Month: June 2023

Vox turbinis

eejoseph

The story of Elijah’s search for the voice of God has informed the modern reader that God’s voice is not always loud or energetic such as in the whirlwind or in the fire or in the earthquake.  It has therefore become popular to think of God’s voice as being the still and calm one, as if he never yells, never screams he never speaks animatedly.  Gee, I, and many of you, have become accustomed to treating the voice of mother or father as the voice of God, and their voices, we know, often get animated, loud and urgent.  So let me take the still calm voice of God for spin, having become aware that God speaks in the African whirlwind every year.  Vox turbinis is the voice of the Atlantic hurricane season, sometimes, verifiably, the voice of God.

Africa and the annual cyclones

What a fascinating discovery it is that the Atlantic hurricane originates in Africa and crosses the Atlantic degrees past the islands of the Caribbean and impacts the North American continent.  So let’s call it an African whirlwind.  The damage repeated every year is a loud message to populations who seem unwilling to batten down the hatches, move inland and keep our heads down. Beach front properties are still quite popular. Millions of people in the Caribbean and North America do their best to cope and millions more wish they can best the hurricane. One thing is certain: westward movements from Africa are a fixture. There is no stopping the African whirlwind, people or hurricane! I’d like to think that the voice of God is playing in the hurricane. Defying it can be costly. American politics obviously wants to play ostrich as hurricanes intensify and the call for accountability for the slave trade gets louder.

He ain’t no revolutionary

eejoseph

There are many servants today who are each breaking away from his master.  (Nabal to David’s servants when they asked for food and supplies)

A lot of people talk like revolutionaries or they toe the line of the status quo, and the former was the case when David, waiting in the wings to be king of Israel,  asked for support from a man called Nabal. Some people are even impressed by the chaos that comes out of revolutionary conflict, but they do not stand for the ideas of a just and caring society.  Nabal’s insult to David ended with him losing his life without a sword being lifted.

David the armed rebel

David is clearly a figure that fits the changing times.  The people of Israel picked their first king  because of his looks and his stature, but God picked David because of his heart.  God also built into David’s experience the form of the ultimate monarchy and the design for a combined governance of priest and king.  Of course, Nabal did not get the memo.

People in the modern era can idolize Fidel Castro, Lech Walesa, Muammar Gaddafi, Haile Selassie, Nelson Mandela or even Harry Sussex, but real page turners are hard to find.  John the Baptist was just a herald, announcing the imminent kingdom of God, but his own task was revolutionary in its own right.  Then comes Yeshua, unmistakably new and fresh when compared to Israel’s prophets, priests and kings.  His clashes with the intelligentsia and leadership of Judea are pattern setting, but when you take his donkey ride into Zion you have an entirely iconoclastic horizon. Compared to Christ the people in charge of Moses’ legacy did not know justice.  Most of us want to be in the safe lane and be at the same time recognized as revolutionary-minded.  Yeshua rocked the boat so distinctly that people thought he was just intent on crashing the Jewish tradition.

17) Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18) For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18, NASB)

Perhaps when people begin to think that we are destroying the ancestral traditions we will know that we are in the lane of the true revolutionary.  When our actions appear in defence of the new and bold without destroying the old we will be standing with the brave and visionary.

Three days and still downhill

eejoseph

If a fire in your kitchen called brought three fire trucks and three hours later the fire had spread throughout your house you would have doubts about the value of taxpayers funding the fire services.   Expecting religious talk and an indoctrination treadmill to hold back the avalanche of incivility, evil, and depravity is a pipedream we cannot deny.  Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the last thirteen centuries communities all over the globe are witness to Islamic, Jewish and Christian preaching, celebration and devotion and still every, every, society spirals into the abyss of human futility.

Edutainment fails grandly

Excuse me for saying we can do better with every succeeding generation, but excuse me also for seeing that we have not.  The echo chambers of religious zeal are woefully mired in supremacy jargon, featuring claims of older, wiser, and ultimate.  Are our weekend gatherings just simply rabbit holes? Very often the weekend exercises turn out to be a little more than entertainment or performance dressed up to look like education.  The failure is on a grand scale, and the three relevant practitioners are highly unlikely to see the ditch into which they have fallen.  We have to conclude that what happens in public is different from what goes on in private. Wisdom is not cute talk; it moves towards visible progress for all the people. Ask Solomon and watch Yeshua.

Along with the distinctives in my DNA, the spiritual world stands tall

eejoseph,

At one point spiritual matters were a function of going with the flow of my parents and the wider family, but then a conscious wave began with cultural awareness, the pull of hormones and the thirst for knowledge.

By the time of my late teen years I had begun to explore the metaphysical realm, clairvoyance telepathy and the harmony of individuals and communities. A gift for music and having a way with languages seemed to funnel my interests into sacred writings, and eventually the study of theology. So for me, spirituality is like the old grandfather clock, ticking away its steady beat about values, pleasures and responsibilities.

How important is spirituality in your life?

Spirituality is 3rd of 4 or 2nd of 3 of the well-defined areas of human experience and striving.

The Moses pedestal

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We read something like the following testimony about a person and we put the person on a pedestal without much thought about ourselves.  Moses was one great man; deny it and you are playing with blinders or VR helmet.  Almost every pedestal has steps designed for our feet.  We can climb up too.  Pedestals do not just happen.  People are ambitious but the people who pole vault into public office with no intention to serve are on a Moses pedestal.  Ambition makes people clamour to be teachers with minimal effort to know the curriculum, like pastors with poor literacy, or a police officer bent on flexing law and order muscle for self-aggrandizement.  The Moses pedestal is more than a shaky and temporary seat; it allows us to see ourselves and those around us as lovely and destined for greatness.  Not even Judas could be put beyond the pale of divine affection and marked with a destiny.

It was at this time that Moses was born; and he was lovely in the sight of God, and he was nurtured three months in his father’s home.

Acts 7:20, NASB

Lovely Moses

Now I do not want to imagine that Moses was an extremely handsome individual, and he may very well have been, but God seeing Moses as someone special, someone that can be likened to Jerusalem, a beautiful city, likened to Israel, a well-furnished garden or vineyard must certainly speak to each of us. Joseph the son of Jacob and Rachel his wife and a few other individuals in the Bible are described as hunks and ravishingly pretty, but this is not the case for Moses.  The term used to describe him as lovely is not about looks;  it is not even about intelligence or resourcefulness, because we are talking about a baby, helpless and dependent on mother and father.

The complexity of the Moses experience

Moses at the head of God’s dealings with the superpower of the day is not a pretty picture.  Getting the people delivered from Egypt into the promised Land was a lovely sight for Moses , and that was literally all he got of Canaan.  Moses and all the prophets knew that Moses’ pedestal was a temporary thing, but who can deny that the man’s testimony permeates the divine revelations from cover to cover in our Bible.  Even though we know that God is done with him as an agent in the business of saving the world Moses still impresses us for his stellar courage, for his use of power and his extreme tenderness, all rolled up into one lovely bundle.  I dare to say, he was just another broken vessel, but he was a broken vessel who may not have realized how important brokenness was to God.  Moses’ temporary and complex pedestal speaks to the contradictions in the life of the One broken to give life to the world.

29)  And while He was praying, the appearance of His face became different, and His clothing became white and gleaming. 30) And behold, two men were talking with Him; and they were Moses and Elijah, 31) who, appearing in glory, were speaking of His departure which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

Luke 9:29-31, NASB

Mighty down, meek up

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Many nations have scads of legislation, some for millennia, others for a few centuries, but not one has had the courage to adopt the obvious and logical pattern of justice.  It was Mary, mother of the Nazarene, who saw God administering justice in the simplest terms.  The brilliant minds of Harvard and Oxford law schools are rank idiots compared to the young Jewish girl.  They cannot see judges pulling the mighty down from their seats and exalting the meek.  The truth is that they do not want to see have-nots acquire wealth and property the haves lose their edge. They and a host of political operatives are just fine with the right of ordinary citizens to gun down innocent citizens, just as it was lawful for any kind of vigilante justice to take the life of a Black person.

Mary’s justice trailer

You might think that what Mary saw and sang about is happening often in the world, but that is not the case. Judgments are not pulling down the mighty from their seats and they are not elevating the humble and the meek. Just ask yourself “Why are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer?”. Quasi-justice is not justified.

52) He has brought down rulers from their thrones, And has exalted those who were humble. 53) He has filled the hungry with good things; And sent away the rich empty-handed.

Luke 1:52-53, NASB

Turntable avengers they are not

The institutions of justice, housing and medicine are still tainted with tribalism and racism.  Neither political slogans nor centuries of tradition have erased the social sins of Rome, the British Empire,  China or Japan.   All of these powers are tinderboxes waiting to burst into flames.  America might have wiped Japan from the map with atomic bombs, but now Japan holds a higher chunk of American debt.  China may be the worst place to live for the lack of  human freedoms and its mushrooming surveillance, but its competition with the United States is clearly not friendly. Justice across the globe is not circular and does not flow smoothly as the winds that circle the planet. Why should they not?

Waiting and watching for justice

Those who are authorized avengers need to be accountable to the people and their representatives, and shown to be equitable. Vigilante justice is a plague for which there seems to be little vaccination. Village justice can be as despicable as state sanctioned executions of innocent persons. Natural justice says “Reverse”, contrived justice says “Manipulate for selective advantage”. Until jurisprudence commits to Mary’s dictum the instructions from Peter and Paul about subjection to civic powers need be taken with a grain of salt and a readiness to protest in protection of the common security.

Throw the Eli book away

eejoseph

Eli was a priest, equal one might argue to a high priest, who was once a sensitive man, careful to guard the sacred works where the ark of the covenant resided.  Eli also slipped and fell, to put it mildly, as age caught up with him. Having the book thrown at him with no chance of forgiveness belongs to the age of terroristic justice, and that book is one we have thrown away.

Caretaker of the ark and judge

Eli was no slouch; he had the trust of ordinary people, and the conception and early life of Samuel shows that his observations of people coming to the shrine in Shiloh were commendable.  He took the prayer of a woman seriously even when he did not know what it was, and after he suspected her of being under the influence of alcohol.

22) Now Eli was very old; and he heard all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who served at the doorway of the tent of meeting. 23) He said to them, “Why do you do such things, the evil things that I hear from all these people?” (1 Samuel 2:22-23, NASB)

But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the Lord desired to put them to death.” (1 Samuel 2:25, NASB)

Priest meets people

“As for Hannah, she was speaking in her heart, only her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard. So Eli thought she was drunk.” (1 Samuel 1:13, NASB)

“Then Eli answered and said, “Go in peace; and may the God of Israel grant your petition that you have asked of Him.”” (1 Samuel 1:17, NASB)

Forever levitical priests are not even a dream

When a priest gets zealous there is privilege and unrelenting violence, but when a shepherd boy becomes king God’s residence in Israel goes into high gear.  Compare Phineas and Ezra with David and Abijah.  If there was a priest or king in Israel named Melchizedek one might have heard inquiries about his ancestry.  However,  long before it was popular to talk about  Israelite tentacles reaching across the planet Solomon was accepting gifts from Hiram, king of Tyre for the building of the Temple, and David had in his bodyguard people who were clearly not Israelites.  A permanent levitical priesthood was problem-ridden for Israelites.

Levites and God’s kingdom

The Melchizedekan priest-king celebrated in Psalm 110 was not going to find himself and welcome where there is a competing levitical priesthood, scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees; not in the BCE and is not welcome now in the 21st century,

Levites and judgments

A man sentenced to be beyond forgiveness is hopeless, the sentence is shocking and there is no crime beyond the pale.

No atonement forever

13) For I have told him that I am about to judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them. 14) Therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.

1 Samuel 3:13-14, NASB

The judgement on Eli’s house comes from a time when it made perfect sense to throw the book at levitical laxness. Let’s face it: Aaron was a priest who dropped the ball at a crucial time in Israel’s journey to Canaan. It also came at a time when it made no sense to unveil the expanse of divine forbearance and the great salvation.

24) Aaron will be gathered to his people; for he shall not enter the land which I have given to the sons of Israel, because you rebelled against My command at the waters of Meribah. 25) Take Aaron and his son Eleazar and bring them up to Mount Hor; 26) and strip Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eleazar. So Aaron will be gathered to his people, and will die there.

Numbers 20:24-26

“When all the congregation saw that Aaron had died, all the house of Israel wept for Aaron thirty days.”

Numbers 20:29, NASB

Perhaps there is a glimpse of divine generosity in the fact that Aaron, first high priest, remained a dignified and respected man well past his burial in mount Hor. So let’s not be throwing this kind of judgment around any more.

Sugar Apple: so full of sweetness

eejoseph,

Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?

From the tree to the table

It has a name that describes EVERY ripe fruit.  Sugar apple is never NOT sweet.  Called sweetsop because the inside resembles soursop this fruit used to be in many gardens, front-yard and/or backyard.  If only AI would break through into taste and smell, you’d be wowing to Sugar Apple.  Only the unique friends, with whom one shares a sugar apple in part or whole, would be missing.