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the foolish in spirit: Psalm 116

July 24, 2012 by David Baer

Jesus memorably elevates a status that is widely viewed to be lamentable.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3 ESV)

Nobody wants to be so impoverished. Broken down, crushed under an unbearable burden, bereft of emotional strength. It is a state to be avoided when possible, regretted when not, survived if one can.

Or so we thought, until Jesus taught us that holding title to his Father’s rule in this world and the next requires one to experience just such broken poverty. Continue Reading »

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dawn comes: Psalm 112

July 23, 2012 by David Baer

Light dawns often in the biblical text.

Whether because the dawn is in human experience such a reliable expectation or because the move from night’s darkness to morning’s shining is so dramatic, the image lends itself to the vocabulary of hope and of hopefulness.

One of life’s great enigmas—and therefore a subject matter for the probing poems we call the Psalms—is why the righteous suffer. Why, in a well-governed world, should good women and men know the darkness and the confusion of night at all? Why is theirs not a perpetual stroll from light to brilliance? Continue Reading »

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pause for reflection: Psalm 111

July 23, 2012 by David Baer

Biblical wisdom insists that life is a classroom. Those who live it best engage life as its students.

The logic of this approach to living life as a learning experience assumes that the way of things is not immediately apparent. Short attention spans need not apply.

Things that are worthwhile require prolonged scrutiny. Circumstances and phenomena do not give up their truth quickly. The best of reality simmers slowly. The patient cook—and his or her loved ones—enjoy the richest meal.

Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them. (Psalm 111:2 ESV) Continue Reading »

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early start: Psalm 71

July 15, 2012 by David Baer

When the writer of Psalm 71 pleads with YHWH to spare him from the murderous intent of his adversaries, he banks on the long relationship that has bound the two together. Crudely put, he reminds YHWH that you don’t abandon an old friend in his darkest hour.

At the core of this extraordinary interaction lies an almost hidden truth: the writer himself did not establish this friendship. It predates his own birth, to say nothing of his eventual capacity to engage the relationship as a rational, articulate person. Continue Reading »

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centrifugal goodness: Psalm 67

July 14, 2012 by David Baer

The knotty old words of the priestly blessing in the book of Numbers, chapter 6, were to be pronounced for uncounted generations over ‘the sons of Israel’.

Yet there is in biblical Israel’s shalom a marked potential for good that flows far beyond that little people’s boundaries. The patriarchal narratives of Genesis tell us, a little enigmatically, that all the nations of the earth shall find their blessing in Father Abraham.

The sixty-seventh psalm discerns in these two resilient threads of biblical tradition—blessing for Israel, blessing for the nations—authorization to unite the venerable words of the priestly blessing to a fervent hope that the whole earth might go giddy before the righteous judgements of Israel’s God. Shalom, for this poet, is open-ended. No zero-sum game, it is capable of embracing all who will come. Love need not love its first object less in order to expand the circle to seconds, thirds, and more. Continue Reading »

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through fire and water: Psalm 66

July 14, 2012 by David Baer

Because of the quality of the relationship that binds YHWH and the psalmist to each other, even the most excruciating suffering is rarely if ever distanced from YHWH’s hand.

The psalms’ theodicy—their attempt to make sense of God’s behavior—is complex rather than simple. The Psalter cannot bring itself to remove causality from the list of explanations that describe God’s involvement in our pain. In my pain. Continue Reading »

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discernimiento y valentía (29 Aniversario, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica)

June 14, 2012 by David Baer

Discernimiento y valentía: por qué nuestros pastores requieren una formación teológica.

Seminario ESEPA, 5 mayo 2012

Cuando recibí de parte de Sadrac Meza la invitación a dar una charla en este notable evento, comencé a identificar mis opciones.

  • Podría contar anécdotas y memorias de ESEPA de antaño.  ¿Quién de los que estuvieron no recuerda con aprecio a Alberto Barrientos, Juan Kessler, Guillermo Brown, el inolvidable Eugenio Green, Kevin Jezequel, Gaby Murillo, Juan Macadam, Dorothy Andrews, y tantos más. Pero para muchos en esta noche, semejantes memorias serían reliquias y semejantes personas seríamos reliquias.
  • Podría navegar las aguas de la exposición bíblica. Pero mañana es domingo y ustedes estarán en sus iglesias, recibiendo—por lo menos los afortunados—lo mismo.
  • Podría enviarles a sus casas con exhortaciones fervientes. Pero me falta suficiente presencia en este contexto para asegurar que mis exhortaciones sean alineadas con su realidad y su momento histórico.
  • Podría contar cuentos sobre la vida de Sadrac. Pero sólo tengo cuarenta minutos …

Al final del día, como entonaba un ex-rector de ESEPA con una memorable frecuencia, mis opciones reales se reducen a una: hablarles del corazón respecto a tesoro frágil que es un seminario … que es ESEPA … en un mundo que todavía no sabe como atesorarlo suficientemente, porque no le ha tocado vivir sin él. Continue Reading »

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my Father’s Day hopes for my sons

June 14, 2012 by David Baer

(This brief talk was prepared for a knot of men, mostly from Indianapolis’ Church at the Crossing, who refuse to stop meeting at a Perkins restaurant on Thursdays at the ungodly hour of 6:30 a.m. for no discernible reason except to sing one song badly off-key, drink more coffee than is good for them, and hear talks like this one.)

*     *     *     *

This coming Sunday is Father’s Day and I’m a father, so I’m claiming this one.

I’ve not only got two sons, I’ve got two sons in uniform: ‘C’ is an infantry officer at Fort Benning, Georgia; ‘J’ a combat engineering officer at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Both will likely be deployed to a hot spot next year.

But my wife’s car now has four stars on the back of it. Her ‘T’ recently finished up his time in the Army and is re-entering civilian life. ‘R’ will be deployed to Afghanistan this year.

Together, we’ve got skin in the game, both as father and mother and in the geopolitical sense: we watch the news out of the world’s hot spots with a little more attention because of our connection with this country’s military through four sons who serve. Continue Reading »

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the capacity to bring down: Daniel 4

April 14, 2012 by David Baer

The biblical book of Daniel delights in narrating the temporary collapse of the Babylonian king who held the Judaean exiles in captivity. Simultaneously, its author asks the reader to learn from the royal demise. If this kind of thing can happen to a pagan king, we are urged to consider, it can happen to anyone.

While the words were still in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven: ‘O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: The kingdom has departed from you! You shall be driven away from human society, and your dwelling shall be with the animals of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like oxen, and seven times shall pass over you, until you have learned that the Most High has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals and gives it to whom he will.’ Immediately the sentence was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven away from human society, ate grass like oxen, and his body was bathed with the dew of heaven, until his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers and his nails became like birds’ claws. (Daniel 4.31–33 NRSV)

The king goes animal before us. Continue Reading »

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wise and wiser (II): Daniel 2

April 6, 2012 by David Baer

The best way to become wiser is to be wise in the first place.

Wisdom is a progressive ordering of one’s life. It is cumulative. The more one learns, the more one can learn. In the context of that blending of wisdom and apocalyptic traditions that occurs in the book of Daniel, a key criterion for Daniel’s reception of divine revelation when failure would have meant death was to have become wise prior to the crisis. Continue Reading »

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