Nathan E. Lewis

If you are in Beaverton, check out Ava Roasteria, Beaverton’s new coffee house. It is beautiful! Free wireless, rich coffee, and perhaps, the new center of Beaverton, a great place to meet people. It also happens to be my new office. Come visit me and I will treat you to a cup.
The owner, an Iranian woman, specializes in purchasing contaminated properties, transforming them into beautiful retail spaces. For years, in the center of Beaverton on Hall and 2nd Avenue, a closed gas station littered the landscape, complete with a chain link fence around its perimeter. Then this industrious woman secured the lot and built a paradise. Actually she hired an Iranian man who has designed and personally crafted the place - fountains, slate tile, and fireplace outside. Inside his wood and copper work are quintessential northwest decor. If you can’t visit me in this lovely setting, at least you can appreciate these two individuals who work to take a polluted, broken place and turn it into an Eden.

“The Covenant: Kind Justice” Deuteronomy 24: 5 - 25:4

In a number of our English translations, the editors have organized sections under descriptive headings. Most of these headings I find to be helpful. Our text for this morning is titled, “Miscellaneous Laws.” I do not find this title to be particularly helpful. The editors are uncertain as to how Moses has organized these sections. Perhaps he has simply thrown some laws together, uncertain himself as to how to categorize them. Moses is ancient. His writing and his addresses do not conform to Western models, Classic or modern. Some of the confusion of categorization results from us thinking that his writing is a book of case law. At least we would expect Moses to categorize all of these detailed laws under the Ten Commandments. But he does not attempt such nice and neat organization. Continue reading »

“The Covenant: Divorce” Deuteronomy 24:1-4

The prevailing view today is that divorce is on the rise, and that in our lifetime the institution of the family has been assaulted like never before in human history. While I do believe that the institution of marriage and family is presently in trouble, allow me to paint a slightly different historical assessment: The institutions of marriage and family have been in deep trouble from the very beginning of time. Some of us cringe at the no-fault laws in Oregon. But in the great Egyptian Empire in Moses’ day, the laws allowed a husband to divorce his wife on account of her bad breath. If the choices are no-fault laws or the citing of petty imperfections, I’ll choose no-fault. The first century laws of the Roman Empire presented marriage as the intent of two people to live together. Divorce was simply a declaration of the husband’s desire to no longer live with his wife. This declaration need not occur in a court of law, but before any seven witnesses. Therefore, divorce was common practice. Continue reading »