Reflections while listening to the Scripture at the Holy Saturday Vespers-Liturgy.
Whenever listening to the scriptures read, I often have thoughts come to mind about a verse or idea in the Scriptures. Here are a few of the things I thought about while listening the 15 Old Testament readings on Holy Saturday.
Genesis 1:4 “And God saw the light was good.” The very first thing that God sees as good is “light” which was also the first thing He called into existence. There is goodness in creation from the very beginning. A blessedness, which God is pleased to see. He is not indifferent to the creation He has made. He not only brings it into existence, He experiences creation (He sees it) and finds goodness in it. As the Creator, He no doubt imbued the creation with goodness, but the text also suggests that He experiences that goodness when encountering the creation. He draws goodness out of the created! Creation is not valueless in God’s eyes. It has a value and this value is not only what He put into it, it is also what He draws out of it when He encounters the created. Goodness is not simply a property of God. It is also a value that His creation possesses and something which can be experienced through encountering created things. The goodness in Christ for example is not simply the divine in Him, it is also the case that His physical body possesses such goodness, as it was meant to do from the beginning. There is no form of dualism here. If creation is not good, it is not because God has withdrawn this property from it, but rather that the created has spurned what God has given to it. Humans are to have a very particular role in creation, and that role requires the humans to be good, blessed, holy, godlike. But when humanity rejects its place in creation, it forsakes goodness and then can no longer fulfill the role God intended humans to have in the created order. Christ re-unites the goodness of God with the goodness God saw in His original creation.
Jonah – the King of Nineveh proclaims a fast in response to Jonah’s message, but the not eating food or drinking even water is not the goal of the fast. Rather the food fasting is simply to get everyone’s attention and to get everyone focused on what really needs to happen: “yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence which in is his hands.” It is turning away from all evil which the king hopes will cause God to relent and not destroy the city. It isn’t letting heaps of food go uneaten which is the goal of the fast – that will not earn God’s favor. Rather by fasting, people are to stop all their normal ways of behavior so that they can concentrate on correcting the real problem – sin. That is what our Great Lent out to be for each of us as well. It is not piles of uneaten food which are going to reach up to heaven, get God’s attention, and cause God to forgive sinners. It is only our changing our hearts and repenting of evil which God will really notice and care about. Something for us to think about – we are not offering up to God uneaten foods, as God isn’t looking for such offerings from us. He is looking into our hearts and hoping to find in us hearts cleansed of sin so that He can dwell with us.
Jonah – God tells Jonah: “And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left…?” It is interesting that God’s motive in warning the Ninevites is His own love, but a particular type of love: compassion or pity. He is not desiring to save the city because of how good the people are, or how holy they are. He pities them because of their ignorance! Nevertheless He feels compassion and mercy for them and desires to save them. He doesn’t wait for them to become good and holy. God’s love is purely gratuitous and unconditional. In Lenten services we do pray for “the errors of the people” or sometimes translated as the “ignorance of the people”, a phrase found in Hebrews 9:7. God’s loving concern for people is not based on the people’s “loveability” nor on their holiness or goodness. God can also love based upon pity and compassion – another lesson for Christians.
Exodus 13:20-15:1 It is God who directs the Israelites to move to the location which will entrap them between the Egyptian army and the Red Sea. Interesting that He doesn’t lead them in such a way so as to avoid danger and difficulty, which would certainly be the way most of us would prefer and would choose. There would be no need for dramatic escapes and rescues if God didn’t lead them to a point where they needed to be saved in the first place. Moses is so confident that God will save them – He will do it all, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will work for you today…” But God, ever unpredictable, says to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.” God it turns out is not going to do all the work in salvation. He tells Moses, “Lift up your rod and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it…” It is Moses who has to part the sea, not God! The salvation of the people is in Moses’s hands. And what is God going to be doing while Moses parts the water and enables the Israelites to escape? “I will harden the heart of the Egyptians so they shall go after them.” In other words, God is not going to stop the Egyptians, on the contrary He is going to provoke them to pursue the Israelites, while Moses is busy trying to get the Israelites away from the Egyptians. God is not trying to make things easier for Moses and the Israelites. God doesn’t drown the Egyptians, He tells Moses to stretch out his hand and to return the waters to their rightful place. God doesn’t do this act on His own, He commands Moses to do it, but then leaves it to Moses to get the job done. God does not and will not do everything for us – He cooperates with us and demands synergy from us in working with Him. He tells us what to do but then leaves it up to us whether or not we do it. This is not God-alone thinking, but true synergy.
Isaiah 61:1-19 Sometimes we Christians are too narrowly focused in our theology. For example we hear a great deal regarding how Jesus died for our sins. But Jesus came into the world to do a lot more than dealing only with sinners. “… because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn … to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit… that he may be glorified.” We Christians sometimes get so focused on sin that we forget all the things that is was prophesied that the Messiah would do. There is a whole lot more wrong with the world than just sin, there is sickness and affliction, captivity and mourning, and brokenheartedness too. Christ came not just to take on our sins, but also to heal our diseases and to take on all our ailments, spiritual, mental and physical.
