New Testament: Gospels Essay 3

For those of you who have been waiting, quivering with anticipation, for the posting of my third Gospels class essay, you may now relax.

The Question:

Discuss the community of origin, "occasion" (that means the reasons it was written), principal characteristics, and theological motifs of the Gospel of Mark. If you were leading a series of Bible studies on Mark in your congregation, what strategies might you use to help people grasp the power of this particular Gospel, in spite of the differences between your context and the author's.

Here's what I wrote, in PDF format.

Temptation

Who would have thought, at this late date, and at this entirely unprepossessing moment in my life, that I would actually be presented with a genuine, no-fooling temptation of the flesh?

My mind is boggled. Seriously boggled.

Only those who have been, by all measures, uneventfully and even comfortably celibate for a prolonged period of time can appreciate how thoroughly disorienting and insanely appealing a mere kiss can be.

I do not know what I'm going to do. I have a pretty good idea what I ought to do, but I don't know what I'm actually going to do.

If you would be so good as to pray for me, I'd appreciate it.

What in you delights God?

My spiritual director is a wise woman. (That IS, after all, the whole idea, isn't it?)

I was telling her about my procrastination epiphany, and how depressing it was to me that I had to put myself through all sorts of torture to have a brief moment of self-approbation.

Like any spiritual director worth her salt (as I teased her), she immediately declared: "Psalm 18, verse 20." She reached to a shelf and opened her prayer book. "Let me read it to you," she said.

He brought me to an open place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.

"That's your homework," she said to me. "Your homework is to figure out what it is about you that is delightful to God."

Now, I have to say, at this particular juncture I'm thinking there's not much at all about me that is delightful to God.

• I'm pretty lazy and undisciplined.


• I'm not particularly giving.


• I play way too much poker.

But if I strain really hard, I can come up with two things about me that might conceivably delight God:

• I am quite helpful in praying together with others. I'm thinking primarily of the healing ministry in this connection.


• I have the heart of a seeker. I don't always follow my heart, but when I do, I imagine that it is pleasing to God.

Still and all, it is very difficult to keep the notion of God's delight in me anywhere near the forefront of my consciousness. It seems, however, like an exercise worth pursuing.

The Oppression will Be Televised

The bad news is that police do stuff like this.

The good news is that, when it happens in public, technology gives eyewitnesses an opportunity to record what happens and try to get accountability.

I have no idea what happened before this video started: the tazed student did seem very disturbed already and his reaction was clearly politicized (one report says that he thought he was being profiled). Nonetheless, I can conceive of no excuse for the repeated tazering of a handcuffed person, or for the threat to taze bystanders who susbsequently asked for the cops' identification.

I think criminal prosecution of the campus police involved is possible and a civil suit is a 100% certainty.

On some level, I find the comments appended to the YouTube version of this video even more disturbing than the video itself. I am deeply distressed by the number of people who seem to find it a) funny (wtf?!?) because of the way the guy screams in pain or b) an example of just deserts because of failure to immediately and silently comply with authority.

And for those commenters who complain that the students didn't do more to intervene... when was the last time YOU jumped in between bullies and their victim (extra points for cases when the bullies were armed with disabling weapons and you were unarmed; extra super bonus points for occasions when the bullies were legal authorities). No? Okay then: stfu.

Why I do it

I have a sick, sick pattern of procrastination. I put off big tasks until the very last minute, when — in an increasingly exhausting orgy of brinksmanship — I make a mad dash for the finish line. It's a stupid and self-destructive habit, and if I had an ounce of maturity and real self-esteem I wouldn't do it.

But I do do it.

And last night, at three in the morning I finally understood why. I had finished my latest Gospels paper, and was blearily brushing my teeth in the bathroom. Suddenly I realized that I needed to add one more paragraph to the essay, one that would complete the assignment more satisfactorily and actually provide a spark of creativity and original thinking that I'd felt was utterly missing from the current version. I woke the computer from sleep, typed the paragraph, and reprinted the last two pages.

And I had the Rush. That rush where I said to myself, in my bruised and debilitated state of mental and physical overextension: "Damn, I'm good."

It doesn't matter how accurate or delusional this assessment is. What matters is how I feel in that moment, the glowing sensation of validation, however temporary (and it is always temporary). How hungry I am for that approval! And oh how much I am willing to put myself through in order to experience it, however briefly....

The Problem with Beauty

A fascinating and clear analysis of the pitfalls of a culture obsessed with physical beauty: Why I Hate Beauty.

The article probably won't tell you anything you don't already know, but provides some useful constructs that could be applied to other categories as well. It also serves as a useful foundation for arguments about the vital importance of a cultural (or counter-cultural!) context for providing a balance of values.

Switching to Blogger Beta [NOT]

Fair warning: I'm moving this blog over to Blogger Beta.

I have no idea how buggy it is, or whether this will drive everything into complete chaos. I may disappear altogether, who knows. Talk about a leap of faith!

I'm not sure how long the process will take. Do let me know if you encounter any problems...

Update: NEVERMIND.

Thanks for your interest in the new Blogger in beta. An error has occurred that has prevented us from switching your account at this time. Our engineers have been notified of the issue, and your blogs and Blogger account should not be affected.

Oh well. Business as usual, then.

Jesus and the Reign of God in 1st Century Palestine

New Testament Gospels: Essay 2

Here's the assignment we were given:

Discuss the intersection of Jesus' proclamation (in word and deed) of the reign of God with the social, political, economic, and religious environment of his day. You will need to discuss (1) the principle characteristics of his context as we are able to recover it; (2) the main thrust of his words and deeds that announce the reign of god; and (3) the identity of groups to whom this message appealed and those whom it threatened, and WHY.

Once again, I demonstrate my laziness and inconsideration by providing a measley PDF for those who might be interested.

Can these bones live?

Overview of Christian Theology: Assignment 8

What does it mean to be resurrected? More specifically, what does it mean to say that Jesus is risen?

Guthrie makes a big point of the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus: “the risen Jesus is the same Jesus they had known before. He walks, talks, eats, and can be touched. The risen Jesus is no ghost or phantom, He is a real flesh-and-blood human being.” (p. 275) This is the same Guthrie, however, who seems almost always to refer to the condition of those who were healed by Jesus through exorcism as in-quotation-marks “possessed.” (p. 281) Like just about everyone, Guthrie picks and choses which of the biblical witnesses he will construe literally, and which he will let a modern understanding of reality reinterpret as essentially metaphorical.

I am also struck by the claim that the resurrection of Jesus was a unique event, and absolutely critical in recognizing the divine nature of Jesus, in as much as the Bible gives us at least one other out-and-out resurrection story. No one goes around proclaiming “Lazarus is Lord!” as a result; yet, according to Guthrie, Jesus didn’t resurrect himself any more than Lazarus did. It was the way that Jesus behaved while he was alive and with us as a fully human being, in combination with the experience his followers had and continue to have of his risen life, that prompts the confession that “Jesus is Lord!”

For me, the most compelling appearance stories are those where the disciples recognize Jesus in strangers. They suddenly see Jesus in others (just as we are called by our baptismal vows to seek and serve Christ in all people). Does this mean Jesus was disguised, and then the disguise fell away? Or does it mean that they were empowered to see the Christ-nature and to learn from the Christ-spirit unexpectedly and powerfully present in a person encountered along the road or on the beach? I am able to proclaim “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again!” in good faith because I read scripture figuratively.

Guthrie says, “If we want to distinguish between God’s Spirit and our own spirits... we have to look at what scripture tells us about who the Spirit is and what the Spirit does.” But as we adopt a different posture toward scripture than that of the church leaders who formulated the canon and shaped doctrine, where are we permitted or required to revisit those teachings? What does it mean to recognize that the Holy Spirit is doing a new thing—especially if we are only to recognize and confirm that it is of the Holy Spirit by testing it against our scriptural and doctrinal understanding?

Where is the authority of continuing revelation, if there is such a thing, to be located? What about cases where scripture is silent, contradictory, or where modern understanding seems to clearly indicate that scripture is wrong—or perhaps I should say ‘conditioned by its time and place of production, its historical-cultural context.’

Unformed Christian that I am, I have always felt (pace Basil of Caesaria) that the Holy Spirit is the most accessible person of the Trinity. I can personally witness to the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in my own life and in the life of my church community. I have witnessed gifts of the Spirit poured out and received, both dramatically and quietly. I would say, as well, that I have witnessed the Holy Spirit moving powerfully in non-Christians that I have been privileged to encounter and in non-Christian communities in which I have participated. I believe that the unity of the Holy Spirit is not only a restrictively Christian unity, but a human unity that—tragically, and often downright evilly—is not recognized by all.

If the Kingdom is both here and yet to come in all its fullness, then an ever-deeper, ever-expanding understanding of and faithfulness to that Kingdom—and the God who’s Kingdom it is—seems to be our primary task in the between time, this present age. I remain cautiously skeptical of all claims of certainty (especially my own when I am rash enough to make them) about what that understanding must necessarily be.

Reading cited: Guthrie, Jr., Shirley C. 1994. Christian Doctrine. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.

New treasure

From time to time, some new intrepid soul stumbles on my blog and is moved to comment, and I thereby get an introduction to another valuable perspective. Such is Brother Bartleby, upon whose blog I read:

On another note, Bro. Robert said something interesting during our noontime meal: "Many people believe that you must first somehow decide whether or not God exists before joining a religion, but the opposite is true. One becomes religious so as to make God present in one’s life. Whether or not God exists is a separate issue. The important point is to make him present and real, and thus inhabit the space where our true humanness emerges."

I will be following Brother Bartleby's writing with interest: where else am I going to get quotations from The Jesus Sutras?

Beyond Xmasdome!

No, that's not the cage for the motorcycle deathmatch. Halloween is just done, and so it's full steam ahead to Christmas, and may God have mercy on our souls.

Darkness rolling in

It's something of a miracle that I haven't been long since swamped, given the positive shitstorm of miserable stuff that's been going on lately.

Nevertheless, today is the first day in a while that the fringe of depression is tangible along all my nerves. I will do what I can to avoid being utterly enshrouded. But already my senses are stifled, and I can feel the hopeful tatters of joy blowing out of my grasp. Already I'd like to sleep for a month.

I don't know which is worse: seeing it coming, or not seeing it coming.

All Saint's Day at WTS

Each of the luminaria (the white bags) you see in this picture represents an American service-person death in Iraq. This display on the Wesley Theological Seminary campus is part of the school's All Saint's Day vigil.

I'd like to add that if recent estimates of Iraqi civillian deaths are accurate, then each of these white bags represents 216 killed since our invasion.

What has God done? (Redemption)

Overview of Christian Theology: Assignment 7

I suspect as we begin our exploration of Christology that my concerns over the relationship of scripture and tradition to doctrine are going to rise even more to the fore. The way Guthrie treats the doctrine of the virgin birth is a case in point.

My current New Testament: Gospels class gives me every reason to believe that the story of the virgin birth was a later addition to the Gospel tradition, designed primarily to appeal precisely to an audience for whom those Greek and other pagan mythological divine-man stories (which Guthrie dismisses so cavalierly) were familiar and powerful. Given a culture in which women’s contribution to the birth of a new human being was understood to be little more than as a passive vessel or perhaps a fertile field in which the male seed ~ the homunculus ~ was sown, it is disingenuous at best to say that the story of the virgin birth doesn’t somehow describe the Holy Spirit as Jesus’ father. That is precisely what it does, in service to an over-all project of proclaiming Jesus the Son of God in that time and place.

What, then, is the proper relationship of doctrine to scripture? If we acknowledge the literary, even knowingly non-literal and symbolic, contributions of the Gospel writers, how do we sort out what attributes we can reliably ascribe to Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ? As we read the theology of the early church, when and how do we temper our understanding of and assent to their interpretations and proclamations with the contributions of modern science, as well as the historical and contemporary experience accrued since their time?

We inherit this giant bolus of tradition: brilliant reasoning and creative imagination grounded in layer upon superimposed layer of interpretation based on written documents and liturgical practice. Are we to swallow it whole, as medicine that is good for us, prescribed by reliable authority?

Guthrie says, “Our purpose, remember, is not to understand the doctrine for its own sake, but to learn from it who Jesus is.” This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, because the doctrine makes specific claims about who Jesus is and how he came among us: yet, were we to—as it were—start from scratch in our own time and place, using the modern tools at our disposal, the doctrine might very well emerge differently. Could the Gospel, for example, still be good news if everything in it that seemed miraculous or supernatural was accepted as non-literal?

I would argue, yes, it could. But it seems evident to me that interpretation would have significant consequences for the doctrine of the incarnation, among many others. My guess is that any such doctrines would rapidly enter the realm of the heretical by the standards of orthodoxy.

Orthodox Christianity makes a claim to having the story and experience that most clearly reveals to human beings who and how God is, who and how we are, and what kind of relationship we are meant to have with God. It often seems to make claims that are particular and exclusive, the justification and rationale for which all ultimately derive from specific scriptural instances. When the working out of these doctrines runs up against our experience or the limits of reason, we say it’s a mystery and it belongs in the realm of faith. This is an answer which will be satisfactory only to those who are unshakeable in their conviction to begin with.

Some of the working out of doctrine, particularly in Christology, strikes me as elaborately baroque as the system of Ptolemaic epicycles which described and explained the movement of planets around the earth. That ever-more complex and refined system did indeed account for the observations of planetary motion in its time, and dovetailed nicely with the culture’s prevailing worldview. With the advent of better tools and increasingly accurate observational data, however, its explanatory power and calculational efficacy became noticeably less impressive. It was time for a paradigm shift; the Copernican model was at once more aligned with observational data, more powerfully predictive, and much simpler. It was also, to many of the established values of the era, deeply offensive to everything they knew to be true and quite literally heretical.

I find myself yearning for a Copernican revolution in Christian doctrine. I feel compelled to acknowledge deep truth in the Christian story — in scripture and tradition — and in the life of Christian community today. But I remain deeply frustrated, disappointed, and even dismayed at what I understand to be the state of doctrine in the Church. This may well be because I don’t know or understand enough. I’m still willing to be taught.

What's the matter here?

Overview of Christian Theology, Assignment 6

The problem of evil is — it seems to me — the pre-eminent theological problem for Christians. I would submit that the existence and persistence of evil is probably the main obstacle for those who question or deny the existence of God. Actually, it’s not any God for whom the reality of evil is problematic. It’s especially the God to whom the following adjectives are ascribed: omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, parental, and especially protective and loving.

Recently, my beloved seven-month-old kitten became fatally ill with an incurable disease. As you can imagine, this was a source of great distress to me; she was a wonderfully affectionate, beautiful, and charming companion creature—innocent, harmless, and delightful. In short, I loved her, and wanted the very best for her, but (and here we encounter the “shadow side” of creation) I was powerless to save her life. I prayed for her, I tried to encourage her to eat nutritious food, I petted her and showed her how much she was loved, I made her as comfortable as I could.

Being human, I couldn’t cure her. (If there had been some personal sacrifice that would have saved her, I surely would have made it.) But in most other ways, I stood in a relationship to my cat analogous to that which we say God stands to us. Her well-being was in my hands. And I intervened, out of love and concern for my kitten, when I took her to the vet and made sure at last that she had a good death with a minimum of suffering. I wept as I did it, and it grieves me still, but I did it nonetheless.

Her suffering and death were not evil (although for me they were very, very sad and seemed pointless and unfair). What would have been evil, in my mind, would have been to allow her suffering to be prolonged unnecessarily, when I could do something about it. There was nothing to be learned from her agony; there was no contribution to the ‘greater good’ to be had. In my ‘godlike’ relationship to her, the loving and compassionate choice was to deliver her from suffering before it became her entire and only reality.

The Hebrew Bible describes an interventionist God, who acts in history to save God’s people. The Gospels proclaim a God who comes among us, who heals and reconciles, one who suffers and dies, but then lives again and is with us still, moving and acting. Where, in our modern experience of ongoing, deliberate evil on both intimately personal and national or global scales, is that God who protects and saves? How can we experience God as loving and parental under these circumstances?

Was there any sense in which the suffering of the victims of the Holocaust could be said to be necessary or beneficial? Where was the God of Exodus for them as they were worked to death and thrown into ovens? Or for the little girl whose entire life is lived in a closet, chained to a pipe, starved, degraded, and tortured for the entertainment of her keepers, who dies alone and with no experience of goodness and love at all... what use is an all-powerful God who knows and shares that experience but does nothing about it? Can anyone in good conscience tell her that this is somehow Good News? How would you ask her to pray to and worship a God who has consigned her, without respite or consolation of any kind, to the hands of evil? Is it really an adequate response to this victim of evil to say that all will be set right in the hereafter?

Almighty, all-knowing, loving: pick two.

It seems to me that we must let go of the paradigm of the parental, interventionist God. From now on, we can see God at work in the world only in the way that the Gospels showed us Jesus at work in the world. And even then, it will only be in a diluted and non-supernatural fashion. The Gospel work of healing and reconciliation can now only be carried out by limited and flawed human beings inspired and sustained by the Holy Spirit. And therefore there will continue to be millions who, untouched by any experience of love and mercy, will suffer and die in thrall to evil. It is not a pretty picture, and I have yet to hear anything like a good reason for it.