Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 12-13 and My Own Article on "Genesis and John" (Part 2)

Nehemiah 12 – The names of the priests and Levites who came up with Zerubbabel are listed. In verse 31, it goes back to first person narration. Nehemiah says he brought all the leaders up onto the wall and they went in procession, one company to the right with musicians and the whole regalia; the other to the left. Again, particular people are mentioned and their place along the wall. It was a great affair. “They offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. The joy of Jerusalem was heard far away” (12:43).

Nehemiah 13– On that day “they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people; and in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God, because they did not meet the Israelites with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them—yet our God turned the curse into a blessing. When the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent” (13:3).

One of the priests, Eliashib, is related to Tobiah (an Ammonite) and prepared him a large room in the temple. Nehemiah was not in Jerusalem when this was done. When he returns and discovers the wrong, he was angry. He threw the household furniture of Tobiah out of the room, gave orders that they be cleansed and brought back the other things that had been stored there.

He also discovers some other problems. He prays that his work may not go to waste. He also tries to get a stricter observance of the Sabbath. He commands that the doors be shut at dusk on the Sabbath. He refuses even to permit them to wait in front of the city gates. He contends with some Jews who intermarry with Ammonite or Moabite women. He also “curses and “beats” some of them and pulls out their hair (13:25). “Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign, and I established the duties of the priests and Levites, each in his work; and I provided for the wood offering, at appointed times, and for the first fruits. Remember me, O my God, for good” (13:31).

“Genesis and John”

Part 2

This vision of Christ as the Second Adam was pivotal for George Fox. The overturning of "the fall" as a condition that weighed us down made "perfection" possible - moral perfection. It made possible ALL the testimonies Friends made and have continued to make to this day: equality of male and female – restoration of the original equality, the peace testimony, the ability to love as Christ loved, the end of all worldly obsession with position and power.

I knew the importance Quakers had associated with this vision of Christ’s work. I remember asking the leader of my Catholic Study Group [Emmaus] why Catholics did not seem to give much weight to the “Second Adam” idea: Why was there still an assumption that mankind lived in “the fallen state” that Adam and Eve’s disobedience had led us to? It seemed like Christ’s redemption should be at least as potent in shaping the reality we all lived in as Adam’s “fall”. He responded that as the Church sees it, we have a choice – about accepting Christ and his being the Second Adam or not, but it didn’t change the underlying reality we lived in to start with. I didn’t pursue it, but inside I did feel that somehow something wasn’t right about this. If Christ was in fact that Second Adam shouldn’t we be dealing with a world fundamentally transformed? Please know, by the way, that I know I am dealing with a spiritual reality and not a simple historical reality when I speak of these parts of the narrative. This is a complex thing. There has always been choice.

Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 11 and My Own Article on "FGenesis and John" (Part 1)

Nehemiah 11- The leaders of the people are now living in Jerusalem. “A tenth of the people from the other towns of Judah and Benjamin were chosen by sacred lots to live there, too, while the rest stayed where they were” (11:1). Most of them stayed where they were.

The representatives of the different groups are named-—Judahites, Benjaminites, Priests, Levites, gatekeepers, an overseer of the Levites, and others. The responsibilities of each “were carried out according tot the terms of a royal command” (11:23). It tells the other villages where people settled as well. The people of Judah “were living all the way from Beersheba in the south to the valley of Hinnom” (11:30).

“Genesis and John”

Part 1

I have done a lot of thinking about the connection between Genesis and the Gospel of John in the past. Among Friends, the Gospel of John has always been referred to as the “Quaker Gospel” – its use of the concepts of Light and Word are part of the deepest Christology of the gospel writers. But the “openings” I am writing about here came about as a result of a steady interest in both of these books during 2012. I was leading a Bible study at our local Monthly Meeting and we were working on Genesis, but also I was also part of an adult study group at my local Catholic Church and there we were doing the Gospel of John all winter. It was there I experienced one of those Quaker moments when I suddenly SAW something in the writings I hadn’t seen before, or hadn’t seen so deeply or powerfully. We were going over the last words of Jesus on the cross as told in John, and I began to see something I really hadn't seen before. Some things came together for me - some Quaker, some Catholic - a volatile mix. But it was an "opening" for me, a powerful one, so I thought I'd write about it.

We all know the Genesis story starts with words that were very central to the author of John: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and the first thing created is “the light” – in John’s prologue, he says “In the beginning was the Word,” the Christ, the Seed of God. How did that concept come into the story – the Seed? I comes from Genesis 3:15, a passage that has been seen by Christians from the earliest days as prophetic. It comes after Adam and Eve have disobeyed God’s command not to eat the fruit of the “knowledge of good and evil”; God has told them that there will be consequences of that disobedience, and those consequences shall be difficult to live with: the snake will grovel on its belly; there will be enmity between the serpent and the woman, between the woman and the man and the work of man will be pointless and his life nothing more than dust. But there is also a few words that were seen as a promise of hope. In 3:15 these words appear, that one day the "Seed" [Offspring] of "the woman" would "bruise the head" of the serpent [evil power that alienates man from his creator].

For Fox and early Friends, this idea of the Seed - Christ, the Light and Word of God - meant that the power of evil over us was dashed in a fundamental way. Christ was the "Second Adam" – a faithful Adam, one that would give a new hope that man’s destiny was not to be “fallen” forever.

“And when I myself was in the deep, under all shut up, I could not believe that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows, and my temptations were so great, that I thought many times I should have despaired, I was so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how he was tempted by the same Devil, and had overcome him and bruised his head, and that through him and his power, light, grace and spirit, I should overcome also, I had confidence in him” (Fox’s Journal 12).

AND again:

“Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell . . . I was immediately taken up in spirit, to see into another or more steadfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall. And the Lord showed me that such as were faithful to him in the power and light of Christ, should come up into that state in which Adam was before he fell, in which the admirable works of the creation, and the virtues thereof, may be known, through the openings of that divine Word of wisdom and power by which they were made” (27).

Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 9-10 and My Own Article on "Friends and Scripture" (Part 13)

Nehemiah 9 – Still assembled, the people fast and are in a repentant spirit. Those of Israelite descent separate themselves from all foreigners, confess their sins and the sins of the ancestors as well. They stand and read from the book of the law for a quarter of the day, and spend another quarter confessing and worshipping: “Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed by your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise” (9:5).

Ezra gives this lovely prayer: “You are the Lord, you alone; you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the stars and all that is in them. To all of them you give life, and the host of heaven worships you” (9:6). He repeats the story from Abram—“you found his heart faithful before you, and made with him a covenant to give to his descendants the land of the Canaanites . . .and you have fulfilled your promise, for you are righteous” (9:7-8).

He recounts Moses’ part and the exodus of his people, their unfaithfulness and all they have been. The prophetic voice of the deuteronomic writers is in his words. “Many years you were patient with them, and warned them by your spirit through your prophets; yet they would not listen” (9:30).

He tells of God’s goodness in bringing them into the new land and providing them with everything; “and they were filled and became fat, and delighted themselves in your great goodness” (9:25). Nevertheless they were disobedient and “rebelled and cast your law behind their backs and killed your prophets . . .Therefore you gave them into the hands of their enemies, who made them suffer” (9:26-27). Their suffering made them cry out, “and according to your great mercies you gave them saviors who saved them from the hands of their enemies” (9:27).

        

“Here we are, slaves to this day—slaves in the land that you gave to our ancestors to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts” (9:36). Because of all this “we make a firm agreement in writing, and on that sealed document are inscribed the names of our officials, our Levites, and our priests” (9:38).

Nehemiah 10 – The names of those who signed are listed, all of those who separated themselves from foreigners, entering into “a curse and an oath to walk in God’s law, which was given by Moses the servant of God” (10:29). They agree to keep the Sabbath holy, to forego the crops of the seventh year and the exaction of every debt (10:31). They agree to levies for upkeep of the Temple, to bring the first fruits of everything they have.

"Friends and Scripture"

Part 13

I spend this amount of time describing Fox’s understanding of the redemption process as paralleling the scripture story because most modern Friends do not attach much importance to these scripture-based “ministrations.” They prefer to pick out of Fox’s account isolated insights or “openings” and then treat these insights as if they were philosophical premises from which the distinctive Quaker practices or testimonies were developed.  But this was not the way Fox’s mind worked.  He believed that if one was being led by the same light that had led the holy men and women of God in history, one’s journey would of necessity be similar.  It was the similarity of the journey that let you know you were on the right path.  God’s truth is not changeable.

And I mention it too because my own response to Friends’ biblicism was fascination.  Something in their approach just struck me as remarkably contemporary and relevant, like Freud’s use of the ancient Oedipus story as a prototype to describe certain stages in human psychological development; or the idea that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”—that the development of an individual organism recapitulates the development of the whole group of related organisms.  This last reflection is very likely not true or so I have read, but in my college days the idea had many proponents and I found the comparison interesting. 

Why couldn’t the scripture narrative be an archetype for the experience of redemption? If God was the same yesterday, today and tomorrow; if God did exist and did work to redeem His creation, then why should his way of working that redemption not be manifest both in history and in the inner lives of people who opened themselves to him.  The fact that the historical accounts of scripture were not exactly the kind of history modern secular historians would produce, or the fact that there were undoubtedly elements of myth or legend mixed in with these accounts did not interfere with their archetypal value.  Even those parts that were strictly literature might be true in that sense. 

Once I started to consider scripture this way, it wasn’t long before I found myself liberated from the skepticism, standoffishness and doubt that modernism had nurtured in me towards the holy books.  I could never prove that the events of scripture were historically valid or accurate in a scientific sense, but the interior dimension of truth I found there was trust-worthy.  This I was learning “experimentally” as Fox had said, and the more I studied it and meditated upon it, the more I came to trust it and look to it.  As I see it now, the very fact that the scripture exists as it does and has such continuing power to open God’s presence and nature and work among us as it does, makes it something commensurate with the greatness we ascribe to God. 

Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 7-8 and My Own Article on "Friends and Scripture" (Part 12)

Nehemiah 7 – The Lord “put[s] into [Nehemiah’s] mind” the idea of assembling the nobles and officials to be enrolled by genealogy. All the returning families are lists with the number of descendants returned—first the people, then the priests, the Levites, the temple servants, descendants of Solomon’s servants and those who came up from Tel-melah, Tel-harsha, Cherub, Addon and Immer but who couldn’t proved they belonged to Israel. The whole group was 42,360, not counting male and female slaves of whom there were 7,337. The financial contributions of the various houses are also listed.

Nehemiah 8 – In the seventh month, everyone old enough to understand, gathers before the Water Gate, just next to the Palace of Solomon, and they listen to Ezra read the book of the law of Moses. He stood on a wooden platform, surrounded by other leaders. The people stood up to listen. The Levites help the people to understand as they went along. “So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (8:8).

The people weep, but Nehemiah and Ezra and Levites told them they ought not to mourn, for the day was holy (8:9). “And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them” (8:12).

The next day the heads of the ancestral houses, the priests and Levites came together to Ezra “in order to study the words of the law” (8:13). They read about the festival of booths, which they are supposed to celebrate in the seventh month. So the people “went out and brought [branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm and other leafy trees to make] booths” (8:14). They put them up on the rooftops of their houses and in the courtyards and in the square at the Water Gate and at the Gate of Ephraim (to the west of the Temple). From the days of Jeshua, son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing.

For the seven days of the festival, they read from the book of the law and there was a solemn assembly. Tradition needs to be revived from time to time for it to remain meaningful. We forget. Just remembering our ancestors’ desire to be faithful, to create for their children and their children’s children (us) a world that is better and more redeemed, helps us to appreciate them more.

"Friends and Scripture"

Part 12

While numbers [of converts drawn to Fox’s message] are difficult to come by, thousands of people responded to Fox’s preaching in the early years.  It has been estimated that by 1657, only eight years after Fox’s first started his preaching, there were at least twenty thousand Friends in England and probably many more. 

But the point here is not to explore how Friends viewed themselves in church history but simply to look at how they used the scripture writings.  Scripture for Friends was not an artifact of God’s work in the past but a story that recapitulated itself wherever God’s spirit worked unhindered—in the individual heart and among God’s faithful on earth.

Fox was not the only Friend to use “ministrations” to describe the spiritual passage from fall to restoration.  Few went into the detail Fox did, but many early Friends make reference to one or more of the ministrations to describe their own journeys.  Here is one other example:

“. . .as I travelled in and under the ministration of condemnation, and true judgment of sin and transgression, great was the warfare and combats that I had with the Enemy of my soul, who through this subtility (sic) did what in him lay, to betray me to despair of my condition, as though there was no mercy for me. . .And having nothing whereof to accurse myself, only some little things through childishness which I knew the Lord as a tender father had passed by, so through faith in the power of God and shining of his glorious light in my heart, I overcame the wicked one. . .through a diligent waiting in the light and keeping close unto the power of God, in waiting upon him in silence among his people. . .I came to experience the work thereof in my inward parts, in order to work my freedom from bondage and redemption from captivity” (John Banks, Early Quaker Writings, 184-185).

Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 6 and My Own Article on "Friends and Scripture" (Part 11)

Nehemiah 6 – Returning to the wall story, reports go back to Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem the Arab (all of them officials of the Persian provincial government who are enemies of Nehemiah), that the wall is nearing completion. Only the gates remain to be done (6:1).

The three try to get Nehemiah to come and meet with them, but he believes it is a conspiracy to do him harm, so he puts them off repeatedly. They continue to charge him with an intent to rebel against the emperor. Sanballat’s servant brings a letter to him about the rumor that Nehemiah and the Jews are planning to rebel and that he – Nehemiah has appointed “prophets in Jerusalem to proclaim concerning [him], ‘Look! There is a king is Judah!’” (6:7)

He accuses them of making everything up to intimidate those working on the wall.  As in the days of Jesus, the enemies of God try to implicate the righteous in a plot to challenge the ruling nation, here Persia; in Jesus’ case Rome.

He goes to the house of Shemaiah, who is confined to his house and he suggests that they meet together in the Temple to seek asylum there, but Nehemiah will not. Nehemiah believes this man too is trying to compromise him at the instigation of Sanballat. Interestingly, when Nehemiah, thinks of all the bad things Tobiah and Sanballat have tried to do, he also mentions a woman prophet, Noahiah, as being one of the prophets who have tried to intimidate him. I wonder how many female prophets there were.

The wall is finished in October of 445, 52 days after it was begun. When their enemies and the nations around them learn of it, they become afraid “for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God” (6:16). The nobles of Judah send letters to Tobiah, and he sends letters to them. Tobiah somehow uses this bond of allegiance to intimidate Nehemiah (6:19).

“Friends and Scripture”

Introduction: This article is one I wrote some years ago and it was eventually part of the book I wrote called Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism. My plan here is just to include a few paragraphs of the chapter each day.

Part 11

Sometimes neat, linear concepts are just not adequate to point to spiritual truth.

It takes about five years from the time Fox begins his pilgrimage in the ministration of condemnation to the point where he passes through the ministration of John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, and enters into the very life and power of Christ, an experience he describes as a kind of combination of coming up out of slavery, a resurrection from the dead, and a restoration to the state Adam was in before he fell. It is the veritable reentry into paradise.

"Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell" (Fox’s Journal 27).

Fox’s account reflects spiritually the entire redemption narrative, from fall to restoration. He was convinced that everyone who opened to the spirit of Christ in them would find themselves involved in a journey like this, one that patterned itself after the events of the Scripture narrative. But until one entered personally on that journey, the Scripture narrative was not something one could really penetrate.

But of course, the passage of individual believers from condemnation to restoration was not all that the scripture story told of or promised.  It also went forward to tell of the final in-gathering of God’s faithful and the establishment of his kingdom on earth.  These future times scripture tells of were also very real to Fox, but while these times might not yet be upon us, Fox believed they, like all the other historical events scripture told of, had also an interior parallel. 

Fox tended to make the “day of the Lord” itself a kind of microcosmic recapitulation of the redemption trajectory—the dawning of Christ’s light, the pain of recognizing our distance from God, Christ’s judgment and the purgatorial, cleansing fires of his presence bringing us to God—but he tended to apply the imagery involved here to the corporate body of believers as well. When people criticized Fox for allowing women to preach, for example, or prophesy, he routinely cited Joel’s famous end-time prophecy as his justification, as if the gathering of Friends in response to his preaching was, in effect, the inauguration of those end-times. 

Peter, who also believed that the end-times were upon them, also cites these same words in his first address to the people of Jerusalem.

“In the days to come—it is the Lord who speaks—I will pour out my spirit on all mankind.  Their sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams.  Even on my slaves, men and women, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.  I will display portents in heaven above and signs on earth below.  The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great Day of the Lord dawns.  All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2: 17-21).

Whether Fox saw the rapid gathering of Friends in response to his preaching as the beginning of an end that had been delayed because of some early apostasy in the church is something Fox scholars might debate, but what clearly was true was that he saw the scripture story as occurring on several different levels—historical, individual and again in the corporate life of the redeemed community, of which he took Friends to be the vanguard. 

Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 5 and My Own Article on "Friends and Scripture" (Part 10)

Nehemiah 5 – There are community grievances. Jews complain about other Jews who have taken advantage of those who were in need of food. The poor have had to pledge their fields and vineyards to stay alive. The rich are charging interest and taking their brothers and sisters into servitude. These things make Nehemiah very angry. He brings charges against the rich nobles and officials, saying they were unlawfully taking interest from their own people. “The thing that you are doing is not good. Should you not walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies?” (5:9)

He asks them to stop charging interest to restore their lands and houses and any interest already charged (5:11). They agree. He makes the priests also promise to do likewise. “I also shook out the fold of my garment and said, ‘So may God shake out everyone from house and from property who does not perform this promise. Thus may they be shaken out and emptied.’” (5:13). In these things, Nehemiah performs the role of prophet in the land, preventing the rich from exploiting the poor, reminding the wealthy of their obligations under the law, even his “acting out” the message he wants them to have from their God.

For the twelve years Nehemiah serves as governor in Judah, he never took advantage of the food allowance he was given to use. Other governors had exacted heavy burdens but he did not “for fear of God” (5:15). And this even though he often entertained 150 people or more at his table—Jews, officials and visitors from other nations. Here he also demonstrates the virtues of the good shepherd and leader of his people.

“Friends and Scripture”

Introduction: This article is one I wrote some years ago and it was eventually part of the book I wrote called Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism. My plan here is just to include a few paragraphs of the chapter each day.

Part10

It is the spirit of repentance that is brought forth by that pure law, which the prophets and John the Baptist testify to; and it must be passed through before one can come to a participation in the cross of Christ.  Going through the judgment due under the pure law of God is a painful time for Fox as it is for all men, but as he permits God to exercise his just judgment over all that denies or kills his spirit, he passes through the ministration of the law to the ministration of the prophets and of John the Baptist, who sees to the fulfillment promised in Christ:

“I saw this law was the pure love of God which was upon me, and which I must go through, though I was troubled while I was under it; for I could not be dead to the law but through the law which did judge and condemn that which is to be condemned.  I saw many talked of the law, who had never known the law to be their schoolmaster; and many talked of the Gospel of Christ, who had never known life and immortality brought to light in them by it . . . as you are brought into the law, and through the law to be dead to it, and witness the righteousness of the law fulfilled in you, ye will afterwards come to know what it is to be brought into the faith, and through faith from under the law.  And abiding in the faith which Christ is the author of, ye will have peace and access to God” (Fox’s Journal 17).

In this passage, we see one of the difficulties Fox’s approach sometimes engenders; for even though he sees the ministrations as leading only gradually to the knowledge of Christ, he tends to mix and mingle Old Testament references with New Testament Christology throughout – as did the earliest Christian writers!!

The reason is because having passed through all the ministrations himself, Fox sees in all of them the Johannine Christ who is with God in the beginning and active throughout the entire story even when his face is hidden: He is in the promise to Eve in Genesis 3: 15--the seed of the woman who will bruise the head of the serpent; he is the voice that leads Abraham away from his ancestral land; the manna that feeds the Israelites in desert and the law Moses transmits to his people.  Finally he is the Word that speaks through the prophets and prepares the way for the incarnated Christ. Fox was not really a systematic thinker or writer either, so that one must also admit that the boundaries between the various ministrations sometimes blur in Fox’s retelling.  But these elements of potential confusion do not detract from the power of Fox’s insights when we remember that he was trying to communicate about things not really susceptible to clear and logical explanation.

Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 4 and My Own Article on "Friends and Scripture" (Part 9)

Nehemiah 4 – Sanballat mocks the Jews saying, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore things? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish it in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish—and burned ones at that?” (4:2)

Sounds like a passage that might have inspired “will these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37)

Tobiah the Ammonite mocks the soundness of the stone wall, which at this point is up about half-way (4:6). The mocking turns to anger as the walls go up; they begin to plot against Jerusalem and “cause confusion in it” (4:8).

The strength of the builders is also beginning to wane—“The workers are getting tired, and there is so much rubble to be moved. We will never be able to build the wall by ourselves” (4:10).

Nehemiah stations people all along the open places in the wall and tries to encourage everyone. When the threat of attack is passed they go back to work. “From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and body-armor; and the leaders posted themselves behind the whole house of Judah, who were building the wall” (4:16-17). They work with a sword strapped to their side. They worked from dawn to dark, never taking off their clothes. “[E]ach kept his weapon in his right hand” (4:23).

“Friends and Scripture”
Introduction: This article is one I wrote some years ago and it was eventually part of the book I wrote called Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism. My plan here is just to include a few paragraphs of the chapter each day.

Part 9

Fox goes on in a very depressed state for a long time after this experience, mostly because he sees that he is a creature with a divided heart.  Like the people of Israel, he continues to have a thirst for the comforts and pleasures of the world.  The thirst for freedom, he discovers, is not unequivocal:

“I found that there were two thirsts in me, the one after the creatures, to have gotten help and strength there, and the other after the Lord the creator and his Son Jesus Christ.  And I saw all the world could do me no good.  If I had had a king’s diet, palace, and attendance, all would have been as nothing, for nothing gave me comfort but the Lord by his power.  And I saw professors [professing Christians], priests, and people were whole and at ease in that condition which was my misery, and they loved that which I would have been rid of.  But the Lord did stay my desires upon himself from whom my help came, and my care was cast upon him alone.  Therefore, all wait patiently upon the Lord, whatsoever condition you be in; wait in the grace and truth that comes by Jesus; for if ye so do, there is a promise to you, and the Lord God will fulfill it in you” (Fox’s Journal 12-13).

The journey through the wilderness looks to our worldly mind as if it should be short and direct, but in truth it is long and often circuitous.  It is not a journey of miles, but of mileposts that are spiritual.  We must just go on in childlike trust, seeking God’s presence in the most personal way.  It requires great patience to endure the testing and purging process, which constitutes the work of the law.  The law of Moses which Christians tend to dismiss as unimportant in the ministration of Christ, Fox sees as essential to the progress of the soul.  He does not see it as outward law but as a pure spiritual fire that burns up all that is contrary to God’s will.  The painful inner discernment Fox feels throughout this ministration is the work of the law in him, a law that must be passed through to get to the ministration of the prophets and of Christ:

“The pure and perfect law of God is over the flesh to keep it and its works, which are not perfect, under, by the perfect law; and the law of God that is perfect answers the perfect principle of God in every one . . .None knows the giver of this law but by the spirit of God, neither can any truly read it or hear its voice but by the spirit of God” (Fox’s Journal 15).

Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 1-3 and My Own Article on "Friends and Scripture" (Part 8)

Nehemiah 1 – Written in the first person, Nehemiah is, at the time of the return, a cupbearer for the Persian king Artaxerxes. The account begins in the year 446 according to a note in my Jerusalem Bible. He is living in Susa when his brother Hanani comes with other men from Judah with news of the terrible condition of the people there. Susa is one of the oldest cities in the world, in the Zagros Mountain area [southeastern Iran today] and home of both Daniel and Nehemiah. The city wall of Jerusalem has broken down; the gates have been destroyed. Nehemiah is moved by his brother’s report. He weeps and mourns “for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven” (1:4).

He addresses God in prayer: “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands, listen to my prayer! Look down and see me praying night and day for your people Israel. I confess that we have sinned against you. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned. We have sinned terribly by not obeying the commands, decrees, and regulations that you gave us through your servant Moses. Please remember what you told your servant Moses: ‘If you are unfaithful to me, I will scatter you among the nations. But if you return to me and obey my commands and live by them, then even if you are exiled to the ends of the earth, I will bring you back to the place I have chosen for my name to be honored.’ The people you rescued by your great power and strong hand are your servants” (1:5-10).

Nehemiah 2 – Nehemiah is a cup-bearer to the king of Persia, Artaxerxes. One day he appears to serve the king, and his face is sad. The king takes notice and Nehemiah tells him his heart is sad because the city of his ancestors’ graves lies in ruins. The king asks him what he wants to do and Nehemiah tells him he wants to rebuild it (2:5). The king asks him how long he will be gone, and at Nehemiah’s request grants him letters permitting him to pass through the province west of the Euphrates River, letters to the king’s forest-keeper, allowing him to take lumber, etc. The governors of the province are not happy about all of this, but they can do nothing.

When Nehemiah gets to Jerusalem, he doesn’t announce right away what he is there to do, but surveys the Temple area, assessing the damage. Then he calls the people together, and encourages them to start building. The officials, Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem the Arab, mock them and imply that they are planning rebellion. Nehemiah responds, “The God of heaven will help us succeed. We, his servants, will start rebuilding this wall. But you have no share, legal right, or historic claim in Jerusalem” (2:20).

Nehemiah 3 – Proceeding in a clockwise direction around the city, the writer tells which exact families made repairs to the walls. The priests work in the vicinity of the temple, starting at the Sheep Gate, then by the Tower of Hananel, the Fish Gate, the Old Gate, the Broad Wall. From there around to the Tower of the Ovens or Furnaces, the Valley Gate and a thousand cubits down to the Dung Gate. To the Fountain Gate and the wall of the Pool of Shelah (Siloam?) to the stairs leading to the City of David. From a point opposite the graves of David to the artificial pool (Upper Pool? A reservoir that drew off water of the Gihon at their source, once filled in by Hezekiah—2 Kings 20). The priests again work near their houses and up to the Water Gate on the east, past the Horse Gate to the East Gate and so on back to the Sheep Gate.

“Friends and Scripture”

Introduction: This article is one I wrote some years ago and it was eventually part of the book I wrote called Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism. My plan here is just to include a few paragraphs of the chapter each day.

Part 8

Fox’s major “openings” are experienced in the ministration of Moses.  Through these openings or revelations, he realizes he must move from the “fleshly” understanding he is accustomed to, to a more spiritual grasp of God’s work in his life.  It is the process of being weaned away from the “common belief of people” that characterizes the openings he has during this stage. The openings he experiences here lead him to rely less and less on those thought to be spiritually wise by worldly standards and more on the sense of what God seems to be saying within him.  He is beginning to see what the new covenant is all about--that “believers. . . needed no man to teach them, but as the anointing teacheth them. . .” (Fox’s Journal 7).

To me it is very interesting to compare Fox’s thinking here to what Augustine tried to get across in his Treatise on the Profit of Believing. If what you are “believing” is central – the existence and teaching and mission of Jesus, for example – then you must rely to some extent on the tradition and teaching of the Church that was started by the people who knew him, heard him, recorded what was taught about him, etc. Belief - trust - starts here.  Fox is saying that what is most essential about the faith was an inward connection with God, or a belief and trust in that inward - gut-like - connection. I go both ways on this one. I do think there is an epistemology of faith; we have to trust the messenger, but just repeating the message over and over is not enough; one must have the spiritual “light” God has implanted in all of us “open” the teaching and release its power in our lives.

 The culmination of this weaning process comes in his famous opening concerning Christ’s inward presence, which I quoted in connection with my discussion of the theology of early Friends’ vision . . . This is, of course, always the quote Friends use to describe what it is that Friends believe, that Jesus Christ dwells in the human heart and it is He who teaches and speaks to the condition of every person.  But in Fox’s account, what this opening reveals is simply the identity of the light that has been guiding him all along.  He is still only somewhere in the middle of the ministration of Moses when he has this opening and it will be years before he emerges from the desert in which his soul is journeying.  He has not yet even begun his passage through the law.

Daily Bible Reading: Sirach [Ecclesiasticus] 48-49 and Acts 23:11-35

Sirach 48 – Elija – A prophet who “arose like a fire” brought famine on the land for the sins committed. He was “taken up in the whirlwind of fire, in a chariot with fiery horses” (48:8-9). And there is an allusion to immortality for those who fall asleep “in love” [of God]. They “too will have life” (48:11).

Then Elisha – He was filled with Elijah’s spirit. “No task was too hard for him, and even in death his body prophesied” (48:13) for that the dead were restored to life.

The people, however, remained unfaithful until they were scattered.

Hezekiah “fortified his city and laid on a water supply inside it; with iron he tunneled through the rock and constructed cisterns” (48:17). Sennacherib invaded, but the people were “delivered” by the hand of Isaiah (48:20).

Isaiah was “Trustworthy in his vision” (48:22). “He revealed the future to the end of time, and hidden things long before they happened” (48:25).

Sirach 49 – Josiah – Memory of him is sweet: “[H]e set his heart on the Lord, in godless times he upheld the cause of religion” (49:3).

Aside from these celebrated men, the people “all heaped wrong on wrong. . .they disregarded the Law of the Most High” (49:4), and so they finally disappeared. “The holy, chosen city was burnt down, her streets were left deserted, as Jeremiah had predicted” (49:6).

Nehemiah is remembered for rebuilding the walls and reestablishing the city.

Then in an apparent retrospect, the author returns briefly to a few names already mentioned: “No one else has ever been created on earth to equal Enoch, for he was taken up from earth. And no one else ever born has been like Joseph, the leader of his brothers, the prop of his people; his bones were honored. Shem and Seth were honored among men, but above every living creature is Adam” (49:14-16).  It’s a little confusing to have this retrospect and puzzling that Adam should now be on the list. Perhaps the author is just celebrating “man” for Adam certainly is mostly remembered for his “fall” and not for any real accomplishment. 

Acts 23:11-35 – The Roman commander who had originally taken Paul into custody when the controversy among Jews of different persuasions had become a threat to the peace now realizes Paul will likely not survive the battle that has broken out. He orders Paul taken to a Roman fort nearby.

Here, in the fort, the Lord comes to Paul and assures him: “Don't be afraid! You have given your witness for me here in Jerusalem, and you must also do the same in Rome” (23:11).

A conspiracy to kill Paul develops among the Jews, involving more than 40 men. They ask to have Paul brought before the Sanhedrin again “to get more accurate information about him” (23:15) – they will kill him then. Paul’s nephew hears about the plot and goes to the centurions. The commander – Claudius Lysias - orders some 300 soldiers to escort Paul to the Governor – Antoninus Felix – in Caesarea. He was Roman Governor between 52 and 59 or 60 AD. He orders Paul to be kept under guard in his headquarters until Paul’s accusers can be sent for.