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life and death by the dates: gravestones in Pennsylvania

April 28, 2010 by David Baer

My distant relatives Johannes and Anna Maria Weaver (Weber) Hoy lived to the ripe old age of 78 and 76. After a Sunday afternoon drive through the greening fields and mountains of Lykens Valley in a luxuriant Pennsylvania Springtime, it is easy to imagine Johannes and Anna breathing the fresh air and working the rich soil of the place. Life might have seemed inevitable.

Yet death stalked this unfortunate couple.

Prolific though they were, life seems to have been fated against their desire to raise children to the healthy adult strength that came naturally to them. Continue Reading »

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self-inflicted Midianites: Judges 6

April 27, 2010 by David Baer

The biblical book of Judges skimps neither in its attribution of blame nor its assessment of the consequences.

The book’s famous historiographical circle elevates both the agency of the ‘judge’ and the responsiveness of YHWH to genuine remorse. In this uncommon biblical moment of history-as-cycle, the Israelites gradually forget the blessed stringency urged upon them by a judge whose oversight brought them peace and some measure or prosperity; they veer into rebellion against YHWH’s exclusive demands; YHWH visits upon them the affliction that is seen to be deserved; the Israelites wake up and call to YHWH out of their affliction; YHWH responds in mercy by sending a new ‘judge’, who sets the nation and its environs to right. Continue Reading »

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the opposition of wills: Luke 22

April 26, 2010 by David Baer

It requires a peculiar strength to assert one’s will as the penultimate thing.

He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.

In Gethsemane’s anteroom to judicial murder, Jesus knew exactly what he wanted: to live.

If there was glory in the arrest, the beatings, the cross that waited him, there was no pleasure. It came to Jesus’ lips as a most bitter, unwanted cup. He would have done almost anything to escape its venom.

Almost anything. On this the world hinges. Continue Reading »

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emergency provision: Joshua 5

April 12, 2010 by David Baer

The early chapters of the book of Joshua twist together twin threads. First, there is Joshua’s assumption of the dead Moses’ leadership of Israel. Then, the occupation of the land promised to the Israelites a very long time ago.

Twin threads. The emerging nation, in this literary history, is required to ’embrace change’—as we say a little too often today—in two important ways.

First, they must choose whether they will follow YHWH’s newly anointed leader, who is very much unlike his famous predecessor. Second, they must learn to provide for themselves in a land that seems poised to cooperate with the effort. Continue Reading »

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burying Moses: Deuteronomy 34

April 10, 2010 by David Baer

It is not difficult to imagine the scandal caused by the Hebrew Bible’s rehearsal of Moses’ burial. Vocalized as it is in the traditional text, the verb is active and has a single subject: and he buried (him) …. Indeed, the Hebrew particle that stands behind the English word him virtually assures that this reading is the intended one. It is hard in context to imagine another subject than YHWH.

There is little alternative: we should read … and (YHWH) buried him ….

Yet a witness as old as the Septuagint feels the scandal of this divine interment. So does a translation as recent as the NRSV. The former should be translated … and they buried him ... The latter reads … and he was buried …

YHWH, it appears, is not easily envisaged scraping out a crevice in the hard ground, then gently laying his friend Moses’ body into it, covering him tenderly against the ravaging hyena and the grave-robber. Continue Reading »

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(some) women don’t get it: guy friends doing it their way

April 7, 2010 by David Baer

I must confess that a smattering of cheer floats in this third cup of coffee or, more likely, comes via this morning’s Wall Street Journal article called ‘Friendship for Guys (No Tears!)‘

An explanation may be in order.

Allow me to begin it with an uncharacteristically (for a man, apparently) dramatic statement: I have guy friends who would die for me. They’ve never told me so, yet I know this to be true. I would die for them, too. Pardon the whiff of melodrama, these are just the facts. Continue Reading »

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putting ‘er in park: 10th Annual Holliday Park Trail Run

April 7, 2010 by David Baer

Something there is about an urban gem.

The architectural delight hidden among blight, the greenery ensconced in gray, the unanticipated lung—as it is described in Latin American Spanish—of a green space where one least expects it brings a quiet satisfaction to the attentive city-dweller.

So it is that Holliday Park, an enchanting jewel half-rustic, half-refined, just across the street from my home adds such luster to life’s rhythms. There I run my dogs along well-manicured and forested paths. There on a Sunday afternoon hundreds of city-dwellers speaking various languages congregate for family picnics and church pitch-ins in a bodacious display of urban civility. Multiply hewed children play together without marking their differences on a high-quality playground funded in part by local residents who band together as the Friends of Holliday Park. Continue Reading »

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living the moment, iTunes randomness, and divine sovereignty

April 5, 2010 by David Baer

On an Indianapolis afternoon when it seems as though Spring my have decisively wrenched the world from Winter’s icy grip, human need runs deep in the streets. As in this poor man’s heart.

iTunes, as is parroted in the way that becomes truisms with their undeniable kernel of truth, has changed the way we listen to music. And talk and sermons.

So does this battered survivor’s heart find itself caressed this afternoon by the alleged randomness of iTunes as it works its way via its own inscrutable logic through my embarrassingly bulging iTunes library. Continue Reading »

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opening day, one more time

April 4, 2010 by David Baer

Here in the Man Cave, the Hated Yanks are taking on my Red Sox on a beautiful evening at Fenway Park.

The estimable and comfortable duo of Jon Miller and Joe Morgan is once again complemented by the sensible, well-timed interjections of Orel ‘The Bulldog’ Herschizer.

Truth be told (tell it not in Red Sox Nation!), I lost my capacity to hate the Damned Yanks several years ago when they clawed their way back from an abysmal start by sheer grit and professionalism. Now I respect the pinstripes and, in unguarded moments, feel a twinge of affection for the boys in the Bronx. Continue Reading »

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the deep magic: Luke 24

April 4, 2010 by David Baer

Death is turned back on a morning like this one.

If the witch had truly understood the deep magic, we are told in the cinematic paraphrase of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, she might have interpreted the deep magic rather differently.

In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! (Luke 24)

Hell’s formidable genius is unable correctly to decipher the meaningful scrawlings of truth. The witch and all who follow her are outwitted on Easter Sunday. Aslan is no longer dead, though his death was most real. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Continue Reading »

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