telling the story ~ flesh and blood
Composition version: yes. (incomplete)
lyrics
displaying your strength to all eyes
to rescue your people
the firstborn of Pharaoh has died
we march out in freedom
I will sing to the LORD
for He has triumphed gloriously
the rider and horse
are thrown into the sea
but the Ancient of Days becomes old
and quickly we grumble
and dancing to calves made of gold
how nimbly we stumble
(now watch us tumble)
we are not Spirit
we are flesh and blood
we are not righteous
we are flesh and blood
so in love you give us
flesh and blood for our weakness
the flesh and the blood
the laver, the altar
the skin and the bone
the fire, the water
the flesh and the blood
the constant reminder
we are your servants
and no one is blinder
in this
promised land
no one
can stand
dust is dust
flesh is flesh
just where
is our rest
would you build me a house
a house made of stone
I'll build you a house
you'll sit on my throne
your sons will be my sons
the objects of love
but for all of this honour
you're just flesh and blood
you are not Spirit
you are just flesh and blood
is this the man of my own heart
the shepherd I've called
now you will know just how far
the righteous can fall
you're just flesh and blood
you are not Spirit
and down through the years
it's the story of tears
constantly told
your promise is near
so why are we here
in slavery sold
who will deliver me
from this body of death
let me enter your rest
we're nothing but
body and flesh
we're just flesh and blood
we're just flesh and blood....
is this the land that we seek
is this the place of our rest
isn't the earth for the meek
isn't the righteous one blessed
why all this wickedness
reigning triumphant
is this the righteousness
for which we hunger
the heavens of brass still resound
with lies we have spoken
like tablets of stone on the ground
the oaths we have broken
we are not Spirit....
how can these bones come alive
from where they have fallen
how can the promise arrive
when we are the problem
is this the land that we seek....
we are not Spirit....
narrative
God has plucked Abram (Abraham) out of death and judgment, and has given him a future. Included in that future is a host of descendants and the promise of land, although Abraham doesn't get to see much of that before he goes to his grave.
The population explosion of Abraham's descendants, interestingly, occurs while they are enslaved in Egypt - over the course of a few centuries, Abraham's host goes from seventy people to some 600,000 men - plus women and children. So one of the great blessings comes to life, but it is compromised, as it were, by the terrible circumstances of slavery to Egyptian taskmasters.
God, however, judges that now is the time to fulfill the other great promise - a land for Abraham's host. To that end, He delivers them from Egypt by way of a series of remarkable - and even astonishing - events, culminating in an escape through the sea, with Pharaoh's hosts drowning behind them.
That demonstrates the goodness of God, and the fact that He can be counted on to come through when He promises something - even if, to be sure, human beings don't always appreciate His sense of timing.
But in the face of these wonders, the Israelite host quickly come face to face with the realities of crossing a wilderness, and in the process, they also come face to face with the realities of their own lack of faith. Despite the mighty acts that had been required for them to emerge from Egypt, when confronted with hunger and thirst, they quickly forget the power that God has shown, and repeatedly complain against the man God has chosen to lead them, Moses. They even suggest that they were better off in Egypt and ought to go back there.
God displays both judgment and mercy in the face of that situation, and within a short time leads Abraham's host to a mountain called Sinai. There, God goes through a sort of marriage ceremony with His people by "cutting a covenant." This covenant appeals to God's history with His people - especially the rescue from Egypt, and back of that, God's promises to Abraham - and calls upon them to love and obey Him. This obedience is not to be drudgery; the law is a constitution for people who have been made free from slavery.
This law includes the Ten Commandments, which are still familiar to many people, but it also includes a lot of material that has become (shall we say) somewhat obscure. For example, the book of Leviticus is largely taken up with matters of "cleanness" and "uncleanness" as well as what to offer God and when (animal offerings and so on). The clean/unclean matter largely had to do with how to be eligible to have fellowship with God at the "tent" - the "tabernacle" where God lived with His people and they could eat in His presence. (Later, the "tent" would give way to the "house" or "temple.")
Eligibility or ineligibility to commune with God revolved to a great degree around the notion of "flesh" - males, for example, needed to have their flesh circumcised as an entry point into this circle of fellowship. There, of course, "flesh" referred specifically to the male sexual organ, but on the whole, the term was broader and takes up everything that comes from inside weak man, made doubly weak through sin. And nothing is a greater sign and effect of this weakness than the fact of death, which is not surprising, given what we know of death as a curse triggered by the very first sins of Adam and Eve.
While that sounds rather arcane, the story of flesh is in many respects the defining center of the rest of the history that runs from Moses to the end of what Christians call "the Old Testament." It is the story of human weakness: how God deals with it when He rescues His weak people from those who are stronger; how that weakness raises its ugly head when those same people forget His mercies and stray from Him; how that straying and rebellion leads them to dead ends and even divine judgment.
And yet, in the midst of it all, there is a promise that God somehow is going to deal with these flesh and blood people, overcome the weakness of which they are made, and bring them through to unprecedented blessing. "Somehow," because God has always tied blessing to faithfulness, and when the people are consistently and pervasively unfaithful to Him, the question arises how such blessing can ever come about.
This consistent and pervasive unfaithfulness is in view as soon as the law is given, the marriage between God and Israel formalized. While Moses is speaking with God on the mountain, his own brother is assisting the people in a "celebration" before a calf of gold, in direct violation of the terms of the marriage covenant God has made with them. Upon arriving on the scene, Moses smashes the tablets of stone upon which the Ten Commandments were recorded - a symbolic gesture reflecting the fact that the people themselves have smashed the covenant, broken its basic terms.
Many of those people never make it out of the wilderness. In fact, only two people from that first generation manage to enter Canaan in triumph. What should have been a brief journey of a couple of months became forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Why? Because God would not give the land to people who claimed that it was not possible to possess. Instead, he gave it to their "helpless" children a generation later.
The story of Israel was indeed up and down, not only in the wilderness, but also after entry into Canaan, the land God promised. That up-and-down pattern is especially evident in the book of Judges, but reappears in the historical books of the Kings and Chronicles. Although God raised up a line of kings from the household of David and promised great things to the dynasty, most of the time even these kings were so unfaithful that they led Israel away from the rescuing and merciful God, rather than to Him.
The weakness of the flesh was so strong that eventually, God removed His people from the land He had given them, and sent them into exile. Some of Abraham's mighty host essentially disappeared, but a great core lived as strangers in mighty Babylon. The prophet Ezekiel depicts that situation as a sort of death. God's people are an army of skeletons who need the breath of life - they need a resurrection.
That resurrection gets a preliminary sort of fulfillment when many of those people are restored to Canaan, but the picture is radically incomplete. For one thing, the great majority remain outside of the land of promise. For another, the blessings of the land are largely absent. Over and over again, even though Israel rarely falls prey to the service of other gods (as had been the case earlier) after the return from Babylon, nonetheless, they remain flesh and blood and the cycle of unfaithfulness has not been broken; it has only changed shape.
And so the question remains: how can God do for His people what He has promised, when they remain so unfaithful, so ineligible to receive the promise?