I do not know how you should use your precious hours, but note this. You seek justice and you seek peace. Very often, it will be one or the other, not both: peace or justice. Very often, they do not come together in time. You must work this out for yourself.
“The holy roller-coaster” is a handle I give to my Old Testament students to set the history of Israel clearly in mind. Spread across some 1500 years, that history has four peaks of great favor separated by three calamities for the whole people. As this undulating wave forms on a blackboard on the first day of class, I often ask my students what the big picture calls to mind. “A roller-coaster” says one. Eventually, from a deeper place, someone says: “My life.”
We are going to hear a number of stories from Genesis in the coming weeks. They tell like one cliff-hanger after another . . . where survival is imperiled. We are old, we are few, they say; we are barren and famished, flanked by enemies, and hating our own brother. Are we going to make it out of here into the future?
Will Christianity pass away? Will some other religion or philosophy take its place? You hear such questions from time to time . . . A scripture says that “nothing will be impossible with God.” On the question whether God will keep God’s savings in the church forever, we might better err on the side of caution.
When is temptation temptation? Is it when someone plans to sway you to do a thing which would turn you from your path? This is the cartoon we continually conjure about temptation—an evil spirit clad all in red, intending harm. But this is foolishness, or worse, for no one sure where his happiness lies is tempted by persuasions. Is it when we fall from our path, when we know that what we are about to do is not right, but we do it anyway? That is another cartoon diversion from seriousness . . .
Let us turn to the city of Corinth, A.D. 50. What news? Bad news. The church of Christ has been behaving badly from the beginning. There is a good news side to this bad news, however. The fact that we tell the story that then and now and throughout history, our churches have failed to grasp their purpose proves that some ships have been righted from grave wrongs and sailed on after the storms, guarding their treasures and handing them on for the living. That, and only that, is what is worthy in a tradition.
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