Hills and Valleys

For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. ~Baruch 5:1-9

Building roads is hard work.  Building roads over valleys and hills and mountains is harder.    You have to blow up that mountain, level that hill, and make a raised highway through that valley.   It's hard work.  In the old days, it was dangerous work as well.  Before explosives, it was so hard that God had to do it because we couldn't.

Bringing the mountains low is not an easy thing to do.   Neither is crossing a mountain without it having been made low.   I'm a little strange in that I believe that when Jesus said the time is coming and is now here when the Kingdom of God shall appear on the earth, he didn't mean blow the whole thing up and start over.  I think he meant right here, right now, usher in the kingdom of God.   We have to get ready to be able to do it, that's what Church is for, and we have to do it in the world in which we live right now because that's the Gospel.

It's actually happening.

 Luke 3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"  

 And the harbinger's mother is old and barren when she becomes pregnant, and meets her young cousin, the Messiah's mother, who starts talking about her unborn child.   

He has mercy on those who fear him *
    in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm, *
    he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

I'm pretty sure this is class warfare.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *

Yep.

    and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
    and the rich he has sent away empty.

In plain English (translated from Aramaic to Greek to plain English)

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
    for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

This is the Kingdom of God.  It works better if we all work together to fill the hungry with good things, so the rich don't necessarily have to go away empty, but that doesn't always work out.  Right here, right now, this is actually happening... so we should do what we're told and get to it.  God is going to make this happen... and he's doing it, right now, through us. 

Happy Circumcision Sunday

I think I was seventeen when this happened. I don't remember why I was there at the apartment complex but it was the first time I ever met my best friend's father.

In fairness, she wasn't my best friend yet. Her dad, a covert to Judaism, a messianic one at the time, chased me down the sidewalk (I wasn't actually running) asking me if I knew Jesus was a Jew? I found myself, staring at this man, this balding man with a beard (I wasn't used to beards), and wondered why on Earth he would have ever thought I didn't know?

Years later, I found out two things:

1) There actually are Christians who are so incredibly thick headed and ignorant that they don't know this this already.

2) If I had been more versed in the history of the liturgy of the Feast of the Holy Name I could have told him Circumcision Sunday is a dead give away.

Oh how I lament not 'getting' him with that zinger to this day. Instead, I think I told him I'd known the guy for years, and it had come up once or twice when I offered him bacon as part of a lovely breakfast.

Oh wait, that's another zinger I didn't get to use. Instead, I looked at him, dumb founded and told him I knew that.

I think what blew my mind then, as it does now, is that Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua to his friends, doesn't make sense outside the context of Judaism. He worshiped at the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, he quoted and claimed to fulfill Jewish scripture. His family waited 8 days to name him and they circumcised him. He went to Jerusalem for Passover. He worshiped at the synagogue.

If he wasn't Jewish, he was one terribly naughty gentile.

So why do people say it does't matter? Because he was so much more than that? Well, I am a lot more than a Terrell, but that's where who I am begins. Israel is where God began hammering into the heads of men what sort of God he is. It matters. It matters because the prophets foretold his coming to the Jews. It matters because this is how he learned to pray, repeating his mother's words at meals and bedtime. It shaped who he was as a man completely and who he is as God shaped Israel completely.

I think people like to overlook this because there were and are a lot of Jews who just couldn't accept this guy as the messiah they'd been promised. I see their point. I disagree. I still see their point. It's okay. I am at peace with being seen as a practitioner of a rather dangerous red headed step child's cult. I know a lot of people aren't. That's okay too. Ignoring this part of his spiritual heritage though is dangerous because it is also our own. It puts God's people solidly in an "other" category of this ancient game of us vs. "other" and that's how people start justifying hurting other people.

Not okay.

Someone has to stop throwing rocks. It might as well be you. It might as well be me. He was one of them and we are connected to Him through them and they are connected to us through him. Play nice. It looks good on your grade card. (And you might make a fried or two and discover a dimension to your religion you didn't even know you were missing.)

Disclaimer: While all of this was born out of a conversation with my older brother he is not the only person I've ever had this conversation with and I'm positive he won't be the last.