Tag Archives: Christ

A Lectionary Experience: Mark 5:21-43

First, on my old blog, I’ve dealt with this passage before:

The writer of Mark favors what are called sandwich stories, A-B-A’ constructions, where B as the central point in the story, says something crucial about A and A’.  Have a look:

A.  21 And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea.  22 Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet  23and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.”  24 And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

B. 25 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years,  26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse.  27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment.  28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” 29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.  30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?”  31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’”  32 And he looked around to see who had done it.  33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.  34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

A’. 35 While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?”  36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”  37 And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James.  38 They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.  39 And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.”  40 And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was.  41Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.”  42 And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement.  43 And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

In the two stories above, an elite (ruler of the synagogue, male, house owner) comes to Jesus asking for him to heal his daughter and save her from imminent death.  But Jesus, on the way to the ruler’s house, pauses for a disenfranchised woman with an impure discharge who has no money.  He pauses, because this woman touched his garment to be made well.  And Jesus calls her, Daughter, not by mistake, but most likely in the presence of Jairus.  This girl too is a daughter.  Then Jesus continues and heals the daughter of Jairus.

In this story, Mark wonderfully juxtaposes the poor and the elite, and shows the priority of the Divine Dominion is for the poor and marginalized first, and then to the elites.  But not only that, but by calling her daughter, Jesus somehow connects the two daughters, perhaps calling Jairus, and other elites, to look upon this woman as a daughter as well.

Existentially, I imagine the experience of the Mark’s readers were concerned for their health and subsistence as this woman was.  Perhaps, the call then, is rather than simply be wrapped up in one’s own existential concerns, we may understand the universality of such concerns, and share the concerns of others, especially with regards to health and subsistence.

On Lording

Over at Storied Theology there’s some nervousness about anti-Roman studies within New Testament.

Did Jesus resist Rome?  Was Jesus anti-Roman?  Would Jesus have taken up arms against Rome if he had the means?

Take this into account:

And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.” (Luke 22:25-27 ESV)

In my opinion, Jesus was anti-lordship, anti-domination of others, and in this way, he was anti-Roman.  It’s difficult to say if Jesus would have defended his homeland if he had had the army or weapons.  We’d like to think not.  But one thing is for sure, Jesus wanted to change hearts, and that’s what he did.  Against a Roman way of life.

So, when in Rome, don’t do as the Romans did.

Freedom and the Burden of Proof

Having been involved in some debates in recent comment sections (most outspokenly, here) of blogs, I’ve realized something important about the Bible, Culture, and existence.  When there is a cultural innovation, it is up to Christians to prove that the said innovation is un-/anti-biblical, not the other way around.  In other words, the burden of proof is on those who say an action is “sinful.”

Take the invention of telephones.  Is talking on the telephone forbidden on the Sabbath?  The burden of proof clearly must be on those who say it is unlawful to talk on the telephone on the Sabbath.

Likewise for slavery, same-sex marriage, or female pastors.  Now the obvious objection to this comparison is that the Bible actually discusses these things, while it doesn’t mention telephones at all.  Well, yes and no.  The Bible mentions slavery, and passively (to say the least) condones it.  But we’ve made the arguments against it, and no one in their right mind will now say that slavery is biblical.  For women, the culture is totally different now.  Restrictions against women in the Bible are connected to the patriarchal culture of its time.  So when a new culture allows women to vote or to work outside the home, when they couldn’t before, the culture has shifted, making it possible to become church leaders, especially Senior pastors.  Since the cultural norms have shifted, the burden of proof lies on the one who would restrict such behavior, not on those who would seek to change orthodoxy.  The same goes for same-sex partners who wish to be in life-long relationships.  They don’t have to show that it is permitted for Christians, rather, those who would prohibit it must show biblically that it is sinful.

The reason for this is that over the centuries of the composition of the Bible, culture in the Levant changed, shifted, and evolved.  These tensions can be seen throughout the texts of the Bible, but no more blatantly than in Paul’s letters to the Galatians and to the Romans.

In Galatians, Paul is dealing with Judean Christ followers and gentile Christ followers and the cultural boundaries that centered around Torah, especially circumcision.  Rather than giving a static new law, Paul breaks the boundary, and gives principles for negotiating cultural shifts.  Consider a couple of verses from Galatians 5:

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit to a yoke of slavery… For you were called to freedom, brothers.  Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Gal. 5.1, 13)

Christ has set (all of) us free from the Torah.  You can follow Torah if you want, but you can’t force another to follow it.  Now, to those of you who won’t follow it, don’t use your freedom to do whatever you want and serve yourself.  The whole gift of your freedom is that you may serve on another in love, freed from the restrictions to do so.

If someone wants to remain uncircumcised fine, and the burden of proof falls on those who wish to force him to do so.  Likewise in Romans, where Paul is negotiating other boundaries between Judean and gentile believers, he concluded:

Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.  (Romans 15:2-7 ESV)

The pointing of fingers does no good.  The aim of the work of Christ is that Christ’s followers would “live in such harmony with one another,” in order that they may welcome each other as Christ has welcomed them.  So whether one eats foods sacrificed to idols or pork, or whether one participates in this-or-that festival (both in Rom. 14) is of small importance.  Only that which stands against these guiding principles for negotiating culture bound restrictions ought to be stopped.  And the burden of proof falls on Christ’s followers who wish to restrict, that they must show that the prohibition actually works to serve the other in love and to welcome the other in Christ.  This is part of the moral trajectory of the New Testament which recognizes the shifted sands of cultural and the problems of culturally codified restrictions.

So the argument, that I hear so often, that supporters of same-sex marriage and female pastors haven’t proven anything according to Scripture, does not stand.  Orthodoxy does not constitute a reason to escape burden of proof; in fact, the burden of proof is always on any static form of orthodoxy.  Therefore, nobody has to make the case for female pastors or same-sex marriage.  Opposers have to make a convincing case against it.

What restrictions in the New Testament are not bound by culture and do not follow the two guiding principles mentioned above?

The Lectionary Experience: Mark 3:20-35

And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.
“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”
(Mark 3:20-35 ESV)

Jesus is essentially saying, “if I am the satan (the adversary) and I am casting out demons, then good news, folks, the satan’s kingdom is gonna fall!!!  But no, really, if you want to destroy the satan’s kingdom, then you first have to bind up the satan, and then destroy his house.”  In other words, Jesus has bound the satan and that’s why he’s cleaning house.

A couple of existential observations.  Notably, in the First Testament, the three times the satan is mentioned he is at least twice a prosecuting attorney for God, most memorably in the prologue to Job.  With this in mind, it is fascinating, to see Jesus claim that the satan is bound, and then proclaim the forgivness of sins (nothing to do with the cross) over the children of man.

Nevertheless, we know that in the period between the Testaments, that the character of the satan grew in stature and power into the figure we encounter in canonical and non-canonical apocalyptic literature.  But here too, the satan is never simply “Satan” as many often imagined, but the satan is connected with the evil political powers of the day (see here for an example).

With the large accusatory Temple scene in Mark 11-12, we know that Jesus is attacking the corrupt powers (especially the scribes, see 12.28-40) of Jerusalem leadership.  With these three points in mind, I submit the following as a clue to the existential concerns of the text.  First, Jesus is calling out the scribes and other Jerusalem leadership for perpetuating evils, oppression, etc.  These evils are built on the premise that they run the system which negotiates sin and retribution between God and the masses.  Jesus, having bound the satan, is cleaning house with the forgiveness of sins, emptying the power of the corrupt leadership.

The existential concern is behind the premise that people need forgiveness of sins in order to be right with God.  With the existential crisis being that the people have no control over their own destiny, the forgiveness of sins meets crisis in several concerns.  First, it is identity with the people of God, a sense of belonging with the other righteous.  Second, the cost for peasants to have to participate in the sacrificial culture is an economic strain.  The forgiveness of sins, reduces this burden.  Finally, corrupt leadership tries to answer the the existential crisis, where they have no control over their own destinies, to try to control the destinies of others.  In some ways, the forgiveness of sin breaks their power to control the destinies of the people.

A good existential reading then will first focus on the identity, the economics, and oppression, before making too much of what “blaspheming the holy spirit” might mean.

Are there existential concerns that I missed?

… it’s what you see.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.  - Henry David Thoreau

Yes, but can’t you see what your looking at first?

Indeed, we cannot even begin to consider the world in which we live without the conceptions.  The conceptions, the ontologies, the faith claims, they make our understanding of the world and our communication efficient.  We cannot adequately describe our experience, it’s too vast for words.  But for the sake of everything good and decent, can we at least look at how our experiences become our conceptions.  Let’s look at first, and then “see.”  Because, sometimes, in spite of Thoreau, it is what you look at that is important.

Case in point: 2012 election.  What is important?  Let’s speculate that it’s the on-the-ground experience of millions of Americans.  Therefore, the policies that affect change on the people’s lives are the important politics.  But every day, Obama is a Muslim, Romney is greedy, the Democrats are commies, the Republicans hate poor people.  These are ontological claims, conceptions of our world, that are at best irrelevant.  Distractions from what is important, making us blind to what we look at, and only emphasizing what we see.

The same happens with faith claims about God, even if those faith claims are quoted word-for-word from the Bible.  The words are far from the core, yet they point to the core.  But the core is the experience and context that produced the words.  To fetischize the faith claim before the core, is to “see” what your not looking at.  To read Christ into Isaiah 9.6 (“For to us a child is born…”) before placing it in the context of Northern Kingdom/Assyrian conflict is to quit reading and and to insert one’s own message into the text.  There’s no reason to shut our brains off and quit reading the text in order to defend our deeply held theological notions.  The Bible is a text that behaves like a text, because that’s what texts do.  So look at the text and let’s see what we can make of it?

Pregnancy and Deliverance

Here comes summer!

Here’s our new fellow.  He was 13 days late.  And during those 13 days, I found a good example to explain the gap between existence and conceptions (of existence).

Pregnancy.

My wife experienced pregnancy, evidently one that was worse than average.  Morning sickness never really faded.  But she was the one who experienced it, not me.

I could only, at best, conceive of what she was going through, what she needed, what she wanted.  Everybody gets this.  There are jokes about it.  What can a man ever truly know about pregnancy?

And on the delivery table, the worst pains, with the greatest hopes, are all intertwined.  The one who experiences and those who can only conceive are joined together in great hope and expectation for what is to come next.  She draws me in to her narrative with this hope.  We trust that the new life will be grand.  But we never know.  You cannot know.  Until it comes.  And the experience itself, is far greater than any of our conceptions.  Our conceptions are next to irrelevant.

So too, with Scripture, and theologies.  We too have a gap between the producers of the text and ourselves.  We are joined with them though in our expectation for the future.  And we are more closely joined if we know the “labor pains” with which they encountered in producing the text.  The closer we are to understanding their experience of life, the greater the chances are that we may wait in hope for the same hope in which they believed.

And in the end, the experience of it, will be greater than anything we’ve ever conceived… so long as we do not replace their hope with our own self-centered conceptions.

Fun Friday: Coffee with Jesus

Most of you have probably already seen these, but for those who haven’t you can find hundreds of these at Radio Free Babylon.  Of course, I like this one because it overlooks the omniscience of Jesus/God and looks at the reality of the uncertainty of human life, in spite of having accepted Jesus’ omniscience as ontological truth.  Bingo.

Experiencing the Lectionary: John 15.26-16.15

UPDATE: I have realized that the lectionary actually leaves out the first four verses of chapter 16.  Sigh.  My guess is they wanted to avoid the anti-semitic tones of the verses.  But that’s a problem with later readers of the Bible like us, not for the text.  Oh, well, it could still be mentioned in a sermon…

An existential analysis of this week’s gospel reading: John 15.26-16.15

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.

“I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

1.  What is the existential concern behind the text? “They will put you out of the synagogues.”

Is it persecution? Survival? Oppression? Being a social outcast?  You get the point.  While there may be economic and political implications to being cast out of the synagogues, I prefer to put this as an identity concern.  It encompasses these tertiary concerns I just mentioned, but it carries with it the added weight of belonging.  This social sense of belonging eases the existential crisis by creating a systematic community that produces meaning for life.

Rather than consider Christians vs Jews, it’s better to consider a Jesus movement within Judaism.  Where some members of the synagogue are now disenfranchised, this text is offering a new sense of belonging to the “Jesus movement.”  Those who have cast out the Jesus followers, will get what’s coming to them, not because they have failed at correct belief and doctrine, but because that have treated the Jesus movement poorly.

Most bible readers will be enthralled with the “Helper” in this passage, as they probably should be.  Is it the Holy Spirit in the narrative?  Close enough.  But again, this is a concept aligning itself as a resolution to an existential concern.  And as I am continuing to argue, the existential concern should take precedence in bible-believing communities, ahead of theories of the Holy Spirit or Divine Judgment.

2.  How to respond to the existential concern?

It’s not about getting the theology or doctrine correct.  Rather, it’s about creating an atmosphere or situation where the human existential crisis cannot rear its ugly head in the concern of identity.  I have two suggestions.

First, don’t be the kind of community that marginalizes based upon theological or doctrinal differences.  Be accepting of challenges to the status quo, to the dominant understanding of the faith proclaimed within the community.  Be aware and open to the fluid nature of identities.  So long as the practices of love abound, questions and fluidity can only help the community grow in faith.

Second, be a community who can continually mold itself to offer new senses of belonging to various disenfranchised members of nearby communities.  In doing so, theologies and doctrines may take a backseat to a community that is attempting to follow Christ, a community that answers existential concerns with existence rather than with concepts.

Bible and Existence (6)

JC&M

Part 6/6 of a series…

The judgment that man’s existence can be analyzed without taking into account his relation with God may be called an existential decision, but the elimination is not a matter of subjective preference; it is grounded in the existential insight that the idea of God is not at our disposal when we construct a theory of man’s existence.  Moreover, the judgment points to the idea of absolute freedom, whether this idea be accepted as true or rejected as absurd.  We can also put it this way: that the elimination of man’s relation with God is the expression of my personal knowledge of myself, the acknowledgment that I cannot find God by looking at or into myself.  Thus, this elimination itself gives to the analysis of existence its neutrality.  In the fact that existentialist philosophy does not take into account the relation between man and God, the confession is implied that I cannot speak of God as my God by looking into myself.  My personal relation with God can be made really by God only, by the acting God who meets me in His Word.

A counter question we may ask to Bultmann is: do we have an idea of an “other” at our disposal, such as the idea of my wife or my mother?  If so, what is different in the distance between my experience of God and my conceptions of God?

I would venture a guess that while an “other” is not fully at our disposal, their participation within the same boundaries of existence with our selves, the objectification of the “other” is made plausible.  On the other hand, where Bultmann and Barth might agree, is that God is wholly other.  One cannot objectify God, one cannot know God as one knows an object, one cannot simply love God as one loves one’s family.  I will admit this is a bit of theology I am uncomfortable with, but I will leave my critiques of Bultmann for later.

Suffice it to say, though, thinking in this way lends itself to an existential analysis, and therefore it is beneficial to think in this way, if we must.

An existential analysis limits itself to the experiences within the self, and therefore all conceptions of the divine must be left to the side.  Religious/spiritual experience, however, is available inasmuch as one experiences it.  But to name that experience is to limit it with our conceptions, leaving it to the realm of faith rather than the realm of experience.

But notice, Bultmann does not simply speak of religious/spiritual experience, but as “man’s relation with God.”  It is a relative/relational experience, that may fail to be captured by conceptions.  Only in the experience of the relationship can God ever be true.

And, at least for Bultmann, this “acting” God enters into such a relationship in God’s Word.  Therefore, it is not the ontological truths of God’s Word that are important, but the experience of the acting God in relation to the Word.  What then is this Word?

Demythologizing at work: ‘Kosmos’

As a response to comments in yesterday’s blog, an example of demythologizing.

From Butlmann’s Theology of the New Testament, Vol. II, Part 3, Chapter 2: “Johannine Dualism”

First the description of the mythical understanding of the kosmos:

“As for Paul, so for John the kosmos means primarily the world of men; on it the judgment falls that it is evil and would be lost were it not for the coming of the ‘Son.’  In its radical opposition to God it is characterized as in Paul by the term ‘this world’ which comes from apocalyptic eschatology.  In this term, the point is the contrast between the nature of the world and God, not a contrast between two ages.  Accordingly, John speaks neither of ‘this age’ or ‘the present age’ nor of the ‘future’ or ‘coming age.’”

Then the process of demythologizing:

“But what is the essence of the kosmos?

…The essence of the kosmos, therefore is, darkness–darkness not as a shadow lying upon the world, an affliction imposed upon it, but as its own peculiar nature in which it is at ease and at home, for: ‘the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light.’  Just this–that the world appropriates to itself its darkness–can come to expression in the judgment that men are blind, blind without knowing it and without wanting to acknowledge it…Furthermore, this compound of darkness and falsehood that is characteristic of the world, which it, itself, has bondage–an idea that is expressed by the promise to those who know the truth (8:32).  Kosmos, then, is in essence existence in bondage.”

Boom! Existential interpretation!  The mythological world is made up of (let’s say) the heavens, the cosmos, and hades.  The mythological understanding of the cosmos, then, can be demythologized to “existence in bondage.”  There is no myth and there is no historical Jesus, only part of the kerygma (the proclamation) of Jesus expressed in modern language.

No need to agree with Bultmann’s move entirely, but important to see the movement.  Next week, we’ll hit hard the series: The Bible and Existence.  Enjoy your weekend!