Journey with Jesus #8

Here are the two Bible Study summaries for April.... Peace, Linda

Old Testament - The Body 04/16/09

In the Old Testament terms that describe the human structure are all very physical: clay, dust, kidney, heart, throat, flesh. In Gn 1:21 “God creates the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves.” The word for “living creatures” is “living nephesh.” This word nephesh—which is usually translated “soul” –basically means throat or gullet – so when God’s breathes life it becomes a living breathing and eating thing. God puts his breath or spirit into the throat/gullet to bring it alive. He does this for animals (Ps. 104:29-30, Eccl. 3:21) the same as he does for humans (Gen. 3:7). In Psalm 10 in three places (vv. 6, 11, 13) we hear that people “think in their hearts.” Most often the heart is the organ of thought and reflection. In Psalm 16:7 we read, “I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.” The word translated here as “heart” is actually “kidney”. Generally the kidneys were associated with human desires; the heart with reflection and will. In the well known passage in Job 19:25-26 when Job states “I know my redeemer lives….then in my flesh I shall see God….my heart faints within me”, the last bit is more rightly translated “my kidneys are burning away within me” – indicating the depths of his desire and longing for life. Biblical Hebrew in fact does not have a word for the Greek intellectual organ, the “mind”. Hebrew “soul,” “spirit,” “heart” are all at different times translated in the Greek text with Greek “mind”. Thus embodied emotional centers and relationships were the instruments of thought and understanding, rather than a discrete thinking apparatus, the mind.

In the creation story human beings are made in the image of God. The Jews were forbidden to make images of God – but we are that living image.

So what is it about humans that makes us resemble God? Augustine would say that it is in fact our mind or intellectual soul. Classic Greek thought was that intelligence belonged to the eternal realm. Many commentators say that what is implied in Genesis is not intelligence but dominion. Psalm 8 illustrates this – in this psalm humans are only little less than God in regards to their dominion over nature. Dominion over the animals is seen today as a negative thing (because of the human impact on the planet –pollution etc). In Old Testament times it was a positive thing – a manifesto against paganism and fatalism. Today a more positive understanding would be stewardship – caring authority over the natural world around us. The other thing that differentiates us from the animals in Genesis is freedom of relationship –Ch 1 v.28. God created humankind in his image, male and female he created them. Human beings are collective and fully relational.

In the second creation story humans are made from the dust and the breath of God (Gen 2:7). Adam means redness/ red skin - very concrete, cognate with the red dust/earth from which we are made and to which we return. Life comes from the breath of God. Seen in the first deep breath of life in the infant that expands its lungs, and seen leaving in the last sighing dying breath. Human life is therefore totally dependent on God. It is this relationship that gives life. Life in the Old Testament is therefore relational and material.

In the Old Testament this life is all there is. After death the body sleeps in Sheol. And yet there is a hope that God will deliver from Sheol. Psalm 16 says: “For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the pit.” This is not resurrection, but it shows urgent belief in God’s power over death. Then in the book of Daniel (one of the later books written during great persecution, just some 200 years before Jesus), the author looks to protection from the angel Michael and to a time when these sleepers will awake. Dn 12:1-2: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”. The word “everlasting is “endless” in Hebrew – until the vanishing point on the horizon (you never reach the end of it). In Greek it is translated as “for ages and ages” and in Latin “eternal” – which has a much more static sense of timeless perfection. The accent in Hebrew is on life that is boundless, rather than a separate “heavenly” order of existence.

In the New Testament endless life comes from our relationship with Jesus. When Jesus breathes out his spirit on the cross he breathes his life into us. The Holy Spirit which he gives is God’s endless life. Thus resurrection has already begun in and through the Spirit. The final resurrection is the consequence of this.

Journey with Jesus #7

New Testament - The Body 04/03/09

First century Israel was a culture under pressure – a period of great crisis. It was threatened by the military power of the Romans and the steadily increasing impact of Greek thinking, which was approaching its peak. Greek culture was city-based - political and cultural centers with baths, theaters and athletic arenas. In the second century BCE Jerusalem had a gymnasium. Jesus grew up in Nazareth, just four miles from the wealthy, cultured Hellenized city of Sepphoris (rebuilt in his early twenties), and fifteen miles from Capernaum (where Jesus hung out with his disciples) was the Hellenized city of Tiberias. Yet the Gospels do not mention Jesus visiting these Hellenic centers – in fact he seems to have avoided them.

History shows that Christianity was quickly affected by Greek culture and thought, but Jesus was not. Jesus had a direct and immediate healing relationship with people. This relationship that Jesus had with the body reflects the Hebrew, not the Greek, world view. The world is the arena of human existence. There is nothing else – this is it! The Hebrews did not actually have a word for “body”. Instead they used “flesh”, “soul” and “spirit”. Flesh refers to the concrete existence of human beings that would in due course die – it was a morally neutral term (not good or bad). “Soul” is the phenomenon of life – the experience of living. “Spirit” refers to God’s spirit or breath that dwells in you and gives you life, like a starter motor. When God removes his spirit your “soul” dies. For the Jews, God is the source of life. Without God’s spirit you return to the dust.

This contrasted with the Greek idea of the body as the vessel for the immortal soul – the body is like an empty shell. In classic Greek thought the soul pre-exists, enters the body for a short while and after death returns to the immortal heavenly realm. This life and world are just pale shadows. This Greek idea has led to the dualism of body and soul that has so impacted Christian thought. The body is less important than the soul. This world is less important than the hereafter. This is evident in beliefs such as punishment of the body for the sake of the immortal soul, a disregard for this natural world and the idea that after death our soul is released from our body and goes to heaven. These do not find their basis in the Bible.

The Christian Nicene creed talks of the resurrection of the body – it does not mention the soul. In the New Testament Paul uses the word “flesh” in a specialized sense. He uses it to express a death-oriented worldly style of humanity. It therefore attains a negative aspect. In contrast he uses the word “body” the same way that the Old Testament uses “flesh” – but now open to the possibility of endless life in the Spirit. The coming of the Holy Spirit means that this flesh/body has been opened up to endless life. God’s Spirit is poured out on all flesh (cf. Peter’s speech in Acts quoting the prophet Joel) and will not be taken away. At Lk 3: 6 John the Baptist quotes Isaiah: “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God”. The body is no longer doomed to die, but is now destined for fullness of life. In Romans 8:9-11 Paul says, “You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you….If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” Now a choice is available – between the way of life based upon a humanity that is going to die or a new humanity that is going to live.

When Jesus heals people he uses their bodies as signs that things are changing. In LK 7:22 Jesus’ response to John the Baptist is “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.” These are signs of God’s kingdom when the body is no longer going to die but to live.

MK 5:21-42 recounts the healings of the woman with a hemorrhage and Jairus’ daughter. At Jairus’ home Jesus criticizes the noise and mourning – signs of the old order that no longer apply. When the woman touches his robe she connects with Jesus – enters into relationship. Jesus identifies her in the midst of the crowd pushing in from all sides. He makes the personal connection, making the healing a sign of something more, i.e. a relationship.

We are invited into this life-giving relationship. At the last supper (Jn 13:23) the beloved disciple (with whom the reader is invited to identify) leans on the breast of Jesus. The same words are used in Jn 1:18 – “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known”. The words translated as “close to the Father’s heart” are the same as those used in the last supper passage. So, just as the Son leans on the Father’s breast, we also lean on the breast of Jesus. There is a direct connection to the Father through Jesus. The language is physical. At the Last Supper Jesus says that the bread is his body for us. Just as the healed bodies are signs of the new order – that death is no longer the ultimate meaning – so his body also becomes a sign of what is the ultimate meaning of life –a profound intimacy of love.

Sign Hunting With Jesus

When I was leaving the Roman Catholic priesthood my superiors—the people in charge--said I was emotionally too immature to get married. No less than ten years earlier these same guys ordained me a priest. Figure that one out. I’ve tried to, and in the process I’ve come up with this little bit of a personal reflection on the meaning of “church.”

I should be gracious. It was easy for those who were charged with discerning my vocation to make a mistake and give me the green light. I gave every sign of unreservedly seeking Christ in my life. So why not think this person “has a vocation.” But there, there, was the problem. A vocation in this thinking is an ontological thing, a stone dropped out of heaven so that it doesn’t matter what kind of state you’re in emotionally or spiritually, so long as you’ve got it you’re good. Yes, I know, seminaries etc. have tightened up their procedures a lot, producing the correct psychological grid to measure the ontological thing. These days with proper testing I would probably not have got through (perhaps, so hold that thought for a moment.) Meanwhile, although generally the seminaries may be more careful, narrowing the human slipper to guage the heavenly foot, the essential thinking—precisely—has not changed. Certain select males have vocations. God drops it on them. Forget the richness of human existence. That’s it.

Back to the perhaps of me not getting through. My superiors didn’t see my radical alienation. The church always encouraged something like that, a degree of alienation—flight from the world, as it was called—so on most days I’m sure I looked pretty good to them. At the same time, as an institution the church was/is deeply worldly. It’s lived in collusion with armies and governments since the fourth century, and sometimes you just have to take your hat off to it for doing such an incredible job of defining itself against the world and surviving very much in it. One of the things that used to get to me about this murky deal was the nukes, i.e. nuclear weapons and their real ability to destroy the planet, all that “good” stuff that God had made back in Genesis 1. The bishops said it would be wrong ever to drop the bomb, but not to use it for “deterrence,” i.e. to threaten to drop it. Another one of those having-it-both-ways that takes some figuring out. The come-back to my kind of criticism of this was: “Well what would you do if the Nazis (or the Soviets) were taking over?” My inclination was always to answer “Whatever.” Not because I think it’s fine to do nothing about the Nazis but because I think the question is disingenuous, just finding the latest pretext for business as usual.

Whatever.

It wasn’t just the nukes. My alienation went deeper than that. And here we’re really beginning to talk, I mean about “church.” Ultimately it was the positive content that seemed to be missing. I was looking for meaning, significance, and the whole complex of signs to which I had originally committed myself was fading faster than Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel on a summer’s day with a million tourists popping flash bulbs at it. It’s the signs that count. Intellectually I understood what was intended and basically believed the package. But the signs by which it all was communicated, i.e. the lived semiotics which people could see and say “ah yes, I know what that this is about,” it was this that was eroding. It was all two dimensional, like the world had become paper thin. I was inside a room with nothing outside it, and progressively the inside was collapsing too so that all that was left was a single molecular surface with the traces of an image on it, and that was evaporating same as everything else. Pretty soon there would be nothing but airless flat extension, and madness. I had to punch a hole into life and get out.

Outside “in the real world” the signs of Christ were completely absent, or so it seemed at first. The world was thick with its own signs, with survival, sex, work, politics. My first job with homeless people made survival top of the list, the main meaning. I would look across the Mile End Road after my shift in a halfway-house for traumatized, alcoholic men. I would stare at the chain-link fence guarding vacant lots, the faded Edwardian houses, and my own thoughts of those unhappy volatile people. But there was no Christ, just survival and work. Later I got married, and later still we came to the U.S.

Ah, the good ol’ U.S. Here I was dumped headfirst in a world of signs. Britain had advertizing and T.V., but nothing like the endless highway of billboards and signs, the riot of channels and stations, the relentless competition to get yourself noticed and be significant in other people’s eyes that happens here. A semiotic frenzy. Here it’s not just survival, sex, work etc., the sign has achieved an existence in its own right, the famous “fifteen minutes of fame.” But now here came the twist: at the heart of American semiotics something both terrifying and wonderful was happening. The sign of Christ I was desperately looking for all those years ago was slowly revealing itself

I attended church here. It has a different meaning than in Britain. U.S. Christianity is itself a mode of survival. It takes place within the maelstrom of competition as a place of reprieve and affirmation from where you can gather yourself one more time to enter the fray. In Britain and Europe generally people don’t go to church half so much because they don’t feel nearly as exposed and in need of divine affirmation. Alongside church, however, there is one other significant mode of affirmation that Americans make use of--the gun. It is of course incredibly scary where people combine these two together and have both Jesus and guns as spiritual props, but we can’t go down that road just now. (But, for reference, check out a book called Deer Hunting With Jesus by Joe Bageant, a raucous read but too true for comfort.)

The meaning of the gun in U.S. culture was brought home to me a couple of months back when I had a tradesman working in our house and it turned out he was carrying a loaded 45. He was a nice guy, talkative and well-read. It was very unlikely he would use the weapon—he said he had it for protection against pit bulls—but it was clear for him to be able to carry the gun meant a lot. It was a potent sign for him, pressed there against the side of his body. It meant he was strong against all-comers. Here in the North East, since Obama got into office, applications for gun permits have gone up over 50% and it’s probably true all across the country. People say it’s because they’re scared the man with the funny name will bring in sweeping gun-control legislation. But I think it’s much more basically a matter of self-affirmation when the riot of signs says generally we’re not doing so well. The gun is the semiotics of last recourse here in the U.S. It is individual divine sanction when there are no kings or priests to provide it collectively. It is sure and certain transcendence within a second’s reach.

Which brings me back to what I’ve been talking about all along this circuitous narrative. As I said, I attended church here in the U.S., partly initially for our children, and partly because I sensed the slightly more edgy role of the church, standing in this weird symbiosis of sign-giving with a sign-ridden culture. In other words, churches were more about providing meaning in the midst of chaos than keeping together a metaphysical world order. However, there was still plenty of that, and the church’s signs remained existentially shallow at a more or less terminal level. But at length—and here finally is the real point—in the slow years of experience I have understood the sign of Christ as coming to greater and greater clarity and visibility precisely as a true and radical alternative to the gun. If you want Christian meaning then observe the crisis of violence all around and then see Jesus as its true and generative other way. And this is not in my head, in the way I intellectually grasped Christian meaning back when I was a priest. No, this is something rising concretely in the world, like blossom on a Spring morning.

How do I know? Well, it’s what I’ve been telling you! Everything in my life has been a sensitivity to the absence or presence of meaningful signs. The sign system of the Roman Catholic priesthood was evacuated for me as surely as if someone has placed a vacuum cleaner at the door and sucked everything out of it. I then embarked on a twenty year pilgrimage looking for where those signs might have landed in the world. And now I know. For me at least, it’s here in the U.S. over against the growing and growling crisis of violence all around us. Exactly over against it. It’s not focusing on life hereafter, or justification, or moral rightness, anything like that. It’s the astonishing, wonderful, loving, creative, restorative, life-giving and forgiving new humanity of Jesus in the midst of a world where humanity is an endangered species. Closer even than the cold pistol with its ten shells filled with hurt lying to that guy's heart the Risen One from the long-empty tomb stands between the world and all its death.

This sign, or set of signs, has a thickness to it that speaks to me every time I turn on the Internet or open the bible or speak to a neighbor. And I cannot be happy in any church situation that does not fully release this meaning, that plays instead to some fuzzy inherited Greek version of Jesus’ message to keep everything ticking along. In fact I have doubts as to whether the actual physical architecture of the churches (their primary pre-reflective sign system), compromised as they are by about 1500 years of metaphysical doctrine as opposed to anthropological restoration, are able to communicate this new humanity. But more on this another time.

Tony Bartlett

Celebrate!

In celebration of the Risen One I include here a short summary I wrote for the end of the Celebrations study.

What does it take to make the world happy? To give our world life and peace?

Is it for everyone, each to have everything? A mind-boggling concept. And yet it seems the principle we collectively go on.

Or, is a happy world a real party where everyone shares everything? Jesus worked on this latter model.

He demonstrated it in practice, calling people together around his table, around the food he provided. He was the master of the feast, giving everyone a seat, and through his attitude of unconditional welcome he brought about a world where everyone shared everything.

There was always enough and more. And when there just plainly wasn’t enough, just a few loaves and fishes, he worked a miracle, bringing forward a new cosmos of limitless gift.

This was where he was, in his mind and his body, in the Father’s kingdom of endless giving. And so, now and again, he brought it forth to view in the world of hard facts. With a feast in the desert.

What happiness that must have been! To be there among the stones and thorn bushes where only scorpions lived and migrating animals might pass, and suddenly an absolute abundance, a feast for kings and queens! A real holiday, a Sabbath!

And the same thing happened for the outcast, the worthless ones, those excluded from the righteous kingdom. Jesus welcomed them for no reason except this was the character of his Father's kingdom. Reaching out in absolute giving to those who had nothing to give. The only condition, that you joined in the same thing, the giving, not trying to rebuild a personal castle in this new grace-filled terrain.

Then, on the last night of his life, he sat down to eat one final time. He turned the sign of the feast to what it always implied, his presence at table, his love for all who came. See this bread, it is me! And now it is me in a new way. Because of tomorrow I give you everything of myself, with nothing held back. An endless feast of love.

Come, come, let us eat and drink. Let us learn this wisdom and live!

From Heather

Heather put this as a comment under “Journey with Jesus #3.” It’s repeated here as her first blog.

I'm finally overcoming my technical handicaps and getting connected to the web...my first blog! Thank you Tony and Linda for your commitment to finding and loving Jesus in the world, in the chaotic abyss of our lives. You make the bible passages come alive by peeling away the layers of culture and religion to find the Living Christ within me and within all creation, all people! It seems a better word for 'sin' is 'violence' and a better word for 'God' is 'love 'or 'light' and a better word for 'christian' is 'follower-of-Jesus-in-the-abyss'. Talking about Jesus (outside of our bible study) is hard for me because the language is covered in all these meanings and associations that are not alive! There are a lot folks thinking they have the last word or they think they know everything there is to know about Him. Jesus is boxed in like His life and breath are being restrained. That's why I so appreciate wood hath hope and our small community. There is a space to talk about the wounds I've suffered from other Christians, the wounds the world and Jesus suffers from other Christians,for example. I feel I've been able to truly meet Jesus or come closer than I ever have before. I need and want community to share in the love and forgiveness of Jesus. I need the freedom to explore and discover what is He doing? What is He about? It makes sense to me when you say that looking to the heavens for a violent divine intervention to save us from our enemies is just projecting our own violence onto God and that a new creation comes from getting in the abyss/chaos and dealing with it. That seems the more difficult thing because we have to go within and face ourselves. How do I deal with it? How do I deal with my own hatred and violence? How do we heal our broken world, our broken hearts, broken bodies, broken relationships? Definitely not with more of the same old same! Jesus is bringing something totally new to us. I pray that I could get out of His way and allow Him full reign but here's the tricky part. I'm so wrapped up in all the chaos and violence that I need to be quiet. I need to be still and empty myself like the contemplatives do. I need to wait and watch for Him. I want to practice being very close to Him as much as I can because I'm habitually forgetful of His life-giving presence. I forget all the time how He poured Himself out in love on the cross and dealt with this core human problem once and for all. What's left is to remember, to practice remembering in my everyday life, moment to moment, breath to breath. I'm happy to be practicing this together with you all. thank you and I love you!
March 31, 2009 8:43 AM