Post by Mark on Aug 2, 2008 5:41:12 GMT -8
It’s never my intention in these drashes to be conclusive, nor even expansive; but just offer some thought. Comments, expansions and your own position on these things is certainly welcome. I’d really like to know, not what you get out of what I have said (though I appreciate the encouraging comments that have been made); but I want to know what you think about what Adonai has said.
There is a lot to the Parashah this morning. There is so much that none of it could possibly covered in the "one 81/2 by 11 page" that I try to limit to.
There are 42 stations listed in the journey from Ramses in Egypt to the plains of Mpab across from Jericho. In Rabbinical Judaism, each station in the journey represents a station in human life; and subsequentially eschatologically, a station in the span of mankind. Shocking to me at first… could Douglas Adams have been right?! It will be worthy for us, at some point, not today, to study the names, the significance and the circumstances of each of Israel’s stops in the journey through the wilderness (no, we will not be applying the spiritually significant innuendoes of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
What struck me most deeply this week, when thinking about this passage of text was the cities of refuge and the people who lived in them. I meet a lot of, well, interesting people in my position as part of our local congregation. I had to call the police about one of them just last week who was threatening to kill her husband’s probation officer. I have to wonder about the measure of grace in my spirit, the commitment to the way of our Messiah that is in my heart, were she to decide that she wanted to attend our fellowship.
We read over the allotment of the cities of refuge very academically and it seems like a profoundly just idea. Nobody gets off free. If you are a murderer you are executed for your crime. If you kill someone accidentally, your life is preserved; but fundamentally altered for potentially a very long time. There’s solid motivation to not even kill anyone on accident.
Still, it had to happen. The perpetrator of this tragedy was extended grace so long as he (or she) went to the city of refuge and remained there for as long as the High Priest lived. (By the way, there’s some possible Messianic foreshadowing there: when the High Priest dies, you go free. Think about it.).
But, what about the residents of the city of refuge? What kind of people did these Levites need to be? Imagine that the neighborhood in which you lived and raised your children were to become the place of refuge for those who had accidentally killed someone. There goes the neighborhood! Sure, it was an accident; but accidents include the gross negligence of a mother who kills her children by not being where she should have been to care for them. An accident is the thoughtless maneuver of a man so focused on his own interests that he didn’t realize that small children were in his path. How would you feel about these people becoming your next door neighbor? How would it affect you knowing that there is someone outside who justifiably wants to do them harm?
We need to consider these things very seriously. We as people and congregations committed to the ways of Adonai are, in effect, to be cities of refuge. How do we respond to the drug dealer who, even while strung out, is looking for truth and stumbles in among us? What do we do with the fellow who has just come out of prison for raping a young girl? These may seem like erroneous questions to some of you; but I could give you names. These people are real and are in our communities. If they reach out to us for refuge, how are we going to respond?
There is a lot to the Parashah this morning. There is so much that none of it could possibly covered in the "one 81/2 by 11 page" that I try to limit to.
There are 42 stations listed in the journey from Ramses in Egypt to the plains of Mpab across from Jericho. In Rabbinical Judaism, each station in the journey represents a station in human life; and subsequentially eschatologically, a station in the span of mankind. Shocking to me at first… could Douglas Adams have been right?! It will be worthy for us, at some point, not today, to study the names, the significance and the circumstances of each of Israel’s stops in the journey through the wilderness (no, we will not be applying the spiritually significant innuendoes of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
What struck me most deeply this week, when thinking about this passage of text was the cities of refuge and the people who lived in them. I meet a lot of, well, interesting people in my position as part of our local congregation. I had to call the police about one of them just last week who was threatening to kill her husband’s probation officer. I have to wonder about the measure of grace in my spirit, the commitment to the way of our Messiah that is in my heart, were she to decide that she wanted to attend our fellowship.
We read over the allotment of the cities of refuge very academically and it seems like a profoundly just idea. Nobody gets off free. If you are a murderer you are executed for your crime. If you kill someone accidentally, your life is preserved; but fundamentally altered for potentially a very long time. There’s solid motivation to not even kill anyone on accident.
Still, it had to happen. The perpetrator of this tragedy was extended grace so long as he (or she) went to the city of refuge and remained there for as long as the High Priest lived. (By the way, there’s some possible Messianic foreshadowing there: when the High Priest dies, you go free. Think about it.).
But, what about the residents of the city of refuge? What kind of people did these Levites need to be? Imagine that the neighborhood in which you lived and raised your children were to become the place of refuge for those who had accidentally killed someone. There goes the neighborhood! Sure, it was an accident; but accidents include the gross negligence of a mother who kills her children by not being where she should have been to care for them. An accident is the thoughtless maneuver of a man so focused on his own interests that he didn’t realize that small children were in his path. How would you feel about these people becoming your next door neighbor? How would it affect you knowing that there is someone outside who justifiably wants to do them harm?
We need to consider these things very seriously. We as people and congregations committed to the ways of Adonai are, in effect, to be cities of refuge. How do we respond to the drug dealer who, even while strung out, is looking for truth and stumbles in among us? What do we do with the fellow who has just come out of prison for raping a young girl? These may seem like erroneous questions to some of you; but I could give you names. These people are real and are in our communities. If they reach out to us for refuge, how are we going to respond?
- there are 70 faces to 
).
