Draw a line.

Cross the line.

Line up.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

There are lines everywhere, and we have experienced them here in Lebanon. There was a huge line when we arrived at the airport with multiple other flights. We cued up, snakelike, in the immigration line as we each waited our turn for that Lebanese visa stamp.

There are lines on the hillsides, terraced garden plots and vineyards, which climb up and up, fruits and vegetables all growing in straight lines.

 

 

 

 

There are lines of my paper peace cranes hanging from the lights up at the conference center.

There are lines of writing on paper, including the ones I captured today to fold into another crane of peace for my flock at home. I am grateful for this one today as it came from the Lebanese member of parliament who represents the Protestants in the government, Dr. Basem al Shabb, who is also a cardiac surgeon. I am sure he sews straight lines of sutures when he closes the chest again over a beating heart.

In this region there are also lines of conflict and much damage and destruction has occurred on either side of them. Almost exactly two years ago I was in Mhardeh, Syria, and posed for a photo. Behind me was a line of trees where extremists would approach to shell this city of 23,000 Christians. I was that close to the line. I was just as close a year ago, also in Mhardeh, when we stood next to the berm that separated Mhardeh from those on the other side who would see them destroyed.

Some lines are just too hard to cross.

But today we had a Bible study on the book of Jeremiah, and I am grateful for teaching that asks me to read between the lines.

Rev. Dr. Hadi Ghantous is the Presbyterian pastor of Minyara, Lebanon, in the north of the country. He is a trained medical doctor who went to the Near East School of Theology, the reformed seminary in Beirut, and earned his M.Div. He went on from there to get his doctorate in Old Testament studies and we are all the better for his teaching.

He took us through the definition and purpose of the prophets today. What is a prophet? The prophet is a person – Jeremiah, Isaiah, Micah, etc. – but the prophet is also the book we read so named for the person. The book is not totally the words of one person in many cases, like Isaiah or Jeremiah. Indeed, the history they cover provides the evidence that these books were the words of more than one person written down over decades and sometimes centuries. You might say the book is from the school of Isaiah or Jeremiah. There are multiple theologies in one book. That was a good lesson to learn.

Hadi then led us to the purpose of the prophets, and here is where it got interesting, and where you can see how one book, Jeremiah in this case, has multiple theologies. What is the dominant line of theology in the books of the OT Prophets? Judgment against nations. The prophets are calling for justice, but the main theme is that God is the God of retribution, dealing with the nations like a judge. This also included Israel and Judah as well, but they had a chance to do something different, to repent. If they turned from their evil ways, going against God’s word, he would turn his angry face and return to them the blessings that came with a righteous life.

The prophet is the one who speaks the word of the Lord, and a lot of that word is about judgment. Part of why we are judged is what we do in the name of the Lord, and that was the lesson for today.

When we make war about God, wage it in his name, we have a serious problem, and for that we will be judged. God is the God of peace, and reading between the lines of the different theologies of judgment in Jeremiah we find this nugget to underline that thought:

Yet hear now this word which I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all people. The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms. As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the Lordhas truly sent the prophet [ my emphasis].(Jer. 28:8-9)

Hadi’s teaching on this subject did not go on long enough for me. He did go on to say that this word of true God-given prophecy was difficult to hear. More power is better! Victory over enemies is better! More guns! More war machines…in the name of God. It was so hard to hear at the time this was written down, that other writers of this word buried it with additions and corrections. But if you spend more time in this book, reading between the lines, the truth will out.

When we hear the nations and our leaders demanding more planes, bigger ships, more bombs and bullets and more money for military build up, let us remember that this is not the way to true peace. It is about a peace that is in our own self-interest: our safety vs. the safety of the other. But God has a bigger idea of peace, and his true prophets will speak to that. It is a hard job because their voices are drowned out by louder ones. But if we spend some time reading between those lines, perhaps we can erase the lines of warfare and shorten the lines between the point of our hearts and those we see as the other.

This is my prayer today: to read between those lines and walk the one that leads to this peace.