Shut the Door [Part 1 of 3]

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The Bible is a Book of Tales (Narrative Theology)

Union and Communion (Covenant)

 

A key phrase in Rahab’s story  in Joshua 2 tipped me off to looking, and I was able to fit the story into the recapitulative structure of the Noah/Lot stories. 

In Jericoh the gate is shut and men are safe in the house.

This reminded me that in Noah’s ark, the people are shut safely inside, and that in Lot’s house the angels pull in Lot and shut the door, and safety exists from the madding crowd of wicked sexual sinners on the outside.

Rahab is a wicked sexual sinner who is SAVED on the INSIDE of the house.  More on that in Part 2, also more about covenant identity and passover in these passages.  For now,

Geography and Resignation

“Family, Not Community [Part 2]”

Filed in:

Union and Communion (Covenant)

 

Communities are parallel worlds crammed into the same universe.

Families are single worlds made of interdependent parts.

Communities are divisible, and are mainly unified by geography and the resignation that it is easiest not to fight with neighbors.  If a conflict is too severe to wage, then I can move to another community, without permission from the neighborhood.

Bodies are indivisible without surgery.   Families are indivisible without divorce.  The church is a body.  Leave and you amputate.  The church is a marriage.  Leave and you are abandoning your husband.

The church is the ONLY family of its kind.  There aren’t other options.  You can’t go to another way of union with the Lord.  The ONLY route to the Father is …the Son.  The Son has already claimed his only bride.

Believers, by and large, don’t have to be convinced to be part of A church, but being part of THE church means loving it.

Family, Not Community

Filed in:

Union and Communion (Covenant)

 

Community is what neighborhoods are.

Family are people you let sleep in your house.

Community makes regulations against how you are free to build your house on your property.

Family is your house.

The church is a covenant something….

We are not a community.  We are a family.  The covenant is like marriage, and adoption.  Actually, it is marriage to the Son, and adoption by the Father.

Community is many in a way that family is one.

One baptism, one bread, one wine, one family.