Aaargh! It wasn’t yet Thanksgiving and they were playing Christmas music in the mall! Hang a shining star upon the highest bough and have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
There’s a near-automatic refudiation, as Sarah Palin would say, when someone who takes Christianity seriously hears these tunes so far away from the actual season, and with an obvious intent of milking the occasion for as much profit as possible. As the righteous slogan used to go: “Christmas sacred, or Christ massacred?”
But then I started listening more carefully and thinking: Is this all simply to make money? Is it all just digging for pay dirt?
Something about the tone of the song struck me, a sense of something precious set against a background of something lost, or threatened with loss. Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us gather near to us once more. Through the years we all will be together, if the Fates allow
What are those “olden days, happy golden days of yore”? And what are the “Fates” that may or may not allow “faithful friends who are dear to us [to] gather near to us once more”?
Did those olden days ever truly exist? Or are they not a metaphor for a fleeting but deep rooted feeling of closeness, of life, of forgiveness, of love? Are they not in fact a popular, acceptable displacement of a much deeper eschatological (present and to come) sense, diffused through culture, of a world freed by Christ from anger, hatred, war and death?
Hold onto your evangelical and liberal hats now! I know it’s a stretch and that we’ve been taught to think about Christmas and the holidays in more and more a “secular” sense. That the world and Christian religion have to be held separate. But may not the “secular” be itself just another displacement—of the world’s own authentic drive (overlaid with lots of distortions and disfigurement for sure) toward a destiny seeded in it by the gospel?
Probably the most popular Christmas song of all is I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. As is well known this song was written and released during the Second World War and was one of the most requested numbers in the Armed Forces Network. It was No. 1 in the Billboard charts in three separate years spanning the war, 1942, 1945, 1946. It is also the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million worldwide. (Thanks to Wikipedia for these fascinating fun facts!)
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know, where the treetops glisten, and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow.
What is that but a reaching out for a world freed from the lowering clouds and miasma of war, where nature is pristine and there are no sounds of violence, rather we can hear the music of an approaching absolute gift? And this is possible not in some vague general sense, but in the totally easy implicit sense of “Christmas”, something that happens right here, year in year out.
No wonder they want to extend the season!
For sure it’s the easy implicit sense that says it’s not to be taken seriously—we accept the nostalgia, the wisting and wishing, the deep-snow hush of Silent Night, but then afterward there is the huge trash heap from the gifts, and none of it makes any real difference. The meat-grinder of history continues just as before, and perhaps every year worse. But that’s not where my own soul leads me. If words and signs are the true human food and the best of these comes from the gospel, then I would rather say that all this longing and regret, all this wistfulness, is only there because the reality is there before it. We would not regret what we have never known, what we have never experienced. Underneath all the mixed emotions, therefore, lies the mother lode of a new earth. We experience it only here and there, as thin veins of ore, but nevertheless, if we look with true eyes, we can see they form the irrefutable traces of a transformed human way. What then makes the season so special is its constant authentic sense of a regenerative shift as the year is reborn in its journey, of an earth at peace, with all rivalries and hatreds dissolved by the absolute nonviolence of the baby Son of God. This powerless child has emptied heaven and every other vertical oppressive environment of its storehouses of thunderbolts, the bombs and drones, the diseases and death, the lies and conspiracies and cover-ups. In this new world everything is green and alive and red and full-blooded and passionate with love.
Here is Isaiah of Jerusalem’s description of this time, written centuries before the first Christmas but looking forward to coming of the Nonviolent One who could make it happen. Someone ought to set it to music and I know they’ll play it in the malls!
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food,
a feast of well-aged wines….
And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death for ever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth… (Isaiah 25:6-8)
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Sacred Space #4
Find below the fourth summary in our Sacred Space series
- peace, Linda
The City of Zion as Sacred Space 10/29/10
Isaiah is comparatively a huge body of text. It is generally agreed it was composed over a long period of time by a school of prophesy. The material spans over two hundred years – including a period before the fall of the northern Kingdom and up to the end of the 8th century well before the Babylonian invasion, then the Exile followed by the immediate post-exilic era (last third of 6th century). A distinctive thing about Isaiah is that it is located in Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah is hostile to Jerusalem – he is a prophet of doom against the temple. Ezekiel is worse - with God authorizing a slaughter in Jerusalem because of the sins of the people. Isaiah doesn’t have this sense of judgment. Instead Isaiah celebrates the city. It is a Zionist school (in a sense completely unrelated to modern Zionism). Isaiah holds the image of Zion as the sacred city.
In Isaiah the city itself becomes sacred space. A whole city becomes beloved of God, the place where God dwells. Here the focus has shifted from the temple to the city as the sacred space. When Jesus weeps upon seeing the Jerusalem (Lk 19:41-44), he is recalling the feeling and words of Isaiah. Jesus sees the drama and catastrophe of Jerusalem set against the backdrop of Isaiah’s promises for the city. There is a mystique attached to Jerusalem that persists to this day, making it one of the most fought over places in the world. It was a walled city, impregnable for a long time up until the Babylonian invasion.
Isaiah 2: 1-4 describes the city as a place of peace. A peace not resulting from overwhelming military might as was the case with the Pax Romana. Rather this peace emanates from the word of the Lord: “for out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”. Politically, Israel was never a major player, yet this prophecy describes it as the place that draws all people. It is a triumphal image.
Isaiah is not blind to the sins of the city. In the opening chapter (1: 1-17) Isaiah speaks out against the injustice and corruption in Jerusalem. In Is 1:21 Jerusalem, the faithful city, has become a whore. God abhors the evil doing and the empty feasts. Isaiah has no use for the temple – despising its uselessness, emptiness and the futility of its rituals.
Isaiah 11:1-9 is the prophecy of the peaceful kingdom: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse….” It is a picture of peace that is more than political. It spreads to the animals – the wolf living with the lamb, the leopard lying down with the kid. All flesh is related and no animal is preying on any other: “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea”. (v.9). This is the heart of the prophesy. The spirit of the Lord will rest upon the Messianic figure. He will strike the earth, not with violence, but with the rod of his mouth. Justice will come through hearing and understanding the word, through a change of heart.
Isaiah 25:6-10 continues this beautiful vision. It portrays a big feast that takes place on the mountain of the Lord. It is a feast of rich foods and well-aged wines for all peoples. God will remove the shroud that is cast over all peoples – he will destroy death. The prophesies written up to the end of Chapter 39 are those of First Isaiah and are written before the Babylonian invasion in a time of relative prosperity.
Second Isaiah begins at chapter 40. It is written after the destruction of Jerusalem. (Jeremiah is written in the period between first and second Isaiah). Second Isaiah is a new voice written in the context of the loss of everything. In the face of such devastation, he tries to make sense of the earlier Isaiahan promises. How can the earlier prophesies be true?
He begins “Comfort, Oh comfort my people, says the Lord” (40:1-11). It is the Book of Consolation. Zion is destroyed, but not irrevocably. Hope springs up again – existing when everything else is gone. The prophet urges the people to find their security in the word of the Lord. Structures can, and do, fail – but the word of the Lord stands firm. (“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (v. 8). In chapters 40-55 there is no mention of the temple because it no longer existed. Instead, like in the Gospels, compassion, promise and relationship are what are sacred.
In 539 Cyrus took over the Babylonian Empire. He decreed that all displaced peoples could return to their original lands. He was considered an enlightened ruler. He believed that it was better for people to pray to their own gods for the good of the Empire. Many of the exiled Jews returned to Jerusalem and around 520 BCE a rudimentary temple was rebuilt.
Third Isaiah begins at chapter 56. It opens with a promise that God’s covenant will be extended to all who obey his laws: “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples”. (v. 7). This passage is quoted by Jesus attached to the quote from Jeremiah 7:11 about the house of God being turned into a den of thieves. Here Isaiah is taking a stand against an emerging movement to exclude outsiders form Judaism. There was a decisive push for the returning exiles to marry only among their own community. For Jewish leaders, the exile was seen as resulting from impurity. Their desire was to create a pure community – in practice, beliefs and bloodline, to stop such devastation occurring again as a result of the sins of the people. (Ezra and Nehemiah, written at this time, demonstrate this belief). As a result foreigners, eunuchs and other ritually unclean people were excluded from the temple. Third Isaiah’s response to this is to include all who observe the Sabbath.
In the final chapter (Is 66:1-13) there is again a shift away from the temple to the city. There is a growing disillusionment with the temple (“Whoever slaughters an ox is like one who kills a human being”), but not with Zion. Jerusalem is seen as a mother bearing children. Her days of mourning are over, after the travail of the exile. Compassion flows out from the city to her children - compassion learned through her experience of loss. Now Zion becomes a source of compassion for the whole earth. The Bible itself ends with a vastly expanded vision of the New Jerusalem. It is depicted as a perfect geometrical, symmetrical space. A place where the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations; and death is no more.
- peace, Linda
The City of Zion as Sacred Space 10/29/10
Isaiah is comparatively a huge body of text. It is generally agreed it was composed over a long period of time by a school of prophesy. The material spans over two hundred years – including a period before the fall of the northern Kingdom and up to the end of the 8th century well before the Babylonian invasion, then the Exile followed by the immediate post-exilic era (last third of 6th century). A distinctive thing about Isaiah is that it is located in Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah is hostile to Jerusalem – he is a prophet of doom against the temple. Ezekiel is worse - with God authorizing a slaughter in Jerusalem because of the sins of the people. Isaiah doesn’t have this sense of judgment. Instead Isaiah celebrates the city. It is a Zionist school (in a sense completely unrelated to modern Zionism). Isaiah holds the image of Zion as the sacred city.
In Isaiah the city itself becomes sacred space. A whole city becomes beloved of God, the place where God dwells. Here the focus has shifted from the temple to the city as the sacred space. When Jesus weeps upon seeing the Jerusalem (Lk 19:41-44), he is recalling the feeling and words of Isaiah. Jesus sees the drama and catastrophe of Jerusalem set against the backdrop of Isaiah’s promises for the city. There is a mystique attached to Jerusalem that persists to this day, making it one of the most fought over places in the world. It was a walled city, impregnable for a long time up until the Babylonian invasion.
Isaiah 2: 1-4 describes the city as a place of peace. A peace not resulting from overwhelming military might as was the case with the Pax Romana. Rather this peace emanates from the word of the Lord: “for out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”. Politically, Israel was never a major player, yet this prophecy describes it as the place that draws all people. It is a triumphal image.
Isaiah is not blind to the sins of the city. In the opening chapter (1: 1-17) Isaiah speaks out against the injustice and corruption in Jerusalem. In Is 1:21 Jerusalem, the faithful city, has become a whore. God abhors the evil doing and the empty feasts. Isaiah has no use for the temple – despising its uselessness, emptiness and the futility of its rituals.
Isaiah 11:1-9 is the prophecy of the peaceful kingdom: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse….” It is a picture of peace that is more than political. It spreads to the animals – the wolf living with the lamb, the leopard lying down with the kid. All flesh is related and no animal is preying on any other: “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea”. (v.9). This is the heart of the prophesy. The spirit of the Lord will rest upon the Messianic figure. He will strike the earth, not with violence, but with the rod of his mouth. Justice will come through hearing and understanding the word, through a change of heart.
Isaiah 25:6-10 continues this beautiful vision. It portrays a big feast that takes place on the mountain of the Lord. It is a feast of rich foods and well-aged wines for all peoples. God will remove the shroud that is cast over all peoples – he will destroy death. The prophesies written up to the end of Chapter 39 are those of First Isaiah and are written before the Babylonian invasion in a time of relative prosperity.
Second Isaiah begins at chapter 40. It is written after the destruction of Jerusalem. (Jeremiah is written in the period between first and second Isaiah). Second Isaiah is a new voice written in the context of the loss of everything. In the face of such devastation, he tries to make sense of the earlier Isaiahan promises. How can the earlier prophesies be true?
He begins “Comfort, Oh comfort my people, says the Lord” (40:1-11). It is the Book of Consolation. Zion is destroyed, but not irrevocably. Hope springs up again – existing when everything else is gone. The prophet urges the people to find their security in the word of the Lord. Structures can, and do, fail – but the word of the Lord stands firm. (“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (v. 8). In chapters 40-55 there is no mention of the temple because it no longer existed. Instead, like in the Gospels, compassion, promise and relationship are what are sacred.
In 539 Cyrus took over the Babylonian Empire. He decreed that all displaced peoples could return to their original lands. He was considered an enlightened ruler. He believed that it was better for people to pray to their own gods for the good of the Empire. Many of the exiled Jews returned to Jerusalem and around 520 BCE a rudimentary temple was rebuilt.
Third Isaiah begins at chapter 56. It opens with a promise that God’s covenant will be extended to all who obey his laws: “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples”. (v. 7). This passage is quoted by Jesus attached to the quote from Jeremiah 7:11 about the house of God being turned into a den of thieves. Here Isaiah is taking a stand against an emerging movement to exclude outsiders form Judaism. There was a decisive push for the returning exiles to marry only among their own community. For Jewish leaders, the exile was seen as resulting from impurity. Their desire was to create a pure community – in practice, beliefs and bloodline, to stop such devastation occurring again as a result of the sins of the people. (Ezra and Nehemiah, written at this time, demonstrate this belief). As a result foreigners, eunuchs and other ritually unclean people were excluded from the temple. Third Isaiah’s response to this is to include all who observe the Sabbath.
In the final chapter (Is 66:1-13) there is again a shift away from the temple to the city. There is a growing disillusionment with the temple (“Whoever slaughters an ox is like one who kills a human being”), but not with Zion. Jerusalem is seen as a mother bearing children. Her days of mourning are over, after the travail of the exile. Compassion flows out from the city to her children - compassion learned through her experience of loss. Now Zion becomes a source of compassion for the whole earth. The Bible itself ends with a vastly expanded vision of the New Jerusalem. It is depicted as a perfect geometrical, symmetrical space. A place where the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations; and death is no more.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Sacred Space #3
Here is the next in our Bible Study series on Sacred Space....
Sacrifice and the Temple of Solomon 10/22/10
The Bible can be seen as a list of failed human attempts to relate to God, i.e. with means involving violence. One of the biggest of these is through the sacrifice of animals. At the Passover at the time of Jesus it is estimated there were over a million pilgrims. With each family making a lamb sacrifice, the Temple would have become like an enormous abattoir to accommodate the blood fest.
Chapter 4 of Genesis provides the first account of sacrifice. There is no preamble, no instructions from God to do it, no explanation why sacrificial practice suddenly appears in the text. It arises in the story of Cain and Abel where Abel’s animal sacrifice finds more favor in God’s eyes than Cain’s harvest offering. This leads to the first murder, Cain’s founding of the first city and the birth of civilization. A struggle exists in the text. God hears the blood of Abel crying out from the ground for justice, but then immediately God protects his murderer by placing a mark on Cain. God prefers Abel’s animal sacrifice, but then the blood of Abel himself (an even greater sacrifice) seems to lead God to protect and bless Cain in what seems a contradiction of his earlier call for justice. This is an anthropological rather than a theological text. It tells us more about us than about God. It is a reflection about who we are: that there is a deep human need in all cultures for sacrifice. That the end result of sacrifice is order, structure, civilization – and that the pouring of blood is a powerful thing. Sacrifice was common to all ancient cultures. It is a deeply embedded human practice that, because of its power, was ascribed to the will of God/the gods. It just emerges spontaneously in the Bible. This ancient human practice is incorporated into the text. The Bible both embraces it yet also cannot completely reconcile itself to it (see prophets below) - because it seems antithetical to the emerging understanding of God.
In Exodus 12:21-27 God gives the Passover sacrifice instructions. It paints an intolerable picture of God. He sends his angel of death to pass over the human metropolis of Egypt, slaying the first born sons of all whose homes are not marked by the blood of a slaughtered lamb. The blood is not just a marker (like paint). Rather it is apotropaic – something that wards off evil. Like making the sign of the cross, the evil eye or blessing someone after they sneeze. It is something holy or magical that keeps evil away. It was an ancient practice in Europe to kill an animal and place it under the threshold of the house to protect the home. Spilling blood is a powerful primitive means of protection.
In Genesis 15:7-20 God makes a covenant with Abram. He instructs Abram to cut several animals in half and to arrange their rendered bodies in two lines to form a corridor. A smoking pot and a flaming torch appear and pass along the corridor. These symbols recall the pillars of fire and of smoke depicted in the Exodus story. They represent God who now moves down the rows of animals. God is saying that if he breaks his promise then he calls down this destruction upon himself. Abram does not have to walk down the corridor – only God. The slaughtered animals act as a curse. This account gives us a picture of how ancient peoples behaved. They used blood to give binding meaning to a promise.
The book of Samuel is the story of the founding of the Kingdoms. Before there were kings, the people were led by Judges –charismatic figures (for example Gideon and Samson) who rose up according to the needs of the people. Samuel, an early prophet, objects to the establishment of a king. He eventually, grudgingly, agrees to anoint Saul king – giving in to the will of the people. The prophets emerge at the same time as the kings – speaking out against them. The kings are another failed prototype. The prophets speak out also against what inevitably comes with a king – the palace and the temple, injustice and false worship. David, Saul’s successor and the archetypal king, did not establish a temple. It was his son, Solomon, who built it. 2 Samuel 7:1-17 tells of David considering establishing a Temple, but he is dissuaded by God, through the prophet Nathan:
“Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’”
God is saying that, unlike a tent that moves with the people, you cannot move a temple.
A temple is to do with centralized, visible, vertical power.
The basis of the Book of Samuel is written by a scribe in @950 BCE. He is preserving both the memory that God did not want a temple yet also that history shows that the Temple was in fact built. The account is contradictory - God doesn’t approve of sacrifice, but then he does; doesn’t want a temple, but then allows it. There is a struggle within the text to reconcile both strands of the tradition. The account tries to resolve the dilemma by having God reply to David that his son, rather than he, will be the architect of the Temple. The temple is therefore removed, at least by one generation, from the idealized reign of David.
The mechanism that makes a temple a temple is sacrifice. The ancient human practice, recounted in the earlier Genesis stories, thus gets institutionalized and introduced into the heart of Israel. The prophets continue to speak out against the Temple and sacrifice, maintaining the struggle/tension within the text:
“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me you burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and your offerings of well-being 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.” (Amos 5:21-24 – a text quoted by Martin Luther King).
“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6)
Jesus continues in this prophetic tradition. He takes on the whole sacrificial mechanism, becoming himself the sacrificial victim but overturning the concept itself through infinite forgiveness and love. In so doing he shows us the way to break with the human dependence upon sacrifice once and for all.
Sacrifice and the Temple of Solomon 10/22/10
The Bible can be seen as a list of failed human attempts to relate to God, i.e. with means involving violence. One of the biggest of these is through the sacrifice of animals. At the Passover at the time of Jesus it is estimated there were over a million pilgrims. With each family making a lamb sacrifice, the Temple would have become like an enormous abattoir to accommodate the blood fest.
Chapter 4 of Genesis provides the first account of sacrifice. There is no preamble, no instructions from God to do it, no explanation why sacrificial practice suddenly appears in the text. It arises in the story of Cain and Abel where Abel’s animal sacrifice finds more favor in God’s eyes than Cain’s harvest offering. This leads to the first murder, Cain’s founding of the first city and the birth of civilization. A struggle exists in the text. God hears the blood of Abel crying out from the ground for justice, but then immediately God protects his murderer by placing a mark on Cain. God prefers Abel’s animal sacrifice, but then the blood of Abel himself (an even greater sacrifice) seems to lead God to protect and bless Cain in what seems a contradiction of his earlier call for justice. This is an anthropological rather than a theological text. It tells us more about us than about God. It is a reflection about who we are: that there is a deep human need in all cultures for sacrifice. That the end result of sacrifice is order, structure, civilization – and that the pouring of blood is a powerful thing. Sacrifice was common to all ancient cultures. It is a deeply embedded human practice that, because of its power, was ascribed to the will of God/the gods. It just emerges spontaneously in the Bible. This ancient human practice is incorporated into the text. The Bible both embraces it yet also cannot completely reconcile itself to it (see prophets below) - because it seems antithetical to the emerging understanding of God.
In Exodus 12:21-27 God gives the Passover sacrifice instructions. It paints an intolerable picture of God. He sends his angel of death to pass over the human metropolis of Egypt, slaying the first born sons of all whose homes are not marked by the blood of a slaughtered lamb. The blood is not just a marker (like paint). Rather it is apotropaic – something that wards off evil. Like making the sign of the cross, the evil eye or blessing someone after they sneeze. It is something holy or magical that keeps evil away. It was an ancient practice in Europe to kill an animal and place it under the threshold of the house to protect the home. Spilling blood is a powerful primitive means of protection.
In Genesis 15:7-20 God makes a covenant with Abram. He instructs Abram to cut several animals in half and to arrange their rendered bodies in two lines to form a corridor. A smoking pot and a flaming torch appear and pass along the corridor. These symbols recall the pillars of fire and of smoke depicted in the Exodus story. They represent God who now moves down the rows of animals. God is saying that if he breaks his promise then he calls down this destruction upon himself. Abram does not have to walk down the corridor – only God. The slaughtered animals act as a curse. This account gives us a picture of how ancient peoples behaved. They used blood to give binding meaning to a promise.
The book of Samuel is the story of the founding of the Kingdoms. Before there were kings, the people were led by Judges –charismatic figures (for example Gideon and Samson) who rose up according to the needs of the people. Samuel, an early prophet, objects to the establishment of a king. He eventually, grudgingly, agrees to anoint Saul king – giving in to the will of the people. The prophets emerge at the same time as the kings – speaking out against them. The kings are another failed prototype. The prophets speak out also against what inevitably comes with a king – the palace and the temple, injustice and false worship. David, Saul’s successor and the archetypal king, did not establish a temple. It was his son, Solomon, who built it. 2 Samuel 7:1-17 tells of David considering establishing a Temple, but he is dissuaded by God, through the prophet Nathan:
“Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’”
God is saying that, unlike a tent that moves with the people, you cannot move a temple.
A temple is to do with centralized, visible, vertical power.
The basis of the Book of Samuel is written by a scribe in @950 BCE. He is preserving both the memory that God did not want a temple yet also that history shows that the Temple was in fact built. The account is contradictory - God doesn’t approve of sacrifice, but then he does; doesn’t want a temple, but then allows it. There is a struggle within the text to reconcile both strands of the tradition. The account tries to resolve the dilemma by having God reply to David that his son, rather than he, will be the architect of the Temple. The temple is therefore removed, at least by one generation, from the idealized reign of David.
The mechanism that makes a temple a temple is sacrifice. The ancient human practice, recounted in the earlier Genesis stories, thus gets institutionalized and introduced into the heart of Israel. The prophets continue to speak out against the Temple and sacrifice, maintaining the struggle/tension within the text:
“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me you burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and your offerings of well-being 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.” (Amos 5:21-24 – a text quoted by Martin Luther King).
“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6)
Jesus continues in this prophetic tradition. He takes on the whole sacrificial mechanism, becoming himself the sacrificial victim but overturning the concept itself through infinite forgiveness and love. In so doing he shows us the way to break with the human dependence upon sacrifice once and for all.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Earth Knowledge
There’s a verse in Isaiah that has always spoken to me and, I suspect, a lot of people, for its sheer poetry, opening up an acutely wonderful idea.
“The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” (11:9)
Because it is so poetic it could be dismissed as little more, a lucid metaphor for a flight of fancy or, at best, something real but postponed for a long-distant supernatural future.
But I’d like to report that at the end of our last bible study we stood in a circle with our eyes shut and our hands spread before us palm upwards, and we felt the reality of an earth, a physical environment, that communicated the deep presence of God.
Don’t get me wrong. This is no claim to a mystical experience or to a special ritual for initiates of Wood Hath Hope. That is precisely why I’m reporting it: because it is not that. Because this thing belongs to everyone.
We were studying the book of Isaiah, from the point of view of the temple, and we were seeing how for the whole book of Isaiah the temple is not really important, but the city which surrounds it is. The Book of Isaiah exalts the city of Zion, of Jerusalem, as the place where God’s plan for the earth and humankind will be accomplished. It involves such marvelous features as the end to war, the end of violence (including among animals), the abundance of food and wine to drink for everyone, all the way to the end of death itself. These elements of biblical prophecy have been consistently played down in favor of the “heavenly elsewhere” of Platonized theology, and of standard church preaching and popular imagination. And why not? It is so much easier to get people to believe in, and pay coin for, some mechanism of a happy afterlife rather than an unlikely metamorphosis of the crappy present one.
But what I’m talking about is not a matter of preaching, of playing to the cultural preconceptions of a mass culture whose preconceptions the Christian church has helped reinforce. (By the way, when did Jesus ever talk about “going to heaven when you die”?). Rather it is the here and now transformation of our constructed sense experience by the power of the Word, by the power of a set of signs and symbols which speak to and release our deepest earthly truth.
In concrete what this means is that when we stood on the earth in the power of Isaiah’s words we stood on an earth freed from violence and death. And when we placed our hands and fingers out into the air we were touching molecules set free from the futility of death by the Holy Spirit of love. These are not false or phantasmal experiences, but the shaping of our highly moldable sense apparatus (technically it’s called neural plasticity) by the redemptive speech of the bible working in and through the Risen Christ.
There’s a feedback loop from the inspired language to our bodies passing through the new creation that Christ has already is. Indeed if Christ is physically risen what other earthly reality could Christians possible refer to except the one that is radically transformed in him?
The feeling may only last for the few moments in the slipstream of the study and its signs, but we remember it and know it’s there and are able continually to base our actions in it.
And that is why we “study”: reading and thinking about these written signs, in and through Christ, enables our human senses to be continually formed and re-formed until new creation becomes second nature.
Imagine what would happen to the Christian movement if every time Christians met they placed themselves in the power of the Word within a transformed earth!
“The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” (11:9)
Because it is so poetic it could be dismissed as little more, a lucid metaphor for a flight of fancy or, at best, something real but postponed for a long-distant supernatural future.
But I’d like to report that at the end of our last bible study we stood in a circle with our eyes shut and our hands spread before us palm upwards, and we felt the reality of an earth, a physical environment, that communicated the deep presence of God.
Don’t get me wrong. This is no claim to a mystical experience or to a special ritual for initiates of Wood Hath Hope. That is precisely why I’m reporting it: because it is not that. Because this thing belongs to everyone.
We were studying the book of Isaiah, from the point of view of the temple, and we were seeing how for the whole book of Isaiah the temple is not really important, but the city which surrounds it is. The Book of Isaiah exalts the city of Zion, of Jerusalem, as the place where God’s plan for the earth and humankind will be accomplished. It involves such marvelous features as the end to war, the end of violence (including among animals), the abundance of food and wine to drink for everyone, all the way to the end of death itself. These elements of biblical prophecy have been consistently played down in favor of the “heavenly elsewhere” of Platonized theology, and of standard church preaching and popular imagination. And why not? It is so much easier to get people to believe in, and pay coin for, some mechanism of a happy afterlife rather than an unlikely metamorphosis of the crappy present one.
But what I’m talking about is not a matter of preaching, of playing to the cultural preconceptions of a mass culture whose preconceptions the Christian church has helped reinforce. (By the way, when did Jesus ever talk about “going to heaven when you die”?). Rather it is the here and now transformation of our constructed sense experience by the power of the Word, by the power of a set of signs and symbols which speak to and release our deepest earthly truth.
In concrete what this means is that when we stood on the earth in the power of Isaiah’s words we stood on an earth freed from violence and death. And when we placed our hands and fingers out into the air we were touching molecules set free from the futility of death by the Holy Spirit of love. These are not false or phantasmal experiences, but the shaping of our highly moldable sense apparatus (technically it’s called neural plasticity) by the redemptive speech of the bible working in and through the Risen Christ.
There’s a feedback loop from the inspired language to our bodies passing through the new creation that Christ has already is. Indeed if Christ is physically risen what other earthly reality could Christians possible refer to except the one that is radically transformed in him?
The feeling may only last for the few moments in the slipstream of the study and its signs, but we remember it and know it’s there and are able continually to base our actions in it.
And that is why we “study”: reading and thinking about these written signs, in and through Christ, enables our human senses to be continually formed and re-formed until new creation becomes second nature.
Imagine what would happen to the Christian movement if every time Christians met they placed themselves in the power of the Word within a transformed earth!
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Sacred Space #2
Here is the second study summary in our series on sacred space. Peace-Linda
Jeremiah’s condemnation of the temple 10/15/10
Jeremiah had a long prophetic life spanning 45 -50 years in the 7th century BCE. He began prophesying in the reign of Josiah, king of Judah. Josiah is often considered one of the better kings because he instituted a reform to clear the land of the worship of other gods. Josiah was killed in a battle against the Egyptians at the plain of Megiddo. This was the site of numerous battles led by various armies, including those of the Canaanites, Egyptians, Napoleon and the British. Megiddo is also the supposed site of the great future battle of Armageddon. Nazareth lies about eight miles from the central Megiddo highway, and it marks the beginning of the territory of Galilee. In this particular battle, Judah had sided with the emerging Babylonian empire against the Egyptians, who were allies of the Assyrians. Josiah, despite being a righteous king, was defeated. It seemed as though God had abandoned Judah.
Jehoiachim, Josiah’s successor, became king in 609 BCE. He aligned himself with Egypt against Babylon. He was cynical – contemptuous and dismissive of Jeremiah. It is during the same year that Jehoiachim ascended to the throne that Jeremiah gives his powerful sermon against the temple. In 598 BCE Jehoiachim dies. The following year Babylon attacks and Jehoiachin (Jehoiachim’s heir, then only eighteen years old) immediately surrenders. Because of his decision not to fight, the city is not destroyed - but the king and about several thousand hostages of import are taken into captivity.
After ten years the remaining officers, court and priests, under the lead of Zedekiah, choose to rebel. They believe that the Temple is invincible. Jeremiah, in a hugely unpopular move, preaches against rebellion, but his words go unheeded. The Babylonian army returns to destroy Jerusalem, burning everything and tearing down the Temple. The people are exiled to Babylon, with just a handful of the poor left behind. Jeremiah, on the basis of his favorable prophetic message, is offered certain privileges by the Babylonians should he return with them. He declines – opting to stay in Jerusalem. The Babylonian-appointed governor is killed and those responsible escape to Egypt. Jeremiah goes with them, staying faithful to Yahweh when his companions become disillusioned with their faith and turn to the gods of Egypt. Jeremiah prophesies against them and, according to tradition, they kill him.
Jeremiah’s life is in many ways the autobiography of a failure. He gets to prophesy at perhaps the worst time in Jewish history - he complains and laments. Almost in spite of himself, he is driven to speak unpopular messages to people unwilling to hear. “O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everybody mocks me. For whenever I speak. I must cry out, I must shout, ‘violence and destruction!’ For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long” (Jer 20:7-8).
Twenty years into his career he gives the sermon found in Jer 26:1- 24 predicting the destruction of the Temple. At this time Jerusalem had a fully fledged temple cult – with its architecture, rituals, priests and sacrifices. Jeremiah foretells disaster – Jerusalem will be like Shiloh (a sacred Israelite site from before the time of the kingdoms, famously destroyed, probably by the Philistines). Shiloh was the symbol of a ruined place. If the Israelites do not change their ways then the Lord will send a mighty force to destroy the Temple.
Chapter 7 gives another account of the same prophesy. Jer 7: 30-34 alludes to the practice of child sacrifice – an abomination to God. “They go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire – which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind” The site Topheth is another name for Gehenna, which lies south of the Mount of Olives. In New Testament times it became the site of the city incinerator. Jesus refers to this place when he uses it as an example of a fiery pit that never goes out.
Jeremiah frequently speaks out against sacrifice. Jer 7:21-23 suggests that the legislation found in Exodus and Leviticus is not from God. God does not want blood sacrifice, rather obedience. Jer 7: 5-7 again calls for justice rather than the shedding of innocent blood. This has to mean the blood of the sacrificial animals. The implication is that killing animals for sacrifice is not God’s will. When Jesus clears the temple before his arrest he quotes from this passage in Jeremiah: “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” (Jer 7:11). Where Jesus’ message is of repentance and forgiveness, Jeremiah threatens the worst. If the people do not change they face ultimate destruction.
Sacrifice is present historically in all human cultures. There is something deep within us that calls out for innocent blood as a way to make things right. Sacrifice is a lightening rod for the anger and energy of the group against its enemies. The act of violence brings a transient sense of peace to the group, as the group violence is discharged through the sacrificial victim.
Jeremiah and the other prophets speak out against the Temple and sacrifice. They are generally suspicious of temple sacrifice exhorting the people instead to act justly and embrace mercy as the way to gain God’s favor. Sacrifice is a human not a divine institution.
In Chapters 30 - 31 Jeremiah preaches from the perspective of exile. In 31:31-34 he describes the new covenant that God will make with his people. God’s law will be written on people’s hearts. There is no more need for a Temple because the people will all know the Lord –will be in relationship with him. The tone has changed from threat to promise and redemption. God is on their side and has a plan – an image of a reconciled humanity. Matthew has Jesus using these words when he tells his disciples at the last supper that the cup is “my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (MT 26:28).
After the return from exile, and despite the witness of Jeremiah, the Temple was rebuilt more splendidly than before. It was gradually developed until, by the time of Jesus, it had become one of the wonders of the ancient world - its dome covered in goldleaf. It is estimated that over a million people made the pilgrimage there during the Passover – the Temple must have been awash with the blood of all of those animals. Its final destruction in 70 AD by the Romans (and foretold by Jesus) led to a huge crisis for the Jewish people, surmounted only by the Rabbinic written tradition, not depending on Temple. The deep need in people for violence and blood sacrifice is so strong that only a transformation of our hearts that goes deeper still can overturn it. This call to enter into a transformed humanity is what lies at the heart of the gospel and is the witness of the crucifixion.
Jeremiah’s condemnation of the temple 10/15/10
Jeremiah had a long prophetic life spanning 45 -50 years in the 7th century BCE. He began prophesying in the reign of Josiah, king of Judah. Josiah is often considered one of the better kings because he instituted a reform to clear the land of the worship of other gods. Josiah was killed in a battle against the Egyptians at the plain of Megiddo. This was the site of numerous battles led by various armies, including those of the Canaanites, Egyptians, Napoleon and the British. Megiddo is also the supposed site of the great future battle of Armageddon. Nazareth lies about eight miles from the central Megiddo highway, and it marks the beginning of the territory of Galilee. In this particular battle, Judah had sided with the emerging Babylonian empire against the Egyptians, who were allies of the Assyrians. Josiah, despite being a righteous king, was defeated. It seemed as though God had abandoned Judah.
Jehoiachim, Josiah’s successor, became king in 609 BCE. He aligned himself with Egypt against Babylon. He was cynical – contemptuous and dismissive of Jeremiah. It is during the same year that Jehoiachim ascended to the throne that Jeremiah gives his powerful sermon against the temple. In 598 BCE Jehoiachim dies. The following year Babylon attacks and Jehoiachin (Jehoiachim’s heir, then only eighteen years old) immediately surrenders. Because of his decision not to fight, the city is not destroyed - but the king and about several thousand hostages of import are taken into captivity.
After ten years the remaining officers, court and priests, under the lead of Zedekiah, choose to rebel. They believe that the Temple is invincible. Jeremiah, in a hugely unpopular move, preaches against rebellion, but his words go unheeded. The Babylonian army returns to destroy Jerusalem, burning everything and tearing down the Temple. The people are exiled to Babylon, with just a handful of the poor left behind. Jeremiah, on the basis of his favorable prophetic message, is offered certain privileges by the Babylonians should he return with them. He declines – opting to stay in Jerusalem. The Babylonian-appointed governor is killed and those responsible escape to Egypt. Jeremiah goes with them, staying faithful to Yahweh when his companions become disillusioned with their faith and turn to the gods of Egypt. Jeremiah prophesies against them and, according to tradition, they kill him.
Jeremiah’s life is in many ways the autobiography of a failure. He gets to prophesy at perhaps the worst time in Jewish history - he complains and laments. Almost in spite of himself, he is driven to speak unpopular messages to people unwilling to hear. “O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everybody mocks me. For whenever I speak. I must cry out, I must shout, ‘violence and destruction!’ For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long” (Jer 20:7-8).
Twenty years into his career he gives the sermon found in Jer 26:1- 24 predicting the destruction of the Temple. At this time Jerusalem had a fully fledged temple cult – with its architecture, rituals, priests and sacrifices. Jeremiah foretells disaster – Jerusalem will be like Shiloh (a sacred Israelite site from before the time of the kingdoms, famously destroyed, probably by the Philistines). Shiloh was the symbol of a ruined place. If the Israelites do not change their ways then the Lord will send a mighty force to destroy the Temple.
Chapter 7 gives another account of the same prophesy. Jer 7: 30-34 alludes to the practice of child sacrifice – an abomination to God. “They go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire – which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind” The site Topheth is another name for Gehenna, which lies south of the Mount of Olives. In New Testament times it became the site of the city incinerator. Jesus refers to this place when he uses it as an example of a fiery pit that never goes out.
Jeremiah frequently speaks out against sacrifice. Jer 7:21-23 suggests that the legislation found in Exodus and Leviticus is not from God. God does not want blood sacrifice, rather obedience. Jer 7: 5-7 again calls for justice rather than the shedding of innocent blood. This has to mean the blood of the sacrificial animals. The implication is that killing animals for sacrifice is not God’s will. When Jesus clears the temple before his arrest he quotes from this passage in Jeremiah: “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” (Jer 7:11). Where Jesus’ message is of repentance and forgiveness, Jeremiah threatens the worst. If the people do not change they face ultimate destruction.
Sacrifice is present historically in all human cultures. There is something deep within us that calls out for innocent blood as a way to make things right. Sacrifice is a lightening rod for the anger and energy of the group against its enemies. The act of violence brings a transient sense of peace to the group, as the group violence is discharged through the sacrificial victim.
Jeremiah and the other prophets speak out against the Temple and sacrifice. They are generally suspicious of temple sacrifice exhorting the people instead to act justly and embrace mercy as the way to gain God’s favor. Sacrifice is a human not a divine institution.
In Chapters 30 - 31 Jeremiah preaches from the perspective of exile. In 31:31-34 he describes the new covenant that God will make with his people. God’s law will be written on people’s hearts. There is no more need for a Temple because the people will all know the Lord –will be in relationship with him. The tone has changed from threat to promise and redemption. God is on their side and has a plan – an image of a reconciled humanity. Matthew has Jesus using these words when he tells his disciples at the last supper that the cup is “my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (MT 26:28).
After the return from exile, and despite the witness of Jeremiah, the Temple was rebuilt more splendidly than before. It was gradually developed until, by the time of Jesus, it had become one of the wonders of the ancient world - its dome covered in goldleaf. It is estimated that over a million people made the pilgrimage there during the Passover – the Temple must have been awash with the blood of all of those animals. Its final destruction in 70 AD by the Romans (and foretold by Jesus) led to a huge crisis for the Jewish people, surmounted only by the Rabbinic written tradition, not depending on Temple. The deep need in people for violence and blood sacrifice is so strong that only a transformation of our hearts that goes deeper still can overturn it. This call to enter into a transformed humanity is what lies at the heart of the gospel and is the witness of the crucifixion.
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