Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 28, selected verses:
If you will only obey the Lord your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth; 2 all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God: 3 Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field . . . 7 The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you; they shall come out against you one way, and flee before you seven ways. 8 The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns, and in all that you undertake; he will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you . . .
15 But if you will not obey the Lord your God by diligently observing all his commandments and decrees, which I am commanding you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you: 16 Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field . . .
20 The Lord will send upon you disaster, panic, and frustration in everything you attempt to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me. 21 The Lord will make the pestilence cling to you until it has consumed you off the land that you are entering to possess. 22 The Lord will afflict you with consumption, fever, inflammation, with fiery heat and drought, and with blight and mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish.
The writer of Deuteronomy lived in a fragile time. The world around him was very unsettled and unsure. He never knew what tomorrow might bring. Calamity might befall the community at any time.
I think we now understand better what kind of world this writer lived in.
The Deuteronomist’s answer was to seek control and order. So he ordered his world with rules and laws which he hoped could control what he thought of as God’s blessings and God’s curses. Do good get blessed. Do bad get cursed. Simple as that.
But what we are facing now we know is not so simple. The war, famine, and pestilences, the Deuteronomist imagined all had a kind of ethnic or national boundary to them. If the Jews did well they would be blessed above their neighbors, but if they did poorly then a pestilence might be sent and their neighbors come and attack them and strip them of their land.
But we now know pestilences do not respect national or international borders. And neither do storms of any kind. The illusion of control really doesn’t make sense in the face of bacterial science or meteorology or a world now so much more interconnected.
Here is the truth about the age we are living in. It is beyond our control now how or why this disease we are living in came along. Is it a judgment? Was there something we could have done to avert it? Who knows? It is here now. It is here everywhere. And in that sense it is beyond our control.
What is within our control is how we respond. Pointing fingers and blaming and trying to quell our anxieties by theologizing this disease’s meaning does nothing to help.
What does help — and is truly within our control — is staying home, not hoarding food and other essential goods, and demanding that our local and federal government do what is within its power to alleviate suffering, protect and defend the vulnerable, and finally create a true safety net for us all.
We’re all in this together — curses and blessings. We are here. And what the Deuteronomist says is basically true, if we do well now then perhaps we as a community will climb out, but if we do poorly we will all fall deeper and deeper into this terrible curse called COVID-19.
NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible together this year. As you can see, there is very relevant stuff here for the times we are living in. Tomorrow’s Lesson will come from Deuteronomy chapters 30 and 31.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Daily Lesson for March 18, 2020
Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 24 verses 10 through 15:
10 When you make your neighbor a loan of any kind, you shall not go into the house to take the pledge. 11 You shall wait outside, while the person to whom you are making the loan brings the pledge out to you. 12 If the person is poor, you shall not sleep in the garment given you as the pledge. 13 You shall give the pledge back by sunset, so that your neighbor may sleep in the cloak and bless you; and it will be to your credit before the Lord your God.
14 You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. 15 You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.
The COVID-19 crisis is exposing the vast fragility of our entire economic framework as it relies so heavily on cheap labor. After years (decades?) of depressed wages which kept laborers from financial robustness, and then the stoppage of work altogether, what happens to those people?
Today’s Lesson shows the Biblical concern for the well-being of the laborer and borrower. There is obligation the employer and the lender each take on for the care and responsibility of the workers, the borrowers, and the whole community at-large.
The current crisis we are in has exposed so much of the fragility of the entire national and international economy. When you’re competing against a place like China for production, then you’re tempted to exploit your workers just like they do. And who cares if they lose their shirts in the meantime?
But now we will have to pay the piper. This is looking like giant governmental bailouts because we can’t afford for everybody to lose their shirts at the same time. And though that will eventually mean more taxes for a lot of people, it will also mean it’s our chance to truly see that we are a community — our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and our workers’ kindred, and should have been all along.
NOTE: We’re reading the whole Bible through this year. Tomorrow’s Lesson will come from Deuteronomy chapters 28 and 29.
10 When you make your neighbor a loan of any kind, you shall not go into the house to take the pledge. 11 You shall wait outside, while the person to whom you are making the loan brings the pledge out to you. 12 If the person is poor, you shall not sleep in the garment given you as the pledge. 13 You shall give the pledge back by sunset, so that your neighbor may sleep in the cloak and bless you; and it will be to your credit before the Lord your God.
14 You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. 15 You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.
The COVID-19 crisis is exposing the vast fragility of our entire economic framework as it relies so heavily on cheap labor. After years (decades?) of depressed wages which kept laborers from financial robustness, and then the stoppage of work altogether, what happens to those people?
Today’s Lesson shows the Biblical concern for the well-being of the laborer and borrower. There is obligation the employer and the lender each take on for the care and responsibility of the workers, the borrowers, and the whole community at-large.
The current crisis we are in has exposed so much of the fragility of the entire national and international economy. When you’re competing against a place like China for production, then you’re tempted to exploit your workers just like they do. And who cares if they lose their shirts in the meantime?
But now we will have to pay the piper. This is looking like giant governmental bailouts because we can’t afford for everybody to lose their shirts at the same time. And though that will eventually mean more taxes for a lot of people, it will also mean it’s our chance to truly see that we are a community — our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and our workers’ kindred, and should have been all along.
NOTE: We’re reading the whole Bible through this year. Tomorrow’s Lesson will come from Deuteronomy chapters 28 and 29.
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Daily Lesson for March 17, 2020
Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 23 verses 24 and 25:
24 If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in a container.
25 If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.
This Lesson may seem a bit grim at this time. And I don’t want to cause any additional panic to readers. But it’s important to note that in the Bible, sustaining life is a preeminent value — and the right to life supersedes all other values, including those of private property.
So while hoarding is strictly forbidden, the foraging of food from others’ excess is permitted in order to sustain life.
According to William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury, early Christian Fathers, St. Thomas, Lactantius, and Ambrose, each affirmed and clarifying this rule, declaring that “theft” to be “no sin if it is committed to relieve genuine need,” so long as the need is “real and urgent, and other means of meeting it lacking” (William Temple, “Christianity and Social Order).
I pray we don’t come to a point when the means to feed ones’ family are utterly lacking. But the shelves are barren. And too many people have taken too much. This is the real robbery, and a far more grievous sin than simply taking to survive.
NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. And it’s apparent that there’s a lot of very relevant stuff in this Book. Tomorrow’s Lesson will come from Deuteronomy chapters 24-27.
24 If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in a container.
25 If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.
This Lesson may seem a bit grim at this time. And I don’t want to cause any additional panic to readers. But it’s important to note that in the Bible, sustaining life is a preeminent value — and the right to life supersedes all other values, including those of private property.
So while hoarding is strictly forbidden, the foraging of food from others’ excess is permitted in order to sustain life.
According to William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury, early Christian Fathers, St. Thomas, Lactantius, and Ambrose, each affirmed and clarifying this rule, declaring that “theft” to be “no sin if it is committed to relieve genuine need,” so long as the need is “real and urgent, and other means of meeting it lacking” (William Temple, “Christianity and Social Order).
I pray we don’t come to a point when the means to feed ones’ family are utterly lacking. But the shelves are barren. And too many people have taken too much. This is the real robbery, and a far more grievous sin than simply taking to survive.
NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. And it’s apparent that there’s a lot of very relevant stuff in this Book. Tomorrow’s Lesson will come from Deuteronomy chapters 24-27.
Sermon Manuscript
I wanted to share the Sunday’s sermon manuscript, as I offered some guiding principles to live by in this extraordinary time.
Peace to all. God is with us.
Ryon
Peace to all. God is with us.
Ryon
Monday, March 16, 2020
Daily Lesson for March 16, 2020
Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 16 verses 1 through 8:
Observe the month of Abib by keeping the passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. 2 You shall offer the passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, from the flock and the herd, at the place that the Lord will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3 You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it—the bread of affliction—because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt. 4 No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days; and none of the meat of what you slaughter on the evening of the first day shall remain until morning. 5 You are not permitted to offer the passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you. 6 But at the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, only there shall you offer the passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, the time of day when you departed from Egypt. 7 You shall cook it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose; the next morning you may go back to your tents. 8 For six days you shall continue to eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly for the Lord your God, when you shall do no work.
Today we are given the command for the remembrance and keeping of the Passover, a yearly festival which for us takes on eery meaning in the age of COVID-19.
Now we see new and perhaps ancient meaning in a yearly festival to help a nation of people remember how to stay safe and indoors in a clean house in the midst of a plague which worsened due to the nation’s leaders’ — Pharoah’s and his court’s — unwillingness to take it seriously.
“Be warned,” the Lesson seems to say, “this is what you will have to do should such affliction arise again.
“And this, the Passover, is your practice.”
Be warned indeed.
And be spared . . .
NOTE: We are continuing to read the whole Bible through this year. As you can see, there’s a whole lot of timeless stuff in there. Tomorrow’s Lesson will be from Deuteronomy chapters 21 through 23.
Observe the month of Abib by keeping the passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. 2 You shall offer the passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, from the flock and the herd, at the place that the Lord will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3 You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it—the bread of affliction—because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt. 4 No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days; and none of the meat of what you slaughter on the evening of the first day shall remain until morning. 5 You are not permitted to offer the passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you. 6 But at the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, only there shall you offer the passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, the time of day when you departed from Egypt. 7 You shall cook it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose; the next morning you may go back to your tents. 8 For six days you shall continue to eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly for the Lord your God, when you shall do no work.
Today we are given the command for the remembrance and keeping of the Passover, a yearly festival which for us takes on eery meaning in the age of COVID-19.
Now we see new and perhaps ancient meaning in a yearly festival to help a nation of people remember how to stay safe and indoors in a clean house in the midst of a plague which worsened due to the nation’s leaders’ — Pharoah’s and his court’s — unwillingness to take it seriously.
“Be warned,” the Lesson seems to say, “this is what you will have to do should such affliction arise again.
“And this, the Passover, is your practice.”
Be warned indeed.
And be spared . . .
NOTE: We are continuing to read the whole Bible through this year. As you can see, there’s a whole lot of timeless stuff in there. Tomorrow’s Lesson will be from Deuteronomy chapters 21 through 23.
Friday, March 13, 2020
Daily Lesson for March 13, 2020
Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 10 verses 12 through 22:
12 So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. 14 Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, 15 yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. 16 Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 18 who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. 19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 20 You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. 21 He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. 22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.
The New Revised Version translation of the Bible calls this section of Scripture “the essence of the Covenant”.
The essence of the covenant, the heart of these vows of the people before God and God’s vows before them is a command of humility before the LORD and kindness and even love towards the stranger.
“You were strangers in the land of Egypt . . .”
We were all strangers once. We were immigrants, and refugees, and slaves, and “huddled masses yearning to breath free”. We were fleeing persecution, and pestilence, and famine, and capture, and war, and who knows what all else. We came here on ships, and by horse, and by buggies, and in the arms of older sisters, and on the bread and kind direction of strangers. We did not make where we are alone. The LORD provided. We are not self-made men and women. We are here by the grace of God and good neighbors.
And so to whom much is given, much is required. This is the essence of the Covenant: to fear and follow in the ways of the LORD, to watch after orphans and widows and give a hand to those who need it, and to never ever forget that we too were strangers and someone was kind to us.
So let’s look after each other now friends; it’s in the hard times that it really matters . . .
NOTE: We’re reading the whole Bible through this year. Monday’s Lesson will be from Deuteronomy chapters 11 through 20.
12 So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. 14 Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, 15 yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. 16 Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 18 who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. 19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 20 You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. 21 He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. 22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.
The New Revised Version translation of the Bible calls this section of Scripture “the essence of the Covenant”.
The essence of the covenant, the heart of these vows of the people before God and God’s vows before them is a command of humility before the LORD and kindness and even love towards the stranger.
“You were strangers in the land of Egypt . . .”
We were all strangers once. We were immigrants, and refugees, and slaves, and “huddled masses yearning to breath free”. We were fleeing persecution, and pestilence, and famine, and capture, and war, and who knows what all else. We came here on ships, and by horse, and by buggies, and in the arms of older sisters, and on the bread and kind direction of strangers. We did not make where we are alone. The LORD provided. We are not self-made men and women. We are here by the grace of God and good neighbors.
And so to whom much is given, much is required. This is the essence of the Covenant: to fear and follow in the ways of the LORD, to watch after orphans and widows and give a hand to those who need it, and to never ever forget that we too were strangers and someone was kind to us.
So let’s look after each other now friends; it’s in the hard times that it really matters . . .
NOTE: We’re reading the whole Bible through this year. Monday’s Lesson will be from Deuteronomy chapters 11 through 20.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
Daily Lesson for March 12, 2020
Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 6:
“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
“Honor your father and your mother . . .” This is a Biblical command often quoted by parents of unruly teenagers in the most vexing of parental moments. Sometimes it is used manipulatively by even older parents. Almost always it is intended to saddle a burden of conscience upon the next generation.
But in a time like this, with a disease like COVID-19 (Coronavirus) rampaging it’s way around the world and striking hard especially against the aged, perhaps we have a more clear look at the intent and meaning of the verse.
“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, SO THAT YOUR DAYS MAY BE LONG AND THAT IT MAY GO WELL WITH YOU IN THE LAND THAT THE LORD YOUR GOD IS GIVING YOU.”
Wow; to read such words in such a time as this is eye opening. Who even remembered that second part of the verse about longevity and wellness? And why is that? Because the context of the Scripture has been so lost to us, but now comes nearer in a time of global pandemic.
The original context for the Biblical injunction was the giving of the Law after the Israelites fled Egypt. In Egypt the aged — fathers and mothers — were of low value and easily discarded. Pharaoh literally worked people to death; and in times of anxiety, or scarcity, or pestilence (there is much about the pestilences of Egypt in chapter 7 of Deuteronomy) the elderly were simply abandoned — forced by Pharaoh in fact to be abandoned for the sake of His greater economic holding, the whole edifice of a slave labor system.
But not so in the new land that the Lord their God was giving the Israelites. In the new land the aged would not be discarded or abandoned or simply left behind. They would honored, meaning cared for, always and to the end, so then it would indeed be possible for everyone’s days to be long and decent even into very old age.
So then, the prophet Isaiah said, in the vision of the new community there would be no person who would live not into the ripest of age; and a person who died at 100 years would still be like a youth.
Now is a time for caring for our mothers and fathers and the rest of their generation. Coronavirus is striking the elderly and other vulnerable people at an especially alarming rate. It is the duty of the young to honor our parents by practicing good hygiene, appropriate social distancing, and by continuing to look after their needs when they need our help and when they need first access to our medical resources.
It is in the face of disease that we read and learn again the import of the command to honor our fathers and mothers. Their lives matter. And we honor their lives by our conscientiousness and care. We honor their lives so that we can be a community different from Pharaoh’s Egypt, where everyone was made to look after only themselves and no one looked after the aged and most vulnerable. We honor their lives so that in the promised land of mutual aid and communal care we all can live long and well lives together — even in such a time as this.
“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
“Honor your father and your mother . . .” This is a Biblical command often quoted by parents of unruly teenagers in the most vexing of parental moments. Sometimes it is used manipulatively by even older parents. Almost always it is intended to saddle a burden of conscience upon the next generation.
But in a time like this, with a disease like COVID-19 (Coronavirus) rampaging it’s way around the world and striking hard especially against the aged, perhaps we have a more clear look at the intent and meaning of the verse.
“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, SO THAT YOUR DAYS MAY BE LONG AND THAT IT MAY GO WELL WITH YOU IN THE LAND THAT THE LORD YOUR GOD IS GIVING YOU.”
Wow; to read such words in such a time as this is eye opening. Who even remembered that second part of the verse about longevity and wellness? And why is that? Because the context of the Scripture has been so lost to us, but now comes nearer in a time of global pandemic.
The original context for the Biblical injunction was the giving of the Law after the Israelites fled Egypt. In Egypt the aged — fathers and mothers — were of low value and easily discarded. Pharaoh literally worked people to death; and in times of anxiety, or scarcity, or pestilence (there is much about the pestilences of Egypt in chapter 7 of Deuteronomy) the elderly were simply abandoned — forced by Pharaoh in fact to be abandoned for the sake of His greater economic holding, the whole edifice of a slave labor system.
But not so in the new land that the Lord their God was giving the Israelites. In the new land the aged would not be discarded or abandoned or simply left behind. They would honored, meaning cared for, always and to the end, so then it would indeed be possible for everyone’s days to be long and decent even into very old age.
So then, the prophet Isaiah said, in the vision of the new community there would be no person who would live not into the ripest of age; and a person who died at 100 years would still be like a youth.
Now is a time for caring for our mothers and fathers and the rest of their generation. Coronavirus is striking the elderly and other vulnerable people at an especially alarming rate. It is the duty of the young to honor our parents by practicing good hygiene, appropriate social distancing, and by continuing to look after their needs when they need our help and when they need first access to our medical resources.
It is in the face of disease that we read and learn again the import of the command to honor our fathers and mothers. Their lives matter. And we honor their lives by our conscientiousness and care. We honor their lives so that we can be a community different from Pharaoh’s Egypt, where everyone was made to look after only themselves and no one looked after the aged and most vulnerable. We honor their lives so that in the promised land of mutual aid and communal care we all can live long and well lives together — even in such a time as this.
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