Re-Assembly Required - Part 1
September 11, 2022Pastor Patrick introduced this new series, setting the groundwork for how to reconcile with spouse, friends, and the like; how to re-assemble broken relationships. A video of the message is here. Our Conversation Starter for this week is here.
It's quite safe to say that reconciliation is a key theme of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. In the Old Testament, reconciliation is mostly (maybe always) spoken of as atonement.
The Biblical Hebrew word for atonement, kaphar (כָּפַר), has the 3-letter root of K-P-R. Does that sound like anything familiar to you with different vowel sounds? How about Kippur, as in Yom Kippur (see Leviticus 23:26-32), the Day of Atonement? Right, same root. The root also means to cover, and here it would mean to cover one's sins.
Old Testament atonement can be for "cleansing" inanimate objects as well as cleansing one's sins. In most of these cases, atonement involves sacrifice, burnt offerings, and the like." This is how the first monothesists "got closer to God" as they were used to sacrifices in the ANE's pagan ways. By proscribing how these sacrifices were to be "properly" done, God put new wine into old vessels.
The Torah also contains some rules ("laws") for how to reconcile person to person. For example, in Numbers 5:5-7, "The Lord said to Moses, 'Tell the Israelites: If a man [or woman] commits a fault against his fellow man and wrongs him, thus breaking faith with the Lord, he shall confess the wrong he has done, restore his ill-gotten goods in full, and in addition give one fifth of their value to the one he has wronged.'" You can see that reconciliation here is in two parts, confession and restitution, including a 1/5th addition to the restitution. While the 1/5th part was intended as the punishment part, we might also consider the +1/5th as a "pot sweetener" to encourage true forgiveness from the victim.
In Numbers 14, The Israelites are reacting to the report given by the scouts who went off to check out Canaan. Despite God's clear (earlier) promise to take the Israelites into that land, ten of the twelve scouts said, "we can't get in, they're too great, fortified, giants, etc." Among many great points Prager makes about this story, one tangent involves the roles all of us play in undermining a relationship. In this case, the scouts (followed by the people) are undermining God's relationship with them, "their mission," to bring knowlegde of Him to the world. In smaller ways, but just as importantly, we (being known as Christians) undermine what God looks like to the world when we don't properly handle our own relationships with others. To the great credit of observant Jews throughout the ages, they generally don't claim victimhood. Rather, they ask "what did I/we do to deserve this?" And then, hopefully, deal with that and make amends.
God asks us to love good and hate evil (Amos 5:15 is one of the clearer references; Romans 12:19 is a relevant NT reference). This includes the "evil" we do to our spouse, friends, etc. I put evil in quotes because things we do to our friends and love ones often aren't quite evil, just not good. We must ask ourselves, "what 'evil' did I contribute to this situation?" Recognizing that and making amends is key.
Here's another biggy to consider. Remain ever grateful for your relationships. God hates ingratitude (see much of the Exodus story in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronony). Ingratitude in a relationship leads to evil. When you're grateful for something or someone you have, you care about it/them more, work on the relationship more, and are more open and willing to fix the wrongs that you did in any given situation.
If you want to go really deep, here's an article by "Barry" about reconciliation across the entire Bible. The first six or so pages focus on the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy), the next eight go on with the rest of the Old Testament, and the final fourteen pages cover the New Testament.
Bonus
Early in the Book of Numbers, the Torah makes a point by omission. Immediately before this, God has been instructing census after census of the Israelites and of subsets of the Israelites. Then, genealogies begin. Numbers 3:1, "This is the account of the families of Aaron and Moses...". This is followed in verses 2-4 with an accounting of Aaron's lineage (to date).
What's missing?
At the outset here, Numbers said this was an account of the families of Aaron and Moses. But only Aaron's family is enumerated; not a word about Moses' family. What is the Torah teaching us by this omission? It's beyond just "Moses' offspring weren't worth mentioning."
Prager suggests the bigger lesson is that great men often are miserable fathers. Moses, like all of us, was human. And humans can't do it all. It's great to concentrate on God. But not to the exclusion of other humans, including, or especially, one's family.
Moses lived on through the Torah (thousands of years!). Most of us don't live on in any way like that (some kind of fame that gets us in the history books). We don't live on through our descendants either. Most people can't even name their great grandparents. What we live on through is the values we pass on to the next generation, descendants or not. If not that, most of us don't really "live on" in any meaningful way.
I was reminded of all this when some of our group went to see the new movie "Elvis". It's long (2:39) but the time flies as it's done so well. And we all learned some things, even the Elvis fans amongst us. One thing I was reminded of... Like Moses, Elvis was a great man who was not a great dad. Unlike Moses, Elvis' god was a false god, music. It is so hard for humans to find middle ground in life.
Do you know what Elvis' middle name was? Aaron. The same name as Moses' elder brother.
To be fair, Prager does point out some other possible reasons that Moses' offspring aren't mentioned. 1. They weren't Priests as Aaron's sons were. 2. Moses' sons went to the dark side, Priests of the Calf. 3. Moses' sons didn't carry on Moses' values. #3 is broader than #2 and relates to the discussion immediately above.