praying forgiveness

Within the span of a week I've had two opportunities to share some insights on the Lord's Prayer (Mt 6:9-13). Here's what I've found:

The prayer defines its addressee in the first line, "Our Father, the one who is in the heavens".  While it may seem obvious to some Christians that we would address God in prayer, the fact that Jesus specifies only God as the recipient of our prayers cuts against the grain of some traditions in which other spiritual authorities are also invoked.  Within the Lord's Prayer there is no mention of the saints or ancestors of human religion/culture.

The prayer features seven verbs.  The first three verbs are pleas for the Father to do something for the Father's own sake.  These accompany nouns with possessive pronouns in the second person singular.  I call this "a pattern of possession or belonging to the second person" who is, in this case, God.    The three verb-noun combinations then are:

May it be kept holy/sanctified--your name
May it come--your kingdom
May it be done--your will

All are pleas pertaining to God.  Disciples pray, as Jesus taught us, for God to guard/protect/keep God's own prerogatives as the creator of the world.  While human beings can participate in the glorifying of God's name, the coming of God's kingdom, and the doing of God's will, all are ultimately the work of the Father himself.  Only the Father can protect his name, kingdom, and will from the humans who inevitably fail to honor God.  Our shortcomings simply expose the need to pray to the Creator, and reveal why we should begin in prayer with pleas that pertain to God for God's sake.  It is upon God's heavenly name, kingdom, and will that the same might be established on earth, and so we address the only One who can bring about these realities.  We plea to God not to give up on the establishment of God's name, kingdom, and will upon the earth in the face of our sin.

After we have put first things first, the things upon which everything else is founded, then we begin to pray to God about the things that belong uniquely to us as frail human beings.  Here come the next four verb-noun combinations.

Give us today--our daily bread
Forgive us--our debts
Do not bring--us into temptation
Deliver--us from the evil one

If in the "pattern of possession or belonging to the second person", that is, "to God", the pronoun was "your", the final four verbs pertain to "our" or "us".  In other words, the second set of verb-noun combinations forms a "pattern of possession or belonging to the first person plural", "to us".  After we have asked God to do some things for God's own sake, upon which our own survival also depends, now we begin to plea for God to do some things for us.  Give us daily bread.  Forgive us our debts.  Do not bring us into temptation.  Deliver us from the evil one.  All four pleas refer to situations unique to the human condition.  We are the ones in need of bread--not God.  We are the ones who have debts (or sins or trespasses)--God has none.  We are tempted--God is not.  We must be delivered--Satan poses no threat to God.  All of these predicaments are truly ours.  And thus, as before, we speak to the only One who can help us.

Now, regardless of whether the pattern is "your" (to God) or "our" (to us), each verb is a plea for God to do something.  God is the subject of doing, whether it be for God's own sake or for ours.  That is the case--with one exception.  Only one verb of the seven appears twice--to "forgive."  If we have prayed for God to forgive us our sins, we must also pray that "we forgive those who sin against us".  If we have prayed for God to forgive our debts, we also pray that "we forgive our debtors".  The two, in fact, are dependent one upon the other.  It is in the act of forgiveness alone that our agency and God's overlap.  God forgives us as we forgive one another.  We express our "godliness", our "god-likeness", through forgiveness.  We "are perfect as our heavenly father is perfect" (Mt 5:48) in no other way but as we extend love without condition to our fellow human beings.  We "complete" the love of an already "complete" God as "we love one another" (1 Jn 4:12).

If therefore we do, as Jesus commanded, "pray then in this way", forgiveness will be the spirituality of our lives; reconciliation its fruit; and peace the kingdom come--"on earth as it is in heaven".

-Joe

Peter, not James

During the Sunday school time before the worship service this week, Pastor Ntapo was leading the people in a reading of Acts 12, the account of Peter’s rescue from prison and perhaps imminent death at the hands of King Herod. Indeed, the story begins with the report that Herod had “laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church”, even having “James, the brother of John, killed with the sword” (vv. 1-2). During this time, the text states, “while Peter was kept in prison, the church prayed fervently to God for him” (v. 5). From this basic introduction to the story, Pastor Ntapo deduced what was for me another unexpected gem of biblical interpretation within the context of South African Christianity and the spiritual realities a vast majority of its adherents encounter. No doubt responding to the perspective of African “traditional religion” that the ancestors of the home (sometimes called in the scholarly literature “the living dead”) exert an active influence over and maintain a “real presence” with their living descendants, Pastor Ntapo pointed out that the church in Acts “prayed fervently for Peter,” which is to say, and not for “James” whom Herod had already killed. “It does no good to pray for a dead person,” he said. “We can do nothing for them,” and by implication, apart from the will of God (known to us in scripture) they can do nothing for us. On the other hand, we can and should pray and intercede to God on behalf of those still alive—and expect, just as Peter was delivered, for the only living God to shower us with his grace.

-Joe

Glory of glories

More than a year ago, I recorded some discoveries I had made on the transfiguration story from the gospels (Mk. 9:2-8; Mt. 17:1-8; Lk. 9:28-36) in conversation with African traditional religion. That entry reflected preparation I had done for teaching the story at Bethany Bible School. Finally, in May, that opportunity came to pass. I used the story as the Bible Study text for my lesson on the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

The story is a good one for getting at some of the thematic differences between the gospels. Taking Mark as the narrative baseline for the synoptic tradition in general, one can see through the transfiguration story the distinct ways in which Matthew and Luke built upon the story. Matthew, for example, adds to Mark’s account the description of Jesus coming to the disciples, touching them, and telling them not to fear after they have witnessed the dramatic scene, entered the cloud, and heard the voice. Jesus comforts the disciples because they have fallen “on their faces” in response to the cloud and the voice. This is the second usage of “face” in the text; the first occurs at the outset of the story when Jesus’ “face” begins to shine a brilliant white. Whereas in Mark it is Jesus’ clothes which turn white, Matthew adds also that Jesus’ face shines. In doing so, Matthew intensifies the comparison between Jesus and his prophetic predecessor, Moses, whose face also used to shine when communing directly with God. Matthew’s intensification of the comparison between Jesus and Moses is commensurate with his gospel’s broader emphasis of Jesus the Law Giver/Teacher who gives the new law which fulfills the law that was given to Moses.

Luke’s account, on the other hand, reveals his own emphases. Jesus is transfigured while he is “praying”, something he did regularly according to Luke. Moreover, the city of “Jerusalem” again figures in this story as it does throughout Luke. Luke alone informs the reader of what specifically Moses and Elijah were talking about with Jesus: the exodus that he was about to accomplish “from Jerusalem.”

It is also from Luke that I was able to make my major connection between the world of the text and the traditional thought-world of my Xhosa audience. As pointed out in my earlier entry, an African reader might quickly notice in this story what a westerner might not, namely, that Jesus is communicating with his dead ancestors. Traditional African Religion was/is based upon communication with the ancestors. The story then might be read as a justification of communication with the dead.

It is not always or perhaps often appropriate to make comparisons between Jewish religion pre-Christ and African religion pre-Christ. There are significant differences, the main one being that Jewish faith was oriented toward the one God, Yahweh, to the exclusion of other gods, whereas African religion was oriented functionally toward many spiritual mediators or “gods” in spite of the fact that a concept of the one Creator God did also exist. Still, for the purpose of proclaiming a text, in this case the transfiguration story, it works to place Moses and Elijah in place of the ancestors of African traditions. Indeed, in this story, Moses and Elijah appear personally to the disciples whom Jesus had led with him up the mountain--as a deceased African grandfather might appear to his progeny in a dream. Peter’s response to the sight, likewise, is functionally equivalent to the decisions many African Christians have made with Christ—put him alongside, not necessarily in place of or even higher than, the other spiritual authorities in one’s life (we must also say that westerners have not often placed Christ in a superior position to the particular “powers and principalities” of their cultures).

But back to Luke. What of his contribution to the story? Luke, alone among the synoptic evangelists, dwells with suspense upon the characters that turn out to be Moses and Elijah. That is, Luke initially does not say, as Matthew and Mark do, that “there appeared with him Moses with Elijah” but rather, simply, “two men”. Who are these two men? Only then does Luke answer: Moses and Elijah. Going on: “they appeared in glory and were speaking about his exodus which he was about to accomplish from Jerusalem”. Luke returns to the appearance of glory once more thereafter: “Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep, but because they stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.” Whereas in the first appearance of glory to the disciples, glory includes three—Moses, Elijah, and Jesus—in the second appearance of glory only one remains. He alone is glorious; Moses and Elijah are again, merely, “men.”

Of course, this is also how all of the synoptic evangelists conclude the narrative. The voice with the cloud acclaims “my beloved Son; listen to him” after which only one—"Jesus alone”—remains.

The ancestors used to look glorious to our eyes. But when Jesus came, we saw true glory.

-Joe

"in his chest"

Inspired from my reading of the prophetic literature earlier this year, I have since alluded in a few sermons to Jeremiah's description of his vocation: "If I say, 'I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,' then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot" (20:9). My paraphrase has been that the prophet, being one who is given the words of God, has no choice but to give also to others what God has given him. The prophet's particular mode of sharing--of not being selfish--is with words. If the prophet should keep those words to himself, within, those words will become death for him. The prophet will become sick, the prophet may die, if the prophet does not carry out the task to which he has been called.

Also three weeks ago, in Philipstown, a man from the church confirmed those words to me after the service. I had introduced the Isaiah text I was preaching on with something like the above introduction to the prophets generally. Responding to that, this man had said that he used always to be sick until he responded to God's call to begin preaching. He now enjoys full health.

The man's experience--we might call it the prophetic experience--has been well-testified throughout Africa by both Christians and non-Christians. In terms of the latter, the way of a person being called to be a traditional healer, a sangoma in southern Africa, is to become ill. The affliction, sent by the person's ancestors, will subside only when he or she consents to take up the practice. Christians too, although the most-committed ones disavow all practices related to the sangoma and seeking oracles from the dead, often interpret illness as a call to something new. Our pastor, for example, knows that he has a particular, nagging condition "in his chest" that will not go away until he finally makes the decision to go full-time in ministry.

Examples such as these might, at the very least, make westerners pause to consider whether certain illnesses suffered in one's body are, in any way, related to something amiss in one's spirit. Short of inciting a too-easy, one-to-one correlation between a person's sin and her sickness, this wisdom of Africa might at least cause us to re-examine ourselves before God.

-Joe

faith of our fathers

Perhaps an alternative title to this blog should be "conversations with Pastor Ntapo", as so many of my insights into African culture and biblical interpretation come in give and take with him. Let that be preface to today's entry.

After a separation of several weeks over the holidays, we met back up in our Bible School office last Thursday. He filled me in on one of the sermons he had preached on a recent Sunday.

He tracked for his people the journey of Abram in Genesis 11-12. Abram, he recalled, left Ur of the Chaldeans with his father Terah, who died on the way to Canaan in the land of Haran (11:31-32). From there, God summoned Abram to continue on his father's journey into "the land that I will show you" (12:1). Later, Pastor Ntapo, continued, "Abram went down to Egypt" (12:10).

His point: Abraham's feet touched down in every place where his descendants would go; his journey anticipated theirs.

Indeed, the Israelites came out of slavery in Egypt to Canaan, and back also to the land of the Chaldeans, to captivity under the Babylonians. And just as Abraham would also go up from Egypt (Gen. 13:1),and later his descendants, so also, in centuries later, his descendants would come back from Babylon. From slavery to freedom. From freedom to slavery. And back again.

As Pastor Ntapo recounted the story, I remembered that Jesus too, went down to Egypt and back up again. "Out of Egypt I called my son," wrote Matthew, applying the words of the prophet Hosea to the boy Jesus (Mt. 2:15; Hos. 11:1). "I also touched on that," said the pastor when I brought up Jesus' journey. "Jesus did the same thing [as Abraham] on the other side."

Thus I observed, as I had in previous encounters, the importance to my African brothers in the faith of the reality that the way which we walk has been prepared beforehand for us by our ancestors. Their experience then is ours now; their suffering, ours; their redemption, ours. More than that, in the words of another pastor at Bethany Bible School when recalling one of last year's lessons on the Israelites' wilderness wandering, "the God who helped them is the same God today."

Because of the story--of Abram and Sarai, Moses and Miriam, of Jesus--"I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (Rom. 8:18). The story is hope. Without it there is naught.

-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

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

how great the father's love: lot and the visitors revisited

"According to the text, is Lot a righteous man or not?"

This was one of the questions we asked students at our Bible school's oral examinations last month.

Not unlike our initial study of the text together last February, most answered in the affirmative: Lot was righteous.

Why?

"God saw him among all the people in Sodom", said one old man.

That seeing, within such a great sea of humanity, must attest to something of Lot's righteousness.

"Lot would do anything to protect his visitors," said another man. "He proved he was righteous by giving his daughters in place of the two men to the men of Sodom."

This answer took me aback a bit, for it is the opposite of what I had argued in the original lesson. Yet this man did make a compelling association in support of his position: Lot's offer of his daughters was like that of Abraham to Isaac, the one whom the story in Genesis 22 introduces as "your only son, whom you love." Thus, rather than an act betraying the daughters' worthlessness in their father's eyes, Lot's offering was likewise of the "beloved".

Another woman was less convincing. In her judgment also, Lot was righteous. However, when pressed, she, unlike other students, did not modify her stance to admit that Lot may have been wrong at least in his willingness "to bring out" his daughters to evil men.

"Lot knew that God was going to rescue him and his family anyway. That is why he offered his daughters."

Although her reasoning is not unlike that which the author of Hebrews offers up with regard--again--to Abraham when he "offered up Isaac" because he "considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead", it elicits one critical objection.

"If he knew," said I, "why then did he not simply give the men his visitors?"

Though through hesitation, her answer amounted to the belief that visitors are more important than daughters--actually, than anyone. That is why Lot would not think of bringing them out.

It is true that visitors are particularly vulnerable people; they can navigate neither the space nor the conventions of a place as its residents, and are therefore at the mercy of the residents. This is, in fact, Lot's primary claim to righteousness in the text: he, as a resident alien among resident Sodomites, alone shows hospitality to the visitors who come to the gates of the city.

Yet there is something else, I believe, that the text invites us to consider.

Guests are not only those who come, but those who are. Long before the two angels arrived in Sodom, Lot the father had charge of guests, whether he deemed them so or not. That he would bring them--his daughters--out for rape is not as much a thing exposed by Lot's righteous impulse to protect those who have come as it exposes his failure to care for those who are daily in his midst.

Lot's dilemma may also reveal an African caveat in the text. Izithunywa, the Xhosa word for messengers--the two angels who come to Sodom--often stands in the context of mediums who divine causes for human misfortune via spiritual messengers, the ancestors. And, not unlike the daughters and the men who have come under the shelter of Lot's roof, the spirits of the dead "compete" with one's living dependents for the attention of present-day Lots, those African fathers and mothers heading households.

"This is the way of keeping us poor," says a young, Xhosa pastor.

How? In a context of poverty, people cannot afford to hold extravagant, expensive feasts in honor of deceased elders (a typical response if one dreams of a given ancestor). Already there is not enough to support the daily, adequate nourishment, not to mention education, of many children.

"Where will that money come from?" says the pastor. "Yet you will find that there is always money for that thing."

There are always children to sacrifice for the sake of important visitors.

"So what do you think Jesus would have done if he were Lot? we asked the students.

"I think he would have offered himself", one brother replied.

How great this Father's love for us, his children.

Therein lies the righteousness in the text.

-Joe

Texts referred to or quoted in this entry: Gen 19:1-14; Gen 22:2; Heb. 11:17-19; 1 Jn 3:1