The Goodness of God

If you're the Roman Emperor, you probably expect to dominate people's thoughts. They certainly dominated a huge percentage of the known world. A whole image of the Messiah grew up around said Messiah kicking the Romans out of the promised land. Yet, Jesus doesn't seem to care at all. Sure. Pay taxes to Caesar. Who care? God is doing something completely different - something much larger, more powerful, and long lasting. Petty earthly empires just don't rate.

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God performed some truly amazing miracle: parting the Red Sea, unleashing plagues on Egypt, sending mana from Heaven, bringing forth water from a stone. Still, the people, when left alone for a few days, create an entire separate religion based on a powerless golden object. We can easily think that we are not like that. We know that's there's only one God. But, do we act like it? Or, do we act like there are a lot of competing priorities, of which God is on on the list?

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Paul had all the right and proper religious credentials. He was born the right way. He studied the right way. He had all the right opinions. He followed the Law. If anyone had a right to boast, he did. Paul earned it. However, compared to his encounter with Christ and the power that held for him al of his hard earned correct check boxes were basically trash. They didn't matter because it turns out that Christ is the most important thing.

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Jonah is hilarious. It's pure comedy with the deeply profound point. Jonah acts in ways that constantly subvert your expectation, while God subverts his. He wants a God that will zap Nineveh, or at least, if he's going to have to go declare some zapping, he wants there to be zapping. Instead, God shows mercy and grace in light of their redemption.

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All of the Bible can feel equally ancient to us. It's all more than 2,000 years ago from our perspective. What's the difference. Well, the distance from the first New Testament writer and the last Old Testament writer is the same distance as we are from the English settlement at Jamestown. It goes even further back to the song celebrating the defeat of Pharoah by God in the parting of the Red Sea. It's difficult to date it, but it's probably more than 3,000 years old, or for the New Testament writers, about the same distance as we are from the Crusades. This first song that we have record tells of God's power, might, and care for God's people.

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If you got asked, "Are you like Moses?" You would probably say, "No." Statically, not that many of y'all are Biblical prophets with massive beards, walk with a cool staff, and have murder on your rap sheet. So, in those ways, at least not that many people are like Moses, but that misses the point of the story. We are like Moses in the critical dimensions - our innate humanity, our connection to God, and our receipt of a piece divine power. In those ways, we can all be EXACTLY like Moses.

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Turns out, with God's help, we can be good. We can take the high ground. We don't have to stoop to their level. We are not destined to repay violence with violence. Instead, we can see even our enemies as humans. Paul instructs us to do this in Romans echoing Jesus's words and actions in the Gospels. These instructions aren't meant to be abstract aspirations. They're a concrete guide to action. With God, we be legitimately better.

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It sounds like the Roman church had issues that we can resonate. A group of older timers and a group of newcomers faced rising tensions over who belongs. As a way to introduce himself to this congregation, Paul writes a letter, Romans, to hopefully help resolve this. He breaks down, in detail, how all belong, and then gets to the point. Since everyone belongs, we are all one body, and we all have something, a spiritual gift, to contribute. It was true for them then and is true for us now.

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We like to turn out noses up at the Pharisees. Who could possibility think that if you won't eat the right things, you doing belong? We say this to ourselves smugly as we move through a world full of brand advertising and images of the respectable good life. To all of us, Jesus issues a reminder that it's the things that we do, how we treat others and ourselves that matter. It's not what we consume but what comes from our hearts.

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His brothers really do a number on Joseph. He lands the role of family narc, and this snitch got something far more than stitches. They sell him into slavery, and as that caravan carries him far from home, we can imagine that Joseph had to wonder what was going to become of his life. He goes on to save God's people and Egypt from a horrific famine, but he doesn't know any of that. His story is a reminder that just because it looks bad, it doesn't mean that God isn't there and that God can do amazing things.

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