Daily Bible Reading: 2 Samuel 24 and Colossians 2

2 Samuel 24 – The Lord gets angry at Israel and incites David to take a census - always a bad thing in Israel. It's interesting to ponder why it was seen as a bad thing, something "satan" would put into David's head. Numbering of people in one's "land" was tied with military service, and the whole concept of "state sovereignty," or organization of a people under the rule of a monarch was not something that flowed easily from Hebrew monotheism. Samuel warned against it as something not wished by God. God is the only "sovereign" power finally. It could be that some remnant of this concern lingers here. Joab warns against it (24:3), but the king insists. 

After nine months and 20 days, they return with the results—in Israel there are 800,000 “able to draw the sword” (24: 9) and in Judah, 500,000. After it is done, David become conscience-stricken. Gad, David’s prophet at this time, comes to him and asks what penalty he wants the Lord to exact - he can choose: 3 years of famine; 3 months of flight before his foes or 3 days of pestilence in the land. David chooses the last.  When he sees the devastation wrought, however, he says to God, “I alone have sinned, and I alone have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father’s house” (24:17).

David buys the threshing floor of Araunah, a Jebusite whose place is threatened by the pestilence, and builds an altar there; he also buys the oxen to sacrifice and makes sacrifice there to the Lord.  The Lord answers David’s supplication and spares Israel any more suffering.

Colossians 2 – Paul tells the community, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.  See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him . .” 2:6-9).  This is fabulous writing, incredible articulation of exactly what it is to see and to live “in Christ.” Paul goes on to describe the mystery of Christian baptism.  “You have been buried with him, when you were baptized; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead. You were dead, because you were sinners and had not been circumcised: he has brought you to life with him, he has forgiven us all our sins” (2:12-13).

The next passage is one that Quakers make a great deal of: “Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths.  These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (2:16-17). “Why do you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings.  These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence” (2:20-23).

Everyone lifts what they want from Paul’s words, and some among Friends especially simply dismiss the words as “human teaching.” Early Friends did not dismiss Paul; they felt that they grasped the message he gave in a way most Christians of their day did not. It is true Friends made a great deal about the irrelevance of “human commands and teachings” – the shadow world of “outward” religion, but Paul’s words about Christ in this epistle were not this kind of “human teaching.”  Friends rooted themselves in this cosmic Christ and they experienced him as Paul did but in a different time.

Personal Reflection: The deep revelation of Christ as Logos, Light, Word and Spiritual Savior, the revelation that energized the apostles and built the community that was the early church is every bit as inexplicable (naturally) as the OT "exodus event" was for the Jews.  You will not find any easy verification of that event in historical records, but acceptance of it was the seed around which God brought together his first people – the Jews.  Acceptance of Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection is similarly not an event you will ever find validated as simple history, but its reality, experienced by these first apostles, is the event around which “the nations” will eventually be drawn to the one God.  Like the Israelites before us, we accept the truth of it through trust in those who were there at the event, those who knew him, saw him risen, were given the gospel first hand; and we trust them because in some deeply interior way, we too encounter God in Christ as an incarnate, loving and saving God.  His face and voice and touch in us reveals God’s reality, discloses His nature, draws us powerfully toward Him and toward the lives we were meant to live as His people.  The Holy Spirit is the power and mystery of God present with us now even though the bodily Jesus is no more. But these are truths of a different order from the truths our mind and mouths are accustomed to dealing with.  They smash against the barriers our logic and materiality (corporality) present to them.  But it is the job of faith to stand even in the absence of every human aid. 

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).