Week 13

Psalm: Psalm 84
Old Testament: Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18

Gospel: John 6:56-69

Epistle: Ephesians 6:10-20

Welcome to another Sunday.  August is just about over and by next Sunday, we will be in September.  I want to point out two things this week about how we ought to read some of these passages.  In this regard, it will sound less like a normal devotional and more like a biblical commentary.  In so many ways we read the Bible with all of our own preconceptions, ideas, and culture.  This is partially inevitable and never fully reversible, but it is always helpful to recognize this is so and what those “lenses” are in which we read the text.  I say this because in reading the Scripture this week, I noticed two things that challenge the way I had read the texts in the past.

First, our Psalm.  Psalm 84 declares the loveliness of the dwelling place of the Lord Almighty.  The writer cries out,

“My soul yearns, even faints,
    for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out
    for the living God.”

Later, he says that “better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.”  I’m sure we have all sung that song that quotes these very words.  But, listen to what the Psalmist says right after that, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”  I had always pictured this song solely about heaven, but I think the author has much more in mind.  The dwelling place of the Lord was viewed as the temple of God in Jerusalem.  The temple of God was where one met God and was able to sacrifice and make atonement.  It was a crucial aspect of the life of Israel.  I think when we read this Psalm, we ought to focus on the desire to spend time in the house of the Lord, here and now.  It is in this life that we ought to desire to be in the presence of God.

Obviously, we can make the direct connection to our own lives today.  In 1 Cor. 3:16 Paul says that we are God’s temple.  The “we” used is the plural form so it should read, “ya’ll are God’s temple, and God’s Spirit dwells in your midst.”  Often times, the focus is the individual as the temple of God, but I think Paul’s point also is that the Body of Christ, the church is God’s temple.  We ought to desire to spend time with and in God’s people.  If I could make another practical suggestion of something that gets on my nerves--the use of the “sanctinasium” as I call it-- the multipurpose room which is the sanctuary and then moonlights as the basketball court and the teen dodge ball field.  We need sacred space in our lives, still, where we know we can go and meet the Lord…even if he lives in us and we can meet him anywhere.  Just something to think about.

Moving on to the passage of John and the phrase “eternal life” in verse 58.  The NIV and the NASB use the phrase that whoever eats the bread of life “will live forever.” The Greek used here for forever or eternity can also mean an age.  In Jewish thought the Messiah would usher in the “age to come” or the “Messianic Age” in which God’s king was on the throne and all things would be made right.  God would be in charge, not the Romans or the Babylonians or anybody else.  And so, when we read this phrase, eternal life, we ought to be careful about only reading it as living forever in heaven; in fact, the phrase is very much about life on earth.  In Jewish thought, the age of the Messiah was coming down from God to rule on this earth.  I am currently reading N.T. Wright’s book “How God Became King,” which I recommend, and he makes this very point.  In his translation of the Bible, he often translates this phrase as “the life of the age to come.”  Interestingly, for John 3:16, that well know passage, he translates it like this,

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but share in the life of God’s new age.

Does that mean we will live forever? Yes, but it changes the focus.  First, the focus is on God and his new age being ushered in by Jesus.  And second, it takes the focus off heaven and returns it to the New Creation/Age God has promised to bring.

There is no possible way to read the Scripture, or any text for that matter, in a neutral way.  So, in that regard, it is best that we try as close as possible to read it with the lens of the original author and hearers and then see how that applies to our life and times.  In the case of the Bible, that means we often have to break thousands of years of barriers and different cultures.  It is no small task to read and interpret Scripture.  One we should never take lightly and without the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

I hope these two points I have made today are not too startling or contentious.  My hope is that we will all be open to explore new ways of understanding what the Bible says.  Some of these readings that seem “new” to us actually are quite old and may even predate Christianity.  Let us approach this task with humility and openness. 

Grace and Peace.