Psalms 142-144 and Early Church Writings [Clement of Rome] 6-10

Psalm 142 – A prayer for God’s help. To Him I bring all my complaints, all my despair. No one seems to care for me, so I cry to you for help: “you are all I really want in this life” (142:5).

Psalm 143 – “Do not put your servant on trial, for no one is innocent in your sight” (143:2).

And he asks God to kill his enemies, destroy those who oppress him. “I lift my hands to you in prayer. I thirst for you as parched land thirsts for rain” (143:6).

The psalmist has suffered a defeat from his enemies and is in a dark prison. He remembers the days gone by and lifts his hands to God in prayer. “Remind me each morning of your constant love, for I put my trust in you. My prayers go up to you, show me the way I should go” (143:8).

“Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing” (143:10).

Psalm 144 – My Lord protects me, trains me for battle and is my shelter. “Lord, what are mortals, that you notice them; mere mortals, that you pay attention to us? We are like a puff of wind; our days are like a passing shadow” (144:3-4).

Tear open the sky, Lord, and come down to us. “Reach down from above, pull me out of the deep water, and rescue me; save me from the power of foreigners, who never tell the truth and lie even under oath” (144:7-8).

I will sing to you, Lord. May our children grow up to be an honor to us and to you. “May there be no cries of distress in our streets” (144:14). Happy are the people whose God is the Lord.

First Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians (96/97 AD)

Section 6

There “are many more of the elect who have undergone hardships and torments instigated by jealousy, and provide admirable object lessons for ourselves” (Early Christian Writings, 25).

Section 7

Clement is not writing of all this just to warn the Corinthians, but “for a reminder to ourselves as well, because we too are in the same arena and have the same conflict before us” (25).

“So let us be done with these barren and vapid fancies, and turn instead to the honorable, holy Rule of our tradition, so that we can find out what is good and pleasing and acceptable in the sight of Him who made us. Let us fix our thoughts on the Blood of Christ; and reflect how precious that Blood is in God’s eyes, inasmuch as its outpouring for our salvation has opened the grace of repentance to all mankind” (25).

In every generation of human history, “the Lord has offered the chance of repentance to any who were willing to turn to Him” (25-26).  He mentions the times of Noah and Jonah in particular.

Section 8

“All those who were ministers of the grace of God have spoken, through the Holy Spirit, of repentance” (26). The Lord himself said, “By my life . . . it is not the sinner’s death that I desire, so much as his repentance” (26).

And further quoting the Lord, “He says somewhere else, Wash yourselves, and be clean; put away the evil of your souls from my eyes. Leave off your wickedness, and learn to do right. Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, do right by the fatherless, act fairly to the widow. Come, let us reason together, says the Lord; though your sins are crimson-red, I will make them as white as snow; though they are like scarlet, I will make the them white as wool” (26).

Section 9

“Let us bow, then, to that sovereign and glorious will. Let us entreat His mercy and goodness, casting ourselves upon His compassion and wasting no more energy in quarrels and a rivalry which only ends in death” (26).

Remember Enoch, whose obedience brought him unending life; and Noah, “herald of a new birth for the world” (26).

Section 10

“Abraham, who was named the Friend, showed his loyalty by obeying the voice of God” (26). He took his household to a new land. For his “faith and his hospitality” (27), “a son was given to him in his old age, and this son his obedience afterwards led him to offer up as a sacrifice to God, on the mountain which He had showed him” (27).

Daily Bible Reading: Hosea 11-14 and John 7:25-53

Hosea 11 – “When Israel was a youth I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son . . .it is I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them” (11:1-3).

Hosea 12 – Referring back to the earliest origins of the Lord’s relationship with Jacob [later called Israel], Hosea says of him, “In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his maturity he contended with God. Yes, he wrestled with the angel and prevailed; He wept and sought His favor. He found Him at Bethel and there He spoke with us, even the LORD, the God of hosts, the LORD is His name. Therefore, return to your God, Observe kindness and justice, and wait for your God continually” (12:4-6).

Hosea 13 – The people were brought to the Promised Land by the Lord and were not to have any other God but Him; but as they became prosperous and satisfied, “their heart became proud; therefore they forgot Me. SO I will be like a lion to them; like a leopard I will lie in wait by the wayside” (13:6-7).

“Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? O Death, where are your thorns? O Sheol, where is your sting?” (13:14).

“Samaria will be held guilty, for she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, their little ones will be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women will be ripped open” (13:16).

Hosea 14 - Finally after rocking from fury to encouragement repeatedly, Hosea focuses entirely on the fruits of repentance:

“Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the LORD” (14:1). “I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them” (14:4).

Israel will once again take root “like the cedars of Lebanon, His shoots will sprout, and his beauty will be like the olive tree and his fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon. Those who live in his shadow will again raise grain, and they will blossom like the vine” (14:6-7).

John 7:25-53 - The people are afraid to speak of Jesus openly, thinking that they will get in trouble with authorities, but when these authorities do not stop Jesus from speaking, the people wonder if perhaps the authorities really do think he is the Messiah—because they refrain from doing anything to him (7:25-26).

The people are perplexed—they do not know if the Messiah will do more signs, if they will know “where he is from” (7:27). What kind of figure is this Messiah they have been waiting for? The Jerusalem Bible note here indicates that while there was a belief that the Messiah would be “born in Bethlehem” it was “commonly believed that he would lie hidden in some secret place . . . in heaven, according to some until the day of his coming” (161).

Does anyone doubt that the same uncertainties would arise in people at the “second coming,” or at the coming that the Jews still anticipate?? We cannot really know what such a thing might be like—uncertainty is at the very core of our dealing with the spiritual narrative we have here, but it is an uncertainty that invites faith and confidence that God’s story is not yet DONE.

The Pharisees, however, are sure about things.  It says they would have arrested him, “but his time had not yet come” (7:30). Jesus tells the people he will be with them a little while longer and then he “will go back to the one who sent me. You will look for me and will not find me: where I am you cannot come” (7:33-34).

They wonder if he is talking about going out to the “diaspora” Jews and maybe even the Greeks (7:35).

On the last day of the festival Jesus says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink” (7:37-38). He quotes the liturgy of the Feast of the Tabernacles, which echoes the promises of Zechariah and Ezekiel: “’[O]ut of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

John tells us that these words are a promise of the Holy Spirit, “which those who believed in him were to receive” (7:39), but he says this Spirit was not yet among them “for Jesus had not yet been glorified” (7:39).

Again, some in the crowd speak of the expectations surrounding the Messiah; he will be descended from David and come from the town of Bethlehem (7:41-43), but they still do not feel sure about whether Jesus might be this figure or not. No one wants to lay hands on him to arrest him because they are not sure. 

The police report back to the chief priests and Pharisees that no one has ever spoken like this man, and the Pharisees think they too might have been “sucked in” by Jesus.

Nicodemus, a Pharisee who had gone to Jesus himself, advises them that everyone accused of a crime needs to be given a hearing.  And this causes them to accuse Nicodemus too of being a Galilean too – a supporter of Jesus. “Prophets do not come out of Galilee,” they argue (7:52).

The overall state of people at this point is confused and divided. No one is sure of who or what Jesus is.  Even he is not ready at this point to proclaim himself too openly—his hesitancy with his brothers, his secrecy in coming to Jerusalem. The crowds are divided, the police uncertain, the Pharisees squabbling still amongst themselves.

Daily Bible Reading: Esther 7-10 and Acts 3

Esther 7 – The king’s eunuchs come to get him for the banquet with Esther. There, the king asks Esther what it is she wants; and she tells him she desires only “the lives of [her] people” (7:4). In the course of talking to him about the matter, Haman’s name comes up as the one behind the terror. The king leaves the banquet in a fury and Haman realizes the “gig is up.” He begs Esther for mercy and help. When the king returns he thinks Haman is trying to assault Esther. One of the eunuchs throws a “veil” over Haman, and the end of it all is Haman is hanged on the gallows he erected for Mordecai.

Esther 8 – Esther receives all the property of the “House of Haman” and Mordecai the ring with the king’s seal that Haman had. Esther asks the king to revoke the order he had issued at Haman’s prompting – for the extermination of the Jewish population.

Xerxes feels that it would be unacceptable to revoke a proclamation issued in the his name and stamped with the royal seal (8:8), but it would be acceptable to her to write a letter of warning to the Jews and also have it stamped. She may write “whatever [she] wants. . . in [the king’s] name” and have it stamped with his seal. So Mordecai assembles the king’s secretaries and has them write letters to all 127 provinces in the empire explaining that “the king would allow the Jews in every city to organize for self-defense” (8:11). The Jews would be permitted to “fight back and destroy the attackers; they could slaughter them to the last man and take their possessions” (8:11).

The Jerusalem Bible also includes translation of the Greek additions to the Hebrew text. There follows in the Greek version a long letter, ostensibly from Ahaseurus [Xerxes], lamenting the ill-influence of bad advisers [like Haman] on kings and describing the things Haman did. Haman is called a Macedonian attempting to win for Macedon a victory over the Persians, but a note indicates they probably meant he was a Mede, as it was the Medes who had had a struggle for mastery with the Persians.

The letter goes on to say, “you will . . . do well not to act on the letters sent by Haman . . . since their author has been hanged at the gates of Susa with his whole household” (8:12). “Put up copes of this letter everywhere, allow the Jews freedom to observe their own customs, and come to their help against anyone who attacks them on the day originally chosen for the maltreatment . . . Jews, for your part, among your solemn festivals celebrate this as a special day with every kind of feasting, so that now and in the future, for you and for Persians of good will it may commemorate your rescue” (8:12). It refers to the Jews as people “of the Most High, the great and living God to whom we and our ancestors owe the continuing prosperity of our realm.”

Then the text returns to the Hebrew. The edict is greeted with “feasting and holiday-making” (8:17). An interesting last sentence from the Hebrew text says, “Of the country’s population many became Jews, since now the Jews were feared” (8:17).

Esther 9 – With Mordecai’s growing power and influence at the court, the persecutions end, and indeed it was the Jews who struck out, bringing their enemies down “with the sword, with resulting slaughter and destruction” (9:5). In Susa, five hundred are killed, including ten of Haman’s sons, but no plunder is taken. At Esther’s request the reprisals are permitted to continue for one more day, another three hundred are killed, and the bodies of Haman’s ten sons are displayed on the gallows.

    

Elsewhere in Persia, 75,000 are killed in the same way. The Jerusalem Bible notes says that there is no historical record of any such reprisals, that they should be taken as a way of showing how God will bring justice in an “eye for and eye” way.

When it is over, the Jews have a day of feasting and gladness—the 14^th day of the month of Adar becomes the day for Purim – the word Purim comes from the word Pur for “lot.” Haman “had cast lots to determine the day for destroying the Jews (9:24). The festival was on the 15^th in the cities. Mordecai writes the Jews everywhere and tells them to celebrate these days annually as days on which “their sorrow had been turned into gladness” (9:22). They are to celebrate and give gifts to the poor. Verses 9:20 on are, the note says, additions to the book from various sources.

Esther 10 – The deeds of Xerxes [Ahasuerus] and Mordecai are recorded in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Media and Persia. Mordecai was “honored and well-liked; he worked for the good of his people and for the security of all their descendants” (10:3).

   

Reflections:

The OT reading about Queen Esther is the prayer in which she (joined through a common memory with her whole people) begs for God to remember his promises to the Jewish people.  She accepts that the “handing over” of her people to their enemies has happened because of their unfaithfulness.  Still, the promises and favor of God do miraculously endure even when we are punished for our failures and are scattered.  God will listen to the “voice of the desperate,” (New Jerusalem 4:19 – the book is garbled organizationally).   The relationship with God is wonderfully reciprocal.  He hears our cries, our calls to him, our praises; and in return he expects us to listen for His voice, observe His commands, respond to His majesty, and fulfil His will with respect to what He has created.  This reciprocity is at the center of the psalm #138 “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart, for you have heard the words of my mouth.” It is also at the center of the gospel (Matt. 7:7-12) where Jesus tells us that God will give if we ask, open if we knock.

Acts 3 – Peter and John encounter a man “lame from birth,” being carried to the temple, to the gate called the Beautiful Gate where he begs for alms. He accosts the two, and they approach him, looking intently at him. They tell him to look at them, and Peter says “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk” (3:6). Immediately he is able to get up and walk and leap. The people who know who he is are amazed and filled with wonder (3:10).

The man clings to Peter as they go into Solomon’s Portico. Peter uses the occasion as an opportunity to preach again. He says to the crowd that it is not through any power of theirs that the man was healed. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob healed him as a way of glorifying the name of his servant Jesus “whom you handed over and rejected” (3:13). You “rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead” (3:15). But he says, he knows they “acted in ignorance” (3:17). It is in this way though that “God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer” (3:18).

He asks them to repent, “and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets” (3:21). He refers to Deut. 18:15. “Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you from your own people a prophet like me. You must listen to whatever he tells you.” He tells them they are the descendents of the prophets, that in them “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (3:25). That is why God sent Jesus first to them, to bless them and turn them from their wicked ways.

I left this chapter and turned to Penn’s No Cross, No Crown and found this very apropos reflection on the state of early Friends minds when they came to be aware how far they had strayed (with all of Christendom, in ignorance of the spirit) from the true path of Christian faithfulness:

“ . . .we were made to see him whom we had pierced, and to mourn for it. A day of humiliation overtook us, and we fainted to that pleasure and delight we once loved. Now our works went beforehand to judgment, a thorough search was made, and the words of the prophet became well understood by us; ‘Who can abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appears. . . . . .the terrors of the Lord took such hold upon us, because we had long, under a profession of religion, grieved God’s Holy Spirit, which reproved us in secret for our disobedience; that as we abhorred to think of continuing in our old sins, so we feared to use lawful things, lest we should use them unlawfully” (Penn 104-105).