Small Among the Nations
The great Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth, is often quoted as saying that ministers should preach “with the Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other.” With the meaning that the church is not an ivory tower – we don’t study God’s Word simply as an academic exercise. Instead, our biblical knowledge should explicitly inform our experience of the world around us. We cannot and should not sequester ourselves from the goings-on of the outside world, but instead apply our biblical principles to our everyday lives.
Which is all well and good, and that’s something I certainly strive for week in and week out.
But I think I’m sort of at the point where we’ve basically got two major current events dominating our conversations – the pandemic coupled with social and racial unrest – and everything else is subsumed by those two over-arching stories – and I’m at the point where I don’t know how many more words and how much more oxygen I can usefully pour into those stories.
So one role of the church is to be a prophetic voice to the world, speaking to the moral and ethical issues of the day. And it’s a role that should be taken seriously and not ignored.
But another role of the church is to be a sanctuary. To be a place where people can come to find a moment of rest and recharge before heading out into the world again. And that’s where I find myself today. By now we’re all fully well aware of the effects of the pandemic on our area and the restrictions we live under. And we’re grateful that in our area the worst of it seems to be behind us, even as we pray for other parts of the country where it’s picking up speed. And we’re also fully aware of the voices of our black countrymen, for whom the reality of America far too often falls short of its promises.
None of us live under rocks. None of us don’t know what’s going on in the world. It’s on our newscasts, in our social media feeds, we live it 24/7. That doesn’t mean that you’ll never hear me mention Covid or racial justice or any other big news stories from the pulpit again. But it does mean that I’m ready for a time of sanctuary, and a semblance of normalcy.
For me, normalcy means that in the summer months, I ditch the lectionary and look to do a sermon series, which we usually start in June. Now, the past few months we’ve obviously been talking about other things, so this summer’s series will be a little bit abbreviated, but I thought we’d take a look at some of the minor prophets of the Old Testament – some of the books that many of us might only know because we once learned a song or a rhyme in Sunday School some decades ago, listing out all the books of the Bible.
So we start this morning with Obadiah.
Raise your hand if you can remember the last time you read Obadiah.
Me neither.
It’s the shortest book of the Old Testament. Obadiah is considered one of the “minor” prophets… the difference between a major prophet, like Isaiah or Jeremiah, and a minor prophet simply being how long their books are. It’s not often we get to read an entire book of the Bible in one church service, but today we do.
And it’s a cheerful read (he said, sarcastically).
There’s a popular conception of the Bible that the Old Testament is all tough love, doom and gloom, fire and brimstone, while the New Testament is all touchy-feely, Jesus is my best-buddy, everything’s going to be hunky-dory. And I don’t particularly buy into that generalization, because we can see times in the New Testament when God gets angry, when Jesus flips over tables and beats people out of the temple with a whip. And we see plenty of times in the Old Testament when God shows love and mercy and compassion for his people, and God works with a soft touch.
This is not one of those times.
Obadiah is speaking to the Edomites – a nation of people in what is now southern Israel and southwestern Jordan. And God is angry at them. Angry because the Edomites, founded by and descended from Esau, the son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham, have been acting with hostility and violence against the Israelites – the tribes of Jacob, Esau’s brother.
The Edomites have waged war against the Israelites in acts of aggression that are not merely tribe against tribe or nation against nation… but brother against brother… kin against kin.
Why?
Because in the political structure of ancient Israel, the Edomites were kind of a punchline. They were a vassal state to Jerusalem, paying them tithes and taxes… they were poor, rural, and of very little industry or account. They were held in low regard. Yet they supported and controlled an important caravan route between the major powers of Egypt and Babylon. And so they fostered those relationships, and earned a little bit of money.
And when war came… when Nebuchadnezzar’s army came into Israel and sacked Jerusalem and the great exile began… the Edomites, it is said, neglected their blood ties to the Israelites, and instead remembered their scorn and their insults. And they remembered their trade with the Babylonians and helped them loot the city.
God does not take too kindly to their belligerence.
Yes, they were something of a punchline, a nation of little consequence, a people of small importance to greater Israel. But they were still a part of Israel’s people, who betrayed their kin for revenge and retribution.
And so the Edomites incur God’s wrath and we get the prophetic voice of Obadiah, declaring that God will make them small among the nations; they will be utterly despised; they will be covered in shame; they will be destroyed forever; Jacob will be a fire and Joseph a flame and Esau will be a stubble – they will set him on fire and he will burn – there will be no survivors from Esau.
Esau’s people, the Edomites, are held in low regard, with little respect. And given the chance to exact some revenge against their brethren from Jerusalem, they take it, and aid the Babylonians in their invasion. An invasion sent by God, by the way, if we remember our prophecies from Jeremiah. And this makes God angry.
So what do we take away from this?
To me, this speaks to how seriously God takes the idea of covenant. Of bonds of kin and family. God expects us uphold our relationships, even when they become difficult.
That as much as the tribe of Esau might have wished they were not connected to the Israelites, that their bonds of blood and culture, language and religion, history and tradition – made them part of that Judean covenant, even if they were not, strictly speaking, part of the 12 tribes.
Which, to my mind, means that there’s two reasons God may be angry. Not just because Edom is in covenant with Israel and that God wanted them to respect the covenant of the nation. But also because, as part of that covenant, Israel’s got a punishment coming, which means that Edom should take it too. And if God has decreed that all of his people will be punished by the sword of Babylon, then no one should get to escape that punishment by jumping ship and siding with Babylon.
When God puts us in relationship with other people, and especially in relationship with God’s own self – we need to think long and hard about our reasons before we go about trying to damage that relationship. I don’t think loyalty needs to be blind, and that there are never good reasons for breaking covenant – but that doesn’t mean we get to go around shifting our allegiances and our identities all willy-nilly just because we feel like it.
Loyalty to one’s people counts for something. It builds trust. It lends weight to our words when we say, “this is who I am and what I stand for and who I stand with.” And that matters whether we’re talking about things like national politics, or our religious affiliations, our own families, or any other of the many, many covenants we may find ourselves in over the course of our lives. And some of those covenants may be intended to last only a short while – where God needs us with certain people for a certain time and for a certain purpose – that actually describes the majority of our relationships, I think. But others are more permanent. Longer-lasting. And require more work and investment and commitment to make them fruitful.
I’ll close with this reminder. That even though Obadiah is a prophet of doom and gloom, and fire and brimstone… that the God that he serves, and the God that we serve, is a God of love. It’s not always easy to see in some of our writings. But it’s there.
God loves when we embrace our common faith and come together in our worship of him. God loves when we embrace each other, lifting each other up, supporting each other, and – when it comes time to take our lumps – taking our lumps together. God loves us as a parent loves a child, inviting us to be full and valued members of God’s own family. And God loves when we take that invitation – that expectation, really – seriously.
When we break covenant – especially through acts of vengeance and betrayal – well… God gets angry.
God’s anger manifests itself in different ways these days. God’s promise has always been to look on us with kindness and compassion, as God longs to be gracious and merciful. And that promise is sealed in the blood of Jesus Christ. So we’re less in the days of full-on smiting as foretold by Obadiah, and more in the days of God as a parent who “isn’t mad – just disappointed.”
But that doesn’t mean we can discount Obadiah and the prophets like him. Because they’re part of God’s story. Without the anger, without the fire and brimstone, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate God’s goodness and the full meaning of God’s love that we share through Jesus Christ.
God can get angry. God is fully capable. And a quick and easy way to tempt God’s anger is through disloyalty to him, betrayal of our brothers and sisters, and seeking vengeance for our own pride and reward as the Edomites did. But though God can get angry, we do not serve an angry God. But a God of love, mercy, and kindness. Which God shows us for his own glory, and not our own. To God be all glory, praise, and honor. Amen.
Let us pray.
Most holy and righteous God, fill us this morning with your Spirit. Awaken us to the bonds of covenant we share all around us. Help us to work on those relationships that may be strained and that need our attention. Above all, inspire us to love you as you love us. We pray this in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom we are bound in covenant with you forever. Amen.
The great Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth, is often quoted as saying that ministers should preach “with the Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other.” With the meaning that the church is not an ivory tower – we don’t study God’s Word simply as an academic exercise. Instead, our biblical knowledge should explicitly inform our experience of the world around us. We cannot and should not sequester ourselves from the goings-on of the outside world, but instead apply our biblical principles to our everyday lives.
Which is all well and good, and that’s something I certainly strive for week in and week out.
But I think I’m sort of at the point where we’ve basically got two major current events dominating our conversations – the pandemic coupled with social and racial unrest – and everything else is subsumed by those two over-arching stories – and I’m at the point where I don’t know how many more words and how much more oxygen I can usefully pour into those stories.
So one role of the church is to be a prophetic voice to the world, speaking to the moral and ethical issues of the day. And it’s a role that should be taken seriously and not ignored.
But another role of the church is to be a sanctuary. To be a place where people can come to find a moment of rest and recharge before heading out into the world again. And that’s where I find myself today. By now we’re all fully well aware of the effects of the pandemic on our area and the restrictions we live under. And we’re grateful that in our area the worst of it seems to be behind us, even as we pray for other parts of the country where it’s picking up speed. And we’re also fully aware of the voices of our black countrymen, for whom the reality of America far too often falls short of its promises.
None of us live under rocks. None of us don’t know what’s going on in the world. It’s on our newscasts, in our social media feeds, we live it 24/7. That doesn’t mean that you’ll never hear me mention Covid or racial justice or any other big news stories from the pulpit again. But it does mean that I’m ready for a time of sanctuary, and a semblance of normalcy.
For me, normalcy means that in the summer months, I ditch the lectionary and look to do a sermon series, which we usually start in June. Now, the past few months we’ve obviously been talking about other things, so this summer’s series will be a little bit abbreviated, but I thought we’d take a look at some of the minor prophets of the Old Testament – some of the books that many of us might only know because we once learned a song or a rhyme in Sunday School some decades ago, listing out all the books of the Bible.
So we start this morning with Obadiah.
Raise your hand if you can remember the last time you read Obadiah.
Me neither.
It’s the shortest book of the Old Testament. Obadiah is considered one of the “minor” prophets… the difference between a major prophet, like Isaiah or Jeremiah, and a minor prophet simply being how long their books are. It’s not often we get to read an entire book of the Bible in one church service, but today we do.
And it’s a cheerful read (he said, sarcastically).
There’s a popular conception of the Bible that the Old Testament is all tough love, doom and gloom, fire and brimstone, while the New Testament is all touchy-feely, Jesus is my best-buddy, everything’s going to be hunky-dory. And I don’t particularly buy into that generalization, because we can see times in the New Testament when God gets angry, when Jesus flips over tables and beats people out of the temple with a whip. And we see plenty of times in the Old Testament when God shows love and mercy and compassion for his people, and God works with a soft touch.
This is not one of those times.
Obadiah is speaking to the Edomites – a nation of people in what is now southern Israel and southwestern Jordan. And God is angry at them. Angry because the Edomites, founded by and descended from Esau, the son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham, have been acting with hostility and violence against the Israelites – the tribes of Jacob, Esau’s brother.
The Edomites have waged war against the Israelites in acts of aggression that are not merely tribe against tribe or nation against nation… but brother against brother… kin against kin.
Why?
Because in the political structure of ancient Israel, the Edomites were kind of a punchline. They were a vassal state to Jerusalem, paying them tithes and taxes… they were poor, rural, and of very little industry or account. They were held in low regard. Yet they supported and controlled an important caravan route between the major powers of Egypt and Babylon. And so they fostered those relationships, and earned a little bit of money.
And when war came… when Nebuchadnezzar’s army came into Israel and sacked Jerusalem and the great exile began… the Edomites, it is said, neglected their blood ties to the Israelites, and instead remembered their scorn and their insults. And they remembered their trade with the Babylonians and helped them loot the city.
God does not take too kindly to their belligerence.
Yes, they were something of a punchline, a nation of little consequence, a people of small importance to greater Israel. But they were still a part of Israel’s people, who betrayed their kin for revenge and retribution.
And so the Edomites incur God’s wrath and we get the prophetic voice of Obadiah, declaring that God will make them small among the nations; they will be utterly despised; they will be covered in shame; they will be destroyed forever; Jacob will be a fire and Joseph a flame and Esau will be a stubble – they will set him on fire and he will burn – there will be no survivors from Esau.
Esau’s people, the Edomites, are held in low regard, with little respect. And given the chance to exact some revenge against their brethren from Jerusalem, they take it, and aid the Babylonians in their invasion. An invasion sent by God, by the way, if we remember our prophecies from Jeremiah. And this makes God angry.
So what do we take away from this?
To me, this speaks to how seriously God takes the idea of covenant. Of bonds of kin and family. God expects us uphold our relationships, even when they become difficult.
That as much as the tribe of Esau might have wished they were not connected to the Israelites, that their bonds of blood and culture, language and religion, history and tradition – made them part of that Judean covenant, even if they were not, strictly speaking, part of the 12 tribes.
Which, to my mind, means that there’s two reasons God may be angry. Not just because Edom is in covenant with Israel and that God wanted them to respect the covenant of the nation. But also because, as part of that covenant, Israel’s got a punishment coming, which means that Edom should take it too. And if God has decreed that all of his people will be punished by the sword of Babylon, then no one should get to escape that punishment by jumping ship and siding with Babylon.
When God puts us in relationship with other people, and especially in relationship with God’s own self – we need to think long and hard about our reasons before we go about trying to damage that relationship. I don’t think loyalty needs to be blind, and that there are never good reasons for breaking covenant – but that doesn’t mean we get to go around shifting our allegiances and our identities all willy-nilly just because we feel like it.
Loyalty to one’s people counts for something. It builds trust. It lends weight to our words when we say, “this is who I am and what I stand for and who I stand with.” And that matters whether we’re talking about things like national politics, or our religious affiliations, our own families, or any other of the many, many covenants we may find ourselves in over the course of our lives. And some of those covenants may be intended to last only a short while – where God needs us with certain people for a certain time and for a certain purpose – that actually describes the majority of our relationships, I think. But others are more permanent. Longer-lasting. And require more work and investment and commitment to make them fruitful.
I’ll close with this reminder. That even though Obadiah is a prophet of doom and gloom, and fire and brimstone… that the God that he serves, and the God that we serve, is a God of love. It’s not always easy to see in some of our writings. But it’s there.
God loves when we embrace our common faith and come together in our worship of him. God loves when we embrace each other, lifting each other up, supporting each other, and – when it comes time to take our lumps – taking our lumps together. God loves us as a parent loves a child, inviting us to be full and valued members of God’s own family. And God loves when we take that invitation – that expectation, really – seriously.
When we break covenant – especially through acts of vengeance and betrayal – well… God gets angry.
God’s anger manifests itself in different ways these days. God’s promise has always been to look on us with kindness and compassion, as God longs to be gracious and merciful. And that promise is sealed in the blood of Jesus Christ. So we’re less in the days of full-on smiting as foretold by Obadiah, and more in the days of God as a parent who “isn’t mad – just disappointed.”
But that doesn’t mean we can discount Obadiah and the prophets like him. Because they’re part of God’s story. Without the anger, without the fire and brimstone, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate God’s goodness and the full meaning of God’s love that we share through Jesus Christ.
God can get angry. God is fully capable. And a quick and easy way to tempt God’s anger is through disloyalty to him, betrayal of our brothers and sisters, and seeking vengeance for our own pride and reward as the Edomites did. But though God can get angry, we do not serve an angry God. But a God of love, mercy, and kindness. Which God shows us for his own glory, and not our own. To God be all glory, praise, and honor. Amen.
Let us pray.
Most holy and righteous God, fill us this morning with your Spirit. Awaken us to the bonds of covenant we share all around us. Help us to work on those relationships that may be strained and that need our attention. Above all, inspire us to love you as you love us. We pray this in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom we are bound in covenant with you forever. Amen.