Greetings!
Peace, mercy, and grace be with you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
What a difference a week can make! Our weather has become considerably cooler and more tolerable. Nevertheless, the large wildfires persist in the mountains east of Los Angeles. They are not growing as quickly as before, yet they are not being controlled as quickly as one might expect. May God preserve life wherever it is in danger.
Sunday, September 15, 2024
The Voice 14.37: The Second Passover | Numbers 9:1-10:10
The Israelites observe the second Passover while on Mount Horeb/Sinai. They had been there nine months: it is as if the “mixed multitude” which fled from Egypt “gestated” and was able to be “birthed” into a more disciplined, organized nation of Israel with YHWH and His Tabernacle in its midst. All had seemingly been going well throughout Numbers 1:1-10:10; Israel has faithfully observed all YHWH had commanded them. As they were about to resume their wilderness journey, there was reason for confidence and hope.
We know how it would turn out, of course. But such was not yet.
Lesson: Right Hand of Power | Psalm 110:1-7 | Hope in Psalm
Outline | Podcast | Conversation
David’s son would be his Lord; God would swear to this Lord an eternal decree of being a priest according to the pattern of Melchizedek forever.
Yet we can profitably understand Psalm 110 as its original hearers in the First Temple would have understood it: a kingly psalm expressing the confidence, or at least aspirational hope, of YHWH giving the Davidic king victory over his enemies. We can only imagine how bitter that would seem for Israel as the defeats mounted and especially in and after the exile. We can easily understand how later Israelites would look to Messianic fulfillment of Psalm 110 and victory over the pagan oppressor.
Jesus would become the Priest after the order of Melchizedek through His life and offering in death; God would raise Him from the dead and He would ascend to the Father and sit at His right hand.
But this is no call to violence. Jesus will indeed gain the victory over His enemies, judging all by the Word which proceeded from His mouth. We await the final defeat of the last enemy, death, so we might share in the resurrection of life.
This is not my photo, but is by Brandon Yoshizawa. He most likely took the photo a few days ago from a local park west of where I live while facing east; our house is somewhere between the photographer and the downtown skyline. The Bridge fire burns in the San Gabriel Mountains even further to the east. For reference, it is about nine miles from the photographer to downtown, and another twenty to thirty miles from downtown to the San Gabriel Mountains.
I feature this photo this week because it presents the surreal reality of Los Angeles during wildfire season. The city perseveres as it seemingly always does, yet in the distance a wildfire rages, an apocalypse for those who live up there. For everyone else, things go on as “normal.”
On the Internets
‘Haitians are not eating pets’: Springfield faith leaders stand with embattled migrants
In an already dark and depressing election cycle, the bigotry and hostility projected upon the Haitian population of the United States has been revealing in its ugliness.
A good number of the Haitians in America are Christians. They have settled in America legally. The employers in Springfield, Ohio, seem quite pleased with the Haitian workers, for they do their work diligently and well. If anything, such is quite a judgment on the rest of the population of the area.
The rumors about Haitians eating pets derived from distortions based on experiences from other parts of Ohio and then projected upon the Haitian population were first advanced in town meetings by people with known Neo-nazi associations, and then were amplified by a vice presidential candidate who later admitted it was a fabrication, and finally made part of an incoherent, wandering response of a presidential candidate during the debate. At no point has there been actual, substantive evidence for this, although people have been trying very hard to force or contrive it into existence.
Yet this moment has certainly proven a catalyst for many to reveal their hearts and minds when it comes to Haitians. I have seen too many Christians willing to believe the worst about Haitians on account of all kinds of bigoted stereotypes, and of course without any interrogation about why those stereotypes might exist.
As usual, there is a history here. The Haitian Revolution was the most successful slave revolt in the history of North and South America. It struck deep fear in the United States and its slaveholders, and both France and the United States have maintained incredibly harsh and punishing foreign relations and policy with Haiti.
Without a doubt Haiti is incredibly impoverished, even more so than their Caribbean peers, but there are policy reasons which go a long way to explain it. Yes, voudou has a history in Haiti, but it does elsewhere in the Caribbean as well. So why are white American Christians so easily and quickly willing to believe Haitians in the United States would prey upon local pets and maintain syncretic beliefs, maybe featuring some Christianity, but certainly a lot of voudou?
This says a lot less about Haitian immigrants and much more about such white American Christians. And none of it looks like loving your neighbor and glorifying and honoring Jesus in how we consider and treat others around us. A lot of people should be quite ashamed of themselves; unfortunately, such people most often have proven themselves incapable of embarrassment and shame, as has become evident over the past eight years.
Polyamorists look for their place in church as the practice loses its taboo
The “culture war” framework and approach regarding everything is damaging for so many reasons. One of the more ironic and ultimately sad reasons involves how legitimate critiques do not get heard in the midst of all the catastrophism on offer.
One of the strongest legitimate critiques of the push for Christians and churches to affirm the validity of same sex sexual relationships in Christian contexts asked where it would end. Granted, many wanted to suggest pedophilia or bestiality would become the next affirmed forms of sexuality, and that argument did not well understand modern conceptions of sexuality in terms of consent and fulfillment. But many, not being prophets or sons of prophets, did “prophesy” polyamory would be the next form of sexual practice which would get validated. Many who wished to affirm same sex sexual relationships attempted to dismiss or deny this claim, but it has clearly been vindicated.
And the logic now advanced for polyamory sounds a lot like the logic used for same sex sexual relationships. And this quote is as accurate a distillation of the modern sexual ethic as anything:
“I want to have a marriage where I have Christ-like values…I don’t think that consensual, meaningful, thoughtful sex is a sin in any context.”
I recognize how challenging it is to read what is presented in the article without giving full vent to one’s moral revulsion. Attempting to justify a throuple by appealing to the perichoretic relational unity among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is its own special form of blasphemy.
Yet, as with same sex sexual relationships, expressing moral revulsion, on its own, will be interpreted, understood, and relativized as the result of one’s social and religious enculturation. And polyamory proves much more challenging to explicitly condemn from the witness of Scripture than same sex sexual behavior. We can point to how Solomon was condemned for having so many wives in 1 Kings 11:1-10, but the concern was his seduction to commit idolatry more than having those wives. Elkanah was not condemned for having Hannah and Penninah as wives in 1 Samuel 1:1-2, nor was David with all his wives; in fact, God Himself said He gave David those wives in 1 Samuel 12:8. The best textual arguments against polyamory feature Paul’s insistence for each man to have his own wife, and vice versa, in 1 Corinthians 7:1-4, and the expectation of an elder to be a “one woman man” in 1 Timothy 3:2.
Yet I would make strongest appeal to the insufficiency of the modern sexual ethic and the importance of covenantal relational unity to critique and condemn polyamory. Sexual behavior should be consensual, meaningful, and thoughtful. But a good part of what makes that sexual behavior meaningful and thoughtful is the confession it involves two becoming one flesh. Sexual behavior is not merely physical; it is emotional, mental, and spiritual, and I dare say relational as well. Jesus rightly appealed to the beginning in Matthew 19:4-6: Adam and Eve are paradigmatic, and ever since it has been intended for a man and a woman to leave father and mother, cling to one another, and become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). For Israelite hardness of heart, Jesus declared, Moses allowed for divorce for any reason (Matthew 19:8); I would extend that same line of logic and thought to cover concubinage and polygamous relationships allowed under that covenant. But such was not the intention from the beginning.
The language is quite telling in these relationships: a person will have a spouse and a partner. Clearly the relationship with the “partner” is not reckoned at the same level as the relationship with the “spouse.” And, by necessity, there is no true perichoretic relational unity in these relationships: the two men (or two women) are not having any such relations, and we would argue could never truly become one flesh even if they had an intention to have such a relationship. Instead, the two men, or two women, are in their own ways both catering to the one woman (or man), who has thus become the fulcrum of the polyamorous unit.
All partners in a polyamorous unit will not be able to truly know each other and become one flesh with each other; such is why in Christ there has never been warrant or justification for polyamorous relationships, and why we can rightly conclude polyamory represents deviation from the sexual norm and standard upheld by Jesus in Matthew 19:4-6. If people want to go out and live in that way in the world, they, like we, will all have to stand before the judgment seat of God in Christ. But one cannot imagine one can live in a polyamorous context and in so doing glorify God in Christ through the Spirit.
Book Reviews
The book generally understood as pseudepigraphic known as 1 Enoch represents quite a challenge for us as Christians. I have written an overview of 1 Enoch as well as doing a deeper dive into the conundrum presented by 1 Enoch. In short: it purports to be the testimony and visions of Enoch, the seventh from Adam; at least Jude and Peter, and likely Jesus and Paul also, have been influenced by its understanding of fallen angels; it is hard to uphold a full canonical argument for 1 Enoch, but the witness of the earliest Christians about it make it hard to fully dismiss it, either.
So there is great benefit in considering 1 Enoch from the eyes of those who have preserved it for us, and who did make space for it in their canon. To this end Bruk Ayele Asale has provided us with a great resource with 1 Enoch as Christian Scripture: A Study in the Reception and Appropriation of 1 Enoch in Jude and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahǝdo Canon (affiliate link).
The author provides what he advertised: he explored what we know about the origins of 1 Enoch; he discussed how it came down to us and in what forms; he discussed its interpretive history in its own right and in terms of Jude and Peter; he considered how it was received and understood in Judaism and early Christianity; he described how it ultimately lost complete favor in the majority of the world of Christendom. He then featured its presence in the life and faith of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahǝdo Church (EOTC): he provided a basic introduction to the EOTC for the rest of us, its origins, heritage, and history; and he considered how 1 Enoch influenced its faith, as well as potential forms of influence on the Evangelical churches of Ethiopia.
In the end he perceived more of an indirect influence: less about the substance of 1 Enoch and much more about its angelology would make itself felt in the theology and life of the EOTC. And, of course, we can only speak of 1 Enoch as a whole text thanks to the fact the Ethiopians valued it and maintained a text of it to this day.
This is a highly recommended resource regarding 1 Enoch.
A big part of our problem in America is not about what we know and with what we are familiar; it’s how disconnected we are from the lived experience and reality of others. The only way to counteract this is to be willing to listen and truly hear from the experiences of others.
Sarah Smarsh has exposed and expressed herself and her family, the experience of living as poor, working-class men, women, and children in Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (affiliate link).
The author writes as to an unborn daughter she often considered and thought about regarding what she would have experienced if born in a predicament similar to the author’s. The author is born in Kansas toward the end of the time of the “family farm” to people who worked the land for generations but whose children were now turning to find work in cities. Her life is constantly in and out of the Wichita urban and rural areas. She chronicled three generations of her family’s life: often the story of men who work hard but often do not have enough, and generally are abusive; the women who endure it for a time, can often find freedom from the abuse, but still constrained by poverty and thus who often find themselves back with abusive men or with family. Constant movement and a lack of settlement; constantly changing schools. The author threw herself into her academic studies and was able to overcome generational cycles by graduating high school without having a child; she went on to college and well beyond and “made it” into the American middle class.
But she does not spend her time judging her origins; she describes them all, and especially their pathologies, as the result of being poor. Their poverty was a choice - not theirs personally, but the choice of everyone else who prospered thanks to their efforts. As the author well attested, it was not as if she or her family members did not “work hard”: quite the contrary. But they were part of that “forgotten” world in the heartland, flyover country, the areas many in more comfortable surroundings look down upon with derision. It was always easier to blame her folk somehow as opposed to seeing the tragedy of how people in her family could work as hard as they did in the “land of opportunity,” the richest country on earth, but only to barely eke out a living.
I cannot personally relate to the author’s experience because I am at least one generation removed from it. Nevertheless, I have known the kind of people who populate the author’s life and story, and the story truly did resonate.
Sure, people in poverty often make less than wise decisions. But everyone does; the difference is how many of us who have the benefits and privilege which attend to some level of generational wealth find ourselves with resources and support systems which cushion those blows, and many who are in poverty do not share in that same privilege. But by the grace of God there would go most of us.
What we find awkward and uncomfortable remains what stares at us in the face in works like these: there are a lot of people who are working very hard in America - far harder than most of us - and the system has been designed to work to their continual disadvantage so they will never really get ahead. And the rest of us, directly or indirectly, benefit and profit from it.
We can, and should, do far better regarding the working poor. It need not be patronizing. But a stronger support system could mean the world for the incipient Sarah Smarshes of our country. And our nation would be a better place for it.
May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirits.
Ethan