WoodHathHope.com

Beatitudes III

2012-02-08T14:06:00.000-08:00

The eighth beatitude seems to conclude the list, as it is a doublet of the first in both the use of the present tense and the promise of the kingdom. The present handing over of God's kingdom book-ends the whole sequence, providing a ringing sense of a complete and finished unit. But it is followed directly by another "Blessed", i.e. by exactly the same beatitude formula. And this ninth beatitude is itself doubled with a repetition in verse twelve: its same content and meaning given in a further statement, but in the imperative rather than indicative. (This is much the same thing as we noted about the sixth and last antithesis in relation to the seventh beatitude.)

It appears that the promise of the eighth beatitude was so crucial that it merited repeating two more times!

The experience of persecution is a startling new element to be added to the list of biblical characteristics of the anawim, to their poverty and nonviolence, to their longing for justice and peace. Biblical figures had certainly been persecuted before. The examples of Job and the Nonviolent Servant spring to mind. There are numerous examples in the psalms, and in the book of Daniel there are hints of a whole group of deeply observant, nonviolent Jews, calling themselves the "wise", who suffered violent persecution. But the eighth beatitude makes it a fixed sociological value in its own right. By raising the experience to the level of a kingdom event, making it not simply an unfortunate side-effect and something to be reversed later on, the eighth beatitude turns persecution into a positive good . People are actually blessed when the world goes after them! In the present tense and authentic fact!

According to Rene Girard the gospels introduce the category and truth of persecution to human history. Because of the gospels the victims of persecution have gained significance and truth in their own right. But the new category depends entirely on nonviolence. To be persecuted you have to be nonresistant to violence; if you retaliate you may be in a state of oppression and pain but you are not persecuted. The root of the word is "to hunt down", "to pursue." In other words you are a creature in the condition of flight, not fight.

Behind the blessing is the living relationship with God-active-in-the-world which Jesus declared and made available. If this were not there, if Jesus had not provided the context for his own words, we could only repeat the violence of the world in response to its violence. That could happen in a variety of ways, from resistance, to despair, to bitterness and resentment. But now the "blessing" of persecution intrudes an entirely different note, one of actual joy which knows the violence inflicted as direct evidence of God's saving action. It is highly paradoxical, but conforms to Jesus' method of speaking a truth into reality and making it stick through his own powerful example. Because of him the world has changed and if his disciples are persecuted when they commit to that change it is further proof the change is real and effective!

The centrality of Jesus is underlined in the ninth beatitude. Now, for the first time the formula changes from the third person to the second, indicating that the statement is addressed to Matthew's actual community. It means that the group of Christians for whom Matthew wrote was experiencing the concrete forms of persecution mentioned: they were being reviled, hunted, and slandered. The final expression is, "Uttering all evil against you." In other words, people were talking trash about them to the extent they had become the sum of all evil in the world, or indeed pure evil itself! In these circumstances it would not be exaggerated to fear for your life.

According to many commentators Matthew (or others) added to the statement the words "falsely, on my account". They believe these qualifications should not need pointing out (they state the obvious, and in fact some of the manuscripts lack the expression "falsely"). But because the qualifications are included they suggest that already people were using the "persecution" motif to excuse bad behavior and its repercussions. It seems the I-am-the-victim excuse was already being abused in the first century! Which, in an upside-down kind of way proves again the reality of the promise. If people had not witnessed the power of the experience of persecution and the way its victims were validated in the community there would have been nothing there to abuse. At the same time the evangelist (or copyist!) understood clearly the difference between the "victim mentality" and the genuine blessing of persecution for righteousness' sake.

And key to that is obviously "on my account." Jesus is absolutely the principle and source of all the beatitudes, and especially this one. It is only by identification with him that persecution is blessed. Here it is of considerable interest that no reference is made to Jesus' own experience of persecution, his passion and death. What we have, therefore, is an echo of his original authority as a teacher and prophet communicating his personal vigor of nonviolence to the audience. Verse twelve with its invocation of the prophets puts the teaching squarely in this frame. The qualifications "falsely, on my account" establish, therefore, the criterion of sincere identification with the nonviolent historical Jesus as condition of the blessing.

Finally the imperatives "Rejoice and be glad" in verse twelve put us in "liturgical" contact with the experience of Jesus' teaching and Matthew's community which remembered it. We are invited to enter in the present moment into the enormous upwelling joy of Jesus reaching through history announcing God's life-giving nonviolence into the world.

Beatitudes II

2012-02-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

Beatitudes 4 through 7

In the fourth beatitude we encounter a word of almost fabled status in the Christian lexicon, "righteousness"! Paul's use of it, especially in Romans, provides a bottomless well for interpretation and is at the heart of all Reform theology. The beatitude on righteousness is the last in the first set of four, and because the theme of righteousness is repeated in the eighth it suggests a division into two halves, each concluded with the same theme. In which case "righteousness" appears crucial to the whole scheme.

The Hebrew Old Testament term behind the Greek is sedekah. This is frequently paired with another word mishpatim meaning justice. In other words righteousness and justice overlap and belong to the same range of covenant virtue and behavior required by God. At this level there is no rigid formal distinction between the two. At Isaiah 1:21-27 we can see how the two are intimately intertwined. But in late biblical Judaism there was a move away from the "moral" sense of the practice of justice to a feeling that this had become virtually impossible for God's people. There had been so many failures experienced in the practice of covenant righteousness it was now something only God could provide. This is the beginning of the apocalyptic attitude, the idea that God must take direct action in order to break through the impasse of human wickedness. See Daniel 9:1-19, for example v. 7: "Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame...falls on us..."

So "hungering and thirsting for righteousness" is again an attitude of poverty, of lack, and therefore a longing for the in-breaking of the kingdom. Jesus in his preaching claims this breakthrough has now taken place (cf. 6:33). At the same time this new righteousness is no "imputed" justification (if indeed Paul ever thought that). For Matthew it remains a practical and concrete "ethic". See 5:13-20, where Christians are to be as visible and public as the Pharisees!

"Blessed are the merciful" is the first beatitude in the second quartet, where there is a shift from more passive or receptive states to more active responses or relationships engaged with the world. This first one is also perhaps the best example of the Wisdom thinking that runs throughout the Sermon on the Mount. Deed-consequence reasoning in Proverbs, for example, is perfectly instanced here: you reap what you sow, if you put in mercy you will get it back!

The O.T. word behind mercy is hesed. It has a much wider range of meaning than "mercy" as we would understand it, and as such is impossible to translate consistently. (In the LXX Greek it is normally rendered with the root eleos, i.e. mercy.) At Genesis 40:14 the NRSV has it as "kindness," at 2 Sam. 3: 8 it is "loyalty". When it is applied to God it is often represented in modern English translation as "steadfast love." It is also twinned with a word more regularly associated with mercy, from the word rehem meaning a woman's womb, and accurately translated in English as "compassion." At Exodus 34:6 you can see both terms used in the classic confession of Israel's God. At Psalm 103:4 hesed and r'hamim are together and rendered in the NRSV as "steadfast love and mercy." At Zechariah 7:9 these twinned terms are proposed to Israelites as the attitude they should have for one another.

In other words the "merciful"of the fifth beatitude has a range of inflections behind it, suggesting a rich relationship of commitment and favorable action. John McKenzie defines it as "a broad and embracing benevolence, a will to do good to another rather than evil." A contemporary word for it perhaps is "human solidarity." So...blessed are those who show solidarity, for they will receive solidarity!

The sixth beatitude seems to break from the scheme of active response or relationship in the world. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God..." But the only thing that takes this out of the world is the Greek tradition. In a Greek mindset it is impossible "to see God" except via the immortal intellectual soul transported to the heavenly otherworld. At every point this is not the sense of Jesus' beatitude.

The "heart" in Hebrew anthropology is not the same thing as "mind." The heart is the seat of the will and thus action in the world. At Jeremiah 31:33 God famously promises "I will write my law on their heart..." In other words, the fount of choice and action will be inscribed with God's law of justice.

"Pure" of course refers to readiness or fitness to come before God or in relation to holy things. Psalm 24:3-6 gives us a clear pattern and uses the term found in the beatitude. " Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully..." Purity here is truth and honesty in relationships, including avoiding relationship with idols. Approaching God "in his holy place," therefore, is a result of concrete relationships in this world, not intellectual sight.

One of the great texts on seeing God is in the Book of Job, the place where he cries out for a redeemer. It tells us the place where his prayer will be answered is on earth: "I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth...then in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19: 25-26). This is the kind of seeing envisaged by the beatitude, one that flows directly from concrete relationships on this earth. The goal is fulfilled in the Book of Revelation in the New Jerusalem come down to earth. Then it will be relationship with God and with the Lamb which gives sight to the city, not sight itself (Rev. 21:22-23). We could say, therefore, that the heart has its own way of seeing, that it is the only organ than can see God, and that the whole range of the beatitudes and the relationships they offer result in this seeing.

The seventh beatitude has two notable effects. On the one hand it is the statement which most forcefully ties the beatitudes, and the whole Sermon on the Mount, to the world. On the other it is the statement which most forcefully ties the character of God to the beatitudes' overall program of nonviolence. Being a "peacemaker" is something associated with rulers and emperors after their successful use of force has brought order and tranquility to the earth. In the year 13BC the Roman Senate commissioned an altar to be erected and named "Ara Pacis Augustae" (Altar of Augustan Peace) to celebrate the peace and prosperity created by the emperor Augustus who had taken power in Rome in 27BC. It survives today and is considered a masterpiece, testifying to the military, political, ideological and religious triumph of Augustus Caesar, a man who ruled for forty one years and initiated a period of 200 years of generally unbroken peace throughout the Roman Empire. When Augustus first proclaimed himself emperor before the Senate he named himself "Son of the divine Caesar" (Julius Caesar). Jesus lived all his early life under Augustus' supreme authority (he was about twenty when Augustus died), and when he names "peacemakers" as "children of God" he is saying that it is his disciples who are the true authors and children of divine peace on earth, not Roman Emperors.

In Israel peace came from the Lord and resulted in fruitfulness and life (see Micah 4:1-4, Psalms 122 & 128). Its crucial character as the righteousness that comes with God's kingdom is illustrated in the "six antitheses" that follow very soon after the beatitudes. Here Jesus explicitly contrasts his teaching with the torah that came before, and in each instance the difference turns on peacemaking as opposed to violence. Particularly the first ("do not be angry") and the fifth and sixth ("do not resist the evil" and "love your enemy") show the absolute centrality of peacemaking to Jesus' preaching of kingdom justice. The last antithesis repeats the beatitude itself, in imperative rather than indicative form: "I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven" (5:44-45).

The consequence in the nature of God cannot be exaggerated. You cannot be a peacemaking child of a violent God. And the God of Israel would not have the right to claim any difference from the gods of the Romans if s/he were in fact violent. In this teaching of the beatitudes God has been shown conclusively as nonviolent. And that nonviolence in fact underpins the whole of Jesus' abolition of purity distinctions, and then, after his death, the outreach of the Christian movement to the Gentile world. A nonviolent God has no enemies, draws no distinction between Jew and Gentile. By the same token Paul's description of righteousness communicated by faith (not race) cannot have a hidden remainder of violence in it, whereby God simply decides not to inflict violence on those who are saved all the while maintaining the attitude of divine violence toward the world. The sixth beatitude radically critiques all attempts to make Paul's theology a legal change in the mind of God and a nonchange in the (supposed) violence of God's relationship to the world. The kingdom of the heavens is a radical breakthrough of divine nonviolence into a human history of violence.

Beatitudes I

2012-01-02T13:30:00.001-08:00

Turning to look at the Beatitudes after studying the parables is a way of getting back to the nonviolent core of the gospel. The story-telling of the parables includes a sense of imminent judgment, which is expressed sometimes in violent scenarios. It is challenging to divide the path between consequential human violence once the in-breaking of the gospel is ignored, and the appearance of a personally vindictive divine violence. The Beatitudes in Matthew are a clear statement of a nonviolent Kingdom of God. What follows is a summary of our studies over a number of weeks. (You must forgive if we slipped behind in the regular blogs, this is my humble--and convenient--way of catching up!)

The foundation beatitude is, understandably, the first one, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of the Heavens." (5:3) The basic meaning of "blessed", the one running through the whole list, is replete human happiness (see Genesis 30:13). Throughout the Old Testament it is associated with the teaching and practice of Wisdom (1 Kings 10:8, Proverbs 8:32 & 34). It is a teaching of how life can be filled with life. The Psalms especially connect this to relationship with the God of Israel (e.g. 33:12).

When Jesus applied this "happiness" to groups of people who, on the surface of things, should be the most miserable on the earth he was introducing the upside-down kingdom of God. He did this in and through his own person, on his own authority, addressing these groups and inviting them to relate to him. But at the same time he proposes a real, concrete sense of material reversal. This is more evident in Luke's version at 6:20-22. Matthew's version more strongly invites us into relationship with a new way, beginning in Jesus. But the background sense of concrete earthly reversal is not lost in Matthew.

A lot of confusion has occurred over "poor in spirit". It does not mean someone who is psychologically weak (a very modern psychoanalytic viewpoint) because the root meaning is actual poverty (as shown in Luke). What it means is a generative attitude among the poor whom Jesus addressed, a longing and expectation that God would make God's move to bring justice to the earth. This is to be "poor in spirit" and can by extension apply to all hearers of Jesus in every generation. The second part of the sentence talks of the "kingdom of the heavens (plural)", i.e, the unfathomable dwelling of God, and it is Matthew's round-about way of saying the "kingdom of God" (compare again Luke 6:20). What it means is that the God of all universes, the God of every level of existence, is intervening on their behalf and they can and will know that as of this moment.

The second and third beatitudes lead us directly into both the concrete and relational meaning of Jesus' teaching. "Blessed are those who mourn..." (5:4). Behind this lies the key prophetic text of Isaiah 61:1-2. It is the passage that Jesus read when he preached in his home-town synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16-30). It seems to have been pivotal for his early ministry. The English translation of the first part of the prophecy in Isaiah speaks of a mission "to bring good news to the oppressed." The word that stands behind "oppressed" in the Hebrew is anawim... a term which refers to a group of people who were powerless in the land. They were oppressed peasantry defenseless against the power of the wealthy and the armed forces. Zephaniah 2:3 and 3:12-13 uses this term in a way that seems closely to describe Jesus' addressees in the Beatitudes: "Seek the Lord, all you humble (anawim) of the land...; I will leave in the midst of you a people humble (anawim) and lowly...the remnant of Israel." In Zephaniah a concrete condition of powerlessness becomes a relational condition of the covenant. Luke in his Greek version of the Isaiah prophecy has Jesus bringing "good news to the poor." In other words he renders anawim as "poor". It is very plausible that Jesus' original statement was on the lines of "happy are the anawim..."

The relationship between the Isaiah 61:1-2 passage and the first beatitude is now confirmed by the second beatitude, "Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted." Isaiah 61:2 goes on to describe the mission as one "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor...to comfort all who mourn." The two beatitudes repeat therefore the categories of the prophecy in order.

Mourning is a condition of profound lack, usually associated with the death of a loved one. But in both the Isaiah prophecy and the second beatitude it signifies a much larger lack, the absence of justice and good in the earth. Mourning, however, by the very force of its emotion maintains a powerful relationship precisely to what is missing. This human emotion is used by Jesus to evoke an extremely powerful relationship to what is not yet. By maintaining this relationship Jesus' hearers look forward concretely to the consolation of God's justice and good. Jesus by his authority asserts that they will be comforted.

The third beatitude "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth" (5:5) brings us to the unmissable earthly core of what is expected and the key human relationship by which it is invoked. The term "meek" is understood in a degraded pathetic sense. Basically it licenses a class system of the willingly downtrodden and the willfully oppressive. Now the background to the saying is almost word for word Psalm 37;11, "The meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity." And guess what, the Hebrew here behind "meek" is our friend yet again, the anawim! But there is a further twist in the prophetic literature which we must notice. It is one of greatest importance for Jesus. At Zechariah 9:9-10 we hear of a king who will come to Jerusalem "humble and riding on a donkey," one who will "cut off the chariot...the war-horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow..." The prophecy of a nonviolent king arriving in Jerusalem lies behind Jesus' "triumphal entry" at the beginning of the Passion, a connection directly cited by the evangelists Matthew and John.

The word "humble" in this prophecy is an adjective cognate with anawim, very close to it indeed, the word anayim... In the Greek this is translated "praus", the word for "meek" (the word used both in the Greek of Psalm 36 and Matthew's beatitude). Even in Greek praus stands in contrast to those who show brutality and unrestrained anger (Hans Dieter Betz), i.e. it means the nonviolent. But in the context of the gospel Jesus' explicit signaling of the Zechariah prophecy in his entry into Jerusalem gives final meaning to the word. It is the conscious, active, transformative program of nonviolence, something as far removed from pathetic "meekness" as may be imagined. Matthew uses the same Greek word in the famous passage "Come to me, all you that are weary...Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle (praus) and humble in heart..." (Matt.11:28-29).

Jesus is the greatest of the anawim, someone who takes their contextual nonviolence (either inability or unwillingness for violence), and makes it a profoundly consistent signal of something wonderfully new in the earth. He challenges all the powers of the world with this true meaning of being human and, ultimately, brings them crashing down. Indeed, "the meek, the nonviolent, will inherit the earth..."

Parables VIII

2011-12-07T08:31:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-08T05:47:00.001-08:00

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

2011-11-08T05:34:00.001-08:00

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

2011-10-07T08:02:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

Jesus used parable word pictures whichhave many layers of interpretation to describe the new reality hewas introducing to the world.

In Mark 3:20-22 we read that Jesuswas being opposed by the religious establishment because he wasn’tplaying by their rules. Here he is accused of casting out demons bythe power of Beelzebul aka Lord of Dung or Lord of the Flies(remember the book by William Golding?)

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

Now, from the perspective of ReneGirard, Jesus is, in fact, saying that Satan is finished becauseJesus is revealing Satan’s real nature. Satan’s real nature isnot a supernatural reality, but a very human construct at work in theworld. This is not an easy concept to grasp. Girard believes Jesusis deconstructing the idea of Satan by describing Satan as theprinciple of imitative (mimetic) rivalry that is everywhere seen inthe conflicts that divide nations, politics, churches, homes etc. Itis everywhere where conflict divides. “I’m right; your wrong”. “I’m good: your bad”. Without an established hierarchy ofsocial power this rivalry and conflict leads to an “all against allcrisis" of increasing violence. This is the crisis that theworld 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 desiresand start imitating Jesus (God) in love, compassion and forgiveness. The Holy Spirit is the power that makes this possible. We are to bepart of the new creation and this is the way to peace. We are allbeing changed. ( See Bartlett, Virtually Christian)

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

Then Jesus adds the fact that youdo 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 theJesus Way. It can’t just be tacked on to the old way of religiouspractice.

Now, regarding how Jesus cast outdemons. He did not destroy them. He bound them by revealing themimetic conflict and restored the possessed one to inner peace by thepower of his loving, accepting presence. (See Mk 5:15 GeraseneDemoniac)

Matthew chapter 25 deserves specialattention because it is often interpreted as a final end timeJudgment (Son of Man comes) and the king in the parable separates thesheep from the goats with the goats going away into eternalpunishment but the righteous into eternal life. (vs. 46) This seemslike another case of the writer adapting what may have been a parableof Jesus, but putting a new spin on it to move the division and thejudgment to the end time in order to preserve the unity of thefellowship. 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. Suchcaring is like doing those things to Jesus. Don’t we need to lookfor Jesus in everyone? (Note that neither the sheep or the goatsrecognized Jesus (See vs 37 & 44) Maybe, “the least of thesewho are members of my family” ( alternative reading my brothers)vs 40 and also “one of the least of these (vs,45) areboth referring to followers of Jesus. See “one of these littleones who believe in me” in Matthew in Matt. 18:6. In thatsection, Matthew has Jesus talking to his disciples. Considering that Matthew was writing at a time when many Christian believers weresuffering in just such conditions as described in Matthew 25, it ispossible that Matt. 25 was addressed to situations in the community. However we interpret “least of these”, it is good for us to carefor others and to see Jesus in all persons.

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

Many of the parables in Matthewend with dire threats of judgment. It is not surprising that someChristian groups prefer Matthew’s gospel because the threats workbetter to exert control.

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

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

Peace, Jerry

Parables II

2011-09-04T05:54:00.000-07:00

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

Matthew seems to be using thismodified theme of seeds and growth from Mark to deal with a currentproblem. There is no established hierarchy to set the boundaries ofthis free-wheeling early community. Who are the true believers andwho are the bad guys (children of the devil). Some of these earlyChristians want to purify the community by some proper sorting outand casting out. Matthew has this parable (Jesus as adapted) saying,“No, don’t do that.” Does this apply today as denominationstry to purify the church? Earl mentioned that the Presbyterian Churchin Mexico has recently broken relationships with the PresbyterianChurch (USA) over the ordination of gays and lesbians. Matthew istrying to keep the flock together and eliminate the violence of asplit in the community. Note that there is still some “burning atthe end times, but that is an idea that is hard to eliminate. Wewill deal with that more when we look at Matthew chapter 25 with thesheep and the goats.

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

Jerry

Parables 1

2011-08-31T04:57:00.001-07:00

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

2011-08-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-17T06:51:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-14T14:28:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-20T08:04:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

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.

(Re)Reading #3

2011-05-04T07:20:00.000-07:00

Sorry this has taken a little time to post. Linda is in England with her Mom who is very ill. Next study to follow soon.

Genesis Part I 04/15/11

Genesis is a rich field for re-reading the bible. In fact the book of Genesis--if you look at it attentively--announces itself as a re-reading, and shows itself all the way through as re-reading.

Thinking about the construction of the Torah (the first five books of the bible) we should ask why the scribes put Genesis before Exodus. Of course, yes, it's about beginnings, what comes first. But what are the themes at work? In Exodus and following books there is no question that God uses violence and that the violence is righteous. But Genesis from the get-go sees violence as human and intensely problematic. The initial creation work of God is entirely without violence and when God resorts to violence (cursing the ground/sending the flood) he decides afterward never to do that stuff again! (8: 21) God re-reads Godself! And the reader is put on alert that the violence in subsequent books of the bible is seriously open to question (needing to be re-read, from "the beginning".)

"Genesis" means beginning, but also "generation". It is about the "generations" of the earth, the various ways in which the human space and human beings get put in place. The seven days are "generations" (2:4) just the same as Cain and Seth born of Adam and Eve, and their descendants, are "generations" (5:1, same word). The book is talking about generativity (the way things get put in place), as much as the fact of their beginning. In short there are two broad concepts or styles of generation: the one described by the "Priestly writer" (the text using the name God/El and picturing the divine as "other" to violence) and the one described by the "Yahwist writer" (text using Yahweh/Lord as name and picturing the divine in very human terms, prepared to use violence, and yet open to change).

If we fail to read these very evident concerns and tensions in the text--the way it is struggling hugely with the question of violence--then we are not really reading it intelligently, with its own intelligence. Instead we read it like a fairy tale, with no meaning except "weird stuff happens".

Genesis chapters 1-11 consists of the prologue (seven day creation) and five prehistories (Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Sons of God and the Daughters of Men, the Flood, Tower of Babel), along with genealogies, lists of generations). It all sets up the introduction of Abraham, the single individual who would trust God completely and in whom "all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (12:3), the one who promises a solution to the human situation. The question then is always "What is the nature of the human situation to which Abraham offers a solution?"

In church teaching from Ambrose and Augustine onward the problem has been strictly legal in nature. Our first parents disobeyed a rule given by God and now they and their descendants must suffer the consequent punishment. In time, however, Christ came and offered a way out, a legal satisfaction or compensation for sin for the sake of "salvation"... But this is a very narrow reading of the book of Genesis. Certainly the Lord makes rules in the Garden of Eden but the key issue is not the rule but the rivalry-with-God that underlies rule-breaking. And even more crucially this rivalry with God cannot be read in distinction from rivalry between human beings. The story of the Garden of Eden cannot be read in isolation from the other prehistories, especially the one immediately after, that of Cain and Abel. (The old legal reading sees these other stories as simply subsequent effects of a "fallen nature" and not first-hand descriptions of primordial human condition.)

Reading carefully the story of Cain and Abel we can see at once it is crafted as a doublet of the Garden story. In other words it is the selfsame story told over from a slightly different perspective, one that illuminates the first. The evidence of this is overwhelming and once it is accepted it throws a startling new light on the basic issue with which Genesis is dealing. Here are at least eight points in which the two stories repeat the same motifs and features, and in ways that are not duplicated elsewhere in Genesis

These are the only stories in the Bible where God speaks so familiarly with human characters (with exception perhaps of the book of Jonah). "Who told you you were naked?" "Where is your brother?" Both stories share a sensation that God is a protagonist only a little removed in life-setting and character from his human creatures who in some measure appear as his counterparts.
In both stories there is a sequence of individual crime and punishment (eating fruit/killing brother, expulsion from Eden/from ground and the face of God). As evident in both cases the core of the punishment is a double alienation: from blessings of the earth/from assured company of God.
In both stories there is mitigation: God softens the punishment and gets newly involved.. He clothes Adam and Eve at 3:21. Even more significantly he puts a protective mark on Cain 4:15. God in fact is seen as caught up in human culture, in ways that seek to soften and control the violence that has entered human life.
In both cases desire is a pivotal element, mentioned by name (3:6, 16; 4:7).
In both cases the desire is plainly mediated, i.e. it is provoked by a third party. The serpent (the most cunning of the beasts created by God) suggests to Eve the desirability of the fruit (the opening of her eyes, 3:5). In 4:4-5 it is God who is the agent of desire, arbitrarily preferring Abel's offering to Cain's, setting up the jealousy between them. Even God's words at 4:6-7 could be construed as provocative, challenging Cain rather than offering him a concrete way out.
In both cases the actual object of desire is possession of what might be called "divine rights". With Eve and Adam it is equality with God, through moral freedom. With Cain it is God's preferential favor (which in fact Cain then obtains for all practical purposes).
Rivalry with God for God is therefore the central motif of both stories. Rivalry between humans is shown to be an aspect of the former. Cain kills Abel in order to have exclusive rights to God!
Death is the result of the rivalry with God. God threatens it at 3:3, but in fact Adam and Eve do not die. (Rather Adam lives an extremely long time, almost a thousand years--5:5!) It is Cain who introduces the first death, uniting the two stories in an outcome that is systemic--desire, rivalry, violence--rather than legal.

Far from Genesis showing the legal consequence of "original sin" God reverses key aspects of the punishment. As we see he continues to accompany humanity, reaching toward the intimate relationship with Abraham, and he promises never again to curse the ground (8:21). The real picture of our human condition that emerges from Genesis is systemic than legal. And the picture of God is of a figure both provoking desire in his creatures and seeking to undo the violence this precipitates among them.

(Re)reading the Bible #2

2011-04-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

Here is the next in the study summaries in our new series. It is an overview of the Bible with the Wood Hath Hope slant - showing how the understanding of a non-violent God emerges through the text. Peace, Linda

Job 04/08/11

The forty-two chapter book of Job begins and ends with a "frame story" describing the basic circumstances of the loss and restoration of the fortunes of Job. Job, a devout and successful man, becomes the object of a wager between God and Satan in the heavenly court. Satan at this point is not the Satan of the Gospels (the symbolization of earthy evil and violence). Rather he is a kind of officer whose job is to prosecute (accuse) guilty humans. The Satan has been "patrolling up and down upon the earth." God boasts to him of his servant Job, “a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil”. The Satan replies that Job has no reason to turn from God, but “stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face”. God accepts the Satan’s challenge, allowing Satan to take everything from him – his possessions, family and health --sparing only his life.

In Job 2:3 God is portrayed as the first to succumb to the Satan’s temptation. He says: “Although you incited me against him to destroy him for no reason ('for nothing').” The Bible is saying that God was tempted by the Satan/the accuser. He crushes Job “for nothing” (Job 9:17). In contrast, Jesus, during his third temptation, replies to Satan ,“Do not put the Lord your God to the test ” quoting from Dt 6:16. Thus in the book of Job God is shown to be less than ideal, in fact to be very "human".. Why is this? What lesson is being taught about the meaning of "God"?

It is hard to put a date on Job’s composition. The reference to a Satan patrolling the earth could come from the Persian practice of organizing regular patrols as a way of controlling their empire. If so it indicates a date of around 500-350 BCE. Job was not an Israelite. He came from the land of Uz and his name can be translated as “enemy”. This fact signals early on that the book is reasoning outside the accepted framework of the Law. It is Job, the enemy and foreigner, who is relentlessly shown to be righteous and blameless.

Job, covered in sores, sits silent among the ashes until three friends, hearing of his troubles, show up to comfort him. After seven days Job starts to speak. The central part of the book is made up of a series of speeches. Job speaks first, then each friend, with Job replying to each in turn. This cycle is repeated three times – so Job has 10 speeches, the friends three each (the final speech of the third friend is missing, presumed by most to have been lost). As the text progresses the friends become more irritated and their arguments and accusations more forceful and direct. Their arguments are basically the same: These misfortunes are not happening by accident. Job must have sinned to have lost God’s favor. They urge him to admit his guilt. Job remains steadfast in the declaration of his innocence.

After the three friends have exhausted themselves a new character is introduced – Elihu, a young man. He is angry that Job’s friends have been unsuccessful in their attempts to convince Job that he is guilty. He also makes two speeches that this time are not answered by Job. Who is Elihu? His name means “He is God”. It is almost as if everyone, including God, is ganging up on Job. When everyone is scapegoating a victim, the manufactured god of unanimous human violence emerges. Elihu sets the stage for Yahweh who finally appears on the scene and speaks to Job out of the whirlwind (40:6). He also gives two speeches but these do not actually answer Job’s complaint. Rather they are an account of the majesty and power of God evident in nature. He describes the Behemoth (hippopotamus) and the Leviathan (crocodile). He lists all of the stuff that he can do that Job cannot. The response doesn’t work. It rings hollow in the light of all that has gone before. It sounds majestic (even pompous) and believable, but remains inadequate.

In his speeches, Job constantly asserts his innocence. He stands alone, yet has the courage to continue. He addresses his complaints to God (not Yahweh here like in the frame story, but “El”). In 9:15 Job protests that God is beyond justice. “Though I am innocent, I cannot answer him; I must appeal for mercy to my accuser”. If Satan is the accuser, then God has become Satan. And God is on the side of the mob, the same as the mob: "He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. They have gaped at me with their mouths; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me. God gives me up to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked...he has set me up as his target; his archers surround me." (16:9-12)

In 9:22 he says that God destroys both the blameless and the wicked. This is an ironic commentary on the psalms and the Deuteronomic God. Deuteronomy is the classic book of reward and punishment. “You must therefore be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn to the right or to the left. You must follow exactly the path that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you are to possess” (Dt5:32-33) Later, Ezra and Nehemiah would appropriate the Deuteronomic view. They saw the Exile as God’s punishment for the people’s transgressions, and exhorted the people to get it right this time. The Pharisees, also adopted this concept of reward and punishment, creating a hedge around the Law to safeguard against any unintentional transgressions. The same thinking (reward and punishment) is evident in certain strands of Christianity today – for example in prosperity preaching.

Job, in contrast, is saying that God does bad things to bad and good people alike. It would be a return to the arbitrary fatalism that existed before the psalms, except that Job rails against God personally. Job has no confidence in the trustworthy character of God displayed in the psalms, who acts justly because his nature demands it. Job is struggling to make sense of the problem of innocent suffering together with blame-the-victim theology, while maintaining a belief in a personal God who intervenes on behalf of his people. Job protests to God about God. He is profoundly questioning the nature of God. In the same way Psalm 22 cries out “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” It is almost like God has disappeared in these texts. Both Job and Jesus have put God to death – the God constructed by humans. Job implicates this humanly created God in the exclusion, blaming and scapegoating of the innocent. Job cries out for a different kind of God.

What then is the way through in Job?

Job begins to talk about a third party in his dialogue with God. Someone who will stand on his side against God. It occurs in three places in the text, gradually becoming more developed. At 9:32-33 “For he is not a mortal, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together. There is no umpire between us, who might lay his hand on us both”. Here Job expresses his wish for an impartial umpire to act between him and God. Humans have no recourse against the divine: he needs someone else who can arbitrate. In 16:18-21 this wish becomes more concrete – a belief that he has a witness in heaven. A witness who is not God. “O earth do not cover my blood; let my outcry find no resting place. Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high.” It is his innocent blood crying out from the ground that is the source of his belief. In 19:23-27 belief is transformed into knowledge. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side”.

The figure of the redeemer (“go’el”) or the avenger of blood appears elsewhere in the Old Testament (in Numbers and Deuteronomy). It was an institutionalized role in nomadic/tribal cultures before the establishment of civic law. If someone is killed then someone has to avenge the spilled blood. This was usually the duty of a close relative. The blood can then lie quiet. Ruth is also the go’el . She doesn’t kill, but marries the cousin of her dead husband and in so doing redeems the line of her dead husband. God is called go’el in 2nd Isaiah – Redeemer. In this text God comforts his people – he will not let their blood disappear. Job was probably written after 2nd Isaiah and there is the possibility that the idea of a redeemer may have been seeded in the mind of the author from that text. Here in Job, with his relentless defense of innocence against the mob, and with God siding with the mob - the Redeemer suddenly appears. Someone will stand upon the earth to defend the scapegoat.

The book of Job ends with Job’s response to God’s justification speeches. “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth” 40:3-6. “I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (42:1-6). The irony and sarcasm of the earlier chapters appears to be closed down in the final frame of the story and it is usually interpreted as Job’s confession for doubting God. The Hebrew is actually better translated as “I reject and regret dust and ashes”. (See note in New Interpreters Study Bible). If read this way the preceding verses retain their irony and the sense of “But now my eyes see you” becomes instead “I see through you”.

Job’s wealth is restored and now it is his friends who are on the receiving end of God’s wrath. "For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has" (42:7).Thus the frame story tells us, amazingly, Job is in the right! Moreover, Job now prays for his friends to God – adopting the role of the redeemer. The book of Job shows us that the truth lies with Job and his pathway.

It is a perfect example of the "(re)reading" the bible, of the bible re-reading itself, revealing the underlying flaws of the Deuteronomic understanding of God. Jesus later assumes the mantle of Job – both as innocent victim and as redeemer. He asserts that God is not a God of violence that sends punishment to the bad and good indiscriminately– rather God sends his rain to fall on the good and bad alike without reservation, without expectation – as pure grace.

(Re)reading the Bible #1

2011-04-09T05:03:00.000-07:00

Here is the first summary of the new Wood Hope Bible Study. It is a foundational study for Wood Hath Hope theology, discovering how the bible's voice finds its deepest self, growing and maturing over the course of its writing. Linda Lament at the Heart of the Psalms. 04/01/11

Christians are in crisis – trying to understand their role in history. Unlike previous crises in church history, this is not primarily a doctrinal issue. Christians are turning to the Bible one more time, with modern scholarship providing a fresh approach, to help them situate themselves in the world. The Old Testament is interpreted, as a revelation of humanity that is at least as important as the revelation of God. We understand God in a new way as we begin to understand ourselves. The Bible is a description of who we are as human beings. We have been told that the Bible tells us we are sinners - indeed lists all of our individual sins. Christ took these sins upon himself and saved us. These concepts are formal and legalistic. If the Bible is seen instead as a means of disclosing the way we are misconstructed as human beings, then it begins to mean much more. It becomes transformative. Understanding is part of being made new. Jesus is both the lens and the path through which we gain this revelation. He brings a radically new way of being human which is at the same time a new knowledge of ourselves and a new knowledge of and relationship with God. “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (MT:11 27). Outside the nonviolence of Jesus (which is his forgiveness) it is impossible to know God.

The Bible moves forward, but is always in tension with itself. So where is the best place to begin? The Psalms are hard to date. They include some of the oldest material in the Scriptures (from the reign of Solomon) but extend perhaps through the second century BCE– an arc of 800 years. They have the honesty and authenticity of a diary or a journal. They provide a witness to the emotional, existential experience of the people of that time. The Psalms are not so much about history or doctrine but about feelings.

They are a personal human response. The Psalms can be divided into three general categories:

1. Psalms of thanksgiving and praise. In these the author thanks and praises God for nature or for God’s protection and care of his people. Psalm 8 is an example of one of the nature Psalms – human beings are the crown of creation. “You have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor”

2. Covenant or Torah psalms. These psalms are about the Law God gave and the relationship between the people and the Law. They have a strong ethical sense, of what God requires of us. Psalm 15 is an example: “O Lord who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart”.

3. The Psalms of Lament– the most typical of the psalms, and the most powerful. They are a personal or communal crying out in lament or complaint. The psalms of lament begin our biblical journey. Psalm 3, 7 10 and 12 demonstrate the dominant themes and tones of the psalms of lament. They cry out for justice against the strong, powerful and greedy who oppress and do violence and think that God does not see. The psalms are not a political statement. They are cries of help addressed to God, asking him to act against the enemies of the people. The Psalmist trusts that God will hear his complaint and will act. If your God first revealed himself by setting you free from Egypt, then there is an assumption that your God is involved and is concerned about your situation. The psalmist’s entreaty depends upon an established personal relationship, one of justice. This was a radical belief.

Alphabetic writing began to be widely used in the area of Tyre and Sidon around 1100BCE and was already established by the time the Hebrews began recording their history. It was more expressive than hieroglyphics and cuneiform which go back at least two thousand years before this. Writing was used by the scribes in ancient Egypt and Babylonia for discursive wisdom-style literature (how to behave), and also to record business transactions, and provide diplomatic and governmental reports for the ruling elite. A few wrote about the difficulties of life. The “Babylonian Theodicy” (around 1000 BCE) is similar to the book of Job. It is a reflection on injustice. It concludes by deciding that the gods have set things up this way and that nothing can be done. “The gods gave perverse speech to the human race. With lies, and not truth, they endowed them for ever” Everywhere the gods collude with the powerful. There is no active God of justice intervening in the world for the poor and the suffering. The wise sought to evade the notice of the gods and the powerful who have them on their side, to avoid their wrath by remaining under the radar. Or by placating and serving the gods through cult and sacrifice and so keeping evil at bay and earning favor.

The Hebrew God of justice is a cultural anomaly. Humans are no longer pawns of the gods. For the first time there is an emotional connection to the divine expressed in terms of relationship which expects justice. Deep human emotion is valued. The writers are not afraid to express fierce anger at injustice because they know their cry is heard. God is expected to act because that is his character. There is at last a recourse to counter the “divine right” of the kings. Psalm 58 is perhaps one of the worst psalms in terms of violence and vengeance. It rails against injustice and calls upon God for vengeance: “Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods? Do you judge people fairly?” This person is not even addressing God. It is a critique against the mighty, a release of hatred and anger.

Emotionally it makes sense, an expression of the emotion that is released once the possibility of a just world emerges for the first time. The psalms thus express this emotion as a necessary stage in the process of becoming human. It is the first human rebellion against resignation and fatalism. Even in the psalms that rail against God himself, the anger is evidence of a relationship.

Anger only exists when one cares, when greater expectations are unfulfilled. The psalms of lament are also therefore a way of channeling and discharging violent emotion. This can be directed towards God or just as likely be reflected back upon the psalmist in terms of remorse. These are the psalms of repentance. In these psalms there is a recognition that we are the same as those we cry out against. Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143 are examples. Psalm 51 is the greatest of these. The call here is not for vengeance but for mercy. The psalmist has experienced a world with God’s presence of justice and human wholeness and now cries out to return to that place. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me”. There is also an implied solidarity with the rest of the human condition. The psalmist seeks to bring others to repentance. Above all there is a dependence on grace. Sacrifices bring God no delight, rather a broken and contrite heart. The last verses (18-19) are widely recognized to be additions, an editorial comment. They strike a dissonant chord within the text – illustrating its human composition.

Psalm 22 is arguably the greatest of all of the Psalms. It is the psalm that Jesus cries out on the cross. He cries out the opening words and in so doing invokes the whole psalm. Here the emotional pathway reaches its fullest development. The sense of being surrounded by persecutors and under threat runs through many of the psalms. But here there is no call for vengeance or retaliation. The end of the psalm invokes the absolute power of God to save and that the whole of the earth will turn to God and worship him. There is a realization that the only way that non-violence can work and justice still be done is by in some way dealing with those who have died. “To him indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust” (v29). There is a belief in a God that will reach down to death itself. Even after death the relationship with God continues. The thing that makes us retaliate is ultimately the fear of death. If the relationship continues in death then God breaks through the barrier that keeps us locked in injustice and the endless violence that is its counterpart.

Book Study, Virtually Christian, Chapter Seven: What Signs Did He Give?

2011-03-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

The last chapter returns to the theme of signs but played out in the historical figure from whom the whole effect originally stems.

It is very difficult to come to firm conclusions about the historical Jesus but if there is a real change in the core human structure, from violence to nonviolence, this cannot happen at the level of just a pretty story. It must come from a real human events with a real human being. We can only learn to be humanly different from someone who is a different kind of human!

Signs occur in the natural world...a bird in springtime sings its insistent song to attract a mate; geese talk endlessly, probably to ensure their collective co-operation. In all cases there is a neural response. Thus at some level "sounds plus meaning" exist in and frame the animal world.

Human beings have vastly expanded this ability via the mystery of purely symbolic language, to the point where you could say the human world is completely made of signs. The human world is completely an artificial world (a "humiverse"), which does not mean unreal or even unnatural. It is natural for human beings to produce or create their world through signs.. With Jesus there is the use of human signs to change our basic programming as human beings.

It is possible to track Jesus' ministry, life and death in terms of signs. His words and actions were all full of sign value, so much so that "sign" is the word that John's gospel chooses for Jesus' miracles. And are not his parables masterful stories each of which is a single sign of the kingdom? "What parable or sign shall I give for the kingdom of God?" A parable or mashal (in Hebrew) is a compelling form of words that runs alongside an experience (a byword, e.g. "like father like son") which can then offer the meaning of that experience. What was special about Jesus' form of words or bywords is that they upset established meaning and proposed a radically new one. His words did not run by you a meaning from the past, but a new meaning that came from himself. His bywords were "mywords"!

The Pharisees and the crowd asked for a sign, and Jesus refuse to give them one in response. This seems to contradict Jesus' communication through signs. But that refusal was itself a communication. It said that the semiotics or sign-system which shaped their demand came from the old world of meaning, rooted in violence. In the chapter this argument is grounded in Jesus' relationship with John the Baptist who in so many ways was Jesus' mentor but from whom he decisively broke. Even though Jesus was baptized by John (and even shared in his baptism ministry, John 3:22) he left him and at a certain point engaged in a long explanation of the difference between their ministries ( Luke &:18-35). VC demonstrates this difference to be explicitly in respect of violence: of the kingdom coming through violence for John, but not for Jesus.

John sends messengers from prison asking whether Jesus is "the one who is to come". In the context this does not mean the Messiah but the figure of Elijah who was to return before the direct intervention of God to establish God's kingdom. Elijah is the classic biblical figure of divine violence (viz. the slaughter of the prophets of Baal), and John and just about everybody else was hung up on the return of Elijah to sort things out before the final day of the Lord. Jesus refused this pathway, opting instead for a ministry of healing, welcome and forgiveness, and that's why John doubted him, having initially thought of Jesus in the role of Elijah! But rather than claiming to be Elijah Jesus identified with Wisdom, a figure of welcome and nonviolence. This is proven by Jesus' actual practice, many of his sayings, and his discourse on John and its ringing conclusion--"Wisdom is vindicated by her children...."

Thus Wisdom is the core sign by which to understand Jesus in the gospels and by which in all probability he understood himself.

Jesus did in fact offer a sign in response to the Pharisees--the sign of Jonah! (Matthew 16:4) The chapter lays out in detail how the whole story of Jonah has to be understood in the key of violence--Jonah's violent anger, the violent anger of God expressed in the storm and from which God relents, the violence of the Ninevites from which they repent, and again the remaining violent anger of Jonah. The great fish is both a monster of the deep--the realm of chaotic violence in Hebrew mythology--and then the transforming agency by which Jonah is saved and the Ninevites converted. The book of Jonah is in fact a Wisdom prophecy and a parable or mashal in its own right. Jesus' adoption of "the sign of Jonah" works on all the levels of the story, as well of course in the central image of Jonah's descent into the abyss of violence and its wondrous transformation through God's action. Jesus is the willing and forgiving Jonah.

In the light of sign of Jonah Jesus' death and resurrection become a profound and final disruption of the human order of meaning based in violence and violent death. In its place a new order of meaning is begun, after "the sign of Jonah." If this is the case it means that the change in the human order of meaning is ongoing; it is not yet complete. We are all virtually Christian!

Book Study, Virtually Christian, Chapter Six: church...

2011-03-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

The church is anywhere there are Christlike relationships--which means a sharing in the personhood of love brought into the world by Jesus. As the Latin hymn has it, "Ubi caritas et amor deus ibi est": where there is self-giving and love, there is God. And if God is there so necessarily is church.

Throughout the study we have discovered that Christlike relationships are in time and space, scattered through time and space. They are part now of the historical and cultural continuum. They do not belong to a strange "other" spiritual world which only the priests or ritual or private salvation can access. They belong to the actual world of human relationships carried by neural mirroring.

Saying this does not mean these worldly Christlike relationships are perfect or unmixed with other selfish or even violent modes (witness the medieval church itself, or in fact any formal church!). Perhaps more often than not they exist simply on the level of signs and meanings--but those signs and meanings can then inspire people, without them knowing it consciously, to act in a Christlike fashion. And if people do act in this way that is church!

Grace is broadcast freely in the world, which is the character of grace. (If we say, as some theology does, that grace is given to some and withheld from others, that is not grace but whimsical violence.)

But what remains then of preaching and teaching? What about Paul's "How are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?" The Good News is news, surely, so it needs teaching and preaching, right? Right!

The argument of Virtually Christian is simply that after 2000 years the figure of Jesus has so entered the deep structure of our general human culture that it preaches and teaches itself! It does not of course teach "salvation by faith" or "salvation by sacraments", or the "divine nature" of Jesus, that is, any of the formal doctrines of Christian tradition of whatever stripe. You need a formal institution to do that. What it does teach, however, is something those formal institutions often avoid or even negate: that Jesus has changed the primal conditions of being human, raising up the victim, and compelling human beings toward compassion as the true character of human life.

It is this message that is broadcast in the world, with innumerable effects in our actual humanity. At the same time, however, two other things are relevant. First the world system of violence is not indifferent to this message but fights tooth and nail to resist it. And its best resistance today is to distort and co-opt the message itself. In this light it is culturally possible even to claim to be "Christian" while espousing the most violent social relationships and politics.

Secondly and in contrast--and here we are really getting to the heart of what it means to be church today!--there are those who are led to turn their hearts and minds to the truth of Christ in the world. They come to believe that the Father/Mother God of Jesus is present at the heart of humanity, engaged in a long travail of giving birth to the creation she always intended. People who feel this way come together continually to renew in themselves the transforming personhood of love shared between Jesus and his Father/Mother. They celebrate, worship and love this communal personhood which is God.

Because Christ is in the world this sense of church must necessarily take place in close contact with the actual world. VC describes the practice in terms of "informal structures" and "inclusive boundaries." The approach demands almost necessarily small groups which can have a fluidity and living contact with local human communities , something which sunday churches seem to draw a line against (or at least demonstrate in terms of activism rather than deep organic transformation).

One standard contemporary situation may be used to sum up the relationship of these groups to the world. It's the local shopping mall! The mall seems a strange place to frame the meaning of church. Is it not the very temple itself of consumerism, hedonism, greed, exploitation? Yes and but! It is just these things that make it totally non-churchy and yet show the powerful impact of Christ in the world.

The argument of VC is that at root it is the liberating message of Jesus which fuels the anthropological power of capitalism and consumerism. Jesus spent his time breaking down boundaries, freeing the earth from taboos and negations created by violence. He declared "the sabbath is made for humanity, not humanity for the sabbath...", in other words he released the sabbath blessing of creation to and for all.

He did this for love's sake, for the purpose of a new creation. But while creation yearns and groans toward this end it is perfectly possible for human beings to use and abuse the freed-up world for the continual growth of private wealth it makes possible. The Christianity VC is talking about will recognize the mobilizing presence of Christ even in something as materialist as the mall. The mall has a Christlike relationship at its core! But to see and say this is not in order to bless blandly all the selfish forces present there, rather to commit oneself even more deeply to the anthropological engine at its root.

It is possible for everyone freely to desire the goods of the world because Christ has released the force of desire in the world. For this reason desire for the goods of this world can and must be transformed into desire for the good of this world, because both come from the same deep matrix of Christ. The only difference is that in the former we take and seek to keep the good offered, and in the latter we want to give it away because we have come to understand that is its true nature! A big difference for sure, but one that requires the transformation of an existing mechanism, not the arrival of an entirely new "spiritual" otherworld.

To look at the mall in this way takes "mystical" eyes, a modern, historical, transforming mysticism which responds to the matrix of Christ in the world. Small groups which set out to be workshops of human transformation seek continually to reprogram meaning in this way. They are really weekday churches at the heart of the world, remembering that sunday for the Risen Jesus and the first believers was just the beginning of the working week...

Book Study, Virtually Christian, Chapter Five

2011-02-23T15:22:00.000-08:00

Chapter Five is the book's "Dilithium crystals" of Startrek fame, the essential energy source at the core of all our crazy explorations through space and time. But we could never discover this precious ore unless we had first set out on the journey, the voyage through culture. Finding the source depends on the journey, but taking the journey also depends on the source.

This is a chapter on Christian doctrine, the classic Christian teaching on the two natures of Christ and the three persons of the Trinity. The ancient formulations run the risk of making the good news of Jesus an abstract scheme with little or no value to average humanity, except those initiated in seminary. The purpose here is to reveal their vibrant basis in human fact.

In so many words, there is a radical intervention made in our human situation by Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth. Jesus showed a complete absence of violence in his relationship to the Father and followed it through with a consistent practice of forgiveness and love, all the way to the absolute nonretaliation of crucifixion and its raising up in resurrection. Without this existential reality at thier root the development of the high doctrines is incomprehensible.

The absence of violence is the key. In all of our relationships there are elements of violence. Not in this one! Here there is full trust, peace, love, surrender...the core practice of Jesus which enables us have any concept of the Trinity at all.

The question is approached in three stages, under the title of "sign". "Sign" is the essential method of the book because sign is flexible and dynamic, allowing for human change. Beginning from fixed intellectual categories assumes we can get into this through our minds, but it will only get us hopelessly lost. We get to the truth in as much we are changed by it...by the signs associated with it which liberate us into a new reality.

The sign of Christ, the sign of the human, the sign of God.

The sign of Christ refers to the way Jesus changed the meaning of human existence, from inevitable violence, to one of absolute relationship in acceptance and love. As already said, it is Jesus' total relationship to the Father insisting on the endless forgiveness and nonviolence of God which is then raised up in resurrection. This total relationship becomes a real existential possibility for all human beings...communicated by signs. When Thomas finds it difficult to believe at the end of John's gospel Jesus shows him physical signs of crucifixion made into meaningful signs (of love) by being raised up. Thomas does not actually put his finger in the wounds--really a further act of violence if he were to do it--but he is invited imitatively into that space. His neurons are literally tuned in to the Risen Crucified. (On this also see below.) And the cry that is then wrung from him--"my lord and my god"--is not a metaphysical claim, rather it is pure exclamation at the total change that Jesus has brought in Thomas' awareness of everything, including God.

It is this experiential basis resonating through the centuries that produces the formulae of Nicaea and Chalcedon, claiming Jesus is of "one substance" with God and his "person and hypostasis" is the eternally begotten Son. In this latter case we have in fact the invention of a completely new concept, "person". It is twinned with the other word "hypostasis" to give it the strength and depth that it didn't have then (it meant "face", "mask" or "role"). Hypostasis meant "independent existence" but can today be translated better by "underlying identity" because of its association with person. And now of course person means a relational being deserving of absolute respect and value.

This then is the sign of the human. We can share the underlying identity of Christ because we are neurally imitative, able to pick up all the way to our depths the changed human value of Christ. The chapter describes this in terms of compassion, the "other" radical possibility of imitation, alternative to rivalry and violence. Because we are neurally imitative the response of Christ can be downloaded into any human being who pays attention to the system of signs associated with Jesus--the stories, the meals, the preaching, and all their repercussions in art, movies, songs etc.

It means that in and through Christ we can share the same "hypostasis" as Jesus, i.e. become "children of God" as the gospel of John asserts. The "sign of the human" becomes deeply Christian, the way human beings through the risen Christ can begin to take on the same divine nonviolence found in Jesus.

And finally it means a deep change in the "sign of God". God also imitates the hypostasis of Jesus, or the Son generates the Father as a human being! This has to be the case for two reasons.

One, the logic of the Trinity itself. To be equal in love they each have to give themselves completely and each following the other. As the books says, equality in love means that there is there is an undecidable priority in the Trinity: they all go first, and they all go last.

Two, Jesus demonstrates precisely this on the cross. "Abandoned" by the Father means that he entrusts himself without guarantee, without support, into an abyss. And the abyss becomes love for the other. This is indeed what it means to generate the other, letting the other be because of your absolute gift. And it means that the Father can do no less than imitate Jesus, abandoning himself/herself in love. Even so Jesus generates the Father on earth. But at the same time the Father generates the Son who is Jesus.

In this way the earth itself becomes part of the eternal dance of God!

Be Happy!

2011-02-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

Here's how the deal went down for me.

I left the Roman Catholic priesthood for the joy of the gospel.

I spent a year in a community in Italy where there were a number of people gathered all facing big decisions. Some actually went on to join a religious order. But the final goal standing before everyone was the joy of the gospel. And it was with that experience shaping my decision I left the priesthood.

Later I quit a bureaucratic job and took a more menial one, again for the joy of the gospel.

You could say I was an addict for the stuff. What is it?

The joy of the gospel is the gospel in the earth not in heaven. It is what Jesus taught us to pray for, "Thy will be done on earth..."

It is divine springtime in the earth, a time of peace, nonviolence, life for all, above all for the poor and defenseless. It is the beatitudes, "Happy are you poor, Happy are you hungry!" Nothing can resist it. It makes the unbearable bearable, and in fact happy.

It says that even if things are grim economically, even if your enemies are pressing hard, even if you don't have a snowball in hell's chance, still you are happy because the good news is in the earth and like the seed of a mighty sequoia it will not stop growing. And this is so because the gospel has its own rules. It does not work by power and influence, by money and weapons. Its MO is hidden and oblique, filled with apparent dead spots where the cellphone of prayer gets no signal, no response. But that does not mean it is not working, and suddenly out of nowhere an answer will beak through loud and clear.

And even without that practical effect those who entrust themselves to it experience a completely different physics.

I believe this to be the case literally.

There is something called "neural plasticity" which means that if you use the brain in a certain way it begins actually to change and grow. A study was done on the brains of London taxi drivers who are obliged to accumulate what, in their trade, is called "the knowledge". This means a detailed map of every road and street in London carried inside their heads. The study noted a marked growth in a brain area known as the hippocampus, the part necessary for spatial memory and recognition. And the more time the taxi driver spent on the job, the more the area grew. And comparable changes can be noted for those who learn a second language, for musicians who practice every day, and--really no surprise--for people who pray regularly and strongly ( http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104310443 ).

Perhaps the joy of the gospel might be more difficult to detect--after all it is not a regular practice, more like an overall contextual sense, a vital impression connected to, well, everything. But we know that the brain contains about a hundred billion neurons and the connections or possible pathways between them approach the infinite. Scientists tell us a mere sixty neurons are capable of making more connections than the total number of particles in the observable universe. In other words, on a certain reckoning the brain is bigger than the universe, much bigger. And remember we have absolutely no knowledge of the world without the use of our brains. You could say practically speaking it does not exist apart from our brains. And in a way we construct it with our brains. So here's what I think.

For those for whom the gospel is in the earth--i.e. those who embrace with their whole selves the stupendous change in human history brought by Jesus--there is a clear sense in which their brains outguess the universe. Even though the world looks like it's being dragged down to death by all the violence within it those who live in the joy of the gospel already reconstitute that world by the transformed neural connections within them. Through the dead and risen Christ they knit the earth anew in terms of the neural shape they give it. They reorganize every informational element by virtue of the one who died and now has conquered death. They literally reboot creation inside their brains through love.

How and in what parts (or whole modalities) of the brain this happens remains to be detected, but from my own experience and especially observing others (those whom I have known who show a much greater constant joy than I can manage) I believe it to be a fact.

As a vision of Christianity this has serious consequences.

For the churches their gospel is too often in heaven not in the earth. They have directed our attention above, out of here, toward "the holiest in the height", because a transformed earth is just too counter-intuitive and it is much easier to believe in a "spiritual" other-world (one that does not interfere with the brain!).

But the pressure is on. The earth's actual survival is at stake. And the informational technologies now at work push Christians to find themselves in the concrete world, an urgent hyper-visual neurally alert world. So the churches with their gospel-in-heaven are dying and the new evangelical community churches with their bring-your-coffee, tweet-your-pastor and holy tattoo parlors seem to be thriving.

But the real challenge is the joy of the gospel. The media-hip churches may be simply celebrating the culture itself with a traditional overlay of joy-in-heaven hereafter, rather than truly teaching and experiencing the gospel-in-the-earth.

Because this gospel in fact continues to press us from deep within our humanity. Our communication and social media I believe are only a distant surface outworking of the profound relational movement unleashed in the world by Christ. (See my book Virtually Christian.) It is this movement that actually restructures our brain if we let it.

Oh for the day when Christians will be recognized by the peculiar activity of their brains! This is what the earth is longing for, the revelation of the children of God!

Be happy!

Tony

God and the Jesus Bees

2011-02-13T09:16:00.000-08:00

The following is slightly extended content of our meeting last Friday and serves as introduction to Chapter Five of Virtually Christian.

God is a word. What does the word mean?

Everybody thinks they know what the word "God" means. How many times do we hear it, "O God!" If everyone's saying it all the time, they must understand it, right?

Well, not so fast. Is "God" in fact Allah, or is he Krishna? Or Yahweh, or Zeus? Or is she Aphrodite?

"Oh well," others reply, "that's a very narrow pettifogging approach. It's evident those are just all the different names we give to the single Supreme Being, all different routes to the same truth which is revealed in different places under different aspects. And, by the way, this Supreme Being is very kind and good and wishes we would all just get along, and that means we have his/her permission to run all the names together."

Now hold it right there. Where are we getting this information from? People who claim it must be very smart, because there are other people who say very clearly only Allah is God, and that's it. And still others say there is no God at all. So they obviously don't have their hotline to the truth.

Is there a hotline at all?

Isn't it more likely that "god" is a sound we make to evoke a complex of human feelings and relationships to do with ultimate power and meaning, and that this is all we can know for sure. The anthropology of Rene Girard digs deep into this area and claims it was violence that gave birth to the primal word/concept "god' (or "deus" or "theos", etc.) and the word packs into itself a deep stratification of anger, fear, calm, peace, gratitude, all rolled up around a dim distant memory of a victim who was the incarnation both of all evil and all good. And then, later--I would add--there is probably a layering of Greek speculative metaphysics, about First Mover, Mind, the Highest Good, etc. So the primitive feelings are overlaid with some sophisticated ones.

"Come on," you say, "it's nothing like that at all! The thought of God as it has come to us in the West is highly specific and personal. God is a powerful Creator who has done a lot of concrete things in regard to his creation and holds out a promise of eternal happiness on the one hand and a threat of eternal damnation on the other. You can't get much more precise than that!"

But isn't this now in contradiction with what we were just saying above about a benign universal concept of a Supreme Being? You see what I mean? Really, we have very quickly looped in a big circle and it's a hard one to get out of. Either on the one hand we're diffusing the thought of God into vague generalities or on the other we're making God highly personal and, with that, really rather demanding!

So are we not driven again back to the the idea simply of god as a word, a human production, full of human elements? Indeed if we look closer at this last received notion of God in the West we can see there is a very obvious human element or category at work, and that is "property" or "possession". And it has had a very definite role in making "God" seem so real and concrete.

God made us, and set everything up for our good, giving us a paradise to play in.

Then we screwed up badly and got thrown out.

Then this God sent his Son to save us literally from a fate worse than death, from eternal damnation which is the consequence of our screwing up. But now all we have to do is agree with the contract that God has made, by means of his Son, and bingo! we're good to go.

This scenario is all about property and things. We're things that belong to God. We stole this thing away from God. So God sent this thing, his Son, to pay the thing back. And now this thing that we are, is safe. Unless of course we don't get in on the contract and then this thing we are is doomed to go to a very bad place/thing, which is hell. And in the midst of all this God appears as the main thing.

The whole thing is thingified, because the meaning comes from one of the most basic human practices, barter or economic exchange, which is all about things. There's nothing that objectifies the world more than economic exchange. It's all literally about having or not having. I've got this thing which I'm willing to give up so long as you give me that thing you have. But should you renege on the deal, should you steal my thing or not give me what you owe, then all hell breaks loose. Exchange is very close to violence; in fact violence lurks behind it and gives every-thing involved in it its intensity and power. It makes everything involved in exchange a real thing!

So me, God, the blood of Jesus, heaven, hell, these are all incredibly real in Western imagination because of the power of exchange. But it's precisely the violence behind all that which causes disgust and then makes people back off into vague generalities and for which unfortunately there is no clear warrant.

But now think about it, and here we have come to the real point of the foregoing. What if an individual should come along in the midst of time, in the midst of human history, and claim that only he knew the Father God, and then proceeded to live and die in such a way to give evidence with his life, that this Father God is in fact Love, and all the way. Love that went to the bottom, no conditions, unto death and even beyond death....

What if a man should come into the world who lived and spoke, acted and died in such a way that the whole story about him continually changes your way of thinking? And not just in speculative terms, moving the pieces of furniture about inside your head, but in terms of the tools of thinking itself, giving you an entirely new set of furniture, a new set of signs, in fact a whole new house to dwell in?

What if this man lived and died in a way that was so profound he subverted the whole order of thought itself? What if every sign associated with him sets up a resonance inside you that begins to change the very construction of your mind and it does so in relation to others who are similarly being changed, because this meaning really can only work collectively, in love?

What if the signs associated with this man gradually began to isolate love and nonviolence as the best definition of life and so we begin to see him as a medicine for our meaning, establishing only the fluid relationship of love rather than the violent exchange of things? And especially rather than he himself as the supreme object of violent exchange! What if empties the universe of things entirely because in fact he empties it of violence and fills it with relationship alone?

Would not this individual then change the very meaning of God along with everything else, and he alone have the right to do so? Would he not in fact teach us that Godself is willing, and always was, to take the side of the victims of history--victims of a violence which is the huge and almost inevitable risk of human freedom? Would not God as Creator then be rightly understood, not as violent power, property and ownership, but, actually its reverse, a movement of self-surrender in love? And then last but not least, would not the one who showed us this himself evoke-- in a moment of recognition that he single-handed had changed the human-system including the meaning of God--the amazed exclamation, "my lord and my god!"

The only adequate image I can find for this thought of Christianity is the old one of the caterpillar and the butterfly. Except even that does not work entirely. But going with if for the moment we see the caterpillar does not have to have its soul saved and float off to a heavenly otherworld in order to become a butterfly. It simply goes into a deep self-reimagining, a deep self-deconstruction and reconstruction according to a code that it is somehow placed in the caterpillar-self. And shazam! a totally new beautiful creature. So good so far, but the code for a new humanity does not come organically inside of us but through the story and person of Jesus who is himself the code. Embrace Jesus and all the signs associated with him and shazam! a new humanity!

But even that is not entirely adequate, because it doesn't happen shazam! and it doesn't happen simply with individuals on their own. So perhaps we should shift our image to bees! Together they share a code that enables them to build a beautiful honeycomb filled with honey. None of them can fulfill the code individually, but they do collectively, and they do so over a period of long labor. Are not Christians the Jesus bees infected with the Jesus code which enables them cell by cell, drop by drop, to create a new universe? One filled with the truly divine honey of love! And because it is code, one developed through Jesus for humanity, it also means that other people who do not call themselves Christians can pick it up anytime anywhere. So perhaps that benign Supreme Being stuff is just a poorly articulated way of recognizing the Jesus revelation of honey!

Book Study, Virtually Christian, Chapter Four

2011-02-07T18:43:00.000-08:00

The question at the head of this chapter is: if Christ has radically changed human culture through a mobilizing compassion, then philosophy--the practice of thought in relation to the world--would surely show some impact? The chapter gives evidence this is in fact the case, demonstrating the powerful contemporary theme of movement as a product of Christ in the world.

Philosophy came from the Greeks. It was the Greeks who invented the analytic method, the method of negation and affirmation. Remember we're talking about a method not the simple fact of negation and affirmation; of course every human being can do these things. But the Greeks pushed negation and affirmation all the way because they were interested in the final "whatness" of everything, the nature of being as such. They were not interested in an ambiguous interpenetration of things as in the Chinese thought of "yin and yang", nor did they seek an Eastern-style religious attitude where all things are experienced as "one". They sought instead an intellectual knowledge of the final nature stuff, of "what is". For Thales the ultimate reality was water. For Anaximenes it was air.

Plato invented the idea itself as the ultimate nature of stuff. How critical was this as a shift in human culture! His term is "eidos" which is commonly translated form, but also as idea, meaning the appearance of something to the mind. His "theory of forms" said that everything in the universe had a form or idea (eidos) which was in fact a copy of a pure eternal form or idea. The pure eternal form held the ultimate nature of everything. Bingo! Thus was born the other-worldly truth of the world!

This way of thinking has had an enormous influence on Western history, especially Christianity. Plato's notion of the eternal--changeless, motionless, nonmaterial perfection--has profoundly shaped our understanding of biblical "heaven", the "immortal soul" and "what happens when we die". Because of Plato ultimate Christian reality became other-worldly and nonmaterial.

Aristotle is supposed to have reversed the thinking of his master, Plato, giving it a more realist, material bent, but the truth is he still retained the intellectual attitude, i.e. ultimate reality was always perceived in and by the intellect. Thus the intellectual or "ideas man" has had enormous prestige in the West. And in Christianity especially this always slipped back into the Platonic other-worldly attitude. As Nietzsche said it, "Christianity is Platonism for the people".

But a significant change began in the 19th century, breaking from the Platonic world view and emphasizing a sense of "movement" rather than static mental truth. And as an experiential fact our contemporary culture is much more shaped by movement, both physically and now imaginatively via the internet, than unchanging heavenly realities. We live in a post-modern world full of flux, relativity, open-ended movement... But it is Christianity itself which at root has provoked this other kind of world, so undoing the millennial hold of Greek thought! This can be shown in two important areas.

Evolution is one vital area in which movement is stressed in our world. The broadly accepted cultural viewpoint--that the earth arrived at its present form of life over millions of years-provides an intense overall theme of movement. But is it Christian?Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit paleontologist who took part in numerous scientific digs in China and elsewhere, and during his long career of writing and research embraced evolutionary thought from a Christian point of view.

Teilhard saw a natural compatibility between evolutionary science and Christian faith because faith taught a movement in time toward Christ, the Alpha and the Omega. This is a perspective made possible by a number of biblical texts, above all in a passage like Romans 8:19 where it says: "The creation waits with eager longing for the revelation of the children of God..."

Scientifically Teilhard believed that consciousness was a natural accompaniment of the development of biological nervous systems (i.e. not a divine element of the soul coming from beyond). As such all of life is a reaching up toward consciousness, and thence to its perfection as love, what Teilhard calls the "Omega point". The recent science of mirror neurons is strong evidence for the basic accuracy of Teilhard's insight--the neural pathways that allow us to move and respond to our world are also able to "mirror" the same actions in others, putting us at once in the self-other relationship, something which is at the heart of consciousness.

Generally therefore the cultural theme of evolutionary movement does not have to be seen as a threat to faith. On the contrary it can be seen to have inspired by it. The argument is not that Teilhard was right in every respect but that, as he himself testified, it was his Christian faith that gave him confidence to propose this way of thinking. Here therefore we have a powerful example of Christian faith making possible the radical sense of movement expressing itself in evolutionary thought.

The other framework in which we read about movement is the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. This 20th century German philosopher is seen by many to be one of the greatest in Western history. His thought is an effective and real break with the Platonism and idealism of the past: a rooting of philosophy in actual human existence.

For Heidegger the human individual is the place or site or of a disclosure of Being via various key moods or conditions of existence. By far the most important is time: time indeed as a human movement. Because human existence is always moving toward its own death then Being is revealed. It's as if you were gradually being pulled on a rope over a cliff so that ever contact with the ground beneath becomes essential and real! His view is of course a little more subtle than that but this is essentially his vital contribution --situating our awareness of "what is" in direct dramatic human involvement, rather than abstract intellect.

But then numerous commentators agree that what first inspired the determining role Heidegger gave to time was--amazingly!--the New Testament. Heidegger taught courses on the New Testament and it was the early Christian sense of living in urgent anticipation of the coming of Christ (and how that affected immediate experience) which underlay his thought about the role of death. He just shifted the key horizon from Christ to death, and voilá! an extremely powerful philosophy of existence was created.

But then if that is the case it has two significant consequences: one) the tradition of Christian faith has shaped at its core the most influential philosophy of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st; and two) the most dynamic underlying truth of Christian existence is not the concept of "heaven" but movement in time through relationship to Christ. Christ mobilizes the present world in all sorts of ways towards its authentic future.

Heidegger's thought effectively shows us that the true philosophy and force of Christian faith is not some supposed perfect other-world accessed after death (or through rapture!) but a movement in time toward Christ whose meaning is so powerful he changes the condition of existence in the present. Change in the present may also come in terms of crisis, because of the world's unwillingness to accept compassion rather than anger.But then this simply intensifies the pressing need for compassion!

The more compassion the more crisis, but then also the more crisis the more compassion!

Thus we can see that the overall thesis of the book--that the message of the gospel has radically affected human self-awareness and experience--is confirmed from the side of philosophy, in terms of the deep sense of movement released in the world by Christ. This means that the Christian message has actually broken its Platonic chains by its own natural power.

Virtually Christian, Chap. Two (Part Two)

2011-01-23T12:22:00.000-08:00

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.

Virtually Christian, Chap. Two (Part One)

2011-01-17T16:11:00.000-08:00

Last Friday's study kicked off with a brief account of the career of René 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

Virtually Christian, Chap. One

2011-01-10T07:04:00.000-08:00

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”.)

Sacred Space #11

2011-01-09T18:58:00.000-08:00

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.

Sacred Space #10

2011-01-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

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.

Sacred Space #9

2011-01-01T09:08:00.000-08:00

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.

Sacred Space #8

2010-12-26T18:38:00.000-08:00

Here is the next Bible Study. Hoping to get the last three in this series posted soon - Linda.

Sacred Space #8 11/26/10
Relationships in the Gospel of John.

Jn1:35-39 gives the account of the calling of the first disciples. These were followers of John the Baptist who hear him announce, “Here is the Lamb of God.” They follow Jesus who asks them, “What are you looking for?” They ask, “Rabbi where are you staying?” Jesus replies “Come and see” - and they stayed with him.

Jn 20:15-17 describes the morning of the resurrection. Mary Magdalene sees Jesus, but doesn’t recognize him. Jesus speaks to her, asking, “Whom are you looking for?” Mary recognizes him and calls out, “Rabbouni”. Jesus tells her not to hold on to him, but instead to “go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, my God and your God’”.

These two passages are bookends or literary inclusions. There is a progression between the first to the second. Both have questions, but these transition from what to whom, from the impersonal to the personal. The disciples call him Rabbi (translated as teacher); Mary calls him Rabbouni. In both accounts the evangelist uses parenthesis to give the same translation - teacher. The difference is that the word’s ending changes to give the meaning “beloved teacher” in the resurrection narrative. They are structurally parallel accounts with a common drama. Mirror stories placed at the beginning and the end of the Gospel. The first story announces the thematic –Jesus is a teacher. As the Gospel unfolds the reader enters into a deeper, more meaningful, relationship with Jesus. The Gospel is an invitation to learn from Jesus and enter into this relationship.

There is a lot of turning in this story. In v. 14, “When she had said this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there…” In v. 16, “Jesus said to her ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, Rabbouni”. The Hebrew word for repent is “to turn around”. Turning here has a spiritual and relational sense. The first time she turns she sees who she is expecting to see, what she is looking for – the gardener. The second time she hears his voice and is open to a different understanding. You can’t see this new risen Lord unless you turn, change your perspective. When you move from your fixed way of being you can begin to see him. It signifies a shift in relationship – from Rabbi to Rabbouni. In the first story the disciples follow Jesus to his home in Capernaum; here Mary is called to a new relationship.

Mary tries to hold on to Jesus, to keep things the way they were in the past. Jesus replies that “I have not yet ascended to my Father and your Father…” He then tells her to go to the brethren and tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”– the present tense. He is in process of ascending. Ascension in John is not a physical thing, a movement to another place, but rather a progressive growth in relationship. Otherwise why link himself and his disciples in this way? He “ascends” in the measure that his disciples enter into the same relationship as he has with the Father.

At the same time being “raised up”, going upward, in John is all about the cross. Jesus will not complete his ascension, he will continue to ascend, until people understand that Jesus’ God, his Father, is also their God and Father, and that he is the one who willed the nonviolence of the cross. When you see Jesus you see the Father - a nonviolent God. Because of this all the barriers between us and the divine are no more. The intermediary mechanisms of sacrifice and temple are redundant once you have been brought into this relationship. Priests and Pastors may serve a useful pastoral role but cannot substitute for the new relationship with God. We see that Mary needs to let go of Jesus and this is so in order that she may enter into this privileged relationship with the Father and help lead others into it. Although we understand the Father through Jesus, Jesus in a way has to become less so that the Father becomes more.

In Jn 14:1 Jesus says to his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” Here he is talking of the same thing. That the Father is nonviolent and loving, so there is no need to worry. Jesus shows us who God is - the Father. Jesus mirrors the Father – and so creates an endless reflective relationship with us in the middle!

The accounts of the Samaritan woman at the well and the anointing of Jesus by the woman at Bethany are also parallel stories. Jn 4:6-15 describes the meeting at Jacob’s well –a holy site. Jesus gently deconstructs that sacred space. He asks the woman to give him water, breaking the cultural barriers associated with Samaritans and Women. Jesus as the source of living water will become the source welling up within you. There is no more need to return to the well. True worship is in spirit and in truth. Neither Jacob’s well nor Jerusalem will be necessary as sacred space. They are replaced by this new relationship between the believer and Jesus. The woman who anoints Jesus in Jn 12:1-8 is a mirror of the Samaritan woman in terms of relationship. She pours costly nard on Jesus’ feet in an extravagant gesture of limitless love. She has moved beyond argument to an act that shows the depth of this relationship.

Short Days, Love and Nothing

2010-12-16T06:03:00.000-08:00

This time of year, the sun is close to its lowest point. Even after the solstice it seems to linger low on the horizon (actually I think this is technically correct for reasons I can’t remember).

The New Testament also tells us the days are short, but from a different perspective

Paul says “The present form of the world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7.31). Why? Because its “form”, its collective human construction, or “imagined reality”, is undermined by the gospel of Christ. Paul didn’t have an anthropology of the victim or a science of mirror neurons to show how this might actually be happening. But he did have a direct awareness of the impact of Christ on humanity—as did all the primitive church, and that’s why he and they called Jesus “Lord”. They knew that something really was up with the Risen Jesus!

If there was a condemned and executed man declared innocent in living fact (empty tomb/appearances to individuals) —a man who had always enacted forgiveness while saying that the kind of God we got depended on the kind of God we gave out—then it meant all previous bets about both divinity and humanity were off. And if you believed this you also knew it. There was a totally new game in town.

That was back then. To think how that might affect us now we have to hit the scene-select much later, a much more contemporary understanding that takes into account the deep course and purpose of the gospel message over the space of 2000 years. For today, after those two millennia, there is a third sense to shortened days. Our time seems to be narrowing before our eyes because of the enormous pressure on the human earth…from increased population, but also increased desires, from the relentless media stream of images and the wants they prompt.

The effect of the pressure is both physical and mental. Slowly, we are herded closer and closer together, and there is less and less room to maneuver, to step aside and find an empty space. We’re like a pot of water on the stove. The heat is the human world itself and we are the molecules, more and more agitated, bouncing off each other, with no place to go but the next bounce…

Then suddenly, in precisely this situation we see the whole point of the shortened days, the increasing pressure of so many humans and their wants…it brings us to an entirely new human possibility, an entirely new way of being human, or in other terms a totally “new year”.

For a bounce doesn’t have to be a bounce. Being brought in close proximity to the other does not have to mean conflict. It could equally well mean forgiveness and peace and community. And this is so because with the gospel there really is a new human physics, one that has as little to do with violence as time travel would have to do with road travel. There is now finally at the eleventh hour a new science of human particles to learn, a new anthropology, a new humanity. It has always been there, of course, but now with the pressure of the pot it appears more and more as the one remaining human possibility. As W.H. Auden said on the eve of WW2, "We must love one another or die".

But at once the objection comes: love seems so tenuous, so helpless, how can it possibly stand against human violence? And it is that objection which brings me to the real point of the blog. I first started thinking not about short days as such but about love, and its real existence. And it was its existence that struck me forcibly, so then I worked back to how urgent love has become in the moment of violent pressure.

For yes, love exists! But love is relational and so essentially invisible. It cannot be seen or observed. I have a friend who’s always talking about vortices and energy lines and powers in the earth. He believes what’s good and holy is located somehow physically in the world, in rocks, and rivers. I am not adverse to the thrill of certain special places and their feeling and associations, but the thing about love is that it is a new physics. You’ll never see an energy line for love, a blip on a screen or the flicker of a meter. No doubt we can see its effects in the physical world, but in its own moment, its actual existence as love, it is absolutely new and different. The closest it could be recognized would be as a vanishing trace, the signal of something that passed this way but we missed it as it passed.

And the reason for that is because love gives itself as a nothing, into the nothing. If it were to give itself as a some-thing then it would not be love, but an exchange, a something demanding something in return. (Even Christmas gifts for all their attraction have some of this, we give and expect gifts. Love expects nothing in return.)

But then—and this is the enormously cool thing—the moment that love passes by in the world, in the actions of people, it sets up a secret attraction, because at a level too deep for words, too deep for anything, we find life exactly in this. There is a level in us moved precisely by no-thing, by love. And it is this level that more than any-thing proves we are meant for more than the present order of things, the present world and its imagined reality. We are meant rather for an endless world of endless loving, of giving the self away as if it were no-thing.

So may the days be short and ever shorter, so the new day of love can begin!

Sacred Space #7

2010-12-15T15:05:00.000-08:00

Here is the next Bible Study summary in our series on Sacred Space. Still to come are Sacred Space in the Gospel of John; Jesus and the Temple; Sacred Space and the Book of Revelations; and the final study in the series will be on the Trinity. Keep watching this space! -Linda

Sacred Space #7 11/19/10

The early Christian community

The earliest writings of the New Testament are those written by Paul. Thessalonians is one of the first – from about 49AD – roughly 20 years after Jesus death. It is a direct communication between Paul and one of the early Christian communities. It provides us with a sociological study of the early church.

The Greek word for church is ecclesia- which was a secular term meaning “called together” or “gathering”. It did not have the modern association with a sacred place of worship. Christians were called together at each others’ houses. The concept of “church” as a separate building came with Constantine. The Roman emperor gave a Basilica (a royal palace) to the church. The king’s private quarters became the area behind the altar from where Jesus/the king would emerge to be seen. The church was adopted by the imperial power and became identified with power and prestige and all of its trappings. For the first three centuries, however, Christian gatherings took place in peoples’ homes. Ecclesia was a small assembly of people. The Pauline letters usually use the phrase “church at the house of”. For example 1Cor 16:19 “Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, greet you warmly in the Lord”. (See also Romans 16:5). Prisca and Aquila were tent makers who moved around – living in Corinth, Ephesus and Rome. At that time it was relatively safe to travel – during the relatively stable Pax Romana. Other examples of house churches are found in the letters to Philemon (1:1-2) and to the Colossians (4:15).

When the head of the household became a Christian, it was usual for his household (his wife, children, servants and slaves) to follow suit. Romans 16:10 alludes to this “ Greet those in the Lord who belong to the house of Aristobulus.” In 1 Cor 1:16 we see the same thing “I did baptize the household of Stephanas.” It has been estimated that 25-33% of the population of the Roman Empire, were slaves. Paul does not argue against slavery as an institution. He did not set out to abolish slavery – rather teaches a subversive love that will ultimately undermine it. For Paul, the Christian message is not about bringing down the empire – rather it introduces a new understanding about who we are in relationship to others, something that overturns the deep structure on which the empire rested. In Philemon Paul says to receive a slave as a brother.

The Pauline message is a message of transformation. God invites us to change our hearts by the power of love. Social order is subverted from within. In 1 Cor 7: 17-24 Paul describes the freedom that comes through belonging to the Lord. The Jewish community had clear demarcating lines with its practice of circumcision, and through its dietary laws. Christianity in contrast has no preconditions. This being the case there is always the tendency to chaos. Paul’s letters struggle with the tension between anarchy and freedom in the Spirit. Paul tries to keep the freedom but at the same time seeks to introduce some order. He recognizes that freedom requires a tremendous surrender to the Spirit to make it work. Christians can experience freedom in any situation – whether slave or master, woman or man, rich or poor.

The early church also has a number of women in leadership roles. Romans 16:1-2 describes Phoebe, a deacon and benefactor. She is a woman of independent means, who traveled to Rome. Her name is not linked to any man. In Romans 16:7 another woman, Junia, is called an apostle. In the Middle Ages an “s” was often added to the end of her name to make it sound like a man’s. In Acts 16:14, Lydia, a business woman dealing in purple (a luxury dyed cloth) is described as the head of her household – another woman of influence.

The New Testament gives us a picture of the people who made up the early church. It also gives us a picture of how they worshipped as a community. 1Cor 11:17 describes problems emerging in relation to the communion meal in Corinth. Corinth was a small Christian community – perhaps just four or five households. Divisions had emerged because people had not learned to share with the poor. Paul says it is better that they eat at home if they cannot be in community.

1 Corinthians also offers teaching on the issue of whether it acceptable to eat food sacrificed to idols. There are three chapters devoted to this subject (8-10). 1 Cor 10:23 -32 sums up this teaching. There is no need to observe dietary laws if you are ruled by love. Food should not become a barrier to entering into a relationship with another. The Christian is free to eat any food, even if it has been dedicated to a god. If another believes that the dedication is meaningful, however, then don’t eat it because it might cause them offense. This concept of no rules only works if you have respect for the other and for yourself. The new Christian movement has no sacred order – instead it is trying to work out a new way of how to be free with each other. “ For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them….I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.” (1 Cor 9:19-23)

Sacred Space #6

2010-12-02T17:19:00.000-08:00

And another Bible Study Summary...

Sacred Space #6 11/12/10

Wisdom

The wisdom literature of the Old Testament is neither prophetic in character nor does it see the need for temple. It is a way of thinking common to all peoples –that if you act well your life will turn out well. It is age and experience passing on to the next generation the message that life has a pattern to it. If you are truly listening to life’s message then there is a level of truth within you that you can rely on. Of course it may be blown away by circumstances, but basically it holds true. Proverbs 3:13-20 talks about the source of true wealth. “Happy are those who find wisdom and those who get understanding…” Jesus uses the same form of expression in the beatitudes: “happy are the poor in spirit, etc.” - i.e. these are Wisdom statements.

Wisdom is personified as a female relational being in the Old Testament. She is not simply something in your head or inherited right thinking, but a persona. Wisdom is a shadowy figure in the Old Testament. She is linked to the tree of life at the center of the Garden of Eden. See Proverbs 3:18, “She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her’. The implication is that through Wisdom, humans can attain life everlasting. In contrast, folly leads to death. Without wisdom people come to harm. There is no God of wrath. Instead we can choose to bring destruction upon ourselves by denying Wisdom, or choose life by following her paths.

The Lord, through Wisdom, created the earth. She is a beautiful person in relationship with God. She was there at the beginning, at the moment of creation (Proverbs 8:22-36). "When he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily he is delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race”(v. 30-31). The word for “master worker” can also be translated as “little child” which seems to fit better contextually. The former is usually used though, because it is less relational and more Greek, so easier to deal with. Wisdom delights in us, God delights in Wisdom. It is a wisdom thing to do – to delight in other people. There is no need for a separate sacred place if the world is full of delight – no need in fact for a temple. Instead through Wisdom we find transcendence in each other. We find the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creation.

Wisdom is a minor key in the Bible – less dominant than the Torah, the prophets and the history of the kings. But still it is one of the strands. It is present throughout the Bible. In the Torah Joseph is in fact a Wisdom figure. He figures things out through his dreams which provide insight into actual circumstances. He reorganizes the food stores of Egypt so that they are able to survive the famine. His wise actions bring life.

The book of Proverbs (a wisdom book) is hard to date. It has material from the 10th century (the time of Solomon) but probably reached its final form in the 6th century. It is fairly well developed – particularly the first eight chapters. In the 2nd century Sirach, another Wisdom book, was written. This is considered deutero-canonical by the Roman Catholic Church, apocryphal by the Protestants. Jesus knew this book and was informed by it. Parts seem to have been used and developed by him. In Chapter 24 Wisdom praises herself in the presence of the Most High. “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist…” (v.3). Here Wisdom is associated with the breath or the word of the Most High. There is an identification of Sofia (Wisdom) with the Logos (the Word). The Prologue in the Gospel of John uses this Wisdom thought, saying that all things were created through the Word. This is a wisdom theology. Jesus used Wisdom sayings and identified himself with the person of Wisdom – who invites people to eat and be filled and promises them life and peace.

In v. 13 Wisdom is depicted also as a great tree. “I grew tall like a cedar in Lebanon, and like a cypress on the heights of Hermon” In v.23 she is associated with the Torah, and in v. 31 forms a great river spreading across the earth.

In Ch 50:1-21 the scribe describes a temple service that took place at some point between 219-196 BCE when Simon son of Onias was high priest. It gives us a snap shot of the liturgy. The scribe sees this is a continuation of the world made good – It is a glorious picture of heavenly splendor come to earth. It is also the last time that Wisdom literature basks in its own confidence.

In 167 -164 the Seleucid kings of Syria take over Judea. Alexander the Great had conquered the known world at end of the 4th century. After his death, power was divided among his military leaders. Two powers in particular arose– the Ptolemies (Cleopatra was a member of this family) and the Seleucids who were centered in Damascus and Syria. The Seleucid leader, Antiochus Epiphanes, tried to turn the temple in Jerusalem into a place of Greek worship. As a part of this effort he erected a statue of Zeus - the infamous “abomination of desolation”. He also forbade circumcision and the reading of the scriptures. This was the first time that an invading army had tried to wipe out the Jewish religion. There were also Jewish Hellenizers in Jerusalem promoting the Greek way of life. They adopted Greek dress and built a gym in Jerusalem. Antiochus Epiphanes’ attempt to Hellenize the temple provoked a guerilla war. The successful rebellion was led by the Maccabee family. They were not a Davidic family instead they were a minor priestly family. Following the success of the rebellion they assumed leadership in Jerusalem. Herod the Great married in to the Hasmoneans – the last of the Maccabean line. Herod was regarded as an imposter because he was of Arab blood and also married to this non-Davidic family.

1 Maccabees 1:36-50 describes the defilement of the temple. Many chose to flee to the desert rather than accept pagan rituals and laws. 1Macc 2:29-41 describes how they were pursued into the wilderness. They were overrun on the eve of the Sabbath. They refused to fight on the Sabbath and so profane it: “ ‘Let us all die in our innocence; heaven and earth testify for us that you are killing us unjustly.” So they attacked them on the Sabbath, and they died, with their wives and children and livestock, to the number of a thousand persons” (vv 37-38).

The Maccabean leader, Matthias, is more secular minded. He justifies fighting on the Sabbath to prevent them from perishing. “When Matthias and his friends learned of it, they mourned for them deeply. And all said to their neighbors: ‘If we all do as our kindred have done and refuse to fight with the Gentiles for our lives and for our ordinances, they will quickly destroy us from the earth.’”

The initial non-violent group were, very probably, the forerunners of the Essenes (the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls). They sought holiness through purity, and refused to fight the Romans. They were not completely non-violent, however – according to the Qumran “War Scroll” they were prepared to fight when the angels came to lead them in the final battle to restore holiness to the land. The Pharisees also sought holiness through purity and were probably related in some way to this initial group.

In the context described, the project of Wisdom – that if you chose to live a righteous life you will do well – appeared to have failed. In response Wisdom thought becomes apocalyptic in the Book of Daniel. The premise of apocalyptic literature is that in order for good to prevail, for the righteous to live, God has to intervene directly. This book, the last of the four major prophets, was written at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes in 167-164 BCE. In Daniel 11: 29-35 there is an account of the Greek profanation of the temple. It also tells of non-violent resisters who fall by the sword. These wise among the people will give understanding to many. Though they fall by the sword, unresisting, this will be so that they might be “refined, purified and cleansed, until the time of the end, for there is still an interval until the appointed time.” (v 35). In Chapter 12: 1-4 we have the first clear description of resurrection in the bible. In this picture some of the dead will awake to everlasting life and then “those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky…”

Wisdom from being a broad picture of living well has shifted to a key of non-violence in a time of crisis. And logically connected to this the only way we are going to make the world turn out well for life is through resurrection. In this thinking it is not a reward of “salvation” in a heavenly hereafter, but as the only way a God of wisdom can bring about the fulfillment of his project. The violence of the world may destroy you – but the resurrection makes it right and becomes our hope.

The concept of sacred space breaks down. Violent power took over the temple and the people who finally triumph through violent rebellion are not the authentic descendants of David and quickly became corrupt. At the time of Jesus, the temple was compromised. Instead the wilderness was the place where people went to meet God, awaiting a breakthrough of a just life on earth. John the Baptist represents the movement away from the temple to the wilderness and apocalyptic. He becomes the link between the Old and the New Testaments. Jesus is then the fulfillment of Wisdom’s project for the earth.

Sacred Space #5

2010-12-01T17:51:00.000-08:00

Here is the fifth in the series on Sacred Space, #6 coming shortly...
-Linda

Sacred Space #5 11/5/10

Ezekiel’s temple of doom and the temple of his dreams.

Ezekiel is one of the four major prophets (the others are Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel). All of these prophets pivot around the crucial event of the Babylonian invasion, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the exile. Daniel, unlike the others, was not written at that time. It was written 400 years later, but gives its 2nd century prophecy added weight by placing it in the 6th century BCE. These prophets were a big deal. They preserved the faith of the people when they had lost their leadership, land and temple. In the process of preserving the faith in the midst of unthinkable loss, they actually created something new.

Ezekiel has been called a catatonic schizophrenic! His visions have an almost psychotic feel. Why then is he considered a major prophet? He stands out. His psychic state is a matter of public record and the psychosis he is dealing with is a national historical event. Jeremiah has a relentless message of judgment; Isaiah has words of consolation and a new vision of Zion. What Ezekiel has is an intense sense of violence. There is something about his understanding of the violence of the moment, and of Israel’s role in it. Ezekiel has a priestly, ferocious image of God – a God of wrath. Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion states that the Old Testament God is arguably the most unpleasant figure in literature. His description of a violent, autocratic and patriarchal deity is not far from Ezekiel’s vision of God. Ezekiel was a temple priest and his mind is formed by the temple. Unlike Jeremiah who had little time for the temple, Ezekiel cares deeply about it.

Ezekiel 1:1-28 gives a description of the divine chariot – the merkabah. The chariot was the fighting machine of the day (like a modern tank). God is kick-ass in an armored vehicle. It is a chariot of supernatural qualities – full of fire, wings and eyes. Filled with life and spirit, it can move in any direction and immediately, without turning. Angel imagery, picked up from the Babylonians, is incorporated into the description. Sitting on the top of the chariot is the glory of God. At this point Ezekiel’s language begins to break down. In v. 26 he starts using the phrase “something like” because he can no longer fully express God’s glory.

He has this vision in Babylon five years after the first exile occurred when Jehoichin (the 18 year old king) surrendered the city. Ezekiel was one of the 10,000 members of the court, the army, craftspeople and temple who were exiled with the young leader. The city is still intact at this point – it will be another five years before Jerusalem’s destruction. Ezekiel is writing in the midst of a secular, non-Jewish alien environment. He mentally compensates for the absence of the land, temple and culture. He has lost his holy place. It is in that gap that he sees this vision – a vision of the glory of God inhabiting the temple. Ezekiel is dealing with violence done to the most precious thing to him – the temple.

Ezekiel 22: 1-16 Ezekiel describes a city of idolatry and violence. A place where strangers suffer extortion, slander leads to bloodshed and people give false witness in court, women are violated while menstruating, and where “the princes …have been bent on shedding blood.” The spilling of blood is mentioned a lot. It is an account of a bloody city. Ezekiel has an aversion to blood spilled in the wrong place (v.26). It becomes a violation of the holiness which happens when blood is poured in the right place – in the temple. Sacrifice is the only acceptable form of bloodshed. Everything else renders things impure. The city is unclean and impure. Because of this, Ezekiel says, the Lord will make you even more impure. Ezekiel makes the mechanism of vengeance clear, violation of the holy brings violation of the people. He wants to blame the invasion on the sins of the people. They have created the sacrificial crisis. The people will thus be made the sacrifice. Here he prophesies the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.

Chapter 9:1-10 is one of the most intolerable chapters in the Bible. Here God orders the slaying of the people. He pours out his wrath on Jerusalem, defiling his own temple with the dead bodies. The people have defiled him so he will defile them in turn to show his holiness. Only those who “sigh and groan over all the abominations” will be spared – having been marked on their foreheads by an emissary of the Lord. No mercy will be given to the elderly, women or children. No sanctuary found in the temple. Scholars think that this chapter, with its instructions to the executioner, is probably an account of what actually happened. In times of invasion people often gather at the temple as a last sanctuary. That is also the place where a conquering army would target. Their goal would be to profane that place, cutting the people down without mercy. What is at stake is the transcendence of the other, which you must destroy. The Romans did the same thing. Ezekiel describes the event then gives it a theological spin. Saying that it is all part of God’s nature and his plan.

In Ez 10:1-17 the chariot described in chapter one is here in the middle of the temple. The fire from the wheels is used to burn the city and the temple. In vv 18-22, after the slaughter, the chariot carrying the glory of God leaves Jerusalem. This chariot carrying the glory of the Lord lifts from the temple and parks itself on top of a mountain halfway between Jerusalem and Babylon. Only when the people are again dedicated to holiness and purity will God’s glory be restored to the temple.

Ezekiel is sometimes called the Father of Judaism. After the return from exile, his prophesy of the rebuilding of the ideal temple (found in Chapter 40) becomes a key text. Today it is important for Dispensationalist and fundamentalist Christians. Ezra and Nehemiah look to the Ezekiel tradition for their sense of national purity. The Pharisees at the time of Jesus have dedicated themselves to holiness laws and rituals in an attempt to keep God’s favor and to forestall further disaster. They are seeking not to repeat the mistakes of the past. For Ezekiel, the sacrificial system with its focus on sin, holiness and purity keeps things controlled and is the source of the people’s security. For Ezekiel the holy is everything. At the same time he has a sense of a genuine interior transformation (“a new heart and a new spirit I will give you”, 36:26). It is for this that the prophecy is remembered more than his concern of the temple. All the same Jesus stands very much in contrast to his temple ideology. He deliberately hangs out with the impure and heals on the Sabbath. He transforms the water jars, set aside for purification, into wine. He breaks the holy open by shutting the temple down.

It's Christmas Time!

2010-11-24T06:47:00.000-08:00

Aaargh! It wasn’t yet Thanksgiving and they were playing Christmas music in the mall! Hang a shining star upon the highest bough and have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

There’s a near-automatic refudiation, as Sarah Palin would say, when someone who takes Christianity seriously hears these tunes so far away from the actual season, and with an obvious intent of milking the occasion for as much profit as possible. As the righteous slogan used to go: “Christmas sacred, or Christ massacred?”

But then I started listening more carefully and thinking: Is this all simply to make money? Is it all just digging for pay dirt?

Something about the tone of the song struck me, a sense of something precious set against a background of something lost, or threatened with loss. Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us gather near to us once more. Through the years we all will be together, if the Fates allow

What are those “olden days, happy golden days of yore”? And what are the “Fates” that may or may not allow “faithful friends who are dear to us [to] gather near to us once more”?

Did those olden days ever truly exist? Or are they not a metaphor for a fleeting but deep rooted feeling of closeness, of life, of forgiveness, of love? Are they not in fact a popular, acceptable displacement of a much deeper eschatological (present and to come) sense, diffused through culture, of a world freed by Christ from anger, hatred, war and death?

Hold onto your evangelical and liberal hats now! I know it’s a stretch and that we’ve been taught to think about Christmas and the holidays in more and more a “secular” sense. That the world and Christian religion have to be held separate. But may not the “secular” be itself just another displacement—of the world’s own authentic drive (overlaid with lots of distortions and disfigurement for sure) toward a destiny seeded in it by the gospel?

Probably the most popular Christmas song of all is I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. As is well known this song was written and released during the Second World War and was one of the most requested numbers in the Armed Forces Network. It was No. 1 in the Billboard charts in three separate years spanning the war, 1942, 1945, 1946. It is also the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million worldwide. (Thanks to Wikipedia for these fascinating fun facts!)

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know, where the treetops glisten, and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow.

What is that but a reaching out for a world freed from the lowering clouds and miasma of war, where nature is pristine and there are no sounds of violence, rather we can hear the music of an approaching absolute gift? And this is possible not in some vague general sense, but in the totally easy implicit sense of “Christmas”, something that happens right here, year in year out.

No wonder they want to extend the season!

For sure it’s the easy implicit sense that says it’s not to be taken seriously—we accept the nostalgia, the wisting and wishing, the deep-snow hush of Silent Night, but then afterward there is the huge trash heap from the gifts, and none of it makes any real difference. The meat-grinder of history continues just as before, and perhaps every year worse. But that’s not where my own soul leads me. If words and signs are the true human food and the best of these comes from the gospel, then I would rather say that all this longing and regret, all this wistfulness, is only there because the reality is there before it. We would not regret what we have never known, what we have never experienced. Underneath all the mixed emotions, therefore, lies the mother lode of a new earth. We experience it only here and there, as thin veins of ore, but nevertheless, if we look with true eyes, we can see they form the irrefutable traces of a transformed human way. What then makes the season so special is its constant authentic sense of a regenerative shift as the year is reborn in its journey, of an earth at peace, with all rivalries and hatreds dissolved by the absolute nonviolence of the baby Son of God. This powerless child has emptied heaven and every other vertical oppressive environment of its storehouses of thunderbolts, the bombs and drones, the diseases and death, the lies and conspiracies and cover-ups. In this new world everything is green and alive and red and full-blooded and passionate with love.

Here is Isaiah of Jerusalem’s description of this time, written centuries before the first Christmas but looking forward to coming of the Nonviolent One who could make it happen. Someone ought to set it to music and I know they’ll play it in the malls!

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food,
a feast of well-aged wines….
And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death for ever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth… (Isaiah 25:6-8)

Sacred Space #4

2010-11-17T16:22:00.000-08:00

Find below the fourth summary in our Sacred Space series
- peace, Linda

The City of Zion as Sacred Space 10/29/10

Isaiah is comparatively a huge body of text. It is generally agreed it was composed over a long period of time by a school of prophesy. The material spans over two hundred years – including a period before the fall of the northern Kingdom and up to the end of the 8th century well before the Babylonian invasion, then the Exile followed by the immediate post-exilic era (last third of 6th century). A distinctive thing about Isaiah is that it is located in Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah is hostile to Jerusalem – he is a prophet of doom against the temple. Ezekiel is worse - with God authorizing a slaughter in Jerusalem because of the sins of the people. Isaiah doesn’t have this sense of judgment. Instead Isaiah celebrates the city. It is a Zionist school (in a sense completely unrelated to modern Zionism). Isaiah holds the image of Zion as the sacred city.

In Isaiah the city itself becomes sacred space. A whole city becomes beloved of God, the place where God dwells. Here the focus has shifted from the temple to the city as the sacred space. When Jesus weeps upon seeing the Jerusalem (Lk 19:41-44), he is recalling the feeling and words of Isaiah. Jesus sees the drama and catastrophe of Jerusalem set against the backdrop of Isaiah’s promises for the city. There is a mystique attached to Jerusalem that persists to this day, making it one of the most fought over places in the world. It was a walled city, impregnable for a long time up until the Babylonian invasion.

Isaiah 2: 1-4 describes the city as a place of peace. A peace not resulting from overwhelming military might as was the case with the Pax Romana. Rather this peace emanates from the word of the Lord: “for out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”. Politically, Israel was never a major player, yet this prophecy describes it as the place that draws all people. It is a triumphal image.

Isaiah is not blind to the sins of the city. In the opening chapter (1: 1-17) Isaiah speaks out against the injustice and corruption in Jerusalem. In Is 1:21 Jerusalem, the faithful city, has become a whore. God abhors the evil doing and the empty feasts. Isaiah has no use for the temple – despising its uselessness, emptiness and the futility of its rituals.

Isaiah 11:1-9 is the prophecy of the peaceful kingdom: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse….” It is a picture of peace that is more than political. It spreads to the animals – the wolf living with the lamb, the leopard lying down with the kid. All flesh is related and no animal is preying on any other: “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea”. (v.9). This is the heart of the prophesy. The spirit of the Lord will rest upon the Messianic figure. He will strike the earth, not with violence, but with the rod of his mouth. Justice will come through hearing and understanding the word, through a change of heart.

Isaiah 25:6-10 continues this beautiful vision. It portrays a big feast that takes place on the mountain of the Lord. It is a feast of rich foods and well-aged wines for all peoples. God will remove the shroud that is cast over all peoples – he will destroy death. The prophesies written up to the end of Chapter 39 are those of First Isaiah and are written before the Babylonian invasion in a time of relative prosperity.

Second Isaiah begins at chapter 40. It is written after the destruction of Jerusalem. (Jeremiah is written in the period between first and second Isaiah). Second Isaiah is a new voice written in the context of the loss of everything. In the face of such devastation, he tries to make sense of the earlier Isaiahan promises. How can the earlier prophesies be true?

He begins “Comfort, Oh comfort my people, says the Lord” (40:1-11). It is the Book of Consolation. Zion is destroyed, but not irrevocably. Hope springs up again – existing when everything else is gone. The prophet urges the people to find their security in the word of the Lord. Structures can, and do, fail – but the word of the Lord stands firm. (“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (v. 8). In chapters 40-55 there is no mention of the temple because it no longer existed. Instead, like in the Gospels, compassion, promise and relationship are what are sacred.

In 539 Cyrus took over the Babylonian Empire. He decreed that all displaced peoples could return to their original lands. He was considered an enlightened ruler. He believed that it was better for people to pray to their own gods for the good of the Empire. Many of the exiled Jews returned to Jerusalem and around 520 BCE a rudimentary temple was rebuilt.

Third Isaiah begins at chapter 56. It opens with a promise that God’s covenant will be extended to all who obey his laws: “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples”. (v. 7). This passage is quoted by Jesus attached to the quote from Jeremiah 7:11 about the house of God being turned into a den of thieves. Here Isaiah is taking a stand against an emerging movement to exclude outsiders form Judaism. There was a decisive push for the returning exiles to marry only among their own community. For Jewish leaders, the exile was seen as resulting from impurity. Their desire was to create a pure community – in practice, beliefs and bloodline, to stop such devastation occurring again as a result of the sins of the people. (Ezra and Nehemiah, written at this time, demonstrate this belief). As a result foreigners, eunuchs and other ritually unclean people were excluded from the temple. Third Isaiah’s response to this is to include all who observe the Sabbath.

In the final chapter (Is 66:1-13) there is again a shift away from the temple to the city. There is a growing disillusionment with the temple (“Whoever slaughters an ox is like one who kills a human being”), but not with Zion. Jerusalem is seen as a mother bearing children. Her days of mourning are over, after the travail of the exile. Compassion flows out from the city to her children - compassion learned through her experience of loss. Now Zion becomes a source of compassion for the whole earth. The Bible itself ends with a vastly expanded vision of the New Jerusalem. It is depicted as a perfect geometrical, symmetrical space. A place where the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations; and death is no more.

Sacred Space #3

2010-11-09T17:55:00.000-08:00

Here is the next in our Bible Study series on Sacred Space....

Sacrifice and the Temple of Solomon 10/22/10

The Bible can be seen as a list of failed human attempts to relate to God, i.e. with means involving violence. One of the biggest of these is through the sacrifice of animals. At the Passover at the time of Jesus it is estimated there were over a million pilgrims. With each family making a lamb sacrifice, the Temple would have become like an enormous abattoir to accommodate the blood fest.

Chapter 4 of Genesis provides the first account of sacrifice. There is no preamble, no instructions from God to do it, no explanation why sacrificial practice suddenly appears in the text. It arises in the story of Cain and Abel where Abel’s animal sacrifice finds more favor in God’s eyes than Cain’s harvest offering. This leads to the first murder, Cain’s founding of the first city and the birth of civilization. A struggle exists in the text. God hears the blood of Abel crying out from the ground for justice, but then immediately God protects his murderer by placing a mark on Cain. God prefers Abel’s animal sacrifice, but then the blood of Abel himself (an even greater sacrifice) seems to lead God to protect and bless Cain in what seems a contradiction of his earlier call for justice. This is an anthropological rather than a theological text. It tells us more about us than about God. It is a reflection about who we are: that there is a deep human need in all cultures for sacrifice. That the end result of sacrifice is order, structure, civilization – and that the pouring of blood is a powerful thing. Sacrifice was common to all ancient cultures. It is a deeply embedded human practice that, because of its power, was ascribed to the will of God/the gods. It just emerges spontaneously in the Bible. This ancient human practice is incorporated into the text. The Bible both embraces it yet also cannot completely reconcile itself to it (see prophets below) - because it seems antithetical to the emerging understanding of God.

In Exodus 12:21-27 God gives the Passover sacrifice instructions. It paints an intolerable picture of God. He sends his angel of death to pass over the human metropolis of Egypt, slaying the first born sons of all whose homes are not marked by the blood of a slaughtered lamb. The blood is not just a marker (like paint). Rather it is apotropaic – something that wards off evil. Like making the sign of the cross, the evil eye or blessing someone after they sneeze. It is something holy or magical that keeps evil away. It was an ancient practice in Europe to kill an animal and place it under the threshold of the house to protect the home. Spilling blood is a powerful primitive means of protection.

In Genesis 15:7-20 God makes a covenant with Abram. He instructs Abram to cut several animals in half and to arrange their rendered bodies in two lines to form a corridor. A smoking pot and a flaming torch appear and pass along the corridor. These symbols recall the pillars of fire and of smoke depicted in the Exodus story. They represent God who now moves down the rows of animals. God is saying that if he breaks his promise then he calls down this destruction upon himself. Abram does not have to walk down the corridor – only God. The slaughtered animals act as a curse. This account gives us a picture of how ancient peoples behaved. They used blood to give binding meaning to a promise.

The book of Samuel is the story of the founding of the Kingdoms. Before there were kings, the people were led by Judges –charismatic figures (for example Gideon and Samson) who rose up according to the needs of the people. Samuel, an early prophet, objects to the establishment of a king. He eventually, grudgingly, agrees to anoint Saul king – giving in to the will of the people. The prophets emerge at the same time as the kings – speaking out against them. The kings are another failed prototype. The prophets speak out also against what inevitably comes with a king – the palace and the temple, injustice and false worship. David, Saul’s successor and the archetypal king, did not establish a temple. It was his son, Solomon, who built it. 2 Samuel 7:1-17 tells of David considering establishing a Temple, but he is dissuaded by God, through the prophet Nathan:
“Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’”
God is saying that, unlike a tent that moves with the people, you cannot move a temple.
A temple is to do with centralized, visible, vertical power.

The basis of the Book of Samuel is written by a scribe in @950 BCE. He is preserving both the memory that God did not want a temple yet also that history shows that the Temple was in fact built. The account is contradictory - God doesn’t approve of sacrifice, but then he does; doesn’t want a temple, but then allows it. There is a struggle within the text to reconcile both strands of the tradition. The account tries to resolve the dilemma by having God reply to David that his son, rather than he, will be the architect of the Temple. The temple is therefore removed, at least by one generation, from the idealized reign of David.

The mechanism that makes a temple a temple is sacrifice. The ancient human practice, recounted in the earlier Genesis stories, thus gets institutionalized and introduced into the heart of Israel. The prophets continue to speak out against the Temple and sacrifice, maintaining the struggle/tension within the text:
“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me you burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and your offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24 – a text quoted by Martin Luther King).
“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6)

Jesus continues in this prophetic tradition. He takes on the whole sacrificial mechanism, becoming himself the sacrificial victim but overturning the concept itself through infinite forgiveness and love. In so doing he shows us the way to break with the human dependence upon sacrifice once and for all.

Earth Knowledge

2010-11-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

There’s a verse in Isaiah that has always spoken to me and, I suspect, a lot of people, for its sheer poetry, opening up an acutely wonderful idea.

“The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” (11:9)

Because it is so poetic it could be dismissed as little more, a lucid metaphor for a flight of fancy or, at best, something real but postponed for a long-distant supernatural future.

But I’d like to report that at the end of our last bible study we stood in a circle with our eyes shut and our hands spread before us palm upwards, and we felt the reality of an earth, a physical environment, that communicated the deep presence of God.

Don’t get me wrong. This is no claim to a mystical experience or to a special ritual for initiates of Wood Hath Hope. That is precisely why I’m reporting it: because it is not that. Because this thing belongs to everyone.

We were studying the book of Isaiah, from the point of view of the temple, and we were seeing how for the whole book of Isaiah the temple is not really important, but the city which surrounds it is. The Book of Isaiah exalts the city of Zion, of Jerusalem, as the place where God’s plan for the earth and humankind will be accomplished. It involves such marvelous features as the end to war, the end of violence (including among animals), the abundance of food and wine to drink for everyone, all the way to the end of death itself. These elements of biblical prophecy have been consistently played down in favor of the “heavenly elsewhere” of Platonized theology, and of standard church preaching and popular imagination. And why not? It is so much easier to get people to believe in, and pay coin for, some mechanism of a happy afterlife rather than an unlikely metamorphosis of the crappy present one.

But what I’m talking about is not a matter of preaching, of playing to the cultural preconceptions of a mass culture whose preconceptions the Christian church has helped reinforce. (By the way, when did Jesus ever talk about “going to heaven when you die”?). Rather it is the here and now transformation of our constructed sense experience by the power of the Word, by the power of a set of signs and symbols which speak to and release our deepest earthly truth.

In concrete what this means is that when we stood on the earth in the power of Isaiah’s words we stood on an earth freed from violence and death. And when we placed our hands and fingers out into the air we were touching molecules set free from the futility of death by the Holy Spirit of love. These are not false or phantasmal experiences, but the shaping of our highly moldable sense apparatus (technically it’s called neural plasticity) by the redemptive speech of the bible working in and through the Risen Christ.

There’s a feedback loop from the inspired language to our bodies passing through the new creation that Christ has already is. Indeed if Christ is physically risen what other earthly reality could Christians possible refer to except the one that is radically transformed in him?

The feeling may only last for the few moments in the slipstream of the study and its signs, but we remember it and know it’s there and are able continually to base our actions in it.

And that is why we “study”: reading and thinking about these written signs, in and through Christ, enables our human senses to be continually formed and re-formed until new creation becomes second nature.

Imagine what would happen to the Christian movement if every time Christians met they placed themselves in the power of the Word within a transformed earth!

Sacred Space #2

2010-11-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

Here is the second study summary in our series on sacred space. Peace-Linda

Jeremiah’s condemnation of the temple 10/15/10

Jeremiah had a long prophetic life spanning 45 -50 years in the 7th century BCE. He began prophesying in the reign of Josiah, king of Judah. Josiah is often considered one of the better kings because he instituted a reform to clear the land of the worship of other gods. Josiah was killed in a battle against the Egyptians at the plain of Megiddo. This was the site of numerous battles led by various armies, including those of the Canaanites, Egyptians, Napoleon and the British. Megiddo is also the supposed site of the great future battle of Armageddon. Nazareth lies about eight miles from the central Megiddo highway, and it marks the beginning of the territory of Galilee. In this particular battle, Judah had sided with the emerging Babylonian empire against the Egyptians, who were allies of the Assyrians. Josiah, despite being a righteous king, was defeated. It seemed as though God had abandoned Judah.

Jehoiachim, Josiah’s successor, became king in 609 BCE. He aligned himself with Egypt against Babylon. He was cynical – contemptuous and dismissive of Jeremiah. It is during the same year that Jehoiachim ascended to the throne that Jeremiah gives his powerful sermon against the temple. In 598 BCE Jehoiachim dies. The following year Babylon attacks and Jehoiachin (Jehoiachim’s heir, then only eighteen years old) immediately surrenders. Because of his decision not to fight, the city is not destroyed - but the king and about several thousand hostages of import are taken into captivity.

After ten years the remaining officers, court and priests, under the lead of Zedekiah, choose to rebel. They believe that the Temple is invincible. Jeremiah, in a hugely unpopular move, preaches against rebellion, but his words go unheeded. The Babylonian army returns to destroy Jerusalem, burning everything and tearing down the Temple. The people are exiled to Babylon, with just a handful of the poor left behind. Jeremiah, on the basis of his favorable prophetic message, is offered certain privileges by the Babylonians should he return with them. He declines – opting to stay in Jerusalem. The Babylonian-appointed governor is killed and those responsible escape to Egypt. Jeremiah goes with them, staying faithful to Yahweh when his companions become disillusioned with their faith and turn to the gods of Egypt. Jeremiah prophesies against them and, according to tradition, they kill him.

Jeremiah’s life is in many ways the autobiography of a failure. He gets to prophesy at perhaps the worst time in Jewish history - he complains and laments. Almost in spite of himself, he is driven to speak unpopular messages to people unwilling to hear. “O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everybody mocks me. For whenever I speak. I must cry out, I must shout, ‘violence and destruction!’ For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long” (Jer 20:7-8).

Twenty years into his career he gives the sermon found in Jer 26:1- 24 predicting the destruction of the Temple. At this time Jerusalem had a fully fledged temple cult – with its architecture, rituals, priests and sacrifices. Jeremiah foretells disaster – Jerusalem will be like Shiloh (a sacred Israelite site from before the time of the kingdoms, famously destroyed, probably by the Philistines). Shiloh was the symbol of a ruined place. If the Israelites do not change their ways then the Lord will send a mighty force to destroy the Temple.

Chapter 7 gives another account of the same prophesy. Jer 7: 30-34 alludes to the practice of child sacrifice – an abomination to God. “They go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire – which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind” The site Topheth is another name for Gehenna, which lies south of the Mount of Olives. In New Testament times it became the site of the city incinerator. Jesus refers to this place when he uses it as an example of a fiery pit that never goes out.

Jeremiah frequently speaks out against sacrifice. Jer 7:21-23 suggests that the legislation found in Exodus and Leviticus is not from God. God does not want blood sacrifice, rather obedience. Jer 7: 5-7 again calls for justice rather than the shedding of innocent blood. This has to mean the blood of the sacrificial animals. The implication is that killing animals for sacrifice is not God’s will. When Jesus clears the temple before his arrest he quotes from this passage in Jeremiah: “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” (Jer 7:11). Where Jesus’ message is of repentance and forgiveness, Jeremiah threatens the worst. If the people do not change they face ultimate destruction.

Sacrifice is present historically in all human cultures. There is something deep within us that calls out for innocent blood as a way to make things right. Sacrifice is a lightening rod for the anger and energy of the group against its enemies. The act of violence brings a transient sense of peace to the group, as the group violence is discharged through the sacrificial victim.
Jeremiah and the other prophets speak out against the Temple and sacrifice. They are generally suspicious of temple sacrifice exhorting the people instead to act justly and embrace mercy as the way to gain God’s favor. Sacrifice is a human not a divine institution.

In Chapters 30 - 31 Jeremiah preaches from the perspective of exile. In 31:31-34 he describes the new covenant that God will make with his people. God’s law will be written on people’s hearts. There is no more need for a Temple because the people will all know the Lord –will be in relationship with him. The tone has changed from threat to promise and redemption. God is on their side and has a plan – an image of a reconciled humanity. Matthew has Jesus using these words when he tells his disciples at the last supper that the cup is “my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (MT 26:28).

After the return from exile, and despite the witness of Jeremiah, the Temple was rebuilt more splendidly than before. It was gradually developed until, by the time of Jesus, it had become one of the wonders of the ancient world - its dome covered in goldleaf. It is estimated that over a million people made the pilgrimage there during the Passover – the Temple must have been awash with the blood of all of those animals. Its final destruction in 70 AD by the Romans (and foretold by Jesus) led to a huge crisis for the Jewish people, surmounted only by the Rabbinic written tradition, not depending on Temple. The deep need in people for violence and blood sacrifice is so strong that only a transformation of our hearts that goes deeper still can overturn it. This call to enter into a transformed humanity is what lies at the heart of the gospel and is the witness of the crucifixion.

Sacred Space #1

2010-10-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

Here is the first study summary in our new series - Sacred Space in the Bible: From Temple Place to Trinity Space. For a different take on the material, check out Tony's blog "Not my Shallow Heart, but, yes, this Shadow Heart" (October 4th 2010).
-Linda

Sacred Space #1 Jacob’s encounters with God 10/01/10

Sacred space is the space in which God or the divine is experienced. But what exactly does that mean? The purpose of this and the following studies is to pursue that question. The stories in Genesis are filled with sacred spaces marked by altars and the blood of animal sacrifice. For example 12:6-8.

“Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the Oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord.”

Also 13:18 “So Abram moved his tent, and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an altar to the Lord.” Abraham is portrayed as moving through Canaan mapping out territory for the God of Israel. And the same is true of the other patriarchs; see 26:23-25 among others.

There are many important narratives associated with Abraham – to do with promises, the land and circumcision. In contrast the stories of Jacob have a more personal feel. They describe his character, his strivings as an individual, his trickery and the violence this provokes. With Jacob the concept of sacred space shifts from a place of awe and transcendence to something ultimately to do with relationship.

The story of Jacob’s ladder (Gen 28:10-22) is the first of two well-known narratives about Jacob encountering the divine. Jacob’s dream is quoted by Jesus in John1:51 when Jesus tells Nathaniel (an honest Israelite) that the Son of Man will be the new founding theophany for Israel: “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”. For the evangelist John, it is the raising up of Jesus on the cross that reveals God’s glory. The ladder in the dream that bridges the gap between heaven and earth is replaced by the person of Christ crucified.

This story is twinned with a second story – one of the most intimate and fascinating in the Bible - is found in Gen 32:22-32. The context of this story is that Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright – his father’s blessing. Fearful of his brother’s anger, Jacob fled to Haran in the East to relatives of his mother’s brother Laban. There he stays for many years, marrying first Leah then Rachel, accumulating family, flocks and possessions. Eventually he decides to return to his homeland, but is fearful of the reception he will get from Esau. Gen 32:3-21 describes his attempts at allaying Esau’s wrath by sending presents of flocks, slaves and even his family ahead of him. Finally he is alone. It is at this point, in the night, that Jacob encounters a “man” who wrestles with him until dawn. Even though he is wounded (struck on his hip) Jacob does not yield and demands a blessing from his opponent. The man replies “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed” and Jacob names the place Peniel (meaning the “face of God”) - for he has seen God face to face and yet his life is preserved.

In this account of the struggle between Jacob and God at Peniel God is weak against Jacob, but leaves Jacob with both a wound and a blessing. This is a different picture of God from the prevailing image in the Torah in which God is usually understood in terms of power and threat.

In Genesis 33: 1-11 Jacob meets his brother. Esau does not exact revenge, instead runs to meet him, embraces him, falls on his neck, kisses him and weeps. Esau does not want to accept any of Jacob’s gifts but Jacob responds “If I find favor with you, then accept my present from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God”.

There is an implied critique of the violent image of God found in Deuteronomy and Exodus here. While Genesis is the first book of the Bible, and draws on ancient traditions, it reached its final form later than many of the books of the Old Testament. In the earlier Amos1:11; Jeremiah 25:21; 49:8-10 and book of Obadiah, Edom is depicted as a hated enemy of Israel. Esau is traditionally the ancestor of the Edomites (Gen 36:9). In 2 Samuel 8:13-14 David conquers Edom. In this context the attitude of Esau in Genesis is amazing. His attitude of forgiveness and brotherhood spurs his brother, who has so recently encountered God, to liken his face to that of God. This face is of a God who does not prevail against his enemies, but wounds them and blesses them through weakness.

These two stories – Jacob’s dream and his wrestling with God at Peniel- frame the story of the conflict between Esau and Jacob. The first portrays the more traditional image of a divide between heaven and earth, in which a ladder is needed for the divine to enter into the human space. The second signals that sacred space, the place we encounter God, is ultimately to do with relationship, surrender, weakness, blessing and forgiveness. In John’s gospel the Son of Man fulfills this second pathway to perfection, and so brings the ladder of the transcendent divine into the heart of human existence.

Deep Places

2010-10-14T12:12:00.000-07:00

I’m sure it’s already a cliché of blogging and preaching—the Chilean miners rising from their tomb two thousand feet under a mountain—but who cares, it’s irresistible in a world dying for a breath of hope.

And more than this: it’s a page cut straight from the Christian culture of South America and of all those throughout the world who celebrate Easter. “Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life, that I should not go down to the Pit!” (Ps. 30:3) Who could deny that part of the thrill as each man came out of the beautiful escape capsule was its echoes of the Pascal Mystery? Because Christians say “Christ is Risen” the world had hoped that little bit more urgently, that little bit more fervently, that the thirty three miners would be saved.

But there is something even more important, more significant, than a brief media moment framed by the gospels. I used to teach a seminary student who was always talking about “thin spaces.” This person meant experiences where the normal mundane sense of the world was displaced by feelings of awe, beauty, holiness. Dead, harsh or oppressive elements of daily life were dispelled and something much more wonderful took their place.

I think, however, that “deep spaces” is a much better image. It is illustrated of course by the experience of the Chilean miners, but, beneath that, it is affirmed by the core New Testament trajectory of death, descent into the tomb and third day resurrection. John’s gospel breaks from the geometry of resurrection as an “up” movement: the passion and death of Jesus are in fact his “lifting up”. Then resurrection is simply the life-filled affirmation of that amazing, counter-intuitive “up”. And, afterward, when Jesus’ brothers and sisters learn the God-revealing meaning of all this Jesus does “ascend”, i.e. all spaces in the universe are filled with his amazing new geometry of descent.

Deep spaces are unmade space, space not controlled by the violent meanings of the world. They may be the result of violence—perhaps they always are—but those suffering in them/from them do not share the world’s meaning: rather they endure it and from the depths of their souls they cry out against it. Deep spaces are therefore the place of emptiness, of possibility, of what yet can be. They are the space of creation and re-creation.

Consequently they are the space of great love and joy. This last weekend I spent time in a monastery in southern New York. It was classic fall weather— that peculiar dry and bright intensity when all the colors of life crackle in chorus before they must turn to dust. The monastery is located high upon weathered mountains which shoulder up clouds then sweep down abruptly into carved-out stream and river valleys. There is a path at back of the monastery which leads down just such a canyon, down to the river Chemung five hundred feet below. Near the head of the path, on a wall by the last of the buildings, one of the brothers had placed a crucifix with the Christ made out of wrapped wire, like the coils of several electric motors strung together. There was something about the harshness of the medium and the way the artist made the corpus sunk entirely in death, with the knee jutting out almost at right angles. It captured the total imprisonment of the body and the fact that the only movement left for a crucified man was spiritual: either total hatred, total despair, or a total self-giving of love. Needless to say what the image captured was the last. Thus suddenly it was entirely right that the body should resemble electric coils, for it was this love that made the electrons run in the first place, across all the channels of the universe. And the crook of the knee projecting out into the void signaled the great wooded chasm below and it became filled with God’s love in a totally real and concrete sense.

This was not a thin space, suggesting a parallel, better and spiritual world. This was a deep space, the depths of this world changed and changing into what it was always meant to be. Deep spaces may not be easy. They can be filled with trauma and the imminent threat of death. But as shaped by the Crucified they are haunted endlessly by love and contain an indelible promise of life. I wasn’t thinking at all of Chile, just about the wooded canyon, about electricity, and about the mystery of love . It was only later I thought about the Chilean miners, and about all the TV stations and the Internet, their electricity buzzing with resurrection in the depths.

Not my Shallow Heart, but, Yes, this Shadow Heart.

2010-10-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

I don’t normally comment on our bible studies, Linda does such a good job of writing them up and blogging them in their own right. But something struck me about last Friday’s study which made me want to sit down and trouble the keyboard, at least this one time.

At our first session on Sacred Space we did the story of Jacob’s nocturnal wrestling bout in Genesis (chaps. 32-33). The fight happened at a place which Jacob named Peniel meaning “the Face of God” which is explained by Jacob’s statement after the battle, “I have seen the face of God and lived.” There’s a lot of stuff going on but it’s clear the figure that Jacob wrestles is the figure of God in dramatic or story form. Jacob leaves no doubt about it and the fact is pivotal in the next story, the encounter with Esau, where Jacob says “seeing you is like seeing the face of God”. A key conclusion of the story then is that the fight at the very best is a draw for God, and given Jacob’s vastly outmatched ranking it could easily be counted as his win. In other words God loses against the human opponent. Or, God is nonviolent. (The issue of nonviolence is made certain by the doublet story of Esau— a man whose violence Jacob had provoked but who greets Jacob with love: even so seeing him is like “seeing the face of God”, i.e. the God who refuses violence).

A big lesson here.

For at the same time as God loses God wounds Jacob as a reminder of the fight. Jacob wins but he goes away limping. He has a permanent reminder in his body of God’s essential not-beating-him, of God’s nonviolence. And that’s what really wounds. It tells Jacob that no matter God’s power the greatness of God is God’s nonviolence, God’s refusal to win. The radical reading we gave is that it is God’s weakness that wounds and worries away at our obsessive human structure of violence.

Enter Jesus. There can be very little doubt that Jesus learnt from this story the character of his Father, the one who makes the sun to rise on the just and unjust alike. No perceptive reader can miss it. And then through the revelation of his total weakness on the cross Jesus makes the radical reading definitive. No doubt here about who loses the fight with human violence. Now it is the Jesus figure that worries and wrestles with humanity through its long night of guilt, anger, despair and retaliation. Jesus is the ultimate wrestler struggling in ever matchup, in every fighting cage, with all our historical violence.

Which brings me to the theological point of the reflection.

If this picture is true—if God in Jesus is wrestling with the depth of our humanity to change us—then many past theological constructions regarding grace, election, predestination are simply wrong-headed. The idea that God makes an unconditional decision in God’s mind regarding who shall get saved and get into heaven not only erases God’s nonviolent wrestling with us but it inverts it into a total smackdown every time—by God. This is what is called “high theology”, so high that it cannot see what’s on the ground, cannot see the actual human dynamic by which God wounds us with compassion and nonviolence. It may be the case that my own heart or humanity is continually violent—perverse as Jeremiah says—but the humanity, or the heart of Jesus, is in full human contact with me—wrestling so close I can hear it beat—and all I have to do is pay attention, stop fighting just for an instant (like a fighter who for an instant loses concentration), and he wounds me at once with his own nonviolent humanity or heart. This is not a matter of an arbitrary decision in God’s mind, but is a concrete effect of Jesus’ nonviolent humanity directly on me, the impact of a new human structuring breaking into the old.

There is no way of tracking exactly when and where I may get wounded by Jesus’ nonviolence, when and where this alternative structuring will reconfigure my violent structure; but what we do know is this is an entirely human process. It is an unfathomable mixture of historical and cultural situation, of family background, even of neural biology, but it is certain none of it is predetermined. As Jesus says it is as untraceable as the wind, but that is exactly what makes it human. It is the chaotic mix of factors that allows for that slightest atom of freedom, for that moment when the new humanity stands in balance against the old and I am able in that moment to surrender myself to this new way. When the new enters in to the old with a clarity that has so far been missing I am so to speak equally in both worlds—I am in the future, and I am in the past. At that point I am called to add the feather weight of my will to the situation. In fact it is precisely the miracle of the new which creates the mystery of freedom: it allows me an unparalleled moment of possibility between two ways of being me; there are in fact two “me’s” in existence at that moment and I simply have to let myself fall into one or the other.

The truth is I have a shallow violent heart, but in the depth of my night there is another heart in contact with me, and with all humanity. This is our shadow heart, the one first encountered by Jacob, and then through Jesus by everyone. There is a shadow heart beating for all humanity, for the whole earth. It is the physical rhythm of a new creation.

Oct. 4, Feast of St. Francis

A Better Book

2010-09-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

I have just read Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity and I have to say honestly, as an author, it’s a better book than mine, i.e. the one that's coming out shortly (see Homepage). But having said that I immediately want to take it back, and I will!

So let me comment this way. Brian has written a truly remarkable book, one that Christians will be reading for many years to come. I won’t say it will have the legs of Augustine’s City of God which has lasted one and a half millennia (if only because the world we have at the moment doesn’t have those kind of legs: who are we kidding!) However, despite its decisively “keep it simple” approach assisted by a felicitous style (even the occasional big words seem to land lightly on the page like cottonwood blossom) it has the same breadth and strength of vision, the same epoch-forming glance and assurance, as Augustine’s magisterial synthesis.

Did I just say that? I did. And I think it’s true. Augustine wrote at a pivotal moment after the barbarians had taken Rome and the total collapse of the Roman empire was looming on the horizon. Augustine turned the imperial disaster of Rome into the metaphysical triumph of the church and so ushered in the character of the Middle Ages when a spiritual organization claimed “eternal” meaning and sovereignty over all worldly powers. Brian is now making a parallel but inverse move. In a moment when the “Christian West” is behaving just like imperial Rome—in the book he points out that the demographic group most likely to support torture is white Evangelical Christians—and can also seem on the point of economic and social collapse, he shows instead that the Bible nourishes a story of human historical transformation through service, nonviolence and love. Biblical faith does not point us beyond history but is “a guiding star within it…an unquenchable dream that inspires us to unceasing constructive action” (p. 62).

It is the conclusive shift in the Christian story-line carried through within our contemporary crisis that makes this book brilliant. Alaric and his marauding Goths were at the gates of Rome when Augustine penned a book for the ages. Today we have a global society, and all its billions of human issues are constantly at our gates because of the Internet and T.V. An exceptionally new situation requiring an exceptionally new theological paradigm, and Brian has served us a very plausible candidate. But it does lack something and that’s why I want to take back my initial act of deference!

My book, available through this website shortly (and later for trade release), does not have Brian’s ambitious catechetical scope nor his fine-wine-and-good-conversation tone but it is very much in the same game—shifting the Christian viewpoint and praxis to the historical and the this-earthly. But then what Virtually Christian has that A New Kind of Christianity lacks is an account of how it is the gospel of Jesus that got us all into this situation in the first place. It’s not that somehow we have just now woken up to the authentic core narrative of the Bible. That narrative has of its own inherent vigor been shaping our human context and awareness. Its exposure of all human violence as in fact violence and its simultaneous offer of compassion and forgiveness as the true mode of human existence have of their own power overturned the Augustinian synthesis (the viewpoint which in his book Brian calls the Greco-Roman narrative). In this light the Evangelical in Brian needs perhaps to go one step further. By grace we are saved! And this grace is neither purely personal, not is it passive, waiting for us to discover it intellectually in books. It is active and pro-active, producing a cultural human situation in which we can recognize it for itself. Like a caterpillar spinning its own chrysalis--and us within it--the gospel changes the human cultural world so finally the butterfly can emerge!

This makes “a new kind of Christianity” even more urgent. Augustine shaped a whole Christian era using elements of Greek philosophy and Roman realpolitik that were not the gospel. Now, in these latter days, the gospel is shaping its own era by facing us with the truth of human violence and crying out in the world for a new human way. A New Kind of Christianity and Virtually Christian are both in their way writing about a shift the gospel alone has written, and first.

The American

2010-09-10T06:20:00.000-07:00

After “America!” right on cue The American, a media-inspired (or simply inspired) segue from the last blog. It’s a movie, a new release, which I just saw. Sumptuously shot in the high valleys of Abruzzo, a mountainous region in central Italy, it fits a familiar genre: the spy or assassin who wants in from the cold, wants to live an ordinary decent life with the newfound love of his life. Except this time the assassin is pretty clearly the eponymous paradigm for all of us, for Americans as such. It’s only because it is presented by the ever likeable George Clooney that audiences will be prepared to watch this unpalatable parable. For that it is, a parable, complete with priest, prostitutes and pointed theological dialogue.

Clooney plays Jack, the soulless assassin seeking to find his soul. In his hideout in the picturesque mountain town—in one shot we’re shown it from the sky, along with soaring eagle (geddit? the American eagle/satellite intelligence?)--he is befriended by a white-haired avuncular priest. Jack’s cover story is that he’s a photographer taking landscape photos for magazines and travel books. The priest asks him if he knows anything of “our history” and Jack replies “No”. The priest says “You're American. You think you can escape history." Later on the priest says to Jack, "You cannot doubt the existence of Hell; you live in it."

The movie is something like the experience of going to confession. The priest bugs Jack to do exactly that and the episode points up the whole screenplay. Everything has the chastened atmosphere of a visit to the sin bin, a feeling fraught with perdition. It does not exclude plenty of sexual action as Jack visits prostitutes and falls in love with one of them named Clara (of course, Francis’ love, the woman of peace). But this only serves to up the ante—the sex seems to be balancing on the edge of a bottomless precipice and makes Jack’s distance from real life that much greater. It’s as if Clooney (he’s also a producer) and the director, Anton Corbijn, are bringing us on a penitential pilgrimage to a medieval Italian hilltop shrine in order to confront us with our very 21st century American crisis.

For apart from the perennial of sex the sins are decisively modern. Jack’s secret skill is the construction of weapons and we are treated to a long wordless sequence in which he painstakingly machine tools parts and bullets for a high-power rifle. When he makes delivery of the weapon to his contact he gives her a tin full of specially made explosive bullets and says “Some candy for you.” Jack’s sins are those of relentless contemporary violence conducted by anonymous assassins, predator drones, insidious technology packaged like candy. In the first minute of the movie we see Jack shoot a completely innocent bystander (someone he’s also just had sex with) because she was about to discover his identity.

So if all this is confession where is the repentance? It comes in the climactic moment of the movie and is produced not by a change in Jack as such (he goes off to shoot someone else) but by the convergence of images and emotions the movie itself produces. It is cinematic repentance and at its root is what I would call a “cinechristocentrism”. This happens when the only image that can bring resolution to the impossible violence put up on screen is Christ. I analyze this in my book that’s coming out (Virtually Christian—see Home Page) and there I describe it as the continual rising up of the image of Christ’s compassion from the vortex of violent images around us, the one truly differentiating sign. There I give several movie examples and The American provides yet one more. The big scene happens in the context of an annual religious procession presided over by the priest. In the midst of the ritual there is an attempted assassination and a body falls off a roof and lies dying on one of the photogenic stone alleyways of the town. Jack rushes off to get information from the dying shooter and is followed in short order by the priest accompanied by a troop of acolytes. In effect the procession instead of following the plaster statue of the Virgin becomes one following after Jack and the actual event of violence. In just one more of an ever-growing list of epochal images from contemporary cinema we have the ceremonial crucifix carried by an altar boy, tilted at a crazy angle behind the priest and his holy band, and yet somehow guiding the revelatory moment. We know the image of the cross is absolutely deliberate because it has been signaled earlier when Jack, invited by the priest to dinner, casually picked up a crucifix from his desk. Now turning from the dying body Jack says the words for which the whole movie has been dying, “I’m sorry.” The cross at its tilted angle appears destabilized as a religious icon, but actually it is we who are destabilized and the cross is correct: as the human truth of violence it is the cross that is bringing us into a radical new geometry. It bends to the body on the ground and thus reveals from below the godless facticity of violence invited to become god-filled forgiveness and love.

This is “cinechristocentrism”, the truth of Christ showing up in the place where all our most intense images relentlessly concentrate. Just as violence concentrates on our movie screens so inevitably does Jesus. It means that well apart from religion and doctrine Christ is sensed “artistically” as the only principle that can deal with American violence. And this in a situation where the dominant political and religious discourse is blind and deaf and dumb to the structural challenge of Christ to our way of violence. But cinema is quintessentially “American” and even though the churches still don’t “get it” the cinematic soul of America does. Or, more accurately, America’s order of signified meaning, which is its constant swirl of images, is challenged from within because of the forgiving and living Christ--that which set it in motion in the first place. The absolute self of America is being invited in crisis to become the self that says “I’m sorry”.

John #14

2010-09-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

Here is the final Bible Study summary in our study of John's Gospel. Our next study will be "A New Kind of Christianity" by Brian D. McLaren (2010) HarperCollins Publishers. New York, NY. Further information about the study will appear shortly. Keep checking the web page - we'll post details as soon as they are fixed.
Peace, Linda

As well as the Gospel and letters of John this Bible study uses the book “Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel” by Sandra M. Schneiders (2003) Crossroad Publishing Co. New York, NY.

Background reading to study # 14- Written That You May Believe, chapter 14.

The Gospel of John #14 – Contemplation and Ministry 08.26.10

Chapter 21 is an addition – a redaction. Chapter 20:30-31 appears to be the original ending to the Gospel. The first twenty chapters were probably written around 90-95 CE, the final chapter perhaps around ten years later. What could have happened in this period to warrant the introduction of this material?

Chapter 21 accepts the pastoral ministry of Peter, but recognizes that it comes with a cost. It hints at two very different concepts of how Christian community should be. The Jerusalem-based Petrine Church and the non-hierarchical Johannine community. The chapter recognizes the role of Peter but also validates the Johannine relationship. It advocates a kind of co-existence.

Chapter 21 of John demonstrates the tension between the figures of Peter and the Beloved Disciple. The Beloved Disciple is not identified with any particular person. The figure is left empty of identifiers so that the reader may enter into that space. The Beloved Disciple recognizes the Lord before Peter. He is the primary proclaimer of the gospel message. While Peter has pastoral authority, he is secondary to the Beloved Disciple – dependent on his/her witness.

So what is this rivalry about? For Schneiders the thematic at work is the tension between Ministry and Contemplation. Ministry is exemplified by the pastoral role of Peter (this passage where Jesus tells him to “feed my sheep” is the source of the word “pastor”); the Contemplative - that is the immediate vision and receptivity to Jesus shown by the Beloved Disciple – stands in contrast to this. Schneiders, therefore, separates the contemplative and the active.

Peter is a leader of men. The disciples follow him. He is to be a “fisher of men” and hauls in the net alone(v.11). The 153 fish represent all the then known nations of the world. By the time that the Gospel was completed, Peter had already emerged as a symbolic, heroic, hierarchical figure following his martyred death in the persecution of Nero in 63-65 CE. Jesus asks Peter three times “Do you love me?” This seems to refer to Peter’s three denials of Jesus in chapter 18, but also points to something more. Jesus is addressing the person who is to become the figure representing the authority and leadership of the established church. He asks him “Do you [really] love me?” It is a question addressed to all Christians in positions of power.

The Peter of the Gospels emerges as one who is more comfortable with the idea of the triumphant Messiah. He rebukes Jesus when he says he has to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die (Mt 16:22). He wants to build a booth for Jesus on the mountain after his transfiguration (Mt 17:4), to create a monument. He is willing to fight to protect Jesus at his arrest – cutting off the ear of the high priest’s slave (Jn 18:10). In John 13:6 he initially refuses to have Jesus wash his feet. For Peter, the holy and powerful is to be kept out of the dirt of world and Jesus’ action turns his world upside down. It upsets the worldly order.

Jn 21: 18-19 has Jesus telling Peter “When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go”. He is indicating the martyrdom of Peter who was traditionally crucified upside down in Rome. Peter’s heroic martyrdom cemented his position as symbolic leader. Peter asks what will happen to the Beloved Disciple, will he also suffer? Jesus replies “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” The word for “remain” is the same as that translated “abide”, found in Chapter 15 in the discourse about the vine and branches. The word has intense significance.

“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete”.

The Beloved Disciple is asked to abide until Jesus comes. To abide in his love. In the intensity of today’s violent, media-driven world, we also need this relationship with Jesus. The institutions are no longer enough to counter the violence (undifferentiation) of the world. The institutions are in decline and Christians are seeking a new monasticism that merges ministry and contemplation. The Johannine message is rising up with more relevance. Jesus calls us into relationship that will stand even if the institutions fail. Peter is going to die, but the “beloved disciple” will abide/remain.

John #13

2010-09-01T18:27:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the late posting of these next two Bible Study Summaries, both of which have a resurrection theme. Peace, Linda

As well as the Gospel and letters of John this Bible study uses the book “Written that you may believe: Encountering Jesus in the fourth Gospel” by Sandra M. Schneiders (2003) Crossroad Publishing Co. New York, NY.

Background reading to study # 13- Written that you may believe chapter 13 -14.

The Gospel of John #13 – Mary Magdalene 08.19.10

Mary Magdalene is the foundational witness in the Gospel of John. Mary Magdalene is not mentioned by name before the crucifixion scene in 19:25. In John she is the sole first witness of the resurrection. In Matthew and Mark she is one of the women who go to the empty tomb, and in Matthew one of a group who see the Risen Jesus (28:8-10) but in John she is the first and only witness. (The longer ending in Mark echoes and seems to get its information from John.) This also contrasts with the account written by Paul in 1 Cor 15:3-8. This is a report of the resurrection that Paul received - a report of the tradition that dates from about three or four years after the death of Jesus. It is a very primitive narrative. In this Jesus appears first to Cephas (Peter) then to the Twelve, then to more than five hundred “adelphoi” – translated either as “brothers” or “brothers and sisters”. In this account the foundational witness is to men recognized as the officials of the church.

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark (longer ending) and John represent a different tradition that goes against the official version. (Luke has the two disciples walking to Emmaus as the first witnesses – though on their return they hear that Jesus has already appeared to Peter. In this Luke belongs to the tradition that accepts the primacy of Peter). The fact that an alternative, and counterintuitive version even exists in the tradition gives it credence. It is just so unlikely that such an account, centering on women, would have been created by design. It is therefore more likely to be true.

John boils it down to one woman thus radicalizing the Matthew tradition. Like other figures in John, Mary Magdalene is a person with whom the reader can identify and whose story brings us into relationship with Jesus. So Mary Magdalene is both a named historical figure who also has a paradigmatic role. The primary purpose of the Gospel is to achieve this relationship– it is “written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (Jn 20:31). The author is interested in leading the reader to a point of connection. John’s account is not an official formula like Paul’s – rather it ends with a relationship. For John relationship trumps authority.

In Jn 20:11-18 Jesus finds Mary Magdalene grieving and in distress compounded by thoughts that his body has been desecrated. He asks her “Whom are you looking for?” This evokes the call of the disciples in Jn 1:38 “What are you looking for?” The disciples in chapter one address him as “Rabbi” (1:38). When Jesus speaks Mary’s name she replies “Rabbouni” which means dear teacher – a relational term of affection. This also echoes chapter 10 when Jesus, as shepherd to his flock, calls each of his sheep by name.

Literary evidence points to a rivalry between Mary Magdalene and Peter as primary witness. Many of the Gnostic gospels, for example, display this rivalry. In part their rejection by orthodoxy can be attributed to this. The Magdalene strand was not suppressed completely and has been preserved in Matthew, Mark and most particularly by John. This is important for the church today as the sacred order is collapsing around us. Both Catholic and Protestant churches have adopted the male, hierarchical, Petrine tradition (even those with women ministers). The Magdalene foundational witness is feminine, non-legal, non-hierarchical and relational. It points not to Peter (hierarchy), not even to faith, but relationship of love as the new primordial foundation.

Unlike the Synoptics, John’s Gospel does not have a glorious resurrection or ascension passage. For John Jesus’ passion and death is his glorification. Resurrection is not a dramatic reversal or divine vindication, but a communication of the glorification that has already taken place. The resurrection appearances explore through the disciples’ encounters the effect and meaning of Jesus’ glorification. Jesus says “I am the resurrection and the life” not “I am the resurrected one”. His glory is the possibility that we might enter into resurrected life through relationship with him.

In Jn 20:11 it is till dark, painting a predawn obscurity. The tomb is placed in a garden by John, and Jesus is mistaken as the gardener. This evokes the Garden of Eden and the image of a new creation. Mary peers into the tomb. This verb is used just three times in the New Testament – twice in John and the third time by Luke in a passage probably borrowed from John. It is the same word used in the Septuagint Song of Songs to describe the action of the lover who peers into the window searching for her beloved. (Song of Songs2:9). The garden backdrop and the peering evoke the Song of Songs – a hymn of the covenant love between Israel and YHWH which was read at the Passover. The Song of Songs is secular erotic love poetry which at the time of Jesus had been validated as part of the tradition. It was recognized as an allegory of the love relationship between God and his people.

Mary Magdalene (the beloved) searches for her lover. Earlier, in the same chapter, the Beloved Disciple also peered in the tomb (same verb) looking for Jesus. Jesus is the lover who has given himself completely. The story seeks to rebuild the relationship lost in Eden. Mary Magdalene as “woman” becomes a paradigm for the Johannine community, the church, the new people of God who are seeking this relationship.

In v. 17 Jesus says “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to my Father. But go to my brothers and say to them ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’”. This has traditionally been interpreted as Jesus not wanting Mary to touch him because he is in some mystical place between this world and the next and he does not want her to interfere with his leaving the physical realm. This dualist understanding does not fit with Johannine theology which understands Jesus as already glorified through his crucifixion. He has not yet ascended because the fullness of his glorification is realized only when everyone has been told about it. Mary Magdalene is the primordial witness to this new intensity of relationship, but it cannot remain exclusive to her. The discovery of how to love must be shared. The prohibition is against making an exclusive relationship – go and tell my brothers and sisters! The discovery of how to be a true lover must be shared. The full realization of his glory comes through all people entering into a love relationship with Jesus. (See Jn 17:10 “All mine are yours and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them” and Jn 12:32 “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”)

Mary is told to deliver a message to the disciples – now siblings with Jesus. The quotation marks added by modern editors seem to give Mary the role of secretary. “Say to them ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ ” makes it seem as though Jesus is referring to the Father and God of his brothers alone. If these quotation marks are removed (they would not have existed in the Greek) then the God and Father belong to Mary and the disciples collectively and the message relates first to her. Jesus uses the present tense “I am ascending”. He is still ascending to his Father. Until the whole world accepts Jesus and enters into this relationship modeled by Mary his ascension is not complete.

John #12

2010-09-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

As well as the Gospel and letters of John this Bible study uses the book “Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus In The Fourth Gospel” by Sandra M. Schneiders (2003) Crossroad Publishing Co. New York, NY.

Background reading to study # 12- Written That You May Believe chapter 12.

The Gospel of John #12 – Seeing and Believing 08.12.10

This study is of the passage found in Jn 20:1-10 –the account of Peter and the Beloved Disciple at the empty tomb. Mary discovers the empty tomb and runs to tell Peter and the Beloved Disciple. The Beloved Disciple outruns Peter, reaching the tomb first. Peter enters the tomb and sees the linen wrappings lying there with the head cloth rolled up in a place by itself.The Beloved Disciple enters, sees and believes.

The Beloved Disciple is never named. He (or she) is a literary construct that allows the reader to enter into the narrative by associating with the figure. The Beloved Disciple represents the Christians of the Johannine community – the model Christian. The Beloved Disciple reaches the tomb ahead of Peter. This is mentioned three times. The text acknowledges that there is a rivalry between Peter and the Beloved Disciple (which is also evident in chapter 21). While Peter enters the tomb first, the Beloved Disciple reaches the tomb first and is the first to believe.

The Beloved Disciple has looked inside and seen the linen cloths, but when he enters the tomb the head cloth is also visible. What is it about the head cloth that promotes this belief?

Schneiders makes a connection between the face cloth and the veil that Moses puts aside after coming down the mountain, having seen God. In the same way Jesus puts aside the veil of his flesh in the resurrection. He puts aside the world to go to his Father. The head cloth symbolically represents this. However this seems to buy into a dualist theology that is not Johannine. Here Schneiders reverts to an old metaphysics that is incongruent with the rest of the Gospel. For Schneiders the face cloth is a sign, a sign that creates belief. However if this is so, it is not an effective one because it points outside this world. Jesus’ other signs in John (for example water, healing, bread and light) are immediate, physical and take place in the world. Here (according to Schneiders) the sign points to an Old Testament textural reference to suggest a metaphysical reality.

So what is the significance of the head cloth? Often it is depicted as a flat piece of cloth placed over the face of Jesus (like a smaller version of the shroud of Turin). In the Lazarus story in Jn 11:44 there is mention of a similar cloth: “The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘unbind him, and let him go.’” This cloth (and the head cloth of Jesus) was likely a cloth wrapped around the face and jaw to stop the jaw dropping and staying fixed that way because of rigor mortis. This practice is still used today when laying out a corpse to make the corpse more presentable for viewing by the family.

This head cloth was not just dropped with the rest of the linen cloths but “rolled up (or around) in a place by itself”. This implies that it was deliberately wrapped up and placed by someone. Or, it could mean it retained its form from the head and was simply taken off and set aside. In any case it suggests Jesus took the wrapping off himself. Someone removing the body would surely not have taken the time to remove his linen cloths – or if they had (in order to create the illusion of resurrection) would not have thought to have carefully placed the face cloth in a separate place. In other words this seems simply another Johannine realist detail that goes with faith in a transformed human world. And in this case the belief of the Beloved Disciple comes simply because he has come to a position where he is required to make a leap of faith. Circumstantial evidence can bring you to a certain point, but belief cannot be arrived at through logic or reason alone. It is his personal relationship with and knowledge of Jesus that tips the balance.

Nevertheless it happens in a real world. For the Beloved Disciple the head cloth is the phenomenological sign that leads him to believe. For Thomas it is touching Jesus’ wounds, for Mary Magdalene it is hearing Jesus call her by name. Each person has a different process of relating to the new reality which is the resurrection.

John #11

2010-08-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

Find below the next Bible Study summary - a reminder that older summaries can now be found using the Present Study tab on the home page. - Linda

As well as the Gospel and letters of John this Bible study uses the book “Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus In The Fourth Gospel” by Sandra M. Schneiders (2003) Crossroad Publishing Co. New York, NY.

Background reading to study # 11- Written that you may believe chapter 10.
The Gospel of John #10 – The Community of Eternal Life (Part 2) 07/29/10

In John’s gospel the raising of Lazarus is the event that precipitates the arrest of Jesus. In the Synoptics this event is the clearing of the Temple (Mk 11:15-33). Jesus has just entered Jerusalem in triumph, enters the sacred space, drives out the money changers and stops the sacrifices. He demonstrates his charismatic and political power. He holds the people spellbound.

In Mk 11: 25-26 Jesus says “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses”. He says this in the context of the temple – the place where people go to make themselves right with God. It becomes his rationale for shutting the temple down. There is no need for sacrifice or offerings – it is in forgiving your enemies that your offences against God will be forgiven.

In John this same event is placed at the beginning of the Gospel. (Jn 2:13-23). In v. 18 the authorities ask him for a sign that proves his right to clear the temple. Jesus replies, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”. John is signaling that the key sign of the Gospel is going to be the resurrection. From the very start of his ministry John indicates that the new life that Jesus brings replaces the need for the temple and sacrifice.

The raising of Lazarus is the last act of Jesus’ ministry in John’s Gospel. It holds the same place as the clearing of the temple in the Synoptics and is linked in the gospel of John to the clearing of the temple passage in chapter 2. Both take place at the time of Passover. In both cases (2:23 and 11: 45) many come to believe in Jesus because of his signs/what had been seen. Both passages are concerned with resurrection and life.

In Jn 11:25 Jesus says “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die”. Jesus substitutes himself for the temple because he offers the endless life of forgiveness. When in chapter 2 he talks of destroying this temple and the comment says he is talking of his body– he does not mean the temple of his body in the modern moral sense of this phrase. He means that in his person he has replaced the temple, through forgiveness. The sign that he gives for this will be resurrection – endless life.

Forgiveness makes you vulnerable. To forgive means to open oneself to violence. Humanly speaking it is almost impossible to overcome our instinct for survival. If someone is really threatening my life I cannot let them do it unless I am convinced that my life is somehow secure. Jesus combines forgiveness and life through the promise of resurrection. We are set free to forgive and live.

Jesus is the resurrection and the life because of forgiveness. Fundamentalists, zealots and extremists are OK with dying for their cause, without having to forgive. They are looking to escape this life for a martyr’s paradise. Resurrection is about a belief in renewed life here in this life. Lazarus is the sign of this resurrection. Resurrection implies forgiveness and vice versa. Unless Jesus had forgiven he would not have risen. And without his trust in the Father and his hope in resurrection, he could not have forgiven so completely. Without the resurrection, Jesus’ project would have failed.

Jesus also changes our relationship with God through forgiveness. There is no more need for sacrifice. Temples are human constructs where negotiation takes the place of forgiveness. It is a place where the holy can be contained and controlled. In abolishing the temple we no longer have control.
Lazarus was dead for four days, Jesus was raised after three. The early Christians associated themselves with Lazarus – like him we will follow Jesus’ resurrection and be raised on “the fourth day”. Resurrection allows Christians to see death differently. It is no longer the definitive end of life. Nor is it the separation of spirit to another realm. Rather it is like a long exhale – while we wait to inhale again. It is like we do not actually die - “everyone who lives and believes in me will never die”. It is a negation of death. A Christian doesn’t expect to die. Forgiveness brings us fullness of life. Resurrection is therefore not a reward, but the natural consequence of forgiveness.

America!

2010-08-23T06:05:00.000-07:00

I began writing the following piece before this latest item of news hit our screens, and when it did I went back and finished it: Gainesville, Florida, the Dove World Outreach Center has announced a Burn Quran Day, planning the burning of the Quran to commemorate the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks…

America, fearful freaking America. A great big beautiful country occupied by a beautiful people occupied in turn by an ideology of absolute selfhood and absolute violence to defend it.

America, named after Amerigo who circumnavigated the twin continents, wrapping them in a single act of imagination, and now that imagination, or its northern half, grips the earth like a fearful vice.

America, America, when will you see that you are the most Christian of nations, the most Christianly sick, the most full up with half-cooked, failed and poisoned Christianity? You had no Middle Ages, no chorus of cathedrals, no network of monasteries, no begging bowls of friars. Of course, yes, there were abuses in all that, we know that and have heard it many times. But there was also mutuality, community, an experiencing of the self as stand-in for the other. The self in its deepest self as already the other, as simply (an)other other…the precondition for love. From where did the American absolute self come from?

And now we have a church burning the Quran, the most absolute of gestures against the other, to erase their words. And not just any words but words which belong to a billion and a half people, a huge communal other whose voice this “Dove World” church wishes to erase. For those for whom the bible is an authoritative book there may even be a verse that might seem to encourage the burning of the scriptures of others. But what I do know is that the founder of Christianity, Jesus who told us actually how to read our bible, said this: “Woe to the world because of scandals [i.e. violent behaviors that cause mental or emotional falling down in others—the mimetic contagion of violence]. Scandals are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the scandal comes” (Matt. 18: 7); “If anyone compels you to go one mile [read military forces with power of empressment, i.e. any violent force which constrains us] go two miles with him” (Matt. 5:41); “You have heard that it was said ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, love your enemies” (Matt. 5: 43-44).

In fact Jesus is the one who has made the absolute self impossible, again and again making the hidden, despised, hated other return to view, and thereby hangs the deep sickness of Christianity, its deep internal self-hatred and anger. The only way the Christian self can uphold itself in absolute terms is through the backing of an ultimate Absolute Self, God, the One who crushes the other with absolute impunity, Jesus included. Where did this so-called Christian God come from? It came from the dark side of the Middle Ages which constructed its theology out of metaphysics and feudal violence and which North American Christianity has no problem inheriting. God, the Father of Jesus, needed some place to put his terminal violence in response to sin, so he put it on his Son. Even so is absolute violence toward the other built in to the Christian thought of things. Even so does the Christian God crush its Jesus!

But no matter how we kill the other to establish the self, the other returns to challenge it. And, again, it does so expressly because of Jesus—patiently, subversively, irresistibly working to overturn formal Christianity—through his teaching and above all rising from the dead and vindicating every victim of our violence. All violence is bad faith (i.e. just as much our own issue as to do with the one we’re attacking) because Jesus has shown it to be so. But it is worst faith when it is Christian violence.

American Christians will never be happy and America itself will never be happy unless it accepts a God who is as profoundly accepting and loving of the other as Jesus was. A God who gives and forgives out of the well of his/her own self-for-other (the Trinity!), not out of any supposed objective order of justice and compensation. After all what would a truly just God do, settle accounts with sin by an answering violence, or change the roots of our humanity so sin, and violence, may no longer exist?

America, fearful freaky America, crammed out with bombs and guns and people itching to employ them, let it all go! Surrender your famous super self, your righteousness and private salvation. Hand yourself over to your brother, your sister, without reserve, without fear!

America, named after Amerigo who circumnavigated the twin continents, wrapping them in a single act of imagination, you are always talking about Jesus, now is the time to let your imagination be his!

Tony

John #10

2010-08-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

Here is the next Bible Study Summary. Tony presents the material each week. I take notes during the study and of the related group discussion. This summary is my interpretation and ordering of those notes. All but the most recently posted study are now located together under the new "Present Study" tab located on the home page. I will continue to post the most current study here on the blog page. Peace, Linda

This week’s study includes a general look at the women in the Gospels. It does not bear directly on the Lazarus story, but is made up in large part of the evening’s conversation. Our Lazarus study continues next week…
As well as the Gospel and letters of John this Bible study uses the book “Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus In The Fourth Gospel” by Sandra M. Schneiders (2003) Crossroad Publishing Co. New York, NY.

Background reading to study # 10- Written that you may believe chapter 10.

The Gospel of John #10 – The Community of eternal life (Part 1) 07.22.10
We have been using Schneider’s book to provide a framework for understanding John’s Gospel. Her process is to first explore the text as literature, then historically, theologically and finally spiritually. Like in much of the Gospel, she sees the author as having constructed most of the narrative in Chapter 11. While there seems to be a traditional oral source for the story of the raising of Lazarus, it is also clearly marked by Johannine theology and concerns. It is the highly constructed culmination of the Book of Signs. It marks the turning point in the Gospel that leads to Jesus’ arrest. In the Synoptics this event is the (historically more likely) closing down of the temple sacrifices. For John, the raising of Lazarus is the event that makes Jesus untenable for the Jewish authorities. Chapter 12 is a bridging chapter that leads to the Book of Glory. There the anointing by Mary points to Jesus’ death, and the triumphal entry into Jerusalem to his resurrection. The Book of Glory begins in Chapter 13 with the events leading up to the Passover.

At John 11:2 there is a reference to an event that has not yet happened (Mary’s anointing of Jesus). This implies a strong familiarity with the oral tradition within the Johannine community. Jesus travels to Bethany after hearing that Lazarus is ill. Lazarus is the brother of Martha and Mary. Martha is not a proper name rather it is a word that means “mistress of the home” or “Lady”. It is the feminine of maran (as in maranatha “come Lord”). Mary could be Mary Magdalene – who was named for a place “Mary of Magdala” rather than the more usual “daughter of x” (bath). The Mary in John 11 could have lived as a “sister” to the lady of the house in Bethany. Mary of Magdala is mentioned first by name in Jn 19:25 and then appears in the resurrection accounts. The logic is that it is highly unlikely there would be two Marys of such critical intimacy to Jesus, one to anoint him prior to his passion, the other to be first witness of the resurrection.

Mary is Jesus’ disciple – she sits at the feet of Jesus (Lk 10:38-42). Jesus defends Mary’s decision in a society that excluded women from taking this role. In John 12:1-8 it is Mary who anoints Jesus as Messiah – again breaking the rules. In Jn 11:17 it is Martha who meets Jesus on the road to Bethany. She says, “Lord if you had been here…,” and then goes on to say “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him”. She instigates a conversation (like the Samaritan woman at the well) that leads to one of Jesus’ crucial “I am” sayings: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (v.25-26).

At the time of the Gospel’s composition Christians were dying. A lot of the original witnesses had also died. It was a contemporary concern – the meaning of death in a post-resurrection world. They had expected Jesus to return soon, had not expected to have to deal with death. This passage helps understand the meaning of death – that even if you die, you don’t die.

Martha declared Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world. This is equivalent to the declaration by Peter at Caesarea Philippi in Matthew. It is the most developed confession in the fourth Gospel. Again it gives pivotal status to a woman.

Martha goes home and calls Mary using the words “the teacher is here” (v.28) underscoring Mary’s role as disciple. When Mary Magdalene greets Jesus in the Garden after his resurrection she calls him “Rabbouni” which means “beloved teacher”. This might be another indication that Mary of Bethany is in fact Mary Magdalene. Mary goes quickly to greet Jesus repeating Martha’s words “Lord if you had been here…” She kneels at his feet (reminiscent of sitting at his feet). Unlike Martha who makes a powerful theological statement, Mary weeps. Jesus is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” (v.33). It is at this point, rather than after the big doctrinal statement, that he is moved to raise Lazarus.

Mary models human anguish and Jesus enters into her pain. The raising of Lazarus is not just the story of overcoming death, but of human anguish, the catastrophe of death and separation. Mary is the representative figure who brings Jesus into this space, in the same way that she appropriates the role of anointer. Her tears anoint him into the human condition and his role within it.

The Gospel Women
It is not easy to get all of the women (especially the Marys) in the Gospels straight. Mary was a prestigious, and therefore common name - Miriam being the sister of Moses. At the cross Mary of Bethany is not mentioned, however, Mary Magdalene is. In Jn 19:25 standing at the cross are “his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene”. Mary the wife of Clopas could be the other of the two disciples mentioned in the post-resurrection account found in Luke 24:18 (the walk to Emmaus), one of whom is called Cleopas. “The one of them whose name was Cleopas, answered him…” It is possible, even likely, that the second disciple was his wife – Mary.

Luke does not mention the women around the cross – but after the resurrection they are listed as Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women. (Lk 24:10). Joanna is the wife of Herod’s steward (Luke 8:1-3) and Mary the mother of James refers to Jesus’ mother, Mary. James was known as the “brother of the Lord” by the early church. Mary is not named as Jesus’ mother by Luke because Jesus’ teaching in the Synoptic Gospels was so fiercely against giving any prestige to his birth family, both because of the character of the kingdom and possibly as a way of deflecting any attempts at building a family dynasty. Mary is also named as the mother of Jesus’ brothers in Mark 15:40 “Mary the mother of James the younger and Joses”. Compare also Mk 6:3 “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” Only in John’s Gospel is Mary clearly named as Jesus’ mother. John uses Mary to illustrate the crucial importance of women to Jesus, making use of the natural role and prestige of a woman close to him, his mother. However, for John she is a powerfully symbolic figure, representing “woman”, i.e. the earth, wisdom, femininity. This is signaled by Jesus calling her “woman” rather than “mother”.

Jesus’ mother Mary became prominent in the 4th and 5th centuries. This was related to the theological arguments that were occurring at that time – was Jesus considered to be God after his baptism (when the spirit alighted upon him – “adoptionism”) or from the womb? Orthodox Christianity concluded that his divinity was integral to his humanity – that it was not an added layer – and must therefore have been present from the beginning. Mary therefore began to be known as the “Mother of God”. It was a doctrinal decision that attempted to uphold the true divinity of Jesus connected to his humanity– but it had the effect of making Mary less human and more divine. The later doctrine of the Immaculate Conception cemented this.

In John 8: 2-11 there is the account of the woman caught in adultery. The earliest Greek manuscripts do not include the story. It appeared to have been a free-floating account that was eventually placed at this point in John’s Gospel (probably because of John’s sympathy for women) in the 5th century. It has a different writing style, however, and may actually fit better in Luke 21. Traditionally the woman has been associated with Mary Magdalene (from whom “seven demons had gone out” Lk 8:2) but there is no scriptural evidence for this.

Hot Love

2010-08-09T07:13:00.000-07:00

The earth is cooking and no one can turn down the gas. That seems the necessary conclusion from this sizzling summer. 2010 is on track to be the hottest year on record, measuring average temperatures of both land and ocean.

Temperatures to date are 1.22 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th-century average (figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association). In June the temperature map for the continents showed hot weather pretty much everywhere, which is unusual. Moscow is experiencing a prolonged heatwave with temperatures constantly in the nineties, while smoke from wildfires in the surrounding countryside create an apocalyptic event, obscuring the sun and making the air unbreathable. Carbon monoxide levels have been six times above safe concentrations. Elsewhere a giant ice sheet broke away from a major glacier in Greenland, an enormous frozen pizza four times the size of Manhattan and over sixty stories thick. As it floats south its melt water is adding volume to the ocean equivalent to the annual outflow of a major river.

Here in upstate New York it has been hot but there is also another geophysical feature that grabs attention and underlines the significance of all this. The landscape here is marked dramatically by the last ice age, with deep long gouges in the earth indicating the paths of the great glaciers. The neighborhood in Syracuse known as “The Valley” is actually the physical product of an enormous glacier, and you can follow its spectacular path miles farther to the south along Route 81. The great ice rivers melted and retreated roughly ten thousand years ago, a mere blink-of-an-eye on the geological timeline but of immense importance to humankind. It was during this brief breathing space that agriculture and civilization developed and virtually all established culture defining who we now are and how we live as a race. Our current human experiment emerges in an astonishingly narrow frame of time, and seeing it in this way means three things.

First, time truly time is of the essence. Everything for us has always happened in an accelerated manner and the biblical urgency that “now is the favorable moment” and “walk while you have the light” is founded in anthropological fact. We have relatively very little time in which to find our meaning and peace as an intelligent life form. Second, geophysical factors strongly shape this narrow frame of time. Jesus himself used meteorological examples when he told the Pharisees to read the signs of the times (“You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky...", Matt.15:3), as if he already connected the weather and the general human crisis he was confronting. Third—and against the first two—it is now an absolutely typical arrogance of our dominant culture almost completely to ignore this intimate connection and instead see itself in divine and metaphysical terms separated from the earth and from time itself.

Even as they jacked up the AC in their paneled rooms the Senate blocked any form of climate legislation this session. Meanwhile down in the Gulf if there ever was a sign for the times here was one. The venting of 4.9 million barrels of oil from the broken stack was run continually on national TV, like some horrible sci.fi. spigot of grease for basting and roasting our planet in its own built-in oven dish. Surely it should have impressed our body-souls with how borderline our situation truly is. But no, the metaphysics of greed and wealth have trumped all realism and truth. What can possibly restore good sense?

Only love. You can argue the facts of climate change until you’re sweating and superheated yourself but that only fuels the reactive vigor of metaphysics. We are beyond justice and good sense. But, in deeper truth, care for the planet is rooted in love, in Jesus’ loving wisdom of flowers-more-glorious-than-Solomon and birds cared for by the Father. A Christian community living intentionally in the Holy Spirit will restore the planet each and every time it loves. Only love overcomes metaphysics. Only love contains its own built-in environment in which everything can live and is already fully alive. Therefore, the rising red in the thermometer requires an equally rising vein of charity. For every degree of heat the planet goes up we are inspired to create a new angle of love, an added degree of love for each person, for our enemies, for ourselves. We cannot know how this will affect things, how it will redeem the planet from its present crisis. But we can be sure that love hopes and believes all things. And, in addition, love from the Holy Spirit is a prism in which we can already see the earth green and crystalline as in the eye of God, as God created it to be. We can be sure that this earth will one day exist, that this is how the actual earth will be, because the eye of love never blinks.

Of Pears, Peers, Spit and Tears

2010-07-28T05:40:00.000-07:00

Jim Warren, my Christian magician friend, sent me a piece he’d written, on a passage in Augustine’s Confessions. He’s commenting on the famous episode where the coming giant of Western theology is telling how as a sixteen-year-old, he once robbed a pear orchard. From the vantage point of his now forty-plus years and evolving Christian consciousness, Augustine is musing painfully on why and how this shameful act was possible. He did not do it for the pleasure of eating the pears for, as he says, he threw most of the “enormous quantity” to the pigs. The picture he paints is rather of a gang of boys spurring each other on and, as Jim relates it, clearly an instance of the power of mimetic or imitative desire. Here is a key passage which Jim quotes:

It is true that if the pears which I stole had been to my taste, and if I had wanted to get them for myself, I might have committed the crime on my own…(and) I should have had no need to kindle my glowing desire by rubbing shoulders with a gang of accomplices. But as it was not the fruit that gave me pleasure, I must have got it from the crime itself, from the thrill of having partners in sin. (II.8) Jim then comments: “So Augustine penetrates to a much more profound level of insight than the typical romantic idea that the thief steals because of the intrinsic desirability of the object. Desire was certainly at work, but in a way different from how we typically frame it. He describes himself possessed that night by a “glowing desire,” kindled from “rubbing shoulders with a gang of accomplices.” (II.9) The image is one of kindling a fire by the friction of rubbing wood against wood. The desire thus kindled does not have an independent existence; it does not originate within Augustine himself, in isolation, as a function of his relation to the pears. Rather, this desire springs into being as a function of his relation to his cohorts.”

In other words, it’s not the pears but the peers… Jim says that Augustine’s psychological analysis brought him very near to the insights of Rene Girard about the imitative character of desire, including its frequently violent outcome, as in the theft and destruction of a harvest of pears. What then struck me was the following. 1) Yes, Augustine has incredible powers of introspection and is right on the track of mimetic desire, and 2) he completely misses it as a structural principle! The reason he was so close to this anthropological principle and yet did not identify it is because he subsumes the whole thing within the Platonic metaphysics of the immortal soul and a doctrine of original sin. And this led me in turn to reflect on how profoundly the whole Augustinian framework has affected Christianity and how it is now at last all changing. I can’t believe how plain it all now seems, and I hope I can make it just as plain in the next couple of paragraphs!

Augustine is one heck of a smart guy. He is called by his contemporary Jerome (the same Jerome who translated the Greek bible into Latin) “the founder anew of the ancient faith” (Epistola 195). When I first came across this remark I thought it outrageous but I feel now it was no exaggeration. The first thing you need to know about Augustine is that he was a rhetorician, the most brilliant of his generation (and perhaps a thousand years after that as well). Today we would be more likely to call him a writer (his literary output was truly amazing) because he is so absolutely good with words, phrases and composition. So, thinking about Jerome’s remark, the first flag is that he is the producer of texts and a complete master of his craft.

Secondly if you read the Confessions you will see that Augustine’s path to conversion to Christianity came via a prior conversion to Neoplatonism (actually he calls it Platonism and in terms of the basic derivation of the philosophical viewpoint he is correct). Without going into any kind of detail—which is unnecessary because we are all so profoundly affected by the spirit of Platonic thought—we may say that what Augustine got from Plato was the intellectual conviction of a heavenly otherworld made available by the immortal intellectual soul which carries in itself the light of that world. Here he is, talking about his encounter with “the books of the Platonists”: These books served to remind me to return to my own self. Under your guidance I entered into the depths of my soul… I entered, and with the eyes of my soul, such as it was, I saw the Light that never changes casting its rays over the same eye of the soul, over my mind…. What I saw was something quite, quite different from any light we know on earth. It shone above my mind…. It was above me because it was itself the Light that makes me, and I was below because I was made by it. All who know the truth know this Light, and all who know this Light know eternity. It is the light that charity knows. (vii, 10)

Cutting to the chase, I would say that what Augustine is doing here, and throughout the Confessions, is constructing the Christian God out of Platonic thought, just as Plato constructed the true otherworld out of the intellectual soul and the death of the body. Plato goes round and round in a circle from innate ideas (like math) to the immortal soul which remembers them, to the return to the heavenly realm by the soul after death of the body. It’s very important to underline that effective construction of any circle of thought involves the casting out or elimination of the element that disturbs it—in Plato’s case the body. Deconstruction in its contemporary sense is the path of reflection which brings to light the cast out or eliminated element in the construction of any circle of thought. In Augustine’s case what is cast out—on top of Plato’s casting out of the body—is historical or earthly salvation, the very thing that the gospel proclamation of God’s kingdom seems to be urgently proposing! And so Augustine crossed a line, refounding Christianity on eternal principles derived from human cultural violence, i.e. the casting out of something (the body and the earth). Ever since Christians have gone round and round in an eternal circle, from the God beyond this world, to the soul intended to live with this God, to the almost complete devaluing of the earth and history, and back again to the God beyond.

It is true of course that Augustine is too much of a Christian and biblical scholar to get rid of history and historical salvation completely. When he’s commenting on the books of the Platonists he says he learnt so much about God and the Son of God in them, but he also says that what he didn’t learn of was Christ’s self-emptying and his redemptive death and the coming of charity or love by these means. (vii, 9 & 20) Nevertheless, these elements are included at a subordinate rhetorical moment after he’s laid out what he’s learned from the books, and so the essential framework is maintained. He even says: If I had not come across these books until after I had been formed in the mould of your Holy Scriptures and had learnt to love you through familiarity with them, the Platonist teaching might have swept me away from my foothold on the solid ground of piety, and even if I had held firm to the spirit in which the Scriptures had imbued me for salvation, I might have thought it possible for a man who read nothing but the Platonist books to derive the same spirit from them alone. (vii 20) In other words the final intellectual and aesthetic reference remains these books and nothing he has learned in the scriptures has provided an alternative intellectual principle. Later in his career Augustine did add what he considered a biblical notion to his thought of God—predestination of souls for heaven or hell. But this simply made things worse. By adding historical initiative to an eternal concept—a changeless divine will beyond the world—he ended up with the absolute inverse of a God of history: a God who has made up his mind for ever and always about the saved and the damned and nothing on earth—including the incarnation of the Word itself—will make any difference. In other words the casting out of history is even more absolute, and the construction of the dogmatic circle ever more fixed.

But now—and this is where all this has been leading—we have the emergence of an intellectual framework not borrowed from Plato, one arising directly from the scriptures themselves, and able to provide a rigorous meaning related directly to humanity and its history. This is what Jim was talking about, what Augustine guessed but then saw in terms only of the soul and original sin. Through the work of Rene Girard we are beginning to see that imitative or mimetic desire is not just a chaotic effect of some mythic sin by our first parents but it is the principle itself of humanity. It is what produces human beings, through their intense ability to imitate, through the violence and group victims this produces, and through the consequent birth of ritual, language and law: the emergence of human culture. But then, and of astonishing importance, it is the bible which is the singular narrative which has revealed all this to a self-deceiving world and at the very same time the possibility of a new human way. Deconstruction itself has to be part of this pulling away of the veils and it means we are now in a completely new situation.

What, therefore, is the goal toward which the gospel is leading, if not a new anthropology, a new way of being human? Rather than the immortal soul as the final point of reference we have a new humanity of love, shown us in Jesus, rising up against the world of violence and beyond all deconstruction because it does not exclude or eliminate anything. All this of course demands a whole lot more treatment, but let me give a quick illustration of what I’m saying. Instead of an eternal principle somewhere off the earth we are offered a new anthropological principle very much on the earth, the dramatically new humanity of Jesus.

In recent bible studies we have been reading the gospel of John and in that context I was struck by the mention of bodily fluids! Nothing in John’s gospel is there by accident. It all has a sign value or what also might be called the character of a signal. It’s meant to lead you deeper into the new thing that is so hard to sense at first. If the gospel talks about Jesus’ spit mixed with mud (9:6) or about his tears (11:35) these are signals to lead us deeper into Jesus’ new humanity. They are not there just to satisfy curiosity. And what is this humanity? It is the absolute handing over his self, his body, to others in love. Spit and tears join with the water and the blood which flow out at 19:34. They are all signals of endless self-giving, of expenditure without reserve, and it is endless or without reserve both at the moral level of Jesus’ character and person, and at the ontological level of how this character and person are raised up as deathless after they have given themselves to the last. In other words, spit and tears become grace: a grace lodged within spit and tears, as spit and tears, not as some ethereal, otherworldly immortal soul. Or, to carry the deconstruction all the way (and in admittedly a challenging image), the only immortal soul we now know is spit and tears condensed, evaporated and raised up for ever, as love.

Tony

John # 9

2010-07-19T15:15:00.000-07:00

Here is the latest Bible Study in our series on John's Gospel.
Peace, Linda

As well as the Gospel and letters of John this Bible study uses the book “Written that you may believe: Encountering Jesus in the fourth Gospel” by Sandra M. Schneiders (2003) Crossroad Publishing Co. New York, NY.

Background reading to study # 9- Written that you may believe, chapter 9.

The Gospel of John #9 – The man born blind 07/15/10

The story of the healing of the man born blind in John chapter 9 is probably a Johannine literary creation. It draws from stories of Jesus’ healing ministry (like the one found at Mk 8:22ff.) but, because the account is so highly constructed, it is unlikely to have been an identifiable event in Jesus’ life. It does have a vividness however that makes it seem authentic if not actually historical. John has given the story many layers of meaning and it tells something true on each of these levels.

For example, the “cast of characters” is highly significant. Each character represents a group affecting the Johannine community @ 90CE. The man born blind is “everychristian”, i.e. those in John’s community, who began in the dark, were brought into the light, and then become witnesses to this light. The man does not have a name but is called “the man” (anthropos in Greek). This is the generic word for human being – as opposed to the specific word for male, aner. Anthropos, for example, can be applied to women if a feminine article is used.

The disciples who asked the first question are also Christians – but agonizing over life’s mysteries. The neighbors who ask questions about the man are inquirers, those attracted to the Christian message but not yet committed to it. The Pharisees (who later in story become “the Jews”) represent the officialdom of Judaism persecuting the early church. The parents are crypto-Christians – those fearful of persecution. Jesus in the story is a transcendent figure who incorporates the earthly, historical Jesus, the Easter Jesus and the Jesus worshipped in the early church.

The story has the structure of a trial scene (one of many found in the Gospel). The man born blind is the defendant – but judgment when it comes falls on the reader. The reader is placed in a situation of spiritual crisis and asked to make a choice.

The story begins with a discussion about sin. The disciples ask who sinned – the man or his parents. Jesus replies that human disability is not the result of sin – rather it is an opportunity for God’s work to be revealed. Bad things happen that much greater good can be done. But God’s work must be done “while it is still day” - an announcement of the coming crisis.

Jesus makes mud from earth and saliva and places it on the man’s eyes. The mud is mentioned four times in the story – underscoring its significance. There are different layers of meaning here. Mud on a person’s eyes is counterintuitive as a means for curing blindness. It is as if we have to obscure our vision, make our blindness obvious, in order to see with new eyes. Humans cannot see. It is this blindness (not original sin—a legal penal concept) that we have been born into. Just as the man born blind does not ask for healing, so we have been unaware of our blindness. The mud also evokes the original clay from which human beings were formed by God in Genesis 2:7. Jesus adds his saliva, his “DNA”, to create a new humanity. Generic man is recreated as the new human by Jesus. This newness is recognized by the man’s neighbors who question whether this is the same man. The old and new humanity look the same but there is something different. The healed man asserts that “I am the man”. He uses the Jesus terminology “I am” – the new human takes on the role of Jesus.

Jesus sends the man to the pool of Siloam (a name that means “sent”). The man obeys and is healed. Healing can only come through obeying, through surrender. You cannot see your way to healing – you must surrender to it.

After his healing the man is subjected to a series of interrogations. The neighbors ask how to find Jesus. The man replies that he does not know. Unlike the crippled man healed in chapter 5 who when questioned does not know who his healer is, the man born blind acknowledges Jesus and gradually comes to know him as the story unfolds. The crippled man remains in darkness, while the man born blind begins to see. The man is then questioned by the Pharisees. They accuse Jesus of not being from God because he healed on the Sabbath. The man defends Jesus, saying that he is a prophet.

The Jews question the man’s parents – implying that they lied about their son’s blindness. The parents deflect the questions back to the healed man. Like some would-be Christians at the end of the 1st century they are afraid of being put out of the synagogue.

The man is then questioned by the Jews. They demand that the man “give glory to God” by declaring Jesus a sinner. This is often religion’s way of glorifying God – categorizing sinners and rejecting the evil ones. This is what the disciples were seeking to do at the beginning of the story (“who sinned?”) This is an example of Johannine irony. The Jewish authorities fail to understand the true way of giving glory to God. Jesus heals the man born blind so that “God’s work might be revealed in him” – to reveal God’s glory. God’s glory is revealed when his work is carried out through us and that work is to end the human system based on violent differences and exclusion. In contrast the authorities want to label Jesus as a sinner. They accuse Jesus of being a sinner and demand to know how he opened the man’s eyes.

The Jews revile the healed man by saying that he is Jesus’ disciple while they are disciples of Moses. Jesus has no authority because no one knows where he comes from. (This contrasts with Jn 7:40-52 where Jesus is rejected because he is known to have come from Galilee). The man responds by saying that never since the world began has someone opened the eyes of a man born blind, yet they do not know where he comes from. Such an unprecedented, singular event in human history has to come from God. Jesus cannot be a sinner because God listens to him. The Jews accuse the man of being born in sin, therefore judged by God, and as such has no grounds for argument. He is excluded by the thought of a God who excludes. They drive him away.

It is at this moment, after his persecution and rejection that Jesus seeks him out. Jesus asks him “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” This is the peak moment of the story. The words “Son of Man” have more importance in terms of power and impact than the term “Messiah” in John’s Gospel. Jesus is asking in effect “Do you believe in the child of human beings?”: i.e. the new humanity. Other mentions of the Son of Man in John are found in Ch 3:14 (“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up”); 8:28 (“When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he”) and 12:32-36 (“‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. The crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ Jesus said to them ‘The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light’”).

The Son of Man is the decisive figure of human transformation and judgment. In John 5:26 authority to execute judgment comes through the Son of Man. This authority comes from his having been “lifted up” – through his crucifixion as the end of all systems of violent difference and exclusion. Judgment is understood, not in terms of sin, but in the rejection of this transformation Jesus brings. In Jn 9:41 Jesus says that “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say ‘we see’, your sin remains”. We return here to the true nature of sin. It is not about human disability or original sin. Paul’s assertion that “Sin came into the world through one man (Adam)” has been interpreted legalistically. In contrast John’s gospel is not talking of original sin, rather our human condition –we are stupid and blind. It is not our fault unless we choose to remain that way when offered enlightenment in the new humanity of Jesus. The sin consists not in the original blindness, but in claiming to see. It is related to our response to Jesus’ call to enlightenment. We can accept or reject. We are called to accept that we need new eyes and receive our new sight from Jesus. We are called from blindness to sight.

This acceptance of a new way of being human leads us to a new understanding of Jesus’ divinity. At the end of John’s Gospel Pilate says “Behold the Man” (Jn 19:5). Jesus is the prototype of the new human. But through his passion and crucifixion the Son of Man is revealed also as the Son of God. Only the Son of God could bring a completely new way of being human which overcomes the generative power of violence. That is why Jesus is God and worthy of worship. The man born blind worships Jesus when he reveals himself to him as the Son of Man. Thus he completes the full trajectory of Christian conversion. Like the Christians in the Johannine community the man born blind believes in Jesus, despite adversity and persecution, and acknowledges him as Lord.