As part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Book of Faith initiative, nearly thirty members of Calvary Lutheran Church in Hillsboro, Oregon have decided to read the Bible in a year. We started in September reading Genesis following a schedule that you can find at http://archive.elca.org/bible/oneyear/. You can start any time and finish in one year. We should be racing toward the end of the book of Revelation sometime September 2009.

I have been enjoying the informal conversations about the Bible in the hallways at Calvary, and the new energy in Bible Study Classes. This Blog is a way to extend that conversation to anyone who wants to participate. I hope you will enjoy what I have to offer which will be a mixture of informal comments, thoughts that come to me as I read the assigned chapters each morning, and more exegetical details. I’ll try to keep in mind some of the basic assumptions that Lutheran’s generally have about the Bible as they are described in the book, Opening the Book of Faith, by Jacobson, Powell & Olsen, Augsburg Fortress press. That God speaks to us through the Bible. That we hear God’s word as law and gospel, challenge and promise. And that the Bible as a whole leads us to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. I also agree with something one of our Calvary Lutheran Church members said to me once that when we come to church we don’t have to check our brains at the door. I would add brains, hearts, life experiences, unique perspectives. And so I invite you to add your comments, questions insights and opinions. How is God speaking to you through reading the Bible?

This blog is also meant to provide encouragement to those reading the Bible in a year. Genesis and Exodus were pretty exciting to read. Then, bam! I slammed into the book of Numbers. That’s a little more challenging.

Even though I’m starting this blog as we begin the book of numbers, I think I’ll insert here some notes I wrote earlier. That will catch you up on the conversation. Then I’ll continue with this week’s readings.

I am enjoying the conversations among those who are reading the Bible. Questions arise. “Why did God accept Abel’s offering and not Cain’s?” “What kind of wacky God would plant a tree that will teach people the difference between good and evil, and then not let them eat from it so that they can learn?” And, “What do these Old Testament stories have to do with Christian faith anyway?” I noticed a few details myself. In Genesis chapter 1, God says, “To every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” Clearly, this shows that God’s original intent was that we would all be vegetarians. Even tigers? But then in Genesis 9:3, after the flood, God says, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.” This seems odd. Not only does God seem to change God’s mind, but also, God’s timing is suspect. If there are only two of every kind of animal coming off the ark, this would not be the best time for humans to become carnivores. Kill one goat, and goats become extinct. What was God thinking?

Ah, but maybe I’m taking these stories too literally. In the Book of Faith classes we will be discussing some of the ways that Lutherans read and interpret the Bible. We will learn to pay attention to what kind of literature we are reading in various parts of the Bible. Is it myth, legend, history, poetry, allegory, letter, law or parable? The Bible has quite a mixture of these kinds of literature in it. It makes a difference how we read these things if we know what kind of literature we are reading. We wouldn’t read a poem by Robert Frost, for instance, quite the same way we would read the New York Times. We call the early creation stories myths, which doesn’t diminish their theological significance for us, but does give us a clue as to how to read them. They are not modern science, but they are rich in theology. They tell us about who God is and about our relationship with God.

We will also learn about Source Criticism. Where do these stories come from? How did they end up in the Bible? Modern Biblical scholars generally agree on at least four major Old Testament sources in the first five books of the Bible alone. These oral traditions from various places and times of ancient Hebrew history were probably written down and compiled during the Babylonian captivity. Separated from their temple cult and synagogues, the Israelite Priests were concerned with keeping their faith alive among the people in captivity, so they wrote these stories down. Some of the stories came from Southern Israel, the Elohist tradition named after the name used for God, Elohim. Some came from Northern Israel, the Yahwist tradition because in those stories they called God, Yahweh. A third tradition uses the name Elohim for God, but the writing is more formal and rule based. This is called the Priestly tradition. A fourth tradition is the Deuteronomist. It will be no surprise that the book of Deuteronomy is mostly from the Deuteronomist tradition.

You may have noticed that there are two creation stories in the Book of Genesis. Genesis 2 is from the Yawhist tradition and shows a very personal, anthropomorphic God. Genesis 1 is more cosmic in scope and shows a mysterious, all powerful God who merely speaks and all things are created. This comes from the Priestly tradition. Both myths have a great deal to tell us about our relationship with God. We know, for instance, that God loves God’s creation and calls it good! We also know that we have failed to live up to God’s expectations of us, and there are consequences for our sins. But we are assured that God still loves us and continues to stay in relationship with God’s creation. (My source for understanding this Souce Criticism is the book, Reading the Old Testament by Lawrence Boadt, Paulist Press) Still, some of those stories leave us wondering. What kind of God, we might wonder, would wipe out almost all of creation with a flood? And yet, I get such a strong feeling of God’s loving care for us, when I read about Noah’s family and all those animals floating safely on the waters.

The Book of Numbers:
You might say that the first couple of chapters of numbers are as exciting to read as a phone book. You might be right, but a phone book could be pretty exciting if, say, you had been adopted and were trying to find your birth parents. A military roll call would be pretty important if you were married to a soldier and wanted to find out which battalion he or she belonged to. The book of Numbers begins with an organization of the people of Israel by tribe, counting “every male from twenty years old and upward, everyone able to go to war.” Unlike modern Israel, only the males went to war, although later in the book of Judges we get to read about Deborah who led the army against the Canaanites.

Somewhere, I read a list of rules about going to war. Maybe that’s in Joshua or Judges. We’ll get to it eventually. There were several exemptions to going to war. If you had just married you were exempt from going to war for one year. If you were physically unfit, you were exempt. Also, you were exempt from going to war if you were a coward. I like that last one. I wonder why a people freed by God’s liberating power, are now organizing themselves as an army. They must anticipate trouble ahead, and sure enough, in a couple of chapters we’re going to find it.

The numbers in the census are exaggerated. My New Oxford annotated NRSV Bible footnotes say this. Verse 1:27 The largest tribe is Judah; this likely reflects the political importance of the tribe to the author. Verse 47 shows the total number of Israelites at “six hundred three thousand five hundred fifty.” The footnote says: “This high number is a reflection of the story’s legendary rather than historical nature.” What kind of literature are we reading here? And what is the source? The source is the Priestly tradition. The kind of literature may be legend, but there is often some real history behind legend. The lists of names may well have come from an historical record.

Here is a hint to help you through the book of Numbers. The narrative passages are interrupted in various places by more lists of laws similar to what you read in Exodus. Some of these laws are disturbing, such as today’s text, a trial of ordeal for women suspected of adultery. (Chapter 5) Man, talk about not fair! (More on this later.) The narrative passages include chapters 1; 10-14; 16-17; 20-27; 31-33. The legal stuff seems to be scattered about willy-nilly, as though the editors of Exodus had all this extra material they didn’t know what to do with, and just fit it in wherever they could, hoping no one would notice. My New Oxford Annotated Bible (with a yellow cover that looks more like a college text book than a Bible and has really good footnotes in it) suggests that you read the narrative parts first and then go back and read the legal stuff. I’m just going to keep going with my daily readings, but it helps to know that the narrative will come and go like a post-modern novel.

Numbers chapter 3 and 4 establishes the tribe of Levi as the Altar Guild and the Property and Grounds committee. Moses didn’t ask them if they wanted to do it, he just assigned them. I’d like to see how that would go over at a church council meeting. I imagine that the Levites considered it to be a great honor to be the caretakers of the tabernacle. They were consecrated to carry the holy things, the curtains, the tent poles and all the utensils, and most importantly, the Ark of the Covenant where the presence of God dwelt among the people. They were set apart of all the tribes of Israel to handle the holy things. There must have been some thirteen year old boy among the Levites like Kirby the elf in the old Christmas classic “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer” who would rather have been a dentist.

In the latter part of Exodus, and here in Numbers, you can see the holiness codes being set up. On the one hand, we can see these as mere health and hygiene issues using the best understanding the people had at the time. We would find it odd that they used sacrificial blood as a kind of detergent to cleanse people of sin and disease, even to purify houses tainted with disease. Perhaps they recognized the connection between blood and life. If you were severely cut and your blood leaked out, so would your life. Therefore, cleansing with blood meant putting forth blood’s inherent power to give life. Carry this idea forward along with the specific offerings mentioned for sins, the lamb, the scapegoat, and you start to understand how Jesus’ sacrificial blood gives us forgiveness, and how the saints in John’s vision of heaven, Revelation 7, “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.” I had always wondered how Jesus’ blood would have made the robes white. According to the ancient understanding of blood, it would work better than All Temperature Cheer or Clorox Bleach. Not only on a physical level but on a spiritual level, offering forgiveness of sins.

I can also understand the near obsession with purity considering that they believed God was literally present in the tabernacle. Annie Dillard writes about an Hassidic Priest who kissed his wife and children goodbye every day before going into the temple to offer sacrifices. “Who knows, he said, “between the time I invoke God’s name and the time I ask for absolution, whether God will be merciful.” Imagine how important the Levites job must have been. My Oxford NRSV footnote for Numbers chapter 5: says, “These impurities can be communicated to others and threaten directly the holiness of the sanctuary, and may cause God to depart from the midst of the camp.” No pressure.
(By the way, what do we have to do to keep God in our camp? Is God in our camp?)

But this concern for purity seems to have led over the course of centuries into a hierarchy of holiness distorted all out of proportion by the time Jesus came onto the scene. By then, prestige, wealth, and power based on these holiness codes eclipsed basic human compassion. Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan in which a priest and a Levite pass by on the other side. They didn’t want to become unclean, or maybe they were just late for a meeting.

Here are some questions we can ask ourselves. Do we recognize the privilege we have been given to be part of the realm of God and to share in the work of God’s community? No matter how large or how small, we are called to serve. Imagine the humbling honor for the tribe of Levi. “I get to carry the tent poles of the Tabernacle of God!” Often the mundane work of the church becomes a burden. Could we say with enthusiasm, “I get to weed the garden bed in front of the church?”

Here’s another question: Has the privilege of living in God’s grace become a matter of prestige and power? Will you stop by the side of the road to touch an unclean thing, an unpopular person or group of people in need of compassion?

Another member of Calvary told me that people can take any economic or political or religious system and distort it to their advantage. (The folks at Calvary are pretty sharp. I learn a lot from them.) The purity laws of Exodus Leviticus and Numbers become the pattern of judgment of women, the sick, the poor and the physically challenged, excluding them from full participation in the worship and social and economic life of the community. Sabbath laws meant to give rest to the land, the animals and the people became rigid rules of power and control. These laws represent a pretty advanced culture for the times, (although some I have trouble with for any time, but that’s my modern-post-modern perspective, I guess). What will be exciting as we keep reading through the Bible is how other voices correct and challenge this covenant beginning, either by calling the people back to the covenant or by offering new insights and challenges to the people’s original understanding of God, God’s laws, and general worldview. The Bible is a vibrant conversation over the course of centuries with the voices of prophets, sages, poets and story tellers, Jesus and Apostles all adding to our understanding and puzzlement of God and God’s relationship with God’s creation, and our response. Add to this our own stories, thoughts experiences, and ever changing worldviews and we've got quite a conversation guided by the Holy Spirit, I trust, and leading to deeper relationship with God and each other. This is exciting. I’m glad you’re part of the conversation.