It is a confusing conversation. There are conversationalists: a king named David, a prophet named Nathan, and God. Part of what is confusing is that in the recent past God and King David had conversed directly, face to face, as it were, in real time. In this instance, they don’t talk directly to each other, but communicate through an intermediary: through the prophet Nathan.
Threshold fear. That’s what the librarians at the Library of Congress call it. It is the common condition and experience of those who first encounter the Library of Congress.1 The Library’s massive, daunting, seemingly impenetrable buildings engender fear. Its 37 million books contain quantities of information so vast and deep, so broad and high, their very presence renders your entire sum of knowledge (the knowledge you have earned in books and study, over a life-time of hard knocks) .... as pathetic, laughable. Threshold fear.
Armor? Breastplate and shield? Helmet and sword? Is Paul serious? Is Paul being just a little too dramatic? After all, we’re talking about the Christian life, right? I don’t know about you, but when I think of the Christian life, I tend to summon bucolic images of pastures and sheep, kindness and love, the gentle strumming of harps and a community of people whose lives are devoted to God and one another.
If you were forced to describe Christianity, the Gospel, to an alien from another planet and if you had only seven words in which to do it, what seven words would you choose?1
If you found yourself in an elevator with a Buddhist who was curious about Christianity ... genuinely curious about your life of faith, and if you only had time to utter seven words to explain to this Buddhist what this faith is to you, means to you, does for you, what do you say?
What seven words best capture, evoke or give witness to your faith?
You know him as a great patriot and a not so great brewer (or maltster). But did you know about his profound devotional life?
You know he was a fierce leader of the Sons of Liberty and a Founding Father of this nation. But did you know that he married a minister’s daughter and that his Christian faith, his Puritan faith, was at the core of his life, of his patriotism and of his politics?
The story does not begin with Philip. It does not begin with the Ethiopian eunuch. It does not begin with Isaiah or baptism. It begins with God. It begins with these words: “An angel of the Lord said to Philip: ‘Get up and go ...’”
God is the story’s protagonist, initiator and hero. It begins with God whose messenger instructs Philip: “Get up and go ... go toward the south ... to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
Once upon a time, in a Galilee far, far away, there lived a young woman, a teenager, a Jewish peasant girl. And, God help her, she is pregnant and unmarried.
She dwells in a land occupied by a great and mighty empire, Rome ... a land occupied, controlled by an army ... a peace enforced by the threat of violence or actual violence: you choose.
The occupation of Mary’s land means that Mary’s heart and life, and her people’s hearts and lives, are also occupied, occupied by insecurity and fear.
There are two sentences smack in the middle of the story of the Magi upon which the whole world turns.
The first of the two sentences: “Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?’
The second sentence immediately follows the first: “When King Herod heard this question, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.”