Magyar Egyház, 1997 (76. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1997 / 2. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 9. oldal The organizing committee of the WARC General Council have produced a book of Bible studies, that they already mailed to all of their member churches. The book was written by individuals from different countries of the world, so the delegates of the Debrecen meeting have a chance to read these studies before they arrive to Hungary. We suggest to the readers of the Magyar Church, that during this long summer take the following excerpts to your congregations and organize groups to discuss the problems that Isaiah will bring to the center of the Debrecen meeting. If your elders, or the various groups of your church will meet for the discussions, you do not need to be close to Hungary, or to Debrecen, because with the help of our Lord, through the Holy Spirit you will be united with the delegates and together we will have more strength to “break the chain of injustice”. * * * One of the authors of the Bible Studies is The Rev. Zoltán Tarr, a young minister, a university chaplain from Budapest. He received his diploma of theology from the faculty of the Gaspar Karoli Reformed University. Because of his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary he is well known at the neighboring Hungarian congregations of New Jersey and New York, where he served at so many occasions during his stay in the USA. The following three meditations are selections from the “BIBLE STUDIES” published by WARC in Geneva, Switzerland and written by The Rev. Zoltán Tarr. LIKE A WATERED GARDEN The experience of the people of God is that God is always with them, even in the most hopeless and dangerous times. God promises to be with those who are faithful and do what God does: share themselves with their brothers and sisters. Only with the gracious help of God can one go through the darkest times of life (Ps 46). God leads those who have reestablished their relationship with God. There is full trust toward God, because God is Lord above everything and has the power to do unexpected things. The prophet describes the faithful with the picture of a watered garden. When the people returned home from exile, they found their land devastated. The temple and all the other buildings were destroyed, the people were distressed and sorrowful. Much labor was required to restore the country and the people. This work was not easy, but if the hearts of the individuals were filled with love and the desire to do what God does then it would be successful, and prosperity and peace would come again. After the difficulties of the new beginning the faithful were to find health and peace with God. That is what the prophet promises. The picture of the watered garden implies that there is a gardener who regularly waters the plants and keeps them in good shape. The main effort here is to get back to the original state. There is a desire for the lost Paradise. This is a point upon which the New Testament passage sheds some light. In Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman we can see that it is important what kind of water the gardener uses. What Jesus offers is ‘living water’. There are two more points to which I would like to draw attention. First, the picture of the garden might seem to suggest passivity from the side of the receiver: God waters, God’s people is watered. Is passivity what the prophet has in mind? The second point concerns Jesus’ action toward the Samaritan woman. In the times when the last chapters of the book of Isaiah were written, there was great jealousy and hate between the Jews arriving back from exile and the Samaritans, who had stayed in the land during the captivity and mixed with other pagan nations. This enmity was still vivid even in Jesus’ time. That is why Jesus’ deed was so shocking to the woman and to the disciples as well. THEE FAST THAT I CHOOSE... It is possible that services of lament and fasting were began during the exile as expressions of repentance. Perhaps the exiles imagined that God might thus be pleased to show favor to them and deliver them from oppression. After exile, the rite of fasting seems to have continued. Yet it appears that the power that it had during exile was lost and it became an empty, external practice for the people. How easy it is to slip into outward customs and lose the sense of the significance of certain traditions! The passage in Isaiah tells us that God was not pleased with this development of the fast. The people engaged in fasting are wondering why it does not provoke a favorable response from the Lord. They are after the advantage of the fast that which it will
