Monday, 10 April 2006
Easter Day Year B
Acts 10: 34-43 NRSV text
1 Corinthians 15: 1-11 NRSV text
Mark 16: 1-8 NRSV text
Flight, terror, amazement and the silence of fear. Happy Easter, Mary, Mary and Salome! Hardly an Easter text, is it? Where is the joy and wonder? Where is the delighted astonishment and awe in the presence of resurrection? Let’s remember that the earliest manuscripts of Mark end the gospel at this point! It’s as bad as Gone with the Wind. I say that because I saw that film when I was about 12. I remember sitting through four hours of film, and wondering how on earth the story could be resolved. And what was I given? Scarlett O’Hara’s “Tomorrow is another day!” Thanks a bunch! I felt robbed. In fact, it still rankles, as you may well gather reading this. There was no resolution. All the hares that had been set running – compellingly and grippingly – just ran off the screen. They ran and ran into the cinematic fade-out. And here, at the end of Mark’s story of Jesus, we have another Gone with the Wind – or is it just Gone …?
The sense of anticlimax and frustration could not have been more cleverly done! We arrive with the women at the tomb. We see, through their eyes, that the stone has been moved – rolled away. We’re wondering what on earth we’re going to encounter when we step inside the tomb with them. And what do we see? Not Jesus, but a young man in white robe. Aha! So this is what happened to the young man who fled naked from Gethsemane. He’s here! And now he speaks (v6) and tells them, “Do not be alarmed!” How very reassuring … NOT! Try and imagine what a stand-up comic like Billy Connelly or Greg Proops would be able to do with this material. It’s a gift! The women have steeled themselves to confront the mangled, smelly corpse of Jesus, and he’s gone. Instead, a strange young man in martyr’s robes is there, and his first words are, “It’s okay!” Does he expect them to say, “Oh, thank goodness! I was really worried for a second, just there …” No it’s not okay! It’s terrifying and mysterious and distressing! Don’t try and tell us it’s okay when it manifestly isn’t!
Then he goes on, “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.” Well, yeeees! I mean, how many other corpses did they expect to find??? And then a wonderful statement of the obvious: “He’s not here. Look, there is the place they laid him”. They know he’s not there! That’s the whole point, isn’t it? And they’re staring at the place where he ought to be, and probably looking around the tomb to see if they could have missed anything as obvious as a corpse wrapped in a sheet … And finally, the “explanation” – so unhelpful as to be positively crass: “He has been raised.” Raised? What does that mean? By what? By whom? Taken where? Are we seriously expected to think that this is helpful? Should the women say, “Oh! That explains it! Thanks. Well, we obviously don’t need all these spices, so we’ll be getting off back home. You have a nice day!”
It’s great theatre. This is an account that hovers on the edge of slapstick. Hovers, but doesn’t teeter over the brink, because we readers know what it means. We already live on the other side of resurrection. We thrill with the excitement of it: this is Easter. It’s resurrection time! So when the young man tells them to go and tell his disciples – especially Peter – that Jesus is not dead anymore and that they will see him, we’re already anticipating the next, wonderful scene when the women rush into the room, breathless with excitement, and blurt out their story. Go on – write the scene for yourself. And then read what happens. “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid”. End of book! See what I mean about Gone with the Wind? Here is the greatest news ever in the history of humankind and the only people with the secret run off in abject terror and say … nothing!
“The way of the cross? Yes. The way of resurrection? No!”
We need to remember that these are the women who have walked the way of the cross with Jesus. Unlike the male disciples, they have not tried to dissuade Jesus from the path, nor have they abandoned him. They’ve “gone the distance” from Galilee to Jerusalem to Golgotha and to the tomb. They have not denied him, as Peter has. They have been prepared to “lose their lives for his sake”. And now they come to pay him their final honours: a proper burial, followed by mourning and regular vigil at the tomb.
I think Mark is trying to tell us something vital about the shock factor of resurrection. The women cannot cope with it. They can cope with suffering, death and despair. That is part of life, however difficult and tragic. It belongs within the imaginative framework of a pre-Easter universe. It does not shatter their devotion or their faith. But resurrection is something else. It is something so totally, shatteringly new and unexpected that it tears the fabric of their universe to shreds and reduces them to terrified silence. They can cope with the way of the cross. But the way of resurrection proves to be their own Gethsemane. Here, in the garden (if that is where the tomb is), they, like their male counterparts, flee in panic. The way of resurrection is a step too far - at least for the moment.
The process of “finding one’s life”
Moving from Good Friday (losing one’s life for the sake of the gospel) to Easter Sunday (finding/saving one’s life) is to move from one universe into another new, hitherto unimagined one. There are no compass bearings. There is nothing certain. Part of our Easter “task” as disciples is to confront again the extraordinary sense of crisis that resurrection occasions. This is not just a piece of biographical information about Jesus: it is about changing the rules of the universe. We cannot remain the same. We cannot live in the same way, or share the old priorities. The old norms no longer work. The hard truth is that it is easier to live among the tombs than to step into the new dawn of resurrection. Losing one’s life is easier than finding it again in the risen Christ.
If we read Mark’s gospel in its longer version (ie beyond 16:8), we note the emphasis on “telling”. There is the same dynamic in each incident: Jesus appears to someone, they tell the others, who do not initially believe, but by the end of the gospel (16:20) they are all out and bout, spreading the good news everywhere.
Whatever we want to make of the text at this juncture, we need to recognise that there is process involved of learning to live with resurrection – learning to live and find our bearings in a radically different universe. Part of the difficulty is coming to terms with the end of everything (which Mark presents Jesus’ crucifixion as being). There is an element of radical decision-making involved – and then a process of growing into that decision! John speaks about in terms of moving from darkness into Light, and from death into Life. His Jesus calls it “being born again”. Paul speaks of it as “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Everything “old” has died and is buried; everything has become “new”.
There is nothing “obvious” or comfortable about resurrection or about Christian faith. To “understand” resurrection is to realise just how terrifying it is, because it is about leaving the old behind and stepping into a future where the only thing that is assured is that “Jesus has gone ahead, and we will see him” (Mark 16:7).
“If Christ has not been raised, then our faith is in vain”
This verse from 1 Corinthians 15 (v14) is not part of the lectionary passage for today. Yet it is the climax of Paul’s preaching about what is most important (v3): Jesus was crucified and was raised on the third day (v4). A dead Jesus is a tragic hero and a martyr. All that we can do is to follow him, and at best “lose our lives for his sake”. We have not yet “found” our lives! Paul doesn’t mean, “At least, if you died for Jesus, you found something worth dying for!” Christian faith is also about what is worth living for! Resurrection is more than a promise that our living and dying like Christ will make a difference to the future of the world: it is the promise that we will share in that future! And it is a promise of life now, in this world.
Resurrection, he will go on to argue, transforms Jesus’ death from something that happened just to him into the gateway into life for the whole of created reality. It transforms Jesus from a martyred prophet (history is littered with them) into the Second Adam – the one who gives life to all of humanity. This is the promise of release and liberation from the endless cycle of death and despair. Resurrection is the announcement of the victory of Jesus over the Strong Man and all the powers that enslave, stifle, and kill.
Resurrection, he will go on to stress, is something that happens to bodies (vv 35ff). This is important. Paul picks up on the biblical link between sin and death. It is possible to read this in “purely” theological terms – as though Paul were operating in the realm of theory. He isn’t! “Sin” is what we do as embodied people. We use our bodies to live and act, to hurt, oppress, and injure others. “Sin” is concrete. Paul’s whole stress in this letter is on bodies – hence his concern with the “body life” of the Church and the way in which this is contradicted by people using their bodies inappropriately so as to make a mockery of new life. This is seen no more clearly than in the way in which the concrete “body life” of the Church profanes Communion – the meal in which Jesus says, “This is my body, broken for you” (11:24). We are not saved for some disembodied life in some heavenly universe, but for life here and now that is incarnated (takes bodily shape) in this world. Resurrection is not some “spiritual” truth. It is about the presence and activity of the Living Spirit in us – the transforming of reality. We are to be part of that transformation.
Not a “fact”, but the power of God (Acts 10: 34-43)
I get fed up with the annual Easter debates about whether we ought to believe that Jesus was raised bodily, or whether it is something about the enduring presence of Christ beyond his death. Both protagonists in this debate are arguing about the wrong thing. Resurrection is not about “biographical facts about Jesus”. Believing that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead is not what makes Christian faith either Christian or faith. Nor are notions of the enduring presence of Jesus beyond death remotely satisfactory for life in a world where “sin” is to be counted in starving, tortured, addicted and diseased bodies.
The question that human experience faces us with is, “Is there any power strong enough to break the cycles that trap us in cruelty, illness, poverty, oppression, despair and death? Is it only possible to live a happy life by creating a living hell for most of the planet’s inhabitants?” And the Christian answer is “Yes!” It is God’s power – the power of the Holy Spirit. Look at Peter’s sermon in Acts 10:37ff. God anointed Jesus with the Holy Sprit and with power”. The story of Jesus is the story of the power of Life abroad in the world. It is a power that cannot be thwarted by crucifixion (v39). When death has done its damndest and proclaimed itself the Ultimate Reality, God has a word of power to speak: “Resurrection!” Resurrection is as real – as concrete and bodily – as both life and death. We have “seen” it made visible in Jesus, who was crucified, laid in a tomb and then raised by God. Its power and reality is not something to be “believed” as though it were something like gravity or relativity: it is to be experienced as transforming, and made visible as we seek to transform the world in the name of Jesus.
Back to the beginning …
What if Mark’s gospel ends, like the film, at 16:8? What are we to make of such an anticlimax to an otherwise thrilling story? The clue lies in the opening verse of the gospel: “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. What happens when we read the whole gospel as the beginning? Then we are brought to the threshold of it all: the story of Jesus who, having been crucified, is now alive in a world throbbing with the powers and possibilities of resurrection and is waiting … for us! What will we do when we have lived long enough to overcome the terror of leaving behind our “old” world, and allowed God to let the Holy Spirit – the power by which God raised Jesus from the dead – loose in us?
Amen.
23:32 Posted in 1 Corinthians , Acts , Mark , Year B | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study
Monday, 13 March 2006
Lent 3 Year B
Exodus 20: 1-17 NRSV text
Psalm 19 NRSV text
1 Corinthians 1: 18-25 NRSV text
John 2: 13-22 NRSV text
I can remember clearly the picture we were given in Sunday School to colour in of Jesus driving the moneychangers from the temple. There was an angry Jesus in flowing robes, with a rope whip in his hands. The table was in the process of falling, spilling scales and coins. Sheep and oxen were milling around. The picture and the lesson that day were clear: God’s house should be a place of quiet prayer and spirituality – not a market place! Economics has nothing to do with prayer and faith!
Interestingly, nothing disturbed that picture for many, many years. And why should it? I lived in a country (Rhodesia) in which politics and economics were one thing, and faith was something entirely different – individual, private and interior. Ironically, it wasn’t until I was about 26, living in Durham during the miners’ strike, and being faced with some destitute families begging outside the church door as we worshippers all emerged, wrapped against the biting wind and clearly well-breakfasted, that I began to be uneasy and to wonder whether there wasn’t something desperately wrong with a gospel that had nothing to say to real human need. Having had my world cracked open just a fraction meant that I began to read the Bible through different eyes. Old stories suddenly took on disturbing, startling new contours. And I began to “get” Jesus for the first time.
The notion that Jesus is trying to clear economics out of the temple is as wrong-headed as it’s possible to be. That is utterly alien to biblical piety. Psalm 19 is a psalm that moves from a celebration of creation to a celebration of the Law. The two are intrinsically linked. Yahweh has created the universe for the good of its inhabitants and for Yahweh’s own joy (hence the wedding imagery in vv 4bff). The psalmist launches directly from this into a hymn of praise for Yahweh’s Law, because “in keeping them there is great reward” (v11). The primary context of “reward” isn’t legal, but has to do with life. Life lived in obedience to the Law is rich and full. It is “sweeter than honey, and the drippings of the honeycomb” (v10) – infinitely desirable.
To be “innocent of transgression” is important in itself, because Yahweh is the judge of human hearts and actions. But more importantly, it means to be living life as Yahweh intends to experience its fullness and gift. It means to experience life with God.
In other words, the universe belongs to God, who intends good for the creation. All of reality and all of living is embraced by Yahweh’s intentions for good. The Law is not intended primarily to provide a legal framework for society (although it does so by extension) but to reveal Yahweh’s character. The Law (which is given in the account we have this week in Exodus 20: 1-17) does not establish Yahweh as the great legal eagle in the sky. Rather it explains the Exodus! It explains grace! This is the kind of life Yahweh intends for people – that is why Yahweh heard their cries in the slave pits and delivered them out of Egypt! To be Yahweh’s people is not so much a case of being given laws to live by but Yahweh’s fellowship – hence the primacy of the first commandment. It is Yahweh’s self-gift. And it therefore follows that the same sorts of attitudes and character should begin to take root in Yahweh’s people – rather in the manner that owners become more and more like their dogs! One of the most important aspects about the 10 commandments is that they embrace all of life – religious, social, political and economic.
It follows, therefore, that true worship of the true God does not exempt any area of human existence from the reign of God. That is what it means to confess God as Lord. It is also what Jesus means when he talks about the kingdom of God – not some other-worldly, spiritual reality or place, but human existence lived in the company of God.
Let us return to the cleansing of the temple for a moment. Jesus is not angry because there are animals fouling God’s house, or money-changers changing coinage from all over the realm into the temple currency. That business is necessary if the temple is to fulfil its function – be a place for all peoples and enable them to make sacrifices in worship. The problem, in Jesus’ eyes, is what it had become – a corrupt system that had its own dynamic that was “exempt” from the laws of God. What had started out to facilitate worship had become an exploitative economic system in its own right.
It is the Synoptic Gospels, rather than John’s, that emphasise the corruption of the system and the way in which it militated against the poorest people. Jesus’ problem was not that it made sacrifice possible, but that it made increasingly impossible for the poorest! It made access to God dependent on economic circumstances – and God’s grace and compassion was, in fact extended to the neediest first. This is what drives Jesus as he drives the traders from the temple.
Of course, in John’s gospel, the cleansing is also tied up with John’s theology of the signs. It follows immediately on the heels of the wedding at Cana – the first of the signs that reveal to Jesus’ disciples who their Master is. Significantly, the signs are usually in the Galilee – the disciples’ territory. This section is interestingly full of Jesus trafficking between Jerusalem and Capernaum. The significance is that the cleansing is also a “sign”. In John’s hands, it points forward to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection – a sign to be seen and understood by those who are sincerely looking. The Jews – Jesus opponents – fail totally to comprehend what is being taught. The disciples are watching – and remembering. It is a sign that will make sense to them after the resurrection (v22). But this is a strange sign!
A crucified Messiah is an anathema! Who can take seriously someone who is crucified? More importantly, if crucifixion was reserved for the lowest of the low in the criminal world, and pointed to the crucified one as god-forsaken as well as forsaken by the rest of humanity, how can the cross be disclosive of God’s love and salvation/ That is pure nonsense!
This is precisely Paul’s point in calling the preaching of the cross “foolishness” in the first letter to the Corinthians. It is divine folly – madness, rather than simply “ridiculous”! It cannot be a “sign” of anything, or demonstration of any sort of compelling wisdom (cf 1 Corinthians 1: 22). Its wisdom and power are seen in the fact that it brings Life – in John’s terms, “life in all its incredible fullness” (John 10:10).
So we are back to the all-embracing nature of God’s presence with us and our world. Back, in other words, to the economics of it all (in the case of the temple cleansing). Jesus was aware of how economic systems take on a life of their own, and benefit some at the expense of others. That is why it is so appropriate that Fair Trade fortnight falls in Lent. Here we are, looking at the cleansing of the temple – a conflict which points beyond itself. This conflict between Jesus and the temple authorities will grow ever more deadly. Here, at the outset of the gospel, John sets an incident that brings the shadow of the cross and the promise of resurrection into the gospel story. It is an economic conflict – and a conflict about the very nature of God. This will be a conflict that will cost Jesus his life – because those who benefit from the system will not be able to face it being challenged.
Fair Trade is all about recognising the economic systems we create, and their destructive powers. Discipleship of Jesus requires that we don’t exempt our economic lives from faith and worship. We are well aware of the ways in which the global economy links us all. What I choose to buy here in England determines how others will live in the Third World. I eat shop and live at the expense of others. I am therefore stuck. I cannot carry on doing what I do now that I know, but neither can I effect the changes I want to in order to eat, shop and live faithfully. The global economy is the only game in town – on the planet, in fact! Yet within that, there are small opportunities for doing things differently – spaces of integrity, like Fair Trade. I can begin to make a difference. And, small though they are, they are signs of something bigger.
The point about “signs” in John’s gospel is that they share in the reality they point to. In other words, they are not just empty gestures, but infused with the truth they point to. It’s the same thing with Fair Trade: shopping fairly, however small and insignificant it may seem, actually does make a difference. It changes lives. And here’s the promise: God is the God of mustard seeds. Small things can make a difference far out of proportion to their size. The global economy, like the temple, may seem impregnable. But the incident in John’s gospel reminds us both of the impregnability and fragility of huge systems (v20). The temple had been around for people’s lifetimes – and was still being built. Yet by the time of the gospel’s writing, it had been utterly destroyed. The global economy may seem as impregnable and durable as Apartheid, the Berlin Wall or Communism. Yet we have seen all of these toppled in our life times. Make Poverty History has made a huge difference to world debt. So will Fair Trade. Because, at this point in our Lenten journey, John reminds us, we are not just in the shadow of the cross but in the first faint glow of resurrection.
Amen.
21:38 Posted in 1 Corinthians , Exodus , John , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (4) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study
Monday, 13 February 2006
Epiphany 7 Year B
Isaiah 43: 18-25 NRSV text
Psalm 41 NRSV text
2 Corinthians 1: 18-22 NRSV text
Mark 2: 1-12 NRSV text
“They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (1:22)
Jesus was definitely out to cause trouble, and can’t have been disappointed! The healing of the paralytic belongs to the section that begins with the exorcism of the unclean spirit from the man in the synagogue at Capernaum, the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, and the cleansing of the leper. Mark hurries us from incident to incident, showing how, from the very first, Jesus’ ministry (significantly in the synagogues) provokes conflict with the scribes. Mark flags the forthcoming clashes over Sabbath observance in the first healing. In last week’s gospel text, Jesus usurps the priestly authority to declare lepers clean. This week, he goes even further: he attacks their sole claim to forgive sin, and is declared a blasphemer (2:7). This is the charge on which he will eventually be executed. From the outset, in other words, the shadow of the cross hangs over all that Jesus is doing.
This isn’t an attempt to read something clever or fanciful into the texts. Jesus’ messianic ministry is a quite deliberate taking on of the powers of the day that imprison and exclude – in particular, the purity system. He is wresting control of the levers of power from the power-holders, and they don’t like it one bit! Mark goes to extraordinary lengths to tell us that to be the Messiah meant going to the cross. But whereas Paul locates that necessity in the eternal plan of God for salvation, Mark tracks its necessity through Jesus’ ministry. Given what Jesus was doing, and the powers ranged against him, one side or the other had to lose. It was Jesus. The awfulness of his death was that the powers of death and destruction appeared to win – indeed, they did win! – and the wonder of the resurrection is that God brings something new and ultimately undefeatable from the ashes of the total failure of Jesus’ mission of liberating grace.
This is a great story for preaching, isn’t it? Think of the various characters and what’s going on for them:
q The paralytic: he’s totally helpless. He says nothing throughout the account, yet imagine the conversations that must have gone on. They arrive at the one-roomed house, and there is simply no way that they’re going to get through the crowd that’s spilled out into the street. Imagine his despair – but also his resignation. After all, this is what always happens to him. No luck: “Ok guys – great thought, thanks and all that, but let’s just go home!”
q Then there are the friends – and what amazing, determined friends! Which was the eternal optimist, I wonder? “No problem – we’ll get you in!” “Oh yes? Just how do you imagine we’ll manage that?” “Ummm … I know! Come on – up on the roof!” “The roof? How is that going to help?” “Easy! All we have to do is dig through it …”
q And what about the crowds? Imagine the scene: they’re all desperate to get inside, and, even though they’re not English, with an obsession for orderly queues, there’s still protocol here. Here are 4 men, carrying a stretcher, trying to get through … But wait a moment! They’re not trying for the door – they’re heading for the roof! That’s ok, then …
q Try being the house owner just for a moment. Just a poor man and his family, in a single-roomed dwelling. What on earth possessed him to invite Jesus in and let him preach?! BAAAD mistake! Just look at the crowds – wall-to-wall people filling every available space, wife looking daggers at him … and now the roof’s starting to fall in …
q Then there are the scribes, huddled against a wall in disapproval, bitter at all the fuss and stir Jesus is causing, trying desperately to avoid touching anyone who might be unclean and contaminate them …
q And Jesus? Here he is, doing his best to preach in some pretty adverse circumstances, and he’s suddenly showered with bits of falling roof. Suddenly, there’s a dirty great hole, letting the light in. But just for a moment, because then the light’s blocked, by … hey, someone’s lowering a stretcher down! The crowd push and shove to make space, and this stretcher lands at Jesus’ feet, with the paralytic on it. Jesus looks at him, then up at the hole where the roof used to be, to see 4 excited, anxious faces peering down expectantly …
Then there’s all the drama of the healing itself. Jesus doesn’t engage the man in conversation – he looks at the friends, sees their determination and faith, and tells the man straight out, “Your sins are forgiven!” Now that is shocking! Whether it was the crowds, who were amazed and excited by what Jesus said, or the scribes, who were enraged, the point is that everyone would have been thinking the same thing: (a) “I wonder what he did to be lying on the stretcher? It must have been something serious for God to punish him like this! Or if it wasn’t him, it must have been his parents. Who are they? Does anyone know any juicy gossip about them?” (b) “Did I hear right? Did Jesus just say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’? Who can forgive sins except God alone? And who can pronounce someone released from sin except the scribes and priests – and then only after the proper sacrifices have been bought and offered?”
Jesus, of course, knows exactly what he’s doing. He turns, not to the crowds, but to the scribes, and asks, “If this man’s illness has to do with sin, as everyone supposes, which is easier to say? ‘Your sins are forgiven’, or to demonstrate that they’re forgiven and tell him to walk? The latter? Alright – I’ll prove to you that I have authority to forgive sin!” And turning to the man, he orders him to stand up, roll up his mat, and walk! And he does! No wonder they all glorified God, saying “We’ve never seen anything like this!”
It’s a wonderful drama. But there are also all sorts of other things happening in this story.
- Mark is telling us that Jesus can forgive sins because he is the Son of God. It’s part of Mark’s Christology. This is why it is appropriate for Mark’s Christian community to worship Jesus – because he is God.
- Two unique “characters” make their appearance in this pericope. The first is “the crowd” (v4). Mark uses a characteristic and unusual phrase – ochlos, rather than the more usual and common laos. The crowd is a collective actor. They follow Jesus, hear him, witness what he says and does. He teaches them. He is open to them and welcomes them. He doesn’t demand that they become disciples, but tells them that the kingdom is theirs. Ultimately, the authorities are able to manipulate them and use them to kill Jesus. One commentator is almost certainly correct in identifying two important characteristics of “the crowd”. The first is that they are poor and unimportant. The word usually refers to the camp followers who perform the menial tasks required for soldiers’ daily living. Secondly, he identifies them with the am ha’aretz – “people of the land”. This was a term originally referring to those Jews who remained in Judea during the exile. They missed out on the Second Exodus – the return. They were second-class citizens. By Jesus’ time, the term was one of abuse. Pharisees were expressly forbidden to associate with the am ha’aretz – yet these are the people among whom Jesus lives and ministers.
- The second is the Danielic Son of Man (v10). Jesus uses this as a term of self-designation, which is why the term (which meant, simply “a human being” – “a bloke”) becomes a Christological title. Again, while Mark does not have a developed theology of the pre-existence of Jesus in terms of the Logos, for example, he is clear that Jesus is no mere prophet, but a heavenly being worthy of worship – the divine Son of God.
- As with the leper, Jesus attacks the scribal monopoly on the ritual forgiveness of sins, which was linked to the purity code and, because of the financial costs involved in sacrifice, was an added burden on the poorest.
- Jesus will be tried as a blasphemer, because he presumes to do something only God can do – forgive sins. Yet the healing vindicates Jesus’ authority to forgive sins – and his implicit claim to divinity. His eventual death will therefore be an illegal murder.
Isaiah 43: 18-25
This is a beautiful passage! It is an oracle of salvation. Judah is in exile, hopeless, lost, apparently abandoned by Yahweh. And now Yahweh announces the beginning of something new! And the “something new” is saving. “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (v19b) is a reference to the Exodus. This is promise of a new Exodus from captivity, and a return to the land. They are re-affirmed as Yahweh’s chosen people (v20-1; cf vv3-7).
But look at the contrast in v22. While wild animals, jackals and ostriches honour Yahweh as the provider and sustainer of life (v20), Jacob does not call on Yahweh. Israel has grown weary of Yahweh. Suddenly, we are into a courtroom dispute, and the Israelites are in the dock. They have not sacrificed and worshipped as they should – despite the fact that what Yahweh requires is hardly burdensome! Instead, they have burdened Yahweh with their sins and wearied Yahweh with their iniquities (v24b). They are justly accused.
Yet instead of judgement, Yahweh astonishingly announces … forgiveness! Yahweh will forgive them – not for their sakes, but for Yahweh’s own sake (v25). Why this astounding move by Yahweh? It is about Yahweh’s grace, and overwhelming desire to be their God and have them as God’s people. Even their sin will not be allowed to stand in their way. If they have wearied of Yahweh, and couldn’t care what Yahweh thinks of them, Yahweh has not wearied of them! Therefore Yahweh will forgive because that is the divine desire, even if the people do not ask for it or want it.
This is not as out of kilter with the requirement for sacrifice as it might seem – as though it is a conflict between Yahweh’s justice and mercy. We badly mistake the sacrificial system if we see the demands for sacrifice as “law”. It is Law – Torah – but covenant law. Israel has not so much offended justice as they have broken covenant. And covenant is always about grace. However abhorrent and bloody we may find the sacrificial system, the Israelites were always clear that Yahweh provides the sacrifice, as happened on Mount Moriah when Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac. There is an important principle here which reaches its acme in Jesus on the cross: God always ends up bearing the consequences of human sin and covenantal unfaithfulness. Yahweh always loses something precious in order to make things right. And, in the gospel, played out in the shadow of the cross, Yahweh will choose to bear the consequences of human sin in the loss of that which is most precious – God’s Son.
Psalm 41
It is no surprise that the lectionary compilers set this psalm for this week’s readings. It is a psalm celebrating confidence in Yahweh’s help, and a plea for healing. The psalmist is sick, and those around him assume that he has been stricken by Yahweh as punishment for sin – just as the crowd assume in the case of the paralytic. They use the illness as an occasion to start a public whispering campaign (yes, whispers can be very public!) against the integrity of the psalmist (vv6-7), while being hypocritically supportive to his face (v6).
But Yahweh is the great healer (v3), and so the psalmist calls on Yahweh to heal him and to so vindicate him publicly. The ill will of the people means that the psalmist sees them as enemies, who will view his death as their triumph (v11).
The psalm, like the gospel, calls us to examine our attitudes and prejudices towards those who are ill. We are unused today to link illness with sin and punishment, but our prejudice and tendency to exclude people is made frighteningly evident in cases such as mental illness, AIDS and other socially unacceptable diseases. To pray for healing for someone is always to ask questions about their exclusion, our part in that, and to pray for their restoration not only to health but to full participation in our communities.
2 Corinthians 1: 18-22
Paul is accused by the Corinthians of being a “yes and no” person – of giving and taking away at the same time. He strenuously denies this, and aligns himself with God, whose promises, he tells the Corinthians, are unequivocally “Yes!” God’s “Yes!” to us is seen in Jesus. It is unequivocal because it is unconditional. God doesn’t make grace dependent upon our goodness or faithfulness. Indeed, grace is seen in that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. In other words, we do not have to make ourselves any less unattractive to God in order for God to look positively at us. God, “to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden”, looks at us in the searing light of absolute knowledge and declares in Jesus Christ, “I love you! I long for you! Come to me!”
That sort of unconditional grace is something the Church is incredibly bad at preaching, affirming and living by. How often does Christian preaching – especially in the Reformed tradition – begin with how bad we are, and how unacceptable to God? And how often do we proclaim that we are saved by grace, and then make everyone live by the Law? It is astonishing and sad how many people are terrified of God, and feel they “have to get right” with God. The God whom the Church preaches and who is lodged so firmly in the popular mind is not that God! This is the God whose promises to us are “Yes and Amen!” Yet we preach a “Yes and No” God – yes, God loves us, but no, that doesn’t mean God accepts us. First we have to do this … and this … and this …
I remember leading a clergy bible study on the Prodigal. The Prodigal doesn’t repent. He doesn’t! Look at it again. He realises he has forfeited forever the right to be the son of the father. He’s prepared to admit that he has exiled himself from the family home forever – but decides to bargain for a place in his former home as a servant. I asked why we don’t preach the sort of radical grace exhibited by the father from the rooftops. The group was appalled! “What would happen if we didn’t confront sin? What would happen if we were to suggest that people could simply come to God, and they’d be accepted just like that?”
What would happen? Well, for one thing, they’d hear about the God whom Jesus calls Father, rather than the God peddled by a Church that likes to clutch hold of the keys to the kingdom in the way the scribes wanted to! I sometimes despair of the Church and our ability to get God so terribly wrong. But I’m encouraged by the paralytic’s friends. They won’t be kept out of God’s presence. They “unroof the roof” (literally translated). And when the walls of the Church shut people out from God, thank God there are some people who will unroof the roof, if that’s what it takes to get to Jesus!
Amen.
01:12 Posted in 1 Corinthians , 2 Corinthians , Isaiah , Mark , Psalms | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study
Wednesday, 08 February 2006
Epiphany 6 Year B
2 Kings 5: 1-14 NRSV text
Psalm 30 NRSV text
1 Corinthians 9: 24-27 NRSV text
Mark 1: 40-45 NRSV text
Jesus has begun his ministry, and the response of the people is “What is this? A new teaching – with authority!” (Mark 1: 27) Capernaum provides the “preview of coming attractions”: first he casts out the unclean spirit from the man in the synagogue, and moves directly to the first healing. By using the narrative device of a day, Mark shows the dramatic effect produced by the preaching of the Good News of the kingdom: the “whole city” gathers around his door, he heals many with illnesses and casts out many demons (1:32). The action which began in Capernaum is now extended throughout the Galilee with the first preaching tour (vv 35-9).
The healing narratives in the gospel aren’t a random – or even biographical – series of “here’s the story of the various people Jesus healed. Impressive, eh?” I noted last week that they are integrally linked to the effect produced by the message Jesus preaches. What they plot for us is the developing opposition to Jesus, provoked by his authority (for a detailed discussion, see this post on the healing narratives). We need to be as aware of the elements of conflict and opposition as we are of the healings themselves. Just as the exorcisms are an attack on the Strong Man (cf 3: 20-30), the healings are an attack on the purity system that made illness a reason for exclusion from the wider community. This exclusion is the “suffering within suffering”, so that the constant emphasis in the healing stories is on restoration.
Read Leviticus 13-14. Two whole chapters in the book, devoted to the subject of leprosy! Then look more closely at the elements in the story:
· The leper dares to approach Jesus, instead of remaining at a distance and calling out a warning: “Unclean!” You can picture how easily and effectively a leper got through the crowd to within Jesus’ reach, can’t you? They’d have parted like the Red Sea! Yet Jesus stands his ground.
· “If you choose, you can make me clean!” If you choose, or if you dare? Is this first and foremost an appeal to Jesus’ compassion, or is this a case of the leper seeing clearly who Jesus is – the one who overthrows the purity system? To be healed and to be cleansed are two different things (as you’ll have noticed from reading Leviticus). Only a priest could declare a leper clean. “Being clean” was a pronouncement, not a condition or disease.
· Jesus responds. He doesn’t only heal, he makes (declares?) the leper clean! Several commentators have remarked upon this and the possibility that Jesus is assuming the priestly role, thereby challenging the hegemony of the priests and scribes.
· Jesus’ response is dictated by compassion. The Greek word is as descriptive as it could be: splanchnistheis. It’s a “guts” word – and sounds like it! It means that Jesus was “twisted up in his guts with suffering empathy and ached to do something about it!” There is a church in the USA called “The Guts Church” – because its aim is to live out the compassion of Jesus Christ. Two things about Jesus stand out in the gospel: his authority and his compassion. In the narrative about power (the powers) that Mark gives us, Jesus’ power is defined by compassion. This is the power of God. It is what motivates the healing of the leper, as indeed it underlies the whole movement of God towards us in Jesus.
· Jesus touches the leper. You don’t do that! Apart from being made ritually unclean (which was more of a bother than a serious problem), it was suspected that leprosy was transmitted by touch. The, as now, the exact processes of transmission are unknown, but it was a deadly and highly contagious disease. It was the job of the priest to examine a leper carefully to establish whether the disease was in the active phase of contagion. Touching a leper was therefore associated with huge personal risk. Jesus touching the leper was akin to the images in the 1980s of Princess Diana hugging the AIDS sufferers.
· Look at the flow of contagion: instead of Jesus being made ill, the leper is made well.
I want to comment further on the notion that Jesus is doing more than healing the leper and restoring him to the community, and is mounting an attack on the purity system. Ched Myers suggests that he is. Now, it is one thing to say that Jesus’ healing provokes the hostile reaction of the purity system, and another to say that this is an instanced of a deliberate attack on the system. But what Myers does do is to make sense of the elements of anger in the story.
Suppose for a moment that the context of the story is one in which the leper has been to the priests to be declared clean (presumably the disease in not in its contagious phase) and that the priest has refused his petition (hence the sense of “if you dare you can make me clean”). Jesus both heals – the leprosy leaves completely so there is no doubt that he is “clean” – not even the priest could argue - and declares him clean. Then “sternly warning him …” The word embrimesamenos, translated “sternly warning”, more readily translates as “Then Jesus, snorting with indignation, sent him away at once”.
Snorting with indignation at what? Jesus sends him away to the priests, to make the due payment for a clean bill of health. What the NRSV translates “as a testimony to them” is actually more naturally rendered, “as a witness against them”. Eis marturion autois is actually a technical phrase in the gospel for testimony before hostile audiences (cf 6:11, 13:9).
In other words, Jesus heals the leper, declares him clean and sends him to the priests as an act of confrontation: “Look! You would not declare him clean, so I have removed all trace of the disease. Whether you declare him clean or not, I have already done so, and he is clean. And now you will make him pay you for an offering! This is indeed an offering to God – but as witness against you!”
Yet Jesus’ strategy backfires. The man aborts his mission, goes public, and Jesus is forced into hiding – not only because of his popularity, but because he is now a marked man: he has touched a leper. If this is so, we have an interesting reversal: Jesus now shares, in some sense, the ostracism from mainstream community life that the leper originally suffered, because of his compassion! Healing provokes conflict and opposition and leads to Jesus sharing increasingly the ostracism of those with whom he is in solidarity.
Psalm 30 / 2 Kings 5: 1-14
Psalm 30 is linked with this week’s texts because it is a psalm of thanksgiving for recovery from a grave illness. Leprosy would certainly be an appropriate context. The sense in v3 that the illness has been a living death – life in the grave – and healing not only “making me feel better” but “bringing me back from the dead” shows the enormous significance of a healing which is simultaneously restoration to full participation in the community.
If we’ve been overly theological about the healing and restoration bit, because of asking what it tells us about Jesus, here’s a good corrective. Psalm 30 tells us about the experience of this sort of illness by the sufferer. And words like “healing”, “clean” and “restoration” begin to bear their weight of personal experience. But so do words like “leprosy”, “unclean” and “exclusion”. They are experienced as living death. They cause desperation – seen not least in the fact that they drive the psalmist (sufferer) not only to pray to Yahweh but actually to rage and cry! “Made supplication” (v8) is a formal term that means to pray, but the prayer is interesting: “What benefit will it conceivably be to you, God, if I die, and go to the grave? What is that would be of sufficient advantage to you that you are killing me slowly and horribly like this? When I am simply dust, is that dust going to praise you? If you’re such a great God, and so need worship and adoration, let me live – then I’ll be in a better position to benefit you and give you what you want!”
There’s a rage simmering under the surface, as well as a desperation. It comes out barely concealed, and couched in what sounds like reasoned .argument. But suffering actually generates pain and anger against God. And there is a pastoral and theological concern here that we often do flick-flacks to avoid: God could prevent suffering and does not. Therefore God must take some responsibility for it, even if God doesn’t cause it.
This is part of Jewish spirituality that can teach us an important lesson. It’s about honesty with God, before God, and with people. It’s about dealing with reality. The excessive Christian politeness about suffering, hedged around so often with “faithful” phrases like, “If it is your will, O God …” in contradicted by the searing honesty of the psalmist. Desperate situations do not encourage deferential behaviour – and God clearly does not expect deference at these points! God is compassionate, and therefore understands pain and desperation. The question, of course, is whether we have an empathetic understanding of suffering – particularly the exclusion that others experience which is the “torment within the torment”. Jesus is right – exclusion is a killer (literally).
At the same time the psalmist teaches us something vital about God: Yahweh is the one who can be addressed from the Pit. What is more, the assumption is that Yahweh can be mobilised by these cries from the Pit. That, after all, was the experience of the Exodus, started because Yahweh heard their groans from the slave pits. Yahweh and acts – because the cries act as a nudge. The psalmist doesn’t sit back ands wait for Yahweh to act – the psalmist cried out! Isn’t this a reminder of the radical grace of God? Whatever our understanding of God’s power, we need to understand that it is driven by compassion, not pride. This is a God to whom we can cry and rage.
That Yahweh is not a God who must constantly be appeased and grovelled to, glorified and worshipped is emphasised in the story of Naaman the leper. This isn’t the main emphasis in the story, but it is enormously significant. Naaman is converted and will henceforth worship only Yahweh. This “clean” man recognises, however, that he cannot remain ritually – or theologically! – pure, because he will have to accompany his master to the temple in the worship of Rimmon. And so Naaman asks Elisha if Yahweh will pardon him for this. That Yahweh will is astonishing. Where is the rigidity of the demands for exclusive worship? Where is the insistence on the due process of law for the failures of purity? Why should Naaman not be condemned as an idolater?
As with Jesus, the answer is grace and compassion. God is a God whose primary concern is people. That is put above God’s holiness, power and divinity. The challenge is for the community of faith to recognise and reflect these priorities. So often the Church reflects the purity code of the scribes and Pharisees, rather than the grace of God. It is significant that the United Churches of Christ in the United States have made their identity around radical inclusion. “Jesus didn’t turn away anybody, and neither do we!” is the slogan. And it has been a powerful message! Have a look at the website and read the testimonies. People speak about how hearing just that one thing, and finding it to be a reality in the church they went to, stopped them committing suicide – suicide from the despair of being declared “unclean” by their home churches and excluded. Something breathtakingly simple, yet life-giving and lifesaving. God’s love breaks down all the barriers that we erect to keep ourselves pure and uncontaminated. God works beyond those. And when the church behaves like the scribes, Jesus works among those people, and says, “Now go back to the church and show them what I have done in your life! Let them try to say that you are not to be accepted! Show them – it is my witness against them!”
Amen.
14:27 Posted in 1 Corinthians , 1 Kings , Mark , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Epiphany 6 Year B, Mark 1: 40-45, Psalm 30, 1 Kings 5: 1-14, healing the leper, healing miracles, restoration, the purity code
Tuesday, 31 January 2006
Epiphany 5 Year B
Isaiah 40: 21-31 NRSV text
Psalm 147: 1-11, 20c NRSV text
1 Corinthians 9: 16-23 NRSV text
Mark 1: 29-39 NRSV text
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news!” That (1:14) is the message that Jesus is proclaiming in Capernaum. It is the message that he wants to preach throughout the Galilee (vv 38-39). The good news is that the time of waiting is over and that the kingdom has begum to take shape among them. That is the message, and what Mark the dramatist gives us in last week’s text and this week is the effect is has! It’s important to keep that firmly in mind, otherwise the section appears to read like a choppy series of unrelated incidents – and leaves the preacher wondering what on earth to say! While it is true that Mark showed us last week Jesus’ power as an exorcist, and this week as a healer, he isn’t trying to tell us, “Hey, this guy Jesus is a great preacher … and exorcist … and healer!” He’s telling us about the Good News in this opening summary – the gospel of the kingdom. Jesus, he tells us, is not only the bearer and herald of the Good News of the kingdom; he is himself the Good News of the kingdom. Where Jesus is, the kingdom has drawn near.
The point is that this is a message with power. It is not simply a word, but a Word – the sort of Word that God utters in creation. The message causes things to happen. It is not meant primarily to be heard, but to be experienced. It is an event. It changes things. The message that God is acting to transform this world into the kingdom of God is not just an announcement, but God in action! That is why there is the immediate confrontation with the man in the synagogue. And now – “as soon as they had left the synagogue” – Mark drags us in Jesus’ wake some 200 metres to the house of Peter’s sick mother-in-law. There isn’t time to draw breath – he arrives, they tell him immediately that she is ill, he goes into the room, takes her by the hand and, without a word, lifts her to her feet – healed! Only then do the men sit down to a meal, with mum-in-law serving. An interesting reaction, that, isn’t it? Peter doesn’t say, “Mum, you’ve not been well – come and put your feet up!” It’s straight to the kitchen for her in this man’s world of Jesus’ time.
Verse 32 sums up the day. It’s been eventful – Jesus’ first day (significantly, a Sabbath) out in his ministry – and already, by evening, they’re bringing him the sick and the demon-possessed. What is going on here? Jesus waits until the Sabbath has ended before beginning his public healing ministry – a sign that the Sabbath is going to become a major bone of contention. Mark is telling us about the Good News. The coming of the kingdom that Jesus announces means that a new power – the power of the Spirit – is loose. It is the power of liberation, because it breaks the hold of those things that imprison people: evil spirits and illness. Mark is telling us about a conquest that has begun. Jesus is claiming territory from the Strong Man in the name of God. And the response of the people who crowd in to receive their liberation, or seek it on behalf of others, is what Jesus means when he says, “Repent and believe in the Good News”.
Do we think of this sort of response by the people as “repentance”? Repentance surely has more to do with the reaction of the people to John’s preaching: coming down to the river to be baptised, or heading for the temple to offer a sacrifice. The point is that Jesus does not announce God’s displeasure, or condemnation, or threatening judgment. Jesus doesn’t announce Bad News. He announces Good News. In effect, what he does is simply to offer a no-strings-attached invitation in his message. “Repentance” is the appropriate response to God. And in the face of the Good News of the Kingdom, it is to respond with joy – to reach out and grasp the gift.
It’s sobering to wonder what our message is, how we understand the gospel, and to ask why we are not being similarly mobbed by needy people who hear and experience the preaching of the kingdom as the Best Possible News. Of course, the answers to that question have as much to do with complex social processes as anything else, but I suspect they also have to do with the fact that our gospel is frequently other-worldly, individualistic Bad News that is little more than a thin guise for persuading people to get their bums on to our pews.
There is one other important consideration here, and it concerns the sociological significance of Jesus’ healings and exorcisms. Both possession and illness did more than mess up the lives of the sufferers. The fundamental point is that they excluded the sufferers from participation in family, social and religious life. It is not that Peter’s mother-in-law is ill and feeling poorly that is at stake, so much as that she is excluded from all that is happening – particularly from the Sabbath meal. We will see how Jesus’ healings and exorcisms have this constant emphasis: restoration to the community. In other words, the message of liberation that Jesus preaches and enacts is not focused on making individuals feel better in themselves (for the sake of it), but about restoring and creating a genuine community for those excluded by the purity system. Where genuine community is created for the outcasts, the kingdom takes on present reality.
Illness or disability alone does not hinder people from living a full life. There is no sense in the gospels that a sick person cannot be a whole person. It is not the illness per se from which people need Jesus’ liberation, but the prison of social exclusion. Individual life has meaning within the wider network of communal relationships, and it is this exclusion that Jesus overcomes. Note how Jesus concentrates on the meaning of the illnesses rather than the illnesses themselves. He pays almost no attention to the symptoms, but rather focuses on the effects of the illness. Jesus is a healer – someone who creates wholeness – rather than a curer. It is when we grasp this significance that we break out of the sterile debates between the demythologisers, on whom the whole significance of the healings and exorcisms is lost, and the conservatives, whose only concern is whether or not we can believe that Jesus can do “magic”.
Isaiah 40: 21-31/Psalm 147: 1-11, 20c
Like the gospel reading, both of the Old Testament readings deal with the theme of power. Look at the refrain “Have you not known? Have you not heard?” (Isaiah 40: 21), which is repeated in verse 28. It is a question about Yahweh’s power. Verses 21-26 are a statement about Yahweh’s incomparable power as creator. This is awesome power. There is no one to equal or question Yahweh. Yahweh is above question, comment or criticism.
Such almighty power is threatening because it is potentially annihilative. If Yahweh is so powerful, what is the status of human beings? Are we not pawns – and potential victims – in the hands of such a God? And if we are, to whom might we appeal, if there is no higher authority? Why should Yahweh be mindful of us at all, let alone attend to our needs? That resignation and despair is the cry echoed in verse 27: “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God!” This is the cry of the exiles: “Yahweh doesn’t care! I am invisible to God and my suffering means nothing to the Lord!”
Then comes the second “Have you not seen? Have you not heard?” This time, the prophet reminds the people of Yahweh’s compassion and intimate care for the people. Yahweh is the God of the Exodus – the God who hears the groans of the slaves under the whip. “Yahweh does not grow faint or weary (ie of listening for and caring for the people). He gives power to the faint and strength to the powerless. When human resistance and the ability to bear oppression and pain run out, Yahweh will give strength so that the faint and the powerless will be renewed and soar like eagles!” This is the power to the powerless expressed in the famous picture of the Laughing Christ, from Brazil.
It is this astonishing, gracious compassion of Yahweh, expressed in God’s care for the least and neediest, that gives rise to the psalm of praise in Psalm 147. The psalm echoes the twin themes of Yahweh’s power seen in creation, and that power expressed in compassion for the neediest. The new community that Yahweh is building in Jerusalem (v2) is a community made up of the gathered outcasts, the brokenhearted and the wounded. It is a community where the downtrodden are lifted up and given life (v6). As a result, Yahweh’s power as creator becomes the subject of the song of praise (vv 7-11) because the creator is the one who uses this awesome power to sustain and give life to creation.
Both these passages echo the theme of Mark’s gospel. God’s power is awesome and astounding. There is nothing like it in all of reality. So what sort of God is Yahweh who has such power? What the prophet and psalmist affirm is something that is made unmistakably and finally clear in Jesus: God is a compassionate God, a God of Life, who wills life for all of creation. All of creation! That means that God has a special care for the excluded and the marginalised. This is why the new community that God builds – the kingdom – is always and necessarily a community where the least come first. This reversal shows that it is of God and from God, because it is so unexpected in its graciousness and invitation. It is no-strings-attached Good News of fulfilled time and the drawing near of the kingdom.
1 Corinthians 9: 16-23
Small wonder, then, that Paul is so motivated, excited and passionate about the gospel! This is the best news ever! It is something that he cannot keep to himself. He is determined to do everything to ensure that everyone hears the Good News. But “hearing” is not just about an auditory experience! Paul is well aware of the factors that can either hinder or help people to “hear” in such a way that they encounter the Good News as something that converts and changes lives. He knows that the messenger is often the single greatest barrier to a good message! And so he sets himself the task of being, as far as possible, “all things to all people”.
This is not some sort of cynical sales pitch, or marketing ploy. It is about genuine contextualisation of the message and, more importantly, radical identification with his audience. It is incarnational ministry. Just as Jesus became a human being to identify with the hearers of the message, so Paul seeks to be in solidarity with his hearers. It means foregoing all of the privileges of his birth, nationality and status as a Pharisee. The Good News takes him to places and people he would never have dreamed of going. More importantly, it changes him. To identify with the Gentiles – the outcasts of his Jewish world – transforms Paul. That he did this effectively and sincerely is evidenced by the Christian communities that he founds – churches where the most impossibly different people manage to live together in genuine community. And none more so than in Corinth!
The reality of this community-in-difference is clear from the problems that are created! But in this passage, the focus is on Paul’s conviction that Christian communities ought to reflect God’s passionate concern for all, starting with the least first. His churches weren’t the collections of like-minded people from similar social, ethnic and national backgrounds that our churches often are. The recurring image that Paul falls back on is of a body – different, but equal, and each with as vital a part as the others in building up the body as a whole. Paul’s understanding leaves no room for middle-class churches made up of exclusive cliques. Church is not about holy huddles of close friends – it is about a genuinely inclusive community that contains such radical difference that it can only be the result of the Holy Spirit’s activity! It is the new community that springs from the announcement of the Good News of what God is doing in Jesus – news that we cannot possibly keep to ourselves!
Amen.
12:40 Posted in 1 Corinthians , Isaiah , Mark , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study
Saturday, 21 January 2006
Epiphany 4 Year B
Deuteronomy 18: 15-20 NRSV text
1 Corinthians 8: 1-13 NRSV text
Mark 1: 21-28 NRSV text
And so it begins – spectacularly! The fledgling messianic community – Jesus, Simon and Andrew, James and John – go to the synagogue at Capernaum. Jesus enters and begins to teach. No time wasted here! Look at the themes in this pericope which will become so important as Mark develops his gospel further:
- Jesus teaches with authority, which is contrasted with that of the scribes. Jesus is operating outside the dominant religious tradition with its established authorities. He doesn’t proclaim his own authority – it is evident to everyone. Its evidence is defined by its contrast with the Temple figures. Note that it is not defined by learning, nor is there a suggestion that Jesus is some sort of teacher of apocalyptic mysteries, with insight into obscure texts and secret meanings. The whole tenor of the account is of openness. This is public. Its effect is emphasised by the reaction of the hearers in vv 27ff – amazement, authority, and spiritual power. This is Jesus, ministering in the power of the Spirit. It is prophetic. The reaction of the hearers is the reaction of people who know that they are in the presence of a man of God.
- He is teaching in the synagogues. These were the communal places where people gathered in their own communities. The contrast Mark draws is not between the Temple and a wilderness teacher, but between the Temple and a teacher who operates in a different strand of the religion – among the ordinary people, who gather week by week in the places in which they live to hear the scriptures expounded and to worship. There is a sense in which the synagogues (as opposed to the Temple) symbolise the earliest religious traditions that centre around the Ark – ie the God who journeys with the people, rather than the centralised cult in the Jerusalem temple. This is God among the people – Mark’s version of Matthew’s “Emmanuel – God with us”.
- Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom draws immediate fire from the demons. This is the opening, public round between Jesus and the Strong Man. Just as the people sense the obvious conflict between Jesus and the Temple tradition, the demons are well aware of the immediate threat to the kingdom of the Strong Man. It is not Jesus who is actively seeking a confrontation; rather, the message of the kingdom provokes opposition because it proclaims another reality – another world. The world as it is cannot remain the same if his message is true.
- Jesus is a powerful and successful exorcist. Exorcisms and travelling exorcists were common in Jesus’ time. Exorcisms were drawn-out affairs, surrounded in drama, mumbo-jumbo, mystical acts and incantations, the use of symbols and religious artefacts, and the summoning of the higher power by whose authority the demon was to be cast out. By contrast, Jesus invokes no higher power or other name. He acts entirely on his own authority. He commands, and the unclean spirits obey. This is why his fame begins to spread at once. He is famed not only as a successful exorcist, but (and this is the truly amazing bit of news that has everyone agog) he does it in his own power! The implication is clear: only God was supposed to have that sort of power! Even a prophet, acting in the name of Yahweh, would need to summon Yahweh’s power by name. This is part of Mark’s Christology: Jesus incarnates God’s power and presence in the midst of the people.
- “Be silent!” Jesus’ command to the spirit operates on two levels. Firstly, as an exorcistic technique, Jesus characteristically refuses to let the demon speak. Unlike his contemporaries, Jesus does not engage in lengthy disputes with the spirits, or let them “do their stuff”. In effect, he muzzles them. He will not allow them to display their power, because he is the one who has authority over them. Secondly, this is also part of Mark’s theme of the messianic secret. The demons know who Jesus is (v24), and when they declare his identity, Jesus silences them, as he will silence demons and people who identify him as the messiah. The point is that Jesus will not allow his messiahship to be defined and understood by his authority over demons and illness, however important that is. Rather, his messiahship will be defined by the cross – by his humility rather than by his power.
Deuteronomy 18: 15-20
“The prophet like Moses”. Moses tells the people that God will raise up prophets like him in the coming years to guide the people. The “likeness” doesn’t have to do with personality, but with the fact that there will always be prophets who will be able to speak with the authority of God and guided the people. Prophetic authority is vested in the immediacy of access to the counsel of God. Unlike the priests, who operate primarily in an interpretive tradition, the prophet speaks what he hears directly from God. Whereas the priest speaks what he has come to understand after wrestling faithfully with the Scriptures, the prophet acts as God’s mouthpiece, speaking only what God has commanded. Hence the chilling sentence of death Moses passes on prophets who announce their own thoughts as though they were God’s words (v20).
By linking this text with today’s gospel reading, the Lectionary invites us to consider the authority of Jesus further. Jesus stands in the prophetic tradition (as opposed to the scribal tradition). He speaks the words of God directly in the power of the Spirit – something immediately recognisable. This is a direct word that confronts and contradicts even the most faithful grapplings with God through the Law and the Prophets (the scribes and Pharisees). Jesus is a prophet like Moses – but, as Mark will show us, “one greater than Moses is here”. And who could have greater access to the mind of God than Moses? Only someone who is God incarnate!
1 Corinthians 8: 1-13
We live in an age and culture that is extremely sceptical about spiritual realities and spiritual power. Or, at least, modernity (rather than postmodernity) has been. These are things that are widely assumed to do with primitive, pre-rationalist pre-enlightment. They belong to humanity’s cultural, religious and intellectual “infancy. So we may read Paul’s discussion bout idols as affirming the fact that the realm of the spirits – as with idols – is actually the realm of unreality, to be treated with amused tolerance and condescension.
That is not what Paul is saying. He is not saying that idols have no power – only that they are not divine. There is no god but God. Idols are false gods. They are not “real” in the sense that they are gods, worthy of worship. They do, however, have a different sort of reality. They have power because they are used by their followers to justify particular uses and abuses of power. Idols give power to those who can claim to be acting in God’s name, rob their opponents of power and justify oppression and mistreatment. To that extent, they are very real and powerful indeed!
An idol may be a statue – a golden calf or a semi-human figure. It may also be the god proclaimed and worshipped as Christian, but have very little to do with the God revealed by Jesus Christ and whom he called “Father”. Apartheid was justified as an expression of God’s will for South Africa. This god was worshipped by devout Christians. The point made in the Kairos Document (which emerged from the townships in the 1980s) was that this god was, in fact, an idol. God is not like that! There is only one true God, says Paul to the Corinthians, and that is the One whom Jesus knows and proclaims as Father (v6). An idol is not defined by a false name, but by imputing the wrong character to God. Paul would agree with Bishop David Jenkins: “God is. He is as he is in Jesus!” All other notions of God – whomever we call God – are false. It is only when we know God through Jesus that we can be sure we know what an idol is – and then we can say it has no reality.
His fame began to spread …
What story is being told about us? Is our living and preaching and ministering recognisably powerful – not necessarily in the sense of being spectacular, but as being enlivened by the Spirit? To what extent do people experience God in our services and through us?
One thing that the Epiphany texts invite us to do is to explore the reality and work of the Holy Spirit. There is a deep reality to spiritual things that we easily miss or shy away from. Those of us instinctively sceptical or uneasy about “charismatic” type experiences of the Spirit are readily confirmed in that by emphases on novelty, the spectacular, or personal “thrill”. And of course, once we go down the route of suggesting that “real” Christians or “spirit-filled” Christians ought to have a particular experience of the Spirit, we are in bad, wrong-headed territory.
That is not what the work and experience of the Spirit is about. The Spirit empowers us to live the life of the cross in a world which is not yet the kingdom and which still kills messiahs. Yet we are also (thankfully!) becoming far more aware of the reality of spiritual powers (thanks to the work, for example, of Walter Wink). We are also learning how much we have been imprisoned by the confines of ultra-rationalist modernity and shut off from the reality of deep, sometimes shocking and disturbing, but real and vital experiences of the Spirit. To take seriously Mark’s gospel is to confront these questions – not with a view to refining our theology, or ensuring that we don’t miss out on some spectacular experience – but in order to become more faithful and effective disciples of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
22:00 Posted in 1 Corinthians , Deuteronomy , Mark , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study
Monday, 16 January 2006
Epiphany 3 Year B
Jonah 3: 1-5, 10 NRSV text
1 Corinthians 7: 29-31 NRSV text
Mark 1: 14-20 NRSV text
Jonah or Jesus? Which of these is the prophet after the heart of God? We are spoiled for drama with this week’s texts. On the one hand, we have Mark’s play that hurtles us from scene to scene with dramatic suddenness, and on the other, the second act of the drama of Jonah – surely the highest point of biblical comedy. And in all the parallels of the prophetic announcement of Good News, the thing that stands out most clearly is the fact that Jesus is himself part of the Good News he announces, whereas Jonah decidedly is not!
Jonah 3: 1-5, 10
Act 2, Scene 1: The Beach. The curtain rises on a huge pile of the stomach contents of a whale (yes, let’s call the great fish a whale, shall we? It makes for a whale of a story, anyhow!). Suddenly, the voice of Yahweh is heard: “Jonah, let’s talk about you and Nineveh again, shall we?”
Act 1 began almost identically. Yahweh calls Jonah to go to the “great city” of Nineveh and prophesy against it. Jonah foolishly responds by trying to flee from Yahweh. There is a delicious, hilarious irony to the chapter. Imagine trying to hide from Yahweh! We see Jonah, crouched among the sailors on a ship, apparently hoping that Yahweh won’t spot him! Jonah ends up in the belly of the fish, which is his place of conversion. He refers to the belly of the fish as the belly of Sheol – the grave (2:2). He prays, and Yahweh causes the fish to vomit Jonah up on to dry land! Imagine it – the fish swims into the shallows of a bay, and from several yards offshore, gives a mighty heave of the stomach. And in the fountain of stomach contents that fly through the air and land on the shore, there we see the prophet of Yahweh. Well, we probably don’t, at first: he’s indistinguishable from the rest of the stomach contents! And Yahweh addresses the pile of dead fish, plankton, seaweed, shells etc: “Jonah, get up!”
Now the pile begins to shake and dissolve, and a bedraggled, stinking human being emerges. It is Jonah! This time, Jonah’s only response is to set off for Nineveh without a word.
He arrives at the “great city”. Everything in the story is in hyperbole, exaggerated for comic effect. The city is apparently three day’s walk across – some 108 miles! The irony, of course, is that this is precisely the length of time that Jonah has wasted in the whale’s stomach!
But look at his sermon – all of 8 words long! Hardly a great sermon – but note how astoundingly, ridiculously effective it is! The people believe, proclaim a fast and put on sackcloth. Everyone! And when the news reaches the palace, the king decrees that even the animals must don sackcloth and repent. Has there ever been such a wholehearted response to the word of the Lord? And so, in verse 10, Yahweh changes his mind about visiting calamity on the city.
The whole focus of the book, however, is not Nineveh, or the success of the prophet’s message. Rather, it is about the prophet himself. In the very next verse (4:1), Jonah is displeased! He goes into a grand sulk, and rails at God.
“I knew it! I knew this would happen! I knew you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and ready to relent from punishing! That’s why I ran away in the first place! And see? I was right all along! No fire from heaven, and all that satisfying judgement! Instead, you’ve let them off!”
Jonah is furious because God is loving and merciful, so that what he fondly hoped would be Bad News to the people of Nineveh turned out to be Good News after all. God’s love and mercy mean that God always desires the best for us. This is a book about a prophet who bitterly resents the fact that the God whom he serves is a God of love and salvation. It is a comedy about the contrast between God and one of God’s people. The book ends with God chiding Jonah: “Jonah, isn’t it ri