Joshua 3:1-5:12
If I was Joshua I might be a little miffed. Moses’ “parting of the waters” trick has been quoted by religious leader after prophet after teacher, has been the subject of Hollywood movies and numerous books and yet barely anyone even bothers to mention that Joshua did the same thing just a few years later. Whereas Moses’ parting of the Sea of Reeds is a vivid and dynamic illustration of cleansing and baptism for redemption, I’m still not entirely sure what the parting of the Jordan was all about. The author of Joshua says it was to exalt Joshua in the sight of his followers, to increase Israel’s reverence for and trust in God and to cause every nation to see that God is great. It was also to enable the Israelites to actually enter the promised land. The thing that strikes me about all of this, though, especially when chucking in the circumcisions at Gilgal, is how quick Israel were to forget what God had done for them. Surely the escape from Egypt with the plagues and the waters parting and the manna and the quails and the Sinai stuff and the ground swallowing people up and the water from the rock and the golden serpent etc etc should have been quite enough to cement in the people’s minds that God should be trusted, that his name should be glorified and that his leaders should be followed. Why the heck did God need to remind everyone? I know it is a generation later but still, you would have thought that such significant events would have been major parts of the school curriculum. I’m just completely baffled by the fact that none of the next generation of Israelites had bothered to be circumcised. But then, when I think of my own life I realise that God will amaze and captivate me on a Sunday and then I’ll be bemoaning his distance by Wednesday. We humans seem pretty awful at holding on to things that matter. But life defined purely by today’s experiences without any regard for yesterday cannot be a life well lived. Our God is the Author of Creation and the Lord of History as well as being the Master of Today. We have got to find ways of reminding ourselves of his historic goodness. Maybe we need to build some cairns.
Luke 22:1-38
My grandfather used to go on and on about these two swords (v 38) saying that is proved Jesus wanted to be a violent revolutionary. What a load of tosh (may he rest in peace). We really can’t take a single verse and give it more weight that all the other verses of the New Testament. The huge weight of evidence shows Jesus refused to accept the land-focussed, revenge-obsessed role of Messiah King of Israel that some wanted him to fill, preferring instead to wage a battle over people’s hearts, obsessed with redemption and forgiveness and wanting to become the benevolent King over all nations. I do admit thought that the verse is a bit of a weird one, coming as it does after the last supper and betrayal narratives. What I think Jesus is getting at here is that the battle is about to get fiercer, that the ante is being upped and that confrontation is only going to increase. I think his call for swords is a call to defence, not to attack. Maybe Jesus knew that 11 of the 12 apostles would end up murdered. Or maybe he saw the persecution of Christians that begun under the Romans and still goes on till this day. I don’t know exactly what prompted Jesus to say it but I do know that it calls all of us to alertness. Not to be stressy, not to be anxious, not to be overly earnest but to be prepared for confrontation and ready to protect ourselves from attack. My preference is to see that attack as coming in the spiritual form and our defensive swords to be the armour of God from Ephesians 4 but I guess that is for another day. For today alertness to the battle would seem to be enough. That, and the fact that Jesus has seen it all, knows it all and wants to prepare us for it all - he really is the benevolent King who brings us safely into forgiveness and redemption.
Psalm 50:1-15
It’s fascinating how this starts to point towards the book of Hebrews and the idea that animal sacrifices really didn’t mean that much, especially when they were separated from obedience.
