May [the LORD] grant you your heart’s desire
And fulfill all your purposes!
We will sing for joy over your victory,
And in the name of our God we will set up our banners.
May the Lord fulfill all your petitions!
Psalm 20:4-5
Category: Scripture
The first chapter of the Gospel of John includes some of the most famous lines in all of scripture: the “prologue” in 1:1-18. Scholars debate whether the prologue was part of the original materials that comprised this Gospel or whether it comes from a source who had a different theological outlook than other narrative parts of the book. Many scholars think the Gospel writer adopted an existing hymn for the prologue. You might say that the prose of the prologue sings, and is meant to be sung.
Karoline Lewis suggests that the prologue identifies eight themes that are unpacked in the narratives throughout the rest of the Gospel:
- Jesus’ connection to God’s creative activity in creation, new creation, and rebirth.
- The origin of Jesus and his relationship to God.
- How the incarnation — “the word made flesh” — reveals God’s character.
- How the divine and the human are held together in Jesus.
- Contrast between “light” and “darkness.”
- Witness.
- What it means to be in relationship with God.
- Abundance.
On this last theme of “abundance,” Lewis notes that the word “grace” (charis) appears only four times in the Gospel of John, and only in the prologue (1:14, 16, 17). The rest of the Gospel narratives “show the reader what grace looks like, tastes like, smells like, sounds like, and feels like.”
Some questions for discussion on the prologue:
- What do you think is the significance of the connection between Jesus and creation?
- What does the term / title “Word” (Logos) suggest to you?
- What do you think about the themes of “light,” “life,” and “darkness” in this passage?
- Who are the ones who “received” Jesus and “believed in his name?” Why does the text emphasize this here?
- Why does verse 18 emphasize that “No one has ever seen God” but that the Son has made God known?
The section from 1:19-34 demonstrates that Jesus is superior to John the Baptist. There are similar materials later in John 3:22-36, where John the Baptist himself is depicted as saying “He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30.) Some scholars think these references suggest the Gospel of John might in part have been written to counter groups that continued to favor John the Baptist over Jesus and that did not understand Jesus was God. Some of these groups, those scholars suggest, might have also been attracted to Gnostic ideas. There is still a community today in the Middle East called the Mandaeans who hold such beliefs and trace their origins back to John the Baptist. Other scholars, however, think the evidence for this kind of connection is thin.
The section from 1:35-51 narrates Jesus’ call of his first disciples. Many commentators remark on what Jesus says to Philip in 1:50-51: “You will see greater things than these . . . you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” This is a reference to eschatology, that is, to God’s consummation of history. Scholars debate whether the eschatology in the Gospel of John is “realized” or “futurist.” In a “realized” eschatology, the Kingdom of God has already arrived and is operating in the present time. For the Gospel of John, this would mean that the coming of Jesus is the arrival of the Kingdom of God. In a “futurist” eschatology, the arrival of God’s Kingdom and its attendant blessings remains a future event. Many scholars see elements of both a realized and a futurist eschatology in the Gospel of John: the Kingdom is now present in Jesus, but also there are elements of the Kingdom that are just over the horizon.
The title Jesus applies to himself in verse 51 — “Son of Man” — appears about eighty times in the four Gospels, including in thirteen different passages in the Gospel of John, but occurs only four times in all of the rest of the New Testament. The original Greek literally translates “the son of the man,” a phrase that does not appear in any secular Greek literature and that makes no grammatical sense. Most scholars agree that this title must relate to Jesus’ humanity, but there is significant debate over what the title says about Jesus’ humanity and how this relates to the claim that Jesus is divine.
Some questions for discussion on these sections:
- What strikes you about the differences in how Andrew, Peter, Philip, and Nathanael come to follow Jesus?
- Notice the different titles used for Jesus in these sections: “Lamb of God” (by John the Baptist); “Rabbi” (Teacher) (by John the Baptist’s two disciples); “Messiah” (Christ, Anointed)(by Simon / Peter); “Him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote” (Philip); “Son of God” and “King of Israel” (by Nathanael); and “Son of Man” (by Jesus). What does the use of these titles here tell us about Jesus? What does it tell us about his followers (including us)?
- What is the significance of the name Jesus gives Simon in verse 42? (Cephas comes from kepha in Aramaic, and Petros (Peter) comes from petra in Greek — kepha and petra mean “rock.”)
- What sorts of events do you think the “greater things than these” in verses 50-51 foreshadow? What kind of eschatology does this suggest?
Categories
Gospel of John: Background
I’ve been leading a Bible study on the Gospel of John. Here are my “background” notes.
he Gospel of John occupies a unique place in Christian faith and spirituality. It has often been called the “spiritual Gospel” for its emphasis on Jesus’ divine character and its call to inner transformation. It differs from the “Synoptic” Gospels — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — both in its tone and in many of its details. Because of these features, the cultural background, editorial history, and theological significance of the Gospel of John has been subject to significant discussion throughout history.
The Gospel of John refers to an anonymous disciple “whom Jesus loved.” (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2-9.) This anonymous “beloved disciple” is portrayed as first-hand witness to Jesus’ ministry and as the source of the Gospel’s narratives. (John 19:35; 21:20-24.) Although the Gospel of John does not refer to anyone named “John,” early Church tradition identifies him (presumably, a man), as someone named “John.” The Synoptic Gospels identify “John the son of Zebedee” as one of the twelve Apostles, and this John appears in Acts as a leader of the church in Jerusalem along with Peter. (See Matt. 10:2; Acts 3:1; Acts 8:14.) It is possible that the Apostle John is the first-hand source behind the Gospel of John, be we cannot be sure.
The suggestion that the text reflects the input of a first-hand source, perhaps even the Apostle John, however, does not mean it is a simple transcript of events written by this one person. The text itself demonstrates that the version we possess went through stages of editing or “redaction.” This includes, for example, the addition of the final Chapter 21 as a sort of post-script to the events described elsewhere in the text. Like the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John likely is based on some material collected close to the time of Jesus’ life that was subsequently shaped, supplemented, and amended to reflect the concerns of a community or related communities of First or Second-Century Christians. It seems that the Synoptic Gospels relied on some common source materials, starting with the Gospel of Mark, and that the Gospel of John relied on some different source materials, which perhaps accounts for some of the differences between the Synoptics and John. At the same time, scholars have begun to note similarities as well as differences between John and the Synoptics.
Some scholars have suggested that the earliest source material behind the Gospel of John might have been a “Gnostic” source that portrayed Jesus as more “spiritual” and less human than the final canonical form of the text. The final canonical form, in this view, came to reflect a more “orthodox” Jesus than the earliest versions. In the first few centuries of church history, what came to be considered “orthodox” Christian theology existed in tension with “Gnostic” versions of the faith. Gnosticism was a family of Greek religious philosophies that elevated “spirit” over “matter” and that offered its adherents secret forms of knowledge that would allow them to access the Divine. Christian thought tried to emphasize both the humanity and divinity of Jesus, and the related goodness of the material creation, in a way that came to distinguish Christian thought from Gnosticism.
There are themes in the Gospel of John that seem more “Gnostic” than the Synoptic Gospels — not least the famous opening line, “In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1.) And there are early Gnostic Christian texts, such as the Gospel of Thomas, that did not make it into the canon of scripture. Current scholarship, however, tends to hold that the earliest versions of the Gospel of John were not Gnostic texts and did not differ radically in theology from the final canonical form.
At the same time, the Gospel of John’s theological themes relate to the other “Johanine” writings in the New Testament: the epistles of 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John, the book of Revelation. It is impossible to reconstruct the community that produced the Gospel of John with any precision, but the related themes in these texts suggest there was a unique stream of Christian faith centered on participation in God’s life in Jesus, the presence of Jesus through the Spirit, perseverance through difficulty, and the practice of faith during this world and into the world to come.
This Sunday in the Church Calendar we remember the transfiguration” of Jesus. Our Lectionary reading in Mark 9:2-9 contains an account of this event.
In chapter 8 of Mark’s Gospel, we see Jesus feeding a crowd and healing a blind man. There is a palpable sense of excitement that leads to Peter’s bold assertion that Jesus is, indeed, the Messiah. (Mark 8:27-29.) But Jesus warns the disciples not to tell anyone about this truth, and then tells them plainly that he will be killed and will rise again! (Mark 8:31-32.) Peter, in particular, is scandalized by this message. (Mark 8:32-33.) Jesus tells Peter and the other disciples that the way of his Kingdom is the way of the cross: “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.'” (Mark 8:34.)
It’s not hard to imagine that the disciples were confused, even perhaps a bit angered, by these words. They expected a Messiah who would lead them to victory, not one who would lead them to a cross. Yet Jesus mentioned not only the cross, but a resurrection. And in Mark’s Gospel Jesus immediately assures the disciples that “some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” (Mark 9:1.)
Immediately following this claim Mark provides his account of the Transfiguration. After a six day period, Jesus takes Peter, James and John to a “high mountain” where Jesus “was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.” The account in Matthew’s Gospel is similar to Mark’s (see Matthew 17), but Luke’s Gospel says the Transfiguration occurred “about eight days” after Jesus told the disciples that some would see his Kingdom come within their lifetimes. (See Luke 9.)
It is clear from these accounts that the Transfiguration is the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise that some of his disciples would see the Kingdom of God come in their lifetimes. Indeed, the second epistle of Peter testifies to the enduring impact of this event: “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased’ — and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16-18.) The Transfiguration assures us that the present sufferings of the way of the cross are not permanent. It in a sense opens the veil between Earth and Heaven and allows us to glimpse the indescribable glory and peace that accompany and await Jesus, his Apostles, and by extension his Church — us — on a mission that requires death but culminates in resurrection.
This theological and missional significance of the Transfiguration may provide a hint concerning the enigmatic time period between Peter’s confession and the Transfiguration. Remember that, in the first creation narrative in Genesis 1, God creates in six days and rests on the seventh. Matthew and Mark are suggesting that the vision of the Transfiguration is a vision of rest. They present suffering of creation — the way of the cross — is somehow necessary before the time of rest. As for Luke, is he simply providing a time frame that he doesn’t precisely recall — “about eight days?” (This hesitancy is, in fact, a fair rendering of the Greek text.) Or, is Luke’s Gospel reflecting a theme that developed somewhat later in the Christian Tradition: that the creation “week” really contains eight “days,” not seven, and that the “eighth day” is the day of resurrection and re-creation? I see this last theme in all three accounts. The Transfiguration shows us that all things will be “transfigured” — changed and transformed into what they were truly created to be, and revealed to be what they truly are.
This series is a theological / spiritual commentary on Psalm 107. I don’t pretend to have great expertise in critical Biblical studies, which I find incredibly valuable, but this is an exercise in theological and spiritual exegesis.
Good.
Psalm 107 opens with a familiar refrain:
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
his love endures forever.
This is the most basic statement of God’s character in scripture. The LORD is “good.” The word “good” in this text is the same word used for the creation in Genesis 1. This tells us much about what it means to say that God is “good.”
Water and sky, land and trees, fish and birds, are “good.” These things nurture and sustain us. They are life. Without them, we shrivel and die, we cease to be. Our human being itself is “very good” (Gen. 1:27-31). God is “good” as life itself is “good.”
The word “as” in this sentence suggests that this is an analogy. When theologians speak about “analogy” we mean that because God is truly God, we can say nothing that fully measures or contains Him. To say God is “good” as trees and water and birds are “good” is not to limit God to the “goodness” of those created things. Rather, it is to say that if we imagine the highest “good” of any of those things, we must try to imagine it infinitely more so when we try to think of God. If water gives quenches our thirst, sustains our bodies, and revives our spirits, how much more does God do the same? If a lack of water causes us to shrivel and die, how much more does a lack of God do the same?
Of course, we cannot truly understand the “infinite,” so to say that God sustains us infinitely more than water is already to admit that the excess of God’s “goodness” over that of creation is itself something our human minds cannot contain. “The LORD is good” therefore is no modest claim. Is it a claim we can truly learn to trust?
Photo Source: Terry Ratcliff / Flickr (Creative Commons)
This post is from a paper I wrote for an Old Testament class at Wycliffe College. The prompt was as follows: Discuss God’s concern for the outsider (the poor, the widow, the orphan, the marginalized, etc.) in Genesis–2 Kings.
Here is Part 3: Joshua – 2 Kings.
The theme of the marginalized and outsider in Joshua – 2 Kings presents the same meta-difficulty as does this theme in connection with the Law: these are narratives that describe or presume military conquest and displacement of “native” people. Once again, we can draw on the concept that Israel is the “marginalized” or “outsider” character in relation to the violent Canaanite nations and in relation to Babylon if parts of the final text are post-exilic. This will not satisfy all our contemporary objections to the notion of herem warfare, but it is a fair characterization of the texts.
At the same time, these texts offer some wonderful micro-examples that demonstrate God’s concern for particular marginalized or “outsider” individuals. A prime example is that of Rahab. (See Joshua 2). As the lecture notes on Rahab indicate, there is debate about whether Rahab was a “prostitute” / Madame or merely an innkeeper. I think the former interpretation is most likely correct because it fits the canonical context of women who have been treated as prostitutes and then vindicated, including Dinah (Gen. 34:1-31); Tamar (Gen. 38:12-30); and the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19). The example of Tamar is particularly interesting because of the motif of a “scarlet thread” (cf. Gen. 38:27-30; Joshua 2:17). That one of the heroes of the conquest / historical narratives was a non-Jewish prostitute demonstrates vividly God’s concern for the outsider.
The Levite’s concubine is another basic example of this concern. (Judges 19). Indeed, I think the Levite’s concubine narrative is a paradigmatic text in the Hebrew Scriptures. The story is complex because the concubine seems in some respect to have “deserved” her “outsider” status since she was “unfaithful” to her husband / master. (Judges 19:1-2). But there are hints that the husband / master might have also been at fault and perhaps was abusive or at least had treated her unfairly. The fact that the woman returned to her father, who had the means to entertain the Levite and was able to persuade the Levite to accept four days of hospitality, suggests there are tribal or economic issues bubbling under the surface. Perhaps the woman and her father were trying to persuade the Levite to make his “concubine” a “legitimate” or primary wife or to become a subsidiary part of the father-in-law’s household.
It seems, however, that the Levite would not agree. (Judges 19:10). The Levite departed from the concubine’s father’s house and then failed to protect the concubine while he was a guest at a Benjamite’s home. (Judges 19:16-26). Instead of feeling remorse and caring for the concubine’s burial after her abuse, the Levite cut her body into twelve pieces “and sent them into all the areas of Israel.” (Judges 19:29-30), provoking a civil war between the other tribes of Israel and the Benjamites that culminated in atrocities by the Benjamites and the other tribes together against Jabesh Gilead. (Judges 19:30 – 21:24). The dénouement of this bizarre sequence of events is the familiar refrain: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.” (Judges 21:25).
The Levite’s concubine, I think, represents the poor and oppressed in Israel. She is not herself perfect, but she presents the Levite – the representative of the Priestly class, tasked with ensuring that the law is kept – with an opportunity for reconciliation and mercy. Instead, the Levite chooses a course of action that leads to violence and social fracture. The Levite’s failure to care for an outcast, a scorned concubine, led to violence that prefigured the final dissolution of the nation.
After Judges in the Old Testament canon, the book of Ruth is a classic text regarding God’s concern for the outsider and marginalized. Ruth determines to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi even though Ruth’s immediate fortunes undoubtedly would have risen had she returned to Moab after Naomi’s sons Mahlon and Kilion died. (Ruth 1:1-18). Ruth is then taken in by Boaz and becomes a link in the line of King David. (Ruth 2:1 – 4:22). The obvious lesson here is that God remembers and honors ordinary faithful people such as Ruth. It is important to note, however, that Ruth also took advantage of the opportunities presented to her, not least when she took the provocative and perhaps sexually daring step of uncovering Boaz’s feet and sleeping in his presence. (Ruth 3:1-18). A further lesson might be that God expects everyone, even the poor and marginalized, to use whatever opportunities are provided to them.
1 Samuel is yet another example of God’s care for women who are socially marginalized because of childlessness. (1 Sam. 1:1-19). Hannah’s prayer after she dedicates Samuel to God’s service reflects this theme directly:
[The Lord] raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes
and has them inherit a throne of honor.
(1 Sam. 2:8) (NIV). Hannah’s prayer prefigures God’s choice of David as King. David was an ordinary shepherd boy, “ruddy, with a fine appearance and handsome features,” but not respected by his brothers. (1 Sam. 16:12, 17:1-58) (NIV). In 2 Samuel 9, David himself reenacts the truth of Hannah’s prayer by honoring Mephibosheth, the crippled son of Jonathan (and grandson of Saul) who was afforded an honored place at the King’s table. (2 Sam. 9:1-13).
David’s story itself, however, soon becomes complicated. In 2 Samuel 12, after David has committed adultery with Bathseeba and murdered her husband Uriah, the prophet Nathan confronts David with the parable of the poor man and his lamb. (2 Sam. 12:1-7). The remainder of 2 Samuel treats the rebellions against David by Absalom and Sheba, the revenge of the Gibeonites, and David’s legacy. There are many difficulties in these texts for the theme of this paper, such as the fact that David handed over seven of Saul’s descendants to the Gibeonites “to be killed and exposed before the Lord….” (2 Sam. 21:6). Even in the context of this tribal vengeance practice, however, David spared Mephibosheth, and subsequently gave Saul, Jonathan, and those killed by the Gibeonites honored burials. (2 Sam. 21:7-14).
1 Kings describes the rise of Solomon and the division of Israel and Judah after Solomon’s death. Solomon famously began to follow other gods when his many non-Israelite wives and concubines led him astray in his old age, and this kindled God’s anger and set the stage for the united monarchy’s fall. (1 Kings 11). Solomon’s idolatry was linked to greed, which produced heavy burdens of taxation on the people. His son Rehoboam followed in these footsteps and increased the quotas of forced labor, cementing the division of Israel and Judah. (1 Kings 12). This demonstrates once again the theme that failure to give proper worship to God is linked to exploitation of people without power, resulting in war and violence.
The last word, however, always belongs to God, and it is always a word of vindication. This is one of the themes of the story of Naboth’s Vineyard, another longer narrative interlude in the cycles of rebellion and return throughout Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. (1 Kings 21). King Ahab desired the vineyard of an apparently ordinary man, Naboth, ultimately resulting in Naboth’s murder through the scheming of Ahab’s wife, Jezebel.[1] God pronounced judgment on Ahab of a particularly ugly sort – Ahab’s house would be destroyed and Jezebel would be eaten by dogs – although because of Ahab’s repentance God relented until after Ahab’s death in battle. (1 Kings 21:20-29).
God’s judgments and deliverances in these texts are mediated by prophets, that is, by individuals chosen and gifted by God to speak truth to power. The final vignette I will focus on in this paper is that of the resuscitation of the Shunammite’s Son by the great prophet Elisha. (2 Kings 3:8-36). The Shunammite was a wealthy woman who regularly housed Elisha. (2 Kings 3:8-10). Although she was wealthy, like so many other women profiled in these texts, she was barren, and God surprisingly provided her with a son. (2 Kings 3:15-17). Her son died, perhaps of a heat stroke. (2 Kings 3:18-21). Through Elisha, the boy was miraculously revived. (2 Kings 4:28-37). It is unclear whether this is a narrative of a “miracle” or of some sort of physical resuscitation, given the precise description of Elisha’s actions: “mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands.” (2 Kings 4:34) (NIV).
Looking back at this text with a post-Easter hermeneutic, there are obvious resonances with the death and resurrection of the Son of God and with the Christian resurrection hope. Perhaps more immediate to the redactors of the story’s canonical form, the text offers hope to Israel that the nation might yet again live after the Exile. Even though 2 Kings ends with the fall of Jerusalem (2 Kings 25), God will send His prophets to give the nation breath, sight, and strength once again. From Genesis 1 through 2 Kings, the “outcast” and “marginalized” is Israel, the people whom God will never abandon.
[1] Since Naboth is known by name and the vineyard is a family inheritance, however, it seems that Naboth was relatively prosperous. (See 1 Kings 21:1-3).
Once again I’m going to make an effort to start writing / blogging regularly. This post is from a paper I wrote for an Old Testament class at Wycliffe College. The prompt was as follows: Discuss God’s concern for the outsider (the poor, the widow, the orphan, the marginalized, etc.) in Genesis–2 Kings.
Here is Part 2: The Marginalized and the Outsider in the Law
The law texts in Leviticus and Deuteronomy provide a rich but also ambiguous source regarding the marginalized and outsider. The foundation of the Torah are the Ten Commandments and the shema. (See Deut. 5:1 – 6:25). The shema commands Israel to “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut. 6:5 (NIV)). The shema is repeated by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, but with the emendation that followers of Jesus must also “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22: 37-40; Luke 10:27 (NIV)). This emendation seems to be taken from Leviticus 19:18: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.” (NIV). The ambiguity here is that Deuteronomy 7 includes a herem warfare text that seems to exclude certain “outsiders” from the category of Israel’s “neighbors”:
When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations —the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy….
(Deut. 7:1-2 (NIV)). Leviticus 19:18, both in its own context and in relation to the text from Deuteronomy, seems to limit reciprocal “love” to relations among “your people,” that is, among Israelites.
There are a variety of approaches to these and other herem texts in the Hebrew Scriptures. None of them are entirely satisfactory. Within the context of the Deuteronomic and Levitical law texts, however, it is worth noting that the narrative frame represents Israel as the “marginalized” or “outsider” people among the nations. Like the proto-historical narratives, the Law and the conquest narratives depict God graciously making space for His people amidst the violence, idolatry and sin of the nations, leading ultimately to the redemption of all the nations from idolatry and violence.
The more “famous” examples of concern for the marginalized and outsider in the Torah are the Jubilee, debt, tithe, and gleanings laws. (See Leviticus 25:8-55). The Jubilee law set aside one year out of every fifty years, during which a variety of legal obligations would be reset. For example, the law provided for bonded labor in the event an Israelite became impoverished. If an Israelite became the bonded servant of another Israelite, the term of bondage could last only until the Jubilee year. (See Leviticus 25:39-42). If an Israelite became the bonded servant of an “alien or temporary resident” – that is, a non-Israelite living in the land – the bondage could be redeemed for a price based on the number of years until the next Jubilee times the rate to cover his work with a hired laborer, and in any event the term of bondage would terminate automatically in the Jubilee year. (See Leviticus 25:47-55). The Jubilee law, however, did not exempt non-Israelites from perpetual slavery. (See Leviticus 25:44-46).
The seven-year debt laws provided that loans made to Israelites must be canceled in an amnesty year as part of a seven-year cycle. (Deuteronomy 15:1-3). The debt law in Deuteronomy specified that “there should be no poor among you” and that Israelites should lend freely to other Israelites in need even if the cancellation year is near. (Deuteronomy 15:4-11). Once again, however, the debt laws did not apply to non-Israelite debtors. (Deuteronomy 15:3). A seven-year period also applied to bonded labor, although this was a rolling period that allowed at least six years of service. (Deuteronomy 15:12-18). This rule seems to conflict with the Jubilee law in Leviticus, since according to Deuteronomy a Hebrew bond servant must be set free after six years of service, while the Jubilee year would arrive only once every fifty years. (Deuteronomy 15:12-18). If these laws were intended to work together, it may be that the Jubilee release would apply to bonded servants who pledged to remain in service notwithstanding the seventh-year release. (See Deuteronomy 15:16-17).
The tithe laws in Deuteronomy required an annual tithe of one-tenth of each person’s produce. (Deuteronomy 26:1-15). This law included a three-year cycle according to which, in every third year, the tithe would be given “to the Levite, the alien, the fatherless and the widow so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied.” (Deuteronomy 26:12). The gleanings law stated that the edges of the field should be left unharvested and that this portion together with the gleanings (parts of the harvest that had fallen to the ground) should be left “for the poor and the alien.” (Leviticus 23:22).
These provisions illustrate the Torah’s concern that all of God’s people have a share in the land. Contrary to some modern attitudes about poverty, there is no suggestion in these laws that individual poverty is the result of moral fault. In fact, Deuteronomy 15:11 states that “[t]here will always be poor people in the land,” which reflect an understanding that bad things can happen to anyone and that the community is responsible to care for those who are experiencing hard times. Moreover, the tithe and gleanings laws recognize the often precarious status of “aliens,” that is, of non-Israelites, and include them in the welfare system. At the same time, the bonded labor laws provided redemption only to Israelites, and the Law also required herem warfare against what we might today call the “native peoples” of the land. The Law’s provision for the “marginalized” and “outsiders” therefore reflects a framework that is deeply conditioned by the historical and theological contexts of these texts as witnesses to God’s dealings with Israel.
Once again I’m going to make an effort to start writing / blogging regularly. This post is from a paper I wrote for an Old Testament class at Wycliffe College. The prompt was as follows: Discuss God’s concern for the outsider (the poor, the widow, the orphan, the marginalized, etc.) in Genesis–2 Kings.
Here is Part 1:
The Marginalized or Outsider in Genesis
Section A: The Protohistory (Gen. 1-11)
The theme of the “marginalized” or “outsider” does not at first blush seem evident in the “protohistory” of Gen. 1-11. After the depiction Gen. 1-2 of God’s creation of the universe, the Earth, and humanity, these chapters tell the story of humanity’s persistent, violent rebellion against God. This theme is summarized in Gen. 6:5: “[t]he Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” (NIV). But these chapters also tell the story of God’s persistent grace and faithfulness towards the creation and particularly towards sinful humanity. In Gen. 3:21, after Adam and Eve are removed from the Garden, God provides them a covering of skin. In Gen. 4:15, God marks the murderer Cain to protect Cain from vengeance in the land “east of Eden.” In Gen. 6-9, God remembers Noah and, even after the terror of the Flood, renews His covenant with humanity. In Genesis 11:8, God scatters the nations, perhaps in part to protect humanity from its own attempt to overreach human limitations.
In a sense, then, Gen. 1-11 demonstrated the furthest depths of God’s concern for the “marginalized” or “outsider.” These chapters show that we as human beings are “outsiders” from the fellowship of God because of our own willful sin and violence. We have “marginalized” ourselves by trading our status as the crown of God’s creation for the allure of knowledge and power that properly belong only to the God who made us. We deserve exposure, but God provides covering skins; we deserve destruction, but God provides an ark; we deserve to be shattered and toppled but God scatters us into nations in which we can build functioning human societies.
Part B. The Patriarchal Narratives
In the Patriarchal narratives (Gen. 11:27 – 50:26), some of the more poignant examples of God’s concern for the marginalized and outsider are in His provision for “secondary” characters within the narratives. By convention we call these the “patriarchal” narratives, but they are also significantly “matriarchal” stories.
We feel sympathy for Abram that he is old and childless, particularly if we understand the extent to which his culture practiced primogeniture and connected an abundance of children with male success and status. (Gen. 15:2.) But Abram’s culture tended to “blame” the wife for infertility, and provided alternatives such as multiple marriages and concubinage with household servants. Indeed, although Abram believed God would keep his promise to provide Abram with heirs (Gen. 15:6) – a moment celebrated in the New Testament as a paradigmatic act of justifying faith (Romans 4:3) – it seems that Abram did not trust God to provide an heir through his wife, Sarai, and so accepted the invitation to sleep with Sarai’s maid, Hagar. (Gen. 16:1-4.) This marginalized Sarai, who would become the barren, disfavored and shamed wife, except that God also remembered and honored her. (Gen. 17:15.) When God changed Abram and Sarai’s names to “Abraham” and “Sarah,” He showed His concern both for Sarah as a marginalized woman and for all of humanity, male and female. As Eve was called the “mother of all the living” (Gen. 3:20), Sarah was named “the mother of nations.” (Gen. 17:16.) The woman who was barren was made the new Eve, and the womb that was empty became the ark that would carry the seed of “kings of peoples” who would be scattered throughout the earth to build a new peaceable kingdom. (Gen. 17:16.)
There are other instances in the “patriarchal” narratives in which God particularly remembered marginalized women: the provision for Hagar and her son Ishmael (Gen. 21:17); the opening of Leah’s womb when Leah “was not loved” (Gen. 29:31, 30:17); the provision of children to Rachel, despite her scheming (Gen. 30:22); the rescue (though violent!) of Dinah (Gen. 34:1-37); and the provision of offspring (though through nasty deceit!) for Tamar when Onan would not fulfill his duty to his brother’s widow (Gen. 38:1-30). Although some of these examples are “messy,” they illustrate that, even in a cultural setting dominated by powerful men, in narratives that emphasize the faith and failings of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, God remembers and honors women as well.
Every time you read slowly through a familiar part of scripture you notice something new. Today I noticed something about the “city on a hill” metaphor used by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:14).
This metaphor is famous in American history because of John Winthrop’s sermon aboard the Arabella in 1630 and later by John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. In politics and sermons, the city on the hill usually represents an elect, special group of people, who in virtue of their virtues, can lead the way forward for the rest of humanity. The city on the hill is on the hill because it is socially and morally above the masses of those without virtue.
But in Matthew’s Gospel the flow of events does not suggest this kind of elitism. In Matthew 4, the writer details Jesus’ temptation by Satan, including Satan’s final offer of the kingdoms and glory of the world from a perch on a high mountain. (Matt. 4:8-11). After his temptation, Jesus begins to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom. (Matt. 4:17). As he proclaims the Kingdom, Jesus calls individuals to follow him, including Peter, Andrew, James, and John. (Matt. 4:18-22). We should notice that the call of these disciples is from among ordinary people who had already heard Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom.
As Jesus continues to preach and minister in the synagogues, he touches and heals the common people — the λαῷ (“laity”), and “crowds” begin to follow him. (Matt. 4:24-25). Seeing the crowds, Jesus retreats to “the mountain” with his “disciples.” (Matt. 5:1). There is a lovely parallel here with the “mountain” from which Satan showed Jesus the kingdoms and glory of the world during the temptation narrative in the previous chapter. From this mountain, Jesus is showing his disciples the wealth and glory of the Kingdom of God: the crowds of ordinary people who need love, healing and care.
I think that these crowds are the people Jesus refers to in the beatitudes: the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, the hungry and thirsty for righteousness, the merciful, the peacemakers, the persecuted. (Matthew 5:1-10). Jesus tells his disciples that these crowds already have within them people who are “blessed,” and instructs his disciples to be “salt” and “light” in and to the crowds. (Matthew 5:13-16). This is why, and how, the righteousness of Jesus disciples must “surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees,” and it is also how they will “enter the kingdom of heaven”: by living among ordinary people who do not even realize they are already blessed. (Matthew 5:17-20).
These are some reflections on Willimon and Hauerwas’ book Lord Teach Us.
It was a delight for me to read the Introduction and first two chapters of “Lord, Teach Us.” The faith presented in this book is refreshingly different from the faith I received when I was younger.
It’s somehow embedded in my spiritual consciousness that the “Christian life” is primarily an exercise in avoiding dangers. My posture, unconsciously, has been one of defensiveness and fear. “We” need to be on constant vigil against moral laxity, heresy, “liberalism,” “secular humanism,” and other threats. If there were something like the “Homeland Security Threat Meter” for spiritual things, in that setting it would constantly have been on “Red.” It’s no accident that the Christian school attached to my former church has a crusading “Defender” as its mascot. The “Defenders” man the battlements and ever scan the horizon for attacking enemies.
Hauerwas and Willimon present instead a faith that recognizes its own weaknesses. As they note at the start of the Introduction, “[b]ecause of the nature of the Christian faith, all of us, no matter how long we have been around Jesus, are always learning anew how to ask the right questions. No one of us ever becomes so faithful, so bold in our discipleship, that we become experts in being Christian.” They are able to make such a statement because they conceive of the faith “not primarily as a set of doctrines, a volunteer organization, or a list of appropriate behaviors.” It is rather “a journey of a people.” To be Christian, they say, “is to have been drafted to be part of an adventure, a journey called God’s kingdom. Being part of this adventure frees us from the terrors that would enslave our lives if were not part of the journey.”
It’s hard to express how much loss I feel resulting from the many years I spent unconsciously or consciously thinking of my Christian faith as something that brings slavery to terror. My Christian commitment was in some important ways born of fear – the fear of Hell. As a young teenager, fire and brimstone preaching motivated me to think, do and say the right things. We lived under the cloud of the Great Tribulation, the scourge of Antichrist followed by eternal flames, from which only proper faith in Christ could rescue us. The vast majority of the human race was on a fast train to Hell, and only a small remnant of us who got things just right would escape.
Thankfully, there were other influences on my faith besides those fire and brimstone prophecy preachers. There were youth leaders, college professors, family members and friends who really did catch the “adventure” of Christian faith. And there was a kernel of truth in the pulpit thumping – Jesus himself, after all, was the source of the imagery of sheep and goats, good soil and rocky soil, Abraham’s bosom and Gehenna.
Yet, even now, it’s hard for me to fully assimilate the truth that the Christian faith is fundamentally “a prayer that [we] must learn to pray” rather than “a set of beliefs.” I’m baffled sometimes when I meet former Roman Catholics who have gotten “saved” and joined evangelical churches. Their testimonies uniformly concern freedom and security: they traded what they perceived as a rigid system of doctrines, good works, guilt and penances, for the blessed assurance of simple faith in God’s grace. I suppose they just haven’t realized that in many of our evangelical churches, particularly for those of us who have grown up in the church, the system of doctrines, works, guilt and penances is just as rigid as it is in any version of cultural Catholicism – and perhaps it’s more insidious because it’s under the surface. Scratch the skin of many conservative evangelicals and you’ll find the same iron blood as that which flows through the most traditional of Catholics.
So, when I read Haurewas and Willimon’s meditation on God as “Our Father,” it banishes some of those old demons and encourages the whisperings of better angels:
“It is comforting to know that even though you don’t always feel like a Christian, though you do not always act like a Christian, much less believe like a Christian, your relationship as a friend of God is not based on what you have felt, done, or believed. Rather, you are a friend with God because of God’s choice of you in Jesus through the church.”
Indeed! Yet – “through the church” . . . . This is our fundamental weakness as “independent” evangelical churches. How do my Catholic friends who embrace and live their Catholic identities know they are accepted by God? Why don’t they suffer from the same guilt and fears as those ex-Catholics I know who left that faith for evangelicalism (or, more likely, for no faith at all)?
I think it’s because they’ve learned to receive the blessing of the Church. They’ve learned to recognize that their friendship with God is far bigger than their own personal strengths and weaknesses. Sure, they realize the need for a vibrantly personal faith, but it’s a faith that’s far more than “personal,” and that therefore is far stronger than their personal weaknesses. And here, they can more readily grasp the significance of Hauerwas and Willimon’s thoughts on the fact that “Our Father” is “in Heaven”:
“You may not be good with words. Don’t worry. George Herbert, St. Francis, and Teresa of Avila pray with you. You may not have your head straight on Christian doctrine. Go ahead and pray with confidence. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and Georgia Harkness pray with you. You may find it difficult to make time to pray. Pray as often as you can. Your prayer joins those already in progress by Dietrcih Bonhoeffer and Dorothy Day.”
We may demur for any number of reasons to the authority of Popes and Cardinals or Metropolitans. Maybe those reasons are good ones rooted in the Reformation, or maybe at this point they’re still born of the fear of change, or maybe there’s some of both at work. Regardless, it’s vital that our “personal relationship with Christ” be far more than “personal.”