011 MU Talks: Special Edition [Easter, 2020] - Rethinking The Passover With Dr. Karl Kutz

Foreign.

Here we go. Another episode of MU Talks, right before. Right before our Easter celebration. The most unprecedented Easter celebration, I think, in modern history. Here we are. Welcome to another episode of MU Talks, live on social media and recorded on soundcloud.commutalks My name is Alain Bransilla. I'm here with a Reverend Dr. Robert J. Hildebrand, my co host. And then we have a special guest. And as a tradition, I'm letting Rob introduce our guest.

Yeah, so I'm just showing the people on Facebook before we start the podcast, showing them the ocean. Use words.

Use words. What are you showing words for the people that are.

Is the podcast started, Ollie?

Yes. Yes.

Okay, Sorry. Hey, podcast people.

He's using the video for the audio podcast. Classic.

Every time the people at home, the people that are driving, just. Just imagine the Pacific Ocean and big waves here in Oregon, you know, Use your words, Rob.

No.

Hey, we have a special guest today.

This is not about the ocean.

Dr. Carl Kutz, who has.

How long.

You've been working at Multnomah?

For a while.

How long?

24 years.

24 years. Terrific. And you currently serve as the.

I'm the chair of the Biblical Languages department.

That's great. Now, this is kind of an exciting news. The last couple years, you came up with recently with a book.

Yes. Yeah. My colleague and I, Dr. Becky Josberger, we came out with a Hebrew grammar that we use for the classroom. It is rooted in teaching Hebrew that began 40 years ago when I was teaching as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. And I've kind of devoted my whole life to thinking about how to really help people engage Hebrew and learn in a way that is conducive to minimizing their fears and really getting them involved in the text from an early point in their study.

Yeah. And you guys have done a killer job, like we have. Our Hebrew department is pretty widely. Well regarded widely. I hear good things all the time.

It is. It is. Yeah. And even this morning, we had a student that was finishing up her master's thesis. She'll be headed to St. Andrews in Scotland in the fall for PhD study. So.

Yeah, Carl, do me a massive favor and tell the story of you talking to the barista about your book, because I think it's the most hilarious story. And then we'll get back to being serious.

Okay. Yes. It's one of those events that kind of puts your whole life into focus, you know, that moment where that existential leveling that occurs in life. So we spent five years refining these Notes and working on our grammar. And much of it was done at a particular coffee shop over in Vancouver, Washington. So we were there consistently. And the baristas would always ask us, how are you doing? How's the book going? Et cetera. Well, after the book was published, we walked in and the baristas said, hey, how are you guys doing on your book? We said, we finished. And she said, that's great. Now remind me it's not a novel, right? And I said, no, it's a Hebrew grammar. And she said, what kind of coffee do you want? Okay, I know where I fit in the cycle of life and keep you humble.

Things have been put in perspective. Things have been put in perspective. But where can people find the book?

I'm actually, they can find it on Learning Biblical Hebrew, which is kind of the entry point for our grammar with Lexham Press. So learning biblical hebrew.com and the website has tools that are designed to help people that want to either teach in the classroom or in a church or just do self study. So. And there's links there. They can email us directly if they have questions.

That's. Yeah, go ahead, Go ahead, Rob.

By the way, not to put, you know, push Maloma too far, but we have long tradition of languages too, like Edric. You know, some of the guys we've had over the years, it's. It's been consistently a kind of a big deal.

Yeah, I think it's an exciting thing and also a resource. Before we get to the discussion that I'm really excited to talk about today, because I read a portion of an article, something that just fell off of one of your books, a brief portion of your article that really put me in a very good perspective for this Passover celebration for this Easter. And the moment I just reread it these days to really put my heart to prepare for that. I said, you know what, we're gonna, we're gonna invite you to open that up for us a little bit on mutalks. And really maybe the people that are following us maybe put them in the, in the celebration spirit in a different way. But Professor Carl Kutz also has a good number of courses on Multnomah. Plus that right now they're actually, we've opened multnomaplus.com for free during this Covid madness for people that are interested of just continuing their learning and their lifelong learners, and for people that decided, you know what, it took a pandemic to make me a lifelong learner. So I'm just gonna start learning Right now, I'm gonna get serious about me being more educated and more passionate about things of knowledge. So multomaplus.com is open for free. The coupon code is MU with you because Multnomah University wants to be with you these days. And so you can just go to multimoplus.com and enjoy more courses from Dr. Cutts. And I guarantee you, by the end of this conversation, if you're not convinced to go now and check those out, I'm pretty sure the end of this conversation will convince you to do that. So the topic of our discussion today, Professor Cutts, is rethinking the Passover. Rethinking Passover. And I'm just going to let you walk us through one of your findings and from your area of expertise, what are some things that we should consider? And the reason I say this is that I really think a lot of people are rethinking their life these days and rethinking a lot of things about their spirituality. And maybe it's a great opportunity for you to rethink Passover in a very different light. So can you walk us through that? And that's gonna lend us to a great conversation, right?

Absolutely. I think it might help even for me to just kind of tell the story of how this realization struck me. We're all the product of our environments. We see things based on how we've been predisposed to see them. And I vividly remember the very first movie that I ever went to as a kid. I went to a private school that got tickets for the entire class to go see Charlton Heston's the Ten Commandments when it came out. And so it's first movie I ever saw. And, you know, so embedded in my head from even just being a little kid is the Passover and green fog. I mean, the green fog moves through Egypt and kills all the firstborn. And my perception of Passover is, you know, rooted in that movie. Now, for our younger viewers who don't even know who Charlton Heston is, you know, we might latch on more to the Prince of Egypt, you know, the animated version of something that works. But we all tend to think about the Passover as this event that's somehow supposed to be important. But I don't feel a personal connection to it because it's this huge national event. The children of Israel are in their homes eating the Passover. And as the angel of Death moves through Egypt, because they see the door on the doorposts and around the door itself, the angel of death passes them by. And in that scenario, the Passover is about being left out. You know, really, you just. You're just not part of the destruction. And I appreciate, you know, if I was. If I was living it, I would appreciate the fact that I wasn't part of the destruction. But it's not an immensely personal thing, and it becomes more of an event that I understand, but I don't necessarily connect to. So, you know, skip forward years and years. And I was reading in my Hebrew Bible one day I was working through the book of Isaiah, and I ran across another verse. And you have to understand that in the Hebrew Bible, there are not very many references to the Passover concept. Now, let me clarify what I mean. The noun passover is used almost 50 times. It's used of, you know, the Passover sacrifice, the Passover meal, the day of Passover. But those kinds of references with a label like that don't necessarily give you much insight because the label is just a designation. It's not a description. More significant are the occurrences of the verb that's related to that term. And fortunate enough for us, the verb is only used four times in the entire Hebrew Bible. Three of them are in Exodus 12, where the Passover is described and where my perceptions of the Passover were always of people huddled in their homes. The angel of death flew over the house, you know, so if we're honest about what we picture in our minds, we imagine Passover as omission. You know, you go past, pass over the top, skip. Those are all the synonyms that we run across in our mind. Well, when I was reading in Isaiah, I was reading through this verse, and it's a passage in Isaiah 31 where God is describing in very vivid terms his protection of his people. And the first image he uses of is of a lion. You know, he says, I'm going to protect my people, Israel, like a lion that's crouched over its prey. When people come out to try and drive the lion away, the lion is not going to move because I'm not going to move. I'm going to protect my people. And then he uses a second image that says this. Like swooping birds, the Lord of hosts will protect Jerusalem. He will protect, deliver Passover and rescue it. Now, this is a pretty vivid image in my mind because when I was a kid, one of my chores was that I had to take out the garbage every week. And so I'd haul the garbage cans from the backyard to the front yard, one in each hand every Thursday morning. Well, during Certain times of the year in Montana, the barn swallows would roost in the end of our shop and house. And so I had this 10 foot wide path between the backyard and the front yard where I had to take the garbage cans. And during the season when the barn swallows were nesting, I would not carry both garbage cans at the same time. I would carry one and the other one. I would hold the lid in front of my face because I was so scared of all the dive bombing birds and trying to protect myself. So when I hear about God protecting them like a swooping bird, I have this very vivid sense of what's going on. And it was shocking to me that I saw the word Passover in a context where it's lumped together with other verbs about protection. You know, he'll protect Jerusalem, he'll deliver it, he'll rescue it. Nowhere in there was there anything about skipping, omitting, passing by, all the things that were my mental image that I always had since childhood. So I thought, this is interesting. So I went back and I re looked at Exodus 12 and I realized that when I got back to Exodus 12, it had said this all along, but I had just missed it. I had just because of my expectations. I was reading the text through a particular lens and it just never hit me that I was getting it wrong. So particularly it's most transparent in Exodus 12:23, where it says, the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians. And that's not the same word, passover, that is used later in the verse. This is like, this is actually the word for going through the land. Okay, so the Lord will pass through the land to strike the Egyptians. He will see the blood on the lintel, like the top over the door and the two door posts. And the Lord will pass over the doorway and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. And I read that and I was shocked. I thought, you know how for 30 years have I read this passage and I not seen the words? I haven't realized that it was there all along, staring me in the face. That because we kind of make this identification with God's judgment and kind of link God with the destroying angel, we don't notice that instead of this national event where the Israelites are just left out of the destruction, it's actually an event where God individually intervenes at every home of the Israelites throughout the land of Egypt, one after the other, as he steps in front of the doorway to keep the destroying angel out of their homes. And like Alin said, that has forever changed for me what I see and think of when I come to the passover season and think about what God was doing. It's an immensely personal event. You know, it's not just something that I resonate with from a theological viewpoint or God's choice of the Jewish people or any of those things. It's a God who steps into time and space and is willing to respond to each individual and each individual family. And that. That's just changed the way that I look at this whole thing.

So I want to pause here just a little bit, because I think that's the first thing that struck me here. And it was. I mean, I've seen this every year. I've read the scripture so many times. And in your simple mention of this truth and reality and that light just stroke me, even with what's happening on the cross, even what's happening with, you know, with that personal aspect of it. And. And. And I will have this. I think I'm gonna have this embedded in my brain even better than the green fog, that image of that image that God that stepped in front of the doorway. In front of the doorway, the Passover that he stepped in there. So, first of all, Rob, I don't know if you remember, what was your first movie that you saw. I remember specifically. I think it was 1987. And my first movie was Zorro. Zorro.

What an excellent show.

I had a Z on every form of everything, everywhere for years to come. And it was. It was in black and white. I will never forget that. But I really. The first comment that I took a note and that I really appreciated is even through this time, that we at least pause and understand how much of a problem of our environment we are, how much influence and the imagery in this. Because, I mean, the moment I thought. I really think the moment I put a title of this video, Rethinking, Rethinking Passover, people were like, okay. Mm. Like, you're set. I think the green fog is done. Like, that is the image that I want. But what implications, really, does it have to think of a God that didn't come to actually pass by that door and went and did destruction and created destruction in Egypt, but a God that was in the doorway and actually staying in there. So I want to pause on that a little bit.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, one thing that comes to my mind, you know, the Tetragrammaton, God's personal name that shows up in the Hebrew scriptures, it's introduced the first time in. Well, it's not introduced the first time, but it's discussed really at the burning bush, you know, and you have God appearing to Moses, and Moses wants to know, you know, hey, you're sending me to Egypt. What does this mean in terms of a deliverance or some kind of intervention on our behalf, of which this is the outcome. And God says, I want you to go back and I want you to say, I am who I am, and I am has sent you. And this is my memorial name for all generations. And by my name, Lord, the Tetragrammaton, I will be known. And in most people's minds, I think, when we hear I am who I am, the tendency has been to settle on a sense that that somehow communicates with God's eternality. In fact, the Septuagint translation, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, that was done in the third century bce, actually translates it. Egoi Mihaon, I am the one who is. So there's. I mean, clear indication that for a long time it's been understood as having this focus on eternality. But. But I don't think that that's actually what God intended with his personal name, which I think is very much embedded in this account, because he doesn't just say, I am. He says, I am who I am. And, you know, if I say, I am who I am, I'm asking somebody to come to terms with the totality of my being, my personality, you know, who I am. And I think that's the essence of what God's personal name is, is that God said, look, I'm going to step into your world, and what you can expect of me is that I will act in accordance with the totality of my character, and I'll bring it to bear on you as an individual. And that's really profound. And, you know, so Moses goes to Egypt. He delivers the Jewish people, they get to Mount Sinai, they build the golden calf. And you remember that. God says, look, I've had it. You know, go on your own. And Moses intervenes and begs. God says, you know, look, your reputation's at stake. You need to continue with your people. And God relents and said, okay, I will. And Moses feels the opportunity to ask a question. And he says, want to see your glory? And God says, you can't. You know, you'll die, but I'll let you see the fading of my glory. I'll let you see my back, and I'll take you up to Mount Sinai. I'll cover you with my hand, and then when I pass by, you can see my back and I will proclaim the name of the Lord. And he's referring to his personal name. And so at the beginning of chapter 34, it's about verse 6, he appears to Moses and he says, the Lord, the Lord God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding and loving kindness, forgiving transgression and sin. By no means leaving the guilty unpunished, but visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, grandchildren of the third and fourth generation. What I find striking is that when God sees fit to define what his name means, the bulk of him defining the totality of his character. I am who I am. Focuses in on what mankind most poignantly needs. Forgiveness, compassion, grace, mercy, kindness. There's a side of it that underscores that you have to accept the totality of his being in the part about judgment. But even there, it's phrased in a way that again underscores his mercy. Because he says, I will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on subsequent generations. Because we find throughout Scripture that God is so patient that sometimes you expect him to step in and he doesn't, because he's holding on. He's hoping for transformation. He's hoping for change. He's hoping for repentance. And it's only as time goes on and there's a lack of repentance and a lack of change, that there's the inevitable hammer that comes down and judgment comes. So that even as he underscores the fact that we have to come to terms with all that he is, he's still underscoring compassion and mercy. And so I look at this Passover event, and I think when God steps into this, what you're really seeing is the relationship side that's embedded in his personal name and how he defines himself. In fact, the verse that we read, Exodus 12:23, you know, the Tetragrammaton shows up two times in that verse. It's. It's the term for God that He uses. And I don't think that's accidental. I think that it reflects that love, that relational side of God where He really does care for his people. And so, you know, particularly from the Jewish side, you know, I look, we would look at this event and we would see in it this very compassionate side of God where He steps in for the sake of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and you have this deliverance of his chosen people. And then from a Christian perspective, where we see a connection with Christ as the passover lamb. There's another dimension to it in the sense that just as in the Passover, God intervenes between his people and his judgment, there's a sense in which you see that happening in Christian theology where God intervenes and again steps between and those things are really cool.

It's actually interesting as you, as you're saying that it dawned on me that this whole discussion of Passover comes as a tenth plague, as God stepping in after he said nine times, let my people go.

Right.

This is not the first time he said, let my people go. No. Okay, Paint the doors with blood coming in. This is after a long discussion of saying, you have to, there's injustice happening, let my people go. What great implication this has for our time, for our pandemic infused Easter to just pause and think of a compassionate present God, a God that in his name you have this. It comes with the whole thing. I am who I am. I never thought of it in this way. If somebody says, well, why do you communicate like this? Why are you so passionate when I talk? Well, this is who I am. I always say, no, no, this is who I. But in that I'm communicating, this is me. This is, this is the totality of me. And I think because of the green fog, I think because of a highly visual society, especially in the younger generation, you, we might have an image of God that is really incomplete. We might get snippets of God who really God is. Even during this pandemic I'm seeing, I think Rob knows and I think Rob is gonna put the emoji face palm very soon. Every time he hears me about getting down on like being hard on people that post all kinds of really weird stuff on social media and the toxicity. And I've just tell people stop posting. And Rob is like, don't tell people to stop posting. But I am because I think a lot of the evangelical Christians are posting such things that are even more misleading, even more taking us in a direction that is providing even more of inaccurate and incomplete image of who God is. And so the first question that I had when I read your article about this was that it was in. My thing is that I've actually, I think I've missed where Christ is in Easter, the positionality of where he is, because I have missed it where he was in the Passover, I thought he's the God that passes by, checks the door passes by and he's gone and then he's go. But I've missed it that he's the God that passes over the doorway and he's in the door, right? And it's really making me think, where is Christ in this Easter for me? Where is this? Is he in my home? Is he here with me? Is he feeling this, you know, presence, fear and glory? So that's the first thing. And then you go on to the next. Rob, I'll let you.

Can I throw something in at this point? So one thing that strikes me, me particularly, as we think about this in this particular time and, you know, with all the questions and uncertainties that come with, you know, my job and what's the future hold and health and death and all those different things, you know, we've been looking at the microstructure of, you know, some verses about what God did when he showed up at the night of Passover. But I think when you look at the macro structure, what you encounter is what we all feel, and that is that, you know, for 400 years, God didn't feel like he was there. And it doesn't change the fact that God cares. Doesn't change the fact that we pass through long periods of time sometimes where we find ourselves really struggling with where is he and what is he doing? And I think starting with Exodus 3 and God saying, look, I've heard the cries of my people. And being aware of that is something that we all have to come to terms with in the midst of our pain. I mean, the world stinks. Life sinks. It's hard. And I think as I get older, one of the things that I'm constantly having to come to terms with is my disappointment. And that more often than not, my problems with God, you know, because if I'm honest, I get upset about, you know, that things aren't happening. My problems with God aren't so much with God as they are the expectations I had about what I was owed, you know, or that it ought to turn out a certain way, or that death or hardship can touch other people, but it can't touch me. And it's just not that way. You look at the macro structure of the biblical narrative and the points where God intervenes are poignant, they're powerful, they're recurring, but they're by no means evenly interspersed or predictable. And, you know, that's part of this story, too.

Can I be.

Rob?

Go ahead, Rob.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, that's kind of what I was.

Thinking a little bit too. Like, I couldn't help thinking while you were talking about just the article, how many times we just kind of jump to the English meaning of a Word. And we assume, well, this is what it is because this is English. But I've often said, like, I teach practical theology. And so you're dealing with young people leaving the faith or people struggling with the problem of evil. And I've often wondered how many times people's struggles with God just are a result of theological oversimplification. You know, they didn't get a real good. Yeah, they didn't get a real good picture of who God is. And so then something happens like a pandemic or something, and they're. They're extremely confused, trying to put together the sanitized, whitewashed Jesus that they got in Sunday school who just loves you and there's nothing else to it, and what they're seeing in the real world. And I think if people use good exegesis, if they treat the Scriptures carefully and read carefully and think about it, I think they'd have a much better view of God. And I think then I think, you know, God can stand on for who he is, not who we're perceiving.

Right, right, right. I think. I think what this study does is it underscores the fact that you have to constantly revisit what you know, and I think there's sometimes a subtle, even not so subtle message that's conveyed, particularly within evangelical Christianity, that the questions have been resolved, you know, that you've. You've seen what the answer is. And I force myself to constantly rethink every passage I come to every time I teach it. It's a little bit labor intensive when you're a teacher, that you're redoing your curriculum every time you come to it. But I feel I owe that to my students, and I owe it to myself to ask myself, have I understood it appropriately? You know, and the things that I have. I keep coming back to the same conclusions, but I asked myself to look at it through a different lens. And, you know, so you mentioned, you know, the constraints of English language. You know, it's translated a particular way. There's a reason why we have multiple translations. It's not the translation that is the objective of our interpretation. It's the original Hebrew text and Greek text. And the translations are our journey together towards understanding and meaning. And one of the greatest assets that a person has in their arsenal is to be able to open different translations and to just hear it with a different word order or with a slightly different term chosen to try and capture what people see going on. And as I look at it with a different lens, I think, oh, you Know what? I didn't notice that before. And there's this trickle down effect where I find that my view of a passage, a book, or the overarching narrative of the scriptures is just being refined because I'm on a journey. And. And I can afford to reevaluate it because I'm not committed to being right. I'm committed to searching. And I think those are important distinctions.

You know, you mentioned something that I think is worth pausing even a little bit more on. The expectations that we put on God and that specific space that creates a place for disappointment. You know, I'm going to be raw and transparent on this Facebook Live, social media live, and podcast. To say a pandemic does not put me at the edge of the edge of my faith at all. Actually, it didn't even move me anywhere close to that edge. But I tell you what put me to the edge of my faith. Fishing. Fishing did. I went fishing three or four times in my life. I suck at it. I'm so bad at it. And I remember sitting there next to a riverbank and waiting for a fish to bite and starting to pray. And I said, lord, please help me catch a fish. Help me, Lord. You are the most powerful God in this universe. I'm pretty sure you can make me get a good fish. And nothing, not one bite, not one movement, nothing.

There's an existential crisis because you wonder if fish really exists.

Yes. Yes. And then I actually started wondering if anything else exists. I mean, I went into saying, like, what is going on? You, the most powerful God. And all these thoughts to the point I realized maybe I'm just not good at it. Maybe I need to stop this exercise because I just. I'm really bad at it. But, and I'm jokingly being serious about the small things that move us to a point where we think God is not there. But we've created this expectation that he, Because I follow him, he follows me on social media. And that means if I say something, he will do it, and he's gonna be there to respond to that. Rob.

Yeah, like as if the creator of the universe, his biggest job right now is to make sure I get the fish. Or I get that fish.

Yeah, I get that fish. But it creates that place because I come with that expectation that, you know, hey, I follow you. And I have. We build the same amount of expectations. And maybe I'm wrong with this, with the friends we have. The closer we are to a friend, the more expectations we have from them and the more we invest in that Friendship with, the more we expect back. But I think that is an interesting thing to carry and copy paste to God. The more closer we think we are to God, the more we expect that he's going to do these all. All kinds of weird things for us and all kinds of favors and protections and stuff. And then you read Hebrews, I think it's 11, and you see a long list of people that were cut in half. They were doing all this. And it was right after the list of people that changed the world and, you know, brought down governments, and then right after that, people that were, you know, persecuted for Christ and stuff. And you realize there's something more here that I need to open to keep in an open palm. I don't want to go fast through this because I really like. And I do want us to pause and think about this, rethinking the passover of a God that passes over the doorway. And I do want to talk a little bit more about the immensely personal God. And you finish the article with the narrative portrays God is protecting each door. And this beautifully reflects the compassionate nature of God and his love for individuals rather than the whole nation. The nation as a whole. Each family was the focal point of his attention. That nearness of God presented in these passages. Can you. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah. I think those words are shaped so much by. They're shaped by another conversation that goes on in my world. Another area that has been a focus of my study for a long time has been the book of Job. And, you know, I started working with Job in graduate school, did my dissertation on Job, jokingly recognized that I should have picked a shorter book and a happier book. But I'm very grateful for the fact that, you know, was very providential in the sense that my world as I know it, caved in in so many ways that mirrored the Book of Job and have made it a very.

Personal.

Book for me that is constantly asking the questions about where is God and how does it fit it with pain? And the thing that I find more and more as I go through life is that those are really the issues everybody has that it really is about pain. And it doesn't matter whether our pain looks the same as Job's or it looks the same as one another. We're all facing pain. Whether it's separation from family members or broken relationships or divorce or financial crisis or death or whatever it is, it's about pain. And we're all kind of struggling with those issues about the presence of God and You know, we don't have time to go into all the facets of the Book of Job and all of its messages too. But I think that in the midst of it there's this side where we are all trying to come to terms with what we feel is the absence of God. And so when I read a passage like this in Exodus, it's fitting into a larger discussion and dialogue where I'm latching on to a disclosure of God's true character that shines through in a moment that helps me understand not in a way that is applied because I am in the event or because I see the event itself replicated, but because I see something about what God cares about, namely me and the world. And I'm awestruck by the fact that he's doing it for the individual, that I don't have to look for it in the context of, of the collective whole, but that I can find that encouragement and awareness that he is aware of me and he's attuned to that. And when I was in grad school, my advisor, Dr. Michael Fox, not to be confused with the actor Michael Fox, wrote a book on Esther that I thought was also very profound. He talked about how in the Book of Esther you never have God's name mentioned and you never have anything explicitly said about God's presence. But none of us who read the Book of Esther are shocked by what we see and think that God is absent. Instead we actually find him to be very much absent. And he suggested that the absence of explicit references to God's name are ways in which the writer invites you into the story to ask the question, do you recognize the presence of God in your own world when it is not explicitly written in black and white, you know, that you somehow see his presence there. And I think that's the intersection between this, you know, national people of faith, big collective side of this act and yet the very personal side and the part where we're invited to see the hints of God's character that are manifested on a day to day level and that remind us that he's with us.

I think that that begs the question if we. And I think that's exactly what I was to going getting from your article, shedding light on a new way of thinking just about the term Passover, that do we recognize God's signature in what happened there when it's not explicitly explained that he wanted to be near to the people behind that closed door, that his desire was not to leave them behind a closed door by themselves, not knowing the destruction happening outside, but to be there with them. Do we get that message? Do we get the message of his desire to do that today in our own homes? We're all staying home behind closed doors. Do we get his desire to do that with us? And I don't think it's a stretch for us to. You know, I don't want to put words in God's mouth, and I don't want to say things about his character that are not. That are very close to Job's friends. My desire for him to look good, good in this, I want to stay away from that. But I do read that in this Passover. I do read that in Easter, very much in everything he's done for us through this. Rob, any concluding thoughts? And then, Professor Karl Kutz, what a pleasure it was to have you with us. I do want to give you a chance to give us some concluding thoughts on this.

Yeah, no, good stuff. Glad to hear it. Thanks for joining us.

Yeah. I think, just in conclusion, I think that we all are very much aware of the antithesis, the silence, the absence of God that would have been felt by the Jewish people during the 400 years while they're in slavery. I don't think that we're going too far when we look at something like this and we allow it to show us God's character. I mean, that's why these things happen, is so that we see God. And whether we feel that presence at the moment or whether it becomes paradigmatic for the way that God is going to act in our world in the future, whenever that is, this is who God is. He's a God who cares about you, and he's a God that cares about you within the whole. And it's not just the fact that you're part of a community of faith or that you're part of humanity. God cares about each individual in his creation.

I am reminded of the verse in New Testament, and I'm doing a New Testament moving to the New Testament just to spite Dr. Rebecca Josberger.

But.

But what I'm doing with this is I'm reminding of the fact that when creation groans, the Spirit of the Lord groans. And I'm thinking of that groaning of the spirit these days, of how he prays, how he feels with the people. My wish and desire. So, first of all, Professor Kurtz, Professor Dr. Carl Kutz, thank you so much for being with us, and thank you so much for being Carl, with us on this podcast and being vulnerable. Share about your life and where you are as you're going through life. And also thank you for being the doctor cuts with us and opening up that Hebrew mystery for us. But I do, and I want to wish both of you a blessed and happy Easter celebration. And my desire and I do want to give you the opportunity to wish something to the people that are listening to us, to Multnomah University students and staff and faculty that you experience. The God that passes over the doorway this Easter, the God that really comes in the house, the God that knocks there and says, I want to be with you. I want to have a meal with you. I want to sit down with you. I want to live this Easter with you and with your family. So that's my desire for every single one of you. Rob?

Yeah, no, sounds good. I think you've got it. Yeah, nothing to add. Good stuff.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for having us. And I'll do it really quick just so everybody knows, the views and opinions, although these views and opinions on this one are very much, we're all in agreement with, but they do not represent the ones of Multnomah University. They're just a few friends talking. I have actually a comment. Oh, yeah, it was just somebody that said I was looking on social media. Somebody that waved and said, thank you so much for all this and for everybody watching us on social media. Thank you for being with us. God bless you and have a blessed Easter. And if you're in Europe in two weeks, have a blessed Easter. We have people watching us from this. So not now, not this Sunday, but thank you so much for watching us. Thank you for being with us.

Sam.