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From the Pastor’s Desk

I was hoping to spend a couple Sundays going over the missing years in the Bible, that is the 340 some years between the building of the Second Temple in Ezra-Nehemiah and the birth of Jesus. As I read and watched videos about this time period I discovered two things: 1) It is hopelessly complicated and 2) it would make the sermon far more of a history lecture than a faith lesson. It is really hard to find people within the story that can push us to explore our own faith. For now, I will put this on the back burner, perhaps there will one day be a Sunday School class about this time. It also serves as a reminder that there are few people that are truly good or bad.

Mattathias ben Johanan was a priest during the reign of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the father of five boys. He began what would become the Maccabean Revolt when a Seleucid official tried to force him to make an unclean sacrifice. When another Jew was compelled to do the same and complied, Mattathias slew him and the official. Mattathias then swore death on any Jew that accepted any amount of Hellenization (that is taking on any Greek culture). He died soon after, but his sons would wage a war that would eventually lead to the independence of Judea for a brief time before becoming a Roman vassal state.

Almost as soon as their father had died, his five sons rejected some of his actions and words. They may have been more conservative in their faith than most Jews, but they recognized that it was wrong of their father to kill the other Jew. After all, is it really right to punish another person because they are obeying the people who could kill him or his? They also knew that most Jews had accepted a certain amount of Hellenization and tolerance of difference in beliefs. This majority of Jews would eventually be known as the Pharisees, while the conservative rule followers that came from Mattathias’s camp would be called the Sadducees.

These two groups would fight with one another for the next few centuries, along with sometimes combining forces against outsiders. Sometimes they would make the righteous choice, others times they would commit grievous sins. Some days they were heroes, the next day they would be villains, and then heroes again.

Honestly, nearly every person in the Bible is like this. However, it is also during this period that historians began to record far more information. Flavius Josephus, formerly the Jewish general Joseph Ben Matthias and a great-grandson of Mattathias, generally wrote of his people in a favorable light, but he included far more information than the writers of Kings and Chronicles. In his, and other historian’s records, the mistakes, intrigue, foibles, and such are thrown in far sharper relief than those of previous eras.

These people were often viewed as the next Messiah, the one that would restore Israel and the Covenant. But we know from history that they weren’t, instead they were men and women that sometimes were in the right and other times in the wrong. Only Jesus is the Messiah and he brings about the restoration of the Kingdom and Covenant in an entirely unanticipated way.

As we begin a new year, don’t place your full trust in the people of this world. We all have our faults. Full trust should only go to God. The only thing that seemed to keep Judea from going off the deep-end during this era is that people held those in power accountable. So go into this year with your eyes wide open. Centering yourselves not on modern-day tribes, but on Jesus’s way of love, compassion, justice, and forgiveness.

THEOLOGY TRIVIA
Theology Trivia:
So what do we read next?

How do you decide what you are going to read next in the Bible? It is a huge book covering over 4000 years, with some stories taking books to resolve and others stories hidden inside other texts. How do you cover all the important bits and avoid repeating constantly?

The Jews, probably during the Babylonian Exile, created the the first ‘Lectionary’ or list of prescribed readings in an order. The first was designed to read the entire Torah in one year, with specific scrolls being read at certain moments.

Early Christianity developed their own which eventually was adapted by the Roman and Orthodox Churches. The Pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic lectionary was a 1 year rotation of a Gospel reading and an accompanying non-Gospel lesson.

The Post-Vatican II lectionary began a cycle of 3 years, with four readings each day: Old Testament (or a New Testament reading doing Easter season), Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel. Each year would be focused on Matthew, Mark, or Luke, John would be read from regularly each year. At the end of the 3 year cycle, a person will have read nearly the entire Bible.

Some Protestant denominations came together to develop their own version based on the Roman Catholic's, this is called The Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). It is a great tool to use in your daily devotionals.

The Church of the Brethren has no stance on the usage of RCL, some pastors use it regularly, others not at all, and a few, like myself, will use it on occasion. Sometimes it is nice to have a little bit of extra help in finding a direction.

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