On the prominent who fall

 I am reminded of a 4 year old jumping on the bed - Look at me, Look at me, Look at me, me, me. How innocent. I am also reminded of a verse, Romans 2:24 - the usual 'shortest distance' problem in my thoughts. 

I have come through a lot as I am sure you all have. No one is short of temptation even after learning to submit to the love of God. We can all name the shared histories of abuse and subsequent confusion. Why did the Jews get such bad and good press from Paul? Your fault that the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles! And the Scriptures are for our learning. Paul can't have it both ways. Does sweet and bitter water come from the same spring? 

Am I going to say this about Barth or Vanier or the endless abuse scandals in institutions? 

I have not studied the NT for a long time, but no one in the churches is much interested in my study of TNK. Why should I bother doing a concordant translations if there is no power (for me) in it? The individual (evangelist?) seeks power. I knew Benny Hinn personally before his ministries took off. I have no idea if he had a history of abuse but he sure learned to abuse the privilege he found. Yet when I quizzed him on his experience of the Holy, I got a zero impression that there was any content to his emerging charisma. Hey - I was only a kid myself, a charismatic tenor c 25. Now 50 years later, after my own foolishness has worked itself out through a doubled troubled time since, do I care about BH or any of the other greatly noised evangelists of the time? The ones who filled stadia...

I am sorry to say that even those I must have learned something from, John Stott and Jim Packer, (yes and even Barth) and more recently, Tom Wright, have faded / fade in my mind, because they deliver to me what Bucky Fuller would have called a second-hand God. Barth at least has the effect of reality since he does not just sell answers. And none of the others has fallen, just faded away from my focus.

For a year now, I have not partaken of the Eucharist. But we are all in the same boat. Like everyone, I am dependent on the fine music emerging from some special places. But even before the pandemic I was silently furious at the lack of depth in our liturgies, even though I benefited from the sacramental grace - so much so that I still count it efficacious after a year's deprivation. But the question arises in this free association, what is this one body in which we participate? Is it all just mental, social or artistic stimulation? personal growth? As someone quipped recently, is it that Jesus said "I have come that you may have sincere and heartfelt emotions, and have them more abundantly"?

The Psalms deal with violence and we purge our lectionaries. Do they deal with financial and sexual sin? with real abuse of power? Lord, how multiplied are my enemies. Why have we (in the churches) neglected our major source of character formation? Are my enemies part of my own body? 

I just looked up Moab, the classic enemy of Israel, the child of the elder daughter of Lot, to test those born of incest after the destruction of their home city. "The potentates of Moab, trembling will hold them fast. Woe to you, Moab. You are perished, people of Kemosh. He has given his sons who were secure, and his daughters into captivity, to the king of the Amorites, Sihon...." 

It will not surprise you that Moab, the land where the words of the covenant were cut, where Moses died, where the children of Israel wept for Moses 30 days, has a huge history in TNK. The sworn enemy of Israel, these children of Lot were not to enter into the congregation of Israel to the tenth generation, yet Ruth the Moabite is the grandmother of the kings of Israel. It is a place of foolishness on the part of the chosen: And Israel settled in Shittim, and the people started to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. 

And later, Moab, under the plenteous Eglon, is overlord of Israel. In the days of the Judges, Moab is used as a foil to Israel, and later as a place where David took refuge briefly, and who became his servants after he became king. And Solomon had lots of wives and concubines, among who were Moabites. 

Their history in the books of kings is extensive. Under Ahab, "Meisha, the king of Moab, ... paid tribute to the king of Israel, a hundred thousand butting lambs, and a hundred thousand rams, wool." After Ahab's death he rebelled. Elisha, inspired by music (!) prophesied the victory of Israel and Judah over Moab, for the sake of Jehoshaphat. 

And Isaiah pleads: Let my banished reside with you, Moab.. Be a hiding place for them from the face of a devastator... Therefore my inner parts for Moab murmur like a harp, and my entrails, for the house walls of earthenware.

How much more complex it gets for devastated Moab, Over all the housetops of Moab, and in her plazas, everyone wailing, for I have broken Moab as a vessel. There is no delight in him. An oracle of Yahweh. So Moab will be a laughingstock and a dismay to all round about him. For I will bring to her, to Moab, the year of their visitation. Yet I will turn the captivity of Moab in the aftermath of the days, an oracle of Yahweh.

And in Moab I will do judgments, "and they will know that I am Yahweh". Moab as Sodom will be and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, steward to nettles and salt-digs, a desolation for evermore.

Neither the NT nor TNK is so self-centered as the innocent 4 year old. Humans wrote the Bible and it is astonishingly full of self criticism. It is good that we should expose our own errors. God's very soul is put into our hands - grubby, power-seeking, sensationalistic, self-protective, sometimes innocent hands. I was reading today that the Bible is God-breathed. Fire from the dragon's mouth. Some breath.