🦁 Advent 3-6
Readings: Psalm 125; 2 Kings 2:9-22; Acts 3:17-4:4
From the TRNG Room:
Reflection
Good morning and welcome to the sixth day of Advent three. This is Brother Logan Isaac broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings come to us from Psalm 125, Second Kings two and Acts three, and I, I announced this in another episode, but I think I may have made that Advent four, which is already on first forward, but I had been announcing the liturgical day as which day of Advent, but I'm trying to actually form.
First formation around the liturgical week, and in Advent in any liturgical season, the week is it's crowned by the Sunday, and the three days preceding Sunday look toward, Sunday and the three days after Sunday look back on that Sunday. And the readings of those three days are related. The psalms are usually the same, and then the Old Testament and New Testament reading typically have some kind of theme that relates directly to the Sunday reading.
So, we are on the sixth day. of the third week of Advent, which is Tuesday December 19th. And that being said, I the readings were really long, so I'll try and keep this brief, but I did want to point out, at the very end, as chapter 4 is wrapping up, at least in this, this passage, many of those who heard the word believed, the number of the men came to about 5, 000.
And 5, 000, you may recall, comes from the feeding of the 5, 000, or it may evoke or echo the 5, 000, which does appear in Luke. And those 5, 000, I've, as I've pointed out in, there's a, a blog I was sent, or a substack I was sent, by, I don't know, some random, Evangelical pastor, and he talks about how the feeding of the 5, 000 happens on the north side of the city of Galilee.
That was a quiet space where Jews could, or Judeans to be more specific, could gather and possibly strategize against Rome. It was far from the Roman capital at Caesarea Miritima and it was also away from the Jewish capital in Jerusalem. And so it was this kind of brigand kind of staging point for major conflicts that would later erupt.
And so when it appears here, this 5, 000, when it kind of makes me think of the feeding of the 5, 000 even though it's in Jerusalem, it does evoke that Feeding scenario and this blog, which I reposted, and then I think it's on the training room as feeding the legion, which I'll include in the show notes.
I point out that the, the original author didn't seem to notice. He has all these, all these military things and how, you know, swords are not as useful as, as forks cause he's feeding them and he's feeding literally a, you know, a military personnel or at least highly, highly, highly symbolized. And 5, 000 here again, I, it makes me think that this is again, another time in which symbolically, metaphorically, parabolically, Jesus and his movement are, are raising up armies, literally legions of 5, 000 each.
A legion included anywhere between 4, 800 and 5, 200 individual soldiers. Now that's not, Jesus never encountered the legions, they weren't anywhere near where he was when he was alive. It wasn't until after he died, 30 or 40 years after he died, in 66 CE. When the great war occurs and the temple is destroyed and legions are used for that, and then remain stationed around Judea, Samaria, Peraea, Syria.
But when Jesus was alive, he just encountered cohorts of two, two thousand, no, no, no, no, one thousand. I Always get my Roman numbers kind of mixed up, but the 5, 000, so they're, they're preaching this kind of fine brimstone sermon, kind of a an insult disguised as a compliment by saying, you know, God is raising up his servant and he sent to Jesus to you, the Jews first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness, right?
Right, like this backhanded compliment. And then, oh, don't you know? About a legion heard and believed what Peter and John are saying, or have said, publicly. They are raising armies just as Roman generals would, or at least they're organizing armies, to do the thing that God has come to do, which is to wage war.
Against the forces of evil. And the, I also, whenever, I was trying to remember, there's this really important parallel between Captain Marvel, also known as the Centurion of Great Faith, from Matthew 8, Luke 7, and John 4 Captain Marvel is foreshadowed by another military commander in the Old Testament in 2 Kings 4, 2 Kings 4 and I couldn't remember if it was Elijah The, it's Elisha who this commander by the name of Naaman the Syrian he goes to Elisha to be healed of this skin disease.
You know, leprosy is this kind of umbrella term, but he's got something wrong with him and he wants to be made better. And his Israelite servant girl says, Oh, we have a prophet who can heal you. And they go out and they find Elisha. And Elisha tells Naaman through his servants, Hey, go wash in the river Jordan six times or seven times, I can't remember.
And you'll be cleansed. And this word he uses, wash, is the only place in the Septuagint where baptizo occurs, linking the baptism that John preaches and that Jesus kind of makes his own, this baptism of repentance that cleanses one from sin. Seems to be very, you know, seems to be influenced not only because John kind of popularizes baptism, and it's the only place this happens in the Old Testament is with a military commander, also, it's not Elijah who does it, it's Elisha, his, you know, the person who gained a double portion of his spirit. And so it's a way of God pointing out, look, you know, things aren't just dwindling down. You know, if you think of energy always losing just a little bit of its energy through transfer or whatever, like God defies that by having this incredible prophet be capable of eclipsing his mentor.
Eli, Elisha, eclipsing Elijah, not, not really, but like he has all this power and yet he's not Elijah. And so it's, it's just interesting, but the other thing I was going to point out was the with Naaman Assyrian, it happens right before the Shunammite woman, which especially in John, and I want to say Matthew, mimics the Sumerian woman.
wIth, who's this person who has the longest conversation with Jesus in any of the Gospels. And so there's really important parallels, not just to the socially marginalized, but to the ecclesiastically marginalized, right? The Jews did not like the Romans. I mean, they tolerated them. Jesus didn't really have a whole lot of interactions with them, but to bestow You know, military personnel, especially not their own military personnel, with the kind of honor that Captain Marvel is bestowed upon, you know, he says, Jesus says, he's found no one who has such great faith in all of Israel, and Naaman the Syrian is the only person baptized in the Old Testament.
He's, he receives this healing miracle for nothing, but that he came and asked, subjecting himself to this foreign shaman, right? Reinforcing the centrality of humility in the biblical witness. Right? You know, and, and Captain Marvel one, one of the things that's verbatim carried between Matthew and Luke is Lord, I'm not worthy to receive you only say the word and I shall be healed.
I too am a man under authority. I say to this one, go. And he goes, I say to the other, he comes and he comes blah, blah, blah. Like it's about humility. aNd one of the things that, you know, John and Peter kind of get at this backhanded compliment. Before the council gets at the, the inverse of humility, like the Jews, Peter and John are suggesting lacked humility.
And that certainly could be true of, you know, this corrupted priesthood that had gone from being Zadokite kind of vaunted clan to this literal, you know, the, the Bothius family and you know, Caiaphas family, the. I can't remember their names. They essentially bought the high priesthood, so it was not seen as legitimate at all.
And so the, the close circling around our tradition of humility with faith and piety and confidence is one that I see mirrored in military service, or at least the lessons that you can learn if you're, if you're humble enough to be taught while you're in service in the military.
