Category: Christian Theology

Jesus, Sinners, and Repentance

A popular meme on social media seeks to clear up Jesus’s true relationship with sinners and tax collectors. Perhaps you have seen it:

Jesus didn’t eat with sinners and tax collectors because He wanted to appear inclusive, tolerant, and accepting. He ate with them to call them to repentance.

Facebook Meme

At first glance, it seems right, particularly because it gets us past the all-in sloppy inclusiveness of our times. However, upon closer examination, it’s actually a clever cover for intolerance and inhospitality in the name of Jesus. Jesus did want to appear inclusive, tolerant, and accepting. It’s the Good News of the Gospel. Jesus welcomes sinners and even eats with them!

I do not contest that Jesus is calling all to repent. It, too, is core to the Gospel message and is the appropriate response to that message. However, I push back on the point that Jesus “did not want to appear inclusive, tolerant, and accepting.” The approach of the meme is a subtle form of gatekeeping—a way of holding those who don’t repent, to my satisfaction or my standard, at bay.

Whoever wrote the meme has no way of actually knowing whether appearing tolerant was one of Jesus’s concerns. However, in story after story in the Gospels Jesus was inclusive, tolerant, and accepting—which is precisely why religious leaders did not include, tolerate, and accept Jesus. And exactly what the sinners found so attractive in Jesus.

Though many stories can illustrate the point, I have chosen the cluster of stories in Luke 15. Here we have some of Jesus’s most well-known parables: the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and what is classically known as the parable of the prodigal son (a poor title at best). To understand these stories in context, one must hear the background offered at the beginning of Luke 15:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Luke 15:1–2 NIV2011

The religious leaders criticized Jesus for not just appearing so but for actually being “inclusive, tolerant, and accepting.” The leaders are disturbed because that is what Jesus did.

The parables that follow the opening verses are addressed not to the crowds in general, but specifically the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. Luke is clear, “Then he told them this parable” (Luke 15:3).

Once this is clear, the referents in the parables become quite clear: lost sheep (sinners), ninety-nine sheep (religious leaders), the shepherd (Jesus). One will note that Jesus is being playful here with the ninety-nine who have no need to repent. Doesn’t everyone have a need to repent?

Now the next parable echoes the first, is connected (“Or suppose…”), and is as transparent: lost coin (sinners), 9 coins (religious leaders), the woman (Jesus).

In both parables, the shepherd and the woman go to great lengths to find that which is lost. The religious leaders, like the author of the meme, do little to create an environment where that which is lost might be found.

Not surprisingly, the parable that follows, which I like to call, “The Parable of the Good, Good Father,” carries on with the same referents: lost son (sinners), older brother (religious leaders), the father (Jesus/God). This parable, however, ends with the judgement of the one who is unwilling to accept the younger son. The older brother will not include, tolerate, or accept his younger brother. Thus, the parable ends with the older brother impenitent.

The older brother in the story is put off by the father’s lavish, generous, outlandish display of grace and welcome: the best robe, ring on his finger, sandals on his feet, a tender calf for the feast, music and dancing—over the top celebration!

To be sure, the young son repented—well, he came home, at least. However, we should not forget that Jesus told the parables to the Pharisees and teachers of the law to explain why he was eating with tax collectors and sinners. The meme creates a false dichotomy. Truly Jesus did want want to appear “inclusive, tolerant, and accepting.” He also sought to call people to repentance. These are not mutually exclusive.

It was in being inclusive, tolerant, and accepting, that Jesus gained the right to be heard by sinners and tax collectors. Jesus did not call people while standing on the outside but rather as part of them, among them. Unlike the religious leaders who feared being contaminated by the sinners, Jesus did not do it at arm’s length. He risked appearing contaminated to others so that he could make a difference among sinners and tax collectors.

We need to be less concerned about how we might appear and more concerned about those whom Jesus was willing to include, tolerate, and accept. It’s hard to maintain boundaries and be among the people at the same time.

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The Name and the Sound of Breath

On various social media, and in sermons, and teachings, the claim is sometimes made that the Hebrew name of God equates to the sound of breathing.

That teaching goes something like this:

There was a moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what his name is. God was gracious enough to answer, and the name he gave is recorded in the original Hebrew as YHWH.

Over time we’ve arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” in there to get YaHWeH, presumably because we have a preference for vowels.

But scholars and Rab[b]i’s have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants. When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing.

YH (inhale): WH (exhale).

So a baby’s first cry, his first breath, speaks the name of God.

A deep sigh calls His name – or a groan or gasp that is too heavy for mere words.

Even an atheist would speak His name, unaware that their very breathe is giving constant acknowledgment to God.

You can find this example at https://diggingdeeper.net/2022/02/17/my-very-breath/.

So, let’s dig a little deeper. It is true that God has a name in the Hebrew Bible, not just a descriptor or category (such as god [elohim], lord [adonai]). In the text where the Lord appears to Moses through a burning bush, the narrator wrote,

God [ʾᵉlōhı̂m] said to Moses, “I AM [ʾehyê] WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”

God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD [YHWH], the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’”

Exodus 3:14–15

Lost in English translation is that “the LORD” is hiding the name of God in Hebrew. This name is sometimes transliterated into English with the four letters, YHWH, called the Tetragrammaton in academic parlance. Though this text in Exodus introduces the name to Moses, its first appearance in the Bible is at Gen 2:4 and the name appears over 6800 times in the whole Bible.

The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Septuagint (abbr. LXX), translated God’s name as either “God” (θεός; theos) or “Lord” (κύριος; kurios). The latter translation begins the tradition of translating God’s name as “Lord.” The New Testament authors wrote in Greek and used the Septuagint and so consequently they speak of God as “Lord,” a term they also applied to Jesus.

Speaking of the development of the tetragrammaton, we did not somehow arbitrarily come up with the vowels between the consonants. Nor did Hebrew speakers lack a preference for vowels—it is actually hard to speak without vowels. Rather Hebrew did not express every vowel in written form—though some of the Hebrew alphabet function as vowels. In time, scribes created vowel markings so the vowels would not be forgotten as Hebrew became less used. Below I have given a copy of Gen 1:1 without and with vowels (and other diacritical markings) noted.

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

Hebrew had vowels before the vowel markers were added. But when it comes to YHWH, scholars remain uncertain exactly how this word was pronounced because the Masoretes, the scribes responsible for the vowel markings in the Hebrew Bible, used the vowels for adonai (“lord” or “master”) and would read the name as adonai or “the name” to avoid the misuse of God’s name in keeping with the third commandment. (See any standard Bible dictionary or encyclopedia for this information; e.g., I consulted Geoffrey W. Bromiley, editor, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, rev. ed. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982], s.v. “God”).

Instead of the sound of breathing, the name YHWH is related to the verb “to be” (הָוָה; hāwâ) in Hebrew. It would convey the sense that God is the “one who is,” thus, directly connecting to the “I am who I am,” or even “I will be who I will be” of Exodus 3:14. This link is clear and uncontested to Hebrew scholars as the footnote in the NIV 2011 points out: “The Hebrew for LORD sounds like and may be related to the Hebrew for I AM in verse 14.” Leon R. Kass, Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021), 73, points out that the name of God YHWH is the “correlative third-person singular, imperfect, of the same verb: ‘He is being,’ ‘He will be being.'” As a verb, YHWH would be read as “he is,” not an onomatopoeia of breathing in and out.

The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the LXX dealt with the awkwardness of God announcing that his name is “I AM” in this way: Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν, which translated would be something like “I am the being one.” Thus,” says the Lord (Κύριος), The One Who Exists (Ὁ ὢν) sent me to you.” The point is that God’s name revolves around the notion of the one who exists and who exists on God’s own terms. God’s existence, unlike our own, is not contingent or dependent on anything. God EXISTS! That is what is embedded in God’s personal name YHWH.

So who are the scholars and rabbis who say the name of God replicates the sound of breathing? You will note that in the piece cited above no bibliographic data is given and for good reason. None exists. Here you will only hear the sound of silence. You will not find this information in the Bible or any ancient Jewish source.

So take a deep breath. Now let it out, and be assured that God exists.

Stop “Advancing the Kingdom” Now!

What exactly do we mean when we say our purpose is to “advance the kingdom”? I think we are reaching for a way to say we want to participate in God’s kingdom but often I hear what is synonymous with advancing our own interest or organization which, of course, naturally, we believe to be completely in line with and consistent with what God is doing in the world. But it is precisely this presumption that needs tempering.

In the New Testament, one does not “advance” the kingdom of God. As the parable of the sower illustrates.

This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come. (Mark 4:26–29 NIV)

True, the farmer does his part, but as the parable makes clear growth  is a rather mysterious affair. And that is the way it always is with the growth or expansion of the God’s kingdom.

The Apostle knew this. In 1 Corinthians Paul explains clearly his role in advancing the kingdom of God:

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. (1 Corinthians 3:5–9 NIV)

Thus, the language of participation is more suitable to our role in the Kingdom of God—which after all is God’s domain. In the language of our text, we are God’s fellow workers, God’s partners—not a bad position, mind you. Together we might be said to advance the kingdom of God but truly it is God’s power that has always advanced his kingdom. In a sense, we are along for the ride though with a significant role, but we are not the advancers—the Spirit of God is— and we are more like the rear guard, or to mix metaphors, the harvesters. (Paul liked to mix his metaphors, too).

Ironically—given the way we sometimes speak about advancing the kingdom—the only time that the notion of “advancing” the kingdom appears in Scripture is when Jesus critiques those who seek to lay hold of that kingdom.

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it (βιάζεται καὶ βιασταὶ ἁρπάζουσιν αὐτήν) (Matthew 11:12 NIV)

Here it is the kingdom itself that is advancing forcefully, even violently, and it is violent people seeking to control it.

So if “advancing the kingdom” is a bit of an overshot, is there better language for talking about our relationship to the kingdom of God?

In scripture, the normative way of speaking of our relationship to the kingdom of God is through “entering” and “receiving.” This receiving and entering is to be done in the spirit and disposition of a little child—not a lot of “advancing the kingdom here, just the humble acceptance of God’s gracious move. For entering, see Matt 5:20; 7:21; 18:3; 19:23–24; 21:31; 23:13; Mark 9:47; 10:15, 23–25; Luke 18:17, 24–25; John 3:5; Acts 14:22; 19:8; for receiving, see Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17; Heb 12:28; 2 Pet 1:11.

So the next time you are tempted to say “advance the kingdom of God,” slow down a bit and ask “really?” Is this really what God is up to, or am I co-opting the kingdom to advance my ministry, organization, or mission?

Does “Church” mean “the called out”?

I still hear it, though, by this time we should know better. The word “church” means “the called out,” therefore, based on the root meaning of the word, the church are the called out ones. Actually, no. While I certainly don’t want to take issue with the notion that the church should be those “called out” of the world to live God’s life for the sake of the world, the word church in the NT (ἐκκλησία) does not mean “the called out.”

This a bit like saying our English word “church” means “those belonging to the Lord,” since, after all, the English word church derives from the Greek “kurikos” (κυριακός) which meant “belonging to the Lord.” But few would even make that connection today.

D. A. Carson, years ago in Exegetical Fallacies, called this way of thinking about words, the root fallacy–that is that you can find what a word means by looking at its constituent parts (in this case, ἐκ [out of] + κλῆσις [calling]).

By the time of the first century, the word was the common word for a political or other assembly. The word, in that sense, is not a religious word. Furthermore, the import of the word is not the people had been called out but rather that they have assembled to conduct some business or activity. In one case in the NT, the word refers to a gathered mob (Acts 19:32).

Unfortunately, the often overlooked background of the NT use of the word ἐκκλησία is that the earliest Christians conversant in Greek knew the word from the Greek translation of the OT, the Septuagint (LXX). The word was not a new word for the early Christians but one they heard often with the OT was being read.

The Greek translators of the OT used the word ἐκκλησία as a translation of קָהָל (qahal) and other synonyms, generally translated as congregation or assembly. Consequently, the NT word we translate “church,” is all over the OT, as in Deut 4:10; 9:10; 18:16; 23:2-4, 9; 31:30; Josh 8:35; Judg 20:2; 21:5, 8; 1 Sam 17:47; 19:20; 1 Kings 8:14, 22, 55, 65; 1 Chr 13:2, 4; 28:2, 8; 29:1, 10, 20; 2 Chr 1:3, 5; 6:3, 12-13; 7:8; 10:3; 20:5, 14; 23:3; 28:14; 29:23, 28, 31-32; 30:2, 4, 13, 17, 23-25; Ezra 2:64; 10:1, 8, 12, 14; Neh 5:7, 13; 7:66; 8:2, 17; 13:1; Judith 6:16, 21; 7:29; 14:6; 1 Mac 2:56; 3:13; 4:59; 5:16; 14:19; Psa 21:23, 26; 25:5, 12; 34:18; 39:10; 67:27; 88:6; 106:32; 149:1; Prov 5:14; Job 30:28; Sir 15:5; 21:17; 23:24; 24:2; 26:5; 31:11; 33:19; 38:33; 39:10; 44:15; 46:7; 50:13, 20; Sol 10:6; Mic 2:5; Joel 2:16; Lam 1:10.

So better than thinking of the church as the “called out ones,” a more biblical approach would be seeing the church as the continuation of the story of God from the OT. When the early Christians heard the word ἐκκλησία, they were more likely to hear a reference to God’s gathered people.

What God Loves; What We Love

Reflections on the Gospel Lectionary Reading for March 15, 2015: John 3:14-21

The United States became “officially” biblically illiterate on January 9, 2009. The day before, Tim Tebow had “John” written in white on his eye-black under his right eye and 3:16 under his left eye in the OU vs. FL football game.  Tebow made a name for himself by his outward religious expressions at sporting events.

However, the amazing thing that happened the next day was that “John 3:16” was the top search on Google search. The top five searches on January 9, 2009 were

1. John 3 16

2. Mary Lynn Rajskub

3. Windows 7 beta download

4. All inclusive vacations

5. Ana Ortiz

In other words, people no longer knew the once most-memorized text of the Bible. If people knew nothing else about the Bible, they would often know “For God so loved the world . . .”

Equally disturbing, to me at least, is that guy who held up the John 3:16 banner at all those NFL games over the years had been utterly unsuccessful.

The Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday includes this once well-known text. Beginning in John 3:14, our text reads,

… And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

When we read John 3:16 in its larger context we see that God is not the only one who “loves” in our text. People are said to love, too. Embedded in this text is a call to respond to God’s love.

“Who said what?” is a bit of a problem in this text. Since ancient manuscripts of the NT had no real equivalent to quotation marks, scholars have argued over where Jesus ends his conversation with Nicodemus and where John begins his commentary. I’m among those who think Jesus finishes at v. 15 and that v. 16 begins John’s comments. This probably does not change how we read the text much, but in the spirit of full disclosure that is how I’m reading it. If you are interested in this issues, you can consult the commentaries on it or let me know, and I will send you the information.

However one resolves who said what, the content of v. 15 sets the context for hearing the whole text and it is important for hearing that text.

In a rather strange analogy, Jesus compares the “Son of Man,” referring to himself,  to the serpent that Moses placed on a pole and lifted up (ὑψόω) in the wilderness. Of course, the story about Moses and the snake is also rather strange, and unexpected, given the association of the serpent with temptation in the creation narrative. The story is told in a few verses in the book of Numbers:

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. (Numbers 21:4–9 NRSV)

Discounting the idolatrous nature of the bronze serpent (and that it violates the second commandment), Jesus analogy rests on one point: just as the serpent was lifted up, so the Son of Man will be lifted up. A second point might be that those who looked at the serpent would live and those who believe in the Son of Man will have eternal life.

But back to the first thought, the notion of “being lifted” has something a double meaning in John’s writing. For Jesus to be “lifted up” could as easily mean to be exalted or to be crucified. John may want his readers to linger a bit on both and perhaps feel the interplay between the two.

So as we turn the corner into John 3:16, the “exalted” Son of Man is still echoing in our heads. We are now prepared to hear that God’s love for the world will cost God dearly: God gave, God sent. Vv. 16, 17, and 18 all move in the same direction. God gave his Son so that those who believe may have eternal life; God sent his Son so that the world might be save through him; those who believe are not condemn. God’s intent is that his creatures will live!

However, there is another side to the equation: “those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” What caught my attention here is that John announces that those who do not believe are “condemned already” (κέκριται; perfect/completed tense in Greek of κρίνω, I judge). Clearly, John has certain people or group of people in mind. He has already mentioned those who believe so he does not believe all people are under consideration here. Rather these who do not believe are those who have encountered Jesus but chose not believe, or in John’s language, closed their eyes to the light of God. This only makes sense if you believe that Jesus is God’s representative, or as the text says, God’s Son. If that is true, then ignoring Jesus is rejecting the God of creation.

In fact, as God so loved the world, such people loved darkness rather than the light. And that, it seems to me, is the fulcrum of this text. God loved the world so much that he sent his Son as “light,” but those who love darkness will not see the Light.

The question of the text becomes, “Do you want to see? Well, do you?

No One But Jesus!

Reflections on the Lectionary Gospel Reading for February 15: Mark 9:1-10

And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

The story of Jesus as told by Mark is punctuated by three nodal moments: the baptism of Jesus, the transfiguration, and the crucifixion. These stories appear to be of the same fabric. They all speak to the identity of Jesus; they all announce Jesus as God’s special messenger, even the Son of God. They all partake of theophanies, or stories in which God appears.

There are several of these stories in the OT: Moses on Mt. Sinai, Isaiah before the throne of God, and others. Often these stories involve clouds, the voice of God, dazzling white garments, and a new direction or clarity for the one who experienced it. Though the elements vary from story to story, they always involve an encounter with the living God.

Though the reading for this coming Sunday is actually Mark 9:2-9, a larger context is necessary to catch the sense of the text. Therefore, I have included v. 1 and v. 10. The first verse sets up the story of the transfiguration. Here Jesus states that some of his audience would be alive to “see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” While this comment may refer to the founding of the church, Mark does not tell us that story in his Gospel. More likely, then, the comment makes sense within in the immediate context. Mark had already introduced the centrality of the “kingdom of God” to the ministry and preaching of Jesus (cf. Mark 1:15; 4:11, 26, 30; 9:1, 47; 10:14–15, 23–25; 12:34; 14:25; 15:43).

Jesus has been very clear that the Kingdom of God was in fact already present in his ministry. In Mark 1:15, Jesus states that the kingdom of God has come near (perfect tense in Greek) and in 4:11 that the mystery of the Kingdom of God has been given (again perfect tense) to his disciples, though they did not understand what he meant. Now, in Mark 9:1, Jesus states that some of his audience would see the Kingdom of God “having come” (another perfect) with power. This text is not predicting some future coming of the kingdom, that kingdom is present in the ministry of Jesus. Instead he is predicting that some of this hearers will experience coming of that kingdom “in power.” (Notice that v. 2 begins with a marker of time: six days later, that is, six days after Jesus said some would see the Kingdom of God having come with power).

The next story, the story of the Transfiguration, satisfies both that some of his audience would experience the kingdom and that it would be a powerful experience. The Transfiguration is certainly nothing short of powerful!

When Jesus had led his closest disciples up a high mountain, he was “transfigured” (μεταμορφόω) in their presence and his clothing became brilliantly white. “Transfigure” is such an ugly English word; the only time we use the word is for this story. The Greek word is the one from which we get metamorphosis, and can just as easily be translated “changed,” “transformed,” etc. More pertinent than the meaning of the word is how Jesus’ transformation sounds like what happened to Moses when experienced the presence of God on Mt. Sinai. The text of Exodus notes that “Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” (Exodus 34:29). Just as Moses experienced God on Mt. Sinai, so now Jesus in this mountain-top experience.

Out of nowhere Elijah and Moses appear to chat with Jesus. Scholars and commentators have speculated on why Moses and Elijah and whether there is a deeper meaning to be found here. Here are a few of the better suggestion:

1) Both Moses and Elijah had theophanic exits. In the case of Moses, the text of Deuteronomy say that God allowed Moses to see the Promised Land, and then he died and was buried in an unknown location  (Deut 34:5–6). With Elijah, when it was time for him to exit, God swooshed him to heaven in the wake of a fiery chariot (2Kings 2:11–12).

2) Moses represents the Law and Elijah, as the beginning of the prophetic movement in ancient Israel, represents the Prophets. Thus, the Transfiguration is about how Jesus is the culmination of the Law and the Prophets.

3) In Deuteronomy 18 Moses predicted that one day God would raise up a prophet like himself. The earliest Christians read this text to refer to Jesus (cf. Deuteronomy 18:15; Acts 3:22). Yet many of the miracles of Jesus sound like those that occurred in the ministry of Elijah. Furthermore, since John the Baptist is identified with the ministry of Elijah (cf. Mark 9:11–13), Jesus would be like Elisha, Elijah’s disciple, who received a double portion of Elijah’s spirit after the latter departed.

In short, the stories related to Moses and Elijah provide a rich pool of images and echoes through which to understand the meaning of the Transfiguration and the mission of Jesus.

Clearly Peter misses the full meaning of the experience, when he said, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” The point, of course, is that Jesus is the one who now represents the will of God. Jesus, as the Voice from heaven says, is “my Son, the Beloved” and the appropriate response is to “listen to him!” One might say that is Mark’s point throughout the Gospel in seeking disciples who will listen carefully to Jesus. Remember “The one who has an ear to hear should listen up!”

Peter, who may well be Mark’s source for this story, speaks before listening. “He did not know what to say!” So as we are prone to do ourselves when we don’t know what to say, we speak anyway. When we do this, what follows is usually disastrous.

Yet Mark goes deeper into the motivation of Peter and the others: “for they were terrified!” Had I experience what they had, I’m sure I would have been terrified, too. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus elicits two basic responses from people: faith or fear. In Mark’s Gospel, the opposite of “faith,” is not un-faith, or disbelief, but fear. At the end of Mark, this same thought recurs. When the women who came to tomb are invited to go tell of the empty tomb, they don’t, “because they were afraid” (Mark 16:8).

When the experience was over, Peter, James and John looked around. They now saw no one but Jesus!

And that is Mark’s point: to see no one but Jesus!

The Legacy of Solomon Northup

As Black History Month comes to a close, I have a moment to reflect on my journey with Solomon Northup, both through his book once again and now twice through the movie. After last night’s presentation on Northup’s theologizing in Twelve Years a Slave, I received a question by text: What did the book mean to you?

To this question I texted back: “I become Solomon every time I read it and I ‘see’ more than I could before.” As Jerry Sanson, professor from LSUA, reminds us, reading Northup allows the reader to experience, in a limited way, what slavery was really like. Sanson remarks, “Solomon Northup’s story helps us to identify with him and others held in slavery against their wills. One of the reviewers of Solomon Northup’s Odyssey, the PBS documentary, succinctly summarized the importance of his experiences with these words: ‘It is this movie and Solomon Northrup [sic] that brings you closest to being able to say, ‘I’ve walked in the shoes of a slave.’ Indeed they do.” There is something about sharing Solomon’s experience that moves us deeper than the mere recognition that slavery was evil.

How prophetic was Samuel Bass, the Canadian emancipator of Northup, when he told the sadistic Edwin Epps, “There’s a sin, a fearful sin, resting on this nation, that will not go unpunished forever. There will be a reckoning yet—yes, Epps, there’s a day coming that will burn as an oven. It may be sooner or it may be later, but it’s a coming as sure as the Lord is just.”

We now live 160 years since the publication of Northup’s book and we have witnessed the outworking of the “peculiar institution” in our nation. And the fruit has been extremely bitter–yet progress has also been made. Northup also witnessed this.

For every Epps, there was a William Prince Ford, who Northup compared to the Good Samaritan. When  Northup had fled from his second owner, John M. Tibaut, who was seeking to kill him, he made his way through the swamp to Ford’s place. Once there Ford and his wife took care of him. They provided him with food and a safe place to rest, but, Northup writes, “neither food nor rest afforded half the pleasure as did the blessed voices speaking kindness and consolation. It was the oil and the wine which the Good Samaritan in the “Great Pine Woods” was ready to pour into the wounded spirit of the slave, who came to him, stripped of his raiment and half-dead.”

The legacy of Solomon Northup is not that his book is about the evil of slavery (which it is) but that his story is about what it means to be human. For Northup, to be human was to be created in the image of God and “images” of God are to be treated with extraordinary respect.

Get Out! Really?

I wrote this when the events related herein were fresh, but I decided not to publish it at that time because frankly when anxiety is up, we don’t hear well. Now that the election is behind us, perhaps we can re-engage in a more civil discourse.

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Perhaps you have seen the recent pontifications of the Rev. Dennis Terry:

“I don’t care what the liberals say, I don’t care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation…There is only one God and his name is Jesus. I’m tired of people telling me that I can’t say those words.. Listen to me, If you don’t love America, If you don’t like the way we do things I have one thing to say – GET OUT. We don’t worship Buddha, we don’t worship Mohammad, we don’t worship Allah, we worship God, we worship God’s son Jesus Christ.”

See it for yourself at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/19/dennis-terry-rick-santorum_n_1364414.html.

When I hear stuff like this from those who openly confess to follow Jesus, I think of the quote attributed to Thomas Linacre (c. 1460 – October 20, 1524) who, upon reading the Gospels in Greek instead of the Latin Vulgate, said:

Either this is not the Gospels… or we are not Christians.

When I hear Christians saying the kind of vitriol Rev. Terry spouted, I think

“If this is the Gospel … I’m not sure I want to be a Christian.”

One would think that as a preacher Rev. Terry’s first commitment should be to represent the Gospel of Jesus Christ—first and foremost; all lesser loyalties are idolatrous compared to loyalty to Jesus. What Rev. Terry proclaim was not the Gospel of Jesus Christ . . . not even close.

The rhetoric of a Christian America has become so pervasive—and normalized—that indeed the Gospel now sounds odd even to those who think they are Christians. Furthermore, for all the concern that Christians are not allow to speak in America, I find that this kind of pseudo-gospel talk get a lot of public air time.

Given the continued strength of America’s Civic Religion (often cloaked a patriotism), it comes as a surprise to most American Christians that God already has a nation! That nation is the church universal. Every time I hear “God bless America”—and I do want God to bless the country of my birth—something deeper inside me screams, “God bless the Church!” While I don’t disagree that the America is morally bankrupt, a concern closer to the heart of the Gospel is the that church is also wasting away.

Some years ago Gordon Scoville wrote a small critique of the American church in a slender volume called Into the Vacuum: Being the Church in an Age of Barbarism. His thesis was simple: American culture is going down the tube. The American (namely, Protestant) church is deeply intertwined with American culture. Unless the church somehow finds a way to separate itself from American culture and rediscover its true mission, it too will go down the tubes. And so it has happened. Scoville published his little book in 1989. Things have not gotten better.

American evangelicals seem not to see that saving America is simply the wrong mission. The church’s mission has never been to save any country or government. That mission is far too small for the Church. Furthermore for a God who seeks to save people from ” every nation and tribe and language and people” (Rev. 14:6), a church that favors one nation, one race, one language, or one people group, has not caught God’s mission. A hymn that can only be sung in one country is not universal enough to be consistent with the Gospel or God’s mission to save the “world.”

As I said, God already has a nation, the church. This “national” language grows out of the church’s early identity with the people of Israel of whom God said:

Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites. (Exodus 19:5–6 NRSV)

The Hebrew Bible offers the vision of Israel being the priestly nation to bear witness of God’s goodness to the world. As such a nation, one of the overriding principles of that nation was to welcome the stranger and the alien and to bear witness to the nations far and wide of God’s goodness. However, the storyline, as it gets played out in the Bible, is that Israel was unfaithful to God’s mission and so at the end of the story, the once proud nation finds itself grasping to hang on to its national identity—while exiled hundreds of miles away from their homeland. Despite this exile, and no doubt, with the help of God, the Jewish people were able maintain a national identity even apart from the physical land.

In the New Testament—which most Christian groups claim as the only guide for the church’s faith and practice—the language of nationhood was applied to those who found themselves exiled in a world often hostile to their faith.

In one place, the New Testament says,

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9–10 NRSV)

These words described not some physical nation with land, leaders, and legislators, but to the church, that is, those who have committed their lives to the way of Jesus. The language of this church is inclusive: people who were once outsiders are now insiders. (Strange, isn’t it, that is only takes a few generations for immigrants to forget they were immigrants?)

When Christians can no longer unmask the rhetoric of power, they will no longer be able to tell when the Christian mission has been compromised. Manifest Destiny was an American doctrine not a biblical one.

Oh, Jesus certainly had imperialistic goals, to be sure, but they took a cross-shaped form where losing is winning. Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world and he stated that before the powerful of his day. Jesus told Pilate,

“My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?”

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate asked him, “What is truth? (John 18:36–38 NRSV)

Like Pilate, American Christians have a hard time hearing the truth of God’s way. The way of conquest is not the way of Jesus. Yet, despite what Jesus himself says about the nature of his kingdom, political pundits still tell us we need to take back America for God. (I’m never quite sure who this “we” is: we Americans or we Christians?).

I find it oddly convenient that Rev. Terry’s rhetoric hides certain realities. For example, America was not just a “Christian” nation from the beginning; it was a denominational nation but not a Catholic nation. So, more precisely, America was a Protestant country. Neither Catholics nor Jews necessarily found the New World congenial to their faith.

The early colonial revivalists continually complained about how debased the American populace was. More honest to history, America has always been a mixed nation. Rev. Terry represents Protestants are upset, and perhaps a bit dumbfounded, that they have been marginalized from the mainstream culture. Speaking louder, as Rev. Terry did, will not somehow save the day or the nation.