bible stuff

Why the Church of N. America will always be (mostly) like it is

May 9, 2012 by Bo Sanders 27 Comments

The church of N. America will always be (mostly) like it is today. When those who think as individuals read a text that is communal, there is always going to be an issue.

I know that there is a real danger in painting in broad stokes and speaking in generalities. I normally steer clear of such dangers but once in a while you find something that allows you to wade out onto the normally thin ice with a certain measure of confidence.

I recently finished a term paper on Alisdair MacIntrye’s opus After Virtue which is his attempt to reclaim the Aristotelian notion of character formation within community (to oversimplify a bit). In preparation for writing the paper I went back over some classics like John Rawls and Michael Sandel (the communitarian) and others.

It just so happens that I have also been reading a lot of post-colonial critique during this year and I have a growing suspicion that I wanted to throw out there:

We have individuals (products of the enlightenment) reading a text that was written in a communal framework (a product of a communal society). That provides a fundamental discrepancy that will never be resolved. It will always provide a disjointed experience and thought process that lacks continuity.

Let’s not pretend that we can think another way. We are heirs of the enlightenment – this is our operating system. We can download a new program like ‘christianity’ but it is operating within the individualist code. Talking with my friends who are from non-European descent (Native American, Pacific Islands or certain Asian communities) it is clear that there is no simple conversion that an individual can undergo and simply start thinking in communal terms. We are cultural creatures and this is our culture.

It shows up when we read the Bible. It shows up when we talk of government (democracy) economy (consumerism), status, value, worth, choice, success, identity, rights, laws,leadership and … well nearly every other aspect of Western society.

The famous example of Philippians 2:12 admonishing us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” is but a drop in the pond. It’s not just that the English language doesn’t have a plural ‘you’ (unless one counts the ya’all of the Southern US) but it is bigger than that. It is that we think in individual ‘you’s and there is no way around it.

This will always be an issue. So even when somebody talks about character formation, spiritual community, or some ideal of communitarian discipleship (be it Hauerwas, the Radical Orthodox, or any other innovative group) in the end, the church of N.America will always look mostly like it does now. The reason is that this individualism we think in is not all that compatible with the communal thrust of our very scriptures – and that is unreconcilable at some level. It can not be resolved because we can no more stop thinking as individuals than that Bible can stop encouraging community.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, Canada, church, Europe, European, God, Hauerwas, individualism, jesus, MacIntyre, radical orthodoxy, religion, society, spirituality, United States, Western

Dressing up in Justice! Looking for the Reign of God!

May 9, 2012 by Tripp Fuller Leave a Comment

When I was younger, many of my favorite characters on TV, or in print, were those who lived normal lives but also felt a sense of calling or obligation to fight for justice. These characters were all over the place, and in many ways, still fascinate our imaginations.

Why NOT the Avengers Case?

They are names of heroes, superheroes even. Superman, Wonderwoman, Lone Ranger, the Incredibles and even Captain Planet. They were all people who, though having normal lives in one moment, possessed the uncanny ability to transform into a different person when a need or opportunity to help emerged.

What all of these heroes have is common is not simply that they fought for justice, for what was right in the world, but that in their everyday lives they were open to the opportunities to do good where ever it was needed most, right then, in that moment; even if it meant flying across the city to make it happen or spending nights looking up at the sky.

"And heart!"

Look, it took me a long while to realize that many of gospel texts that seem to be about cosmic judgment aren’t really about some cosmic-epic judgment at all. They are really about how it is that we live our lives in the day to day. Stories like that of Christ the king who sits on throne and who draws a line between those who do good wherever they see it, and those who do good when they think others will see it, is not something that should startle us.

Rather, this parable really puts doing good for others back on us. Like many of the other stories that we read in our communities of faith throughout the calendar year, the feasts and festivals that the church holds as part of what it means to do life together shapes us to see the world with a different set of eyes and to hear with a different set of ears.

The parable of Christ the King, one often read as far more judging than calling, beckons us like the batman symbol cast across the Gotham skyline to see justice not as something that will get enacted out in the future, but rather as something that we enact every day, in every moment, with every choice. Or, as Tony Jones suggests at the intersection of our ongoing journey with others.

Look, in a sense, what our Christian readings, prayers, and our table fellowship call us to today, is to dress up in justice and to play our part in the reign of God that exists always before us. And this reign, is not something that happens in one place of creation and not in another. The rule of God always covers us all. The rule of God, the reign of God, is more like the ground of all being that gets glimpsed and tied into than simply put in place when the right people are in power. Rule of God is always happening though not always enacted.

What the church enacts through its readings, liturgies, and prayers, is a calling of Christians (and all who participate in them) to be in the rule of God and to Look (for the good in others, for the good in self); to search for the opportunities and places where we can help the other, where we can do justice in the world, where can do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

When we do this, when we put on the eyes of faith, we come to see that Jesus doesn’t want us to do things in this world because he told us to. Jesus wants us do justice (to do good) in this world because as we do justice, as we do good in the world, we bring a little bit of hope to those that need it most. We bring a little more of that which is sacred to the forefront of people’s experience and vision.

And, if I’m guessing, as we do unto others as we would have done unto us, and as we share our talents with one another, as we gather rather than divide, bind those that are injured, see someone crying and offer a shoulder or help, see someone that is hungry and give them food, see the thirsty and give them water, see those that are cold and give them a jacket; as we imitate the saints living and present among us…we might just figure out that there are a few more heroes out there in the world, and in our communities of faith than we thought.

And that my friends, is pretty super.

Look.

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, latest, living

Nerd Out! Leaving Church, Packing Heat, and Metaphysical Violence

May 1, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 12 Comments

This is the LAST TNT episode in the Homebrewed Podcast Feed! Subscribe HERE to the Theology Nerd Throwdown podcast so you will continue to get the goodness like next week’s episode with John Caputo! The iTunes subscription is below.

Why are people leaving Church? Rachel Held Evans blogged it, Bo shared it, and now we discuss it. Andrew Sullivan’s post that got the conversation started ‘Christianity in Crisis.’ In this conversation Tripp discusses three good reasons people are leaving the church

Majoring in the Minors
Lack of Intellectual Integrity
Lack of Ethical Integrity

and then questions the impact of age programed ministry through college on the decline of the church. Why does Tripp have gay friends at Acts 29 churches?

Then we move on to discussing Jesus and his disciples packing heat. Bo previously blogged all the verses where Jesus mentions swords and then he ‘Walter Wink’s it’ by discussing turn the other cheek. Tripp then wonders about metaphysical violence and Process philosophy. We concluded by getting a little sermonic about the Biblical logic for universalism!

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Filed Under: bible stuff, emergent, features, philosophy, podcast, TNT

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 8 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

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

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

“Christian” Resistance to the Resurrection

April 4, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 24 Comments

Why would a Christian deny the resurrection? Or at least come up with some explanation of it that is deflationary, an account without all the death defeating flare on expects this coming Easter Sunday. In the past few days I have been asked that question by a number of my local beach friends which got me thinking. What are the theological reasons some Christians resist the proclamation of the resurrection?

Off the top of my head I can think of at least four forms of ‘Christian’ resistance to the Resurrection. I would really enjoy your feed back and additional forms of ‘Christian’ resistance. Send them and Daniel Kirk and I can discuss them in our LIVE STREAMING resurrection podcast Wednesday night!

1. The resurrection of Jesus is a denial of the one true democracy – death. The only thing promised to all human beings is death and yet for many Christians the resurrection is the theological means by which the church evades death or denies it. BUT should one locate the resurrection as a metaphorical reality then perhaps the resurrection (deflated to an existential horizon) can be preserved. By taking this move the resurrection becomes the means by which one faces their finitude with grace.

2. The resurrection of Jesus is a theological justification for turning our attention upwards towards a heavenly realm. This kind of other-worldly notion of fulfillment is the best pacifier for a church called to act for justice and likely a projection by a community of people who know that they too may die. The passion of Jesus that led him to the events of Passion week cannot be forsaken for a story about an eternal security blanket. BUT should one locate the resurrection within the community of disciples then perhaps the resurrection can be preserved as the poetic way of articulating the death of the transcendent God and the ~~resurrection~~ discovery of the grassroots deity preserving and vitalizing the communal passion of Jesus.

3. The resurrection of Jesus is an enormous theological distraction and misguidedly attempts to tie up all truth’s loose ends. Talk of ‘the resurrection of Christ’ ends up swallowing the attention as Christians we need to put towards other issues such as discipleship, ethics, community witness, the demands of love, mission of God, and so on. In the end the resurrection is turned into a slogan that is substituted for genuine critical reflection about life, faith, love, and justice and needs to be dethroned from theological prominence.

4. The resurrection of Jesus reeks of triumphalism. The proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection ends up reversing, denying, or trivializing the suffering of Jesus on the cross. If Christ’s suffering is only behind him, overcome, and undone then its as if the cross has been displaced! It not only makes the event of crucifixion a passing and transitional moment of suffering yet to be conquered but the trivialization of Jesus’ cross trivializes all the crosses, real and metaphorical, throughout history. If the resurrection of Jesus is the relegation of the moment he most identifies with world’s suffering and serves to hide its reality for so many then it needs to be dethroned theologically.

Don’t forget to check out Philip Clayton’s ‘resurrection’ podcast!

Filed Under: bible stuff, latest, thinking Tagged With: resurrection, theology

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Reflecting on the Resurrection part 2

Resurrecting space for belief

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

There’s Wonder Working Symbolic Power in the Blood?

“Christian” Resistance to the Resurrection

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