This week we will begin a move in a new direction. I'm staying with Walter Brueggemann but moving to a part of another one of his books - Mandate to Difference and a chapter called, "You Cannot Fool Your Nephesh." In the books of the Torah, all paths lead to Sinai. The Israelites had escaped Egyptian slavery, though they remembered Pharaoh's Egypt wistfully as a place of adequate food. The had traversed the "stony road" of wilderness, been contentious and received "wonder bread" from the sky. Then they approached the mountain. It was an awesome, dread-filled place that signaled divine presence that was in no sense user-friendly. As they approached that dread mountain. Moses reminded them of the heavy cost of life with YHWH. They would have to obey.... The mountain was an offer of a new identity, of life in covenant with YHWH. That is all Moses said. He gave them no details. Coming into a new identity is not easy. For example, to be a person who is forgiving demands a lifelong discipline. To say I forgive is not necessarily the life of forgiving. There is the day in and day out exercise of this life. We must continue to go back to the one who forgive us and remember what it is to be a forgiven people. Then - after we turn to the One who initiates all forgiveness - we step into the way of the Reign of forgiveness. As we all know, it is so very easy to let forgiveness fall to the side of the road as we move forward in the way we want to go and in the manner in which we will be going. So, like Israel returning to Sinai to in order to remember the life into which they were led by their God, we must keep returning to the word of forgiveness that is the power to change our own lives so that we might be a part of this forgiving Reign no matter where we are. That become our identity. I think that identity is a big change in identity. It takes practice and it take the power of God's creative Spirit to make it happen. Like Israel in the wilderness, we are a people who are handed a new identity that is not at all what we would choose for ourselves. Israel cried to go back to the food of Egypt - under oppression. God invited them into promise - where life is whipped up and will always be enough. Connection: Have you ever wondered about the way God's forgiveness could be the directive of this day? How would we be changed within that gift given to us? Bless us, O God, for the gift of life that is handed to us. Blessed is the Reign we are invited to enter and live all the days of our lives. Lead us in this day along this way. Amen. |
No comments:
Post a Comment