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

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

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)

‘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

“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)

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?”

LORD, lead me in Your righteousness,
because of my adversaries;
make Your way straight before me.
(Psalm 5:8 HCSB)

I really think the Psalms come alive when you read them with a Samuel L. Jackson accent – Particularly Psalm 5.

I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of giving God a list of reasons why he should help us when we pray. It gets fairly well drummed in to us that we are saved by grace, sustained by grace, and we have nothing to offer God that isn’t automatically his by right.

We aren’t in a bargaining position.

David’s prayers don’t really sound like this. David is completely comfortable with giving God long lists of reasons for action.

Psalm 5 is full of great examples but verse 8 has got to be the most audacious.

“Lead me in your righteousness because of my adversaries.”

Are you struggling with prayer? Feeling that your prayers just bounce off the ceiling? that God doesn’t hear?
The tele-evangelists have got it all wrong, you don’t need more faith.
You need more enemies!

It’s an interesting strategy…

But David’s prayer isn’t just based on the fact that he has enemies. In fact, the whole Psalm is essentially a reminder to God of who God is, who David is, and who David’s enemies are.

God is good:

“For You are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil cannot lodge with You.
The boastful cannot stand in Your presence;
You hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who tell lies;
the Lord abhors a man of bloodshed and treachery.”
(Psa 5:4-6 HCSB)

There is a thorough going consistency to God’s actions – he is utterly reliable. And he hates all evildoers.
(incidentally, that doesn’t leave much room for ‘hate the sin and love the sinner’ does it?)

God has never given up on his good plans for creation. He has never had the failure of imagination that leads us to accept less than perfection in our world and our selves. God’s endless creativity and endless love of goodness means that he cannot tolerate evil.
Our willingness to do so continually makes us complicit with it.

But David has the nerve to remind God that he hates all evil-doers, that God isn’t at home with evil.
This is the bloke who coveted his neighbour’s wife, lied, engaged in conspiracy to murder, and committed adultery. That’s four of the ten commandments right there. It certainly sounds like “bloodshed and treachery.”

Yet David can say:

“But I enter Your house by the abundance of Your faithful love;
I bow down toward Your holy temple in reverential awe of You.
Lord, lead me in Your righteousness,
because of my adversaries;
make Your way straight before me.”
(Psa 5:7-8 HCSB)

David, clearly a doer of some substantial evils, has entrance to God’s house.
He is not there on the basis of merit but because of God’s love for him. (This definitely presents a bit of a problem, how can God be just and justify the wicked? Isn’t God now complicit with evil? Stay tuned for the New Testament…)
David is God’s man.
Without disregarding his failure and sin, he remains someone who’s life, identity, future, and loyalty are all wrapped up with God. So much so that there is a total identification between God’s enemies and his.
David’s enemies are God’s enemies.
God’s enemies are David’s enemies.

Look at David’s description of these people:

“For there is nothing reliable in what they say;
destruction is within them;
their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongues.
Punish them, God;
let them fall by their own schemes.
Drive them out because of their many crimes,
for they rebel against You.”
(Psa 5:9-10 HCSB)

David’s enemies are those who rebel against God.
It’s strong language. It probably makes you feel a little uncomfortable. (I wouldn’t be suprised if there is now a file on you, stored somewhere in an office in Canberra, flagging that you visit extremist websites…)

Would you be willing to say that your enemies are any and all who rebel against God?

We generally imbibe the cultural assumption that, ‘everyone ok with me as long as they don’t hurt anyone.’
We’re not real comfortable with the idea of having enemies. And we are very uncomfortable with the idea of having specfic enemies, particularly when that includes everyone who isn’t a Christian. That’s a lot of enemies…

But it really comes down to how firmly your interests are bound up with God’s.
If you have half a million dollars sitting in a superannuation fund, I imagine that you take a reasonable interest in the stock market. If something is preventing your Super Fund from getting you the best return, you get cranky.
How much have I got invested with God?

Is it enough to make God’s enemies your enemies?
Enough to make any opposition to God’s plans direct interference with your interests?

I get angry when I see people dropping cigarette butts. They show reckless disregard for our world, how angry should I be at someone who opposes the good plans of God to create a new heaven and a new earth?

We should have enemies.
If we don’t we haven’t really understood faith in God.

And if we don’t have enemies, these words don’t make any sense:

““You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matt 5:43-45 HCSB)

““When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it should not” (let the reader understand), “then those in Judea must flee to the mountains!” (Mark 13:14 HCSB)

That little parenthetical remark, “let the reader understand”, has been the source of a great deal of discussion over the centuries. Where would Markan theologians be without the endlessly useful variations for the titles of their books?

It’s a little bit like that moment in the movie Fight Club where Edward Norton’s character begins to realise the truth about Tyler Durden, the narrative that’s been playing in his head begins to unspool, the screen begins to flicker and it looks like the film strip is whirling off the projecter, the celluloid about to burst into flame.
It’s an interesting moment in the film, the scales drop from the eyes of the main character – and because we see the story through his eyes, we share in the experience of revelation.

The really interesting thing, though, is that screen flicker. It makes the characters suddenly come outside the screen. The medium of communication is exposed, the mechanics laid bare for a moment, but the character survives and continues to speak. It’s deliberately unnerving, like being in a room full of statues, thinking you are alone, and someone moves.

Mark inserts editorial remarks everywhere throughout the book. For example, he gives some classic comments on the reactions of Jesus disciples,

“Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here! Let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”— because he did not know what he should say, since they were terrified.” (Mark 9:5-6 HCSB)

It’s impossible to write a narrative without having some kind of narration, the voice over who ties events together, provides insight into the motivations of the characters, and moves the action along. Every narrative has this with the exception of a first person narrative – where the Narrator is the main character.

And that really wasn’t an option for Mark’s Gospel…

What isn’t so common, is for the Narrator to interrupt the main character in the middle of a sentence.

““When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it should not” (let the reader understand), “then those in Judea must flee to the mountains!” (Mark 13:14 HCSB)

It’s a drastic ploy for any writer to make, most times the words of the Narrator can wait ’til the character has finished speaking. It’s a truly colossal thing when the speaker is Our Lord…

In reading Mark, it’s a moment when the screen flickers. The mechanics of Mark’s writing are put on view for a moment. The room full of statues – the text which we read as a work of art, held at a distance – suddenly moves. The Narrator steps out from behind the narrative, and pokes you in the ribs.

It has to be in the middle of a sentence to achieve this effect. There is no disrespect intended when Mark breaks in to Jesus’ sentence.
Jesus’ broken sentence has sharp edges, it has a cutting edge – it is not just another (admittedly strange) conversation between the characters in a story. It is an address through the pages directly to the reader.

The words are for YOU.

Mark 13 is known as the Apocalyptic chapter within this Gospel. It’s full of strange language and dark predictions. But there is more going on here than just old fashioned Buffy-the-Vampyre-Slayer weirdness.

‘Apocalyptic’ is a Greek word referring to something being ‘uncovered’ or ‘revealed’. Apocalyptic literature seeks to uncover the spiritual realities behind earthly events. That’s why at the start of the Book of Revelation (Greek name: The Apocalypse) John says, ‘After this I looked, and there in heaven was an open door.’ (Rev 4:1) John is being given an insight into what’s going on behind the scenes. Revelation is a backstage pass to Reality.

Mark 13 is an apocalyse about Jesus’ death. It’s a backstage pass to the Reality of Jesus’ death – the curtains are drawn back, the door stands open. It’s not easy to understand, if you’ve ever pulled apart a clock or a radio you’ll know that the insides of something very rarely look simple on first inspection, but it’s giving behind the scenes information.

It makes sense that at this point Mark the Writer breaks into the narrative. He reveals himself, for a moment his narrative techniques are left dangerously open to view. It is an apocalypse within an apocalypse.

And this double apocalypse has an uncanny effect.

In chapter 13 the narrative breaks out of this world, in order to reveal the Reality behind. At the same time, in the very middle of this movement, it also breaks into our world.

Mark’s direct address lets us know that we are the objects to whom this is being revealed – not just the confusing bits in Mark 13, but the entire narrative. It breaks through our arms-length reading and demands to be urgently understood.

Let the reader understand!!!

*(do you know that there is no such thing as one (1) shenanigan, it’s a plural noun. weird…
**(this has nothing to do with my essay on Mark, just found it interesting)