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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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what to ask for: Luke 11

April 4, 2010 by David Baer

When Jesus’ disciples ask him for training in prayer, he has just finished praying. Presumably they are moved to pray because the sight of Jesus in conversation with his Father stimulates them to desire the same.

It would seem, then, that the thing Jesus instructs his disciples to ask for is what he himself has been requesting.

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.”‘

We are told to ask the Father that his reputation might be set apart as untouchable and untarnished. As well, we learn to desire that his rule might be realized in our space and time as it is known to prevail even now in heaven. Continue Reading »

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hearing without seeing: Deuteronomy 26

April 4, 2010 by David Baer

The Bible regularly privileges hearing over seeing.

From time to time the priority of audition over vision is hammered home from complementary angles. On the one hand, Israel is commanded to listen. On the other, she is forbidden to craft a visual representation of her speaking Lord.

Then Moses and the levitical priests spoke to all Israel, saying: ‘Keep silence and hear, O Israel! This very day you have become the people of the LORD your God. Therefore obey the LORD your God, observing his commandments and his statutes that I am commanding you today.’ The same day Moses charged the people as follows: ‘When you have crossed over the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim for the blessing of the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. And these shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. Then the Levites shall declare in a loud voice to all the Israelites:

“Cursed be anyone who makes an idol or casts an image, anything abhorrent to the LORD, the work of an artisan, and sets it up in secret.” All the people shall respond, saying, “Amen!”’

Context makes clear that the forbidden idol here is not merely a hidden—that is to say, extra-official—image, but any image shaped to present YHWH to human eyes.

The logic of this persistent privileging of the ear over the eye as the organ of choice for a new nation is not too difficult to discern. Israel’s ongoing proximity to her redeeming Lord demands a mental, an intellectual grappling with his person and his presence. Clearly, both ear and eye are organs of sense, so the affirmation of the value of hearing YHWH and the prohibition of seeing him does not reduce to a mere preference for the abstract over the sensual. The distinction is not so much one of kind as of degree. Continue Reading »

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What makes a great teacher? (with thanks to ‘Mr Wolf’)

April 3, 2010 by David Baer

As we speak, my oldest son beavers away at a history degree at a fine university in this country’s Pacific Northwest. Our telephone conversations and Spring Break bike rides on Indy’s wonderful Monon Trail are punctuated by discussions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the continuing relevance of Plato’s Republic as well as the merits of road over mountain bikes and the fitness benefits of pushing along really fat tires.

Why history? Because First Son’s strong but uneven education at the British School of Costa Rica brought him into contact with the curmudgeonly but brilliant and engaged ‘Mr Wolf’, an historian with a stubborn and inelegant fixation on making history relevant for high school students in what others of his ilk might have dismissed as an intellectual and cultural backwater. Continue Reading »

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bereft in good company (for Cris, for Sandy)

April 1, 2010 by David Baer

On the rough outer orbit of two of the worst evenings of my just over half-century of accumulated life, I find myself after a good day’s work in the company of a kindred spirit over good steak, crowned with two fine scallops, adorned with something red.

How can such pain mingle so seamlessly with such hilarity, such good company, such joy?

Cast me gently into morning, for the night has been unkind.

—Sarah McLachlan

Those of us nursed and nourished on good decades are, arguably, poorly prepared for anguish, for loss.

We have no precedent for the madness, for the illogic, for the unbending chaos that comes on the lips of those we have loved, those whom we would love still if we were permitted.

What do we do then? Continue Reading »

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