I don't even no where to begin. I feel like a child in tall grass unable to see above the brambles. These readings are not easy.

In Miriam I thought of pride. While it is difficult to see God punishing her severly it can be understood. Like the disciples who wanted to be first Miriam seeks to be first. Moses (at least in the beginning) runs away from being servant and is given the honor. Miriam seeks out the honor and is castigated. I hear a God who seeks us and tells us it is better to serve than be served. What is also interesting is that she receives a light punishment. Even her sin which counts against her lightly affects the entire tribe.

In Romans I hear the negation of Wisdom. "Fear of the lord is the begining of wisdom." Here they do not know God and can not be at Peace. I here the effect of not being centered in God. The effect of living just in the world. I think of the world I live in and people scrambling to find meaning. I hear the great psalm that Dr. Jung quotes that is part of the synchronicity that sets off the founding of AA. "As the dear pants for water so my soul pants for thee.". Romans seems to be the resultant of a people who have lost sight of God.

Jesus is certainly not the neutered love hippy as he is sometimes portrayed. It is hard to read this without hearing anger and scorn. It smacks of disapointment. This is close to the overturning of tables at the temple. What is fascinating is that Jesus is angered at their interpretation of law. They have interpreted pourly...forgetting the very real obligation to parents in favor of tithing to God.
I love (and worry) that we can invalidate the commandments with our own thinking. It very much suggests our God to be one of power whose anger is stirred when we "conveniently" forget our family, the sick, the poor. As our Lord was incarnate so to the commandments.

This scripture is rich. There is so much here.
 

I love the Miriam story and find it troubling...why does God seem sexist in this reading, i.e. he punishes Miriam and not Aaron? (Some commentators say due to Aaron's priesthood; a priest can't have been tainted with leprosy...glad we have lower standards for priests these days, as I have been "tainted" by plenty of sins and am pursuing the priesthood). I also think Miriam and Aaron raise good questions...but yikes, God obviously doesn't agree.

Which leads to the next reading..."there is no fear of God in their eyes." I am taking a Hindu/Muslim class this quarter, and recently learned that Muslim tradition does not approve of parental images of God, and that fear is the only appropriate emotion towards God. I love parental images of God, but I also think that such images can lead us to negate and forget God's power...after all, Jesus is NOT our racquet-ball partner. So while I do not believe that fear is the only appropriate emotion, I do believe it is a valid one and one I at least underuse.

I had my mind blown over the weekend by the Richard Hays reading assigned for NT...there's just so much in Scripture that I am tempted to ignore or explain away. I am so grateful for the chance to explore some "difficult" texts with others.
 

So, could these Scripture benefit the wider church if they were included in the three-year lectionary cycle?

I think the church would benefit from careful exegesis of these passages so we could make some sense of the questions they raise; such as, why Miriam and not Aaron?

I also think in our current climate we emphasize love and not judgment, and these Scriptures remind us of judgment. That was another part that was really challenging for me about the Hays reading I mentioned in yesterday' post: he talked about three key images for the whole NT, and made a case for love NOT being one of them. Very interesting. Can't wait for the class discussion tomorrow; "love" as a primary theme had always been my view. These readings challenge that.
 

I am intregued by the choice of Miriam as the one who recieves judgement from God. Is it directed at a woman or is it through a woman the whole community recieves judgement. I'm suddenly thinking of Genesis and the punishment for eating the fruit. There seems to be corporate repercussions for the disobedience as the whole community must wait out Miriams punishment. I wonder to if Miriam, as suffering servant, almost takes a higher place than even Aaron? Is she taking the same road? While in this piece of scripture Moses is held up we can not forget the trials that Moses has gone through in becoming that trusted servant.

While Miriam certainly is one rough road to go there seems to me to be a lesson to the wider community that the way to God or to leadership in general is a way that requires courage. While we live in a culture that seems only to raise up leadership by popularity there is a need to seek out those who have been tested and tried. Currently I think of such leaders as Mandela, Ghandi, Martin Luther King etc, etc. They suffered great hardships and injustices. Yet they are respected not by their tolerance for suffering but for their ability to fight for justice through such suffering. Does God break the prideful because he has nothing better to do or because they are needed as servents and can not truly lead until they are in correct relation with Him.

This reading reminds me of a God not afraid to draw the line. God here is in charge. All position and rank is pointless. What is required is humility.
 

Anger and frustration
It seems that these readings are full of anger and frustration. I am taken aback by the Romans reading. I wonder about its larger context. What is Paul answering to? And the Gospel seems to be useful to anyone defending the church; it puts the heresy in a very bad place as only the work of human commandments (I could use this in the theology debate...)
The Numbers section is an interesting story. It details Moses' special relationship with God, and what God can do to condemn a human. I wonder though why Miriam pays the price and not Aaron, since both criticized Moses. It also doesn't say specifically if she was healed. It as well seems to speak of punishment for those who speak against the canon, who are critical in any way. Makes a dangerous power statement that those on the inside can use against those on the outside.

This was (written and )posted by Matthew Scott on April 5th.(it was cut and pasted by scottpetersen)
 

The Romans reading seems to be only part of an argument, and seems to be lifted a bit "out of context." In doing just a little bit of "head work" before heart work, I found that in this section of Romans, Paul has lifted passages from Eccl. 720, Psalms 14:2-3, Psalms 5.9, 140.3, 10.7, Isaiah 59.7-8 and Psalm 36.1.

Here, we see Paul taking inspiration from and language from texts in the Old Testament that castigat those who actively refuse God, who disobey God and who are living outside of the Covenant. In the passages in the Old Testament, these angry words are perhaps meant to bring people back, to shock them into responding. I like Scott's reflection on these readings in relation to Jesus and the moneychangers. Clearly Paul is trying to wake people up, he is trying to lay out the fact that God expects better, that we should seek "understanding," "kindness," and that the "fear of God" is something that should be welcomed. Embracing and delighting in (Isaiah 11.1-10) the fear of God means that we recognize our utter dependence upon God, our utterly small existence when we come into contact with God. Proper response to the grandeur of God would not include such nasty behavior that Paul (and the OT) states.

God's presence and God's power and might destroys our hubris and sense that we are our own creation, that we are the be all and end all of all things, that we are God.
 

So day 3 is what challenges do these pose to the wider church if included in our worship...well, the Miriam story seems to support sexism, as well as a hierarchical and elitist priesthood. All of the passages could frighten people to the point of interefering with their faith, or get in the way of them having faith. Probably not great texts with which to initially evangelize, unless one is going by the terrorize-them-into-accepting-Jesus model. (Is that an effective model? I suppose it can be.)
 

While I think, if given time, I could discover multiple reasons why each reading would challenge the church, it is the third reading which jumps out at me.

This reading very clearly shows the importance of following the living God. We may learn from the church but we must always be wary of it becoming an idol.

What hit me was the argument along the lines of, "your disciples in not washing their hands betray the TRADITION of the ELDERS (church)" to which Jesus does not even answer the accusation. From this reading it seems that the tradition of the elders is not all God inspired (is most of it man for the sake of man?). Jesus sidesteps this accusation and levels the accusers by asking (condeming!) "why have you forsaken what God seeks of you for church tradition?"

They come at him with church. He comes at them with God.

This reading certainly challenges the church to not take itself too seriously. It shows the ease by which we can loose sight of whom we're serving. How many serve the church rather than God?
 

Where is the viper's venom in today's church? I have seen too often how those professing the faith can become like serpents, waiting to strike at those within their very nest.
I went to a strongly academic Christian college, which was wonderful in many ways, but I also saw how a cult of personality developed around certain professors within the religion department. Because these professors were articulate about their faith, there was a blindness within the student body to the incompleteness that lies within an one person's understanding. There was sense among many that if Jerry Sittser or Jim Edwards had come to a certain conclusion, then certainly it was the right one, and we should adopt it.
This attitude amidst the community made it difficult for those within the Christian tradition who had a different theological perspective. I remember a Catholic friend of mine, who left his small group on campus after the conversation happened upon and reinforced that disturbingly common idea that the Roman Catholics are not within the Christian tradition. I remember being pulled aside and told that my support for the Christian Feminist movement simply showed a misunderstanding of the issues, and that if I knew what I was talking about, I would surely abandon my heretical ways.
I think that we can find a warning in these verses; we are told to keep our religious authorities in perspective, because they too have turned sour. We are warned against that adoption of traditional interpretation without a biblical analysis of our own. We are shown how the desre for power and recognition can corrupt someone's entire being, even among our own prophets and leaders, as demonstrated in Miriam.
They address our nature as Christian communities, and how we learn and interact with our own leaders.
 

The scripture that resonates the most with me this morning is the reading of Matthew.

I believe this tension can be the most difficult to be in. It is the tension of serving God first but being paid by the tradition. As a church representative and in the future bound by vows it will easy to side with the church.

I can't help but think that Jesus here is talking to all Priests and ministers when cuts the pharisees to shreds. Jesus here goes on a full court press pointedly revealing how they have given up the law for the sake of tradition. Do we not do this when we rely to heavily on church?

The implication of the reading is that God is present. Through the spirit we can and may be challenged to do church differently. As the reading suggests it is possible to defend tradition to the point where it becomes "lip service".

The danger of opening up to the spirit is that it takes developing a trust amongst members. It takes practice and a community to check one another in their understanding of spirit. It takes living in a new way. It takes believing that God will show up. I means believing in the miraculous and the inbreaking. It may result in throwing things out. It requires surrender which can be painful.

I almost feel bad for the pharisees. If they are anything like us their defending what they know. They believe in what they know. They have chosen this path because the elders have shown them that this was the way to God. How were they to know that God was going to show up in Jesus and tell them something different. Its not a fair fight.

I pray for a church that in leaning on God and tradition will instinctively lean more on God than tradition. Leaning on God is difficult but the costs seem great not to...
"Hypocrites! How rightly Isaiah prophesied about you when he said: 8 This people honours me only with lip-service, while their hearts are far from me. 9 Their reverence of me is worthless; the lessons they teach are nothing but human commandments.'
 

I find it intriguing that at the center of the turmoil among Aaron, Miriam, and Moses is not a doctrinal issue or how to present a teaching, but rather a relational issue. Moses was being criticized for entering into an interracial, intercultural, interfaith marriage. I wonder if the comment about YHWH speaking through them also was possibly not a posturing of pride, but a discussion of the way their closeness to Moses (and then, it would follow, his wife's as well) affected their roles in the community; in part because of their relationship to Moses, they also became leaders and prophets. Maybe they were concerned about the fitness from someone outside their community to have that same role that came along with Zipporah's relationship to Moses.
In this manner, Miriam's story can be intepreted as an injunction against xenophobia and racism. She criticizes Moses for Zipporah's part in the community because of her status as a cultural outsider; as a result, she is stricken with a disease that affects her physical appearance (changing her very color), and is mandated to spend seven days shut out from camp, stricken from her role and place in the culture she grew up in. She became an outsider to the Hebrews for that week.
And so, Miriam's story really isn't one of a God that can seem at times vindictive and wrathful; it's an example of restorative justice, putting Miriam in the place of the those she was attempting to exclude from the community.
 

The common theme in these three scriptures the nature of revelation; in the Exodus passage, YHWH speaks out about how the means God uses to speak to the religious leaders; Romans and Matthew address how that revelation is passed on from the leaders to their followers, often times in ways that misconstrue the message and are not pleasing to god.
 

While I think these three are random there is a common element in their condemnation of those seeking human ways over attentiveness to God.

Miriam and Aaron seek to be included in God's line of communication. There seems to be elements of the the Adam and Eve story. They seek to obtain the fruit of the tree of wisdom.

Romans simply says this. "not one seeks God" By default by not seeking God they know not the way of peace. There is no fear or reverence in their understanding and the result their words bring about venom.

In Matthew the Pharisees are rebuked quite severely for following human commandments in the place of God's Commandments.

All proclaim the folly of too great a dependence on human ways of being. Having to great a dependence the readings lead to the lack of communion. All the readings have an element to remind through the folly of others to "seek the Kingdom of God first".
 

I missed yesterday so will do the day 4 and 5 reflections together...if choosing a passage on which to preach, I would want to choose Exodus, but am not sure what I would say. It's such a tough one, and appears so sexist to me. I might focus on the community aspect; that the community waited for her and accepted her back during her punishment. I also might emphasize the imperfections of leaders of the church, and how desipte this story both Aaron and Miriam are remembered alongside Moses in Micah 6:4. That gives home to me as an imperfect Christian.

As for the day 5 reflection of what they have in common, that feels like cheating since I picked them. MUCH more interesting to read what Amy and Scott wrote about what they have in common!