2643AFC102326 – Your Neighbor, and Your Self ← 😊 PODCAST LINK

Exodus 22:21 – ²¹ You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Exodus 12:48 – ⁴⁸ If an alien who resides with you wants to celebrate the Passover to the Lord, all his males shall be circumcised; then he may draw near to celebrate it; he shall be regarded as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it;

Psalm 18:1 – ¹ I love you, O Lord, my strength.

1 Thessalonians 1:8-b, 10 – … the news about your faith in God has gone everywhere. There is nothing, then, that we need to say. (GNT[1])
¹⁰ and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath* that is coming.

*orgé (or-gay') – ("settled anger") proceeds from an internal disposition which steadfastly opposes someone or something based on extended personal exposure solidifying what the beholder considers wrong (unjust, evil); it therefore implies that it is not a sudden outburst, but rather (referring to God's) fixed, controlled, passionate feeling against sin as in a settled indignation.

Matthew 22:37-40 (GNT) – ³⁷ Jesus answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the greatest and the most important commandment. ³⁹ The second most important commandment is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ ⁴⁰ The whole Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

Get ready for Hallowe’en

Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace and Peace to each of you from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus the Christ, in the Power of the Holy Spirit. The above passages are related to this week’s readings for the 30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The emphasis on all of the readings and prayers for this Sunday is on caring for “the underdog” in the same way that God cares for us. This is an important message and I sincerely urge all of us to reflect on the Sunday Readings ( ¬ Click Link please) in advance so that our ears and hearts will be open to the Word. If we prepare well, we will be moved by the Holy Spirit to apply The Word of the Lord in our daily lives in ways we might not have known before. There is, however, one Key Verse that kept nudging around the back of my head, back there where That Little Old Guy lives – you know, the one who keeps telling us what to do until we do it. Before I start with that one, I want to invite you to visit another post from this time of year. It is called
Aloha Friday Message – October 27, 2023 – Look, Taste, See, Learn

Please do take a look. It’s about Hallowe’en and the things that are taught by demons (and how easy it is for us to learn and believe those things!).

What about those aliens?

What was that insistent Key Verse? It was Exodus 22:21 – ²¹ You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. Why? Why did that one needle me so? I think it’s because we have such an uproar going on these days about aliens, immigrants, invaders, and a whole bunch of other names I consider unprintable. And no, I'm not going to get into the politics or the persons behind those politics. I want to talk about what God says about aliens – people who come from the outside into our living space. There is one Command with the most stringent clarity in the second Key Verse I presented from the book of Exodus. I mean, look at how it’s framed. It’s basically a “pay-to-play” command addressed to outsiders who want to join the “in-group.” If you want to celebrate the Feast of Passover with us, God says all your menfolk have to be circumcised. That’s a pretty severe initiation procedure! Remember that God gave the same command to Abram, and then Abram passed it on to all his relatives, and – as Abraham – to all his descendants. That includes Jesus, too; we recall that he was an heir of the Promise, in fact, he was THE Heir of the Promise because he was, is, and will be The Promised one, the Meshiach, the Christ of God one of the circumcised.

The Law in The Book

Here’s another insight into God's imperatives for aliens who wanted to live among the people of Israel. Numbers 15:15–16 – ¹⁵ As for the assembly, there shall be for both you and theresident alien a single statute, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you and the alien shall be alike before the Lord. ¹⁶ You and the alien who resides with you shall have the same law and the same ordinance. This is another passage that indicates the necessity for integration of outsiders into the “group of preference.” Suppose a family from Mesopotamia wanted to become citizens of Israel. First the guys had to be circumcised. Then they had to follow all the rules given to them by God, by Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and whatever seers and Prophets spoke for God. To put it into Star Trek parlance, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” If we get down to brass tacks here, it’s “If you want to live with us, you must live like us.” That meant that the resident aliens who had integrated themselves into the Nation of Israel lived under the same civil laws. You can get a good sample of that in Leviticus 24:16-22 (put this on your reading list for next week). This is where you can find that famous “fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered.” Resident aliens were answerable for all their own compliance with, and infractions against, The Law.

Leviticus 19:18– ¹⁸ You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor^† as yourself: I am the Lord.
^† לְרֵעֲךָ֖ (lə-rê-‘ă-ḵā) from רֵעַ (rea) {ray'-ah} → friend, companion, fellow resident. The meaning is quite clear: anyone who acts like us must act AS one of us – and that includes both keeping and breaking The Law. This is what is known as Torah Echat, One Law. This especially applied to idolatry, something the Israelites just couldn’t seem to get out of their system. From the first week of the Exodus when they made the Golden Calf to the coming of Christ, they slipped into idolatry repeatedly – and, as a nation of Israelites and resident aliens, they paid the price by repeated conquest, and even deportation to Babylon.

About that lawyer.

But then, as The Apostle Paul said, “since by man came death, by man came also the Resurrection.” (See 1 Corinthians 15:21) We all know the story behind the Key Verse from the Gospel today. A lawyer came up to Jesus and posed a question, “What’s the most important of the commandments?” Jesus gave the answer hopefully every Christian should be able recite with confident knowledge: Love God totally, and love your neighbor like yourself. Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. He did not abolish The Law, he fulfilled The Law. He opened to mankind the Kingdom of God. To live in the Kingdom of God means that we have to join in as a Resident Alien; after all, certainly we modern-day Christians are not naturally born into the inheritance of Eternal Life! We are born into sin and death, and if we want to reside in the Kingdom of God, we’ve got to stick to the rules closely, and so I ask again,

“What is the first step?” and everyone should be able to respond, “Repent, and Believe the Gospel!” And once we repent and confess our knowledge of the Gift of God (reciting The Creed, for example), we become Children of God through Baptism, and BIM-BAM-BOOM!, we become convicted by the law for every infraction against it, and have forgiveness for the sins we confess to the Lord in humility and contrition because of Jesus' willing Sacrifice for us. That is because there’s a wideness (<<Music Link) in the Endless Mercy of God, our Father in Heaven – because “wide, wide as the ocean; high as the heavens above; deep, deep as the deepest sea is our Savior’s love” (<<Music Link) (we used to sing that song in my Sunday School Class with Mrs. Wright – where I learned the Bible verse “Children, obeyyour parents in the Lord for Mrs. Wright.” ¬ That’s supposed to be Ephesians 6:1 – especially KJV) This is all possible because of the Wonderful Grace of Jesus. (<<Music Link) We can take the Precious Name (<<Music Link) of Jesus – who rescues us from the wrath* that is coming – with us everywhere! And everywhere we can be, God is always there waiting to Love us as his own children – aliens no more, but Children of God! Your Self becomes a New Creation, grafted into the Family of God. We confidently look forward to Heaven, Eternal Life, the Resurrection, and being strangers no more in the Presence of Almighty God, yeah, that God I call El Shaddai-Olam. Almighty-Ever-Living God! He, God, will be the Neighbor of my Self, and I will Love my Neighbor as he and I Love one another. And adelphoi, you will be there too, and none of us will be outsiders. Together we can give God the Praise and Glory of his name as we sing, O how I Love Jesus (<< Music Link). Your Neighbor in Heaven will call to you and Your Self will be transformed – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the Last Trumpet!

Hallelujah!

But then I thought that line would be the last line – the Hallelujah. Nope. Wednesday morning, maybe around 03:30, I had a dream that the essay ended with something I have put in previous essays, but not MBN essays. It goes like this –

God tests us. He uses one of those incredibly difficult essay questions:

"Do you Love Me? Why or why not? How do you know?"

That's THE BIG ONE worth 95 points out of a hundred possible points. But then he gives us lots of 25-point pop-quizzes with hundreds of bonus questions each worth up to 10 points each. Some are T/F, some multiple choice, and some fill-in-the-blanks. Yes, God does test us, mostly on the essay; but, Good God that He is, he wants us all to get an A+ so they’re all open Book tests from the B.I.B.L.E.!!

HOWEVER, he changes it up sometimes! The incredibly difficult essay question gets a “little” easier (maybe) when he asks, “Do you know I Love you? Why or why not? How do you know? (That is just a “little” easier, right?)

The “Chemistry of Obedience”

Now, here is something that clinched the dream for me. First I have to tell you about a symbol used in chemistry (I had no idea why, in  my dream, I was back in chemistry class at Thomas Jefferson Jr/Sr high school in 1962.) The symbol looks like two stacked half-arrows  

And here is how it was used in that dream (using an = sign instead of the chemistry sign) ~~

Statement: If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Solution 1: If you Love me = then keep my commandments.

Solution 2: If you keep my commandments = then you will love me.

Both solutions satisfy the original statement! What a WISE and Loving God we have!

We will live all together in that Peace which surpasses all understanding, IF we love him AND we Love one another as HE has loved us in, through, and by our Self and our Neighbor.

Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Biblical languages inserts from Bible Hub (Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages) Visit at http://biblehub.com

Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

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