Today’s Scripture Reading (February
12, 2014): Jeremiah 4
There is a
bit of a misconception that the Hebrew Bible can be characterized by idea of the
law, and that the Christian Bible can be said to be characterized by the idea
of grace. The conception is that the premiere idea presented in the Hebrew
Bible is that of the bringing of the sacrifice into the temple, that it is just
this following of the rules that matters to God. And so the people of Israel
came faithfully (sometimes) to the temple to present their sacrifices and
fulfill the dictates of the Law of Moses.
But the
reality is twofold. The first thing that we often miss is that in this
sacrifice there is grace. The law in the Hebrew Bible is not devoid of the idea
of grave – it is a means to obtain it. Israel did not do as they were supposed
to do, they continually fell short of the behavior that God wished for them. It
started in the Garden when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and has
continued down through human history. What was needed was grace – and the
sacrifice of the Law of Moses was just a way of obtaining that required Grace.
The other
thing that we often miss is that the law was actually a response in and of
itself. The end that God desired of his children was never the law, rather, it
was a people who would willingly chase after what was good and right. Often we
want to ask why God would have placed the forbidden tree in the Garden in the
first place – but the answer is fairly easy. As God gifted us with the ability
to choose, we needed to have something that we could choose that was wrong –
enter the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the forbidden fruit. The
idea was that if we were to be worthy of God, we would need to be able to put
behind us the thoughts and affections of things that went against God. But we
failed the test, and the law entered into our experience as a way for us to
find our way back to God - as a way of proving on a small basis that we were
able to serve something beyond our own wants and desires.
The mark of
Israel was that the males would all be circumcised on the eighth day. It marked
them as a people that at least on some level wanted to chase after the things
of God. To the non-Abrahamic nation, circumcision was a detestable act. But for
the people of God, it was symbol of everything that they desired to be in God. But
circumcision was never supposed to be the end. It was simply part of the Law of
God, given through Moses, because of the way that the human race had failed.
What God really wanted, and had always wanted, was that we would learn to
choose well; life over death, light over darkness, God over whatever other
things this world might offer. And this is what God calls the circumcision of
the heart.
God is still
asking us to learn to choose well – asking us to circumcise our hearts - not
our bodies. But unlike the people of Jeremiah’s day, he has also given to us
his Spirit to help us with the task. With his help we are able to choose, life,
light and God. We really can choose well.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:
Jeremiah 5
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