latest

Hit Me (baby) One More Time: on turning the other cheek

April 24, 2012 by Bo Sanders 2 Comments

I’m going to see Slavo Zizek this evening. He is at the LA Library and we got tickets! In preparation I have been listing to all of my archives of his talks – including the last time he was at the LA Library. His conversation partner that night was Jack Miles (author of God: a biography) and the topic that night was violence.

As I listened again I was struck with how timely the dialogue was in light of our conversation about Jesus and (s)words last week – as Tripp and I prepare to go into the podcast studio this week to record a TNT about that, as well as leaving the church.

In his book ‘Violence’ Zizek addresses the idea of emancipatory or redemptive violence embedded in Christianity – a topic that we have discussed at length. But at one point Miles has to correct the philosopher. It concerned that issue of ‘turning the other cheek’. What Miles has to flesh out is that a master would have hit a slave – not by striking him on the right cheek – as he would an equal – but the left with a back hand. The command then is that if someone strikes you in this way (on the left cheek) show to them the right as well and in this way provoke them to a greater of level of violence than they had originally intended – accomplishing two things:

exposing their violence
positioning your dignity in the face of that violence

I have also been reading Walter Wink’s Jesus and Nonviolence. He clarifies it this way:

There are three general responses to evil: 1) passivity 2) violent opposition 3) the third way of militant non-violence articulated by Jesus. … Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil.

Wink outlines that third way later in the book with a series of bullet points:

Seize the moral initiative
Find the creative alternative to violence
Assert your own human dignity as a person
Meet force with ridicule or humor
Break the cycle of humiliation
Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position
Expose the injustice of the system
Take control of the power dynamic
Shame the oppressor into repentance
Stand your ground
Force the Powers to make decisions for which that are not prepared
Recognize your own power
Be willing to suffer rather than to retaliate
Cause the oppressor to see you in a new light
Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a show of force is effective
Be willing to undergo the penalty for breaking unjust laws
Die to fear of the old order and its rules

This type of thinking is as revolutionary as the day it was spoken in that famous sermon by Jesus. The binaries and dualisms that we operate in are just failing us at every turn. The overly simple either-or options are a trap.

Here is the simple reality: loving your neighbor is a big enough challenge that it has kept many thinkers for many traditions busy trying to figure out who (exactly) is one’s neighbor. and what does love look like. We follow a teacher (in this ‘way’) who goes past that debate and says “Love your enemies”. Let’s be honest – that doesn’t make any sense! If I love them … they would not long be to me an enemy

I end with a Wink: Love of enemies is, in the broadest sense, behaving out of one’s own deepest self-interest; “that you may be sons and daughters of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:45).

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, dignity, God, Jack Miles, jesus, Matthew 5, pacifist, Sermon of the Mount, violence, Walter Wink, zizek

Mark Driscoll is Wrong! Biblical Christianity Is Far More Complex Than Sex, or Friendship

April 21, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 7 Comments

In all honesty the debate is starting to grow cold. While Mark Driscoll keeps writing books that hipster conservatives want to read, gay and straight people of faith are starting to tune him out. The problem is, rather than diminishing, his popularity seems to only continue to grow.

In recent weeks Driscoll was awkwardly on The View and many of us watched painfully as he and his wife answered questions about “Christian sex”. Christian, that is, in his view of it (pun intended). And then there were the facial expressions of Whoppi Goldberg and other hosts: horrified, perplexed, and unsure if they could actually trust this man.

Then it happened, without a moments notice Driscoll parroted sections from his newest book (Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, & Life Together) where he claims that while the Bible says nothing bad about masturbation or oral sex, he is certain of what it says about homosexuality. Namely, that it is wrong. Godly sex, Driscoll holds, is meant to be performed only between a man and a woman, married. He also noted, and I’m not kidding, that the Biblical model for Christian marriage is all about friendship. He was, as he put it, “a Biblical Christian” and Christian sex means friends first (according to the Bible) and then becoming devoted husband and wife second (according to the New Testament). Verse? Passage? Seriously?

The quickest way for me to get to the point is to just say it: not only is Mark Driscoll’s reading of Scripture shallow and off point, he is not a Biblical Christian. Rather, like a child given a hand-me-down iphone to play with, Driscoll neither fully understands nor utilizes the technology of Scripture in ways that are consonant with its design or intent. In fact, in some ways, one might wonder if his use of Scripture is more a kin to giving a child a loaded gun rather than a iphone.

Biblical Christianity holds the capacity of the living Scriptures to shape the faith of the community at a higher value than the authority Scripture to normatively dictate moral behavior. While traditions model and even shape behavior, the stories of Scripture narrate values and open up faith beyond singular interpretations.

Biblical Christianity attempt to listen to the writers of the Bible in their local context and in our present one. Tradition, reason, science, and real time community must provide the context in which Scripture is read and lived today. For Driscoll, who believes that certain parts of the Bible are frozen in time like Han Solo in the chambers of Jabba the Hut, the narratives of Scripture are clear about some things more than others. My issue is, these narratives are neither stuck in time, nor seeking to speak normatively for all time. If they were, then Driscoll should not have been wearing the jacket that he wore any more than he should eat shrimp, or pork, or allow his wife to speak to with authority, head uncovered.

Biblical Christianity holds all the teachings and stories of Scripture, the good and bad, the random and silly, the bloody and romantic in the context of our story as a people of faith today. The Bible itself can not be reduced to a singular theme. As hard as ethicists, theologians, and scholars have tried to reduce the message of the book to that of a single nature, by its very design it resists the capacity to be reduced. As Adolf Harnack would have us to consider, you can not separate the corn from the husk. And, while even Andrew Sullivan has suggested that Thomas Jefferson’s Jesus is more worthy of following than that of the faith of the church, Biblical Christianity can not be abstracted from its practice in community (the Church) any more than Jesus can be followed outside the tension of the whole of his remembered words.

At the end of the day we need to be very clear: there is a difference between Biblical Christianity and Christianity that uses (or abuses) the Bible to its own ends by claiming that it has clear cut answers to very complex issues that Christians face. Biblical Christianity, indeed Biblical faith, is not concerned with whether or not answers are made simple or questions are ever answered. Biblical faith recognizes what Luke Timothy Johnson so often points out to his students: that by its very design, the Bible canonizes a diversity of voices, opinions, and perspectives on how to follow the Risen Lord.

Guest Post From…

Joshua Case is an Episcopal blogger, creative, and public theologian. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama and the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Known as “Josh” of The Nick & Josh Podcast, Joshua currently works at Holy Innocent’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta. When not curating things religious and cultural Joshua works as a professional golf instructor.

Joshua on Twitter & Joshua on Facebook

Filed Under: bible stuff, emergent, latest, pomo, thinking

Reflecting on the Resurrection part 2

April 20, 2012 by Bo Sanders 9 Comments

Resurrecting space for belief

Easter is a big deal. Passages like Paul’s claim in 1 Corinthians 15:13-15 (NIV) tell us:

13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.

As I a pastor I looked forward to Easter so much. I knew, however, that we would have visitors, family members, and friends who would come to our services out of relational obligation or for social interest in the event. I knew that some of these would not believe in the literalness of the resurrection of Jesus’ body.

I always had to think through how I was going to talk about this in a way that was both faithful in proclamation for us as a community of faith, while also attempting to be invitational and sensitive to potential objections or barriers from our guests.I have no interest in apologizing for what we believe as a faith community. But neither do I want to dogmatically push an ancient worldview that may, to the listener, be suspicious at best and incompatible at worst.

In light of the conversation that we have been having with Philip Clayton [around his new book] and my articulation between the miraculous and the ‘super’natural- the resurrection takes on an interesting twist.

Here is the thing: as in so many aspects of our modern life, we exist in a world dominated by dualism and presentation designed for polarity. The resurrection is no different. The two options seems to be:

A) it happened literally just like the Gospel accounts portray
B) the laws of physics can not be broken by even God and so the Gospel accounts are literary creations designed to portray theological themes.

I get both of those perspectives. I myself have no problem with the bodily resurrection as a miraculous event that carries deep theological implications (like prolepsis, ontological priority of the future, etc.)

But … in the same way that Jesus’ walking on water is not the POINT of that story. The point was to hear the word of Christ “be not afraid” . It was not simply to understand the physics of how Jesus might have walked on the water or to add it to a checklist of things you must believe even if you don’t understand them.

This is where Clayton’s idea is so powerful.

In Acts 9, Paul experienced Jesus post-ascension and he was also powerfully changed. It was that same guy (now named Paul) who penned the words that I quoted earlier (1 Cor. 15) . But Paul did not encounter the biological body of Christ. He experienced something we can call the ‘real presence’ of Christ.

Various options are open to those who accept this hypothesis, which we might call the personal but nonphysical theory of Jesus’ post-mortem presents. There can be no talk of proof here, but there may be ways of showing that, at least in principle, a real albeit nonphysical presence of a person after death is compatible with the presumption against miracles to which the problem of evil let us in chapter 3.

One of these approaches involves postulating that the early disciples must have experienced a certain kind of event that no longer occurs today. Advocates of this view seek to do justice to the indications in the New Testament texts that, even if Jesus remains somehow present, the nature of his presence changed radically after the finite series of events that occurred soon after his death. They reason that something must have been different in the days or weeks after Jesus’s death, even if what occurred did not involve the resuscitation (even in some significantly transform condition) of the physical body. - Predicament of Belief p. 97

My question is ‘why could that not have been what the disciples experienced?’ I know full well that the more progressive members of the Homebrewed community will say ‘Duh – we have held this for a long time.’ Please understand A) I was certainly not raised to think this way and did not know it was even an option B) most of the people I know and talk to panic when something like this is proposed.

I want to be clear: I am not trying to get everyone to believe this option. I am simply trying to highlight an alternative to the modern either-or argument that is stuck in an endless round-and-round stand off.

My only point is that those who buy into this third (real presence) option count as “believing in the resurrection”. Those who subscribe to a literal-physical option often claim that only their option (#1) counts as legitimate. Those who hold to option #2 roll their eyes and look down their nose (not easy to do at the same time) at those who have not accounted for the literary devices employed in the Gospel accounts.

I’m interested in the ‘Big Tent’ here. To get there we must first concede that the point of the text is not about physics or biology. Even if we hold to that element of the story, we have to remember that understanding or believing in the physics is not the point. To experience the risen Christ and be changed by that presence is the point.

So I wanted to ask

What have you found helpful to include in the conversation that I am leaving out?
What seem to be the sources of folks’ major hesitations that I have not accounted for?

I could really use some help thinking this through. Since I left behind my Josh McDowell evidence that demands a verdict and my Lee Strobel case for the resurrection, I am working diligently to both think and present a broader approach without going all the way to Marcus Borg-land.

[part 1 can be found here]

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, Easter, God, gospel, jesus, john cobb, NT Wright, Pentecost, Philip Clayton, resurrection

Reflecting on the Resurrection part 1

April 20, 2012 by Bo Sanders 4 Comments

He is risen! … now what?

Several of my mainline friends get to preach this coming weekend – as do I. The conversations have been great as we compared notes. The first question is usually “are you using the lectionary text?” (which I am not) and then the question of post-Easter themes as we round the corner toward Pentecost come up.

I was looking for something on my old blog and stumbled upon two posts from an Easter past. I thought it would be fun to edit them and put them up again.

The central question is “what do we do with this?” – also known as the so what question. People want to know because there are 3 key passages in the New Testament that say Jesus’ resurrection has consequences for what we as believers can expect after our death.

Here are the 4 layers of thought that seem to come out of the Resurrection conversation.

Layer 1: The disciples experienced Jesus after his death and that indicated two major things A) death is not the end and B) the Roman empire was not the final authority.

I like this interpretation. If this were all that there was, it would be enough for me. I often hear that this is nothing more than a ‘ghost story’ and offers no hope. I don’t see it that way, and have written about it often.

Let me just add that North Americans are good at focusing on the first implication – that death is not the end – but often struggle with the second implication because, as I have learned, we assume that the as is structure of modern existence is the final ordering. Both the Nation State and Capitalism are given realities and so the best that can be hoped for is for the system to be tweaked in order to bring about a slightly kinder, gentler, more fair, and just version of the structures as it currently is configured [as Jeremy and Tripp outline in their TNT episode breakout session entitled "Occupy Theology"]

Christian implications of the resurrection should enable us to imagine a re-ordering of this world’s governors and empower us to dream of and participate in our ordering of life to display a different operating system and demonstrate a pronounce protest to the powers the be.

Layer 2: At the end of our life, we are taken into (or absorbed back into) the life of God. This position holds that life after death is total and absolute communion with God and acknowledges that all the ‘streets of gold’ and ‘pearly gates’ stuff is a result prophetic language and poetic imagining- not a material (physical) rendering.

I like the language of this view. It also helps that I think the book of Revelation is a political critique of the Roman empire and has nothing to do with the end of the world and is therefor not instructive in the least about life after death. So I don’t have to worry about the personification stuff. It frees me to enjoy the thought of release and embrace: release from this life and embrace by the divine other.

The way we read the book of Revelation now is killing our political imagination. The lesson of Revelation is not what will happen in our lifetime or in history – but to model for us how to speak to our time like the author spoke to his time! We are faithful to the book of Revelation not when we take it literally (as if one even could) but when we critique our Imperial structures and imagine a different way of ordering the world in order to bring about different and better outcomes.

Critics of this view say that it is too spiritualized and not specific enough and doesn’t give dignity to the existence of the individual. I hear what they are saying, but it opens us up the to anthropomorphic critique again.

Layer 3: Jesus was resurrected with a trans-physical body. So we can expect a glorified – bodily – spiritual/physical existence in kind.

This is the classic reading of the text. Jesus both interacted with the physical (making breakfast on the shore and letting Thomas touch his wounds) while also not being limited to the physical (walking through walls, etc.)

I am, of course, comfortable with this view as it is what I was raised with and ordained into. The only downside is that it desperately needs to humbly engage the gaps that emerge in Biblical scholarship instead of arrogantly raising it’s voice to anyone who dares question any aspect of the accounts that were written so much later and which vary from each other. We have to be honest about the literary aspect of the Gospel accounts.

Layer 4: Some really thoughtful modern theologians have put forward some new theories or vocabularies with which to have this conversation. Notable are N.T. Wright, John Cobb, and the new book by Philip Clayton.

I was listening to an interview with John Polkinghorn and he said something that caught my attention.

“What is the real me? It is certainly more than the matter of my body, because that it changing all the time. The atoms are always changing – but in some sense it is the pattern of how the atoms are formed. That,I think, is what the soul is (agreeing with Thomas Aquinas).
It is an immensely rich pattern that doesn’t end at my skin. It involves my memories, my character, my personality. I think it involves all the relationships I take on. It is complex and we struggle to even say something about it. But I do not think that God will allow that pattern to be lost and I think that God will recreate that pattern after resurrection.
Faith and Science are in conversation about what could be the continuity between this world and world that has yet to come.”

I love this language. It gets away from the historical argument of only literal vs. merely spiritual and points to the possibilities of a preferable future – but does so without being dogmatic, wooden interpretation or concrete physics. It leaves the door open for faith and invites us into a conversation. In my mind, that is better than rote ~~regurgitation~~ repetition of old formulations. It encourages us to think biblically and explore theologically the possibilities of a new reality.

We just can’t afford for Christ’s resurrection to be a promise of escape from this present world and a subsequent passivity toward the as is structures of our existence.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, Easter, God, gospel, jesus, john cobb, NT Wright, Pentecost, Philip Clayton, resurrection

Secular Scientists…the Present Day Noah!

April 17, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 2 Comments

I am busy editing and reworking my keynote for the Sustainable Faith conference later this week in St. Petersburg Florida. I was going back and forth between making a biblical illusion to either Noah or Job when I read this post by Church historian Bill Leonard. Now that he used it oh so well in this post I guess I will link it and go for Job! If you are local come join us for a conversation on “ecology, incarnation and the interconnectedness.”

As for Noah, Bill Leonard asks a bunch of questions – good ones. Be wise. Listen to his awesome visit to the podcast & go check out his post on Noah.

When did the people of Noah’s day finally realize that what was happening to them was more than just a stationary front? Why do some religious folks take the Noah story literally but resist the possibility of a contemporary global catastrophe, one essentially of human creation?

Is biblical literalism clearer for the past than the present? How many glaciers must collapse and heat waves smolder before we literally read the “signs of the times?”

Wouldn’t it be weird if “secularists” turned out to be the ones who discerned earth’s impending judgment on our lives and lifestyles? What if global warming is true and we don’t have sense enough to see the planet itself as ark?

Like Noah, we still could labor together to find “grace in the eyes of the Lord.” Or just turn up the church air conditioning.

If you wondered exactly what our modern day Noah has to say check out Paul Gilding’s recent TED talk ‘the earth is full.’

Filed Under: engaging, latest, news, politics, public policy, science

Leaving the Church – Staying at Church

April 16, 2012 by Bo Sanders 30 Comments

Rachel Held Evans had a post last month that she has graciously allowed us to utilize here. In this week’s TNT podcast, Tripp and I are going to talking about Jesus & His (S)words - which should be fun as Tripp lays the smack down on a pacifist metaphysic – but, as a pastor type, I also wanted to pair it with something ecclesiastic.

Rachel’s post [link] and it’s follow up “15 Reasons I Returned to the Church” are wonderful. Here is her initial post and then I was hoping to hear from the Homebrewed crowd. Why did you leave the church? If you haven’t left, Why have you stayed? What would be the reason you leave?

___

Eight million twenty-somethings have left the church, and it seems like everyone is trying to figure out why.

Last week, Christian Piatt offered seven reasons here, and four more reasons here. David Kinnaman recently authored a book entitled, You Lost Me, which details the findings of Barna researchers who interviewed hundreds of 18-29 year-olds about why they left the church.

I left the church when I was twenty-seven. I am now thirty, and after trying unsuccessfully to start a house church, my husband and I are struggling to find a faith community in which we feel we belong. I’ve been reluctant to write about this search in the past, but it seems like such a common experience, I think it’s time to open up, especially now that I’ve had some time to process. But let’s begin with fifteen reasons why I left:

1. I left the church because I’m better at planning Bible studies than baby showers…but they only wanted me to plan baby showers.

2. I left the church because when we talked about sin, we mostly talked about sex.

3. I left the church because my questions were seen as liabilities.

4. I left the church because sometimes it felt like a cult, or a country club, and I wasn’t sure which was worse.

5. I left the church because I believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old and that humans share a common ancestor with apes, which I was told was incompatible with my faith.

6. I left the church because sometimes I doubt, and church can be the worst place to doubt.

7. I left the church because I didn’t want to be anyone’s “project.”

8. I left the church because it was often assumed that everyone in the congregation voted for Republicans.

9. I left the church because I felt like I was the only one troubled by stories of violence and misogyny and genocide found in the Bible, and I was tired of people telling me not to worry about it because “God’s ways are higher than our ways.”

10. I left the church because of my own selfishness and pride.

11. I left the church because I knew I would never see a woman behind the pulpit, at least not in the congregation in which I grew up.

12. I left the church because I wanted to help people in my community without feeling pressure to convert them to Christianity.

13. I left the church because I had learned more from Oprah about addressing poverty and injustice than I had learned from 25 years of Sunday school.

14. I left the church because there are days when I’m not sure I believe in God, and no one told me that “dark nights of the soul” can be part of the faith experience.

15. I left the church because one day, they put signs out in the church lawn that said “Marriage = 1 Man + 1 Woman: Vote Yes on Prop 1,” and I knew the moment I saw them that I never wanted to come back.

“I am convinced that what drives most people away from Christianity is not the cost of discipleship but rather the cost of false fundamentals.” – Evolving in Monkey Town, p. 207

“We aren’t looking for a faith that provides all the answers; we’re looking for one in which we are free to ask the questions.” – Evolving in Monkey Town, p. 204

In the weeks to come, I’ll be sharing more about why I stayed with the Church–with a capital-C-- and about our search for a local faith community.

Why did you leave the church?

Why do you stay?

Filed Under: conversations, engaging, latest, random, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, Forget the Church, God, jesus, Newsweek, rachel held evans

Jesus and His (S)words

April 12, 2012 by Bo Sanders 38 Comments

Jesus tells his disciples to sell their bags and buy swords. Why? And why then does he reprimand Peter for using a blade at the moment when it seemed to be most appropriate? Was Jesus being inconsistent? Did he change his mind in the moment? Was it a test? Did he set Peter up to fail? Why did he say that ‘those who live by the sword, will die by the sword?’ and then tell his disciple to buy them?

I am asked about Jesus’ relationship to swords as much as anything I get asked about. Good hearted people are quite baffled by the whole subject.

Jesus did after all say that he came to bring a sword.
As the word of God, he is said to be sharper than any two-edged sword.
He is pictured with a sword coming from his mouth when he ‘returns’.
and there is this matter of him telling his followers to buy swords

As a former apologist, I have gotten pretty good at helping the baffled work through these passages. I even has a presentation I do called jesuSword that incorporates Jesus, his words, and these passages about swords.

In order to facilitate a lively give and take, we will take this in 3 quick addresses over the next 24 hours.

Part 1: Jesus says that he came to bring a sword.

Matthew 10:34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— 37 Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

Is it possible that Jesus was being ironic and that his sword is actually an un-sword. I say this because Jesus’ sword does the exact opposite thing that normal swords do. His sword divides family. Traditional swords are used their swords to defend their kin and kind.

Jesus was using a play on words.

Jesus was using hyperbole. In his day swords were actually for defending one’s family – for guarding me and mine. In this sense, Jesus’ “sword” is an un-sword… or an anti-sword. It does the opposite of what human swords are used for. Jesus’ sword is not for defending family but for dividing family. Jesus did not come with a human sword but the opposite!!

John Caputo puts it this way:

The kingdom reigns wherever the least and most undesirable are favored while the best and most powerful are put on the defensive. The powerless power of the kingdom prevails whenever the one is preferred to the ninety-nine, whenever one loves one’s enemies and hates one’s father and mother while the world, which believes in power, counsels us to fend off our enemies and keep the circle of kin and kind, of family and friends, fortified and tightly drawn.”

If Jesus was being ironic or using hyperbole, it would make so much more sense than the way this passage gets used to justify violence and militarism.

I would love to hear your thoughts – I just have one request: please don’t use the word ‘Pacifist’ when speaking of Jesus. That set of commitments belongs to a distinct school of thought that did not exist in Jesus day so it is anachronistic to use in that way. He was certainly into non-violence and radical peace-making but Pacifism is a unique configuration of convictions.

_______________

Part 2:

There are lots of swords in the New Testament. The Word of God is compared to a double-edged sword and Jesus comes back wielding a sword. Maybe the Bible is more than ‘O.K.’ with swords and sword imagery?

Let me throw out two things:

In the context of the Roman Empire and its occupation of Jewish lands in the 1st century, swords would have been a common item that drawing imagery out of would have been appropriate.

A well-known pastor in Seattle, Washington is famously quoted as saying “Jesus is a cage fighter with a tattoo on his thigh and a sword in his hand, determined to make someone bleed”. He said this in reference to the fact that he “could not worship somebody that he could beat up.”

Some people dismiss statements like this and chalk it up to testosterone fueled, overly inflated, pumped up hyper-masculinity. I worry that there is something much deeper and much more sinister involved. I think that it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God and the interpretation of Christian scripture.

What is noteworthy in Revelation 19, is that the sword is not in Jesus’ hand but it comes out of Jesus’ mouth. That seems important in the poetic/prophetic nature of Revelation. This sword is not your average sword. It is not in Jesus’ hand and that makes you wonder if the way in which this sword “strike down” the nations is not in bloody violence but in a kind of destruction that would happen as a result of a sword that proceeds from the mouth of God? Let’s ask ourselves “is there something that comes from the mouth of God that radically impacts or consumes peoples and nations?” Is there something sharp that comes from the mouth of God … something sharper than any two edged sword?

Oh, here we go: Hebrews 4

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

So far so good! ‘It’ judges the thoughts and heart… but here comes the twist:

13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from His sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Hold the phones! … the Word of God (it) is a person? Yes. Guess who?

14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

Jesus is the Word of God? (I’m being funny but you may want to check out John 1 for clarification).

In conclusion: the use of sword imagery in both Revelation and in the book of Hebrews needs to be taken with a poetic grain of salt. Yes, the Bible uses sword imagery. The thing is that if Jesus’ (S)word, from part 1, is a non-sword or an un-sword and in Revelation is comes from Jesus’ mouth and in Hebrews it is a person … then none of these passages, thus far, can be utilized to justify what so many Christian (s)words are used for.

I’ve obviously been having fun here, but the bottom line is that just because the Bible uses swords as analogies – it isn’t a wholesale validation of swords nor a justification for using them as the world does.

________

Part 3: Jesus tells his disciple to buy a sword?

We come to that famous passage in Luke 22 where Jesus tells his disciples to buy a sword.

35 Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

36 He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. 37 It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’[b]; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

38 The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That’s enough!” he replied.

Here are two readings you may want to consider:

Earlier this week I engaged a political reading of Moses and the waters of Meribah from Numbers 20. My question was “why, if Moses was going to ultimately speak to the rock, did the Lord even mention the staff?” The answer was that it was a symbol of power to be carried – yes – but ultimately resisted in favor of a better present option that might be overshadowed by the most obvious option.

It takes strength to turn the other cheek. If you don’t have the ability to retaliate … it is just being a doormat or victim? That is how I have always thought about it.

In that perspective, I have read Jesus’ odd command with Peter in mind. I see that fateful night where Jesus tells him to ‘put away your sword’ and later tells the authorities ‘if my kingdom was of this world my followers would fight.’ The implication is that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world and so his followers don’t fight.

The sword for the disciple, then, is what the staff was for Moses in Numbers 20: a powerful option to be resisted in favor of a preferable option that is less obvious because it is less forceful.

I used to reconcile ‘buying swords’ as a sort of object lesson or training excersise for the disciples. One lesson (trust and supply) is over – next lesson: You can’t resist temptation is one of the options is not even available.

Then, in 2007, I discovered that Biblical Scholars have a different way of handling the passage. Here is Ben Witherington:

Lk. 22.36-38. What is the meaning of this little story, taking into account the larger context of Jesus’ teaching? Vs. 37 is the key where Jesus quotes Is. 53.12—“he was numbered with the transgressors”. Jesus is saying to the disciples—you must fulfill your role as transgressors of what I have taught you!!! They must play the part of those who do exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught them in the Sermon on the Mount. The disciples become transgressors by seeking out weapons and then seeking to use them. This much is perfectly clear from the context for the disciples then go on to say “look Lord here is two swords”. They already have such weapons and Jesus responds in disgust to the fact that they are already transgressing his principles of non-violence by responding “that’s enough” (of this nonsense).

So either Jesus was saying that two swords was enough for the revolution (not likely) or Witherington has this right.

Conclusion: We have looked at these four famous passages now and it seems clear that although Jesus talked about swords and the writers of scripture utilized sword analogies, none of these passages is a validation of the type of violence these verses are used to justify.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, conversations, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, God, guns, Hebrews 4, jesus, John Caputo, Matthew 10:34, Military, non-violence, pacifist, peace-making, Revelation 19, swords, violence, Weakness, word, words

Myths Killing the Church from the Inside-Out

April 12, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 9 Comments

Myths Killing the Church from the Inside-Out: High Sunday-Low Sunday, or Letting People off the Hook!

“It is not the proper duty of Christianity to form leaders- that is, builders of the temporal, although a legion of Christian leaders is infinitely desirable. Christianity must generate saints-that is, witnesses to the eternal. The efficacy of the saint is not that of the leader. The saint does not have to bring about great temporal achievements; he is one who succeeds in giving us at least a glimpse of eternity despite the thick opacity of time.”
~ Dorothy Day

Recently I’ve come to realize that there are parts of my Episcopal tribe that simply do not make sense to me. While I, like Rachel Held-Evans, have my reasons for having left and returned to the church, there remains language, expectations, and even myths that I think are preventing many mainline communities from being church…all the time. In fact, I think that these myths are silently killing (robbing the life of) churches all over the country from the inside-out.

Of particular note for me as of late has been discussion around the scheduling of events and activities during what are typically called “low Sundays.” While the Episcopal church does the liturgical calendar very well (seriously, its why I am Episcopalian), what follows these narratively epic events and seasons is the expectation that once people have done that much church, there will be a lull in participation. The myth goes that: people just do not want to do that much church or God or religion.

This myth is killing the church, and it is simply wrong.

In our language, these peak and valley days have come to be called “high Sundays and low Sundays”. While the language itself is likely a naming of that which is true in the experience of many clergy in the institution, it’s ongoing effect over the life of the church has made it such that the clergy and staff themselves expect less not more from those in their communities in the aftermath of significant religious experience (aka Holy days). And let’s face it, in most of the Biblical narratives, in the aftermath of religious experience (or God) people became more dedicated, more engaged, more devoted, more convicted to live in the experience of God…not less!

Isaiah, Saul, Peter, and even Jesus were all compelled to a life of deeper, more communal, more public faith with God after their divine experience than they were before. Isaiah’s call story left him not only speechless, but then a prophet among the people. Saul’s experience of the great light, led him to change his ways and become of the principle voices in a movement he once opposed. Jesus, simply put: baptized, recognized and and crucified (did I miss something?).

So if the narratives of our faith tradition narrate an expectation that experience with God leads to more participation not less, why does the high Sunday, low Sunday myth persist? Why do we in the mainline community let religious and spiritual people off the hook? Is it because in our excitement over “who was here” we forget to remind people that “here” is nothing more than a sign and symbol of what ought be going on “out there” all the time? Do people actually experience God in our events? Do we or they interpret them as emblematic of shifting personal responsibility from passive to active? Or, do our experiences simply leave people as having ticked another box?

Because we leaders have bought into the “high Sunday, low Sunday” myth, it is killing the church from the inside-out. And yet, by my read, not only does it fail to represent what has always been true of Biblical experience with God (that experience with God- in the other, on the way, or in a religious service- always leads to deeper more public engage with personal faith) it fails to challenge people to live fully into their Christian vocation; a vocation which is not something that comes in merely in days high and low, but that gets enacted every moment of everyday all the time.

Guest Post From…

Joshua Case is an Episcopal blogger, creative, and public theologian. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama and the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Known as “Josh” of The Nick & Josh Podcast, Joshua currently works at Holy Innocent’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta. When not curating things religious and cultural Joshua works as a professional golf instructor.

Joshua on Twitter & Joshua on Facebook

Filed Under: engaging, latest Tagged With: church, Mainline

A Most Interesting Reading of Moses at Meribah (Numbers 20)

April 11, 2012 by Bo Sanders 7 Comments

Recently I stumbled on what might be the most interesting reading of Moses at Mirebah I have seen. It comes from the book Emergency Politics by Bonnie Honig (also on Kindle). In it, she is engaging the theology of Franz Rosenzweig – a contemporary and rival to the German (later Nazi) Carl Schmitt who famously said “” Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”

In Numbers chpt 20, Miriam passes away. She had been a prophetess for the people and had challenged Moses’ authority on occasion. Immediately after her passing (this will become important) the people realize that there is no water and press Moses and Aaron for solutions. Moses and Aaron step away from the people to seek God and receive instruction to “take the staff and speak to the rock – it will pour out water before their eyes”.

Moses, as you may remember, doesn’t follow instructions to the ‘T’. He ad libs a little bit. He does indeed gather the people but then he veers from the plan. He chastises the people and then strikes the rock. Two things happen:

water does indeed come out
God is displeased with Moses and will not let him enter the land that is promised.

I have preached this passage many times and have read lots of treatments. I am intrigued by this passage and have always been unsettled by one detail in the story, which I have never been able to resolve:

why does the Lord tell Moses to take the staff if he is just going to speak to the rock? Why even mention the staff?

Here is where Honig and Rosenzweig bring a unique reading. The staff represent something magical like sorcery – or the miraculous for the early 20th century. This is a political theology and what is at stake in the suspension of law in emergency conditions. Can a sovereign power suspend law in the same way that God suspends the laws of physics in order to preform miracles? Leaders, being empowered by God, the thinking goes, could suspend ‘normal’ activity if they determined an exceptional circumstance.

In Honig and Rosenzweig’s hermeneutic the dispersed empowerment of the people (multitude) is the location for God’s will and is intended to be home to the will/voice of the Lord. But, as we know, this responsibility had been too overwhelming and was resisted by the people in selecting Moses as a king type who would speak to God for/instead of them (Exodus 20:19). This was an abdication by the people of what the Lord had desired for them as a people – to be prophets all.

This resistance is reinforced when the voice of the people rises in the absence of water, and Moses (along with his brother Aaron) turn away from the ‘stiff necked people’ and receive instruction to speak to the rock. Moses then, probably importing the top-down authoritarianism of his Egyptian upbringing, disobeys the command to speak and instead, chastises the people and strikes the rock with his staff in an act of magical sorcery. God, though it produces water, reprimands this act, and Moses is disallowed from entering the promised-land with the people.

This event is placed within the historical context, earlier in the passage, where Miriam passed away and immediately the people realized that they had no water and held a council against Moses and Aaron. Miriam’s name alludes to water and she was the sister who placed Moses in the Nile’s water when he was an infant. She had been the only one to challenge Moses’ authoritarian ways and she provided, as a prophetess, a check to Moses’ power. Without her, this reading states, Moses proved he will give the people … “not authentic prophecy, but sorcery.” In not recognizing the predictive prophecy of the people (and Miriam), Moses loses his leadership of the people.

Honig utilizes Rosenzweig’s two types of prayer – one that spontaneously arises in a situational moment, and another that is used by the community and creates an openness or receptivity – to analyze the judicial deliberation surrounding the Bush v. Gore presidential ruling. By imagining that the people could have risen up in expectation of a serious effort to count valuable democratic votes instead of waiting for a Schmittian top-down rule from the authorities. The sovereign power might have been within the people prepared for and receptive to the sign instead of what came from above it – a rupture from beyond them. This expectation is foreshadowed within the Mosaic tradition that one day all of the people would be prophets (like Miriam).

Honig asks if this metaphorical reading (which it expressly is) is a good model for democratic politics and a comparison of the “state of legal exception to the divine rule of god”. The people, she says, when bound together can give to themselves the powers of state and can again decide to suspend them when, as a multitude, they are oriented and receptive (having been prepared) to the consequences of such action and what they point toward as a sign.

This, in the end, is the problem with magical thinking! We abdicate our power as the people – to be receptive to and bring forward the voice and will of God – in favor of looking to magically empowered leaders to suspend the rules that govern due to exceptional (or emergency) circumstances and hand down solution (metaphorically) through sorcery.

It makes sense then why the Lord even mentions the staff if Moses is ultimately to speak to the rock. It is a metaphor (symbol) of concentrated power that is present but to be resisted in lue of the prophetic possibility of speaking. In that speaking, which is to be located in the people (multitude) prepared by prayer, that a sign is revealed that points to a greater reality. We never hear that voice if a receptive people continually abdicate that potential to exceptional leaders who are expected to provide magical results.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, politics, speaking, thinking Tagged With: Bible, Bonnie Honig, book, books, Carl Schmitt, church, democracy, democratic, emergency, empower, Franz Rosenzweig, God, jesus, law, magic, magical, multitude, political, politics, power, prophecy, sorcery, the people

There’s Wonder Working Symbolic Power in the Blood?

April 6, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 10 Comments

Human history, evolutionary history, Church history and the story of Jesus is packed full of violence. Christians have acted violently on behalf of God and for many Jesus took on the violence of God for us. The violence of the cross can and should make us a bit skweemish – yet the Gospels are focused on the cross and Paul can’t stop talking about it. If you grew up in a Baptist church like me you know a whole bunch of cross and blood songs (like Old Rugged Cross…my rendition) and the blood of Jesus had a piety all its own. Sometime in college, after sitting through the The Passion of the Christ, I got rid of all the blood talk, blood singing, and just tried to avoid all the Good Friday bloody violence. Then Andrew Song Park, James Cone, and Paul Tillich re-enchanted the blood of Jesus theologically. Now there is a wonder working symbolic and prophetic power in the blood I don’t want to give up….some days.

Step One with James Cone

The finality of Jesus lies in the totality of his existence in complete freedom as the Oppressed One who reveals through his death and resurrection that God is present in all dimensions of human liberation…As long as Oppressors can be sure that the gospel does not threaten their social, economic, and political security, they can enslave others in the name of Jesus Christ (A Black Theology of Liberation, 117-118)

Why is it that I desired to cover up the blood of Jesus, to deny it theological power? Mostly it had to do with the image of a blood requiring Father who fulfilled the requirement through Jesus. I have no interest in articulating a theology where there is a dichotomy of character and intention between the Fatherly Mother and her eternal Son. God was either as good as Jesus said God was or I could just as well join Jesus and Job’s protest. IF Jesus was in fact the image of the invisible God, if the Son who was sent shared and communicated the heart of God, then it was theologically problematic to let a bad atonement theory introduce an ethical dichotomy between the two. I believed that (and still do) so I got rid of the blood. But what if the blood needs to stay for another reason, one that coheres with the ministry and message of Jesus as well as God’s desire for more just creation?

It was James Cone who impressed that quest upon me. During lent of 2009 I decided to take up reading only African American theologians and by the time I was done I began to see that in running away from the blood of Jesus I was running away from a symbolically powerful place for the Black church and, more importantly for a white-straight-middle class-dude like me, the ever-present reminder of God’s cross-bearing, blood spilling confrontation with with cross-building powers of this world. In silencing the blood of Jesus I was not just avoiding a problematic atonement theory but God’s demand for justice that streamed from the body of my Lord.

Step Two with Paul Tillich

The sign bears no necessary relation to that to which it points, the symbol participates in the reality for which it stands. The sign can be changed arbitrarily according to the demands of expediency, but the symbol grows and dies according to the correlation between that which is symbolized and the persons who receive the symbol. Therefore, the religious symbol, the symbol which points to the divine, can be a true symbol only if it participates in the power of the divine to which it points…A symbol has truth: it is adequate to the revelation it expresses. A symbol is true: it is the expression of a true revelation. (Systematic Theology I:239-240)

Trying to figure out exactly how I could theologically reclaim the blood of Jesus wasn’t easy. Paul Tillich’s differentiation between signs and symbols became an extremely helpful tool. For Tillich religion expresses itself in symbols, they are contextual and finite. A symbol lives where it serves to breakthrough the conditioned reality of the religious community and confront its inherited assumption about the world. A symbol is a living symbol as long as it continues to participate in the Unconditioned and rupturous reality which gave it life.

For me the blood of Jesus became a sign, it didn’t participate in my own experience of God but pointed to a rather depressing image of a God I couldn’t worship, and so I let it go. After engaging Cone, the blood of Jesus began to speak to me again – it confronted many of my own practices, my assumptions about the world, my unexamined privilege, and the coercive system that preserved them. Cone had pricked my imagination and what use to be a sign pointing to a depraved atonement theory became a symbol for the power-threatening gospel of the crucified one.

Step Three with Andrew Sung Park (do yourself a favor and check out our discussion of this HERE on the podcast @44:40)

For the oppressed, Jesus’ blood as a symbol participates in the agony of their suffering under the unjust persecution, exploitation, oppression, and violence…his blood signifies the intermingling of God’s woundedness, sorrow, grief, and God’s never-ending hope for the downtrodden. Jesus’ blood represents God’s pierced heart for the sinned-against.

To the oppressors, Jesus’ blood symbolizes the protest, confrontation, and challenge of the oppressed and of God. It participates in the outcries of the victims. Like Abel’s blood, Jesus’ blood cries out from the ground until its voice is heard. It has the extraordinary strength to open up the cruelty of injustice, violence, vice, and evil – to unlock oppressors’ hearts of stone. (Triune Atonement: Christ’s Healing for Sinners, Victims, and the Whole Creation, 35-36)

It was Andrew Sung Park who helped me piece everything together, it was his work on atonement that took this retrieved and revived symbol and made it sing. Park was able to expand the symbolic power of the blood to all creation, adding an ecological flare, but he was also rather brilliant at pointing out the conflicted nature of ourselves.

We are all both oppressed and oppressors. Not in the same way or even symmetrically but it was Park who insisted that the blood of Jesus is for all creation’s wounds – including mine – and a protest to all of our wounding – including those I participate in structurally and those I inflict upon others. The blood of Jesus insists on God’s Holy Justice, God’s participation and sharing in the wounds of all, God’s protest with and on behalf of the wounded, God’s promise but not yet accomplished healing, God’s insistence on a fleshly and material Gospel, and God’s decision to take the side of the wounded – the wounded in all of us. The blood of Jesus is a symbol of the God who is for us, beside us, and working through us to bring healing.

Today is Good Friday & thanks to this little theological journey of mine I will sit down tonight after everyone is asleep, smoke a delicious cigar and listen to Gavin Bryars & Tom Waits ‘Jesus Blood Never Failed me Yet.’ Check out the story of the recording here.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, latest, thinking

Hit Me (baby) One More Time: on turning the other cheek

Mark Driscoll is Wrong! Biblical Christianity Is Far More Complex Than Sex, or Friendship

Reflecting on the Resurrection part 2

Resurrecting space for belief

Reflecting on the Resurrection part 1

Secular Scientists…the Present Day Noah!

Leaving the Church – Staying at Church

Jesus and His (S)words

Myths Killing the Church from the Inside-Out

A Most Interesting Reading of Moses at Meribah (Numbers 20)

There’s Wonder Working Symbolic Power in the Blood?

Search

Support the brew

The latest

Transforming Christian Theology

The Homebrewed Hosting Service

Friends