Sunday, January 23, 2011

Virtually Christian, Chap. Two (Part Two)

As Cathy said during the meeting, it’s a very hard thing to translate a piece of Spanish poetry into English. How much more challenging is it to start an entirely fresh language based in an entirely new principle of meaning, and carry the old language across to that!

This is what Jesus did. The gospels are littered with evidence of his word-spinning, his signal-giving, his soul-searing mind-bending significance-shifting. How could the Pharisees possibly ask him for a sign when they were surrounded by so many? They could not have been paying attention at all. Or, rather, because the source code for the language he was evolving was so utterly foreign to their own program, they were blind to all the signals he produced.

John’s gospel in particular is thick with signs, and awareness of their pivotal function.

“In the beginning was the word…” This has been read within an eternal framework, talking about the eternal Word of God made flesh in the person of Jesus. But to read it in purely a high doctrinal light takes away so much of its dynamism. We can also read it as: In the beginning was word, communication, sign, and this is with God and is God! And the beginning is absolute beginning, now, with this word/sign....

We remember where we came in on this last time. Human signs are manufactured items, all of them. The very first, original sign is the sound wrung from the awed lips of our distant ancestors when they became collective murderers of the first human victim. That noise signified the first abstract meaning— one not directly connected to a physical stimulus. Rather it signified the total complex of feelings (rage, violence, fear, peace) generated by terrible crisis of imitative desire and its wondrous resolution by the killing of the single victim. It was a sound of and for the sacred, the transcendent realm of meaning beyond direct satisfaction of needs. It also generated the name of a god representing the deceased victim, but who was not remembered as a victim, rather an all-powerful being responsible for both all the terror and all the peace. Then, from this first sound and its power of meaning all other words and significations got their start, like cells multiplying out from an original life form. Because once proto-humans “got” the trick of “sound + meaning” it would be almost automatic to imitate the same basic formula for every other experience in the actual world. (Remember how imitative the brain is: it can surely also imitate itself.)

And so again, if Jesus enters into the role of the primary victim but does so with infinite forgiveness and peace—which then becomes the meaning of the event rather than the anger and violence of the persecutors—then the words and signs spilling out from this event, the “good news”, is the beginning. It is an absolute beginning of human meaning, relationship, culture. And the beginning is even more primal than the ancestral beginning of human language and culture, because it undermines the “older” beginning with absolute life now, absolute giving now. Therefore, “In the beginning was the word….”

We also remember that the binary system of language came from the origins of culture (“all the terror / all the peace”), but in this astonishing new beginning there is only affirmation, only “yes”. We said, therefore, “Jesus took the ‘no’ out of life!” It was objected that “no” is still very important, e.g. “no to torture” or “no to slavery”. We then discussed how these vital “no’s” were part of a wider “yes”, and that a theology of no, protest or resistance against injustice, is still a necessary witness and ministry. The key thing is not to be infected by the violence against which we are protesting, to have the purity of heart to always affirm everyone, and the world too, even as we’re saying “no” to the systemic violence in it.

But back to signs. Here, for example, is a piece of bread. “This is my body for you…” Oh boy, the audacity and genius of this sign! We’re not talking about some strange ontological miracle whereby this “really, really” is Jesus’ body even though it still looks like bread (transubstantiation). Neither are we talking some peculiar “spiritual” reality coming from a different, spooky, non-material world. Nor are we talking about a depressing plain memorial, some empty theatre of the one atoning sacrifice of Christ. Rather, this is a sign, as sign, that subverts every other sign! It invokes Jesus’ intervention at the very root of our sign system and holds itself up as primordial, reconstituting sign. “Do this in memory (as a concrete sign) of me! Everything for us humans is sign and I want you to recall again and again that I have changed the very roots of our signs, out of violence into love: and this particular “sign” springs that truth up into our hearts and world, over and over.” The eucharist is the sign of the reinvention of signs by Jesus.

But, if this is the case, if Jesus is this radical intervention in our sign system, evidence surely has to show up also in the vast array of signs around us. There has to be a profound disturbance in our semiotic universe. Last week we looked at evidence from the Middle Ages. How about in our own time when we are surrounded by an ever expanding galaxy of signs? The argument of Virtually Christian is that, yes, indeed, there is evidence, and it shows up powerfully in contempoary movies and songs. There is the presence of what the book call “the photon of compassion”. This particular metaphor was chosen because a “photon” in physical terms is the elementary particle of light, but it is also a wave (like a wave in water). In other words it is a dual reality, both an observable “thing” and a relationship. The effect of Christ is both an identifiable reality at the heart of our sign world and yet a relationship that can only be properly appreciated in relationship.

Next week we will look at a number of examples of the photon of Christ but we ended this session with one highly telling example, the Disney cartoon, Wall E. This movie tells the story of a small, grubby robot left alone on earth to clean up the huge mess of a trash-covered planet. Meanwhile all the humans have taken off into space, literally cruising around the heavens and reduced to endlessly-entertained, obese parodies of human beings. The only one with any real humanity is the little robot, Wall E of the title. And we know in fact that Wall E is the new Adam because he falls in love with another robot called Eva and together they re-inspire humanity to return to earth and behave as real humans! Wall E is killed in the process and resurrected by Eva for good measure. In other words this is the story of the compassionate Christ but told without one mention of religion and more effective for that. Watching the movie the divine/human photon of compassion falls luminously from the screen into our hearts. And it does so because of the original refiguring of our sign system by Jesus.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Virtually Christian, Chap. Two (Part One)

Last Friday's study kicked off with a brief account of the career of RenĂ© Girard and the development of his key scientific proposal: original crises of violence among groups of early hominids gave birth to human culture, including language, rules and ritual. The bible’s story of Cain and Abel says essentially the same thing.

Because enormous stress has been put on the story before it—the disobedience of the first parents—the second Genesis story of human origins has not received the attention it deserves. It is in fact parallel to the Garden of Eden story and deals with the same core theme: rivalry as the source of alienation, violence and sin: in one case human rivalry with God, and the other human rivalry with humans. It is this second story in fact which first mentions the word “sin” and it goes on to bring a vital further reflection--the birth of culture from violence. Cain the killer becomes the founder of the first city, and then retaliatory violence escalates until Lamech boasts of “seventy sevenfold vengeance”. Lamech’s children, however, seven generations in a line beginning with Cain, are the founders of cattle herding, music and metallurgy.

This evolutionary anthropology is presented alongside what looks like the constant figure of God, but actually God is shown to change and his plans to go awry. God at first provokes the rivalry (because of a preference for animal sacrifice he never explains), then protests the rivalry, then protects its outcome, and then the system of protection he provided grows inside human history to a devastating level of mass murder. Read anthropologically we can see the hugely dangerous function of desire (Cain wants what Abel wants/gets), its result in the first murder, and then the actual outcome of the murder is the growth of human culture and, at the same time, redoubling violence. (The cultural emergence of blood sacrifice is first introduced as a “given” but then is framed in the overall story as murder: because the actual killing of Abel produces the same desired benefit of God’s favor/ protection as it did for Abel, this time for Cain.)

Girard simply presents this story in credible factual detail: on an evolutionary timescale, going back a million years or more, terrible crises of group rivalry and violence among our hominid ancestors—of all against all—were resolved by the function of the single victim, the scapegoat. With everyone fighting everyone because of desire and rivalry, suddenly the fall of one singles out the “guilty” one on whom all the violence then descends. With the peace resulting from the killing there is the beginning of the sacred, of the god, and then of ritual and myth, i.e. culture. Girard’s anthropological proposal can today claim the theological importance which Ambrose and Augustine’s legal insistence on Adam and Eve’s “original sin” had during the intervening centuries.

There is an extra reason why Girard must be taken so seriously. His thought of original violence is rooted in a prior analysis of human relations termed “mimetic desire” which itself explains human violence. Human desire is imitated or mimetic, and that is why it is so incredibly powerful and easily leads to violence: the more you want something, the more I want it!

There are plenty of examples of this type of imitation from family life, especially from children: one child wants what another child wants. But also adults: Jerry (who is retired!) goes to a restaurant and first checks out what everyone else is eating to see what he actually wants…

The recent discovery of mirror neurons has added further, hard-science evidence for this kind of behavior. We watched a valuable PBS short video that can be found at: http://video.pbs.org/video/1615173073/

The very neurons that control actions in humans act to mirror the same perceived actions in others. As the video demonstrates the neurons allow us to mimic the emotions of others, and that must include desire, the mainspring of so many emotions. In the images of faces in the video we could in fact see violence at work and directly imitated in the brain of the viewer.

                                              X X X

All this material was by way of introducing the essential argument of Virtually Christian, laid out in the second chapter of the book, and in pages 105-110. If violence gives birth to culture it must give birth to the human sign system that carries culture. Girard in fact says this explicitly, and the bible implies it when it says language is a human activity and production: God brings all the animals to the man “to see what he would call them…” Girard argues that the original symbolic moment or (“center of signification”) is the death of the victim. But VC argues, in addition, that this moment carries in itself a binary, what it calls an on/off switch. The original victim contains in him/herself the “bad” for which s/he is blamed and then the “good” of the peace which his/her death then produces.

None of this is brought to conscious recognition but resides deep within the original “thought” produced by the victim, the first fixing of an abstract or transcendent human meaning which is not instinctual. Within that original meaning lives both the negation of the victim and the affirmation of the order she brings.

This double-sidedness or negative/positive in the origin of signs conforms with a standard result of the study of signs (semiotics), i.e. their binary nature. Our discussion described many of these binaries, up/down, east/west, male/female, in/out, etc., and we could see how vital this on/off switch is to the construction of the human universe. It is easy to conclude, therefore, that this critical function of language is derived from the original on/off switch of the primary victim. From where else, on this hypothesis, could such a powerful world-making function of signs be derived? For, of course, we remember that one of the first functions of on/off is to decide who is part of our group and who is not, who is embraced and who is excluded.

We then came to the central point. If we accept that human beings are a system of binary meanings, based in violence, and communicated along neural pathways in a whole range of ways--from facial expressions, through language, images, print media, T.V., consumer goods, internet, movies, etc.—then a nonviolent intervention at the very root of the sign system must give birth to a new sign system, i.e. the communication of a different way of being human.

Jesus is the figure who brings the negated victim to light but not as violence, rather infinite forgiveness. He therefore undoes negation itself and becomes the sign that subverts our sign system from within. He undoes all its divisions and exclusions, in order to affirm the other in love, overcoming violent difference with the revolutionary sign of cross and resurrection

The gospel record shows that he did this as a matter of program in his active ministry, inviting all the excluded to table with him and earning thereby the hostility of those who (like the rest of humanity) lived by exclusion. He then went on in the cross and resurrection to provide a sign that overcomes exclusion throughout all of history.

The body of the victim, previously hidden and negated, arises now as generative love and thereby enables a new absolute “yes” to creation rather than an endless series of “yes and no” (see 2 Cor.1:19-20).

But then the question arises, if this is the case, surely it would have left some evidence in our actual sign system. And this is in fact the conclusion of VC, moving it along the trajectory of its argument. The book discovers concrete evidence of an eruption within our sign system during the Middle Ages. It assembles signs from the13th century movement of Romantic thought and feeling, in poetry, art and devotion. It describes the ideal of “non-possessive” desire in courtly love and at least a hint of nonviolence in some of the Arthurian legends. In Christianity itself devotion to the Eucharist was a powerful experience of a nonviolent sign. The feast of Christmas is perhaps the single most evident case of a profound shift in our repertoire of signs derived from this period. The popular tableau of the crib begun by St. Francis manifests, despite all the exploitation, a perennial sense of absolute earthly peace.

The objection was raised that the Middle Ages were violent and bloody (viz. the Crusades) and anything but “gentle”, so how could these claims be made? The answer is that it’s the emergence of nonviolent set of signs which is being argued not a nonviolent Christianity as such. At the same time as these nonviolent signs there were in fact very violent signs produced in Christianity, i.e. the violent doctrine of atonement and the papal militarization of the church. It’s clear these other signs were the main mobilizing forces of religious and political Christianity and this is hugely important if we’re thinking about Christian meaning as in fact a system of signs. The very polarity or contradiction of Christian signs serves to reinforce the argument that signs are the issue, and it’s a question then of which are the deeper, more authentic ones.

But perhaps an even more telling response is that the nonviolent semiotics of the Middle Ages were a discovery more of poets and artists, plus one or two crazy saints like Francis, rather than a matter of church doctrine or practice. In other words, it is truly a matter of signs and signification, rather than formal systematic thought. Christ is changing our signs and meaning despite the best efforts of churches and theologians to make his meaning conform to the meaning of the world by effectively transposing it out of the world. Signs are to be understood as evidence of the deep work of Christ to transform our human condition, rather than the products of church authority negotiating our salvation for us.

                                                                                             
                                           Martin Luther King Day, 2011

Monday, January 10, 2011

Virtually Christian, Chap. One

In the next several weeks the blog will cover a study course on the recent book by Anthony Bartlett, "Virtually Christian, How Christ Changes Human Meaning and Makes Creation New."

Summaries from the Friday night meetings of Wood Hath Hope. Blessings to all.

We started with signs: the human world is a world of signs. There is no human knowledge, no “things’ even, without signs to communicate them. Our meaning world is a sign world. Thinking about signs allows us to see that our meaning is produced, fluid, constructed for us.


Violence is a crucial element in the production of signs. The sign “God” has a huge amount of violence in it: all cultures have the support of their “god” when they go to war, including Christian cultures. The whole concept of “hell” associates great violence with “God”.

“God” is a sign—a dense one, a powerful one, a confusing one.

By discussing this together the thought of Jesus and his intervention began to come through more clearly and powerfully. The way in which he was changing the very character of our signs, and so of our human meaning. The gospel, the “good news” is a set of signs, of words, which changes human meaning, including “God”. He spins our world anew out of nonviolent love.

Understanding Jesus this way shows us that Christian faith is not about a ticket to another world, an insurance plan for when we die. It’s about a kind of human evolution, a kind of cultural evolution whose purpose, pressed forward by the Spirit, is new creation.

Because of Jesus humans are like lung fish crawling out of the slime, and learning to breathe on land a new meaning of nonviolence and love. Christians are those who see and believe this meaning, and choose it with their whole lives.

But the entire world is under pressure of the Jesus evolution. That is why everyone is “virtually Christian”, including also Christians. Because everyone is on the pathway of a change of human meaning.

The point, therefore, of this first chapter is change the orientation of theology from “upward” to earthward, which is the actual trajectory of the bible. It begins in a garden “in Eden, in the east” and ends with the New Jerusalem where God and the Lamb dwell with humanity on earth.

(P.S. “Hell” has to be understood as itself a sign, a metaphor, for the self-destruction of human existence when based in violence. Not a torture chamber personally supervised by “God”.)

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Sacred Space #11

Here is the final study summary from our Sacred Space series. Over the next few weeks Tony will be summarizing our current study - of his book "Virtually Christan". Peace- Linda

Trinity 12/17/10

The doctrine of the Trinity is highly evolved, not finding full, systematic expression until 451 AD. It describes three persons of the Godhead who share the same substance, and one of whom also became a human being! It came out of the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople and Chalcedon from the fourth to the end of the fifth century, the time when Christianity had become the established religion of the Roman Empire. It was formulated in Greek terms of substance and nature but was rooted in the lived experience of the early church.

In polytheistic religions there is a rivalry among the various gods. In monotheism, the single god inevitably becomes a symbol of solitary might and power. For Christians, the Trinity became the way of understanding God in terms of community, love and equality – without rivalry or violence. While triadic forms exist in other religions and three is a holy number in many cultures, for Christians, the idea of the Trinity grew organically from the person of Jesus.

1 John :1-4 is a riff on the Prologue of John’s Gospel. It was written at a later time than the Gospel of John and attempts to counter the Greek Docetic and Gnostic heresies that were emerging at that time. These denied or down-played the humanity of Jesus. Jesus only appeared to be human. 1 John underscores the physicality of Jesus: “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.” (v. 1)

On the night before his death Jesus prays for his disciples in John’s Gospel (Jn 17). Jesus makes the amazing claim that he alone knows the Father. “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you” (v.25). Here “knowing” refers not to intellectual understanding and conceptualization, but to intimacy. In this sense it is closer to the Old Testament meaning of “knowing” as sexual intimacy. This claim by Jesus comes as liberation: the concept of Trinity is rooted in the practice of love witnessed in Jesus. It brings God into our human realm. Through the concrete ways that he behaved – teaching, healing, serving, dying, Jesus manifests this claim that would otherwise appear megalomaniacal.

Mt 11:25-27 has a similar passage. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” It is a Johannine like passage but written much earlier. It is unexplained in the text but is entirely memorable. It reads like other of his wisdom sayings and is probably authentic to Jesus. It suggests an exclusive intimacy between Jesus and the Father which is not a matter of doctrine but of perfect love unmarred by any division or rivalry. Packed away in these earliest traditions the Trinity is already there.

The Holy Spirit appears in John’s Gospel: “if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go I will send him to you” (Jn 16:7). A three-fold relationship is shown to exist. The Spirit is the reality within the Christian of the unbroken relationship of love between Jesus and the Father. The Spirit comes from Jesus and becomes our inner experience of God. The Spirit is something inside us that is not Jesus. It is poured out on people. And so the only way to describe it is as another entity, and necessarily a personal one. It was therefore through the lived experience of the early Christians and their attempts to describe it that the concept of Trinity was born. Jesus’ final prayer is that his disciples be one as he is one with his Father. He is praying for the relationship within the Trinity to spread out to the human race. The Trinity is meant to be passed on. Christianity is about learning this relationship.

If we relate to Jesus and imitate him we will imitate his crucial formative relationship. Trinity is the ultimate sacred space determined not by architecture or geography but by relationship. If the Spirit is pure loving relationship, then relationship becomes the ultimate sacred. Any place where this relationship exists becomes sacred. The Trinity sets us free from defined sacred space in order to make every space sacred.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Sacred Space #10

Here is another study summary, the last in this series is coming soon. Our new study (on Tony's new book "Virtually Christian") begins this Friday - January 7th at Health Pathways. Hope to see you there - otherwise keep watching this space for the study summaries....Linda

Revelations. 12/10/10

Revelations is the final book of the Bible. Some early Christians did not think it should have been included in the canon because it did not have apostolic authorship. It describes a dramatic vision of history yet to come. It is mind-bending in its expression and its repetition of themes. It is important because the story ends with an opening. It is written in crisis mode – not a comfortable expression of sacred space, but is yet filled with tremendous energy and hope.

The book begins with a series of addresses to seven churches. Seven is a recurring figure throughout the book. Chapter 2: 12-13 is a letter to the church in Pergamum. This is a place where Christians are being persecuted “where Satan lives”. Antipas, a faithful witness, has been killed there. Pergamum was a city where the cult of the emperor was practiced. An important shrine to Zeus and to the Caesars (Julius and Augustus) had been erected. It was a trading city in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) that traded goods between Greece and Asia Minor. Pergamum vied with other trading cities to get privileges from Rome. Pergamum gained a march on its rivals by instituting the cult of the emperors. Anyone who traded there was probably required to participate. The “mark of the beast” probably relates to participation in this cult. There was pressure on Christians to collude with – the worship in the temple of the Caesars. Antipas refused to collude and so he was killed.

Satan here is code for the Beast and its power. It is a word that encompasses the Roman system of rule and culture. Satan represents all worldly violence, power and influence. This is similar to the Gospel use of the name - Satan is depicted as the ruler of the world in the temptation of Jesus. The emperor Nero is also associated with the Beast. He heads a kingdom that opposes the Kingdom of God. Christians towards the end of the first century were becoming aware of the powers ranged against the Lordship of Christ. These were real and significant. Satan is not understood as a real personal metaphysical rival of God (as in Milton’s Paradise Lost). Rather Satan is the price of doing business - the forces of the world.

Chapters 4 – 5 describe the court of heaven and the worship of the Almighty on his throne. In his right hand he holds a scroll that no one in heaven or on earth is worthy to open. “Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered…” The Lamb opens the scroll at the throne. The only one worthy to open the scroll is the Lamb who was slain. Here the Lamb, as the agent of God, becomes the conquering hero in opposition to the throne of Satan. The Lamb is mentioned twenty-nine times in Revelations. A lamb is immediately recognizable as a sacrificial animal – the inverse of one who slays.


In 5:9 the blood of the Lamb is introduced for the first time. From this point blood becomes a dominant theme - the blood of limitless violence and the blood of the Lamb. The blood of the Lamb is in conflict with the bloodiness of the world. This changes the meaning of being “saved by the blood of the Lamb” from the purely personal to a much more social or systemic thing. The blood of the Lamb discloses or reveals the bloodiness of the world and brings it to an end.

In chapter six the scroll with seven seals evokes the scrolls of the prophets. The scroll is a prophetic motif in Isaiah and Ezekiel. It also captures the excitement of something hidden that is going to be revealed. It has seven seals that can only be opened by the Lamb. The first four seals are four horsemen – white, red, black and green. These represent Christ, war, famine and death. The fifth seal is the crisis of Christian persecution – the blood of the martyrs. Their blood calls out for vengeance from under the altar. The normal function of sacrificial blood is to bring peace. Here the blood is not peaceful. The word for vengeance can also mean vindication – a restoration of life. The blood cries out – like the blood of Abel. The blood of the witnesses of the Lamb is not quiet.


The sixth and seventh seals continue the blood theme with the moon becoming like blood (v.12), and after the seventh, with the trumpets, hail and fire mixed with blood (7:7) and the sea becoming blood (v.9). Other blood references can be found in 11:6, 14:17-20 and 16:4-7. The more blood you spill – the more blood will be spilled (see 13:10). Once the innocent victim is revealed, the world reacts with more violence in its attempt to restore the world to the old order. It is a picture of the twentieth century with its two huge world wars, including the Holacaust and the atom bomb. Things can no longer be brought to the peace of forgetfulness anymore – the blood cries out. The cross has brought on the crisis. The worse the crisis is the closer the triumph of the Lamb. The book of Revelations is a revelation of violence, not (as it is sometimes used) an inciting of violence. The blood of the Lamb is not the terrifying red stuff that all humanity fears, rather it transforms and brings healing and peace. The Lamb’s blood counter-veils (reveals) and counter-offends (forgives) – robes are made white as snow. (7:13-17).

The miracle of Revelations is that, after all the blood-letting, comes the promise of healing and transformation. All those who have been killed will reappear and in Chapter 21: 1-4 we have the vision of the new Jerusalem – the final sacred space without sacred violence. This final image is of sexual union – of a bride and groom. New humanity is the bride, the Lamb is the groom. There are no more temples (v22). The Lamb triumphs over the violence. There is no more need for a temple to negotiate with a God identified with violence. Rather the Lamb replaces the temple - the Lamb whose blood sets us free from blood-letting.



Saturday, January 1, 2011

Sacred Space #9

Here is the next bible study summary - working on the final two in the series..
-Linda

Jesus and the temple 12/3/10

In John’s Gospel Jesus replaces the temple. After he announces his ministry at the wedding feast at Cana, the first thing Jesus does is to shut down the temple. This event is placed at the end of his ministry in the Synoptic Gospels – which is more likely to be chronologically correct. It is hard to imagine that he would have succeeded in completely disrupting the business of the temple without having established a reputation and a large following. John places the incident at the beginning of his Gospel to signal that he is reconstituting the human relationship with the divine. That he is making all things new.

Traditionally the purpose of placing the clearing of the temple at the start of the book was understood as the gospel reconstituting the sacred order. The temple still exists – but has been replaced by the body of Jesus. The temple therefore becomes cosmic and bigger – the underlying sacrificial system remains. In the Roman Catholic tradition this is evident in the idea of the universal sacrifice of the mass, no longer limited to one central temple but accessible on any church altar. Wooden church altars to this day are required to have an embedded piece of stone that evokes the ancient sacrificial altars. Protestant churches may not have altars but often have tables set aside for the purpose of communion, with a sacred aura and which cannot be used for more secular things.

Jn 2:13-22 gives us the account of the clearing of the temple. It is the feast of the Passover, celebrating the liberation of the Exodus. It describes a scene of dramatic action. Jesus drives out the sacrificial animals, along with the money changers and the traders. The money changers were engaged in exchanging the shekel into the officially approved Tyrian coin—probably with the most stable value as currency. This was surely one of the most lucrative industries in Jerusalem.

Next time the temple is mentioned is in Jn 5: 1-9 – the healing of the man at the pool of Siloam. This takes place during a feast. This feast is most likely the feast of Pentecost. Pentecost was a festival that celebrated the first fruits of the harvest. The healing takes place at the sheep gate – the place where animals enter to be prepared for slaughter. The healing here is already a displacement of sacrifice.

The third mention of the temple is in Jn 7: 1-11. This time the incident is during the feast of Succoth – the festival of Booths. Succoth, the later harvest festival, included dancing with fires and drink in the piazza of the temple. It celebrated the goodness of the land. It also recalled the wandering in the wilderness. Its name comes from the tents or booths that the people made as shelter in the wilderness. Jesus is staying away from Judea because the authorities were looking to kill him. His disciples go to Jerusalem to take part in the festival. Jesus initially says he will not go but then goes in secret. On the last day of the festival the priest traditionally poured water all over the altar – possibly relating to the Ezekiel prophesy about water flowing out from the temple, but also to the prophesy in Zechariah 14. Jerusalem is pictured as the source of a mighty river, of life for the whole world. Here (in v.37-39) Jesus again displaces the temple. He cries out “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” This echoes Jesus’ meeting with the woman at the well in Samaria. There the invitation was for her to drink living water – here the invitation is extended to the whole world.

The feast of Booths is also an eschatological feast. It refers to a Messianic text in the prophet Zechariah about the future king (the anointed one). Zechariah was written immediately after the exile (about 530-510 BCE) at a time when there were no kings in Israel. The King described in Zechariah is a peaceful one, a non-violent Messiah (not planning on rebelling against Persian overlords). Zechariah 9: 9-10 describes him riding on a donkey instead of a horse, (associated with warriors and war). Instead he is to bring peace to the nations. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey in the Synoptics signals that he is to be a Zechariah style messiah.

Zechariah is written at the end of the time of the prophets. The fifth century BCE marks the end of the monarchy. As they disappeared so too did the court prophets and also the need for prophets speaking out against the injustices associated with power. What replaced the court was the temple, and with it a move towards religious purity. When John the Baptist comes he is the eruption of a new prophetic voice after a period of silence. What is new about John the Baptist’s message is the element of apocalyptic. An increasing sense that God himself has to break into history to transform the world, overcome the wicked and raise up the good. His message is a call to prepare because God is going to come soon. Jesus embraces this, but changes the message to a non-violent act by God – not the expected violent war against evil.

Chapter 14 of Zechariah is one of the earliest apocalyptic texts. It is the chapter associated with the festival of Booths. Jerusalem has no army here – instead it is God’s army who fights for the people. Zech 14:8 describes the living water flowing out from Jerusalem. In v.16 the enemies that have been defeated in the battle will keep the festival of Booths. It describes the end times, when all things promised to all peoples will come to pass. It is an eschatological, or last-times, text. It is a vision of peace and celebration and the end of purity boundaries. “On that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, ‘Holy to the Lord’. And the cooking pots in the house of the Lord shall be as holy as the bowls in front of the altar; and every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and use them to boil the flesh of the sacrifice. And there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.” (v20-21).

The horse represented war and military power. Even the bells on the horses, the most secular things, will be inscribed as holy. The cooking utensils are holy. Everything that is secular will be filled with holiness. The people will not need to have special pots to prepare the meat of sacrifices. Pots were used to carry the sacrificed meat from the temple back to the family. At the time of the Passover clay ovens were set up on street corners to help cook the meat so that it would last the journey home. Here everything is reversed. Here the pots in the city kitchens are holy. There essentially is no need for a temple, or at the least the basic distinctions on which it is based are destroyed.

In fulfillment of this feast of Booths prophesy, Jesus gets rid of the animals and the traders in the temple. Mark 11:15 tells the same story. “..and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.” This has often been understood in sacrificial terms – that Jesus was keeping the temple space holy and pure by not allowing anything to be carried in to it, maintaining the sacred space of the sanctuary.

But the word used for “anything” here is skeuos which means vessel or utensil generally, and in the context of the temple refers to all the paraphernalia of sacrifice (there are numerous OT uses in this sense) and of course including pots. Jesus was preventing the traffic of vessels, the kind used in sacrifices to carry materials in and the carcasses out. It should be best translated as “pots”, as in the Zechariah prophesy (although the actual word in Zechariah is not skeuos). Jesus’ action marks the end of the sacred function of the temple. In the Synoptics it is after this that the authorities seek to kill him. Jesus is slain by the forces that would keep the sacrificial system going.