Bible Tuesday for Sunday, August 24, 2014

Isaiah 51:1-6

Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness,
you that seek the Lord.
Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were dug.
2 Look to Abraham your father
and to Sarah who bore you;
for he was but one when I called him,
but I blessed him and made him many.
3 For the Lord will comfort Zion;
he will comfort all her waste places,
and will make her wilderness like Eden,
her desert like the garden of the Lord;
joy and gladness will be found in her,
thanksgiving and the voice of song.

4 Listen to me, my people,

and give heed to me, my nation;
for a teaching will go out from me,
and my justice for a light to the peoples.
5 I will bring near my deliverance swiftly,
my salvation has gone out
and my arms will rule the peoples;
the coastlands wait for me,
and for my arm they hope.
6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
and look at the earth beneath;
for the heavens will vanish like smoke,
the earth will wear out like a garment,
and those who live on it will die like gnats;*
but my salvation will be forever,
and my deliverance will never be ended.

This passage of Isaiah is written to the same audience as last week’s, the Israelites already returned and still returning from captivity in Babylon. Not all of those folks did pursue righteousness or trust in Yahweh anymore, so the prophet is not speaking to all Israel in this passage.

When the Israelites retuned home, they found very much the same thing as the Japanese Americans did when they returned to their homes and businesses from the internment camps, at the end of WWII. While in captivity they yearned to just get home and back to normal, when they returned to their houses and businesses, most had very unpleasant surprises. They found squatters or worse yet, foreclosures. They found their property had been looted and nothing was left. Some had very loving neighbors and friends who kept things safe in their absence, but not many. The Israelites returned to Israel after a much longer absence to find Jerusalem in ruins and the Temple desecrated. The outlying towns and countryside fared no better. Their cry to God was for safety, help, hope, and assurance. To these yearnings and lament, the prophet urges the faithful to turn to God, who created them and promised them through the covenant with Abraham and Sarah. God assures them, “my salvation is forever.” Against all contrary evidence, their faithful God is with them.

Psalm 138

I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart;
before the “gods” I will sing your praise.
2 I will bow down toward your holy temple
and will praise your name
for your unfailing love and your faithfulness,
for you have so exalted your solemn decree
that it surpasses your fame.
3 When I called, you answered me;
you greatly emboldened me.

4 May all the kings of the earth praise you, Lord,
when they hear what you have decreed.
5 May they sing of the ways of the Lord,
for the glory of the Lord is great.

6 Though the Lord is exalted, he looks kindly on the lowly;
though lofty, he sees them from afar.
7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble,
you preserve my life.
You stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes;
with your right hand you save me.
8 The Lord will vindicate me;
your love, Lord, endures forever—
do not abandon the works of your hands.

This psalm is attributed to David. However, the temple did not exist under David but the “tent of meeting” which sheltered the ark of the covenant did.

While David is much earlier than the prophets of Isaiah, this psalm uses the same metaphor as the above Isaiah passage. Whereas God admonishes the Israelites to return their gaze to their source of life, God, in this passage David makes the same claim to God.

“With your right hand you save me.” Many years ago I was in Budapest and had the opportunity to visit St. Stephen’s Cathedral during its displaying of holy relics. King Stephen, in Hungarian “Ishtvan karoly”, later canonized, was baptized in a river in the Carpathian Basin on either Christmas Day 1000, or New Year’s Day 1001, and immediately crowned king. He declared all Hungary to be Christian that day and was himself, devout. On display in his cathedral the day I visited was his mummified right hand and wrist, the symbolic seat of his power. The right hand as the symbolic seat of power is an image present in this psalm and throughout the Old and New Testaments. Even the creeds of the Christian faith state Jesus will be “seated at the right hand of God.”

Romans 12:1-8

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters,* by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual* worship. 2Do not be conformed to this world,* but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.*

3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching;8the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Paul’s concepts here, while somewhat awkwardly worded due to the Greek/English translation, look so great and sound so good. But, how to practice them?!!! Oh that we might know with clarity what is the will of God! How often we pray for it and yet feel as if we proceed “sinning boldly” as opposed to confidently proceeding in God’s will.

As we read only Paul’s side of this correspondence, we only guess to what Paul is responding. Starting at verse 3, it appears that the congregation in Rome has develop some sort of hierarchy of spiritual gifts and abilities. Here again, as he does throughout his writing, Paul emphasizes that we are all of equal status in our service to God because we are all part of the same body, the body of Christ.

Matthew 16:13-20

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ 14And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ 15He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ 16Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah,* the Son of the living God.’ 17And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter,* and on this rock* I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ 20Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was* the Messiah.*

First, please allow me to again address the “messianic secret” as told to the readers in verse 20 of this passage. All four of the gospels to one degree or another, tell the readers/hearers that Jesus warns those around him to “not tell anyone that he was the Messiah.” What a strange thing to do when Jesus’ whole life is about proclaiming that the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near in the flesh, his own! Throughout the ages, scholars have widely speculated, the most common conclusion being that Jesus was trying to bide time to ensure the faith and comprehension of the disciples before he was arrested and executed.

CAESAREA PHILIPPI (the following description comes from Eugene Boring (Matthew, New Interpreter’s Bible)

Caesarea Philippi, about twenty miles north of the Sea of Galilee, had earlier been the site of a Baal cultic center, then in Hellenistic times became known as Paneas because the god Pan had been worshiped in the famous grotto and spring there, but was renamed by Herod the Great after he built there a temple to Caesar Augustus. After Herod’s death it was made part of the territory of his son Philip, who enlarged the town and named it after Tiberius Caesar and himself. During the war of 66-70, Caesarea was a recreation spot for the Roman general Vespasian, who began the siege of Jerusalem and then left his son Titus in charge to complete it when he became emperor. After the fall of Jerusalem, Titus and his troops returned to Caesarea, where Josephus reports he had some of the Jewish captives thrown to wild animals. [The Jewish War 3.9.7., 44-44; 7.2.1. 23-24]. Matthew’s preservation of this location (dropped by Luke) may be only incidental, but since he did omit Mark’s setting on the road, Matthew may have wished to emphasize that the significant scene took place in a setting with older nationalistic and religious associations, Jewish and pagan. He brings the scene of Jesus’ confession as the Jewish Messiah into the shadow of a Caesar temple, where the Roman destroyers of Jerusalem had celebrated their victory, a revered site long associated with both pagan and Jewish revelatory events (cf. 1 Enoch 12-16). [p. 342]

Ancient Hebrew society functioned on an honor/shame system. Honor and shame were ascribed to a person by others: family, friends, society. An individual did not determin who he or she was, society did that for them. People were labeled by place of origin, occupation, family of origin, marital status, level of wealth, and state of health (for example “Simone the Leper”), all of which determined their social strata and level of honor/shame. To be a good person was to have high honor through family, occupation, amount of wealth, and state of health. One’s own opinion or level of introspection had nothing to do with anything in this culture. With that in mind, when Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am?” he is asking what social place has been ascribed to him. He is asking for his identity to be given him. Same thing when he asks the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” What makes Jesus unique, is that he identity is made clear by God, at baptism in the gospel of Mark, at annunciation of birth in the gospel of Matthew and Luke, and in God before all things in John.

The keys of the kingdom are the ability to forgive and heal here on earth. They are granted to all the disciples in the gospels except Matthew, where they are only granted to Peter. Peter’s real name is Simon but Jesus gives him the new name Petros or Peter meaning rock. Peter is the rock foundation on which the church will be built.