🦁 Advent 4-👑
Sunday Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26 ; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38
From the TRNG Room;
Reflection
Hello and welcome to Advent 4. This is Brother Logan Isaac broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. The readings for Advent 4 come to us from 2 Samuel 7, Luke 1, and Psalm 89, as well as Romans 16 and Luke 1 again. The first Luke being the Magnificat. The second Luke being earlier in Luke when the angel Gabriel announces to Elizabeth.
So I have a number of thoughts on this that I think are important. And I will provide links in the show notes to posts in the training room that cover Jesus name and family you know, this idea of royalty and, and how it conflicts with the priesthood, which is kind of the political structure that was intended for Israel.
buT in 2 Samuel 7 and those of you who are subscribers know that first forward is kind of the wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. Just reflections, no readings, no prayer, just, you know, the, the meat and potatoes of first formation, but also with Sunday readings. And anybody who's listened to me for any amount of time knows that I have some.
Doubts about monarchy and the way we the Gospels and the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament deal with this Messiah, and I, I suppose at the, at the outset I should say it's my understanding from the Bible that kings and the monarchical system was a foreign concept to Israel. I'll say that real quick again.
Monarchy as a system of political governance was a concept that was foreign to Israel and its own telling of its own story in the Old Testament, right? The Hebrew scriptures. So what God creates or what he has done in Joshua 6 after, you know, all the, the Torah is about their kind of foundation myth.
Joshua and judges is about how that the founding was then. unfolded in their in their taking of the promised land and inhabiting it. It's not a pretty story. Joshua, they, they do a lot of things right. Most things, I guess I would say. Judges, they start doing a lot of things real wrong. But in there, it tells a story of this construction by tribe, by, by familial connection.
Each clan gets a portion of land, the smallest tribes, or I should say the, the nominally the smallest tribes, the two half tribes Manasseh and Ephraim get, in Manasseh's case, a huge portion of land, and in Ephraim's case, they get the capital in Jerusalem. Benjamin is right beside Ephraim, down there by Jerusalem.
anD they are, were the Benjamin being one of the, Abraham's sons, shit, now I'm forgetting. Ephraim and Manasseh were Joseph's sons. They're the two half tribes of Israel. Joseph was not the youngest, Benjamin was, of the twelve. However, I think that Joseph takes promise because Benjamin Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin.
And so I think it's a sore subject. Anyway, um, the thing to look at is how those clans then organized themselves politically. The only permanent political structure which dealt with power, which belonged to God, were the priests and the priestly system. And the priests had to be Aaronic. That's with an A, not an I.
As in, from the line of Aaron. The lineage of Aaron. And then even more specifically, the Zadokite priests. Zadok was a descendant of Aaron. They would be the high priests and high priest was a priest who also had extra duties. There's a bunch of just normal everyday priests. And these are, this is the only permanent political structure in Israel.
And each there were what, six or nine Levitical cities. They did the, the clan of Levi did not get any land. They just got cities, but this is a political structure. The only. Political ruler, and I use that word very carefully, were judges. And judges were charismatic figures. They were not appointed by anybody, they just rose out organically from
And God worked with the judges to free Israel from their oppressors, the first of whom is Deborah, or the earliest, at least historically. Then we have Gideon and then ending with Samuel. Samuel says explicitly the monarchical system is a rejection of God and a rejection of Israel's, Israel's own rejection of its calling as a set apart people, which is to say a holy people, right?
So they adopt the world's system of governance. It is a foreign concept to Israel. So, David is a big question mark, right? We read about David in 1 Samuel, I'm sorry, 2 Samuel 7. And he wants to move the tabernacle to Jerusalem and then eventually he'll later want to build a temple. But that is an improper imaginative act on David's part.
He's making a mistake and God tolerates it. And David himself, as king, is kind of a tolerable mistake. The people ask for a king, they demand it. God says to Samuel, it's not you they've rejected, they've rejected me. He picks Saul. Saul is a shit leader. David, you know, certainly in contrast to Saul, is Extraordinary, right?
Not extraordinary because he amasses all this land or wealth or property, but because he is humble, because when he fucks up, he owns up to it. Sometimes takes him a while, but he is, he is fundamentally human. That is how the Bible depicts him. They don't put him up on a pedestal. They don't tear him down just because they can.
He is one of the only, I could argue, I don't know if I would right now, but I could argue that. He's the only like morally credible ruler of certainly the three united, the kings of the united kingdoms, and then probably of most of those of the divided kingdom. But monarchy is not Israel's thing.
And so when we get to a figure like Jesus, who's supposed to be the adoption or the inheritor You know, the throne, essentially. God, in my assessment, has taken this thing, this worldly human thing of monarchy, which, you know, is wrapped up in both it can be a good thing, could be okay, but also it tends Deuteronomy about what kings will do.
And so it's not a, a, a, an internally. coherent kind of political system to their own story, their own self understanding. This is kind of like a foreign corruption. Jesus, you'll notice in the passage that we read for this Sunday in Luke 1, 26 38, it has all this kind of royal language, Son of the Most High, Lord God, and blah, blah, blah.
Even the angel's name, Gabriel, comes out of this Hebrew word, gibbor, which is used very frequently to translate mighty men of valor. You know, brave, strong men, kind of depending on the translation. But The angel Gabriel, his name evokes mightiness, you know, the, the enunciation, Jesus is Magnificat, which we also read and Isaiah 61 as a whole that we looked at last weekend, last on Advent three it has all these, you know, military.
nuances that you won't notice unless you're looking for them. The House of David, you know, when we talk about what we think of kings, you know, they're in, they're, it's a lineage, right? And it's strictly adhered to. You know exactly how many people are in line for the throne before you or the next guy.
And So to be the son of David, which he's called elsewhere, or the son of the Most High in Mark he's called the son of Mary but here in Luke we have this contrasting voice. It says that both Elizabeth and Mary, er, I'm sorry, Elizabeth and Mary are blood relatives. Cisgenus. One gene. One relative.
Right? They're blood relatives. Not just kind of related in some weird way. They're not friends. They're blood relatives. And it says Elizabeth is a daughter of Aaron. Meaning from the Levitical line. So Mary is from the tribe of Levi, according to the text. Joseph, who only appears in Matthew and Luke, and Mark, you know, is not named.
Paul doesn't mention a father at all. It mentions a mother, but doesn't name her. Her name in Mark and here is given as Miriam, the the sister of Moses. Making Joseph Jesus's father, kind of an evocation of Joseph the 11th of 12 sons of Israel, also known as Jacob. So it's playing a lot with the language, but Jesus does not receive any genetic material from Joseph.
He is not of the line of Judah. He's like grafted into through this adopted parent, Joseph, but he himself is not a royal blood. So when we talk about Jesus being king, that is merely a metaphor used to ensure that God's promise is fulfilled, right? He makes David a promise. God says, I will build your house, your house's lasting, you know, throne forever, blah, blah, blah.
And God keeps God's promises. And here's Jesus, who fulfills that, and yet who is not himself eligible for the throne because he is not of the, he's not, Genetically a son of David. And so I, I don't want to beat this too much, but there's a lot that I think that's going on in terms of political theology that borrows and I, I think it's important to listen to last week and I advent three and how the, the language of the arm, the divine warrior armor of God is getting pulled out from Isaiah 59 and 61 in the inaugural speeches.
of Jesus at Nazareth and Mary and her Magnificat. anD so this is, this reading this morning is mostly about political theology, but it's important to understand how political theology of Israel emerges out of the society that is much more comfortable with martial military metaphor and activity than our own is.
You know, every Israelite, every Able bodied male in an ancient society was expected to be prepared to take up arms to defend not only their own family, but the collective of families, whether that's the clan, the tribe, the nation, whatever. And now we live in a society where that's not the case at all.
And we've grown unaccustomed to and, and uncomfortable with some of the military implications of these texts. And that's part of what First Formation and First Forward is about, is re acclimatizing ourselves to what's already there in the Bible. The divine warrior should not be an offense to us.
The armor of God should not surprise us. And, and if we look with properly formed eyes, with properly and inquisitively formed questions, we should not shy away from the fact that, you know, the inaugural speeches of Jesus and Mary are calls to battle that God through Jesus, through the incarnation is going to war against the forces of evil in a way that we haven't seen before.
And so this is a really important text, not just because it's Christmas, but because it has to do with the very nature of Jesus. And all that being said, if I've kind of throwing some of y'all off. I, I don't do feasts for first formation. That's why this is advent four. It's not Christmas Eve.
It's not the nativity of our Lord. This is the recording for Advent four and the readings for Advent four. You know, I kind of leave the feasts, most of the feasts except for Sundays now to, you know, the leadery leaders who lead, the people who you know, and the, the ideas, the imaginative structures, that privilege, some of these cooler, clearer, you know, more central passages of the Bible. I leave that to other people because I think the scraps that fall from the table are just as, as nutritious and important and and integral to the tradition of Scripture and to our own faith. And it deserves just as much attention. I try to give it here.
So, yeah, I hope that's helpful. Check the show links for more from the training room. And thanks again for subscribing to First Forward.
