Wednesday, 07 June 2006
Trinity Year B
Moving!!!
If you've got here via a search engine query, you might like to know that this site will only be operational here for this week and next. I have already moved it HERE, where the layout is better. I shall cancel my subscription to blogSpirit. I'm duplicating the blog here for the moment while the search engines learn the new site. That may take time, though, and they won't pick it up for a while. So if you find this helpful, bookmark the new site. Best wishes, Lawrence.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Isaiah 6: 1-8 NRSV text
Psalm 29 NRSV text
Romans 8: 12-17 NRSV text
John 3: 1-17 NRSV text
Nuns on the Run is the story of two small-time crooks (played by Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle) who are on the run both from the Police and the Triads. They hide out in a convent, disguised as nuns, where Eric Idle finds himself scheduled to teach the A-level Religious Education class. He’s horrified. Robbie Coltrane, a lapsed Catholic, tries to reassure him by telling him how easy it will be. What’s your first lesson on?” he asks. “The Trinity!” Robbie’s face falls. “The Trinity! Now that’s a bugger!”
Most ministers and preachers appear to experience a similar sinking sensation when Trinity Sunday comes round. Far from a sense of excitement and awe at a service focused very specifically on God, the overwhelming sense is one of dismay – how to explain the inexplicable! “Trinity” means pulling out illustrations of shamrocks and sun, sunlight and warmth. For me, it conjures up the memories of trying to get my head around Barth’s “Revealer, Revelation and Revealedness”, or of listening to Nicholas Lash expound his (helpful) notion of the Trinity as “speaking of God in three ways”.
Having worked for a couple of years in local government with a Shi’ite Muslim, it also conjures up memories of heated debates, Shabir demanding that I explain how I can possibly call myself a monotheist when I clearly believe in three Gods! And in parenthesis, I must say that one of the most helpful things I have discovered on the doctrine of the Trinity is Moltmann’s insistence that to be Trinitarian is what it means to be Christian, and to be neither a monotheist nor a polytheist.
The drama of salvation
But all of this is to miss the point that our texts make so clearly this week: the “doctrine of God” is not a matter for academic debate or catechesis, but the outcome of our experience of God in Jesus Christ. The Trinity is a necessary corollary of salvation. Jesus, in this famous chapter from John’s gospel, talks of having descended from heaven, being the only-begotten Son of the Father (who loves the world and has sent him to save it) and of the Spirit who blows like the wind, bringing new life/birth. The Trinity, in other words. And if our response is, “Yes, but I’ve always thought that this is a great “gospel” passage”, then the response is, “Precisely!” Let me put this as forcefully as I can: the fundamental point to be made on Trinity Sunday is that the doctrine of the Trinity means nothing less or other than rehearsing the story of salvation! And if we do something other than that in the pulpit this Sunday, we are taking a drama and turning it into a conundrum – and that is neither faithful to the Scripture nor is it the place of preaching! The Trinity is the story of God’s passionate determination to be present with the world. It’s the reminder that God’s primary disposition towards the world is of love, not judgement. It is about the fact that the saving God is the God of resurrection and recreation, giving new birth and Life to human beings. And it is the reminder (in the person of Nicodemus) that none of this makes sense or fits easily into good religious schemes about reward and punishment, or stringent holiness movements, because God is a God of grace!
The Trinity, in other words, doesn’t just tell us who God is, but about what God does and what God is like! This is the day to get into the pulpit and tell again the wonderful, joyful story of who God is and how passionately, uncontrollably, inexplicably and inescapably this world is loved. It’s the Sunday to re-awaken a sense of wonder and to renew faith, because it is Gospel Sunday!
The “Three-in-One” stuff
If the Trinity is about the drama of salvation – about rehearsing the gospel story – what’s the point of all the stuff we usually think of in connection with the Trinity? What about the “Three-in-One” stuff? The doctrine of the Trinity attempts to safeguard our thinking and talking about God. It helps us to “get it right” – not in the sense of “explaining” God, but in the sense that we don’t create an idol in place of the Living God whom we worship in Jesus Christ and through the Spirit. I want to pick up on three aspects of the gospel story of God that the “Three-in-One” formula enshrines and protects: the fact that relationship is fundamental to the life of God; that the Spirit draws human beings into the very life of God through resurrection and adoption; and that it is appropriate to worship both Jesus and the Spirit because they are divine.
Three Persons: Love and relationship in God
The “Three Persons in One Godhead” stuff (Triunity: three in one) isn’t a cleverly-devised formula to keep Christians (and everyone else!) scratching their heads for millennia, or for keeping theologians in business! Again, it belongs to the drama of salvation. Look at the gospel passage. There is the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Three Persons. Not one Person. The story of salvation in Jesus Christ teaches us that it doesn’t do simply to talk about God only in singular terms. God may – indeed must – be One, but there is relationship within God. Three Persons in dynamic relationship. And the “cement” holding them together is love. There is a dynamic unity of love and will which means that God sends Jesus into the world to be its saviour, which will necessitate death. But Jesus is no unwilling sacrificial lamb! Jesus is a volunteer! In John’s gospel, Jesus’ high priestly prayer does what the Gethsemane account does in the Synoptic Gospels – it establishes that there is a unity of divine will! The love of God for the world is matched by the love of the Son in going to the cross. The loving self-sacrifice of the Son is matched by the love (not anger!) of the Father, who abandons himself to the loss of the Son. Which constantly makes me wonder, by the way: why does so much Christian preaching lead people to suppose that Jesus loves the world, but has to appease God who is angry with it?
The Spirit is sent in the same way as the Son is sent. In John’s gospel, the Spirit is “Another Christ”. Paul picks up on this, as we have seen in recent weeks, when he insists that anyone who has the Spirit belongs to Christ because the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ (as well as the Spirit of God). In John’s gospel, the role of the Spirit is to “lead the disciples into all truth” (14:26, 15:26). Jesus makes the Father known to them. He does so as the Word made flesh– the one who has come from the bosom of the Father (1:18). As such, the disciples can trust absolutely what they know of God through Jesus. To see Jesus is as good as seeing the Father.
That is why the disciples preach Jesus! Jesus came (in John’s gospel) to make the Father known. However, he was rejected and crucified. The rejection of Jesus was also the rejection of the God whom he called Father. Yet God does not allow the crucifixion to stand as the last word. Unknown to those crucifying him, Jesus is the Lamb of God, whose death takes away the sin of the world (John 1: 29). This means that the disciples preach Jesus. They don’t just repeat his message: now they have a further story to tell – the story of God walking among us in Jesus and saving us though his death and resurrection. They can tell this story because it is God’s story! The Jesus story is not simply the story of God acting through a man: it is the story of God as a man! Jesus is the act of God.
“Three on one” therefore insists that we have first and always to speak about God in terms of relationality. To be God is to be in relationship. The relationship between God and the world flows out of the relationship of love that exists between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It means that Jesus is not just a man of God, but God as a man! And if Jesus shows us not only what God is like, but what it means to be human, then we come to understand that to be truly, fully and freely human – to have “Life in all its abundance” – is to be related in love to God and to one another.
The Spirit of Resurrection and Adoption: being drawn into the life of the Triune God (Romans 8: 12-17)
Jesus (particularly in John’s gospel) comes to reveal the Father. This revelation is not “facts about God”: it is to draw us into the very Life of God, so that we become in reality what we are intended to be through creation – children of the Living God. The risen Jesus does this through the Spirit.
The primary role of the Spirit in Romans 8 is resurrection. This is the Spirit of Life who liberates us from death (8:2). To have the Spirit dwelling in us is to belong to Christ (8:9). We saw this last week. The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. Yet look at 8:10, and what Paul says: he has just finished explaining that if the Spirit of Christ indwells us, we belong to Christ. Then he says, “But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness”. Note that, in Paul’s, eyes, having the Spirit is the same thing as having Christ. This is not because Jesus and the Spirit are the same. They are distinct persons. Rather, it is the Spirit of resurrection who raised Jesus from the dead and now dwells in us, so that we undergo death to the old life and resurrection to the new. What happened to Jesus at Easter happens to us through faith in Christ: we immediately pass through death and resurrection, so that we are already on the other side of our own death! That is why Paul can talk as he does about there being no more condemnation for those of us in Christ Jesus (which is how he has begun the chapter and concludes it in vv31ff).
But this means that the Spirit is also the Spirit of Adoption. Not only are we raised from the dead, as Jesus was, but we are drawn into Jesus’ life as child of the God whom he addresses as Father (v15). Isn’t it curious how much time and energy we often spend worrying about what will happen to us when we die? It’s as though the answer to that question has yet to be settled – when Paul goes to extraordinary lengths to explain that it has already been answered! The only person whose death was open to question in this way was Jesus himself – and God raised him through the Spirit! Now we who have the Spirit have Christ. We have already died with him and been raised with him – and we shall be glorified with him. That is already settled. We have been incorporated into the life of the Triune God! That is what “Life in all its abundance” means! We are incorporated into God’s family life. That is why one of the most ancient formulas of salvation was, “He (Jesus) became a man, that we might become divine”. And that is exactly right! How about that for a message for Trinity Sunday, eh? We share in the life of God!
The Oneness of God: Love and worship
I have suggested that the Trinitarian formula of “One God in Three Persons” is made necessary because of salvation. We encounter God in three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And yet Judaeo-Christian faith has always insisted that God is One. There is only One who is worthy of worship, and that is God. There cannot be more than one God, because that could be potentially conflictual! What if one God wanted one thing and another God another? Where would we poor humans be? How would we decide what to do? We have already seen that we talk about Three Persons as a way of expressing the unity of will between Father, Son and Spirit – the unity of love. This unity of will and purpose means that we have to do with three Persons, not three gods! The statement “God so loved the world …” is an expression of the love of the divine family for the world. We cannot preach or believe as though there is a difference in attitude towards the world among the three Persons – particularly between Father and Son.
I remember hearing a sermon by Rowan Williams in which he said – almost as an aside – that “We must not preach the cross as though there is a difference of attitude between Father and Son”. Suddenly, all the unease I had felt about the gospel as I had heard it preached came into focus. I had heard it as, “God is holy and we are very sinful. God is angry with our sin. By rights, God should judge us. Yet the sinless Jesus gave his life for us voluntarily. Jesus took the punishment from God that was ours by right, so that, if we have accepted Christ as our personal saviour, God looks at us and sees the righteous Jesus and accepts us”. There was a sense there – no matter how often and forcefully I heard John 3:16 quoted – that the Father is basically itching to let fly with some thunderbolts, but Jesus (who is the “nice guy” in the godhead) deflects all that anger on to himself, so that God’s thirst for judgement is satisfied and we’re okay. Now I know that that’s to caricature things – but actually, it is to do so only slightly and far less so than we fondly imagine we are doing! Grace is as much the Father’s idea as the Son’s! There isn’t a “playing off” of holiness against mercy within the godhead. We are loved by God – Father, Son and Spirit – with the same saving love. And our response to that grace ought to be love: to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength.
Love issues in worship. What set earliest Christianity apart from other messianic Jewish sects was the insistence that it was appropriate to worship Jesus. Now, if worship belongs only to God, then this was a very serious error … unless Jesus is as divine as the Father. That is what John tries tirelessly to tell us in his gospel. His is the story of Jesus that is constantly presenting us with the divinity of Jesus and the outrage that it caused. Jesus’ claim to divinity in John’s gospel is unequivocal: “Before Abraham was, I AM!” It is in John’s gospel that Thomas confesses Jesus as “My Lord and my God”. This is the faith of the Church. But it is not about playing metaphysical games, or rehearsing ancient controversies. It is saying something fundamental to everything we are and do as churches: we love Jesus and worship him as God. So Trinity Sunday ought to be the Sunday when we worship as on no other day! It’s a day for renewing our love and celebrating God’s story in worship.
God with us – the foundation of Word and Sacrament (Isaiah 6: 1-5/Psalm 29)
Poor old Isaiah! He’s in real trouble – and he knows it! He’s in the temple, and he sees the Lord, glorious and lifted up. That is not good news! He knows he is in mortal danger. To see Yahweh is to die, because Yahweh’s majesty and holiness is awful. Yahweh’s voice can smash mighty cedar trees, uproot cities, flash forth flames of fire, shake the wilderness, send huge oak tress skittering and strip the forest of its leaves (Psalm 29: 5-9). Yahweh is no tame god! So Isaiah’s first response is “Woe is me! I am lost!” (Isaiah 6: 5). That’s a very polite version of what he’s effectively saying!
Isaiah 6 and Psalm 29 belong to a venerable tradition of the threat of Yahweh’s presence. Yahweh has no business being on earth – it’s far too dangerous for human beings. It’s dangerous for two reasons. The first one is moral: Yahweh is holy, and we are not. Yahweh’s holiness is a “consuming fire”. The second reason is one that is less dominant in the Bible but strong in the classical Greek tradition: God is God and Spirit; we are creatures and mortal. That which is spirit has no place among the earthly. In fact, the aim of human living is to discover how to flee the earthly into the realm of the spirit.
Here in Isaiah 6 we have a moment of the same sort of grace that we will see in spades in the Incarnation: God’s presence doesn’t destroy, but cleanses, liberates and commissions. That Jesus is God incarnate is an affirmation that God is not the sort of god who cannot be present on earth. Nor is God restricted to the sterile environment of the Holy of Holies. In Jesus, God enters into the depth of human darkness and living. Neither the fact that God is creator nor God’s holiness can keep God out! The grace of love is too passionate – too driving a force. It is transgressive. It bursts through the boundaries of purity and divinity with startling, life-giving energy and power. It is a astounding because it is entirely inappropriate! We look around, and suddenly discover, in Jesus, that God is among us!
And isn’t this precisely what we mean by Word and Sacrament? “Sacrament” means that God can be present in created stuff. God can be present in bread and wine and water because God was present in a human being – Jesus! And because it is God’s incarnate presence in Jesus that is foundational, we know that God’s presence is a good thing! It is liberating, cleansing, forgiving and saving. It is grace, not judgement and destruction! It means that this world is a place where we can and do expect to encounter God.
Astonishingly, it also means that this world is the place where things happen to God! Now that is totally outside the rule book on How to be God! Things don’t happen to God. But things happen to the Triune God who walks among us in Jesus Christ! God took suffering and death into God’s self. In Jesus, God embraced human history. And as a result, God continues to be among us, present not only in Word and Sacrament, but in people and relationships. We meet God “in many a guise”. And we do to God in Jesus Christ. When we give a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty, we do it to Jesus. And when we do anything to the very least of our world, we do it to Jesus. When we are agents of grace (we children of God), people encounter God in and through us.
God’s mission and our mission (Isaiah 6: 6-8)
Isaiah is not consumed by the fire; he is cleansed by it. And the cleansed and renewed prophet is faced with Yahweh’s question: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” God is a missionary God. The earliest theological use of “mission” (meaning “sent”) referred not to sending missionaries, but to the sending of the Son by the Father and the sending of the Spirit by the Father (and the Son, depending on where you lived!). Mission is God’s idea, and God’s project. To be drawn into the life of the Triune God is to be drawn into God’s saving project of transforming the world into the kingdom. To be “ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven” is not only to “sing God’s praise” but to live it out in involvement in the world.
What makes out involvement particularly special? After all, there are many other groups and people who are involved in transforming the world – often with more commitment and to greater effect! That is perfectly true, and it means, for a start, that Christians ought to be far more generous about recognising allies and fellow-workers, regardless of what faith (or none) they profess. According to the parable of the sheep and the goats, we ought to recognise them as brothers and sisters, because what we do is as significant as what we say. In other words, the disturbing challenge of mission is that it blurs our neatly-drawn boundaries of who’s in and who’s out. It means that Christians who oppose the transformation of unjust structures (in Palestine, for example) are enemies of the kingdom, opposed to God’s salvation, while humanists and communists who deride any faith in Jesus but who do his will are worshipping the Triune God!
What is Christianly distinctive about our involvement, though? It is because it is done in the name of the Son and in the power of the Spirit. That is not playing games with doctrinal formulations. All I have been saying implies that it means that our involvement in the world, its people and its transformation can never be separated from our faith in the missionary God we discover in
Jesus and through the Spirit. Being translated, that means we cannot extract our actions, activities, the deployment of our resources, our priorities and decisions from the gospel story of God in Jesus. Mission and Christian faith and proclamation go hand in hand – because mission is the making a reality of the Good News of what God has done in Jesus Christ to save this world.
That means that we might be no more effective than others (although we believe that God is able to take a mustard seed and grow a mighty tree from it, so that the effects of what we do can be totally disproportionate to their size). We might be less effective than other groups who may, for example, have a far better grasp on how structures work than we do. The point is, though, that we believe and proclaim that the transformation of the world into the place where peace and righteousness kiss is more than a human project. It is God’s project. The transformed world discloses the gracious God who walks among us in Jesus and is present in and with us through the Holy Spirit. This is the God who yearns to draw us into the divine Life itself. We cannot but continually set out the clear invitation: come and find Life! Come and love and worship the living God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom be glory in the world and in the Church forever!
Amen.
13:05 Posted in Isaiah , John , Psalms , Romans , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Trinity Year B, John 3: 1-17, Isiaiah 6: 1-8, Psalm 29, Romans8: 12-17, doctrine of the trinity, trinity as the story of salvation
Tuesday, 04 April 2006
The Liturgy of the Passion - Year B
Isaiah 50: 4-9a NRSV text
Psalm 31: 9-16 NRSV text
Philippians 2: 5-11 NRSV text
Mark 14: 1-15: 47 NRSV text
It feels very peculiar to be concentrating on the Passion a week before it happens! But then, many people move directly from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, missing out the passion itself! It’s therefore very much a case of what to put in and what to leave out – particularly given the weight and size of the lectionary readings for the Liturgy of the Passion. I want, therefore, to do nothing more than to highlight some of the issues that leap out at me as I read Mark’s account of the Passion, and which seem to me worth stressing to someone who will otherwise miss out on this crucial (a quite deliberate pun!) section of the gospel narrative. It is, after all, the crunch – what it is all about. Mark has brought us at incredible pace to the outskirts of Jerusalem. The pace alone tells us how determinedly he has headed to this point. Interestingly, it is only once we are “at the city gates” that Mark slows the narrative pace, concentrating on the passage of time. There is a sense in which the entire gospel has been on “fast forward” as he whips through the lead-up that brings us to the events of Holy Week. Now he lets go of the button, and the story is allowed to proceed slowly enough for the readers to take in every moment of the unfolding drama.
Messianic anointing at Bethany (14: 3-9)
This is a strange passage in several ways – not least because of what it includes (Simon’s name, that he was a leper, the monetary value of the ointment) and what it leaves out (the silence on the woman’s name is positively deafening). This is extraordinarily ironic: the woman who will be remembered wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world and in all time is anonymous! Wouldn’t it be good to know who she was? And is it surprising that it is a woman who is so strikingly “forgotten” even as she is remembered? This is the significance of Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s book, In Memory of Her.
What is it about what she does that is so “memorable”? Jesus is doing more than saying, “This is a very striking incident that ought not to be forgotten”. He is holding the woman up as a paradigm of discipleship. Remember that the second half of Mark’s gospel is about the way of the cross, and the deep resistance of the disciples to it. The point here is that the woman – unlike the disciples, and Peter in particular – accepts that Jesus is facing the cross. She does not try to dissuade him from the path, but prepares him for it. In effect, she says, “I am doing what I can to walk this road with you”. It is costly ointment because the road ahead for Jesus is costly.
Sell-outs and signals: life in the shadows
The authorities have been conspiring to kill Jesus ever since 3:6. As the Passover approaches, Mark resumes the conspiracy narrative. Judas’ actions and the elaborate preparations for the Passover (14: 12-15) are puzzling at first sight. Why do the authorities need a traitor? Why not simply seize Jesus? And why the emphasis on the Passover preparations that have led many commentators to see this as some sort of miraculous foreknowledge that Jesus has about what the “two disciples” will find in the city?
These begin to make perfect sense when we recognise that Jesus and the disciples have gone underground. Jesus is planning his “Jerusalem campaign” strategically. Bethany is a safe haven for the group, which is being hunted by the authorities. Jesus has been careful to date: his appearances in the city have been public, in the temple, where it would have been difficult to seize him without provoking a riot. Mark paints a picture of a volatile situation that both makes it difficult for the authorities to move openly against Jesus and makes it necessary for Jesus to be very circumspect.
They are in Bethany in secret. If the authorities are to take him at a time of their choosing (preferably at night), they will need to know the group’s movements. They need someone on the inside who is prepared to keep them informed – and that person is Judas. Judas initiates the betrayal: he goes to the chief priests and agrees to betray Jesus for the promise of money. Mark doesn’t invoke any theory of satanic inspiration for Judas’ actions: it is straightforward, grubby money-grabbing. And so Judas begins to look for an opportunity to deliver Jesus to the authorities at time when he can be taken without fear of a riot. That means that he needs to find a time when they are in the city (rather than at Bethany) or close enough for the authorities to get together an arresting party at short notice. And it needs to be at a time that will enable them to act without being observed by the people – ideally, therefore, at night.
It will be the Passover that provides the opportunity. Jesus and his disciples will have to go into the city. This is highly dangerous, as well Jesus knows. Clearly, there was an anonymous group of sympathisers, living in the city and linked to Jesus and his group. Jesus makes arrangements with them to have a private room in which to celebrate the Feast with his disciples. The logistics are worked out carefully. Two disciples are to go into the city. Two men are hardly likely to attract the attention that Jesus and his band would if they went in en masse. There is an agreed signal: a man carrying a water jar. That’s the contact. Carrying a water jar is normally women’s work. It’s a clever signal – unusual enough to be unmistakeable and noticeable, but not so unusual as to be conspicuous or arouse suspicion. The two are instructed not to talk to him, but simply to follow at a distance. The contact will lead them to the house. The two are to wait until he’s gone in, then knock, and give the owner the agreed code (V14). Jesus has already had word that this man is able to provide them with a large, unfurnished room upstairs that they can use. The two disciples are instructed to prepare the unfurnished room, and then return to Bethany to lead the group secretly into the city under the cover of darkness. Wonderful cloak-and-dagger stuff – yet terrible, terrifying and deadly.
Betrayal and covenant
When we realise just what is at stake, and just how careful Jesus is having to be, we begin to take on board just how callous and cynical Judas’ betrayal is. It doesn’t matter how elaborate the precautions are that Jesus takes to ensure the group’s safety: there is a traitor in their midst. They are doomed. We – the audience – know this. And so does Jesus.
Small wonder, then, that the opening words recorded in Mark’s gospel are words of sorrow and accusation: “One of you will betray me!” The disciples are probably just beginning to relax, and believe that everything has gone safely according to plan. Jesus’ words area bombshell, and they “begin to be distressed”, as Mark puts it. This is the closest Mark comes to English understatement! They would have been shocked, frightened and devastated. It can’t be true! The pressure must be getting to Jesus – he’s losing the plot. After all, if he only stopped and thought about what he was saying – even for a second – he’d realise just how ridiculous it sounded. They begin to relax, having convinced themselves that it’s all down to stress. So Jesus speaks again. “Yes, I do know what I’m implying. So let me tell you straight. We’re not talking about one of our friends, who has helped us thus far. I’m talking about you – the people in this room. It is one of the Twelve – however unbelievable you find that!”
One question that arises is, given Jesus’ antipathy to the temple and its compromised cult, why does he bother with the Feast – particularly in view of the dangers associated with being in the city itself? The answer lies in what Jesus will do at the Passover. This is to be the new covenant. Here is a word of hope and promise. Until now, he has told the disciples only that he will be handed over, will suffer horribly, will be killed and will rise again. Now he promises them that it is not in vain. This has a purpose: his death is for others.
We talk glibly about the “new covenant” as a covenant of grace. Yet it is when we listen to the words of institution, prefaced by “On the night in which he was betrayed …” and realise the sick despair that Jesus must have been feeling as he sat at the meal, that we begin to appreciate what “grace” means. It means Jesus facing the fact that one of his hand-picked friends, with whom he had shared his life and hopes and dreams, had callously and deliberately decided to betray him. And Jesus knew that this was the night. He knew, too, that his best efforts to convince the disciples about the way of the cross had failed. They would all desert him before the night was out. If his criterion for true discipleship was “denying themselves, taking up the cross and following”, then none of the Twelve was actually going to make the grade. Everything that Jesus has worked for is about to be smashed beyond any hope of repair.
Looking all this fully in the face, Jesus’ response is to promise them a future. It is a future based on what he will do alone. It is a new covenant based not on their faithfulness but on Jesus’ faithfulness. It is the promise of fellowship, given to traitors and deserters. Even though Peter will deny three times that he ever even knew who Jesus was (another sign of the intense threat facing the community), Jesus will never deny him.
Gethsemane: torment and terror
As the group (now minus Judas) leaves the upper room to return to the safety of the countryside, Jesus knows that it is too late. They have been betrayed. Escape is impossible. Jesus must face the cross. Typically – and unsurprisingly – he chooses to spend the short time he has left in prayer. But this is a startlingly atypical “Jesus-in-prayer” scene. Mark’s account of Gethsemane is deeply shocking. Something terrible and destructive is happening between Jesus and the God whom he calls Father. Several times in the gospel we find Jesus withdrawing at key points to be alone in prayer (cf 1:35, 6:46). He draws strength and encouragement from communing alone with his Father. Here in Gethsemane, Jesus is desperate not to be alone in God’s presence! He asks his friends to keep watch with him – because he is terrified. The language of 14:33 is very strong: he “shudders in distress” (ekthambeisthai) and “anguishes” (ademonein). Its force is difficult to covey adequately. The scholar Lohmeyer says, “The Greek words depict the utmost degree of unbounded horror and suffering”.
This is no reassuring time spent with God! Jesus throws himself to the ground, begging God like a child (“Abba, Father, please …”) to spare him what lies ahead (v36a). And he is answered with silence. Yes, Jesus could have refused to go through with it, and yes, Jesus responds by saying “Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll do it” (v36b). Yet Mark wants us to understand that Jesus finds the silence of God appalling. God will not grant his request – and this is the reason for Jesus’ terror.
What is it that is so appalling? Clearly, there is deep dread at what lies ahead. Jesus would not be human if he didn’t fear it. Yet Jesus is no coward. There seems, in these verses, to be an altogether more terrifying prospect: the fear that he, the Son, the Beloved, who loved the Father as no one else has, could be ‘forsaken’. He will not refer again to God as “Abba”, but only formally as “God”. Jesus did not fear for his life. He feared for God. He experienced God’s silence as abandonment, and it tore his soul apart.
What did the cross mean for Jesus? We see it here, as he struggles in Gethsemane. But struggles with whom? It is more than his struggle with what lies ahead, more than his struggle with himself. Gethsemane is Jesus’ struggle with his experience of God – the death of the Father-Son relationship. This is his torment, and this is what he endures on the cross through his self-surrender.
The collapse of the discipleship narrative
This is a dark and depressing story. We are watching the disintegration of all that Jesus has been about unfolding. The tragedy is as inexorable as it is inevitable. Try and imagine what it must have been like for Jesus. He is utterly alone. The disciples have slept, completely impervious to his agony. They just will not “get it”. Jesus wakes them – literally and symbolically. As they struggle into wakefulness, still rubbing the sleep from their eyes, all hell breaks loose. An armed crowd arrives. They haven’t evaded their enemies. Then Judas steps forward from among the crowd – their Judas! – and kisses Jesus. There is an immediate scuffle. Jesus is taken. Terrified, the disciples scatter. Mark puts it starkly: “All of them deserted him and fled” (14:50).
A sign of hope
At this point, however, Mark introduces a tantalising mystery in the form of “a certain young man who was following” (v51). The armed crowd try to grab him as he runs off, catching hold of his clothing (a linen cloth). He tears away and flees into the night, naked, and leaving them holding the linen cloth.
This “young man” is a symbol. The cloth is the symbol of the cloth in which Joseph of Arimathea will wrap Jesus’ body for burial (cf 15: 46). The young man “reappears” at the resurrection, now wrapped in the white robe of the saints and martyrs (16: 5). He is the symbol of the promise of a renewed community of discipleship. He flees the Garden naked (symbolising shame) and is found “restored” in the tomb (symbolising the new community that is given birth through the resurrection).
At the hands of the powers: the double trial narrative
Jesus is tried twice. The accounts follow an identical structure: Jesus is questioned about the main charge against him; he doesn’t reply; he is pressed further and responds ambiguously: “Am I!”/”You said!” Both hearings are then followed by some sort of consultation (between the high priest and the Sanhedrin, and between Pilate and the crowds). Each ends with a verdict, followed by mockery and torture.
Several scholars have suggested that Mark’s intention is to exonerate the Romans as far as possible, and to blame the Jewish authorities for the death of Jesus. The Sanhedrin, they point out, tries fair means and foul to obtain a conviction; Pilate, by contrast, tries to avoid condemning Jesus. He is well aware of the Sanhedrin’s determination to secure a conviction at any cost (15: 4), and tells the mob baying for Jesus’ blood that he has not done any evil to deserve crucifixion (15: 13).
However, the whole of Mark’s narrative has been structured to show the collusion between Rome and the temple. Jesus’ ministry has been a constant challenge to both. His trial is the moment of confrontation with the very powers he has come to destroy – Imperial Rome and the temple purity cult. Jesus is crucified as a messianic pretender and blasphemer: the truth is that he is the Messiah. He is crucified as a self-styled King of the Jews and political revolutionary: the truth is that Jesus is Lord and king.
Mark uses the mockery of the crowds to shout aloud the truth about Jesus. And nowhere is this to be seen more clearly than in the releasing of Barabbas. His name literally means “Son of the Father”. Jesus calls God “Abba”. The crowd call for the release of the “Son of the Father” and for the crucifixion of the true “Son of the Father”. We know this from 1:1 – Mark’s is the story of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. But this true Son of God is also the true revolutionary! His revolution is a different sort of revolution from the one Barabbas was part of. Jesus will die to bring about something more far-reaching than the kingdom of David. The revolution that Jesus is mounting is a one-man confrontation with powers, in the name of the kingdom of God.
Seeing and believing
The mockery is no more pronounced than on the cross itself (15: 25ff). Mark is doing more than using narrative irony to proclaim who Jesus is, however. This is “the Messiah, the King of Israel” (v32). The mockery is both total and Mark’s point about the “last word” on the Good News that Jesus preached and lived. Jesus is mocked by the passers-by, the chief priests and scribes, and the two bandits on either side of Jesus. Jesus is alone. The voice of God at his baptism and transfiguration is replaced and drowned out by the voices of mockery: “Everything you said and believed is rubbish! You thought you were so special! You thought you were God’s Son! You believed the Voice! Well, just look at you now!” Two things are happening. The first is that Mark is following his dramatic narrative formula of using irony to disclose truth. The chief priests will “see and believe” that he is the Messiah, the King of Israel, if he comes down. The ironic truth is that he is those because he chooses not to come down! Jesus is reaping the consequences of the “Your will be done!” choice he made in Gethsemane.
The second is that Jesus’ soul is being torn to pieces – because these voices make sense to him! Even though he hangs on (literally) and doesn’t turn back from the way of the cross, he does so in the face of the utter despair of being abandoned by God.
Golgotha: despair and death
There are no reassuring words from the mouth of Mark’s crucified Jesus. Jesus hangs on the cross in silent agony for three hours. He is utterly alone in his silence. He has been abandoned by his disciples: he is no longer the Master. He has been abandoned by his people: he is no longer a Jew. He has been abandoned to crucifixion: he is no longer regarded as human. And, at the moment of his death, he lifts his head to scream in despair, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
It is difficult to imagine how these words could have entered into Christian faith if they had never been uttered. Nor will it do to note that they are the opening words of Psalm 22, thereby making them less shocking and offensive. Psalm 22 ends up as a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance from death. Placing the cry of abandonment in that wider context robs the words of their horror and offence, but it will not do. The popular notion that Jesus recited the psalm his dying moments, after three hours on a cross, is simply ridiculously implausible. And the whole point is that there was no deliverance from death on the cross! Jesus dies, utterly alone, calling to God, but in despair and accusation. He does not refer to God as Father, but quite formally as “God” – as though he had come to doubt what had been fundamental to his identity throughout: that he was the Son, Beloved of the Father.
Three responses to Jesus’ death
Traditionally, there are three “true disciples” – three non-mockers, who respond appropriately to the death of Jesus: the centurion, Joseph of Arimathea and the women. The centurion’s statement, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!” is commonly taken as the climax of the gospel. He is the “ultimate witness” to the truth that Mark tells us at the outset of the narrative, and which is confirmed by the heavenly voice at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration. Joseph is the other, repentant “Nicodemus-type” figure – Jesus’ “friend at court” among the Sanhedrin, who fails to do enough while Jesus is alive but now, with his death, finds the courage he previously lacked and aligns himself with Jesus (see, for example, the way in which he is portrayed in The Greatest Story Ever Told). Both of these assessments need to be questioned.
The centurion: “Rome has triumphed over Jesus!”
This, at least, is Ched Myers’ contention. The centurion’s statement has frequently been questioned as an unambiguous confession of divinity. It could equally be a colloquialism – effectively saying, “This was a son of god (ie a human being)”. If so, we ought to read this as “This was (and is no more) a human being” – ie “This man is dead”. It is a formal declaration by the person responsible for overseeing the executions on Golgotha, and a declaration that Rome’s sentence and will have been carried out properly. That is precisely what we would expect of the man in his position. Moreover, the centurion then goes off to Pilate to report the successful completion of his mission (15: 44). If this is about an epiphany and conversion experience of a centurion who becomes a disciple, Mark is singularly silent about telling us so! There is no discernible change in the centurion – only an immediate return to his true Lord – Pilate! Pilate is wondering whether the power of Rome (Caesar) has “triumphed” over the “King of the Jews” (Jesus). The centurion’s role is to confirm that this is what has indeed happened!
Joseph of Arimathea: “The Sanhedrin has defeated Jesus!”
Mark is at pains to tell us that Joseph is “a respected member of the council” – in other words, deeply complicit in Jesus’ death. He is “waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God”. The traditional view is that he is an exception to his brother councillors in this. Yet there is never any suggestion in the gospel that the problem the authorities had with Jesus was that he preached the kingdom of God! They, too, were “expecting” it. Everyone was! The problem was the content Jesus gave to the kingdom. The Sanhedrin had found this blasphemous. They had sought to have Jesus killed – and now he had been. An end had been put to that little blasphemy. It could be safely “buried”.
It was, indeed, a bold move to go to Pilate. But is the boldness occasioned by fear of Imperial opposition, or is it a boldness that, under normal circumstances would be grossly impertinent, but, given the co-operation between the Sanhedrin and Rome in Jesus’ death, but in this context has as its basis a shared common goal?
Myers suggests – extremely plausibly – that the Sanhedrin wished to clear the whole matter away as quickly as possible, presumably to minimise possible trouble when the whole matter became public. What better way than to have Jesus taken down and buried as hastily as possible? And what clearer statement could be given that this matter was finished and filed in the archives?
Rather than a mark of respect, in other words, we need to see Joseph as acting on behalf of the Sanhedrin to consolidate their victory over Jesus. Joseph does not tend to any of the traditional offices or rites of burial – a reason, in fact, for the women to have to return to the tomb. Joseph appears only to wrap Jesus (carelessly?) in the nearest thing to hand – a loincloth (itself a symbol of the disciples’ desertion) and almost toss his body into the tomb and shut it in order to get things done as quickly as possible. There is nothing that shows any sense of respect: quite the opposite. This, then, is a hurried burial – the final indignity.
Further weight is lent to this argument by Mark’s use of symbols. A key area of contention between Jesus and the Sanhedrin has been the conflict over Sabbath observance. Jesus has stood far too loose on this matter. He is, as we are told in 2:28, “Lord of the Sabbath”. In the end, the Sanhedrin has successfully seen off Jesus’ challenge to the symbolic order represented by Sabbath observance. The one who claimed to be “Lord of the Sabbath” is subjected to the ultimate insult: a hurried, improper entombment for the sake of the Sabbath order, lest Jesus’ dead body profane the Sabbath! Surely Mark is not unaware of the irony here: the Sanhedrin, in the name of God, has conspired to have Jesus murdered. Their hands are covered in his blood; their system of justice manipulated, shamed and in tatters. And now they are claiming the sort of purity-holiness that Jesus despised and decried by attending scrupulously to Sabbath observance – as though that were a greater profanity than Jesus’ execution!
The women – the true disciples
The women are the “lifeline” of the discipleship narrative. These are the women who have followed Jesus from the Galilee, and served him. They have followed to the foot of the cross, and now they follow to the grave. Like the woman at Bethany who anoints Jesus, the women have not deserted him and fled. Neither have they tried to avoid the cross. In both of these things – being servants and following all the way to the cross and beyond – they have done what the male disciples were incapable of doing.
And so, at the conclusion of the Passion, in the place of death and entombment, we find ourselves in the company of the women who will be the first witnesses to something utterly astounding – something that will change everything forever: resurrection!
Amen.
14:02 Posted in Isaiah , Mark , Philippians , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (3) | 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
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
Monday, 05 December 2005
Advent 3 Year B
Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11 NRSV text
Psalm 126 NRSV text
Luke 1: 47-55 NRSV text
John 1: 6-8, 19-28 NRSV text
This is John’s beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Whereas Mark’s gospel last week pulsed with Mark’s characteristic impatience, energy, and hurry, John takes us to the time before time: to the very beginning of everything. Here is the christological reprise of the opening verse of the Bible. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, says Genesis 1:1. But John tells us (in effect), “In the beginning … Jesus!” Of course, what he actually says is that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God! In verse 3 that John goes on to rehearse the opening verse of Genesis, with the creation of all things. This is quite deliberate. To get into the “mood” of John’s gospel, we need to imagine ourselves sitting comfortably at the feet of an old man. And when we’re all sitting comfortably, he begins. With those two short sentences (vv 1-2) John tells us that the story we know from Genesis is not the full story. It is actually a Christian story – the story of God and God’s Word. It is only when we have learned that we cannot think of God apart from the active presence and companionship of God’s Word that we can re-member the creation story truly. The Word is a “him” – a person. Of course, we know that the Bible uses symbolic language about Word and Life and Light. We know that Wisdom is spoken about as a woman who is present at the creation. Yet there’s something tantalisingly suggestive in John’s prose that awakens anticipation. This is a story about Someone – not just a story about beginnings! The point about going back to the beginning is surely that this is going to be a story that discloses the truth of all things. Who is the Word – if, indeed, we are right to trust out intuition that this is going to be the story to end all stories?
With that preamble, just look at how anticlimactic verse 6 is! Here we are, in the swirling mists of pre-time, with God and the Word moving and active … and then the stark, “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John”. What a let-down! Here was a story that began so well and promised so much – and now here we are, back on familiar territory. God sends some bloke. Okay, that’s not insignificant. And certainly, if God sent him, we ought to pay attention to him. But we know about prophets and stuff. More of the same. So all that good stuff about the Word is just symbol! And as we settle (metaphorically) into a well-worn groove about how God acts in the world, John (with the glint of mischief and the gentle conceit of the master story-teller who knows just how to press the audiences’ buttons) goes on: “Oh no. This isn’t a story about John! John is just the Prologue. He comes on stage to introduce the main character – the Light. John has already come – but just you wait: the Light is on the very threshold!”
The “Ta dah!” moment is, of course, verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth!” All right! This is something else altogether! We’re not just getting a story about some prophet (however special) who does some of the usual stuff (however unusual and marvellous). This is a story of something never before conceived, imagined or paralleled: God’s one and only Son becoming a human being and living among us. Not just visiting, mind, but living! And, lest there be any confusion about who the main character in this story is, we are told that this is the one about whom John testified to as being greater than he (John) was (v15).
This becoming flesh of the Word takes us places we’ve never been before in the whole, long story of God’s saving love affair with the world. Verse 18 is our (the audience’s) line: “Hey, hang about here! No one has ever seen God! That’s an absolute rule! God doesn’t present God’s self to human eyes and experience. God is above all that! God doesn’t get involved in time, in change, in decay, in darkness! The bad bits – those are no-go areas for God! So how can you (John) claim to be telling us a story that is the Truth not only about our world but about God?” And the next sentence is John’s reply: “Ah, but you see, God the only Son, who comes from the very heart of the Father, is the one who has made God known!”
Of course, vv9-18 are omitted by this week’s lectionary. We’re looking at the testimony of John the Baptist to Jesus. But we won’t understand that John’s opening section focuses time and again on John only to make the point that the focus is actually Jesus, not John! The Baptist’s role in John’s gospel is to say, again and again, “I am not the One! Stop looking at me. Stop wasting time asking me questions about who I am, and what I’m doing here, and instead look at him, and ask yourselves who he is and what he’s doing here!”