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.

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 Old Testament: Ezra 2-3 and My Own Article on "Friends and Scripture" (Part 3)

Ezra 3 – After seven months, Jeshua, head of the priests, and Zerrubabel, set out to build the altar of the God of Israel and to offer burnt offerings on it. They do it fearful of the response of the neighboring people (3:3).

They kept the Festival of Booths [or Shelters - Sukkot] and other offerings prescribed by the Law. They gave money to the masons and carpenters to work on the foundations, food and drink to Sidonians and Tyrians for the cedar they brought in ships. The second year after arriving, they “made a beginning” (3:8). Levites oversee the work, and Jeshua and certain other families “took charge of the workers in the house of God” (3:9).

        

Praise is offered up when the foundation is complete. “But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, thought many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away” (3:12).

Ezra 4 – When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin (Samaritans?) hear that the temple is being rebuilt, they reproach Zerrubbabel for not asking them to help. They claim to be worshippers of Yahweh too, but their offer is rejected. Then the landed people, “people of the land” [Samaritan settlers] discouraged the people of Judah from their efforts. So things are frustrated until the coming of Darius in 522, it says.

Then it goes on to say that in the reign of Artaxerxes (much later from 464-423), some of the adversaries of the returnees wrote to the Emperor, complaining that they were “rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city; they are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations” (4:12). The petitioners encourage the Emperor to recheck the court records to see that this is a rebellious people, not one that should be encouraged to rebuild. The Emperor responds ordering them to cease the rebuilding. When Rehum and Shimshai (Governor of Samaria, center of Persian government for the region, and his Secretary) get this message, they go to Jerusalem and “by force and power made them cease” (4:23). The work is discontinued until the second year of the reign of Darius (4:24).A Jerusalem Bible note says the delay in rebuilding occurs between 538 and 522 or through the reign of Cambyses, not Artaxerxes. Haggai blames the delay on their indifference. The Chronicler blames their opponents.

“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 3

Now Fox would never have described the words of scripture in this way [analyzing the words and meanings of the scripture narrative as a way of “opening” some inward reality – kind of the way the “Life of Pi” describes].  The concepts were just not part of his intellectual life in the 17^th century.  But I am convinced that the fundamental experience of coming into those familiar words was the same in his life and in mine.  So what I want to explore here is what early Friends did with respect to the scriptures—not what did they say, but how did they use them to encourage others to “enter into” the words.

One of the most revealing passages from Fox’s journal on the scriptures goes into great depth on the problem as Fox saw it. People approached scripture, according to Fox, “without a right sense of them, and without duly applying them to their own states (Fox’s Journal 31).

. . .I saw the state of those, both priests and people, who in reading the Scriptures, cry out much against Cain, Esau, and Judas, and other wicked men of former times, mentioned in the Holy Scriptures; but do not see the nature of Cain, of Esau, of Judas, and those others, in themselves.  And these said it was they, they, they, that were the bad people; putting it off from themselves: but when some of these came, with the light and spirit of Truth, to see into themselves, then they came to say, “I, I, I, it is I myself that have been the Ishmael, and the Esau”, etc.  For then they came to see the nature of wild Ishmael in themselves, the nature of Cain, of Esau, of Korah, of Balaam and of the son of perdition in themselves, sitting above all that is called God in them (Fox’s Journal 30).

The characters of scripture were not merely historical personages, people comfortably distant from us in time and place.  They were exemplars of every kind of spiritual condition and nature that one might have to contend with—inwardly or outwardly. Those who envied and persecuted the godly were people who dwelled in the nature of Cain; those who chose earthly goods over the heavenly promises of God were in the nature of the earthly Esau. Those who rebelled against God were in the nature of Korah, and those who traded in God’s wisdom for material gain had the nature of Balaam.  On the other hand, those who received the living Word of God in their hearts and responded to it were in the nature of Abraham; those who saw into the pure law of God were in the nature of Moses and those who were able to see into the types and shadows had the nature of the prophets.  This did not mean for Fox that the historical Moses or Korah or Cain were imaginary.  It simply meant that they were more than just human and historical; they represented spiritual realities we all encounter either in ourselves or in others.  So we should approach the characters and events of the scriptures with an eye to “types” and “figures” they represented, the truths they illuminated and the insights they gave us into our own spiritual conditions.

Daily Old Testament: Ezra 1-2 and My Own Article on Friends and Scripture (Part 2)

Ezra 1 – “In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord fulfilled the prophecy he had given through Jeremiah” (1:1). He sends the exiles back to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. 539 is the date of Cyrus’ conquest over Babylon, 538 the first year of his reign over the Empire. The 70 years turns out to be about 49 years unless, as a Jerusalem Bible note suggests you count Babylonian rule from the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign in 609. Then the numbers work.

He sends out an edict saying, “The Lord, the God of heaven, has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah” (1:2). The Persians were generally good about letting subject people worship their own gods, but their own special devotion was to the “the gods of heaven.” Perhaps for this reason they felt the Jewish God was their supreme deity as well. Any Jew is free to go up and assist in the rebuilding of the Temple. “[E]veryone whose spirit God had stirred” (1:5) went or sent gold or goods with the returnees to help them. The treasure that Nebuchadnezzar took from the Temple is returned. Sheshbazzar is the prince of Judah at this time.

Ezra 2 – The people who return with Zerubbabel and ten other leaders (one is Nehemiah) are numbered by town of origin. The Jerusalem Bible has twelve family heads, adding Nahamani. A note indicates that their list was reconstructed a bit from the Memoirs of Nehemiah. It also says the layfolk are listed by clan for the upper classes and by town for the lower.

Then returnees from the priestly families, the Levites, the temple servants, etc are enumerated. It is obviously a carefully kept record of people and families in exile. Genealogical records are alluded to in verse 62. The whole assembly together was 42,360 not counting male and female servants and singers (1:65).

When they get to Jerusalem, the heads of families make freewill offerings. People return to their towns. The priests stay in Jerusalem (1:70).

“Friends and Scripture”

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 2

I know my own conversion experience, which resulted in large measure because of my contact with these early Friends’ writings, led me to see from the beginning that the scripture words, contexts and reference points had been utterly central to me. 

When I tried to tell people what it had been like, feeling reawakened to God and to Christ, I had used an image from a popular move I knew everyone was familiar with, The Miracle Worker with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.  For those who aren’t familiar with it today, the movie is about the childhood of Helen Keller, a well-known celebrity whose victory over blindness and deafness made her a heroine in the early years of the twentieth century.  In the story the movie tells, Helen’s teacher, Annie Sullivan, seeks to free Helen’s mind from its dark, silent prison by teaching her a tactile alphabet that can make it possible for Helen to learn words and language. Helen quickly learns the alphabet and the game of fingering words to get what she wants--her D-O-L-L, her M-O-T-H-E-R or the sweet C-A-K-E she loves; but the concept of words, that everything in the world can be named and that words make learning and communication with other human beings possible, this Helen cannot seem to learn.  For months Miss Sullivan labors to get the idea across with no success.  Finally, as she is about to give up, Helen has a moment of grace at the water pump outside her parents’ home.  Forced to refill a pitcher of water that she intentionally dumped on her teacher, Helen holds the pitcher under the spout while Miss Sullivan pumps the water and repeatedly fingers the word W-A-T-E-R into her palm.  Something in that moment at the pump--its intensity--its repetition or its evocation of a primitive memory Helen has of a time when she could still see and hear and knew what water was—something--sparks a light in Helen’s mind and she sees what her teacher has been trying to open to her.

This was exactly what I had experienced in my conversion. I was seeing a landscape I had never seen before, a set of realities I had “knocked around” in and stumbled over and been curious about for years but had never really seen.  But now I was seeing, not directly because those realities are not directly perceivable but I was seeing them through the medium of this language I had been taught [night prayers, Christmas story, Easter – the messages inscribed on everybody’s mental “hand” if they live in a Christian country] earlier in my life but had never seen the point of—not really. Now I was seeing their point and their power--the Light of Christ, sin, the fall, the cross, resurrection--they had to open up this landscape of spiritual truth in me.