"Who then is this?"

Our November conference topic at Bethany Bible School was the Lord's Supper. Based on five key repeated words in the text, Mark 14:12-25, I made five points.

1. The Supper is the Lord's. The possessive pronoun "my" in relation to Jesus is prominent in the text.

2. The Supper is for disciples. The word "disciples" makes four appearances, all but one in explicit relation to Jesus through the use of the possessive "his" or "my", depending on the speaker. In addition, the text makes two references to "the twelve", a synonymous term.

3. The Supper requires preparation. Variations on the verb "prepare" number five in the text.

4. The central act of the Supper is eating. Variations on the verb "eat" number four.

5. The Supper was a Passover meal. The noun "Passover" likewise makes four appearances.

I learned much by studying and teaching this text. Above all, the text confronted me again--in the manner of Mark's gospel--with the question of Jesus' true identity.

How? The character of Jesus inspires wonder. He is direct, unequivocal; for that very reason he is mysterious. Ordinary people do not speak as Jesus speaks.

He calls ordinary bread "my body." He takes a cup and says "this is my blood." Earlier, he instructs the disciples to go into the city where they will meet a man carrying a jar of water. As they are to follow that man, Jesus tells the disciples to enter "wherever he enters" and "say to the owner of the house, " 'The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples' " (14:14). It is there, in that guest room--"a large room upstairs whose furnishings have been fully prepared"--that the disciples will prepare the Passover.

Though the disciples will prepare the Passover, however, they find that preparations have already been made for them. At the beginning of the text, they do not know where they will observe the Passover: "Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?" (14:12); their Teacher has known all along. His word has gone before, preparing their way. Or perhaps he has foreseen the man carrying water, the owner of the house, the upper room. Regardless, the guest room, like the bread and the cup, are his--"my room"; "my body"; "my blood."

Earlier in Mark, the disciples "were filled with great awe" at him who calmed the storm: "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" (4:41) Similarly, we might ask, "Who is this, who calls bread "my body" and a cup "my blood"? This is not only a looking forward, that is, to his crucifixion--"my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many" (though it is surely that); this is a looking back, to the beginning. Before the disciples mixed the flour and formed the cakes, before the grapes were gleaned and pressed for drink, someone made the sun to shine and the rain to fall. Someone grew the grain and ripened the fruit.

"Who then is this, who says, 'Creation is mine' ?"

This is Jesus, the giver of life, the Lord of creation.

-Joe

"the good confession"

Two weeks ago, Pastor Ntapo preached a short message based on John 17:3, "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

The preacher's point was that Jesus came in order that we might know God, and indeed that the purpose of human life on this earth is to know God. Consequently, he admonished his people to know God before they die.

This probably sounds too typical, another example of standard preaching-for-conversion. Except that it wasn't.

The pastor's message was not accompanied by the question "Where will you go when you die?", the stereotypical warning of revivalism, but "What will you confess at the end of your life?"

He said that many of "our people confess when they die that they have killed so and so through witchcraft"; instead of a confession of evil-doing, he urged his people to do good in order that they could confess it in the end.

Obviously, the pastor thought that having nothing good to confess at the end of one's life is punishment enough--and motivation enough for his people to walk now in the way of Jesus, growing in the knowledge of God.

That the pastor might not accomplish the purpose for which he was placed on this earth is, in fact, his greatest fear. I have heard him say on several occasions that "the cemetery is very rich because of all the people buried there who never used up what God deposited in them."

"When I die," he says, "I want to be empty."

And that is why he presses on, amidst formidable obstacles, to teach a young congregation the way of God. "I was born for that," he testifies, citing Jesus' words before Pilate (Jn. 18:37). It will likewise be his "good confession" when he dies (1 Tim. 6:13).

-Joe

of Pilate and the poor

Since re-reading it a couple of weeks ago, Jesus' conversation with Pilate (John 18:33-38) has been on my mind.

Some observations:

1. Pilate acts here as any worldly king does, ultimately disinterested in the plight of the poor in his kingdom. This is obvious from his lack of effort in distinguishing Jesus from the people who have handed him over. Those who handed him over, of course, were Jesus' own people, in the words of Pilate to Jesus "your own nation and the chief priests" (v. 35). Also by implication these are simply what the text calls "the Jews", for Pilate is perturbed that Jesus insinuates that Pilate might be able to tell for himself whether Jesus is truly or not "King of the Jews." "I am not a Jew, am I", Pilate retorts, aghast that he might be associated on any level with the subjects of his rule. In effect Pilate is saying, "I don't know them, I can't know them, indeed I do not want to know them." It is unthinkable that a man of his power shares anything in common with the subjects of his kingdom. Because of this attitude, it is not surprising that Pilate is surprised that Jesus' own people would hand him over; the impassible king does not sense that conflict rages within and among the subjected peoples of his reign. He can only ask,"What have you done?", implying an act of offense great enough to warrant a request for crucifixion, because he sees no reason otherwise why the Jews should be at war among themselves. This is not because Pilate regards the Jews as exceptionally good people, immune to conflict, but simply because he does not care whether they are typically human enough to have passion, disagreement, conflict. To Pilate they are "only" Jews, the subjects of his rule, objects to be moved or crushed for his political gain. In Pilate's eyes, the only conflict of the Jews is that between them and him; they are all out to get him because everyone and everything must always be about the king.

2. Jesus, on the other hand, is not out to get the king, at least not in the manner that Pilate fears. Jesus, rather, contra Pilate, is only concerned with the plight of the poor, his own people (which is to say, and not with Pilate). Jesus knows that the fight which Pilate fears from the Jews is not the fight that will free them. He will not permit them to fight, and see, as he explains to Pilate, his followers do not fight "to keep me from being handed over to the Jews" (v. 36). Rather, Jesus' people will be free on account of their trust in another kingdom--one "not from this world"--and another king. The sign of that trust will be their refusal to fight in the manner of Pilate, with the weapons of blood and flesh. The sign will be that they will "be handed over", but they will hand no one over. It is the sign that distinguishes Jew from Jew, the sign also Pilate might have seen if he had eyes to sees.

3. The question remains whether the sons and daughters of Pilate will ever see. The historical record is not good (At this moment Barack Obama has handed over 30,000 more U.S. troops to a war in Afghanistan). We have little reason to doubt whether the kingdoms of the world have not really been "given over" to Satan (Lk. 4:6), and whether therefore the poor are not more worthy of our attention in the hope of a better world.

-Joe

old and new

Last Sunday at church, we had a service of blessing for a new marriage. Afterwards, we enjoyed the standard meal: meat, sugar beans and mealies, and potato salad, washed down with Coca-Cola. After that, one of the servers set down at our table a plate of uncooked, red cow livers.

"Can we eat it like this?" the pastor said. "No, I think we must braai [cook over the fire/barbecue] this."

He continued, "Some of our people eat it just like this. They just sprinkle a little salt on it."

"Do you ever eat it raw?" our guest visiting from North America chimed in, asking the pastor.

"I used to," he said, "before I got saved. After I got saved, I read in the Bible that we are not supposed to eat meat with the blood still in it, because it says that the life is in the blood" (Lev. 17:10ff).

The pastor's comments illustrate how the Old Testament, from which the above reference is drawn, can be good news--gospel--to people from traditional cultures. Set against many of his culture's practices, the Old Testament's dietary laws and admonitions against consulting the spirits of the dead, for example, constitute an alternative way of living in the world--one that leads away from death and towards life (Deut 30:19).

Consequently, although the pastor "got saved" in the name of Jesus, the central figure of the New Testament, he experiences the Old also as Jesus' story.

-Joe

the manly calling

Again, I've linked an entry which fits thematically on both of the blogs we maintain (the manly calling).

-Joe

outside the law

I've posted a reflection on our other blog. You can access it at http://joeannasawatzky.blogspot.com/2009/10/outside-law.html

-Joe

two-edged mirror

We belong to a Bible Study/fellowship group which meets on Tuesday nights. The majority of members on any given meeting come as expatriates working in Mthatha as missionaries or in NGOs, both in long and short-term stints. The people come from "mainline" churches, Anglican and Presbyterian primarily. We hold down--or is it hold up?--the Anabaptist wing of the Church. For the past two years or so, we have been using the readings from the lectionary to guide our conversations.

As we read James 1:17-27 recently, one of our members gave expression to my own thoughts in her puzzlement over James's analogy of a mirror in vv. 23-24. We never really attempted to answer her query that evening; the conversation quickly took another turn. But as I continued to read James through the week, culminating in a sermon the next Sunday, I decided that the mirror was analogous to the word of God (see previous post on James's teaching about the word).

James says that those who hear the word but do not do it "are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like" (v. 24).

My initial puzzlement was around the assumption that we should want to look at ourselves in the mirror and then try to remember what we looked like. It seemed narcissistic. Why would James be encouraging us to spend time in front of the mirror for the purpose of dwelling in the image of ourselves? Why should we be so keen to remember our appearance?

If, on the other hand, the mirror stands for the word of God, that which it reflects back at us is not strictly a picture of our appearance. It is rather like the "two-edged sword" which the writer of Hebrews used to describe the word (Heb. 4:12). It sends back to us a picture of ourselves in comparison to that which it describes: God's will for human life, revealed to us in its stories and commandments fulfilled in Jesus, the very Word made flesh (Jn. 1:14). The mirror is not one-to-one; it is one-to-two. The word reflects our image as we are--marred by sin and imperfection--and the image of God. In light of God's image, it shows us who we are, what we will be, and how we might get there.

If the mirror's reflection is not of our own but in the light of Jesus, then truly the appearance of ourselves is not a thing to be forgotten. We must not forget what we look like, for we look like Jesus. To forget is to remain in sin. To remember is to become like him.

-Joe

the word is the work

I've been enjoying reading through the book of James, coming up as it has in the lectionary over the past three weeks. I also had the privilege of preaching on James 1:17-27, thereby stepping into a well-established tradition on the African continent; through his research, Philip Jenkins, the respected scholar of global Christianity, has noted that the book of James has long been an orienting point for the worship and witness of African churches.

A few observations:

It is well-known that Martin Luther relegated James to a subordinate status in his translation of the Bible, dubbing it "the epistle of straw" for its insistence that "faith apart from works is dead" (2:17ff), a perceived challenge, of course, to his teaching that salvation is by "faith alone." In the ensuing years, the church came to accept uncritically Luther's original dichotomy, and came to line up on opposing sides, not only "faith" and "works" but also "word" and "deed". It is not hard to see what lined up with what: faith and word were one side, works and deeds the other.

James, of course, did make a distinction: "Be doers of the word," he told his people, "and not merely hearers" (1:22). However, that distinction, contra to how the church has arranged things, was not between word and deed, but between hearing and doing. In James, the force that unites hearing and doing is itself the word; a higher regard for the word in no other book can be found. Indeed, it is "the word of truth" which "gave us birth", the "implanted word that has the power to save your souls" (1:18, 21). In light of this, it is entirely obvious why James spilled so much ink on the subject of that from which the word emanates: the vehicle of speech, the tongue. He counsels his audience to "bridle their tongues" (1:26) because, as he later explains, "the tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity", an "untameable" source of "deadly poison" with which the human being "curses those who are made in the likeness of God" (3:6-9).

Yet, as James says, "this ought not to be so" (3:10). The corollary of the spoken word's great power for destruction is its great power for life. Indeed, we do not only "curse" with the tongue; "from the same mouth also comes blessing". James calls for a bridle, not a screw. He calls not for the cessation of words, but the channeling of right words. He calls for the words that build up the people of God, not the words that ridicule, deride, tear down the poor of the earth.

The word is the work. If we hear it, let us do it. That is "pure religion" (1:26-27).

-Joe

Philip Jenkins's comments can be found in The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), pp. 60-62.

the beginning of wisdom

Because I may be called upon to preach whenever we attend Harvest Time Ministries, a small Pentecostal congregation in Mandela Park in Mthatha, I keep myself immersed in scripture by following the Revised Common Lectionary. We also read these--four readings per week--every morning at breakfast before the boys go to school and we go to our office.

The readings from the lectionary may not be appropriate for some Sundays in Mandela Park; I need to keep myself free to speak a word from wherever in the Bible the Spirit might direct me. More commonly, however, the work of the Spirit is in making connections between my preparation in certain texts and the particular needs of a Sunday morning.

One such example comes from two weeks ago. The pastor had informed me in the week leading up to that Sunday that two special events were to occupy the service: a church blessing for a newly married couple and the welcoming of another young couple into positions of leadership in the ministry. I was assigned the marriage blessing; the pastor would do the welcome. However, when the newlyweds did not show, the pastor gave me the other assignment. I had to switch from something I was preparing in my heart from Ephesians 5 to--well, I didn't know what. But what came to me was what I had been reading that week from the lectionary: 1 Kings 3:3-14.

It so happens that 1 Kings 3:3-14 is a most appropriate text for exhorting new leaders; it describes something of a divine commissioning of Solomon to leadership of Israel. The commissioning comes in the form of a test set in a dream of Solomon.

God asks Solomon to ask God what God should give him. Solomon assumes a humble posture in response to the revelation of God, acknowledging God's "steadfast love" in the past, that is, to his father David, and his own inability for so great a task as "leading the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted" (v. 8).

Solomon's request pleases God. Solomon asks "only" for the wisdom to "discern between good and evil" in the cause of leading God's great people. Solomon's request for wisdom to do the good and shun the evil is significant in the text in light of that to which it is in opposition--"long life or riches" or "the life of your enemies." God does not want a leader for God's people who looks first to external things, to the things outside oneself, but internally, within his own heart. That is, as in words ascribed to Solomon's very father, David, the leader of Israel, God wants someone who asks God,

"search me and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Ps. 139:23-24).

The enemy which God's appointed leader seeks to slay lurks not without but within. The enemies from outside are not the greatest danger to God's people; danger attacks from within.

The leader cannot buy "long life and riches"--prosperity--for the people. Neither can the leader protect the nation through the forcible removal of its enemies. Rather, the leader provides and protects by being who God has called the leader to be.

When confronted by the greatness of the God who "alone is good" (Mk. 10:18), the humble leader, like Solomon in the text, sees himself as he is: "a child", lacking in understanding ("I do not know how to go out or come in", v. 7), in need of the higher wisdom in order to do the good. In the piercing light of perfect love, complete knowledge (omniscience), and total capability (omnipotence), the humble leader rightly fears, for he now sees that perfect love and light cannot abide the bitterness and darkness within his own heart; "God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all" (1 Jn. 1:5). The leader either submits to the God who can cleanse her, thereby saving her life, or clings to her desire for wealth and the life of her enemies, thereby subjecting herself to the destructive cycle of greed and jealousy with those very enemies who seek her life. The leader has only two options: fear God or fear humans.

The latter is the way of mutual destruction. The former is "the beginning of wisdom", the way of peace for the people of God (Ps. 111:10).

-Joe

to him

In two different settings recently, the story of Jesus' encounter with the Sadducees has occupied the center of my message. One was at a funeral in which it was appropriate to speak about the destiny of the dead. The other was last week at our Bible conference, in which we discussed that same topic under the broader category of eschatology.

Though I probably preached a synthesis of the three versions of the story, appearing as it does in Matthew (22:23-33), Mark (12:18-27), and Luke (20:27-40), it was a line unique to Luke which proved critical.

"To him all of them are alive." This was the line Jesus used to sum up his defense of the resurrection to the Sadducees, "those who say there is no resurrection" (20:27). It came following Jesus' brilliant recontextualization of Exodus 3, "the story about the bush" (20:37), for an audience, that is, the Sadducees themselves, which accepted only the five books of Moses (of which Exodus is one) as scripture. Other Hebrew texts, for example, Isaiah (26:14, 19) and Daniel (12:2) had taught more explicitly the resurrection of the dead; these, however, were not authoritative for the Sadducees, though they were for both Jesus and other Jewish groups such as the Pharisees. As a result, Jesus did not base his response to the Sadducees on texts which were not to them scripture; he made his point from their (and, yes, also his) scripture. He selected the story of God's self-revelation to Moses in the wilderness, in the burning bush.

In that story, God had revealed Godself in relation to God's people; God is God because God is God to someone, in this case, "Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob", three men who yielded their lives, not each to his self, but to God. When they died--and they had been dead for centuries by the time Moses appeared on the scene--their lives remained in the presence of their God who is, the "I am who I am" (Ex. 3:14). Or, as Jesus implied, God did not say of Godself in relation to the dead ones, "I was", but "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

In other words, "he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive" (20:38).

Jesus' logic in this story had always perplexed me. Approaching it from an academic point-of-view, his logic seemed more like an affirmation of the existence of the person between biological death and the resurrection of the dead--the so-called intermediate state--than it did the resurrection of the dead, the actual issue at hand in his encounter with the Sadducees. That is, it was not obvious to me that the continuation of personhood after death for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob automatically proved their coming resurrection on the last day; the only "proof" of that was Jesus' appearances to his disciples following his own death, a unique mode-of-being within the corpus of post-death experience available to us from the scriptures, a resurrection promised also to us who "have been united with him in a death like his" (Rom. 6:5).

However, preaching the story, that is, approaching it with a pastoral intent, introduced different questions and, in turn, yielded different answers.

The specific Africans in whose presence I proclaim the Word of God do not, like the Sadducees, have a difficult time accepting the continuation of life for the dead. Quite the contrary, the dead are all too alive for them! The dead still demand attention, still receive care--and this at the great expense of the living. In such a setting, the key question and answer comes from Luke.

To whom are "all of them" alive? "To him all of them are alive."

The dead are not alive to us, their living descendants. The dead are alive to God, their and our living Creator. God remembers the dead. God loves the dead. God cares for the dead. God judges the dead. If the dead receive such good care from an all-powerful God--if to him all of them are alive--what more can we give them? What more do they need from us?

We do not honor the dead by seeking their favor, or fearing their wrath. We honor them by seeking the God who holds them in his care.

-Joe

a satisfactory word

It was a model of its kind, the most brilliant of scriptural insights: attentive to the narrative, creative, culturally-relevant, pastoral, transformative.

Pastor Ntapo stood at the front with five other students, reporting on what their respective small groups had discussed in this August session of Bethany Bible School. The text: 1 Samuel 28:8-19.

I had chosen the text because it was a potentially explosive text for our students' real-life context. Saul, in a time of crisis as leader of the people Israel, goes against the will of God to seek advice from the dead through a diviner, or a sangoma (Zulu), an igqirha (Xhosa). He disguised himself and went by night to a woman who could call up the spirits of the dead. Against her own wishes--"you know what Saul has done, how he cut off from the land all the wizards and diviners"--she agrees to call up for Saul the one whom he names. Saul is seeking the counsel of his old prophet, now dead, Samuel.

The woman, of course, succeeds in calling up Samuel. She lets out a great cry when she sees him, for she recognizes him as the one who in life was associated with Saul--the very one who has cut off her kind from the land. "Why have you deceived me--you are Saul", she says. Saul, now identified for the first time in the text as "'the king", encourages her to carry on. "Do not fear; what do you see?"

From what she saw, Pastor Ntapo reported on what he sees. "First," he said, "we see that Samuel was wrapped in a robe. From that we take that Samuel was a priest. This shows that one is identified in death by what he was in life. If you were a tsotsi [a gangster, a criminal], you would come back in tsotsi's clothes. This goes to show that the dead don't need anything from us. They are already clothed, so they don't need us to give them a blanket."

I remembered what Pastor Ntapo had explained to me many months earlier. When a Xhosa person sees, much like the woman saw Samuel, "an old man" in his/her dreams, one of the most common cultural assumptions is that the dead ancestor is cold. He is appearing now to his living descendants to serve notice of his discomfort. In response, the living will slaughter a goat for the dead and leave its coat on the floor beside the bed; there the ancestor will sleep in the warmth of the goatskin. But, as the text peers into the spiritual world, it sees that such costly sacrifices are unnecessary, for the dead person is yet provided for in the clothes which he donned in life; he has no need of more. Since the dead person has no need of more, the old cultural assumption is a lie. On the contrary, the dead want to rest as they are, just as Samuel scolded Saul, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?" Consequently, it is for that reason also that Pastor Ntapo does not attribute visitations to the living from the ancestral spirits to the ancestors themselves. Rather, they are "from Satan", pictures of loved ones sent by the Deceiver in order to take sacrifices for himself.

"That is a blue lie," the pastor has said to me on mulitple occasions. "You will find that whenever they do that [sacrifice in response to such a vision], a death will soon follow." People may sacrifice innocently, out of ignorance and even genuine concern for their dead, but the Evil One only wants to take more. Satan will never be satisfied.

God, on the other hand, has given us his word, and God is satisfied in it. Thanks be to God for interpreters like Pastor Ntapo who open that clear word for others in order that it might become flesh in the lives of God's people.

-Joe

an interpretive stone

Another Bible conference. Another obscure reference to Absalom.

Last May, you might remember, one man had asked about the kiss of Absalom.http://joeannasawatzky.blogspot.com/2009/05/two-kisses.html On Saturday, in the reports of small groups to the general assembly, a young woman unveiled Absalom's stone (2 Sam 18:18).

If you don't get the pun, you don't live in this part of South Africa. The woman's "unveiling" of an obscure part of scripture for me came precisely in the context of her using that verse as a justification for her cultural practice of "unveiling tombstones" for deceased loved ones. Although I think it can happen at the same time as the funeral, tombstone unveilings commonly occur some months to a year after the person's death. As many families do not have enough money for both the funeral and the stone, the stone often follows at a later date. At that time, the family will again hold some kind of service (one of our Committee members in the Bible School assures me that an unveiling is strictly a family event, just a small event, and need not involve the broader community or the church. In reality, people often do make a big deal of it).

At any rate, the young woman's comment irritated me. The topic for the day was eschatology, or the theology of "last things." Because most of our students are fixated not on eschatology in its sense as the goal of history/creation but as the destiny of their dead loved ones, I too chose to focus the lesson on its personal dimensions, that is, on so-called "personal eschatology". Closing the first session leading into small group discussion, I had left students with the question, "What is our responsibility toward the dead?" Now I was getting the answers from this young woman. First, "we bury them." Then, "we unveil tombstones". Both answers, of course, came not on their own but with a scripture verse thrown in for support. And therein lies my irritation.

If there is a scriptural justification for tombstone unveilings, this was not it. First, Absalom was not setting up a stone for a loved one; he was setting it up for himself, worried that he would die without a son to remember him. Second, who is Absalom, and why should we follow him? The young woman's answer showed little concern for these considerations. In the end, Absalom's practice in this verse has no more to do with the woman's own than the stone. And that, it seems to me, is no rock on which to build the house of God.

-Joe

gleanings on gleaning

Yesterday, my wife preached, by request, on the topic "the responsibility of mothers in building up the church". She chose as her primary example the story of Ruth, in which Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi orchestrate a plan to provide for their own security.

After the service, while commenting on the sermon, the pastor remarked that "this Jewish culture [in the biblical text, the story of Ruth] is so much like our [Xhosa, and in particular, Pondo] own." The example he went on to cite from Ruth was the part in which she, in her economically-disadvantaged status as a widow, gleans grain behind Boaz's workers at the harvest (Ruth 2). This, of course, is a narrative example of Jewish law, in which provision in this manner was written in on behalf of the poor (Lev. 19:9-10). The pastor said, "it was just like that in the village where I grew up. The poor people would follow behind the harvesters collecting mealies."

I do not know whether there was a prescriptive dimension to this practice in Pondoland, whether the haves were sanctioned to leave what fell for the have-nots (if so, the law in this case was "only" oral). Regardless, the stories of the Bible read as a close descriptive parallel to many African cultures, and therefore also contain great power.

On the other hand, "these practices are no more there [in his boyhood village]," says the pastor. Because the pastor was born in 1973, it seems to reason that his memories of gleaning would date from at least into the early-mid 1980s. It also indicates how rapid was the erosion of such practices: from a fact of life to nonexistent in 25 years. An entire generation of children, though rural, has grown up ignorant of the old agrarian ways. In that case, a new generation of Africans will perhaps also have to listen harder for the voice of God in ancient texts whose relevance was once so overtly obvious to their mothers and fathers.

-Joe

the joy of learning

from danger to danger

One of the purest joys in my life is the act of preaching. In particular, this joy is the product of moments of unexpected creativity. In the flow of retelling a Bible story, words find me, flashing across my mind seconds before they leave my mouth.

Several weeks ago, I was taking my time in preaching the story of Moses. I came to the part in the story in which Moses' mother places him in a basket in the river in order to hide him from Pharaoh's campaign of slaughter of Hebrew boys (Ex. 1-2). In the concern of making the story exceedingly clear for my audience, I realized that it didn't make sense for me: why exactly would a mother think that putting her baby in a river, however pitched the basket and however watched by the baby's sister, is a situation more conducive to the child's survival than hiding him away in a house somewhere? Feeling my way through this dilemma, I suggested that the river was surely infested with hungry crocodiles. Then another scripture came to mind. In response to evildoers who proclaimed the coming of "the Day of the Lord", the prophet Amos had declared that "Day" not light but darkness. It was to be a day of judgment, and not one in which the perpetrators of justice would find comfort. Amos likened it to someone "who fled from a lion and was met by a bear", or "rested a hand against the wall and was bitten by a snake" (Amos 5:18-20). Taking up the imagery, I suggested that Moses adrift on the Nile was akin to going "from danger to danger."

From danger to danger. It was simply a phrase coined to find a way through a telling on my way to a broader point. It was, in the end, the phrase that one listener had filed in his memory bank, the phrase which he recounted to me weeks later upon our next meeting; the phrase had gone with him as the presence of God for weeks and weeks.

Why? I wondered. I do not know exactly, but I suspect that it has something to do with the reality that this brother's life is a going about "from danger to danger." A tempestuous marriage. A physically abusive wife (yes, contrary to the dominant pattern in South Africa, the domestic abuse in this situation runs the opposite way and, by the way, the wife is much bigger than the husband). Sporadic "piece" jobs. Wandering through town, dependent upon the generosity of acquaintances to provide for daily bread. Scrapping to pay school fees for four children.

If his life is not danger to danger, it is hardship to hardship, stress to stress, insecurity to insecurity.

"How are things?" I ask my friend. "It is better to have hope than not to have hope," he replies, reduced to one of the "three things that will remain" (1 Cor. 13:13).

"God is taking us somewhere", he also testifies to me. For my friend perceives that "from danger to danger" has a flip-side. The weight of suffering now is preparing him for "an eternal weight of glory", a "yoke that is easy and a burden that is light" (2 Cor. 4:17; Mt. 11:30).

"From danger to danger" is one side; "from glory to glory" is the other (2 Cor. 3:18).

-Joe

of knowledge and power

A woman pastor in the Bible School was reporting to me of the funeral she conducted on Saturday. She said she used 2 Kings 5, the story of the cleansing of Naaman. Two years earlier, I heard another woman preach this text to a group of young women. Both women made similar points. They focused on the role of the slave girl of Naaman's wife in the process of Naaman's cleansing.

Though the girl was a person of lowly status, they said, she had the knowledge Naaman did not. She knew where cleansing could be found, and she did not keep that knowledge to herself.

The text does indeed seem to draw a comparison between Naaman and the girl. She is "young," she is a "girl", she is a foreigner, a "captive" taken from Israel to Aram during one of the Arameans' raids. By contrast, Naaman is "commander of the army of the king of Aram", "a great man and in high favor with his master", one by whom "the Lord had given victory to Aram", and "a mighty warrior" (vv. 1-2). It is as if Naaman can do no wrong. Naaman has no weaknesses.

Except that "though a mighty warrior, he suffered from leprosy" (v. 1). The text seems to anticipate that this should come as a surprise to the reader. Persons such as Naaman are not sick. Yet he "suffered from leprosy."

The preacher used these details to make a point about the status of women in her own culture, indeed, in the church. Though regarded as the inferiors of men, God's Spirit chooses women to make God's purposes known. In fact, she preached the text under the suspicious glares of male pastors in attendance who were jealous of the honor of leading the funeral. Throughout the service, they kept looking, hoping, for the woman to make a mistake, to do something out of the time-honored order. Yet she conducted the service, beginning to end, flawlessly, beautifully, powerfully. "They were so surprised," she reports.

We talked on. We spoke of certain leaders adept in the evil arts of obfuscation, of secrecy, of hiding information from their people, of using power bestowed to hoard benefits. "That is the leprosy," the pastor said.

The affliction of Naaman was more than a disease of the skin. It was also more than the mere possession of power. Against the backdrop of the one who gave what she had for the sake of another, is the power of selfishness exposed. Only in light of the slave girl, or of a crucified Christ, might we turn and be healed (Isa 6:10).

-Joe

the Gift and the gifts

When thinking about the overarching theme of the Bible School, the mission that we want to be about, we have returned again and again to Ephesians 4. Specifically, verse 13: "until all of us come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ" (NRSV).

This sentence fragment includes both the mission and the vision. Through acquiring "knowledge of the Son of God" through the corporate study of his Story, we find ourselves growing into "the full stature of Christ".

What is the life that "the full stature of Christ" entails? How do we realize our vision?

When reading Ephesians 4, I have often puzzled over vv. 9-10. In the flow of the text, it seems tangential, a diversion from the flow of Paul's exhortation. The NRSV, in fact, encourages such a sentiment, for it supplies parentheses around the verses. As is often the case with interpretation, however, precisely that part of the text which seems out of place is key to the meaning of the whole. And so it is with Ephesians 4:1-16.

The text reveals a movement from one to many. There is one Body, one Spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father (vv. 4-6). Singularity soon gives way to plurality: some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers (v. 11).

What lies between the one and the many? How do we get from one to the other?

The text locates "Christ's gift" between the two. Christ's gift (singular) is the fountainhead of the gifts (plural) "he gave to his people" (v. 8b), namely, "that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers" (v. 11).

The gift of the one conditions the gifts of the many. If we want to understand our own gifts, we must know Christ's. What is the character of his gift?

Here the text speaks of Christ's ascension. "When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people" (v. 8). There is something necessary about Christ's ascension--his departure as a flesh and blood reality from this earth to "the right hand of God", the "heavenly" seat of all power in the universe--for our own empowerment.

Yet the ascension is previously conditioned.

Translated parenthetically, Paul actually makes the main point. The One who ascended did so only by first descending; "he who descended is the same one who ascended" (vv. 9-10).

What is Christ's gift, the Gift according to which we also receive our gifts?

It is none other than God's descent in Christ. The Word becoming flesh in Jesus' birth. Jesus' descent beneath the waters of baptism (an event itself blessed by the descent of the Spirit). Jesus stooping down to wash his disciples' feet. And finally, one dramatic descent, fraught with irony: the Son of Man "lifted up" on the cross in his descent to the dead.

What is the quality of Christ's gift? It is God's own self, the love of the One given for the many.

And what, then, in turn, are the qualities of our gifts? Whatever the differences implied within the various tasks of the so-called "five-fold ministry" (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers), there is still one ministry: the descent, the humility, the self-giving love operative in those who have joined themselves to Christ's Body.

As the One, so the many. As the Gift, so the gifts.

We see, then, that the movement of the text is not, after all, one-way. The many give themselves back to God, which is to say, also to one another.

" . . . until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ" (v. 13).

-Joe

the curse of ignorance

While promoting Bethany Bible School last week, the vice-chairperson offered the following interpretation of Luke 23:34, one of Jesus' oft-quoted words from the cross, "Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."

"The first sin that Jesus cursed from the cross was the sin of not knowing," he said.

His point? Not knowing, or ignorance, is an offense to God, a sin which carries a curse for those guilty of it. The reverse is equally true: knowledge of God is God's will for his creatures, a relationship which carries a blessing for those who remain within it.

The interpretation was novel to me for its shifting the accent of Jesus' words to the sin rather than that which overcomes the sin, the declaration of forgiveness. In my understanding, the accent of Jesus' words fell always upon the forgiveness, on his letting us off the hook, as though our not-knowing was sufficient grounds for our innocence before God.

Perhaps, then, the vice-chairperson's interpretation has exposed the extent to which the "cheap grace" narrative has infected my interpretation of well-known texts. Indeed, in his interpretation, Jesus' words are not so much a declaration as they are a lament, a plea for knowledge for those who have none. In Pauline terms, they are not words "declaring" one just/righteous in spite of one's sin; they are words "making" just/righteous from sin. Jesus does indeed give us love while we are sinners, powerless, ignorant (Rom. 5:6-8); yet he leaves it to us to integrate his gift into our lives.

Our ignorance, therefore, is not a source of blessing, the cause by which God decides to save us. Rather, our not-knowing is the cause of Jesus' reminder to our Father that all is not right with the creation--yet could again be if only we "knew the things that make for peace" (Lk. 19:42).

-Joe

things above

For me, some of the most fascinating features of African spirituality are dreams and visions (North Americans also have them, yet our dominant worldview is largely closed to their reality).

I have recently experienced a close convergence between something I have been reading about in a book about African "religious thought" and an experience as related to me by a pastor friend.

The book was explaining a certain Congolese Christian evangelist's experiences of an "underground world", accessed via water, inhabited by witches and sorcerers who convene to plot evil against the inhabitants of the earth. The authors describe these worlds, as described by the Africans who experience them, as "contain[ing] the same features as the material world, but in malign forms that are inversions or perversions of their visible representations" (Ellis and Ter Haar, 50).

We might recognize this same characterization in the pastor's account.

He described to me the story of a certain man whom he knows. One day, studying in his university's library, the man looked up to notice a number of children from his home, rural village entering the library. He thought the sight most strange, conceiving of no reason why such children should suddenly appear at his institution of study. Suddenly, accompanied by the children, the man found himself in a location "beside the sea". He then witnessed a most gruesome scene: people from all sorts of ethnic groups--"black, white, Indian" [some of the prominent groupings of South African society]--"drinking one another's blood" at the behest of certain witches who held them captive. One of the witches took a knife and, giving it to the man, ordered him to cut out the heart of a white man there hanging by his feet from a tree. The man first refused; yet under duress, he complied. "I will never forget the screams of that white man," the man would later tell the pastor. To make a long story short, the witches also tried to cut the man himself. However, when one thrust the knife into his belly, it bounced back as if repelled by strong rubber. Another witch chided the other, "I told you we are unable to do anything to people who have been washed in the blood of that man." "They [the witches] do not even like to say the name of Jesus," the pastor explained to me. Following this, the man woke up in the hospital in Mthatha.

Just as the authors, in their analyses of certain accounts from the continent, describe an alternative world that "contains the same features of the material world", so we notice that, according to the pastor's telling, the man experienced things more real than we would commonly ascribe to dreams. He really felt himself to be "by the sea"; felt the knife twist into the white man's flesh; heard his screams; felt the knife bounce off his own flesh.

And just as the authors describe that world as an "malign inversion" of the visible world, so the invisible world is dominated by witches, ostracized evildoers in the visible world. The invisible world in the pastor's story, similarly characterized by the authors, is also a "perversion"; the atrocities committed there are the utmost extremities of human discord in the visible world. As such--extremely perverse, extremely painful--the invisible world is, in a sense, more real than the "real" world, for it exposes the pain common to many--yet known by few--in the visible world. Though humans are not often literally seen to consume one another's blood, we actually do whenever we curse, abuse, and kill one another.

Yet the malign "underworld" is not the only invisible world; neither is it the most real.

When a certain man named John "was in the Spirit on the Lord's day", he saw, perhaps like the man in the pastor's story, "a great multitude which no one could number from every tribe and people and language." These, however, were not those who drink the blood of one another; "these are those who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev. 1:10, 7:9, 14).

"But I do not like to tell my people such stories," the pastor says to me, closing the book on his acquaintance's encounter with witches. "Jesus is more powerful."

The world below does not determine life on this earth; the world above does (Col. 3:1-4; Eph. 2:1-7).

-Joe

The work cited above is Stephen Ellis and Gerrie Ter Haar, Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2004.

two kisses

I've posted a reflection on our other blog, which can be accessed at http://joeannasawatzky.blogspot.com/2009/05/two-kisses.html

-Joe

more than conquerors

"By this sign, conquer."

"See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered."

These two statements, representing two visions, formed the heart of our exploration at Bethany Bible School on the topic of the History of Christianity.

The first vision, seen by Constantine on the eve of the battle by which he would take control of the Roman Empire, forever muddied, in the course of Christian history, the clarion call of the second vision--that seen by John, a prisoner of the empire--some 200 years earlier.

Constantine's vision of a fiery cross in the sky, accompanied by the words "by this sign, conquer", captivated the students at BBS. I had used the story--from the year 312--as part of my telling of the change of meaning of Christian faith initiated by Constantine's patronage. Now legal, and increasingly privileged, by will of the Emperor, the Christian religion soon became coterminous with power conceived as violence.

The original Christian vision, however, shows power in a different light.

John, greatly weeping because no one was found worthy to open the book and break its seals, hears that a Lion--of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David--has conquered. When John actually looks, however, he sees not a Lion but a Lamb--"standing as if it had been slaughtered." Already identified according to the flesh--as Judah's descendant and David's heir to the throne--the King's true identity, according to the Spirit, is now revealed: not slayer but slain; prey, not predator; not conqueror, but conquered.

Except that the King has conquered, and precisely because of his playing the Lamb. "Worthy are you," sings the heavenly choir, "because you were slaughtered."

"So," I asked. "Are these two visions--Constantine's and John's--the same vision? Or are they different?"

"I think they are different," said Pastor Mgodeli. "Constantine was told to conquer; the Lamb already has conquered."

I was looking for something even more explicit, that is, how the Lamb conquered: by giving his own life rather than taking the lives of his enemies (I did, in fact, add this point). Yet Pastor Mgodeli's answer, while implying mine, also ensures that the text's pitch of hope remains high, thereby empowering our perseverance in love in the face of evil. Because our Lamb has already conquered, we don't have to.

"We are", in fact, "more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Rom 8:37).

5, 2, and 1

How would you summarize the message of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible?

For our February teaching at Bethany Bible School on the theme of "Law", I chose five words.

1. Liberation. God rescued a people from slavery.

2. Provision. God led the people in the desert. God fed the people in the desert.

3. Covenant. God made a covenant with Israel, an agreement of mutual faithfulness.

4. Law. God gave Israel instruction on how to remain faithful to God.

5. Holiness. God set Israel apart as a witness before the nations.

I then summarized these five in two words.

1. Grace. God chose Israel, not because of its righteousness but because of God's love.

2. Justice. Israel responds to God's grace by practicing justice in all of its relationships.

And finally, one word:

Love. Israel's life flows from and is characterized by God's love.

Much more could be said. But this is one framework for telling the story.

-Joe

"peace be with you"

In the course of preaching the story of the risen Jesus' appearance to his disciples from John 20:19-31, I found what was for me a new interpretation.

The text begins with the disciples' fear. They have locked themselves inside the house "for fear of the Jews."

Suddenly, however, Jesus--not one of the Jewish authorities whom they fear--comes and stands among them. At this same point in Luke's gospel, we read that it was indeed the sight of Jesus that caused them to fear, thinking that they were seeing a ghost (Lk 24:37). John, however, while not including this editorial note, implies the same with the use of Jesus' greeting to the disciples, "Peace be with you."

Until he comes, the disciples are at enmity with their teacher. One, now dead, had betrayed him. Another, Peter, had denied him--three times. All had deserted him.

Now he comes to them, a ghost perhaps, bent on vengeance.

"Peace be with you," he says.

They thought they were seeing a ghost; they touched a flesh and blood human being (Lk 24:39).

They were expecting an enemy; they received a friend.

They feared wrath; they got peace.

As if the words of Jesus were too good to be true, he proceeds to show them his hands and his side, the marks of his crucifixion--and the bitter reminder of their having abandoned him to his enemies. If this is not cause for fear for the disciples--and in truth now they "rejoiced when they saw the Lord"--might it be a rallying cry to vengeance against the enemies of Israel?

Yet again they hear, a second time, "Peace be with you."

Having received his "peace" in his word, they now receive his Spirit through his breath, by which the disciples in turn become agents of peace to all the world: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

Having been forgiven much, they forgive. Their sin having been canceled, will they hold on to the sins of others?

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" the gospel of peace.

-Joe

three tents or the tent?

"But Jesus talked to his ancestors."

I once heard a former missionary in Africa narrate this response of members of an independent church.

The story, of course, that they had in mind was the transfiguration of Jesus (Mk. 9:2-8; Mt. 17:1-8; Lk. 9:28-36).

It seems a compelling point.

The gospel texts, however, do not exactly state that Jesus was talking with his ancestors, in the case of the story, Elijah and Moses. On the contrary, as Mark puts it, "there appeared to them Elijah with Moses talking with Jesus." That is, the action in the narrative flows from the great Jewish forefathers toward Jesus; they appear with him; he does not appear with them. The distinction is so subtle as to escape notice, yet may prove significant.

Regardless, what is of first significance in the gospel witness is not who appears alongside Jesus but to whom the vision appears.

"And there appeared to them . . ." It was to them, that is, to Peter, James, and John--Jesus' disciples--that Moses and Elijah appeared alongside Jesus. Moreover, it is to their response that the gospel witness clings.

Peter, for his part, musters a response to the revelation on behalf of those with whom--James and John--he is "terrified."

"Rabbi [or "Lord": Mt.: "Master": Lk.], it is good for us to be here; Let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

Even if, however, Peter, according to Mark and Luke (though not Matthew), "did not know what he was saying", he nonetheless stumbles upon the critical issue--though not the solution.

Peter is right: the revelation of Jesus "in glory" (Lk. 9:31, 33) with Moses and Elijah has everything to do with tents.

Surely, for example, the appearance of Moses alongside Jesus only confirmed for Peter that which it immediately succeeds: the change--the transfiguration--of Jesus' appearance, his face, as Matthew puts it, "shining like the sun, his clothes as white as the light."

For Peter, the appearance of Moses quite naturally seals the transfiguration of Jesus, for the face of Moses also used to shine "whenever he went in before the Lord to speak with him" (Ex. 34:29-35). Originally, of course, Moses' encounter with God on behalf of Israel took place on Mt. Sinai. Subsequently, however, the presence of God would descend "outside" the place wherever the wandering Israelites had encamped, to the Tent of Meeting where Moses would go to speak "face to face" with the Lord (Ex. 33:7-11).

Far from irrational, therefore, Peter's comments are more than rational. He sees the shining light in the face of Jesus. He sees Moses. He knows that God has descended upon the mountain. He offers, like Israel in the desert and later in Jerusalem, to set up a tent of meeting--a temple--wherein the presence of God might regularly speak for the sake of the people.

On the other hand, Peter is not yet convinced that God is really for the people; he, and the others with him, "are terrified." They, like their ancestors in the desert, cry to Moses, "you speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die" (Ex. 20:19). For Peter, the presence of God is mediated through holy men in holy places.

As a result, when a cloud--and from the cloud a voice--overshadows them as Peter is still speaking, it is more rebuke than interruption: not more holy men (three, as Peter would have it) are needed, but One Mediator; not more holy places, but One Tent of Meeting.

"This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him."

But who is "this"? Who is "him"?

Until the cloud overshadows them, three men are visible to the disciples. One, Moses, established the pattern of prophethood in Israel. Of him it was once said, "I will raise up a prophet like you from among your own people. Listen to him" (Dt. 18:15). If, however, Moses was the original, Elijah could lay claim to the fulfillment; on him was bestowed a status not even Moses enjoyed: translation to heaven apart from death (2 Kgs. 2:11).

Yet neither of these is "the Beloved Son."

"Suddenly when [the disciples] looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but Jesus alone."

Jesus is the "prophet like Moses" whom God would "raise up"--though Moses could not have guessed how literally true that would prove. Jesus is the prophet unlike Elijah, if for the very reason prophesied by Moses: he would be "raised", that is, from--not apart from--the dead.

Thus we see, as the disciples before us, that Jesus did not approach Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah pointed to him.

Even the ancestors cry, "listen to him."

-Joe

"great suffering" (Matthew 24:1-31)

This post reflects my thinking in preparation for an upcoming lesson at the Bible school on eschatology, or "last things." A pastor friend here recently told me that "Israel is our clock." In other words, according to him, events that occur within the present-day nation of Israel hasten the day and hour of Jesus' coming again. Through a close study of such texts as Matthew 24:1-31, however, I hope to switch the emphasis--as I believe Jesus did--from the "when" in his disciples' original question to the "what": not "when" will these things be but "what" is the sign. Even that "what", however, was not what the disciples--still enamored of the temple (v. 1) and expectant of a messiah who would "suddenly come to his temple", increasing its splendor (Mal. 3:1; Hag. 2:9)--expected.

"When will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?"
(Mt. 24:3)

So the disciples asked Jesus.

Earlier he had told the scribes and Pharisees that "a wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign" (Mt. 12:38-39).

Now his disciples ask for a sign.

Jesus, in his response, speaks of wars and rumors of wars, famine, earthquakes. He speaks of betrayal and the love of many growing cold (vv. 6, 7, 10, 12).

He also warns of false prophets and false christs (v. 11, 24).

It is his discussion around these false prophets that introduces the key words in the text.

First, the false prophets are those who "produce great signs" (v. 24). That is, the false prophets are those who produce the very thing that the disciples ask Jesus to give them.

Second, the false prophets perform their signs with the intent of "leading astray, if possible, even the elect" (v. 24). That is, those who have asked Jesus for a sign are themselves vulnerable to the deceitful signs of false prophets.

Third, as opposed to the false prophets who produce great signs, the disciples will experience great suffering, "such as has not been since the beginning of the world and never will be again" (v. 21). That is, just as the suffering of the Son of Man who, like Jonah in the belly of the sea monster, will be in the earth three days and nights, so the only sign given to the disciples is their inevitable suffering (Mt. 12:39-40).

Their great suffering (Greek: thlipsis, vv. 9, 21, 29) is not, however, pointless; it is for the sake of righteousness; it is the sign of blessedness (Mt. 5:10-11). In fact, "the one who perseveres to the end will be saved" (v. 13).

The disciples will be handed over to suffering and they will be killed, but for their sake--"for the sake of the elect"--"those days will be cut short" (v. 22). Moreover, just "after the suffering of those days," after "the sign of the Son of Man has appeared in heaven", "he will send out his angels to gather his elect" (vv. 29-31).

Though suffering is their lot, their mark, their sign, the Son of Man is coming for his own. "And remember," he says, "I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Mt. 28:20).

"Let the reader understand" (v. 15) what then is the cost--and the hope--of discipleship.

-Joe

our great high priest

This is the summary content of the Bible Study portion of our February teaching at Bethany Bible School.

Leviticus 14:1-9 details the cleansing of one who is to be cleansed of his leprosy. He will be "brought to the priest", who will "go outside the camp" to "make an examination" to determine whether the "stroke of leprosy is healed" in the person. If the disease has indeed abated, the priest will command that two birds, cedarwood, two red cords, and hyssop be brought to him. Then the priest will slaughter one of the birds over a clay vessel filled with clean water. The blood of the slaughtered will mix with the water. Then the priest will take the living bird, together with the cedarwood, the cords, and the hyssop, and dip them in the mixture of blood and water. With the latter elements he will dash the mixture seven times upon the one who is to be cleansed of his leprosy. The living bird, carrying the blood of its slaughtered counterpart, he will release to the open field. Following this, the one who is to be cleansed will shave off all his hair, wash his clothes, and bathe his body. Then he can reenter the camp.

Upon reentry, however, the law dictates that he will "stay outside his tent" for seven days. On the seventh day, he will again shave, wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh, after which he shall be definitively, finally, clean.

Mark 1:40-45 also describes a scenario involving one who is to be cleansed of his leprosy. For his cleansing--"that which Moses commanded"--he was instructed to "show himself to the priest." The one who gave him such an instruction, however, had already cleansed him.

"If you want," the leper, begging and bending the knee, says to Jesus, "you are able to make me clean." "Moved with compassion and stretching out his hand to the leper," Jesus responds: "I do want, be made clean." "Immediately the leprosy left him."

Ignoring through his joy Jesus' warning to him not to tell anyone but to "show himself to the priest as a testimony to them", the cleansed one embarks to spread the word broadly, to the effect that Jesus is no longer able to move about freely in the city, so great is the demand on his time by the many who seek healing for their afflictions. Instead, Jesus finds himself "outside, in the desert place."

Taking upon himself the disease of the afflicted, the one who was so able to make the afflicted one clean, is himself now unable, cast outside of respectable society to dwell in the desert place. Like the bird contaminated by the blood of its slaughtered counterpart, Jesus is expelled to the field carrying the diseases of the people. In fact, like the bird which was slaughtered, Jesus too will be crucified outside the city, with the consent of the chief priests of his religion.

Yet the one who was cleansed will no more be able to return to the priests of his religion, so complete is his healing by the compassionate touch and loving words of the One who is able to make him clean.

For his sake--for ours--the Able One has been disabled. The Healthy One has become sick. The Just One has become a sinner: "God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us in order that we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor 5:21).

-Joe

the snake of God

I was reflecting on Paul's line to the Corinthians that "knowledge puffs up, but love builds up."

It occurred to me that in South Africa we have a very poisonous snake: the puff adder. When provoked, it puffs up.

Did Paul have a snake in mind when he turned that phrase? After all, it was precisely a kind of "knowledge" that the snake offered the woman in Genesis 3.

When the woman was given to the man as his helper, the text says that they were "naked together and unashamed." Following the snake's deception, however, the woman and the man sew clothes as a barrier between them. Moreover, the helper becomes a subject to a husband who will act as lord over her. Nakedness turns to hiddenness, intimacy to estrangement, mutuality to dominance.

But God is more clever than the snake. God uses the snake to accomplish God's purposes. When a deadly plague of poisonous snakes broke out against the Israelites in the wilderness, God commanded Moses to make a snake of bronze. Whenever anyone who had been bitten looked upon the snake, they were healed. Jesus applied the story to himself. "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up so that all who believe in him might have eternal life." And just as Aaron's staff-turned-snake swallowed up those of Pharaoh's magicians, so the knowledge of Christ overcomes the knowledge of the world.

Consuming the knowledge of the world breeds selfishness. The man and the woman, different one from the other according to the Creator's design, willingly enter into covenant as one flesh. "For this reason," for the sake of being joined to another in love, "a man shall leave his father and mother." Together they are naked, sharing all things. But confronted with the knowledge of the world, they seek to satisfy desires peculiar to their creatureliness. "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired in order to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate." As each pursues his or her own desires, the woman and the man erect between themselves a "dividing wall of hostility", sew "clothes of fig leaves" to hide from one another.

What can return two human beings, infected with the venom of divisiveness, sated on the desires of the self, "puffed up" with the knowledge of the world, to their primal nakedness?

Perhaps it is the sight of One who was lifted up from the earth, naked before the world on a cross: the vision of One who has not withheld, but given himself for love of another.

-Joe

Texts referred to or quoted in this entry: 1 Cor 8:1; Gen 2:25; Gen 3:7; Gen 2:18ff., 3:16; Num 21:4-9; Jn 3:14-15; Ex 7:8-12; Gen 2:24; Gen 3:6; Eph 2:14

living the story: culmination

This is the final of a four-part series in which I narrate how I have sensed recent events in my life reenacting the story of the Bible, particularly around the relationship between the primary commitments of God, family, and ministry.

If I have been recently tested as to whether my commitment to family is indeed before ministry, I had not yet undergone the trial of God before family. Many people, I suppose, confuse the commitment to God with that to ministry; so what might a distinction between the two actually look like?

It looks like Genesis 22, the story of Abraham's "sacrifice" of Isaac, "his beloved son."

I also have a beloved son named Isaac.

Throughout our time in Africa, I have been particularly worried about how Isaac--not his two younger brothers--is doing in relation to our ministry. My worries about how he might react to some of our more intense efforts to engage with the local population have prevented me from pursuing some of those "ministry" relationships as much as I might otherwise. Still we often wondered whether God did not want us to do something more radical in reaching out to the people with whom we work: move to a rural area, for example, where we would have no choice but to use more of the Xhosa language, thereby deepening relationships. We had no clear word regarding this matter; we resolved to stay put until we had an unmistakable revelation.

That revelation came in the form of an eviction from our home of three years. Yet it did not result in the scenario I have outlined above.

When our landlord informed us last December that she would not be renewing our lease, we thought that maybe this was the door we needed to move out of town. We pursued the decision with our church in Mandela Park, a former informal settlement outside Mthatha--just the kind of place to which we had an itch to move.

We told them our sad story. The pastor said, "Must we find a place for you?"

"Please," I replied, "even in Mandela Park."

That was a big moment for me. I had never been able to express to that point my willingness to move to such a place. I still had too many fears--founded or not--related to my children.

The morning after, we went to the beach with the children of the church. The pastor said that one of the members had already found us a place. It was in Southridge Park--decidedly not a place like Mandela Park.

We checked the place out. I was convinced that it was the place God had prepared for us. Anna had doubts.

On Sunday I told the people that we "were serious when we said we could live in Mandela Park."

"We can do it," I pleaded, giving them another chance to find us a place among them. "Do you believe we can?"

Heads shook around the room.

"I have a response to that," said the pastor. "Because we also love you, we will not let you live here. The crime of this place is too bad, and it is a burden that only we of this place must bear."

After a week of intense anxiety, forced to make a decision about living arrangements in a city with few options, I was relieved simply to have clarity. We would take the place God--and indeed the local church--had given us. Yet we did not take it before God had tested me.

Like Abraham, I had to decide whether God was more faithful than my fears, wiser than my wisdom. Did God love the beloved son more than I did? God was waiting for me to say so.

In that moment, when "even Mandela Park" rolled off my tongue, I laid Isaac bound upon the altar.

And God gave Isaac back. With more blessings to follow.

-Joe

living the story, part three

Speaking of the threefold hierarchy: God first, family second, ministry third, my conviction about its importance coincides with that of the pastor with whom I am currently working.

He recently made the following confession before his little congregation.

Many years ago, as a very young evangelist, he and his wife conceived and she bore their first child. As he kept up a heavy slate of revivals under the authority of another minister, his young child became quite ill. His wife needed him at home. His overseeing minister told him that the child would be fine; God would heal him because his father was doing the work of the Lord.

The child died.

Following this, the union was blessed with three healthy sons.

Years later, the pastor was working again under the authority of another traveling preacher. This overseer actively encouraged his protege to take other women, even as the overseer himself attempted to woo his protege's wife. A period of separation resulted between the pastor and his wife. Various friends intervened to help the couple clarify the confusion, untangle motives, and eventually, to reunite.

Then a confession, first to his wife more than a year ago, then to his congregation just two weeks ago: during the period of their separation, the pastor had conceived a child with another woman.

He feared the worst. His wife forgave him. Now he was asking the church to do the same.

It was a powerful story, followed by powerful exegesis.

"When it says in Genesis that the man and his wife were naked together, it does not mean simply that they were not wearing clothes," the pastor explained. "It means that there was nothing between them. They were completely naked to each other."

He went on. "We Mpondos [one of the large clans in this area of South Africa] are under a curse we inherited from our forefathers: our fathers did not go along with our mamas. Even in the church, we pastors have not had our wives by our side."

Two weeks before this was revealed, I had a dream.

Anna and I approached a house. Alone inside, eating supper at a dining room table, was the pastor's wife. She was distraught. We asked her what was wrong. Through tears she said, "Tata has not come home from work. It has been two days now."

I awoke troubled.

The next day was a Sunday. The pastor was at church, but he was ill. I did not want to tell him the dream so as to trouble him further in his tired state. A week or so later, I was prompted to share the dream in the presence of both pastor and wife.

"Enkosi, Tata," "Thank you, father," he said, taking my hand and giving me a knowing glance.

After the confession on a subsequent Sunday, the dream suddenly became clear to me. Mama Mfundisi (the pastor's wife) had been through far more than we had imagined: the death of a child early on in their marriage, the confusion related to her husband's overseer, her husband's indiscretion, the revelation of a half-sibling to her own sons. She was still harboring fears about their relationship, doubts as to whether he would remain faithful, doubts perhaps as to whether he would leave her behind for the sake of his work--his ever-growing call to ministry.

"Tata has not come home. It has been two days . . . "

"It is like that," the pastor confided in me within the following week. "Mama has said recently that it feels like I was running from her."

"But I know now that if I have to stay late at work, loading that truck," he says, pointing to the vehicle he drives for his day-job, "that I must call my wife and tell her exactly where I am. And I practice that."

"When Jesus comes back," he told his congregation, "he will not ask me 'Where is the church.' He will say to me, 'Where is your family.' The wife of Jesus is the church. I must first care for my wife.

living the story, part two

I associate a second "attack" with the first for, in the absence of any other uniting evidence, its coming upon the heels of a sermon I preached on the same theme of servant-leadership.

On the Monday after this sermon, our family left for a two-day vacation to celebrate Anna's birthday on our favorite spot on the Wild Coast. We had a great time. Then we packed up to return to Mthatha.

On the way home, as we pulled back into the city limits, we stopped at Steers to pick up lunch. I left the family in the car as I went inside. While I was waiting at the counter having placed my order, I removed my ball cap, rubbed my disheveled hair and eyes tired from the drive, and probably let out a deep sigh or two. From the left I heard a voice say once, and then a second time to get my attention, "you need to relax, man."

"Where are you from?" the man behind the voice continued.

I knew what he was looking for. Having been identified as a foreigner, I chose to cut to the chase and just say "America". "But I live in Mthatha now," I added.

He proceeded to educate me on a number of subjects: "We don't cut people's hearts out and eat them like they do in Rwanda. This is South Africa. You've got to draw the line somewhere."

He proceeded to berate the young woman working behind the counter.

"Where's my friend's order? If you want to get anything here, you have to ask for it," he said, coming back at me. He badgered the woman still more.

He raises his eyebrows at me. He throws some glances at the woman, who, thankfully, at this point is paying him no attention. "The dark meat, that's where it's at. Every one who smiles at you, take her."

"I don't operate that way," I insisted. "I'm married."

"So am I," he said incredulously. "It doesn't matter. Can't you give this man some ice cream," he returned to the young woman, "for his wife."

I could not wait to get out of there. Now my order really was taking its precious time.

I had not been in the mood from the start, when this drunk had approached me with what felt very much like an accusation: "You need to relax, man."

I pride myself on being relaxed. And I take other people's criticisms seriously. But I was not going to take too seriously this particular guy's "counsel". I finally got our food. I wished him well, we shook hands. I was relieved to leave. I was also disturbed by the encounter.

As I relayed it to Anna, it dawned on me that this was another attack: a demon of sorts who had met me upon my return from the wilderness in order to gain some kind of upper hand over me.

"You need to relax, man."

"I know who you are."

I would never pretend to be in the place of Jesus; yet I had been perceiving, as I preached his words from the gospels, that his Spirit was leading me. Whatever possessing spirit--not the man himself--recognized that.

I do need to relax: this I know. It is in fact why I have been preaching about leadership in the first place; pastors must not feel that they have to do everything, that they bear the burden of saving the world. A prior responsibility to ministry is to relax with one's wife and children, to delight in one's primary relationships. As a result, "you need to relax" on the lips of this man was not a word of prophecy for me; it was a (vain) attempt to derail me in the priorities I had set for myself: God first, family second, ministry third. These are not commitments to relax.

living the story, part one

My time in Africa is teaching me that, in terms of work, I am as much preacher as anything else. And as I ply that trade, I find myself increasingly accountable to the words I utter in the midst of the congregation; I sense increasingly that God wants to re-enact the story of scripture in my own life. I experience this as a privilege and yet a fearful thing.

I have observed that, just after I am close to a breakthrough in communication, I receive an inexplicable "attack." The first one came last May.

I had just delivered a passionate teaching about servant-leadership in the Bible school. Specifically, I had called for pastors to share the load of ministry, not to hoard responsibility for the sake of glory. The model, of course, is Jesus, whose ministry lasted but three years in order that we might take it up through the power of his Holy Spirit.

The next day, resting in the confidence of a successful teaching even as the level of my having been drained tempered my joy, I heard a knock on our door. There stood one of our neighbors. His face was grim.

"I'm going to be straight with you, Joe. Did I see you teasing my dogs."

I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. But the depth of his consternation induced a deep guilt nonetheless.

As it turns out, my shock and earnest confusion quickly convinced him that he had not seen what he thought he had. The heaviness in his face gave way to the lightness of a smile. We exchanged polite conversation for the next two or three minutes even as my head continued to spin in the confusion of the original accusation.

After he left I came to a realization of what he might have seen. A few boys from the neighborhood had earlier asked to borrow our pump for their soccer ball. I walked up the lane by the neighbor's house, past the ever incessantly barking dogs, pump in hand to where some other boys were waiting with the ball. They pumped up their ball. I returned the same way pump in hand past the dogs. What the neighbor thought he saw was me teasing his dogs with a "stick" of sorts.

I decided to go to our neighbor and clarify that he had indeed probably seen me, that the stick was the ball pump, but that there was no intention of teasing the dogs; indeed I did not even know that it could have appeared that I may have been swinging the pump as I wandered down the lane. His heaviness returned. Yet he "assured" me that "I'll do what Jesus would do and forgive you." My clarification was now apology; I was guilty. But I would have to be content with the guilt/absolution equation worked out for me.

One line from the original encounter kept haunting me. "Teasing the dogs," was unacceptable because "I believe that we need to be the leaders of the country."

What in common had I with this man? Who together were "we"? And as opposed to whom were "we"?

I was being tested to confront in myself what I had just proclaimed to others. Was I to seize the mantle of leadership, perpetuating in the sphere of my own relationships, the status quo of privilege along lines of ethnicity, age, or gender? The words spoken by my neighbor held out this option.

Or was I to persist in the laborious task of convincing an historically disempowered people that it was they--and not simply those whom they had always viewed as masters (literally "boss")--whom God, in love, had entrusted the responsibility of leadership. The words of the One whom I call "Lord" hold out this.

Beneath the glare of the gospel, there are deficiences in the leadership models operative in the various divisions of South African society. As God holds my life accountable to the words I preach, may others be drawn to give their lives so that all may truly live.

-Joe