Daily Office

Year 1, Advent 1, Tuesday

Today's Readings:

• Amos 3:1-11
• 2 Peter 1:12-21
• Matt 21:12-22

Amos discusses cause and effect, the lion does not roar unless it has prey, the bird does not fall from the sky unless it has been snared, the trap does not spring unless it has caught something, and the Lord does not act without the prophets revealing it. The Lord says that because Ashdod and Egypt do not know how to do right, they will be surrounded of an adversary and stripped of their defense.
Peter writes that the apostles' story is real, not some myth 'cleverly devised' and states that he heard the voice of God on the mountain at the Transfiguation. Important lesson: "No prophecy of scriptue is a matter of one's own interpretation." I disagree. I also wonder what modern prophecy would look like. Did the ancient prophets prophecy in hindsight? Did they explain what had just happened, or what was going to happen? I know the Jews interpreted their history as "we sin, we lose; we keep faith, we gain" in cycles. I know that in modern times, things like 9/11 were explained after the fact to be the fault of liberals, and Robertson has told Dover Pennsylvania (I think it's Dover) that they will fall because "they have abandoned God" (they voted out the board of education that wanted to install intelligent design in the science classroom, and replaced them with people who promised to keep science in science and religion in comparitive studies). Which of these counts as prophecy? The statement explaining the past or the statement threatening the future?
Jesus cleanses the temple of the money changers. Good for Him. Jesus also kills a fig tree, reminiscent of the banned story of the childhood Jesus killing a playmate. In the banned books, Jesus is a dark child, viscious and petty, and growing up he learns that He had great repsonsibility. This passage, which is hard to take, shows that same selfish side of Jesus, but there is a lesson. One lesson is that the fig tree was not bearing fruit when it should have, it was not following its true nature, and was punished. The lesson the apostles demand is that faith, with no doubt whatsoever, can move mountains.
I think all basic divisions in Christianity (and possibly all other world religions) is the desire for certainty and the desire for mystery. They are the ends of a teeter totter, not an either or proposition. Progressives have very few certain things (God is Good) and Conservatives have many (Harry Potter is Satanic because Rowling isn't a Christian). Progressives are happy to experience mystery, conservatives are wary of it. Sure, they accept "how the miracles happened" as a mystery, but they work hard to fill in gaps in our sacred stories that progressives don't mind at all.

posted by Josh English @ 3:38 PM