Reading with the family

Themes: Reading Scripture, Selections

The woman conceived and gave birth to a son at the same time the following year, as Elisha had promised her.
The child grew and one day went out to his father and the harvesters. Suddenly he complained to his father, “My head! My head!” His father told his servant, “Carry him to his mother.” So he picked him up and took him to his mother. The child sat on her lap until noon and then died. (2Kings 4:17–21 HCSB)

The devastatingly short biography of a promise.

Look at how the ancient story-teller constructs the tale. The first phrase is a repetition of the words of Elisha. The prophet’s words in the narrator’s voice. This is how we know the prophet speaks for God: the ‘what will be’ of a man describing what is not, becomes the ‘And it came to pass that…’ of the narrator who always says what is.

But what a desperately short life.

The boy who grew so fast in verse 18, so fast that it takes him merely one sentence to spring from conception to joining his father at the reaping, declines just as steeply. He withers and passes, like the summer grasses. Two sentences and he is dead.

The speed at which this happens shocks us: suddenly he grabs his head. He is rushed to his mother, already unable to walk.

Wait though, it is the next phrase that breaks your heart. The ancient story-teller, not given to spending unnecessary words, burns us with an image of the mother. Voyeuristic, embarrassed, helpless, I sit there all morning, mourning, as the child dies in her lap.

That little detail is the genius of this mini story. Disciplined to be concise by the nature of the available resources, the story-teller can’t give us unlimited description. He chooses his words carefully. This discipline creates a spare, taunt, tightly sprung imaginative world. And all that force recoils through the elected detail.

The story is itself a detail within the the tightly sprung narrative of Yahweh’s redemption of his people. The death of this promise child echoes with generations of questions asked: about Yahweh’s faithfulness, about the security of the future, about the holy discontentment which loving Yahweh provokes and alone can satisfy.
These are my questions because the Shunammite mother is one of my people. Any reader who doesn’t read like this, doesn’t really read. This is a story about how I got to be here, why I hope for the things I hope, about other people’s decisions which have charted my course. So, when I meet the detail within this detail of this (our) story, it unloads upon me with not just narrative, but affective force.

Does this story need to be made relevant to me? She is one of my people! My Auntie. What kind of pathologically insensitive person would need to be taught how to feel about this, this death in the family? Even if I know more about the reasons and the answers, how can I not feel the darkness opening beneath her, the precariousness of her faith, and want to hold on to her and tell her its going to be ok?
But then I discover that she’s comforting me, my auntie in the faith. She steps out from among the great crowd of witnesses, the family tree, sits with her child on her lap, invites me to put my head down there for a while too, and tells me her story.

 

image by yazeed

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The gift of an Enemy

Themes: Reading Scripture, Selections

Consider my enemies; they are numerous,
and they hate me violently. Psalm 25:19

But my enemies are vigorous and powerful;
many hate me for no reason. Psalm 38:19

One of the most strange and estranging experiences of life in our age is the absence of enemies. At least, I think that it must be so. I don’t feel like I have any, and I feel strange…

Maybe ‘absence’ is a little strong. There is a certain stream of political rhetoric in our society that still uses enemy-type language (although rarely the word). Currently it is largely employed for shadowy paramilitary opponents with beards and kaftans. Enemies have been etherealised.
These political enemies (necessary for the functioning of a state) are carefully prevented from becoming personal enemies. We are opposed to evil ideologies, to life-denying movements, but not to individual enemies.

The fact is that the Gulf neowar led to the emergence of a problem that was absolutely new, not only to the logic and dynamics of paleowar but also to its governing psychology. The aim of paleowarfare was to destroy as many of the enemy as possible, accepting that many of one’s own men had to die too. After a victory, the great military leaders of the past would pass by night through battlefields sown with thousands and thousands of dead, and they weren’t surprised that half of them were their own soldiers. The commemoration with medals and moving ceremonies of the death of one’s own soldiers gave rise to the cult of the hero. The death of the others was publicised and gloried in, and civilians at home were expected to rejoice at their elimination.
The Gulf war established two principles: (1) none of our men should die and (2) as few enemies as possible should be killed.
(Umberto Eco, “Some Reflections on War and Peace” in Turning Back the Clock,15)

Don’t get me wrong, of course it is good that we seem less likely to go around killing each other.
But the change in how we regard our enemies cannot fail to have implications for our self-understanding. If you read back into history, even only back to the World Wars, everyone had enemies, they were an important part of identifying yourself properly, of understanding your place in society and the world. Have you ever felt a sense of embarrassment at how elderly veterans speak of those against whom they fought? Or blushed at old news footage?
Once you get back into Biblical history the embarrassment becomes so acute that we tend to suppress it altogether. It’s most troubling in the Psalms. A whopping great chunk of the Biblical references to ‘enemies’ come in the context of Israelite prayers: “please God, smash them.”
Take the most graphic example:

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who pays you back what you have done to us. Happy is he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rocks. (Psalms 137:8-9 HCSB)

How do you accept those words as your own divinely inspired response to God? How can you speak them aloud in a congregation as your corporate act of prayer?

Modern theology has made much of the idea of a relational ontology, but in practice we are far more likely to be practical essentialists than our forebears. Interestingly, the commencement of hostilities in the Bible comes from an unexpected source:

Then the Lord God said to the serpent:
Because you have done this, you are cursed more than any livestock and more than any wild animal. You will move on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life. I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel. (Genesis 3:14-15 HCSB)

You read that carefully right? Who put the hostility between the snake and the woman?
Yep, The L-G.

But consider the alternative for a moment: what would have been the consequence if the Lord God had not put hostility between the Serpent and the Woman? What if he had acquiesced in her decision to be a friend to the enemy of his purposes? What if God had abandoned humanity to its unholy alliance against him, leaving them at peace with evil, plunging unperturbed into the abyss?

Commentators have often referred to Genesis 3:14-15 as a proto-euangelium (the first announcement of the good news). They pick up on the idea that the descendant of Eve will crush the Serpent. Personally I think I think the arguments for this idea are rubbish. But there is good news in these verses. It is in that promise of hostility.

It’s easy for us to forget that there are times and places in which nothing could be more evil than to be a friend to those whom are properly your enemies. It is a terrible forgetting of yourself, a lack of proper regard for your neighbour, a rejection of your identity.

In the recent Bushfires in Victoria it was reported that arsonists were deliberately lighting fires during the peak of the fire danger period. There was public outrage in the news media. Volunteer fire-fighters from around the country were risking their lives to save people and property and these deviants were deliberately undermining their effort. That outrage was a proper moral sentiment drawing upon the hostility we should feel toward those who are the friends of our enemies (even if that enemy is a force of nature).
How much more terrible for our Grandparents, those who lost so many people they loved in the World Wars.

Losing sight of the Enemy has tragic consequences for how we understand ourselves. It plays a large part in why we struggle to understand the proper hostility of God. It is not moral to have no enemies if the price of that peace is betrayal of those who are properly your friends.
That is cheap grace, the cheapest of reconciliations.

My enemy is God’s gift to me. My enemy teaches me who I am; what I believe strongly enough to fight for; who I belong to. He forges new bonds of kinship; he trains me in endurance; he crushes me so that I might learn not to count on my own strength. And at the end, my enemy will be at my side when he helps me to lay down my life so that I might follow my Lord into the greater life beyond.
A kind enemy.
Is it any wonder we are told to love and pray for him?

In God’s astonishing grace, even in the moment of the Fall, he has blessed us with hostility toward evil, he has made evil hostile toward us. And in God’s astonishing wisdom – the wisdom of the One who through death dealt death to Death – he uses even our Enemy to serve our good. So that, “all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose.” (Rom 8:28)

The gospel in the garden is the gift of an enemy

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Reading with Zwingli

Themes: On Knowing God, On Pity, Reading, Reading Scripture

I know for certain that God teaches me, because I have experienced it: and to prevent misunderstanding, this is what I mean when I say that I know for certain that God teaches me. When I was younger, I gave myself overmuch to human teaching, like others of my day, and when about seven or eight years ago I undertook to devote myself entirely to the Scriptures I was always prevented by philosophy and theology. But eventually I came to the point where led by the Word and Spirit of God I saw the need to set aside all these things and to learn the doctrine of God direct from his own word. Then I began to ask God for light and the Scriptures became far clearer to me… than if I had studied many commentators and expositors. Note that it is always a sure sign of God’s leading, for I could never have reached that point by my own feeble understanding. (H. Zwingli, On the Clarity and Certainty or Power of the Word of God)

I’ve been reading Holy Scripture by John Webster with a few guys, in a book group, at College. It is a cracking read.
This quote from Zwingli came in the middle of a chapter entitled ‘Reading in the economy of grace’. The chapter is a theological analysis of how a Christian reads Scripture.
It’s a bombshell – throughout the book Webster essentially denies one of the central presuppositions that undergirds critical Biblical scholarship – and ultimately Modernity itself: that knowledge is, in principle, equally open to any knower.
Crudely put, one of the central philosophical assumptions of our society is that it doesn’t matter who you are, a Fact is a Fact. Certainly there have been endless critiques of this assumption through Post-Modern philosophy, yet they all seem to end with a collapse into solipsism – the knower can only know him or her self. Obviously, this is less than satisfying when applied to a theory of reading Scripture. Indeed, it is downright idolatrous.

Webster manages to dismiss the Modernist assumption while avoiding the barrenness of a Post-Modern alternative.
Starting with any of these notions, according to him, will get your theology all bent out of shape, because, when it comes to knowing God, it really does matter who you are.
I’ve got plenty of questions for Webster – big, meaty ones. I’m suspicious that his answers are just too simple. But I’ve got to love a guy that, today, moved me to want to quit Theological College, and just read the Bible.

For Zwingli, then, the real nature of the interpretative situation is best described as as struggle to replace mastery by teachableness. (Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, John Webster)

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City Light

Themes: Places, Reading Scripture, Scripture, Society, Sydney

‘If thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, blessed shalt thou be in the city’ (Deuteronomy 28:2,3).

‘The city is full of care, and he who has to go there from day to day finds it to be a place of great wear and tear. It is full of noise, and stir, and bustle and trouble. Many are its temptations, losses, and worries. But to go there with the divine blessing takes off the edge of its difficulty; to remain there with that blessing is to find pleasure in its duties, and strength equal to its demands.

‘A blessing in the city may not make us great, but it will keep us good; it may not make us rich, but it will preserve us honest. Whether we are potters, or clerks, or managers, or merchants, or magistrates, the city will afford us opportunities for usefulness, It is good fishing where there are shoals of fish, and it is hopeful to work for our Lord amid the thronging crowds. We might prefer the quiet of a country life; but if called to town, we may certainly prefer it because there is room for our energies.

‘Today let us expect good things because of this promise and let our care be to have an open ear to the voice of the Lord, and a ready hand to execute his bidding. Obedience brings the blessing. In keeping his commandments there is great reward.’

- C H Spurgeon

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Worship – John 4:21

Themes: On Knowing God, Prayer, Reading Scripture, Scripture, Sunday

Where can God be found?

“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, yet you |Jews| say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus told her, “Believe Me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will explain everything to us.”” (John 4:20-25 HCSB)

The question about where to worship is crucial to the Old Testament. Yet with these words Jesus renders the question irrelevant.

It’s no longer to be about place: God the Father desires worshippers who will worship in spirit and truth. The Father desires worship that is appropriate to his nature. What good is worship that by its form betrays ignorance of the one being worshipped?

We might reveal in the praises of people who don’t know us, knowing full well that if the details of our lives and failures were to become public, the praise would be quickly diminished. But the more we come to know God the more capable we are of worshipping him fully. He is good all the way through.

The worshipper in ‘spirit and truth’ approaches God in a manner that demonstrates the he or she really knows God.
It’s the kind of worship that is only possible once the Father has been revealed to the worshipper by the Son.

God is Spirit, as such, he is not bound by location. This was recognised by Solomon in his dedication of the Temple.

“But will God indeed live on earth? Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain You, much less this temple I have built.” (1 Kgs 8:27 HCSB)

Yet it was in the temple that God chose to meet with his people and accept their worship.
The Jesus we meet through John’s Gospel is in a continual tension, almost rivalry with the temple. Early in the narrative we are told that the Christ understood his own body to be the replacement for the temple,

“Therefore the Jews said, “This sanctuary took 46 years to build, and will You raise it up in three days?”
But He was speaking about the sanctuary of His body. So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this. And they believed the Scripture and the statement Jesus had made.” (John 2:20-22 HCSB)

The place where God chooses to meet with his people is now in the person of his Son.

“The Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We observed His glory, the glory as the One and Only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14 HCSB)

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Persuasion in Mark

Themes: Apologetics, Exams, Gospel, On Language, Reading Scripture

The recent essay I had to write for our New Testament 1 course has given me a lot of food for thought*, particularly with regard to the techniques employed by Mark in seeking to persuade us that Jesus is the ‘Christ, the Son of God.’

Have you ever thought that if you or I set out to convince someone that they should follow Jesus, give him their personal allegiance to the point of death, that we probably wouldn’t be content to simply present a narrative?

I’ve just come back from a mission week where we were engaged in a whole range of evangelistic presentations. We gave out CD’s and knocked on doors. I sat in on a ‘dialogue meeting’ (question and answer time with Christians and non-Christians), and spoke at a Chapel service. Each activity was designed to engage with people and persuade them that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

Yet we didn’t once engage in the form of persuasion and teaching that was employed by the writers of the Gospels.

I really don’t want to fall into the sad, trendiness, of those ‘Evangelists’ who want us to simply tell each other our ‘stories’. Narrative theology is all the rage at the moment and it has been very influential in thinking through how we preach and proclaim God’s word. It helpfully reminds us to be attentive to the form in which God’s word presents truth. It’s good to remember that the literary form of the scriptures isn’t just an accident of history. There are no accidents in history.

So why does Mark tell a story where he (and we) might reasonably have chosen a more direct form of argument?
I thought about this a lot while I was working to understand the overall significance of the feeding miracles for Mark’s presentation of Jesus.

I think the feeding miracles form a piece of the interpretative framework which Mark is unfolding for the reader. By that I mean, Mark isn’t just writing a narrative of Jesus’ life. He’s writing a narrative that will have a certain effect on the reader. Mark is creating a framework that is designed to create a reader who will encounter the events of Jesus’ death equipped to understand them as (among other things) the climax of Jesus’ kingly provision for his followers.

Mark establishes a resonance in the mind of the reader through his description of events. As you progress through the narrative, Jesus’ breaking bread to feed the hungry crowds, echoes in his breaking bread for his disciples at the Passover.
Jesus’ compassion, his power, his superabundant provision, are in the mind of the reader as he or she comes to the final meal that Jesus shares with his disciples. As the bread is broken once more, Mark adds the final touches to the framework through which the reader will encounter the death of Jesus.
The narrative structure of Mark is intended to create a reader who is capable of understanding the true significance of the disturbing events at the end.

Mark faced the difficulty of presenting a message to individuals who could not possibly have the framework of experience to understand its significance. How could anyone hear of the execution of a man for blasphemy and come to the conclusion that he is the answer to our seeking after God? In itself, the death of Jesus is a deeply ambiguous event.

We face the same problem as we seek to share the message of Jesus with people who are completely unequipped to understand it. On a practical level, the average Aussie doesn’t see themselves as occupying the same narrative world as Jesus, our questions about life seem different, the history of answers to these questions – the culture we share seems very removed from the world of the New Testament. On a spiritual level, the average Aussie is unable to understand the message of Jesus due to darkness and ignorance brought on by rebellion against God.

For anyone to encounter Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection – and to correctly understand the significance of these events – requires that they themselves be transformed into the kind of person capable of understanding. This requires the spiritual work of removing blindness. And it also requires the approach taken by Mark and the Gospel writers. The person will need to be transformed by the narrative so that they come to occupy the same thought-world, so that the reader is shaped to stand at the correct vantage point, the proper angle, from which to view the cross.

That’s why its fascinating to study the narrative techniques by which Mark does this shaping, and to wonder how we could apply similar techniques to our engagement with people.
Who’d be interested in writing an evangelistic book along these lines?

*topic of the essay was “What is the significance of the feeding miracles for Mark’s presentation of the ministry of Jesus?”

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