tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36668130097388532852024-02-20T06:57:30.221-08:00reconciliation papersRebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.comBlogger138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-79356198182996271432023-09-25T08:42:00.001-07:002023-09-25T08:48:04.323-07:00God's Repair Shop<p>Preached at Silverton Friends Church</p><p>September 24, 2023</p><p> <br />I’ve been watching The Repair Shop from England on YouTube. The show is built around a workshop of experts in restoration and repair in woodworking, clock-making, leatherwork, art, ceramics, toymaking, metalworking. These experts meet with ordinary people who bring in cherished heirlooms that need attention. As the show says, “While some of the items pass through The Repair Shop due to unfortunate accidents, others are simply ravages of time.” And still others are there because of bad actors. But all are welcomed into the shop and the skillful crafters there work on them, often with nearly magical results. As Will the woodworker says, “This is the workshop of dreams.”<br /><br />This show makes me reconsider how God looks at the work of restoration and ask myself, “Do these experts reflect something of God’s response to human beings who need repair, restoration, conservation?” <br /><br />There are some problems with the analogy I’m going to draw, so let’s acknowledge them up front. First, when people in the Bible encounter God personally (or even just God’s messenger), God often has to say, “Don’t be afraid.” Something about God is awe-inspiring, filling ordinary humans with dread and even terror. “Woe is me!” said Isaiah. Even Jesus occasionally terrified his followers, as when he stilled the storm. “Who is this that even the weather obeys him!” The experts on The Repair Shop, though amazingly skilled, are friendly humans. Not scary. So there is that.<br /><br />Second, the items brought in do not have wills. They are objects rather than persons, so they do not resist or evade their repairers, though they are certainly often a challenge. Often these items have been loved almost into life by their owners, particularly if they have been a part of their childhood; nonetheless, the items cannot and do not sabotage the repairs.<br /><br />So what about this show reminds me of the love God has for human beings? As Psalm 8 says, “What are mortals that You God should notice them? What are human creatures that you pay them heed?” There is a mystery about why God loves us, and we take refuge in the word from the Bible that God is love. Jesus is historical evidence that God loves us and wants to save us from error, from brokenness, from evil. This is simply the character of God.<br /><br />Many Christians have been taught to think that God sees human beings as evil. Some theologies even say that God cannot look on us human beings because of our sins. Imagine this attitude in The Repair Shop. Clockmaker Steve looks at a broken watch and all he sees is brokenness. So he simply looks away until someone puts a brand-new watch in between him and the broken one. As long as that perfect watch blots out his view of the broken one, he can be happy. Otherwise, he tosses someone’s cherished heirloom into the rubbish.<br /><br />All through the Bible, the various writers are well aware that God sees their good and their evil. Job challenges God by reciting how he is good and asking to be told what he’s done that is so wrong it deserves punishment. The psalmist who wrote Psalm 139 explores in detail how well God knows him or her: You know when I sit and I rise…and with all my ways you are familiar. Wherever I go or even run away from you, your hand leads me and your right hand seizes me. Search me, God, and know my heart, probe me and know my mind. And see if a vexing way be in me, and lead me on the eternal way. (Alter, 316, 317, alt.) And the writer of Hebrews reminds us that the Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword…a discerner of the thoughts and the intentions of the heart.<br /><br />George MacDonald, 19th century writer and preacher, believed in the inexorable love of God, a love that absolutely wants the best for us, wants us to be our best, and will work on and with us until that goal is met. When C.S. Lewis suffered the loss of his wife Joy, he wrote that if God was just cutting us open to torture us, we could hope that he would lose interest, but that if God was performing surgery to heal us, we could not hope for any relief until God’s work is done. (Sounds a lot like Job, who said, Could you not look away from me long enough to let me spit on the ground.) Perhaps absolute love can both terrify and comfort us. After all, God remembers we are dust.<br /> <br />When someone brings their beloved object into The Repair Shop, broken, worn, sometimes vandalized, clockmaker Steve and his colleagues say things like this:<br /><br />I love the challenge of [fixing] something like this.<br /><br />I love to improve things; I hate to see things thrown away.<br /><br />This is a nice exciting project.<br /><br />It’s an honor to be working on this.<br /><br />I’m thrilled to work on it.<br /><br />I’ve been imagining God’s Spirit with me, with us, seeing our brokenness, our missing parts, our worn-out-ness, and saying to the rest of the trinity, “I love the challenge of fixing something like this. I love to improve things; I hate to see things thrown away. It’s an honor to be working on this. I’m thrilled to work on it.”<br /><br />One scripture that comes to mind is this from Psalm 103.<br /><br />God forgives all your sins, heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the Pit, surrounds you with steadfast love and mercy….The Lord executes righteous acts and judgments for all who are wronged….As a father [an ideal father] has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For He knows how we are formed; He is mindful that we are dust. The Lord’s steadfast love is for all eternity toward those who fear him.” (The Jewish Study Bible, p1396)<br /><br />Or this translation by Robert Alter: [God] forgives all your wrongs, heals all your diseases, redeems your life from the Pit, crowns you with kindness, compassion…The Lord performs righteous acts and justice for all the oppressed….As a father has compassion for his children, the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For He knows our devisings, recalls that we are dust…The Lord’s kindness is forever and ever over those who fear him…(Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, “The Writings” p. 239-241)<br /><br />These words stand out: Forgives, heals, redeems, surrounds, crowns—These are the actions of our God. This is the God we stand in awe of. This is the God who has to say over and over, “Fear not!” Respect is too small a word to describe our response to our God. We can see a little of what it means to see God in action when Jesus stills the storm on the lake, and his close followers and friends fall back in fear and amazement. This is the God who forgives, heals, redeems, surrounds, crowns. This is the God who, for reasons beyond us, loves us.<br /><br />It is the attitudes of the repairers toward both the object and the owner that reminds me of God. Their tenderheartedness toward the present owner and absolute respect for the original craftsperson shine through over and over.<br /><br /><b>Listening</b><br />When a person brings an object into The Repair Shop to be worked on, The Repair Shop expert will ask: What do you want me to do with this? Sometimes the owner replies, I want it back as close as possible to when it was first made. Sometimes the owner says, I want this repaired, but I don’t want all the marks of history taken away. Sometimes the owner says, I just want to hear it chime again, or see it move like it did when I was a child, or I hope you can fix the corner the woodworm ate away. <br /><br />(This is different from when I took my diamond ring in for cleaning and got it back with all the 1970s antiquing removed as well. I was shocked and sad, but it was too late to change. Look at how new it looks, the jeweler said.)<br /><br />The experts listen to the stories of the objects from their owners. Their response is always tender and hopeful. They have confidence in their expertise, and they value what the owners value in the item. No item is beneath their interest. Steve the clockmaker spent hours on a plastic toy spaceship from the 1960s, getting it to spin but most importantly, getting it to hum like its owner remembered. <br /><br /><b>Loving the challenge</b><br />These experts love a challenge. They may moan a little over the complexity of the task, but they really enjoy their work. Will the woodworker looks at a hundred pieces that have fallen off a chalet music box and puzzles them back on appropriately. Kirsten the ceramicist looks at a shattered vase and not only reforms it but creates the missing pieces and then carefully paints it so it blends in. The toy experts dismantle a much-loved teddy bear, gently clean years of grime away, carefully match fabrics, and return it to the person who loved it as a child. In many cases, the owner does not want the years of love and use erased, but instead just wants it to be whole again. The owners often value the history revealed in scratches and worn patches, and they also are overjoyed that the bear has both eyes again. <br /><br /><b>Exercising patience</b><br />The experts are patient. They will say things like, “This is the fiddly bit, but I like fiddly bits.” I’m always amazed at the man who repairs music boxes. He gets it moving first, then listens for false notes. Again and again he solders or files and then tests it again. <br /><br /><b>Going beyond expectations</b><br />These experts like to do even more than asked. When restoring the chalet music box, Will notices a tiny dog house on the front. So he carves a tiny dog for the dog house. Extra. The toy restorers tie a bow around the teddy’s neck just to dress him up. Extra. Lucia, the art conservator, researches the provenance of the painting she has just restored and gives the owner more reasons to be proud of it. Extra.<br /><br />God also listens, God loves the challenge, God is patient, and God goes beyond expectations.<br /><br />Here are a couple of Repair Shop stories that are lovely parables for us.<br /><br />Lucia, the art expert, works to conserve the paintings brought to her. The one I saw most recently was a portrait with a hole through the lady’s lips, the result of an adolescent boy throwing a dart at it. So she had first to repair the 15-year-old hole in the canvas by wetting the threads, restoring them to position with an adhesive behind the canvas, filling in the hole from the front with an acrylic filler, and then painting that twice, once with watercolor to cover the filler and once with oil or acrylic to blend in with the rest of the paint. She also took the time to carefully clean the painting, and in so doing discovered decades worth of nicotine stain that obscured the rich coloring. Her careful work brought the painting back to its original beauty, and took away the damage caused by carelessness, though of course you can see the repairs from the back. She also took time to research it, and she explained to its owners why it was more than just a sentimental heirloom, how it fit into history.<br /><br />Steve, the clockmaker, had a pocket watch that was the only family possession saved by a woman taken to the concentration camp in WWII. She had hidden it by sewing it into her clothing. It was so thin and delicate that it gave Steve more anxiety than most of his repairs. He began by opening it up and observing the works. He cleaned the clockworks of 80 years and he washed its face. Then he put it back together and it ran, as they say, like clockwork. It was a reminder of resilience and also of the present time. The grandson was moved to tears with gratitude.<br /><br /><br />When people get back their items, they will often tear up in the stoic British way and then apologize for being emotional. They most often say “Wow” and “I can’t believe you were able to do that,” “this takes me right back to my childhood, to happy memories,” and “I want to give this to my grandchildren, to people I love.” They want to share with their loved ones how the item was magical for them, how it brings simple pleasures and sparks the imagination. They want to share joy with their beloveds.<br /><br />Imagine God asking us, what do you want me to do with you? Do you want yourself restored to like new? Do you want yourself conserved by having areas of wear and tear and damage remedied? Do you want cleaning so you can operate normally? Do you want the signs of age removed? Or do you want to keep the honorable scars of your history, even as the brokenness is repaired and beauty is restored?<br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-18562972160248534582023-09-25T08:37:00.002-07:002023-09-25T08:48:56.058-07:00The Fruit of the Spirit Is Love<p>Preached at Wayside Friends Church, 2023 <br /></p><p>When the pastors asked me to consider speaking on Love, I became immediately conscious of many failures to love in my daily life, and I nearly declined. But often in preparing to speak to others, I find God speaking to me, so I thought this sermon prep might create that opportunity. <br /><br />I’ll start with a confession that when I was discussing politics, I said, “I despise that person. He’s a liar.” So there’s that. And then, I’ve been married to a lovely man, Mark, for 48 years and counting, and I find that instead of worshiping the ground he walks on as I did at 16 when we began dating, now I snap at him daily for one thing or another. It reminds me of my dad who came up to my house one day from his room at Friendsview and said, “Your mommy loves me, but she doesn’t love all my ways.” So there’s that, also. And then I have not outgrown neediness—particularly with those I love the most. To quote the movie “What About Bob,” “I want I want I want, I need I need I need.” Perhaps the most embarrassing on this list.<br /><br />None of these things I confess to you make me love myself. In fact, I am ashamed of my unloving actions and words. I am also sad that as I age, I am not becoming sweeter and kinder. This actually dismays me.<br /><br />When I was in graduate school for English literature, I chose to do my doctoral research on George MacDonald. MacDonald was a 19th century Christian who wrote fiction, poetry, and sermons. His thinking has shaped me in more ways than I can identify.<br /><br />He lost his preaching job because of his beliefs. He believed that God’s love would never rest until hell is emptied, though the way out of hell is to give up saying "I am my own," to cede our sovereignty to God. We must give ourselves to God, and the way we do that is to obey what God says to us to do. <br /><br />I turned to my friend and mentor George MacDonald and his disciple C. S. Lewis for help in thinking through this topic of love with something that I hope you and I will find useful. Together, George and I will cover topics of vengeance, justice, forgiveness, and obedience, all as aspects of love. <br /><br />Much of what follows is directly quoted or my paraphrase of things George MacDonald wrote, particularly in his 3 volumes of <i>Unspoken Sermons</i>. His writing is infused with scripture. <br /><br />As St. Paul confessed, “The good I want to do, I don’t do; the evil I don’t want to do, I do.” What MacDonald says is that we do not know the sources or causes of our impulses, our desires, our tendencies, our likings. To put his ideas into modern terms, we are subject to neurological diseases, we catch the contagious evil around us, we have hatreds rooted in our childhoods, we have inherited genetic tendencies and traits. MacDonald also says that God will make every excuse for us that can be made, that God is pleased with every effort we make in the right direction toward love, and that God will not rest until we have been made right from deep within. MacDonald is fond of quoting that “Our God is a consuming fire.”<br /><br />We must recognize the inward opposition to love comes from the part where God is not yet present; we need to realize that it takes time for our whole selves to be redeemed because God goes to the roots of ourselves beyond our consciousness, starts there—when God inhabits that part which is presently opposing our desire to love, it will become holy.<br /><br />MacDonald counsels honesty. Don’t try to feel good when you recognize that you are not good, but cry to God who is good. Wait in the quietness until light goes up in your darkness, and in the meantime, do something positive that needs doing—make your bed, prepare a meal, visit a friend, weed the garden. He says, astringently, we must give up any notion of playing the hero when we are not yet barely honest. Indeed, the purest efforts of will of which we are capable cannot keep us from doing wrong to our neighbor.<br /><br />Now on to MacDonald on love (what follows are assorted quotations from MacDonald's <i>Unspoken Sermons</i>, many of then collected in C.S. Lewis's <i>George MacDonald, An Anthology)</i>:<br /><br />Why do we love? We do not love because we see why but because we love. In the main, we love because we cannot help it—there is no merit in it but neither is it selfish. The love that is born in us is our salvation from selfishness. <br /><br />Where we do not love, the not-loving seems rational. How can we love a man or woman who is mean, unlovely, fault-finding, untrusting and untrustworthy, self-righteous, self-seeking, sneering and contemptuous? These things cannot be loved. But are they the whole of the person? Is there not within the person the divine element of brotherhood or sisterhood, something lovely and lovable, something human, however it seems to be fading or even dying?<br /><br />Though we cannot make ourselves love, we can and must fight against the hatred inside us. Hate concentrates itself on the thing hated. Love makes everything lovely.<br /><br />If your neighbor, who owes you love, gives you hate, you must nevertheless pay that neighbor the love you owe them, says MacDonald (and also Jesus). <br /><br />Do not heed much if people mock you and speak lies of you, or even in goodwill defend you unworthily. Heed not much if even the righteous turn their backs on you. Only take heed that you turn not from them. <br /><br />In the dungeon of self we are breathing in the same air we breathed out. “Love your neighbor” is the only way out of this dungeon. “Love your neighbor” frees us into God’s sunlight and the sweet winds of the universe.<br /><br />However, the impossibility of following God’s command to love our neighbor drives us to God for help. <br /><br />God says, “Vengeance is mine.” When we understand God rightly, we might as well pray for God’s vengeance as for God’s forgiveness. God’s vengeance is to destroy the sin, to make the sinner reject and hate it. The same unblinking purifying love God has for us, God has as well for our enemy. No one escapes the flame of God’s love.<br /><br />Indeed, Christ died to save us not from suffering, but from ourselves; not from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust. A human being is not made for justice from another human being but for love, which is greater than justice. Love is the law of our condition without which we cannot render justice. <br /><br />It may be … less evil to murder a person than to refuse to forgive them. When we will not forgive another, we cannot believe that God is willing, even wanting to forgive us. <br /><br />The will of his and our Father is the yoke Jesus would have us take and bear together with him—it is this yoke—shared with Jesus—that is light and easy.<br /><br />Do you ask what is faith in God? I answer, leaving your own way, your purposes, your self, and taking God’s way, God’s purposes, God’s self—the leaving of your trust in humans, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and instead doing as God tells you.<br /><br />Ask yourself whether today you have done one thing because God said "Do it," or abstained from one thing because God said "Do not do it." <br /><br />To those who obey and thus open the heart’s door to receive the eternal gift, God gives the Spirit of the Son, the spirit of God’s Self to be in them, and lead them to the understanding of all truth…true disciples shall thus always know what they ought to do, though not necessarily what another ought to do.<br /><br />God does not by the instant gift of the Spirit make us always feel right, desire good, love purity, aspire after God’s self and God’s will. The truth is this. God wants to make us in God’s own image, choosing the good, refusing the evil. For God made our individuality, our apartness, so that freedom would bind us divinely dearer to God’s self with a new and inscrutable marvel of love.<br /><br />To be right with God is to be right with the universe: one with the power, the love the will of the mighty Mother/Father, the cherisher of joy, the Lord of laughter, whose are all glories, all hopes, who loves everything and hates nothing but selfishness.<br /><br />It is only in God that the soul has room. In knowing God is life and its gladness. The secret of your own heart you can never know; but you can know God who knows its secret. <br /><br />It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another. Let us be compassionate and humble, and hope for every person. <br /><br />Let us also be compassionate toward ourselves, humble within ourselves, and hopeful for ourselves. God is faithful and God’s love is unstoppable until it achieves God’s purpose for us which is to love God wholly and first and to love our neighbors as ourselves.<br /><br /><br /></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-35681413781607340532023-06-14T04:50:00.001-07:002023-06-14T04:50:26.601-07:00Who Are Our Untouchables?<p><span style="font-size: medium;">Preached at Silverton Friends Church</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">May 14, 2023</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I have been thinking about touch. We use touch as a metaphor when we stay “in touch” on social media or by snail mail, when we find news stories “touching.” And these metaphors work because of the emotional component of touch. Touching is communication without words. A touch can be selfish, taking something without permission from someone else; a touch can be desperate, grabbing something in order not to be lost or destroyed; a touch can be consoling, wiping someone’s tears away or brushing back a sick person’s hair; a touch can be healing. When we touch someone else, we move into their space with intention, and truly only we can be sure of the goodness of those intentions. (I will also add that asking permission to touch is a helpful practice.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There is also the word “untouchable.” We use this to describe athletes who cut through defenses like butter, who run away from the crowd in races, and so on.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We use this of people who seem to live charmed lives, untouched (!) by poverty, sorrow, sickness, slander. It has an overtone of invulnerability. (And it is often an illusion.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But the saddest meaning of the word untouchable is quite literal. This person cannot, must not be touched. In historical India, the lowest class of people was and is called the Dalit, the broken, scattered, divided. They were and are outsiders within their own culture. But every culture has its untouchables, including ours. In Jesus’s day, the Mosaic Law recorded in Leviticus defined a number of people as unclean and therefore untouchable, and if you touched them, you were also unclean, at least until the day had passed and you had undergone a ritual bath. Lev. 5:2 says, “If a soul touches any unclean thing, he also shall be unclean and guilty.” Lev. 10:10 says that the priests are responsible to teach and enforce “the difference between holy and unholy and between unclean and clean.” Proper behavior towards unclean people helped define your religious commitment, your holiness.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As you already know, Jesus didn’t care about the proper behavior towards unclean people.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Jesus came as a prophet, both in his words and in his actions. We can look at what Jesus does to understand what he taught and the reverse as well.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One of the causes of uncleanness was the skin disease that caused discoloration called leprosy in the Bible.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(It does not seem to be the same as what we call leprosy today, by the way.) Leviticus spends a lot of time on leprosy. People afflicted with leprosy were required to leave their homes and communities and stay outside the city. (Lev. 13.3) They were not allowed to join in festivals or pilgrimages or religious ceremonies. In Jesus’s time, we see them sometimes travelling together. So it is remarkable that, as recorded in Matthew 8 and Mark 1, Jesus reached out to touch a leper.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now a leper came to him, imploring him, kneeling down to him and saying to him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be clean.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The physical seat for compassion and sympathy and mercy was considered at the time to be the bowels. I find this imaginatively engaging. We probably would use the word “visceral” or “guts” so as not to be disgusted, but it carries the idea of an irresistible movement from our depth toward the outside. It is love and caring that must be expressed.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And Jesus makes it visible with a touch.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now, by rights, Jesus was unclean as a result of this touch, and he doesn’t seem to care about it. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Another group of unclean persons were women who had “an issue of blood,” whether menstruation, postpartum, or a chronic condition.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They themselves were unclean, and thus outside of religious observance, and everything they touched and everyone who touched them was unclean as well.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Irritatingly, women were unclean for a week after giving birth to a boy and two weeks after a girl.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Not sure about boy-girl twins…) There were upsides to this, namely that during “an issue of blood” a woman was pretty much set free from wifely and housewifely obligations, but there were significant downsides if the bleeding persisted, as it did for a woman in Jesus’s time. Mark (5) tells the story of the woman who pushed through a crowd in her desperate search for healing and touched Jesus’s robe.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Jesus perceived that healing power had gone out of him, and he asked who had touched him in that way.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>When she confessed, he praised her for her faith. At the same time, Jesus was now unclean, and he didn’t seem to care about it. (Of course, all the other people she pushed by were unclean as well, demonstrating the nightmare of keeping track of who is clean and who is unclean.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Another source of uncleanness was death. A dead body and anyone who touched a dead body were unclean. When the woman touched Jesus’s robe for healing, he was, according to Mark, on his way to see Jairus’s daughter, despite the news that she had died.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He took her by the hand and told her to get up, and she did.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In Luke 7, Jesus was walking and a funeral procession passed by.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He touched the open coffin, immediately becoming unclean, and told the young man in it to get up. Which he did. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus did not care that touching the dead person would make him unclean. His compassion for the living moved him to meet a need, and he did so.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">No wonder that in the Acts of the Apostles, God taught Peter that no one is unclean through a vision and a visit to Gentiles (unclean). And Paul wrote in Romans 14:14, “Nothing is unclean of itself.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It is unsurprising, given their religious law, that the people of Jesus’s time and culture distanced and diminished those identified as unclean and therefore unholy. What is surprising is that in our time and culture, and in our individual hearts, we also have people we consider unclean and unholy. I have people I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Maybe you have some of those also.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But what Jesus teaches us by example is that no one is actually an untouchable. Jesus also teaches us by his word that when we are moved with compassion, we need to reach out with loving, healing touch, whether literal or figurative. We feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, give water to the thirsty, clothe the ragged and naked, set the captives free, and do even more good together than Jesus was able to do in his short life. Jesus takes all those loving actions as done to him.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And, just to get real personal, sometimes we have parts of ourselves we despise and consider “untouchable”—we want to partition it off from the rest of our selves and isolate it outside the camp, so to speak.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But what would Jesus do with that aspect, that part of who we are?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Wouldn’t Jesus reach out a hand to stop the bleeding, to give life, to make whole? Could we be similarly compassionate to ourselves?</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I think in Jesus we can see someone wholly at peace with himself and with God, and the result of that is that he does not need to hate or fear anyone else. All he really complains about in other people is their unwillingness to admit who they really are, and when they do admit it, he meets them with compassion.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p></div></div></div><p></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-26436549362339328962023-01-20T11:56:00.004-08:002023-01-20T11:56:44.355-08:00Jacob, Esau, and Peace-Making<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-family: Cambria;">Peace-Making</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Today, I’m going to tell you a story about someone who is mostly a negative example of peace-making, Jacob from the book of Genesis. I encourage you to look at chapters 24-33 of Genesis for the detailed story, which is unsparingly honest about this man.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jacob was born one of twins, but his brother Esau was born first. Esau meant Rough and Hairy and Jacob meant Trickster, or Heel-Grabber. Their characters were also different— Esau was the outdoorsy type, Jacob liked being indoors. Also, each of their parents had a favorite child: Esau was his father’s favorite, and Jacob was his mother’s. And the custom of the time gave first-born sons highly preferential treatment in the distribution of property and power over the other children. So from childhood, Esau and Jacob were set up to be at odds with each other.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As their father Isaac aged, he became blind, and he felt he was nearing his death, so he sent for his favorite Esau and said, Go hunting and bring me a savory meal from the meat you kill, and I will bless you as my first-born son.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Their mother Rebekah overheard this, and she said to Jacob, You go kill a couple of kid goats and I will make your father the kind of meal he loves, and then you can have the blessing meant for Esau. So Jacob did what she said.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jacob was worried that his father would detect him as an imposter; his mother suggested putting the hairy skins on his arms and the back of his hands and his cheeks and she brought him some of Esau’s well-worn and not recently laundered clothes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He dressed in the clothes and fixed the goat hair on his smooth skin, and went in to his father Isaac.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">His father was puzzled. He brought Jacob near and smelled him, then he felt his arms and hands, and then he muttered, “The voice is Jacob’s, but the smell and hairiness are Esau’s.” Nevertheless, he accepted the savory meal and ate it, and then he blessed Jacob with the blessing he had prepared for Esau. This blessing, besides promising prosperity, also promised that the other son and his offspring would serve the son being blessed.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Esau came in several hours later with his savory dish of game he had hunted and prepared. Isaac was distressed, and they both realized the trick played on them by Jacob and Rebekah. Esau wept and begged for a blessing, and Isaac did what he could, telling Esau that he would be a nomad, that he would serve his brother, and that at some point, his descendants would rebel and throw off that servitude.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In his anger, Esau let it be known that when Isaac was dead, he would kill Jacob. Again, Rebekah stepped in to protect her favorite. She told Jacob he would have to leave home, and she arranged it so that it appeared he was traveling to relatives in order to find an appropriate wife.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jacob left on the run, with almost nothing but the clothes on his back and some small provision of food (undoubtedly). The blessing for which he had betrayed his brother had instead resulted in his running for his life.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We can see from the lofty distance of time and psychology several things that killed the willingness of Esau and Jacob to live at peace with each other.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The uneven inheritance of children prescribed by their culture, the preferential love of each parent for one of them, with the all-important father’s love going to Esau—these made for a relationship of competition and envy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Add in that they were very unlike in their characters.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Jacob played the long game, and Esau lived more in the moment, and Jacob took advantage of that.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Even though Jacob himself acts as if everything depends on his wiliness, we find that God has not abandoned him<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As Jacob sleeps, he dreams of a ladder between earth and heaven and angels going up and down. In the dream, God tells Jacob: “I am the God of your father and grandfather; I will give you and your descendants the land where you lie; I will give you many descendants and will bless the whole earth through you. I am with you, and I will keep you wherever you go, and bring you home again. I will not leave you until all my promises to you have been fulfilled.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Jacob wakes, he says, “Whoa, God is here ,” and sets up a memorial stone.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Then he says to God, actually ignoring the grace God has offered him: “If you take care of me, providing food, clothing, and keeping me safe until I return to my father’s house, then you will be my God and I’ll pay you 1/10 of all I have.” <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We can see from this that Jacob wants to strike a bargain with God. His understanding seems pagan, in that he locates God in that place and then thinks that offering God material things will ensure God takes care of him. Craftily, Jacob requires God to go first with the bargain before Jacob pays him the tenth. And we learn that God is immune to such nonsense as Jacob proposes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>God has already promised to take care of Jacob despite Jacob’s untrusting character. As, in fact, God is also taking care of Esau despite Esau’s vengeful character.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We can also see that God reaches out to people in conflict to remind them that God’s grace and love are available. The love of God is not scarce but instead infinite.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I skip over the next 20 years except to note that Jacob connives a genetically improbable method to increase his flocks at his father-in-law’s expense, causing his brothers-in-law to be resentful and angry. Jacob decides to run for it, though this time he is encumbered by wives, children, flocks, and employees. Now he is running for home.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On the way home, Jacob hears news that Esau is coming to meet him accompanied by 400 men.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Jacob reasonably assumes this is a fighting force, and he is caught. Going forward is dangerous, and he has promised Laban not to go back.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He sets up wave upon wave of livestock gifts to Esau. Then he arranges his belongings in two companies in case Esau massacres one of them. Then he sets up his children and their mothers in groups and places himself before any of them, in case by killing him, Esau will be satisfied and Jacob’s family will live on. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jacob spends a lonely anxious night before his meeting with Esau. While he is alone, a man wrestles with him until daybreak. The anonymous wrestler does not win, so he dislocates Jacob’s thigh and lames him.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Still Jacob holds on, and the wrestler says, “Let me go.” Jacob says, “Not until you tell me your name.” The wrestler says, “What is your name?” Jacob admits his name, which means trickster, and his character. The wrestler says, “Your new name is Israel because you have striven with God and with me and have prevailed.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Jacob (now Israel) meets Esau, he bows before Esau. To his surprise, Esau dismounts, runs to meet him, and kisses him, and they weep together.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God has also been with Esau, as it turns out, and Esau has plenty and clearly has forgiven his trickster brother.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Perhaps that is the unexpected way he threw the yoke of Jacob off his neck.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What do we learn from these brothers about conflict?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><ol class="ol1"><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1.All conflict is essentially between siblings—all humans are fundamentally related.</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2.Conflict often begins in the perception of one party that the other party has more of something—love, food, material goods, freedom, charisma.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In other words, the deadly sin of envy is in the heart of conflict, with the related deadly sin of greed, resulting in the third deadly sin of bitterness, which allows the aggrieved party to justify deceptive, violent, cold-hearted actions.</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3.Conflict intensifies when one party’s legitimate rights are taken away by trickery or force. It continues because the deprived party wants justice and even revenge.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It also continues because the oppressive party begins to fear and then hate those they have wronged. Hatred, another deadly sin.</span></li></ol><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What do we learn from these brothers about making peace?</span></p><ol class="ol1"><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1.Each must set aside fear of the other—fear of trickery, fear of violence, fear of loss.</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2.This is enormously helped along by each recognizing God’s infinite love is for all, and there is enough for all. (I have plenty, says Esau.)</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3.Making amends is helpful for the party who has deprived the other. (Jacob needed to give gifts to Esau.) Justice and generosity meet and embrace.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4.Acknowledging that God is actively involved in the lives of all those in conflict, that they are all under God’s loving and disciplinary care, helps us set aside the desire to control events and other people.</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5.Sometimes, it helps to let some time pass.</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>6.There is no way to bribe God, and no need either.</span></li></ol><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Charles Wesley wrote a song about how Jacob’s experience spoke to him personally, and I’ll close with that.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Come, O thou traveler unknown, whom still I hold but cannot see;</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">My company before is gone, and I am left alone with thee.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">With thee all night I mean to stay, and wrestle till the break of day.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I need not tell thee who I am, my sin and misery declare;</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Thyself hast called me by my name, look on thy hands and read it there.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But who, I ask thee, who art thou? Tell me thy name, and tell me now.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In vain thou strugglest to get free; I never will unloose my hold!</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Art thou the man that died for me? The secret of thy love unfold;</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Wrestling, I will not let thee go, Till I thy name, thy nature know.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Yield to me now; for I am weak; but confident in self-despair;</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Speak to my heart, in blessings speak, Be conquered by my instant prayer.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Speak, or thou never hence shalt move, and tell me if thy name is Love.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">‘Tis love! ‘Tis love! Thou diedst for me; I hear thy whisper in my heart;</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The morning breaks, the shadows flee; pure universal Love thou art.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">To me, to all, thy mercies move, thy nature and thy name is love.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Lame as I am, I take the prey; Hell, earth, and sin, with ease o’ercome;</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I leap for joy, pursue my way, and as a bounding hart, I run</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Through all eternity to prove thy nature and thy name is love,</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Thy Name is Love.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May we each be visited and overwhelmed by the infinite love and care of God, and may we allow that experience to change our hearts toward others, particularly toward those with whom we are in conflict.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><br /><p></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-29432895303386135132022-11-29T15:20:00.008-08:002022-11-29T15:20:47.834-08:00Jesus and His Bible, Epilogue<p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Love Is At the Center</b></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I started this study genuinely curious to see how Jesus used his familiarity with his Scriptures, what authors/books he quoted, when he quoted them, and what the contexts of the quotations revealed about his passions in his ministry.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I leaned entirely on the NASB’s cross references in the gospel of Mark, and I used present-day Jewish commentators on the quoted scriptures to get at least a flavor of what Jesus’s community might have understood them to mean. It has been so much fun to do this work.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus quoted from the Law (the first five “books of Moses”) on nine occasions. What he emphasized from the Law were the following themes:</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God is present to us at all times</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What we do with our own and with others’ bodies matters to God and has profound effects on us; we are eternally present to God</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We need to love God wholeheartedly</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We need to love our neighbor, showing generosity and compassion to all other human beings</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We need to put human need above the letter of the law</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He also took his hearers to task for their failure to read the Law with open hearts that saw the love at the heart of all things. “What does the Law say?” he asked; “Have you not read…”; “What did Moses command you?” “Why do you put your tradition above what God has said?” In his claim to be Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus implicitly took precedence over the letter of the Law, even while paying tribute to its heart of love for God and neighbor. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus quoted from the Prophets on ten occasions. He clearly associated himself with Isaiah and Ezekiel in being a prophet, particularly one who preached to willfully deaf and blind audiences. He expected to be misunderstood and dismissed. His association with Ezekiel, who famously acted parables of his prophecies, teaches us to see Jesus’s actions as acted-out parables. Specifically, what he emphasized by quoting from the Prophets were the following themes:</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God does not want ritual obedience when the heart has strayed</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God does not want ritual obedience from those who go on to do whatever they want</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God wants repentance because the present actions will lead to violence, exile, and ruin</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God judges the nation for continually missing the mark and rejecting God’s messengers</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God wants the place of worship to be inclusive and free from commerce</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God will do what is necessary to cleanse the people in order to effect reconciliation with them</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus clearly identified himself with the prophets, calling his people to repent, to be contrite, humble, and reverent before God, so that God might comfort them and care for them like a mother. People are judged by their lack of repentance, their refusal to admit need, their stubbornness in wanting their own way rather than God’s way.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus quoted from the Writings, specifically the Psalms and Daniel on five occasions. As he neared the end of his life and ministry, his mind turned to the apocalyptic visions of Daniel, This turn to apocalypse coincides with the intensity of his experience of moving toward death. At his trial, he quoted Daniel and Psalm 110 to assert his messiahship. As he was dying on his cross, he Identified himself with David, poignantly quoting<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the opening of Psalm 22; he invoked thereby the whole of that psalm which moves from his sense of abandonment to his assertion of confidence in God.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus took from his familiarity with his scriptures the understanding that love was and is at the heart of the Law and the Prophets and the Writings. Violations of love toward God and neighbor must be recognized and repented of; if people insist on putting other things ahead of this one, they are moving toward judgment and misery. God will do all God can to bring people into reconciliation with God and with each other. Let those who have ears, hear.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-66989491904310012442022-10-31T07:38:00.004-07:002022-11-18T07:52:55.104-08:00 Jesus and His Bible, Part 21<p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Agony and Trust</span></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The gospel of Mark propels Jesus through his trial before the religious leaders to his appearance before Pilate, the release of Barabbas, the sentence of crucifixion, and his torture by the Roman soldiers. Then Jesus carried his cross as far as he could until the soldiers pressed Simon of Cyrene into service to carry it the rest of the way.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As Jesus hung above them on the cross, with the inscription THE KING OF THE JEWS over his head, the soldiers below divided up his garments. Then Mark quotes the Jewish Testament for only the second time as narrator: “they ‘divided up his garments among themselves, casting lots for them’” (Psalm 22:19), and then “those passing by were…’wagging their heads’ (Psalm 22:8). These quotations are irresistible to the narrator as deriving from from Psalm 22 which Jesus quoted from the cross.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Years ago, I heard Brendan Manning preach on this moment in Jesus’s dying, and I think what he said set me off on this whole study of the scriptures Jesus quoted and how knowing their context lights up aspects of Jesus’s interactions that would otherwise remain obscure. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What I took from what Brendan said is this: Many people think when they read what Jesus said at the moment of his dying, that God abandoned him. This is understandable, given that Jesus “cried out with a loud voice, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’” (Mark 15:34). From this understanding has arisen the notion that when Jesus took on himself the sins of the world, God could no longer look on him or be in his presence. In this understanding, God turned his back on Jesus because of our sin which he took on as his own.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What Brendan said that changed everything for me was that when Jesus quoted Psalm 22, he brought into the event the entire psalm. Jesus made the psalm about him, and the significance is enormous. Specifically, said Brendan, the shift of the latter half of the psalm into an assertion of trust and confidence in God was implicit from the quotation, making it clear that while Jesus truly suffered as any human being would, in the midst of agony he could still affirm his confidence in God.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It came clear to me that there was no more separation between Jesus and his Father than there is between any suffering human and God. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me”—another statement of faith in another Davidic psalm.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The editors of <i>The Jewish Study Bible<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i> discuss the Davidic authorship of the Psalms ascribed to him, noting: “An ancient and pervasive tradition, going back to the Bible itself, attributes the authorship of Psalms to David” (1281), and that this tradition has continued into modern times for both Jews and Christians. Certainly this would have been the tradition received by Jesus, and his quoting a David psalm is deliberate as well as appropriate to his suffering. (Modern scholars are skeptical that David wrote all the psalms attributed to him; this does not seem very relevant to the context in which Jesus grew up and learned the scriptures.)</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In his anguish, Jesus cried out with this Davidic psalm to express his brokenness and isolation. However, by quoting this psalm, he also identified himself with David, an anointed one who was targeted for assassination by King Saul. a king who also faced abandonment by his people on occasion, It is possible that in this quotation, Jesus asserted again his vocation as the anointed one of God and the son of David, in fact the true King of the Jews.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The psalm begins with the psalmist’s lament that he feels God to be far away from him in his time of dire need.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from my deliverance and from the words of my groaning” (Psalm 22:1). And he continues in that sorrow and despair for nearly half the psalm until a shift occurs in verse 22.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Robert Alter translates that verse this way, “Rescue me from the lion’s mouth. And from the horns of the ram You answered me” (<i>The Hebrew Bible: The Writings</i>, 68).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Alter’s use of past tense goes against the majority of translators, who make it parallel to the first half of the verse: Rescue me…Answer me.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>However, Alter justifies his use of the past tense as a literal translation of the received text, and writes “perhaps the verb in the past tense is intended as a compact turning point: God has indeed answered the speaker’s prayer” (69, n.). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Following that shift, the psalm becomes one of praise, the speaker calling all people to praise the Lord.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>God “has not spurned nor has despised the affliction of the lowly, and has not hidden His face from him; when he cried out to Him, He heard” (Psalm 22:25, tr. Alter, <i>Writings</i> 69).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>To see this affirmation implicit in the first cry of agony means that God did not abandon Jesus at his lowest point. When Jesus cried out, God heard him. And we, in our small flawed selves, can with confidence know that God does not and will not abandon us either, no matter how alone or agonized<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>we feel.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Additionally, if we read to the end of Psalm 22, we see again the vision of a humanity reconciled to God. “And all the families of the nations will worship before thee; for the Kingdom is the Lord’s, and he rules over the nations.” Even the dead will bow before him, which, writes Alter, “is unusual because a reiterated theme in Psalms is that the dead, mute forever, cannot praise God” (n., 69)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But for a Christian reading this through the lens that Jesus spoke truth about the resurrection of the dead, it is the most natural and hopeful vision possible.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As a literary scholar, I have frequently looked at the context of allusions and quotations writers incorporate for enlightenment and expansion of the text before me. This is why Brendan Manning’s exposition stopped me in my complacent assumption that Jesus’s quotations of his Bible say only what they appear to say. It seems completely reasonable to me now to assume instead that they said far more to his scripturally alert audience than they appear to say, and these reverberations account in part for the hostility with which religious leaders met Jesus.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In this specific instance, the gulf between thinking that God abandoned Jesus because of sin and thinking that Jesus invoked the trusting and even confident ending of Psalm 22 is enormous. God can look on sinful persons, God loves sinful persons, God hears sinful persons when they cry out their distress, and God will save them. We have only to look at the flawed humans in Jesus’s Bible to see this is true.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-88496592426163613792022-10-26T06:05:00.003-07:002022-10-26T06:05:22.048-07:00 Jesus and His Bible, Part 20<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Jesus Asserts His Messiahship</b></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">To remind ourselves, after referring to himself as the shepherd, Jesus and his followers (except Judas) went to the Mount of Olives, where Jesus prayed and his disciples slept. Judas arrived with an armed crowd and identified Jesus by a kiss. One of the followers drew a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave, but Jesus healed it. Jesus pointed out that they had many times before when they could have arrested him. His followers fled, and some followed at a distance.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus was put on trial before the Sanhedrin, with several testifying against him, but their stories were inconsistent.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Eventually, the high priest asked him directly, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus responded, “I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62). With this statement Jesus invoked not only scriptures from his Bible, but also reminded the leaders of what he has said publicly in the past that they have not appreciated or believed.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It is possible, as we saw in Part 12, that by using “I am,” Jesus reminded his hearers of the words of God to Moses, “I AM has sent you.” This time Jesus applied the “I am” to himself, and those who recalled his earlier discourse would have been infuriated.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The second part of Jesus’s reply again alludes to David’s Psalm 110, with the invitation from God to the anointed one to sit at God’s right hand, the place of favor and authority (Psalm 110:1). Jesus repeated the offense he originally gave to the religious leaders by reminding them of the question they could not answer. This added fuel to the fire for those questioning him.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(See also the discussion of this Psalm in Part 14, for further reading.)</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus then quoted Daniel 7:13 once again to assert his being given authority and dominion by God, making public the words he shared with his followers about the destruction of the temple.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(See also Part 16 for extended discussion).</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus’s quotations from his scriptures function to remind his enemies of what he had said earlier. The leaders conducting this trial had already determined that Jesus was not the Messiah, so his claim to be Messiah could be labeled blasphemy. Of course, since he is who he says he is, it is not blasphemy at all but merely truth-telling.</span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-77331211866540518382022-10-20T06:54:00.001-07:002022-10-20T06:54:10.723-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 19<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <b style="font-family: Cambria;">The Suffering Shepherd</b></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The story in Mark moves from the argument about the perfume to the oncoming disaster. Judas met with the religious leaders and offered to betray Jesus. Then as Passover began, Jesus and his disciples observed the first night of Passover with a supper. Jesus told them that one of them would betray him, to that man’s harm. He blessed the bread and broke it, and said, “Take it, this is my body." Then he gave thanks for the wine, and said, “This is My blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many.” Then they sang a hymn.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On their way to the Mount of Olives, Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, because it is written, I will strike down the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered” (Mark 14:27). He added, “After I have been raised, I will meet you in Galilee.” But Peter and the others insisted they would stay with him.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The scripture Jesus quoted is Zechariah 13:7: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man my associate, declares the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd that the sheep may be scattered; and I will turn my hand against the little ones.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The historical context of Zechariah is after the return of the exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem under Cyrus the Persian and the rebuilding of the temple in the 6th century BCE (Robert Alter, “Prophets,” <i>The Hebrew Bible, A Translation with Commentary,</i> 1193). This quotation comes midway in a prophecy that begins with Zech. 12:1. In that prophecy, Zechariah reverses the oracles against Israel to describe Israel as a bowl of poison, a burdensome stone, and a flaming torch to annihilate any invaders. God will destroy the nations coming against Jerusalem, and after that will pour out “grace and graciousness” upon David’s house and those who live in Jerusalem (Alter, “Prophets,” 1380.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Chapter 13 goes on to promise cleansing for Israel’s offenses and impurities, the demise of false idols, and the punishing of false prophets.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">However, it pivots to this poem, which is what Jesus quotes: “Sword, rouse against My shepherd, against My companion man—said the Lord of Armies. Strike the shepherd and let the sheep be scattered, and I will bring My hand back against the shepherd lads” (Alter, “Prophets,” 1382-83).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The chapter ends with the apocalyptic vision that two-thirds of the population will die and the remaining third will be purified as if by fire, until they call out for God and say that the Lord is their God. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This particular quotation continues Jesus’s theme of apocalypse, perhaps intensified by his foresight that he will soon suffer and die. Indeed, Christians from early times have seen in Zechariah 12:10 and 13:1 predictions about the Jews in relation to Jesus. “They will look on the one whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for him, as one mourns for an only son…in that day a fountain will be opened for sin and for impurity.” Understandably, the Jewish commentators see Zech. 12:10 as directly following from the battles and sieges foreseen early in the chapter; thus this mourning is for all their countryfolk who have died in the battle. Intriguingly, the Hebrew can be translated as singular or plural: “they shall lament to Me about those who are slain, wailing over them as over a favorite son and showing bitter grief as over a first-born” (Berlin and Brettler, eds., <i>The Jewish Study Bible</i>, 1264).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The way Jesus uses Zech. 13:7 not only references apocalyptic cleansing, but also invokes the promise of reconciliation that comes before and after this passage, so that even though a disaster is coming upon his followers, the result will be their longer-term spiritual good.</span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-8525281566104274962022-10-18T05:45:00.007-07:002022-10-18T05:45:46.050-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 18<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <b style="font-family: Cambria;">Generosity and the Poor</b></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Following his apocalyptic sermon, Jesus told his followers that they would need to stay alert because no one except God knows when the end of all things will occur.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Despite this clear statement, Christians through the ages have speculated and predicted the end of the age to the day and hour. What Jesus did know was that his own days were numbered because the religious leaders were looking for ways to seize him in order to kill him. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus was in Bethany at dinner when a woman with an alabaster vial of costly perfume came in, broke it and poured it over his head.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>By itself, this was a remarkable act of generosity, but to some it was wasteful.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>“She should have sold it and given the money to the poor,” they said to each other. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">However, Jesus commended the woman who poured perfume over him and defended her action to those critical of it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>“She has anointed my body for burial,” he said, “and her gift will be spoken of in the whole world.” Despite Jesus’s advice to stay alert and his clearly stated expectation that he would die soon, their concern was to disparage the woman’s gift because of “the poor.” It appears that only the woman took Jesus seriously and “she has done what she could.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But Jesus did address their concern for the poor: “For the poor you always have with you, and whenever you wish, you can do them good; but you do not always have me” (Mark 14:7). This comment immediately turned the spotlight onto the critics: what had they done for the poor lately?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus’s comment alludes to a passage in the Torah: “For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land’” (Deut. 15:11).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The text commends generosity toward the poor, but not just handing out money to them. The context of this verse in Deuteronomy is the requirement to remit all debts every seven years. This requirement, if observed, would go a long way to lessening poverty, particularly generational poverty.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Every seven years, a family would have a chance to live and work without indebtedness, a chance to start over. Specifically, the Deuteronomy text goes on to insist that every Hebrew who must sell himself or herself into slavery must be freed in the seventh year, and must be sent away with supplies, always remembering the years of slavery in Egypt, and how the Lord set Israel free and furnished them with the goods of Egypt in their escape.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Once again Jesus rebuked the religious elite of the day for observing jots and tittles of the law but ignoring the law of love for neighbor. By including this quotation, Jesus reminded all his hearers of the requirements of Mosaic law that go to mitigating poverty, a law that each of them is responsible to fulfill. These requirements are with them and us daily. I’m reminded of the times I have heard “the poor are always with you” as an excuse for apathy, but instead Jesus and the Law make this persistence of poverty the reason for practical compassion.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Remit their debts. Give them access to your extra. Help them make a new start.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-23436784802093357112022-10-16T11:11:00.005-07:002022-10-16T11:11:30.785-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 17<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <b style="font-family: Cambria;">Reconciliation and God’s Kingdom</b></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Like the Prophets of his Testament, Jesus first called out the disobedience of Israel and their breaking of covenant with God. But also like the Prophets, Jesus then envisioned a future of reconciliation. Israel will serve him, and all exiles will come home, and their hearts will be devoted to loving God, as is evident in the allusion here in Mark 13:27 to Deuteronomy 30:4. In the context of that verse, God warns Israel that if they disobey and break covenant, he will scatter them among the nations. But if they return to the Lord and obey him with their whole heart and soul, then the Lord will restore them from captivity.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back.” They will return to the land God has given them, and God will “circumcise your hearts to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live” (</span><span style="font-size: large;">Deut. 30:4).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Like other prophets, Jesus also invoked a vision of a humanity reconciled in its entirety to God. He alludes also to the prophet Zachariah, who, during the reign of Darius the Mede, sees an angel going to measure Jerusalem, and the angel says that God will be the glory in the midst of Jerusalem, that it will not need walls to protect it, because God will be a wall of fire around her. God says to Israel to return home.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> “Flee from the land of the north, for I have dispersed you as the four winds of the heavens.” Zechariah goes on to say that God is coming to dwell in the midst of Zion and “many nations will join themselves to the Lord in that day and will become my people” (</span><span style="font-size: large;">Zach. 2:6).</span><span style="font-size: large;"> This carries forward the vision of a humanity reconciled to God.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus placed his vision in the tradition of the Prophets by invoking Isaiah and Zechariah. He brings in the books of Moses by quoting Deuteronomy (the last to be written down, often dated to the Babylonian exile). He also quoted from the book of Daniel, a book of conundrums, with its pinpoint accuracy about the history of the Middle East up to the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and its far flung predictions in the ending chapters that no one has yet seen fulfilled. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus referenced by these quotations the covenant of obedience between Israel and God, the breaking of which led to Israel’s exile and after their return to Jerusalem, the collusion of some of Israel with the Greek invaders to the profanation of their Temple. He also spoke of God’s judgment on the occupying powers. He stated that the Israel of his own time was again breaking the covenant, some colluding with the invaders, that they would therefore be dispersed and exiled, and that their own Temple would be profaned and destroyed. He warned his followers that because of their suffering, they would be vulnerable to claims by false messiahs, but reminded them that the work before them will still be to spread the good news of God’s kingdom and God’s Messiah Jesus while enduring unto death.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He asserted as well that the coming of the Son of Humanity will put an end to nations and armies (which was opposite to what Israel hoped for)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and that His kingdom will include all humanity. We hope to see this literally true, but we remember as well that Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is among/within you.” This helps define our relationship to nations and armies in our present day. Our first loyalty is always to the Kingdom of God and the King God has chosen, namely Jesus.</span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-22982028665759225102022-10-15T05:54:00.001-07:002022-10-15T05:54:30.213-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 16<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <b style="font-family: Cambria;">Apocalypse and the Kingdom</b></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Facing into his own oncoming murder by the Jewish and Roman authorities, Jesus continued his apocalyptic mood and prophecy. He predicted false Christs who would lead even the chosen ones astray, if that were possible. Then, as it seems to me, he spoke about the end of the world, as, perhaps, does Daniel. He reminded his hearers to remember the fig tree, and to learn to watch the signs as they watch for leaves and buds, so they can know that the end is near. He said that “this race” will not pass away before the end occurs, and that his words are eternal. He also said that no one knows the exact time, except his Father, so stay alert. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling, and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken, and then they shall see the son of man coming in clouds, and he will gather together his chosen from the four winds, from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven” (</span><span style="font-size: large;">Mark 13: 24-27).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Here Jesus alluded to the prophetic words of Isaiah:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“Behold the day of the Lord is coming, cruel, with fury and burning anger, to make the land a desolation; and he will exterminate its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when it rises, and the moon will not shed its light. Thus will I punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud, and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless” (Isaiah 13:10).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This passage in Isaiah is first to be understood as an oracle concerning Babylon, in which God calls his warriors to do battle against Babylon. Isaiah foresees that God will raise up the Medes against Babylon, destroying them completely. The fact that Jesus quoted a passage reminding his hearers of deliverance from captivity spoke to the crowd’s hope of deliverance from Rome, and must have made the leaders of the nation more uneasy, as they already feared retribution from Rome if anything like a political uprising occurred.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But Jesus also included the leaders of his own people among the wicked, arrogant, haughty, and ruthless. They might have called his diatribes against them to mind as he quoted Isaiah.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Next, Jesus referenced a prophecy where Isaiah names Edom (Isaiah 33) as a target for wrath, and prays for and celebrates Zion’s survival. Then Isaiah shifts to God’s indignation against all the nations, all their armies.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Isaiah 34:4 “And all the host of heaven will wear away, and the sky will be rolled up like a scroll; and their hosts will also wither away as a leaf withers from the vine, or as one withers from the fig tree.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Jesus quoted from this passage, he put both Herod (who was Idumean, or of the Edomite people) and then all nations on notice that the time will come when all their military and political might will wither away.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Additionally, the fig tree and the vine specifically reminded his hearers of the frequent use of these plants to symbolize Israel itself.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There was nothing reassuring in any of this for his immediate hearers.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Still in an apocalyptic vein, Jesus invoked Daniel’s vision of “the Ancient of Days.” This vision is set within the reign of Belshazzar of Babylon. Daniel sees “The Ancient of Days” on a throne, surrounded by thousands and thousands, and the books were opened. The boasting beast is slain and thrown on the fire.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Daniel 7:13 “I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a Son of Man was coming. And He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.” Daniel asks for an explanation, which is more of a reiteration of what he has seen than an explanation.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Jesus quoted from this passage, it is easy to hear him repeating his self-identifying as the Son of Humanity to whom God will give everlasting dominion, whom all peoples, nations, and languages will serve. I think Jesus’s use of this passage underlies the Christian understanding that aspects of Daniel’s apocalypse point toward Jesus.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The vision cited here in Daniel 7 foresees that all peoples will serve the Son of Humanity, and emphasizes the grace and inclusive nature of God's Kingdom even as the political powers and rulers of nations are defeated. This speaks against nationalism and political partisinship: our primary loyalty is to the kingdom where Jesus rules.</span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-13895284926534721772022-10-13T06:21:00.001-07:002022-10-13T06:21:31.662-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 15<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <b style="font-family: Cambria;">Jesus and the Temple, Actual and Symbolic</b></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This post will repeat some of the content of earlier posts, but I’ve put that content in to address a central preoccupation of Mark 11-13, namely the Temple as the central symbol of the nation of Israel.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Starting in Mark 11, Jesus arrived at the Temple, which formed the focus of his attention for the next three complete chapters of Mark, ending with his trial before the Sanhedrin.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Temple was the holiest of sites for the Jewish nation, containing in its deepest recesses the Holy of Holies where the High Priest visited God once a year. Jesus had visited the Temple many times over his lifetime as a devout Jew, and this visit was his last. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Embedded in the narrative are symbols relating to the nation of Israel. Jesus cursed the fig tree for being fruitless, reminding his followers of the traditional symbolism in which the fig tree represents Israel. This fig tree which has put all its energy into leaves rather than into buds that will fruit is a living parable. Its owners have not pruned it into fruitfulness (as per Sarah Ruden, <i>The Gospels</i>, 43, n.).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The next day, the dried up tree was a pointed warning to his followers about what was coming for Israel and the temple.</span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The allusion provided by the fig tree signifies in two directions. First, the ideal of human life is often referred to in the first Testament as sitting under one’s own vine and fig tree. National peace allows unmolested cultivation of crops, including those with some degree of luxury and pleasure.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This picture of peace is found throughout the Jewish scriptures.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Second, the prophets often target this picture and show its destruction as a sign of God’s displeasure and judgment. The prophet Joel depicts the judgment of the Lord as coming in a horde of locusts destroying the vines and fig trees, and the regeneration of Israel as productive vine and fig tree (1:7, 11; 2:22). The prophet Hosea, speaking for God: “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness, … as the first ripe in the fig tree…” but they followed after idols (9:10).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The prophet Amos identifies the diseased and worm-eaten vines and fig trees as the judgment of God, who says, “yet you have not returned to me” (4:9). It would be hard for people familiar with the prophets to miss this allusion.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In case this was too subtle an allusion, Jesus then told a pointed and provocative parable about a vineyard.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>What immediately precedes this parable in Mark is the confrontation between the priests, etc., and Jesus over where his authority is from. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“A man planted a vineyard, and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the winepress, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey” (Mark 12:1).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">No one familiar with the Hebrew prophets would have missed this quotation from the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 5, the prophet writes: “Let me sing now for my well-beloved a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. And he dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. And he built a tower in the middle of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; then he expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones. And now…I will lay it waste…For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his delightful plant. Thus he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress…Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil…Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and clever in their own sight.” The prophecy goes on to predict the defeat and downfall of the nation of Israel.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus essentially said that the same conditions that provoked judgment before have occurred again, and even worse, and how can they hope to escape?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This had to be infuriating: Jesus tapped into the Jewish national fear that they would lose their holiest of places, the Temple,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>which God inhabited, and that they would again be dispersed as exiles. And it confirmed their suspicion that Jesus’s message and person have political implications.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This suspicion became more intense as he continued.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The disciples pointed out the grandeur of the Temple, and Jesus said it would be torn down. They asked when, and he said, “Many will come in My name saying, ‘I am He!’ There will be wars, earthquakes, famines, the beginning as of birth pangs. You will be persecuted for My sake, and the Holy Spirit will give you the words to speak. Family members will deliver you to death, and all will hate you because of me. The one who endures will be saved. Then the Abomination of Desolation appears. Run for the hills, don’t stop to take your valuables. This will be the worst trouble since the beginning of creation, and no one will survive if the Lord does not shorten those days.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And do not believe any who say, ‘Here is the Christ.’”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">These are terrifying words, but for the Jewish hearers, the worst is yet to come.</span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“But when you see ‘the abomination of desolation’ standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Mark 13:14).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This famous phrase, “the abomination of desolation,” comes out of the book of Daniel. (I think the advice to the reader was interpolated by the gospel writer, knowing that his Gentile readers needed to do some research, rather than a direct quotation from Jesus.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The fact that Jesus quoted from the apocalyptic book of Daniel requires attention. I was brought up to read the whole Bible with an ingenuous understanding that the stories were written just after the events they narrate, sort of like a diary, that prophecies were about future events, and that events took place as literally as their representation in the text. I also shared with others like me an anxiety over any question that opened up the possibility that scripture included fiction or legend or even oral tradition that was written down much later than the events, or that prophecy could legitimately be insights about events current to the prophet.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As I myself learned a dead language, Anglo-Saxon (Old English), and grappled with the trouble of translating it, and then investigated the questions arising from the relationship of the text to historical events (see <i>Beowulf</i> for an example), I became less anxious about the Bible as well. As a Christian, the Bible remains a measuring stick for my behavior and a source of my understanding of who God is and what Jesus came to do for us, my sacred text.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I have become more at ease with thinking of it also as a complex text with many kinds of literature in it. It could have as a motto “Let the reader understand” meaning “This is going to take some study and imagination on your part, reader.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Also, as I grew in my experience of God’s love and my understanding of God’s character, the literal interpretation of events in the Bible became less crucial to my faith. I had existential experiences of God in my life that pointed me toward seeing the whole of the Bible as the record of others’ experiences of God. The religious communities who discerned what should be in the Bible seemed to me to have chosen a collection that requires reverent imagination to reconcile together. I also became convinced that we cannot read innocently, or in other words, without the pressures of our upbringing and our experience and our allegiances, and thus that before accepting any one reading, it must be tested against the whole Bible, and particularly against the character and teaching of Jesus.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For me, the book of Daniel presents all of the textual problems that previously I could barely acknowledge.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>According to <i>The Jewish Study Bible</i>, it has two parts: legends of Daniel and other Jewish heroes in the royal courts and four apocalyptic visions. Complicating the matter is the fact that both Hebrew and Aramaic are used, but do not define the boundary between the two parts. The first part probably circulated orally in the 4<span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>th</sup></span> to 2<span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>nd</sup></span> centuries BCE, and the second part likely dates to the last year of the Maccabean revolt (164 BCE) (<i>JSB,</i> 1640). As with other apocalyptic literature, the scholarly understanding is that they are written after the facts they describe, a symbolic recounting of the history that gives credence to the prophecies about the future (JSB, 1642).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Robert Alter points out the similarities between Daniel and the Apocrypha apocalyptic texts, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls, all written in the 2<span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>nd</sup></span> century BCE (Writings, 747).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jewish commentary notes the occurrence for the first and only time in the Jewish Scriptures of the idea of personal resurrection in Daniel 12:2-3. There is also an emphasis on the faithful few, and a judgment separating those who deserve reward from those who deserve disgrace.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This resurrection was a tenet of faith for the Pharisees of Jesus’s time and persists in some Jewish sects to the present.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jewish and Christian commentators see different things in this book. Christians have seen prefigurations of Christ; Jewish rabbis have seen the book as a symbolic description of the exilic past and present threats (1642). Thus, the Jewish Scriptures categorize Daniel with “The Writings,” while the Christian Scriptures place it among the prophetic books. This reflects how I understand what goes into the act of reading and understanding: we are unavoidably biased in how we interpret what we read, even when we try very hard to be neutral. So it interests me even more to see what Jesus emphasizes out of Daniel and how he appears to understand it.</span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So back to Jesus referencing “the Abomination of Desolation.” The first reference is in Daniel 9:27. During the first year of Darius, the Mede, Daniel prays for compassion on his people, repents on their behalf, reminds God of the despair of the chosen people.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>While he is praying, Gabriel comes and gives him insight into the destiny of his people. They will have “70 weeks” to restrain transgression, seal up sins, make atonement, bring in everlasting righteousness and anoint the holy place. After 69 weeks, the Messiah will be cut off, and a foreign prince will come to destroy the city and the sanctuary. He will in the 70<span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>th</sup></span> week stop the offerings, “and on the wing of abomination will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Commentary in <i>The Jewish Study Bible</i> identifies the word Messiah, which means “anointed one,” with the high priest Onias III, killed in 171 BCE. The foreign prince is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who placed new altar stones on the Temple altar and offered pagan sacrifices (<i>JSB</i>, 1660, n.). Scholars believe that a portion of the Jewish nation at the time collaborated with Antiochus.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">By referencing this history, Jesus invoked the understanding from the prophets that the Jewish people suffered invasion and exile because of their idolatry, but he also challenged the politics of his present day. The Sadducees, the priests, were willing to collaborate with Herod and Pilate, representatives of the Roman occupiers, in order to rid themselves of Jesus, fearing that Jesus himself would provoke an invasion by his talk of a kingdom. The Pharisees were willing to cooperate with the Sadducees, their religious opponents, in order to rid themselves of Jesus, who consistently provoked them by pointing out how their outward pious observances covered inward corruption and compromise. Jesus foresaw that their efforts to preserve the political and religious status quo would in the near future be desolated by invasion and ruin. Jesus also contributed<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to the interpretation that the Messiah referenced in Daniel applied to him also as God’s anointed one. Death is the fate of God’s anointed ones who stand in the way of political and religious self-perpetuation and self-aggrandizement.</span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">During the reign of Cyrus the Persian, Daniel previews (or reviews) the shifting empires of the area. A particularly evil king, a usurper of power, will lose a battle, and take his disappointment out on the people of the holy covenant. “And forces from him will arise, desecrate the sanctuary fortress, and do away with the regular sacrifice. And they will set up the abomination of desolation” (Daniel 11:31). And he will entice those irreligious away from the covenant but the people who know their God will display strength and take action.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This again details the rise and course of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (<i>JSB</i>, 1664), including the Jewish sympathizers who enable him to take over the Temple worship and the Maccabees who “take action” to avenge the desecration.</span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This next passage comes toward the end of Daniel, where the writing has moved from the symbolic review of history into apocalyptic prophecy. The shift occurs at Daniel 11:40, with the phrase, “At the time of the end.” The events described from here to the end of Daniel have no historical reference, making this a foretelling of the future, in which a major battle will occur in the area near Jerusalem. A time of great suffering will occur, the worst since there was a nation. Wickedness and goodness will be separated and appear in clarity. When the power of the holy people is shattered, the events are completed. Daniel does not understand, and asks what will be the final end. “Many will be purged, purified and refined; but the wicked will act wickedly, and none of the wicked will understand, but those who have insight will understand. And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days” (Daniel 12:11).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps Jesus was foretelling the Roman invasion in 70 CE as a fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy. At the same time, Jesus’s quotation alludes to the historical abomination of desolation, the idolatrous profanation of the holy place by a political leader, supported in his despicable action by some of the chosen people. It is possible that Jesus used the historical (and possible future) profanation as a metaphor for the way he saw the religious establishment of his day profaning the Temple by making it a “den of thieves.” Perhaps also Jesus was thinking about how his own person would be violated and destroyed at the behest of Jewish leaders using the tools of the Romans. This possibility resonates with Jesus’s words as reported in other gospels, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” referring, as other gospel writers say, to his own body.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-47781992873294743062022-10-04T09:24:00.007-07:002022-10-04T09:25:16.910-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 14<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><b>The Messiah and Politics</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: large;">In Mark 11, Jesus entered Jerusalem to wild acclaim, disrupted the Temple businesses by throwing the vendors out and overturning their tables, and signaled his sense that the temple system was fruitless and would die by cursing the fig tree. Subsequently, through Mark 12, people ask him a long series of questions.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: large;">The first, asking where he got his authority from, he answered with a question. The second, asking if it was according to Jewish law to pay taxes to Caesar, Jesus answered with the famous “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” The third, asking about whose wife the much married woman would be in the resurrection, and the fourth, asking which was the greatest commandment in the Jewish Law, we have already discussed.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now Jesus poses a question of his own. “How is it that the scribes say that the Christ, the Messiah, is the son of David? David himself said in the Holy Spirit, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put thine enemies beneath thy feet.’ So if David calls him Lord, in what sense is he David’s son?” (Mark 12:35-37).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The religious authorities do not answer this question. And it is a puzzler. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Here is the context in Jesus’s scripture:</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Psalm 110:1 “The Lord says to my Lord: sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet.” This Psalm is full of political promises. God tells the king to rule over his enemies. Later in the psalm, God promises that he will be at the king’s right hand, shattering kings, judging nations, filling them with corpses. The scribes and religious leaders cannot safely talk about this psalm without sounding like rebels against Rome. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Further, this Psalm is a promise made by God to the king, promising him a priesthood like Melchizedek’s, an ancient priest/king at the time of Abram.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Both Saul and David occasionally took priestly roles. Additionally, Melchizedek is also possibly a pun meaning rightful king (Jewish Study Bible, 1408, n.). I suspect its interpretation was controversial at the time of Jesus, and Jesus knew it. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The way Jesus quotes it is to take David as the speaker and the “my lord” as a son of David.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This is not a self-evident interpretation. Some present-day Jewish commentary suggests instead that David is the psalmist writing about himself as king in the third person and reinforcing the idea that God is on his side.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Though Christian commentators adopt the whole of this psalm as a prophecy for which Jesus is the Messianic fulfillment, it is in fact full of puzzles. For example, the victories described are military and partisan, in that God works judgment upon “the nations, crushing heads far and wide.” This does not accurately describe the work Jesus said he came to do. Further, expecting that Jesus in a Second Coming will be qualitatively different, even militant and violent, does its own violence to the character of Jesus demonstrated at his first coming. Jesus was militant against hypocrisy, greed, power-hunger, and pride when he came the first time, and these will be the great enemies he defeats when he returns.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus quoted this verse to silence those baiting him. He asked the people how it is that the scribes say the Messiah is the son of David, particularly since David in his Messianic psalm calls his “son” my Lord.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The crowd enjoyed hearing him riddle the religious experts. (This reminds me of the religious debates so popular with the ordinary folks in the 17<span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>th</sup></span> century in England, a time when people went to war over versions of the Christian religion.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But it is hard to imagine Jesus simply engaging in riddling one-ups-manship. Why this riddle at this time?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The immediate context in Mark is one in which Jesus was frequently quoting the Hebrew scriptures at his enemies, making clear that he knew they were opposing him, making clear that he would be the murdered son of the vineyard owner, who is God, and making clear that God is the God of the living, not corpses, and that death will not be the end. He also made clear that the mission of Israel was not self-involved purity but loving each other as neighbors and loving the stranger as oneself also.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They were meant to bring God to the world, not keep God to themselves.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He followed this quotation with specific criticism of the hypocrisy of the religious experts, who showed off their prayers while impoverishing the helpless.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This reinforces his teachings elsewhere about taking care of human need as being more important than religious observances.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This particular quotation spoke to the Jewish hope for military victory over national enemies, and Jesus invoked this in a way that both put his questioners on the spot and undercut this political understanding of the Messianic aspect of the psalm.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-26319116436900723082022-09-02T12:12:00.007-07:002022-10-04T09:25:53.984-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 13<p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-family: Cambria;">The First of All Commandments and the Second, As Well</span></span></b></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After the last round of thrust-parry-thrust-touché between Jesus and the Sadducees, a scribe asked his question. He asked it because he liked how Jesus had dealt with the previous question, and it was this: “Which is the first commandment of all?”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ And the second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Mark 12:29-30).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The first part of this quotes from Deuteronomy 6. Significantly, Jesus included this theological prologue—“the Lord our God is one.” This recapitulated his answer to the Sadducees, God’s self-identifying formula to Moses (Exodus 3:14), “I am who I am.” The present tense, Jesus said, shows that God is present and presence. Jesus required his Sadducee questioners to confront the enigma that all of time is present to God, all humans are present to God, all of God is present at any time; to admit that their model of the past is not God’s reality. This is such a mystery.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It may be one of the questions a human can pose but, when answered, cannot understand.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4-5). This particular quotation from Deuteronomy 6 has two words for God in it: <i>Elohim</i>, which is plural (remember “Let us make human in our image…male and female”) and Yahweh, which is singular. Specifically, “<i>Yahweh</i>, our <i>Elohim</i>, is one <i>Yahweh</i>.” (This nuance is lost in Mark, written in Greek, in which the words are <i>Kyrios</i> and <i>Theos</i>, both singular.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Again, we are plunging into an ocean of mystery.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This is (or is like?) the mystery of the Trinity, the three-in-one, affirmed by Christian creeds for centuries, often in response to challenges to trinitarian belief. Jesus emphasized the unity of purpose between himself and his Father, and in John’s Gospel, emphasized the unity of substance between himself and his Father, and said that when he was no longer physically present,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the Father would send the Spirit of truth to guide them.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Trinity fits in well with the <i>Elohim</i> part of the Deuteronomy quotation.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The rest of the quotation is about loving God. Robert Alter says that this emphasis on love in Deuteronomy is new, that it is an addition to the traditional “fear of the Lord.” He also adds that it is the word used in treaties which pledge loyalty.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Alter goes on to explain that the heart is the seat of understanding and is also associated with emotions. The “soul” is better translated “life-breath” or the “essential self.” And the word “might” is usually an adverb “very,” meaning “over the top.” (Alter, Moses, 641, n.) So if I put this into my own words:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You shall love the Lord your God with all your understanding and feelings, with your essential self and your life-breath, and with an unbreakable and complete loyalty.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I notice that Jesus added “with all your mind” into this list.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The questioner responded with his own list, which I suspect we are to consider parallel: “the heart, the understanding, the soul, the strength.” They were on the same page, despite the differences—Love God with all you are. This is the most important of all.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The second, which Jesus said is like the first, is to love your neighbor as yourself. This also derives from the Torah: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:18).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This positive command occurs in the Levitical context of many “thou shalt not” admonitions centering on the following:</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><ul class="ul1"><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not reap all your field, but leave some for the poor and the stranger</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not steal</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not deal falsely</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not lie to one another</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not take false oaths in God’s name</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not oppress your neighbor</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not rob your neighbor</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not withhold the wages of the day-laborer overnight</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not curse the deaf</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not trip up the blind</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do no injustice in judgment</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not be partial to the poor</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not defer to the rich</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not slander others</span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not take vengeance nor bear a grudge</span></li></ul><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All these are implicit in loving the neighbor as one’s self, but are made explicit for those of us who want to limit our love for our neighbors. Further on in the Leviticus chapter this occurs: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There is no exception to the command, in other words.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The questioner and the crowd before Jesus were well aware of the context of this second command and likely squirmed over their own failures to love. Even if we can say, “Oh, I love God wholeheartedly and more than anyone or anything else,” can we say, “I love my neighbor as myself, and my behavior toward my neighbor is in line with the expectations of Jesus’s Testament?” I’m feeling a little uncomfortable right now.</span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-35716728422986879432022-08-04T08:37:00.002-07:002022-08-04T08:37:20.998-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 12<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The God Who Is </b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">This chapter 12 of Mark describes Jesus in one confrontation after another. After the one about the unfaithful vine-growers, the Pharisees and Herodians (unlikely allies) tried to trap Jesus about paying taxes to Rome, and then the Sadducees came up with a long story about a woman who married one brother after another until she finally followed the seventh in death.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I speculate that this was one of those perennial points of debate between the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the Pharisees, who did. Their participation together in trying to trap Jesus reveals that in their time as well as ours, politics made strange bedfellows. (Also, to me, it resembles the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.)</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus answered first by saying to the Sadducees, “You don’t know the scriptures nor do you know the power of God.” Once again, hardly conciliatory. This was a confrontation with the priestly establishment who were in positions of political as well as religious power, and Jesus described them as ignorant of their scriptures and of what God can do. (He went on to say that resurrected people are no longer involved in marriage, and are like angels, a fascinating statement, but beyond what we’re working on here.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then he said this: “But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?” (Mark 12:26). Again, “Have you not read”—Jesus asked those in charge of religious observance if they were even reading their scriptures. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus asked them a good question which goes right back to the rescue of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. The question exposed their superficial reading of the scriptures that were basic to their national identity, their claim of being chosen by God.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The context for the quotation is the story of Moses and the slavery in Egypt of the Hebrew people.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Moses was born at a time in Egypt when the Pharaoh had decreed that all Hebrew boy babies were to be killed at birth. The heroic midwives Shiprah and Puah refused to obey the edict and instead reported to Pharaoh that Hebrew women delivered too quickly to need their services. Then Pharaoh required his own people to throw Hebrew sons into the river. When Moses was born, his mother hid him for three months, then placed him into a small woven and waterproofed boat and floated him on the river.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Pharaoh’s daughter took him out of the water and had compassion on him, even knowing him to be a little Hebrew boy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>His birth mother became his wet-nurse for pay, and the princess adopted him and named him Moses. Moses grew up in safety, even privilege, though he knew of his Hebrew origin, and when he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, he killed the Egyptian and hid the body.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Hebrews denied his authority and Pharaoh wanted to kill him, so he fled the country to Midian, where he found water, a wife, and a job as a shepherd. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Some time later, he saw a bush burning without being burnt to ashes, and he went to investigate. God called him by name from within the burning bush.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It is worth wondering what Moses’s exact religious upbringing had been. It seems likely that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>his mother taught him about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and the God they worshiped. It seems likely also that the princess taught him about Ra and Isis and Osiris, and the rest of the Egyptian pantheon. But this is the flashpoint of his understanding who his God is and will be going forward.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). This reminds Moses of his immediate father in Egypt as well as of his ancestors. So much history is embedded in those three names, so much of their personal relationships with this God. I think of Abraham leaving his homeland to wander at the word of God; of Abraham taking his son Isaac to be a sacrifice at God’s command; at Isaac being rescued from that sacrifice by the messenger of God; at Jacob running from the consequences of his duplicity only to be met by God in a dream, and then years later on the way back home wrestling with God’s messenger into permanent lameness. So much that could be explored, too much for this post. All of their stories are implicit in Jesus’s quotation, and he requires his opponents to look at the history of personal relationship and responsibility to God embodied in those patriarchs.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The emphasis on “I am”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in the list is an insistence on the present tense of God.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It also looks forward to the point in Moses’s story when he asks, “Who shall I say has sent me?” The reply, I AM WHO I AM, doubly emphasizes God’s irreducibility and presence, God’s creative and sustaining power. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Further, Jesus went on to say that “God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.” He linked this to an affirmation that the dead are alive with God, which his Sadducee questioners denied. But it is more profound even than that.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What else could this have meant to Jesus’s hearers?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I think it meant that his questioners needed to look at their own personal relationships with the God of their patriarchs: each of them had had personal encounters with the “I AM WHO I AM” who spoke to Moses.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They needed to acknowledge God being immediately present in the moment in which they were questioning Jesus. They needed to admit God’s claims on their obedience and loyalty. But what they did was take refuge in tradition and traditional understandings that allowed them to maintain their status quo. This is a lesson for all of us.</span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-80229083848259279882022-07-25T08:31:00.000-07:002022-07-26T05:33:37.853-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 11<p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;">The Rejected Cornerstone</span></span></b></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Immediately following the parable of the faithless vine-growers, Jesus carried the confrontation into the religious leaders’ camp.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He asked them: “Have you not even read this scripture: ‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief corner-stone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” (Mark 12:10).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Let’s not ignore the implications of how Jesus introduced his quotation.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>“Have you not even read this scripture?” Not conciliatory in the least.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And you can tell this is so by their reaction, which is to move toward assaulting him, only restrained by their fear of the crowd. I wonder how often today God’s Holy Spirit says to each of us, “Have you not even read this scripture?” Do we respond with defensiveness or do we sit down to listen? I remember when the Spirit brought these verses into my heart and said, “Have you not even read these scriptures?” And I had not actually let them sink in to form the foundation of my faith until that point.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hebrews 10:1 <i>The Law foreshadowed good things to come but could not bring them about</i><span class="s1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>.</i></span></span></p><p class="p5" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i></i><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Ephesians 2:15 <i>Christ abolished in his flesh the law</i><span class="s1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>.</i></span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Romans 7:4-6 <i>We are dead to the Law by the body of Christ; we are delivered from the Law</i><span class="s1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>.</i></span></span></p><p class="p5" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i></i><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Romans 7:25-8:2 <i>The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death</i><span class="s1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>.</i></span></span></p><p class="p5" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hebrews 7:18-19 <i>The earlier commandment has been annulled and replaced by a better hope in Christ as our high priest, through whom we draw near to God</i><span class="s1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>.</i></span></span></p><p class="p5" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Galatians 2:16-21 <i>We are justified by the faith of Christ, we believe in the character and work of Jesus Christ; we are dead to the Law so that we may live to God; we are crucified with Christ, and now Christ lives in us and we live by the faith of Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. We do not annul or reject the grace of God by saying that righteousness comes through the Law.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i></i><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So Jesus’s question to religious people of his day is still resonant today.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The passage Jesus quotes is from Psalm 118. This Psalm celebrates the everlasting kindness of God. The psalmist says that he called to God and God answered, that the Lord is for him, and that with the Lord’s name he cut down all the nations. “You pushed me hard to knock me down but the Lord helped me. My strength and my might is Yah, and he has become my rescue.” He claims the Lord as his rescuer. Then comes the passage that Jesus quotes: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. From the Lord did this come about—it is wondrous in our eyes. (Psalm 118:22-23).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The psalmist then petitions the Lord for rescue and prosperity and then this: “Bind the festive offering with ropes all the way to the horns of the altar.”</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">By quoting this passage, Jesus identified himself with the psalmist as one who fears the Lord. He asserted that God has answered his call, that God is for him, that God is his strength and might. Yet at the same time, the faint echo of the coming offering/sacrifice is hinted at as well. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus also calls his critics to account—do they fear the Lord? Can they point to where God has answered their call?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Are they rejecting the cornerstone, the stone from which the whole building is measured out and built?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-77356880869059105482022-07-24T08:43:00.000-07:002022-07-24T08:43:08.496-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 10<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The Faithless Vine-Growers</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Mark 11 ends with the priests, scribes, and elders asking Jesus who gave him the authority to do such things as clear the merchants out of the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">He “answered” them with a question about where the baptism of John came from, whether heaven or humans.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">They refused to answer, because he had trapped and immobilized them.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Mark 12:1 And He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard, and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the winepress, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The parable goes on to tell how, each time he sent servants to collect the rent, the vine-growers beat them, stoned them, shamed them, and killed some of them. So he sent his son, thinking they would respect him. But instead they reasoned that killing the son would make them the <i>de facto</i> owners, so they did kill him and throw his body out of the vineyard.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus asked the crowd, “What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine-growers and give the vineyard to others.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus’s Bible has so many references to vines and vineyards that they cannot all be brought to mind here.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The references are particularly prevalent in the Prophets, and we will look at just one, Isaiah:</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“Let me sing now for my well-beloved a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And he dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. And he built a tower in the middle of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; then he expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones. And now…I will lay it waste…For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his delightful plant. Thus he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress…Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil…Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and clever in their own sight.” (Isaiah 5)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The context of this parable is the prophet Isaiah’s call to his nation to repent; his description of the suffering their sinfulness will call down on them; his prediction of the dissolution of their community and kingdom; his list of their sins, including a plea to “cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (1:17). Interspersed among the warnings and accusations are visions of a blessed future, where war is no more, where Zion is holy and protected, which Isaiah so much wanted to be true.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Isaiah<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>goes on following his parable of the vineyard to predict the defeat and downfall of the nation of Israel.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">By quoting this passage, Jesus brought before the priests, scribes, and elders their worst nightmare—the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem and the nation.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It had happened before when Babylon invaded, and the Jews were dispersed out of their homeland. Isaiah’s prophetic vision was accurate.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus essentially said to his hearers that the same conditions that provoked judgment before have occurred again, and even worse, and how can they hope to escape?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This was infuriating, and it confirmed their fear that Jesus’s message and person had both personal and political implications. Their arrogance and their will to power and their personal corruptions were laid bare by Isaiah’s words in Jesus’s mouth.</span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-56843739356272156152022-07-18T07:58:00.004-07:002022-07-18T07:58:43.005-07:00 Jesus and His Bible, Part 9<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Welcome and Worship in God's House</b></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">To summarize events between the last quotation and this next one: After his encounter with the rich man, Jesus educated his followers on how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Then he said that those who left their houses and relationships and lands would receive back<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>a hundred times their loss in this time, accompanied by persecution, and in the time to come, would receive eternal life.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He told the disciples he would be killed in Jerusalem, and the response recorded by Mark is that James and John came to ask for seats of preeminence in the kingdom. Jesus said they would have to share in his experience, and that they would indeed share it, but that he didn’t decide who was preeminent in the kingdom of God. (He had just said that the last would be first, so that’s a clue.) He also said that whoever wants to be great among Jesus’s followers must be the slave of all.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Then he healed blind Bartimaeus.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He entered Jerusalem on a colt and the crowds hailed him as King. He looked around the temple and went back out of Jerusalem for the night.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On the way back into Jerusalem, he cursed a fig tree without fruit, and then returned to the temple. It is easy to connect the fig tree to the temple as an enacted parable, given what happened next.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He drove out those who bought and sold in the temple and turned over the tables of the money-changers.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then he said: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a robber’s den” (Mark 11:17). The picture invoked is that the merchants in the temple are like a band of robbers who hurry back to their safe hideout to count their takings, and the temple is that cave. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus quoted two prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah. The first is Isaiah 56:7. This quotation comes from a passage that begins “Preserve justice, and do righteousness, for my salvation is about to come and my righteousness to be revealed.” The passage promises blessing to those who do not profane the Sabbath and who do no evil. The blessing is also for the foreigner and the eunuch who keep God’s Sabbaths and choose what pleases God and hold fast to God’s covenant. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus invoked Isaiah’s inclusive prophecy as he cleared out all the hubbub and chicanery from the court of the Gentiles.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>By his action, seen as a parable, Jesus took the holy interior of the temple where only Jews could go and extended it out into the outer court where Gentiles were allowed to visit. He invited outsiders into God’s presence, including them in the privilege of worshiping God.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The second is Jeremiah 7:11. This comes from a word that Jeremiah was told to speak in the Lord’s house, the temple, to all the people of Judah who entered to worship. This is the immediate context:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Amend your ways and deeds and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not think that because the temple is here, you are ok. You must practice justice, you must not oppress the foreigner, the orphan, or the widow, and you must not shed innocent blood or worship idols. But if you do wrong and then come here and say “We are delivered”—has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your sight?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This directly confronts any sense of being exclusively chosen to belong to God, the sign of which for the Jews is the temple. Sadly, however, their actions do not reflect justice and mercy to those who are other and those who are needy or helpless. If they are implicated in the death of the innocent and if they put anything (like wealth, see the rich man of Mark 10) ahead of God in their worship, they have made the temple a robbers’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>hideout. (It is not hard to apply this to the many who make money out of religion in our time.) Jeremiah highlights the teachings of the Torah that specifically command justice and mercy to vulnerable groups of people and the many instances in the Hebrew scripture that insist on care for the innocent and putting God first.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In both quotations from Jesus’s Bible, the context has to do with the fact that the chosen people have themselves chosen to act without justice and righteousness and they have thus obscured the intent of God, which is to invite and include the foreigner, the powerless, the eunuch in the knowledge and worship of the true God, and to protect the interests of the helpless, friendless, and innocent.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Instead, in Jesus’s time, the place these folks were welcome had become a marketplace rather than a place of worship, a place where the “protected” classes were taken advantage of in order to accumulate money.</span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-12935826924212077112022-07-12T07:47:00.001-07:002022-07-12T07:47:28.243-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 8<p><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: large;">Mark 10:19 The Rich Man Wants Eternal Life</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Question: Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Answer: Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“Why do you call me good?” This abrupt response puzzles me. I think, as with other surprising responses, it is tailored to the person with whom Jesus was speaking. It suggests that this conversation began with a compliment from one good person to another.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I recognize you as good, the rich man said, because I also am good. Jesus brought him up short when he asserted that “no one is good except God alone.” While this is not a direct quotation from Jesus’s Bible, it sums up multiple references to God’s goodness in the Psalms, and in many of those, God’s goodness is linked directly to his loving kindness, his mercy. This mercy, this care for the weak and helpless, is what the rich man is apparently specifically missing.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But first, Jesus made the “law-abiding” answer: “You know the commandments: do not murder; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness; do not defraud; honor your father and mother.” Interestingly, Jesus did not begin with Exodus 20:3: “You shall have no other gods before me,” nor did he include the prohibition of sacred images, or swearing oaths falsely using God’s name. He omitted the positive command about keeping the Sabbath. Instead, he focused on the ethical commands, the ones which detail how we are to treat other people. (See Exodus 20:12-16; Deut. 5:16-20.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus concisely summed these ethical commandments up, with the interesting addition of “do not defraud,” which extends “do not covet”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>into the actions that result from covetousness. Fraudulent practices are condemned in some detail in various teachings about honesty in business practices in both the Pentateuch and the Prophets.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Embedded in this story are numerous political and theological threads, making the answer a complicated one, despite its apparent simplicity. The questioner who asked about eternal life, if sincere, must have been a Pharisee. They were at odds with the Sadducees over this issue. The Pharisees also were strict followers of their interpretation of Mosaic Law, both the written and oral traditions. By agreeing that “eternal life” is possible, Jesus aligned himself with the Pharisees in their debate with the Sadducees. And yet he was in constant conflict with the Pharisees over how to fulfill the Law. Specifically here,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>when Jesus summed up the “other-facing” laws so concisely, he confronted the complexity of the traditions followed by the Pharisees.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus’s assertion that “no one is good except God alone” confronted the rich man’s awareness of his own goodness, as exposed in the exchange in which the rich man asserts that he has kept the commandments from his youth. This came out of Jesus’s<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>love for the questioner, a love which insisted on his looking honestly at himself.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then Jesus answered with “sell all you have and give it to the poor”; Jesus reasserted that mercy is an essential aspect of goodness. He challenged the rich man to radical generosity. Mercy goes beyond the law of Moses into the law of love; now it isn’t about stealing or defrauding but about giving. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Further, Jesus said: “Take up your cross and follow me.” Crucifixion was the punishment for rebels against the civil power of the Romans. In this context, Jesus signified the need to rebel against the idea that legalistic fulfillment of the law is enough, the need instead to embrace the idea of a whole-self giving away of privilege and power. This rebellion, though figurative, would have made real the worshipful attitude the rich man began with (“good master”).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>“You call me good, but none is good but God; if you really believe I am good (if you really believe I am God), throw away your life and follow me. This is the absolute best I can offer to those I love.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-40337107326861394472022-06-09T06:25:00.003-07:002022-07-10T06:00:02.591-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 7<p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>(Note: I didn't like how I organized this originally, so I've reorganized it and added a bit.)</i></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus and his disciples went into Judea, which is closer to Jerusalem. There he met Pharisees who had a question they hoped would trap Jesus into revealing that he was not adhering to the Jewish law. This question about marriage and divorce is a big question for human relationships, and several inferences have been drawn from it that are in their turn legalistic and inhumane. This is the same Jesus who came not to condemn but to save, and who came to give abundant life, and who promised the Spirit of truth who would guide into truth, and that truth would set us free.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Specifically, Pharisees asked whether it lawful for a man to divorce a wife. Jesus met this with another question: “What did Moses command you?”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>marriage laws in Deuteronomy require some context. The Jewish Study Bible summarizes the cultural setting thus: “In the ancient Near East, marriage was a contractual relationship. A woman, regarded in terms of her relation to her father or her husband, could not act independently. There was little conception of the woman as a free agent, either in legal or sexual terms” (Deut. 22, 416, n.). Out of this context, the JSB editors see the Jewish law moving the woman toward agency and moral responsibility (p. 417, n. on verse 22). Jesus followed that direction right into equality, as we shall see.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The law quoted by the Pharisees comes out of Deuteronomy 24:1-4. “If a man takes a wife and she loses favor with him because he finds some indecency or uncleanness in her, he may write her a certificate of divorce and send her away.” This “indecency” could be something morally reprehensible, a physical defect, or lack of sexual satisfaction for the male (Alter, Moses, 698, n.).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Deuteronomy goes on: “If another man marries her, and he also turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce or if he dies, the first husband absolutely must not take her back as his wife.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The stipulation of a written certificate of divorce gives the woman a legal status permitting her to remarry. (This is an important distinction for her in a polygamous society.) Additionally, there is some evidence from the 5th century BCE that wives could initiate divorce. Exodus 21:10 specifies that a slave wife is entitled to food, clothing, and conjugal rights; withholding these sets her free from the marriage. Rabbis Suffice it to say that the legal context for marriage and divorce was complicated in Jesus’s time.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Pharisees have bypassed the male-oriented commands about a husband who discovers his wife is either not a virgin when they marry or is unfaithful while married. In both cases, they can have her stoned to death. I speculate that whether or not the Pharisees were in agreement with the law, actually putting someone to death was tricky under Roman occupation. Another possibility is that stoning to death<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>for sexual sins had fallen out of favor. We know Joseph decided not to make a public spectacle out of Mary’s unexpected pregnancy, going on to marry her only when an angel said she was pregnant by the spirit of God. (Later, Pharisees would taunt Jesus by saying, “We know who our father is.” )</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I cannot ignore Jesus’s teaching elsewhere that adultery takes place in the heart before it ever takes place in the bed. Underlying this teaching here in Mark is the understanding that wayward desire is common, and is no excuse for hardening one’s heart towards a spouse.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We have one account of what Jesus did when confronted with a stoning sentence for a woman taken in adultery. (See John 8.) He did not comment on stoning to death <i>per se</i>, but he did stipulate that only those without sin could throw stones, with the result that no one threw any. And Jesus himself, without sin, did not throw any either.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The Thorny Question about Divorce, Installment 2</b></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus said that Moses allowed divorce because of “your hardness of heart. But from the beginning, God ‘made them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh.’ What therefore God has joined together, let no human separate” (Mark 10:6-9).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus based his answer, not on the law, but on the creation narrative.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>“And God created humanity in God’s own image; male and female, God created them” (Genesis 1:27). “In the day when God created humanity, God created them in the likeness of God, male and female, and God blessed them and named them Adam (Human) in the day when they were created” (Gen, 5:2). “For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">First, Jesus singles out for notice that God made humanity in God’s image, in the likeness of God, and that included maleness and femaleness. We can also see from other scripture as well that God exhibits both masculinity and femininity in God’s self , so it should not surprise us to see both in our own selves. So while some see this as confirming binary sexual divisions in humanity, it is also possible to see it as affirming that each person, bearing the image of God, includes masculinity and femininity as part of the whole self.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We ought not to try to separate ourselves from our own true identities; we ought to acknowledge and make use of our own interior diversity, as God does.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Second, the husband or the wife can file for divorce in Jesus’s hypothetical scenario. “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery” (Mark 10: 11-12). This is a fundamentally egalitarian teaching. It applies not only to equality between men and women but within each individual equal respect for their masculine and feminine aspects. </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Second, he comments on what “one flesh” means, namely, a unity that cannot be broken by a certificate of divorce.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So he communicates a sense that there is a holy truth in the unity of the sexual act—a truth that goes beyond body to soul and spirit as well. The whole of the human being is involved with another human being. Try as we will, that unity cannot be undone, that involvement cannot be erased. I’ll point to the difficult passage from Paul who says, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? …Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For He says, ‘The two will become one flesh’” (1 Cor. 6:15-16).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This teaches us that what we do with our bodies is not simply casual or fleeting; in fact, traces of our actions remain with us in our bodies as well as in our spirits. No one is free from these consequences.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">However, in the context of Genesis 2:24, this statement of unity is immediately followed by the story of the temptation and fall, in which each person is treated as an individual, and in which one person blames another person for his own choice. This shows a limit to the degree to which “one flesh” applies to a relationship in which there are two persons. Each is still responsible as an individual to God.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus went on to teach that second marriages while the first spouse is still alive, even after a legal divorce, is committing adultery. This can be seen as logically following on from the premise of union as one flesh that cannot be undone. However, it is important to understand the context in which a divorce for any cause—any cause—was popular at his time. Jesus spoke into that context. (See the parallel passage in Matthew 19, where the question was: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?”) Jesus confronts his hearers with the idea that a divorce for trivial causes is no divorce at all. I think he also speaks obliquely against the practice of polygamy as well, despite its prevalence in Israel’s history.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Notably, he never said that divorce because of “hardness of heart” cannot happen. He did not set aside the Mosaic requirements that a husband provide food, clothing, and companionship to a wife.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>His taught only that even those who experience a hard-hearted spouse cannot erase the fact of the union they have had with each other. I expect that anyone reading this who has been divorced will agree that a divorce does not magically erase that relationship.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If you have more questions about the topic of divorce, and who doesn’t, please take a look at Dr. David Instone-Brewer’s work on it. Here’s a place to start.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="text-decoration-line: underline;"><a href="https://www.baylor.edu/ifl/christianreflection/MarriageArticleInstoneBrewer.pdf"><span style="font-size: medium;">https://www.baylor.edu/ifl/christianreflection/MarriageArticleInstoneBrewer.pdf</span></a></span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-29179746907241599052022-06-06T10:11:00.008-07:002022-06-06T10:12:09.485-07:00 Jesus and His Bible Part 6<p><span style="font-size: medium;">One Misunderstanding after Another</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After Jesus had chided the disciples for worrying about having literal bread, and he had healed a blind man, they walk along through the villages of Caesarea Philippi. He asked them what they think about him. Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus followed this up in a way that surprised his disciples. He told them plainly that the Christ, the Son of Man (Jesus’s preferred title for himself), must suffer and be rejected and killed, only to be resurrected on the third day. Peter objected, and Jesus treated his objection as he did the temptations of the devil in the desert. All this must have been very surprising to the disciples and likely hurtful to Peter. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I wonder if this relates directly to the two-part healing of the blind man, especially after Jesus pointed them towards the double meanings of his actions. At first the blind man saw unclearly, similar to their understanding of the work of the Messiah. It was not enough that they identified Jesus as the Christ because they also continued to misunderstand the work of the Christ. So Jesus went to work to clarify their vision, and they did not get it even then.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And Jesus makes it more poignant by insisting that those who want to follow him should expect their own cross, should expect to trade their whole lives in for the work of following Jesus.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus then took Peter, James, and John up the mountain where they saw him transfigured and accompanied by Moses and Elijah. They were astonished, and Peter blurted, “Let us make tabernacles here for the three of you.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God replied, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">They did not yet understand what Jesus was telling them about dying and rising again, and they were still unable to look at the scripture with imagination, so they asked when Elijah was to come to herald the Messiah. Jesus said, “He has already come, and they killed him.” From this they could have realized that the prophecy was a parable also, and that John the Baptist had filled the function of Elijah.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">They arrived back with the other disciples to discover that a child had been brought for healing who was so oppressed by evil so that he could not speak and had dangerous seizures. The disciples could not heal him, and the father begged Jesus to intervene “if you can.” Jesus admonishes the father to have faith and then heals the boy.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When the disciples got Jesus alone, they asked why they could not cast out this evil. It is not surprising they were puzzled because earlier Jesus had given them authority to do just this (see Mark 6). Jesus responded that this kind came out only by prayer, which must have puzzled them further, and still puzzles people today. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On the way to Capernaum, he again told them he must die and then rise again; their response this time was to talk among themselves about which of them was the greatest. Jesus had to correct their understanding of greatness by telling them that whoever wanted to be great must serve everyone else. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So they’ve made three mistakes in understanding Jesus since the one about leaven. They refused to see that he must die, they wanted to make him an object of worship, and they thought he would set them up in a hierarchy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">These are mistakes we still make today. We judge people based on their obedience to religious traditions. We deny the necessity of dying, the requirement to take up our own cross every day, the unavoidableness of suffering. We want to keep Jesus in a religious house where we can go to worship him. And we think Jesus set up a hierarchy.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We come to one more error, one which resonates today in the midst of our culture wars here in the United States and similar conflicts everywhere.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>John told Jesus, “We found someone casting out demons in your name and we told him to stop because he wasn’t one of us.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This was a fraught issue, given that they had just failed to cast out a demon themselves, so it is not surprising they were unhappy to see someone else being successful. It is a human tendency also to want to keep any kind of power within one’s own in-group. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But Jesus told them that “whoever is not against us is for us, whoever gives you water to drink because you follow me will be rewarded, whoever causes a little one who believes to stumble would be better off drowned in the sea; if your hand, foot, eye, causes you to stumble, get rid of it; better to enter God’s kingdom maimed than to be cast into Gehenna ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ For everyone will be salted with fire (Mark 9:48).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We can learn from what Jesus says that those doing good in Jesus’s name should be encouraged to continue, that those who cause other believers to stumble would be better off dead, and if we are controlled and hindered in discipleship by our ability to control, to be mobile, or to oversee our world, we’d be better off losing all control, mobility or vision in order to be able to enter God’s kingdom. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The quotation is from Isaiah 66:24 and is for those who rebelled against God: “For their worm shall not die and their fire shall not be quenched” and they shall be an abhorrence to all humankind. And who are those rebels? Those who perform the rituals but prefer their own way. God promises to come in fire and whirlwind and execute judgment by fire on them. I am reminded of the cautionary comment in Hebrews, “Our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29), and of the passages in Paul’s epistles where our works are tested by fire in the judgment. Fire and wind are purifying and sanctifying agents, as witnessed at Pentecost with the sound of a strong wind and tongues of fire. By invoking this passage in Isaiah, Jesus taught his disciples to expect that God would indeed purify and sanctify them from their dependence on religious rituals and their preference for their own way. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Isaiah goes on to add: “But to the ones who are humble and contrite and tremble at my name, I will extend peace and I will comfort like a mother comforts and nurses her children.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I will take some of them for priests; all humankind will come to bow down before me." <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What we learn: God prefers the humble, the contrite, and those who are awed by God’s name to any who set themselves up as enforcers, or any who perform the outward signs of religion while secretly following their own lusts and disobeying, or any who simply prefer their own way to God’s way. Jesus reinforces that by puncturing the disciples’ sense of being special: whoever is not against us is for us. I am not just for you twelve or seventy-two or the inner circle. </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And forbidding others to do good in Jesus’s name is like offending one of the little ones who believe in Jesus. It is a serious crime against life.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus continually corrected the disciples’ misunderstandings to emphasize to them that they had to embrace suffering and humility and graciousness in order to follow him. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-88511172203432383192022-06-04T17:28:00.006-07:002022-06-04T17:28:40.650-07:00Jesus and His Bible Part 5<p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Disciples Miss the Point</span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus declared all foods clean, and then he went into the Gentile region of Tyre. There he encountered the Syrian woman with the daughter oppressed by an evil spirit. After a dialogue with the mother, he healed the daughter. Then he and his disciples traveled to the region of Decapolis (still in Syria), where he healed a deaf person and enabled him to speak intelligibly. Then in chapter 8, the gospel of Mark records the second great feeding of a multitude, this time around 4,000 people, with 7 baskets of leftovers.These three miracles join with the healing of the Gerasene man to show Jesus taking his ministry into Gentile territories and to Gentile people.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Afterwards, they crossed the Sea of Galilee to the west side, back into Jewish territory. There the Pharisees came out to argue with Jesus and to get him to give them a sign, which he refused to do. Jesus and his friends got back into the boat, and ended up in Bethsaida, home territory.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now as they were heading back home, while Jesus was warning them about the Pharisees and the Herodians, using the metaphor of leaven, or yeast, the disciples began discussing the fact that they did not have enough bread.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus said to them: “Do you not yet see or understand? Do you have a hardened (dull, insensible) heart? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear?” (Mark 8:18). Do you not remember both feedings of the multitudes? With leftovers? Do you not yet understand?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This rebuke is a quotation from the prophet Ezekiel, to whom God says: “Son of man, you live in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see but do not see, ears to hear but do not hear; for they are a rebellious house” (Ezek. 12:2). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The context in Ezekiel is this. Ezekiel is a prophet during the Babylonian exile of the Jews. He hears from God that he is to act out a parable among the exiles that relates to the Jews still in Jerusalem, and that parable means that they too will go into exile. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The allusion to Ezekiel makes me think that Jesus is advising his disciples to observe his actions as if they were parables.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He has fed multitudes with a few loaves and fishes; he has freed those oppressed by evil; he has just given hearing and speech to a deaf man. He is about to give sight to a blind man. By this rebuke to their own sight and hearing, he invites his disciples to bring their imagination and intelligence to bear on what all this means, what these signs point to.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;">In Matthew, the story includes the words that the disciples realized he was talking about the doctrine of the Pharisees, not literal leaven. And that doctrine was one which judged people for not following religious traditions, and which always needed one more attesting miracle to prove that Jesus was the one sent by God, the Messiah.</span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-60377123634078144892022-05-26T09:15:00.000-07:002022-05-26T09:15:33.263-07:00Jesus and His Bible Part 4<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Jesus and Purity</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The next time in Mark that Jesus quotes his Testament is in Chapter 7.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In the intervening story, Jesus has done the following:</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><ul class="ul1"><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Told more parables about the Kingdom of God—the seed growing, the mustard seed growing;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Stilled the storm on the sea;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Freed the Gerasene (Gentile) madman from his demons;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Brought Jairus’s daughter back from death;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Healed (inadvertently) the woman who had bled for 12 years;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Met unbelief in his home town;<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Sent the 12 disciples out in pairs to preach;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Fed the 5000 men plus women and children with 12 baskets left over</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Walked on the water to his disciples’ boat.</span></li></ul><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The level of activity is breath-taking to read. In these encounters and events, we see the growing awareness among his followers that he is not a run-of-the-mill itinerant preacher or prophet. They add to their undoubted affection and admiration a streak of fear when he stills the storm and walks on the water.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We also see that his home town is blind to his worth and that the Gentiles want him to go away. Mark’s Jesus inspires awe, and yet desperate people continue to beseech him for help.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Jesus quoted his Testament in the context of a dispute with Pharisees over ritual purification.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In Mark 7, Pharisees noticed that the disciples ate with unwashed hands. Pharisees asked Jesus why the disciples did not keep the traditions. This<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>reflected on Jesus as a trustworthy teacher, so they were really asking about his relationship to the Law and ritual.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Jesus said, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men” (Mark 7: 6-7).</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is a reference to Isaiah 29:13:-14: "Then the Lord said, ‘Because this people draw near with their words and honor me with their lips, but they remove their hearts from me, and their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by rote,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people…and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be concealed.’”</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The context in Isaiah is a prophesy against Jerusalem, specifically that the city will undergo a military siege, defeat, and a return to dust, accompanied by thunder, earthquake, tempest, and the flame of a consuming fire. Strikingly, God tells Isaiah that this vision will be like a sealed scroll to his audience, a scroll the literate will reject because it is sealed, and the illiterate because they cannot read. It is followed by the pronounced woe to those who act secretively, who consider themselves wiser and more understanding than God, who are like pots thinking themselves equal to their potter.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This chapter in Isaiah ends with a prophecy concerning bringing hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, gladness to the afflicted, causing the needy to rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. But also ending the ruthless, finishing the scornful, cutting off those intending evil, those who pervert justice with lies and bribes. Christians will see Jesus in these words, which express the hopes of humankind for a better future.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It is clear where Jesus included those who were preoccupied with ritual purity—they were among the ruthless, the scornful, those willing to bully, lie and cheat for their own ends.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus went further with his indictment of Pharisees. Jesus said they put traditions ahead of the commandment of God, quoting Moses: “‘Honor your father and your mother’ and ‘he who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death’ but you say ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, anything of mine you might have been helped by is Corban—given to God’—thus invalidating the word of God by your traditions which you have handed down, and you do many such things like that” (Mark 7:9-11).</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This commandment to care for parents deals directly with human relationships, calling the young to care for the old. The familiar context is the 10 commandments given to Moses by God on the stone tablets: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you” (Ex. 20:12, see also Deut. 5:15). It is worth noticing that Jesus quoted only the command. When God says to do something positive, do it regardless of outcome, may be the message.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> [</span>Robert Alter notes that “it is hard to square the causal link between honoring parents and longevity with empirical observation, and one probably has to regard this as part of the traditional wisdom of the ancient Near East, the sort of hopeful moral calculus reflected in the book of Proverbs” (Moses, 297, n.).]</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus also invoked the flip side of caring for parents. In a list of capital offenses is included the following: “And he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death”) (Ex. 21:17, see also Lev. 20:9). Robert Alter translates “curses” as “vilifies,” and notes that it connects with treating parents with contempt. (Moses, 303, n.). Jesus condemns the tradition that makes it a good deed to give away </span><span style="font-size: large;">“to God” </span><span style="font-size: large;">money or goods that one’s parents need. He makes clear that human need is more important than looking good.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus followed this by an address to the multitude: “Listen to me and understand: there is nothing outside the man which going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile him” (Mark 7:15). Jesus directly confronted Jewish dietary laws about what could and could not be eaten. He explained to the disciples that, literally, what a person eats goes into the stomach and is eliminated, causing no impurity.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Mark asserts that this means “he declared all foods clean,” an interpretation confirmed by Peter’s vision on the rooftop detailed in Acts 10. This vision expanded the acceptability of all foods to include the acceptability of all persons, whether Jewish or not. Those of us who yearn for rules and guidelines that will make us acceptable to God are out of luck.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What is defiling before God are the ways we harm each other that derive from evil thoughts, pride, and foolishness. Again Jesus sets to the side the interpretations of the Law and the religious traditions that hinder us from caring for the human needs we encounter.</span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-46034339368210374552022-05-24T11:06:00.003-07:002022-05-24T11:07:00.286-07:00 Jesus and His Bible, Part 3<p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: large;">Jesus and the Prophet Isaiah</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Between the event in the previous post and today’s study, Mark has moved briskly through the following events:</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><ul class="ul1"><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus healed a man with a withered hand in the synagogue on Sabbath;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus preached to huge crowds from Galilee and from Idumea, Tyre and Sidon (non-Jewish audience);</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Evil spirits identified Jesus as the Son of God;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus chose the twelve;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus’s own people tried to take him into their care, thinking him mad;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus identified those who do God’s will as his family;</span></li><li class="li3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus told the parable of the sower and the seed.</span></li></ul><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When his disciples ask him about his parables, this is his response.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God; but those who are outside get everything in parables; in order that while seeing, they may see and not perceive; and while hearing they may hear and not understand; lest they return again and be forgiven” (Mark 4:11-12).</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This quotation links the ministry of Jesus with the prophetic ministry of Isaiah:</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">"Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' Then I said, 'Here am I. Send me!' And He said, 'Go, and tell this people: "Keep on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand." Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and repent and be healed'" (Isaiah 6:8-9).</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is from the famous passage where Isaiah sees the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, with a train that fills the temple. Isaiah responds with terror, as anyone would, and identifies himself as a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips. The word “unclean” has a history in the Law; people were rendered unclean by touching a dead body, by bodily discharges, by leprosy, by numerous causes, and in an unclean state were prohibited from engaging in worship with the community. We can infer that Isaiah had not made himself unclean in these ways since he was in the temple.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But he sees himself as essentially unclean when he sees the holiness of God, and in this he represents all of us. His cry, “Woe is me!” is the cry of all humanity when we see the difference between ourselves and God. His immediate understanding that he is a person of polluted language and boundaries (things represented by lips) applies to all of us.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And it makes the reaching out of God to humanity through Jesus so necessary and important.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As Jesus, who identified himself always as the son of humanity,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>says, “Whoever has seen me has seen my Father.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The sting in this quotation is for those who do not perceive their essential neediness before God, those who listen but do not hear, who see but do not understand. These will never turn back to God, will never face into God’s holiness and their own need. These people can be completely religious, and yet not healed.</span></p><p class="p4" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">By identifying himself<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>with the vision and calling of Isaiah, Jesus also admits and predicts a similar certainty that many people will not see, listen, or understand his own person and ministry; therefore they will not repent, and by this lack of repentance they will be judged. The parables are therefore challenges to us: will we listen with our spirits and imaginations? Will we look for how they call us to repent?</span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3666813009738853285.post-6982016037467091362022-05-23T13:34:00.001-07:002022-05-23T13:34:19.236-07:00Jesus and His Bible, Part 2<p><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus and the Sabbath</span></b> </p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In Mark 2: 23-28, Jesus and his disciples were walking through a field on the Sabbath. His disciples plucked some grain and rubbed the chaff off and ate it as they walked.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Law-abiding Pharisees were shocked at this action, which by their lights was a breaking of the holy Sabbath.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They said, “See here,” a confrontational opening to what turns into a very surprising conversation.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus responded: “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and became hungry, he and his companions: how he entered into the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he gave it also to those who were with him?” (Mark 2:25-26). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The historical context is this:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Saul’s jealousy of David’s military successes and fame among the women, sets out to have David killed. Jonathan tells David and sends him away, running for his life.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He comes to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest; tells him the lie that the king has commissioned David with a secret mission, and he and his young men need food<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(1 Sam. 21:1) The priest answers that the only food on hand is the consecrated bread; they can have it only if they have kept themselves from women. David says they have, and they get the bread. [Sexual activity was taboo during periods of combat. Alter, Prophets 265, n.]<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It interests me that Jesus referenced Ahimelech’s father Abiathar, and the writer of the history identifies Ahimelech as the priest at this time.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It may have been that both were present, and, for all we know, the son consulted the father. What we can see is that Jesus was not bothering to be word-perfect in referring to this incident, but also that he knew the scriptures well enough to know the names of both father and son. This all by itself suggests that we also can make our emphasis on the meaning of the Old Testament texts, rather than focusing on the letter of the law.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The laws governing this bread are found in Leviticus 24:5-9: “Bake 12 loaves, place them in 2 rows along with frankincense, which you will offer as a token for the bread, and the bread will be renewed each Sabbath. The priests shall eat it in a holy place.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Robert Alter notes that it was common in the ancient Near East to offer bread daily to the deity, but this law limits the offering to once a week. He suggests that this perhaps signifies that they are NOT keeping God alive. This idea is in keeping with other scriptures where God is depicted as saying that God does not need their bulls and sheep for food.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Additionally, it is notable that the bread was stale when priests finally ate it. (Alter, Moses, 248, n.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Interestingly, Jesus made nothing of the fact that David got the bread by deceit. David<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>pressures the priest with his “secret mission” from Saul; he also cynically assures the priest that all his young men have kept themselves pure from women because they’d been in combat, which is not true as he is alone. His lies show that he is desperately hungry and will say anything. But Jesus attributed no ill to him. Jesus recognized the imperatives of bodily hunger.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And human need was more important than following the law.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus went on to assert that “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In the Law, God establishes Sabbath as one of the central identifying and compulsory laws for the children of Israel. Six days for labor, and then everything rests on the seventh day. Jesus took them back to the earliest establishment of Sabbath (Ex. 23:12, Deut. 5:14): it is a time to take a breath (Alter, Moses, 310, n.), to refresh all who labor, from master to slave to beast. Later elucidations of the meaning of Sabbath include God’s resting after creation or the history of Israel’s liberation from slavery, but Jesus did not invoke those in this instance. The simple identification Jesus made asserts that Sabbath was created for the good of humankind.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Cambria; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Jesus went on to assert that consequently the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath(Mark 2:28), this had to shock the Pharisees. It comes after Jesus says you need to patch old garments with old cloth, that you need to put new wine into new wineskins. What he is bringing is not a patching of the Law, but a new Law altogether—the Law of love. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p>Rebecca Ankenyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08681249340843641137noreply@blogger.com0