This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readings along with a headline from world news: ‘QUAKE DISASTER IN JAPAN. 
Deuteronomy 7:12-16
12 If you heed these ordinances, by diligently observing them, the Lord your God will maintain with you the covenant loyalty that he swore to your ancestors; 13he will love you, bless you, and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, in the land that he swore to your ancestors to give you. 14You shall be the most blessed of peoples, with neither sterility nor barrenness among you or your livestock. 15The Lord will turn away from you every illness; all the dread diseases of Egypt that you experienced, he will not inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you. 16You shall devour all the peoples that the Lord your God is giving over to you, showing them no pity; you shall not serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.
……………………………………………………………….
There’s much beauty in this passage but it’s spoilt by two things:
you shall devour the peoples
1. “You shall devour the peoples”-this is permission, no more than that, it is a command to carry out jihad and ethnic cleansing. When we criticise the Quran we should remember passages like this; and explain to Muslims that we are obliged to interpret all scripture in the light of Christ. Jesus the Word of God cancels the words of verse 16.
2. It’s unfortunately NOT TRUE. Earthquakes strike randomly. God does not bless the faithful with worldly prosperity, fertility and good health. If it were true we’d have good reason to believe. Only the self-satisfied rich think that it is true. Jesus blessed the poor.
…………………………
John 1:35-42
35 The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ 37The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ 39He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. 40One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed). 42He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).
………………………………………………………………………………
The gospel of John uses the Greek verb “menein” to stay, abide, in a special way: it can indicate the fundamental place of belonging of a person; as we might say, “where he’s coming from.” It’s used with that connotation here. The disciples want to know “where Jesus is coming from.” He invites them to come and see, that is, to become disciples who won’t really know where he comes from until his resurrection, but they remain, abide with him that day. They conclude from this experience that he is the Messiah. It is by such discipleship, that is, by remaining with Jesus, that people still may learn who he is. No amount of theology can replace this “abiding.” One week’s discipleship teaches more than all the sermons in the world. As people come to recognise Jesus, so also they receive a new name from him, a name which like Peter’s, indicates what we shall be rather than what we are.
Emmock's Blog 
Couple of things here my friend.
I am wondering if you have left out a “not” where you say, “this is permission, no more than that, it is a command to carry out jihad and ethnic cleansing.” If so, I guess I would have to disagree with you, since in other places it seems pretty clear that what God commanded was something akin to a jihad, as you put it.
Second, to say of the promises that they are “NOT TRUE” is to use very strong language on something I am not so sure we can be that dogmatic about. In my understanding, those words were written for a different time and under different circumstances than what we live under today; I take it on faith that they were true for that time and place, but that with the coming of Christ and the outpouring of His Spirit, then other things are happening today. In Christ every promise is Yes and Amen.
I think we’re saying the same thing about holy war, and the problem is my language. I think it’s clear that Deuteronomy believed the Lord commanded jihad.
I disagree with your second point. I think we do know that it’s not true in Christ and we must say so for sake of those, say, victims of Tsunami, who might think they are being punished by God; and also for the sake of the idle rich who might imagine they’re being blessed by God.
All the promises are yes and amen IN CHRIST and only in Him.
As always, thanks for the comments.
Not sure about point #2, where I think we have misunderstood each other. I would never say that the earthquake in Japan was a punishment of God – or that the rich are that way because God caused it.
I would say that we are blessed today in different ways (a simplistic way would be to say in spiritual rather than physical ways, but that is not quite it either) than in OT times.
But I still would contend that, for that time, with the strictures God placed on them, that the promises were true.
Jeff, I certainly was not accusing you of viewing the tsunami as a punishment, but as you know there are people who do. I think I now have to agree that the interpretation of Deuteronomy is not as straightforward as I indicated:
1. most scholars think it was composed not earlier than the time of Josiah and probably a good deal later. It’s reckoned to be part of a huge scriptural project which edited the ancient texts and re-presented them as the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings all of which hammer home the simple message: faithfulness to God=national health; unfaithfulness=national disaster. I’m sure they sincerely believed their message, but we have to start by treating the “promises and threats” as expressions of the authors, rather than as direct utterances of God.
2. On the other hand we can’t just dismiss their belief as worthless. (Perhaps I was guilty of this) The conviction that communal life flourishes if God is truly worshipped; and degenerates when there is idolatry is clearly relevant today.
3. My guess is that the intructions to “devour” the other nations was not issued at the time of the conquest (12 century BC) but only at the time of the writing of Deuteronomy 7th-5th century BC) when Israel was in no position to carry them out. Why issue them then? As a warning against the culture and Gods of other nations. Because in the view of the writers foreign Gods had been the downfall of Israel, they asserted their belief that all non-Israelites should have been cleansed from Holy Land at the time of conquest.
4. Because the scriptures are only a word from God if we treat them also as the word of human beings, we have to look at the human production of the texts so that we can hear what God is saying through them, always remembering that God has spoken more clearly in his Son, the Word made flesh.
5. Thanks for your comments: I was trying to take an illegitimate short-cut.