🦁 Advent 1-7
Reflection
Good morning, and welcome to the seventh day of Advent. This is Brother Logan Isaac, broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings come to us from Psalm 79, Micah 5, and Luke 21. It was hard to catch, and I didn't notify my listeners, that Luke picks up in the middle of a dialogue, and so it's kind of hard to interpret it because it's, you know, it literally kind of takes the context out.
However, in the reading from Micah, there's a couple of things that stood out to me in the NRSV the Anglicized NRSV um, where it talks about these, and yesterday I spoke a little bit, and the day before, about political theology and what Israel's political imagination was, what system they used. I mentioned a judge is at the top Shafat.
whIch sounds kind of like shofar, the, the ram's horn that is blown at certain festivals. And the political system of Israel at the top is a judge who is charismatic. There's no time limit or term of office. Deborah was called. Under the impression of the Midianites, if I remember correctly, Gideon was called Deborah was the Gideon Midian, Midianites, Gideon was the Amalekites, I think.
But even Gideon gives up this rulership, this leadership of Israel. They want him to stay, he's kind of tempted but he recognizes that he kind of went too far in something and he backs off. And then that's the entrance into this speech from Jotham, the, the, Parable of the Bramble King that I talked about, I believe, on Monday. , In Micah, there are these words in English that are translated as ruler, which I like. Ruler, as I said yesterday, we sometimes think is some idiot with a crown, but it's really, literally just a ruler. A standard that is set that everybody is expected to follow. That is the best that I think the Bible can say of people in leadership.
That you have to live in accordance with the standards and thereby invoke everybody else to live by those standards of justice, mercy, compassion. So what is these, this ruler? Again, it's used in Micah, and remember this is just one chapter after we've beaten our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks, and we won't learn war anymore we'll sit under our, our own vine and our own fig leaf, again, recalling Judges 9, so if you want to understand the political system, And it's breakdown, uh, you gotta read probably Joshua, but certainly Judges.
Judges 4 and 5 with Deborah, Judges 7, 8 and, I can't remember, 6, 7, 8 with Gideon. But the, the Judge, the Shophat, it's not like a term. You kind of get risen up. When you're needed and then when the, the crisis passed, there's no evidence that you remain judge. Or maybe you do, like Deborah, you just kind of are a judicial judge, if not the commander in chief in a time of war.
But this word in Micah 5. 1, I checked it against the Masoretic text, and ruler here is the judge, the shofot, uh, the judge of Israel. They will strike. The judge of Israel on the cheek, and that was from the ESV in the Masoretic text. And so it's pretty clear that our ruler is a judge. That's both what they do judicially, but also it's this unique position within the, the political system of Israel that also stands as commander in chief.
But then the next time we see ruler in Micah 2 it's in English. It's. bUt in Hebrew, it's actually a verb, mashal. Hayah mashal is, it's kind of squished together, but the mashal is the best kind of ruling that, again, we, we see in the Bible, in the Hebrew Bible. And it's sometimes rendered dominion.
Which can have really overt kind of hierarchical implications, which aren't there in the Hebrew. It also, you could think of it as sovereignty to have a unique status. Within a community it's just like a judge. You know, they're not any better than any other. Israelite doesn't have to be a Levitical person.
Anybody who is charismatic and good, who reflects the standard of God of Yahweh, they might be called upon both, either by God or by the people to rise up to be Judge Chant. And what they do is, and in ruling in Al um, Al is. Simply to, to You know, the verb form of rule, to live in such a way that you are a standard against which others might follow.
Mashal is like the, if you can, maybe difficult in our day and age, but to think of the positive aspects of a leader that you've known. I have a couple in my mind, Lieutenant Bogarts, and then Lieutenant Wojcik in Hawaii. Like, I'm not a big fan of officers, but those two were exceptions that proved the rule, that leadership isn't a problem, that there's a lot of easy paths to take to bad leadership.
There's a lot of easy paths to take to corruption and authoritarianism and it's sometimes very difficult to be a good form of what, a good policeman, a good soldier. a good leader. That leadership, that service that law enforcement, that in and of themselves aren't bad, there is something good in there that has become corrupt.
And that, I don't know if it appears in Micah, but there's another rule or ruler in Micah that just is, is a totally different word and it didn't check out. I think it was in verse four or five and now I, oh, the princes of men in the ESV in verse five. The princes is, is something else. It just one of the things that as I, as I'm exploring political theology in the Bible, it's, you know, it's.
If there's a um, a good thing in leadership that we call Michal the bad thing, if I remember, it's not to Redock, it's something else. But I think one of the things as a veteran or as a. Yeah, a veteran and even when I was a soldier that a lot of otherwise really Thoughtful people seem to have this opinion that you know, the military is the problem or the police are the problem And we let's get rid of the police.
Let's defund them. Well We're taking the most obvious and startling Incidences within law enforcement within service and taking those things to be the baseline the norm I've heard it said at, at academic meetings with everybody nodding in agreement that, you know, we know that everybody goes to war out of bloodlust.
It wasn't ironic. It wasn't facetious. It wasn't a, you know, it wasn't a joke. People were saying that. And I didn't go out of bloodlust. Even in my worst moments, I don't think you could compare it to bloodlust. There, I'm sure there are people, I mean, now the worshipping Norse gods and berserkers and everything else.
Like, sure, maybe, maybe that exists. I don't know. I sure as shit didn't see it. But Micah as, as critical as the prophet is of. leaders and political systems in much of the Hebrew Bible. That isn't to say we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that political systems are not the problem. It's how political systems are used by corrupt people to further corruption or further their own interests.
That's a very important distinction that I think the Bible makes. And I think we need to continue to make that. As I remember, one of the things I, I read, you know, kind of in these political philosophical things in seminary was that Christians, well, I should say more the Catholic tradition you know, the, the, the favored political system is a benevolent ruler.
I Don't know if it was Augustine, I, I can't remember, but I wouldn't put it past him. And I thought for the longest time, like, that's ridiculous. Like, we shouldn't have dictators, period. But the more, as I, I, I'm hoping to open a bookstore within the coming months. And I, it's not a non profit. I have no intention of making it a non profit.
If people want to make tax deductible donations or, you know, if you need a tax shelter, you can go to the Cayman Islands. If you want to give me money, you can give me money. That's perfectly okay by me. I have a GoFundMe. You can look me up at I think gofundme. com slash chapter house is the name of the bookstore.
But what I want to do as the, the dictator of this business is I want to take only what I need as owner's compensation or profit and distribute the rest either to the, the, the employees themselves or back into the, The program that I want, some of the programs that I want to host. And the more I think about what I want to do and how I don't want to be a nonprofit cause they're sluggish.
You know, you need a board, there's all this other stuff that, like, I don't know if it's worth the hassle. The more I think about it, the more I realize, like, oh, I, I want to be a benevolent dictator. And you could say that's certainly a bit arrogant, but Me or someone else. I've, I've said it before, and I'll probably keep saying, I don't particularly want to create my own thing, but I've been so, I've, I've met with so much turbulence and, and frustration and trauma and trying to do this thing already that I just rather do it myself and make, make the community that I didn't have that I was looking for, not just in getting out of the military, but in entering the church.
And if a benevolent dictator like myself, over, you know, business. If that's the way it can work, then that's the way it can work. anD so I think in this reading of, of Micah and this whole past week, I think that's one of the lessons I hope people take from the Bible in general. Like, sure, there's some general things that we can say, right?
That monarchical system that Israel wanted. It's not necessarily the problem. They wanted to be like the other nations. They did not want to be set apart. They did not want to be holy. They wanted to fit in. The system that they chose, or that they saw around them that they wanted to fit into was not one that is very advantageous to most human beings.
And yet, I still have this anti authoritarian or anti And I'm sure a lot of listeners do as lower, mostly lower enlisted folks. But don't take, those are the exceptions that prove the rule. Don't forget that leadership can be good. And it's not impossible to be a good leader if you feel called to be a leader, a priest, a, you know, fill in the blank but to hold both at one time not so you lose sight of, of you know, what you're hoping for, because it's easy to kind of fall into routines and take advantage of power and take for granted that you can.
And so you do. But rather to always be vigilant, always watchful as we hear in Luke because that's what it takes. To not become corrupt, to always be watching for those subtle little things that get into your head that make you feel entitled and privileged. I think that's the problem, not necessarily the systems through which those things might occur.
