Another way in which we blur church/business is in the consumer mentality of  church members who often choose their church on the basis of services received: the youth program for their kids, the worship service to support their emotional health, and the various programs and ministries to meet their needs. How many of us choose a church on the basis of God’s call to be a servant, or beliefs held dear?

Nowhere is the cozy relationship of business and belief more pernicious, however, than at Christmas. Santa Claus and Baby Jesus are marketing logos, as cute as the GEICO gecko. Christmas carols waft even from the parking lots of some super stores. And calendars count down the number of shopping days till Christmas.

Children are taught to ask, “What am I going to get?” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if children (and adults) learned to list what they were going to give for Christmas, instead? And if gifts were of time, craft, and kindness more than plastic widgets or DVDs?

Perhaps one way to keep the marketers out of the manger is to remember another silent, holy night, a night Jesus began by sharing the Passover seder with his beloved friends. Then he warned them of a betrayer and a betrayal that very night.

He went to a Garden. Warning the disciples to watch and pray, that they come not to time of trial, he went a stone’s throw away and began to pray. Luke tells us that his sweat was like great drops of blood. He prayed that he might not drink the cup of torture and death that was less that 24 hours ahead, “yet, not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22.42).

Gethsemane, the name of the olive garden where Jesus prayed, means “oil press.” Messiah (= Christ in Greek) means “anointed one.” The Israelites anointed their prophets, priests, and kings. Yet, the lovely fragrant oil they use is produced by crushing the olives. The salvation of all creation required the literal crushing of the Savior.

As the night waned, the disciples grieved, aware of the Master’s agony, but unable to fathom his mood or minister to him in it. When Judas, the betrayer, came with a mob of thugs to arrest Jesus, the disciples struck out with the sword, only to be rebuked by the Lord they tried to defend.

No wonder they scattered in terror and bewilderment.

Peter found his way to the courtyard of the high priest, who was interrogating Jesus. Three times this man who had promised even to die with the Lord, three times Peter denied that he even knew Jesus.

Startled, terrified, alone—Peter betrayed not only Jesus, but himself. At that moment Jesus looked at him, and he ran out and wept bitterly.

For that was a dark and bitter night. When we sing “Silent Night, Holy Night” we do well to remember it, too.

Preliminaries:

• Satan recruited Judas to betray Jesus.
• The disciples prepared for the Passover/Unleavened Bread feast. They killed and roasted the lamb, brought the wine and unleavened bread, arranged the room, and so on.

Deliverance from Death

Jesus first connected his ministry/sacrifice with the Exodus. God delivered the people from slavery in Egypt. Exodus 12.1-14; 21-28 describes Passover. They sacrificed a lamb without blemish, and daubed its blood on the door posts. When the Death Angel passed over, and saw the blood, he spared everyone in the house. God brought the people out of Egypt so fast there wasn’t time for the bread to rise. Exodus 12.15-20 describes rituals related to Unleavened Bread.

Covenant

Second, Christ connected his new way with “the new covenant” promised by the prophets. A covenant is a promise, a contract, an agreement between God and people. The old covenant began with the Exodus and included the giving of the Law of Moses at Mt. Sinai. The old covenant reaches a climax when Moses sprinkled the blood of the covenant on the elders in God’s presence on the mountain (Exodus 24.8). Jesus, however, cut a new covenant, based on his life, given that all creation may be redeemed.

Jeremiah promised that God would make a new covenant (Jer. 31.33-34):

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

No longer will we meet God in a temple made of stone; no, we’ll meet God in our heart, from the least to the greatest, all will have equal access to God’s Spirit.

A Suffering Messiah

Luke 22.37 records that, quoting Isaiah 53.12, Jesus said,

For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, “And he was counted among the lawless.”

Here Jesus connects his ministry to a third Old Testament tradition, pointing to Isaiah 52.13-53.12, the fourth in a series of poems about an innocent person who chooses to suffer on behalf of others. This process comes to a climax in these words:

He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

Who did the prophet have in mind? Scholars suggest the prophet himself, or perhaps the nation Israel. Jesus  found in the Servant Songs of Isaiah a vision of who the Messiah was to be: not a conquering general-king like David of old, but a gentle Savior who took on himself the sins of the world.

On this night Jesus may have used non-verbal methods of teaching, ritual and tradition, because these reach deeper into the spirit than words alone, and because the night of betrayal and violence that lay ahead would seek to destroy everything Jesus hoped to teach and to begin.

“Do this in remembrance of me,” he said. I often pair “re-member” with “dis-member.” To dismember is to cut into pieces, but to remember is to join what has been separated into one whole. When we take part in the Lord’s Supper, we become one with him and with each other.

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father…. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. (Gen 9.22,25 KJV)

Of course, no one ever noticed that Noah cursed the grandson Canaan rather than the father Ham, who did the deed. According to many Southerners, the story proved the black race was to be enslaved forever to the white race.

Originally, the ancient Hebrews used it to justify exterminating the Canaanites, who lived in the Promised Land before them. Exterminating a whole race of people is genocide; although still practiced in Darfur and formerly Rwanda, it is universally condemned.

That fact should give us pause before interpreting Scripture any time to justify the status quo.

Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, ch. 7, [mine is a digital copy without page numbers] as the primary justification for slavery by Southerners cites these verses:

Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.  Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.  And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.  (Leviticus 25.44-46 KJV),  

McLaren’s cogent chapter on Biblical authority uses the work of William S. Jenkins, Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South; and Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840.

You might dismiss this stuff as quaint historical verbiage, unless you’ve listened to recent rants of the so-called Christian right on women, gays and lesbians, and Muslims.

Guided by the love of Christ, the Bible is a book of light, justice, and love. As in Jesus’ day, however, Satan twists Bible truths into lies.

As the old folks would say, we had a very “anointed” Bible study this morning which began at Luke 9.51:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

This verse begins Luke’s journey to Jerusalem, ending 19.48, the centerpiece of Luke’s gospel, unique to him. He portrays Jesus’ life (and that of Christians) as a journey to the theological center, to the cross.

I’m told a seeker church doesn’t display the cross because seekers don’t know what it truly means. I couldn’t agree to that, because without the cross there is no true Christianity, only cheap grace, cotton candy choruses and sermons for simpletons.

Twice in this chapter Jesus predicts his suffering and death at the hands of religious and political authorities. The cross did not result from a miscalculation on Jesus’ part or manipulation by Judas. From before the foundation of the world, a cross was erected in the heart of God. That’s why, Jesus continues:

²³‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. ²⁴For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. ²⁵What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves? Luke 9 NRSV.

What is the cross?

For Jesus and people of his day it was the instrument of capital punishment imposed on those guilty of heinous crimes against the rule of the Empire. Therefore, these people were put to death in the most brutal way possible, in order to terrorize the population into abject subjugation. Roman citizens were exempt.

“Take up your cross daily” did not bring to mind silver or gold necklaces or jeweled art objects reverently, prominently displayed in temples. Today we might say “take up the noose or electric chair.” Crucifixion was intended to be the most extreme example of cruel and unusual punishment.

To take up the cross for Americans, raised in the dust and gunsmoke of the Old West, means to face the violence at the heart of our culture. Inner city residents, people of color, and the poor know violence at a level that the privileged classes cannot comprehend. Whole continents, like Africa and South America, regions like Tibet, and most of the poor in the two thirds world experience the violence of destitution.

Gandhi said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” On the cross and the resurrection God conquered violence, without resorting to violence. We wage the peaceful war of justice.

When the disciples shared their pitiful feast of five loaves and two fish with the crowd of thousands (women and children do count), each disciple gathered a basket full of left overs, more than he began with. So it is with group Bible study when it works: even as faciliator/teacher, you end up with much more than you began with.

Thanks be to God!

I love the Bible—having read it, learned it by heart, taught it, preached and (I hope) lived up to it all my days. I believe by composing, preserving, and passing down through generations these scriptures the Hebrew, Jewish and Christian peoples have sought to hear (often succeeding in  hearing) the true Word of God.

Darkness (whatever you understand it to be) also loves to use the Bible, however, creating diversion, division and hatred, and causing pride, hypocrisy. and legalism. Darkness also wrongly uses texts like Zephaniah to persuade us there’s no hope, no use, no future—when by God’s grace there is hope, there is a point, there is a bright future for all who listen and follow the God of light and love.

Zephaniah, one of the 12 short books at the end of the OT, gives End of the World crazies a reason to celebrate! Try this:

“I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth”
—declares the Lord.
“I will sweep away [humans] and beast;
I will sweep away the birds of the sky
And the fish of the sea….
And I will destroy [humankind]
from the face of the earth”—declares the Lord. (Zeph 1.2-3, TANAKH)

The note says the Hebrew may mean the total destruction of an area of the earth, rather than total annihilation. Either way, I’d rather not.

 For the Hebrew prophet, the issue of ecology is morality, not science. Science is a tool, a good tool, in the hands of good people. But science alone cannot correct this problem.

The prophet Hosea, much earlier than Zephaniah, makes the connection crystal clear:

…”there is no  honesty and no goodness
And no obedience to God in the land.
[False] swearing, dishonesty, and murder,
And theft and adultery are rife;
Crime follows upon crime!
For that, the earth is withered:
Everything that dwells on it languishes—
Beasts of the field and birds of the sky—
Even the fish of the sea perish.” (Hosea 4.1b-3)

So what?

A scholar I can’t name said that Bible study involves two questions: what? and, so what?

“What” tells the message, “so what” the meaning for your life.

Zephaniah, Hosea said… So what? For decades pop culture has laughed at the bearded guy in a monk’s robe waving a placard “The End is Near.” Preachers don’t talk about this stuff so much any more. But Nature programs now routinely document the imminent extinction of species and decimation of habitat. “Mass extinction event” is part of our everyday vocabulary.

Yet, nothing changes.

BP makes bad decisions to speed things up and boost profits; and, millions of gallons of crude oil foul the Gulf of Mexico. A natural environment that cannot be valued is mired for a century or more. If (or when!) the stuff gets into the Gulf Stream, who knows what worldwide destructive impact is possible.

Here’s what I think:

We know of several civilizations which flourished, depleted their resources, and vanished from the earth: Easter Island, the Mayans, the culture centered in Angkor Wat, Southeast Asia. It’s very likely that is happening again, except this time on a global scale. Perhaps, if humans are utterly stupid, greedy and blind, we can cause a mass extinction event.

There aren’t enough tears to weep, when you realize that. Nevertheless:

I Will

• reach out my hand and heart to all who strive to follow the Wisdom Tradition of their culture. 
• speak out for justice and well-being of individuals and eco-systems.
• do my best to understand my position of privilege, and deconstruct as much of that as I can.
• strive to live as St. Francis and Gandhi lived, though I can’t reach anywhere close to their level.
• follow Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, living in accord with
  • the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7),
  • the Great Commandments (love God, others, self), and,
  • the Ten Commandments.

I will live in hope.

Soldiers who die at 18 years old don’t get to live. John Keats, one of the greatest English poets, died at 26. In the 2/3 world infant mortality snatches thousands before they even get a name.

So, does your manner of life, and the outcomes of your actions, indicate you, rather than they, are worth living?

(A question I ask myself)

 In my Southern U.S. evangelistic culture winning another to faith in Christ is #1. Bearing the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, generosity, fidelity, self-control (Galatians 5.22-23)–also makes your life worthy. Compassion for the least of these Christ’s sisters and brothers is equally validating.

The dominant American culture, however, prizes beauty, wealth, pleasure, and fame as achievements of the life well lived.

As an example of a worthy life, I think of Habakkuk, the obscure poet/prophet of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

His name evidently refers to a plant. It lacks a God-element so common in Hebrew names, like “Je-” or “Jo-” or ”Yah/jah” short for Yahweh, or “El,” a word meaning God. (Example: Elijah)

Nothing is known about him, except that his “little” book reveals first-hand knowledge of the 7th century BCE, when Babylon was the enemy of God’s people.

In “Bel and the Dragon” (an addition to the book of Daniel found only in Greek translation, not in Hebrew), the prophet Daniel finds himself once again in the lions’ den, this time for killing a dragon worshipped by his Babylonian rulers, and not for one night, but for six days. The Spirit of God lifts Habakkuk by the crown of the head and carries him and the stew he has made to provide Daniel food. As a metaphor of someone who nourishes you spiritually in tough times, this story is right on the money.

Summing up, his life is worthwhile because:

1. he asks great questions.
2. he states simply one of the greatest principles of religion.
3. he experiences the majesty of God.

 (1) The prophet has seen violent, wicked people destroy righteous people. He asks, how can God tolerate such evil? That question has yet to be answered. The best questions are like shovels; they help us dig a foundation that weathers the storm, not by giving us answers but by bringing us face to face with the living God (as Job’s questions brought him, Job 42). If I could ask one or two great questions, that would keep my life from being wasted.

(2) He stated the heart of biblical religion in a few words. Habbakuk 2.4b says:

“The righteous will live by their faithfulness.” (TNIV, courtesy Bible Gateway)

The righteous, those who live by the Torah of God, wait patiently through the storm and trust God without wavering. According to one rabbi in the Babylonian Talmud, this statement “encapsulates all the commandments” (Jewish Study Bible, p. 1229). It is cited in Romans 1.17; Galatians 3.11; and, Hebrews 10.38-39—and is bedrock of Christian faith.

The concluding hymn of the book elaborates on faith in trial:

Though the fig tree does not bud
       and there are no grapes on the vines,
       though the olive crop fails
       and the fields produce no food,
       though there are no sheep in the pen
       and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
       I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
       he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
       he enables me to go on the heights.  (3.17-19 

(3) Habakkuk experiences exalted moments, when he sees the glory of God:

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD
       as the waters cover the sea. (2.14)

But the LORD is in his holy temple;
       let all the earth be silent before him.”  (2.20)

 In the final analysis, I believe, our worth rests in our being created by God and redeemed by Christ. But, if at the end of my days, I could look back on a page or two of writing anywhere near the insight and majesty of Habakkuk’s, I’d feel pretty damn good about my days.

Translators note that “humbly” also means wisely or prudently.

I’m rambling all over the place. But the question is, What does the Lord require of me? That’s the question.

There are several attempts to sum up the Law. The Ten Commandments. Psalm 15 boils it down to 11 clauses. Jesus reduces it to two stated + one understood: (1) love God with all your being, (2) love your neighbor, (3) as [you love] yourself.

But the prophet called Micah achieves an elegant simplicity:

•  justice,
• mercy,
• wisdom (which presumably engenders humility).

In Matthew 23.23-24 Jesus condemns the legalists who tithed the herbs in their garden but”neglected the weightier matters of the Law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness.” (TNIV) NRSV translates the same three virtues.

Do justice. Treat everybody fairly, or to go to the spirit of the Law: generously. Treat people as God treats them. For God sends rain on the just and the unjust. For the average American, the problem is that the people abused by our system are largely invisible. They may be the poor on the other side of town, or the destitute on the other side of the world. For us much of the world is as familiar as the dark side of the moon. So doing justice may require us to open our eyes and learn about people we never see, we never think of—people we have no intention of harming, but whom we do harm because of where and how we live.

Love mercy. This term mercy is a great Hebrew word hesed. It stands for love within covenant. It means that God requires us to treat the stranger kindly, that is, like kindred. Why? Because, it’s not the preacher or the deacon, not the brother or the sister, but it’s we ourselves who are standing in the need of God’s love.

Finally, walk humbly, wisely with God. Like Enoch did, like Adam and Eve in the garden did, like Jesus did. Walk is a metaphor throughout the Bible for life. How we live, day by day, hour by hour, must reflect God’s love and mercy to us.

Sorry if this post is a bit preachy. I’m preaching to myself. I’m none too happy with how I’m “burning daylight” as the Bard says.

“There’s a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow…. Readiness is all,” Hamlet tells Horatio just before his death.

I think that’s what God requires. Readiness for whatever God pleases. I hope to do better at that this coming week than I have in the past.

It pisses me off.

The author says he is a neutral observer of history, what probably happened. Since miracles are highly improbable, he can’t prove they occurred. But by that logic—the super natural lies outside the realm of the natural, which is all the historian has access to—that same historian cannot prove or disprove miracles.

So how come the author then attempts to disprove every miracle in the NT?

Doubt is not a modern phenomenon. It’s as old as the Garden of Eden. “But the serpent said, ‘You shall not die….’” (Gen 4.4).

No, I don’t know absolutely that there was a snake, a Garden, or a woman named Eve. I’m not sure whether Genesis is an account of data as well as a story.

I believe in miracles. I believe also in the power of Story.

What I’d like to point out is that, when historians pooh pooh the miracles, reduce them to a parlor game of Gossip over time, they are not doing so as historians. But as dis-believers.

It’s okay, fashionable, especially in academic circles to be a dis-believer. So the historians say they cannot write as believers. To be honest, they must say also that they cannot write as dis-believers. Disbelief is  often actually a set of beliefs made popular in the 18^th century by white male Europeans which reduces every miracle to something that fits an 18^th century intellect of this stripe.

The problem of miracle belongs to the Newtonian universe, the machine in a box. But physics today has exploded that universe.

Many of us believe uncritically, unconsciously, what that group of white male European scientists and philosophers in the 18^th century believed, ideas called the Enlightenment.

But that set of beliefs reduces the world to a place without anything intangible. You can see how it works in the definition of the word immaterial, (Dictionary.com)

im·ma·te·ri·al

–adjective

1. of no essential consequence; unimportant.

2. not pertinent; irrelevant.

3. not material; incorporeal, spiritual.

The basic meaning is 3a: not material. But look at all the other stuff that gets piled on: of no essential consequence, unimportant, not pertinent, irrelevant, spiritual. In other words, all that counts in this worldview is what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, count, control.

But wait: love is immaterial, that is, not material. Joy, peace, right, wrong, dreams… the list goes on and on forever. That which makes us uniquely human—not a brick, or a dog, or a widget that produces dollar value—is immaterial, but it is what makes humans human.

Maybe one pair of human eyes cannot see an angel. But over time and space, a thousand human spiritual eyes can see that, indeed, there must be angels, there were angels at Bethlehem.

Okay, that’s a belief statement. It’s beyond the ken of an historian.

That’s a knock against our way of doing history, not belief.

I don’t want the Bible to be historical, in the way my historian friend makes it. I want it to be true.

I just hope our college freshmen know enough to realize that belief and disbelief are the same kind of thing.

My darling girl pointed me to a video by Rob Bell, Everything is Spiritual. One of the most incredibly intelligent addresses I’ve heard, ever.

He lived in the 7^th-6^th centuries BCE. During his life the Babylonians destroyed the Temple of Solomon, drove the population of Judah into exile, murdered the royal family and blinded the king. The survivors, counter to his prophecy, ran off to Egypt, taking him along.

Most saw it as a time to despair.

“Don’t chase after pagan gods,” Jeremiah had warned the people; they brushed him off, “It’s hopeless, we won’t change.”

Hope takes courage. Spiritual change takes courage. It’s so much easier to go with the status quo.

Hope requires you to humble yourself before God, to wait for God’s time.

Judgment fell on Judea in the form of drought. These people were subsistence farmers; they had no stores of grain.

No rain, no crop spelled starvation, famine.

Jeremiah pled with them to return to God, their hope, the fount of living waters.

I grew up in the desert southwest. The Rio Grande, dammed north of El Paso, ran a muddy trickle most of the time—or dry.

Rain swept across the desert, a thin  gray veil, fragrant, refreshing. The arroyos gushed full of water.

Then, for a few days, the bare slopes of the Franklin Mountains blossomed with yellow flowers.

In the desert water is precious. Lack of rain quickly becomes a crisis; if it continues, it is catastrophic.

The catastrophe for Judah was exile. Its people marched stripped and starving into a strange land. By its waters they couldn’t sing.

Jeremiah wrote those exiles. “Seek the welfare of the city you live in,” he wrote.

The welfare of Babylon?!

“You have a future and a hope!” he promised. “In 70 years (a symbol not of arithmetic but of God’s harmony) you’ll come home.”

Hope is for the long term.

 Near the conclusion of his writings he calls God again Israel’s true pasture, their hope. The image reminds me of green pastures and still waters.

But Jeremiah didn’t limit himself to words. He acted.

At that moment, likely, Babylonian armies trampled the land. Standing at Anathoth, you could feel the thunder of their cavalries in the sole of your foot.

In prison, where governments often put prophets, Jeremiah received a visit from his cousin, who had a plot of land to unload, a parcel of the ancestral acreage in Anathoth, a few miles north and east of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah had no clue about his personal future, but he bought the land. He told his scribe Baruch to keep the deed safe for a long, long time.

By law Jeremiah was obligated to redeem the land. Later, when he set out to see it, however, his enemies accused him of desertion, and had him thrown in jail again.

For Jeremiah, as for people of God throughout the ages, hope is not a quick fix. The arc of the universe is a moral one. Love and truth always win at the last. Hope requires the long view, though, the willingness to set aside self-interest.

I confess I’m an M&Ms kind of guy. I want the good times to roll now, today, not tomorrow. As for next month, next year, next generation—forget it.

But that’s not how the God of hope works.

I had a friend who was involved in the People’s Revolution in the Philippines. He said, “We called it, not ‘theology of liberation,’ but ‘theology of struggle’ because many of us would never live to see liberation.”

The saints tell us that every step toward heaven is itself heaven. That’s hope, for sure.

O God, Hope of the hopeless, thanks for hanging on to us, when in our weakness we let go. Thanks for hoping through the darkness to the coming of light that was always there that we hadn’t opened our eyes and our hearts to see. Amen

• build temples, organizations, traditions;
• practice ritual;
• enforce beliefs;
• cross oceans, continents, jungles, rivers to win proselytes.

Think of the blood of religious

• sacrifice,
• persecution,
• warfare.

Jesus of Nazareth boiled down real faith in God to one verb, and two direct objects.

Love God.

Love your neighbor as yourself. 

What does the Almighty think of all the religious activities we undertake in the Almighty’s name?

Jesus suggested that God did not outright oppose them. The inner nitpicker in us deserves her or his moment in the sun. Of that most sacred of all religious obligations—tithing—Jesus held the opinion that we ought not to neglect it.

But justice, mercy and faith are the big ticket items.

For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.

Matt 23:23 (NRSV)

One verb: love. Agapao in Greek, meaning 100% self-giving love.

Two objects: God (with all our being) and neighbor (as we love ourselves).

Pretty simple.

Hard to mess up—unless you’re looking for a back way out.

In the God Sightings One Year Bible, the great commandments (February 3) are followed by the Ten Commandments (February 4).