May 31, 2024

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“The Lord was very angry with your ancestors. Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty. Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord. Where are your ancestors now?” (Zechariah 1.2-5a)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Jesus warned of signs of the end times saying “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24.6-13) In the conclusion of yesterday’s perspective on Zechariah 1.2-5a), I brought us to Jesus’ teaching concerning the “last days” as Matthew remembered them. It is important that we hear Matthew’s rendering of this teaching because Matthew is Jewish and his audience, those to whom his gospel concerning Jesus as the Christ, was overwhelmingly Jewish. Why is this important? Because not all Jews held to the teaching of the Scribes, Pharisees and Teachers of the Law. Those groups pronounced God’s word in such a way as to enslave the people of God to the Law. They announced the prophetic descriptions of Messiah to parallel their own agenda of promoting themselves as God’s representatives and “final word.” In doing so, many Jews were disaffected, lost, cast out, or burdened beyond resource to be found holy and acceptable in the eyes of the Lord. That means there was a large percentage of Jews who looked forward to the Messianic Age as the silencing of those who were in leadership. Why? Because the facade of those in leadership was fairly transparent. The people could see the abuse of power leading to an excess of prosperity at the hands of the people. If not for the authority and presence of Rome that very leadership would have not been so influential in taking advantage of the situation for their own device.

With the teachings of Jesus and His emphasis on righteousness which coincided with a condemnation of the Temple leadership for their hypocrisy, the general population were more than willing to follow after Jesus. It was the task of the gospel writers themselves to disciple both Jew and Gentile in what John described as “Jesus as the only way, truth and life which leads to the Father and brings favor upon all who would believe on earth as it is in Heaven.” My emphasis on Matthew 24.13, “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved,” stands as a challenge to many “tribulationalist” who desire to be swept up from the earth and absolved of “living through the chaos of worldly judgment.” In some fashion, this sense of “tribulation” might mirror the various exiles of the Hebrew and Israelite people under the numerous “rulers over them” such as the Egyptians, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. The situation during the days before, during and after Jesus in the first century was different. The population of Israel was already scattered, see the Diaspora, and as for the rest, it was never Rome’s intent to remove leadership to subdue a people. Rome simply controlled the leadership practices as well as the economy of the nation to keep them as loyal subjects. Of course, well placed crucifixions for those who did not agree with their “opportunity to live the Roman way” also helped keep the population in line. Perhaps for this reason, the sense of tribulation became a greater part of the post-resurrection concept of the gospel concerning Jesus as the Christ. Were they looking for their spiritual “Calgon take me away” moment? It simply “doesn’t wash” with me. But, who doesn’t want to escape trial, tribulation, poverty, hatred, racism and death of the “innocent”?

The problem with such escapism is that removing the people from the situation doesn’t mean that the trouble they were experience is removed from them. We need only to go back to Noah and see an example of this. ?Even though the “whole” world had been judged and the sentence of righteous judgment executed in the flood (to wash away the sin of the world by drowning those who were sinners), Noah still got drunk and his drunkenness created a schism between the three sons: Ham, Shem and Japtheth. The march through the history of Israel in its “Old Testament” years reveals how the effort to “cover up” the internal turmoil and presence of sin with a facade of righteousness and obedience through a religion of rites and rituals failed. Even God commanded, “I have no use of these rituals because your heart is far from Me.” Religion without right relationship is an abomination to the Lord. In the prophecy of Ezekiel, we hear of how God’s removes His abiding presence from His beloved Jerusalem. His heart is still for it but His presence, His shekinah, could not find rest on Mount Zion which was known as “the City of the Great King.” Not until Israel repented of the evil it had done in muddling the truth of the Law with personal agendas of worldly advancement, trusting more in themselves as God instead of trusting themselves into the hands of God, would God’s spirit return to Israel in a “new Jerusalem.”

We hear this echo in Zechariah’s prophetic utterances as God inspired them to him. He repeats the promise of God “Return to me and I will return to you.” Some translate the Hebrew shub, to turn away from or to return to, with the word more common to our theological vocabulary which is “repent.” But, as it is used in Zechariah 1.3, shub is presented in its variant form to indicate “bring honor to or restore honor to.” It is a call to “Worship the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind.” If that sounds familiar to you, it should. It is the first great commandment followed by its corollary “Love your neighbor as yourself [or as you yourself are loved by God.]” Jesus would announce to the Temple leadership, the Scribes, the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law that these two commandments fulfill all the Law and the Prophets. If we were to orient our thinking differently, they fulfill all of that because they preceded all of that. They are the original benchmarks and understanding of authentic righteousness. They fulfill them because they are them. Everything that comes after them is the extrapolation of authentic righteousness. But the further away the people got from that truth, the more convoluted it all became until it was a mere shadow of its former self. I might offer that it all became a “shadow of death” reducing the Law to a punitive experience of the consequence of sin. This is what Paul would speak to of “the burden of the Law.”

So, mighty ones of God, as we reflect on Zechariah “return to” carrying with us Paul’s admonition to the Ephesians “to do what pleases God,” we will find that sense of authentic righteousness and living for the purpose of honoring the name of God and His presence with true worship in spirit and in truth. It is tested by faith in difficult times and in times of ease and peace. Sometimes it is more difficult to do the right things when there is no friction or drag in life. Complacency becomes the anathema of authentic righteousness. If we will “return to” God and affirm that God has promised to “return to” us, then we will be tempered by the friction of the world that doesn’t do that and be made and proved worthy. It is not about getting of the way of trouble but by being the peace of God in the midst of trouble. We are not to sail in a sea of forgetfulness but in a sea of remembrance that God is with us always to the close of the Age and in the Age to come.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit brought us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit so that others may be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind that we would know that we are Your people and that You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.