Psalm 119:129-136: As the psalmist’s encomium regarding God’s word stretches to new heights, he makes what at first looks like a provocative assertion: “The portal of Your words sends forth light, makes the simple understand.” (130) Really? Sometimes it seems that God’s word is awfully obscure. And even if the sophisticated understand, they tend to fight among themselves regarding the interpretation of God’s word. Never mind the simple.
So what is our psalmist saying here? That we just need to open the Bible and read or pray and listen for God’s response and then we’ll just understand everything in the Bible? Hardly. Rather, I think he’s being a bit more subtle in the metaphor here. We need to think of God’s word present behind a closed door that is our to open. We are holding the doorknob in our hand. And just as an interior light spreads its light into the outside darkness when the door is opened, we must open the door of our heart to feel the light of God’s word. Only after opening that door will God’s light pour over us.
Will we–simple or sophisticated–then understand everything God has to say? Well, we may not get the theological subtleties of God’s word in the normal sense of “understanding,” but even the simplest among us will come to understand via God’s word that God is present with us and that God holds us in His light. Without his word we are in the dark, certainly in terms of knowledge and understanding, but also knowing that it is through God’s word that He speaks to us, if only to reassure us that He is present in our lives–and above all that He loves us. I think this reality is summed up very nicely in the old song, “Jesus loves me; this I know for the Bible tells me so.”
2 Samuel 23:18-24:25: Joab’s nephew Abishai is the commander of Israel’s special forces under David–“the Thirty.” One of the Thirty, “Benaiah son of Jehoiada was a valiant warrior from Kabzeel, a doer of great deeds” (20) “won a name beside the three warriors. He was renowned among the Thirty, but he did not attain to the Three. And David put him in charge of his bodyguard.” (23) These verses give us insight into the sophisticated organization of the Army under David and his general, Joab.
For reasons our author doesn’t specify, “the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.”” (24:1). Joab resists this task but David, in his anger, insists and the census reveals that “in Israel there were eight hundred thousand soldiers able to draw the sword, and those of Judah were five hundred thousand.” (24:9)
David suddenly realizes that he did a bad thing by taking the census (Alter tells us that taking a census had negative folkloric connotations and that the people would feel cursed by virtue of being counted.) A suddenly arbitrary God offers David three choices: 3 years of famine, 3 months of warfare or 3 days of pestilence. David chooses pestilence, but God’s anger is averted by David’s purchase of a threshing floor and offering a sacrifice there “and the plague was averted from Israel.” (24:25)
This is a very confusing story. The character of God demanding such severe punishment by virtue of David taking a census seems arbitrary and very much out of character of the God whom David has been following–and speaking with–up to this point. One is left with the impression that this story has been tacked on at the end of 2 Samuel by a different author.
John 11:31-44: Ever the brilliant author, John reveals a new dimension of Jesus’ character as he arrives at Lazarus’ house and finds Mary weeping. Up to this point Jesus has been pretty much focused on the lesson he wishes to communicate in eventually raising Lazarus. He has an important lesson to teach about his own life and impending death, and not even the protests of his disciples have deterred him. He was willing to let Lazarus die in order to facilitate this lesson.
But when he arrives and Mary falls at his feet and says (I think plaintively, not angrily), “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” (32) Jesus sees the very real anguish that his delay has caused. And then when he actually arrives at Lazarus tomb, Jesus weeps. This is one of those places where we realize that Jesus is indeed fully human. Yes, as he’s been saying for the last chapter, he has followed the will of his Father, but as we will see in Gethsemane, it has come at the price of real human suffering; Jesus’ humanity is fully expressed here.
And not everyone is happy. Since some in the crowd chide Jesus–certainly a disciple or two, one of them probably Thomas–“Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (36)
But then the great surprise. Yes, Jesus could certainly have prevented Lazarus’ death, but now by raising Lazarus he offers his greatest miracle recorded in the Gospels. I think if the disciples had really been paying attention–and it’s even a difficult thing for us to see–is that Jesus is making the final statement about why he’s really here; he’s revealing why his Father has sent him. It’s not to set himself against and overcome the political authorities of the time. It is neither Israel nor Rome that he has come to earth to conquer. He has come to conquer death itself.
Of course for us with the privilege of knowing the outcome of Jesus’ story, the point of the Lazarus story is easy for us to see. But for the crowd there it can only be confusion and wonderment.
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