| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | We continue with our look at 'the obligation to listen and to do justice' that is a part of being the people Israel with their God.
Israel is to "listen' to the command of YAHWEH and to respond in obedience. While the commands in the tradition concerning listening are many and varied, we may say in sum that Israel's obligation is to do justice. Israel is a community put in the world, so the testimony suggests, for the sake of justice. The justice commanded by YHWH, moreover, is not the retributive justice of "deeds-consequences" wherein rewards and punishments are meted out to persons and the community according to conduct. Rather, Israel understands itself as a community of persons bound in membership to one another, so that each person-as-members is to be treated well enough to be sustained as a full member of the community. In its articulation of justice as its principal obligation, Israel is acutely alert sociopolitical differentiations and is aware that the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, live differently and need to be attended to in different ways. It is not belated ideology to recognize that Israel's convenantal-prophetic sense of YHWH's justice does indeed have "a preferential option for the poor" and the marginalized. This preferential option that is mandated to Israel is rooted in YHWH's own practice and inclination, so that in the practice of justice Israel is indeed to imitate YHWH.
Bruggemann goes on to rec.ount the stories that call for a 'love of strangers' and a 'love for widows and orphans' - all of which means caring for them. Caring comes to be providing clothing, housing, food, and anything else that will help them have a place of honor and a place in which they can become an actual part of the community. Even though the poor could not offer much back, they were to be seen as ones 'at home' within Israel. Those who were in a position of power and influence and wealth were to be the ones who made sure that their power was used for the welfare of these 'least among us.' When we lose those who are at the edge - those who are marginalized within any society - we lose our spirit of life that is shaped by the God who claims us all. When all are seen as claimed or chosen, is there any margin that can be left alone to die or suffer or be uncounted? No. Never. Otherwise we divorce ourselves from the character that our God has called us to be.
Connection: It is not easy to remember those on the margins. Our lives can be so consumed by what is around us that we lose our vision and we forget that which is so central to who we are meant to be.
O God, who takes us up into the ways of justice, help us to keep in mind those who need us in order to simply make it through the day. For when we remember them, your glory shines among us. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | We continue with our look at 'the obligation to listen and to do justice' that is a part of being the people Israel with their God.
Israel is to "listen' to the command of YAHWEH and to respond in obedience. While the commands in the tradition concerning listening are many and varied, we may say in sum that Israel's obligation is to do justice. Israel is a community put in the world, so the testimony suggests, for the sake of justice. The justice commanded by YHWH, moreover, is not the retributive justice of "deeds-consequences" wherein rewards and punishments are meted out to persons and the community according to conduct. Rather, Israel understands itself as a community of persons bound in membership to one another, so that each person-as-members is to be treated well enough to be sustained as a full member of the community. In its articulation of justice as its principal obligation, Israel is acutely alert sociopolitical differentiations and is aware that the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, live differently and need to be attended to in different ways.
I wanted to stop at this point in this ongoing quote because a community that takes on the shape of the God who is shaping them to be a living presence of that love must deal with how different each member will be. How to we honor those differences? For the welfare of all, each one must be taken seriously. I think that means that some will and must be allowed to exercise a greater degree of power. That is not power to be over and against others, but power used for the well-being of the community. Those with lesser power as individuals must be held accountable for what they can and must be within the community - but it never needs to be nor should it be a power that is beyond them. This all takes time. This takes finding out who each person is - what gifts are present - what weaknesses seem to prevail. I immediately think of the lamb lying down with the lion. Wow. What a community image for the people of God. Extremely different embodiments of power - ones that could become destructive and yet are used to show the wonderful imagination of God's Reign.
Connection: Lion honoring lamb - Lamb honoring lion: the welfare of all.
O God, who takes us up into the ways of justice, remind us to find the essential power of the other and help that one grow as s/he has been called within the community of saints. Guide us to share this life we have been handed together. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Today we begin to look at 'the obligation to listen and to do justice' that is a part of being the people Israel with their God.
Israel is to "listen' to the command of YAHWEH and to respond in obedience. While the commands in the tradition concerning listening are many and varied, we may say in sum that Israel's obligation is to do justice. Israel is a community put in the world, so the testimony suggests, for the sake of justice.
We again are given a community that is to take on the character of the one they say they follow. When a community pursues justice, it will be a community that is contrary to the ways of life that run the rest of the world. Therefore, they will stick out and be noticed and people will eventually ask why they do what they do. That means the community becomes a witness to something other than the way the powers of the world operate and are seen. To do justice - to honor the worth of the other and to make sure that the power of being within each person is held up and protected and encouraged is to be about a life that is radically refreshing. It is also to be about a life that may be utterly rejected. And yet, because this is the image of God that is to be the image of the people, Israel, (and I would argue the church today) we are hearing of a community that may turn heads and appear quite amazing. So - the obligation is be nothing more than whose we are - beloved children of God who have been given a way of life in and through all times.
Connection: Obliged to be God's beloved - could be a bumper sticker
O God, who takes us up into the ways of justice, we long to be encouraged and strengthened so that we will step into your way and let your light shine among us. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Brueggemann continues to open up the meaning of this love for us and what it does with us. Love is a dense term. Clearly it is a covenant word that means to acknowledge sovereignty and to keep one's oath of loyalty, on which the covenant is based. But such a political dimension to the term does not rule out an affective dimension, in light of the term set one's heart (hashaq), which we have already considered. At the core of Israel's obligation to YHWH is the desire to please YHWH and to be with YHWH (Psalm 27:4; 73:25). This dimension of desire and joy is what, in the best construal, keeps Israel's obligation to YHWH from being a burden. At its best, this obligation is not a burden, but is simply living out Israel's true character and identity, for Israel lives by and for and from YHWH's freedom and passion. This same dimension of desire has permitted the reading of the erotic love poems of the Songs of Solomon as a reflection of the affective commitment between YHWH and Israel. Thus we may focus the obligation of Israel around a yearning devotion for YHWH; but with that focus we must recognize that the enactment of that obligation takes many different forms, depending on time, place, circumstance, and perspective.
Israel lives from " YHWH's freedom and passion." That has become the life for all who know this God and the one and only. We are to be the people whose lives take shape from this God whose love is the essence of life. I suppose when we talk of the Holy Spirit coming upon us, it is this love filling us up so that our lives will now be a part of this breath. That breath - that spirit - does not simply pass by or through us. It is taken up into every part of us - it becomes the life that can now be available to the world in a way that is shaped by the God whose love becomes our character. I find that this loving relationship with our God does not make all things fixed in a certain manner. Rather through time and place, that love may take shape in different ways. Love is never stagnant in its expression - it is always consistent in that it will not turn into something other than a gracious love for us. But in any context, that love now must be put to life. In that life, it makes room for more than we so often want to limit. Therefore, love spoken one way and put to life in one way, may take on another face and action in another time. Therefore, this love is always dialogical - always staying alert to learn more fully how to love from time to time and place to place.
Connection: Obligation need not be a burden. Unfortunately, as soon as we say obligation, we are thrown into thinking about conditions. That need not be the case. In a dialogical relationship, we are obligated to take up our part of the loving relationship. That is simply how love becomes complete and alive.
O God, who makes our humanity shine with life, help us to be the love that moves us to offer ourselves in loving relationship to other just as you so freely offer you love to us. Amen.
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| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | More on this covenantal relationship
The evocative, forming, summoning power of YHWH, which gives life to Israel, puts Israel under profound and unqualified obligation to YHWH. When we try to give substance to that obligation, it is clear that the testimony of Israel is diverse and variegated. Israel's obligation to YHWH is to be fully responsive to, complementary to, and in full accord with the character of YHWH, so that the way in which obligation is understood is understood is commensurate with the way in which YHWH is construed. In sum, the obligation of Israel to YHWH is to love YHWH. Thus, the first commandment: "You shall love the Lord you god with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might: (Deuteronomy 6:5); "The Lord you God you shall follow, him alone you shall fear, his commandments you shall keep, his voice you shall obey, him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast" (Deut. 13:4)
In that loving of God - the people are shaped. The love that initiates all things is not only that. It initiates - yes, but it also becomes the character of the ones who are loved. We cannot be untouched by such love and such a demand to love. When the first commandment calls for the love of God, it will be a simultaneous calling to love others since our God is already in a relationship of loving all things. Therefore we - being in love with God who loves us first - are turned out to the world with this love as our foundation. The Character of our God is not something distant and out of our touch. It is, rather, something that becomes us. That is quite an obligation and expectation. It is also a gift that is given to us. As our relationship to this loving God continues to ground us, we are empowered to be the living presence of such love. This is all simply an expression of God's love that now is visible in, with, and under us all.
Connection: It is not so easy to remember that our life is the shape of the love of God that is visible to the world. When people cry out for God's presence in their lives, where are we?
O God, who makes our humanity shine with life, be our life and our love. Amen.
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| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Brueggemann now presses a bit more about the importance of not making a distinction between law and grace within this covenantal relationship
Such a distinction does incredible mischief to Jewish-Christian relationships, and comparable mischief in self-discernment about persons in community. That is, grace and law as twin aspects of covenant become competing issues of entitlement and responsibility, when in fact both belong inescapably to a workable covenantal existence. Israel was to respond in love to the self-giving love of YHWH. As in any serious relationship of love, the appropriate response to love is to resonate with the will, purpose, desire, hope, and intention of the one who loves. It is for that reason that the traditions of Deuteronomy, without apology or qualification, understand that Israel's proper response to YHWH's inexplicable love is obedience, to the purpose of the One whose love has made its life in the world possible.
We are to 'resonate with the will, purpose, desire, hope, and intention of the one who loves.' I find that to be at the center of what we call the faith. For this is no comment about the content of what is to be 'believed.' It is rather an embodiment that comes to the same dynamic as the one who loves. As I'm trying to learn to play the cello, I'm learning about how tuning takes place. This notion of covenant and life being quite the same is like a note that is played and the note also rings out from another string that is the same note. The second string - without being hit by the bow - amplifies the primary note. That is like the saying 'we love because God first loved us.' There is a unified word that is offered up from the loving relationship between God and God's people - a fullness of life.
Connection: So we are a part of the life that being sung by our God. Not because we must - but because it is a beautiful song and it creates a song within our lives.
O God, who makes our humanity shine with life, help us to sing out with the life of your Reigning love. Amen.
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| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | | Brueggemann comments about the the covenant between God and Israel as one that is utterly giving and utterly demanding.
I suggest that E. P. Sander's term covenantal nomism is about right, because it subsumes law (Greek nomos) under the rubric of covenant. By inference, I suggest that grace must also be subsumed under covenant. Covenant is the larger, working category through which this witness understands it life with YHWH, which entails a full relationship of self-giving and self-regarding in which embrace of commandments (in obedience) and embrace of love (in trust) are of a piece. To forgo the umbrella notion of covenant and to sort out cleanly "grace" and "law" is a distortion of the way in which the Old Testament speaks about this relationship. Such a false distinction may serve on the one hand to remove grace from the expectant, insistent relationship of covenant, or it may serve to reduce covenant simply to law. Either maneuver is a distortion of the testimony and self-understanding of Israel.
I'm writing this on Reformation Sunday. This is often a day when many try to make the separation between the law and the gospel. Thus some talk of the 'old' covenant and the 'new' covenant (old testament and new testament). And yet, for there to be a relationship built up within covenant, it will mean that grace and law will abound. We can go about a life lifted up by our gracious God and yet, when we are in such a relationship, there must be a way to walk within this new life. The covenant is in place - forever in place. With that being true, the people within a covenantal relationship are a people who can be identified by how they are a people. The law within the covenant is a gift to nurture our identity as a people in covenant with God. I quickly make a jump to baptism - a sheer gift. A gift that also demands a life that has a shape to it. I suppose you could call that law - of some sort. Something that helps us walk the walk.
Connection: Gracious love grips us and pulls us. This is not just into a 'nice' feeling. It pulls us into a gracious love made manifest in terms of our lives.
O God, who makes our humanity shine with life, you have given us a way to walk and a way to shine forth within our eternal relationship with you. Continue to shape us. Amen.
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