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Tag: Bible

  • Exodus on bringing about peace

    An image of a door opening as a metaphor for bringing peace as told in the book of Exodus.

    The book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible is a sobering look at the difficulty in bringing about peace. Starting with a new king, to heading into the wilderness, nothing is easy for these ancient people.

    And here we are over 2,000 years later still seeking peace. Maybe walking humbly alongside them in their struggles, we can see more clearly our own.

    What Exodus shows is needed to bring peace

    The Bible reminds us of this simple truth. What one sees and hears changes the possibility of peace. Whether ruler or minion, God or mortal. And Exodus, the first story in the Bible about empire, is a master class.

    There is a new king in Egypt as the book of Exodus opens. And the first thing he does is to tell the Egyptians to see.

    “Look, [says the king to the Egyptians], the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we.” Exodus 1:8

    And this is where the story begins. Not with the miracles or the plagues but with the simple choices we make about what we hear and see.

    Pharaoh tells the Egyptians to see a threat by focusing their sight on the Israelites’ growing numbers. And immediately the Egyptians “set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor.”

    There is fear and violence, not peace.

    Close your eyes and block your ears

    Bringing peace to Egypt will elude the pharaoh. Hope is lost. Fear and violence grow.

    But the Lord, hidden from sight, has heard and seen. And the Lord says to Moses,

    “The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.” Exodus 3:9

    As the story unfolds, you will see what happens when rulers do not rule wisely. Their eyes and ears blocked by the fear of losing power, or, trying to gain it. You will see how difficult it is for their subjects to see and hear for themselves.

    You will also see the Israelite people turn to an unseen power as they sink lower into powerlessness.

    For when you are powerless, miracles and signs that a force unseen is on your side corrects that imbalance of power.* It makes visible the power of the unseen for those who plug their ears and shut their eyes to reality.

    Miracles and signs are utilitarian, amazingly, in order that all God’s people are at the table. Pharaoh and slave.

    Bringing peace is a journey in Exodus

    I did not expect Exodus to so richly tell of bringing peace through the simple acts of seeing and hearing. Nor did I expect to see miracles in a new way. There is so much to experience here. But it needs to be an experience shared.

    Only when people with different world views sit down to speak of what we see and hear can peace come. So come, grab a group of friends to journey through this story of Exodus. You will travel a lot of ground, politically, personally and theologically. So, when you finish Chapter 15, rest for a while. As did the Israelites. For this is still the beginning for those ancients and we moderns. The road to peace is long.

    First though, remember, as the Israelites remembered, of what must happen to bring peace. To listen carefully to the voice of the Lord and do what is right in the Lord’s sight. “For I am the Lord who heals you.”

    In the last verse of the fifteenth chapter of Exodus, we are reminded of the universal desire for peace. We catch a glimpse of the garden in Eden.

    Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there by the water. Exodus 15:27

    We too will catch glimpses of peace, even if briefly before journeying on, when we turn to look towards it together.

    Peace be with you.

    *A loving shout out to a faithful book group discussing Yangsze Choo’s book, The Fox Wife, and the author’s thoughts on writing it. Thank you all for helping me see.

    Postscript: Bringing hope for peace

    Check out More Perfect, a non-profit partnership formed as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

    It may bring you hope. It did me. Here is their statement.

    “At a moment marked by dysfunction and division, More Perfect – a campaign to align America around a shared vision for democratic renewal – is our reminder that our finest moments come when we set big, bold, long-term goals that capture our imagination and then rally across our differences to achieve them.”

  • Governing the world

    A microscopic image of a Tardigrade, a microscopic animal, making up the world that we seek to govern.
    Credit: Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa, Corinna Schulze & Ricardo Neves / Nikon Small World.* Image from Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Ocean Find Your Blue website. This image of a marine tardigrade (or “water bear”), taken at 40x zoom, was named an Image of Distinction in the Nikon Small World 2013 photomicrography competition.

    There’s a lot of talk about governing the world. And what it takes to govern. And who should be doing it. So let’s go back to the beginning and explore a primer on sovereignty, the Bible. In particular the Books of Samuel where as the great Hebrew Bible translator, Robert Alter, says,

    “…the anonymous Hebrew writer [of the Samuel books], drawing on what he knew or thought he knew of the portentous historical events, has created this most searching story of men and women in the rapid and dangerous current of history that still speaks to us, three thousand years later.” p. 176 The Hebrew Bible, Vol. 2

    “All together now”

    Recognize the fella in the photo above? I didn’t but lots of people do. It is an extraordinary animal, the Tardigrade, because of its ability to survive in extreme environments. Most no bigger than one millimeter long, living in our waters in almost every habitat on earth.

    But why lead with a photo of a Tardigrade if talking about governing the world? Because we are silly, and need reminding of what really the world is.

    We are silly to think that imaginary lines, the borders between countries, these human-made squiggles, are the world. And that because we thought them up we can redraw, undraw them and call that “governing the world.” Silly.

    The world is everything in it. Somehow working together, starting with the very, very small. From the Tardigrade to the volcano. From the earth to the stars we see in the sky. And beyond.

    We moderns look ever deeper with our microscopes and telescopes seeing whole new worlds, and so all the more humbled by the wondrous workings of the universe. Or at least we should be humbled.

    But let’s get back to our little blue planet.

    Where do we start?

    The story in the First and Second Books of Samuel takes a fabulous romp through the ups and downs of governing. There’s the weak priest Eli with corrupt sons, gods fighting in the secrecy of darkness, Samuel the king maker, and of course David. Flawed and larger than life, slaying the giant Goliath, the cat and mouse chase with King Saul, the deep love of Saul’s son Jonathan, a dancing David and pissed off wife Micah. Donkeys, oxen, a cow. And then Bathsheba, lots of battles, strategies, avenges and alliances. Ending with King David’s reckoning with God. All that and more in less than 60 pages.

    And it all begins with a woman. A woman and a loving husband unable to have a child together. The woman is Hannah. Her husband’s name is Elkanah.

    No amount of force, strength or power will bring them a child. We cannot say, “I want a child” and know a child will be given to us. Hannah knew this just as we do.

    The Bible as a primer on governing

    To govern, according to Merriam-Webster, is “to exercise continuous sovereign authority over.” This we do not have over life. So Hannah prays. Her prayer is not about magical thinking. It is about knowing, because she is living it, that we do not govern life.

    Following the birth of their son Samuel, Hannah again prays. In this prayer she is no longer asking but telling. She knows that the real world is upside down from what she is told is reality. She names that upside down-ness in her prayer, most succinctly said in verse 2:9 in 1 Samuel:

    “…for not by might does one prevail.”

    So, this story of Samuel’s begins at the beginning of ordinary lives where it is all too obvious that authority does not come by power over another. With that truth established, the books go on from there, “searching” as Alter says.

    Searching not by means of a rule book, but instead, a storyteller with a carpetbag that spills from it the most marvelous characters in the most fabulous circumstances. All for the sake of looking for someone to govern wisely.

    Talk on governing the world

    Strength, force, power. Leaders often say these are needed to govern.Three thousand years ago as now. Here is Stephen Miller, a policy adviser to the United States President recently talking to Jake Tapper of CNN about governing.

    “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”

    Poppycock. We have the two books of Samuel in front of us to explore together what the real world is and what happens when leaders think they have authority over it. When they are not humble in the face of reality.

    I would love to have Jake and Stephen and you and I sit down and read these books of the Bible together. But short of that, go and have a Samuel Night with your friends. Let the books of Samuel speak to you. I recommend serving Humble Pie to set the right mood.

    Governing the real world

    Before sitting down to consider the real forces that make this world thrive, which of course is the purpose of all governing, watch this short video of life in a drop of water. (Sorry, no Tardigrades but there is another tiny invertebrate who shows up – Rotofers.)

    The Bible often sets up a teaching moment by placing the story in a real life setting. For this discussion of governing the world, what better place for us moderns than dropping into the world of water through a microscope. Immerse yourselves. This is where life on earth begins.

    Reading further

    For all you parents of young children out there, consider a recent picture book about Tardigrades, The Three Little Tardigrades. And for adults – I just started reading Christopher Brown’s new book, A Natural History of Empty Lots. So very pertinent to this discussion and so delightful to read.