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
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, May 11, 2009
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
-Joe
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
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).
"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).
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