Psalm 42 - Thirsty

Put your hope in God
  for I will yet praise Him.
     My Saviour
        My God

Many in our 'material world'
Put hope in their gods —
   their possessions
   their bank balances
   their positions in society
   their connections.

They look at me and sneer
"Where is your god?"
I might not have many visible possessions,
My bank balance might be very low,
        even less than zero.
In the eyes of society, I might be a "Nobody",

But I know that
 the God of Heaven is my Abba —Father
 God is my Rock and Redeemer.

When things look bad,
I will yet praise Him.
When I am feeling sad
I will yet praise Him.

God is my Hope
A very present help in troubled times

I'm thirsty — I crave the Water of Life
I search for the eternal spring,
I find its source in Him.

They're thirsty —
       but their wells are dry.
They run to their resevoires,
       but cracked as they are,
The sustenance, on which they relied,
       has dried.
       They cried.

They madly dash about,
    hoping to find a river in the drought
But all that remains on the cracked river beds
are a few small smelly puddles,
Putrid pools with shiny oil rings on the scummy surface,
Making mocking mirages in the scorching sunlight.

I'm thirsty — I crave the Water for living.
My thirst is quenched at the eternal Spring
I find its source - pure and Life-giving,
in Him.

They're thirsty, blind and angry —
They scream, "Now, where is this God?"
We cannot see Him,
He must be nowhere.
Does God even exist?
They lie there dying and shake their fist.

God sends me - the one they despised.
With the Water of Life.
Bucket loads full - and overflowing
To revive and refresh their shriveled souls.
Are you thirsty?
Do you want to know:
The eternal Spring of Life
The nourishment of Life
The Way, The Truth and The Life.
You can find God within you,
As you thrive and grow.

Joshua 22 Effect of Exclusion

I have been mulling over this chapter over the past few days. It intrigues me. I will admit that it is narrative I was not familiar with. I know lots of Bible narratives, but this one had escaped my notice. So in case you like me had skipps over this bit let me try and give you the story in a nutshell.

These events come in, as you probably guessed, when Joshua was still in charge, The promised land had been occupied by the "Children of Israel". Who was Israel? He was Jacob, renamed Israel, and the children, were the descendants of Israel, and they belonged to "tribes named after the sons of Jacob and sons of Joseph (for the half tribes). Back track a bit to before they crossed over the Jordan, they were camped in the region on the Eastern side of the Jordan for quite a while. Now, as you do, a bunch of them kind of liked where they were living and wanted to stay. These people who were from the Tribes of Reuben and Had and the half tribe of Manasseh (One of Joseph's sons), asked Moses if tgey could stay, Moses agreed on condition that the men of the tribe FIRST cross over the Jordan with the rest of the Tribes and help take occupancy and settle the land, before going back to set up their own homesteads. So they had the bits that they liked apportioned to them on that condition. The men of Reuben, Gad and Manesseh are conscripted, and occupying the promised land was no walk in the park. SEVEN years it took them to get things in shape on the West side, and the Tabernacle, the centre of Jewish worship, the location of the Ark of the Covenant, was set up at Shiloh. 

After seven years, Joshua summons the men of Reuben, Gad and Manesseh, and said, you can go back to your families. You are being honourably discharged, having done your duty and served well.   Go back to your families who are on the other side of the Jordan River but keep on Loving God, obeying his commandments and serving Him with all your heart and soul. 

So they go. They take their spoils of war, which is a bit like, in the modern sense, the severance and retirement packages. They were told to share this with their families.  They go back, and the first thing they do, on getting back is decide to build a humongous altat. It was not meant, as far as I can determine, not to be an alternative to the Tabernacle at Shiloh, but what they termed a "remembrance".  There was a problem with this altar, and that is, in the Mosaic law, there was to be only ONE centre of worship and that was where the Tabernacle was. 

Somebody on the Eastern side must have seen this altar, and thought, "Hang on a bit, what's going on here? That's not right. and the rumour mill started. If they are building an altar then they must be worshipping other gods, and the ten tribes on the East side were inflamed with righteous indignation. They all head for Shiloh and are willing to go to war against those on the West side of the Jordan. That is an extreme action of a zealous bunch. 

So often injustices and violence comes as a result of rumour and misunderstanding and most often, it is the people who are regarded as different for some reason that become the target of violent repercussions of a misunderstanding. I believe this was what could possibly have happened here.

Fortunately, instead of them taking a preemptive strike, they decide to send a delegation of leaders to find out what is going on there.  

After being challenged and accused of treachery and told that their ''sin" could destroy the whole nation, they explained their motive. This is the bit that got my attention. 

Then Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh replied to the heads of the clans of Israel: 22 “The Mighty One, God, the Lord! The Mighty One, God, the Lord! He knows! And let Israel know! If this has been in rebellion or disobedience to the Lord, do not spare us this day. 23 If we have built our own altar to turn away from the Lord and to offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, or to sacrifice fellowship offerings on it, may the Lord himself call us to account.

24 “No! We did it for fear that some day your descendants might say to ours, ‘What do you have to do with the Lord, the God of Israel? 25 The Lord has made the Jordan a boundary between us and you—you Reubenites and Gadites! You have no share in the Lord.’ So your descendants might cause ours to stop fearing the Lord.

So the crux of the matter was that Reuben Gad and Manasseh thought that one day the bunch over there will look at us, our children and grandchildren and will say, that we are not part of them, that we are not part of God's people and will refuse to allow us to come to the Tabernacle to worship. They will view the river of Jordan, that they had all crossed together as a barrier between them. This altar was not built as the others thought as a rebellion against the Lord, but as a remembrance that they belonged to the Lord. 

Were they wrong to do this? Were they mistaken?  Could it be that despite the original purpose of this altar, over time, it could have become a substitute for Tabernacle/Temple,  not only a different place to worship the one true God, but an alternative to the one true God? I don't know. It is possible. Whatever is the case, the thing I find intriguing is the thought that worried the two and a half tribes was the idea that one day they might come to be regarded as foreigners, and that they would be excluded from regular worship in the Tabernacle. They were going to be told YOU DON'T BELONG! 

They feared that this might occur in the future. Were there fears well founded? 

I believe they were, even if, I do not think that the idea of building an altar was tgevbest way of dealing with this. As we see from the narrative, the altar was seen as rebellion instead of remembrance. It became a bone of contention instead of a unifying force. 

I think of how the people of Israel became a divided people, the Northern Kingdom of 'Israel" and the Southern kingdom of Judah, which included Benjamin.. I think of the Jews of Jesus time and how they despised the Samaritans who worshipped on Mount Gerazim . AndvI think of today, when one part of the body of Christ says to another part, you do not belong to this body. Go away. We di not need you. One denomination will point an accusatory finger at another denomination, andcsaya they are not real Christians. 

Something has divided them and caused them to see the one's on the other side of the Jordan as outsiders. 

What is your Jordan, is it a theological difference? There are a lot of those. Is it a racial or cultural divide?

In our modern age, with communication devices and transport that link continents across oceans, it is hard to understand how a River could become such a barrier as to split a nation, but it did, and you need to remember that it took a miracle for the nation to cross over the Jordan in the first place.

Psychological barriers are far more challenging than physical ones.  At the root of this fiasco was a fear, a dread, that future generations, due to unfamiliarity would grow apart to such an extent that they would no longer be recognized as part of the same family, the same nation.

How is that possible? Look at Israel today, where Jewish people are at odds with Palestinians. Palestinians, as Muslims have a common heritage and view Abraham as their Patriarch too. And yet the division is such that even the religion is different. 

All over the world there is a growing distrust of the immigrant. The beginning of the idea that you do not belong here, you are not a true believer. That is what is happening here.

I am not sure that building an altar was the right answer for Gad, Reuben and Manesseh. Personally, I think that it would have been better had they pledged to ensure that Gad, Reuben and Manasseh people regularly participated in the worship at the Tabernacle, and encouraged the other tribes to come to their region to enjoy their hospitality.

However, I am intrigued that the controversial altar was allowed to remain, and the delegation did not insist on its destruction.

The conclusion of the matter was, it did not matter which side of the Jordan River they lived, they all loved and served the same loving God.

Today,  seek out what unites you to others, not what divides. 

"Christ is preached to an Ethiopian"

I thought I would check out the lectionaries readings for tomorrow. The 1st reading is Acts 8:26 - 40 and so I went to www.biblegateway.com and put the reference in the search engine. Up it came with this title:
Christ is preached to an Ethiopian

So what, I hear you ask is wrong with that - that is what the passage is about isn't it.

If you are going to add subtitles to the Biblical text, please do not miss the main point. If you are unsure as to what the main point is, then consult the text. And since you are publishing a version, you should consult the text in its original language. Read it and see what is repeated. If you do that with the text in question, you will find that he word Ethiopian is not repeated but the word  eunuch is.

So what is the big deal about that? Jews did not have a problem with Ethiopians. Remember the "Queen of Sheba" . However, Jews did have an issue with eunuchs. A eunuch was cut off from the assembly, in accordance with Mosaic law. For the Christian sect to welcome into fellowship a eunuch marked a huge departure from the Mosaic law system.

The word ευνουχος -eunuch is repeated  four times. How many times did the writer use the word Ethiopian? You guessed it - ONCE. 

So, having established that to the writer was more interested in the fact that this person was a eunuch than that he happened to hail from Ethiopia or that he happened to be a "powerful" man in the government of that country, we need to ask why. Why did the writer emphasise that he was a eunuch rather than simply "a man" - a descriptor used once for him in verse 27.

Well the writer, Luke, like any good journalist, focussed in on the most newsworthy aspect of this story, and that was that this convert was a eunuch. In order to understand why this fact was so amazing one has to have some background information.

In Deuteronomy 23:1 it specifically prohibits eunuchs from entering the "congregation ", or the temple. That was effectively a permanent exclusion from the covenant, Eunuchs, like lepers, were completely excluded and should any eunuch attempted to enter the temple, that would have been regarded as a defilement and the consequences for the eunuch would I am sure have been very severe.  

God did seem to be softening his line on this if we read in Isaiah 56:4
For this is what the Lord says:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
    who choose what pleases me
    and hold fast to my covenant—
5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls
    a memorial and a name
    better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
    that will endure forever.

So God is giving his Temple and its walls. That is very significant when you consider that under the Mosaic law, it was the Temple that eunuchs were excluded from. But this is Isaiah, and this is, I believe a prophesy - future tense. 

Could it be that this account of the the eunuch and Philip is a fulfilment of that passage in Isaiah. Was God not doing a new thing here, that the translators and editors of the NIV in the 20th and 21st centuries AD. have failed to realise. Either they have failed to realise it, which is itself terrible, or worse they have deliberately ignored it because they do not want to deal with the implications of that realisation. Namely, that we serve an Inclusive God, a God who is beyond Gender. A God who though ever red to throughout with masculine pronouns, has among his many names -El Shaddai, which means "many breasted".  

Our God wants to be in relationship with every person, though God also chooses to allow us to choose to be in relationship with him. If I look again at the passage from Isaiah, it seems to me that what is important is not the physical attributes of the persons genitalia, but the ethical attributes of the person's soul.  "Those who choose what pleases me". Clearly, being a eunuch is not a matter of choice. But such people who are eunuchs can still choose what pleases God. 

What got me really excited about the story of Philip and the eunuch in Acts 8 is the place where having had the scriptures explained, the eunuch asks Philip what is stopping him from being baptised.  Bearing in mind that baptism was the New Covenant equivalent of circumcision under the Old Covenant, baptism is the welcoming into the congregation, the very type of person that had been hitherto excluded. The man did not cease to be a eunuch, because lo and behold, at the end of the narrative, it says that the eunuch continued on his way rejoicing. Not only was he welcomed into the congregation, but he became a minister of the Gospel, instantaneously ordained to take the Gospel to Ethiopia. 

I do not wish to suggest that the eunuch's ethnicity is not significant. Actually I think it is very significant that the first reported Gentile convert to the Way was Black, and again, we are often told that the first Gentile convert was "Cornelius."


I have just asked Siri who was the first Gentile convert to Christianity, and it showed me a Wikipedia article about “Cornelius the Centurion” - if that is correct, then either Luke got his Chronology mixed up because he reports on the eunuch’s conversion before he talks about the centurions conversion, but then how would we know that is the case since the same document, the Acts of the Apostles, is the only historical record of both narratives. The only other explanation that would make Cornelius the first, and that would be that the Ethiopian was not a Gentile, and if he were not a gentile, he must have been Jewish, but again, I am stymied because Luke does not mention that he is Jewish, he writes that he was a man from Ethiopia. 

I am left with only one other option in my opinion, and that is that God chose to convert a black African man (more senior in rank in his government) before he converted a white European man who had a military rank, but relatively junior to that of the Candace’s official, but that the Eurocentric theologians prioritise Cornelius conversion because he in their eyes was more important. Maybe Cornelius, being a “real man” so to speak, without the baggage of being a eunuch. 

So if I might be so bold as to suggest an alternative “headline” for this narrative in Acts 8:
First Gentile convert to Christianity: a Black African Eunuch.