March 11, 2007

The Intent of Biblical Study: Living into the call to Singular, Complete Loyalty to the LORD alone

Source Scriptures: Deuteronomy 6:4-25, Psalm 22

Bible study is easier for some people than for others. Some of us are naturally more inclined toward the study of books, especially books written two thousand years ago. Also, some of us were raised in homes in which the Bible was read and used often, while others were raised in homes where the Bible was unknown. We all come from different places here today, and God understands that better than any of us can know; but that doesn't leave us directionless, because we've gathered here today because we're at least slightly interested in what God might have to say to us, and at least slightly interested in wanting to follow Him, and that's a good starting point here for us today.

Some questions you might carry in your mind as we move forward today might be: Why should I study God's word? Is it truly important for my life, because if it isn't, then I won't do it...some of us sitting here today I'm sure have decided on some level that it isn't, so you don't study anymore.

Observing Sabbath: Israel called to rechoose identity, depends in part on thinking differently, it also requires visible practices and concrete disciplines that can be regularly undertaken and seen publicly by the young of the community and by non-Israelites

- not "do as I say, not as I do" but lead by example

- lived faith is a form of nurture, perhaps the most telling form of nurture

- obedience is way to teach obedience

- faith is a way of evoking questions on the part of children (lived faith will evoke

such wonder in an observant child)

- specifically with non-Israelites, draw connection between that and "how beautiful are

the feet of those who bring good news")

- further illustrates that we're bringing freeing, good news (best); so the intent

of our lives is not to feel like a pile of poo and help others come to that

reality, but instead to give good news (words + action)

It's ok to pursue a theoretical and intellectual understanding of reality, but it is necessary at some point to pursue some sort of habits and practices (disciplines) that undergird the identity, mission, and vision of the people of God.

Always fixed on children (coming generation): 6:4 is followed by series of imperatives, "recite, bind, fix, write" (The core claim of the LORD is to be everywhere available to Israel,audible and visible

- Moses proposes saturation education so that a child's imaginative horizon is

completely pervaded by signs and reminders of this imperative.

We build in reminders during the day of who we are, and we need to consistently be aware of the question: did my day look any different than my friends who aren't followers of Jesus? If not, then you and I have to ask some serious questions about our identity, and what we can do to recover that identity as the people of God

Why do we pray before meals? Before bedtime? In worship? (Acknowledging the gift as well as the giver)

In the later ministry of Jesus, much informed by the traditions of Deuteronomy, the costly summons to discipleship is of the same demanding absolute quality (Mark 8:34-35, 10:21, 38-30)

Individual lives and the common life of the community are healthy when they are about one loyalty (Kierkegaard “purity of heart is to will one thing”)

- singular response to the jealous God is not simply an archaic witness to a cosmic crankiness, but it is a judgment about what is possible in human life and on what basis

The demand of singular loyalty is an expectation never fully attained

- perfect obedience is never attained

- the full Christian liturgical tradition is marked at the same time with high expectation as well as the readiness of this God to forgive and invite again to loyalty (in Deut 6, the jealous God becomes the merciful God)

Joyous task of singular loyalty

History of the Christian Church is strewn with examples of those who occupy and monopolize singular loyalty in ways that have produced judgment and violence on others; the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch-hunts, and a variety of excommunications

Command to exclusive loyalty to the LORD is fraught with temptations to both despair and pride.

Ours is an economy of abundance that lives by an ideology of satiation. The seemingly limitless capacity of the consumer economy- supported by a market that keeps growing, kept in place by a military establishment without parallel in the history of the world- leads to a common, thoughtless assumption that it has always been this way and will always be this way- “world without end.”…A part of the problem is that satiated amnesia is slow even to notice the warning. Characteristically, the ones addressed in amnesia are slow to discern that it is they who are being addressed. (WB 91)

Psalm 22 as model for move from individual despair when things aren’t going right to God’s greater covenantal loyalty

- so we have to make the move from our own individual concerns to the greater reality that God is faithful and has been in the past

Remembering takes place only by constant, intentional verbal reiteration (7-9, 20-25) plus the parents’ vigorous obedience (1-2). The teaching community is in a life-or-death struggle for the heart, commitment, and imagination of the younger generation (keep that in mind, parents and adults in this church community…that you are pursuing Christ for the sake not only of yourself, but those who are watching you in your life…your life continues to tell a story)

- talk about these things when you lay down, when you rise, when you…

The child asks about what the Lord your God has commanded you. (distancing)

The parent, in response, seeks to overcome the distance by using the inclusive pronoun “us” (the attempt by parents to transform their uninvolved children from “distemporaries” to “contemporaries” i.e. true-life sharers, is an issue of supreme and recurrent significance in the Bible.

Dangerous influences:

Host of postmodern cultural realities and forces that work against intergenerational embrace of a remembered past that may energize a present-tense obligation. It is certain that many of the young in the community of faith are distemporaries who scarcely have the categories available through which to become contemporaries. Both the lived practices and the intentional verbalizations of the parental generation are thin and in general lack conviction.

Thus, the community is at risk when the younger generation is alienated. The text does not, however, settle for despair, but proposes the intentional reassertion of the memory as a source for a radically different future.

A culture that is inattentive to its memories trades its tradition and culture to remember something else

- in Deuteronomy, the “something else” was the “Canaanite religion” in its many forms

- in Western culture at the beginning of the 21^st century, the likelihood is that the “something else is an ideology of consumerism (and entitlement) rooted in anxiety and expressed as greed susceptible to brutality (fear).

So we need a deep sense of urgency (not on the scale of ATF’s campaign designed to get us off our tushes, but a deep lived reality that we have a high calling both to the generations before, generations after, and centrally to the LORD to live faithfully)

The LORD has had a special emotional passion for Israel out of which He has made particular commitments to Israel that He has made to no other people