Sunday, July 21 - One of These Things
Three Semitic consonants dismantle colonial ideology.
Things are never what they seem, and your eyes can deceive you. Maybe that’s why Sesame Street was so important for so many of us growing up in the seventies.
In 1968, Joan Ganz Cooney introduced the show with the teaching segment “One of These Things.” Her work, set to music by Joe Raposo, conveyed a methodology for study and a life-saving template for correct behavior.
“One of these things,” brothers and sisters, always and forever, is not like the others.
Thank God for that, and thank God for Sesame Street and the teachers of that era who gave a damn, made an effort, and used their capacity to teach as many kids as possible (people they would never meet) the power of observation.
Roots, Habibi, not fruits.
“One of these things is not like the others.”
Are these things different?
How do these things fit together?
Why do some things stand apart?
Why do things appear as they do?
Should these things be excluded because they are different?
Are they different?
‘Ayin-Bet-Resh
‘Ayin-Resh-Bet
Please, somebody, can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
This week, I discuss Luke 6:1.
Sermons
Fr. Aaron Warwick
Fr. Aaron and Jason Ewertt host Teach Me Thy Statutes on the Ephesus School Network.
Fr. Fred Shaheen
Fr. Fred hosts A Light to the Nations on the Ephesus School Network.
Clean Your Eyes
By Rev. Deacon Anthony
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the epistle, Paul tells the Roman church that endurance brings patience, which raises hope. However, the problem for us is: what are we enduring? We are not the original recipients of the epistle.
When he speaks of endurance in tribulation, he means enduring suffering for Christ.
We do not face that choice today. We have the choice to hear the gospel and heed its message.
Our eyes are darkened. We are blinded by the lies the media tells us: that one politician is better than another, and that this matters to us. If we are in Christ, it should not.
Why are you anxious? Why are you afraid? What are you afraid for? Democracy? Why? What does that mean? Democracy for whom?
Even in our own history, as proclaimed in 1776, there was no such thing as democracy. It was a philosophical statement then, and it remains so now. The God of Scripture crushes all philosophical statements.
If the eye of your body is light, then you are trusting in Christ and, through Christ, in God his Father and his instruction.
If you entrust yourself to this instruction and not to one of the politicians, then the light in your body will be light. The lens through which you view the world colors your world. If your lens is CNN and Fox, you get a CNN and Fox-colored world. If your lens is Scripture, you will see God’s signs in a biblically colored world.
As Father said last week, and numerous times before, Scripture is black and white: there is good and there is evil, there is day and there is night. That is why, when Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body,” if your eye is clean—if you view clearly through Scripture—you will be full of light. If you view the world through the eyes of the world, then you will be dark, and your darkness will spew forth darkness.
This is why, brothers and sisters, we do not see a change in our world: we, as Christians, have given up. We have not travailed and persevered under pressure. We have not struggled against anything in the world.
Therefore, our name is ‘former,’ because we say we make our battle with this guy or that guy.
If we submit to Scripture, we would not be anxious. In submission to the gospel, you don’t submit to the ways of the world. Instead, you submit to what the Gentiles—the worldly ones—tell us we should care about: the next big thing, who the president is, etc. All these things that Gentiles worry about because they are blind, and we are blind.
We blind others through our devotion to things that are not of God.
In Romans, Abraham’s righteousness was imputed by God through trust. Circumcision was not the mechanism of Abraham’s righteousness. God gave him the promise before he was circumcised, and circumcision was the seal of that promise. God’s promises to us are given to us, and as a result, we are baptized in hope as a seal of the promise.
God gives life after baptism as a chance to live according to His promise. Until we have struggled to live according to our baptismal promises, until we have struggled to do Scripture to the point where we’ve lost ourselves, we cannot say that we have struggled.
Therefore, we have no hope but God—that God will cleanse the lenses of our eyes, clean the dirtiness of our hearts, and purify us of our idolatries, insolence, and arrogance, believing we are better than those who came before us, so that we can truly see that we are nothing and that God is everything. As a result, we must love the people around us.
And I don’t mean love in a sentimental way. I mean love that becomes active and does something. For example, you put the mulch around the church, not because the building is worth anything, but because your neighbor needs help, and you are commanded to do it.
It is the following of the command, not the result, that matters. The church community is irrelevant.
So when I am commanded to shovel dirt, I will shovel the dirt until kingdom come because it is commanded.
If you are commanded to love your neighbor, then love your neighbor until kingdom come. Or you can spend your time worrying about all the things in the world that everyone wants us to worry about.
May God’s mercy be with you, and remember that mercy today and forever.
Christ is in our midst.
Noah and Abram/Abraham
By the Literary Liturgicist
I am an Orthodox Priest, and this is a personal blog. As the title says, the subject matter here is Scripture, Liturgy, and anything else that catches my attention. Thanks for visiting, and enjoy!
In Genesis 6. 8 – 9, we have the following:
“But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord. These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.”
As we learn from Genesis 6 – 9, the exalted status of Noah was not to last long, as he would emerge from the Ark and soon thereafter plant a vineyard and . . . get drunk. His inebriation would provide the background to his curse of Ham’s son (Canaan). The Bible would then essentially dismiss the remainder of Noah’s life with the words, “After the flood Noah lived three hundred fifty years” (9.28); that is, there is nothing else to say.
So, with the story of Noah, we have a human being who is blameless, righteous, and who walks with God (clean sweep) at the beginning, but who falters at the end. It was through him that humanity was supposed to be given a second chance, so what is God to do now? In Genesis 9, God backstops himself from repeating the Flood, with an everlasting covenant sealed by a rainbow. God cannot wash his hands clean and forget about it all, since through his promise he has committed to humanity.
In Genesis 11 – 12, we are introduced to Abram (i.e., “exalted human being”), a city dweller with . . . many slaves. In chapter 12 we encounter an arrogant, entitled, and selfish human being, who places his wife’s life in jeopardy just to save his own skin. He gets richer through deceit and ends up with . . . more slaves.
By chapter 15, his trust will be accounted to him as righteousness, and in chapter 17, God will command him to “walk before me, and be blameless” (17.1).
So, what is going on?
Well, God will not again begin with the perfect, only to see them falter at the end. He begins with a typical, self-entitled human being, and reforms that human to walk before God and to be blameless. He begins with a broken vessel and fixes it. He teaches him how to walk before God and how to be blameless. It takes time.
Abram is us — exalted in our thinking, entitled, possessive, and all too relatable.
Jesus later on will explain this when he says that those who are high will be brought low, and the humble will be exalted (Matthew 23. 12). It is not how you begin life, but how you end.
Rūḥ al-Quddus
By Blaise Webster
Today marks the feast of Pentecost in the Orthodox Church. This will be a brief post, but it is important to understand what the feast of Pentecost is and furthermore, what the Bible means by “the Holy Spirit”.
Pentecost was not an original Christian holiday, but like Pascha, was carried over from the Jewish calendar. In the Old Testament, Pentecost was the Feast of Weeks. This feast commemorated the giving of the Decalogue to Moses on Mount Sinai. That is the main thread of this holiday. Pentecost is about God instructing his people.
These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. — Jn 14:15–31
We see from that passage from John’s gospel that the main function of Jesus’ sending of the Holy Spirit to his disciples is principally to teach them. In scripture, “spirits” are often intertwined with teaching. In 1 John, the author speaks of testing different spirits to see whether or not they have correct teachings.
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. — 1 Jn 4:1
In 1 Corinthians, Paul similarly speaks of “spirit” in the same manner as “teaching”.
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. — 1 Cor 2:12–13
While the word “spiritual” certainly conjures (pun intended) many images for us of mysticism and “feeling”, in scripture, “spiritual” refers to something leading an individual. A “teaching” prompts a response, and thus leads you in a certain direction. This is because the word “spirit” literally refers to “breath”. This is true in nearly every language I can think of (although, I’m sure there are exceptions). In Hebrew, the word for spirit is ruaḥ, related to the Arabic ruḥ. Both can mean “breath” or wind. Take, for instance, the story of Job.
And behold, a great wind (Heb. ruaḥ gedolah) came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you. — Job 1:19
In Greek, the word is pnevma from the verb pneō meaning “I blow”. Thus, it can also refer to wind or breath. We see this connection clearly in the original Greek of John’s gospel.
The wind (pnevma) blows (pnei)where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (pnevmatos). — Jn 3:8
We also have Jesus being “led” by the Spirit into the wilderness of Syria following his baptism. Why is he led? Because the Spirit is a “wind”. It is simply the same word, a connection that we miss out on in English. While it does have a more sinister connotation now, English does natively have the word ghost which comes from the Germanic ghast, meaning “breath” or “wind”. We inherited “spirit” from the Latin spiritus, also referring to breath. If we think about some of our English vocabulary, we can see it present in many words. “Inspire” comes from the Latin meaning breathed into. “Ex-spire” means that breath has left something. “Spiration” refers to breathing in general. We even have words derived from Greek, like “pneumatic”, referring to “breathing”. Interestingly, the Greek adjective pnevmatikos, translates to “spiritual”. In the gospels, Christ has to cleanse many individuals from impure spirits because those spirits are leading them astray.
So the question becomes, which spirit will you follow? There are many spirits out there, but only one is holy. How are we to effectively test spirits? John gives us the answer.
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. — 1 Jn 4:2–3
What does it mean to confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? It is to acknowledge that Christ has set us free from the “elemental” spirits of the world (Col. 2:20). As Paul thunders in 1 Corinthians 8, we are to proclaim one God and one Lord. This proclamation invalidates every other so-called “god” and “lord”. This includes literal pagan deities of course, but also political leaders and ideologies, religious traditions and teachers, national and tribal identity, ourselves generally, and the things we create and concoct with our own hands. We love to worship literally everything but the God who created us. To truly confess Christ in the flesh is to proclaim freedom from the wordly powers, but complete surrender (aslama) to God. In other words, لا إله إلا الله. There is no god, but God. This isn’t just a passive belief in monotheism. This is a proclamation that your one reference is God, and by extension, his teaching. Nothing else is to come between you and God. That is the freedom secured by Christ. That is the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and the recasting of the feast of Pentecost in light of Jeremiah 31:31 where the Holy Spirit would indwell the believer, writing the law on their hearts. As such, the Holy Spirit is called paraklētos, which literally means to “call alongside” in Greek. In other words, it is a helper, comforter, or a counselor.
Do not be fooled by anyone, or any organization, that seek to put you back into bondage. You are free, bought by the blood of Christ. There is only one God, and he has no partners and he calls you to show mercy to your needy neighbor. That is why, if you read the rest of 1 John 4, he speaks exclusively about God as love itself. This is the true teaching, the true Spirit from God. Other spirits call us to serve ourselves. God tells us to serve those who are needy and forgotten by the world. It is about love and mercy. Nothing else matters.
Weekly Arabic and Hebrew Lexicography
By Fr. Marc Boulos
“With respect to Hebrew lexicography, the “great reservoir” of Arabic literature and vocabulary has not been dealt with satisfactorily.”; Guillaume, Alfred. Hebrew and Arabic Lexicography: A Comparative Study. Brill Archive, 1965, p. 1.; Centuries earlier, Ibn Barun, a Jewish Rabbi and famed grammarian of al-Andalus, produced his great work, The Book of Comparison Between the Hebrew and the Arabic Languages. It was his conviction that because Arabic continued as a living Semitic language, it was invaluable for providing insight into the biblical text and for the comparative study of Hebrew.; Wechter, Pinchas. Ibn Barun’s Arabic Works on Hebrew Grammar and Lexicography. 1964. (Dark Sayings, p. 111)
ש-ב-ת (Shin-Bet-Tav) and س-ب-ت (Sīn-Bāʾ-Tāʾ)
In Biblical Semitic, the triliteral root ש-ב-ת (Shin-Bet-Tav) can mean “to cease” or “to rest” and is associated with the function “judgment.” In Hebrew, it is sometimes vocalized as “שַׁבָּת” (Shabbat); In Arabic, as “السبت” (as-Sabt).
These roots do not directly refer to seven but are closely related. The function seven in both languages is rendered with an ʿaiyn:
ש-ב-ע (Shin-Bet-Ayin) and س-ب-ع (Sīn-Bāʾ-ʿAyn)
I will cover this in a future entry.
ש-ב-ת (Shin-Bet-Tav)
Judgment:
“Thus I will punish the world for its evil And the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end (וְהִשְׁבַּתִּי, we-hishbati) to the arrogance of the proud And abase the haughtiness of the ruthless.” (Isaiah 13:11)
Rest:
“By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested (שָׁבַת, shabat) on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it He rested (שָׁבַת, shabat) from all His work which God had created and made.” (Genesis 2:2–3)
Cessation:
“The manna ceased (שָׁבַת, shabat) on the day after they had eaten some of the produce of the land, so that the sons of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate some of the yield of the land of Canaan during that year.” (Joshua 5:12)
س-ب-ت (Sīn-Bāʾ-Tāʾ)
Rest:
“سبات” (subāt): Sleep or slumber, indicating a state of rest.
“مسبوت” (masbūt): Unconscious or in a deep sleep.
Not to be confused with “مظبوط” (mazbūt), meaning correct or accurate.
“سبات” (subāt): Can also indicate hibernation, which relates to the function “cessation,” above.