Writing the Latest Sermon

This post started as my standard Roblog entry of my latest sermon, but much like the sermon itself, it has become something else.

I was talking with our pastor, Micah, and elder, Matthew on Sunday, September 26th, about our upcoming plans. It came to my attention that in two weeks Micah was planning to have the week off, and there was no plan for the sermon that week. Since I was in the middle of vacation, I offered to fill that gap. My last sermon was in March, and I felt overdue to go through the labor of creating a sermon. Whether that labor is more of a production job or the act of giving birth, I am still not sure.

I was not sure at that time what I would be preaching on. Micah was working through 2 Thessalonians, and wasn't sure whether he would finish that week or the week before. I had been talking with Rick about his preaching, which was working through some significant points in the Old Testament. He had mentioned the possibility of preaching on the Jubilee, from Leviticus, and that sparked something in me. I have been fascinated with the idea of the Jubilee for a long time, and this felt like the time to tackle it. I pitched it to Pastor Micah that Tuesday, and he told me to go for it. That left me with 12 days to assemble my sermon, much less time than my usual 3 or 4 weeks. I started re-reading chapters 25 and 26 of Leviticus, and a sermon in a book of sermons by Walter Brueggemann that I borrowed from Rick far too long ago and which he has not bothered me at all about returning. The sermon was about how dangerous this idea of Jubilee is to a world that worships at the altar of capitalism.

And I was on fire for this sermon! I was looking forward to dragging our congregation into the Torah and showing them where you could find the tools to take apart society and rebuild it into God's Kingdom! I spent Friday that week, nine days before the sermon was due, at Rick's office, researching the Jubilee.

I found that to really grasp the idea of Jubilee, it would help to have an understanding of the seven-year-Sabbath: a year in which the land was to rest, and the people were to have faith that God would not let them starve. And that only really made sense in the light of the weekly Sabbath, which Jewish people still celebrate every week and we do ourselves a disservice by not more closely observing. And the Sabbath really comes into focus when you realize that it is just one of the times that God appointed in Leviticus for Israel to stop and focus on their relationship with God. And those appointed times make much more sense when you realize that they are part of a larger structure of social interactions and laws that govern how God's people get along with each other. These rules clearly stem from the boundaries of holiness that are clearly defined in Leviticus, from how priests should behave in their daily life and their job, to how all of the various kinds of sacrifices should be made, and how the priests were to approach God. 

I decided that I could cover all that in a couple of minutes.

Spoiler alert: I couldn't.

I spent the next week assembling an outline. On the Friday two days before the sermon I started fleshing out my outline, connecting the pieces to help me figure out what was missing. In that process, I came up with "an idea to bracket Leviticus," to set that portion of the sermon apart from the parts about Jubilee. It was beautifully symmetrical, and painted a clear picture of Leviticus that I had never before held in my mind. The problem was that this two minute introduction had grown to more than ten minutes of a sermon which I had intended to last 20 minutes (knowing full well that it would likely be 25, but not at all likely to pass 30).

In addition, my end bracket for Leviticus felt like the end of the sermon. Except that I had my Jubilee ending as well, so I was stuck with a sermon that effectively had two tails. I thought and prayed about it, and came to the conclusion that I had two sermons on my hands. I asked Micah and Matthew what to do, and they agreed that I should run with the more complete sermon of the two, so I started hacking. 

I had to remove some of my favorite parts, because this was no longer a sermon about the Jubilee. I left hints and allusions to them, and a couple of their themes as they fit into the larger structure, but withheld the smackdown that Jubilee brings to the world at large. This was not really painful, because I had already made up my mind that Jubilee still needed, and would get, its own sermon. It's in the works, and will likely show up sometime around November. (It ended up being September 27th.)

So I spent the Friday before it was to be delivered doing surgery on my sermon. I have had to do a lot of writing on sermons later than that, but it was late enough that it should have felt panicky. It didn't, though. It felt like the right move, and it felt blessed. I went to bed late Friday night fairly happy with it. Saturday I went through it a couple of times, reworded a few parts, tweaked here and there, but no major changes. Horyon had it early in the day to translate, but she had a busy day, so she finished after I had gone to bed Saturday night.

I had been working on a theme involving circles, which I illustrated by carrying a kind of shofar with me. Mine is made from the horn of (I believe) a longhorn steer. The shofar was also used to announce the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, which is mentioned in the sermon. I held it through the sermon, and gestured towards it a few times. Even mentioned how one like this would be blown for Yom Kippur. But I did not actually blow it until the end, and in fact used it to end the sermon. I believe to good effect.

I have a Korean friend who is the pastor of a little home church. He gives a couple of sermons on Sunday, and another for Wednesday services (which are standard for Korean churches). He preaches through three different books at a time. Doesn't leave much room for procrastination. He recently told me that preparing a sermon can be painful, like giving birth.* I find that most creative efforts are like this. If a deadline is not imposed on me, I will often delay, just to avoid that pain. 

*I realize that comparing the birthing of an idea to the birthing of a child is problematic, in that I have only witnessed the latter, and am missing some key anatomical features involved. But I struggle to come up with a better metaphor, and just can't. So please bear with me if you have actually borne a child.

This Roblog post is an example. The writing itself was no more difficult than usual, but the self-examination in these past few paragraphs gave me an excuse to stall. So I did. And I didn't feel like I could post the sermon until I had this ready to go, so that didn't happen either.

And waiting for these two posts is the latest sermon, this one actually on the Jubilee. The sermon itself was last week, but I couldn't post it without getting this one done, so...

There is also part 2 of my faith journey. It is also suffering birthing pains. It is almost fully formed, but refuses to come into the light.

Enough. This is going up, and the sermon it's about will go up shortly thereafter.

Sermon: Leviticus, a Guide to Holiness

I am publishing this retroactively on the date I delivered the sermon, August 9th, 2020, even though I am writing these words in October. I just want to make this easier to find in the context it was delivered. I have written an entire post about the process of writing this sermon. It's a bit spoilery, so I suggest reading the sermon first.

Here is the video. The whole service is there, but I believe the link will open to the time I start preaching. As usual, scripture references are from the ESV Bible, and are in bold print.

3 “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, 4 then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit…

11 I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. 12 And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. And I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect. Leviticus 26:3-4, 11-13

What do you think of when someone mentions Leviticus? Serious question, I’m looking for hands.

Leviticus is a bit of a puzzle. It starts in chapter one sounding like it’s going to be exciting:

“The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, …’” Leviticus 1:1-2b (NIV)

and we think, “Wow, a conversation with God! This is going to be cool!” But it ends up being a list of instructions. Not instructions for winning a battle, or building an ark, but instructions on how to do basic stuff: how to do offerings and sacrifices, how to prepare the priests to do their jobs, how to behave towards each other, how to eat. And the calendar.

It can be dry reading, and much of it seems irrelevant to us today: we no longer worship God at the Tabernacle or the Temple in Jerusalem, and our lifestyles seem so very different from those of the early Israelites.

But Leviticus actually does something very important: it defines holiness. It is a kind of map, or a blueprint for God’s Kingdom. As Micah has been teaching us in his 2 Thessalonians series, holiness is about setting something aside for a higher purpose, and Leviticus clearly marks those boundaries. The larger patterns we see in Leviticus can help us to understand God’s plan for us.

Leviticus is structured like a series of circles around God, some larger, some smaller, but all centered on God, separating the holy from the common. Like the diameter of a horn, or ripples in a pond after tossing in a stone.

The beginning of Leviticus outlines the guide to the sacrifice of animals, which is the smallest circle. Sacrifice was, and still is, the only way to make ourselves holy enough to approach God. Blood is used to make things and people clean, or holy, 89 times in Leviticus. And each of those procedures were carried out many, many times. Some daily, some multiple times per day. We should not forget how expensive holiness is, nor should we take the blood of Jesus for granted.

The next circle is a guide to holiness for the priests. Only the priests could draw near to God on our behalf, and only they could make sacrifices. The only narrative in Leviticus displays how important this was: two of Aaron’s sons are killed by God for bringing “strange” or “unauthorized” fire before the LORD. Coming into this circle is a dangerous act.

The next larger circle is a guide to holiness for the community. The people of Israel needed to be ceremonially clean to be acceptable to God. These verses deal with what foods they could eat, childbirth, bodily discharges, and bleeding, as well as skin diseases, mildew, and dead things. Only things and people that are clean are acceptable in the circle of God’s community.

The next circle is not really larger or smaller than the previous ones. It’s a circle that sets a time apart: the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. This was the time of year, every year, that Israel was drawn closest to God, by confessing their sins. It was signalled by sounding the shofar, a horn, perhaps like this one. On Yom Kippur the sins of the nation are placed on a goat, and the scapegoat carries the sins of the people out of the circle of God’s community, to die in the desert.

The next circle defines a place of holiness, warning that sacrifices are not to be made outside of the tabernacle, or later the temple. This is a reminder that we do not get to decide where God is, or where God is to be approached. We can pray to God from anywhere, but we must enter this circle to be forgiven.

With every rule and law, a circle is drawn, and limits are defined. Using these circles, God’s people can locate themselves in God’s presence, and orient their lives towards God.

The second half of Leviticus is a bit messier. As the circles get larger, they interfere with each other, and Leviticus takes us in a lot of different directions. So we have rules about sexual conduct mixed in with more general rules about being fair to each other. These rules often amount to providing for the poor through daily life decisions, for example by not harvesting 100% of your crops. This would encourage the poor to come and glean what was left. In God’s circle, holiness is often expressed as justice.

There are rules about how the priests should behave in their lives outside of the temple, because true holiness is not something you put on and take off like the priestly garments. The circle is smaller while performing their duties, but it still exists while they are outside, interacting with their neighbors and family.

In the second half of Leviticus we find a call to obedience: a promise of blessings and curses that echoes the promises made by the people of Israel in Exodus and Deuteronomy. A circle that God’s people deliberately step into, promising to have no other gods, promising to stay inside the circles of holiness.

In one section, God appoints special times throughout the year, as periodic reminders of what God has done for us: the Sabbath. The Passover. The Festival of Firstfruits. Pentecost. The Festival of Trumpets. The Day of Atonement. The Festival of Tabernacles. The Sabbath Year, and the Jubilee. These festivals are all worthy of attention, but today I will focus only on the three Sabbath-based holidays:

The Sabbath is another kind of circle in time, again helping us to find God at the center. God commands the people Israel to rest on the Sabbath, to take time to withdraw from the world, from pali-pali culture, from working overtime, and focusing on money. On the Sabbath, there was to be no cooking, no farm work, no buying and selling. All preparations for the Sabbath are made the day before. As we enter the Sabbath circle, we are to leave our distractions outside.

The Sabbath Year is like the Sabbath Day, only on a grand scale: a circle that encompasses one year in seven, rather than one day. We read in Leviticus 25:1-2

The LORD said to Moses on Mount Sinai, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: ‘When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a sabbath to the LORD.’” (Leviticus 25:1-2)

The people, who were mostly farmers, were not allowed to work their land. Can you imagine what you would do with a year of setting aside your job? Just you, in this year-wide circle, without the usual things to distract you from the LORD. What would you do? I suspect that the Sabbath Years of old produced a lot of art and music, and perhaps some innovation and exploration of different talents.

Then we come to the Jubilee. Every fifty years there is a Super Sabbath: seven sevens of years. The circle is drawn around the whole nation, and tightened down so that everyone is pulled in close to God.

The Jubilee is marked by sounding the horn on the Day of Atonement. In this Jubilee all land that has been sold over the past fifty years is returned freely to the family group that originally owned it. Slaves were set free. Debts were forgiven. All aspects of life that had been pushed to the outside of God’s circles were pulled back. Back to the center. Back to God. Because, as God tells Moses:

“The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.” (Lev 25:23 ESV)

Jubilee, and all of Leviticus, really, draws a clearly defined circle. It told them, and it tells us, “Everything inside this circle belongs to God. You are welcome to anything you find outside of this circle, but there is nothing outside of this circle. Not even you.”

As I have said, Leviticus is a guide to holiness. It is no coincidence that it is also a guide to justice, to fairness. The laws in Leviticus do not only make it possible to approach God, and live in covenant with God, they make it possible for God’s people to live together in peace.

With hindsight, we can see how the rules of Leviticus played out: once God’s people settled into Canaan, they played little games with God’s plan. They started inside God’s circles, but wandered out to see what the world had to offer. They repented when things got rough, but never seemed to make it as far back into the circles. Last year at Redeemer we followed the path of some of the Judges of Israel, as well as King David, and at most turns we see Israel taking one step forward, and two steps back. And sometimes they skip the step forward. We see the people draw their own circles around wealth and power and pleasure, ignoring the circles that God has drawn in Leviticus.

Until Jesus shows up. He goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and reads from Isaiah:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

and recovering of sight to the blind,

to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

Everyone there knows what Jesus is talking about. At least, they think they know what he is talking about. Sound the horn! It’s the Jubilee, just like back in the day! Israel will get their land back! Jerusalem will be our capital, and we will no longer be second class citizens of the Roman Empire! God is redrawing the circles! And we will be inside!

His listeners dreamed of the ideal kingdom that Israel was supposed to, but never quite managed to, be. They did not imagine that it would be so much more than that.

20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:18-21

The Good News had arrived. The Gospel, the Word, the Lamb of God was right there, walking among them. And Jesus was going to expand those circles to the ends of the earth!

With the death and resurrection of Jesus, all of the requirements of Leviticus are fulfilled!

We can meet God in any place, because Jesus has established the temple in us!

We can meet God at any time, because Jesus brings the Sabbath and Jubilee into our lives!

The community is washed clean in his blood, and all of us are priests!

And the sacrifices that were required to approach God have now been perfectly fulfilled!

This is not just good news for the poor and the captives, it is good news for everyone!

Yet many Christians act as though this were just advance notification of good news, something that is going to happen, at some time in the future. This is a problem I see with many Christians: they view the Kingdom of Heaven as nothing more than a reward that they will get after they die. It is that, no doubt about it, but it is so much more!

All of us still have the opportunity right now to choose which circles to dwell in. When you walk out of Redeemer ICC, which is a super easy circle for some Christians, what kind of circle will you step into? What kind of circles have you joined, or made for yourself?

Some people draw their circles around fame or power. They are drawing their own prisons, and Jesus is calling them to liberty!

Some draw their circles around friendship or family. They are drawing their own oppression, and Jesus is calling them to freedom!

We have all drawn circles around ourselves at times, putting ourselves in the center, drawing our own blindness. Jesus is calling us to see!

Some of us have fooled ourselves into thinking that being bound by any circle is a bad thing, but Jesus has drawn circles of freedom!

Freedom from a false sense of security! Freedom from the desire to be a winner! Freedom from the constant, anxious striving to get more stuff!

The circle that Jesus draws not only frees us from these prisons, it frees us to act! Freedom to show mercy, love and compassion! Freedom to fight against unjust systems and structures!

Read with me the words that Jesus said,

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

and recovering of sight to the blind,

to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:18-21

Come into the circle!

Sermon: Who is Gideon to Us?

I delivered this sermon on March 15th, 2020, so I am pre-dating this post. Here is the video:
Our pastor, Micah Mercer, very kindly edited out my pre-sermon fumbling around with the music stand, the microphone, my coffee, and myself. The sound is occasionally a little low, but he has done a great job of making me look as good as possible. It's just under 30 minutes, which is standard for our church these days.

This was our second service that was exclusively streamed, with only about eight people actually in attendance. I found it very challenging to preach to such a small congregation, even though I knew that many of our regulars were watching on YouTube, as well as my parents and a friend or two back in Kansas.

As for the sermon itself, I intentionally wrote it for an audience who has read Judges 6, 7 and 8 at some point. If you haven't read it, you should, whether before or after hearing and/or reading this sermon. I touch on the major points (as I see them), but I do not tell the story in a linear way. It came to me in a sort of looping way, and I attempted to deliver it as I received it.

A church member told me that she appreciated the way I got into Gideon's head, and Maxine told me that it is entertaining to watch me preach (in reaction to Gideon's panic mode). I felt pretty good about this one. It had been about 18 months since the last time I preached, and when I offered to preach this Sunday, I had no idea how busy my life was about to become. COVID19 was still a fringe thing happening in China, my semester was supposed to happen in classrooms rather than Zoom, and my family was all healthy. The week before I delivered it was crazy with getting my department geared up for virtual teaching, and I wrote more of it than I care to admit the day before. But God works through brokenness and poor plans, as I can attest, over and over.

Who is Gideon to Us?

Judges 6-8

And the LORD turned to him (Gideon) and said, “Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?”

And he said to him, “Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.”

And the LORD said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.”  Judges 6:14-16

Lord God, open our ears to hear your Word. Holy Spirit, refresh us with good news. Jesus, be our way. Amen.

When I read Hebrews 11 and 12 about the cloud of witnesses, I did all right up until chapter 11 verse 32. When the author gets to Gideon, and tells us that he doesn’t have time to explain why, my first thought as a university professor is, “Did you do the readings at all? Because it feels like you kind of remember him from Sunday School when you were a kid, that story about how he defeated a swarm of an army with just 300 men.”

Who is Gideon to me? You see, when I go back and read Judges 6, 7 and 8, where Gideon’s story happens, I don’t see a role model, I see a mess. A coward, a doubter, a complainer.

An Angel of God came to Gideon, not even asking anything, but telling him, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.” Gideon’s response is to question this assertion: “If the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us?”

He’s talking about Israel being oppressed by Midian for the past seven years. The Midianites would come in like locusts, steal all the food and livestock they could find, and cause no end of trouble. More men than you could count, the Bible tells us.

Gideon knew the stories of how God had brought the people Israel into the promised land, and how God had given the land to them. He had probably learned them as a child the same way that my son has learned about Greek myths. But more than that. Recently God had sent a prophet, unnamed in this story. We think of prophets as people who tell about the future, but this prophet told of the past, drawing attention to the present. The prophet said,

“This is what the LORD, the God Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the LORD your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.” (Judges 6:7-12)

So the stories and the prophet had to have been in Gideon’s mind, but he still didn’t quite believe them. He basically says to the Angel, “What has God done for us lately?”

Gideon seems to believe that the Angel is God’s emissary, yet he doesn’t believe what the Angel is saying, and has the nerve to put God to the test!

Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6:16 when he says, “Do not put the LORD your God to the test…” Not only is Gideon’s behavior contrary to scripture, it seems contrary to common sense! I like to think that if I had met an angel and heard God’s voice speaking to me, I would listen! I would obey!

Gideon’s doubts are so strong that it takes three miracles to get him to agree to the mission God has for him!

That said, Gideon does go on that mission. In Judges 6:34 we read that the Spirit of the LORD takes possession of Gideon, and that’s when he calls the troops together. This is Gideon’s big faith moment, the one that echoes back and forth through scripture, from Moses before him, to David after, and into Pentecost, when the Spirit of God was on the whole crowd, and on us today. That’s where Gideon shines. Not because he is brilliant, but because he does God’s will.

Then we come to the part of the story in which Gideon seems to do all right. This pattern seems familiar, because after our mountain top moments we all tend to behave well. For a while, anyway. Gideon follows the LORD’s instructions in assembling the army. The LORD doesn’t want him to lead too many troops into battle, because the LORD doesn’t want Israel to say that they won the battle by their own hand. The LORD should get the glory. So Gideon decreases his own army size from 24,000 to just 300 men.

Gideon leads his 300 men into the most unconventional battle since the walls of Jericho had fallen, many years before. His troops carried trumpets, and torches in clay jars. I will give Gideon some serious faith points for this one: it’s hard enough to risk your own life on something that seems so foolish, but leading 300 other people into what seems like certain death is a serious leap of faith.

The battle goes according to the LORD’s plan: The Midianites are routed. They have been tormenting Israel for seven years, and Gideon with his 300 men chase them relentlessly across the country. Finally, Gideon is a Bible Hero that does what we expect him to do.

But as I continue reading, that good feeling starts to fade. This is a war, and wars are ugly. But Gideon’s story turns dark, and it never seems to come completely back into the light. There is the usual bloodshed and carnage of war, and at one point Gideon is presented with the heads of two Midianite generals. The Old Testament doesn’t talk much about feelings, but at this point I imagine that Gideon is flooded with that feeling of being The Avenger. The bullies who had tormented his people were all dead fleeing, from an army not even a tenth of their size.

Also Gideon gets his revenge on those who do not help him along the way, whipping the uncooperative leaders with desert thorns to teach them a lesson. Our coward, Gideon, has become the kind of hero that we cheer for in the movie theater.

Our hero Gideon drives the Midianites out of the land. Afterwards, the people ask Gideon to rule over them, to be their king. Gideon gives a lovely speech that seems to embody the ideals of the Kingdom of Heaven. He says, “I will not rule over you, neither will my son; the LORD will rule over you.” (Judges 8:23)

If we stop reading there it feels like a pretty good story, in spite of the blood and gore. If Gideon’s story had stopped there, and he had gone back to his farm, it would have been a much happier ending.

Gideon does not take the throne, but he does ask for a tribute. A payment, for services rendered. He makes a request, very politely, which the people willingly fulfill for him. Gold. A portion of the plunder taken from the dead bodies of their former oppressors, the Midianites.

God had not wanted Israel to take credit for the win, so God made Gideon send away all but 300 of his soldiers. But one thing got in the way of that plan: Gideon was still there, with the 300. And Gideon was willing to take credit for the win, rather than give it fully to the LORD.

He was also willing to take a tribute of 43 pounds of gold. In chapter 8 verse 27 we read, “Gideon took the gold and made an ephod from it, and all Israel prostituted themselves to it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family.”

Who is Gideon? On my scorecard, Gideon does not do so well. He is slow to get into the game, with a weak start. He scores some big points in the first half, but he finishes poorly. The LORD’s goal of ending the Midianite oppression was successful, but I suspect that very few of you would wish to be like Gideon. So tell me, why does the author of Hebrews say that Gideon accomplishes so much through faith?

Maybe the answer is that God asked everything of Gideon, and used what Gideon gave.

God called Gideon a mighty warrior, and told him to save Israel from Midian’s hand. Gideon doesn’t directly say “no,” but he questions. He tests. He humbly asks for proof.

And when he gets that proof, he believes! He knows that he has been speaking to an Angel of God! But then in verse 23 we read the following:

But the LORD said to him, “Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.” (6:23)

Now it’s not just an angel talking, it is the LORD Himself. And Gideon thinks that he is going to die. That’s what happens when God gets right up in your business. It’s scary.

So Gideon is jazzed! He wants to serve! He’s so excited that he builds an altar to God right there and then. He was probably searching for rocks, and stacking them up, and telling himself, “I just met an Angel of God! And God talked to me! How cool is that?”

Then, that very night, the first instructions come. God tells Gideon to tear down an altar to Baal and an Asherah pole, and build an altar to Jehovah, the LORD. To you and me, that seems like an easy choice, especially after talking to an angel of Jehovah. But it’s actually a very risky move. Baal and Asherah are the local gods. People took their gods seriously. The men of town showed up the next morning and demanded Gideon’s life for tearing down those idols.

Jesus gives us clear instructions: to lay down your life, pick up your cross, and follow. Gideon had to know that he was risking his life in this action. He was testing God again, but this time if God failed him, Gideon would lose his life.

Gideon comes through the best he can. I can imagine what was going through his head as he gathered his servants together to tackle this project. “This is crazy! My friends and neighbors are gonna be seriously angry! And my Dad! Oh, Dad’s gonna kill me! Oh, God, you’ve proved yourself to me, but this is crazy!” Then as he and his servants are tearing the altar down, “Oh, please God, don’t let me get killed over this! This is crazy!” Then as he waits for morning, because I’m pretty sure Gideon didn’t sleep that night!, he was probably thinking to himself, “That was crazy! God told me to do it, but it was crazy! What have I done?”

When that crowd of angry men shows up at his door, maybe Gideon is resigned to his fate. Maybe he thinks this day will be his last. Maybe he has given up hope.

It doesn’t matter. God is sending Gideon to drive out the Midianites, and God has no intention of letting Gideon get killed in a minor skirmish.

So God wakes the faith of Gideon’s father Joash. Joash is a big man in town, with many servants, and a lot of land. Including the land with the Baal altar and the Ashtoreth pole. Joash’s faith has been slumbering as he focused on being a leader in his community, but Gideon’s actions, driven by God, wake up Joash’s faith! He comes to the defense of his son and his God.

He confronts the crowd of angry men, saying, “What kind of god is Baal that he needs you men to defend him? If Baal is real, he can defend himself. In the meantime, anyone who touches my son Gideon will be dead by morning!”

Now hope soars in Gideon, and he is thinking, “Thank you, God! You were right! I AM your warrior! You ARE with me!”

Who is Gideon to us now? He is clearly the up and coming hero. Gideon has witnessed God at work in his life, and he is open to the Spirit of the LORD.

So Gideon does his hero work, driving out the Midianites. When God tells him to decrease his army of 24,000 down to 300, he probably thinks, “Really? Just 300? Well… God saved me before, I guess God can do it again...” Gideon sends away 23,700 men. He is obedient, but I think he is doubtful.

We don’t get to know Gideon’s thoughts directly. The Old Testament rarely lets us know what people were thinking, but God knows. And God must have seen doubt in Gideon’s mind, because God says to Gideon, “If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah and listen to what they are saying. Afterward, you will be encouraged to attack the camp.” (7:10-11)

Gideon accepted the offer for a tour of the camp, so he must have been afraid. Where does fear come from? Doubt. When you doubt that God will come through for you, you feel fear. God can see your doubt, like God saw Gideon’s. And if you listen to God, as Gideon did, God will give you a little tour of reassurance. Gideon’s tour reveals that the Midianites have been dreaming of being destroyed by Gideon himself! And with that, Gideon’s fears are gone!

When God tells Gideon to arm his men with only torches and trumpets, Gideon is probably thinking, “The LORD has got this! Only trumpets and torches? No problem!”

What is Gideon to us now? The Hero, with a capital H!

The pursuit lasts for days, and Gideon’s troops are riding high on a string of victories. I think this is when Gideon’s thoughts begin to change from “I am on God’s side,” to “God is on my side.” It’s a small change in word order, but a huge change in meaning.

As it happens, this is where we notice something missing: no more conversations between the LORD and Gideon. The last one was when the LORD gave instructions for the trumpet and torch attack. From here on out, Gideon still talks about the LORD, but he no longer talks with the LORD. Not according to the book of Judges, anyway.

Maybe that’s the change that lets Gideon casually accept the severed heads of his enemies. When God was on Gideon’s side, Gideon became the punisher, whipping men with desert thorns. The executioner, killing prisoners in cold blood. And he knew that it was good, because he was totally sure that the LORD was with him, backing him up.

Who is Gideon to us now?

Gideon has not completely lost sight of the Kingdom of Heaven, but his vision is becoming ever more blurry as he moves forward, ahead of the LORD, rather than with the LORD.

In the end, Gideon gets the outline of the big picture. He doesn’t allow the people to crown him King. But he accepts their gold, and their praise. He has seventeen sons, for he had many wives, and a concubine in Shechem bore his son Abimelech. Judges 9 follows the tragic fruit that grows from these seeds.

Gideon died at a good old age, surely still believing that God was on his side. After all, he had accomplished what God had set out for him to do: to deliver Israel from the Midianites.

Maybe you recognize yourself in some part of Gideon’s journey. God is most definitely calling you to see his Kingdom.

Maybe you are still listening to the unnamed prophet, and turning the ideas over in your mind. Or maybe you are in the middle of the conversation with the angel.

Maybe God has answered your questions and consumed your offering, opening you to God’s Spirit. Maybe you have made the first moves, in spite of your doubts and fears. Maybe you’ve already routed the armies.

Maybe you’ve decided that God is on your side, rather than you being on God’s side.

So what is Gideon to us? To me? To you?

Let’s revisit our memory verse from January, Hebrews 12:1, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…” Gideon is part of that cloud of witnesses. As we’ve seen today, Gideon is not a textbook example of practicing faith. Rather, he is an example of one way that the LORD works with faith in real life.

Gideon’s faith was not enough to make him perfect. You do not have to dive deeply into the Hebrews 11 cloud of witnesses to see that NONE of them had enough faith to be perfect.

Yet Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, “You must therefore be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect, or you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matt 5:48) That’s after telling us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us! Gideon is like the poster child for hating your enemies!

So who is Gideon to us, especially within this cloud of witnesses? And not just Gideon, either. These past few weeks as Micah has led us through Hebrews 11 and 12, he has pointed out how the people who make up this cloud of witnesses had problems. They were broken, imperfect vessels of God’s perfect faith. Each of them had a vision of God’s plan, some clearer than others. And each had a desire to make God’s vision a reality. But each of them, in their own fallen way, twisted and tweaked God’s plan, and poked at it, and bent it to make it a better fit for the world in which they lived. They tried to combine the Kingdom of the LORD with the reality that they were accustomed to.

Still, at heart, each in their own way had faith. They all felt assurance for what they hoped was real. Though their feet were planted in the world that we are so familiar with, their eyes were on God’s Kingdom. Having babies at 90 years old. Rising from slave to Pharaoh’s right hand man. Going to battle with torches and trumpets, attacking 20,000 men with a force of 300.

This cloud of witnesses.

What does a witness talk about? Usually not themselves. They talk about what they have seen or experienced. This cloud bears witness to God’s faithfulness. They bear witness to the fact that God used them in spite of their flaws. They bear witness to the grace of God, the forgiveness that flows freely, the undeserved love, and the protection of God. And they bear witness that when God plans for something to happen, it will happen.

In the here and now, we don’t face armies of invaders stealing our food. We don’t face being enslaved, sawn in two, or being persecuted in any serious way. Don’t get me wrong, there are Christians today who face real persecution. But not us. Not here.

Our battles are smaller, but in a way just as impossible on the surface. Jesus calls us to be peacemakers and healers, even when there is a virus that pushes us apart, labeling an entire ethnicity as lepers and enemies. Jesus calls us to love our enemies.

We all feel the need to be avenged for every insult and disrespect; it is a deep part of us, our sinful nature. But it is our calling to be on God’s side, rather than assume God is on our side.

The urge to gossip, to put down the weak and blame the poor. Society tries to convince us that this is how we survive, by putting ourselves first, throwing the other guy under the bus.

Maybe stopping to listen seems ridiculous to the world. Maybe forgiving someone who hasn’t even asked is the equivalent of attacking a larger army with nothing but trumpets and torches.

Maybe forgiving yourself is as hard as tearing down the altar where everyone in town worships.

The author of Hebrews tells us that this cloud of witnesses, including Gideon, are pointing us towards Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

That’s who Gideon is.

Lord God, thank you for giving us faith, for using us and loving us, though we are broken, misguided, and all but blind to your glory. Make us worthy to join your cloud of witnesses. Amen.

Sack Family and COVID19

We are doing okay. Not great, not bad, but a solid okay.

There. That's the post. I can't go into more detail, because the details are all tangled up like a pile of coat hangers: if I pull one out to include, I just have to include a couple more to support it, and those sort of need more background to make sense of. Next thing I know, we're talking about the Japanese occupation of Korea, my job, which has changed a lot in the last year, and Busan Waldorf School, where my kids currently aren't going to school.

Nevermind. It's all in my head. I just don't want to go into it because my brain is getting used up on other stuff. I started writing this update a few days ago, and found that it was a page and a half about my job. So I retitled it, set it aside, and started this post. It's Sunday, April 5th as I start this, and I plan to publish this week. Preferably early this week, so I can use it to procrastinate for work that needs to be done by Thursday.

All right, enough culture talk. This is twice now that I have started a post about my family and dodged the issue. It's now it's April 11th, and there are two more posts in the queue and this one has been reduced to half a page.

Winter vacation is always an interesting time for us: Horyon usually has about two weeks of actual vacation, during which we try to go out of town for some kind of trip. The rest of her vacation is taken up by "vacation classes," which I could have sworn I had written about previously on the Roblog, but a brief search revealed nothing, and an intense search felt like more procrastination than I was ready to commit to. I am leaving this coat hanger in the closet. Even with vacation classes, Horyon has more time at home than usual. The kids have about 6 weeks off, and I have more than two months. By the end of vacation time we are all ready to go back to our normal lives. There is protesting on all fronts, but it is clear that everyone wants to be back in their respective schools.

This past vacation was no different. We drove to a big, famous amusement park called Everland south of Seoul. This was early February: the Coronavirus was starting to come into public view, so people were wearing masks and it was hard to buy hand sanitizer. There was no government directive to avoid crowded places, but people were starting to do that on their own. And the temperatures were wintery: below freezing at night, snow on the ground. Hat and gloves cold. There were not many people there, so we could go on most of the rides without waiting long. When Everland is running full steam you wait an hour or two for most rides, and they sell an add-on package that lets you go to the VIP line. Not necessary in February. Of course, the water-based rides were closed, and the wooden roller coaster was as well. I was very disappointed with that. But we had a

This year the kids had a week of school, then we went on COVID19 lockdown. At first the kids were happy, "Yay! More vacation!" That lasted about a week*, which was about a week longer than it lasted for Horyon and me. Then we started hearing, "I want to go back to school," and "I miss my friends," and "My soul is starving in this wretched isolation."

* This is a sort of average. Maxine figured out that this was bad news within a few days. Quinten took longer.

By now I'm pretty sure you all understand this reality. You are either under some sort of lockdown, or reading this in the future, trying to figure out how exactly our species was wiped out.* But we started in early March, so we've been doing it longer.

*I know, my optimism is amusing.

The country as a whole has done well, but we've had some minor scares along the way: Horyon has had low-grade fevers (under 100 degrees F), enough that her school nurse made her go to the hospital to get tested. Twice. Both came back negative, both within 12 hours from hospitals designated for testing. Early on she had a week or so of a bad cold or flu, with a real fever. She slept in a separate room for a couple of weeks, just to be safe.

Maxine was also sick for a while with the same flu Horyon had. So along with our family being isolated from everyone else, we were isolating ourselves from each other. Horyon and Maxine were pretty much worthless for about a week. Maxine's been doing dishes the past few months, so we really missed that, and when Mommy goes down for the count, everything slows way down.

So now it's April 19th. I am determined to publish this soon, but that has been the case for two weeks.

The kids are going back to school. Just once or twice a week, with classes divided so that only five students at a time are there. Our school is a Waldorf school, so they don't have kids doing computer literacy until 10th grade (next year for Maxine). Even then, they have a ground-up approach, starting with how computers are made and work, the basics of programing and communication, and touching on the Internet right at the end. Before that, they don't want students to get on the Internet at all.

I refuse to stick slavishly to these guidelines, but my kids do get a lot less screen time than most, and it's a win most of the time. I miss being able to discuss much pop culture with them, but they are still pretty fun to talk to. Which is all beside the point. The point being that my kids don't do online school time. They go to school a couple of times a week, with just four other kids from their class at a time. They get homework to do, but it's not normal by most standards. Quinten's includes things exercising (take the eight flights of stairs to our apartment eight times a day), growing bean plants from dried beans, and copying a huge amount of text into his notebook. Maxine is at a strange in-between stage, without a regular teacher, so she doesn't have homework per se. Her class is going to do self-directed projects, but they are still working on how that will look.

And now it is April 20th, more than two weeks since I started. I'm going to leave you with just one photo:

Maxine and I with 2000 pieces of Glorious Fun!

Twilight

[I started writing this post in October of 2018, about the time I wrote a Roblog post called Just Reading, which, by the way, you should go read now, even if you read it when it first came out. It's a pretty good one, and it suggests that I was going to write about Twilight. Which I did. Until I stopped writing. Not just that post, but in general. The Roblog has only 3 posts for last year, not including this and a couple of others that got stuck in the pipeline. I will attempt to get things flowing again, but I suspect that this year will not be an improvement. Time will tell.]

There comes a time in every father's life when he realizes that something has changed. His children are not little offshoots of his own personality, they are individuals. Not only are they separate from him, they are practically little aliens. It is enough to make one wonder whether some otherworldly genetic code has somehow been spliced into the offspring.

Okay, I'll just come out and say it: Maxine has read the entire Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers, in Korean and in English. And she likes it. And that kind of freaks me out a bit.

Don't get me wrong, I bought the full set of books for her. Any reading is good reading at 13 (14 now, 16 in Korean age, damn you Korean age counting system!), and tastes change as one matures.

I read the first book for myself, and it was just not my thing. It had bits that weren't bad, like... (spoiler alert! though I'm guessing that everyone reading this falls into one of two camps: 1) read the books multiple times 2) hasn't read the books, has no plan to read the books, is only reading this because it's laying some pretty sick burns on the books, can't imagine reading these books no matter how much they love their little girl, etc.)

One bit that wasn't bad was the fight scene at the end. It was well told from the point of view of the human being used as bait. There were a few other plot driving scenes that worked all right, and some conversations that... communicated ideas important to the plot.

Speaking of the plot... Twilight felt like a short story expanded into a novel, but I understand that this may be a symptom (cough-cough) of the supernatural-romance genre (the romance part, not the supernatural part). There were so many words dedicated to admiring Edward that by the end I found myself wondering what it would be like to drag my fingers along his finely sculpted chest, just like Bella spent most of the book wondering. One reason I love to read is that it helps me understand others better. But what is the difference between understanding the alien and becoming the alien?

Of course, the answer is that now I remember the imprint of that longing, but it was never mine. It was just a tour of the heart of a teenage girl, albeit a fictitious one. But a tour that many young women and girls gladly take, over and over. I can imagine myself being easily carried away by such longing if it had been more in synch with my own.

This wasn't my first vampire book, of course. I read Stoker's Dracula many years ago (perhaps long enough that I owe it another read). I followed Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire series for a while, as well as Susie Stackhouse's books about being dead. Many movies, t.v. shows, and short stories involving vampires have also left their impressions, so my definition of "vampire" is a flexible one.

As such, I was not overly upset by the liberties that Meyers took with defining her blood-drinking, living dead anti-heroes. I actually thought that making them sparkle in the sunlight was an interesting twist on explaining why they avoid sunshine.* My biggest gripe is the one that every vampire mythos has to deal with: you have a ridiculously overpowered predator which can easily turn a regular human into another ridiculously overpowered predator. One lapse in judgement and it's Vampire Apocalypse. The Vampalypse? Apocapire? The Vampocapiralypse?

*They avoid sunshine because of the ancient law: "Thou shalt not combine the serious and the fabulous, lest the Lord smite thee with irony and they neighbor be consumed with jealousy."


It's possible that she deals with this power imbalance in the sequels, and she did introduce the werewolves to keep an eye on the blood-suckers. But maybe this is just a limitation of the vampire genre, like faster-than-light travel in science fiction, the powers of superheroes, and people breaking into song during a musical: you just sort of mentally look off in another direction and whistle tunelessly rather than think too much about it.

However, my biggest issue with the story is over a different kind of power imbalance, namely the relationship between Bella and Edward. At just over 100 years old (born in 1901, converted at 17) Edward is young for a vampire. But Bella is a high school student, 17 years old. The same age that Edward was when he died. (By the way, ick.) By contrast, I am almost 50 years old, and I can barely even remember a time when I was young enough to look at a 17-year-old girl and think, "I wish I could marry her!" And for me, the rest of my life is only a few more decades (if I'm lucky), as opposed to forever, or until someone cuts off my head and burns my body and scatters the ashes just to be sure.*

*Instructions from the book for killing a vampire. Technically, having my head cut off and my body burned and the ashes scattered would be end my life. Okay, not even technically. It just would. The point being that however miserable I might be in a relationship, at least I know it will end when I die. And that it won't be that long. And... I think I need a drink.


I suppose one can get around this by just thinking of Edward as a kind of freaky 17-year-old with sparkly skin and super powers, but this is not a big improvement. Not if you've spent much time around most 17-year-olds.

I also did not care for Bella's father: he was like a cardboard cutout with "father" written across the chest. He was the most trusting police chief and least paranoid father ever. I know that the family was broken, and that his relationship with Bella needed some work, but it felt like she was more casual housemate than daughter to me. Perhaps a distant cousin. Maybe in the next book he will be a little more protective, since the first book ends with his daughter hospitalized with a bunch of broken bones. I will probably never know.*

*Because there are many many books I still want to read, and a pretty long list of books that I would be happy to read again, and I will have to be extremely bored and have access to nothing much else before I pick up a copy of Breaking Dawn.


I did figure out a way to get some amusement out of Twilight other than tearing pages out and throwing them at passers-by. Because the story is told from Bella's point of view, the only clues we have as to Edwards thought processes are what he tells her. This is actually a key point of the plot, that she isn't sure what he is thinking. So while I was reading it, I imagined that Edward was playing with Bella on the level you would expect from a one hundred year old, frightfully intelligent and quick-thinking manipulative jerk of a vampire.* Since the reader only sees and hears what Bella sees and hears, we have no idea what is going on in his head. Vampires are often portrayed as being fiendishly intelligent and completely lacking in morals, so what if Edward is really just seasoning Bella up so that she will taste better later? Maybe the more she likes him, the tastier her blood will be! And if she truly loves him with all of her heart, draining her of all life will be a transcendent, maybe even religious experience!

* Like Lestat, or Count Dracula, or a member of the Black Court from the Dresden Files. Don't get me started on Jim Butcher's vampires: clever, evil, non-sparkly, and powerful, but not the most powerful players on the board by a long stretch.

If that is the case, Edward needs to get Bella to think he is the bees knees.* Like any good lie, there are bits of truth in what he says: it's hard to resist feeding on her because she is so fascinating to him. True. Fascinating like a bucket of fried chicken. And when he says he won't let anyone hurt her, he means it. He doesn't want her unique flavors ruined by anyone else. When he says he loves her, it's like loving a bottle of wine that you are saving for a special occasion. And at the end of the book he has the strength to defeat a stronger, meaner, older vampire because that philistine was not only stealing his property, but would never be able to fully appreciate how delectable she was.

*An expression popular in the 20s, when Edward was in his 20s.


Lying to Bella is easy for Edward, because he has had a hundred years to practice: He can control his body completely, down to pretending that he needs to breath. He can read her physical reactions with a little effort, even if he's not lying about being unable to read her mind. (I'm accepting this as true in my interpretation, and part of what makes her smell so tasty to him.)

My little theory only works early in the series. In one of the later books they get married. He makes her into a vampire so that they can "live" happily forever after (or until they get crossovered into a "Blade" sequel, knock on wood). It could still be an alternate version of Twilight, but I will never give my theory the write up it deserves, because to do it properly I would have to spend even more time reading and researching the original. Also, I'm just not in the mood to make that many enemies. I don't even have a good title for it. I was thinking maybe, "It's Getting Kinda Dark Outside," or more simply, "Gaslight." Perhaps "Edward is Evil, but What a Hunk." Fans would refer to it as EEWH. I'm open to suggestions.

Though I didn't really enjoy it, I have to admit that the Twilight series has staying power. People are still reading them, and they were made into fairly popular movies. Female friends of mine have laid claims to these books, saying that they enjoyed the books when they were younger. One attraction seems to be that Bella is written as a blank slate in the book, ready for the reader to step into her place. When I was young I often imagined myself as a character in the story I was reading, and as such enjoyed the first person point of view. It's a tougher sell for me now, especially when I find the viewpoint difficult to process.

Like feeling totally helpless in front of someone you have a deep crush on. That's not a fantasy, it's a nightmare. To me, anyway. I understand that the fantasy is that Edward has all of this power over her, but he doesn't use it. He doesn't want to use it, and is afraid of using it for fear of hurting her. (Unless you read my fanfic!)

In this story of immortal beings with supernatural strength and abilities, it's possible that this particular fantasy is the most difficult to believe, and the one that appeals most to the target demographic.

I understand the words and ideas, I just don't see the appeal. My mind went right to imagining that Edward so devious that Bella doesn't realize that he is evil. I don't want to be Edward, but it's hard to imagine him the way he is portrayed. I want to understand Bella, but I can't see wanting what she wants.

The whole thing is just too alien for me. But attempting to understand it may give me some insight into how Maxine thinks and feels, so it's worth it.

Earth to Maxine, can you hear me? What is it you see in Edward and Bella that makes you read and reread those books the same way I used to read Asimov's Foundation series? Can we communicate? Can we find any common ground?

Or do we just sit and read together? I call that a good start.