Crossing Over

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crossingover.substack.com

Eugene Peterson talking on “lucky” as a possible translation for the Greek term MAKARIOS.

*****Image Credit: Laura Chouette on Unsplash

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crossingover.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crossingover.substack.com

Image Credit: Painted by F. Baroccio and engraved by E. Smith

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crossingover.substack.com

We recorded this conversation during Holy Week 2023, just a few weeks ago. Where we considered what was happening on the cross within the Trinity. Did the Father abandon the Son? Of course, we tipped our hand with the title.

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Our final conversation about the Priestly Blessing from Numbers 6. We consider peace a little further. And look at Genesis 32 where we first encounter the lift of a face towards another.

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As the great writing prophets of the Bible knew, sin has a thousand faces. The prophets knew how many ways human life can go wrong because they knew how many ways human life can go right. (You need the concept of a wall on plumb to tell when one is off.) These prophets kept dreaming of a time when God would put things right again.

They dreamed of a new age in which human crookedness would be straightened out, rough places made plain. The foolish would be made wise, and the wise, humble. They dreamed of a time when the deserts would flower, the mountains would run with wine, weeping would cease, and people could go to sleep without weapons on their laps. People would work in peace and work to fruitful effect. Lambs could lie down with lions. All nature would be fruitful, benign, and filled with wonder upon wonder; all humans would be knit together in brotherhood and sisterhood; and all nature and all humans would look to God, walk with God, lean toward God, and delight in God. Shouts of joy and recognition would well up from valleys and seas, from women in streets and from men on ships.

The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight — a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.

— Not the Way Its Supposed to Be, by Cornelius Plantinga

Institute for Religion, Peace, and Justice

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crossingover.substack.com

The conversation about the priestly blessing found in Numbers 6 continues! This week we are considering what it means for God’s face to shine on us, and to experience God’s gracious favor.

Show Notes:

* Here is a link to “The Gospel in Chairs” with Brad Jersak. I can’t recommend this video or Brad’s books enough. His book A More Christlike Word was a huge help in considering life giving ways to read Scripture, and Her Gates Will Never Be Shut a deeply considerate (and healing) book about hell—from the perspective of Scripture. (Daniel)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crossingover.substack.com

Continuing the conversation about the priestly blessing found in Numbers 6—discussing the ideas of blessing and guarding in Scripture.

Here is the quote from Ephrem the Syrian on the foolishness of overstretching our human images as metaphors for God.

Who is so stupid and stubborn so as to suppose, even just a little, that because human beings have been called by names that belong to God, that the nature of man and of God is consequently one, or that, because the Lord has also been called by a name appropriate to His servants, that we should weigh with a single comparison both what is made and its Maker.

Ephrem going further says that it is God who holds the true meaning of these words, and we, and I think this is self-evident, are the shadow.

When God called us king', using the name appropriate to Himself, the true sense remains with Him, the likeness applies to us.

But when again He called Himself by a name appropriate to His servants, the natural usage lies with us, but the appellation with Him.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crossingover.substack.com