If
you read the Hebrew Bible, which is what we most often refer to as the Old
Testament, you might wonder where it’s all going. I mean, isn’t that question
we ask of any good story? What’s the point, in the end? So, it strikes me as
odd that I can’t remember anyone ever teaching me about the end of the Old
Testament. We know about the New Testament—Revelation and this apocalyptic
vision that, though strange, is nonetheless something of a logical progression.
But
how does the Old Testament end?
Well,
it depends on which Bible you’re reading. I’m not talking about translations,
either; I’m talking about how you order the books. The Christian Bible concludes
the Old Testament with Malachi, which leaves us with a call for Elijah’s
return, but the Hebrew Bible (which came first, by the way) actually ends with
2 Chronicles. I’ll read that scripture for you (and it should probably sound a
bit familiar): “In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in fulfilment of the
word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord
stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia so that he sent a herald
throughout all his kingdom and also declared in a written edict: ‘Thus says
King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has
given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a
house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people,
may the Lord his God be with him! Let him go up’” (2
Chronicles 36:22-23).
If
you feel like you’ve heard that before it’s because we read it just a few
minutes ago in the Ezra, chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible ends, as Ezra begins, with
King Cyrus of Persia ordering the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. The
Christian Bible ends with Malachi because we-Christians are looking forward to a
Messiah. But the Hebrew Bible ends with Chronicles because they found theirs…
sort of.
OK,
it’s an exaggeration to think of Cyrus as the Jewish Messiah, and, yet, Isaiah
45 begins, “Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to
Cyrus.” That word, anointed, is the Hebrew word, “meshiach” or Messiah; in
Greek it is “Christos”—Christ.
Now,
I want to pause here for a second for a little audience participation: How many
of you have heard of Cyrus before?
My
guess is not many. But how is that possible? This is a guy who appears in no
less than three books of the Bible (Ezra, Isaiah, and 2 Chronicles); this is
the last accounting of anointing we have before Jesus, and it the final one,
period, in the Hebrew Bible. This is a guy who might be the most non-Jewish character
in the Middle East before Muhammed. So, why on earth don’t we know a thing
about him?
I have a theory, but it’s a bit of a tricky one: I
believe we don’t know about Cyrus because Judao-Christian history has done a
good job of burying people like Cyrus. We don’t like the idea that God works
through people so different from us—that God works through a person who is A)
Persian (modern-day Iranian), B) Gentile (and not Christian either, obviously),
and C) a king (literally a leader of the enemy).
Cyrus
was a military conqueror of Persia, turned king, who maybe more than any person
prior to Muhammed has helped to define and delineate the peoples of Iran and
what would eventually become the Arab world. (Let that sink in) The reason the
Jewish people have a temple and a land restored in Jerusalem at all begins with
Cyrus. You can’t have Jesus overthrowing the tables of the moneychangers without
Cyrus. The Pharisees and the Sadducees and all those people we vilify in the
Gospels owe their standing in society to some extent to Cyrus. He began a
process that took several hundred years, which saw the Jewish people return not
to political power (they were still, after all, under the auspices of the
Romans by the time Jesus came along) but it did give them the ability to
practice their religion and culture in a way that they couldn’t in Babylon.
To
put it simply: Cyrus may very well have saved Judaism, and without Judaism
there is no Christianity... except, we should be clear, it wasn’t really Cyrus who
did this, as Ezra 1:1 tells us, “the Lord stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus
of Persia.” It is God working through Cyrus to change history, but this is
exactly the point where our insecurities about Cyrus creep in because God again
chooses the person who makes us the least comfortable. Not only does God choose
the littlest and the least and the lost; he also chooses the king of the enemy.
Yikes.
We
should remember and reflect on the variety of folks God has chosen. There’s David,
the littlest of the brothers. Moses, the one who failed public speaking. Isaiah,
one who doesn’t believe in the people. Jonah, who doesn’t have even the
slightest desire to be a prophet, who runs in the opposite direction. John the
Baptist, a woe-be-gone wilderness man. The disciples, all of whom failed out of
studying the Torah. Mary and Joseph, a girl and a carpenter. But it doesn’t
stop there: There’s the Good Samaritan, a half-breed outcast; there’s King
Nebuchadnezzar; who wanted people to bow to him; Noah was drunk, Abraham was
old, Jacob was a liar, Rahab was a prostitute.
You
know what I find most interesting about this list? These people who God uses,
as far as I can tell, have nothing in common: There are foreigners and Jews,
there are men and women, there are divorcees and people with remarkable
failures and people who are said to be righteous in God’s eyes. The only
universal moral that can be drawn from these characters is that God can, and
does, use anybody.
Anybody.
So,
if you want a simple reason to show the love of God to strangers and all the
people you least expect it is this: These are the people God works through.
More than that, these are quite literally the face of God. That includes Muslims
and Atheists and other Christians. These are people God uses. Then, take a look
in the mirror. Don’t underestimate God’s ability to work through you, too,
because God’s power comes in weakness and we are all weak. We’re certainly
showing plenty of weakness these days.
God
chooses all sorts of people we don’t expect partly as a reminder that we are not
the judges of righteousness, and partly because the Christmas promise is to all
nations. It is a promise that obliterates borders. I confess that Cyrus is one
of my heroes, but it took many years for me to come to this realization. I
remember the first time I heard about him in a sermon. It was during my
sophomore year in undergrad; one of those sermons that stuck with me and gives
me hope that occasionally something I say sticks as well. I was in Chicago
visiting the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago and James Forbes, Jr. was
the preacher, an American Baptist pastor from New York City. He was preaching
about Cyrus and how God uses the one who looks and believes differently from us
intentionally to accomplish God’s will. I remember this because I am still
struck by how unapproachably wise God is in working this way, and how I can
barely hold a candle to the way that God works.
Cyrus
looks nothing like me. We have virtually nothing in common. Thank God. Because
I need that reminder that I am not so much like God. I need a Savior who does
not look like me, who acts better than me, who chooses people to which I cannot
relate. You do, too—all of you. We need to stop making God in our image. We
need God to raise up more leaders who look different than you and me, who
believe differently from you and me. What are we afraid of? We have political
reservations about some of these things, but God is not changed by politics.
Jesus came into the world and King Herod massacred thousands of Hebrew
children; that should have been a clue to us that politics are futile against
God’s will for humankind. Herod tried to kill God; he failed, and the
collateral damage was horrendous. Later, the temple leaders and the Roman
authorities colluded to kill God and succeeded only to have death and life
turned upside down three days later when the stone was rolled away. We have
plenty of Herods today, plenty of Pilates. Some of them believe differently
from us; some of them, tragically, take the name of Christian and think that
might will make right. They have forgotten (or perhaps they never knew) that
God came into the world in weakness… that God always comes in weakness.
So,
today, we wait in Advent amidst a world where great love confronts great fear
and hatred, and we have a choice: Trust in power or trust in weakness; trust in
our ability to save the world or in God’s ability to do it in spite of us. The
funny thing is that neither philosophy will change how God works in the world.
He will keep lifting up strange people like Cyrus, like the Samaritan on the
road or the woman at the well. He will come in the form of a baby even when we
want him to come like Donald Trump—full of arrogance and bravado. Doesn’t
matter what we want. All that’s going to change is how we treat our fellow
human beings who all reflect the image of God. Christmas isn’t about how we
act—it’s about God coming into the world—the question is: How are you going to
testify to that baby in a manger? It’s an open-ended question for an open-ended
time in history.
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