The author understands that the Israelites want to have a king like other nations. Concentrating power in one person is, in itself, dangerous for justice, so the actions of the king are circumscribed immediately to prevent the baser temptations of power. The king must not acquire many horses, and especially must not return to Egypt, the land of slavery, to acquire those horses. The king must not acquire many wives so that his heart will not turn away. And the king must not greatly increase wealth (Deuteronomy 17:16-17).

However, even after God’s warning that anyone with the power that comes from being a monarch will automatically become abusive (1 Samuel 8:10-18), the people begged for a king. Soon, King Solomon was importing 666 talents (about 25 tons) of gold a year (1 Kings 9:28), importing thousands of horses from Egypt (1 Kings 10:26-29), and married or held in his harem hundreds of women who led him to worship other gods and construct temples for those other gods within eyesight of the temple to the God of Israel (1 Kings 11:4-10). Solomon was exactly the kind of king that Deuteronomy warned about.

The Levitical priests were forbidden to have a portion in the land or have any inheritance. The temptation for priests would be to use their position to accrue wealth and acquire whatever they want of the offerings that people brought. This was precisely what was prohibited in Deuteronomy 18:1-5. In a time when land wealth was everything, they were not to acquire land, nor transmit it to their children nor receive it from their fathers. The priests were only to receive food by helping the people worship God. They received a generous portion, to be sure, but there was to be no possibility of hoarding transferable wealth (Deuteronomy 18:1-5).

If a Levite lived in a walled city, he could sell his house (without any land outside the walls, because they were forbidden to own any) and live off the proceeds (Deuteronomy 18:6-8) as he ministered. Priests could sell homes in cities, but could not acquire riches. Put another way, the religious leaders should not have any sustainable wealth, not be able to acquire any such wealth, and only have daily provision that came from helping people worship God.

Sadly, taking whatever and as much as they wanted from the offerings was exactly the sort of narcissistic abuse of worship and authority that some priests practiced (1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25). Note also that the wicked priests also used their power to sexually abuse their female coworkers (2 Samuel 2:22). Far too many religious leaders today build wealth from offerings and/or sexually abuse their coworkers or congregants.

The prophet was a unique institution that sought to make sure that God would have a human voice with which to speak to the people. The temptation here, of course, was/is to abuse the trust that people have and say anything that grants the “prophet” power or authority over others. In setting out this office, God orders capital punishment for the prophet who speaks of his own accord in the name of God. Telling people lies in God’s name was incredibly dangerous then (Jeremiah 28), as now with COVID-vaccine denialism, among other deceptions.

These three were the centralized forms of power to which people could appeal if they did not find justice locally (Deuteronomy 17:8-9). But the Torah portion opens by insisting that people should be able to easily find justice locally:

“Judges and police shall be appointed in [and available] in all gates of towns… and they shall judge the people with righteous judgement” (Deuteronomy 16:18).

The Talmud (BT Sanhedrin 16b) and midrash (Sifrei Devarim 144:1-5) insist that the work of judges and the police must be available to people at all levels of society, officers, and geographic location. Their work to bring righteous judgement cannot be denied to anyone. So the judges and police should be in all the gates of every town and there should be no area where people live that does not have equitable access to the justice system.

God knows that humans with a little bit of power tend to oppress others unfairly, and so warns about the temptations for judges and police. Three things are forbidden to the judges and police: 1) do not pervert justice, 2) do not be partial and 3) do not accept a bribe.

Working backwards on the list, we know that bribery, inducements, kickbacks and financial “favors” render a justice system completely unable to live up to its name. But the command for police and judges to “not be partial” is an inexact translation. The Hebrew says “לֹא תַכִּיר פָּנִים Lo takir panim” <<You shall not recognize faces>>. The LORD understands that humans are tempted to make snap judgments based on what different faces look like.  Further, God knows that judges or police making judgements based off whether they recognize themselves in the face or skin of the other is something that must be avoided categorically.

We do not need to wait thousands of years for Critical Race Theory to be drafted. Scripture already knows and testifies that those with power and charged with upholding justice tend to abuse the power.

One of the most dangerous vectors of that abuse is the tendency of police and judges to recognize some faces and not recognize others. The inclination to recognize faces, to be especially kind to people we know and trust, and to be hostile to people whose features make us uncomfortable is insidious, and scripture categorically forbids it.

We are left with the command to not pervert justice. If bribes and being partial to certain faces are also proscribed in the verse, what could not perverting justice be referencing? Jewish commenters noticed the apparent redundancy and understood that nothing perverts justice like unjust judges and police (Sifrei Devarim 144:7). If judges and police are to be present to give righteous justice to all (Deuteronomy 16:18) and they are to pursue “justice squared” (Deuteronomy 18:20), a dishonest, racist, corrupt police officer or judge distorts the whole justice system immediately.

God knows and scripture confirms that power is dangerous, and humans like to control things. Kings like to get rich; religious leaders like to control resources and people; prophetic folks loved to be listened to and trusted; and judges and police do not always provide justice without corruption or partiality. When each of these things happens, there are consequences for the normal people living under their power.

The good news is that thousands of years ago, God gave scripture to God’s community. We who have eyes to see and ears to hear can learn to look out for impediments to justice from God’s words, and follow the path toward wisdom and wholeness.

We must ensure that those in power do not succumb to human weakness, depriving those in their charge of the justice that God so passionately wants for all.

Many post-Enlightenment biblical scholars have been embarrassed by the anthropomorphization of God in the Bible. They reasoned that God, who is spirit, cannot have a body like we have. Passages that talk about God’s back (Exodus 33:23), nostrils (Exodus 15:8), feet (1 Chronicles 28:2), and arms (Isaiah 59:1) must be metaphor and poetry. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel addressed this issue a different way. In his book, The Prophets, Rabbi Heschel explained that these passages about God’s “body” are invitations to “theomorphize” ourselves. That is, when God’s arm is mighty to save we see that the true purpose of an arm, as a part of a human created in the image of God, is to try to work out redemption for our neighbors. As such, the passages from this fourth week of Advent prophetically address the actions that God will take and how we can emulate our Lord Jesus.

Mary’s song, the Magnificat, is my favorite passage in all of scripture. In it, she proclaims: “[God] has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:51-53). This is what the strength of God’s arm accomplishes: to confuse the prideful, to bring down the powerful, to elevate the meek, to feed the hungry, and to dismiss the rich.

Micah offers a similar vision in which the coming King of Israel, who is both born in Bethlehem and from ancient days, will “stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD” (Micah 5:4). God’s strength is demonstrated in special attention to the lowly and the feeding of the poor.

Notice what God’s strong arm does not accomplish in these passages. God brings tyrants down from thrones, but revolution is not in view. The throne itself is not removed. Mary did not sing of a removal of the crushing occupation of the Roman Empire, but of a God who takes special interest in the poor and humble, elevating them, while displacing the prideful and the abusive wealthy. The Micah passage is sandwiched between descriptions about how the Assyrians will strike the Lord’s anointed with a rod and a brutal occupation that reduced the people of Jacob to only a remnant. It is precisely in the middle of horrible situations where God shows up to demand and perform justice.

In the time of Mary and Micah, horrible subjugation and violence raged. And when God stepped into the middle of it, the strength of God’s arm was not bent primarily to political revolution, but to feeding the poor, paying attention to the humble, and confusing the proud.

If we would seek to do what is pleasing to God, I would argue that we would do well to start right here. Let our attention to the lives and needs of the poor and humble take a much greater percentage of our mental bandwidth. In every community there are folks who are not impressive socially, who are neglected or actively shunned. These are the people whom God devotes special attention to, and we should too.

God uses God’s strength to feed God’s people. Can we, as God’s people, do any less? I believe that doing these two acts — valuing those forsaken by society and exerting strength to provide for the poor — will certainly confuse the prideful as we witness by our actions against the value of societal acclaim. Ultimately, if we orient ourselves to what God is doing for the outcast, the marginal, and the poor, I believe that those in power who do not do the same will be brought down, and wealth will stop flowing to the abusive rich.

In this time of year in which we ponder Jesus’ incarnation and what it means for the Word to be made flesh, let us reflect on the words of the prophets Mary and Micah who tell us what it means for a human to fulfill the will of God. Whatever else, if we are paying attention to the humble, feeding the poor, and confusing the prideful, we will be pleasing God and have a companion in Jesus who did the same.

How often does it happen that we are afraid to get out of a bad system or situation because we don’t know what’s on the other side? Have you ever stayed in a job that was crushing you or demanding unhealthy amounts of your time? Work isn’t always fun — that’s why they have to pay us to do it! But it also shouldn’t be injurious to ourselves or others. But sometimes we are just too scared to leave or witness against a toxic entity.

The lectionary passages work together seamlessly to point out that we need not fear, be afraid, or worry in any situation because God is among us. Zephaniah proclaims:

“The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more…The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” (Zeph 3:15, 17)

Because the LORD is in the midst of the people, the enemies have been turned away and the people are to stop fearing disaster. Isaiah goes further to assert: “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2). Because God is salvation, the prophet will not fear. Finally, Philippians simply says: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil 4:6). The passages all work together to point out that with God among us, we need not be afraid.

It is this awareness that we don’t need to be afraid that I want to bring back to this second week of considering John the Baptizer’s ministry. I always think of the people who came out to be baptized by John as a brood of vipers. And that’s probably correct on some level, but still they chose to come to be baptized for repentance. I think they are no worse and no better than any of us who need to repent of the ways that we’ve injured each other and defamed God through our actions and inactions. We were all a brood of vipers who needed to be — and only could be — saved by God’s intervention and coming into our midst.

I want to recognize the courage of the people who came out of Herod’s Jerusalem and the surrounding areas to go to the wilderness to hear what a guy who ate bugs and wore hair suits was saying about repenting. In particular, the Jewish soldiers (Luke 3:14), many of whom would have had to undergo ritual immersion regularly if they worked in or around the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, were making a strange choice to the casual observer. They went to undergo baptism not in the beautiful pools around the temple, but in a not-that-impressive river (2 Kings 5:10-12). The tax collectors (Luke 3:12) who ultimately worked for Herod, who in turn worked for the Romans, were risking a great deal by coming out to hear a man who criticized their boss, tell them that they should not use their governmental power to hurt people — even when it was their right to do so.

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These two groups of people were complicit in the occupation of the Holy Land. The tax collectors extracted wealth from a conquered people to give it to their Roman occupiers. The soldiers’ main job was to protect Rome’s Idumean [non-Jewish] puppet ruler, Herod; the Roman-appointed-and-deposed High Priest, Annas; and his Roman-appointed son-in-law, Caiaphas. It is difficult to convey how serious the danger the soldiers and tax collectors faced when they came out to the Jordan river valley to hear John, be baptized by him, and then ask what they should do.

It is important to remember that John was not the only one out in the desert side of the Judean highlands. The Essenes were a community of Jews who advocated leaving Jerusalem and the temple cult because it was hopelessly corrupted by collaborationists with empire. They saw themselves as sons of light who resisted and would one day fight against the sons of darkness (i.e., the soldiers, tax collectors, priests, and rulers who supported the Roman occupation). They lived all around the areas where John preached. The soldiers and tax collectors came out to the territory of people who thought that they should be killed, not knowing at all what John would say to them, only knowing that they felt convicted that something was wrong, and they wanted it to be right. They showed an amazing lack of fear in walking away from their relatively cushy jobs and lives to hear a voice in the wilderness.

John did not say to them, stay here, join my movement and give up on the collaborationist project, however. He sent them back to their jobs to do them justly in a way that did not harm their fellow Jews. This would have been a powerful witness to their fellow soldiers and tax collectors and an indictment from within of the abusive system. Following John’s instructions would have made the tax collectors and soldiers immediately poorer, and then if they continued, would have endangered their lives. After all, Herod wasted no time arresting John right after this (Luke 3:19-20).

As I reflect on how people of faith witnessed against the evil treatment of asylum seekers in San Diego this week and the arrest of church folk a couple weeks ago at CityWell in North Carolina, I see this week’s lectionary readings speaking specifically about folks who work for abusive government agencies and how they can learn to turn away from manufactured fear and to stop being injurious to their siblings.

This also reminds me of the first few lines from one of my favorite poems by Wendell Berry, Mad Farmer in the City:

As my first blow against it, I would not stay.
As my second, I learned to live without it.
As my third, I went back one day and saw
that my departure had left a little hole
where some of its strength was flowing out…

The soldiers and tax collectors walked out of the city and their abusive power roles. John taught them how to live without abusing other people. Then John sent them back. Their presence must have ripped some kind of hole in empire where its strength started to leak out.

This Advent, as we prepare ourselves for the celebration of Jesus’ birth, let us look to John the Baptizer again for his fearless incitement to repentance of evil and abusive behavior. But let us also look to those who questioned their roles in an abusive system and bravely risked their lives to seek and find a better way to be faithful to the God who calls us all to live without fear.

John the Baptizer would have been a stumbling block for me. Initially, I feel attracted to his message of baptism for the forgiveness of sins. But being called a brood of vipers would have gotten old pretty quickly. Still, there is something necessary, and maybe even good about the work of the voice crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord.

The Malachi passage from this week’s lectionary helps shape our expectations. The messenger comes as a harbinger of the Lord, whom the people desire (Malachi 3:1). But the day of his coming will not be all celebration and light. Rather he comes as a refiner’s fire which melts away impurities in the scorching furnace. He comes as a launderer, ready to use burning lye soap to scrub away uncleanliness (Malachi 3:2). The coming of God’s Holy One is desirable, for sure, but also his advent heralds a potentially painful process of removing sin and inequity from our lives.

John hears and proclaims Malachi’s message loud and clear. John preached a baptism for the forgiveness of sins (Luke 3:3). But instead of kind, inviting language that I would expect and appreciate, John’s preaching sounded like this:

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

These harsh words cut to the heart of many of the people who came out to hear him and be baptized, and they wanted to take the next steps:

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked.

John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”

Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”

“Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely — be content with your pay.” (Luke 3:7b-14)

John’s message is essentially this: We cannot count on our upbringing or being respectable people. Only production of good fruit and cessation of evil will prevent us from being chopped down and thrown away.

This doesn’t sound like the gospel that I remember being preached in churches when I was young!

The passage goes on:

“‘I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’ And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.” (Luke 3:16b-18)

There is something about Jesus winnowing the wheat from the chaff — protecting the former and burning the latter — that is good news.

As the literal darkness (in the northern hemisphere) and social-political darkness continues to increase perceptibly in the world, Jesus taking a firm stand against wickedness IS good news. Passive tolerance of evil that injures people is not good news. John and Jesus being absolutely clear that the kingdom of God isn’t just an everything-goes festival, but a place where righteousness matters IS GOOD NEWS.

This isn’t just some general call to morality, though. There are specific activities that Malachi and John stand against. Listen to the things that need purifying:

• Religious abuse and malpractice (Malachi 3:3-4)
• Ethnic pride that leads to feelings of superiority (Luke 3:8)
• Religion based on identity that doesn’t produce good fruit (Luke 3:8-9)
• Hoarding and not sharing (Luke 3:11)
• Governmental defrauding and abuse of civilians (Luke 3:12-13)
• Police (the “soldiers” here are Jewish police, and not Roman soldiers) falsely accusing and extorting civilians (Luke 3:14)

The burning of these things and the weeding out of them from the kingdom of heaven is profoundly good news.

This Advent, let’s not settle for a sentimental Christmas season, but actively work to open ourselves up to Jesus’ refiner’s fire and launderer’s soap to burn and to scrub abuse and mistreatment from our lives and our societies.

The passage from Mark 9 tells the story of Jesus once again seeking to avoid crowds so he could be alone with his chosen disciples. He told them that he would be handed over and killed, but that he would be raised on the third day. Mark’s gospel is explicit in pointing out that the disciples did not understand that Jesus was describing how he would lay down his life to defeat the powers of sin and death.

As if to underscore their lack of understanding of Jesus’ self-sacrificial love, Jesus asked the disciples what they were arguing about as they walked on the Galilean road. The disciples were too embarrassed to admit that they had been arguing about who was the greatest among them! Seeking to dramatically overthrow this kind of thinking among his followers, Jesus told them that whoever wants to be first, must be last. The greatest must be the servant of all. Jesus had no patience for those who sought to be great, powerful, or famous. If anyone self-aggrandizes, you can be sure they are not acting Christlike in that moment.

Seeking to further emphasize the point, Jesus took a young child [παιδίον usually means an infant] and placed the infant among the disciples. When no one picked up the baby, Jesus picked it up again (Mark 9:36) and said that whoever welcomes a child welcomes Jesus, and indeed welcomes God! If we are too self-important, or too committed to “greatness” to care for any and all little children, Jesus is very clear in saying that we do not welcome him or God. For the follower of Jesus, “there’s no such thing as other people’s children.” If we want to welcome Jesus, we must love and welcome each child as if she or he was our own. That’s the plain text of scripture.

Jesus sought relative isolation from the huge crowd so that he could teach his disciples. When they did not understand what he was saying to them, he gave an object lesson in what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. The wise Christian does not seek to be great or fight over greatness. Rather, one who has heard and obeyed Jesus’ teaching seeks to be the servant of all — and to welcome those who are the weakest.

James, the brother of Jesus, understood this message well. He advised that whoever had wisdom and understanding would demonstrate it by living a good life and doing actions in wise humility (James 3:13). The opposite of wisdom, according to the leader of the Jerusalem church, was bitter envy and selfish ambition. James also could not stand it when people worried about being the greatest. James warned, “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice” (James 3:16). True wisdom is submissive, considerate, impartial, sincere and full of good fruit (James 3:17).

The praiseworthiness of demonstrating true wisdom through loving action on behalf of those in need is described throughout scripture. The book of Psalms opens by blessing the one who shuns evil and mockery. Gossip and mockery may not seem too bad to us, but the rabbis held that those who mock are guilty as if they killed three people: themselves, their hearer(s), and the one spoken about (BT Arakhin 15b and Matthew 5:22). The one who meditates on God’s law does not just sit and study in isolation, but yields good fruit as if a well-watered tree (Psalms 1:3). True biblical wisdom is not just about knowing things, but performing wise, loving action.

The psalmist’s concepts of punishment and rewards for such wise action and evil occurs within the scale of eternity. To be sure, those who do evil, mock others, and seek to make themselves great are frequently rewarded with power and riches in this life. But when the time comes for judgement, only those who performed loving actions in accordance with wisdom will stand through judgment in the assembly of the righteous (Psalms 1:5, Matthew 25:31-46). Jesus is mighty and merciful to save, to be sure. But scripture repeatedly commands us to live a life that testifies to Jesus’ lordship — to actually try and do what he says!

If we would follow Jesus, we have to give up on a craven quest for power and greatness. That is only the first step, however. We must extend ourselves on behalf of those with less power than us. Loving the weak is wisdom. Acting in humility and mercy is wisdom. Producing good fruit is wisdom.

We believe that God saves through the salvific work of Jesus, and we do not merit our own salvation. The corpus of scripture invites us, however, to live our lives on earth in submission to God’s design for humans: wise, sacrificial love.

Dracula, or Vlad III (sometimes Vlad Tepes) was a real person who lived in the 15th century in the Wallachia region of what is now Romania. He was not a mythological vampire, but a prince who has become famous for his terrifying justification of torture to defend Christendom.

He famously nailed turbans to the heads of Ottoman emissaries after they failed to remove their headgear in deference to him. But what Vlad is most famous for was his impaling of his enemies. Chroniclers describe how Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II’s invading army of 150,000 was shocked to discover a “forest” of 20,000 corpses of men, women, and children impaled on high poles covering an area of about two square miles. Shortly after that, the Ottoman forces retreated from Wallachia, reasoning that it was not possible to deprive such a sadistic man of his realm without incurring unimaginable losses.

Vlad III is considered by many Romanians as a Christian national hero, not in spite of, but because of the depth of violence and murder he was willing to engage in to protect “Christian” territory and power. The celebration of his ends-justify-the-means approach to preserving Christian political power is shocking, but becoming increasingly relatable for Americans.

The question of how much participation in evil we are willing to condone in order to promote and defend “Christian” power and territory is one that we grapple with in the United States. Recently, Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, said that evangelicals are willing to overlook a certain amount of sin as long as they see their policies enacted. How can we tolerate evil and injustice in order to maintain or promote a “moral agenda?” How long can those committed to the way of Jesus embrace un-Christlike behavior? We are faced with the same question Romanians faced when considering Vlad III: how much evil are we prepared to tolerate in our actions or the actions of others in order to accomplish some good?

Jesus shows us another way. As he began his ministry he was led by the spirit out to the wilderness to be tempted. The third and last temptation that the devil tried was to take Jesus to a mountaintop and offer him all the kingdoms of the earth if Jesus would only worship him (Matthew 4:8-10). Think of how efficient this exchange would have been: Jesus would have been the temporal lord of the world instead of Satan. Instead of Jesus being murdered on a cross in order to rescue us from sin and death, he could have just purchased all of humanity by one quick act of idolatry. But Jesus chose against turning all the world, instantly, into Christendom, because it would mean him becoming a dracula, or son of the devil, instead of the Son of God. Jesus said, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.” We are not to serve money, power, politics or even Christendom. Only God!

The early Christian community held steadfastly to this model of non-participation in evil. The letter to the Ephesians argues that those following Christ are not to participate at all in evil deeds: “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not be partakers with them; for you were formerly in darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light” (Ephesians 5:6-8). We are not to be children of disobedience, but children of light.

The message is clearest in the letter of James, the brother of Jesus and the first head of the Jerusalem church. He advised: “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27).

We are not doing God any favors if we make moral compromises with evil to gain power or influence, even when we would use that power and influence for Christ. This is a temptation from the evil one! Jesus refused the expediency of such a compromise and so should we. Let us live as children of light, refusing to participate in evil, and keeping ourselves unstained by the world.

The kingdom of heaven has always had an anti-hoarding emphasis and a preference for wealth distribution. During the Israelite sojourn in the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan, God provided the Israelites with water from rocks, quail from the sea, and bread from heaven. Regarding the manna, the Israelites were charged with gathering as much as their families needed, an omer per person. We are told that they did, with “…some gathering more, some less” (Exodus 16:17).

After the gathering, when the amount of manna was measured, “those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed” (Exodus 16:18). Usually when this passage is discussed, emphasis is placed on the miracle that those who gathered little did not lack. I would like to address the situation of those who gathered much: they had no excess. This passage provides a key example of a bias in the kingdom of heaven against hoarding and vast accumulation of wealth.

The Israelites, when they complained during the wilderness journey, frequently looked back to their experience of food in Egypt. One wonders if the food situation they describe reflected their memory of slavery or of a time before the “new pharaoh” and their enslavement. In any case, the Israelites longed for the times of sitting by fleshpots, eating their fill of bread (Exodus 16:3) and free fish and assorted vegetables (Numbers 11:5). They looked back to a time of overabundance in which they could count on the security that came from having more food than they could consume. When the Israelites tried to keep manna for the next day and build up a surplus, it became foul and bred worms (Exodus 16:20). This prevented them from building up food security except for during the Sabbath (Exodus 16:22-26).

Looking forward to the other side of the wilderness experience, God warned that although the Israelites were being led into a land of super-abundance, that they must remember to bless the Lord for their food wealth:

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land… a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing… You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you (Deuteronomy 8:7-10).

This land yielded produce so massive that a cluster of grapes had to be carried on poles between two men (Numbers 13:23). However, this plentitude was also dangerous for the Israelites reliance on God:

When you have eaten your fill… do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt… He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” (Deuteronomy 8:12-17).

The ability to acquire vast wealth beyond the provision of daily bread is antithetical to reliance on God. As with the temptation to return to Egypt, so the temptation in the land was toward abandoning the reliance on God as provider and to focus instead on the fecundity of the earth and human ability to plan and store food.

We see this principle reflected in the Lord’s Prayer for daily bread as well as the admonition not to store up treasures on earth (Matthew 6:19-21). Nowhere is the warning against storing up wealth clearer than in the parable of the foolish rich man (Luke 12:16-21). A man attempted to store up “ample goods for many years” but his imminent death ruined his plans. Instead of hoarding wealth for the difficult times Jesus foretold, the early church looked for opportunities to liquidate the excess of the rich for the provision of the poor (Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-35). Indeed, Paul specifically cited Exodus 16:18 in 2 Corinthians 8 as he tried to elicit funds for other believers.

As we consider Jesus, our bread of heaven (John 6), we are reminded that Paul frequently spoke of Jesus’ movement toward us in terms of wealth disbursement: “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Jesus was fundamentally anti-hoarding, even in his own exalted position. When we partake in the Eucharist and in the Christian life more generally, we receive, like those Israelites in the desert, exactly as much as we need, without possibility of hoarding. Instead we rely on daily provision. This is the way of the kingdom of God.

A key facet of the promotion of justice is to determine truth. The truth of the matter must then be used to remove the guilty from a position in which they can further harm those in their care. All too often, we are anxious to sweep aside such disgusting and disappointing events, to pretend they did not happen, or to simply enforce quick and meaningless “forgiveness” rather than actually going through a full, fair, and biblical analysis of what went wrong, how repentance and restitution can be made, and how we can prevent similar actions from happening in the future. What happens when these processes are not followed can be seen in the closing chapter of the book of Judges.

Phyllis Trible spoke about the tale of the Levite and his concubine (Judges 19) as one of the “texts of terror.” This horrific tale begins with spousal disharmony (the history of interpretation is full of allotting the blame to both parties) and ends with genocide and mass rape. The tale is bracketed by reminders that in those days there was no king or secular adjudicating authority (Judges 19:1 and 21:25), and the book ends by saying that everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

In this story of the “Terror of Gibeah,” the Ephraimite Levite journeyed down to Bethlehem to retrieve his concubine who had returned to her father’s house. On his way back, he refused to entrust himself to foreigners and spend the night in a fortified city. Instead, he thought that he and his small traveling party would be safe among his own Israelite brethren in the Benjaminite town of Gibeah (Judges 19:12). This is similar to how most of us would consider the church a relatively safe environment where we could let our guard down. However, the men of Gibeah were bent on abuse, and when they were not permitted to rape the Levite, they instead committed a particularly abusive [יִּֽתְעַלְּלוּ־בָהּ Strongs H5953] gang rape against his concubine who was tossed out the door to them by the Levite in one of the most heinous acts in the Bible.

The next day, the Levite showed no compassion to the woman he had sacrificed to save himself, but cut up her body. (The text does not say if she was already dead or not.) He sent the pieces of her body to the 12 tribes, asking them to assemble and mete out justice. The Levite told his tale to the assembled tribes, and they immediately sought to bring the men of Gibeah to justice. But instead of turning over the perpetrators of this perversity, the Benjaminites actually stood up to defend them (Judges 20:12-14)!

How often have we seen this in our own days? When pastors finally have to face the truth that they abused their position and inflicted themselves on those whom they should have protected, the people of God give them a standing ovation? Just like Benjaminites rallying to protect those they know to be guilty simply because of an in-group identification, Christians applaud those they know to be wrong because they reflected on their actions publicly without issuing meaningful apologies or doing the hard work of repentance that makes restitution. Victims and God declare when sins are forgiven and someone is welcomed back into the community, not an applauding crowd and not a band of warriors who defend the guilty.

READ: Highpoint Church: How You Know Jesus Has Left Your Church

The rest of the story of Judges spirals into increasingly pervasive violence and abuse. The Benjaminites slaughter tens of thousands of their countrymen. The Israelites finally decimate the Benjaminites to the extent that the tribe faces extinction. The Israelites feel remorseful and they then approve two instances of capture and forcible “marriage” of unwilling women so that the remaining Benjaminites men will have offspring. The book closes with the grim reminder that there was no king in those days and everyone did as he saw fit.

In our days, King Jesus watches over us and demands that we take care of “the least of these.” Those who abuse a child will prefer that they had been tied to a heavy object and drowned in salt water (Matthew 18:6). Those who do not take positive action on behalf of the lowly, weak, and oppressed will be personally excluded from heaven by Jesus (Matthew 25:31-46). We need to be active on behalf of the oppressed, especially when it is the shepherds of the church doing the oppressing.

The solution is not for every man to do what he thinks is right, however, but to have a secular power seek out the truth and adjudicate in these matters. We must remember that the Israelites were capable of seeking AND hearing the will of God from the cultic center at Bethel (Judges 20:18). What they lacked was a temporal authority to enforce justice. Again, we are fortunate in these days that we have not only law enforcement authorities (though there are certainly problems with unequal application of justice), but we also have services specifically aimed at seeking out the truth in situations of church abuse, such as Boz Tchividjian’s GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment).

The choice for Christians is stark: do we plunge headlong into everyone doing what they think is right as the community splits between those who wish to prosecute offenders and those who wish to defend them? Or, do we acknowledge the kingdom of heaven and embrace open, thorough, and external investigations of potentially abusive situations? Let us all choose the difficult, narrow path.

In the time of Jesus, Ethiopia was not the country in East Africa that we think of today, but was roughly analogous with the territory of Biblical Kush. This land would have covered most of today’s Sudan and parts of upper Egypt, with Meroë as its capital. Ethiopia was ruled over by Candaces, or queens (Acts 8:27).

In Antiquities (8:165-73), the Jewish historian Josephus argues that the Queen of Sheba with whom Solomon concluded a trade mission was also one of the earliest queens of Ethiopia. Further, there was a very early tradition that Solomon loved the Queen of Sheba and sent her home with not only gifts, but children that he had fathered with her. Ancient Jewish and Christian sources (Irenaeus and Jerome among them) agreed that the descendants of the Queen of Sheba by Solomon, and the Ethiopian eunuch in particular, were to be regarded as at least partially Jewish.

Acts 8:26-40 points to the eunuch’s embrace of Judaism through his attempt to visit the temple and reading the prophet Isaiah. Related people groups who were co-descendants of Abraham, like the Edomites, were to be welcomed into the temple and embraced (Deut 23:7-8), which was the first major expansion of the kingdom of God. As such, the eunuch was probably not a convert to Judaism, but born Jewish. It is for this reason that Cornelius and his household are regarded as the first Gentile baptized converts to Christianity (Acts 10:45-48) and not the Ethiopian eunuch.

But if the eunuch was another of the thousands of Jews (Acts 2) or even related groups like Samaritans (Acts 8:4-25) who had already received the Holy Spirit, why does his case merit special mention? Just as Jesus commanded, the gospel was being preached in expanding circles, first Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, then all the earth (Acts 1:8). This Ethiopian represented an allied people group that had split off from the Jewish people much further back in history than the Samaritans, but was still “family” and to be reached before the gentiles.

The reason for the inclusion of the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and the second major expansion of the kingdom of God is the bodily reality of the eunuch. As a eunuch, he would have been prevented from entering the temple compound (Deut 23:1). Without needing to check his private parts, temple guards would have been able to see clearly the effects of several years, perhaps a lifetime, of lack of testosterone in production of female secondary-sexual characteristics. The guards would have been suspicious already of court officials coming from lands that were known to create eunuchs. The Ethiopian eunuch made the journey from Meroë to Jerusalem, a distance of about 1,500 miles. At the end of that journey he was refused entrance to the temple and the baptismal pools in which Jews and new converts to Judaism became ritually pure before entering the temple compound. The hopeful words of Isaiah 56:3-5 about eunuchs being included in temple service was regarded as prophesy – if that – rather than authoritative law by the party of the Zadokites (Sadducees) who primarily administered the temple compound. Thus, the eunuch was kept out and excluded.

It is difficult for me to imagine his disappointment and hurt at being refused entrance to participate in worship because of what had been done to his body. He must have been crushed as he was riding home. That he was reading the prophet Isaiah at all instead of giving up on a temple system that prohibited him from full participation is testimony to his faithfulness to God. Phillip heard him reading the particularly applicable passage:

In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.

Who can speak of his descendants? (Isaiah 53:8)

The anguish of soul that this man must felt reading about humiliation, deprivation of justice, and lack of descendants must have been tortuous after being turned away from his pilgrimage to the temple.

Into his despair, the Holy Spirit brought Phillip to explain that this passage pointed to the messiah. Jesus was also humiliated and deprived of justice. Jesus also would not have a family or descendants. The eunuch’s next question to Phillip must be read in this context. If Jesus, who is the messiah and the holy one of God could empathize with the suffering of this man, what was to stop him from finally being baptized and declared pure and whole? Nothing! He was not just displaying eagerness to be baptized, but making sure that nothing still stood in the way of his being recognized as a full member of God’s Kingdom. Even after Phillip was taken away, the eunuch, recognized as a whole and complete person, went on his way rejoicing! (Acts 8:39) I believe this is one of the great understatements in scripture.

Phillip had already shared the message of Jesus with the Samaritans. Now God expanded the community to include not just Ethiopian descendants of Solomon’s royal line, but a man who had been formally excluded from worshiping in the temple because of his queered body. Phillip helped expand the understandings of who was part of God’s beloved community, to include even the previously restricted. In this way, he was truly bearing much fruit for the kingdom.

Hundreds of Sub-Saharan migrants sat or stood by the side of the road in Takadoum, a rougher area of town. They were hoping to be hired as day laborers. As I make this journey fairly often, I have seen Moroccans pull up with trucks, and several young men smile at their fortune of being selected to earn a day’s wage as they bounded up into the back of the truck to ride to a job site.

On my most recent journey, I first rode by in the morning, about 9:30, and then again at about 1pm. By the early afternoon, almost all of the groups of migrants had disappeared. Seeing that they would probably not be called upon to work, most left, leaving only the most desperate men standing, looking for someone to hire them, but quickly losing hope.

The vineyard owner of the parable of the workers in Matthew 20:1-16 made a trip to the daily labor market as many who sought and still seek manual labor did and do. He went in the morning and selected the strongest-looking of the potential workers. This is what the Moroccan foremen do in the Takadoum neighborhood, such that by mid-morning the crowd of potential workers look less physically impressive to a potential foreman who will recognize them as a good investment for the day.

It is at this time that we read of the first strange behavior of the landlord in the parable. He went out to the market at about nine (verse 3) and then again at about noon (verse 4). The landowner would have had a good idea about how many workers he would have needed for his vineyard. More than that, the vineyard owner would have had a good idea about how much money he would have been able to spend on laborers and still make a profit on his grapes and/or wine, as it was one of the crops that the Roman Empire bought in vast bulk and provided at subsidized prices to the citizens of the cities in the empire. A smart landlord would have used as little labor as possible to harvest grapes in order to ensure maximum profits.

The landlord in the parable, however, not only keeps hiring laborers, thus cutting into his profits, but keeps hiring progressively less physically impressive laborers from whom he knows he will receive diminishing marginal returns. After mid-morning, only the weak, unknown, or argumentative laborers are left in the market. After noon, only the desperate are still waiting around to be hired.

You can imagine the incredulity of the landlord when he asked those still waiting around in the market at almost the end of the day: “Why are you standing here idle all day?” (verse 6). Why did you not go home, find somewhere to take a nap, or at least get out of the hot sun? Their reply turns the culpability for their lack of employment back on all the potential employers who passed them by: “Because no one has hired us!” They wanted to work, they displayed their dedication to finding work all day long — and probably not for the first time — but still no one had chosen them. They were the weak and unpopular, and the daily rebuke of their full humanity, dignity, and willingness to work must have stung them every morning as they watched those who were stronger walking to their gainful employment while the human leftovers stayed in the market, kept there only by vain hope.

The rest of the parable is well-known. The landlord employed even those desperate few who still stood in the market at the end of the day. As it came time for payment, the workers who labored all day were shocked that their wages were the same as those who were chosen last. Their principal complaint was that “You have made them equal to us…” (verse 12). I think that was the whole point! Those who were rejected all day were shown to be just as valuable as those who were chosen first. The parable ends with the reminder that the first will be last and the last will be first (verse 16).

The Kingdom of God works as a powerful equalizing force as we realize that our best and only claim is to be beloved children of our Father in heaven. Indeed, we are to rejoice in this equaling: “Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation” (James 1:9-10a).

God, like the landowner, has chosen to demonstrate our equality at great cost to Godself. The requirement for me, then, is to recognize and treat my Moroccan and Sub-Saharan neighbors as precious, equal brothers.