Conspiracy Theory

History is full of conspiracies, real and imagined. To this day, scholars discuss and debate the extent to which Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, or acted in concert with others, in his assassination of JFK. Much more clearly, and beyond any doubt, is the fact that John Wilkes Booth was part of a large conspiracy to not only assassinate President Lincoln, but also to murder other key figures in the United States and possibly overthrow the government.

Likewise, the execution of Jesus was part of a conspiracy. There was an organized effort to get a guilty verdict and a death sentence for a man who had committed no crime. In his account of the matter, Matthew writes that

the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.”

The conspiracy was to be carried out with stealth - another translation offers the adverb 'sly' - and among the conspirators, Matthew notes elders and chief priests. This was a conspiracy among the powerful, not among the common people. In his narrative, Marks adds the scribes to the list of conspirators:

the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”

This conspiracy would seek to have Jesus arrested in a low-profile manner: a public arrest in front of crowds was not their goal. Once arrested, the conspiracy would stir up public opinion against Jesus, and pressure on the Roman governor to issue a death sentence - this, despite the lack of any reasonable or valid charge against Jesus in terms of Roman law.

Now, however, the events take a bizarre turn. The conspiracy is not well thought-out. Governor Pontius Pilate sees that Jesus is innocent, and is not easily swayed to give orders for His execution. At the end, it seems that this conspiracy might fail, until it receives assistance from an unlikely source. Although the conspirators do not know it, Jesus has been aware of their plot since its beginning - indeed, since even before its beginning. And it is Jesus Who will assist the plot and finally bring about its success.

In the final analysis, the conspirators were incompetent. Jesus, seeing their plans unravel, realizes that if He is going to receive the death sentence He is trying to get, will have to intervene on their behalf. Jesus is manipulating His own trial to ensure that He is executed. At several points in the narrative, a few words from Him would have secured His release. He must calculate His words, and His silences, to obtain death. Although the conspirators do not know it, Jesus has become part of the conspiracy.

Just as there was a conspiracy against Jesus 2,000 years ago, so there is also a conspiracy against us today - a conspiracy against you and against me. Who are the current conspirators? Sin, death, and the devil; in addition, the world, and our own sinful natures.

They conspire to cause us to lose sight of Jesus and His central role in our lives and in the world. They conspire to get us to think that life is about getting an education, getting a good job, and being relatively happy and content. They conspire to prevent us from spending time with God; they conspire to prevent us from helping others.

This conspiracy has a number of tactics it uses against us; one of them is busyness. If we are busy, we won't take the time to talk to God, to listen to Him, and to meditate on His Word. Having not done those things, we won't spend time helping others, either.

Against this conspiracy, we are powerless. In fact, we are part of the conspiracy against ourselves. Jesus, however, stands powerfully and effectively against this conspiracy. He rescues us. As John writes, addressing us,

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

There was an organized conspiracy out to get Jesus. It wanted Him dead. It succeeded, but only because He caused it to do so. And in succeeding, it failed, because the conspirators did not know that after killing Jesus, He would rise from the dead, unleashing His amazing power to transform people and transform the world. In killing Jesus, the conspiracy set into motion a process which would ultimately install Jesus as supreme and ultimately erase the conspiracy.

There is an organized conspiracy out to get us. It wants us dead - spiritually dead. Our own sinful nature is part of that conspiracy. But Jesus stops the conspiracy. Jesus breaks into the conspiracy, and into our lives, and shatters the plans which would lead us away from Him. Foiling this conspiracy, Jesus leads us to the truth. Conspiracy is always about deception; Jesus is always about the truth.

Doctrine vs. Ethics

The tenuous relationship between doctrine and ethics in the Christian faith has long demonstrated ambivalence. On the one hand, no good doctrine can be so purely abstract as to lack practical application; on the other hand, the prescription of specific habits in the physical world takes on, at some point, a degree of specificity which lacks the peculiarly general nature which is a mark of doctrine.

Theodore of Mopsuestia, who died around 428 A.D. and who was a friend of John Chrysostom, wrestled with theological abstractions, and yet did so in the concrete practice of his monastic life. John of Damascus wrote his abstract work, The Source of Knowledge, but wrote a concrete text, Sacred Parallels as a companion text to it; he died in 749. Peter Lombard wrote a medieval classic called the Sentences; in it, propositions of theological doctrine stand next to propositions of practical ethics; he died in 1164.

Despite impressive intellectual horsepower being devoted to integrating doctrine and ethics, strong forces were at work to separate them. The history of ideas, or the history of thought, is a tangled web; one interpretation sees humanism as a force which worked to separate doctrine from ethics. While this assertion is controversial, it has at least some plausibility. A scholar named Christian Callisen argues that Georg Calixtus (also known as George Calixtus) was in some sense an extension of humanism as it arose in the forms of Petrarch and Angelo Poliziano. Calixtus lived in Germany and died in 1656. According to Callisen,

The movement was characterized by the rediscovery and reconsideration of ancient texts - Latin, Greek, and Hebrew - within which was sought "the answer to all social, political, artistic, and ethical problems."

The quote marks indicate that Callisen used a phrase from a book by S. Harrison Thomson.

While Callisen's characterization of Renaissance humanism is a bit naive - he appears to accept uncritically the propaganda put forth by the Renaissance writers themselves, propaganda in which they claim to have "rediscovered" the heritage of Greco-Roman classicism, even though medieval thinkers had access to these texts - he nonetheless properly notes that some humanists hoped to offer solutions to a wide variety of questions, including ethical questions, but notably not listing doctrinal questions. If Calixtus is part of this Renaissance humanist movement, his theology may be one of the forces separating doctrine from ethics. Jaroslav Pelikan writes:

Already in the early centuries, Christian thinkers began to distinguish between that instruction which was intended “to make known the word concerning Christ, and the mystery regarding him” and that instruction which was intended “to point to the corrections of habits.” At least in part, the distinction was suggested by the procedure of the New Testament itself. Theodore of Mopsuestia noted that both in the Epistle to the Romans, and in that to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul first set forth “dogmatic sermons,” defined as “sermons which contain the account of the coming of Christ, and indicate the blessing which he has conferred upon us by His coming,” and then went onto “ethical exhortation.” The great commission in Matthew 28:19 likewise was seen as a division of Christian discipline into two parts, “the ethical part and the precision of dogmas,” the former being contained in the commandments of Jesus, and the latter in the “tradition of baptism.” This meant that “the method of Godliness consists of these two things, pious doctrines and virtuous practice,” neither of which was acceptable to God without the other. Both forms of instruction belonged in the pulpit and in books about Christian teaching. The standard manual of doctrine in Greek Christianity, the Orthodox Faith of John of Damascus, discussed not only the Trinity and Christology, but also such matters as fear, anger, and the imagination. Its later counterpart in the Latin church, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, included in its third book a treatment of the virtues created by Grace. The two branches of theology were not permanently separated until the work of the seventeenth-century Protestant theologian, George Calixtus, but the distinction between doctrine and life had been in force long before that division of labor was effected.

The Christian faith certainly cannot be reduced, or seen as equivalent to, a moral code. Indeed, moral questions are secondary or peripheral to the core of faith. Yet Christianity does demand some ethic - and not merely any ethic. Jesus devoted effort to the discussion of ethical matters - even as He reminded His listeners that moral laws were not the core of His message. Christian doctrine may be seen as meta-ethical: setting not detailed moral precepts, but establishing a broader framework in which possibly several competing moral systems might be constructed, yet which also rules out other possible moral systems.

Beyond the 'what' of ethics, Jesus also addresses the 'why' - not merely what I ought to do, but what will motivate me to do it. Perhaps this is closer to the core of Christ's message - striving to be moral is, by itself, a nearly worthless activity. Human efforts at morality are useless and vain, and when most convincing are most dangerous. But divine inspiration to morality - when the effort is not a human one, but one driven by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit - is simultaneously a manifestation of God at work and an expression of gratitude toward God.

If a truly ethical act can only be the result of the Holy Spirit at work inside a human being, and can never be the result of a purely human effort, and if the only possible motive for such an act is the response of gratitude from a human being who has received unearned and unmerited grace as a freely-given gift, then we might begin to see how Hegel saw the universe as the process of God's self-knowledge.

The Mind, the Heart, and the Hands

Approaching the topic of Christian doctrine, noted scholar Jaroslav Pelikan worked first to place doctrine within its larger context. Doctrine can be over- and underemphasized. Borrowing from a long tradition - Pelikan was a Lutheran for most of life, converting shortly before his death to Eastern Orthodoxy - he identifies doctrine as the content of the church's believing, teaching, and confessing. These beliefs, teachings, and confessions are based on the text of Scripture. In short, doctrine is the "what" of the church's written and spoken expressions.

It is worth noting that, according to Pelikan's definition, doctrine is corporate and not individual; it is the "we believe" and not the "I believe" - the usual texts of the Apostolic Creed and Nicene Creed begin with credo - "I believe" - but the Athanasian Creed includes a credamus - "we believe." Even with the first person singular of the credo, the set text and the corporate recitation of the text give a corporate aspect.

Although Pelikan made a career out of doctrine and theology, he notes that doctrine is not the main function of the collected followers of Jesus. Christians serve mankind, worship God, work to improve this world, and anticipate the joys of the next world: none of those functions are doctrinal. Yet all of those functions are informed by doctrine. Christians serve mankind, being instructed to do so by their doctrine; and the ways in which they serve mankind are shaped by doctrine: Christians must show charity to all people impartially. Christians worship God, identifying Him by their doctrine and praising His properties as those properties are set forth in doctrine. Christians work to improve this world, guided by peculiarly Christian doctrines which value peace over war, which value every human life, and which value each individual and his freedom - even if that individual opposes Christianity and uses his freedom to do so. Christians anticipate the joys of the next world, knowing by means of their doctrine that such joys are an utterly unearned and unmerited gift bestowed by a loving and gracious God.

Doctrine may not be eternal. Once this world has passed, we will have no need of doctrine, for, as Paul writes,

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

When we know perfectly and see perfectly - when we have an experience of the direct unmediated presence of God, an experience which in our present state we can neither imagine nor comprehend - doctrine will be superfluous and unneeded. Doctrine is provisional; it serves us as long as we are in this life. Once I have been brought to my destination, I no longer have need of the schedules and maps which showed me the route. Doctrine will end:

where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

Despite its provisional nature, doctrine is important, because it shapes the church's ministries. Teaching doctrine is therefore a good and necessary task, not for its own sake, but in the service of the larger nature of Christ's corporate body on earth. Pelikan writes:

What the Church of Jesus Christ believes, teaches and confesses on the basis of the word of God: this is Christian doctrine. Doctrine is not the only, not even the primary, activity of the church. The church worships God and serves mankind, it works for the transformation of this world and awaits the consummation of its hope in the next. 'Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love" - love, and not faith - and certainly not doctrine. The church is always more than a school; not even the age of Enlightenment managed to restrict or reduce it to its teaching function. But the church can not be less than a school. Its faith, hope and love all express themselves in teaching and confession. Liturgy is distinguished from ceremonial by a content that is declared in the Credo; polity transcends organization because of the way the church defines itself and its structure in its dogma; preaching is set apart from other rhetoric by its proclamation of the word of God; biblical exegesis avoids antiquarianism because it is intent on discovering what the text teaches, and not merely what it taught. The Christian church would not be the church as we know it without Christian doctrine.

Its corporate nature is one thing, among several, which makes doctrine what it is. Theology can be the work of an individual: the history of Christian thought illustrates this. But doctrine is the collective expression of those who follow Jesus. Jaroslav Pelikan has done well to bring this to our attention.

Paul's Concern for Unity in Galatians

Pauline epistles continue to serve, after two thousand years, as points of departure for numerous lines of thought. In the second chapter of his letter to the Galatians, the reader encounters a narrative which can be construed as a tale of signs which have been detached from the their original purposes and meanings. Once thus unfastened from their original contexts and denotations, they cause trouble.

Daily life, in any era, is filled with symbols. Over time, some of those symbols become disconnected from their initial functions and significances. Many people wear baseball caps who neither watch nor play baseball. One type of earring, which once signified slavery, is now worn as fashion. Many modern shoes have patterns of dots which were originally designed to drain excess moisture from the shoe after stepping in puddle; now those dots are understood as decorative in purpose and few wearers are aware of the original task of the perforations.

In Paul's letter to the Galatians, he mentions in the second chapter two symbols which had lost their meanings: circumcision and communal dining. Nicholas Thomas Wright discusses the adventures of Nigel Barley among the Dowayo people of Cameroon. Barley, a sociologist and anthropologist, carefully observed, recorded, and analyzed the culture of the Dowayo. Wright summarizes Barley's findings:

Social psychologists can and do come up with theories as to why circumcision plays such a large role in certain cultures. The ritual seems to highlight both the importance of the reproductive function and the fact that sexual appetite is a force that must somehow be controlled (though from Barley's accounts of Dowayo life this aspect is decidedly more symbolic than actual). Its origins are lost in the mists of time, through the Bible speaks of one occasion on which God commanded Abraham that he and his household and could be circumcised as a sign of the covenant God had made with Abraham and his family (Genesis 17). The Jews were by no means the only people in the ancient world to wear this badge, just as they are not alone in this respect today.

In many cultures, circumcision had a specific meaning or meanings, purpose or purposes, and context or contexts. The Hebrews were not the only nation to attach significance to this ritual. But over time, the initial functions of circumcision - to remind the Hebrews that their covenant with God was hereditary and therefore linked with the act of reproduction; to remind the Hebrews that the human sexual drive was a powerful force requiring discipline and judiciousness - were gradually less and less linked to the ritual itself. Circumcision became a ceremony disconnected from its primordial purpose. Floating free, as it were, a symbol without a referent, people found other alleged meanings for it. Circumcision came to be seen as a distinguishing mark, one which created two classes: the circumcised and the uncircumcised. To be sure, from its initiation, it had de facto created these two classes; but that was not its original purpose, meaning, or context. Consider carefully whether this text was meant to create two social classes, or whether it was to remind people of a sacred arrangement between God and humans:

And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

Again, while the text does generate a two-class system, such a class system was at most a byproduct of the text. The focus and theme of the text is covenant. By Paul's time, however, two thousand years after God's conversation with Abraham, circumcision had come to be seen as a "badge" - Wright's word - of a group. Many of Paul's readers had misunderstood the primary function of circumcision: they assumed that its purpose was to divide humans into two groups.

Likewise, the act of dining with others was an act loaded with significance. Throughout the Tanakh and New Testament, communal dining was exactly that - communal. A meal was a "being together" - a phrase worthy of Heidegger. From Abraham's meal with visitors (Genesis 18:2 through 18:8), to the Last Supper, to the eternal banquet which is Heaven in the future, the Scripture uses mealtime as a metaphor for unity. Yet in the narrative concerning Peter's eating habits, meals will become divisive instead of unifying.

Anyone who has seen a cafeteria in an American high school will find this narrative easy enough to understand: imagine Peter eating lunch routinely at a table with a group of people - daily, over a series of weeks and months. They eat together because they are friends, and they are friends because they eat together. The shared meal both reflects and strengthens the bond. But one day, as Peter is on his way to lunch, he sees an old friend, a friend whom he has not seen in a long time. Happy to see his friend, he is also concerned about what his friend might think or say when he sees the people with whom Peter has been dining. Peter suddenly breaks his habit of eating at the table of friends.

Peter's error? He has detached the common dining experience from its primary meaning of a "being with" or a "being together" and instead has attached the dining experience to a new meaning, "being seen" as a part of a group. When the symbol is disassociated from its original referent and connecting to a new and foreign significance, social disruption results.

Paul's main concern in writing to the Galatians is not the purity of the symbol; Paul's concern is not preserving the meaning of the symbols. His concern is preserving the Gospel. Paul sees that the misunderstanding of these symbols - circumcision and common dining - threatens something of a larger magnitude. If the problem were merely this misunderstanding, then the problem might be overlooked, or dealt with in a more low-key manner. But this misunderstanding concerns Paul because it could lead, if left unchecked, to much worse problems.

Explaining that he is not held up by minutia or by the technicalities of definitions, Paul points to the question at the heart of the matter: unity. When symbols are detached from the original referents, and attached to other referents, the resulting misunderstanding is the least of the problems. The graver issue is conflict and divisiveness.

The reader might be misled into thinking that the concerns in the second chapter of Paul's letter to the Galatians are circumcision and shared meals. Those are not the main concerns; they are merely the occasions or instances. The main concern is unity. Nicholas Thomas Wright continues:

Why? Because the gospel is the announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus is Lord of the world. And if he is Lord of the whole world, then those who believe in him, who give allegiance to him, must form a single family. There cannot be divisions based on nationhood or race. If the church had learnt this from Paul, instead of conveniently forgetting it, many troubles in today's world might have been averted.

Paul cares about circumcision and common dining only because, and only to the extent that, they impact the Gospel, for good or for ill. If someone asks Paul about his theology of circumcision, he might reply that it's whatever most effectively promotes the Gospel. Asked about his theology of shared meals, he might reply that it's whatever most accurately transmits to people the idea that Jesus loves them.

One possible understanding of the second chapter of Galatians, then, is this: Paul understands that unity serves the Gospel, and disunity hampers it. In this particular case, the issues which offer an opportunity for unity, or which threaten to disunite, are circumcision and mutual mealtimes.

Ezra: Forms and Themes

The book of Ezra presents an interpretive challenge to the scholar. Its chronology is complex, and in the course analysis, readers are unanimous in seeing that its texts, in the canonical arrangement, are not in temporal order. Rearranging the material into a proper sequence is a complex task.

But beyond questions of chronology, Ezra presents other engaging features. In terms of form, a variety of texts present themselves: letters, first-person memoirs, third-person narratives, and lists. The author or editor chose not to smooth the transitions from one form to another, and leave the book as an explicit anthology.

The most obvious narrative to be assembled from the texts is the struggle to rebuild Jerusalem, its Temple, and its walls. The fall of Babylon, in 539 B.C., to the armies of the Persian king Cyrus, paved the way for the release of the Jews, who had been held captive by the Babylonians. Freed by Cyrus, they return to Judea and begin the reconstruction.

This process is dominated by frustration. Initially, Cyrus gives permission and even encouragement to the project, but his successors and their subordinates continuously create obstacles to the construction. The frustrating form of the text - the unevenness between forms, the exasperating riddles of sequence - is perhaps meant to capture the frustrations of the Jews as they encounter one complication after another.

The theme of confusion permeates the theme of obstructionism. The enemies of the rebuilding project confuse the spiritual and the worldly. The fear, real or feigned, that the Jews will not pay taxes to the Persians, and the intimation that Jerusalem would lead some form of rebellion - a plausible notion in the wake of Babylonian revolts against the Persian administration of Xerxes around 521 B.C. - reveal that the enemies of the Jews are thinking on a strictly worldly plane, and fail to understand the larger spiritual issues which motivate the Jews.

Ironically, the Jews themselves are at that moment in their history at which they begin to loosen their grasp on the desire for a worldly kingdom. To be sure, the zealot tendency will remain strong, and four centuries later, many will confuse Jesus with a worldly king. But emerging from the Babylonian Captivity, the Jews have also begun to explore the more spiritual understanding of their inherited promises. While there will remain a significant focus on the establishment of a geo-political kingdom, it no longer has hegemony over the parallel spiritual focus.

Irony is located in the fact that, just as the Jews are increasing their scope to include a vision beyond the physical and political, their enemies, still strictly limited to the physical and political, accuse them of plotting in exactly this worldly mode.

The sudden release with which these barriers are removed and progress enabled manifests a divine intervention, like the Exodus from Egypt or Cyrus's initial impetus for the reconstruction.

The closing segment's concern with intermarriage again emphasizes the transition of the Jews from a primarily geo-political focus to a more spiritual focus, and again leaves them open to misunderstanding. Those not attuned to the sacred concerns of the Jews will be easily misled into accusing them of chauvinism and racism. Nothing could seem more crassly bigoted than Ezra's dismay at intermarriage.

This misunderstanding pivots on the word 'foreign' or 'strange' in the text. Ezra is not dealing here with matters of race or language. What is 'foreign' about the forbidden spouses is their 'abominations' or 'detestable practices' - their adherence to the polytheistic practices of neighboring cultures. Human sacrifice was still not only practiced by the nations located around Judaea, but practiced frequently. These pagan worship ceremonies also include ritual orgies. Ezra marks these things as foreign, i.e., a foreign way of thinking.

The larger text and context of the Tanakh reveal that God freely countenances marriages between individuals of different cultures, languages, citizenships, and races. Moses married Zipporah, a Midianite, who was foreign in the sense of language, culture, citizenship, and race - but who was not foreign in the spiritual sense, inasmuch as her family worshipped the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, the one true God.

To be sure, more questions are raised than are answered by Zipporah - enigmatic passages in the text mention a Cushite woman who might be Zipporah, or who might be a second wife to Moses - but the precedent is set.

Ezra's injunction against marrying those who engaged in the polytheistic practices of the pagan nations was not an example of cultural elitism, national chauvinism, xenophobia, or nativism. Ezra understood that the practices of human sacrifice and ritual orgies were what made these people foreign, and were practices which would grow and spread if permitted. A civilization which would maintain any respect for human life, and which would attribute any dignity to human life, could not survive if it permitted these practices.

A rather modern message emerges from Ezra: if a society is both to maintain civil liberty and to maintain a sense of dignity and respect for human life, then - while it freely allows intermarriage in the cultural, linguistic, and racial senses - it cannot allow practices like human sacrifice and ritual orgies, which undermine any sense of dignity or respect concerning humans, and undermine any sense of civil freedom. Marriage is one way in which these pagan practices propagate them: to allow marriage to a practicing polytheist is to encourage the spread of these practices.

The text of the Tanakh sees no problem with marriage across boundaries of citizenship. Marriage which would be a tool for the degradation of human life, however, must be stopped.

Thus the book of Ezra, documenting the Jews at the time when their awareness of, and focus on, spiritual matters was keener than at previous times in the narrative of the Tanakh's mega-text, fittingly ends with a passage concerning marriage. Having embraced a more spiritual perspective, the Jews could countenance marriages across lines of language, citizenship, race, and culture; but they could not permit marriage which would serve as an instrument for the degradation of human life.

As with Abraham, So with Us

The call of Abraham, at the beginning of chapter twelve in the book of Genesis, is a significant turning-point in the salvation history - Heilsgeschichte - of the world. The first eleven chapters show us God's perfect creation, and sin's entry into that creation, which results in the breaking of fellowship between man and God, and which results in the breaking of fellowship between man and man. It also results, finally, in death. This long downhill slide, from the Fall at the beginning of chapter three, onward through the incidents of their hiding from God (3:8), their attempts to avoid responsibility (3:12 and 3:13), Cain's murder of Abel, Lamech's polygamy, the bizarre celestial confusion (6:1 through 6:4) which triggers the flood at the time of Noah, and the Tower of Babel, manifests the destructiveness of sin, spiraling ever wider through creation. The call of Abraham is God's intervention into world history to limit, and eventually to eliminate, sin's aggressiveness. The call of Abraham is the first good thing in the text since chapter two. From the time of Abraham onward, instead of a long downhill slide, the text shows a long uphill march, as God unfolds His plan of salvation.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Abraham probably didn't know or understand the millennia-long process which was beginning with him. Exactly how much information God revealed to him, we don't know, but he likely would not have understood it, or been psychologically capable of absorbing its impact, if God had shown him in detail the great plan which was starting with the instructions to Abraham to leave his hometown of Ur and go to a place which God would only later indicate to him.

Leaving Ur, Abraham and family traveled northwest along the Tigris-Euphrates valley to Haran. Abraham's father accompanied them this far, but died in Haran. From Haran, they went southwest into the Jordan River Valley area. This route was part of a longer and widely-used route between Mesopotamia and Egypt. A straight-line route was not available, because moving directly west from Ur led one into impassable deserts. Abraham's nomadic existence in the Levant, also called Canaan, and later called Israel or Palastine, kept him moving periodically to find fresh pastures for his herds and flocks. Many of the places at which he stopped reappear later in the Old Testament salvation narrative, like Shechem, which will centuries later be center of worship in Israel, even before Jerusalem. It is therefore telling that Abraham builds his first recorded altar there.

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.

For the phrase "called upon the name of the Lord," the Hebrew text is ambiguous enough to allow the rendering "preached the name of the Lord," but the difference is slight: a healthy spiritual life is an integrated whole, and whoever properly prays will proclaim, and whoever properly proclaims will pray. It is possible to pray without proclaiming, or to proclaim without praying, but in that case, neither will have been done correctly.

The phrase "blessed to be a blessing" has become, appropriately, a regular theme in devotional literature. The January 1994 edition of Tägliche Andachten notes: In diesem Text äußert Gott zwei Wahrheiten. In the divine economy, the blessing we receive and the blessing which God grants to others through us are inseparable. Franz Delitzsch and Carl Friedrich Keil, in their commentary on Genesis, describe the beginning of the Heilsgeschichte in light of the geopolitical situation in the Ancient Near East. Given the established territories, populations, and cultures of the Babylonians (at that point still as the kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad), the Egyptians, the Canaanites, and others, and given the thorough paganism of these civilizations, God would need a new tribe to begin His salvation history.

It was necessary that by the side of these self-formed nations He should form a nation for Himself, to be the recipient and preserver of His salvation, and that in opposition to the rising kingdoms of the world He should establish a kingdom for the living, saving fellowship of man with Himself. The foundation for this was laid by God in the call and separation of Abram from his people and his country, to make him, by special guidance, the father of a nation from which the salvation of the world should come. With the choice of Abram the revelation of God to man assumed a select character, inasmuch as God manifested Himself henceforth to Abram and his posterity alone as the author of salvation and the guide to true life; whilst other nations were left to follow their own course according to the powers conferred upon them, in order that they might learn that in their way, and without fellowship with the living God, it was impossible to find peace to the soul, and the true blessedness of life.

The blessing given to Abraham becomes the blessing given through Abraham, and assumes a new and greater form in Jesus. Jesus is a gift to us; His birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection are gifts to us. In Jesus are contained numerous other gifts. The Tägliche Andachten tell us that

Der Herr segnet uns. Sein größter Segen ist das Leben and Sterben und die Auferstehung Christi, denn durch den Glauben an Christi Versöhnungswerk werden wir für gerecht erklärt. In Jesu schenkt Gott uns die Möglichkeit, als unschuldig und gerecht gesehen zu werden, und heilig und geliebt zu sein. Daneben gibt uns der Herr auch andere Gaben. Er gibt uns die Gaben des Heiligen Geistes: die Fähigkeiten, mit denen wir in der Gemeinde dienen. Er bewirkt in uns die Frucht des Heiligen Geistes: Liebe, Freude, Geduld, Freundlichkeit usw. Der Herr gibt us auch Lieb und Seele, Augen, Ohren, Vernunft und alle Sinne, Kleider und Schuhe, Essen und Trinken, Haus und alle Güter, Familie, Geld, Freunde, und alles andere.

Like the master who entrusted sums of money to his servants (Matthew chapter 25), the gift which is Jesus and the gifts which arrive through Jesus are not to be securely locked up as a treasure for ourselves, but rather shared with others.

Wir sollen diesen Segen nicht bloß einsammeln und für uns behalten, sondern Gott befiehlt uns, ihn mit anderen zu teilen. Oft sind wir das Mittel wodurch er andere segnet. Wir teilen die gute Nachtricht unserer Erlösung in Jesu mit; wir benutzen die Gaben und Frucht des Heiligen Geistes, um anderen zu helfen; und wir geben auch von unseren weltlichen Gegenständen.

While it is our responsibility to be good stewards of the blessings which God has given us, and it is also our responsibility to share those blessing with others, we simply can't do this. We are too sinful and selfish. It is our nature to keep those blessings for ourselves. Grace can flow freely through us only when the Holy Spirit is present in our hearts and minds, and overrides our selfish human nature. Therefore, we must pray for God to work charity within us, because we cannot work it within ourselves:

Lieber Heiland, segne die Welt durch uns! Amen.

The grace which flows to us is the grace which flows through us. Like Abraham, we are blessed in order to be a blessing.

As Needed

Most followers of Jesus would not immediately consider themselves to be pastors or priests. Yet all of them will occasionally be both.

Under the heading of "the priesthood of all believers," theologians note that each follower of Jesus has an equal status, but not an identical calling, before God. While the fellow up front in the pulpit has been called by the congregation to preach, teach, and administer sacraments, every other person in the pews could have been so called.

This can be made clearer by examining the words we use - words which sometimes seem to create distinctions and classes among believers, but which were intended to reflect tasks which God might occasionally assign to any believer. Consider these words:

A priest is one who stands as an intermediary between man and God. A priest represents God to man and man to God. Although the term has taken on complex meanings from the ancient Hebrews to the modern Roman Catholics, in its simplest sense, if you are praying for someone, then intercession is a priestly function, and you are at that moment a priest. Likewise, if you assure someone of God's love, that is likewise representing God to man, and you are executing a priestly function.

A minister is someone who serves. In any context, if you are helping another person, you are ministering, and you are a minister.

A pastor is a shepherd. To the extent that you care for others, take care of others, whether in the sense of provision or in the sense of leadership, you are a pastor, carrying out pastoral ministry.

A preacher is one who proclaims. To make a statement about God is to preach.

An evangelist is a messenger, specifically, a messenger who brings good news. Any word of love or forgiveness you speak is an evangelical word.

A disciple is one who is training or trained; one who is being trained or who has been trained. A disciple is a pupil, one who studies and learns, and is subject to discipline.

A prophet is a spokesperson for God. Anyone who explains God's intent or meaning to another is a spokesman or spokeswoman for God, and is prophesying.

An ordained person is one who has been appointed or officially designated for a purpose. While this word is normally reserved for clergy, there are times at which God ordains an individual to carry out a specific task, whether proclaiming doctrine or changing a flat tire, and there are times at which the church appoints or designated a person for a specific task, perhaps ushering or organizing sheet music.

As we look at these words closely, we note that their semantic fields overlap, despite the fact that the prophets and the priests, categorically, were often in conflict. This is not surprising, from a God who will "unite all things" and who sees all of His people as a royal priesthood. If you are a follower of Jesus, you may not normally think of yourself as a priest or as a pastor, as ordained or as prophetic, but at any moment, for perhaps a brief time, God may appoint you to be all of these and more.