The Old Testament God vrs the New Testament Jesus

            This week’s sermon explores the differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament. quite an undertaking to explain in the space of a 10 to 15 minute sermon.  So I began my research as any child of the computer age would, I went to the internet and googled the question “What is the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament.”  The answers that came back to me were quite interesting.

• “The Old Testament was written before Jesus was born and the New Testament was written after.”  
• “The New Testament is the sequel to the Old Testament.”
• “The Old Testament is the covenant between God and the Israelites (sons of Abraham) and the New Testament is the covenant between God and everyone else.”
• “The Old Testament is Jewish, the New Testament is Christian.”
•  “In the Old Testament, the stories tell of a wrathful and vengeful God, whereas he does not exhibit his wrath as often in the New Testament until the book of Revelation.” 
• “The Old Testament is about the Law, The New Testament is about grace.”
• “The New Testament trumps the Old Testament.”

There are a lot of opinions out on the World Wide Web but it is hard to figure out what is the truth.  It reminds me of my very first day of Old Testament class in seminary.  The professor began the class by asking us to share our perceptions of the Old Testament and many of the answers that came were similar.  Many of us said that we didn’t like the Old Testament because the God of the Old Testament is a vengeful and angry God.  We thought that the Old Testament was all about sin, starting with the fall of humankind from it’s beginnings in the Garden of Eden.  That in the Old Testament God was all about laws and obedience, bringing wrath upon those who disobeyed him.  Some perceived the Old Testament as writings of doom and gloom where God thought badly of humankind and that in order to redeem us God sent his gentle son Jesus to be sacrificed for our sins which is written about in the New Testament.   In essence what we were saying was that the Old Testament was bad and the New Testament was good.  So why were we endeavoring to take a year long class on a section of the Bible we so detested, does required class for graduation ring any bells.  But thank goodness for required classes because they can help a student to open their eyes to new ways of seeing old stories.

First we must remember that the Bible is not just one book; but it is a collection of 66 books that tell the story of God’s relationship with humankind and creation.  Throughout the New and Old Testament this relationship is communicated through covenant—the promises of God made to humankind to love, care for, and guide us in the ways that give us life.  In the Old Testament the covenant is expressed most simply when God said, “I will walk among you, and I will be your God and you shall be my people.” (Leviticus 26:12).  This covenantal relationship was also expressed by Jesus in the New Testament when he made this promise to the disciples at the Last Supper “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” (1 Corinthians 11:25b)[i]  The Bible is not a single story with a single plot line, but rather the books of the Bible are put together like a family album.  The Bible contains a compilation of different kinds of literature.  Within it are sagas, laws, poetry, and even heroic biography to name a few.  Some of the books of the Bible are in placed in chronological order whereas other parts of it seem to be out of sequence. 

The Old Testament is the life story of Ancient Israel.  What some are now designating as the Hebrew Scriptures.  The distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament is only a Christian one.  For the Jewish community there is only one Testament and they refer to it as the Tanak.  The Christian Bible divides Older Testament into four sections.  The First being the Pentateuch, the first five chapters of the bible which tells the basic story of the Israelite people which includes laws to guide them in living.  There we have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  Then come the numerous historical books, Joshua, Judges, Kings, Chronicles and others which talk about the political history of the Israelites Nation.  Then we have the books of Poetry and Wisdom, the book of Job, Psalms Proverbs etc. Then it come the prophetic writings:  Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel to name a few.  In these we find stories where God calls prophets to speak on his behalf to warn nations that if they keep doing things the way they are, that calamity will come down upon them.

            The New Testament contains the stories of the Christians.  It begins with four different accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry in the Gospels:  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  The story continues with the history of the first Christians in the book of Acts.  Then we have the records of the early church through Paul’s letters to various churches, what we call the epistles.  Then the New Testament ends with the Book of Revelation which is the prophesy of what the world will be like in the culmination of the things to come. 

The over arching theme of the Old and New Testament is the grace and love of God.  Throughout the Bible, God longs to be in relationship with humankind, God blesses humankind with an abundance so that all may have what they need to live whole sustainable lives.  However God also gives humankind free will, we can either move towards God and heeds Gods call to spread the blessing of abundance or we can move away from God and deal with the consequences.  What the stories of the Old Testament are trying to do is to explain why life is difficult.   Beginning with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we hear stories of the consequences of people and nations who fall short of God’s call for all of creation to live in right relationship with each other.  God’s will is justice for all of God’s creation. 

The law is the same throughout the Old and New Testaments.  It is grounded in covenant, which is God’s commitment to be in relationship God’s people.  The punishment that nations and peoples suffer in the Bible is not by God coming down on them to smite for their bad behavior.  Rather the punishment suffered is a result of a a nation living in unjust ways, where wealth is held by few while many live in poverty, where nations fall by their own arrogance and abuse of the earth leads to plagues, storms and famine. 

Unfortunately misinterpretation and misunderstanding have given the Old Testament a bad reputation in Christian Church history.  Throughout history some have incorrectly interpreted the New Testament as being over and against the Old Testament.  Pieces of it have been taken out of context and misunderstood to validate such things as violence against Jewish folk, the taking back the Holy Land through the crusades and conquering new lands in the name of Jesus. 

The Gospel of John has been misused many times for this purpose.  In it we read, “He came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God”   This text has been used to discriminate against people of the Jewish faith and the Hebrew scriptures.  But if we take into account the context in which this gospel was written, we remember that the early Christians whom the evangelist John writes to were part of the Jewish community but in conflict with their faith community because of their belief that Jesus was the messiah sent by God to be the embodiment of God’s grace and love.  They were expelled from their church home, the synagogue and so they had to carve a new church home for themselves.  What this newly formed community needed was comfort and assurance and John provides it for them by recalling that Jesus wasn’t accepted by his people either.

The God of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New Testament are the same.  In the Christian tradition we believe that Jesus is God incarnate.  That God loved the world so much that God poured Godself down into the human form of Jesus.  And the New Testament very clearly states that the incarnation of Jesus did not do away with all the teachings that came before him, as he states in the gospel of Matthew, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” Matthew 5:17-18 

The accomplishment of the Law is love and God’s love and grace are found in the stories of both Old and New Testaments.  Do not think that one is better then the other because it is all God’s story.  May it be so.  Amen.

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[i] Kathleen C. Ackley, Project Editor; writers: Kealahou Alika…[et al.] Affirming Our Faith:  A Congregations Guide to Confirmation. (Cleveland: United Church Press, 2008),  44.

Ruth the Moabite - Where ever you go I will go

Hello, my name is Ruth. 

Perhaps you have heard of me. 

I’m the great grandmother of King David and I’m the great great grand mother of Jesus 28 times removed. 

I am from the land of Moab over by the dead sea. 

I have an amazing story to tell, so amazing that someone actually wrote it down and put it in your scriptures and they named the book after me. 

Quite an achievement because I am a woman and there is only one other book in the Bible that is named after a woman.

My story begins with my mother-in-law Naomi. 

She and her husband Elimelech (a-lee-ma-lech) suffered a great famine in the land of Judah. 

So they and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion left Bethlehem, their hometown and immigrated to Moab. 

This undertaking was a great risk for Elimelech and Naomi because the Moabites were despised by their people the Israelites. 

The Israelites would joke that nothing good comes from Moab, that the Moabites were strange people, who prayed to strange Gods, worshiped in strange ways and ate strange food. 

But for Elimelech and Naomi’s family, the fear of hunger overtook their fear of what was different and so they settled into Moab and became part of the Moabite community.

Unfortunately illness overtook Elimelech and he died, leaving Naomi with her two sons in this strange land of Moab. 

She was resourceful and made due with what little she had and rose her sons Mahlon and Chilion to become good strong men. 

I was married to her younger son Chilion. 

It was quite controversial me a Moabite woman to chose to be married to a foreigner.  Marriages are usually arranged by the brides father, and no one ever marries for love.  But when Chilion and I met we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.  My father had a fit when I told him I wanted to marry Chilion an Israelite. 

He told me that if I married “that foreign boy” that he would disown me.

 It devastated me to leave my family but I had to go where my heart was leading me.

When I moved into Chilion’s home, his mother Naomi showed me such loving kindness.  It seemed like she knew what I was going through, because she had lost all ties to her family when she moved from Bethlehem to Moab. 

She treated me like I was her own flesh and blood, remaining steadfast and true to me when my family abandoned me. 

For ten years we lived as one big happy family, me Chilion, his brother Mahlon and his wife Orpah and of course Naomi. 

Orpah and I tried hard to give our husbands sons, but it was not to be. 

On our tenth year together, an illness plagued the land of Moab and too the lives of Chilion and Mahlon.  This left us three women, Naomi, Orpah and myself widowed and childless. 

Not a good place for a woman that time to be in. 

You see, women were considered the property of men. 

A woman’s very survival depended upon the men that she was connected to. 

It starts with the father giving his daughter to be a wife to a man of his choosing. 

Then it was the wife’s job to provide male heirs to her husband. 

Women could not own or inherit land. 

If a woman was not connected to a man as a daughter, wife or mother, she was nothing.

So knowing she had nothing and she was nothing, Naomi left Moab to go back to her homeland of Bethlehem in Judah hoping that one of her townspeople would take pity on her and care for her. 

Orpah and I decided to follow her to Judah because really we had nothing to lose. 

A little ways into the journey Naomi realized that it was foolish for us to follow her into Israelite territory. 

Unlike the Moabites, the Israelites were not keen on foreigners. 

Their rulers even told their men to cast out their foreign wives and children from their households in order to purify the land of Israel. 

Naomi said, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house.  May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me.  The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.” 

Orpah and I cried and begged her to let us continue but Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands?  Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.”

Orpah kissed Naomi and left back to Moab, but I clung to her and saying,

‘Do not press me to leave you
or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
17 Where you die, I will die—
there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!’

How could I leave this woman who showed me such kindness, loyalty and compassion when my family abandoned me. 

I could not stand to live with out her. 

When Naomi saw how determined I was to go with her, she silently continued her journey to Judah with me trailing behind her. 

When we got to Bethlehem, Naomi would not even acknowledge my presence as her companion.  When she ran into some of her women friends in Bethlehem she told them to call her Mara which means better.  She said, “I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty.”  (1:21)

All the while forgetting that she returned to Bethlehem with me, her daughter-in-law.  Her friend derided me, calling me Ruth the Moabite, woman of the despised people of Moab.

I knew that I was a burden to Naomi as her foreign daughter-in-law and I was willing to do anything I could to be of help to her. 

One morning I told her that I was willing to risk life and limb by going out alone to the fields to glean the left over crops from the harvest. 

It was dangerous for a woman, especially a foreign woman to wander around Bethlehem alone.

I hopped that I’d find someone who would take pity on us and hire us as servants. 

Naomi dismissed me, saying“Go my daughter.” And so I went. 

As providence would have it, I came to a field that belonged to Boaz. 

Now I didn’t know it at the time, but Boaz was a relative to Naomi, and he was wealthy.  Boaz had heard from his neighbors about Naomi and me. 

He was impressed at what he heard of my steadfast and loyal love to Naomi. 

So he let me keep close to his women servants, giving me the choicest of leftovers. 

Then Boaz invited me to eat at table with him and his servants. 

I tell you my cup runneth over, because by the time I was done gleaning I had enough wheat and barley to last Naomi and I for 30 days. 

When I came home with my harvest, Naomi was astonished. 

She asked me how I got so much wheat and barley and I told her all about Boaz. 

Her eyes became as big as saucers, she had thought her and her husbands family all died in the famine, but obviously Boaz survived.

Naomi was so grateful to me for the kindness and loyalty that I had given her that she wanted to secure my future by joining me with Boaz. 

She devised a scheme where I could win Boaz’s hand in by entrapping him in a levirate marriage. 

I didn’t feel comfortable doing this but because I loved and trusted Naomi, I willingly went along with her plan. 

I won’t go into details but after a night on the threshing floor, a nail biting trial in front of the town elders and a negotiation with an even closer relative of Naomi’s, Boaz was finally able to take me as his wife, thus giving security not only for myself but for my mother-in-law Naomi. 

God gave me the gift of a son which Boaz and I named Obed. 

When he was born it was a blessing for both Naomi and me. 

The towns women blessed Naomi by saying “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin;^* and may his name be renowned in Israel!  

He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.” 

She took Obed to her bosom and became his nurse.  And the towns women sang, “A son has been born to Naomi”

What is amazing about my story is how God worked through my devotion to Naomi to do God’s will. 

In other stories you hear about God intervening in history through wars, plagues, seas parting and burning bushes. 

But in my story, God worked behind the scenes. 

Sometimes it was done by putting us in the right place at the right time or just by inspiring someone’s generosity.

What I’ve learned is that God longs to go where ever we go in our life journeys and in times of adversity, God will work through the people who love us to help us ‘make a way out of now way’ just as God worked through me to help Naomi. 

Thanks be to God.

What Happens When We Die? Considering the Communion of Saints.

            Every morning Beloved and I like to take a walk around our apartment complex after having our daily cups of coffee.  Most mornings are spent in deep conversation and on a particular morning last week Beloved was trying to engage me in her thoughts about the tumbling economy, the starving children in Somalia, and the conflict over our nation’s debt crisis.  Nothing small or casual but I was too distracted t listen to here.  As she spoke every word sounded like the adult voices that you hear on Charlie Brown cartoons, “mwa, mwa, mwa”  When she realized that I wasn’t hearing a word she was saying, she demanded, “Pay attention to me, I’m talking about the state of our world.  What could possibly be more important than that.”  “Well dear,” I replied, “I’m just thinking about the sermon I have to give this week on what happens to us when die.  Just how am I going to fill up a 15 minutes sermon saying, ‘I don’t know.’”  Then she said, “Well isn’t it communion Sunday this Sunday.”  “Wonderful” I replied, “I get to say ‘I don’t know for a 10 minutes meditation!” 

Death is truly the final frontier.  All of the questions and notions of what happens after we die and lead us to one conclusion, that when we die we go somewhere else.  Where, we don’t know.  We haven’t been able to fly a human into death and have them come back to us to give us a full report of what’s out there.  Other than Jesus and Lazarus and a couple of other people in the scriptures, we mortals have not been resurrected from the dead.  We get hints of life after death from those who have had near death experiences but they are just that, hints.

            What images come to mind when you think of the afterlife.  Some of us associate heaven with clouds, harps, and streets paved in gold.  We imagine that our deceased loved ones are up there (point up) dressed in white robes blissfully enjoying one another.  We recall the many jokes about people waiting in line at the pearly gates with St. Peter as a heavenly bouncer deciding who gets in and who stays out.  We tremble as we imagine that other place, down there, (point down) the place we call hell.  It is the place where all the bad people are supposed to go to pay for their sins.  This is a place that is full of fire and brimstone, where we hear people crying in agony.  This place of eternal damnation is controlled by a scary looking red monster with horns and a pitchfork. 

            Where do these images of heaven and hell come from?  Do they come from our scriptures or from other sources?  Even if they are in our scriptures, are they meant to be taken literally or metaphorically?  Both the Old and New Testaments speak of heaven and hell and our scriptures give us assurance of eternal life, but what is this eternal life that we keep hearing about. 

            It is hard for us to conceive that the life force of a person, what we call the soul ceases to exist when the body dies.  Just as Einstein states “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes form.”  Some faith traditions believe in reincarnation, that when a body dies, its life energy is passed onto another living form being born.  I tell you if that is true, I’m going to come back as a housecat, now that’s a great life!  Our tradition believes that one day we will be resurrected as shown to us by the bodily resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning.  In the epistle this morning we hear the Apostle Paul’s proclamation of the resurrection.  Paul is assuring his listeners that because God raised Jesus from the dead that death does not have the final word.  As the apostle Paul states, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.  Where O death is your victory?  Where, O death is your sting?  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:54b-51)  What Paul is saying is that because Jesus rose from the dead we can face the reality of our bodily deaths courageously and faithfully.[i]  Knowing that physical death is not final, but merely changing form from this world to the next gives us the confidence to live in the ways of Jesus even if doing so leads us to suffering and even death in the hands of our persecutors. 

            The daunting question in this of life after death quandary is really one of salvation.  How do we know if we are the ones who are going to an eternity with God or an eternity of damnation?  Many Christians believe that the only way to heaven is in exclusively believing in Jesus.  In the gospel we hear Jesus say, “I am the way the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14: 6)  But Jesus did not mean to be exclusionary.  He’s not saying it’s either my way or the highway.  The words “I am” come from the Older Testament story where God tells Moses that his name is “I Am” thus what Jesus is doing whenever he says, “I am” such as “I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world” he is declaring the divine name of God and fusing it with a human longing.  So when Jesus says, “I am the way…no one comes to the father except through me.” Jesus is joining the human longing for spiritual certainty with the name of God.[ii]  He is stating that anyone could have the same close and abiding relationship that Jesus has with God if they follow the way that Jesus lived his life!  Jesus lived in the way of love that embraced all of humanity as children of God.  He lived in the way of generosity that knew that God has blessed all creation with abundance both in this life and the life beyond it.  To live outside this way of love and generosity was to live in a state of alienation, separation from God.  This is living in a state of hell.  To live in a place of hate, in a place fear, in a place of perceived scarcity, in a place of harsh judgment that according to Jesus is living in hell.  However, hell is neither lasting nor is it a final destination.  As Jesus assures us in the gospel, “In my father’s house there are many dwelling-places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you myself.  And you know the way to the place where I am going.” (John 14: 2-5) 

            What happens to us when we die?  We don’t know, but we have faith that we will go someplace beyond this world to where God dwells.  We catch a glimpse of it every time we gather around this table for the sacrament of communion.  In the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the cup we participate in the foretaste of the heavenly feast to come.  We have faith that one day we will gather together transformed in the presence of God.  We will gather with those who have come before us and all who will come after us and all of creation will sit at table with Jesus and the saints and share in the communion of the bread of life and the cup of liberation.  May it be so.  Amen.

           

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[i] Maria Marsala “1 Corinthians 15:51-58:  Homiletical Perspective” FOW Year C, Vol. 1(John Knox Press: Louisville KY 2009), 399.

[ii] Shannon Michel Pater “John 14:1-14: Exegetical Perspective” Feasting On the Word, Year A, Vol. 2 (John Knox Press: Louisville KY 2010) , 469.