Links for today’s readings:
Read: Deuteronomy 31 Listen: (4:57) Read: Romans 11 Listen: (5:23)
Scripture Focus: Deuteronomy 31.9-13
9 So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the Levitical priests, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. 10 Then Moses commanded them: “At the end of every seven years, in the year for canceling debts, during the Festival of Tabernacles, 11 when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose, you shall read this law before them in their hearing. 12 Assemble the people—men, women and children, and the foreigners residing in your towns—so they can listen and learn to fear the Lord your God and follow carefully all the words of this law. 13 Their children, who do not know this law, must hear it and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
Reflection: Reading As Resistance
By John Tillman
If you know something will fail eventually, is there any point trying to delay or prevent that failure?
God revealed to Moses that Israel would fail to fulfill the covenant. Eventually, Israel’s sins would lead to exile and suffering, however, even after banishment, when their hearts turned back to God, God would restore them. However, Moses wasn’t a fatalist. He didn’t shrug his shoulders and say, “It can’t be helped.” Moses had a plan of resistance.
Was it a military campaign? High walls to keep out undesirables? More restrictive laws and more severe penalties? Forsaking all aesthetic pleasures, in case they might lead to sin? No. It was reading scripture.
Moses charged the community to regularly gather and hear the scripture read publicly. The Levites were to keep the writings Moses had collected and created. They would read and explain them to the people every seven years, at the time of canceling debts. It is no accident that reading God’s word is connected to freedom from debts and slavery. Reminding themselves of the debt they owed to God could fuel dutiful obedience and forgiveness among the community.
Israel read scripture to resist the idolatries and ideologies of the land. So must we. Reading scripture is not a task on a spiritual checklist. Reading scripture is an act of resistance. God’s word is an inoculation against the poisoned wisdom of the world that enslaves us to sin. The wisdom of scripture is the truth that sets us free. (John 8.31-34)
Israel, like other cultures of the time, was an oral culture. Few people could read. Even fewer would ever see or hold what Moses wrote and the Levites kept. Israel didn’t have the privileges we do. Those who waited to attend synagogue to hear sections of scripture read or waited seven years to hear the entirety of God’s word read would be shocked that we own personal copies of God’s word. They’d be even more shocked to learn how little we actually read them.
Like Israel, you will fall into sin. But that doesn’t mean you give up and give in. Resist by reading scripture and living out its wisdom. (Matthew 7.24) Don’t neglect the incredible gift of God’s word. Give time and attention to reading God’s word individually and with others. Read your Bible like it makes a difference and it will.
Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
You are my hiding place; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. — Psalm 32.8
– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summer
by Phyllis Tickle
Read more: Ways of Canaan, Ways of Christ
Seek God’s face and ask him to reveal and remove “ways of Canaan” within you.
Read more: Between Gerizim and Ebal
Standing in between Gerizim and Ebal, there is more at stake than personal holiness or individual choices.
