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Ok, this is one of those Twitter-turned-into-a-blog-post kind of posts. Here you go:

Read Daniel chapter 7 yesterday morning. I tried to read this oft interpreted scripture text with fresh eyes. Pretty trippy, to say the least. Then I had this thought: how often do we read scripture through the lens of someone else’s interpretation… or teaching… or book, instead of just looking at the text? How often do we come to scripture looking for it to confirm what we already think (or tell us what we want it to say), instead of letting the text speak for itself? Houston, we may have a problem!

Especially with scriptures like Daniel 7. I realized as I was reading that I was intentionally having to PEEL BACK layers of interpretation to just “listen” to what the text was actually saying. Even the “study notes” in my Bible (just beneath the text) were– perhaps in spite of themselves, seeing how study notes often try to be “objective”– presenting a certain spin on the interpretation of the passage.

Now my purpose here is not to debate the meaning of Daniel 7. (Though that could be fun…) My purpose is to highlight the tendency we have to understand scripture through someone else’s lens, and/or the lens that has been given us to use and that we are now expected to use. Not that those lenses are necessarily bad, of course… BUT… if all you can see in a particular scripture is a certain understanding because that’s what you’ve been taught or what you’ve read, then please pray and look harder at the text itself to see what you may be missing. God may be wanting to say something to YOU!

What do you think? Does this happen to you?

Zephaniah 3:17

So I’m reading through Zephaniah, and get to that famous verse, 3:17. Here it is from the NIV:

The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.

I, like so many, have loved this verse and the idea of God “quieting us” with his love. But have you noticed that not all the versions translate it that way?  For example, the NASB renders the line “He will be quiet in his love.” Ok, that’s a bit different. Which is it? The NKJV gives us a clue:  “He will quiet you with His love.”

The convention of the KJV and NKJV has always been the translate the main and plain things in regular font and to italicize the words that the translators have inserted to flesh out the meaning in English (a convention I appreciate). So the NKJ is showing here that the verb is the “quiet” and the “you” is what has been inserted.  So some translators have chosen to make the object “you” i.e. the people, the reader; some have rendered it a state of being, i.e. Yahweh is being quiet. Why?

Here’s what I just learned. The Hebrew text of 3:17 seems to read “He will be silent in His love.” It is the Greek and Syriac translations (always cross-referenced by modern translators) that read “He will renew you with his love.” Without getting into the nuances and philosophies of Bible translation, let this suffice: in their own ways, I think both versions are right. But…

If I had to (and I don’t) I would likely vote for the Hebrew reading because it seems to fit better in the context of Zephaniah, i.e. the day of the LORD has brought judgement for the sins of the people; now He is rejoicing and not speaking judgement any more, he is restoring.  Having said that, the notion of God quieting (comforting, renewing, refreshing) the people with his love post-judgment, and as part of the restoration, could make sense as well. My caution, however, is that our modern/post-modern eyes may prefer the warmer, fuzzier reading of quiet and comfort because of our emotional and psychological sensibilities, but the picture of Yahweh “being silent” after speaking many judgements seems to fit better (IMHO) with the vibe of the Old Testament and the Prophets in general, and Zephaniah in particular.

One more thought: Yahweh is pictured as “rejoicing over” the people using two different words for joy in 3:17, one which connotes “spinning about wildly” while singing. In the flow and tone of the text, i.e. rejoicing, dancing, singing, it would seem odd to suddenly insert an image of Yahweh “quietly comforting” his people with his love. There’s nothing “quiet” about this text, certainly from verse 14 on! It does seem consistent, however, to picture Yahweh rejoicing and being silent about the people’s past sins, His judgements now replaced with singing! Here’s how 3:17 in the Amplified Bible reads:

The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a Mighty One, a Savior [Who saves]! He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest [in silent satisfaction] and in His love He will be silent and make no mention [of past sins, or even recall them]; He will exult over you with singing.

Whichever reading you may prefer, it is good to know that our comfort in God’s love is in fact that he is now silent on our sins. Those sins have ultimately been handled and washed away in the Messiah Jesus.  I leave you with this from the Psalms:

The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him (Psalm 103:8-13).

Amen!

Habakkuk and Other Conversations with God

So I’ve been working my way through the Minor Prophets recently. (As an aside, it’s really unfortunate that someone named them “minor” just because they’re short. They’re really not minor at all.) You know: Obadiah, Micah, Jonah, Habakkuk, etc. All those that get relegated to the biblical “backburner”– with Leviticus of course– because they are deemed too strange, negative, or otherwise irrelevant for mainstream usage… except for the occasional couple of verses that we can pull out of context to put on Christian greeting cards or use in sermons to illustrate some other point.  But that’s another topic.

The Minor Prophets (and the Majors, of course) are actually really amazing to study, and when read alongside the straight historical books in the Canon (like Chronicles and Kings), you start getting this incredible picture of the totality of what God was doing in those years. You see that several prophets were saying the same kinds of thinigs at around the same time, and in different areas. It makes sense of “Surely God does nothing without first revealing it to His servants the prohpets” (Amos 3:5). God was speaking like cray to the people… and they largely just ignored it.

Rats.

Enter Habakkuk. This book is unique in that there is no straight up “oracle” to the people anywhere. There’s no part of the book that says “Hey Israel, here’s the deal…”  The whole book is basically like pages from Habakkuk’s journal: his conversations with God.  It is the whole conversation that forms the word from God (i.e. the book) to the people.

The basic outline goes something like this:

Part 1: Habakkuk says, “Hey Lord, what’s the deal with this?”

Part 2: God says, “Well it’s like this.”

Part 3: Habakkuk says, “Ok, got it, but that makes no sense.”

Part 4: God says, “Yep, it’s like that and here’s some more detail.”

Part 5: Habakkuk writes a worship song to praise God for who He is and what He’s done.

While there’s much that could be said about the in’s and out’s of the book, how about just this: Habakkuk had a conversation with God. Yep. He asked some hard questions… and God answered. So, he asked more hard questions… and God answered again!  In the end, Habakkuk didn’t have “all the answers,” and he didn’t understand all of qhat God was doing in his time, but he had heard enough to worship. Hmmm… Authentic conversations with God lead to worship. In spite of struggle. In spite of injustice. In spite of unresolved questions.

Worship.

What about us? Are we conversing with God? Are we being authentic?

Kingdom Communion (part 2)

Here is the next bit of the Kingdom Communion message:

Read 1 Corinthians 11:26-30

What is Kingdom Communion?

PRESENCE.  In verse 24, Jesus is quoted as saying “This is my body.”  Interpreting these four words has been the source of no little controversery in the Church over the years.  On one end of the continuum is the high church-liturgical-Catholic-Orthodox-type position that says the elements of the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ.  They may not look like it on the outsde, but they are the real deal.  On the other end of the continuum is the low church-protestant-type position that says the elements in communion simply represent the body and blood of Christ.  Everything done in the supper is symbolic, nothing more, nothing less.  Without trying to navigate and dissect all the theological caveats, here’s what I would say:  Christ is somehow uniquely present in Communion.

There is a way that Jesus comes to us and communes with us in Communion that he does not do in any other way or time.  He comes to us and communes with us in worship– yes.  He comes to us and communes with us in the scriptures– yes.  But there is something unique about this Communion.  It’s just… different!

Is Jesus literally, physically present in the elements?  I don’t know, and ultimately, I don’t think it matters if I know or understand.  It’s a mystery… and I’m ok with that.  Is it just symbolic?  I don’t really think so; I frankly don’t think that that perspective does justice to what the scriptures say about these things.  Check out 1 Corinthians 10:16:  Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? The word translated “participation” in this verse is the Greek word koinonia which means “fellowship, communion, mystical participation in.”  Believers have koinonia with each other, and we have koinonia with the Father and the Son.  And, according to Paul here, we have koinonia– a true mystical participation in– the body and the blood of Messiah Jesus.  And in case we might think that Paul is just speaking metaphorically here, Paul reminds us (1 Cor. 10:18-22) that people who worship and sacrifice to idols have koinonia with demons.  The point is that there is something real happening, a real spiritual interaction occuring, when people worship demons; and likewise, there is a real spiritual interaction happening when we partake of the Lord’s Supper.

Real Presence?  The Church across generations and denominations has used this term to describe the presence of Jesus in Communion.  Granted, different streams have meant very different things by this term, but I would suggest that it ultimately speaks to what is held in common more than to what is not, i.e. that the presence of Christ is somehow, someway, uniquely present in Communion.  Jesus did not ask us to engage in an empty, symbolic ritual to remember him, but to embrace and engage His very presence every time we share in the Supper.

Eastertide!

Did you ever wonder about what Jesus and his disciples did, what they talked about, for those 40 days between the Resurrection and the Ascension?  (Did you realize that there were 40 days that Jesus walked around on the earth in that resurrected body of his?)

I think the tendency for many of us, thanks to movies, or the creeds, or maybe the way some of the Gospels are written, is to assume and envision that Jesus rose from the dead early on Easter Sunday, showed his hands and his feet, then led the guys out to the mountain, gave them the “Great Commission,” and then ascended to heaven.  But Luke tells us something different (Acts 1:1-9):

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”  So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”  He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

No wonder those first apostles and believers could be Jesus’ witnesses.  THEY HUNG OUT WITH HIM FOR 40 DAYS!!  And what did they do??  And what did they talk about??   Love?  World peace?  The church?  Faith?  Nope.  Jesus talked with them about the KINGDOM OF GOD.  From Jesus’s first proclamation through the parables and miracles and up to the last things he shared with his followers, Jesus Christ was all about the Kingdom.

In the calendar of the church year, we call these 40 days ”Eastertide,” which means “Easter season.”  We commemorate and celebrate those amazing days when the risen Jesus walked among us.  But we also begin looking forward to mission, to empowerment… to Pentecost!  As Luke shared with us, in his teachings on the Kingdom during those days, Jesus told his followers to WAIT for the empowering baptism in the Holy Spirit that was coming “in a few days.”  Today (April 24th) marks 7 days until the Ascension, and 17 days until Pentecost when The Father and the Son poured out the awesome Holy Spirit on the church!!

My challenge to you and to me and to all the Church is this:

• Meditate on what it would be like to hang around with the risen Jesus in the flesh for 40 days… and for only one more week!
• Celebrate and meditate on the Ascension on May 1st; re-read the scriptures, live with that moment, how awesome it would have been to be standing there when it happened!
• Prepare… wait… meditate… and seek God for a fresh outpouring of Pentecost in your life, your family, the church, and the world!  “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call!” (Acts 2:39).

Alleluia!  The Lord is risen indeed!  Come– let us adore Him!!  Alleluia!!