Biblical
Words [627]
Hearts inscribed with torah,
the murmurings of unrelenting prayer – these are the marks of the faithful.
Jeremiah 31:27-34.
The prophetic readings of the past
two months, taken from Jeremiah, reach a
climax in the prophecy of the new covenant.
We have heard,
- the indictments of the sinful city and people,
- the agonies over the devastation that is the punishment of the sin,
- the counsel to accept exile as God’s new direction for a people of the Diaspora,
- and a transaction symbolic of new life on the promised land –
all these have been dramatically
portrayed in Jeremiah’s words and actions.
What remains is the question of the humanity who will be included in the
new form of God’s venture with a chosen people.
Our passage says the people of the
new time will be individually responsible and will have a compelling inward
guidance to fulfill God’s will.
But first, Jeremiah reminds us of the
Federal deficit.
The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on
edge. (Verse 29, NRSV.)
This is an old proverb, which is
also quoted and applied to the same situation by Ezekiel, who devotes a whole
chapter to its interpretation for the exiles (Ezekiel 18).
The previous generation has
brought disastrous consequences upon their children and grandchildren. This has been the way of the world, but in
God’s eyes it will be so no longer. Sin
will not be inherited, its consequences will no longer be passed on to
those who could not avoid it. “All shall
die for their own sins” (verse 30), not those of someone else.
This doctrine can be sustained,
however, only for a people who have known exile, a people whose former society
has been dissolved.
The second part of the passage
promises a cure for the cause of the disaster, the disaster that
led to the exile.
The sinful people were indicted
because “they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of
their evil will [literally “their bad heart”], they walked in their own
counsels, and looked backward rather than forward” (Jeremiah 7:24 ).
They guided their lives by the stubbornness of their hearts. The heart was the problem – the heart, the
organ of personal motivation. The
heart would not obey the instruction of God.
The new covenant passage
(Jeremiah 31:31-34) says God will give each person a new heart, one with God’s
instruction (torah) written upon it.
People will no longer need to teach each other to know God, for “they
shall all know me [says the Lord], from the least of them to the greatest,”
that is, everyone individually will have the knowledge to be responsible.
My teacher in old days at Hebrew
Union College felt that this passage expressed a divine determinism – God doing
it entirely for each person rather than making each person responsible to
choose God’s will – a view that would not have come from Jeremiah himself. (Sheldon H. Blank, Jeremiah Man and
Prophet, Hebrew Union College Press, 1961, pp. 208-213.)
Prof. Blank expresses Judaism’s
age-old conviction that the Torah is God’s gift that can be obeyed. The passage as it stands expresses Jeremiah’s
despair, after forty years of constant stubbornness, that this people could
meet God’s requirements. Later
Christians would, of course, see this new covenant as a revelation that God’s
Grace would initiate the process by which followers would find lives that would
be acceptable to God.
In any case, the issue of personal
motivation to do God’s will loomed larger and larger for a people who had
accepted exile and become the Diaspora.
Psalm
119:97-103.
A new way of responding to God’s
will was created by the psalmists and sages who devoted their hearts to cherishing
God’s torah, God’s instruction.
The Psalm reading is one stanza
from one of the most remarkable compositions in all Biblical literature. The 119th psalm, all 176 verses of
it, is a kind of on-going polyphonic fugue.
It is an alphabetic acrostic, each line of each eight-verse stanza
beginning with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet – from aleph to taw. The twenty-two letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, each receiving eight lines of verse, produce the 176 verses of the
psalm. (Our reading is the Mem
stanza, every line beginning with the Hebrew consonant corresponding to M in
the Roman alphabet.)
Each group of eight verses also
presents its praise of and devotion to God’s instruction, torah, by
using a set of synonyms for torah that are repeated throughout
the psalm. Each one of the twenty-two
stanzas uses most of these words for God’s will or instruction – the terms (in NRSV
translation) are law, commandment, decrees, precepts,
word (dabar), ordinances, and words (’imrah, also
translated promise, e.g., verse 38).
These seven are used, in this order, in our reading, verses 97 through
103. Other stanzas include an eighth
synonym, statutes.
Whoever composed this psalm was saturated in these words. They
are combined and re-combined in cycles of devotion, declarations, and
prayers. The divine instruction that is
pointed to by all these terms is written deeply on the mind, heart, and
emotions of this speaker. The circles of
poets and sages who composed and relished this psalm and others like it – Psalm
1, Psalm 19, and Psalms 111 and 112 – had
truly made God’s law reign over their wills and their confessions. These are the psalms of the “torah piety,”
of the devotion that became virtually mystical about the revelation, mystery,
and profundity of God’s gift of the law.
There is no mention of Sinai, or
Moses, or of prophetic reforms based on law.
There is only love and unqualified devotion to the instruction and
wisdom God has given for the human heart.
II
Timothy 3:14-4:5.
The Epistle reading is also
profoundly committed to God’s revelation as a transforming power for God’s
servants.
The Apostle recalls that Timothy has known from childhood “the
sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation” (verse 15, NRSV ). These writings are, of course, the law, the
prophets, and the psalms – the numerous scrolls that a well-educated Judean
became accustomed to handling easily.
(Some “handling” was indeed required!
The Law, Prophets, and Writings, even in Hebrew, consisted of at least
twenty-two separate scrolls, and even more in Greek translations. There was no such thing as "the Bible.")
Our passage continues with that other
3:16 text, so
beloved by Bible Christians. “All
scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, and for training in righteousness.”
Again, this is said about the Judean
holy writings, which Paul and Timothy saw as pointing to the whole saving
appearance and work of Christ Jesus.
There were no Christian scriptures at this time; only Judean scriptures,
and these it was that should instruct Jesus followers into righteousness and
“every good work” (verse 17).
Since Timothy knows and believes
the scriptures, he is equipped for service to the Lord, and the Apostle
delivers an ordination sermon to him (4:1-2). He sees trials ahead that will lead people to
fall away and to walk in the stubbornness of their own hearts and minds. “…[T]he time is coming when people will not
put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will turn away from
listening to the truth and wander away to myths” (verses 3-4, intimations of
our own times?).
The Apostle is warning Timothy of
the opposition he will face, virtually as God warned Jeremiah at the early
stage of the mission to which he was called (Jeremiah 1:17 -19). To face
the challenge, Timothy is armed with the scriptures and the example of the
Apostle who suffers in the service of the Lord Jesus (see 3:10 -12, just before our reading).
In the Gospel reading Jesus tells
a parable of the judge and the widow.
This judge certainly did not
saturate himself in the instruction of the Lord, nor even burden himself with
the opinions of men. And yet this
independent and thoroughly autonomous magistrate was confronted with a murmuring
day and night, a pleading for justice from this unrelenting widow.
The parallel to this widow’s
activity is the person referred to in Psalm 1, who murmurs (the literal meaning
of “meditates” in 1:3) day and night, constantly reciting God’s instruction back
to God (i.e., repeating Psalm 1) – that instruction about the blessed way of
the righteous and the way of the wicked who will get lost.
Jesus’ instruction is about
prayer, and the single, unqualified motif emphasized here is persistence. Wear him down! Make him do the right thing, not because he
wants to do good, but to get rid of you!
Fill the magistrate’s surroundings with the buzz and business of
righteous ones pleading the cases of the powerless, the needy, and the
neglected.
That’s how to pray, says Jesus – like
the ḥasîdîm who never cease chanting torah so that one day God will
finally relent and send the Messiah!
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