Daily Old Testament: Daniel 1 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 10)

Introduction to the Book of Daniel: The following information comes from Lawrence Boadt’s Reading the Old Testament (Paulist Press, NY, 1984. The text claims to take place in 6^th c. BC but there are mistakes in identifying king’s names. The consensus of scholars is that the author is probably from the 2^nd c. BC, but that he “creates a character of long ago and puts into his mouth as predictions all the important events that have already happened right up to the author’s own time. . .” (509).

Importance of the book: In Christian circles, it resonated especially references to the  “Son of Man” and the apocalyptic vision. In it we see the first explicit teaching about a “divine promise that the just person will rise after death to a life of happiness with God” (511). See 12:2 - It projects a coming kingdom of God that will be brought about by a heavenly yet human figure, the Son of Man.” (511), This figure differs from the Messiah who would be an anointed Davidic king (Isaiah 7-11, Ezekiel 33-48, and Zechariah). The early Church took it to mean Jesus was the eschatological savior whose victory would come only after his own death and resurrection.

Daniel (chapters 7-12) represents a new type of literature for Israel. It continues the work of prophecy in a new form - obscure and symbol-driven. Here God is the master of events and has a plan revealed through special people or visions – it did not see reform coming from “human conversion” but rather from direct intervention in power for the good and upright.

“Apokalypsis” means uncovering or revelation. Apocalyptic literature expresses the hopes of minorities (sects) in that they differed from the official story that stressed living in the world according to the Law. These sects despaired that the ideal Davidic restoration and restoration could be achieved in the world. They suffered active persecution. They used famous ancient leaders to express these hopes – they are “authorities” to be trusted instead of the present priestly leaders. The revelation is secret and must be kept secret. Prophetic context conveyed authority. Real authors are anonymous. They are pessimistic about man’s ability to make positive change but very optimistic about God power and intention to do what must be done to bring justice and faithfulness to this world. Dualism is common and final struggle at the end. Confidence is placed in divine intervention. Vision is cosmic. There are intermediary beings like demons and angels and there is hope in a resurrection of the dead and establishment of a new kingdom either in heaven or on earth. God will reign over the just and the wicked will perish.

Daniel 1 – The Lord delivers Jerusalem into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar during the reign of Jehoiachim. Jehoiachim, son of King Josiah was born Eliakim but the Babylonians changed his name. He had been installed as king of Judah by Egypt’s Pharaoh Necho after his brother Jehoahaz refused to pay a tribute to Egypt.

The chief eunuch of the Babylonian king selects a number of promising boys from among the captives to train for service; Daniel is one of these young men. The boys are given Chaldean names. Daniel was called Balteshazzar; Hananiah was called Shadrach; Mishael called Meshach and Azariah called Abednego.

Daniel uses his wits to convince the king’s attendant not to force unclean foods on them. “God gave these four young men an unusual aptitude for understanding every aspect of literature and wisdom. And God gave Daniel the special ability to interpret the meanings of visions and dreams” (1:17).

Daniel and his friends become favorites of the king and remain in his service until the Persians take over with King Cyrus.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 10

But among my other friends, especially those who were or had been Catholic, a sense of bafflement typically greeted my announcement that I was contemplating a return. How could I reconcile the antithetical approaches each took to worship and church order—the extravagant “outwardness” of Catholic religiosity with the utter inwardness of Friends; the authoritarian, hierarchical order of the Catholic Church versus the democratic and egalitarian order that reigned among Friends? Others wondered how I could possibly consider going back to a church that was so “antiwoman” and so “out of touch” with the needs of our time—population control, the need for changes in our sexual mores, and so on. One friend accused me of going back just for the security Catholic authoritarianism offered. My husband felt I was romanticizing the alleged “unity” the church had had in the early days and being completely unrealistic in thinking that it might ever attain such unity on this earth. None of this mattered in the end. God just wanted me to go back. I was sure.

I did not go back because I thought the Church had everything right. I did not go back because I thought I would be completely satisfied with the Christian community I found there or the degree of faithfulness I would find among Catholics at large. I went back because I believed God wanted me to go back, and as a Friend I would have proved unfaithful had I failed to obey his voice.

Daily Old Testament: Obadiah and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 9)

Obadiah

There is just one chapter to this book. It contains a vision and a message from Yahweh concerning the land of Edom, the land Esau, Jacob’s brother, was given in the southern Dead Sea region and Jordan.

The message is addressed to Edom, which has become too proud: “I will cut you down to size among the nations; you will be greatly despised. You have been deceived by your own pride because you live in a rock fortress and make your home high in the mountains” (2-3). They think the physical security they have from the people around them will always protect them.But “even if you soar as high as eagles and build your nest among the stars” (4), Yahweh will now “fling” Edom down. Renowned for its wisdom, it will be reduced to idiocy; warriors will be seized with terror (8-9).

Edom is being punished for its behavior at the time of Jerusalem’s fall – perhaps it took advantage of the fall and occupied the city. “[Y]ou stood by as strangers carried off his riches, as barbarians passed through his gate and cast lots for Jerusalem” (11).

They gloated and pilfered treasure; they blocked fugitives escaping and handed over people to their enemies: “As you have done, so will it be done to you: your deeds will recoil on your own head” (15).

The House of Jacob “shall be a fire, the House of Joseph a flame, the House of Esau stubble” (18).

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 9

Christ begged his disciples to remain one in him, to be so completely one “that the world may believe that you [God] sent me [Jesus]” (John 17: 23). We have not been faithful to him in this. We are now very much divided—perhaps not with as much hostility as in the past, but still very much divided and mostly over things that seemed increasingly meaningless. My own sense of it was that the Catholic Church came the closest to being the church that Christ had founded. It went back to apostolic times. It had a sense of itself as the bearer of Christ’s promise to Peter that he would build his church on him and give him the keys to the kingdom (Matt. 16:18-19).

The Church saw itself as charged with Peter’s love of Christ and his charge to feed Christ’s sheep (John 21: 15-17). But the Church was not only the promise bearer; it was also the spouse who had gone astray and become worldly and corrupt and unfaithful, the one God’s wrath had been poured down on and scattered, just like the people of God’s first promise.

Out of this jumble of insights, coming as they did against the backdrop of frustration and struggle I felt embroiled in as a Friend, ultimately came a sense of clarity, a sense that God was called me to return to the Catholic Church. Indeed, even my sense of what it meant to be faithful as a Quaker seemed to require going back to the Church. When I talked with people about it, the responses I got were interesting. Curiously, most of the positive feedback I god came from Quaker friends. It was widely appreciated in Quaker circles that there were aspects of Quaker spirituality and Catholic spirituality that overlapped or coincided: the belief in Christ’s “real presence”, for example, or Friends’ notion of “continuing revelation”, which is similar to the Catholic view of the developing tradition to which they attach such importance. There were also the mystical elements that were similar. One Quaker minister I knew actually admitted to me that he too sometimes mused over the idea that Quakers might really be considered a kind of religious order for lay people in a Catholic context.

Daily Old Testament: Zechariah 13-14 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 8)

Zechariah 13 – Some words here I fear have been taken too seriously – “I will also rid the country of the prophets, and of the spirit of impurity” (13:2). The prophets uttered too many lies to have enduring respect. It says in the note that the ancient prophets used to gash their bodies and scar them. Why? But they got too caught up in ignorance and false prophesy. There follows a messianic prophesy! God will “strike the shepherd so that the sheep may be scattered. . .turn my hand against the weak” (13:7). Two-thirds of the people will be lost and the remnant shall be refined in a fire. “They will call on my name and I shall listen; and I shall say; ‘These are my people’; and each will say, ‘Yahweh is my God!’” (13:9)

Zechariah 14 – This chapter is a recounting of the eschatological struggle and the new order that will follow: The nations will gather at Jerusalem to do battle. Half the city will go captive but the remnant will find refuge with God. The Mount of Olives will be split. God will come with all the holy ones. Day and night will disappear; running waters will issue from Jerusalem – going east and west. Yahweh will be king of the whole world and Jerusalem will be safe to live in again. The enemies of Jerusalem will be infested with plague. There will be violence. And the last sentence is “there will be no more traders in the Temple of Yahweh Sabaoth, when that day comes” (14:21).

It is clear that the words of this book have been very influential both today among those who constantly meditate on what the Last Days shall be like and on those of history – especially those who knew Jesus and tried to understand what he was. But I am left puzzled at how anyone could read these words and believe themselves enlightened on the topic in any substantive way.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 8       

The outward dimension of religious faith is important—the principle ideas or “notions” that make up the Christian gospel, the information Scripture contains about the journey of redemption, about Christ, the apostolic preaching, and even the working of the Holy Spirit are all important—not because they are the “end” we seek, but because the spiritual dimension that is what we seek lays somehow behind or within them. This is the mystery of our existence as human beings, this interpenetration of outward and inward, this coexistence of matter and spirit. Early Friends had not bypassed the outward; they had penetrated it. That they believed they had bypassed it did not make it so. We who were dealing with the results of excluding it were in a better position to judge its necessity.

Still, while I felt it was a matter of some consequence that I return, I did not want to go back with the usual message about how messed up the Protestant churches were and how the Catholic Church was the answer to all the mess that was outside it. That was not it. There was a mess inside the Society of Friends, but that mess was not at the heart of the experience Friends had given me. I had come into Christ among them. There was a dimension of the gospel they knew about that I had not found among Catholics, and this God did not want me to lose. This was the thing that I needed to offer up to the Church—a part of the “fullness of the gospel” that they saw as their job to protect and nurture. I still wanted very much to be a Christian after the manner of early Friends; I wanted to know Christ at the very center of my life in everything I did, and I did not feel a desperate need to partake of sacraments or do the kind of outward things that were so much a part of the Catholic religious culture.

Daily Old Testament: Zechariah 11-12 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 7)

Zechariah 11 – Fire and devastation will bring down the mighty trees of Lebanon and Bashan. There is an allegory here about bad shepherds; it isn’t easy to follow, and I’d by lying if I said I understood it completely. (11:7). The Prophet takes the shepherds’ staffs and names one of them “Favor” and the other “Union.” He breaks the staffs, showing that the Lord has “revoked the covenant . . . made with all the nations” (11:10). The Lord sends the prophet to “play the part of a worthless shepherd” (11:15), to illustrate how the Lord will give them a shepherd “who will not care for those who are dying, nor look after the young, nor heal the injured, nor fee the healthy” (11:15).

“Trouble is coming to the worthless shepherd who deserts his flock! May the sword strike his arm and his eye! May his arm wither and his eye be blinded!” (11:17)

The main point is that there will be bad leadership of God’s people, and it will not be good.

Zechariah 12 – The eternal things man reveres in God – that he created the stunningly beautiful earth, the fathomless heavens and the irresistibly awesome powers of human consciousness. Here the prophet introduces a message from the Lord: “It is Yahweh who speaks, who spread out the heaven and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him” (12:1).

Jerusalem will be made an equally appealing treasure in history – “an intoxicating cup” to those who see it. The words St. John read as referring to Jesus are here: “But over the House of David and the citizens of Jerusalem I will pour out a spirit of kindness and prayer. They will look on the one whom they have pierced; they will mourn for him as for an only son, and weep for him as people weep for a first-born child” (12:10-11).

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 7

I felt I had to return in some way to the church that was connected to the apostolic promise. For me, that meant bringing myself back into unity with the Catholic Church, which I saw as the bearer of Christ’s promise and commission to Peter. For the second time in my life I felt the same pull. Everything else in the particulars of my story was different, but again I felt God’s call to be there. I wasn’t drawn back to it because I thought that they were the bank into which all truth was deposited. Sometimes Catholic converts who write their stories seem to see the Catholic Church in this way, but that is not my take on it. We are all broken, and we all share the blame for that brokenness. But the line of continuity still calls. There is no do-over for the church.

        

On the other hand, I do think the “do-over churches”—the Reformation churches and sects that arose in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries—articulated and lived out aspects of the gospel that the historic church, both Catholic and Orthodox, have not appreciated or developed as well as it should have. They have invaluable insights into the gospel Christ gave us.

Was this insight that grew in me from God? Was it nonsense? How could I ever know? I felt it very deeply and very powerfully. It squared with what I could understand of God’s revelation in Scripture. It wasn’t the kind of leading I could readily take to Meeting or even to Christian Friends; it seemed inappropriate for me to ask Friends if this vision of Friends’ limitations and errors in theology might be something from God. So I talked to a priest. Things had changed in the years since I had left the Catholic Church. In 1964, when I had first sought membership in the Catholic Church, there had been a sense of rejoicing that I had found my way to the “one true church.” But in 1987 they hardly seemed eager at all to see me return. God worked in other churches too. They seemed basically complacent with the brokenness that so exercised me.

        

I felt it was imperative for me to go back. It seemed to me also that the Catholic Church understood better than Friends and most other Christian denominations that Christ had not necessarily come to end outward forms and observances of religion, but to extend them in new ways that represented a real continuation of his physical presence among us. The sacramental spirituality of the Church and the outward letter of Scripture both perpetuated Christ’s presence among us in necessary ways. The Scriptures give us the story we are part of and knowledge of who and what Christ is—at least an initial knowledge. The sacramental presence of Christ reminds us of his real presence in our midst in a way that transcends what even Scripture can give. The sacramental does not displace the inward—it introduces us to it, nourishes and guides it. Without it, the inward too easily becomes merely personal and subjective.

Daily Old Testament: Zechariah 9-10 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 6)

Zechariah 9 – The prophet foresees doom on all the great cities of the region – Damascus, Hamath, Tyre, Sidon and the Philistine cities of Gaza and Ashdod. Those who survive will turn to the worship of Yahweh. “I will guard my Temple and protect it from invading armies” (9:8).

The people of Zion should rejoice! “Rejoice heart and soul, daughter of Zion. Shout with gladness, daughter of Jerusalem. See now, your king comes to you; he is victorious, he is triumphant, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (9:9).

“I will remove the battle of chariots from Israel and the warhorses from Jerusalem. I will destroy all the weapons used in battle, and your king will bring peace to the nations. His realm will stretch from sea to sea and from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth” (9:10).

The Lord promises to repay his people for all their sorrows – two blessings for every sorrow. The image of their victory is painted in words of war and images of peace combined The Lord’s people “will shout in battle as though drunk with wine. They will be filled with blood like a bowl, drenched with blood like the corners of the altar” (9:15). This is followed with these words: “On that day the Lord their God will rescue his people, just as a shepherd rescues his sheep” (9:16).

Zechariah 10 – The Lord will restore his people. He warns them never to look to the seers of the pagan world – household gods, fortune-tellers, interpreters of dreams. They deal only in lies and worthless advice (10:2).

The Lord’s people wander “like lost sheep; they are attacked because they have no shepherd” (10:2). He speaks of his anger towards the shepherds who failed to care for the people.

But now the people are going to be restored and the arrogance and dominance of those around them will be ended. Though they have been scattered “like seeds among the nations, they will still remember me in distant lands. They and their children will survive and return again to Israel” (10:9). In a prophecy that some saw as a prognostication of Alexander the Great’s victory over them, the prophet says that the “pride of Assyria will be crushed, and the rule of Egypt will end” (10:11).

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 6

I realized that the Friends’ “culminationist” way of seeing Christ—the idea that he ends history and the need for all outward religion—was something they came to because they were unwilling or unable to see that the real human history that came after him was part of the redemption story as well, the second half of the story, and that this second half might be meaningfully complex. In this they were like other Christians of their day, especially the Reformation Christians, who looked so exclusively to the biblical text and its first-century orientation. But the church had a life too; its history also mirrored or recapitulated the story of God’s first people.

Friends had always assumed that the individual believer would go through something like a recapitulation of the Old Testament story in coming to God, but it apparently had never occurred to them that the church Christ started might itself go through such a recapitulation. But why not? The church was not just a human institution, a place that contained the truth within four walls like a bank has money. It was a living organism, the assembly [ekklesia] of God’s people, Christ’s Body in the world. And if the in-gathering and shaping of the Jews as a people had taken two thousand years (and was in fact still going on), then how many millennia might it not take to gather in all the “nations” of the world formed as a people for God? How many challenges might that project involve? There would be times of faithfulness, but there might well also be times of scandal and disorder. The first people of God had known such times. Why should those gathered by Christ expect to fare better?

        

The story of God’s first people was in the Scriptures. I am not saying it is history as we might write it today, or that it is all perfectly written or perfectly understandable, but its general line is comprehensible and instructive. It is a story of people who were bearers of a promise from God, who brought to the world an understanding of what it is to live lives consecrated and devoted to God and to God’s purposes for man. What Christ did was to open that redemption to all; he revealed to all the depth and perfection of that redemption, but he did not end the story. He bestowed a promise on the leader of his disciples to bear that redemption forward in time. The assembly of people bearing that promise—the church—would not necessarily be any more perfect than his first people had been. They might even be so rebellious and unfaithful that God would be tempted to withdraw his promise from them, but there would always be enough of a remnant to go on. God’s work among us was not over; he might still perform great works among his people that we cannot even imagine.

Daily Old Testament: Zechariah 6-8 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 5)

Zechariah 6 – The eighth vision is four chariots emerging from between two mountains of bronze. The first chariot has red horses, the second has black horses, the third has white horses and the fourth has dappled-gray horses (6:1). The angel says they “are the four spirits of heaven who stand before the Lord of all the earth. They are going out to do his work” (6:5). The red ones are going to the East; the black ones to the North; the white ones to the West and the dappled to the South. They will patrol the world (6:7).

Zephaniah is to take a crown of silver and gold, place it on Joshua’s head and tell him that “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Here is the man called the Branch. He will branch out from where he is and build the Temple of the Lord . . . Then he will receive royal honor and will rule as king from his throne. He will also serve as priest from his throne, and there will be perfect harmony between his two roles” (6:12-13).

People will come from lands far away to rebuild the Temple, and when it is rebuilt, everyone will know that these visions and messages have come from the Lord.

Zechariah 7 – November 518 – since the destruction of the Temple in June-July 587, there had been a fast to commemorate it. Zechariah wants to know if this tradition should continue. The important thing is God wants the people to practice kindness and compassion towards each other, but the people never obey these simple commandments, so he scattered them. “They turned a land of delights into a desert” (7:14).

Zechariah 8 – Yahweh promises to return to Zion and “shall dwell in the middle of Jerusalem” (8:3). “Now with the remnant of this people, I am not as I was in the past. It is Yahweh . . .who speaks. For I mean to spread peace everywhere. . .Just as one you were a curse among the nations, you House of Judah (and House of Israel), so I mean to save you for you to become a blessing” (8:12-13). The prophet also tells us that someday people from many nations will come to Jerusalem to learn of Yahweh.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 5

The story goes on to say that Jesus leaves his disciples, telling them to baptize all people. The Holy Spirit comes and Christ’s church is born. The church believes that Christ will return soon to end human history and gather his faithful to himself. But he does not return. We learn a little about the first decades of the church, but then the narrative ends, at least as history. The real end of the biblical narrative comes in the Revelation of John, which portrays in symbolic or imaginative terms what the end of history will be like.

History, insofar as it has to do with the past, ends in the first century, biblically speaking. Quakers incorporated the Revelation part of the narrative by saying that events prefigured there could be experienced on a spiritual plane even though they had not yet come to pass, just as all the events of the narrative could be inwardly experience. We could come into the full presence of God and sup at the great banquet in a spiritual way in this life. But Quakers did not see the historic events that unfolded after the establishment of the church, after Christ’s ascension, as having much weight or spiritual significance. Like the New Testament writer of Hebrews, they saw Christ’s coming as the end of all outward types and shadows, the culmination and end of God’s redemptive work in the world.

They used the image of the sun and compared Christ’s coming historically to the rising of the sun (Son) to its zenith over the earth. As the sun (Son) rises to its fullness—to its zenith—it casts “shadow” in the world (the “types” or outward forms), but once it is “come” (or risen to its fullness), the shadows disappear and what you have is perfect fullness (what Friends called Substance), the fullness of God’s Spirit and Light.

        

This image spoke to me. It explained why Friends did not feel the need to see God’s redemptive truths embodied in outward things like sacraments; but over time, it also led my mind to see that it was Quakerism did not address. The sun did not stop at noontide; it had a downward course to take as well to complete its story, and during this part of its course through our world, it would inevitably cast “shadows” again because the world it illuminated was just that way. It contained things that both obstructed and made real the sun’s presence. This image, the sense of what it implied, the sense that it revealed something true to me about the course of the redemption story and the way God was working in the world today, opened a way out of the labyrinth I felt Quaker theology had placed me in. It helped me see a way of resolving issues about the place of outward things in religion, the legitimacy of the historic church, and the matter of apostasy as well. I began to see another way the narrative could be viewed and other truths it might open.

        

I know this sounds strange. It is very hard to communicate how a vision of something comes to one, how a different way of orienting oneself to a story like the biblical story can open things, solve issues, or lead one in a direction not yet taken. It is very mysterious, but these insights brought me to some important conclusions and insights.

Daily Old Testament: Zechariah 5 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 4)

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.

Daily Old Testament: Zechariah 3-4 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 3)

Introduction – This prophetic work originates in the same year as Haggai – two or three months after in 520 BC. Zechariah is a priest and a prophet, grandson of Iddo who was head of the priestly families returning from the exile. He is writing to encourage the returning remnant to repent and renew the relationship with Yahweh.

Zechariah 3 - In a fourth vision, the prophet sees a court of justice at heaven’s gate presided over by God. Joshua is the high priest [a footnote says he represents the Jewish people] and Satan is the accuser. Joshua’s dirty clothes are removed and he is given “splendid robes of state” to wear. The angel of Yahweh puts a stone in front of Joshua – a stone with seven eyes. Yahweh also tells Joshua that He intends to raise a servant named the “Branch” [the footnote says this is a messianic title].

Zechariah 4 – The angel asks the prophet what he sees, and the prophet says he sees “a lamp-stand entirely of gold with a bowl at the top of it; seven lamps are on the lamp-stand, and seven lips for the lamps on it” (4:2). There are two olive trees – one to the left and one to the right of the lamp-stand. He asks what this means and the angel explains the lamps are the “eyes of Yahweh” – symbols of his omniscience. The olive trees represent the two anointed ones “who stand before the Lord of the whole world” (4:14).

Of Zerubbabel [descendant of David who returned with his people from the Babylonian captivity and helped them rebuild the Temple], the word of Yahweh is “not by might and not by power, but by my spirit. He will lay the “chosen stone” of the Temple.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 3

I tried to look at the story [the scripture narrative] without interpreting too much. I wanted the kids to see what Friends had seen there, but I also just wanted them to see the whole as it presented itself as they would any book they were asked to read.

For most of the story, the version of the story early Quakers saw seemed fairly convincing. Mankind is created by God to care for the creation and be “his image” in it, but man rebels against God’s clear command to him and falls away from the closeness that was intended by God to exist between them. He doesn’t physically die, but enters into a kind of spiritual death, which according to the story results in all kinds of misery and violence. The “fall” is thus the “problem” or “conflict” (as any English teacher will tell you, you must have conflict in a narrative) that propels the story forward and lays the foundation for God’s continuing involvement in it—his efforts to redeem his work or bring it to the perfection he has intended from the beginning.

It is to fulfill his original creative intent that God stays involved in human history, to bring man out of the death he has chosen into the fullness of life it was always God’s intention for him to enjoy. It is crucial to man’s identity as God’s “image and likeness” and crucial to God’s creative intent that the relationship of love and dependence God intended for man be entered into freely—thus the importance of “the test”. The serpent is that power of evil in us and in the world that tempts us to choose things other than dependence on God. But there is a promise given early in the story that the “head of the serpent” will eventually be bruised (Gen. 3:15) by the “seed” or offspring of the woman—Eve—and one of the things the story will show is how trustworthy the promises of God are.

Daily Old Testament: Zechariah 1-2 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 2)

Introduction – This prophetic work originates in the same year as Haggai – two or three months after in 520 BC. Zechariah is a priest and a prophet, grandson of Iddo who was head of the priestly families returning from the exile. He is writing to encourage the returning remnant to repent and renew the relationship with Yahweh.

Zechariah 1 – “’Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.’ Don’t be like your ancestors who would not listen or pay attention when the earlier prophets said to them, ‘This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Turn from your evil ways, and stop all your evil practices.’” (1:3)

The translation of Yahweh Sabaoth as “Lord of Heaven’s Armies” is a more modern version of the term Lord of Hosts. Host or Heaven’s Armies are the gathering of heavenly powers – angels – the “hosts” of heaven.

Zechariah has a series of visions. The first comes to him in the night. A man “sitting on a red horse that was standing among some myrtle trees in a small valley. Behind him were riders on red, brown, and white horses” (1:8). An angel explains to him that they patrol the earth. The angel said to Zechariah, “I have returned to show mercy to Jerusalem . . . The towns of Israel will again overflow with prosperity, and the Lord will again comfort Zion and choose Jerusalem as his own.’” (1:17)

Then he see another vision – four animal horns. They “represent the nations that scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem” (1:18). Then the Lord shows him four blacksmiths (1:20). They have come “to terrify those nations, throw them down and destroy them” (1:21). The number four represents something that is “universal.”

Zechariah 2 – The prophet looks again and sees a man with a measuring line. He is going to measure Jerusalem, to see how wide and long it is (2:2). An angel tells Zechariah that Jerusalem is to remain un-walled. Yahweh will be her wall of fire and also her glory.

Yahweh tells the people to leave the North [Babylon] and return to the holy city. “Sing, rejoice, daughter of Zion; for I am coming to dwell in the middle of you . . .Many nations will join Yahweh . . .They will become his people” (2:14-16).

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 2

There was also another reason why I wanted to use the Scripture “story” as my text. I had recently read a book by a man named Stanley Hauerwas—The Peaceable Kingdom—and I was taken by one of the ideas he introduced me to in that work. Hauerwas proposes in this book that Christians make moral decisions not by applying abstract principles to a situation, but by imagining themselves in the biblical narrative and making a judgment about what kind of decision or behavior seems consistent with the embedded principles of the people who are heroes in the narrative.

Hauerwas is a moral theologian who teaches at Duke University, a Methodist much influenced by the outlook and testimonies of the Reformation peace churches. His interest in what I have since learned has a name—“narrative theology”—is directed primarily at the moral sense of direction the biblical narrative can provide to the believer. His approach to the biblical narrative was somewhat different from the approach early Friends had taken—seeing the general trajectory of the Scripture story as something that recapitulated itself in the spiritual life of the seeking person. But it seemed complementary to me and somewhat simpler to understand. It did not involve interiorizing the story or seeing things in terms of ministrations. Hauerwas’s point was that the religious narrative in which our religious tradition was grounded functioned in the same way our other narratives do—our personal family narratives, for example, or our national narrative—to help us define who we are, what we stand for, and how we should behave in difficult situations.

Hauerwas’s approach to the Scripture narrative was also useful because it permitted me to be neutral with respect to questions I could not really get into with my religiously diverse group of students: Were the Scriptures inspired by God? Were the inerrant? Were they authoritative? What was the correct way to interpret this passage or that? I didn’t really need to get into any of these difficult questions. All I needed to do was familiarize them with the narrative and let them understand how Quakers saw it.

I had read the Bible on and off for years and was familiar with all that Friends had said about it being a story that replicated itself, but I have to say that I never saw how much it does present itself as a narrative until I stared teaching it. I actually remember the first day I stood up in class with the book and noticed out loud that the book begins at the beginning of time and ends at the end of time, and that it thus purports to deal with the entire history of God’s creation. It startled me that the story presented itself as so utterly comprehensive.

Daily Old Testament: Haggai 1-2 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 1)

Introduction: Haggai, another one of the twelve minor prophets, was active during the rebuilding of the second Temple. He began his ministry about 16 years after the return of the Jews to Jerusalem (c. 520 BC). The work on the Temple had been halted as a result of some conflict between the Samaritans and the Judeans, but thanks to prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the project got going again.

Haggai 1 – It is the year 520 – August of that year – the most precise date of any biblical writing. As long as the Temple of the Lord lies in ruins, nothing will go well.

“You hoped for rich harvests, but they were poor. And when you brought your harvest home, I blew it away. Why? Because my house lies in ruins, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, while all of you are busy building your own fine houses” (1:9).

God will inspire the leaders and the people to get to work to rebuild the Temple. The high commissioner of Judah and the high priest listen to Haggai.

Haggai 2 – A little later in that same year, the Lord sends another message through prophet Haggai. “For Yahweh . . .says this: A little while now, and I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all the nations and the treasures of all the nations shall flow in, and I will fill this Temple with glory” (2:6-7).

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 1

Given the difficulties and questions that are inherent in the Quaker notion or doctrine of “continuing revelation”, difficulties I have discussed at some length, it is not lightly that I turn now to the insights I came to feel that God was opening in me. The famous Fox quotation Friends used to capture the spirit of what continuing revelation was about—“You will say Christ sayeth this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say?”—this was something I felt challenged by too.

What I came to see after some years as a believer and a Friend was that I was doing this same thing with the words and writings of early Friends that they criticized people for doing with the Scriptures. I was not paying as close attention or giving as much weight to the insights God was opening to me personally. What was it God was trying to open in me? What did I have to say about faith, about the redemption story I was part of, about the condition of the church, about the things God wanted us to deal with in our world—the kinds of things early Friends had been called upon to address in their day?

What ultimately got me to realize that I did have something to say was the teaching I had the opportunity to do beginning in 1985 and the encounter with Scripture that it forced me to. I was asked to take over the Quakerism course my husband had been teaching for a year or so in the Middle School of the Friends School where he worked. Nothing clarifies like teaching. No matter how much you thing you know about something, you never really know it until you learn to teach it—especially until you learn to teach it to the young. The point of the course was to teach seventh graders about the basic beliefs and values of Friends, such as why it was “unQuakerly” to be mean; why lying or cheating could easily get you expelled from the school; why we wanted students to dress simply and without eccentricity; why they were never ever permitted to wear army fatigues or military gear to school, even on Halloween; why we never permitted lotteries or chance drawings of any kind at school functions; why community service was such an important part of school life; and why we all sat in complete silence for thirty or forty minutes each week at the Meeting House on the off chance someone would have something to say “from the Spirit”.

Had I been asked to teach adults, I would no doubt have gone straight to the Quaker texts I loved and have quoted so extensively in these chapters. But my students were only twelve years old, and most had had little exposure to religion of any kind. They would never be able to understand Fox or Penington or Barclay—a lot of adult Quakers had trouble with the seventeenth-century English they used, not to mention their theology. Since all of Friends’ original beliefs and principles rested on biblical foundations, it made sense to use the Scriptures directly and to supplement them with my words to describe the way Friends had interpreted the critical texts. Something about just having to use my own words brought me into the concepts more, so that I really saw them in a clearer way.