Hearing the Music

Results filtered by “Andrew VanderMaas”

Memories

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I trust many of you know that bittersweet feeling after a good vacation. On the one hand it is hard to leave a place of rest and refreshment, on the other hand there is a restlessness to get back to purpose and productivity. This is the balance that Addison talked about last week in Exodus 31. I certainly feel that tension as we come back in from a couple of weeks of refreshment, camping in Pentwater. Pentwater is special place for our family. It is where we have been going the entirety of our married life, a place where all of our kids have fond memories. One of the great features about our time away was the activating of those memories. It is has been interesting to see our kids come back as adults and relive those memories: sitting around the campfire, hitting up House of Flavors, digging in the warm sand, tossing the Waboba in the water, even making a beeline for Cosmic Candy. Memory is a powerful force to be reckoned with in our lives.

I mention this because this week in turning to Exodus 32, we are invited to activate the collective memory of God’s people throughout the ages. Contrary to Pentwater the memories are not positive. In fact it is just the opposite, in Exodus 32 Israel turns away from YHWH to embrace the gods of Egypt. In 1 Corinthians 10 the Apostle Paul recounts this specific incident and, centuries later, calls on God’s people to remember so that we may learn to “not desire evil as they did”(cf. 1 Cor. 10:6). Cultivating memory is important. Lazy forgetfulness can literally be deadly. But God is faithful and kind to provide us what we need to remember. I look forward to diving in with you this week!

 

Photo by sarandy westfall

Posted by Andrew VanderMaas

Priests

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As protestants we don’t often talk about the role of priests. While it is true that ecclesiastically we no longer employ a priesthood, we do talk about Jesus fulfilling the role of the great high priest. And we do subscribe to the priesthood of all believers. But what do we mean by that?

On one level, when we talk about the priesthood of all believers we mean that we all have the opportunity to enter, by means of Jesus finished work, the holy place of God through prayer. We do not need another human to intercede for us. We also mean that each of us plays a role in bearing the burdens of our fellow believers. Spiritually caring for each other is not relegated to the professional clergy. But it also means that we have a responsibility to those in the “outer courts” to proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light (cf. 1 Peter 2:9). Like the OT priest we bear the names of the nations near our hearts as we intercede before the Lord. I look forward to diving into the priesthood a little deeper with you this Sunday as we come to Exodus 28, 29!

 

Photo by Ismael Paramo on Unsplash

Posted by Andrew VanderMaas

To Really See

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Sometimes to see a thing as it really is requires some imagination. I am not talking about the kind of imagination that makes up pink elephants or little green aliens. No I am talking about the kind of vision that pushes beyond what we can see with our physical eyes and aided by God’s revelation, sees more clearly. Brian Walsh in an essay entitled Subversive Preaching in a Postmodern World says this about the pastoral task, “(it) is fundamentally about shaping the imagination of the Christian community. ... We need preaching that will set the captives free, especially when they have become comfortable in captivity.” He builds off from Walter Bruggemann who observes, “The key pathology of our time, which seduces us all, is the reduction of the imagination so that we are too numbed, satiated and co-opted to do serious imaginative work.” … “It is the preacher’s primal responsibility to invite and empower and equip the community to reimagine the world as though Yahweh were a key and decisive player.” (Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope).

It occurs to me that empowering the imagination is exactly what God was up to in the construction of the tabernacle. It is a little weird isn’t it that almost immediately after getting Israel out of the slave clutches of the Egyptians, God invites the people to take up a collection from their hearts and to build an elaborate, mobil dwelling place in the midst of the wilderness (cf. Ex. 25). What is God’s play here? As we will see Sunday there is a lot going on, but a big part is that God desires his people to really see the universe. He wants them to understand that he is the key and decisive player in the world. He wants them to know his holiness, mercy and glory and weave it into their everyday lives. As we take a deeper dive into these tabernacle building instructions the next few weeks, our prayer is that the Spirit will be at work liberating our co-opted imaginations for His glory!

 

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Posted by Andrew VanderMaas

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