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
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
an interpretive stone
Another Bible conference. Another obscure reference to Absalom.
Last May, you might remember, one man had asked about the kiss of Absalom.http://joeannasawatzky.blogspot.com/2009/05/two-kisses.html On Saturday, in the reports of small groups to the general assembly, a young woman unveiled Absalom's stone (2 Sam 18:18).
If you don't get the pun, you don't live in this part of South Africa. The woman's "unveiling" of an obscure part of scripture for me came precisely in the context of her using that verse as a justification for her cultural practice of "unveiling tombstones" for deceased loved ones. Although I think it can happen at the same time as the funeral, tombstone unveilings commonly occur some months to a year after the person's death. As many families do not have enough money for both the funeral and the stone, the stone often follows at a later date. At that time, the family will again hold some kind of service (one of our Committee members in the Bible School assures me that an unveiling is strictly a family event, just a small event, and need not involve the broader community or the church. In reality, people often do make a big deal of it).
At any rate, the young woman's comment irritated me. The topic for the day was eschatology, or the theology of "last things." Because most of our students are fixated not on eschatology in its sense as the goal of history/creation but as the destiny of their dead loved ones, I too chose to focus the lesson on its personal dimensions, that is, on so-called "personal eschatology". Closing the first session leading into small group discussion, I had left students with the question, "What is our responsibility toward the dead?" Now I was getting the answers from this young woman. First, "we bury them." Then, "we unveil tombstones". Both answers, of course, came not on their own but with a scripture verse thrown in for support. And therein lies my irritation.
If there is a scriptural justification for tombstone unveilings, this was not it. First, Absalom was not setting up a stone for a loved one; he was setting it up for himself, worried that he would die without a son to remember him. Second, who is Absalom, and why should we follow him? The young woman's answer showed little concern for these considerations. In the end, Absalom's practice in this verse has no more to do with the woman's own than the stone. And that, it seems to me, is no rock on which to build the house of God.
-Joe
Last May, you might remember, one man had asked about the kiss of Absalom.http://joeannasawatzky.blogspot.com/2009/05/two-kisses.html On Saturday, in the reports of small groups to the general assembly, a young woman unveiled Absalom's stone (2 Sam 18:18).
If you don't get the pun, you don't live in this part of South Africa. The woman's "unveiling" of an obscure part of scripture for me came precisely in the context of her using that verse as a justification for her cultural practice of "unveiling tombstones" for deceased loved ones. Although I think it can happen at the same time as the funeral, tombstone unveilings commonly occur some months to a year after the person's death. As many families do not have enough money for both the funeral and the stone, the stone often follows at a later date. At that time, the family will again hold some kind of service (one of our Committee members in the Bible School assures me that an unveiling is strictly a family event, just a small event, and need not involve the broader community or the church. In reality, people often do make a big deal of it).
At any rate, the young woman's comment irritated me. The topic for the day was eschatology, or the theology of "last things." Because most of our students are fixated not on eschatology in its sense as the goal of history/creation but as the destiny of their dead loved ones, I too chose to focus the lesson on its personal dimensions, that is, on so-called "personal eschatology". Closing the first session leading into small group discussion, I had left students with the question, "What is our responsibility toward the dead?" Now I was getting the answers from this young woman. First, "we bury them." Then, "we unveil tombstones". Both answers, of course, came not on their own but with a scripture verse thrown in for support. And therein lies my irritation.
If there is a scriptural justification for tombstone unveilings, this was not it. First, Absalom was not setting up a stone for a loved one; he was setting it up for himself, worried that he would die without a son to remember him. Second, who is Absalom, and why should we follow him? The young woman's answer showed little concern for these considerations. In the end, Absalom's practice in this verse has no more to do with the woman's own than the stone. And that, it seems to me, is no rock on which to build the house of God.
-Joe
Sunday, August 2, 2009
gleanings on gleaning
Yesterday, my wife preached, by request, on the topic "the responsibility of mothers in building up the church". She chose as her primary example the story of Ruth, in which Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi orchestrate a plan to provide for their own security.
After the service, while commenting on the sermon, the pastor remarked that "this Jewish culture [in the biblical text, the story of Ruth] is so much like our [Xhosa, and in particular, Pondo] own." The example he went on to cite from Ruth was the part in which she, in her economically-disadvantaged status as a widow, gleans grain behind Boaz's workers at the harvest (Ruth 2). This, of course, is a narrative example of Jewish law, in which provision in this manner was written in on behalf of the poor (Lev. 19:9-10). The pastor said, "it was just like that in the village where I grew up. The poor people would follow behind the harvesters collecting mealies."
I do not know whether there was a prescriptive dimension to this practice in Pondoland, whether the haves were sanctioned to leave what fell for the have-nots (if so, the law in this case was "only" oral). Regardless, the stories of the Bible read as a close descriptive parallel to many African cultures, and therefore also contain great power.
On the other hand, "these practices are no more there [in his boyhood village]," says the pastor. Because the pastor was born in 1973, it seems to reason that his memories of gleaning would date from at least into the early-mid 1980s. It also indicates how rapid was the erosion of such practices: from a fact of life to nonexistent in 25 years. An entire generation of children, though rural, has grown up ignorant of the old agrarian ways. In that case, a new generation of Africans will perhaps also have to listen harder for the voice of God in ancient texts whose relevance was once so overtly obvious to their mothers and fathers.
-Joe
After the service, while commenting on the sermon, the pastor remarked that "this Jewish culture [in the biblical text, the story of Ruth] is so much like our [Xhosa, and in particular, Pondo] own." The example he went on to cite from Ruth was the part in which she, in her economically-disadvantaged status as a widow, gleans grain behind Boaz's workers at the harvest (Ruth 2). This, of course, is a narrative example of Jewish law, in which provision in this manner was written in on behalf of the poor (Lev. 19:9-10). The pastor said, "it was just like that in the village where I grew up. The poor people would follow behind the harvesters collecting mealies."
I do not know whether there was a prescriptive dimension to this practice in Pondoland, whether the haves were sanctioned to leave what fell for the have-nots (if so, the law in this case was "only" oral). Regardless, the stories of the Bible read as a close descriptive parallel to many African cultures, and therefore also contain great power.
On the other hand, "these practices are no more there [in his boyhood village]," says the pastor. Because the pastor was born in 1973, it seems to reason that his memories of gleaning would date from at least into the early-mid 1980s. It also indicates how rapid was the erosion of such practices: from a fact of life to nonexistent in 25 years. An entire generation of children, though rural, has grown up ignorant of the old agrarian ways. In that case, a new generation of Africans will perhaps also have to listen harder for the voice of God in ancient texts whose relevance was once so overtly obvious to their mothers and fathers.
-Joe
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)