{"id":1286,"date":"2012-01-24T19:27:24","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T19:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=753"},"modified":"2017-08-26T15:26:28","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T19:26:28","slug":"god-of-the-testaments-iii-if-god-is-on-your-side-then-whos-on-mine-blessings-revisited-jan-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/?p=1286","title":{"rendered":"God of the Testaments III: If God is on your side, then who\u2019s on mine?Blessings revisited Schmucker Jan 22"},"content":{"rendered":"

View Archived Sermons<\/a><\/p>\n

Listen to this Sermon\u00a0<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

God of the Testaments III: \u201cIf God is on your side, then who\u2019s on mine?\u201d: Blessings revisited.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tim Schmucker\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Genesis 12.1-7; Exodus 15.1-3, 20-21; Deuteronomy\u00a0 28.1-2, 7-10<\/p>\n

Isaiah 2.2-3; Matthew 5.43-45; Acts 10.34-36<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t<\/span>Before I start this sermon, I want to say something to the youth. You should know that you instigated this sermon. A dynamic conversation you had in your Sunday school class numerous weeks ago with Lori is what sparked this sermon in me. So I want to thank you for the impetus, and also invite you to listen to my take. So Derek and Quinton, Silvie and Sarita, Bridgit and Cheyenne, Jerrem and Isaac, Madeleine and Magdalene, Clay and Timoni – are you up to listening? I\u2019d really like to hear what you think afterwards.<\/p>\n

\t<\/span>\u201cSo Tim, I need to tell you why I want nothing to do with your Judeo-Christian god.\u201d We were heading west on the 401, to Leamington — Point Pelee, to be exact. My traveling companions were long-time friends from Toronto. One was a Quebecoise who grew up in Quebec Catholicism and came of age in the silent revolution, and the other a humanist who had read and observed a fair bit about the American religious right. Both were deeply moral and ethical guys who self-identified as agnostic or atheist. In Leamington, we were going to be biking with a gang of Mennonites from Ohio, and I had been briefing my Torontonian friends about the influence of American evangelicalism on Mennonites in the USA, and what to expect during the weekend. They listened carefully, and then Sean told me why he wanted nothing to do with a Judeo-Christian god: \u201cIt\u2019s all about the whole blessings business, and the way you see yourselves as \u201cgod\u2019s chosen people.\u201d That\u2019s all out-dated ideas that have been responsible for loads of violence over the last thousands of years.<\/p>\n

\t<\/span>Or as Kitchener singer-songwriter, Danny Michel, sang a few years ago: \u201cIf God’s on your side, then who’s on mine?\u201d My friend Sean even said it more bluntly: \u201cyour God is a tribal god.\u201d (By tribal god he meant the god of a group or tribe of people, who favours them and is god only for them.)<\/p>\n

\t<\/span>Does Sean have a point? He certainly raised for me the question of how we understand scripture that seems to prove his argument? This was one of the reasons the preaching team developed this preaching series on \u201cGod of the Testaments.\u201d And so, how do I answer Sean? How would you? Perhaps our answers are as important for us as they are for him, for those answers shapes our understanding of God, faith and the Bible. And to simply say, we know God best through Jesus, while perhaps true and helpful, doesn\u2019t deal with the many Biblical passages that appear to support Sean\u2019s point.<\/p>\n

\t<\/span>So, to explore those issues, we need to embark on a rapid romp through the Bible. But first I want to state at the outset some assumptions I have about our beloved Bible and how we understand her messages for us today.\u00a0 These are foundational for how I interpret the Bible.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. 1.\t<\/span>I think we need to grapple with the extent to which specific historical peoples and their cultures shaped scripture. Scripture is saturated with their issues, struggles and realities, some of which we may share today, others that are completely foreign.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  2. 2.\t<\/span>In addition, when we read the Bible, we take our own culture with our issues, struggles and realities to scripture when we read it. We in 21st<\/sup> century urban Ontario read the Bible through very different lenses compared to people of ancient times, and also compared to others today \u2013 rural Colombia for example. Our understandings of scriptures\u2019 messages are deeply shaped by our lenses.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  3. 3.\t<\/span>The influence of culture directly shapes one\u2019s understanding of God. The Israelites didn\u2019t start with a fully formed concept of God, nor did they understand God the way we do today.\u00a0 Even our understanding and experience of God isn\u2019t exactly the same as a generation ago. Sure, there is much continuity, but both subtly and drastically, some understandings are honed and shifted.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>So it all began with Abram at the very beginning of the story of God\u2019s people in Genesis. Yahweh (translated in most English Bibles as \u201cthe Lord\u201d) calls Abram to leave his country and his folk and go to a new land. There, Yahweh promises to make of him a great nation: \u201cI will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.\u201d Five chapters later in Genesis, there is another version. In chapter 17, El-Shaddai, that is \u201cGod of the Mountain,\u201d choses Abram and makes a covenant with him. El Shaddai promises to Abram they he will become a great nation, and that God will give him all the land of Canaan. So, God chose Abram and called him into special status, promising him land and that he\u2019d be the father of a great nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Special status. Chosenness. That\u2019s what greatly bothered Sean. That \u201cGod\u201d would choose Abram, now called Abraham, above all others. And then the Lord made a covenant \u2013 that is, a sacred agreement stating \u201cI\u2019ll do this if you do that – with his chosen people, a covenant that demanded mutual exclusivity. Then, centuries later, when God\u2019s chosen people had been enslaved in Egypt, Yahweh heard their groaning and remembered his covenant with them and thus liberated them, leading them to the Promised Land. Three months after their escape from slavery, they arrived at Mount Sinai where Yahweh reintroduced himself to his people, saying: \u201cyou\u2019ve seen what I\u2019ve done for you. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.\u201d Later as they were about to enter the promised land, this special status was re-affirmed; in Deuteronomy chapter 7, they were instructed to NOT mix with the inhabitants of the Promised Land; rather, destroy their gods, \u201cfor the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.\u201d Later, the covenant and its blessings needed to be renewed frequently over time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Blessings. From God. To be blessed means \u201cto be favoured by God,\u201d and thus blessings come from God. And that\u2019s another core complaint of Sean\u2019s: God blesses his own to the exclusion of others. Exclusion or worse. Could be a curse, the opposite of blessing. Curse your enemies! So blessings if you\u2019re chosen, curses if you\u2019re not. In liberating his people from slavery in Exodus, Yahweh is experienced as a warrior god who fights for his chosen people and defeats their enemies. It\u2019s \u201cwe versus them.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>So back then in the Exodus, when the Lord parted the Red Sea and led his people through, he released t
    \nhe waters and the pursuing Egyptian army was destroyed. The people then rejoiced and sang. The song is recorded in Exodus chapter 15, and it is one of the oldest things recorded in the Bible. In technical terms, it predates the formation of many other stories in the Pentateuch. Doug (Jane) read it earlier: \u201cThen Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the\u00a0Lord:\u00a0 \u2018I will sing to the\u00a0Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.\u00a0The\u00a0Lord\u00a0is my strength and my might. The\u00a0Lord\u00a0is a warrior; the\u00a0Lord\u00a0is his name.\u201d Then it was Miriam\u2019s turn, this time with tambourines and dancing, singing the same words. And we have the same theme throughout the Psalms: \u201cWho is the King of glory? YHWH, strong and mighty; YHWH mighty in battle.\u201d [Ps 24] And prayers for deliverance from enemies: \u201cin your steadfast love cut off my enemies and destroy all my adversaries, for I am your servant\u201d [Ps 143].\u00a0<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>This is this type of passage that has led people to develop a we\/them mentality, believing that God was only on their side. Leap forward a millennium and we have priests and popes blessing the Crusaders as they set out to slaughter Muslims and Jews to regain the Holy Land. Then another millennium leap to the 20th<\/sup> century and the language in the United States each time they embark on a war. For example, during World War II, a popular song declared, \u201cpraise the Lord and pass the ammunition.\u201d More recently, the September 11 attacks produced a resurgence of \u201cGod Bless America\u201d sentiment, especially seen in the ubiquitous bumper sticker: \u201cGod Bless our Troops.\u201d A lighter example is American football celebrity Tim Tebow, who is known more for his kneeling in a prayer of thanks for God\u2019s blessing after scoring a touchdown, than for his stellar quarterbacking.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Blessings, however, weren\u2019t just for being in covenant with God, but rather they were for obedience to the covenant. Paraphrasing our reading this morning from Deuteronomy 28: Just obey me, the\u00a0Lord\u00a0your God, keeping all my commandments, and you\u2019ll be the greatest of all nations on the earth. You\u2019ll receive many blessings; just obey me. I, the Lord, will defeat any enemies who oppose you. I\u2019ll defeat them utterly. You, however, will be blessed in everyway; especially with the land I am giving you. Just keep my commandments, and walk in my ways. All the peoples of this earth shall know you are mine, and they shall be afraid of you.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>This is common Deuteronomic language. In another part, there\u2019s an additional focus. See if you hear it: \u201cSee, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse:\u00a0the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the\u00a0Lord\u00a0your God that I am commanding you today;\u00a028<\/sup>and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the\u00a0Lord\u00a0your God, but turn away to follow other gods that you have not known.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Other gods. Yes, there were many other gods, and Yahweh was very jealous in face of those other gods because the Lord demanded unwavering allegiance from his Chosen People. No two-timing allowed! Indeed, the very first commandment Moses brought down from the Mountain was \u201cyou shall have no other gods besides<\/span> me.\u201d If you ask why, that was stated immediately before: \u201cI am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.\u201d It\u2019s like, hey, after all I\u2019ve done for you, it\u2019s inconceivable that you\u2019d lust after other gods. But they did, of course \u2013 almost immediately; when Moses delayed coming down from the mountain where he was receiving the Ten Commandments, and many many times thereafter. This, even though the people were instructed to put to death anyone who called them to serve other gods, even if they were from their own family. Deut 13.1ff.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>The Lord\u2019s chosen people. A warrior God defeating his people\u2019s enemies. Blessings and curses. How do we understand all this? And we must make sense of this, for if we don\u2019t, we have no answer for Sean. Some Latin American and African theologies talk about God\u2019s \u201cpreferential option for the poor\u201d, meaning that Yahweh does take the side of the some people \u2013 not based on ethnicity or country, but rather based on being the underdog, the poor and oppressed. Yet, this begs the question. This answer only explains why or justifies God\u2019s preferring some people over others. So the theological question remains. How do we answer my friend Sean?\u00a0<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>First of all, some historical and anthropological evidence. The Biblical record presents God\u2019s chosen people invading Canaan after being delivered out of slavery. Marilyn\u2019s sermon last week dealt with one of the troubling texts from that conquest. Canaan was their Promised Land flowing with milk and honey. There they sought to establish themselves in the midst of tribal groupings of peoples, each devoted to the god of their own tribe. They thus characterized their conquest of the Promised Land in epic terms as a struggle between the Lord God of Israel and the tribal deities of their neighbours. However, there is little archaeological evidence that there actually had been any such invasion. Many scholars believe that the \u201cinvasion\u201d was likely a slow infiltration or that they emerged from among the groups in Canaan. However God\u2019s chosen people established themselves in the Promised Land, they totally believed that Yahweh the Lord their God had delivered them and handed their enemies over to them. They were victors because they were the Lord\u2019s Chosen. Period. A bit of mythic hyperbole, perhaps. But that\u2019s how they understood Yahweh God.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>But then come their prophets, centuries after the \u201carrival\u201d in the Promised Land. Due to the unfaithfulness of Yahweh\u2019s Chosen People, the prophets started to shift their understanding of Yahweh, the Lord their God. And gradually, it became a huge paradigm shift for the Israelite people. Essentially, the prophets began to understand Yahweh as the Only God, the Lord of all peoples, of all nations. This was cemented with the incredulous loss of their Promised Land \u2013 the foundation of the Lord\u2019s covenant and promise, and their subsequent exile. Let\u2019s look at a few passages and their historic details.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>In 742 BCE, a member of the royal family had a vision of Yahweh while in the Jerusalem Temple. Now, this was an anxious time for the people of Israel. Their king had died and his son was encouraging them to worship other gods along side Yahweh. In addition, the powerful Assyrian empire next door was looking hungrily at their lands. That royal family member was Isaiah, and he was quite disturbed with what was happening in his land: the threat of the Assyrian Empire along with the reduction of their faith in Yahweh to simply slaughtering and sacrificing animals in the temple. In his vision, Isaiah heard the Lord giving him a message for the \u201cchosen people\u201d: the Lord will lay waste to your land and cities until all is utterly desolate, and you will be sent far away. About Assyria, their powerful enemy, Yahweh said: \u201cAh Assyria, the rod of my anger \u2013 the club in their hands is my fury!!!!\u201d\u00a0 [6.1-13; 10.5]<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Assyria: this was what was chillingly new in Isaiah\u2019s message. The god of Moses would have cast Assyria as the enemy. Now, the God of Isaiah saw Assyria as his instrument. It was not the Assyrian rulers who would drive the Israelites into exile and deva
    \nstate the country, but rather it is \u201cYahweh who drives his people out.\u201d And this was a constant theme in the prophets. They understood God as becoming the lord and master of history, who had all the nations in his pocket.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>And 137 years later, the prophet Jeremiah echoed Isaiah\u2019s new understanding of Yahweh in 25.8f: \u201ctherefore thus says the Lord of hosts: because you have not obeyed my words, I am going to send for King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon who is my servant. I will bring [him] against this land and its inhabitants \u2026 I will utterly destroy them.\u201d\u00a0 WOW! Yahweh was no longer understood as the tribal god of the Israelites, but Lord and Master of all nations, people and history.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>In addition, according to many prophets, Yahweh was revolted by all the religious ceremonies the chosen people would do, supposedly to keep the covenant. The prophet Amos was representative when he proclaimed: \u201cThus says the Lord: I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>And while Amos attacked economic injustice, the prophet Hosea dwelt on the lack of an interior commitment to Yahweh, which comes before and must be much greater than exterior observance. So no longer would Yahweh the warrior god defeat all enemies of Israel, but rather The Lord of All was now using those enemies against Israel, to punish her for her unfaithfulness to the meaning of the covenant: justice and righteousness.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>So the Chosen People were carried off into captivity, into exile. And what a traumatic paradigm shift that was. Not only was it their own Lord God who caused their exile, but their Promised Land, the foundation of the covenant and promise of Yahweh, was devastated and lost. Clearly, God was not who they understood God to be. Hey Sean, are we making any headway?<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Then, in the Isaiah 2 passage that Elise read, we find the second focus of the prophets that is pointing us toward a response to Sean\u2019s objections. While the passage is at the very beginning of Isaiah, it actually comes from a post exile time, that is after Isaiah, after the exile1<\/sup>. The exiled people are now back in the Promised Land. After the inconceivable destruction of their beloved and holy Jerusalem and their forced exile into Babylon [in 587 BC], they had finally returned, re-occupied their promised land, and rebuilt the temple, which was to be the centre of God\u2019s peace and worship. But it hadn\u2019t happened. The glory of Jerusalem had not been realised by the restoration and rebuilding of the temple. The bricks and mortar were there, but there had been no return to the glory days of Israel. First, they, the \u201cChosen People\u201d, were still controlled by a foreign power \u2013 now Persia. Plus, there was much division and strife among them \u2013 some Israelite groups didn\u2019t trust those rebuilding the temple, and had very different religious observances. And so, the compiler of the Isaiahs put their dream, their vision at the very beginning of the book, chap 2. And the vision is also in the book of the prophet Micah.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Listen: \u201cIn days to come, the mountain of the Lord\u2019s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains. All<\/strong> the nations shall stream to it. All peoples shall come say, \u2018Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, that the Lord may teach us the Lord\u2019s ways, and that we may walk in the Lord\u2019s paths\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>So no longer is Yahweh, the Lord God, just a tribal god of the Israelites, showing complete preference for his chosen people. Rather Yahweh is seen as the Lord of \u201call the nations.\u201d Think about that for a minute in terms of Sean\u2019s challenge to us. This is huge! Lord of all nations! To be sure, the identity of being \u201ca chosen people\u201d didn\u2019t just disappear. But there was a very new understanding of God, one that saw God as Lord of All.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>And we see this in the New Testament also. While we still have \u201cchosen people\u201d language in the Gospel of John, and the letters to the early Christian communities by Paul and other writers, we also have clear evidence that the prophets\u2019 radically changed understanding of the Lord God continued to permeate and develop. Jesus, for example, says in the Sermon on the Mount in a very dear passage to us Mennonites: \u201cYou have heard that it was said, \u2018You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.\u2019\u00a0But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,\u00a0so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.\u201d This of course affirms the prophetic understanding that Yahweh is no longer seen as a warrior god. Yet Jesus continues, taking the prophetic assertion that the Lord is God of all people to a new level: God\u2019s blessings are for ALL. Period. Not just for the \u201cchosen\u201d or the \u201cbeliever\u201d. Why love enemies? \u201cFor God makes God\u2019s sun rise on the evil and on the good, and God sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>The disciples, however, have to learn that through personal experience. After Jesus\u2019 death, Peter has a vision, reported in Acts 10, where he is instructed to eat foods that Jews considered unclean. He refuses, saying that he has never eaten anything unclean. After the vision, messengers sent by Cornelius, a Gentile and a professional officer in the Roman military, ask Peter to accompany them, for Cornelius needs to speak with him. Peter understands the Spirit instructing him to go with them. So he does, and then upon arrival to the house of Cornelius in Caesarea two days later, Cornelius proceeds to tell Peter of his own vision from God to receive instruction from Peter. Then Peter responses with that epic line: \u201cI [now] truly understand that God shows no partiality,\u00a035<\/sup>but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.\u201d The Lord God shows no partiality. No partiality replaces chosenness.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Later, the apostle Paul gets at this same theme from a different angle. On one of his missionary journeys, he\u2019s in the Greek city of Athens. There he debates with some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. Then he stands in front of the Areopagus \u2013 air-e-o-pagus \u2013 and declares\u201d Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. You even have an altar dedicated to \u201can unknown god.\u201d \u201cwhat therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines, \u2026 [but] indeed he is not far from each one of us. For \u2018In him we live and move and our being\u2019; as even some of your own poets have said: \u2018For we too are his offspring.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>So in this romp through the Bible, we\u2019ve come a long way from the God of Abram and Moses. We\u2019ve seen how there\u2019s been a progression or evolution of the Biblical people\u2019s understanding of God. I also want to say that there are several other types of answers to Sean\u2019s challenge that I won\u2019t<\/span>
    \naccept. One is that the God of Jesus and the New Testament is a completely different god than the god of the Israelites. A second rejected answer is one that emphasises God\u2019s omnipotence, that is God\u2019s all-powerfulness. \u201cGod is God, and so God can do whatever he wants\u201d is how it often is expressed. This doesn\u2019t work for me. And the third type of answer that I reject is supersessionism which asserts that Christians are the new \u201cchosen people\u201d, that God\u2019s covenant with Christians in Christ replaces the Old Testament covenant.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Rather, I believe that there\u2019s been ongoing and evolving revelation about the nature of God. And not only in Biblical times. Just as the Israelites grew in their understanding of Yahweh, and reinterpreted scripture with the Hebrew prophets growing to understand Yahweh as Lord of all humanity, and<\/span> just as Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus grew in their understanding of God and reinterpreted scripture, we also grow in our understanding of God and thus reinterpret scripture. So to the Kitchener singer song-writer who sang \u201cif God\u2019s on your side, then who\u2019s on mine?\u201d I want to respond: \u201cthe same God is also on your side, for our Lord God, the creator of all, whose essence is love, is on the side of all humanity.\u201d All peoples are chosen. Or to use language from the early covenant, God\u2019s \u201ctreasured possession\u201d is all humanity. And through God, all humanity is blessed. All peoples are blessed. No exceptions, for \u201cGod shows no partiality\u201d, to quote again Peter, and because \u201cGod makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous\u201d, to quote Jesus.<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>So, my friend Sean. There\u2019s my answer. The creating spirit of love we call God is of and for all humanity, and blesses all alike. And now you \u2013 especially the youth, what\u2019s your answer? Not just for the Seans in your life, but for you and our faith?<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Blessings then are gifts from God to all, for everyone. Raffi, the Canadian children singer song-writer expresses it best:\u00a0<\/p>\n

    \t<\/span>Just like the birds that keep on flying
    <\/span>\t<\/span>Just like the wind that keeps on blowing
    <\/span>\t<\/span>Just like the sun, these gifts are here for everyone<\/p>\n

    \t\t<\/span>Just like the trees that keep on giving
    <\/span>\t\t<\/span>just like the grass that keeps on growing
    <\/span>\t\t<\/span>just like the sun, these gifts are here for everyone.<\/p>\n

    Amen!<\/p>\n

    \n

    1<\/sup>\u00a0Following Childs and Sweeney in dating this redactional \/ theological insertion into the beginning of Isaiah as post-building of Second Temple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    View Archived Sermons Listen to this Sermon\u00a0 God of the Testaments III: \u201cIf God is on your side, then who\u2019s on mine?\u201d: Blessings revisited.\u00a0 Tim Schmucker\u00a0 Genesis 12.1-7; Exodus 15.1-3, 20-21; Deuteronomy\u00a0 28.1-2, 7-10 Isaiah 2.2-3; Matthew 5.43-45; Acts 10.34-36 \u00a0 Before I start this sermon, I want to say something to the youth. You should know that you instigated this sermon. A dynamic conversation you had in your Sunday school class numerous weeks ago with Lori is what sparked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-a-worship-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3952,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions\/3952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}