Sun Jun 22nd 2025
Dear friends,
We journey on through what may be a new idea for some of us – that the word ‘salvation’ means
‘deliverance!’ both in the Bible, and for us now, a very different take from
the traditional ‘I believe in Jesus = I’m saved = I’m going to heaven when I
die/all my sins have been forgiven etc.
In Gen 12, God begins to reconnect God’s wayward created
species and calls out to Abram the Chaldean – then called Av-ram, his Chaldean
name. That name will change. (see Genesis 17:5ff) Abram is invited into an
unknown future with an unknown being, and he accepts. When Abram accepts,
a strange experience happens, leaving Abram with no doubt about what is going
on. It is a ‘beyond this world’ touch – an experience that happens in this
world but does not come from/is not of this world. It has nothing to do with
trust, faith, hope, or prayer, for it is the objective experience of a different
reality. (see Genesis 15:12ff).
Abram learns from this experience that God will make him
into a great people who are to become a living blessing to others. God intends
to make this happen in Abram’s time. He accepts this weird and amazing thing and
goes forth, headed for literally God only knows where, another wandering
Aramean. God renames him ‘Av-ra-ha-am’
for he is now to be the Father of a Great multitude. See Gen 15:12 and Gen
17:9; This may become the new path as Abraham’s people get a chance to accept
the offer of new relational accord with God and lead the rest of us.4
Therefore God now looks to see if this ‘chosen’ people
will exercise their will, individual and collective, in God’s favor, and
thereby re-enable the original accord. A
new Eden, perhaps? This is their role in the partnership. Choice was given,
choice was misused, but choice may now be used correctly. A matter of will. Abraham
is the test case for a 2nd chance. But he must deal with the
persuasive, hedonistic, insidious influence of the negative power that seduces
human will - that which we call Satan.
Abraham’s learning about his individual will and God’s will gets
off to a confused start, and ends up with 2 sons, where God intended one. What
happened? Abraham and Sarai tried to create an event that God had set into
motion. They created their own path (Gen 16:11) and then Isaac – Yitzhak (Heb. he
who laughs – because Abraham and Sarai -
see Gen 17:17 and Gen 18:12 - laughed at
the idea that they might have a child!) comes. The first child is unintended, and of human
choice. The 2nd child is the God intended gifted purpose one. The
time in between is thirteen years! Is this a common human trait – our desire
for results from God according to our timing? And if we don’t get it in our
timing, do we try to make it happen? What does it mean to ‘wait upon the Lord’
when that is required of us? But the result of human intervention here is a
divided people, originally marked for greatness in God’s will as a single
people, but now growing into 2 different socio-political cultures with
different religious traditions, and who continue today to be at war because of matters
of faith and culture. So tragic. Think of what scripture teaches of Cyrus the
Persian and of the idea of 1 people under God, despite differences! Cyrus was
no Jew, but God worked through him and he understood it! And the meaning now
for Israel and Iran? And the meaning for Israel’s continuing self-understanding
of itself?
But this is how Scripture records this period of history.
How it is - not how it is meant to be. Human innovation is irrelevant to God’s
plan for human society. For example, it is not what we can do with technology,
but what good we can use it for! We continue to fight over our ‘cultural
values’ because we would have it so. And we will continue to exercise our will
to make it so. We’ll use emotional words that stir us - like culture, identity,
tradition and a named land and country, in nationalism. But we are not
following God’s will. The claims of human will have never had anything to do
with God’s will for us. As an example, look at the promise of God’s
healing in Exodus 15:26, which does not ask for belief, faith, hope or prayer. Leaders
often try to use religion or distance themselves from it. And both ways
are wrong. Only the application of knowledge, human will and accord in an
intentional closeness to God’s presence can work to resolve the human
condition. Not a sinfulness of things, but a sinfulness of missing
relationship. Look at the opening chapters in Genesis. Our primary food source
is to be plant based. Plant based diets are not new then, are they? Instead, we
have created multiple options for ourselves and have employed all manner of
excuses that seem pertinent. We claim to know a lot about what it means to
live well. But we know precious little about what it means to die well. But we
can always learn. And the Spirit will teach.
Christians can set down claims about that which is moral.
Interesting how this has changed with every age, no? But religious
traditions can only make moral claims. They can neither authenticate nor
validate them. And they contradict them all the time, anyhow. Only God has
final say. And God is not about social ethics, or cultural morality, or our
other ‘creative’ hang-ups. With God, it is always about love. It’s like the
first encounter of white missionaries with Polynesian and/or African girls of
some societies who went about bare breasted. The missionaries called such
behavior immoral.5 But on what basis? And on whose definition of
morality? Their own culture and their own customs. Neat projection, huh?
Encountering new local custom and sociology, such were their conclusions. But God’s will is that all of creation should
live in peace and harmony and grow spiritually. Not divisively. Not nationally.
But to embrace a possibility, a potential, a prototokos…of being.
Whether we like it or not, human politics, with its
methods and consequences, continues to stagnate the human condition.
Doesn’t necessarily make me a dystopian. Just reminds me of the reality of
where we are, and of our inability to deal with our ongoing weaknesses. We
could create new systems and structures, but they would only be as good as
those who run them.
God has given us freedom of choice and the ability to
determine present and future. Hell might
be that which we have created by ourselves, for ourselves, determined by the
path we have taken and the actions we have condoned. Apart from some strategic language about fear
and hell, the Bible is always about love. Always. Perhaps God allows us to
create our own hell and allows it to become a learning place for us, beyond
death. Maybe the Catholic notion of purgatory is closer here - a place after
death where we learn to escape the hell of our own creation! Has the
tradition used the concept of hell to scare folk into being ‘religious?’ according
to its controlled terms? What Jesus said and what Jesus did not say, is an
existential truth that we can only discover for ourselves through the leading
and the teaching of the Holy Spirit. And where doctrine and tradition
fashion the path we walk, the fear of death and hell often continues to lead.
But the fear of God cannot coerce us into the Kingdom. Only the love of God can
lead us in. And that love begins in our relationship with Jesus and works
through everyone in our lives, to challenge us with the potential and
possibility of growth.
By the end of Genesis we have moved from Abraham through
Isaac to Jacob, and to the 12 sons of Jacob, who have become the 12 tribes of
Israel. Joseph thrives in Egypt, and his God given dreams play a role in
setting him free from prison. Note the
importance of dreams in the Bible and learn the difference between God given
dreams and wishful desire. There is sharp, vivid detail in the dream that God
gives that is missing in the other. And the dream that comes from God will
phase into reality in a time God sets for us, because God sees what we
cannot. We just need to know how to
interpret signs and times. The difference is life changing. Food for thought.
But as Israel thrives and grows, the Egyptians worry about
their position of strength. Such is the nature of greed and power in human
politics. Political power will always fear being replaced. It will force its
will on any potential threat.
So, the ‘blessed to be a blessing’ challenge goes on hold.
The people of Israel seem short on blessing and cry out to God for help. And
God answers them. Why? Remember Abraham’s strange ‘terrifying’ spiritual
experience of Genesis 15? It signified a commitment between 2 parties, like a
contract. Expectations will be fulfilled by both. Commitment will be
demonstrated. Moses is chosen, trained
with the quality and character of a leader - a Prince even, and the circumstances
of the injustice he sees and responds to, forces him to flee Egypt. But God
sends him back. Save the people. And here’s the point: salvation = deliverance-salvation,
which works to set us free from that which threatens our well-being. Now. I
didn’t say it. The Bible does.
The Bible is all
about salvation as deliverance, and Genesis provides the first explicit
account. Hence, I call it deliverance-salvation. We need to qualify our
historical notion of salvation. Salvation is never an ongoing state of
being, as interpreted and professed by many, but is always that adventure of
being delivered, by God’s power, from that which threatens harm to us. God means
to keep on bringing deliverance-salvation into our lives, and we are challenged
to keep on growing, from strength to strength, through every challenging situation.
And God’s answer is never ours, because God is always in the process of showing
us new parameters and dimensions of spiritual growth.
If you don’t know the rest of the biblical history of
Israel, read Genesis through Exodus and keep reading until you get to the end
of 2nd Kings. Then take a break before you continue. Note the
repetition in Chronicles, that also differs. Learn as you go.
Look at the pattern of deliverance-salvation that is
demonstrated throughout. It is a movement that has been exceptionally described
By Walter Brueggemann as a movement from sorrow to joy, from darkness to light.6
God still works in the same way – God has never changed. Except that the
teachers and leaders of church tradition have continued to exercise a
subjective and somewhat manipulative interpretation of it. God is not a vending
machine into which we may drop or pour our tithing in, so that blessing results!
Or rather, we get the results we want or hope for. The earthly desire for
material success is totally unlike the experience of God’s spiritual power and
the reality of the Holy Spirit. But the patterns of deliverance that show how
God works - we need to look at a representative selection of them at the least,
in order to understand the way the power of God works in our lives and the call
that Jesus continues to make to us. And that is what we will get into next
week. Stay well, and have a blessed week. Love and peace in Jesu, G.
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