Thoughts on Washing

The Rejoice devotional entries of both yesterday and today referred to washing. Yesterday's words were linked to a passage in Exodus 30:17–21. The relevant portion of that was that one of the articles made for worship within the Tent of Meeting or Tabernacle was a bronze basin on a bronze stand. The Chief Priest, Aaron, and his sons were to wash their hands and their feet with water in this basin before they entered the Tent of Meeting or went to offer sacrifices on the altar "so that they may not die." (NRSV)

First off, this seems rather harsh. Wash or die! Of course, when we put this in context, we realize more. When God had originally called Moses when he was tending the flock on the slopes of Mount Horeb, northeast of Egypt, he was told to take his shoes off as he approached a burning bush out of curiosity because it was holy ground. Those who have ever attended a Muslim mosque will know that it is a practice to remove one footwear before entering. Indeed, in some mosques, there are facilities to also wash your hands and feet before entering the to worship.

All of this points to the fact that when we go to worship in whatever sanctuary or place, we are entering the presence of God, who is pure and holy, and as such, cannot by his nature, abide anything unholy or unclean in his presence. Now, of course, simply washing with water does not change our nature or the way we look to God. However, washing then is a symbol of our making a commitment of awe, reverence and respect as we enter the presence of God. It was also a regular ritual for ordaining and concentrating priests for service.

Indeed, we can think about baptism in this way. We generally regard it as a symbolic act of washing to demonstrate that we have put our faith in the saving work of Christ on the cross, and the efficacy of that in cleansing as such, that we can be welcomed into God's presence. More than that, we are told that by this act of faith we are adopted back into his family as sons and daughters. The act of baptism for us as Protestants and Anabaptists is a declaration of this change that we have chosen to experience and receive.

At the same time, I think this ritual speaks to a commitment to follow Jesus, which means to serve. This can be seen to arise out of the passage used as a basis for the Rejoice write up on the day after the one referred to above - John 13:1-11, which is the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.

This act took place on the eve of Jesus's last celebrating the Passover meal with his closest followers prior to his execution the following day. In his own words, Jesus described this as an act of the deep love he had for his disciples. He was  also demonstrating that his washing their feet symbolized in his eyes that they were clean and fully acceptable to him. As Miss Hostetler writes in her peace for the day, Peter, of whom we read at the idea of Jesus washing his feet, saw this as "an honour he was not worthy of a blessing he did not deserve." Jesus response had an element of rebuke in it, saying that if he did not let him wash his feet, he could not be part of Jesus. Jesus was here pointing to deeper layers of meaning of this act. The element of acceptance, belonging, love and affection. As Hostetler further rights, "to be in relationship with our heavenly parent, we must accept the gifts offered to us.” 

Again, with his command that his disciples should continue to do this to one another, I think we further see this as a call to service to one an other, a demonstration of the unity and love we share as brothers and sisters in God’s new family.

The fact that this involved washing another's feet is also often seen as an act showing great humility. Christ also brought out this meaning in his comments, following what he did when he told his disciples that he had "Set [them] an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” If he, their Lord and master was willing to do this for them, how much more ought we to do it to one another.

Thoughts on the Sabbath... or is it Sunday?

 Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy

Sabbath or Sunday?

The biblical Sabbath day, according to the 10 Commandments, the Decalogue, as we sometimes refer to it, as found in Exodus 20 of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, was to be the seventh day of the week. The way the Jews eventually counted days, it started at 6 PM or sundown on Friday and went until the same time on what is our Saturday. Now, some Christians, particularly those who are Jewish, do keep the sabbath day on Saturday. For most of us Christians though, the first day of the week is regarded as our equivalent of the Sabbath day. The first day of the week became prominent early on in the life of the church because that was the day that Christ rose from the dead, making all things new. 

If we accept that we regard Sunday as our Sabbath day, what might be the implications of that?

Turning to Scripture

A. The Old Testament

To begin examining this, we turn to scripture. According to the exhaustive Strong's Concordance, there are 137 references to Sabbath in the Bible, and another 35 references to the plural, Sabbaths. There are five references of the singular form in Isaiah, seven in Jeremiah, three in Ezekiel and one in Amos. The plural occurs twice in Isaiah, twice in Lamentations, 12 times in Ezekiel, and once in Hosea. There are six  singular references in Exodus, 17 in Leviticus, three in Numbers and three in Deuteronomy, as well as 13 in Nehemiah. The plural occurs once in Exodus, 11 times in Leviticus and once in Nehemiah.

The total of 41 references in the Pentateuch have to do with the establishment of the Sabbath day, what was allowed during that day and not, as well as repeated references to having to continue to observe the Sabbath going forward. This was an important part of God’s covenant with his people if they wished to continue to enjoy God’s favour and blessings. Interestingly, there was some work that was authorized on the Sabbath, such as setting up a fresh batch of showbread loaves in the Tent of Meeting, later the temple, and offering certain sacrifices. Some of this is repeated in the Chronicles, which reinforce the religious practises of Judaism.

The references in the prophets are reminders of the necessity of observing the Sabbath and of identifying consequences that are occurring or will occur if the Sabbath day is not kept. Again, these are place in the context of keeping the covenant made with God. The number of references in Nehemiah have to do with his discovery that there was buying and selling going on during the Sabbath day, including from merchants coming from outside the Jewish community. Nehemiah was zealous about trying to restore Israel, as it had been before the exile, not to repeat the sins of their fathers, so as to put themselves at risk for further severe consequences, hence his concerns about observing the sabbath.

B. The New Testament

In the New Testament, there are 10 references in Matthew, 11 in Mark, 18 in Luke and 11 in John, as well as nine times in Acts and once in Colossians. The plural form does not occur in the New Testament.

The New Testament references include Jesus going to the synagogue on the Sabbath in the gospels, to teach, and Paul going to synagogues on his mission travels to locate Jews, to whom he could preach the message of the gospel, as noted in Acts. We probably all remember that the stories about Jesus and the Sabbath often involve his doing things such as healing on the Sabbath, which got him in trouble with the obsessive-compulsive religiosity of the Pharisees and other religious leaders of the time.

A couple of questions can arise for us with how the Sabbath day is dealt with in the New Testament, as this part of scripture, which we sometimes refer to as the New Covenant, is seen as the final guide for our behaviour as Christians. We probably remember some of the discussions Jesus got into with these leaders who would do things like rescue an animal that had fallen into a well on the Sabbath, but could not tolerate good deeds being done on the Sabbath otherwise, such as healing humans. Jesus repeatedly referred to himself as being the Lord of the Sabbath, however, we interpret the meaning of that for our lives. Otherwise, he did not really teach or obviously promote the observance of the Sabbath. One could say his observance of going to the synagogue or temple on the Sabbath gives us a clue as to what we should do.  Then again, synagogues and their attendance on the sabbath did not even come from the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament. It was a practice that evolved after Israel returned from exile some 300+ years before Jesus’ time on earth. Interestingly, none of the new Testament writers in the books after the Gospel of John speak to proper observance of the sabbath either. What we do read was that they continued to gather for worship and prayer on the first day of the week. What does that say to us today? Then  again, during the time the New Testament was written, one might argue that keeping the sabbath was so ingrained it did not need to be taught. Indeed, that might have applied to the first Christians, who were Jewish. But what about the Gentiles, the non-Jews who soon became such an important part of the Christian movement? Well, we also do know now that most if not all of the early congregations founded by the Apostles started with Jews, so it could be that the first Gentile Christians simply followed the practices of their Jewish predecessors. 

Historically 

Regarding Sunday as the Sabbath has continued to be part of the teaching of Christianity as most of us know it. This really never presented much of a problem, as it was really not much of an issue until around the beginning the middle of the last century. Living in Winnipeg at the time, I can remember a vote, or was it a referendum, to allow organized and professional sports to be played on Sundays. That was in the late 1960s. I can remember some more conservative Mennonite Christians at that time not even allowing their children to play recreational pick up ball games on Sunday.

Then, in the 1980s, when grocery chains wanted to open up on Sundays, there were many in the church, who opposed that, even to the point of petitioning governing authorities. The leadership in our Mennonite Church in Brandon at the time promoted the signing of a petition against that. One member told the pastor that she would sign the petition if he no longer golfed or went to restaurants on Sunday. Indeed, church goers have long been famous for going out for lunch after Sunday morning worship services nowadays. No one much seems to bat an eye about that. However, in the past, those who knew about Sunday as the Sabbath, sometimes did look askance at what they considered the hypocritical Christians, taking a break from their lunch, preparation at home but making other people work for them.

Not satisfied with being able to open on Sundays, the big chains also wanted to open late every evening if they so wished. We had just started to run a convenience store, which we did for three years in Brandon. It had been purchased by my brother-in-law as an investment to come to Canada. It was just at that time that the big stores began to open on evenings and weekends, which really did not spell well for running such corner stores or convenience stores. We were obviously open.

So, where are we at today?

If you are like me, I sometimes think that we have indeed gone too far with essentially ignoring what the original sabbath day was for, and what the church carried over to be observed on their first day of the week. To be sure, many enterprises, such as government offices and banks are closed on Sundays still. One might argue that other businesses give their staff a day off in lieu of Sunday. Some might even argue that getting several weeks of holidays may balance out having to work at other times of the year.

When you look around at what happens on Sunday though, what do you see? It seems more people go to the mall and to shop and to eat out because they do have the day off their work. When this is our habit, when do we as a society slow down, rest? Would we not agree that our hectic society could benefit from more of us having more times of rest? Maybe we could take a break from the ever present social media? Now we often forget to turn off our phones or at least the sound on them when we do go to worship.

When it comes to meal preparation on Sundays, perhaps we find a clue in the account of the appearance of manna for the Israelites in their 40 years in the wilderness, as recorded in Exodus 16. On the sixth day of the week, God provided twice as much manna as on the rest of the days, so that they would boil or bake enough for the seventh day too. Indeed, I think those of us who come from Christian backgrounds will remember that our mothers and grandmothers often prepared more food on Saturdays so that they had to do a minimal amount of warming up or simple preparation on Sundays. Then, especially for those of the rural background, the evening meal was a late afternoon meal of cold foods. There was no cooking or baking, although I think tea and coffee were brewed.

When one reads the prophets, although there really are not that many references, the ones that are there create a fairly strong impression that it was the Israelites’ failure to continue to honour the Sabbath, and especially the seventh or Sabbath year, let alone the 50th year of Jubilee, that were part of the sins that God held against them, resulting in their eventually being removed from the land and, as we actually read in II Chronicles 36:21, giving it a 70 year Sabbath rest. Do these warnings have any impact on us today?

Are we missing something with our failure to observe Sunday in the old-fashioned way as some might describe it? Most of us still want to eat on Sundays. Those who have farms need to look after their animals on Sundays, including milking cows. All of this then requires some of what we would call work. So where do we draw the line?

What shall we do on our Sabbath, Sunday? I'm sure most of us do as little as possible, whether it comes to shopping, business or meal preparation. Those are the things we may not do as much of. But perhaps we could do more of things like taking more time to read the word, pray, and perhaps even do more of this in conjunction with fasting. Our world could use a lot more prayer.

Biblical Intermarriages

 Biblical intermarriages

Most with even a cursory knowledge of history will recall that marriages between the

rulers of different countries were often carried out to create or strengthen allies.

Sometimes this occurred on a national level, sometimes personal. What happened with

the Children of Israel prior to 722 BCE was no different.

The first such marriage we hear about in the Old Testament was between Patriarch

Jacob's son, Joseph, and “Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, a marriage

arranged by the Pharoah. Thus Joseph gained authority over the land of Egypt.”

(Genesis 41:45) At the same time, the Pharaoh hired him to be his, in effect, Prime

Minister. The aim here was no doubt to foster loyalty to the Pharaoh by having his

underling marry this Egyptian aristocrat. Some suggest Joseph consented as it

provided security for him and his family, perhaps even all of Jacob’s family at the time.

Another such marriage we read about was between King Saul's daughter, Michal, and

David, when he was a servant of King Saul. Saul had offered David the older daughter

Merab, but David in humility turned that down We read that Saul’s younger daughter

Michal actually loved David. The timing and terms were more acceptable to David and

though he initially turned that down too, he did accept that offer (I Samuel 18:20-29).

Sadly, that marriage soured when Michal disapproved of some of David’s ecstatic

behaviour as when he led the return of the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem, dancing

at the head of the procession (II Samuel 6:16-23). It seems David’s seemingly harsh

response to her disapproval left her childless.

David's son, King Solomon, married a daughter of the contemporary Pharaoh, no

doubt to strengthen the relationship between Egypt and Israel (I Kings 3:1). This would

have been helpful for Israel in those days because Egypt was a much more ancient and

powerful, larger nation that was regularly confronted by nations, such as the Hittites,

Assyrians and Babylonians. These nations lived north and east of Israel, making Israel

a crossing area in their advances to battle each other if not an actual fighting area

between these forces if they met in Israel.

Then we read of intermarriage after the nation split in Solomon’s son Rehoboam’s reign

between Judah, the Southern Kingdom, and Israel, now referring only to the Northern

Kingdom. This last was later also referred to as Samaria after that city was later built as

its capital. These relationships turned out to be fatal for the participants.

Omri, an Israelite king, was the father to his successor King Ahab. Omri had built Israel

into a fairly powerful kingdom (I Kings 16:27-8). It was he, the sixth king of Israel, who

built Samaria as the capital. Thus, Ahab was ranked highly enough to be able to marry

Jezebel, the daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians (I Kings 16:31). That would have

been to strengthen their relationship with Sidon, a powerful city state city with its

surrounding area that stood between Israel and the Mediterranean. It might also have

been helpful in defence against those warring nations from the southwest and

northeast that crossed this way that we have already referred to.

Unfortunately, this marriage was the beginning of the downfall of Israel, as Ahab disobeyed all of God’s

commands and introduced his wife’s pagan worship of Baal to Israel (I Kings 16:31-33).

This is also the last and most dramatic story of how these marriages played out.

In spite of his faithfulness versus Ahab's adoption of idolatry, especially because of the

influence of his pagan wife Jezebel, Judaean King Jehoshaphat made himself an ally of

Ahab in some of his battles (I Kings 22). This relationship is no doubt what led to

Jehoshaphat's son Jehoram marrying Ahab's daughter (II Kings 8:16-18). 

When he was on his apparently divinely appointed killing rampage to eliminate Ahab’s family as a

punishment for their apostasy as prophesied by the prophet Elisha, Jehu killed both Ahab’s son,

King Jehoram and Jehoshaphat’s son Ahaziah, his nephew (II Kings 9:14-29). This was

made easy by Ahaziah’s fatal decision to visit Jehoram in Israel after being fatally

wounded by Jehu (II Kings 8:29). This was not surprising as Ahaziah had married a

daughter of Ahab. Jezebel was also killed at this time (II Kings 9:30-37), fulfilling

another of Elisha’s prophesies. Jehu also came across other individuals who identified

themselves as relatives of Ahaziah, 42 in all we are told, and he killed all of them (II

Kings 10:12-14).

A final member of Ahab's family who was killed was Omri’s granddaughter, Ahab’s

daughter Athaliah. When her son Ahaziah had been killed, leaving no heir, she had

destroyed the rest of the family to make herself queen except for her daughter

Jehosheba’s taking and hiding Ahaziah’s youngest son Joash (II Kings 11:1-3). He was

brought up by the high priest Jehoiada, and when it was determined it was time to

make him king, Athaliah was killed, completing the destruction of Ahab's family (II

Kings 11:4-16).

Graphic representation of Ahab’s family

 

One in a Thousand

Apparently that is true of me. I would never have guessed. Before I really get to what this is about though, I want to write about humility.

Humility is one of the great virtues of life. As a Christian, familiar with the Bible, it has multiple exhortations towards developing humility and being humble. I am currently leading a Bible study on Philippians and there is a well known and remarkable poem in chapter 2 that uses Jesus Christ as the prime example of humility in an effort by apostle Paul to point the Philippians of ancient Greece towards greater humility.

Looking back over my life, I can think of many things that, not to sound like I am bragging, have helped to keep me humble. In the first place, although my parents were a pastor and teacher, respectively, they both came from a rural farm backgrounds. Again though, my paternal grandfather was also a teacher.

Then, the first 16 years of my life were  spent in small rural, largely indigenous communities. My parents impressed upon me, and I saw for myself, the skills and abilities our neighbours had to live and thrive in what was sometimes a harsh environment in what we called Northern Manitoba. I think our teachers challenged us  as well as they could, and perhaps it was as much a reflection of the time as the environment in which I was obtaining my education, that I never really learned to be a questioner and debater. That may also have simply been part of my personality. 

One of the first things that I remember on this pathway of humility was when, in Grade 6, one of my indigenous classmates scored higher than me in mathematics. Previously, I had generally had the highest marks in my class.

When we moved to the city and I began high school there, in Grade 11, although English and Composition had not been my strengths, I never even achieved 65 in Grades 11 or 12. Physics was also a challenge. However, I worked at it and my marks improved steadily as the year went on. I got top marks in geometry and algebra in Grade 11. Then, the double whammy of losing our mother and my missing school subsequently because of mumps, had a considerable negative impact on my Grade 12 mathematics and sciences scores.

Even from early childhood, another thing that I would say helped keep me from too much pride was that I never was much of an athlete. Here, most of my classmates could do better than me. I never captured too many prizes, if any, in our annual school field days. Just the same, I did not do too badly in soccer and particularly in volleyball where, even though I may not have been so good at defence, I could rack up the points with my height and scoring from the back line when I served.

My three years at Bible College were good. However, when I returned to math and sciences after this interlude, I again struggled. I only got 50 in first year math.

By the time I had gotten my Bachelor of Science degree, I was wanting to get into medicine. I always blamed part of my inability to get marks as good as I could have because I had to work part time to support myself and pay my tuition. That cut into study time. But, honestly, maybe I was having too good of a time with life and friends too.

Then, I did not get into medicine on my first two tries. After I did get in, when it came to second year I, along with a good friend, failed my midterm. We did pass the oral makeup exam though. I managed to get through the rest of my medical education without incident and did pass the license exam, even though I knew I did very poorly on one question. In some ways, I am not one to be aggressive, and I left a pregnant lady with abdominal pain too long, and she miscarried. Then,  after a two-year residency in Family Practice, I did not make my family practice certification exam and had to appeal it.

Overall, my preceptor and mentors always let me know that academic excellence did not always equate with other aspects of being a good physician, such as one’s personality and ability to relate to people. I did well in that regard.

Then, after 12 years of family practice, I fulfilled an original aspiration of going into psychiatry. Here again, when I had been encouraged to go into child and adolescent psychiatry, halfway through my first rotation, my preceptor indicated to me that he was not sure I was cut out for this. Perhaps he was playing a mind game and trying to get me to work harder because with the same preceptor at the end of the rotation, I did very well. Again, there was one other mid-year interview exam I failed and had to redo. At the end of the four years, I passed my fellowship exam with no evidence of a problem, so that was affirming.

Just the same, in my eyes, comparing myself to classmates and then colleagues, I always had a sense that a good many, if not most, were beyond me when it came to academics and skill development. There were also incidents in my career that were challenging and raised questions. Not that these had anything really to do with the safety or well-being of my patients.

When I look back on my life and career, I have recently come to the conclusion that I was somewhat more of a manager than an innovator. It brings me back to a remark my nursing supervisor made when I was a nursing orderly working my way through my pre-med. She knew I wanted to go into medicine and challenged me to look more into how things could be improved in the fields in which I found myself. To some extent, I always did have my eye on that subsequently.

Some time ago, I heard the tale of a church member whose fellow parishioners at one point rewarded him for what they saw as his humility. They presented him with a pin that said “I am humble.” Maybe it was partly a test. When he wore it to church next Sunday, they asked for the pin back! You don’t brag about being humble.

I will say I have never been one to put forward that I am a physician. I never wanted that to interfere with people taking me for whom I am. Many who have crossed my path never knew that about me. Some years ago, a new acquaintance who has become a dear friend, told my wife, she would never have guessed I was a doctor. In her experience in a previous church where there had been physicians, she felt they ‘had their noses in the air.’ She had not seen me that way.

After retirement, which is now nine years ago, it seemed that I was experiencing more of new or the same symptoms that to me had long indicated a certain degree of possible problems with attention and certainly memory. Some of that I know is normal with aging. There were things in these areas though that made me wonder if I was beginning the long slow slide into dementia. Therefore, I spoke to an erstwhile colleague and managed to obtain a full cognitive assessment.

The results I finally got today, three months later for reasons I did not explore, were really quite reassuring. My examiner did not feel I had ADHD, nor did she feel I had any signs of cognitive impairment.

What she told me first off in giving me the results though, was that I had done very well. When I think over what I heard next, and then read in her report, I am glad I never knew this until after my retirement, when it is really no longer that relevant anyway. She told me almost right at the beginning that I am one of those one in 1000 when it comes to my IQ. I'll leave you to figure out what that might mean numerically, but let’s just say that I could have applied to Mensa if I ever thought I was anywhere near that realm or wanted to be part of it. I still have no desire to do so. I will still be me, the boy from the prairies and the north.

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