law in light of law

Earlier this month at Bethany Bible School I taught on the topic of Law, or the course in our curriculum on the Torah or Pentateuch. The eight-hour course (in one day) is designed 1) to give students a framework for making sense of the material in the five books; 2) to gain understanding of one particular Old Testament law; 3) to gain understanding of how Jesus interprets that OT law in a gospel text. For this year, I selected Deuteronomy 25:5-10 and Mark 12:18-27 to accomplish the goals of points 2 and 3.

Deuteronomy 25:5-10 spells out the procedure for what is known as levirate marriage, or the marrying of a deceased man's widow to his brother. The purpose of such marriage is defined in the law itself as “the perpetuation of the [dead] brother's name in Israel” (25:7). Indeed, the concern for the continuation of the deceased's name appears three times in the text: 1) in the introduction to the law, “so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel” (25:6); 2) in the conclusion, “This is what is done to a man who does not build his brother's house” (25:9); 3) centrally, in the words of the widow pleading her case before the elders at the gate, “My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel” (25:7). Although elsewhere in the Old Testament the law of levirate marriage is portrayed as an initiative of the widow to gain security for herself through offspring (Gen 38:1-26; Ruth), the Deuteronomy text seems not to foreground the care of the widow but the perpetuation of the deceased man's name. Though it may not be insignificant to the cause of justice for the widow that by law the widow carries out the public shaming of the brother who refuses to take her in marriage (what if all men who did not fulfill their responsibilities toward women were similarly shamed, rather than the woman bearing the shame of society by herself?), nonetheless the primary offense of failure to marry a brother's widow is stated in the law by the widow herself—the failure of the brother “to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel” (25:7). The perpetuation of the name, I argue, is the central concern of this law.

Having established with the students that the perpetuation of the deceased brother's name does appear to be the text's central concern, one older woman offered her opinion of the text: “I so don't like this lesson.” It was perhaps not the practice of levirate marriage that offended her, which is even still not unknown to our students or resides in memory in the not-so-distant past; rather, the prescription of the widow “spitting in the face” (25:9) of the her husband's brother who refuses to take her in marriage struck the woman as not in accord with the broader concern of the Torah for “holiness” and “love”. The student's disdain for the text was encouraging to me, not because my goal is for them to disdain particular texts, but because she displayed the ability to read the text in the light of other texts, in canonical perspective. For many of our students, the Bible is an authority whose commandments are beyond interpretation (perhaps in North America we have a slightly different problem: the erosion of the notion of the Bible's authority). The woman's comment thus showed an ability to critique the text in light of the Text.

The woman made one other, highly imaginative comment. The brother who refused to marry the widow, the brother whom the widow by law may publicly disgrace, is, in the words of the woman, the righteous one who belonged to the age of the resurrection. Why did the woman make this comment, and upon what was her reference to the resurrection based?

In the gospel text that appropriates the levirate law, Mark 12:18-27, Jesus tells the Sadducees that “when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (12:25). The man who did not wish to marry his brother's widow, therefore, belonged before his time to the resurrection in which “they neither marry nor are given in marriage”. In our student's perspective, the disgraced brother was the righteous one; the one shamed according to the law was the one vindicated by the word of Jesus.

Whether or not one accepts the woman's midrash, it is certain that Jesus disagreed with the Sadducees' application of Deuteronomy 25:5-10 to the issue of resurrection if not the main concern of that particular law itself. The Sadducees, those “who say there is no resurrection,” applied the levirate law to a hypothetical and highly unlikely situation in order to deny the resurrection and to humiliate Jesus (Mark 12:18ff.). Their story, in which seven brothers, each in turn taking his brother's wife following his brother's death and failing to produce offspring for his brother, somehow, in the Sadducees' mind, proved the impossibility of resurrection. The proof for the Sadducees seemed to lie in the unassailability of life by “natural” means. In Sadduceean perspective, life continued or went forward into future generations through sons, those who would carry on or “remember” the name of their father in Israel. Without offspring, the continuation of life through the perpetuation of the name was an impossibility. For the Sadducees, fathers only lived on through their sons, ancestors through their descendants who remembered them. The only possibility for a kind of “everlasting life” was via reproduction. To the extent that Deuteronomy 25:5-10 also attaches ultimate concern to the perpetuation of the brother's name, the Sadducees not incorrectly understood it as the guardian of the one way of “eternal” life.

Jesus, of course, rejected the Sadducees' way of thinking and perhaps with it the central concern of Deuteronomy 25:5-10. For Jesus, eternal life was not secured by one's capacity for offspring but through the faithfulness of God. In Jesus' perspective, human beings do not cause their own names to be remembered in perpetuity; God, as he promised Abram on the heels of the disaster of those who tried to “make a name for [themselves]” at Babel (Gen 11:4), will “make your name great” (Gen 12:2). Abram, the one whom God called to obedience in the very years of his childlessness, is the same Abraham whose name God remembered when God appeared to Moses in “the story about the bush”--the very story from the Law (Exodus 3) that Jesus used to combat the Sadducees' account of eternal life through the law. If God remembers the righteous dead, those who “walked before [God]” that they might be “blameless” (Gen 17:1), then the righteous dead continue in God. Life is secured by the God who raises the dead—not by human beings who, through all manners of desperation, attempt to “raise up” offspring for the sake of a name (Mark 12:19).

One might see all kinds of applications of this textual debate to the realities of traditional and modern life in Africa, North America, or elsewhere. I leave that work to the reader. But in terms of an understanding of biblical law and its authority for our lives, Christians still have much to learn from Christ's way of reading law in the light of law through the knowledge of “the scriptures” and “the power of God” (Mark 12:24).

-Joe

joy in the judgment

Today I've been studying Ecclesiastes 3:16-22 in preparation for an upcoming lesson.

In this passage, Qoholeth, the "Teacher" of Ecclesiastes (1:1), ruminates on the fate of human beings.  The teacher does not believe in life after death.  The teacher does not share the voice of Isaiah, that those who die in the Lord "shall live, their corpses shall rise" (Isa 26:19), nor the hope of Daniel that "many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame and contempt" (Dan 12:2).  Far from these rare affirmations of resurrection in the prophetic and apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament, the wisdom of Ecclesiastes is that human beings "are but animals" (3:18).  Humans and animals share the same "fate"; they are one in spirit (or breath) and flesh ("dust") (3:19).  Perhaps in rebuttal of a more optimistic view of human destiny, the teacher sees little reason to hope that "the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward" (3:21).  His summary is that "all go to one place" (3:20).

If the teacher's conclusion on the fate of humans and animals was that they die to "one" and the same "place", it was his vexation that "in the place of judgment, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there" (3:16) that led him to that conclusion.  The troubling proposition of the one and same place of judgment (or "justice", Hebrew mishpat) and wickedness, of good and evil, of saints and sinners, leads him to "the one place" of humans and animals.  Because wickedness flourishes in the place of righteous judgment,  in death humans go to the same place as animals.  In the teacher's mind, the reality of the one place of wickedness and righteousness is somehow related to the one place of humans and animals.

What is the relation?  In the teacher's mind, the one place of death follows from the same place of justice and wickedness because "God will judge the righteous and the wicked" (3:17).  The teacher, far from having abandoned hope, clings to faith in the judgment of God.  The wicked's standing, not falling, in the place of judgment, would seem to be evidence of the injustice and impotence of the world's Creator--if but for one equally conspicuous phenomenon.  For, just as the teacher has observed that it is common for the wicked to sit in the judgment seat, lording it over the just, he has observed that all human beings--righteous and wicked--die with the animals.  Just as surely as, in death, "humans have no advantage over the animals", so the wicked, by fact of their humanity, have no advantage over the righteous. Because of the animals, the place of judgment is not in the end overrun by wickedness; the witness of the animals suggests that a righteous God will yet pull the wicked from their thrones.

Consequently, while the perspective of the teacher is not exactly resurrection hope, it is nonetheless biblical faith. If the teacher could not affirm as much as Isaiah and Daniel, Paul and, of course, Jesus (“I am the Resurrection”) (Jn 11:25), he does, like them, “entrust himself to the one who judges justly” (1 Pet 2:23). Such trust, moreover, commends a distinctive course of living. For Jesus, trusting God for judgment sealed his own perseverance in love that refuses to return violence for violence. Paul, confident in God's vindication of the righteous through the resurrection of Jesus, counseled the Corinthians to “be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58). The teacher wrote that “there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot” (3:22). Unless we view enjoyment of the work that God has given us to do as evidence of selfishness (as though working for God should not bring us happiness), the teacher's course of action is a welcome contribution to the biblical canon. Joy in our living is not the sign of self-satisfaction but of our justification by faith in God.

-Joe

breaking from the tomb

In between Mark’s crucifixion narrative (15:25-39, see last post) and his resurrection narrative (16:1-8) is the burial of Jesus.  Chapter 15 ends with the notice that “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid” (15:47).  This is the perfect set-up for the events of chapter 16.
Seeing where the body was laid, these two women along with a third, Salome, “brought spices so that they might go and anoint him” (16:1).  Spices in hand, they head for the tomb.  The resurrection narrative in Mark centers around the tomb.  The women set out to go there (v. 2).  Later they enter there (v. 5).  Finally, they flee from the tomb (v. 8).  The tomb receives one extra mention, this time in the mouths of the women themselves rather than from the narrator.  As they approach they ask themselves, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb” (v. 3).  Presumably this question was occasioned because the stone was “very large” (v. 4).  Nevertheless, looking up, they find that the stone “had already been rolled back” (v. 4).  And so they are able to enter the tomb.

It is in the tomb that the central drama of the story takes place.  It is in the tomb that the women see the messenger of Jesus’ resurrection (v. 5), hear the announcement of Jesus’ resurrection (v. 6), and receive instructions of what to do next (v. 7).  All of this happens in the tomb.

But none of this were the women seeking in the tomb.  Though we must credit them—perhaps especially in comparison to the twelve disciples of Jesus—for looking on at the cross (15:40), we cannot say that their faith was complete.  The women, like the disciples, had not taken Jesus at his word.  Presumably they too, with the twelve, had heard him predict his death and resurrection.  Witnesses to Jesus’ authority in life, the women might have trusted, even now, that what Jesus said would be fulfilled in him would come to pass.  Yet they set out with spices “to anoint him”; they are not seeking a risen Lord or a living God in this moment.  They are seeking a corpse.  It is a dead man which they seek.  That is the most for which they can hope.  A body is what they have come seeking in this place.  For a dead man they have entered here.

It is precisely in that place, however, in the tomb of their hope which was not a hope, that they hear something which they did not expect.
 
“Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised; he is not here.  Look, there is the place they laid him” (v. 6).

If the women’s best hope was hopelessness, their best faith an instinctual sense of duty, their present state a dulling numb, then it was not by their merit that they received the news spoken by the young man robed in white (v. 5).  By the mercy of God they hear, “He has been raised.”  They were hoping for a corpse; they received a revelation of the living God.

It is well-known that Mark, aside from the disputed endings to his gospel (16:9-20), narrates no resurrection appearances of Jesus to his followers.  Likewise it is customary in certain circles, perhaps for shock value, for preachers to point out that the women in Mark flee from the news in terror, saying nothing to anyone (v. 8).  Full stop.  End of story.  I’m not sure what all that emphasis is for; given the subsequent widespread belief in the resurrection, good logic suggests that he both appeared to the women (as the other gospels attest) and that they did overcome their fear and tell his disciples, from which the witness spread.  Yet if Mark’s focus on the women’s fear, not unrelated to the way in which Mark characterizes disciples generally in his gospel as dull and often disobedient, awakens our senses to the reality of God’s love and grace breaking through, then his ending is well-played indeed.

-Joe

fear, deception, mercy: the burial and resurrection of Jesus from Matthew’s Gospel

In my last post, I argued that Matthew’s story of the passion exposes the violence from all sectors of a human society united against Jesus. In the follow-up to the passion, the burial and resurrection, Matthew continues with that theme. If, however, no one group assumes greater responsibility for the death of Jesus than another in the passion, the burial-resurrection narrative implicates especially the “chief priests” along with the “Pharisees” (27:62) and the “elders” (28:12) in another plot against Jesus—a cover-up of his resurrection.

From 27:62, the story begins with the “chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate” asking for “the tomb to be made secure” in order that Jesus’ disciples may not “go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead’”—a “last deception”, they say, which “would be worse than the first” deception, presumably Jesus’ own prediction that he would “rise again” (27:62-64).

For someone who was so plainly destroyed and humiliated before their very eyes, the chief priests and company show a most peculiar fear. Rather than delighting in the elimination of one who was such a threat to their power, they are consumed by the fearful prospect of his enduring influence. That fear is tied to Jesus’ disciples who—if the chief priests had been watching from the events of Thursday-Friday—were nothing to fear. Indeed, long ago they “all” had “deserted him and fled” (26:56). The disciples, not courageous enough to stay with Jesus in his darkness hour, were scarcely a threat to steal his body from the tomb and willingly proclaim a lie, a resurrection that was not. Yet the chief priests fear precisely that. They fear it so much to go to Pilate and ask for “the tomb to be made secure”, a request that Pilate grants with a “guard of soldiers” (27:65).

A “guard of soldiers” and “sealing the stone”, however, is not enough to prevent what they fear. In fact, their first fear gives way to a worse one—evidence that what Jesus promised of himself has actually taken place, his resurrection from the dead. In one sense, of course, their fear was not fulfilled; the disciples did not steal away the body. In the other sense, their fear increased. They who had feared a “last deception worse than the first” find themselves ensnared in a “last fear worse than the first”: Jesus, their enemy, is alive.

Ironically, that which they feared would happen—the disciples stealing the body of Jesus and proclaiming a lie—is, following the report of Jesus’ resurrection by the guard, all to which the chief priests have to cling; their first fear remains their last security—and a flimsy one at that. The very lie that the chief priests feared is the lie they now actively spread, paying the soldiers a “large sum of money” to say that “ ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away’” (28:13).

Of course, the chief priests find themselves clinging to a “last deception worse than the first” because they could not submit—neither in Jesus’ life nor now in his resurrection—to the truth. No amount of plotting, scheming, or force can thwart the Life that Jesus embodies. He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (Jn 14:6); they—we—the “imposter” we made him out to be (27:63).

Surely the story has something to say about the trap of fear. Just as the chief priests submitted to their worst fear rather than to the truth in Jesus, so we, doing the same, find our “last” condition “worse than the first” (see also Mt 12:45). Yet in the grace and mercy of his resurrection he says to us, as he did to two Marys, “Do not be afraid” (28:1, 10). Or to “the eleven”, those who had deserted him: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28:16, 20).

-Joe

saving faith

Luke 17:11-19, the story of the ten lepers, is a text which has proved relevant to us repeatedly over the last two years—most recently, at last week’s discipleship class. As we studied the story together, one young man connected its meaning to a sermon I had preached in the church last month. Just as there are “three tenses” of salvation in the biblical witness, so in this text there are perhaps “three stages” of salvation. These three stages correspond to, or rather may be derived from, three distinct words in the Greek, translated “cleansed” (v. 14), “healed” (v. 15), and “saved” (“made well”, NRSV) (v. 19). That is, after the ten lepers cried out to Jesus for mercy, Jesus sent them to the priests, on the way to whom “they were made clean” (v. 14); seeing that “he was healed”, “one of them turned back, praising God with a loud voice, prostrated at Jesus’ feet” (v. 16); this one, because he returned to give thanks to Jesus for his cleansing and healing, was also pronounced “saved” (v. 19).

What this summary shows is that there is both a close relationship of meaning between the words “cleanse,” “heal”, and “save” and a distinction between the three. Their unity lies within the merciful will of God as revealed in Jesus, that is, that cleansing of the skin and healing of the body is within the salvation that God intends for God’s creation. Indeed, the cleansing and healing of the leper were critical factors resulting in his salvation; physical cleansing and healing are not separate from salvation but within it. Consequently, any “salvation” that undermines the needs of the body is not the salvation that Jesus brings.

Even so, the very emphasis of the unity of cleansing, healing, and salvation reveals their diversity. Indeed, though cleansing may lead to healing which leads to salvation—that they are parts of one process—that very “leading to” prioritizes “salvation” as something more than the body—even if not exclusive of. The distinction is as important as the unity. This is so because the goodness of God cannot be limited to the health of the flesh. In other words, the faith to live, the declaration of God’s goodness to and love for his creatures, continues in spite of the suffering of the flesh. Though Job was stricken, yet he said, “I know that my Redeemer lives” (19:25). Or Habakkuk:

“Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation” (3:17-18).

In spite of suffering in the flesh and famine in the physical world, these prophets perceived that life with God continues. “In the valley of the shadow of death” they perceived that they were not dead yet—that death was only that: a shadow (Psa 23:4). As long as they had breath, they had the love of God.

If the life that remained in the prophets in spite of suffering was enough to maintain hope in God, the life that remains for us in the resurrected Christ is surely enough to sustain us. Though the presence of suffering tests our hope no less than it did Job, we have the story even he did not. Even the flesh that died has been raised immortal, imperishable, incorruptible (1 Cor 15).

Just as the Samaritan leper kept the faith--thanking Jesus for his mercy--and so experienced salvation, so our faith of the same order will keep us for eternity.

-Joe

streaming up the mountain

I had the privilege of preaching the sermon at Grace Community Church in Philipstown, Northern Cape, on Sunday. I chose Isaiah 2:2-4 to complement the themes of our weekend seminars on the church as the community of Christ's peace.

As I warmed up, I began to relish the metaphors in the text, specifically, the image of the nations "streaming"--"like a river that runs down to the sea and never stops" is how I put it--to "the Lord's house" (v. 2). Afterward, our colleagues pointed out to me a tantalizing paradox in the image--the nations streaming like a river up the high mountain on which the Lord's house stands.

Can a river flow up a mountain? A geological impossibility is paired with a theological certainty. The nations at war with one another will beat their weapons into agricultural tools. In our day, as well as in the days of Isaiah and, 800 years later, the early church (whose leaders cited this scripture in their writings more than any other), peace may seem as much an impossibility as a river flowing up.

Yet the "God of Jacob" is there. He himself "will teach us his ways that we may walk in his paths" (v. 3). "He himself is our peace", as Paul later put it, "who has made the two one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between us" (Eph. 2:14). He did this "in his flesh", that is, through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (Eph 2:14, see also 1:20), another impossibility made certain.

What is impossible for humans is possible for God (Mk. 10:27; 11:23-24).

-Joe

on following

One of my favorite songs sung in the South African independent-church context is Somlandela, "We will follow Jesus". A second verse to the tune is the dialogue between Jesus and Peter in John 21:15ff. Simon nikaYona, uyandithanda na?/Ewe Nkosi yam, ndiyakuthanda, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?/Yes, Lord, I love you". I enjoyed the opportunity yesterday to join the preaching of that text to the song.

Jesus' third resurrection appearance to his disciples, recorded in John 21, is, in my reading, a story about a crossroads in the disciple's life (here represented by Simon Peter) between the old life (before Christ) and the new (in Christ). In reading the text this week, a pivotal revelation for me was the fleeting quality of Jesus' resurrection appearances to his disciples. After his resurrection from the dead, he did not simply stay with his disciples; rather he appeared, disappeared, and reappeared to them over the course of forty days leading up to his ascension (Acts 1:3). His time with them was broken. As a result, in between appearances, his disciples must have yet been prone to doubt whether they had in fact seen the risen Jesus or, as Luke puts it, merely "a ghost" (24:37). Was Jesus' resurrection appearance a unique experience within the disciples' spiritual worldview, or did it fit established categories? The fleeting quality of the resurrection appearances left room for the disciples to question whether Jesus was uniquely alive--in a quality different from others who had died--despite having had "many convincing proofs" that he was indeed the "firstborn from among the dead" (Acts 1:3; Rev. 1:5).

This, then, is the critical context for the story--the disciples lingering doubt. From there, we see the options open to Peter. How will he live with his doubt? Will Peter continue to go the way of Jesus, the way he began after his encounter with Jesus three years earlier by the Sea of Galilee (Lk. 5:1-11)? Or will he go back to his pre-Jesus life?

Peter, perhaps fed up with this fleeting Jesus, weary from the emotional swings of friendship lost and regained, chooses his pre-Jesus existence. "I am going fishing", he announces to his companion disciples. "We will go with you," they say. Without their former leader, the disciples will follow Peter. They will follow him into the old way of living. No more "fishers of people" (Mk. 1:17); fishers again only of fish. Except that, just as the first time Peter met Jesus, no fish were forthcoming (Lk. 5:5). "They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing" (v. 3).

This is the perfect set-up for Jesus to reappear to the disciples. He stands "on the beach" and calls to the disciples on the sea. He tells them, as he did when they first met, where to cast the net in order that they might catch some fish. Again an overwhelming catch ensues. The disciples would be truly dim indeed if they did not now recognize the man on the beach as their Lord.

Peter, to his credit, recognizes Jesus and makes his move back toward him. First he puts on some clothes in order to swim back to land to meet Jesus--"for he was naked".

This has long bemused me. Why would one put on their clothes in order to swim? Why also was Peter naked in the boat?

I asked the congregation. Pastor Ntapo: "I can guess that Peter was naked in the old life." Peter, having decided to again seek security apart from this fleeting, seemingly undependable Jesus, ironically finds himself more exposed. He will put on his clothes and go back to Jesus. He will "clothe himself with the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 13:14; Gal. 3:27; Col. 3:10) So too will those who have chosen to follow Peter from new to old and back again. They row back to land "in the boat".

When they return, they find that a meal has been prepared for them. A charcoal fire is there with fish on it and some bread. This is not the fish the disciples have just caught; it is already on the fire for them. The disciples will simply add to the fire what Jesus has already put there. The "fleeting Jesus" is still who he always was: Israel's Provider, giving bread and meat to his beloved in the desert.

But Jesus' love for his disciples is a tough love; Peter feels "hurt" because Jesus has asked him three times whether he loves him. As Jesus was being condemned to death, Peter denied Jesus three times. Jesus now wants to know--three times--whether Peter truly loves him. And "yes" alone will not do; Peter must feed Jesus' sheep. Peter has other disciples willing to follow him wherever he goes.

"I am going fishing." "We will go with you". "I am going back to the old life." "We will go with you."

Does Peter love Jesus enough to care for his sheep? Jesus says, "Follow me" (v. 19). "Do as I do". "Feed my sheep".

There is a danger in singing songs of extreme commitment--"Somlandel', Somlandel' UYesu/Somlandel' yonke iindawo, "We will follow, We will follow Jesus/We will follow everywhere [he goes]--if we do not intend to take the steps.

Jesus told Peter, "When you were younger you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go" (v. 18).

Persecutions and trouble, trials and tribulations are bound to come. Suffering is in the world. Our lives are not our own. Going alone, "going fishing" again, is no recipe for success. We are slaves--either to the world or to Christ. If anything is sure, it is that someone else "will take you where you do not wish to go". But only in Christ is the slavery freedom (Rom. 6:16ff., compare with Gal. 4-5; Mt. 6:24).

I'm still working on that one.

-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

"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

there's peace in the blood

At the heart of Ephesians 2:11-22, we find two parallel statements which express agency.

A divided humanity, whom the text calls "the circumcised" and "the uncircumcised", the "near" and the "far", and "aliens" and "citizens", has become one "by the blood of Christ." This "one new humanity in place of the two" was likewise united "through the cross." "By the blood" and "through the cross" are the synonymous means from which the text makes its central claim: "hostility"--that which divided humanity--has been "broken down" or "put to death", the end result being "peace."

It seems indeed a peculiar thing that "the blood" and "the cross" would break down hostility and make peace, for it is precisely that problematic, divisive hostility that finds substantial expression in the shed blood of a Roman death instrument, the cross. In what sense, then, are the blood and the cross peace?

They are so, according to the text, because of whose they are. The cross is not Rome's, and the blood is not specifically that which was shed; the blood is Christ's, the one who "himself is our peace", who has made the two one "in his flesh", who has "put to death hostility through the cross". The text does not say that the cross has put to death hostility; it says that "he has put to death that hostility" by means of the cross.

So what is the difference?

As we were studying this text together last May, I was led toward this distinction between the cross and the blood as hostility and the cross and the blood as peace. The students again were looking for repetitions in the text, the same method we had used to find the meaning in Genesis 19:1-14 (see previous entries). Quite naturally, then, we came to "hostility" and "peace."

"How does the text say the hostility was broken down?" I asked the students.

Eventually, it came to the answers posited above: "by the blood of Christ" and "through the cross."

The large, mud church hall where we were meeting in a rural area outside Lusikisiki was supported by wooden beams from the floor to the ceiling. I approached the beam nearest me.

Having turned my back on the students, I began with my right hand to pound my left into the wood. "Does this blood make peace?" I asked.

Heads nodded affirmatively around the room.

"Really?", I said.

Facing the students, I leaned my back against the beam, arms outstretched. Again I made the hammering motion while maintaining my position against the beam. "Or is it this blood?"

Murmurs of growing recognition scattered among the people.

"How can this be peace?" I said, returning to the pounding action. "Is this not hostility? Is this not murder?"

In a sudden burst of conviction, I remembered the language of the text. "Hostility is far and peace is near, and the two have no part one in the other."

I exhaled.

"But this blood," I said, returning to the outstretched posture and wiping the palms of my hands, "this blood is peace."

"At the same time that Jesus' enemies are taking his blood, he's giving them his. At the same time they're cursing him, he's blessing them. At the same time they're hating him, he's loving them. 'Bawo Baxolele', 'Father forgive them.' "

Seemingly every Sunday, the small, Pentecostal church with which we often worship sings "lona linamandla igazi lemvana", "the blood of the lamb has power." Or, even more emphatic were the words we heard there just last week. Igazi likaYesu, asoze la phela amandla, "the blood of Jesus will never lose its power."

Why will the blood of Jesus never lose its power? The first answer, of course, is the peace Jesus maintained on the cross in face of hostility's cruelest test. John was right in his first letter when he declared that "the blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin." Yet before that blood could become for us healing balm, it itself had to withstand our greatest evil--the murder of the cross--precisely because the evil from which we must be cleansed is ours. Our blood, contaminated and shed in the spirit of hostility, had itself to be cleansed by the peace in the blood itself infused with the life of the Spirit. That, of course, is the work that was truly "finished" in Jesus' dying breath.

Yet it does not explain how the power in his blood gets from his cross--one moment in time--to us--in every time and place. To receive his peace, we will need to know that the "flesh in which he has made us one", from which poured out his blood, life, and Spirit, has indeed been raised to the "right hand of Power." And to us he says, "Touch me and see, a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." Upon us he also breathes, saying, "Peace be with you, receive the Holy Spirit."

Yes, surely, he is more than us: "the first human being became a living being, the last human being became a life-giving Spirit." Yet his difference does not negate our (us with him) fundamental unity. "For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being." And again, "since the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things . . .. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham."

Because he is both us and more, he can help us. Because his blood is both ours and the Spirit's, it can turn our hostility to peace.

But how specifically do we receive his blood? I suppose it has something to do with asking, seeking, knocking. And going. Which will include preaching. And listening. And water. And teaching. And obeying "all that he has commanded." Which includes remembering. In bread. And wine. Or juice, depending.

More to come.

-Joe

Texts referred to or quoted in this entry: Eph. 2:11-22; Lk. 23:34; 1 Jn. 1:7; Mk 14:62; Lk 24:39; Jn. 20:19-23; 1 Cor. 15:45,21; Heb. 2:14-16; Mt. 7:7, 28:19-20; 1 Cor 11:23-26