Today’s Scripture Reading (February
27, 2017): Jeremiah 9
A few year back a good friend of
mine struggled with a parishioner who wanted him to preach the entire Bible. That
is good advice for any Biblical speaker, but what made this battle so unusual was that this person
wanted to hear more about a God of hate and less about this God of love that
the pastor seemed to be promoting. The problem was that my friend did not believe in the allegations that were being made against the God that he
preached. His God was a God of love. And I have to admit that I agreed with
him.
One of the early heresies of the
church divided the personality of God. In the Christian Bible God was primarily thought to be a God of love. The
definition of God is love, a being who is concerned with the inner condition of the heart. But in the Hebrew
Bible, God seemed to be a God whose desires centered on the outward keeping of
the law (this idea is actually refuted
several times within the Hebrew Bible,
but often we don’t seem to be listening.) God is maybe not a God of hate
exactly, but a God who often seems to be far from love.
The early church took strides to
stamp out such teaching. God was God – he has never changed. He is the same
today as he has always been. The problem – the division of God – is really a perception thing on our part. In the
Hebrew Bible, God is sometimes who we expect him to be. In the oldest books of the
Bible, God is often seen as more violent
– but that was just who we understood and perceived that God needed to be in a
culture that was also very violent. As time went along, our perception of God
changes as God speaks to his prophets and reveals to them his essential nature.
For the Christian, the ultimate
revelation of God is found in Jesus
Christ. Jesus told his followers exactly who God was. He called him Father. He
explained that the law was just a means of revelation – that God wasn’t
concerned with just the actions of your life – he was concerned with
intentions, the reasons and the thoughts that lived behind our actions.
Jeremiah (from the Hebrew Bible)
maybe surprisingly picks up on this theme of Jesus. God’s punishment comes on
all of those that are only circumcised in
the flesh – in other words, God is displeased when all we do is keep the law.
His intention has always been that we would be a
people who are changed on the
inside. The beauty of Christian message is that Jesus came to help us change
internally. He wants to assist us to live out our lives in a way that flows
naturally from the core of our being. Am I there yet? No. It is journey – one
that we are all on, and one that brings pleasure to the God who we say we want
to serve.
Or as Jeremiah wants to say – we
need to become a people that have experienced a circumcision of the heart. It
is the only circumcision that really
matters.
Tomorrow’s Scripture
Reading: Jeremiah 10
No comments:
Post a Comment