Stories in Conversation

AS THE CHURCH wends its way through Lent, the last days of Jesus become the focus of the lectionary. The story of those days is hopelessly entangled with the story of the early church establishing and defining itself. One consequence of this is the habit of the Johannine gospel (John 2:13-22) to blame “the Jews” for all that befalls Jesus. Its authors are a long way from Mark’s portrait of a Torah-observant Jewish Jesus (Mark 14:3-9). And yet John 3:16 proclaims the love of God for the world; no sibling rivalry can stand in the face of that love. Similarly, Jesus announces that he will draw all people to himself in John 12:32.

The epistles emphasize that Christ calls all, non-Jews (lumped together under the moniker “the Greeks”) and Jews, in 1 Corinthians 1:18. The emphasis on God’s love and mercy in Ephesians 2:4 makes this reading especially suitable for Lent.

The readings from Hebrews and Philippians on the last two Sundays focus on a heavenly Christ who is exalted, in sharp distinction to the earthly Jesus betrayed and executed in the passion gospel.

This diversity of texts reveals Jesus through the different lenses of his faithful at varying points in the church’s story, inviting us to add our vision and voice to the telling of that story.

[ March 4 ]

Thou Shalt...

Exodus 20:1-17, Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS spell out human responsibilities in the covenant between God and Israel, and subsequently to us, who have become party to that covenant. Not surprising, the commandments that pertain directly to God precede those that pertain to sister and brother human beings. The commandments are presented as being on the very lips of God. It is not clear whether God speaks through Moses or directly addresses the people. (In Exodus 20:18, the people witness the lightning, thunder, and smoke that accompany God’s speech and ask God not to speak to them, raising the possibility that they saw but had not heard or didn’t want to hear further.)

The foundation of the commandments is God’s identity expressed in God’s unutterable name and in God’s actions, liberating the Israelites from Egyptian slavery (20:1). Everything else flows from that. The Torah has both strictly monotheistic texts such as “there is no other besides God” in Deuteronomy 4:35 and henotheistic texts like those in Exodus 20. Henotheism is worshipping one god above others.

The commandments pertain to all of Israel—and on occasion their slaves, animals, and immigrants among them—but are addressed to individual male subjects. The commandments are addressed to adults who can be bound by them. For example, honoring parents is about caring for elders, not teaching children to obey. Patriarchal hierarchy will characterize biblical Israel, while at the same time gender performances are more nuanced and complex, and the commandments presume the continuation of slavery.

The commandments are not as simple as they may appear. The injunction not to murder in verse 13 has famously been translated “Thou shall not kill” in the King James Version. But, as Jeffrey H. Tigay observes in The Jewish Study Bible, there were many occasions on which killing was sanctioned in the Hebrew Bible. “Murder” is the preferable translation. Adultery was configured differently for women than for men. A married woman could have no sexual partner except her husband, while her husband had access to other wives, slaves, and prostitutes without fear of the death penalty. The society the commandments envision is not ideal, yet together the commandments sketch out a community that respects boundaries and honors God.

[ March 11 ]

Miracles and Magic

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

Zap them! There are times I long for a God who will zap certain people, similar to Zeus from Mount Olympus. Then I read texts in which God does (or threatens to do) just that, and I realize that is not a god I would choose. The Israelites are most often described as children, meaning “the children of Israel.” In Numbers 21, they are arguably bratty children. Parents in our world—which we project on to the biblical text, rightly or wrongly—are expected to respond to their bratty children with patience, love, respect, and nonlethal (and hopefully nonviolent) discipline. But in the text, God zaps the bratty “children” with poisonous snakes.

Frankly, the Israelites have every reason to be bratty—make that terrified—non-compliant, and just human. They had just escaped slavery, and no one knew how long that would last. The world’s greatest army was on their track. They ate up their few provisions, went hungry and thirsty, and the solution was hitting a rock, scraping up something that was probably an insect by-product, and happening across the occasional flock of quail. They are hungry and frightened. And God zaps them.

This is a terrible story about parenting, human or divine. It is a useful reminder that there are significant differences between our world and the world of the text, and it is important that we not disregard them. This is also a meaning-making story. This is a people’s story preserving stories of their ancestors that had been passed down to account for the presence and worship of a bronze serpent in Jerusalem to the time of Isaiah, despite the prohibition against idolatry. (King Hezekiah destroyed the image in 2 Kings 18:4.) At one level, the story is intended to (further) stigmatize and delegitimize that worship.

What are we to make of something that looks like magic and idolatry? This passage reminds us that mystery and the miraculous are deeply embedded in our religious ancestry. This story is also a dramatic demonstration that sometimes people need to see the object of their faith, or a sacred item representing it. We long for iconography of one sort or another.

[ March 18 ]

A People Redeemed

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 119:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

It is easy for Christians to read the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 as the new relationship between God and humanity inaugurated by Jesus or as referring to the New Testament. It is certainly valid to see Jesus heralding a new relational paradigm. It is also important to read the Hebrew scriptures in their own context, to understand them as the gospel writers would have broadly understood them—even as they were expanding their understanding in light of Jesus.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 is part of an extended promise in the full chapter to restore Israel, particularly Judah and Jerusalem, to wholeness in the aftermath of the Babylonian conquest and decimation. The promise includes rebuilding (verse 4), in-gathering exiles (verses 8-10), abundant harvest (verse 12), and restoration of the temple and its sacrifices (verse 14). This restoration is called the redemption of Israel (verse 11). Redemption is not personal salvation; it is national, in this instance and throughout the Hebrew scriptures.

What is new about the covenant in Jeremiah 31 is that it will be engraved on the hearts of God’s people (here Israel and Judah in verse 33). It will not be like the previous covenant God made with their ancestors leaving Egypt (verse 32). The only difference articulated is that the internal nature of the covenant means it will not need to be taught (verse 34). Jeremiah’s rhetoric is not literal here. He is not saying that no one—Judean, Israelite, (or by extension Christians who read from their perspective)—will ever need religious instruction again. Indeed, he is not putting himself and other prophets out of business. Instead he is describing a world in which people who had lost everything were restored and thus had no need of anyone to teach them about God. They would know God for themselves through their own experience.

It is these values, the trustworthiness and power of God to redeem and restore, that the gospel evangelists saw as contiguous with the life and teaching of Jesus. In short, the book of Jeremiah does not so much predict Jesus (though it may), as it renders a portrait of the God whom Jesus incarnates.

[ March 25 ]

The Body of Jesus

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:1 - 15:47

The Passion Sunday reading in Mark does not include the familiar Palm Sunday parade. It chronicles the end of Jesus’ mundane life, the emotionally charged days called “the passion,” and continues through his death to his resurrection. There is value in just sitting with the passion, rather than rushing to the resurrection and risk neglecting the most sorrowful days on our calendar.

The events of the passion are set into motion because Jesus is dangerous. He is dangerous to the status quo, dangerous to the Pax Romana, the peace (or suppressed resistance) that characterized Roman occupation. He is dangerous to those who have cast their lot with the empire. He is also dangerous to those who have cast their lot with him. It is that danger that leads Peter to deny Jesus (Mark 14:68-71). And that causes a young man to physically run away from Jesus and any association with him, running right out of his clothes (verses 51-52). Jesus is a marked man and has been for a while. Yet there are those who open their hearts and homes to him, such as Simon the leper and the woman who anointed Jesus (14:3-9).

Jesus’ presence at Simon’s table is gift and grace, hospitality offered and received at the margins of respectability. Jesus’ body is in proximity to a man who has or had a communicable disease with religious implications. (In the Bible, as in life, characters are sometimes known by one thing, past or present, even when that’s not who they are anymore.)

Jesus is also in bodily contact with a woman who is not a family member and not a slave or servant tasked with washing the feet of guests. There is no innuendo of her sinfulness here as in Luke (7:37). She will be mis-remembered in all four gospels—unnamed and misnamed (see Matthew 26:6-13; Luke 7:36-50; John 12:1-8).

Jesus is also embodied as a Torah-observant Jewish man. His fidelity to his own Judaism demonstrates he is not at war with Jews or Judaism, his people, his faith. And it is this body that he offers to his disciples and to the world at the table and on the cross.