Monday, July 27, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
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
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
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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
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
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
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
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
Thursday, May 28, 2009
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
"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 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
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