Daily Old Testament: Zechariah 5 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 4)

Zechariah 5 – The sixth vision is a flying scroll 20 cubits long and 10 cubits wide. It is the “curse sweeping across the face of the whole country” (5:3) banishing every thief and everyone who swears falsely.

Then the seventh vision – a bushel basket with a heavy lead cover. A woman in the basket represents wickedness. The angel forces her back in and puts the lead cover on it. Two women with “wings like a stork . . . picked up the basket and flew into the sky” (5:9). They are going to the land of Babylonia “where they will build a temple for the basket. And when the temple is ready they will set the basket there on its pedestal” (5:11).

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 4

[Continuing a simple lay-out of the scripture narrative] After the failure of the Noah project, God’s redemptive work takes up with Abraham. God sees in Abraham a man who will listen to his voice and do his will—the archetype of the hearer and obeyer that is so central to Friends’ understanding of faith. Out of the obedience of this one man will come a people who will hear and obey. The law and outward rites are given to this people to train them and guide them, but there is much backsliding and faithlessness. Error and repentance are thus part of the journey, as are the prophets God sends to reprove and guide the people back when they go astray. As the people mature in the context of God’s redemption, more is expected of them—a deeper understanding of God’s law, a more spiritual grasp of his will, and again it is the prophets who will help them come to these deeper understandings.

But the journey is not without deep and catastrophic setbacks. The division of the kingdom after Solomon and the many years of unfaithfulness and abuse under the kings who follow him ultimately lead to a near destruction of God’s people and many years in exile from the Promised Land. In the midst of the suffering and turmoil brought on by these events, there is always the promise and hope of renewal and return. The prophets see a future Messiah who will heal the people of God, restore the kingdom promised to David, and bring a new covenant to man—one not written in stone or even in ink, but one written on the human heart so that even the promise of Eden, the home God intended for man from the beginning, might be restored.

In time, a man is born whose life and teaching lead some to believe that he is the promised Messiah, but it turns out he is both less and more than had been expected. He does not do all that they had come to expect the Messiah would do—he does not lead armies or depose the Roman occupiers. But after his death on the cross, his followers experience him resurrected and they come to believe that his is actually more than the Messiah. He is God in the form of man. They see in him the substance of all that God has previously brought forth from the beginning to draw people to him—the substance of the “types” and “figures” of the story in all their fullness: God’s light and Word, the new Adam, the seed of Eve, man’s offerings to God, the ark, the manna in the desert, the water from the rock, our scapegoat and sin offering, our priest, our shepherd, our prophet, our king, our law, and perhaps most of all, our New Covenant.

Daily Old Testament: Zechariah 3-4 and My Own Article on "What DId I Say?" (Part 3)

Introduction – This prophetic work originates in the same year as Haggai – two or three months after in 520 BC. Zechariah is a priest and a prophet, grandson of Iddo who was head of the priestly families returning from the exile. He is writing to encourage the returning remnant to repent and renew the relationship with Yahweh.

Zechariah 3 - In a fourth vision, the prophet sees a court of justice at heaven’s gate presided over by God. Joshua is the high priest [a footnote says he represents the Jewish people] and Satan is the accuser. Joshua’s dirty clothes are removed and he is given “splendid robes of state” to wear. The angel of Yahweh puts a stone in front of Joshua – a stone with seven eyes. Yahweh also tells Joshua that He intends to raise a servant named the “Branch” [the footnote says this is a messianic title].

Zechariah 4 – The angel asks the prophet what he sees, and the prophet says he sees “a lamp-stand entirely of gold with a bowl at the top of it; seven lamps are on the lamp-stand, and seven lips for the lamps on it” (4:2). There are two olive trees – one to the left and one to the right of the lamp-stand. He asks what this means and the angel explains the lamps are the “eyes of Yahweh” – symbols of his omniscience. The olive trees represent the two anointed ones “who stand before the Lord of the whole world” (4:14).

Of Zerubbabel [descendant of David who returned with his people from the Babylonian captivity and helped them rebuild the Temple], the word of Yahweh is “not by might and not by power, but by my spirit. He will lay the “chosen stone” of the Temple.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism -

“What Did I Say?”

Part 3

I tried to look at the story [the scripture narrative] without interpreting too much. I wanted the kids to see what Friends had seen there, but I also just wanted them to see the whole as it presented itself as they would any book they were asked to read.

For most of the story, the version of the story early Quakers saw seemed fairly convincing. Mankind is created by God to care for the creation and be “his image” in it, but man rebels against God’s clear command to him and falls away from the closeness that was intended by God to exist between them. He doesn’t physically die, but enters into a kind of spiritual death, which according to the story results in all kinds of misery and violence. The “fall” is thus the “problem” or “conflict” (as any English teacher will tell you, you must have conflict in a narrative) that propels the story forward and lays the foundation for God’s continuing involvement in it—his efforts to redeem his work or bring it to the perfection he has intended from the beginning.

It is to fulfill his original creative intent that God stays involved in human history, to bring man out of the death he has chosen into the fullness of life it was always God’s intention for him to enjoy. It is crucial to man’s identity as God’s “image and likeness” and crucial to God’s creative intent that the relationship of love and dependence God intended for man be entered into freely—thus the importance of “the test”. The serpent is that power of evil in us and in the world that tempts us to choose things other than dependence on God. But there is a promise given early in the story that the “head of the serpent” will eventually be bruised (Gen. 3:15) by the “seed” or offspring of the woman—Eve—and one of the things the story will show is how trustworthy the promises of God are.

Daily Bible Reading: Ezekiel 2-3 and John 9:24-41

Ezekiel 2 – Ezekiel hears a voice calling him “son of man” (2:1). The term is used in Ezekiel and later Daniel to emphasize the distance between the God behind the vision and voice and the mere man who is receiving them. The first use of the term “Son of Man” [ben-Adam] is in Numbers 23:19, but Ezekiel uses the term over 90 times in his writings.

The voice tells Ezekiel to “deliver my words” to the rebellious people that were his.

“Open your mouth and eat what I am about to give you” (2:8). Yahweh gives him a scroll to eat, full of “lamentations, wailings [and] moanings” (2:10).

Ezekiel 3 –Ezekiel eats the scroll God has given him and finds it “tastes as sweet as honey” (3:3). God tells him he’s not being sent to a foreign nation where people speak a different language; he is being sent to his own people. But then he adds, if he sent him to a people whose language he did not speak, they would listen; but his own people are obstinate. Still, he is to go and speaks God’s word, even if no one listens.

He is lifted up by the spirit, and he hears “a tumultuous shouting” (3:12) - wings beating against each other and wheels turning beside them.  

He is transported to Tel Abib, by the river Chebar, where the exiles are living, and his heart is heavy with bitterness and anger. He is with them for seven days. Then God comes to him again and tells him he has been appointed “sentry to the House of Israel” (3:16). When he tells him to warn the rebellious that they will die, he must do it or else he too will share responsibility for their death. If he does warn as instructed, however, then he will not die with the wicked.

           

Ezekiel tells us that while he was with his people, “the hand of Yahweh came on me” and he was told to go out into the valley, where “the glory of Yahweh was resting” (3:23) and Yahweh’s spirit enters him. It is clear that there will be times when Yahweh will keep Ezekiel from warning others and times when He will “open [his] mouth” (3:27). “Whoever will listen, let him listen; whoever will not, let him not; for they are a set of rebels” (3:27). 

John 9:24-41 - The Pharisees call the man again – the man born blind whom Jesus has restored to sight -  and ask him to declare Jesus a sinner for having broken the Sabbath. He answers, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (8:25). The Jews are reluctant to believe: “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from” (8:29). For the man it is simple. God does not listen to sinners, God does not do miracles for sinners, and he has experienced a miracle. They drive the man away.

Jesus finds him and asks him if he believes in “the Son of Man.” Who is that, the man asks? Jesus says, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he” (9:37). “Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him” (9:38). Jesus says, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind” (9:39). The Pharisees don’t get it.  It is their insistence that they do see—that they know the truth and can lead others in truth—that makes them sinners, not necessarily their confusion or doubts about Jesus.

Why are we born blind? I think the scripture narrative assumes that blindness is a central problem, maybe even THE central problem at the core of our disrupted relationship with God and with our fellow man.  We walk according to how we see, so this mis-seeing is perhaps what we mean by original sin, the innate condition, which it is the work of redemption to overcome.  Jesus says the problem is there “so that the works of God might be made visible” through us and in us in the work of redemption that brings us to see differently.  This and Jesus’ statement that he “came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind,” are the most interesting things about this reading to me (now).  Again, we don’t always like to think of Jesus in these terms, but his coming into the world, and our personal world, brings both a judgment and a light by which the things of God may be separated from the things of the world.  And it is the process of redemption in us that brings us to see God and Christ and the light of his judgment.  We can’t give glory to that which we cannot “see.”