Parables VIII

The Dishonest Manager Luke 16:1-9

Some think this is one of the most difficult parables to interpret. Here is the basic story. A rich man hears information that his manager is up to something and calls him to account and orders him to turn over his books. Manager is losing his job. What is his plan now? He is too weak to work and too proud to beg. He better make friends with the people he has been cheating. So he calls them in separately and instructs them to mark down their accounts 50%.for the oil and 20% for the wheat.

Ambiguity of the Greek words.

Many Greek words can be translated in different ways, just as our words can have different meanings. Who is the master in Luke 18:8a? The Greek is KURIOS which can mean any of the following: lord, master or The Lord meaning Jesus or God. So who is doing the praising of this dishonest manager and why?

Questions about the story.

Why would the master praise his dishonest manager? If he knew he was being cheated, why not beat him and throw him in jail? Do not give him time to do further damage.

Maybe the owner isn’t really sure of his servant’s dishonesty but fires him anyway. “charges were brought to him” (diaballo Gk.) There is the suggestion of slander or rumor in the Greek here.

Where does the parable end and the comment by Jesus begin? In any case, why is this apparently dishonest manager praised? The sentence from 16:9b on seems like Jesus talking, ..”for the children of this age are more shrewd…than are children of light. Shrewd is the way the Greek is most often translated and the idea seem to be “careful for his own future” (Phillips} or “knew how to look after himself”. Jesus wants his followers to be as careful about our eternal future as the manager, maybe.

How has the manager solved his problem? The master will surely find out and punish him. He might have “friends” but who would hire such a dishonest person?

Who are the “children of light”? One possibility is that they were members of the Essene Community who withdrew from the world and lived ascetic lives studying the Torah. Is Jesus saying that we should not withdraw from the world, but use “mammon” wisely? We are to “make friends with dishonest wealth (mammon) so that when it is gone they will welcome you into their eternal homes. (NRSV). That sentence has many questions and seems clear as mud.

Some interpretations of the master and his servant.

A possible paraphrase from The Message.

8-9"Now here's a surprise: The master praised the crooked manager! And why, because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you'll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior."

Or based on an interpretation by Kenneth Bailey.

The manager was not so much dishonest as “shrewd”. He was not thrown in jail, but shown mercy. He decides to risk everything on that mercy. The debtors would assume that the reductions were made with the master’s approval. Everyone would praise the master for his generosity. What will the master do? His reputation has been enhanced. Everyone thinks he is a wonderful, generous man and his reputation is very important to him. Wouldn’t it be better to praise the “shewdness” of his manager.

With Bailley, the master represents the gracious forgiveness of God and makes this parable similar to the mercifull father in the parable of the prodigal.

A possible application for us is as follows. Recognize that God is merciful and generous. So we use our money (mannon) wisely by building community and being generous. Then we will be welcomed to our tents (homes) in the next age.

The Parable of the Sower

Matt:13:1-23, Mark 4:1-20, Luke 8:4-15

This parable is important enough to be all three of the synoptic gospels. In each case, it is coupled by an interpretation of the parable by Jesus and a cryptic quote from the Hebrew Scripture and like God does not want all to hear and understand. How do we understand this?

In most groups where we have looked at this parable, the questions we asked were these. What kind of soil am I and am I growing and bearing fruit? Good questions for individual reflection. But this parable is also about a Sower (God or those who preach or teach), who scatters seed generously everywhere. The seed will eventually bring in a great yield or harvest. In this case, the parable is a statement about the various responses to the message of the kingdom, and has the a promise of a great harvest.

Here is what I think. The followers of Jesus of every age need this prediction of reality coupled with the promise of a great eventual harvest, lest we “weary in well doing” and give up because the results do not seen enough. The quotation does not mean God is blinding some, but that’s just the way it is.

In Conclusion:

final suggestions on reading the Parables

• The simplest application to our day may not be the original interpretation
• Parables are often open ended and designed to stimulate thought.
• The main figure in the parable may not always be God.
• Parables encourage a new way to look at the world.
• Jesus may be describing something new and unique like the kingdom of God.
• It is helpful to compare the parables in different translation.
• In Matthew the kingdom of Heaven is not out of this world or future, but corresponds to Luke’s kingdom of God. Mathew, as a Jew, used heaven as a euphemism for the holy name of God.
• It is safe to assume that the parables originated with Jesus, but the gospel writers place them in their gospel story to fit their purposes.
• I want to thank, Tony, Linda and our WHH fellowship for stimulating my interest and study of the parables as never before. I feel blessed by the opportunity to study and grow with these people. The opportunity to summarize and add to our discussion has forced me to clarify and firm up my understanding. Thank you all. Jerry.

Parables VII

WHH Parable Study VII Oct. 21, 2011

The Prodigal Son and Elder Brother is one of the longest and best know of the Parables of Jesus. It appears only in Luke 15:11-32. It follows the parable of the Lost Sheep and The Lost Coin. If you consider the Prodigal lost, then this is the third of three parables demonstrating God’s concern for the lost.

A better name for the parable would be the parable of the Compassionate Father or, by normal worldly standards, the Crazy Father. When Jesus told this parable his hears would be shocked, just as we are, when we really think of the father’s actions.

He son insults his father by asking for his inheritance in advance.

That is kind of like saying, “I can’t wait until you are dead. Give me the money now.” In that culture where the father was an honored figured of authority, this was a serious insult. The ones who heard Jesus would have expected the insulted father to have the brat beaten and thrown out with nothing, but no. You know the story. When the prodigal “come to himself” because he is broke and starving, he decides to return home and see if his father will take him back as a hired hand. The amazing thing is that the father “saw him when he was far off and “ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.“ vs. 20. Those familiar with Middle Easter Culture say that the father running would have been undignified and socially shocking. The prodigal gets his father’s ring (our equivalent is credit card) and a garment signifying status and dad throws a big party. This is a story picture of the grace filled, compassionate love of God for all of us.

We are all prodigals in some way, but most church people fit the role of the good, hard working, elder brother. Perhaps he was trying to earn his father’s love, but he never asked for anything. Certainty he has a deep resentment of his brother, probably of long standing sibling rivalry The story ends with no real conclusion. We don’t know whether the elder brother ever joins the party. If he stays away, he insults his father, because, as the oldest son he had an obligation to be the host at the party. If he misses the party, it is his choice.

The next parable we discussed was the Rich Man and Lazarus.(Luke 16:19-30.) The context here is 16:14 The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this and they ridiculed him.” Jesus has harsh words for them in vs.15. Then skip down to vs. 19 and Jesus tells this story. (Jesus doesn’t call it a parable)

A rich man (very rich, purple and fine linen sumptuous daily feasting) and a poor suffering, beggar named Lazarus. Both of them die. Lazarus is carried by angels to be with Abraham. The rich man is in Hades. The word is Hades not hell. Hades is the Greek word for Sheol, the place of the dead. The Hebrews did not have a word that expressed our concept of hell as a place of everlasting torture. Since the rich man is “being tormented” some translations use the word hell. (See KJV and The Message)

The rich man gives no indication of repentance and he wants Lazarus to wait on him and send a message to his brothers warning them of their fate. Abraham replies, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from dead.(vs.31). This was a clear message to the Pharisees and how true it proved to be.

Notice that Abraham addresses the rich man as “Child” (v 25) There is no indication of judgment or condemnation, but there is a “division or a great chasm that has been fixed. (vs.26) It is the way things are and money is the issue. Fair warning. Jerry

Parables VI

The Parable of the Lost The Sheep

Matt. 18:10-14

Matthew chapter 18. Jesus is talking to the disciples about caring for “These little ones who believe in me.“ Whoever these “little ones” were they were not to be despised or cast out. Matthew seems to be concerned about keeping the community together. Jesus wants them all included, all are important. Therefore, the parable of the Lost Sheep (Matt. 18:10-14) fits in perfectly here. Who are the little ones or the lambs of our Christian communities? Maybe they are those we tend to exclude, ignore or think are not important.

Luke’s version

Luke 15:1-7

Luke chapter 15 Jesus is addressing not to his followers, but the Pharisees and Scribes who were grumbling against him saying, “He welcome sinners and eats with them.” Such behavior by Jesus was in direct violation of religious rules and social norms. The Abba of Jesus does not exclude but includes all. The Good Shepherd searches for those who are “lost”. The sheep are the people of Israel, Gods flock. The lamb represents those the Pharisees reject in order to maintain their religious purity.

Luke’s version of the Lost Shepherd is in a poetic style. It was probably closer to the original words of Jesus than the shorter form in Matthew. Those who heard the parable would think of a peasant village adjacent to pasture land. The flock would be the collective flock of the village under the care of more than one shepherd. The flock were led out to pasture during the day and returned to the village at night. When it was time to head home, the lambs would be counted. A shepherd would seek a missing lamb while the others were led home. The people of the village would be concerned for the safely of the shepherd and worried about the loss of a one of the lambs. Therefore, there would be a lot of rejoicing when the shepherd returned with the lost lamb on his shoulder. The shepherd rejoiced when he found the lamb, even though he would need to lug it home on his shoulders.

John 10 The Good Shepherd

There is no lost lamb story in John 10, but the narrative in chapter 9 shows Jesus as seeking the man cast out by the Pharisees. Jesus was a good shepherd who found and restored him.

Then in the tenth chapter there are several images or parables that describe the ministry of Jesus in terms of sheep and shepherds. He is “the gate” to the sheep fold(1-10) and also the “Good Shepherd. (11-18)

Perhaps the “hired hands”, “thieves” and “strangers”, represented the religious leaders who had not and were not caring for God people.

“I am the “good shepherd”. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”. (Jn 10:10,11)

The sheep recognize the voice of the good shepherd and follow him for the shepherd knows them each by name.

John 10:16 “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold”. Certainly, this suggests the universal extension of God’s inclusive love and the promise of the eventual unity of all in Christ. (See Phil. 2:9-11)

It is possible that the sheepfold Jesus meant was the large area with a gate where the sheep were kept prior to their sacrifice. In that case, Jesus (vs.2) is “the shepherd who enters by the gate.” He is then sacrificed, crucified, lays down his life for them and, when resurrected, leads them out into green pastures and the abundant life.

By the time John wrote this gospel, the temple had been totally destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. There would be no more sacrifice of lambs in the temple, but people and groups of people have continued to be sacrificed by many societies. Sometimes the sacrifices have been to maintain the purity of religion or race. Some are called to sacrifice for the purposes of governments. That is another story that has been well hidden according to Rene Girard. (For a history of sacrifice in America read, Pahl’s book, Empire of Sacrifice:the religious origins of American Violence. Some of my comments regarding the parables are based on Kenneth Baily’s, book, Through Peasant Eyes. Jerry

Parables V

The writers of the Gospels were all inspired to write the story of Jesus of Nazareth. The risen Lord had transformed lives. They wanted to pass on the “good news” and we are still learning just how good that news is.

In the telling of the story, they recorded the parables that Jesus told, but they did so in their own ways in order to fit the purpose and theme of their “gospels”.

Matthew collects the teaching of Jesus in chapters 5-7 in what we call the Sermon on the Mount.

Luke introduces the teachings of Jesus (chap. 7-19) as Jesus journeyed on the way to Jerusalem. Luke was writing as the “good news” was spreading into the Greco Roman world.

In Luke 10:25-29 the parable of the Good Samaritan is introduced by a question. A lawyer (The Message calls him a “religious scholar”) asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor? This seems like a reasonable question. Don’t we all have circles that define those for whom we feel greater of less responsibility? In the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus deals with this problem by turning the question around.

Jesus asked, “Which of these was a neighbor to the man…”:Lk 10:36

The priest and the religious man probably had good reasons to pass by the wounded man. Contact with this wounded man might have made them ritually unclean and unable to perform their temple duties. Think of a priest, preacher or teacher who need to be about their work. We can always find good sounding religious reasons to avoid what we do not want to do.

The Samaritan was moved with pity (NRSV) or his heart went out him (TM) In Greek this is the word that is used of Jesus when it is said that he was “moved with compassion”. The Samaritan is acting like Jesus! There are no predefined limits to our neighborly compassion as followers of Jesus. Only the Holy Spirit defines for us our responses when faced with human need. There are no outcasts. (Sue Wright, another local Girardian theologian, has a website called No Outcasts. Check it out. You’ll like it.)

Jesus was always breaking down barriers and bringing unity to the divisions of the world. He broke the religious rules that separated people into categories of good and bad, clean and unclean. He subverted or upset the established order. He died to bring peace to a divided and violent world by revealing the innocence of the victim and by forgiving all of us.

We have been given a new start and here we are today, still learning what it means to be “in Christ”. As imperfect as we are, we are still those who are “trusted with the message of reconciliation”(2 Cor. 5:17-20) We are to love and forgive and speak of God’s marvelous, gracious love for all not just the few. 

Jerry

Parables IV

 I am so very grateful to Jerry Shave for doing these summaries of our Friday Bible Studies. As you will surely pick up he is no mean biblical scholar himself. Of course as the picky theologian that I am I will occasionally post a point in the comments, but you can certainly disregard them and be well served by Jerry alone! It's the grace of God that counts, and all here is grace! Tony Bartlett

The Sermon on the Mount Mt. 5-7 seems to be all about non-violence and trusting God. In Mt chap 25 there is a separation of sheep and goats in judgment with the goats suffering torture. Is there a way we can understand this in keeping with our understanding of the loving God (Abba) that Jesus reveals?

Matt. 7:21-27 Jesus warns his followers that prophesying, casting out demons and doing many deed of power does not mean that they will enter into the reign of God. Remember, Matthew’s kingdom of heaven is a kingdom or reign of God on earth and not some heavenly place after death. Jesus doesn’t punish them, but he says, “God away from me, you evil doers.” Our proposed interpretation is this. They may be doing these things, but their method is by power and not by the methods of peaceful transformation of Jesus. In other words, their actions may be effective but their methods wrong. Jesus does not want their methods associated with the new Way he is introducing.

Matt. 7:24-27 The house built on a rock stands; the one built on sand falls. The “house” would have been a recognizable metaphor that can stand for all human constructs, i.e. empires, nations, economic systems, institutions, churches and our lives. All will fall or collapse, if built on violence and power rather than love and forgiveness. When we look at the big picture, history seems to bear this out. “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” Psa, 121:1

The familiar parable of the vine and the branches is in John 15:1-7. If we consider, that vines have tendrils not branches, the union of believers and the Master seems even more intimate. The word for prunes also means cleans. To be thrown into the fire and burned need not be interpreted as thrown into a final “hell”. Hell was not a Hebrew idea and there is no word for hell in the Bible. Maybe, the idea is of a purifying burning. (See I Cor. 3:13ff. The Bible has a lot of references to fire used to cleanse or purify.)

In Matt:25-46 the “goats” “go away” which suggests a choice and as opposed to being sent. As we noted last week, “eternal” is not a timeless eternity, but a long, long time.

Matt 18:23-35 The unforgiving servant in vs. 26 is “handed over to the basanizo in Greek . “Torturer” seems like the accepted and

legitimate translation. But the verb root of basanizo is based on the noun basanos which is “primarily a touchstone, employed in testing metals” (W.E. Vine, Dictionary of N.T. Words.) That is where Tony gets the alternative reading or “the rubber” who tests by rubbing to clean up these goats who have chosen to go away. “God can’t kill anything” Nobody is lost.” (Tony)

This does not take away the seriousness of the call of Jesus and that there is and will be a time of “testing and cleaning” up that is necessary for all in the final Reign of God. Jerry

Parables III

Jesus used parable word pictures which have many layers of interpretation to describe the new reality he was introducing to the world. 

In Mark 3:20-22 we read that Jesus was being opposed by the religious establishment because he wasn’t playing by their rules. Here he is accused of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul aka Lord of Dung or Lord of the Flies (remember the book by William Golding?) 

In defending himself Jesus used the illustration (parable) that a “house divided cannot stand” (vs.25) and if Satan (the accuser) is casting himself out, then “his end has come”. (vs 26) That is quite logical. Why would Satan do that? This is the common understanding of this short parable. 

Now, from the perspective of Rene Girard, Jesus is, in fact, saying that Satan is finished because Jesus is revealing Satan’s real nature. Satan’s real nature is not a supernatural reality, but a very human construct at work in the world. This is not an easy concept to grasp. Girard believes Jesus is deconstructing the idea of Satan by describing Satan as the principle of imitative (mimetic) rivalry that is everywhere seen in the conflicts that divide nations, politics, churches, homes etc. It is everywhere where conflict divides. “I’m right; your wrong”. “I’m good: your bad”. Without an established hierarchy of social power this rivalry and conflict leads to an “all against all crisis" of increasing violence. This is the crisis that the world is in today, according to Girard. I think he is right. Violence seems to be increasing everywhere. Jesus is the only Way. We better stop imitating one another in the conflict of human desires and start imitating Jesus (God) in love, compassion and forgiveness. The Holy Spirit is the power that makes this possible. We are to be part of the new creation and this is the way to peace. We are all being changed. ( See Bartlett, Virtually Christian)

This a new way! In Mark 2:18-22 Jesus uses two examples of this newness when he is asked, “Why don’t your disciples fast like the disciples of John? (vs18) Jesus says, “We don’t fast because it is party time! We are celebrating the new thing I am doing. When I am gone, then the spiritual discipline of fasting will be more appropriate. (my paraphrase of the bridegroom being present at the wedding vs. 19-20) 

2

Then Jesus adds the fact that you do not sew new cloth on old cloth or put new wine in old wineskins. It will make matters worse. 

There is a radical newness about the Jesus Way. It can’t just be tacked on to the old way of religious practice.

Now, regarding how Jesus cast out demons. He did not destroy them. He bound them by revealing the mimetic conflict and restored the possessed one to inner peace by the power of his loving, accepting presence. (See Mk 5:15 Gerasene Demoniac)

Matthew chapter 25 deserves special attention because it is often interpreted as a final end time Judgment (Son of Man comes) and the king in the parable separates the sheep from the goats with the goats going away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life. (vs. 46) This seems like another case of the writer adapting what may have been a parable of Jesus, but putting a new spin on it to move the division and the judgment to the end time in order to preserve the unity of the fellowship. I think Jesus wants us to give food, drink and clothing. He wants us to care for the sick and those who are in prison. Such caring is like doing those things to Jesus. Don’t we need to look for Jesus in everyone? (Note that neither the sheep or the goats recognized Jesus (See vs 37 & 44) Maybe, “the least of these who are members of my family” ( alternative reading my brothers) vs 40 and also “one of the least of these (vs,45) are both referring to followers of Jesus. See “one of these little ones who believe in me” in Matthew in Matt. 18:6. In that section, Matthew has Jesus talking to his disciples. Considering that Matthew was writing at a time when many Christian believers were suffering in just such conditions as described in Matthew 25, it is possible that Matt. 25 was addressed to situations in the community. However we interpret “least of these”, it is good for us to care for others and to see Jesus in all persons. 

In Matthew 25:46 the goats “go away” they are not sent or cast out. And, we already have talked about eternal (Gk aion) which does not mean an endless, static, timeless condition as in Greek philosophy. It means an age or duration as “ a long, long time”. 

Many of the parables in Matthew end with dire threats of judgment. It is not surprising that some Christian groups prefer Matthew’s gospel because the threats work better to exert control. 

Where both Mark and Luke refer to the kingdom of God, Matthew always substitutes kingdom of heaven. This has led some people, myself included, to think that Jesus was talking about a heavenly, other- worldly realm and minimize the emphasis Jesus placed on the kingdom here on earth. Now, I think, Matthew, because of his Jewish background, was just being a good Jew and used heaven as a euphemism to avoid using the holy name of God. 

“Your Kingdom come.” The Lord’s prayer in Luke 11:5 (NRSV) 

Peace, Jerry

Parables II

The study of the parables continues. Last week’s parable of the growing seed (Mark 4:26-29) was contrasted with the “Wheat and the Tares” (Matthew 13:34-43) Matthew has lumped a number of parables all together in this 13^th chapter and thus separated them from the original narrative context. Now there are weeds (tarno) growing with the wheat and slaves ask the Master, “What shall we do about these weeds?” (Whoever heard of weeds being sown?) The solution is to do nothing. It will be sorted out at the end (eschatology) with some burning (gehenna) of the weeds. 

Matthew seems to be using this modified theme of seeds and growth from Mark to deal with a current problem. There is no established hierarchy to set the boundaries of this free-wheeling early community. Who are the true believers and who are the bad guys (children of the devil). Some of these early Christians want to purify the community by some proper sorting out and casting out. Matthew has this parable (Jesus as adapted) saying, “No, don’t do that.” Does this apply today as denominations try to purify the church? Earl mentioned that the Presbyterian Church in Mexico has recently broken relationships with the Presbyterian Church (USA) over the ordination of gays and lesbians. Matthew is trying to keep the flock together and eliminate the violence of a split in the community. Note that there is still some “burning at the end times, but that is an idea that is hard to eliminate. We will deal with that more when we look at Matthew chapter 25 with the sheep and the goats. 

Then we looked at Matthew 18:6-9. This is one of these “hard sayings” of Jesus about the “stumbling blocks”, scandals, temptations to sin. The Greek word is skandelizo to give offense or cause to stumble. It is translated different ways and can mean cause to sin.. Matthew uses it 14 times is used frequently in the NT and is very important. Jesus seems to take it very seriously. As a concept it was not discussed in theological studies until fairly recently, but is prominent in the work of theologians who are influenced by Rene Girard. The concept introduces a concept of sin as something that happens between people and not something that offends God because of broken rules. It is especially important for those theologians who are developing Biblical understand based on the works of Rene Girard. Undoubtedly, we will be talking more about this because it prompted a lively discussion. 

Jerry

Parables 1

Our first in the new series.  Hope you enjoy!

Studying Jesus' parables is a privileged way into his meaning for us, and for all humanity.

He is a teacher of unparalleled verbal skill and artistry. His stories, delivered in real-time settings to illustrate specific points, retain immediacy of voice and universal appeal two thousand years later.

Quoting the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes, "Jesus was a solitary giant among the ancient Hasidim. The gospel preached by him is fire, power and poetry, one of the high peaks in the religious creativity of the people of Israel."

Geza himself quotes another Jew, Joseph Klausner. from 1922. "In his [Jesus'] ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code; neither is there any parallel to the remarkable art of his parables. The shrewdness and sharpness of his proverbs and his forceful epigrams serve, in an exceptional degree, to make ethical ideas a popular possession."

Jesus' verbal art is supreme but it has a content which is organic. He is announcing "the kingdom of God". A typical parable beginning is "To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?" (in Hebrew, "What mashal, likeness, byword, compelling verbal picture, shall I give for the kingdom?).

He was continually seeking to explain, communicate, make sens-ible (known in the senses) this thing that mobilized his own life--that God was making God's move to bring justice, life and peace to the world and it was happening through him. There is therefore a continuity between his skill, his message and his self. He is the Word! No one ever spoke like this man! (John 7:4-6) His verbal brilliance is rooted in and grows out of a transformed personal awareness of what everything means.

The simplicity and rigor of so many of the parables demonstrate clearly the wholeness or integrity in his message. We look at three that have these qualities:The Seed Growing By Itself (Mark 4: 26-29); the Mustard Seed, the Leaven in the Dough (Matt. 13: 31-33).

In each of these parables there is a powerful image of organic growth, i.e. growth that emerges from a single source and continues independently and irresistibly to great abundance and size.

This is a teaching of enormous confidence, picturing an historical impact of the gospel that nothing can hold back.

The Seed Growing by Itself stresses the simple act of planting by the farmer followed by the day-and-night growth of the wheat with its successive natural stages. It provides an image of a process now built in to the structure of history itself! For where else are we to see growth as growth?

The figure of the Mustard Seed--"the smallest of all the seeds" which becomes a tree in which the birds of the air make their nests--is in obvious connection to tree images for empire taken from the Old Testament (e.g. Ezekiel 31:1-14). These trees also give shelter to the birds (i.e. the nations, Ez.37:6) but they are proud and arrogant and are cut down. The point of Jesus' word picture is therefore the startling contrast between the political and military weakness of God's kingdom and its eventual size and ability to shelter the nations. Jesus has clearly chosen the tiny mustard seed as a pithy image to make his point.

The Leaven in the Dough recruits the strange semi-miraculous effect of yeast to the same purpose: making a contrast between the small amount of yeast and the very large batch of bread (enough for 150 loaves). The word picture also says how the yeast is "hidden" in the dough, suggesting he kingdom is not simply small but is unseen, while at the same time it has its amazing quickening effect.

Yeast seems to have had a suspect nature in the Old Testament--it was not allowed to be offered on the altar (Leviticus 2:11). Jesus exploits it for its generative, multiplicative quality. He says "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees" and the text says in commentary that he meant "teaching" (Matt. 16: 6-12). If we add this to his use of leaven to characterize the kingdom we see his understanding of the generative character of all teaching. It cannot leave the individual unaffected, because it always contains its own energy.

From the point of view of mimetic anthropology this energy would either be the generative power of violence or the generative power of forgiveness and love.

Colossians

Here is the last in the course, Re-reading the Bible. Thanks for following the series!

Capping off the Re-reading series we take a look at Paul to the Colossians. A high point in New Testament thought, parallel to John's gospel. It shows a final God-filled end to the whole biblical journey. With Colossians we have re-read the bible from God invisible and remote to God here and fully present.

Did Paul himself write it? Scholarship is divided. Whether or not Paul did, it is a vital piece of Christian teaching based in Pauline principles.

First thing to grasp is the situation to which Paul is responding. The towns he mentions, Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis, were important commercial and industrial centers located on the river Lycus and sitting on busy trade routes running toward Greece and Rome. They seemed to have acted as bubbling points of religious speculation derived from Judaism, Eastern religions, the new message of Christianity, and a general Greek philosophical mindset.

In these circumstances Paul is not arguing with people who want to return to the Law but against a free-floating "secular" speculation that would place Christ as just one of multiple agencies, spiritual practices and experiences that communicate with the divine (see 2:8 & 16-18). Sound familiar? Yes, in many ways the context of Colossians is similar to our own new-age, plural, cafeteria-style religiosity. (See 2:23, ethelothreskia, "self-chosen religion").

Paul's response is not to argue from the Hebrew scriptures, proving salvation through faith in Christ. Rather he asserts a new universal truth, the primacy of Christ in all things.

A key sentence is: "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ." (2:8)

"Elemental spirits" in the Greek is stoicheia which literally means "rods" or "strokes" and specifically the division of hours on the sundial. The word implies the primary matter or order of the world and in Paul's world has a personified spiritual dimension as in "rulers and authorities" (2:15). In our time the word could be interpreted anthropologically as "the way humans put the world together", i.e. its structure out of elemental human violence. Everything has been structured along the "lines" of violence but Christ sets us free from this world into something dramatically new, non-oppositional and whole.

In the setting of the letter Jesus may not have seemed elevated or "other-worldly" enough to satisfy religious longings, and that may have been why "worship of angels" (2:18) was attractive. At the same time, in order to communicate with these elevated beings "self-abasement" and strict taboo regulations (2:21) were necessary. Instead Paul claims that in Christ "the whole fulness of God dwells bodily and you have come to fulness in him" (2:9-10).

It is a startling claim and it is the radicalism of Christianity: that all religion and authority are found in this man. It inverts the apparent natural order of truth from "up" to "down" and from spiritual lack to spiritual fulness.

The reason is that in the cross and resurrection Christ has caused to "die off" the past human order including every violent "legal demand" against us (literally the "written down orders" 2:14). 2:10-13 uses the image of circumcision to present this "die-off" of the flesh (i.e. of the whole human system). 
 

What is natural about this "body of the flesh" is that it is a system of death. But then what is systemically dead becomes dead explicitly with Christ, in order to be co-raised with him into true life.

All of this plays out the core statement of the letter at 1:15-20, perhaps an original liturgical hymn used or expanded by the author. "He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities--all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."

Taken in one spoonful this is far too much. But if we begin from the last two sentences as the real formative experience of the early Christian community then we can see how everything that comes before makes sense. In other words, because the direct communicated event of the Crucified and Risen One changed every aspect of violent human experience, both relationships and transcendence, then this man was immediately felt to contain the fulness (pleroma) of God. The experience was organic and neural before it was metaphysical. But, against the background of Hebrew Wisdom thinking, it did naturally expand to a cosmic stature, and so the first two sentences follow logically.

Because of the cross and resurrection Christ remakes the whole of the human cosmos as if for the first time, and so claims preeminence.

But those who have only half-received the message are willing to fit Jesus in a scheme below the angels. In which case they need to have the full significance of Christ restated as a matter of principle. Every power or principle is subordinate to Christ. Why? Because he redesigns the human reality which projected these powers and principles in the first place.

Paul says this in so many words. "...you have stripped off the old humanity (anthropos) with its practices and you have clothed yourself with the new humanity (anthropos) which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image (icon) of its creator.." (3:9-10). Clearly this is a cultural event--putting on clothes--and one dependent on imitation of the image of the creator which is Christ (1:15).

The results of this renewal is a humanity without boundaries, without exclusions, with only the fulness of Christ that remakes everything as endless love.

(Re)reading the Bible #9

This is a summary of the last two Bible studies from June 17th and June 24th – both on Isaiah. Apologies for the delay and disruption. This has been a bit of a crazy summer so far – with wedding celebrations, naturalization, funerals, conferences and international trips all playing their part in interrupting the flow. Hopefully we will soon be back on track… Linda

Isaiah


From chapter 40 Isaiah is the prophet of the return from exile – his message is one of comfort and hope. He is a counterpoint to Jeremiah who created new possibilities of spiritual relationship in the face of impending loss. Isaiah also finds God in the midst of social disorientation. The exiles return to a situation without king, army or temple – institutions that had been closely associated with God – stamped with divine validation and authority. The people are now in a situation of powerlessness and weakness. Isaiah’s message is of weakness, love and reconciliation within this context. He writes with a growing recognition of the compassion and gentleness of God.

Isaiah 54:4-8 describes God’s people as a shamed and forsaken wife now being brought back into relationship. “I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer”. Here the figure of the redeemer (the “goel”) is introduced. The “goel” was a familiar role in Hebrew culture of that time -usually a family member who stepped in to restore life. If someone was unjustly killed, the goel would exact revenge or retribution. If a man died his brother might marry his widow to save his brother’s family from ruin. Ruth acts as goel when she follows Naomi to the land of her ancestors and agrees to marry her kinsman. In so doing she provides protection to Naomi and preserves her family line. Here in Isaiah, God becomes the goel, the redeemer, the restorer of life. Isaiah announces a new relationship that extends beyond the privileged relationship he shared with single key figures in the past like Moses and David. Here the relationship embraces all of the people. Isaiah uses the word “love” to describe the relationship between God and his people – a term that is now enriched by the new depth and sensitivity of the relationship where the conditions of power and violence have been removed.

In Is 40:1-11 a new biblical voice is introduced. It has a new tonality – of tenderness, gentleness and comfort. This is evident in both the words and the images used. An especially key figure emerges in 2nd Isaiah – that of the Servant. There are four Servant songs describing this individual. The study of this figure as the “Suffering Servant” grew prominent in the 19th century. Perhaps a more accurate, less passive term would be “the Non-violent Servant”. The second and third songs are written in the first person, the first and fourth in the third person.

The identity of the servant has been a matter for scholarly debate. He has been identified with the idealized nation of Israel--“you are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (49:3). However, the passages where the song is written in the first person strongly imply a single individual with an identity separate from Israel. For example, “And now the Lord says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him” (49:5). Moreover, in this instance, the servant is seen as distinct from the people (Jacob). This individual, formed in the womb to do God’s will, brings to mind Jeremiah, a prophet. The Servant could therefore also refer to the prophet (2nd Isaiah) who wrote these passages. This individual has gained insight through the suffering of the people and through personal suffering. He understands that the loss of power has created a new opportunity. That it is the way that the people, and in fact the whole world, can turn to God.

The four songs are linked, not only by the central figure of the Servant, but also by the theme of escalating violence. The first three songs anticipate the violence that climaxes in the 4th song. The songs not only have a shared protagonist and common content, they also directly refer to each other. The commentary of the second song is actually a response to the servant in the 4th song : “one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations” (49:7) - compare with 52:15 and 53:3. There is therefore a descriptive unity within the text. Another example is the start of the second song “Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away” (49:1) which refers back to the first song where “the coastlands wait for his teaching” (42:4).

Following each of the first three songs there is a short commentary:
1st Song: 42:1-4 Commentary 42:5-7
2nd Song: 49:1-6 Commentary 49:7
3rd Song: 50:4-9 Commentary 50:10-11
4th Song: 52:13-53:12

In the first song this commentary is flagged by the words “Thus says the Lord”. It marks a shift from description to an oracle voice that addresses the Servant directly. The commentary of the third song shifts to a second voice exhorting the people, the audience of the song, to pay attention to what has been said.

The 4th Song 53:1-11 is written in the first person pleural. It is a “we” section representing another change of voice. The song refers to a third party – to the Servant. Here, the mob implied in the other songs, especially the third, finds its voice. The crowd has changed their perceptions of the Servant. He was ugly, despised and of no account – “we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted” (53:4). They had thought he had offended God and that God had turned against him. Now they understand that he was wounded for them. This is not substitutionary atonement. He was not punished in our place, but punished "for" our sins. The “for” here is understood as “because of” or "in relation to" rather than “in place of”. He accepted the violence/punishment in order to bring us to a different place, to teach us and change us. The Servant is the Lord’s choice for this task “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (v6). He is only able to do this because the Lord has chosen him precisely for this purpose, taking the burden of humanity in order to transform it. It is not an accident of suffering but something taken on and accepted by the Servant.

In the third song (50:4) the Servant is described as both disciple and teacher “The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens – wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught”.
53:11 speaks of the Servant. “Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge”. This is followed by: "The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous." The period does not exist in the original and is an editorial addition for sense. Without it the first sentence could end at "satisfaction" and then the text would continue “Through his knowledge the righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous”. This changes the meaning from punishment and satisfaction to knowledge and revelation. I.e. this knowledge is non-violent non-retaliatory love, a breakthrough in human meaning. Indeed if righteousness is understood as non-violence, then this passage has a coherent transformative meaning: “The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous” (53:12) becomes “The non-violent one my servant, shall make many non-violent”.

Jesus was familiar with these texts – “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard” reminds us of his teaching about turning the other cheek. The Servant songs, probably more than any other Old Testament text, lie at the heart of Jesus’ self-identity and teaching.

(Re)reading the Bible #8

Here is the next in our study of the Old Testament -Linda

Jeremiah 05/27/11

Jeremiah stands at a pivotal moment in the Bible. The prophecy demonstrates the absolute centrality of the events of the 6th century BCE. This was a time of global spiritual growth: the time of Confucius, the Buddha and the Jewish Exile - the central landmark of the Bible. Solomon had established the temple shortly after the formation of the kingdom. The priests and the Temple helped establish and validate the power of the monarch. This is how culture works – largely benefiting the powerful. God, however, is working to overcome culture. In Israel, the Temple and state were overthrown in the 6th century BCE.

Jeremiah 7: 1-4 presents Jeremiah’s first prophesy against the Temple. He says the Temple is an institution that will be destroyed. “Do not trust in these deceptive words ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord’”. Jeremiah mocks those who take pride in the temple.

In Jer 26:1-16 the story is retold. Here the account is placed specifically in the reign of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah of Judah. This dates the prophecy to 609BCE. Jeremiah predicts the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem. The two are integrally connected. As long as the temple stands so does the city. “I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth”. (Shiloh was a holy place 7-8 miles outside of Jerusalem destroyed by the Philistines. In Jeremiah’s time it would have been a heap of ruins).

The prophesy comes true. Jer 39:1-18 describes the fall of Jerusalem under the reign of Jehoiakim’s son, Zedekiah. The passage is not just recounting historical events. It is also prophesy and enactment. The fall of Jerusalem becomes a part of the sign system of loss that is being developed. The Babylonians (Chaldeons) entered the gate and slaughtered the sons of the king Zedekiah. They then blinded him and exiled him along with most of his court. Jeremiah was confined but not injured. His life is spared, in large part because he has advocated surrender. The fall of Jerusalem is repeated at the end of book of Κings, again as prophetic fulfillment (2 Κings 24: 18-19): “(Zedekiah) did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done. Indeed Jerusalem and Judah so angered the Lord that he expelled them from his presence.”

Judges through 2 Κings are known as the historical books by Christians, The Hebrew Bible calls them the “Earlier Prophets.” They are prophetic because from the moment the monarchy is instituted these books record the downhill spiral towards exile. The "early prophets" therefore fulfill the prophesy of Moses in Deuteronomy – that if the people follow the Law then they will receive blessings, but if they disregard the Law then things will not go so well. The Lord demands fairness and justice. The early prophets tell of the the king's (the people's leaders) predilection for idolatry and injustice. Prophesy is not about prognostication or portents, it is about transforming human behavior. By reflecting on the past, lessons are learned that can translate into the present and predict the future based on present actions.

After the king, court and key administrative and military personnel have been taken away to Babylon, Jeremiah stays behind in the ruined city. He then joins a group who decamp to Egypt – and it is there that, as the tradition goes, he is killed by them. In Jer 29:1-23 is Jeremiah’s letter from Jerusalem to the exiles in Babylon. He tells them to forget Jerusalem and to get used to Babylon. He exhorts the people to make a life there - build homes, plant gardens and build families. They are to ignore any one advocating rebellion and an early return. He prophesies that it will be 70 years (two full generations) before the Lord will bring them back – after the present generation has passed away.

Exile is when you lose what you love, what you would fight for. It is the loss of your culture, your temple and your way of life. Jerusalem had come to represent all of these things and had been idolized as such. Neitzsche talked of “depth” in people, a greater or deeper level of self associated with the will. The situation of the exile created depth in Judaism in the bible – but in this case one that came from suffering and loss. The richness of the Exile was that it created an empty space that allowed the people freedom to enter into a deeper relationship with the Lord. Deprived of the physical objects of their status as a people they could enter a place of absolute trust, hope and love. As the Janis Joplin lyric goes “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”.

Out of this space, this freedom comes Jeremiah’s most beautiful prophesy (Jeremiah 31:27-34). It is his prophesy of the new covenant, the law written not on stone but on the human heart. The law is no longer about punishment but instead becomes part of your heart, your inner meaning. This re-writing can only come when all the other stuff is taken away. Dispossession allows space for love. In fact it creates the heart, the place and possibility of relationship in the absence of physical possession. A relationship emerges of inestimable worth. This is God’s will – that the people begin to relate not to what they have but what they do not have – to a promise, to hope, to the other.

(Re)reading the Bible #7

Here at long last is the next installment of the Bible study. This one focuses on the theme of Temple. Peace -Linda

Temple 05/20/11

The Book of Exodus, which tells of the liberation of the Jews from Egypt, the giving of the commandments and the establishment of the code of the covenant, also devotes eleven whole chapters to a description of the wilderness tabernacle. The architectural design of this tabernacle (another word for tent, later associated by implication with sanctuary and temple) is set out in some detail. The description is found in chapters 25-31, then repeated again in the account of its construction at Chapters 35-40.

Commentators say that it is highly unlikely that a people newly escaped from oppression and poverty would have had the means and ability to create and transport a tabernacle of such opulence and proportions. Therefore it is likely that what is described is an idealized desert sanctuary. It describes an outer tent and an inner tent with a holy of holies, a design that mirrors the later stone temple built under Solomon. It is a retrojection of the later temple onto the desert period.

33:7-11 describes another tent. The word for tent used here is different. This one is outside the camp (the Tabernacle was always placed in the center of the camp). This tent is called the tent of meeting. It is a tent of divination – a small sacred space, rather like a shamanistic cabin, where Moses communes with God. The passage also describes a different worship practice. The people worship in their own tents, not in this tent or in any other separate sanctuary. Only Moses and Joshua enter the tent of meeting. The likelihood is that this is a more authentic account for a nomadic people.

Amos, one of the earlier prophets, lived in the 8th century BCE. He wrote when the Temple tradition had been established for about 200 years. While the events the writes about are later than those of Exodus, it was actually written earlier than the book of Exodus. Exodus was compiled a couple of centuries later in the 6th century BCE). Amos is therefore closer to the actual events of the exodus. Amos 5:21-25 demonstrates his disdain and rejection of the Temple. God despises the festivals and takes no delight in solemn assemblies. God does not want burnt offerings – instead he seeks justice and righteousness. In v.25 God asks the rhetorical question “Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?” Amos implies that during the Exodus period there was in fact no established ritualized sacrifice. This came later with the establishment of the temple by Solomon. (In fact it stands to reason that a refugee group needing to eat manna and quail did not have cattle from which to select the sacrifice.)

2 Sam 7:1-13 describes yet another tent – this one housing the arc of the covenant (v.2). David, the great warrior king who established the Κingdom is contemplating building God a temple. God, however, responds 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”. Nathan tells David that God will make him a house (a dynasty) but David should hold off building God a temple. The temple will be built by his offspring. In this way the text tries to balance the tension that arises from two conflicting strands present in the Old Testament - the establishment of the temple cult and the historical and prophetic witness against it.

Chronicles, written from the priestly perspective, re-tells the story. Here the reason that David does not build the temple is because of his violent past. The Temple is not to be contaminated by unholy blood. The priestly perspective is concerned with ritual holiness.

In 1 Samuel 24:10-25 David, at the end of his reign, orders a census. The primary purpose of a census is for taxation, conscription and establishing an empire. This act so displeases God that he punishes David – but gives him the choice of punishment. He opts for three days of pestilence. At the end of the three days David erects an altar on the threshing floor of land he has just purchased. On this site he has seen a vision of the angel of death and he is hoping, through burnt offering, to avert further catastrophic plague. This plot of land is the same one on which Solomon later builds his temple. Although he does not actually build the temple, David establishes the holy ground.

The establishment of the Temple finds its roots in the establishment of empire. There is a need for temple sacrifice once imperial forces come into play. The reasons are many – for centralization of power; for display; for the displacement of the greatly increased forces of violence. Sacrifice and temple are integral to the heart of worldly power.

Sacrifice obviously existed before the Temple, but was not an established hierarchical event. Rather it was normally apotropeic and spontaneous – an act of warding off evil. The Passover sacrifice is an example of this. The blood on the door lintel acts as a protection against the angel of death. In contrast the heart of the prophetic tradition was that God communicated directly through the prophets. The people existed under the overarching care of God and called to practice justice and mercy under the covenant of the Lord.

Third Isaiah (who lived towards the end of the prophetic period, after the return from Exile) gives a thorough rejection of sacrifice. (Is 66:1-3). Cultic practices are equated with violent, impure, idolatrous acts. The whole world is God’s house, so how is it possible to build God a temple?

Jesus rejects all forms of sacrifice. He equates people to sheep – the primary sacrificial animal. As the good shepherd, he sets the sheep free. In Mk 11:15-19 Jesus clears the Temple. After he overturns the tables of the money changers and disrupts the purchasing of sacrificial animals “he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple” (v16). The word for “anything” is actually “vessel” (skeuos). In 1Κings 7:45, 47-48 and 51 this same word is used to describe the vessels used for carrying all sacrificial materials. Jesus comprehensively stops the flow of offerings and the process of sacrifice.

The Oath

On May 19th I went down to the Federal Court House and became a US citizen. Instead of God Bless America the Spirit of Syracuse women crooners should have been hitting Subterranean Homesick Blues, Dylan's raucous rap on being young and American in the sixties. That song, and others like it, shaped how I felt about the US back in the day, and would have made a much better soundtrack to the occasion. I always imagined myself right there with Dylan ducking between some crooked Cold War spy and a frontier-scout dealing who-knows-what, all the while hounded by a guilty sense of fate. Coming now to America for real, was I still dodging destiny or was it truly an offer of something new?

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he’s got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you did
God knows when
But you’re doin’ it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin’ for a new friend
The man in the coon-skin cap
By the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten

I stood there with all the other immigrants (thirty odd from twenty one nations, places as diverse and distant as Uzbekistan and Argentina) pledging my allegiance to the flag and the United States which it signifies. I had done my best to condition my oath to an intentional lifestyle of nonviolence and, fair enough, the federal officer at the interview had accepted, without skipping a beat, the conscientious refusal to bear arms. But the oath continued... "to perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law," and I had agreed to that. At the time I felt "noncombatant" was the key word which allowed me to go along in conscience. But this morning it struck me, there in front of the judge and the flag, that I was pledging myself to a nation that saw itself for ever and always on the brink of war. Nothing about pledging yourself to peace or the welfare of your fellow human being.....

Through my twenties the US was in Vietnam. It seemed that war went on for ever. I identified with the students at the time who saw the far eastern engagement as a piece of brutal militarism in the cause of capitalism, waged against Vietnamese peasants who wished simply to live and work in a country governed by themselves. Plus it seemed that many young Americans felt they had no stake in the fight and wanted out. It always seemed the young people were the good guys on both sides of the big pond.

But then we were all getting older and the Cold War shifted focus from the far east to Afghanistan and the build up of nuclear weapons in Europe. Even though it seemed anti-war had been victorious in response to Vietnam the battlefield had simply morphed and moved location, and the dangers had become more acute and terrible. Thatcher and Reagan were remaking the world economically and politically and the voice of protest seemed effectively neutered. It was more or less at that time that my own life changed dramatically and, as I concentrated on survival, "Power to the People" sounded like nothing so much as on old hippie rant....

I would dream about far away places. I would go constantly on these dream trips up through the mountains, or on a long train journey, but I never thought it would be the USA. Essentially I was trying to get away from a previous life, and any place would have done. Yet it was the USA it turned out to be.

And, of course, that makes sense. The USA is the single most evident place in the world where people who wish to start over have come. America is the place where the whole Western world started over back in the sixteenth century and it's been rebooting the universe every since. I really am grateful to get to be a part of this country and its immense sense of possibility. But pledging allegiance, especially with all those references to arms, well it doesn't sit easy, and, in point of fact, what private personal sense can it have?

So I have to say for the sake of self, and any integrity I might claim, that when I made the pledge I did so in a way that went deeper than militarism, far deeper. As a kind of apologia to the past and promise to the future here then is what I do mean.

I do not pledge loyalty to the US in the Enlightenment sense that supposedly moved the framers of the constitution, the belief in effortless rationality, in self-evident truths. Neither do I do so in the popularly embraced frontier sense, the manifest destiny to conquer all that stands in the way, leaving no stone unturned or enemy unconquered. Nor at all did I do it in the Holywood movie sense, the belief that anyone with half a brain and willingness to work hard can become as rich as Bill Gates..

I take the oath of loyalty to the USA in a sense which I believe underpins all these expressions of human self-projection. I am committing myself to something which in fact gives life and breath to the whole exceptionalist and expansionist mood even as it is almost completely unrecognized, and constantly distorted and disfigured by it. What is at work in America is the spirit of deep freedom and boundless possibility communicated by the Christian gospel and instilled in the veins of Western culture. There are two things that can push men and women out into the unknown. One is greed for conquest and the other is faith and hope. And the third is a profoundly muddied mixture of the two.

This last state is what characterizes the US and its history but that should not blind us to the authentic presence of the gospel in the mix. Pledging myself to the US is really pledging myself to the work of the gospel in human culture. It means promising myself (with apologies to Dylan) to a "subterranean life-quick news" that knows no ultimate boundaries of state or race, of politics or party, of pride or past. For me the US is the land of Holywood in the core sense of imagination, the land of fluid and constantly re-envisioned self-image. It is the place where a dynamic idea can take hold and sweep all before it, and that is so because the most dynamic idea of all---of God-made-flesh--is at the root of its borderless self- meaning. The US is a long difficult work of human transformation. Ranged against its positive outcome are all the risks of wealth and war, of paranoia and anger, and now in addition climate change and environmental breakdown. But the boundless horizons of the US are encompassed finally in one world because they are radically shaped by the hope and love of the gospel.

I am o.k. to take this oath, therefore, because it is a spiritual error waiting to correct itself (which is par for the course for just about any other oath I have taken). All our words, just like the whole earth, are under the long slow arc of divine possibility and one day that one great Word will make all those other, lesser ones true. "Look out kid. It’s somethin’ you did. God knows when, but you’re doin’ it again!"

Tony Bartlett

(Re)reading #6

Exodus To Jonah, 5/13/11

This bible study is pretty easy to report: it consisted in some of the most horrific readings in the Scriptures! We looked at passages where punitive violence against Israel seems to be a part of the divine s.o.p. and character, or where God directly orders the most extreme violence against Israel's enemies.

Why do this study? Why put ourselves through the scandal and shock of these readings?

Well, first of all, they're there, in the bible. If you're honestly reading the bible you have to read these scriptures. Secondly, you have to ask, why in fact are they in the bible? If the bible is divine Revelation what is the meaning of these texts? (Re)reading the bible has to come to grips with these passages. Can bible (re)reading help us get a handle on them?

Deuteronomy 28 15-68 gives us the terrible sequence of curses invoked by the Lord should Israel fail to keep the law. They form the antithesis to the prior (shorter) list of blessings promised if Israel is faithful. The two alternatives, curse and blessing, make up the classic Deuteronomic viewpoint: do well and good things will come your way, do evil and bad things will happen. We think at once of the book of Job's subversion of this viewpoint (bad stuff happening to a man who is innocent...), but Deuteronomy's simple math provided the central architecture of the biblical thought world all the way to New Testament times, and beyond. So the question remains: what sort of a God would threaten this?

...You shall become an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your corpses shall be food for every bird of the air and animal of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away. The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with ulcers, scurvy and itch, of which you cannot be healed. The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusions of mind...

One way to look at it is to consider that the standard human reaction for bad things happening in a group is to find someone to blame, an odd-one-out or a stranger or foreigner, someone to be identified as the culprit. If there was a plague in Thebes it was because someone had offended the gods and, sure enough, they found it was the king, Oedipus. Here in Deuteronomy, relentlessly, the blame rests with the people themselves, under the judgment of the Lord. They cannot scapegoat others for the bad things that are happening, because they are the ones responsible. Even though the message is harsh, and can easily lead to a religion of guilt and fear on the one hand, and a God of violence on the other, it does at least have the value of taking ownership and possibly repenting: I am not permitted to get rid of my responsibility by blaming others.

No such possible justification exists for the next couple of passages. Numbers 25:6-15 tells of a Midianite woman brought into the camp by an Israelite named Zimri. The context is a plague afflicting the Israelites and its cause identified as the ritual and sexual relations of the Israelites with the women of the region and thus a "yoking" to their god, Baal of Peor. One of the Israelites named Phineas spears Zimri and the woman, called Cozbi, through the belly in their tent, and the plague is stopped.. No one today would begin to believe that these two were personally responsible for the plague virus, unless it happened by the decision and causation of God. In other words the primitive sense that plague is brought on directly by some human crime is preserved in the framework of a God of judgment and primary causality who acts to discipline his people by "sending the plague".

It's possible that in such a framework we might think, well, it was right for "God" to do this, because Zimri and the woman were bringing idolatry into the camp and threatening the Israelite religion itself. In other words we could turn a blind eye to the violence. But in the next story it is absolutely impossible to do so.

At Numbers 31:1-20 Moses commands the genocide of the Midianites in retaliation for their corruption of the Israelites just described And he does so on a direct order from the Lord. Every male is to be killed and all females who have had sexual relations with the Midianite men. The only ones preserved are the young girls who have not slept with a man, and so can be integrated ethnically to the Israelites. It is impossible to conceive of this as the work of a God of justice, let alone the God of Jesus. In which case we are driven to the conclusion that this is not in fact the God of biblical revelation but a "god"of human construction: a god generated through violence, and in this case the intense violence of a religious revolution. Moses orders the killing in order to preserve and strengthen the Yahwist religion, but he does so using archaic violence as the generative mechanism.

This (re)reading takes revelation of theology out of the text, leaving the text as revelation of anthropology. We are justified in doing this by the canon of the bible itself, taken as a whole. The book of Jonah demonstrates with acid precision the mechanism of finding an individual who is the guilty one, responsible for a natural disaster. The pagan sailors "know" that someone has done some evil as the cause of the storm and yet they strive might and main not to have to kill Jonah. At the same time Jonah's ready offering of himself as the guilty one is motivated not by honesty, but by resentment and anger.

The point then of the story is that God, who is the one who sends the storm, does not remain on the level of this kind of appeasement or punishment. He acts from within the ocean to save Jonah from his own violence, and thereby the sailors too. Further, God's actions to save Jonah are one with his willingness to pardon the Ninevites who repent of their violence at the preaching of Jonah. In other words the story subverts the whole work of violence at every level--both its generative power to return the world to order by driving out the evil thing, and then its evident oppressive imperial character.

The turning point of the story is Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish. This has the effect of redeeming the "guilty victim" supposedly underlying natural disaster, and thereby undoing the whole phoney construct of group violence on which the world order is founded. The book of Jonah doesn't say so explicitly but the repentance of the Ninevites flows from Jonah's prayer in which the guilty victim finds deliverance and life in the depths of death. They are set free from the work of violence because Jonah is set free. After Jonah's deliverance it makes complete sense the Ninevites would repent!

The book of Jonah is, therefore, an absolutely crucial (re)reading of the stories of divine violence we were reading. It shows God reversing God's role in collective human violence against the scapegoat. Rather than accepting this violence (to stop the plague, to purify the people) God works to undo it at its core, and so set everyone free from the endless mystifications of violence. Of course this (re)reading by the prophecy of Jonah could not become dominant unless Jesus had chosen the sign of Jonah as his own and followed its pathway in definitive terms. But our study has shown that it was already well underway in the Hebrew scriptures, and Jesus could not have taken his pathway unless it had been first prepared for him there.

(Re)Reading #5

Genesis Part III  5/6/11

We continue to (re)read the first book of the bible, understanding it as a bedrock meditation on the human issue of violence. God is inevitably framed in and around that question. What do you do if you're a God of life and justice and your human creatures turn to killing? Well, you can punish them, but doesn't that just encourage them further, like the example of a violent parent? What is desperately needed is a set of different models, and that's exactly what Genesis strives to give us. (Re)reading Genesis takes us away from a mechanical account of "the fall", and God's successive covenants which will ultimately work out as "salvation". Its truth is much more radical, showing us an underlying generative anthropology opening up and transforming the question of humanity itself.

From chapter twelve onward Genesis is the story of Abraham and of Abraham's grandson, Jacob. These two patriarchs are the major protagonists of the book (Isaac is little more than a bridging figure); furthermore the greater proportion of these chapters (twenty five to fifty) is taken up with the saga of Jacob and his sons. It is true, of course, that the covenant with Abraham and his descendants is a major structural feature, the narrative and conceptual hinge of the book, but it is equally evident that the underlying drama of the story is rooted in the problem of violence. And this deep concern has a double generative aspect. First, the figure of Abraham struggles with the violence of God, and then Jacob is the epicenter of a constant tremblor of human violence which finally finds resolution in forgiveness.

Abraham in chapter 18 seeks to bargain God into not wiping out Sodom and Gomorrah. This is hugely significant. God concedes that he has to inform Abraham of his intentions, because he has chosen him so that "all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him" (i.e. including necessarily the most evil; 18:18). Abraham fulfills his role to perfection, intruding into the story the principle of the innocent caught up in the fury of collective punishment ("Far be it from you to slay the righteous with the wicked..." 18:25). But then, in a crucial biblical moment, this principle is transformed in the text into something else, still more positive--the possibility the innocent will act as a protection for the guilty. Abraham gets God to agree to spare the wicked for the sake of a remnant of the righteous. God agrees; he will not destroy Sodom "for the sake of ten righteous" (18:32).

Justice needs to be done--the evil in the earth cannot be allowed simply to continue their evil. Who would not agree? However, in the process the innocent are inevitably swept up by the broad brush of justice. But then, like the bursting of a meteor in a dark night, it seems God will in fact simply spare the wicked from violent punishment for the sake of the just. (It should be emphasized this is not any sort of exchange, as in Christian thinking, the righteous punished for the wicked. It is simply the righteous deflect or neutralize "divine violence" itself.)

In the case of Sodom the Lord manages to get everything mathematically right, fulfilling retributive justice while letting the one righteous man, Lot, and his family, escape from the city, before raining down sulfur and fire. But Abraham's insistence on the possibility of forgiveness for the sake of a few individuals clearly suggests the general indiscriminate character of violence and the need to forestall it. Even more significantly it is Abraham, not God, who introduces the principle of discrimination and then the effective pardon of the wicked for the sake of the just. In other words, here in Genesis the path to human salvation lies through a human being effectively learning and promoting the practice of compassionate nonviolence, and, because of this, God is willing to do the same!

The story of Jacob and Esau returns us to the human scene with a vengeance... Esau has every reason (and right) to kill Jacob who has stolen his inheritance and very identity (27:36, 42). Jacob flees for his life, but then after twenty years the time comes for him to return and he fears intensely Esau's violence. He sets up an elaborate show of gifts and respect to appease his brother (32:13-20; 33:1-3). In the meantime he has an encounter with God in which he wrestles with the divine figure but God does not destroy him. Jacob says "I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved" (32:30). The God that Jacob meets is precisely one who will not overcome him with superior force, who does not win violently. The message is directly confirmed in the following story when Esau comes to meet Jacob, embracing and kissing him and offering him none of the expected violence. In the dialogue Jacob then says "Truly to see you is like seeing the face of God--since you have received me with such favor" (33:10). Jacob should know: he has just discovered that God 's face or person is defined by non-conquest. Esau's "favor"--read nonviolence--is a precise mirror-image of this. The twining of God's gentleness and Esau's forgiveness is a triumph of biblical narrative.

In the encounter with God Jacob was given the name "Israel" meaning "the one who strives with God" or "God strives". The narrator interprets, saying Jacob has "striven with God and with humans and prevailed" (32:28), but hidden in Jacob's apparent victory is the deep nonviolence of the God of Israel revealed in this episode. It is that by which Jacob "wins" and is surely the wound which Jacob takes away from the encounter (32:25) and the whole of biblical revelation with him.

The story of Joseph is one of the best known in the bible, a tale of fraternal jealousy, attempted murder, slavery, lust, dreams and a great reversal. Joseph is the final and true hero of Genesis. His brothers intend to kill him out of jealousy because of preferential treatment from his father (basically the same scenario for which Cain killed Abel). Because of the intervention of Judah he is sold into slavery, the next best thing to killing him. As we know Joseph eventually rises to the pinnacle of power but that is only a stepping stone to the true reversal of the story.

In the time of famine his brothers come to Egypt seeking food and Joseph engages in an elaborate pantomime, stretching over a considerable space of time, to bring them progressively to a duplicate of the situation in which he was abandoned by them and thereby an intimate knowledge of their crime. This time it is Benjamin, his full brother, who is threatened with descent into the pit, but now in contrast Judah steps forward and volunteers to take his place in order to protect him. Joseph can bear it no longer and reveals his identity. The brothers are terrified but Joseph tells them not to be angry with themselves for what they had done, rather to see it as the working of God's purpose: "God sent me before you to preserve life..." (45:5)

In the story Joseph weeps four times when encountering his brothers in Egypt (42:24, 43:30, 45:2, 50:17). The first two times he does it in private, apart from them, the other times in their presence. The final time is after Jacob's death when the brothers, still wary of Joseph, try to get him to say he forgives them because Jacob had made a deathbed request that he should do so. Joseph weeps and on this occasion, for the first time, the brothers weep too. They have gone from murderous jealousy, to fear and remorse, to empathy, to something approaching sorrow. Joseph speaks to them kindly saying "Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God?" (50:19). He again assures them that all this was intended by God for good.

The story demonstrates a genuine human process coming to a final point of bodily compassion for and with the victim (the brothers weep when they see Joseph weeping) and in a few ironic words suggests that human forgiveness is a much better way than divine revenge. The God that Joseph is talking about does not in fact look for revenge but rather finds a way to turn the harm to good.

The book of Genesis concludes, therefore, with a brilliant account of a new generative pathway in human life, the only one that can assure God's purpose of life. Surely the demonstration of this pathway is at least as much "Torah" (law and teaching) as any formal relationship of covenant.

(Re)Reading #4

Genesis Part II 4/29/11

We have seen how Genesis offers us a dramatically unfolding story not a legal docket. To take this intra-textual (the drama-in-the-text!) approach does not deny the inspired character of the text, rather it demonstrates it more powerfully. In contrast reading Genesis as a legal constitution in which an "original sin" implicates all humanity in its punishment does not change our human frame of reference. God becomes the most possessive and conflicted monarch ever, insanely reactive when his citizens exercise the freedom that he prompts in them in the first place! It means God is just humanity writ very large, and can only lead to atheism...

But if we see the story attempting to describe desire and its exercise which from the start sets itself up against God, but which God also creatively wills as the necessary process by which humans become humans, then everything becomes much more persuasive. In this case it is God who is at least as much at risk as humanity. And the prehistories hint at this, showing a very human sense of apprehension in God who takes a variety of defensive measures against his creatures. (In respect of the tree of life, 3:22-23, and the Tower of Babel "nothing will become impossible for them", 11:6-7.)

As already pointed out this kind of description of God belongs to the Yahwist writer and to grasp that there are at least two writers or voices running through the editorial composition of Genesis is at once a crucial event of "re-reading". It means the bible itself works on the assumption that one "angelic" voice cannot quite give us "revelation", because there is something at stake here which exceeds any single framework. And if someone might say this is just fancy highfalutin lit.crit. directed at sacred text which cannot be treated that way, what about the fact the bible as a whole clearly has multiple authors? Why are there two versions of the ten commandments? Why are there two histories of the kings (Kings and Chronicles)? Why are there four gospels? It's obvious the bible accepts in principle that the same story can be told from more than one perspective. In this light the two voices in Genesis simply show the same principle working in the creation of a "single" text. And to tease out those voices becomes critical part of understanding how revelation precisely exceeds one mono-linear meaning. Communicating a whole new dimension cannot be mono-linear because it takes at least three lines to create depth! 

For example, there are two accounts of the flood, one from the Priestly writer, one from the Yahwist. At 7.2 God tells Noah to take seven pairs of clean animals and only one pair of unclean animals into the ark. But at 7:8-9 God commands only one pair of all animals, regardless of whether they are clean or unclean. Why? Because for theYahwist sacrifice and meat-eating already exist (so the clean animals need to be in small herds, for those purposes.) But for the Priestly writer meat-eating only begins after the flood (9:3) and sacrifice only with the covenant at Mt. Sinai. The presence of these two versions side by side--like a split-screen movie with two different pictures of what is going on--is blatantly obvious and it must mean something!

It means that shedding blood is a hugely significant issue, enough to confuse the plotline significantly, and to be left just like that, out in the open. The Yahwist (and therefore the final editor who includes this writer) recognizes that there really is no humanity without sacrifice and killing, and that is why it's got to be there from the get-go. (Abel, the very first generation after creation, offers blood sacrifice without being commanded, 4:4; and then of course Cain kills Abel.) But the Priestly author feels the deep anomaly of spilling the life God has given in creation, and so deliberately excludes it from beginnings. And the editor leaves this in because this "second opinion" is also a core part of revelation. There is a huge built-in tension around killing, and it's that which is being revealed. Meat-eating is then introduced after the flood as a concession, and only so long as the blood is not consumed--a clear attempt to deflect from the mind of the meat-eater the felt reality of killing. In addition the Priestly writer then establishes a law requiring exact reciprocal killing for murder (9:5-6)--a fundamental rule to narrow the response to violence to mechanical equality, and prevent the escalation as in the case of Cain (sevenfold vengeance) and the virtual genocide demanded by Lamech (4:24).

The concern of the Priestly writer to show God is "other from violence" is given its greatest platform in the very first chapter of Genesis, in the seven day creation account. Chapter 1.1 to 2.4 displays a unique sense of God creating without a battle against darkness or chaos or any other kind of violence. The result is a created space overflowing with goodness and life, the absence of all harm. The succession of days culminating in rest by God and blessing for the seventh day suggests that the earth is destined temporally for the enjoyment of perfect peace. 

The placing of this prologue before the more "human" Yahwist account of God presented in the Garden of Eden and Cain and Abel stories gives a distinct priority to the nonviolence of God and sets the tone for the whole of Genesis, and indeed the whole of the bible. The priority of this account gains even more meaning when it is set against the background of alternative stories of creation available in the classic Hebrew culture. For example, Isaiah 51:9-11 and Job 26:12 both mention the tradition of a primordial battle by God against a sea serpent or beast, a mythic account shared with other cultures of the ancient near east. Second Isaiah and Job date from the time of the exile or later, proving that the text of Genesis 1 stood in contrast to violent stories of creation well accepted in the middle to late biblical period. In other words the Priestly version must be seen as a decisive re-reading that established itself progressively during this time, finally becoming the norm. There could hardly be a stronger case for the way the bible is a continual re-reading of itself, above all in relation to violence.

The more we read Genesis in this way the more we see it as a workshop of deep inquiry about the character and role of violence in relation to the meaning of both humanity and God. And the fact that this laboratory is present right at the beginning of the bible should tell us that these are absolutely key questions being posed by biblical revelation and faith.