So last night I fell asleep in the middle of the post. I was asleep for about an hour, and when I woke up my computer was almost out of power, which is why last night's post ended so abruptly. Anyway, on to the Bible reading.
Reading for March 5
Numbers 4:1-5:31
OK, so chapter 4 is all about the different groups of Levites. Remember, God set the Levites aside from the rest of the Israelites, as the first born and thus belonging to God. These different groups of Levites were responsible for the transit of different pieces of the tabernacle. At this point in the story, this group of Israelites were still fairly nomadic, so they were often moving from place to place. But the Tabernacle was such an important part of their culture and was essentially their only connection to God. So obviously, every time they moved, the Tabernacle had to move with them, so the Levites were in charge of carefully wrapping the items and safely transporting them from place to place.
Chapter 5 seems to get back into some of the Leviticus kind of stuff. God instructs his people on what to do when someone is "wronged" (its not specific about what that means), and also what to do about a wife who has been suspected of cheating on her husband. The punishment is the woman is found guilty of cheating is, get this, a curse.
I thought curses were only in 'pagan' religions, surely Christians don't belive in curses, but apparently we do. I don't think I've seen anything about curses before this line in the Bible, but given the fact that the idea of a "curse" has been so debunked that its used in science fiction movies, most often as a joke, hurts the credibility of the text.
Mark 12:18-37
The Pharisees once again try to trap Jesus in this section, actually a couple of times. First they quote Moses by talking about how if one man dies, his brother should marry his widow and continue the deceased family. The Pharisees propose this radical scenario where there are 7 brothers, all who die and all who leave the widow behind for the next brother. They then ask Jesus who this woman will be married to when she is resurrected.
First of all, where is this notion coming from that everone on earth will be resurrected at some point? Is that in some piece of text in the OT that I haven't gotten to yet? Possibly...
Anyway, Jesus tells them that that's not how resurrection works, and points to God referring to himself as " The God of Issac, Jacob and Abraham, which apparently means that God is the God of the living, not the dead.
Oh boy, my eyelids are already starting to fall. Let's see how far I can get.
Psalm 48:1-14
Wow, I am seriously sleepy. This is a praisey kind of psalm. Very pretty. Check it out.
Proverbs 10:26
26 As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes,
so is a sluggard to those who send him.
I like the imagery here.
Wow, I'm exhausted. Once again, cutting it short, I apologize. Good night...
For the Mark passage:
ReplyDeleteFirst, important distinction. It is not the Pharisees who are asking this question but the Sadducees, a sect of 1st century Judaism (must be distinguished from modern Judiasm) who believe, as state, "there is no resurrection." Will get into that later.
Second, I'll cut to the chase before going into the historical/biblical stuff, one of the big points of this passage is that the Sadducees were asking a question mainly to debunk Jesus because they realized him declaring Himself Messiah was a threat to the power structures of that time. And they were doing it by asking, well, the wrong questions. And the message to us is that we often as the wrong questions when trying to understand just how big and glorious God is.
What do I mean? The equivalent would be like (analogy stolen from N.T. Wright) if a kid was inquiring about sex, and the adult says "it's one of the most beautiful, pleasurable acts two people can have together," and the kid says "will there be chocolate in sex?" In other words, the kid has no idea in his experience what sex is like, other than the most pleasurable, beautiful thing he knows, which is chocolate.
Much in the same way, the Sadducees interrogate Jesus one what most 1st century Jews at that time were expecting as the "afterlife" -- the resurrection of all the dead in a new, perfect world, "fixed" from its original brokenness. And they did it by asking a legalistic, technical question based on a particular cultural custom of their time. The question boils down to -- "In your supposed perfect post-resurrection world, who would this guy be married to," -- which is like asking, "I don't believe in sex or think it will be that great because I don't understand how chocolate will fit in."
One parallel I can think of is like people who try to debunk God by asking philosophical questions that sound smart and are legalistic but don't get to the heart of the matter. I think of Sam Harris, who says things like (paraphrase) "Well, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says ask and you shall receive. So why don't we just conduct a simple experiment where 5,000 people ask for x. And if x doesn't come through, then Jesus is fake." This is stupid because God is not some thing to do experiments on but our living Creator that we are called to be in a relationship with. That's like if you did "experiments" on your wife to test if she's actually faithful to her vows. She "technically" said she would be faithful, but if she knew your intention was to "test her," she would be rightfully offended. Why would you expect God to respond to Sam Harris' stupid, offensive experiment?
But anyway, Jesus' response is rightfully "Listen Sadduccee, do you get how powerful and awe-inspiring and unimaginable God is? Your question is silly, like being stubborn about sex because there will be no chocolate is silly."
More coming in second comment!
Now, onto resurrection:
ReplyDeleteYes, in short, the Christian belief, is that everyone in the world will be raised from the dead. When we die we are "with Christ," whatever that should mean (what we call heaven), but at the last day of judgment, heaven and earth will be renewed, and there will be a new heaven and new earth, where we will all have new, resurrected PHYSICAL bodies, holy and perfect.
Unfortunately, they won't be like zombies or just skeletons. Boo-urns. It's not really scientifically explained how this will look, what with decomposition and urns and all. But, like the message in the verse, if God can create the whole world, I have faith he can deal with our bodies decomposing underground (ewww).
When Jesus says "I am the Resurrection," he, among a billion other things, is saying he is the first resurrected body anticipating the days when we will all have resurrected bodies. The Bible teaches that our bodies and all of God's creation is GOOD, but BROKEN (important to remember when you start getting into Paul's discussion of hating the "flesh"). God didn't just create a world, say "screw it, I'll just take people's souls and bring them to heaven", but that He loved His creation, and mourned that it turned away from Him. He promises one day to make everything right, which includes our total physical selves, and He does this through reconciling the world to Him, through Jesus Christ, who is our hope, our Redeemer, our Savior.
This fuller understanding of the Christian hope -- not just of the afterlife but of the, uhm, after-after life with our resurrected bodies and a restored world the way it was meant to always be -- I think also gives us an even greater imperative to be faithful Christians today. Our bodies are imperfect but meant to be signposts (N.T. Wright word) to what our bodies were meant to be and WILL be. This gives it extra significance in how we treat them in our sexual and moral lives, for examples.
This also means that things like social justice and caring for the environment aren't just sorta things you check off so you get to heaven or something. This creation is GOOD but BROKEN, and we were meant to be stewards of this land which is a gift from God.
Feeding poor people matters, because our bodies are not just shallow vessels for our souls, but full, beautiful creations of God that will one day be restored the way they were meant to be.
This hope of restoration is humbling because it reminds us in our hope that it is GOD who will heal this world and heal our brokenness in the future, NOT our own work. At the same time it is empowering because none of our good works are ever in vain, because God will somehow use all of our good works in the final restoration of his good but broken creation.
Hope that helped...