personal and universal

There’s a saying in the world of drama that the more personal the story, the more universal the emotion or the application. I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past few years in relation to Israel and its place within the story of God’s actions and interactions with our world as presented in the Bible.

It’s always seemed a little unfair, of course. Why Israel? Why not some other nation? A common theme is that God is showing His might by choosing a small nation, a small tribe. Thus, His actions are even more miraculous by what He accomplishes through them. (Sort of like Elijah demanding multiple buckets of water so the fire is even more spectacular)

Well, first of all, if you’re looking for things to be fair, you may need to look towards a different religion. Our concept of grace pretty much negates things being fair. We don’t get what we deserve, any of us.

But let me throw this out for consideration: while it’s not a completely random choice, God choosing Abraham and building from his tribe a nation, and working through them to share Himself with this world is much more about God and much less about Israel.

How better to show how He works with all of us than to show how He works with one of us? By focusing on Abraham’s family and Israel, we immediately put ourselves in their place. I’ve never been so afraid of being killed and robbed that I claimed that my wife was my sister, or had to walk my son up a mountain to what may be his doom, but somehow the immediacy and reality of such a situation moves something inside of me.

So God starts with Abraham because it’s time to start. The story has to have a beginning. I’m not implying any sort of randomness in God’s choosing, but I think we get too narrow in our concept of what God is doing in the world. I don’t want to go too far in saying just any old person could have fit the bill, but I do want us to take a moment and consider that God is trying to get his message across to us.

Even the fact that Jesus came as a Jew who was a messiah to the Jewish people, and was indeed crucified by them as well, is an example of what God is doing. Jesus didn’t come with a charter to the first century United Nations, worrying about how he could tailor a message to the entire world. He came as a back woods prophet with a specific message to a specific people. He preaches a message centered on the traditions of a smallish country in the middle of an empire, and somehow this message has resonated throughout the world for two thousand years.

My second point is this: God is working through us today and through the church and our church, but we do not contain Him. He is always doing the unexpected. Too often we’re like Jonah, on board with God’s plans until He decides to redeem our enemies. But like I said, it’s unfair. Even those who wish to destroy us can be saved.

Jesus has a mission to this specific group, but he’s always pushing them. Not only pushing them to take care of their own societal outcasts, but also hinting at the fact that the relationship Israel holds so dear is not theirs to control. Jesus keeps speaking to Gentiles and Samaritans, infuriating all of his followers who are convinced that he is their messiah, and when he comes to power they’ll be like John and James, ready to sit at the right and left hand of the new King of Israel.

The stories that have led me to start thinking about this are of Melchizedek and Jethro in the Old Testament and of Cornelius and the Jerusalem Council in Acts. In these stories and elsewhere, people outside the fold seem to have insight into what God is doing and even have advice for the “people of God.” I’ll spend this week going into these four stories, but please jump in with comments/questions/arguments at any time.