What we are seeking is the questions that themselves brought the text into being. We try to follow the questions back to their source, to comprehend what is moving in the questions. We become willing to suspend our favorite beliefs (and disbeliefs), to bring our own lives and understandings under radical scrutiny, to allow the text to examine us, rebound on us, as a fundamental challenge to our integrity. We give the Bible that much authority, not because we worship it, but because we are confident (we have heard about it happening to others or it has happened to us!) that the Holy Spirit is able to train its words on us, laser-like, and perform the soul-surgery that we need to become more whole, more real, more our true selves.
[June 7]
Pentecost: The Spirit is Poured
Acts 2:1-21, Genesis 11:1-9, Romans 8:14-17, John 14:8-17, 25-27
The gospel has a context. It is not eternal truth indifferent to its environment, but a response to the system of domination that began, in earnest at least, when herdsmen "from the east" descended on "Shinar" (Babylon--already a thriving agricultural civilization) and first introduced the warfare, empire building, arrogance, desire for fame, and alienation from nature so characteristic of the conquest states that arose around 3000 B.C.E.
In Genesis 11, a common language (symbolizing a social framework free of strife) is lost as a result of urbanization ("let us build ourselves a city") and the construction of a ziggurat or stair-stepped tower. Why? Wasn't urbanization the first step toward a cosmopolis, a global village, whose slow emergence is, in fact, leading to a single language (English)? Why did the Hebrews regard urbanization with such dread? Why does God scatter the people and confuse their tongues? Why is God afraid that "nothing they do will be impossible for them"? Why does Babylon ("Gate of God") become Babel ("confusion")? And what is happening to our cities?
To reverse Babel, to counter the domination system with its privileged elites, its male supremacy, its oppressive hierarchies, ranking, and classes, God revealed the gospel and poured out the Holy Spirit to enable its implementation. The gospel is thus a disease-specific remedy for the domination system. Pentecost is not the undoing of Babel, but only the first installment, limited to Jews (Acts 2:5, 22) from all parts of the known world (Ezekiel 39:28-29; Zephaniah 3:9). Pentecost does not fulfill Joel 2:28-32 in its totality ("all flesh"), but merely initiates the process.
But how utterly astonishing! Four to five hundred years before Pentecost, God declares through the prophet Joel that this is what the whole divine yearning is bent upon: God wants to end domination hierarchies; therefore God will pour the Spirit on everyone equally. God wants to end elitism; therefore God will break down the power divide between young and old. God wants to end sexism; therefore God will cause daughters to prophesy along with sons. God wants to end class distinctions; therefore God will cause both male and female slaves to prophesy. Such sweeping changes will shake the very heavens (Joel 2:30-32), and usher in a new, domination-free order.
Write a dialogue with the Holy Spirit about your role in this amazing new order.
[June 14]
Wisdom's Song
Proverbs 8:22-31, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
Sophia ("Wisdom") is the feminine aspect of Yahweh, the immanent presence of God in all things, a mild and incomplete compensation for the over-masculinization of God. She is the architect or artificer of creation, working beside God and delighting in each thing made. She was the first of God's creative acts, the principle of creativity. She is called sister, wife, mother, beloved, and teacher. As the hymn to Sophia in Colossians 1:15-20 put it (prior to its identification with Jesus as the Christ), everything was made in and through and for Sophia. Later she was identified with the Logos, or masculine reason, and then, because Jesus was male, she was squeezed out altogether. With her went a large component of the female and feminine in Christianity.
Where do you locate the feminine side of reality? Is there a lesson for the church in the revival of goddess worship? Is it possible to regard God as androgynous, or do we need a variety of God-images: God as Father, God as Mother, God as Lover, as Wisdom, as Friend?
The earliest Christologies depicted Jesus as Wisdom's child (Luke 7:35) or Wisdom incarnate (Matthew 11:19). Just as Jewish wisdom theology used elements of goddess language to speak of the gracious goodness of Israel's God, so Jesus and the early church drew on female imagery to describe the tender compassion of God toward her children (Matthew 11:28-30; see Sirach 24:19; 51:23, 26-27, where the original image is applied to Sophia; and Luke 13:34).
It is characteristic of Wisdom, however, that her voice is not heard (Proverbs 1:20-33). Ignored, Sophia causes us to bait a trap into which we ourselves will fall, and to lay an ambush that takes our own lives (Proverbs 1:17-18). Perhaps some of the folly that threatens our survival is itself fostered by our over-masculinized images of God. How have we made God the ultimate Dominator? What doctrines and beliefs depict God as an abuser, a torturer, a sadist, a murderer? How might Sophia help us clean up our God-images?
[June 21]
The Real Owner
1 Kings 19:9-14, Galatians 13:23-29, Luke 9:18-24
Mere is the central paradox of Jesus' teaching and dying: We must lose our-lives to find them. Why is the imagery so morbid? Because, says Carl Jung, the unconscious still operates on the archaic law that a psychic state cannot be changed without first being annihilated. And the annihilation must be total; "the gift must be given as if it were being destroyed." This is what was symbolized by the non-utility and waste of the whole burnt offering in Israelite sacrifice: The entire victim was consumed by fire so that no benefit might be had of the remains. When the sacrifice of the ego is withdrawn from its projection on an animal, one faces the task of dying to the inauthentically formed ego in order to become the self one is meant to be.
Rebirth also includes the necessity of dying to whatever in our social surroundings has shaped us inauthentically. We must die to the domination system in order to live authentically. We are not only possessed by the ego as an inner complex, but also by an outer network of beliefs that we have internalized.
We can no more free ourselves from the ego by means of the ego than we can liberate ourselves from the powers by means of the powers. The ego must be totally reoriented with God at the center, but this is impossible for the ego to do. What is required is the crucifixion of the ego, wherein it dies to its illusion that it is the center of the psyche and the world, and is confronted by the greater being of God. Has your ego been crucified?
The ego, as it were, tears up the false deed by which it had claimed possession of the house, and acknowledges that the whole property belongs to God. And lo! God allows the ego to go on living there. The ego now knows whose the house is, beyond a shadow of doubt, though by force of habit it inevitably slips back into acting as if it owned the house. This is one reason we worship. To worship means to remember Who owns the house.
What is unique is the way Jesus enacted this almost universal myth of death and rebirth in his own life. Taking up one's cross refers specifically to Rome's instrument of intimidation and execution. Following Jesus' liberating way puts us on a collision course with oppressive regimes and institutions. By voluntarily and deliberately facing the prospect of death, one is freed from its power as a deterrent. Write: For what would I joyfully and willingly die?
[June 28]
Life on the Fringe
1 Kings 19:15-21, Galatians 5:1, 13-25, Luke 9:51-62
Luke portrays Jesus now beginning his journey to Jerusalem, via Samaria. Samaritans, according to Josephus, not infrequently refused to quarter Jews on pilgrimage from Galilee to the Jewish high festivals. The disciples, whose lack of faith is already legendary in the gospels, are suddenly quite sure of their power to call down fire from heaven like Elijah did (2 Kings 1:9-12). Jesus rejects their violence-driven response. Yet he is determined to stay with Samaritans. He just goes on to the next village, where ostensibly they find shelter. He rejects the insider/outsider, Jew/ Samaritan, clean/unclean divide. A verse not found in the better manuscripts at Luke 9:56 perfectly captures his intent: "You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man came not to destroy lives but to save them."
Jesus was, according to Luke's tradition, born in a borrowed manger and buried in a borrowed tomb; his last meal was in a borrowed house in Jerusalem, which he had entered on a borrowed ass. Even foxes and birds do better! Nor does he make it easy on those who wish to follow him. One says, "I will follow you wherever you go," and Jesus says, Hey, wait a minute, take this a little more seriously. Then, when he calls two others, they say, Hey, wait a minute, this is pretty serious, give us some time to settle our affairs and then we'll catch up--and Jesus says, No, you have to drop everything and follow now.
One prospective disciple's father is on the verge of death (had he already died, the son would scarcely have been with Jesus); Jesus will not give him time to see him dead and grieved for. By then Jesus would himself be dead. Discipleship may even mean violating the fifth commandment ("honor your father and mother").
Who or what is this "human being" ("son of man" is a Hebrew idiom simply meaning a person) who exists on the fringe of society, not belonging, rejected, censured, finally executed, yet most certainly "taken up" (Luke 9:51)? Why is Jesus demanding of those who follow him that they too take up this wanderer's existence? If the "human being" that was incarnate in Jesus were to be awakened in us, what excuses would we give? What would it mean for you to leave behind every normal or collective security for God's domination-free order?
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!