by j. Snodgrass
Given 26 January, 2008
When I finished college at 21, the first piece of advice I got was this : Kiss your twenties good-bye – nobody gets anywhere in their twenties anymore. I resisted, I denied, and then I worked some jobs, ate some pizza, lived in some apartments, smoked some cigarettes, and here I am, just around the corner from thirty. Wow. And then I found out that this is some kind of cultural phenomena – the vanishing twenties, the disappearing decade, the lost years.
How did this happen? When did it begin? Well, I decided to start my search way back, in the opening book of the Bible, see if it might shed some light. And I found the results pretty comforting. Take Abraham, for example, when the Lord told him about fatherhood.
Genesis 17:17 ‚Äì ‚ÄúAbraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” (NIV)
Abraham’s wife Sarah had a similar reaction to motherhood.
Genesis 18:12 – “Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, ‘After I am worn out and my [husband] is old, will I now have this pleasure?’”
And then of course there’s old Noah, who built the ark. But when I say ‘old’ I really mean, as we read in Genesis 7:6, “Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters [swelled] the earth.” (NIV)
Noah, what happened? “Well, I worked some jobs, ate some matzo, lived in some huts, smoked my pipe and here I am, just around the corner from six hundred.”
And then I started wondering‚Ķwhere was Jesus in his twenties? The gospel of Luke has him at age twelve, making mischief in the Temple and then‚Ķhe‚Äôs thirty years old, being baptized for repentance…
5-Min Skit on Prophets, Politics & Upcoming Elections
January 14, 2008
BIBLICAL PRESENTATION – GOD AND POLITICS (for Marble Collegiate Church)
By j. Snodgrass
NARRATOR : So there’s an election coming up, and all the candidates are falling over themselves to let us know what they believe, what’s their favorite hymn…WWJVF? Who would Jesus vote for?
So I thought we could ask some of the Hebrew Prophets, see what they had to say about political issues of their day…which, believe it or not, are pretty much exactly the same as now. Should we stand by while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Should we go to war? Does God want us to have a king at all?
Naturally, all of the prophets are different, and yet just about all of them had some things in common. It was the prophet’s job to stand against the king, and probably die for it. What do you call a prophet who agrees with the king, who is liked by everyone, who says things are fine? A false prophet. What does king Ahab call the prophet Elijah? Troubler of Israel (1 Kings 18:17). Oh my enemy (1 Kings 21:20). And three times in one day, Ahab sent fifty soldiers to kill him (2 Kings 1). That might be why in so many cases, when the Lord calls to say “You shall be my prophet,” the reply is, almost invariably…
PROPHETS : Oh no, I’m not the one you’re looking for.
NARRATOR : In the tenth century before the common era, what‚Äôs now known as Israel was a group of tribes doing the best they could to raise crops and animals. But sea-pirates called the Philestines showed up on the west coast and started working their way inward, sacking villages, setting up cities, and ruling over the populations. So, the Israelites decided what they needed was a military chieftain to raise up an army and fight. The prophet Samuel warned the Israelites that a king might not be in their best interests…
SAMUEL : “This is what the king‚Ķwill do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands‚Ķand others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards‚Ķand give them to his attendants‚Ķ.He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you.” (1 Samuel 8:10-18, NIV)
NARRATOR : …Sound familiar? This is pretty much the standard contract between population and ruler, to this day. Saul, the first chieftain, was cool – he beat the Philestines, but didn’t interfere much with the populace. David was famously David, but Solomon made all of Samuel’s predictions come true and more – taxation, forced labor, the draft, and a brand of inequality the Israelites hadn’t known since Egypt.