots of reading and cooking.  Her youngest daughter wants you to know that her mom’s favourite colour is blue and she doodles when she is bored.

DISTRUST WHAT YOU SEE AND BELIEVE WHAT YOU DO NOT SEE (Or My life as Lot).

Today’s blog is written by my good friend Hector Nieblas. One of the things we need to do is listen to other voices and I would encourage you to do that here. Hector will tell us a little about who he is below. I am hoping to be able to bring more voices to the table as we talk about our stories in light of the Bible. May we learn to choose life during these interesting times.

When we think of Biblical characters, which one do you identify with? Usually we think of characters who are considered heroes of the faith, those who have done what is right before God. But what about those who were known as not following Him? Have we ever thought about what the Lord is saying through them to our lifetime?

If I had been asked a few weeks ago to choose a character with whom I identify, I most likely would have chosen one of those mentioned in the book of Hebrews, with a perspective that these characters were “victorious and perfect” people.

I was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. I thank the Lord that for as long as I can remember my mother instructed us with Christian teaching. On the other hand, my father has still not met the Lord, but we continue to pray that He will have mercy on my dad and save him. Currently the Lord has given me a beautiful family, my beautiful wife (Rebecca) and two beautiful children who literally every day turn my life into an adventure, almost like a roller coaster ride.

Hector , Rebeca and family

Spending our time together in this quarantine has resulted in some very good changes; this time has helped us to know ourselves better and love each other more sincerely as a family. When we started the quarantine, I felt we were heading towards a ravine on a bullet train at high speed. This happened because of bad decisions I made in my life. Believing myself wise, I became a fool without seeing who it affected.

One character I identified with specifically this week is Lot. Strange, right? I think the Lord wants to show me something very important with Lot. He was a person that, by the mercy of the Lord, had so many possessions that he was not able to live together with Abraham in the same region. This brought and would continue to bring more conflicts over food, water, land, etc. if nothing changed. So, to avoid future conflicts, Abraham and Lot made the decision to separate their families so they could live “without conflict.” The Scriptures say:

Lot looked around and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan toward Zoar was well watered, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) 11 So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company: 12 Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom. 13 Now the people of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the LORD.

Gen. 13:10 NIV

Lot based his decision on what he was seeing at the time. He saw something akin to Eden, something he thought would be good, something he remembered superficially as being from the Lord, a place where he believed that his family would live well, a place where he would have all his needs satisfied (“human and spiritual”.)

A place where everything was green and well watered.

But it was not to be. While trying to avoid a conflict, Lot plunged together with his family into another where his neighbors (Sodom and Gomorrah) did not have a relationship with each other as designed by the Lord. They were of a twisted mind and living together with them, Lot exposed his family to things we consider disgusting. The Scripture shows us how Lot’s day-to-day decisions were sinking him deeper and deeper into the hole together with his family.

I think when we read the scriptures we often dismiss stories that we don’t like very much, but Lot’s story shows me something that was lost in Eden. Since believing myself to be the owner and lord of my life, I have made decisions according to what I saw; I have considered myself wise and intellectual for choosing abundance, even thinking on occasion that I was being led by the Lord. But in the end I separated myself from Him, renewing the conflict since my decisions were based on what “suits me” (this is according to what I could see and not according to how I should represent God as an Image bearer).

I can see that God’s purpose is different than the way we currently make decisions. When we believe we are ready to move towards our goal, we will always choose what is safe for us. But it is important to take into account that uncertainty plays an important role in our lives since it reminds us of our limits and our total dependence and trust in Him who is Eternally wise. He is the only One who truly knows good from bad. We need to learn to live clinging to Him and His promise.

It will not always be a mistake to choose what you see, but I sincerely hope that in my next decision I will seek the Lord before being guided by the limitation of my own sight. One of the reasons for learning to choose what we do not yet see is to learn to relate to God in faith.

“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Jn. 20:29 NIV

If you want to read this in Spanish you find it here: https://eligevidahistorias.wordpress.com/2020/06/20/desconfia-de-lo-que-vez-y-cree-lo-que-no-vez/

My Life as Abraham

If you could choose someone to identify your life with who would it be? And why would you choose this person? What makes you like them? I too have people that I identify with and will explore one of them here.

I want to start a new blog series where people can tell part of their stories based on characters from the Bible. The goal is to put the Bible characters into real life and to understand ourselves a bit better. As Miguel De La Torre has said, ‘theology needs to be done from the margins, so that it is brought down to the level of the common, instead of being only done from the ivory tower, where it often does not affect the everyday lives of people.’ Thus we will attempt to listen to the voices of ordinary everyday people as they tell us their stories in this way.

A number of years ago if you had asked me whom I identified with I would have said Abraham. Abraham lived in tents and moved from place to place always looking for something better. He was looking for the place which God had promised him. It took many years with a lot of detours in his wanderings before he found that place and God started fulfilling his many promises.

When we first came to Dawson City in the Yukon, with two small girls, there was no housing for us to rent or buy so we ended up living in a tent for more than two months.

Looking at the world from the safety of the tent

The rule was that no one could stay in a government campground for more than two weeks at a time. As a result, we ended up moving every two weeks until someone left for the winter and we were able to rent a house and start putting down roots.

Getting ready for the night!

However, when we read the story of Abraham it seems like he took a long time to put down roots. The first time he reached the land that God had promised to him he moved right on through and went down to Egypt. It is in Egypt where Abraham became a very wealthy person. The reason he moved to Egypt was because of a famine in Palestine. As COVID-19 is upsetting our economic now, a famine would upset the whole economic system at that time. Abraham being a man who was looking for something better left and went to the place where life seemed to be more secure. He was in fact much like an undocumented migrant who is traveling to the US looking to save and improve his life.

It is while living in Egypt as an undocumented migrant that he runs into trouble. What will he do for a livelihood there? If you follow the story in Geneses 12:10 and forward, you will find that Abraham tells his wife Sarah to say that she is his sister instead of his wife. This is only half true, because while she is his half-sister, in the story Sarah is always known as Abraham’s wife. There is a lot that we do not know about what happened, but Abraham became very rich when he was in Egypt, because of Sarah. Did he sell her to Pharaoh, as in pimping her out? It seems he must have. The place of safety for Abraham became a place of great danger for Sarah! When Pharaoh finds out that Sarah really is Abraham’s wife they get deported. This happens not only once but twice in the life of Abraham and Sarah, the other time is in Genesis 20. The huge mistakes that Abraham makes during times of difficulty did not mean the end of his relationship with God. We can forgive Abraham for his many sins because we see the whole picture. I think those times were times of learning for Abraham and by the end of his life he is willing to follow God even when God asks him to give up his son in Genesis 22. To be able to do this he did not let past failures stop him from moving forward.

In my own life there have been times of difficulty, and like Abraham those times have not meant the end of my walk with God. I want to touch briefly on a couple of times that were life changers for me. Like Abraham I have spent my time looking for a place. Not only a place to live but a place to belong and be a part of a community. I used to think my life was something like Abraham’s because we both looked for a unique place to live. Finding a unique place to live is great, but finding for a place to belong is more important, a place where we can explore life’s meaning and not be afraid of people who might see things differently.  A place where we are treated as equal human beings and also a place where we treat others like we want to be treated. Sometimes this is a hard place to find and yet being part of God’s kingdom means that we should have a place of belonging.

My first difficulty was caused because of conflict with some who at one time I counted as my best friends. The conflict Abraham had with Pharaoh, caused Abraham to go back to the place that God called him to. For me it led to six years of higher education ending in the Master of Divinity program at Providence. Those years opened the door to viewing life as much bigger than I had previously understood. It cracked open a door to freedom that has more than paid for whatever cost arose from the conflict. I am deeply grateful for the doors which have opened to me.

The second time when conflict came it was almost a repeat of the first time, and again the result was it opened new doors for me to teach others and share life with them. Spending twelve winters in Mexico has allowed me to be in a very special place of belonging. A place where my heart is with my friends, a place where I can see, God is calling us to, a place to serve. It has not all been easy, learning Spanish is a huge struggle. Living in two places is not always easy either. And now we do not know what the future holds, because of COVID-19. Will we be able to go back to the people we have grown to love and with whom we feel like family? For me Mexico has become a place of belonging. When I think of Abraham in his later life when he took his son up the hill to offer him to God, I wonder what all went through his mind.  What is clear after the years of difficulty and mistakes, he was sure of one thing; if God closed one door, he would open another. If there is a lesson that we can learn it is that when things go sideways, it does not mean that God is done with us. Usually it means if we can learn a lesson we will be able to move onto new things. With COVID-19 we cannot live in the past but need to be seeking new ways forward. As Carey Nieuwhof puts it “Asking the question “What does this make possible?” will shift your focus from what you can’t do to what you can do.”  (https://careynieuwhof.com/5-transformative-questions-to-ask-before-you-reopen-your-church-or-after-youve-done-it/) Who knows which doors God will open for us as we seek belonging and place here in this life with God who knows and leads us like he did Abraham.

Who knows where going through an open door will end?

And Now What Will We Do?

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We are living in very interesting times with little idea of what tomorrow, next week, or even next year holds for us. This is nothing new, but the realization that we don’t control our lives in the way that we thought we did is. This leaves us with questions such as what is important and how should we live? How do we know what to do? Who am I?

We are concerned about matters of health and wealth. We are or will be cut from close contact with family and friends. We may want to hug or shake someone’s hand but that is not allowed. What can we do? What gives us hope? And if we find hope, how can we share that to others in our community? I write this as a member of a local church community, but I am also writing this as a member of a larger community made up of people from many different walks of life. And then I am also part of a country and finally part of the whole world. We are in this together and as such we must answer the questions of what gives us hope and how we should seek to give answers that work on all levels.

I think what gives us hope can be best answered, not from science even if that is part of the answer, but more from a spiritual perspective. I am hoping and expecting that science will develop a vaccine, but that is a ways into the future. However we need more than that to hold on to in all of life’s difficult moments.

One of the things that gives me hope is that I do not have to have answers to what is happening, but that there is someone who is willing to walk though difficult times with us. As a Christian and someone who has spent much time studying and teaching the Bible, I find there is always an element of hope no matter how dark things got. Yes there were terrible times for the people of the Bible. For example, other nations might be invading Israel and they would and did defeat them. They were sent to live in far-away places way beyond their homes. But the story never ends there. There is always the hope that God would come to be with them and would right the wrongs. It is a message that is built on the very character of God himself.

Hope is built on the fact that God as the creator has made this world as a place to be enjoyed. Then he put humans into this world to live here in community with others. It is a place where there is enough for everyone and a place where each person is caring for those who can’t care for themselves. I see people who are caring for others and willing to help them at a cost to themselves. I am always a bit embarrassed when it is not the church that is leading the way in this. I am guilty in this too. The people who are reaching out to help others are actually showing us a picture of what God is like. Our calling is to show others what God is like.

The best picture we have of God and how he wants to relate to people is the stories of the four gospels. Here God comes as fully human while still being God, to show us how to live in this world. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the book of Acts starts with these words, “In my first book I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach.” (Acts 1:1 NLT) The implication is that what Jesus did, we are to do as well. He brought hope to the common people he was in contact with; these were the people who needed help and were willing to admit it. For people who were not willing to admit they needed help, there was little Jesus could do.

What kind of hope did Jesus bring to his larger community? The first thing that I see was that he lived his daily life with them. He identified with the common people by hanging out with them. These were people who were called sinners; today we would still call them sinners, people who hang out at the bars or the ones who have just not made it up to our standards and try to deal with the troubles of life in an unhealthy way. They are the people that we look down on. They are the people that think differently from us. What we would expect as “good Christians” is that Jesus would come to these kinds of people with a message that you are lost and need to repent. Yes it is true that Jesus did have a message of repentance but for the common people that was not the focus; rather the focus was come follow me, come and see, the kingdom of God is here and we should live the realty of that. God is still in control.

We see how Jesus lived out his teachings by healing the sick, touching the lepers, feeding those who were hungry, and not condemning the woman who was caught in adultery. Jesus was always inviting people in and one of the best ways that I see him doing that is being with and for the common people. He rarely talked to them about what they believed. Yes, his teaching and parables showed what he wanted people to believe and at the heart of that teaching was that he wanted people to live like the world had enough for everyone. It really boils down to loving your neighbor, and then Jesus redefined neighbor as the person that was most despised in the Jewish world at that time (Luke 10:33ff).

I think as we face this crisis, we would do well to look at Jesus’ example and teaching. We might not be able to meet in person as a church community but at this time people will be looking for something to hang on to.

So we are left with the question off how will we be the church in our communities and how will we bring hope to those who are looking for hope? If we want to be the people that God has called to show his love to the world how can we do? It will take so deep thinking so that we can help those who are already working on this. We as a whole community are in this together and the church as a part of that community has a very important role to play. In the next five to twenty years from now how will we be remember?

The Younger Brother

I am the youngest of five siblings. We know how the story goes, if you are the youngest then you must be spoiled because you get all the attention and everyone in the family is there to protect you. Sometimes that may be true but I am here to tell you that is not always the case. I can speak from my experience that there is another side to being the youngest. In my case I had three older sisters and a brother two years older than I was. Being the youngest comes with its own set of problems.

All five of us, but who took my chicken?

One of the problems is that everyone else has already arrived and can do grownup things and the youngest is often reminded that he or she is not there yet. Everyone thinks that they are better than the “baby.” So there is always a struggle to be good enough and meet the older sibling’s expectation.  Not only do you have your parents to discipline you but all your older siblings think it is their job too! Therefore, being the youngest might lead to some serious rivalry. That was certainly true between my brother and me.

He got to drive the tractor and make deals with the neighbors while I had to do more of the manual work. the lead hand on the farm and I was the laborer and had to do what he said. This is not to say it was all bad, because my brother was gifted in ways that I was not. My point is that from my young perspective, life did not seem fair. I think the truth is that life is not fair and each of us must live where we are placed, and try to improve and make the best of things.

Doing chores, hauling water!!

At this point in our history we see a number of situations where this is happening: one is COVID-19 and the other is the Black Lives Matter movement that is crying out for long overdue justice. I cannot speak to what it feels like to be Black or Latinx, but at the same time I can stand in solidarity with them and say their cause is justice, because they, the same as I, have been made in God’s image. I think it helps that I have also fought for the “right” to be my own person who could make decisions and take responsibly for them.

Today I want to look at the story of two brothers, with one being just minutes younger than the other.  It is the story of Esau and Jacob. In their case the oldest was not only the lead hand but some day he would have to care for the extended family. Being the oldest held great honor, but came with great responsibility. We have been taught to read this story with Jacob as the hero, who in the end becomes the good guy.  Therefore, we see Esau as the bad guy and because of what he did we blame him for a lot of the problems that Israel had with Edom later. This is a very similar story to that of Abraham’s two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, where Isaac the younger takes over from Ishmael the older. Here too, we love to cast the blame for a lot of the problems between Jews, Christians and the Arabs. Maybe another way of reading these stories is to look at those who are not normally the heroes or the ones in power.

We pick up the story of Esau and Jacob in Gen 25:19. We find that Jacob means heel grabber and if we are familiar with the Biblical story we should know that is what he will spend much of his life doing: taking down people so that he can supplant them. When we read the story, we see that Jacob, the younger one, gains things that were not rightfully his. He is not portrayed as a good guy but God is with him anyway.

Esau on the other hand is seen as someone who does not take his duties seriously. He likes the open fields away from home and the duties that he has there. So one day when he comes home from an unsuccessful hunt, hungry and tried, Jacob takes advantage of the situation and trades a bowl of stew for Esau’s birth right that came with being the first born (Gen. 25:28-34). Birth Rights included inheriting the majority of the father’s possessions and the holder of the Birth Right became the leader in the house after the father died. So Esau lost both the responsibility and the honour that came with being the oldest son. We may be inclined to blame Esau for his loss, but the next time Jacob grabbed what was not his we cannot blame Esau.

When it came time for Isaac to pass on the family blessing to Esau, he sent him out to hunt for wild game and make a meal for him. After Isaac had eaten, he would bless his oldest son, and what Isaac had would in effect become Esau’s. However, Jacob’s mother overheard this and made sure that Jacob got the blessing through deceit (Gen 27). Making a power grab like this does not make for peace, and Jacob had to flee for his life.

On the way to his mother’s former home he rests for the night out in the open and in his dream he sees a ladder going into heaven. On this ladder there were angels going up and down and at the top was the Lord God who promised to be with Jacob and to give him the land from which he is fleeing.

Jacob was gone for around 20 years during which time he met his match in a man called Laban who would become his father-in-law. After conflict arose with Jacob’s in-laws, Jacob set off for home, the place that the Lord had promised to him in his dream. But there was a problem – his brother Esau was still there and when Esau heard that Jacob was on his way back he prepared to meet him with an army of four hundred men.  Jacob had a choice to make. He could not go back to his father-in-law’s place because of an agreement he had made with him. But what would he do with his older brother from whom he had stolen the birth right and the blessing? He could try to fight against Esau’s armed forces, but Jacob would probably lose the conflict. Jacob chooses to repay Esau for the damage that he had caused in his life. So he sends gifts ahead to Esau hoping to appease him.

When the two brothers meet there is reconciliation, repayment, and the chance to start over. Jacob makes a very interesting statement when he sees his brother Esau which we find in Gen. 33:10, “No, if I have found favor with you, please accept this gift from me. And what a relief to see your friendly smile. It is like seeing the face of God!” ( NLT).

What is it in Esau that makes Jacob say it is like seeing the face of God? We must remember that not far from where the two brothers met is where Jacob had his dream in which he saw God standing at the top of the ladder. Jacob met God when he left the land and again when he entered, but in two very different ways. Is Jacob saying that his brother whom he had treated as someone to abuse and take advantage of was made in the image of God with full rights to everything God had in store for him? I think so.

In many ways Esau is the hero of this story. Yes, he may not have taken his responsibly seriously enough when he was young, but when he had the chance to take revenge, he did not take it. Rather it seems that he forgave his brother and wanted to have a renewed and close relationship with him. Jacob also learnt he needed to make amends for past wrongs which would lead to peace. When we read later about the trouble between Edom, the descendants of Esau, and the Israelites, the descendants of Jacob, this story should help us understand why the Edomites do not trust Israel.

When we see what is happening with Black Lives Matter, it is time to stop and listen to what they are saying. It is also time to make amends for past wrongs. If we want to have peace we must give up our quest for power and control. The desire for power and control drove Jacob to do what he did.  Being the younger brother may have been a part of it, because he may have thought life was not fair to him. I understand that thinking, but once we give up looking for justice and it becomes a desire for power we are in trouble. Justice demands that we see others as made in the image of God who have full rights to protection and equal treatment. Will it be easy?  I don’t think it will. Jacob’s life was not easy either, but in the end he could live at peace with his brother.

Can we imagine what life would be like when we see others that we would think of it as actually seeing Jesus face to face, even those who we may think of as less than ourselves,.

Jesus said “For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. ³⁶ I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’ ³⁷ “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? ³⁹ When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ ⁴⁰ “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’ ⁴¹ “Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons. ⁴² For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. ⁴³ I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’ ⁴⁴ “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’ ⁴⁵ “And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’ ⁴⁶ “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”

Matt. 25:35-46 (NLT)

Mi Vida Como Abraham

¿Si pudieras elegir a un personaje bíblico cual se identifica con tu vida y con quién sería? ¿Por qué elegirías a esta persona? ¿Qué te hace gustarlos? Yo también tengo personas con las que me identifico y explondre una de ellas aquí.

Quiero comenzar una nueva serie de blogs donde las personas pueden contar parte de sus historias basadas en personajes de la Biblia. El objetivo es poner los personajes de la Biblia en la vida real y entendernos un poco mejor. Como ha dicho Miguel De La Torre, “ la teología debe hacerse desde los márgenes, de modo que se reduzca al nivel de lo común, en lugar de hacerlo solo desde la torre de marfil, donde a menudo no afecta la vida cotidiana de personas “. Por lo tanto, intentaremos escuchar las voces de la gente común y corriente mientras nos cuentan sus historias de esta manera.

Hace algunos años, si me hubieras preguntado con quién me identificaba, habría dicho Abraham. Abraham vivía en tiendas de campaña y se trasladaba de un lugar a otro buscando siempre algo mejor. Estaba buscando el lugar que Dios le había prometido. Le tomó muchos años con muchos desvíos en sus andanzas antes de encontrar ese lugar y Dios comenzó a cumplir sus muchas promesas.

Cuando llegamos a Dawson City, en el Yukón, con dos niñas pequeñas, no había viviendas para alquilar o comprar, así que terminamos viviendo en una tienda de campaña durante más de dos meses.

Mirar al mundo desde la seguridad de la tienda

La regla era que nadie podía permanecer en un campamento del gobierno por más de dos semanas. Como resultado, terminamos mudándonos cada dos semanas hasta que alguien se fue para el invierno y pudimos alquilar una casa y comenzar a echar raíces.

Preparándose para la noche!

Sin embargo, cuando leemos la historia de Abraham parece que tomó mucho tiempo echar raíces. La primera vez que llegó a la tierra que Dios le había prometido, siguió adelante y bajó a Egipto. Es en Egipto donde Abraham se convirtió en una persona muy rica. La razón por la que se mudó a Egipto fue por una hambruna en Palestina. Como COVID-19 está alterando nuestra economía ahora, una hambruna trastornaría todo el sistema económico en ese momento. Abraham, siendo un hombre que buscaba algo mejor, se fue y fue al lugar donde la vida parecía estar más segura. De hecho, se parecía mucho a un inmigrante indocumentado que viaja a los Estados Unidos buscando salvar y mejorar su vida.

Es mientras vive en Egipto como un inmigrante indocumentado que se encuentra con problemas. ¿Qué hará él para ganarse la vida allí? Si sigues la historia en Geneses 12:10 y sigues, encontrarás que Abraham le dice a su esposa Sarah que diga que ella es su hermana en lugar de su esposa. Esto es solo cierto a medias, porque mientras ella es su media hermana, en la historia, Sarah siempre es conocida como la esposa de Abraham. Hay muchas cosas que no sabemos sobre lo que sucedió, pero Abraham se hizo muy rico cuando estuvo en Egipto, debido a Sara. ¿La vendió a Faraón, como cuando la proxeneta? Parece que debe haberlo hecho. ¡El lugar de seguridad para Abraham se convirtió en un lugar de gran peligro para Sarah! Cuando Faraón descubre que Sarah realmente es la esposa de Abraham, son deportados. Esto sucede no solo una vez sino dos veces en la vida de Abraham y Sara, la otra vez está en Génesis 20. Los grandes errores que comete Abraham en tiempos de dificultad no significaron el final de su relación con Dios. Podemos perdonar a Abraham por sus muchos pecados porque vemos la imagen completa. Creo que esos tiempos fueron tiempos de aprendizaje para Abraham y al final de su vida está dispuesto a seguir a Dios incluso cuando Dios le pide que abandone a su hijo en Génesis 22. Para poder hacer esto, no dejó que las fallas pasaran él de seguir adelante.

En mi propia vida ha habido momentos difíciles, y como Abraham, esos tiempos no han significado el final de mi caminar con Dios. Quiero tocar brevemente un par de veces que me cambiaron la vida. Como Abraham, he pasado mi tiempo buscando un lugar. No solo un lugar para vivir sino un lugar para pertenecer y ser parte de una comunidad. Solía ​​pensar que mi vida era algo así como la de Abraham porque ambos buscábamos un lugar único para vivir. Encontrar un lugar único para vivir es genial, pero encontrar un lugar para pertenecer es más importante, un lugar donde podamos explorar el significado de la vida y no tener miedo de las personas que podrían ver las cosas de manera diferente. Un lugar donde somos tratados como seres humanos iguales y también un lugar donde tratamos a los demás como queremos ser tratados. A veces este es un lugar difícil de encontrar y, sin embargo, ser parte del reino de Dios significa que debemos tener un lugar de pertenencia.

Mi primera dificultad fue causada por un conflicto con algunos que en algún momento contaba como mis mejores amigos. El conflicto que Abraham tuvo con Faraón, hizo que Abraham volviera al lugar al que Dios lo llamó. Para mí, llevó a seis años de educación superior que terminaron en el programa de Maestría en Divinidad en Providence. Esos años abrieron la puerta a ver la vida mucho más grande de lo que había entendido previamente. Abrió una puerta a la libertad que ha pagado más que cualquier costo surgido del conflicto. Estoy profundamente agradecido por las puertas que me han abierto.

La segunda vez que surgió el conflicto fue casi una repetición de la primera vez, y nuevamente el resultado fue que me abrió nuevas puertas para enseñar a otros y compartir la vida con ellos. Pasar doce inviernos en México me ha permitido estar en un lugar de pertenencia muy especial. Un lugar donde mi corazón está con mis amigos, un lugar donde puedo ver, hacia donde Dios nos está llamando, un lugar para servir. No todo ha sido fácil, aprender español es una gran lucha. Vivir en dos lugares no siempre es fácil tampoco. Y ahora no sabemos qué depara el futuro, debido a COVID-19. ¿Podremos volver a las personas que hemos amado y con quienes nos sentimos como familia? Para mí, México se ha convertido en un lugar de pertenencia. Cuando pienso en Abraham en su vida posterior cuando llevó a su hijo a la colina para ofrecérselo a Dios, me pregunto qué pasó por su mente. Lo que está claro después de los años de dificultades y errores, estaba seguro de una cosa; si Dios cerraba una puerta, abriría otra. Si hay una lección que podemos aprender es que cuando las cosas van de lado, no significa que Dios haya terminado con nosotros. Por lo general, significa que si podemos aprender una lección podremos pasar a cosas nuevas. Con COVID-19 no podemos vivir en el pasado, pero debemos buscar nuevas formas de avanzar. Como dice Carey Nieuwhof “Haciendo la pregunta” ¿Qué hace esto posible? ” cambiará tu enfoque de lo que no puedes hacer a ¿Quién sabe qué puertas nos abrirá Dios? .”  (https://careynieuwhof.com/5-transformative-questions-to-ask-before-you-reopen-your-church-or-after-youve-done-it/) Buscamos pertenencia y lugar aquí en esta vida con Dios que nos conoce y nos guía como lo hizo con Abraham.

¿Quién sabe dónde terminará pasar por una puerta abierta?

Traducido por Hector Nieblas Grijalva

¿Y tú quién eres?

¿Cuál es tu nombre?

Como se ha dicho, vivimos en tiempos inciertos. Para todos nosotros, la vida ahora es diferente de alguna manera, incluso si tenemos trabajos que hacer y recibimos un cheque de pago cada dos semanas. Debemos aprender a vivir con las nuevas situaciones en las que nos encontramos. Para aquellos que tienen trabajo, incluso si algunas cosas son diferentes, la vida tiene una rutina, y la rutina ayuda a dar sentido.

Sin embargo, hay otro lado de la moneda en estos tiempos inciertos. Para las personas que han perdido su trabajo y deben quedarse en casa, la vida es muy diferente y para algunos debe parecer que todo está perdido. Estas personas deben preguntarse cada día ¿de dónde vendrá su próxima comida? De repente, la vida se ha convertido en un caos sin un final claro por el momento.

Actualmente tenemos dos preguntas que deben responderse para ayudar a dar sentido a nuestras vidas.

El primero tiene que ver con un poder superior: ¿hay realmente un Dios y le importa lo que nos está pasando? Y si hay un Dios, ¿Está lleno de ira y necesitan ser liberada? ¿Busca destruir el mundo tal como lo conocemos? Traté de lidiar con eso en un blog que escribí hace un mes.
https://jlvogt22.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/what-kind-of-god-do-you-have/
Mi respuesta sobre Dios es que no es iracundo, sino que es un Dios amoroso que quiere estar en una relación con nosotros

La otra pregunta que deberíamos hacernos es quiénes somos y qué significado puedo tener en esta vida cuando todo es incierto. Muchas de las cosas que solían dar sentido han desaparecido. Cuando conocemos a alguien nuevo en Canadá, queremos saber quiénes son, así que comenzamos a hacer preguntas, como ¿de dónde eres? y ¿qué haces? La pregunta ¿de dónde es? no cambia y le pedimos que vea si podemos entender un poco más sobre la persona. Tal vez conocemos a alguien más que viene del mismo lugar, o tal vez hemos visitado allí.

Por otro lado, la pregunta, ¿qué haces? Trae consigo un conjunto diferente de valores. Esta pregunta nos dice su lugar en la sociedad. Si la persona tiene un trabajo sobresaliente con buena paga, podemos relacionarnos de manera diferente con ellos, porque quién sabe algún día podríamos pedirle un favor. Serán buenas personas para mantenerse en contacto. Si la persona trabaja en algún trabajo de trabajo manual, ganando menos que nosotros podemos verla con otros ojos.

¿Pero quién eres si ahora has perdido tu trabajo y tienes que quedarte en casa? Muchas de las cosas que dieron sentido a tu vida ya no están. Ya no tienes que estar en ningún lugar a las 8:00 a.m. y ahora ¿qué harás con tu tiempo? No solo qué harás, sino ¿quién eres cuando te separas del resto de la sociedad? Tomemos el ejemplo de saludar a alguien, en Canadá nos damos la mano, pero ahora debemos estar a 2 metros de distancia. O si estás en México, saludas a alguien con un abrazo, ahora eres un depravado si haces eso, ¿quién eres? Ser depravado de algunos de los actos simples pero profundamente significativos de la vida actualmente sugiere rechazo. Estar apartado de la sociedad en general dice que hemos perdido nuestro lugar y sentido en la vida. ¿Entonces, quién eres?

La Biblia tiene algunas respuestas a la pregunta de quiénes somos, pero puede que no tenga la respuesta de por qué nos suceden las cosas. Tomemos el ejemplo de Job, perdió todo y, a pesar de todo, rogándole a Dios que explicara por qué le sucedió esto, nunca obtuvo esa respuesta. Por lo tanto, es posible que nunca sepamos completamente la razón teológica de COVID-19, pero la pregunta más importante sobre quiénes somos en medio de todo esto está disponible.

Al principio de la Biblia tenemos una serie de historias de creación que se dan para que podamos saber quiénes estamos destinados a ser. En Génesis 1:26 encontramos la historia de la creación de humanos hasta su creación y todas las cosas que Dios hizo fueron llamadas buenas, pero con la creación de los humanos encontramos que el texto llamaba a todo lo que Dios había hecho muy bueno. No perfecto pero muy bueno. Los humanos, tanto hombres como mujeres, fueron creados a imagen de Dios.

LA GRAN PREGUNTA ES ¿qué significa ser creado a imagen de Dios? Podemos encontrar muchas ideas diferentes de lo que diferencia a los humanos de otros animales, pero si miramos el momento en que se escribió el texto, encontramos muchos ejemplos de imágenes. Los ídolos eran imágenes de los dioses. De una forma u otra, representaban a un dios, como un embajador representa a su país. Los embajadores hablan por sus países de origen en asuntos de política y otros asuntos.

Entonces, como humanos, debemos representar a Dios aquí en este mundo. Debemos preguntar qué hace Dios, para que podamos representarlo y reflejarlo mejor. Bueno, en la primera historia de la creación, Dios toma el desorden o el caos y lo convierte en algo bueno que puede traer vida. Puede que no sea perfecto pero es bueno y con la creación de humanos muy bueno. Creo que nuestro trabajo como humanos y más aún como cristianos, que dicen seguir a Jesús, es traer el bien a este mundo. Cuando llegamos al Nuevo Testamento, esto es lo que encontramos haciendo a Jesús: trajo la vista a los ciegos y oyó a los sordos. Jesús trajo el orden a un mundo en caos. Había gente a la que no le gustaba eso.

Sin embargo, hay otro aspecto para los humanos. En la segunda historia de creación en Génesis capítulo 2, encontramos que los humanos están hechos del polvo de la tierra. Lo que pasa con el polvo es que cuando sopla el viento, el polvo se va volando. No se necesita mucho para convertir el polvo en caos. Entonces, mientras nosotros como humanos tenemos este alto llamado de ser embajadores de Dios, como lo fue Jesús, para traer el orden al caos, también tenemos un elemento de caos dentro de nosotros mismos.

Somos personas de esta tierra, hecho de polvo, es una de las razones por las que a menudo fallamos y nos equivocamos. Terminamos “haciendo las cosas que no queremos hacer y no hacemos las cosas que queremos hacer” (Rom. 7:21). En momentos como este, debemos recordar que somos humanos sujetos al miedo y al desánimo, pero también es en momentos como este cuando necesitamos recordar el alto llamado que tenemos como embajadores de Dios, para ayudar a sacar algún tipo de orden del caos de COVID-19.

¿Cómo ayudamos a sacar el orden del caos? Para cada uno de nosotros, probablemente será algo diferente. Puede ser hablando palabras de aliento a las personas cuyo pensamiento se centra en la parte del polvo de ser humano. Puede estar ayudando de manera física. Para algunos de nosotros, significa quedarse en casa y asegurarnos de que nuestra comunidad se mantenga segura. Y a veces puede tratarse de nuestra vida diaria en paz reconociendo quién es Dios y que hemos sido llamados a reflejar eso. Significa no pensar que este es el fin del mundo, sino caminar por las puertas abiertas que se colocan frente a nosotros, aprovechando el tiempo para las nuevas oportunidades que se nos presentan.

traducido por mi muy buen amigo Héctor

WHO ARE YOU??

You over there, who are you? What is your name?

As has been said, we live in interesting and uncertain times. For all of us life is now different in some way even if we have jobs to do and we receive a paycheck every two weeks. We must learn to live with the new situations in which we find ourselves. For those who have work even if some things are different life has a routine, and routine helps give meaning.

However, there is another side to these interesting times. For people who have lost their jobs and must stay at home life is very different and for some it must feel like all meaning is lost. These people may be wondering where their next meal will come from. All of a sudden life has become chaos with no clear end in sight.

For all of us there are two questions that need to be answered to help bring meaning to our lives. The first has to do with a higher power: Is there really a God and does he care what is happening to us? And if there is a God, does he have anger issues that need to be dealt with? Is he seeking to destroy the world as we know it? I tried to deal with that in a blog that I wrote a month ago. https://jlvogt22.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/what-kind-of-god-do-you-have/ My answer about God is that he is not wrathful, but rather he is a loving God who wants to be in a relationship with us.

The other question which we should be asking is who are we and what meaning can I have in this life when everything is uncertain. A lot of the things that used to give meaning are gone. When we meet someone new in Canada, we want to know who they are so we start to ask questions, such as where are you from, and what do you do. The question, where are you from, does not change and we ask it to see if we can understand a little more about the person. Maybe we know someone else that comes from the same place, or maybe we have visited there.

On the other hand, the question, what do you do, brings a different set of values with it. This question tells us his or her place in society. If the person has an outstanding job with good pay we may relate differently to them, because who knows some day we may want to ask a favor of them. They will be good people to keep in contact with. If the person works in some manual labour job, earning less than we do we may view them with different eyes.

But who are you if you have now lost your job, and have to stay at home? Many of the things that brought meaning to your life are now gone. No longer do you have to be anywhere at 8:00 A.M., and now what will you do with your time? Not only what will you do, but who are you when you are cut off from the rest of society? Take the example of greeting someone, in Canada we shake hands, but now we are to stay 2 meters apart. Or if you are in Mexico, you greet someone with a hug, and now you are depraved of that, then who are you? To be depraved of some of life’s simple but deeply significant acts suggests rejection. To be cut off from society in general says that we have lost our place and meaning in life. So who are you?

The Bible does have some answers to the question of who we are but it may not have the answer to why things happen to us. Take the example of Job, he lost everything and for all his begging God to explain why this happened to him, he never got that answer. So we may never fully know the theological reason for COVID-19, but the bigger question of who we are in the middle of all this is available.

In the beginning of the Bible we have a number of creation stories that are given so that we might know who we are meant to be. In Genesis 1:26 we find the story of the creation of humans. Up until their creation all the things God did were called good but with the creation of the humans we find the text calling everything that God had made very good. Not perfect but very good. The humans, both male and female were created in God’s image.

The big question is what does it mean to be created in God’s image? We can find many different ideas of what sets humans apart from other animals, but if we look at the time the text was written, we find many examples of images. Idols were images of the gods. In some form or another they represented a god, like an ambassador represents their country.  Ambassadors speak for their home countries in matters of policy and other affairs.

So we as humans are to represent God here in this world. We must ask what does God do, so that we might represent and reflect him better. Well in the first creation story God takes disorder or chaos and makes it into something good that can bring life. It may not be perfect but it is good and with the creation of humans very good. I think that our job both as humans and more so as Christians, who claim to follow Jesus, is to bring good to this world. When we come to the New Testament, this is what we find Jesus doing: he brought sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. Jesus brought order to a world in chaos. There were people who did not like that because when chaos is destroyed the rule of fear is also destroyed and fear has power to control us. We cannot let fear control us, but we do need to use common sense in determining what is happening around us.

However, there is another aspect to humans. In the second creation story in Genesis chapter 2 we find that humans are made from the dust of the ground. The thing about dust is when the wind blows, dust flies away. It does not take much to turn dust into chaos. So while we as humans have this high calling of being ambassadors for God, like Jesus was, to bring order to chaos, we also have an element of chaos within ourselves.

Being people of this earth, made of dust is one of the reasons we so often fail and mess up. We end up ‘doing the things we do not want to do and not do the things that we want to do’ (Rom. 7:21). During times like this we need to remember we are humans who are subject to fear and discouragement, but it is also at times like this when we need to remember the high calling we have as God’s ambassadors, to help bring some kind of order out of the chaos of COVID-19.

How do we help bring order out of chaos? For each one of us it will probably be something different. It may be by speaking words of encouragement to people whose thinking is centered on the dust part of being human. It may be helping out in a physical way. For some of us it means staying home and making sure that our community stays safe. And sometimes it may be just going about our daily life in peace recognizing who God is and that we have been called to reflect that. It means not thinking this is the end of the world but walking through the open doors that are placed in front of us, making use of the time for new opportunities that come our way.

What kind of God do you have?

Easter is the most important date on the church calendar; however, the way that we look at Jesus’ death and resurrection says a great deal about us. Not only does it say much about us, but it shows how we understand God. As some have pointed out, how we understand God is the kind of person we become. Or maybe it is the other way around, and the kind of person we are is how we think about God. We may not do this consciously. That is why Easter is so important, because it asks us to rethink everything that we know about life, death, and who God is.

I have been in Good Friday services where the reasons are given for Jesus’ death. By the time the service was over, I left thinking that maybe I didn’t like this God who takes his Son and kills him as an offering. The OT is very clear that Yahweh is not that kind of God. Child sacrifice is forbidden. The story of Abraham taking his son Isaac and offering him to Yahweh is stopped at the last minute, because Yahweh is not the kind of God that needs or wants human sacrifice.

I understand where the idea of Jesus as a sacrifice for payment of sin comes from. We read in the OT of an animal sacrifice but Jesus did not die on the day of atonement; he died on the day of Passover. On the day of the Passover, a lamb was butchered and eaten. The blood on the doorpost gave protection against death and it brought freedom from slavery to new life. It was the day when the enemy of bondage was defeated. The day of atonement is different; there were two animals, one was killed and its blood was used to cleanse the temple and the priest laid his hands on the other one confessing Israel’s sin and then sending it away. My point is this: Jesus didn’t die on the day of atonement and even on the day of atonement, the animal taking away the sin does not die. Jesus dying on the Passover has everything to do with defeating the enemy, sin, death, and the forces of evil.

All the other ways that we talk about Jesus’ death are important – atonement or propitiation, substitution and sacrifice, but they need more careful defining than we give them most of the time. To understand those terms requires a careful study of the OT and most Christian spend much more time in the NT. So what we have done with these terms is make them legal, instead of basing them in a covenant. In the OT one of the controlling ideas is the covenant. It is similar to a marriage. It must be lived out in a relationship and within that relationship is where we find the ideas of atonement, etc.

If we make Jesus’ death a legal entity in which a wrathful God demands payment for sins and then places that sin on Jesus, we go back to the idea of a God that must be appeased. We do not have a God that forgives. Yes, under that system we as humans can find forgiveness because of what Jesus paid. But God does not forgive, he demands payment.

So if we see an angry God that needs payment for the wrong done, where does that leave us? We are left with Jesus as God’s Son who takes our sin and pays for it so that we can be forgiven to appease the wrath of God. Jesus loves us but does God? Someone always has to pay.

If we follow the idea of a God of wrath where does that leave us? I think at some level we will become angry too. We will want to live by the letter of the law instead of extending grace and mercy to our fellow humans. We will become fearful people and when something like COVID-19 comes along, we might say that God is punishing people, instead of asking how we should respond to what is happening. Subconsciously we will be afraid that what we do can’t please God and we will try to appease him, just like a small child will try to appease an angry parent.

I think the idea of God being angry and needing to be appeased comes from Jesus’ words on the cross where he cries out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” (Matt 27:46). Jesus is identifying with the Psalmist who is in a very difficult time in his life. But in the second half of Psalm 22, his cry turns from abandonment to great hope that God’s kingdom will be extended over all the earth (22:28), and that God will act according to the great loving kindness of his covenant by rescuing him. Yes, the Psalmist went through hard times but even though he felt abandoned, his prayer speaks of an intimate hope in Yahweh’s love.

So how should we understand God? I think we need to look at Jesus as the fullest revelation that we have of God. He came to serve, and he forgave people when they needed it without demanding payment. He was willing to be beaten and killed by those who opposed him. He loved the people he was with. It is true that he did get angry and we see that best when he cleansed the temple. But what made him angry? It was when people stopped others from coming to God. He drove the merchants out of the temple because they had made the place where people came to seek God into a place where thieves hang out. He was also upset at the Jewish leadership that imposed a harsh legal system that demanded payment for all actions, instead of forgiveness.

Jesus came as a King bringing a kingdom that worked on a different system than the empires of this world. The empires of this world demand payment for our actions, punishment for wrong and reward for those who follow their rules. In contrast, in Jesus’ kingdom, he freely chose to go to the cross so that he could defeat our enemies of death and sin. It is a kingdom where anger is set aside and replaced by love as we see in the book of John when Jesus puts off his garments and washes his disciples’ feet (John 13:1-17). If we miss the part of Jesus coming as a king to serve instead being served, we will miss the point of the words above him on the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.” Here is a king who was willing to die so that others could live as shown by Jesus taking the place of Barabbas (Matt 27:15-23), showing us what true substitution looks like. By his death, Jesus wins for us a great victory and sin has lost its grip on this world; no longer will evil have the last word. It is a great thing to wake up on Easter morning and know that by Jesus’ death we are now set free, just as the Israelites were set free on Passover morning when the angel of death passed over the house with the blood on their doorpost. We are free because of what Jesus has done and we have a God that loves us.