Hearing the Music

Bruised Reeds and Smoking Flax

 There are certain verses that just work better in the old King James. Isaiah 42:3 is one of those for me, "A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench". Perhaps this one works for you? Or maybe you like the ESV "faintly burning wick "instead of "smoking flax"?

Whatever the case, the image of the fragile being protected is beautiful, and one that I wanted to highlight as we make our way through Lent. If you were with us this past Wednesday for our Ash Wednesday Worship service you will recall this quote from the Worship Sourcebook, "The aim of Ash Wednesday worship is threefold: to meditate on our mortality, sinfulness, and need of a Savior; to renew our commitment to daily repentance in the Lenten season and in all of life; and to remember with confidence and gratitude that Christ has conquered death and sin." There is a holy reckoning with our frailty in the Lenten season as we remember our mortality and the sin that necessitates our need for a Savior.

As we have been seeing, the book of Hebrews tells us that we have a high priest, Jesus, who has compassion for this frailty because Jesus became frail as well. He knows pain and suffering. He understands the struggle. He knows what it is to hope and be disappointed, to be wounded and abandoned.

In the parable of the good Samaritan we see ourselves broken and bruised, laying on the roadside. But in the person of the Samaritan, we see Jesus lift the wounded traveler onto his donkey, and carry him to an inn, a safe place where he could receive care and would have the time he needed to recover. All of us are wounded travelers who need someone to see us, to stop for us and give attention to our wounds. We all need One skilled with the bruised reed.  

It is my prayer that by taking time to remember that we are dust, to remember that we are the bruised reed and the smoking flax, we will also experience the embrace of the one who bids the weary to come and rest. May each of us take on his yoke, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Let us together find our strength with the One who is gentle and lowly in heart (cf. Mt. 11:28-30).

Photo by Thomas Jensen thojen on Unsplash

New

Do you like new things or do you prefer old? Over the years I have been drawn a bit toward the new and shiny, though more recently I find that I am appreciating the older, the tried and true. (Maybe that comes with getting a bit older myself?)

There is one thing however, that I always want new and never old, namely to be in relationship with God through the NEW covenant.  The new covenant is better in every way than the old. The old may have had a little more ritual and definitely more gold (cf. Heb 9:1-10), but the new covenant is so superior. It is superior in its access. It is superior in its inclusion. It has a superior Mediator. Superior! Better!

I really do look forward to digging into this with you this Sunday (the whole text is Heb 8:7-9:10). On a day when our culture tries to roll out the best -- best athletes, best entertainers, best commercials, best fans (we see you T.S.) --  in the end our best cannot measure up to THE BEST!

Photo by MOTIVID .ORG on Unsplash

The Throne of the Majesty

I hope that your Groundhog Day is going well? Some of you remember the movie with the same title in which the Bill Murray character goes through an endless repetition of the same day. In many ways the movie, which is billed as a comedy, is asking the question of how we obtain meaning, if there is any at all to be had.  In this sense, Groundhog Day is a parable for lives which can feel repetitious and sometimes seem to touch only tenuously at deep meaning. 

Our passage for this week offers what we might consider a "deeper touch to transcendent meaning" in Hebrews 8:1 where we are told that Jesus, as our most excellent High Priest, "is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven". What is singular about this verse is the idea of "the Majesty". The word majesty is used only one other time in the the NT (Jude 25) and this is certainly the only time that it is used as a definite noun to describe God. Used this way we get a sense of the mind-blowing greatness of God. It is one thing to use a term like Father, which helps us formulate an idea about God, or to used terms like omnipotent or omniscience to seek to describe an attribute of God. But it seems to me, that the preacher of Hebrews here uses a word more transcendent and less specific to remind us that God is bigger than anything that we we can strictly conceptualize.  The preacher is seeking to lift up the drooping hands and weak knees of the believers by saying there is a Being in the universe that is so absolutely worthy of our worship. A Being that gives meaning to every blade of grass and every seemingly pointless interaction. That there is such a Being is mind-blowing enough, but to note further that Jesus, as Priest who represents God to us and us to God, is seated at the right hand of the throne of this Majesty serving us! I don't know about you, but at the very least the preacher here is pressing us to consider that there is something more to this universe than the everyday humdrum of life. Taken in their fullness, the preacher's words are an invitation to celebrate a life that is rich with the Majesty brought near to us!