Landmarks
Commentary
Our lives are filled with a combination of physical, emotional, and spiritual landmarks. Some landmarks are recognizable and guide us on to the next step. Other landmarks are only recognizable in retrospect.
This week’s scripture passages include spiritual landmarks for three individuals engaged in either a literal or spiritual journey -- Abraham, Paul, and Jesus. Because of who they are, their landmarks are important benchmarks for our journeys as well.
Abraham’s landmark is the oak at Mamre, where a seminal event occurred -- a meeting with the divine. But perhaps the real landmark is the opportunity for hospitality. Hospitality is the portal through which all that was promised by God begins to be fulfilled.
The apostle Paul might have been writing a training manual for Roman Christians to strengthen them for faithful endurance. Each training step provides a crucial landmark for attaining the next one. The suffering that undergirds them all may be a prerequisite to attainment of the goal Paul envisions.
Finally, it seems that the landmark that signals for Jesus to commission the apostles for a ministry of their own, to finally go solo, is the occasion when Jesus went about the towns preaching the good news and healing the sick. The sight of all those who needed the good news may have triggered the commissioning of much-needed partners in mission. Matthew’s gospel seems to include as one of its aims the creation of a church by Jesus -- and that means Jesus must prepare for the time when he is no longer among the people himself. The suffering of others is what causes him to take this important step.
Genesis 18:1-15 (21:1-7)
Centuries following this incident in Genesis, the Jewish historian Josephus (writing in the first century AD) said he knew of a venerable ancient oak referred to as the oak of Abraham, the tree behind this scripture. Well into the Middle Ages this tree was honored for its association with the patriarch. Whether or not this was actually the tree that appears as a landmark in this story, ancient trees were honored in the Middle East for their tenacity. A tree represented the whole of the cosmos, as many living things found shelter in or around the tree, finding food or becoming food. Trees touched the heavens and sent roots deep into the earth. It is probably no accident that a venerable tree provided the anchor for this heavenly visitation.
The Bible is very clear on two things: No one has ever seen God. People see God. Moses took the elders up the mountain and they saw God. Moses had to hide in the shelter of the rock so God could walk nearby and yet ensure Moses wouldn’t die. Gideon’s father was alarmed he’d been in the presence of God and was sure he was going to die. His more sensible wife pointed out that they were still breathing.
So here is the divine presence of God visiting Abraham. God is first visible as three individuals. They are traditionally identified as angels. Alluding to this story, Hebrews 13:2 states that we should always show hospitality to strangers because some have entertained angels without knowing it. I think, however, in the Old Testament the definition of angels is pretty vague. Angels are the way God is seen and known.
The hottest part of the day in that neck of the woods is the time when one takes a nap, but that’s postponed when Abraham sees the visitors. With Sarah’s help they provide hospitality to strangers. Providing hospitality to strangers -- refugees, for instance -- opens doors to endless possibilities. When a church turns outward from itself, serving difficult populations where success or failure is hard to define, it becomes more fully the church. Abraham had every reason to be wary of strangers or chary of hospitality.
Sarah, like any thinking person, listens to the conversation at the tent’s entrance -- a tent was hardly a cone of silence, after all. She could not help laughing when the strangers told Abraham that in a year the aged couple would have a new child. And though she denies that she laughed, this does not disqualify her from receiving God’s promises. God has room for doubters (see Matthew 28:17), laughers (Abraham too), and questioners (see Moses, Job, Habbakuk, Jeremiah, Isaiah, et al) if scriptures are to be believed. And one wonders if Sarah felt her laughter was vindicated -- she named her son Isaac, which means laughter.
Perhaps this is important to point out as well. Abraham does not answer the question -- is anything too hard for the Lord? Sarah denies she laughed. In the ancient world an encounter with a god might be a test, and the right answer could mean a total reversal of fortune. The fulfillment of God’s covenant promises is not a test. No matter what Abraham and Sarah say or don’t say, God intends to fulfill promises. Think of a divine promise for which you are still awaiting fulfillment.
Romans 5:1-8
Someone setting out on a journey of self-improvement may set out a string of landmarks by which progress can be measured. Perhaps one wants quicker times running a 5k. Perhaps one celebrates a series of 10-lb. barriers while engaged on a daunting weight loss program. College students celebrate the end of each year of study. Think of landmarks that signaled progress along your own journey’s way.
Paul sets out a string of landmarks for the Romans, setting as a baseline the idea of afflictions as the first step on a path to glory. The Romans lived in close proximity to the emperor, at the heart of an empire that spanned the Western world. That emperor was celebrated as the prince of peace for having made peace across the length and breadth of that world, eliminating the petty wars between various kingdoms. Of course it was a peace based on the threat of annihilation for those who did not obey the emperor. However we have peace with the God who created the world through the grace of the real Prince of Peace Jesus Christ, through his death on the cross. That is not something the emperor would boast of, but Paul boasts about it.
So then, like stepping stones, we begin with afflictions -- things that are caused by someone else outside of ourselves, not self-inflicted hardships -- produce endurance. The endurance of the martyrs was especially prized as a virtue by most Christians and Jews.
(While the writer of the First Book of the Maccabees, writing about the war to liberate the Temple, looked on martyrs as fools or worse, the writer of the Second Book of the Maccabees lifted up their tribulations as an example to all believers, and that is the attitude we find in books like the Revelation of John.)
Getting through a difficult experience teaches us endurance. So Paul teaches us that endurance produces character.
The Greek word dokime is not used elsewhere in the New Testament. It refers to someone who has been tested and been approved -- character. We learn a person’s true character in tough times. Prophets such as Malachi speak of being tested like an assayed metal, and proven true.
If we endure afflictions, if we have proven our character, we have hope. Hope is our anchor in the future, our assurance that we will be vindicated, and that death is not the end. Now, what is interesting is that God did not wait for us to go through the afflictions, producing endurance and character, before sending Jesus to endure afflictions for us. Jesus died not for saints, but for sinners.
Matthew 9:35--10:8 (9-23)
Jesus had encountered several obstacles in the early stages of his ministry, including controversies about the right day of the week to heal, whether the fact Jesus cast out demons demonstrated that he was a demon himself, and matters of clean and unclean. This sort of opposition that threatened to consume or even derail the ministry of the Good News.
However , for Jesus the suffering he witnessed proved to be an important landmark that demonstrated there was a tremendous amount of work to do. It was time to send out the apostles. The root word for the verb translated as compassion is splagknos,or colon. Going out among the villages, preaching in synagogues, and encountering the suffering of the people firsthand made it clear that all this other stuff didn’t matter. Jesus felt their suffering in his gut, as the word suggests, and realized that the people were like sheep without a shepherd.
Jesus had already shown that he carved out personal time for prayer -- recognizing his own spiritual needs, on the one hand, and therefore knew that as one fully human he couldn’t serve everyone. This meant getting the disciples fully involved, setting them up for success instead of failure, and so he gave them instructions to go forward in faith, serve the people, and warning them that there is always the possibility of rejection and failure.
The deeply felt compassion for the suffering of ordinary people proved to be a catalyst for the beginning of the creation of the church of Jesus Christ. What spiritual landmarks have helped you to realize we’re in this together, and not simply as individuals?
This week’s scripture passages include spiritual landmarks for three individuals engaged in either a literal or spiritual journey -- Abraham, Paul, and Jesus. Because of who they are, their landmarks are important benchmarks for our journeys as well.
Abraham’s landmark is the oak at Mamre, where a seminal event occurred -- a meeting with the divine. But perhaps the real landmark is the opportunity for hospitality. Hospitality is the portal through which all that was promised by God begins to be fulfilled.
The apostle Paul might have been writing a training manual for Roman Christians to strengthen them for faithful endurance. Each training step provides a crucial landmark for attaining the next one. The suffering that undergirds them all may be a prerequisite to attainment of the goal Paul envisions.
Finally, it seems that the landmark that signals for Jesus to commission the apostles for a ministry of their own, to finally go solo, is the occasion when Jesus went about the towns preaching the good news and healing the sick. The sight of all those who needed the good news may have triggered the commissioning of much-needed partners in mission. Matthew’s gospel seems to include as one of its aims the creation of a church by Jesus -- and that means Jesus must prepare for the time when he is no longer among the people himself. The suffering of others is what causes him to take this important step.
Genesis 18:1-15 (21:1-7)
Centuries following this incident in Genesis, the Jewish historian Josephus (writing in the first century AD) said he knew of a venerable ancient oak referred to as the oak of Abraham, the tree behind this scripture. Well into the Middle Ages this tree was honored for its association with the patriarch. Whether or not this was actually the tree that appears as a landmark in this story, ancient trees were honored in the Middle East for their tenacity. A tree represented the whole of the cosmos, as many living things found shelter in or around the tree, finding food or becoming food. Trees touched the heavens and sent roots deep into the earth. It is probably no accident that a venerable tree provided the anchor for this heavenly visitation.
The Bible is very clear on two things: No one has ever seen God. People see God. Moses took the elders up the mountain and they saw God. Moses had to hide in the shelter of the rock so God could walk nearby and yet ensure Moses wouldn’t die. Gideon’s father was alarmed he’d been in the presence of God and was sure he was going to die. His more sensible wife pointed out that they were still breathing.
So here is the divine presence of God visiting Abraham. God is first visible as three individuals. They are traditionally identified as angels. Alluding to this story, Hebrews 13:2 states that we should always show hospitality to strangers because some have entertained angels without knowing it. I think, however, in the Old Testament the definition of angels is pretty vague. Angels are the way God is seen and known.
The hottest part of the day in that neck of the woods is the time when one takes a nap, but that’s postponed when Abraham sees the visitors. With Sarah’s help they provide hospitality to strangers. Providing hospitality to strangers -- refugees, for instance -- opens doors to endless possibilities. When a church turns outward from itself, serving difficult populations where success or failure is hard to define, it becomes more fully the church. Abraham had every reason to be wary of strangers or chary of hospitality.
Sarah, like any thinking person, listens to the conversation at the tent’s entrance -- a tent was hardly a cone of silence, after all. She could not help laughing when the strangers told Abraham that in a year the aged couple would have a new child. And though she denies that she laughed, this does not disqualify her from receiving God’s promises. God has room for doubters (see Matthew 28:17), laughers (Abraham too), and questioners (see Moses, Job, Habbakuk, Jeremiah, Isaiah, et al) if scriptures are to be believed. And one wonders if Sarah felt her laughter was vindicated -- she named her son Isaac, which means laughter.
Perhaps this is important to point out as well. Abraham does not answer the question -- is anything too hard for the Lord? Sarah denies she laughed. In the ancient world an encounter with a god might be a test, and the right answer could mean a total reversal of fortune. The fulfillment of God’s covenant promises is not a test. No matter what Abraham and Sarah say or don’t say, God intends to fulfill promises. Think of a divine promise for which you are still awaiting fulfillment.
Romans 5:1-8
Someone setting out on a journey of self-improvement may set out a string of landmarks by which progress can be measured. Perhaps one wants quicker times running a 5k. Perhaps one celebrates a series of 10-lb. barriers while engaged on a daunting weight loss program. College students celebrate the end of each year of study. Think of landmarks that signaled progress along your own journey’s way.
Paul sets out a string of landmarks for the Romans, setting as a baseline the idea of afflictions as the first step on a path to glory. The Romans lived in close proximity to the emperor, at the heart of an empire that spanned the Western world. That emperor was celebrated as the prince of peace for having made peace across the length and breadth of that world, eliminating the petty wars between various kingdoms. Of course it was a peace based on the threat of annihilation for those who did not obey the emperor. However we have peace with the God who created the world through the grace of the real Prince of Peace Jesus Christ, through his death on the cross. That is not something the emperor would boast of, but Paul boasts about it.
So then, like stepping stones, we begin with afflictions -- things that are caused by someone else outside of ourselves, not self-inflicted hardships -- produce endurance. The endurance of the martyrs was especially prized as a virtue by most Christians and Jews.
(While the writer of the First Book of the Maccabees, writing about the war to liberate the Temple, looked on martyrs as fools or worse, the writer of the Second Book of the Maccabees lifted up their tribulations as an example to all believers, and that is the attitude we find in books like the Revelation of John.)
Getting through a difficult experience teaches us endurance. So Paul teaches us that endurance produces character.
The Greek word dokime is not used elsewhere in the New Testament. It refers to someone who has been tested and been approved -- character. We learn a person’s true character in tough times. Prophets such as Malachi speak of being tested like an assayed metal, and proven true.
If we endure afflictions, if we have proven our character, we have hope. Hope is our anchor in the future, our assurance that we will be vindicated, and that death is not the end. Now, what is interesting is that God did not wait for us to go through the afflictions, producing endurance and character, before sending Jesus to endure afflictions for us. Jesus died not for saints, but for sinners.
Matthew 9:35--10:8 (9-23)
Jesus had encountered several obstacles in the early stages of his ministry, including controversies about the right day of the week to heal, whether the fact Jesus cast out demons demonstrated that he was a demon himself, and matters of clean and unclean. This sort of opposition that threatened to consume or even derail the ministry of the Good News.
However , for Jesus the suffering he witnessed proved to be an important landmark that demonstrated there was a tremendous amount of work to do. It was time to send out the apostles. The root word for the verb translated as compassion is splagknos,or colon. Going out among the villages, preaching in synagogues, and encountering the suffering of the people firsthand made it clear that all this other stuff didn’t matter. Jesus felt their suffering in his gut, as the word suggests, and realized that the people were like sheep without a shepherd.
Jesus had already shown that he carved out personal time for prayer -- recognizing his own spiritual needs, on the one hand, and therefore knew that as one fully human he couldn’t serve everyone. This meant getting the disciples fully involved, setting them up for success instead of failure, and so he gave them instructions to go forward in faith, serve the people, and warning them that there is always the possibility of rejection and failure.
The deeply felt compassion for the suffering of ordinary people proved to be a catalyst for the beginning of the creation of the church of Jesus Christ. What spiritual landmarks have helped you to realize we’re in this together, and not simply as individuals?
