Reflection on the Word for the Sunday of May 22, 2022
Bless God, and God will bless you – Psalm 67: 1-5 –
May God be merciful to us, bless us, and cause his face to shine on us. Selah. That your way may be known on earth, and your salvation among all nations, let the peoples praise you, God. Let all the peoples praise you. Oh let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you will judge the peoples with equity, and govern the nations on earth. Selah.
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There is a reciprocity not really between God and man, as God owes us nothing and we owe God everything.
However, in the ancient world, pagan worship practices worked on the basis of “do ut des” which Latin for "I give, so that you may give". Actually, it is not really that we give God offerings and sacrifices, and then God may give us something we wish, it was more like that they wanted to compel a specific God or all the gods to answer positively, like in a economic exchange.
The other term, used for this pagan view, is also in Latin, "Quid pro quo" ('what for what' ) which means exactly an exchange of goods or services, or "a favor for a favor", like "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours", and "one hand washes the other".
These sound like mutual agreements, like contract or even covenants established for mutual benefits between God and people or nations, except that in the Bible the concept of the covenant is nothing like that. The pagan mentality is the old behavior of Nimrod, who built the very Tower of Babel, to besiege Heaven and dethrone the annoying God with his annoying rules.
With all the sacrifices and offerings they wanted to coerce the powers in the spiritual realm to to do the human will.
It is known that happened once upon a time, that Xerxes the Great, who was the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid empire, was the son of King Darius the Great, and was on his way to attempt to invade Greece in 480 BCE, arriving at the Dardanelles, and ordered Pontoon Bridges to be built for his troops to cross into mainland Greece.
Legends have it, that two of the bridges at the place, called, Hellespontos were destroyed by a storm before the army arrived. The Persian Emperor Xerxes was so enraged, that he had the builders of the bridges beheaded. Tradition holds it too, that he ordered his servants to scourge the sea with fetters thrown into the strait, given it three hundred whiplashes, meanwhile his Persian priests cursed the sea aloud.
The whole attitude is the ancient approach toward the Gods, who were first of all feared, but were also considered as rivals or occasionally as allies, partners to be convinced, opposed, pushed, enforced etc. In order to create the pontoon bridges the Persians used hundreds of ships tied closely to each other. After the crossing, these bridges were left behind. It is quite an irony or potentially the wrath of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, when the remnant of the Persian army later retreated to the Hellespontos, they only found the debris of these bridges, because they were destroyed by another storm. Give and take, insult and vengeance.
The Biblical view is completely different. Definitely there is a conversation between God and humanity, there is definitely a reciprocity between not exactly between God and humans, but a proportional reciprocity, that how we praise God, that much we will be blessed.
The conversation, we can say, it is a little bit unilateral, at least on the surface, because it is not us who are able to tell God, what we want from him. In the revelation at the Mount Sinai, recorded in the Bible, God was the one, who told humanity, what he wants from us. And it is not that complicated, it is summarized in the Ten Commandments.
In our relationship with God, everything depends on how we keep the Commandments, God gave us. John the Baptist and Jesus particularly insisted that people must keep the Commandments in order to merit the Kingdom of Heaven.
Some people think that, beyond the short three or some years of the earthly ministry of Jesus, God the Father, still keeps intervening regularly in history or in specific events. Other some people think that beyond the short three or some years of the earthly ministry of Jesus, God has never intervened or intervenes personally, God stays in Heaven, and we harvest what we sow. However, neither this and that are fully true, and also both are true somehow.
But HOW?
Let us say, that there is the Lake of Galilee, which can represent figuratively our life in general. God may tell people, that there is this nice lake, it will feed you, it will entertain you, it will comfort you, you can use it, you can share it, and you have to take good care of it, of course. However, when you see around the coast that there is an amber flag raised, which means that a terrible storm is coming, or a red flag is raised that a thunderstorm is hitting the water right now, then the access to the lake is banned, you shall not go out to swim or to fish or to cruise in a boat or a ship, the lake are barred by law. For good reasons.
As we can see in the Gospel story of Calming the Sea, when Jesus meekly slept on board, meanwhile the waves threatened their barge with sinking. The disciples woke Jesus up, and he stopped the wind, but it did not happen every day. Supernatural miracles can happen, but they are rather the exception than the rule. God gave the law, and when people breach it, they must face sometimes even with deadly consequences.
Thus, if you follow the Law of God, providence, health, happiness, even economic success are guaranteed, but if you go to the opposite direction, then the opposite is guaranteed.
Similarly, God says that you shall love your neighbor. If it is so, then two neighboring farmers fare better with cooperation than with hostility. If they cooperate, they can share the workload, and in a time of need they can help each other to survive and prosper.
In a case of hostility, the opposite of the cooperation happens.
They do not share the workload, they do not help each other in the time of need, in the case of hunger, drought, flood, locust invasion, peronospora attack, etc., thus, even the very survival is not guaranteed, especially when hostilities can go so far like burning each other’s fields and barns, or even killing each other in shoot outs or in full scale wars.
Thus, God’s law, if it is followed and respected, is not only defines providence, but also it is working like instant karma, permanent and instantaneous judgment of conducts and behaviors, and in this way it is a permanent intervention of God, as well.
Biblically, all the prophets said all the time, that if you repent and begin to keep the commandments of God, you will do well, otherwise the doom is unavoidable and immanent.
And it is exactly what is happening, when we keep the commandments, when we bless God for his providence, for his just laws, when we are not law breakers but law abiding citizens, then all the blessings of God will be showering on us, as this law is divine to abide with.
As prophet Jeremiah said that “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose confidence is in the Lord. For he will be as a tree planted by the waters, who spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes, but its leaf will be green, and will not be concerned in the year of drought. It won’t cease from yielding fruit.”
May we trust the Lord always and bless God by the Holy Spirit in every hour, AMEN.
