Friday, October 11
Luke 12.13-21: This brief parable of the rich man’s barns, which introduces the straightforward didactic section on trust in God (verses 22-34), is proper to the Gospel of Luke. It is consistent with Luke’s constant attention to the needs of the poor and his caution about the dangers of wealth. Luke is eloquent and dependable on both of these themes.
The parable is given in response to a request that Jesus intrude His influence in an inheritance dispute between two brothers (verse 13), and prior to presenting His parable the Lord disclaims authority to settle such a dispute: “Then one from the crowd said to Him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’ But He said to him, “Man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you?”
Jesus refuses to take sides or arbitrate in a domestic and financial dispute in which, presumably, an arguable case could be made for either side. This sort of thing is simply not what He does. He refuses to be made an authority in matters of purely secular dispute.
If this restraint was exercised by the Son of God and the font of justice, how much more should it apply to the Church and her ministries. This story provides no encouragement to those who imagine that the Christian Church should intrude her influence in social, economic, civil, and political controversies on which plausible arguments can be made, whether in theory or in fact, for either side of a case. This is not the vocation of the Church, for the same reason that it was not the vocation of Jesus.
In the societal settings in which the life in Christ is lived, there are certainly circumstances where it is incumbent on the Church and her ministries to speak clearly and fearlessly and decisively. The Church’s intervention in social and political controversies, however, should be limited to those discernible cases. With respect to the other myriad concerns of society and the political order, prudential concerns about which it is legitimate for godly men to disagree, the proper response of the Church should be, as it was for Christ, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?”
This message will necessarily be disappointing to those who imagine the Church is some sort of social arbiter, with immediate, practical solutions to all the world’s problems.
Ezra 8: We come now to what appear to be the memoirs of Ezra himself, beginning with a list of the companions who accompanied him from Babylon to Jerusalem (verses 2-14). They are listed according to twelve families, a number reminiscent of the original twelve tribes of Israel. He lists his own family first (verse 2, compared with 7:5). We observe that the total number (1151) includes only men, but we are justified in thinking that at least some women and children accompanied them, perhaps to a number equal to the men themselves. Ezra, when he gathered this assembly together for the trip to Jerusalem, was disappointed that no Levites had joined them, so he immediately took steps to remedy that shortage (verses 15-20).
A time of prayer and fasting would prepare them for the journey (verses 21-23). The sacred vessels, destined for the service of the temple, were handed over to the priests for safe-keeping (verses 24-30).
With so large a retinue, the journey to Jerusalem required a hundred days (verse 31, compared with 7:8) and was followed by a respite of three days (verse 32). This rest by the waterside puts the reader in mind of the three days Israel spent beside the Jordan prior to the entrance into the Holy Land (Joshua 3:2).
Verses 35-36 shift the account to a writer other than Ezra.
Saturday, October 12
Luke 12:22-34: The parable of the rich man’s barns is followed by a straight didactic exhortation that complements the message of that parable. Most of this material (verses 22-32) is shared with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25-34). “”Life is more than food, and the body more than clothing,” asserts our Lord (verse 23). No great insight nor advanced wisdom is required to grasp the truth contained in this assertion. It is a matter perfectly obvious to a second’s reflection. This is the reason why our Lord poses the truth in a rhetorical question. Any intelligent person knows that the body is more important than the clothing that adorns it. Everyone knows this, yet there are anxiety-driven men that destroy their health by overworking in order to obtain more wealth. This is folly.
The Lord’s exhortation against anxiety is based on two considerations, one of them an appeal to common sense, and the other a call to faith.
First, common sense indicates that mere anxiety about material things does not improve the material situation. There are limits to man’s ability to control the circumstances of his life, restrictions on how much he is able to do for himself. His anxiety is spawned by the constant remembrance of those limits and restrictions. Why, then, asks Jesus, be anxious about what is beyond our control? Such anxiety is irrational. A man cannot lengthen his days by anxiety on the subject (verse 25), a truth illustrated by the foregoing parable of the rich man and his barns.
Second, the call to faith is founded on a consideration of what takes place in nature, where a heavenly Father cares for the animals and the plants. This, says our Lord, is a matter of empirical observation. This information, coupled with the consideration of man’s value, greater than the animals and the plants, yields the inference that God is to be trusted to take care of us. The only rational response to these considerations is faith.
The alternative to faith, therefore, is not simple unbelief, but a shaky life based on the constant, nagging companionship of anxiety, from which there is no other deliverance. Such anxiety eats away at every fleeting human joy.
In addition, it remains a perpetual cause of distraction, so that man is unable to give proper attention to the deeper purpose of life, which Jesus identifies here with God’s kingdom.
Such anxiety is unnecessary and absurd, because the God that provides man with the greater gift, the kingdom, will not deprive him of lesser things. It is this priority that man must adopt in his own mind, seeking what is higher and trusting in God to provide all else *verse 31).
This mention of God’s kingdom prompts Luke to append here another saying of Jesus abut the gift of the kingdom (verse 32). Their reception of this gift will inspire believers in turn to treat others generously (verse 33), thus becoming rich with respect to God (verse 34; cf. verse 21).
Sunday, October 13
Galatians 1.1-24: In its structure, the opening few verses of this epistle closely resemble Paul’s other letters; specifically, his introduction (1) identifies the author and (2) the recipients, and (3) it expresses a greeting. Within this structure, however, Paul quietly alludes to the concerns that are specific to this epistle. These concerns include the nature of his own authority, the theological problems current in the Galatian churches, and the very message of the Gospel.
He begins, “Paul, an Apostle.” In the Greek text this noun does not include the definite article; this omission means that the word is used almost as an adjective; it describes Paul. Thus, within the first six syllables of this epistle, the author is asserting his authority.
Indeed, much the first chapter is devoted to a defense of that authority. The epistle’s opening words, “Paul, an Apostle,” means, ‘What I am about to write here is not just my opinion. I am a man divinely authorized to define for you deluded Galatians exactly what the Gospel is, and to explain those points on which you are seriously mistaken about it. Hold on to that thought; I will shortly come to particulars.’
Ezra 10: Word got out, evidently, that Ezra’s spirit was disturbed, because he found quite a crowd of distressed people waiting for him when his prayer was over (verse 1). What ensues in this chapter is best ascribed to what must have been the singular moral stature and authority of Ezra. It was surely not the “mob psychosis” that one modern commentator ascribes to the scene. The dynamics had to do, rather, with the towering moral presence of Ezra himself, standing forth among the people, fortified by his fasting and his prayer on their behalf.
He was thus able to persuade them to take steps deeply repugnant to very deep instincts and warmly cherished preferences. From a concern for the purity of Israel’s faith, he was able to convince them to relinquish their wives and children. He did not do this, moreover, in an impassioned or imperious tone. On the contrary, his words to the people were more restrained than the words he used when speaking to God.
All the returned exiles were gathered at Jerusalem for a “command appearance” (verses 7-9), assembling in the rain, cold, wet, and doubtless a bit discouraged. Ezra then read them the riot act. Under this barrage of rain and prophetic invective, the men became cooperative. Understandably, nonetheless, their moral situation, their “case of conscience,” was more than slightly complicated, involving many details that could not be settled immediately (verse 13). Consequently, a commission was established to work out the particulars associated with the dissolution of all those marriages.
It is reasonable to assume that the work of the commission had to do with the disposition of property claims and rights of inheritance. In those days, after all, couples did not simply fall in love and get married. Pre-nuptial agreements, in the form of inter-family contracts, were the rule, not the exception. Virtually all of those marriages, therefore, involved complex financial arrangements, in the form of dowries and transferred inheritances. If the people were to conform to the strict rules laid down by Ezra, all such matters had to be adjusted. In the lengthy list of the offenders (verses 18-44), we observe many family names that we saw in the census record in the second chapter.
Monday, October 14
Luke 12.41-48: Luke 12.41-48: Jesus describes the righteous servant as “faiithful.” In the present context “faithful” (pistos) probably bears the meaning of “loyal” rather than “believing.” Several times St. Paul uses this very adjective to describe the ideal pastor, missionary, or Christian leader (1 Corinthians 4:1-12; Ephesians 6:21; Colossians 1:7; Titus 1:9). In the present text, we observe that the vocation of this servant is to feed the others in the household.
The other servant assures himself that he still has opportunity to neglect his stewardship. He is coaxed into this disposition precisely because there appears to be a delay in the return of his master. “My master is delaying His coming,” he says to himself. That is to say, the sense of a postponement is an essential part of the story. The failure of the servant has to do with his inability to deal with the prolonged passage of time. What he lacks is perseverance.
Nehemiah 1: Nehemiah’s mission is easy to date. It began in the twentieth year of the Persian emperor, Artaxerxes I (465-425), therefore 445 (verse 1). The month was December. This book is mainly a collection of Nehemiah’s own memoirs.
Nehemiah is called the royal cup-bearer, but this term should not make us think of a simple domestic servant. That bearing of the cup at the king’s table was but the symbolic function of an individual of great important in the realm. The term “royal chamberlain” comes closer to the more recent idiom, for this was no menial position. In the Persian art of the period the cup-bearer ranked second, right after the crown prince, in the gradations of the royal court. Archeology demonstrates that sometimes cup-bearers were buried in the same crypts as the emperor’s own family. Nehemiah the Jew, then, was a high official of the realm, the ancient equivalent to our “prime minister” or “secretary of state.” All important business with the crown passed through his hands.
One day some fellow Jews came to see Nehemiah (verses 2-3) with the sad news that local opposition, evidently implementing an official decree, had put a stop to the construction of the walls around the city of Jerusalem. It is impossible that the highly placed Nehemiah did not know this already, but the first-hand report gave him a strong new impression of the full tragedy of the situation. It threw him into a depression for days, a depression accompanied by fasting and prayer (verse 4).
The lengthy confession that follows is our first example of Nehemiah in prayer; we will have frequent occasion to observe this recourse to prayer as an habitual and sustained practice on his part. Nehemiah’s prayer in the present case (verses 5-11) is full of Deuteronomic vocabulary, a characteristic shared with other late books of the Old Testament, such as Ezra and Daniel. Nehemiah based all his hope on God’s fidelity to Israel, manifested during the Babylonian Captivity. Such prayers may be described as doxologies of judgment. As in the prayer in Ezra 9 (and later on in Nehemiah 9 and in Daniel 9:4-19), this prayer identified Nehemiah with the people for whom it was offered.
Tuesday, October 15
Nehemiah 2: Fortified by prayer and fasting, Nehemiah prepared to argue his case before the king. He bided his time until the following spring, during Nisan, the month of the Passover. Doubtless Nehemiah was waiting for the most opportune and advantageous moment, watching the movement of government, carefully observing the emperor’s moods and attitudes.
He resolved finally to display his feelings; it was not an inadvertent dropping of his guard, but a calculated move (verse 1), and the emperor, as expected, noticed (verse 2). There was a sudden tense moment, because Persian emperors liked to be surrounded by happy, healthy faces (cf. Daniel 1:10-13!). Nehemiah stated the matter quickly and succinctly, for Persian emperors were also efficient men, not famous for their patience. In addition, they were notoriously fickle and capricious (cf. Esther 4:11).
Nehemiah knew all this, and even while he spoke to Artaxerxes, he continued to speak to God in his heart (verse 4). As always, his brief prayer was efficacious, because he managed to make his complaint without criticizing either the emperor or anyone in the Persian government.
Nehemiah was ever the consummate diplomat, schooled in all the arts of a large, international court. Throughout this book we shall find him playing a cool, deft hand, maintaining strict control over the cards held close to his chest. In every instance we shall see him disclosing only as much information as was needed to accomplish what he had in mind. If anyone wants to witness what it means to be as cunning as a serpent (which Jesus our Lord commands us to be), he will discover no better example than Nehemiah.
For example, we readers of this memoir will know that everything Nehemiah did was done on the authority of a private imperial edict that was handed to him, but we will also observe that he never permitted his enemies to know this. That is to say, he did not show his cards. His opponents would always be obliged to guess what hand he was holding, so they would be ever acting in the dark. Nehemiah knew very well that a privately issued instruction could always be privately withdrawn, so he was extremely careful not to let that happen. His opponents could never challenge something which they were not even sure existed! Nehemiah preferred to bluff his way through, laying down a card here and there, taking up another, never showing his hand. He kept his winning hand intact. Thus, we will observe that he never spent all his force on a single confrontation. There was ever more in his reserve.
In the present scene, for example, Nehemiah only answered the emperor’s question. He made no request until the king explicitly asked for one, and we observe that the request, made at precisely the moment when it should have been made, was immediately granted. Similarly, Nehemiah did not disclose, even in this memoir, how much time he had at his disposal to complete the project (verse 6). Armed with papers of authorization, he crossed the Euphrates and cleared his mission with the satrapy authorities in the area (verses 7-10). When he arrived at Jerusalem, no public information was available to his opponents. Hearsay, of course, would reveal that he came from the capital. Certainly everyone knew his high standing in the Persian Empire. He lay low, nonetheless, for three days (verse 11), keeping the opposition off-guard, letting their discomfort mount, but without saying anything. Their growing curiosity and impatience would work to his advantage, and he knew it. Then, in the deepest secrecy, he made a quiet, nocturnal inspection of the city, riding on a sure-footed donkey around the ruins of the walls, an inspection recorded in this memoir in minute detail. We may call it The Midnight Ride of Nehemiah (verses 12-16).
Encouraged by this inspection, he summoned the proper people to promote public interest in the project (verses 17-18), while his opponents, learning of it only by rumor, were reduced to mere reaction (verses 19-20). Questioned on the matter, Nehemiah spoke only of trust in God. He breathed not a word about the papers in his breast pocket, leaving his opposition to guess and blunder.
Wednesday, October 16
Luke 13:1-9: The lessons of the previous chapter stressed the necessity of repentance in advance of the historical judgment soon to be visited on Israel. Whereas the verses immediately before (12:57-59) and immediately after (verses 6-9) emphasize the shortness of time left for decision, the present pericope underlines the grave consequences of not repenting.
Here we have no parable but a couple of contemporary tragedies that convey the necessity for repentance.
First, Jesus is told of the incident in which Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, had recourse to violence in order to repress a sedition of Galileans (verse 1; Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews 18.85-89; The Jewish War 2.169-177). Were those that perished in that incident worse than anyone else? asks Jesus. Certainly not!
The example is particularly telling, inasmuch as Pilate represented the authority of Rome in the Holy Land. This story implies to the Jews what sort of treatment they may receive at the hands of the imperial forces, which the Lord of history is about to employ as a scourge on an unrepentant people. In the case of Israel too, the divine judgment will fall swiftly and without remorse (verse 3).
The second incident (verse 4), which is unrecorded outside of the Gospel of Luke, conveys the same message. Those that perished in the collapse of the tower were not sinful beyond their compatriots. Yet, destruction had come upon them quickly and unawares. The message is the same: Repent now, and do not delay!
Galatians 3.1-14: Who are the true children of Abraham? Was it just the Jews? The apostles, and chiefly St. Paul, saw no reason to think so. Since the possession of eternal life came from union with Jesus in faith, why should only Jews be counted children of Abraham? Had not John the Baptist affirmed that God was able even from stones to raise children to Abraham?
The apostles took seriously one very important fact of biblical history: Abraham was justified by faith, long before the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. Why, then, should the true children of Abraham, who lived by the faith of Abraham, be obliged to observe the Law of Moses. After all, Abraham had never observed that Law, and he was justified.
This was a very important insight of Christian revelation, which settled a very thorny question faced by the apostles: Were the Gentiles obliged to keep the Law of Moses? Their answer was a resounding NO. The principle of justification by faith settled that question once and for all: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Thursday, October 17:
Galatians 3;15-29: The Incarnation is the culmination of a specific line of history. As the Final Cause of that history, it is theologically inseparable from that history. When God first spoke in the Burning Bush, He was already taking the first step toward becoming incarnate. He spent centuries taking flesh in our language before He finally took flesh in our flesh.
From its inception, then the Christian religion has presented itself as the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy, as the legitimate successor of Old Testament history. It is because of Jesus Christ we read the Hebrew Scriptures as our own.
The Old Testament, we recall, was the only body of authoritative Scriptures known to the Jesus and the Apostles. God would permit no other Scriptures to be written until the Christian Church had deeply assimilated that truth: His Son was born “under the Law,” and it remains the purpose of that Law to bring us to Christ. The Old Testament remains paidagogos hemon eis Christon—“ our pedagogue unto Christ.”
Nehemiah 4: The frustrated opposition party was holding an impromptu powwow about what to do next (verses 1-2). Sanballat was aware that the emperor had forbidden the building of the walls, but here was the highest non-royal official in the realm, with full knowledge and cooperation of the governing satrap, doing that very thing. The situation left him angry and confused. He dared not complain to the capital, of course, because Persian monarchs tended to react in dangerous ways if stimulated by incautious questioning (cf. Ezra 6:11), to say nothing of deliberate provocation (cf. Esther 7:10). Nehemiah was completely familiar with the workings of the court, whereas Sanballat and the opposition folks were just a bunch of yokels. They found themselves now completely out of their political depth.
Their frustration could be expressed only in ridicule (verse 3), but their mirth rang hollow, because the wall in question was growing huge. Dr. Kathleen Kenyon’s excavations show it to have been 2.75 meters thick—roughly nine feet—and in Chapter 12 we will read of a lengthy dedicatory procession conducted on top of the wall!
Since Sanballat’s people could do nothing in the open, their opposition took the form of surprise raids by small gangs. The list of opponents in verse 7 indicates that Jerusalem was literally surrounded by enemies. There follows (verses 13-23) an account of how the builders, like Minute Men, simultaneously prayed and defended themselves during the construction. Verse 10 seems to be a snatch of a song that they sang while working.
Much of this chapter is resonant with the themes and vocabulary of Israel’s ancient warfare stories from the Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges: the threat of the enemies (verses 7-8), the strategic disadvantage of Israel (verses 10,13), the preliminary prayer before arming (verse 9), the arrangement of the forces by families (verse 13), the declaration of divine help (verse 20), the summons to bravery and fidelity (verse 14), the Lord’s frustration of the enemies (verse 15), and the bugle call to battle (verses 18-19).
Friday, October 18
Galatians 4.1-11: Biblical history, the theme of our recent readings in Galatians, culminates in the Incarnation. Today’s verses include the fundamental Christian thesis that God sent his Son to earth; this is what we call the Son’s “enfleshing,” or “incarnation” (Latin caro, “flesh’). What does Paul have
The Incarnation is the Formal Principle of Divine Revelation itself. That is to say, the dogma of the Incarnation is not just one of the teachings of the Christian Church. It is, rather, the structural principle, the Formal Cause, of the Christian revelation. It is that which determines and gives form to the Christian religion in all its aspects.
To illustrate what we mean by this, it will be useful to contrast the Christian religion with the world’s second largest religion, Islam. I certainly hope not to be invidious in this comparison; I will endeavor not to misrepresent Islam in even the slightest measure. Indeed, I hope to say nothing about which a responsible Muslim would disagree.
To appreciate the difference between Islam and the Church with respect to revelation, let us start with Islam. According to universal Muslim teaching, Muhammad received the contents of the Qu’ran by direct dictation from the Archangel Gabriel. It is the direct word of God, according to this belief; it is in no sense the word of Muhammad. He contributed nothing to the process except the act of writing down what he was told.
That is to say, the words of the Qu’ran in no way entered into, or came through, the creative literary powers of Muhammad. He simply took dictation, word for word. The Qu’ran was in no way mediated through his thinking and imaginative powers. It remained entirely external to Muhammad. In no sense was he its author.
Please understand that this is not my view of the matter. I am not distorting the teaching of Islam on this point. It is a matter on which all Muslims, in all times and in all places, agree.
Now I submit that this view of revelation is radically alien to what the Christian religion means by the same word. What is missing in Islam is what we Christians call “The Incarnation Principle.” That is to say, we Christians believe that God never speaks to man in this way. We do not believe that a single word of divine revelation was simply “dictated.” Quite literally, we insist that the biblical God is not a “dictator.”
On the contrary, the Christian theology of revelation teaches that God speaks to man through the workings of his mind and heart. We believe that the teaching of the Pentateuch is not simply the word of God, but also the word of Moses. We contend that God spoke to Moses through divine inspiration, a mysterious process that included the thinking and imaginative powers of . . . Moses. God’s word is always likewise the word of some human being. The Incarnation Principle means that God’s word was filtered through the mind and heart of Moses. It comes to us through the inner agony of Jeremiah, the high inspiration of Isaiah, the probing minds of Job and Habakkuk, the near despair of Qoheleth, the lyric poetry of David, the disappointments of Jonah, the struggles of Nehemiah, the blood of Abel, the mystic raptures of Ezekiel, the slow, patient scholarship of Ezra, the careful narrative style of Mark, and the methodical, ponderous thinking of Paul.
It is the teaching of the Christian religion that God comes to us only through this Incarnation Principle. It finds expression in inspired literature, because it first assumed flesh in human history. This truth is indicated in that vision where Ezekiel sees God’s word on a scroll that he must eat. That is to say, God’s word always comes to us in a kind of digested form. It reaches us through someone else’s heart and mind.
Furthrmore, the Incarnation is Efficient Cause of our own sanctification. God became man, so that man could become God: “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the status as sons..” (in Greek, “status as sons” is a single word, huiothesia.)
God’s Son took flesh in the fullness of time in order to share with us, by divine grace, His own relationship with the Father. If we are in Christ, then God sees us as His own children. It is not a metaphor, but a reality, because in Christ we are reborn; we become partakers of the divine nature.
God does not simply impute Christ’s righteousness to us. He does not simply declare us righteous because of Christ. He causes us to be righteous in Christ. In Christ, united to Christ in faith, we are made new creatures, God’s very children. In Christ we have a new mode of existence, which enables us to live in this world as the true heirs of its history.
This new mode of life puts us into the family of God as His children. We are made the brothers and sisters of His only Son, and the heirs, with Him, of eternal life.