Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 19-20 and My Own Book "Leadings: A Catholic's Journey Through Quakerism" (Part 21)

Isaiah 19 – Oracle against Egypt: The “idols of Egypt tremble before [Yahweh]” (19:1). The people of Egypt will fight against each other and the land will be demoralized. They will be handed over to a “hard master” (19:4), and the waters of the Nile will dry up. The fishermen, flax workers and weavers will all be dejected. The leaders of the country are fools – counting on the sages (past kings consulted by necromancers).

In a passage added later, according to the footnote, Egypt’s conversion is foreseen. Five towns will learn to speak the language of Canaan; they will set up altars to Yahweh. Yahweh will reveal himself to them and will heal them. Israel, Assyria and Egypt together at the “centre of the world” (19:25) will be blessed.

Isaiah 20 – Prophecy of the capture of Ashdod, a Philistine town taken by Sargon II, king of Assyria, in 711. Isaiah walked naked as he prophesied to represent the defeat Egypt and Cush would suffer from Assyria. It will be a lesson to those in Israel who looked to them to find safety from Assyria.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism

Part 21

But there was more to it than this. The interior Christ was not just a presence, not just an aura to be engulfed in. He was an active presence. He was in us in his crucifixion. He was in us in his birth. He was in us to redeem us, to save us, to bring us back into the image and likeness of God that we had been created to reflect. As Penington put it in one of his writing, “I have met with my Saviour; and he has not been present with me without his salvation, . . .” (Penington, Early Quaker Writings, Barbour and Roberts, eds., 233).

        

Salvation, for Friends, was at the heart of God’s work in the world and in our lives. But salvation wasn’t something far off or distant any more than God was. It wasn’t something one came into only after death. It was something to be entered into now – a future perfection to be made real in us. Eternal life was not about before or after time for early Friends, or before or after the things in time. Eternal life was about coming into union with God by being joined to him in Christ. As John taught, “this is everlasting life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (17:3).

I didn’t see all of this in the very beginning of the turn in me. But I did see that it was possible that Christ was present in this intimate and powerful interior way, and that if I opened myself to him there, he would guide me back to life. As I opened to seeing what was going on in me and in my journey with my friend in terms of the Christian story, I began to feel this work of salvation as well. Friends used different images to name Christ’s presence and work:

He is light, opening and illuminating the way God wants us to walk and the way he wants us to understand his gospel;

He is God’s word or voice, communicating to us God’s will and letting us know the direction we should go in;

He is God’s holy seed, stirring in us, bursting through the hard ground of resistance in us and growing into a sheltering vine in which we can find life. These were the most common names Friends used to refer to Christ’s indwelling Spirit. But there were others.

He was our prophet, our high priest, our king, our messiah, our lamb, our shepherd. Virtually all of the redemptive images and figures that were part of the Scripture context pointed to some way that God’s presence and power was in and among us to lead us to life.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 11-13 and My Own Book "Leadings: A Catholic's Journey Through Quakerism" (Part 18)

Isaiah 11 – The coming Messiah will spring from the stock of Jesse [David’s father]. The “Spirit of the Lord will rest on him – the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord” (11:2). 

He will not judge by appearances. Integrity will be his loincloth and faithfulness the “belt about his hips” (11:5). He will bring the peace of Eden: “In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all” (11:6).

“In that day the heir to David’s throne will be a banner of salvation to all the world” (11:10). He will bring back the scattered people of Judah and end the enmity between Judah and Ephraim. “The Lord will make a dry path through the gulf of the Red Sea. He will wave his hand over the Euphrates River, sending a mighty wind to divide it into seven streams so it can easily be crossed on foot” (11:15).

Isaiah 12 – A hymn of thanksgiving is offered up to the Lord. The anger of the Lord has been appeased. “The Lord is my strength and my salvation” (12:2). “With joy you will drink deeply from the fountain of salvation!” (12:3)

The great things the Lord has done shall be made know to all the world.

Isaiah 13 – This oracle on the kingdom of Babylon is about the judgment God will bring on them for their offenses: “I will punish the world for its evil-doing, and the wicked for their crimes, to put an end to the pride of arrogant men and humble the pride of despots” (13:11).

While the title and occasion reference make Babylon the target, the language of the oracle is more general – more world-wide. Towards the end, the city of Babylon seems more specifically the topic. The introductory note to the chapter says that the oracle was likely written during the exile.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism

Part 18

I don’t remember exactly how it started to change, but suddenly I began to see that this was a way of seeing the cross, a way that illuminated what we were going through day to day, what we were hoping for and waiting for. I was familiar with Christian language and teachings, but I had never heard of Christ spoken of in these terms. He had always been presented as an outward thing to me, a person crucified for sins long ago, or off in heaven somewhere at the right hand of God, wherever that was, or present in the Eucharist or in some other thing or place that was always outside of me. But Friends said Christ was in me. His crucifixion was something to be joined with in the depths of my being. What he was going in my life now was what he had come to do in history, and he was inviting me to be joined to him, to trust as he did in his Father to bring forth something good in his own time. It was startling to me to think of Christ as something present in me. Later, when I came to study what early Friends had taught, it was apparent that they had been started at the thought too. The following is Isaac Penington’s account of his own “convincement”:

         The Lord caused his holy power to fall upon me, and gave me such

an inward demonstration and feeling of the seed of life, that I cried

out in my spirit, This is he, this is he, there is not another, there never was another. He was always near me though I knew him not, not so sensibly, not so distinctly, as now he was revealed in me, and to me by the Father. (Isaac Penington, The Light Within and Selected Writings, 6).

I had experienced the nearness of God many times in my life: helping me overcome a tangle of lies so I could start life fresh in a new place, comforting me when I felt rejected or strange living apart from my parents, strengthening me when I was afraid of going to sleep, speaking to me out of the night sky when I needed my grandfather to not die, whispering to me in the words of a great poem. He was always near me though I knew him not, not so sensibly, not so distinctly, as now he was revealed in me . . .

On the simplest level, what I came to see and then to experience as I let my defenses down and opened myself to the possibility that God and Christ might be real and present to me in this interior kind of way were the two fundamental things early Friends taught: that the Christ of history, the Christ who suffered crucifixion and rose again—the light and word of God that John spoke of in his gospel—dwelled really and palpably in the depths of every human person, and that this Christ was not in us to merely be a presence or aura of some kind, but was a power working in us to redeem us from the spiritual death that is the “normal” or “natural” state of our existence in this world. Christ dwells within you, and he is there to lead you to life.

This was the Quaker Message—the early Quaker message.

Daily Bible Reading: 2 Samuel 23 and Colossians 1

2 Samuel 23 – David’s last words—an oracle:

The spirit of the Lord speaks through me,

     his word in upon my tongue.

The God of Israel has spoken,

     the Rock of Israel has said to me:

One who rules over the people justly,

     ruling in the fear of God,

     is like the light of morning,

     like the sun rising on a cloudless morning,

     gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.

Is not my house like this with God?

For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure. . .(23:2-5).

The names of some of David’s warriors are named along with their deeds against the Philistines.  A lot of this is repeated in 1 Chronicles 11. The writer celebrates “The Thirty” and “The Three”: Josheb-basshebeth, a Tachemonite, chief of the three; Eleazar, son of Dodo; and Shammah, son of Agee.  Among the Thirty, several are named: among them Abishai, Benaiah (in charge of David’s bodyguard); Asahel; Elhanan (also son of Dodo); Ittai (Benjaminite); and Uriah the Hittite (Bathsheba’s husband).

A few of the famous deeds done by “The Three” are recounted: forcing their way into a Philistine camp to get water for the king, water he would not drink because he felt he should offer it up to the Lord instead. Then a few particular men are celebrated: Joab’s brother Abishai, most famous among “The Thirty,” Benaiah, who killed “two great Moabite warriors” and killed a lion on a snowy day. Then all the names of The Thirty are listed. 

Introductory Information on Paul's Epistle to the Colossians: This letter, dated in the period from 61 to 63 AD along with the letters to the Ephesians and Philemon, was written while Paul was under arrest in Rome. Paul’s style has changed and his doctrine is more developed than in the “great letters”—Corinthians, Galatians and Romans (written in 57-58 AD). The occasion for the letter is Epaphras’ arrival from Colossae with news of the dangers presented by speculative notions widely current in Jewish circles of the day regarding the influence of celestial powers, speculations that challenged the supremacy of Christ.

Colossae is a town in Asia Minor east of Ephesus; the church at Colossae was not one started by Paul but was in an area Paul felt some responsibility for. Paul wrote the letter and gave it to Tychicus to deliver.  The dangers addressed gave Paul occasion to rethink things he had said in the earlier letters in a deeper way.

He always thought that believers participated in Christ’s life through faith. What he develops here is a concept of how Christ’s life and power impacted on the cosmos as a whole—as pleroma [fullness of divine powers]. “Three aspects of this broader view, which focusses (sic) on the function of Christ as Head, are: that the scope of salvation is seen to be cosmic; that Christ, into whom the Church has to structure itself, is this same victor who has triumphed over the whole cosmos; and finally that the concept of the future, eschatological, promise, as already realized, becomes very much more central. . .” (Jerusalem Bible, 262). While authorship of Colossians has been questioned, the weight of opinion is that it is Paul’s.

Colossians 1 – Paul greets the Colossians and commends them for the love they have and the fruit they have given forth from their faith.  He lets them know he prays for them always, asking “God to fill you with the knowledge of his will, with all the wisdom and understanding that his Spirit gives. Then you will be able to live as the Lord wants” (1: 9-10). God has “rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (1:13).

           

Paul gives us his description of the cosmic Christ: “Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son, superior to all created things. For through him God created everything in heaven and on earth, the seen and the unseen things, including spiritual powers, lords, rulers, and authorities. God created the whole universe through him and for him. Christ existed before all things, and in union with him all things have their proper place. He is the head of his body, the church; he is the source of the body’s life. He is the first-born Son, who was raised from death, in order that he alone might have the first place in all things. For it was by God’s own decision that the Son has in himself the full nature of God. Through the Son, then, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself. God made peace through his Son’s blood on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven” (1:15-20).

The Christ described here is every bit as divine as the Christ of John’s prologue.  But what is truly amazing is that this cosmic Christ still conforms—or is conceivable only in relation—to the framework given forth in Genesis 1.  God begets light—a divine light, indeed His own divine Light--the “logos” of the entire universe.  And through this Light all the subsequent creation comes to be—ordered, good, image of the unseen and unimaginable power of the Father.  As pinnacle and embodiment of this light, life and power, man is brought forth—man both male and female.  Christ is this Adam, but here Paul tells us He is also that first Light, indwelling divine power of the entire cosmos.  It is this Christ that is Head of the Church (and Peter is His visible sign).

Christ restores in us (in our faith, in our knowledge of these great mysteries and responsiveness to them) this sense of what our lives are, of what the universe is to God.  But we must “continue securely established and steadfast in the faith,” not wander off—into the old slavery or ignorance we were once in.  Christ’s “saints” have come to know “the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generation” past (1:26).  This mystery “is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1:27). The work he is engaged in is the work of bringing believers to maturity in their faith (1: 28). 

Daily Bible Reading: Jeremiah 40-41 and Romans 8:1-17

Jeremiah 40 - The next several chapters are very dramatic and show the chaos surrounding the whole broken Judaean region following the Chaldean conquest. Jeremiah is taken with the captives who are being led into exile with their Chaldean captors as far as Ramah, but is then told that he does not have to go into exile; he can go wherever he wants to go.  He is advised to go to Gedaliah, whom the king of Babylon has named governor of Judah. Gedaliah comes from a family that was deeply associated with the reform movement started by Josiah; and his father, Ahiakam, had helped save Jeremiah earlier [see chapter 26]. So Jeremiah does go to him.

There are also some Judeaen military officers who had not surrendered to the Chaldeans who go to Gedaliah to seek refuge; and other people as well – Israelites from Moab, Ammon, Edom and elsewhere return to Judah, hoping that Gedaliah will be able to provide some security.

One of the Judaean officers  -- Johanan – tries to warn Gedaliah that the Ammonite king, Baalis, who has not yet surrendered to the Chaldeans, is resentful of Gedaliah and sees him as a puppet of the enemy. Johanan tells Gedaliah that Baalis intends to assassinate him, but Gedaliah refuses to believe it. Johanan advises Gedaliah to send someone to kill Ishmael, the man appointed to assassinate him, but Gedaliah will have none of it.

Jeremiah 41 – So the assassination happens—while they are all together at a dinner table in Mizpah. Ishmael and the ten men with him also slay many of those associated with Gedaliah. The day after--before anyone has learned of the assault--eighty men with beards shaved (under a vow of some kind?), clothed in rags and with gashes on their bodies, arrive to bring food offerings and incense.  Ishmael greets them, invites them in and then slays them as well—except for ten. He takes captives, including women left behind by the Chaldeans for Gedaliah and leaves.

           

When Johanan learns of the slaughter, he and his men set out after Ishmael, overtaking him at the Great Waters of Gibeon.  When the captives with Ishmael see them, they go over to the pursuers; but Ishmael escapes with eight of his men to the Ammonites. Johanan takes charge of the assorted “remnant,” but fearing what the Chaldeans will do now, they decide to escape to Egypt. 

Romans 8:1-17 – Paul describes a Christological understanding that is rooted in the Levitical sacrifices—the Law was powerless to completely deal with sin (bring it to a state of utter holiness), because the “flesh” in human makeup could not be brought into complete obedience to the Law but rather found in the Law ever new ways to undermine God’s will, which was to save through the Law under the Old Covenant.  So now it is flesh itself—in the person of Christ—that is condemned and handed over to God in sacrifice.  But only God can do this.  By joining ourselves to Christ through faith in his sacrifice, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the divine that gives us a spiritual power capable of overcoming the drag of flesh.

“For the concern of the flesh is hostility toward God; it does not submit to the law of God, nor can it; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.  But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.  But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness” (8:7-10). He says this a time or two again.

So we see the indwelling Christ proclaimed here, but also the expiatiatory nature of Christ’s incarnation and death—Quaker and not so Quaker aspects of the faith. I am very interested in the tension between the “fleshly” and the spiritual dimensions of the truths proclaimed in the Christian gospel.  The sacramental spirituality of the Catholic Church seems a two-edged sword – it is a vital reminder or teacher of the truths and the message of Christ’s redemption; but it seems to me too a snare that sometimes (maybe often) keeps people from passing into a real spiritual grasp of what that redemption is all about.   One could argue (and I do) that true sacramentality comes after the spiritual rebirth.  When the Spirit of Christ animates our mortal bodies and dwells at the heart of all we do in the flesh - our marriages, our friendships and our communities. 

Daily Bible Reading: Deuteronomy 25-26 and Galatians 4

Deuteronomy 25 – Flogging may be imposed on a person found guilty of an infraction, but not more than 40 strokes – “more than that would humiliate him publicly” (25:3). Do not muzzle ox treading out grain—even animals have a right to a reward for their labor. If brothers live on the same property, and one of them dies with no son, the surviving should take a deceased brother’s wife as his own so that children may be brought forth for that brother’s line. Now get this, if he refuses, then the woman can call upon the town leaders to put pressure on him. If he still refuses “his brother’s widow is to go up to him in the presence of the town leaders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face, and say, ‘This is what happens to a man who refuses to give his brother a descendant’ His family will be known in Israel as ‘the family of the man who had his sandal pulled off’”(25:9-10).

Really, some of these rules are amazing. Makes me thankful the Temple never was rebuilt; that apparently is the reason ALL these laws are no longer in effect for the orthodox. If “two men fight and the wife of one, grabs hold of the other man’s genitals, show her no mercy; cut off her hand” (25:11). Then come some that you can easily understand. You are not to cheat using weights and measure. “The Lord hates people who cheat” (25:16). And the chapter ends with an admonition to “kill all the Amalekites” because of what they did when the Israelites entered the land; they attacked them from the rear when they were exhausted and killed stragglers. No mercy.

Deuteronomy 26 – In remembrance of all the blessings the Lord showed to the Israelites in bringing them from Egypt, people are to take the first-fruits of their crops to the place of worship and recite the words that tell of their history. Then celebrate with the Levites and any foreigners as well. “Every third year give the tithe – a tenth of your crops – to the Levites, the foreigners, the orphans, and the widows, so that in every community they will have all they need to eat” (26:12). The faithfulness of God’s people to all these laws “will bring praise and honor to his name. You will be his own people, as he promised” (26:19).

I think the thing I most take from reading through all these laws, some that seem fundamental and justice-based, some that seem trivial and even silly, is a sense of how fully and completely those who clung to them wanted everything in their lives to be in conformity with God’s will. They did not see God as a being who only loved; He hated as well. He hated evil, disobedience, interference with His plan to plant this “people” in a way of life that would attract the attention and admiration of others over time. 

The argument about whether the God of the Old Testament and the God Jesus talked about could possibly have been "the same God" makes me think of the movie, The Quarrel, about two Jewish friends who have survived the Nazi slaughter and meet by happenstance in a park in Montreal around 1948. They get into an argument about God - had he abandoned His people or punished them for their lack of complete obedience?  Was this God still a God anyone could rationally believe in? At the end you realize that neither argument could really be reasonably debated. The existential questions - on God's existence or not; His nature - loving or capable of abandonment and hatred towards humankind; the value (or not) of faith and memory and obedience - all the things Deuteronomy holds dear - are really beyond our ability to argue, or if not argue - we can argue these things forever - but our ability to resolve through argument. Whatever our answers are to these questions, they are answers based on faith. Faith is that inward rock on which the "house of your life" is built.

Galatians 4 - The Christian is no longer under the discipline of the law.  He is now a man.  He is no longer “enslaved to the elemental powers of the world” (4:3) – the various “celestial beings” pagans thought controlled the world. Gentiles are now adopted children of God and heirs. The proof of this is “that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba, Father’” (4:6).

It is not so much that they have come to “know God” but that God now “knows them” (4:9). He’s annoyed that somehow they now want to observe “special days and months and seasons and years” (4:11).  This sounds just like George Fox and early Friends complaining about the special Christian “Holy Days” and seasons. He is so aggravated by the fact that others have come and ended their devotion and enthusiasm to him as their teacher. He feels now he “must go through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you” (4:19).

Paul insists that if they want to be “subject to the Law” (4:20) it will mean they have chosen to be heirs of Hagar, not heirs of the “free woman” Sarah. “[T]he women stand for the two covenants. The first who comes from Mount Sinai, and whose children are slaves, is Hagar—since Sinai is in Arabia—and she corresponds to the present Jerusalem that is a slave like her children. The Jerusalem above, however, is free and is our mother” (4:25-26). They are meant to be like “children of the promise” like Isaac, not children born in the ordinary way.