Zechariah 5 – The
sixth vision is a flying scroll 20 cubits long and 10 cubits wide. It is the
“curse sweeping across the face of the whole country” (5:3) banishing every
thief and everyone who swears falsely.
Then the seventh vision – a bushel basket with a heavy lead
cover. A woman in the basket represents wickedness. The angel forces her back
in and puts the lead cover on it. Two women with “wings like a stork . . .
picked up the basket and flew into the sky” (5:9). They are going to the land
of Babylonia “where they will build a temple for the basket. And when the
temple is ready they will set the basket there on its pedestal” (5:11).
From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through
Quakerism -
“What Did I Say?”
Part 4
[Continuing a simple lay-out of
the scripture narrative] After the failure of the Noah project, God’s
redemptive work takes up with Abraham. God
sees in Abraham a man who will listen to his voice and do his will—the archetype of the hearer and obeyer that is so
central to Friends’ understanding of faith. Out of the obedience of this
one man will come a people who will hear and obey. The law and outward rites
are given to this people to train them and guide them, but there is much
backsliding and faithlessness. Error and
repentance are thus part of the journey, as are the prophets God sends to
reprove and guide the people back when they go astray. As the people mature
in the context of God’s redemption, more is expected of them—a deeper
understanding of God’s law, a more spiritual grasp of his will, and again it is
the prophets who will help them come to these deeper understandings.
But the journey is not without deep and catastrophic setbacks. The
division of the kingdom after Solomon and the many years of unfaithfulness and
abuse under the kings who follow him ultimately lead to a near destruction of
God’s people and many years in exile from the Promised Land. In the midst of
the suffering and turmoil brought on by these events, there is always the
promise and hope of renewal and return. The prophets see a future Messiah who
will heal the people of God, restore the kingdom promised to David, and bring a
new covenant to man—one not written in stone or even in ink, but one written on
the human heart so that even the promise of Eden, the home God intended for man
from the beginning, might be restored.
In time, a man is born whose life and teaching lead some to believe
that he is the promised Messiah, but it turns out he is both less and more than
had been expected. He does not do all that they had come to expect the
Messiah would do—he does not lead armies or depose the Roman occupiers. But
after his death on the cross, his followers experience him resurrected and they
come to believe that his is actually more than the Messiah. He is God in the form
of man. They see in him the substance of all that God has previously brought
forth from the beginning to draw people to him—the substance of the “types” and “figures” of the story in all their
fullness: God’s light and Word, the new Adam, the seed of Eve, man’s
offerings to God, the ark, the manna in the desert, the water from the rock,
our scapegoat and sin offering, our priest, our shepherd, our prophet, our
king, our law, and perhaps most of all, our New Covenant.
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