🐮 Epiphany 3
Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31; Luke 4:14-21.
From the TRNG Room:
Reflection:
Good morning and welcome to first formation. This is brother Logan, Isaac broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. Our readings fro for the third Sunday after Tiffany. Come to us from Nehemiah eight. Psalm 19 first Corinthians 12 and Luke four. And the, um, the Nam Maya reading is important because it has or contains this kind of like second finding of the law. And it gives us an image of what the people of Israel. Uh, do. In worship. Like we talk a lot about worship.
Maybe you have like, Lights and lasers and music and stuff. And that's all great. Um, In Nehemiah talks about how they, they were weeping and they were encouraged not to weep.
Um, but rather to celebrate, to eat. You know, the fat, which is like the tasty part or what gives meat its flavor. And to drink sweet wine. Um, and to make sure that you send some of that good stuff to people who don't have anyone else to prepare it for them. Whether they're poor. We're in from. Uh, or isolated. Part of worship. Um, this, uh, this kind of constellation of activities around the word of God, the law of God. Um, is deliberately. Um, like pro-social I suppose it's not like just getting along with what you've got going. But in fact, to spread the good stuff, to make sure that everybody has some to make goodness contagious, kind of. Um, And it. The text does not seem to correct them when they bow their heads. And they keep their faces on the, to the ground. Um, And so it is. The Israelite practice. Um, to do these things. And there are a couple of words I want to point out. And in Nehemiah before I get to Luke four. Um, in Nam Maya, when people could hear. With understanding it's both men and women.
Um, it's not, you know, they're not segregated it either other than to identify that they're both able to hear and understand the names the time, the first day of the seventh month. And the water gate I believe is in Jerusalem. I don't know which gate it is though. Um, and in the presence of all those who could understand. So maybe not small children with no moral compass or sense of self or identity yet. But all able bodied, able minded people, whether male or female, it doesn't mention ages, but it does say who can understand. And so that seems to make up the bulk of the people of God at the time. Um, and when they read from the book from the law of God, they did so with interpretation that gave the sense. So that the people could understand the reading. And interpretation.
I mean, I don't have my like word study Bible in front of me. But it suggests to me that the interpretation was deliberately left. For those who read. Because it's an ancient Hebrew. They did not record vowels. The Mesa Reddick text. The oldest complete manuscript we have that exists. Is the first two record vowels. Before that before Hebrew scribes. I don't know, we're able to preserve. Holy scripture. Uh, successfully. Um, they did not record the vowels. And many words, root words, usually verbs. Um, can go one of many different ways.
For example, L H M you know, the transliterated LHM could be Um, low hem. Uh, uh, and either of those are two different things. Um, is to devour. And to devour without. Being satisfied that could mean war as in mil Hama. Uh, or it could mean. Uh, uh, another is one way of describing a prostitute. Uh, somebody who sold their body for money because their body could never be satisfied. Um, they were called Zana, but also l'Homme. And if you switch around the vowels again, you can get low hem, which is fighter. L H M but fighter, the low hem does not appear in the Bible there.
Israelites, as in all the battles they get into and violence, they do, they are never called those who fight. Um, and the interpretation that is left open with the, the example I give is LHM that's interpretation. When it says the sense it may mean, or may imply or suggest the vowels. So every time we get together, there's a set. Uh, texts.
There's a set. Script. Within which you are allowed as a worshiping community. To, to draw from the text interpretations based on your own context. And that has been standard practice up until I, the, the ninth century is the earliest manuscript we have in Hebrew with valves. Um, and that I want to kind of play off of interpretation and understanding. Because we sometimes in the modern era, you know, we have every single versus numbered. And like every chapter is broken down, even get like subtitles.
So you you're instructed what that scripture is going to like do for you or whatever. And that's kind of not the point. Well, it isn't, it isn't. Whoever's putting these subtitles in and deciding where these versification. Things go. Is giving you their interpretation, their understanding, and that's fine. But that isn't hard and fast.
That is not, God has not given one denomination. One person. One, um, institution or organism. The right to tell others, this is right and that's wrong. The may strategy text came well after the church had already been pretty damn well established. Um, and so to get back to the Bible, as Jesus reads it, or as the Messiah reads it, Um, Requires that we do some of that interpretation on our own from our own understanding whether women or men, as long as you have understanding, as long as you are morally competent, which all creation is all human creatures.
I think our. Um, it is up to us to draw from a.
S a minimal text. To infuse it with meaning from our own context. So long as it doesn't kind of go too far. Um, and I say like too far, like low hem, never appears in the, like the, the vowels in the Mesa Reddick text. They never ascribe any of those three. Uh, continence. Though the correct verbs to make the word fighter. So we turned to Luke four.
This is Jesus's inaugural address. His mother, Mary has an inaugural address as well in Luke one. The Magnificant. And in it, he draws from Isaiah 60. Isaiah 60 is a part of a larger or a small part of a larger passage. That spans from about 58 to 64. On, and all of that is kind of generally having to do with. Gods. Intervention in creation on behalf of the oppressed using. I'll say force. To include violence.
So for example, in 59, 17, we get one of the strongest and earliest forms. Of the armor of God. Uh, which we eventually become. You know, the breastplate of righteousness. The helmet of, of justice or salvation. Um, I don't have Isaiah 59 from me right now, but it leads into Isaiah 60. And right before Jesus reads or the text preceding, it is about. God being on the battlefield, looking around and seeing no one to come to rescue. The captives, the poor. The ICMA LOTOS the people who are taken by spear point is the word for captives here in the new Testament. So it's not just slaves.
It is. Ill gotten war slaves. Prisoners of war that are. And in need of, uh, uh, salvation. Um, and he says the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. And in the, uh, One thing I pointed out recently, I may have even being been the last week. Uh, last week's reflection. Um, nowhere in the new Testament is anybody. And who is a part of the way or the followers of Joshua, the Christ.
Nobody is ever anointed with oil. The people who were probably anointed with oil would have been the high priest and the priestly cast, the Sadducees and the temple, uh, the Jerusalem temple economy. Maybe pilot, if that was also something that, uh, procurators did. Maybe, uh, Octavian who was then called Augustus and the first emperor. But Jesus was never anointed with oil. He was baptized John baptized. And other people were baptized by John. And Joshua, the Christ begins baptizing. But nothing.
The only place where we get oil. Uh, off the top of my head is when the woman with this huge alabaster jar breaks it to anoint Jesus's feet. Not as head with anointing oil, but his feet. Because feet are what. You know, get you around. Um, And so Jesus is a nog funeral and G and his mom's inaugural. I'll put the link to that training room post on the show notes. Uh, they both draw from military imagery. You cannot understand your way. The Hebrew God and, and their Messiah, Joshua, the Christ, the anointed one. If you don't understand the military, if you don't understand. The moral. Complexity that we call. Military violence. Um, that I think a lot of people will disagree and I stand by it.
If you disagreed and you want to debate me, let me know, because I'm confident I will. Put you to shame. Um, If we try and take the military out of the Bible. We get this kind of. Juan. I don't know.
You would be taking away. Half of church tradition and probably three quarters of the Bible. If you aren't willing to interpret. Um, and understand military service and you need it to be gone from your Bible. Um, And as I party. Uh, you know, partake the next three years of the liturgical cycle, I will be showing you using the Sunday readings. Exactly how that's the case, how we cannot get rid of military service without getting rid of not just Joshua the Christ, but God. Yourway who is called a man of God in one of the oldest sections of the Hebrew Bible in Exodus. Um, or Deborah, you had the, the oldest. Written section of the old Testament judges four and five. If you want, if you can't. Turn to face violence and those who do it. You have not faced God. If you want to have God without. Moral complications. You will have a false God and you'll give it the name.
Jesus. You'll give it the name, God, whatever you want, but you cannot know Yourway. Or you always incarnation. Without knowing your military neighbor.
