Saturday, February 5, 2022

“Learn where there is wisdom,
where there is strength,
where there is understanding,
so that you may at the same time discern
where there is length of days, and life,
where there is light for the eyes,
and peace.”

Baruch was the secretary of the prophet Jeremiah. The book, which is part of the Apocrypha, is broken into different sections, but the pattern is the same. The people sin, they are chastised, they repent, and they return to God. Baruch acknowledges that both punishment and restoration come from the Lord.

As for me, I do not see myself as wise at all. Yes, I’ve learned a few things in my 71 years around the sun, but I still make an awful lot of mistakes, many of them over and over again. I still allow myself to get hurt over things I can’t control. I still open my mouth and the exact WRONG thing comes out of it. I go into things with the best of intentions, only to have it blow up in my face. I continue to believe, with Anne Frank, that “people are really good at heart,” even when they don’t live up their part of the bargain, if there ever was one.

This passage, though, says this is a skill (if you want to call it that) that can be learned. Not something inborn, but a learned behavior. How do you learn wisdom? Where are the books with a lesson plan on becoming wise? I’ve known little children who were much wiser than the adults who raised them (my own included). And I’ve known adults who make a shambles out of their lives because they just can’t (or won’t) learn the lessons life puts in their path.

There is an old saying that goes something like this: “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” And maybe that’s the trick to wisdom. Wisdom is not found in a book. Knowledge can be found in books, yes. Knowledge is found in the head. Wisdom is found in the heart. And the only way to become wise is to get out there and LIVE!

Wisdom does not happen sitting on the sidelines. Wisdom happens in the middle of the game. Wisdom comes when you stick your hand in the fire and find out that it burns. Wisdom happens when you DO…but sometimes it happens when you just WATCH. I may look at someone’s life and say, wow…now I wanna be like that! Or I may look at someone’s life and say, wow…what a mess! Both observations are wise.

So in this passage we have wisdom, and understanding, and strength. Powerful images, all. But continue…oh do please continue…for in learning to be strong, in learning to be wise, in learning to understand the troubles and foibles of ourselves and others, we must learn to find peace within ourselves. We continue to seek life, light, and peace.

You know, sometimes it seems as if peace in the Bible is rare. We read a lot about war and stupidity and God being angry about one thing or another, but peace? Not so much. So, why are we so drawn to these books? Written over a span of a few THOUSAND years by men and women, shepherds and physicians, prophets and just plain folks, why does this book, above all others, and filled with so much rampant violence and wrong-doing and sin, continue to speak to our hearts?

I think it’s not because of the sex and violence we find there, but because interspersed into the Bible, tucked away like tiny treasures, we find the peace we are all seeking. Hidden away in passages like Baruch, we read about life and light and peace, and we have hope that within the idiocy of our own lives, perhaps there lives a kernel of peace in our own hearts as well. These gems of hope, the words of Jesus, the cry of the Psalmist shine the Light of God into our hearts, and we find Peace.

Life. Light. Peace. Blessings.

Thank you, Lord.

The Apocrypha and Why I Read It

THE APOCRYPHA AND WHY I READ IT

The Apocrypha and Why I Read It

Phoenix Hocking

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the books of the Apocrypha, I’ll start with a smattering of information.

The Apocrypha are books that are included in Catholic Bibles, but are not included in Protestant Bibles. For non-Catholics, the books are considered useful for “examples of life and instruction of manners, but not for doctrine.”

Swiss reformers declared in 1530, “We do not despise Judith, Tobit, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, the last two books of Esdras, the three books of Maccabees, and the Additions to Daniel; but we do not allow them divine authority with the others.”

The Catholic church included the books at the Council of Trent in 1546. Protestant leaders had their doubts. Even Martin Luther did not see them as canonical, but then, he had doubts about four books in the New Testament as well: Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. After his death, those books were kept in Protestant Bibles, but the Apocryphal books were not.

There are 17 books in the Apocrypha. Some are found in ancient Greek Bibles (called the Septuagint), the Latin Vulgate Bibles, the Douay English Version, some Russian Bibles, and some verses are included in the King James Version.

You may be familiar with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The tradition of lighting the candles for eight days comes from the books of the Maccabees, which are found in the Apocrypha. In this miracle, God has allowed the oil to light the holy lamps to burn for eight days when it should only have lasted one day.

In addition many passages with which you are already familiar are either echoed in the Apocrypha or seem to have been written by the same hand.

“I will sing to my God a new song:

O Lord, you are great and glorious,

wonderful in strength, invincible.

Let all your creatures serve you,

for you spoke, and they were made.

You sent forth your spirit, and it formed them;

there is none that can resist your voice.”

Judith 16:13,14

And see how these verses from the Old Testament, The Apocrypha, and the New Testament flow seamlessly into each other:

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostril the breath of life; and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)

“But now, O Lord,

You are our Father;

We are the clay, and You our potter;

And all we are the work of Your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8)

“A potter kneads the soft earth

and laboriously molds each vessel for our service,

fashioning out of the same clay

both vessels that serve clean uses

and those for contrary uses,

making all alike;

but which shall be the use of each of them

the worker in clay decides.” (The Wisdom of Solomon 15:7)

“Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and for another dishonor?” (Romans 9:21)

Many of our Christian hymns draw upon passages in the Apocrypha to bring belief to life. For example, the hymn you may know as “Now thank we all our God,” and was written by Pastor Martin Rinkart about 1636, and is dependent upon Luther’s translation of Sirach 50:22-24.

Now thank we all our God

With heart and hands and voices,

Who wondrous things hath done,

In whom his world rejoices…”

Some of our most common expressions and proverbs have come from the Apocrypha. “A good name endures forever,” and “You can’t touch pitch without being defiled” are derived from Sirach 41:13 and 13:1. And “To fear the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” (Sirach 1:14)

So, why bother? If these books are not “authorized,” nor considered canonical, why do I read them? I read them because I find them to be rich in poetry, in valuable life lessons, and in history. They broaden my understanding of the Bible and the times in which they were written. Where sometimes I find the Bible itself to be a hard read, I find the Apocrypha an easier path to my understanding.

Many of the tales in the Apocrypha are simply entertaining, but with moral messages attached. Some might well have been included in Ecclesiastes, or with the Psalms. I am particularly fond of the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus (also known as the Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach). The stories of Esther and Judith in the Bible are continued in the Apocrypha with additional information. The Prayer of Azariah is an addition to the Book of Daniel, and Christians will recognize the cadence in “Bless the Lord…sing praises to Him and highly exalt Him forever.”

And the refrain of “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, and his mercy endures forever,” is continued at the end of Sirach.

“Give thanks to the God of praises,

for his mercy endures forever.

Give thanks to the guardian of Israel

for his mercy endures forever.

Give thanks to him who formed all things,

for his mercy endures forever…”

Speaking of Daniel, the story of Susanna appears as Chapter 13 of the Greek version of Daniel. It tells the tale of a comely young woman who is beset upon by wicked elders who threaten her with disgrace should she not do their bidding. Daniel, of course, is the hero who saves her and unmasks the elder’s evil intent.

Later, in Chapter 14, called Bel and the Dragon, Daniel exposes the fraud of the priests of Bel, and find Daniel in the lion’s den, but this time for six days. The author here was ridiculing the Babylonian myth of creation, and revealing the God of Daniel as “the living God who created heaven and earth and has dominion over all living creatures.” (Daniel 14:5)

Psalm 151 was “discovered” as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1956, and is included here, as it was in the Greek Septuagint manuscripts.

The political wrangling over which books to include and which not, it seems to me, have deprived us of a rich and absorbing adjunct to the Bible we already know and love.

To quote from the Prayer of Azariah:

Bless the Lord, all people on earth;

Sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever!”

The Lord Was Not In The Wind

“THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE WIND”

1 Kings 19:11,12

“The Lord was not in the wind”

“He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now, there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.”

It has been my experience that the Lord rarely shouts. He whispers, He prods, He nudges, but rarely does He shout.

Let me tell you a story. I am told it is true.

There was a man, a rather ordinary Christian man who lived a fairly ordinary life. He held a job and lived in a nice enough apartment, in a nice enough neighborhood, with his wife and two children. One evening he came home from work and was sitting down after dinner in front of the television.

He was not particularly accustomed to hearing the voice of God. He knew it happened, of course, because they talked about it in church sometimes, but it had never happened to him.

He had just taken off his shoes and settled in when he got an unexplained urge to get up, go to the store, and buy milk. He resisted the urge, because he knew they had milk in the fridge. Why should he go buy more?

But the urge would not go away. “Get up. Buy milk.”

He got up and looked in the fridge. Sure enough, there was plenty of milk, so he sat back down in front of the television.

“Get up. Buy milk.”

So he got up, put on his shoes, and told his wife he was going out to buy milk.

“Why?” she asked. “We have milk.”

“I don’t know,” he answered. Then he got in his car, went to the store, and bought milk, and bread, and peanut butter.

He put the bag on the front seat, then sat in his car, feeling rather foolish as he spoke aloud, “Well, God, I bought milk. Now what?”

He started his car and just drove. He found himself in a rather rough part of town. It was the part of town that nice, respectable people avoided, full of drug addicts, and homeless people, gangs, and crime.

He pulled off to the side of the road in front of a shabby brick tenement.

“Here.”

He could almost feel the pull towards the front door, rusty and practically falling off the hinges.

“Here? Lord, you must be kidding.”

“Here.”

So the man took the bag with the milk and the bread and the peanut butter, and walked to the door. He opened it, and his nostrils were assailed with the stench of unwashed bodies, and urine, and vomit. He stood silent for a moment, feeling more than a little foolish. He almost turned around to leave, but he felt rooted and could not move.

“Okay, God,” he said, giving in. “Just tell me where to go.”

He climbed the stairs to the third floor.

“Here.”

He stood in front of an apartment door. He heaved a great sigh, squared his shoulders, and knocked.

A woman answered the door. She was Latina, with long black hair and eyes red from weeping. “Si?”

He held out the bag. “Here,” he said. “This is for you.”

Puzzled, she took the bag, looked inside, then burst into tears.

A young boy about ten-years-old came to the door and looked in the bag. Then he too began to cry.

“Gracias, seňor,” the boy said through his tears. “The baby has had no milk for two days, and it has been longer than that for my brother and me. My father was killed a week ago, and we have no money. We just finished praying that somehow we could get milk for the baby.”

Quakers call this “being in the power of the Lord,” and such things happen more often than we hear about.

My old priest would often tell the story of how he took Communion to a parishioner who resided in a nursing home. He brought just enough Host for her and for himself. He knew there were only two Hosts in the pyx, because he packed it himself.

Just as he was about to administer the sacrament, two nurses came in and asked if they could share in the Communion as they hadn’t been able to go to church that day. Fully prepared to break the Host to provide for them, he was shocked to discover that in the pyx were not two Hosts, but four.

Can I explain this? No, I cannot. Did the priest make a mistake? Or did God provide the extra Hosts?

I’ve talked to many a person who told me they never heard the voice of God. But, I wonder how often we are in the power of the Lord without realizing it. How often do we heed the still, small voice inside us that tells us to do this, or to go here, or to say that, perhaps not understanding that the voice of God is calling us to action.

God is a gentleman. He does not shout, nor does He demand. He whispers, He cajoles, He nudges.

And He smiles when we heed His desires, and do His will. For how else would anything ever get done?

In Jan de Hartog’s book, “The Peaceable Kingdom,” about the beginning of the Quaker movement in 1652, Margaret Fell has just came face-to-face with the horrors of children being imprisoned in the dungeons of Lancaster Castle. She has run to George Fox for comfort, and for answers.

“She wanted to assail him again, but he said, in the power of the Lord, ‘Stop crying for proof of God’s love! Prove it thyself!’ Then he added in a gentler tone, ‘How else dost thou think He can manifest His love? Through nature? Through the trees, the clouds, the beasts in the field, the stars? No, only through beings capable of doing so: ourselves. In the case of those children in the cage, about to be hanged, it is thou He touched. All He has to reach those children is thee!’

So, I invite you as much as I invite myself, when we hear that still, small voice of God, when we feel His nudges, or hear His whisper in our ears, to listen, and to act. For we are God’s instruments, His hands, His feet, and His love.

Covenant of Salt

THE COVENANT OF SALT

2 Chronicles, 13:4,5

“The Covenant of Salt”

“Then Abijah stood on the slope of Mount Zemaraim that is in the hill country of Ephraim, and said, “Listen to me, Jeroboam and all Israel! Do you not know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingship over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt?”

What on earth is the “covenant of salt?”

Salt in Biblical times was a precious commodity. The Dead, or “Salt” Sea is perhaps ¼ salt. After every flood, when the water evaporated, a course-grained salt was left behind. It was not particularly rare, but it was as necessary to their daily lives as it is to ours.

Salt was used in a variety of ways – as a preservative, a seasoning, a disinfectant, as a unit of exchange, and in ceremonies. It was used to draw the blood from meat, and to preserve it. And how many of us have gargled with salt water at the first sign of a sore throat? In Biblical times, newborns were often rubbed with salt, not only to ritually protect them, but to ensure that they would have integrity and always be truthful.

But beyond the practicalities of everyday life, salt was considered important enough to use in ceremonies and promises. A covenant made with salt was intended to last forever, unbreakable by either party.

Treaties were sealed in salt. Covenants were based on trust. Giving someone your salt was a sign of that trust. You do this, and I do that. Shake on it. It’s a done deal. But what about when God makes a covenant with mankind? How does that change things?

We make promises to God all the time, and unfortunately, break them just as often. Perhaps we forgot we made the promise in the first place. Or maybe as time goes on, the promise doesn’t seem as important, so the whatever we’ve promised kind of falls by the wayside. Or we may even say, “But God, I didn’t mean that! You can’t expect me to do that!”

But then there’s God – permanent, ever-faithful, forever keeping His end of the bargain, even when we break ours. “I will never leave you, nor forsake you,” He says, and He means it.

For His part of the bargain, His “salt,” He gave what was most precious to Him, His only begotten Son. And what do we give as our part of the bargain? What is your “salt?” What is most precious to you? Is it money? Health? Your children or your mate? Are we really willing to give what is most precious to us over to the care and keeping of God? Or do we hold on to it, that thing that is so precious, unwilling to let even God have it for a little while, let alone forever?

Here’s God, waiting in the wings, His part of the bargain intact. Waiting.

And here are we, holding on to what is most precious to us for dear life.

I wonder, are we afraid that if we give our “salt” to God that He will treat it as shamefully as we treated His?

House of Prayer

HOUSE OF PRAYER

1 Maccabees 7:37

Even though this passage is taken out of context, this portion speaks to my heart:

“You chose this house to be called by Your name,
and to be for Your people a house
of prayer and supplication.”

The writer was speaking of the Temple in Jerusalem, but applies equally today to all houses of worship, and I believe, to our own houses as well.
My question for myself this morning is: “Is my house a house of prayer?”

I confess that I don’t pray as often as I should. I tend to shoot up what I call “arrow prayers” throughout the day. “Thank you, Lord, for this…Please, Lord…Lord, what will I do about such-and-such…Lead me, Lord…” You get the picture. But to sit down quietly before the Lord? Not easy. I find I kind of “dry up” when I sit down with the actual intention of praying. But, I pray before I open the Bible to whatever passage the Lord calls me to before I write these little ponderings of mine. And I shoot arrow prayers up many times a day. So, does that count as prayer?

Okay, here’s what occurs to me. God is not talking necessarily talking about a physical building here. If our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, is my body a “house of prayer?” Do I carry my “house of prayer” around with me, wherever I go? To work, to school, in the car, walking the dogs, grocery shopping, to Weight Watcher meetings? Am I carrying my house of prayer with me, or is my house of prayer carrying me? It seems like a fine line, because I’m not sure we can separate the two…and why would we even want to?

If we ARE a house of prayer, “we” as in our very own selves, not a building we go to once a week, then how do we treat this house of prayer? In the book of 1 Maccabees we hear how the Syrian ruler plundered the temple, burned the books of the Old Testament, forbade circumcision and sacrificed a pig on the altar of the temple. What sort of desecrations do we do to our personal houses of prayer every day? Are we putting toxic chemicals or alcohol into it? Are we not treating it with the respect it deserves? Are we letting our temple get fat and lazy?

Looking at our bodies as temples of the Living God, as Houses of Prayer that are with us every second of our earthly lives….well, it puts kind of a different spin on just how we treat God’s house.

How do YOU treat your House of Prayer?

The Still, Small Voice of God

THE STILL, SMALL VOICE OF GOD

1 Kings 19:11,12

“The Lord was not in the wind”

It has been my experience that the Lord rarely shouts. He whispers, He prods, He nudges, but rarely does He shout.

Let me tell you a story. I am told it is true.

He was not particularly accustomed to hearing the voice of God. He knew it happened, of course, because they talked about it in church sometimes, but it had never happened to him.

But the urge would not go away. “Get up. Buy milk.”

He got up and looked in the fridge. Sure enough, there was plenty of milk, so he sat back down in front of the television.

“Get up. Buy milk.”

So he got up, put on his shoes, and told his wife he was going out to buy milk.

“Why?” she asked. “We have milk.”

“I don’t know,” he answered. Then he got in his car, went to the store, and bought milk, and bread, and peanut butter.

He put the bag on the front seat, then sat in his car, feeling rather foolish as he spoke aloud, “Well, God, I bought milk. Now what?”

He pulled off to the side of the road in front of a shabby brick tenement.

“Here.”

He could almost feel the pull towards the front door, rusty and practically falling off the hinges.

“Here? Lord, you must be kidding.”

“Here.”

“Okay, God,” he said, giving in. “Just tell me where to go.”

He climbed the stairs to the third floor.

“Here.”

He stood in front of an apartment door. He heaved a great sigh, squared his shoulders, and knocked.

A woman answered the door. She was Latina, with long black hair and eyes red from weeping. “Si?”

He held out the bag. “Here,” he said. “This is for you.”

Puzzled, she took the bag, looked inside, then burst into tears.

A young boy about ten-years-old came to the door and looked in the bag. Then he too began to cry.

Quakers call this “being in the power of the Lord,” and such things happen more often than we hear about.

Can I explain this? No, I cannot. Did the priest make a mistake? Or did God provide the extra Hosts?

God is a gentleman. He does not shout, nor does He demand. He whispers, He cajoles, He nudges.

And He smiles when we heed His desires, and do His will. For how else would anything ever get done?

Breadcrumbs From the Bible

Saturday, February 5, 2022

Baruch, Chapter 3

BARUCH, CHAPTER THREE

BARUCH, CHAPTER THREE

The Apocrypha and Why I Read It

THE APOCRYPHA AND WHY I READ IT

The Lord Was Not In The Wind

“THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE WIND”

Covenant of Salt

THE COVENANT OF SALT

House of Prayer

HOUSE OF PRAYER

The Still, Small Voice of God

THE STILL, SMALL VOICE OF GOD

Baruch, Chapter 3

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