How we study scripture is as important as that we study it. Look not for quick answers, or preachable ideas, but for the big questions, the ones that make us pause, doubt our wisdom, that tear us open to hear, that touch a virginal place that wants to give birth. Take these questions into a Bible study group, or prayer, or while exercising. Live the questions toward the larger answers they portend. Refuse a quick spiritual fix. Demand that God speak to you through these texts (not through my words). Wrestle the dark angel till it blesses you.
April 5: The Vision Revealed
Isaiah 43:16-21, Philippians 3:8-14, John 12:1-8
The philosopher A. N. Whitehead once remarked that it can take a thousand years for a really new idea to make its way, given human resistance. Exodus--now that was truly new: For the first time a divine being siding, not with the mighty, but the powerless, not with masters, but slaves (Isaiah 43:16-17). But now, 800 years after the exodus, Isaiah declares, God is about to do a new thing! It will be 600 years before that new thing is manifest in Jesus, and then it takes millennia just to begin to be heard. Write: What is the "new thing" God is still trying to do in our time? Why does humanity resist it so? If you are in a group, share.
The "old thing" included Israel's nonviolence at the cost of Yahweh's violence at the Red Sea. The "new thing" involves, among other things, a restored creation, a peaceable ecosystem (Isaiah 43:19b-20). Has Yahweh become nonviolent? Is such a vision as Isaiah's illusionary? Can human beings learn to live peaceably and ecologically responsible? Realistically, how much dare we hope for?
Isaiah provides the corrective vision. God gives us water to revive us in the wilderness. It wets our tongues for praise (43:21). Praise is the homeostatic principle by which humanity is kept in ecological balance with God and the universe. We cannot praise God and devastate God's creation. We cannot worship God and idolize our own power.
Do you find praise difficult? If so, why? Are you sure you thought big enough about what God is about to do?
April 12: Palm Sunday, The Vision Incarnate
Isaiah 50:4-9a, Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 19:28-40
Why do you think Jesus is taking his case to Jerusalem and its temple? What do you think he hoped to succeed in doing? Did he expect success at all? How do kings normally stage processions? Zechariah 9:9-10, where the notion of despotic kingship is lampooned, must be behind this scene. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus writes of a Jewish rebel in Babylon who captured the king's son-in-law and paraded him naked on an ass, which the Parthians esteemed the greatest reproach possible. Yet here comes Israel's king, "his cause won, his victory gained, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey" (Zechariah 9:9).
His first act will be to disarm Israel, according to Zechariah 9:10. Jerusalem will exist without walls, for God will be a wall of fire around it (Zechariah 2:4-5). God, not the military, will protect it, says Zechariah, "not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts" (4:6). God's people can live trustingly because they will do justice (7:9), and there will no longer be traders in the temple of God (14:21). God will raise up a servant, the Branch of David (3:8). As a result of the exile in Babylon, the Davidic family has learned meekness. It is poor and now identifies with the poor (7:10).
On the promised day, the Lord shall stand on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4). The good shepherd will be priced at 30 pieces of silver (11:12). The shepherd will be struck, and the sheep will be scattered (13:7). The people will look on the one whom they have pierced, and mourn for him as for an only child, the first-born (12:10). And then the Lord will become king over all the Earth (14:9).
That, at least, is how Zechariah was probably read by the early church. What "new thing" is God doing here? What new understanding of power is implied? Are we ready to hear it yet?
April 19: Easter, The Vision Subverts
Isaiah 65:17-5, 1 Corinthians 15:19-26, John 20:1-18
Easter is a scandal, not a comfort. It answers death--by blowing our whole world away! It is unintelligible, impossible. And the gospels do nothing to soften the shock. Women are its earliest witnesses--in a society that rejected women as witnesses!
That is not how the church should have gone about creating a believable story. Stuck with a recalcitrant tradition that insists that Mary Magdalene and other women were the first witnesses, they should have found some way to introduce some real witnesses--men!--into the account.
Take John's story of the empty tomb. Admittedly Mary goes to the tomb first (John 20:1). The writers have her leave the tomb and go get Peter and the beloved disciple. Let the men observe that the tomb was empty; they would meet the angel, or Jesus himself, and go and tell the rest.
Apparently some man did try to "fix" this account, but he botched the effort. He has Mary flee to tell Peter and the beloved disciple that Jesus has been stolen from the tomb. But how does she know he has been removed, if she didn't look in? Why this ludicrous footrace? Why does the beloved disciple, who clearly wins it, defer to Peter? What might this tell us about power struggles in the early church? Why don't they see the angel Mary sees? Why does the empty tomb produce belief in the men, but has no such impact on the woman? And why, why, why do they go home without even bothering to tell the others?
In verse 20:2 Mary had departed the grave; how then does she come to be there in verses 20:11ff? How would the story be altered if John 20:2-10 were seen as a later addition? What might have been accomplished by adding it?
Without verses 20:2-10, Mary is commissioned as the first apostle and preacher of the resurrection. In all four gospels, plus Mark's longer ending, women are the first witnesses of the empty tomb and risen Lord. Why then doesn't Paul include her--or any other women--in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8? And see John 21:14! What's going on here? How are we still playing sexual politics with the resurrection today? How is this story still a scandal today?
Jesus tells her not to cling to him. How do we cling to him in ways we should not? How has resurrection happened in your life?
April 26: The Vision Spreads
Acts 5:27-32, Revelation 1:4-8 , John 20:19-31
Why were the disciples arrested? Key to the growth of the early church (and Pentecostal and charismatic churches today) are healing and exorcism (Acts 5:15-16). Why have we largely abandoned these ministries? Jesus understood healing and exorcism as signs of the breaking-in of God's domination-free order ("the kingdom of God"). How have we let our theologies stand in the way of God's healing and liberating activity? In what ways are we "jealous" (5:17) of those who do engage in this ministry? In what ways do they also truncate the gospel?
God initiates civil disobedience by freeing the disciples from jail (Acts 5:19). The authorities are nonplused that illiterate (agrammatoi) ignoramuses (idiotai, 4:13) refuse to be cowed by their command to preach no more in Jesus' name. Adding insult to injury, Peter boldly declares that the authorities (not "the Jews" but the ruling oligarchy) are responsible for killing the initiator, revealer, and implementer of God's new order (5:30). God's "new thing" is already happening; nobodies speak back to somebodies: "We must obey God rather than any human authority" (5:29). Which means the unveiling of a whole new authority, not acquired by wealth or property or political clout, but by observing the naked truth of what God really intends for humanity. The disciples see it. They want it. They will die, if they must, for it. The authorities, sensing this, tremble, and fall back on judicial threats.
Gamaliel to the rescue, a Pharisee, one of the somebodies. The "enemy" is never as monolithic as we think. There are authorities who are in touch with their Author (archegon, 5:31). The movement that might have been strangled at birth explodes into the world.
How is the gospel being silenced today? What part are we playing in this silencing? Who tells us to be silent? Or are we censoring ourselves? If, with a single microphone, you could reach the entire world, what one thing would you say? Write and share.
Walter Wink was professor of biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City when this article appeared. He is the author of Transforming Bible Study (Second Edition, Abingdon Press, 1990).
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!