🐮 Proper 28

Readings: Isaiah 12, Psalm 98, 2 Thessalonians 3, Luke 21

Central Theme: Jesus's prophecy against Herod's ornate temple reflects a consistent biblical pattern of God rejecting centralized religious power and wealth accumulation in favor of decentralized, agrarian faithfulness.

Key Insights:

• Luke writes post-70 CE with knowledge of the temple's destruction, but this doesn't negate Jesus's prophetic vision
• The name "Joshua/Jesus" (Yeshua = "salvation") connects to Joshua the builder of the plain Second Temple
• Septuagint (LXX) Exodus 15:3 reads "The Lord brings wars to nothing" vs. Masoretic "The Lord is a warrior" - a crucial difference for understanding God's relationship to violence
• Hebrew root LHM carries both "laham" (fighter) and "elohim" (gods), pointing toward a God who undoes war

Theological Argument: Salvation is cooperative work between humans and God, not passive reception of predetermined grace. The biblical witness consistently undermines those who claim entitlement without labor (Pharaoh, Herod, Solomon) and instead elevates agrarian mutuality and decentralized interpretation.

Contemporary Challenge: We must "federate our faith" and resist religious institutions that enforce monopolies on meaning. The oldest manuscripts we possess are Hellenized texts that already represent a tension between imperial power and prophetic decentralization - we should embrace this pluralism rather than seek singular authority.