Hope you all are having a blesséd holiday and if that is your practice -- holy day season.

Today, New Years Eve day my grandmother was admitted to hospital sufffering from disorientation. Her oxygen saturation levels in the blood are low as is her blood count. Evidence of internal damage. She's receiving a blood transfusion and massive numbers of tests.

She's 91. She's resisted the nursing home option for some time now but it looks like the choice will finally be made and not by her.

2007 is starting off with a flare.

according to mark 4:1-20

CHAPTER 4

The story of the sower

4:1-8 Then once again he began to teach them by the lake-side. A bigger crowd than ever collected around him so that he got into the little boat on the lake and sat down, while the crowd covered the ground right up to the water's edge. He taught them a great deal in parables, and in the course of his teaching he said, "Listen! A man once went out to sow his seed and as he sowed, some seed fell by the roadside and the birds came and gobbled it up. Some of the seed fell among the rocks where there was not much soil, and sprang up very quickly because there was no depth of earth. But when the sun rose it was scorched, and because it had no root, it withered away. And some of the seed fell among thorn-bushes and the thorns grew up and choked the life out of it, and it bore no crop. And there was some seed which fell on good soil, and when it grew, produced a crop which yielded thirty or sixty or even a hundred times as much as the seed."

4:9 Then he added, "Every man who has ears should use them!"

4:10-12 Then when they were by themselves, his close followers and the twelve asked him about the parables, and he told them. "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those who do not know the secret, everything remains in parables, so that, 'seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand; lest they should turn, and their sins be forgiven them'".

4:13-20 Then he continued, "Do you really not understand this parable? Then how are you going to understand all the other parables? The man who sows, sows the message. As for those who are by the roadside where the message is sown, as soon as they hear it Satan comes at once and takes away what has been sown in their minds. Similarly, the seed sown among the rocks represents those who hear the message without hesitation and accept it joyfully. But they have no real roots and do not last - when trouble or persecution arises because of the message, they give up their faith at once. Then there are the seeds which were sown among thorn-bushes. These are the people who hear the message, but the worries of this world and the false glamour of riches and all sorts of other ambitions creep in and choke the life out of what they have heard, and it produces no crop in their lives. As for the seed sown on good soil, this means the men who hear the message and accept it and do produce a crop - thirty, sixty, even a hundred times as much as they received."

according to mark 3:20-35

Jesus exposes an absurd accusation

3:20-21 Then he went indoors, but again such a crowd collected that it was impossible for them even to eat a meal. When his relatives heard of this, they set out to take charge of him, for people were saying, "He must be mad!"

3:22-27 The scribes who had come down from Jerusalem were saying that he was possessed by Beelzebub, and that he drove out devils because he was in league with the prince of devils. So Jesus called them to him and spoke to them in a parable - "How can Satan be the one who drives out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, it cannot last either. And if Satan leads a rebellion against Satan - his days are certainly numbered. No one can break into a strong man's house and steal his property, without first tying up the strong man hand and foot. But if he did that, he could ransack the whole house.

3:28-29 "Believe me, all men's sins can be forgiven and their blasphemies. But there can never be any forgiveness for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. That is an eternal sin."

3:30 He said this because they were saying, "He is in the power of an evil spirit."

The new relationships in the kingdom

3:31-32 Then his mother and his brothers arrived. They stood outside the house and sent a message asking him to come out to them. There was a crowd sitting round him when the message was brought telling him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you."

3:33 Jesus replied, "And who are really my mother and my brothers?"

3:34 And he looked round at the faces of those sitting in a circle about him.

3:35 "Look!" he said, "my mother and my brothers are here. Anyone who does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me."

according to mark 3:13-19

Jesus chooses the twelve apostles

3:13-19 Later he went up on to the hill-side and summoned the men whom he wanted, and they went up to him. He appointed a band of twelve to be his companions, whom he could send out to preach, with power to drive out evil spirits. These were the twelve he appointed: Peter (which was the new name he gave Simon), James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother (He gave them the name of Boanerges, which means the "Thunderers".) Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew,Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Patriot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

secrets and exorcisms/david

So with this passage we run aground on two issues.

First we meet with what scholarly commentators on Mark call the Messianic Secret. Jesus, as depicted in Mark deliberately conceals who he is, that is to say, goes forth performing all manner of miracles, and yet deliberately forbids disciples (and exorcised demons) from publishing his status as the Christ. There are a number of attempts by scholars to explain this behaviour and generally the historical critical scholars attribute this to Mark's narrative strategies and not to Jesus himself.

If they are right, then we have a Messiah, whose divinity was hidden not only from the people he came to reach but possibly also from himself. I find this theologically interesting. If Jesus was/is the Christ but didn't know it until very late in his ministry (if ever) then he becomes a powerful role model of acting on our leadings and best judgments even in the absence of certainty or complete knowledge. It also explains Gethsemane. Because if Jesus knew in an absolute omniscient sense that he was divinity incarnate, destined to be resurrected and glorified, then the whole passion narrative, from sweating blood in Gethsemane to his cry of pain on the cross -- makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.

And so I hold to a doctrine of incarnation that makes Jesus fully divine, but in becoming fully human, he emptied himself of the royal perogatives, including knowledge of his own divinity.

The second issue that messes with our (post) modern minds is exorcism. Can't help but see exorcism through the lens of Hollywood horror flicks with their pea soup and SFX.

If we see exorcism as narrative strategy then Jesus is mucking about exercising the very authority he's denying. If my Jesus, unaware of his divinity, that makes exorcism a social and religious practice -- something that we could expect ourselves a his disciples to be called upon to do as well.

So how to understand this? For me the notion that these folks just didn't get mental illness, and that exorcism is just another kind of physical healing -- but of brain events instead of body maladies -- doesn't work for me. I think these healings are seen as different in kind and degree to healing dropsy or blindness.

My way in is the powers and principalities theology taught by Berkhof, Stringfellow and Wink (among others). John Dominic Crossan also goes there to an extent. Exorcism then becomes a kind of emotional healing for those whose symptoms are caused by internalizing the social and political oppression in their society. It is both healing and psycho-drama and a witness to the established order that its rule is about to come to an end.

That model appeals to me. Partly as I have worked in a few workplaces that could use a good exorcist in that sense. Indeed. I know a few churches that could use a good exorcist. But that takes us back to Revelation. And we're reading Mark.

according to mark 3:7-12

Jesus' enormous popularity

3:7-11 Jesus now retired to the lake-side with his disciples. A huge crowd of people followed him, not only from Galilee, but from Judea, Jerusalem and Idumea, some from the district beyond the Jordan and from the neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon. This vast crowd came to him because they had heard about the sort of things he was doing. So Jesus told his disciples to have a small boat kept in readiness for him, in case the people should crowd him too closely. For he healed so many people that all those who were in pain kept pressing forward to touch him with their hands. Evil spirits, as soon as they saw him, acknowledged his authority and screamed, "You are the Son of God!"

3:12 But he warned them repeatedly that they must not make him known.

gospel according to mark 2:23-3:6

Jesus rebukes the sabbatarians

2:23-24 One day he happened to be going through the cornfields on the Sabbath day. And his disciples, as they made their way along, began to pick the ears of corn. The Pharisees said to him, "Look at that! Why should they do what is forbidden on the Sabbath day?"

2:25-28 Then he spoke to them. "Have you never read what David did, when he and his companions were hungry? Haven't you read how he went into the house of God when Abiathar was High Priest, and ate the presentation loaves, which nobody is allowed to eat, except the priests - and gave some of the bread to his companions? The Sabbath," he continued, "was made for man's sake; man was not made for the sake of the Sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is master even of the Sabbath."

CHAPTER 3

3:1-3 On another occasion when he went into the synagogue, there was a man there whose hand was shrivelled, and they were watching Jesus closely to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day, so that they might bring a charge against him. Jesus said to the man with the shrivelled hand, "Stand up and come out here in front!"

3:4 Then he said to them, "Is it right to do good on the Sabbath day, or to do harm? Is it right to save life or to kill?"

3:5-6 There was a dead silence. Then Jesus, deeply hurt as he sensed their inhumanity, looked round in anger at the faces surrounding him, and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand!" And he stretched it out, and the hand was restored as sound as the other one. The Pharisees walked straight out and discussed with Herod's party how they could have Jesus put out of the way.

discipleship/david

With the conversation evolving on spiritual disciplines and discipleship I would like to share that I have started to read a niftazoid little bit of scholarship called Patterns of Discipleship in the New Testament by Richard Longenecker. He's actually the editor. Its a collection of essays on discipleship as found in the New Testament writings. Chapter one is on Mark which I'm about to read and will share with you as I feel led. But I'm not reading these things in order.

I'm an undisciplined disciple.

I bought it in part as I'm interested in the topic and in part because I have read other scholarship by Longenecker and have been impressed. He wrote an amazing (to me) survey of how the New Testament authors exegete the Hebrew scriptures which completely blew me away. It was called Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period and I believe its out of print.

new wine/david

2:21-22 "Nobody," he continued, "sews a patch of unshrunken cloth on to an old coat. If he does, the new patch tears away from the old and the hole is worse than ever. And nobody puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine bursts the skins, the wine is spilt and the skins are ruined. No, new wine must go into new wineskins."

New wine in new wineskins. Fresh winds of the Spirit needs to distance itself from old church structures. It reminds me of manages concern about starting a new church/meeting/thingie. I imagine in the early days of Jesusianity when persecution flowed from the resistant synagogues and not the jackboots of the Roman Empire, these words were comforting. We are new wine. We need new wineskins.

For me, who tends to view doctrine functionally rather than propositionally, the question is always: how do we apply this? Do we use this to murder or create? And if create, then create what?

And I had never linking this wineskins trope to the fasting injunction. Fasting is for mourning. For folks who do not feel God's Spirit to bribe God, get God's attention by some symbolic act of sacrifice. Fasting is for dead souls who want to live not for living souls moved by the Spirit.

I cannot help but apply this to the whole emerging church thingie. And I am one foot in each world, liking some of what I see in this emerging church but also seeing a serious lack of charity and a refusal to acknowledge the accumulated wisdom of the previous generation. I especially see a rejection of the social gospel in emerging church circles. I see a deep longing for community and inclusion and empowerment in emerging church. A longing that needs to be fed. But I also feel a narrowness of spirit. And a confusion of packaging with depth.

Perhaps I see something to be recommended in old wine.

gospel according to mark

The question of fasting

2:18 The disciples of John and those of the Pharisees were fasting. They came and said to Jesus, "Why do those who follow John or the Pharisees keep fasts but your disciples do nothing of the kind?"

2:19-20 Jesus told them, "Can you expect wedding-guest to fast in the bridegroom's presence? Fasting is out of the question as long as they have the bridegroom with them. But the day will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them - that will be the time for them to fast.

2:21-22 "Nobody," he continued, "sews a patch of unshrunken cloth on to an old coat. If he does, the new patch tears away from the old and the hole is worse than ever. And nobody puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine bursts the skins, the wine is spilt and the skins are ruined. No, new wine must go into new wineskins."

housekeeping

I'm noticing a slowing of comments (in myself and in others). I know I can commit to posting a bible passage twice a week right through to the New Year. But my time and energy levels are such that reflective comments are going to be less than nada until at least the week between Great Arrival of the Fat Guy in the Red Suit and when Times Square drops the ball.

Can I suggest we drop this study group down to social chatter and season's best wishes until twenty-nought-seven?

Mark 2:14-17

I saw a page at Crieghton University's site on praying with our imaginations, or Ignatian contemplation - Contemplating the Call of Matthew ...

“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus saw Matthew, sitting at his customs table, Jesus must have seen how the people despised this tax collector. Jesus had to sense that this kind of resentment and rejection did things to a tax collector. He had to immediately feel compassion on Matthew and what it had done to him. Had it made him defensive and thick skinned? Had he become gruff and insensitive to others? Did he bark and push others away?

I imagine that the first thing Matthew noticed was how Jesus was looking at him. Could it have been that the first experience Matthew had of Jesus was that Jesus was simply looking at him in a way no one had ever looked at him? When their eyes met, Matthew must have seen love and compassion, not blame and judgment. Jesus did not look on him with hate and contempt. Jesus simply looked at him with care.

As I picture the scene, Matthew immediately sensed that Jesus somehow understood the predicament he was in. He got himself into this and he'd not been an attractive character at all. He played the role people had put him in. But, Jesus didn't fix him in that role somehow. Before he uttered a word, Jesus' eyes must have said to Matthew, "I know this isn't really you. I understand how much playing this role is distorting you, souring you, hardening you." It was as though Jesus' face, and the sadness it revealed, reflected the sadness in Matthew's heart.

"Follow me." The words must have made their ways straight to Matthew's heart. Never had his heart been so opened by such understanding, compassion and loving acceptance. For a moment, he must have thought, "Me? I'm just a ... I can't change ... I'm stuck here ... And, what'll they say about ..." But, those protests surely were replaced with something responding from deep inside that welcomed this call, this liberation, this vote of confidence more than anything in the world. Without a word, with their eyes still locked in that communication of intimacy, Matthew's heart said, "Yes! Amen! I'm yours!" Nothing else had a hold on him. There were no excuses, doubts or fears. Matthew had been healed as he had been called. His yes was his surrender to being loved.

Can we look up from our own custom table today and see Jesus looking at us with compassion and love? He knows and understands whatever has us locked into roles, images, patterns that aren't very attractive and that we don't really like about ourselves. Can we let ourselves experience and feel his love? On the other side of that loving acceptance, there's a freedom to imagine him calling us today, in our situation, and say "Follow me."

including the out caste

Gandhi -- it is said -- liked Jesus very much but found Christians a bit hard to deal with at times. The Jesus of the synoptic traditions -- Mark and Q -- builds his ragtag army out of the rabble that good clean folks would rather not associate with. He also seems to go out of his way to touch lepers and others that would contaminate him from a cultic perspective. I imagine that's what Gandhi found so endearing about him.

So, how do we, people of faith, cope with this witness today?

A minority of self-identified Christians (of which I am NOT one) have committed themselves to direct contact and interaction with the poorest of the poor. Mother Teresa and Oscar Romero are only two prominent names that most might recognize. But there are thousands of others who do not make the cultural radar including many whose motivations are ideological rather than faith-based, such as the Food Not Bombs networks.

But while these folks are legion they remain a minority. Christianity has become a quiet middle-class church rather than a ratty social movement. We deal with the poor and the sinners with social programs that alleviate the suffering but don't particularly include the out castes into our social circles.

Jesus did not feed the poor. He didn't create social programs, food banks, counselling centres. He hung out with folks, when to street parties, taverns and likely brothels.

When you give food to the hungry, they call you a saint. But when you ask why the hungry have no food, they call you a communist.

Dom Helder Camera

Gospel According to Mark 2:14-17

2:14 As Jesus went on his way, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at his desk in the tax office and he said to him, "Follow me!"

2:15-16 Levi got up and followed him. Later, when Jesus was sitting at dinner in Levi's house, a large number of tax-collectors and disreputable folk came in and joined him and his disciples. For there were many such people among his followers. When the scribes and Pharisees saw him eating in the company of tax-collectors and outsiders, they remarked to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?"

2:17 When Jesus heard this, he said to them, "It is not the fit and flourishing who need the doctor, but those who are ill. I did not come to invite the 'righteous', but the 'sinners'.

gospel according to mark 2:1-13

Faith at Capernaum

2:1-5 When he re-entered Capernaum some days later, a rumour spread that he was in somebody's house. Such a large crowd collected that while he was giving them his message it was impossible even to get near the doorway. Meanwhile, a group of people arrived to see him, bringing with them a paralytic whom four of them were carrying. And when they found it was impossible to get near him because of the crowd, they removed the tiles from the roof over Jesus' head and let down the paralytic's bed through the opening. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man on the bed, "My son, your sins are forgiven."

2:6-7 But some of the scribes were sitting there silently asking themselves, "Why does this man talk such blasphemy? Who can possibly forgive sins but God?"

2:8-11 Jesus realised instantly what they were thinking, and said to them, "why must you argue like this in your minds? Which do you suppose is easier - to say to a paralysed man, 'Your sins are forgiven', or 'Get up, pick up your bed and walk'? But to prove to you that the Son of Man has full authority to forgive sins on earth, I say to you," - and here he spoke to the paralytic - "Get up, pick up your bed and go home."

2:12 At once the man sprang to his feet, picked up his bed and walked off in full view of them all. Everyone was amazed, praised God, and said, "We have never seen anything like this before."

2:13 Then Jesus went out again by the lake-side and the whole crowd came to him, and he continued to teach them.

Mark 1:40-41

A leper came to him (and kneeling down) begged him and said, "If you wish, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, "I do will it. Be made clean."

Two interesting things about this reading ... one is that there's some question about the Greek word used to describe Jesus' emotion when he heals the leper ... the other is that Jesus touched the leper, when doing so would have made him "unclean" as well.

Here's some of a Sermonwriter article ...

V. 41 presents us with a difficult translation problem. Most manuscripts say that Jesus was filled with pity or compassion (Greek: splanchistheis), but others say that he was angry (Greek: orgistheis). Compassion makes more sense in this context, and some good manuscripts use splanchistheis. However, there are also reasons to read anger (orgistheis) here .... Jesus is trying to maintain a proper balance between teaching and healing, the two primary forms of his ministry in the first half of this Gospel. For the most part, people are drawn to him by his healing miracles, and often fail to see his deeper spiritual dimension .... The leper's plea forces him to choose between mission and compassion − to compromise one or the other ...

And ...

If Jesus can heal the man by touch, presumably he could also heal him without touching him. His touch seems reckless, because touching the leper should contaminate Jesus (both medically and spiritually). However, in this case, it is not the leper who is contagious, but Jesus. The leper does not transmit his uncleanness to Jesus, but Jesus transmits his wholeness and holiness to the leper and makes him clean (medically, spiritually, and socially) .... In this Gospel, we will read about Jesus touching or associating with other people in ways that would potentially defile him − tombs and swine (5:1-20); a hemorrhaging woman (5:25-27); a corpse (5:41); Gentiles and unclean spirits (7:24-26). In each instance, he transmits his wholeness and holiness rather than the other way around ...

Demons and Lepers

I was recently ambushed by a Nadine Gordimer quote: "The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms."

Roman-afflicted Israel was, and modern "America" is, in such a time. If Paul Goodman, writing in the early 1960's, described us as suffering from "unfinished business," what can we say for our current selves, except that we are heirs of all he meant and more?

As the gains of the 60's were rolled back, the long onset of the BGH Economy (Say "Moo!") began. When our rulers began talking of a "kinder, gentler" world, it was a timely reminder of the crueler, harsher (and infinitely pettier!) world they had in fact been imposing for one very long time.

Playing musical chairs for jobs--no longer hoping much for the advertised
'rewarding' careers, gradually settling for bait-&-switch at best--has psychologically deformed most all of us. For people who once hoped only for honest work and a tough-but-endurable life, the concept of what Buddhists call "right livelihood" has become an unimaginable, inaffordable luxury.

Self-images warp and shatter. Mania and depression are the twin sides of this coin. And for that lucky class of people in (more or less) beautiful cliffside homes... the many faces of denial.

The lepers are on your corners. They're a scurvy lot; I don't recommend kissing them. But you can't truly say they aren't your brothers and sisters.

An old, alcoholic friend has just gone over the edge; her little booze-devil isn't cute anymore, has started to tell her who's in charge and what she "has" to do. She doesn't want to hear how big it's gotten, how it will eat her if she doesn't put it down.

Pray for her? What does that mean? Pray God to make her do something she doesn't want to do? How many friends of alcoholics have prayed that futile prayer?--and what is the prayer we should pray instead?

A booze-devil is individual-size, obvious to everyone except the one afflicted. What other, larger, unrecognized devils leer out from kindly, oblivious eyes?

What is a devil? A conscious, malicious being? Or an angel twisted by our desires?

Does it order us to act like zombies? Or do we lull ourselves by dreams of mechanical efficacy?

The other night I was remembering my youth, how I'd done ever so many foolish things only to keep from clearly looking at myself. Last night I told some friends; they said, "Isn't that how everybody's youth goes?" Lucky if we've gotten past that, at all. Shouldn't we have compassion, for everyone with their heads still stuck in dark places?

We made it (to those dubious heights we now inhabit); there's hope for us all. Unlikely as it looks...

gospel according mark 1:40-45

Jesus cures leprosy

1:40 Then a leper came to Jesus, knelt in front of him and appealed to him, "If you want to, you can make me clean."

1:41 Jesus was filled with pity for him, and stretched out his hand and placed it on the leper, saying, "Of course I want to - be clean!"

1:42-44 At once the leprosy left him and he was quite clean. Jesus sent him away there and then with the strict injunction, "Mind you say nothing at all to anybody. Go straight off and show yourself to the priest, and make the offerings for your cleansing which Moses prescribed, as public proof of your recovery."

1:45 But he went off and began to talk a great deal about it in public, spreading his story far and wide. Consequently, it became impossible for Jesus to show his face in the towns and he had to stay outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from all quarters.

in the grip of an evil spirit

The significance of this figure to me is as a type of me (and perhaps you) or of the nation to which I (we) belong.

Theologically we serve God-- or the devil (there's certainly a grey area, on the fence, indeterminte, some good, some bad). But what I (we) do less than God is readily seen as an evil spirit.

I am many- Legion. Or more properly Legion is within me. It causes me to cut myself on the stones: the law, preconceived notions of what is good for us (but not for them). Separating ourselves from the rest of the world like all those with evil spirits do.

Thankfully we, too may be blessed with the healing seen in this story. I have been so blessed, am being blessed, and will be blessed. Hurrah!

gospel according to mark 1:35-39

He retires for private prayer

1:35-37 Then, in the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a deserted place, and there he prayed. Simon and his companions went in search of him, and when they found him, they said, "Everyone is looking for you."

1:38 "Then we will go somewhere else, to the neighbouring towns," he replied, "so that I may give my message there too - that is why I have come."

1:39 So he continued preaching in their synagogues and expelling evil spirits throughout the whole of Galilee.

teaching with authority/david

Why he even gives his orders to evil spirits and they obey him!

I notice a parallel with my favourite passage in Mark. The calming the sea miracle recorded in 4:35-41 -- which opened my kwakersaur blog 2 years ago -- ends with Jesus' very disciples saying:

Who ever can he be? - even the wind and the waves do what he tells them!

Now that I've read Berkhof and Stringfellow as well as Wink I can see clearly that evil spirits and forces of nature were not seen as significantly different kinds of critter to Jesus' contemporaries. These were the powers and principalities, the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil (Ephesians 6).

But that just nuances the core issue for me. The crowds (and later is very disciples) just don't get it. They accept him as a teacher, they are amazed at his miracles, they don't get that he has authority over the forces which oppress their lives.

Authority is important here. It maps to my earlier discussion with crystal on omnipotence. In these stories (unlike for example the story of the woman healed of a blood issue, Mark 5:24-34) it is not some supernatural power that Jesus has that allows him to work miracles but a superhuman authority. He doesn't impose his will in some psychic power kind of way. He speaks, and the forces of destruction submit.

I know I sometimes split hairs in these scripture studies but I think this time the distinction is important. Its important in a political way. Judea is occupied by two Roman legions; it has become a province of a world empire whose emperor demands worship as the incarnation of a god. Jesus' power is not the power of an individual centurion with simply a bigger nastier sword. It is the authority of a world emperor, who commands and the individual centurions obey. Indeed, he commands even those in rebellion against him, and they obey.

It is significant in another way. One I have not integrated into my spirituality as yet. It is implicit in Mark's second prologue:

These signs will follow those who do believe: they will drive out evil spirits in my name; they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up snakes, and if they drink anything poisonous it will do them no harm; they will lay their hands upon the sick and they will recover.

It is explicit in the gospel of John:

I assure you that the man who believes in me will do the same things that I have done, yes, and he will do even greater things than these, for I am going away to the Father. Whatever you ask the Father in my name, I will do - that the Son may bring glory to the Father. And if you ask me anything in my name, I will grant it.

and

You will find trouble in the world - but, never lose heart, I have conquered the world!

Since Jesus' power is an authority over the forces that oppress us, then we too as his followers have such authority. I have not figured out how to exercise that authority. And I have not figured out how to integrate it into my basic spirituality, which is one of consecration and kenosis: not my will, but thy will be done.

gospel according to mark 1:21-34

Jesus begins healing the sick

1:21-24 They arrived at Capernaum, and on the Sabbath day Jesus walked straight into the synagogue and began teaching. They were amazed at his way of teaching, for he taught with the ring of authority - quite unlike the scribes. All at once, a man in the grip of an evil spirit appeared in the synagogue shouting out, "What have you got to do with us, Jesus from Nazareth? Have you come to kill us? I know who you are - you're God's holy one!"

1:25 But Jesus cut him short and spoke sharply, "Hold your tongue and get out of him!"

1:26-27 At this the evil spirit convulsed the man, let out a loud scream and left him. Everyone present was so astounded that people kept saying to each other, "What on earth has happened? This new teaching has authority behind it. Why he even gives his orders to evil spirits and they obey him!"

1:28 And his reputation spread like wild-fire through the whole Galilean district.

1:29-31 Then he got up and went straight from the synagogue to the house of Simon and Andrew, accompanied by James and John. Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a high fever, and they lost no time in telling Jesus about her. He went up to her, took her hand and helped her to her feet. The fever left her, and she began to see to their needs.

1:32-34 Late that evening, after sunset, they kept bringing to him all who were sick or troubled by evil spirits. The whole population of the town gathered round the doorway. And he healed great numbers of people who were suffering from various forms of disease. In many cases he expelled evil spirits; but he would not allow them to say a word, for they knew perfectly well who he was.

christology/scripture (david)

I cast down the gauntlet so to speak. So here goes.

I became a Christian in November of 1982. At the time and for some time following I found it very important to direct my prayer toward the God of Jesus. I remained agnostic on Christ's divinity -- not because I doubted but because I felt my call clearly to be to the God Jesus revealed and to Christ as his revealer. Overtime I have become more explicitly Trinitarian (Tri-unitarian) mostly by osmosis. I'm mean Trinitarian is the default position of Christianity and without strong reasons/incentives otherwise that's where a Christian ends up.


Then I ran into ran into Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1: The Doctrine of the Word of God. Instead of trying to reason his way into faith through what is called Natural Theology or Philosophical Theology he starts with the core fact God's self-revelation in Christ Jesus. His Christology is logically prior to his doctrine of reconciliation. You have to have studied Protestant theology to know how truly radical that move is. He starts with revelation qua revelation even before the content of that revelation. And suddenly this troublesome notion of God, three persons in one Godhead which I sort of embraced knowing full well that it was utterly incoherent -- suddenly it made sense to me.

christology

What I have is a Quaker peculiarity. I hold to what church types call a "high christology". As Barth would say, Christ Jesus was fully human, fully God, and fully God-man. Now my friend Larry is squirming in his boots. Because everytime I affirm the divinity of Christ he feels a need to qualify it. Yes Jesus is divine, but so are we all. They taught us at AVP everything before a "but" is a lie.


Like Larry I affirm that doctrine all but lost to Protestantism, theosis. We're all on the God-track. Salvation doesn't just mean escaping the horny guys with pitchforks -- it means becoming divine. And that offer that opportunity and that reality is available to all of us. So we both affirm universal theosis. And maybe just maybe this theosis extends to the universe itself and not just everybody in it.

But in the meantime, I know I'm not quite there yet. I'm not even fully human let alone fully divine. And that goes for anyone I know or have heard of including those I love most in this world. So while we're all human and divine, Christ Jesus is human and divine in a different way I cannot fully articulate -- only that this difference remains important for me to affirm.

I'm going through a time of foment right now. Not sure where its taking me. The name(s) I call God in prayer and in public suddenly aren't working for me any longer.
Time will tell where it takes me. Maybe I'll pack it all in and become a cyber-Daoist.

scripture

If my christology is high my doctrine of scripture is low. The bible is a collection of ANETs: Ancient Near Eastern Texts. What marks it a different from other ANETs is simply that it is held to be scripture by a fluid cluster of interrelated sects calling themselves Christian.

I do not deny the spiritual validity or utility of other scriptures -- Daodejing, Quran, Torah, Analects. But I also note these are not my scriptures. I come to them as an outsider. I'm presently a practitioner of the Christian path and I can only read other people's scriptures in light of that practice. Reading is always done form within a tradition or set of (often conflicting) traditions.

I also affirm with Karl Barth (and early Quakers), that our scriptures, are faithful witnesses to the Word of God. I also affirm with Karl Barth, that when reading them in faith, seeking the Word they bear witness to, they become the word of God to/for us. I have experienced it. But for me it is not the Bible but the Word that has the authority and power. And faith has to be there prior to the reading.

David's Questions: Our personal notions of scripture and Christ

I don't think I can talk about the nature of scriptures without talking about revelation.

And I can't talk about Christology without talking about what it means to be "a human being."

Getting down to the nitty-gritty of it, how does Creation happen? Much as poems are "written," or plants grow. We live in our dream.

What is there to dream us?

Given the miracle that anything exists at all--that there is spirit to live this story--I'm inclined to believe the notion that God intrinsically exists. If it were possible for God not to exist, there would not be any existence, any being to experience the nothingness that wouldn't be anywhere--but my experience contradicts that alternative (and so does yours!)

God "became" us because that was the only way we could have any reality whatsoever.

The Whole Thing is within us, within each of us, and so is whatever we call "the outside world." But is not limited to that.

We experience our moment-to-moment existence. This could be, as in a dream, a succession of (seemingly) unrelated images, but instead we have continuity, the past morphing into the future--So something holds it all together, and whatever that is--is beyond our conscious self. Whatever that is, it is not some brute unreasoning "subconscious," not a mental working that's less conscious than we are but obviously something conscious of much more. I can imagine no limit to it.

And yet it has "peopled" itself into this universe. It is not possible to exist without being, intrinsically, It itself. And thus it loves us "as we love ourselves." If we are hungry to know the truth, it feeds us. But it's such a bewildering truth, and we're so little.

Scripture is our baby food.

Is it "the Truth"? How can words or letters be true or false, except as we translate them into our minds? Scriptures nourish the truth growing in us, if we chew them and digest them properly. Like what we might tell a child who wants to know, "Why is the sky blue?"

"Inspiration is not dictation." We can read scripture (like anything in this world, but particularly scriptures) as containing messages addressed to us. The passage we need (like anything else in this world) is likely to come to our attention at the appropriate moment, when it will be most helpful. At best, scripture is written by people in a state of communion with God, but it is not written by infallible people, nor can it make us infallible. It is merely one form that our mental/spiritual "daily bread" can take.

Is Jesus "just another human being," then? Yes. But what is a human being?

Is Jesus sent by God to let us know what God is like? Yes.

Is God like Jesus in character and personality, then? That appears to be the message.

son of God?

Often it's illuminating to look for the original meaning of a religious phrase. Often you find that it's been distorted beyond recognition--but then you also find that the new meanings it's taken on have an illuminating power of their own.

So. The "Son of God" once meant simply the "King of Israel," period. Like "the Son of Heaven" was ruler of China.

To call someone a "son of" anything can merely mean that he somehow resembles whatever he is "son of." Like the "Sons of Thunder." But there's also that metaphorical family relationship.

Jesus led us to understand ourselves as "God's children." Outside of John, he doesn't go around sounding like: "I'm the Son of God and you're not." He tells us to look on God as a good father to us, to trust God, depend on God, love and obey God, not as a ruler or a boss but as one truly akin to us.

Ursula Le Guin in _The Lathe of Heaven_ quotes from Chuange Tse XXIII:

"Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn it by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason..."

The good news for us is that we are all God's children in this sense.

But if we don't believe this... then we don't believe it.

It's hard to help someone who's too busy struggling, dispairing, or frantically maintaining denial of imagined horrors. And for the "wicked," mercy can look a lot like wrath.

{A friend of mine, counselling men whom courts had referred in cases of wife-beating, found many of them utterly unrepentant, sure that what they'd done was entirely right and proper. All he could do for some was to pray. At the moment he was praying for one particularly bad example, the man was on his way to his wife's with every intention of killing her. The police caught him on the way, and he ended up spending a long time in jail, time enough to think things over and sort them out differently. Our jails and prisons are a scandal, an accustomed atrocity, institutions that should be abolished. But the effect, this time, was good.}

Theological types have gotten fond of calling God "wholly other." This is valid in the sense of "wholly unlike our habitual selves"--even when our habits are good ones. But we can understand God better as "wholly akin." Wholly akin to what is deepest in us, most alive, most creative and unexpected.

gospel according to mark 1:14-20

Jesus begins to preach the gospel, and to call men to follow him

1:14-15 - It was after John's arrest that Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the Gospel of God, saying, "The time has come at last - the kingdom of God has arrived. You must change your hearts and minds and believe the good news."

1:16-17 - As he walked along the shore of the Lake of Galilee, he saw two fishermen, Simon and his brother Andrew, casting their nets into the water. "Come and follow me, and I will teach you to catch men!" he cried.

1:18 - At once they dropped their nets, and followed him.

1:19-20 - Then he went a little further along the shore and saw James the son of Zebedee, aboard a boat with his brother John, overhauling their nets. At once he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and went off after him.

temptations/david

Mark's tradition doesn't specify the temptations. We just don't know. The traditions that do specify can for the present purpose be taken to be an alternate Christology.

Mark presents Jesus encountering the Holy Spirit in an ecstatic experience of the heavens being sundered and a voice claiming you are my dearly-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!

This is a secret event. Jesus hears and sees. No one else does. This troubles the author of John's gospel who transfers the vision to the Baptist so an outside source can witness to Jesus' sonship to Heaven.

For Mark the immediate effect of the immediate result of the descent of the Holy spirit, the sundering of the heavens, the adoption of Jesus by God -- is for the Holy Spirit to drive Jesus into the wilderness to be tested by the satan.

The Holy Spirit does this. And during this time no one was with him but wild animals, and only the angels were there to care for him.

Such is the inward life of the Christ. Sent into harm's way by the Holy Spirit. To be tested by the Evil One. This is what it means to be a son of God. This is what it means to be led by the spirit.

What's Jesus Doing In the Wilderness?

1:12-13 Then the Spirit sent him out at once into the desert, and there he remained for forty days while Satan tempted him. During this time no one was with him but wild animals, and only the angels were there to care for him."

"Forty days," of course, is one of those phrases that sounds more specific than it is. "Somewhere between a couple weeks and a couple months," then. But this is more or less parallel to forty years of Exodus; Jesus has just been given title to the Promised Land, but he needs to spend some time wandering in the wilderness on the way. Since the Jews under Moses got uppity, kvetched and came close to mutiny, Jesus gets tempted by Satan.

Since Jesus has just been awarded a potential death sentence, he's got very practical reasons for leaving civilization awhile. We don't know how conspicuous his anointing was. There's the example in 2 Kings 9: "Then Elisha the prophet called one of the sons of the prophets and said to him: 'Gird up your loins, and take this flask of oil in your hand, and go to Tamoth-gilead. And when you arrive, look there for Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi, and go in and bid him rise from among his fellows, and lead him to an inner chamber. Then take the flask of oil, and pour it on his head, and say: "Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel." Then open the door and flee; do not tarry.' " This happens; Jehu then dashes out to massacre the former king and his family and all available supporters. Although Jehu's situation and response were quite different, Jesus too could have been anointed secretly, even in private.

There is no specific list of temptations in this (probably) first gospel. Perhaps Jesus recounted the experience in the course of his ethical teachings, to be eventually incorporated into "Q", and hence into Matthew and Luke. Since he is not shown explicitly fasting here, but like Moses depending on God for his sustenance, this would fit with what he says in Matthew, to not be concerned about what we'll have to eat, drink, or wear, and how.

Perhaps not. There are plenty of literary and theological explications, of why Satan would choose these particular temptations; we can't assume however that they are any more authentic than the appropriate speeches that historians customarily composed for prominent figures. Napoleon's General Cambrone was asked to surrender at Waterloo, for example, and was quoted as saying, "The Old Guard dies but never surrenders," while according to Hemingway he answered simply, "Merde!" (Known at "le mot de Cambrone" among polite Frenchmen of Hemingway's day.)

John Yoder in _The Politics of Jesus_ said: "All the options laid before Jesus by the tempter are ways of being king." But Yoder was assuming that Jesus shared in God's omnipotence, and could feed multitudes as often as and whenever he chose. Becoming a wholesale dispensor of manna would have brought Jesus a following, but not one of much use against Roman soldiers. It would put him into an awkward intellectual position: preaching "Food, drink, and clothing are of little importance," to an audience hanging around waiting to be fed. To a modern Christian, it suggests some stereotypical secular charity, meeting people's physical needs while offering nothing whatsoever for their presumed spiritual hungers. It makes a nice religious-sounding criticism of the so-called "Welfare State" ideal (which was certainly more Christian than the current system of malign neglect.) Mainly, it does not seem to have been what God ordered.

The other two alternatives seem like opposites. One would have involved a foolhardy form of "trust," going immediately to the Temple in Jerusalem to claim his kingship directly ("cast himself down from the top"), trusting God to save him from the consequences. But this was not what Jesus was led to do. That would have been acting on the idea of "Trust in God"--but without consulting God about it, which would have constituted "testing God" rather than acknowledging God as a living reality with ideas of his own.

The other would have been to accept Satan's help. This could mean any of several things.

One, to "work within the system" by seeking Roman approval. Could the Romans have accepted a new client king? Probably yes; the Herodians were not Jewish, which made their rule illegitimate in many people's eyes. The trouble was, there was an inherent conflict between Roman interests and those of the local population. And the Roman commercial economy was incompatible with the demands of the Torah. So "working with" both God and Caesar was out of the question.

Two, to use "Satan's methods." It may not technically violate the Golden Rule for warriors to kill each another, both sides willing to fight--but it is not love by any plausible definition. God's rule allows for war, even uses war, but can't be based on war. Previous rulers of Israel had swords and soldiers; David had been "a man of blood," an effective one at that. But while David would ask the Lord, "Should I go up?" to a fight, his successors would count the swords on either side and make their own decisions. Dependence on military force leads inexorably towards worship of military force.

Three, then, would be any effort to rule by "one's own power"--not just by military calculation, but by putting faith in any use of personal cunning or wisdom (of which Jesus had an abundance!)

Jesus could not rule by a heedless "faith" in God, nor by faith in his personal powers, nor by any "balance" between the two. He would need to use all the powers he'd been given and to also depend utterly upon God; only God could make this either possible or worthwhile.

Mark 1:12-13

N THE WILDERNESS

CHRIST of His gentleness
Thirsting and hungering
Walked in the wilderness;
Soft words of grace He spoke
Unto lost desert-folk
That listened wondering.
He heard the bitterns call
From the ruined palace-wall,
Answered them brotherly.
He held communion
With the she-pelican
Of lonely piety.
Basilisk, cockatrice,
Flocked to his homilies,
With mail of dread device,
With monstrous barbed slings,
With eager dragon-eyes;
Great rats on leather wings,
And poor blind broken things,
Foul in their miseries.
And ever with Him went,
Of all His wanderings
Comrade, with ragged coat,
Gaunt ribs--poor innocent--
Bleeding foot, burning throat,
The guileless old scape-goat;
For forty nights and days
Followed in Jesus' ways,
Sure guard behing Him kept,
Tears like a lover wept.

- Robert Graves

NT parallels for Jesus' testing/david

Of the four gospels only Matthew and Luke agrees with Mark that Jesus was tested in the desert, and then Matthew, expands the account to provide details of that testing. We also have confirmation in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Both are provided here for your consideration. The translation is JB Phillips.

Gospel According to Matthew

4:1-2 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit up into the desert, to be tempted by the devil. After a fast of forty days and nights he was very hungry.

4:3 "If you really are the Son of God," said the tempter, coming to him, "tell these stones to turn into loaves."

4:4 Jesus answered, "The scripture says 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God'."

4:5-6 Then the devil took him to the holy city, and set him on the highest ledge of the Temple. "If you really are the Son of God," he said, "Throw yourself down. For the scripture says - 'He shall give his angels charge concerning you,' and 'In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone'."

4:7 "Yes," retorted Jesus, "and the scripture also says 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God'."

4:8-9 Once again the devil took him to a very high mountain, and from there showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their magnificence. "Everything there I will give you," he said to him, "if you will fall down and worship me."

4:10 "Away with you, Satan!" replied Jesus, "the scripture says, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only you shall serve'."

4:11 Then the devil let him alone, and the angels came to him and took care of him.

Gospel According to Luke

4:1-2 Jesus returned from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit and he was led by the Spirit to spend forty days in the desert, where he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during that time and afterwards he felt very hungry.

4:3 "If you really are the Son of God," the devil said to him, "tell this stone to turn into a loaf."

4:4 Jesus answered, "The scripture says, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God' ."

4:5-7 Then the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of mankind in a sudden vision, and said to him, "I will give you all this power and magnificence, for it belongs to me and I can give it to anyone I please. It shall all be yours if you will fall down and worship me."

4:8 To this Jesus replied, "It is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only you shall serve'."

4:9-11 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem and set him on the highest ledge of the Temple. "If you really are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down from here, for the scripture says, 'He shall give his angels charge over you, to keep you', and 'In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone'."

4:12 To which Jesus replied, "It is also said, 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God'."

4:13 And when he had exhausted every kind of temptation, the devil withdrew until his next opportunity.

Epistle to the Hebrews

4:14-15 Seeing that we have a great High Priest who has entered the inmost Heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to our faith. For we have no superhuman High Priest to whom our weaknesses are unintelligible - he himself has shared fully in all our experience of temptation, except that he never sinned.

4:16 Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with fullest confidence, that we may receive mercy for our failures and grace to help in the hour of need.

gospel parallels for Jesus' baptism/david

The baptism of Jesus is recorded in all four gospels with considerable agreement of details. These are posted for your consideration. The translation in JB Phillips.

Gospel According to Matthew

3:13-15. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to prevent him. "I need you to baptize me", he said. "Surely you do not come to me?" But Jesus replied, "It is right for us to meet all the Law's demands - let it be so now."

3:16-17. Then John agreed to his baptism. Jesus came straight out of the water afterwards, and suddenly the heavens opened and he saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and resting upon him. And a voice came out of Heaven saying, "This is my dearly-loved son, in whom I am well pleased."

Gospel According to Luke

3:21-22 When all the people had been baptized, and Jesus was praying after his own baptism, Heaven opened and the Holy Spirit came down upon him in the bodily form of a dove. Then there came a voice from Heaven, saying, "You are my dearly-loved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

3:23a Jesus himself was about thirty years old at this time when he began his work

Gospel According to John

1:29-31 On the following day, John saw Jesus coming towards him and said, "Look, there is the lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world! This is the man I meant when I said, 'A man comes after me who is always in front of me, for he existed before I was born!' It is true I have not known him, yet it was to make him known to the people of Israel that I came and baptized people with water."

1:32-34 Then John gave this testimony, "I have seen the Spirit come down like a dove from Heaven and rest upon him. Indeed, it is true that I did not recognize him by myself, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me this: 'The one on whom you will see the Spirit coming down and resting is the man who baptizes with the Holy Spirit!' Now I have seen this happen and I declare publicly before you all that he is the Son of God.!"

gospel according to mark 1:9-13

The arrival of Jesus

1:9-11 It was in those days that Jesus arrived from the Galilean village of Nazareth and was baptised by John in the Jordan. All at once, as he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens split open, and the Spirit coming down upon him like a dove. A voice came out of Heaven, saying, "You are my dearly-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!"

1:12-13 Then the Spirit sent him out at once into the desert, and there he remained for forty days while Satan tempted him. During this time no one was with him but wild animals, and only the angels were there to care for him.

Marked

For those who like pictures with their stories, there's a graphic novel of the gospel of Mark ... Marked. Mark Goodacre had a post about it on his NT Gateway Weblog some time ago :-)

history with an edge/david

Forrest points out that "gospel" was in the ancient world a technical term with a different sense than we use it today:

Specifically, a gospel was the announcement that a new Roman Emperor, a new "savior", had agreed to govern the world in exchange for whatever wasn't actually nailed down.

"Gospel" then is being used ironically. It is also being used to proclaim a different kind of gospel with a different kind of good news and thus a different kind of world empire. And a part of what we face, if we can see it, is that Mark confronts us with the fact that this game of world empire hasn't changed all that much in 2000 years -- even when played by folks who own the name "Christian" who say their prayers at night, when the wolfsbane blooms and the moon is full and bright.


What this points out is that even Mark, the apparently simplest and most straight forward of the gospels is not simply chronology: it is history with an edge. It has an agenda. One of the advantages of reading, say Revelation, is that the agenda is pretty much naked at the party. Mark is more like that country bumpkin lawyer who seems to be stumbling in his homespun ways meanwhile leading the witness and the courtroom into a cul de sac.

One such agenda item seems to be the status of John the Baptist. Mark sets him up as the last of the old style prophets, a fulfillment of HaShem's promise through Isaiah, one who called the Roman subject state of Judea to cleansing and righteousness. Mark then places on John's lips:

There is someone coming after me who is stronger than I - indeed I am not good enough to kneel down and undo his shoes. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

It seems likely therefore, that one of the target audiences of this gospel is the followers of John the Baptist who have not yet joined The Cause: who have not yet become disciples of the disciples of Jesus.

As the old maps used to say: here there be dragons

gospel according to mark 1:1-8

1:1 - The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God .....

1:2-3 - ... begins with the fulfilment of this prophecy of Isaiah - 'Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you'. 'The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight' .

1:4-5 - For John came and began to baptise men in the desert, proclaiming baptism as the mark of a complete change of heart and of the forgiveness of sins. All the people of the Judean countryside and everyone in Jerusalem went out to him in the desert and received his baptism in the river Jordan, publicly confessing their sins.

1:6-8 - John himself was dressed in camel-hair, with a leather belt round his waist, and he lived on locusts and wild honey. The burden of his preaching was, "There is someone coming after me who is stronger than I - indeed I am not good enough to kneel down and undo his shoes. I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit."

JB Phillips translation

Retreating From Revelation

Okay, we're moving on. We weren't quite ripe for Revelation; we leaped ahead to the happy ending before we left, with a lot of questions unsettled. I still hope we come back to this someday.

There's one of those scholarly ‘consensus'-es that Revelation was written as merely a religious pep talk for early Christians facing persecution. There is that element; the threat of persecution was obviously on the author's mind, and a key refrain here is that those who keep the faith get richly rewarded, while bad stuff happens to those who don't. That reading makes the whole book pretty trivial, not much to say about it–and so we've treated it.

The happy ending came along, and that should make everybody there celebrating happy enough, but it isn't at all clear how they arrived and why we haven't yet.

Unsettled questions, probably unraised questions. If we're Christians, and Christianity is based on Judaism, what do we make of the prophets' understanding of history? The Apocalypse is the one book of Christian scripture that applies something remotely like the prophets' tacit view of things. We can treat the book as "inspirational," in which case we find most of it more disturbing than inspiring. We can use it to point fingers, as people have been doing ever since "666" became a numerical word-game. If we imagine "prophecy" means merely "prediction," we can mine it for hints of how God plans to whup us next year.

Or if we're looking for that, we can seek ways to better understand God and our own collective situation. The "meaning of human history," as people generally interpret that scroll with all the seals.

Is "Stuff happens" the governing mechanism of the world? Can we rely on?–or must we settle for?–human progress, techniques of political lobbying or grass-roots organizing, framing of issues, creative nonviolent actions like the ones we did last war, some other notion or gimmick to make the world come out better rather than worse? One strong message of this book–one of the things that makes it so very unpopular–is that we can't do that. Whatever your saving gimmick, it isn't the rock and you can't build there.

People keep trying to build Jerusalem and ending up in Egypt, until God finally pulls the rabbit out of the hat. I still don't understand: Why that rabbit, that hat, that time?–rather than sooner or later?

If the message is to "Just trust God," why is God shown teaching it by wars, plagues, famines and earthquakes? What makes The Beast seem the most interesting character here, the Whore the one seemingly most fun to party with?

If we don't like scarey, violent stories full of bad people and disasters–why do people choose the news and entertainment they generally do watch or read?

We don't like to think of God as responsible for the yucky bits–but monotheism demands that God must be. This, however, is hard to square with our knowledge of God's goodness–which is not a matter of intellectual interest alone, but tied to our whole orientation toward life. Do we get to honestly consider it a good thing?

I understand this aspect of Revelation as stemming from the truth of Buddha's statement--that life (as an ego) is suffering.

Without a felt mystical connection to God, life is inescapably tragic.

But then God–from the very depths of our souls-- rains plagues on us, to bring us out of Egypt, that "narrow place" of slavery we imagine to be our only possible home.

2007 Annual Events - Spiritual Directors International

Forgive me for what amounts to shameless self-promotion (but else is a blog for anyway?)

In April of 2007 an international conference will be held in Richmond British Columbia (that's in Canada). The conference is for Spiritual Directors International. I've been a member since 2003 (4?) though I am not a practising Spiritual Director myself. I attended one of their conferences in the past (when it came to Toronto) and while I enjoyed it -- I was also the lone Quaker.

I'm delivering a workshop entitled "Money Work and Identity". It will not be so much on offering spiritual counsel as understanding the dynamics of people in financial crisis and how that may relate to offering them spiritual counsel. I credit this participation in part to a Friend. A number of years ago she recommended my name to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting as someone who might write an article on rendering pastoral care to folks in financial crisis. This workshop will take that article and expand it to include issues of unemployment.

Here is a link to the brochure with the list of workshop offerings: SDI 2007 (pdf file -- Adobe Acrobat Reader required).


I'll be planning and prepping the next few months. Keep me in your prayers.

A New Heavens and a New Earth

The consensus seems to have moved to the Gospel According to Mark. So I will begin posting passages from that gospel in a more or less regular rate starting next week. I thought it sad somehow to leave off this book in the muddle of plagues and disasters, before the decisive battle, kind off like getting all the way to Frodo in Shelob's lair in LOTR and laying the books aside. So here, for weal or ill, is the Revelation 21:1-22:5.

Revelation 21
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and lying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.

And the one who was seated on the throne said, See, I am making all things new. Also he said, Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.

Then he said to me, It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.

And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The angel who talked to me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width; and he measured the city with his rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, one hundred forty-four cubits by human measurement, which the angel was using. The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel; the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass. I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day-- and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Revelation 22:1-5
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

housekeeping

Okay, though Quakes go by sense of the meeting and not by vote we still have a tally. Larry votes we bail and move on to the Gospel of Mark. Forrest wants to stick it out with Revelation but will bail if Revelation means he'll be the only one posting.

I can't guarantee Forrest won't be the only one posting. I've abstained thus far and Crystal hasn't said anything. Yet.

I'm heading back into Revelation unless I get an overwhelming response otherwise. I won't get a chance to post before the weekend likely.

I don't feel as strongly as Larry that this text is devoid of wisdom. Luther felt the same way about James, James is my fav biblical tome, James started this blog in the first place.

At the same time -- I'm really not finding a lot to say. And even Forrest, who does find stuff to say, does so by posting long tracts from commentaries (mostly Ellul) which means those who've found the Apocalypse enlightening are is some ways more enlightening than the Apocalypse.

The point however -- we're coming into the pay off. Reading to this point is kinda like buying tickets to an all-you-can-eat rib-fest and ordering a garden salad and leaving.

Judgement

From one of my poems on another site...

"...Don't demand peace
or call loudly for justice.
Beg mercy; our nation's trial
is now in the sentencing phase..."

This has been on my mind for a very long time. It's a cliche when people say they don't want some particular American atrocity "done in my name." It's a cliche because it happens and happens over and over again.

There's a crash coming. We've worked hard for it; we deserve it; and unless all the signs of our times have just been kidding, we're going to get it.

I don't want to carry this discussion all by myself; I didn't join up here to be a blog of my own. But we can't quit now; Babylon ain't even fallen yet.

This book takes the justice of the Hebrew prophets and ups the ante. Yahweh was just angry because he loved his people and they weren't giving him the attention he wanted. That's a very human thing. What we've been getting here is more like Yahweh vs Pharoah. ~'Plagues coming, armoured locusts tomorrow followed by occasional fire-breathing horses, clearing by sometime next year.' The specific details may have been symbolic of something in our condition, but mostly we get this impression that God doesn't like us. And that puts people off; I can't blame them for that.

Jacques Ellul keeps finding love, hope, and good stuff in all this.

In my own life, so far as I feel myself part of this world, I find a continuing tension between love and hope vs the vast public spectacle of corruption triumphant.

Jacques considers the powers beaten, from the moment of Incarnation... "But they still have a considerable force among men. They can cause men to perish; upon the earth they can accuse and destroy.

"Why then this delay?... Why is there not an immediate and total victory of God? ... First of all, if there were a total victory, this would be once more the expression of the absolute, unlimited power of God. Once more there would be a competition of powers. Now this explosion of power is exactly what the Tempter proposes. He continually provokes God to combat. But if this takes place, God is no longer love.

"The way decided by God in the Incarnation is the triumph of love; but precisely this love which gives itself, abandons itself, delivers itself up, is not that which kills....

"But the other aspect of this delay... is the time of testing for humanity; the time of the desert... In other words, the issue here is knowing if man is going to follow Jesus, is going to enter into the plan of God, is going to accept this unity with God.... The time of the desert is the time when man is deprived of all his natural resources, the possibilities and protection of civilization, when he is truly 'unchained', but with all the risks that that involves. The time of the desert is that when man has strictly no other support, no other assurance than the grace of God."

Maybe you don't feel yourself in that position yet?

Certainly, as I've been trying to say elsewhere, this is not testing us "to see if we make the cut" to get into the best neighborhood in the Afterlife. Perhaps the attempt to pass ourselves through such a test may help us see the absurdity of the very idea.

This is a spot quiz, not for the grade but for learning. Are we in unity with God yet? Not entirely? Why not?

This reminds me a little of my first notion of Friends, many years ago, that we all would march around obeying our consciences in perfectly idolatrous, triumphant integrity. I went to the nearest worship group, sat there a few minutes, felt a presence standing by the door, asking: "Forrest! What are you doing, trying to hide with the good people?"

I think I have learned to know God much better, since then. And it has never gone quite as I've expected.

How can we be under Judgement?--as I feel we must be--and yet be loved, held safe, protected even from our own inadequacies? Because we've bribed the Judge. Because the Judge is (among other things) the Defendents. Because the object of this trial is not to punish us, but to lead us toward doing that one right thing, to put our trust in God at work in and around us, at this and every moment.

still much for discussion--if we're up to it (?)

While we're still here...

You left out verse #14: "The second woe has now passed. But the third is yet to come."

It's rather difficult to pinpoint what that third woe is. Jacques Ellul thinks it's the Incarnation. God becomes a mere human, thereby resigns his absolute power over the universe.

I don't think this Greek distortion of a Hindu notion had entered the author's essentially Jewish mind. For him, as for Paul, I think Jesus is still up there "at the right hand of God," in the royal favor and enjoying ultimate authority, but still distinct from God. But Jacques Ellul, thousands of years later, finds the doctrine there, and who can say that God is only active in the writing?--and not in our later misunderstandings...?

"To the exact degree that the man Jesus is in perfect and constant accord with the will of the Father, that it is not a matter of servile obedience to the law but of perfect response of love to love, to the degree that Jesus is constantly free to be other than God and never-the-less is constantly the voluntarily expression of the will of God, then there is no longer any possible role for [the] powers...
There can no longer be accusation of men before God or separation of men from God (and that is why Jesus is designated the Savior.)

"But these powers are not abolished. They have only lost their decisive power, their power to prevail and to establish definitively chaos or rupture. For a rupture on the part of God--meaning that God would reject humanity--would end in him condemning himself and would be a victory of the powers.

"When there is talk, somewhat thoughtlessly, of the judgement of God, with condemnation and damnation for certain men (and for some theologians, the immense majority of men) it is completely forgotten that this would be not the expression of the justice of God but, rather, the success of the infernal powers. If God condemns, he does what Satan suggests. If he delivers the creation to destruction, the Devil has finally succeeded in his work of breaking decisively the relation between the Creator and the creation. Thus the 'apocalyptic' judgement, which is too often depicted, is not at all the realization of the justice of God but of the victory of the infernal powers.

"And we note in passing that the justice, which (it is declared) demands the judgement of God, is in reality a juridicial concept issuing from the interpretation of the Roman law. That has nothing to do with what the Old Testament calls justice, nor with what Jesus shows us as being the justice of the Father (by example, the workers of the eleventh hour or the parable of the talents.)"

The Time Has Come

the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing-wax --
Of cabbages -- and kings --
And why the sea is boiling hot --
And whether pigs have wings."

We have come to a point in our original agenda, where we would reconnoitre the lay of the land so to speak and determine whether or nay we might continue in this project. Methinks energies have dropped off -- though blogger has been on the fritz on and off for about a week and commenting may have been difficult. So maybe I misread the circumstances.

Kindly check in with how we be with Revelation. And if some other tome would move you -- suggest it.

Seventh Trumpet Sounds/Revelation 11:15-19

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and voices could be heard shouting in heaven, calling, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.

The twenty-four elders, enthroned in the presence of God, prostrated themselves and touched the ground with their foreheads worshipping God with these words,

We give thanks to you, Almighty Lord God, He who is, He who was, for assuming your great power and beginning your reign. The nations were in uproar and now the time has come for your retribution, and for the dead to be judged, and for your servants the prophets, for the saints and for those who fear your name, small and great alike, to be rewarded. The time has come to destroy those who are destroying the earth.

Then the sanctuary of God in heaven opened, and the ark of the covenant could be seen inside it. Then came flashes of lightning, peals of thunder and an earthquake and violent hail.

Cecil B. DeMille eat your heart out

Revelation 11:1-14

Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, "Come and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample over the holy city for forty-two months. And I will grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy for one thousand two hundred sixty days, wearing sackcloth." These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. And if anyone wants to harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes; anyone who wants to harm them must be killed in this manner. They have authority to shut the sky, so that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have authority over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire. When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that is prophetically called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days members of the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb; and the inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and celebrate and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to the inhabitants of the earth. But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and those who saw them were terrified. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, "Come up here!" And they went up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies watched them. At that moment there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe has passed. The third woe is coming very soon.

prophetic calls

What jumps out at me from this reading -- and especially the last paragraph (eating the book) -- is the theophany from Isaiah. So I post that here as well for reference.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.

And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!"

Revelation 10

And I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He held a little scroll open in his hand. Setting his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, he gave a great shout, like a lion roaring.

And when he shouted, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down."

Then the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it: "There will be no more delay, but in the days when the seventh angel is to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God will be fulfilled, as he announced to his servants the prophets." Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, "Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land."

So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll; and he said to me, "Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth." So I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. Then they said to me, "You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and languages and kings."

idolatry/david

But the rest of the human race, who escaped death by these plagues, refused either to abandon their own handiwork or to stop worshipping devils, the idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood that can neither see nor hear nor move. Nor did they give up their murdering, or witchcraft, or fornication or stealing.

Issues come and go. Today commentators are quick to say that whatever the bible means by idolatry, it isn't what Hindus of good conscience do as they practice their devotions, or what Eastern Orthodox folks as they pray before icons or Roman Catholics and their devotion to the saints -- no none of that is idolatry.

And I want to agree. Of the few Hindus I've met they seem like fairly nice friendly folks. I've met even fewer Easter Orthodox, but I've met a fair number of Protestants with icons in their homes. I have a modern print handing on the wall intended to be a contemporary icon. As for Catholics with their cults of the saints, I have met quite a few Catholics, and while they have all been flawed human beings, they have not been any more flawed than the Protestants I've met. So I'm not altogether sure what all the fuss is about.

Past generations have not felt this way. Iconoclasm was a movement that in its extreme expressions went about smashing religious images in churches. The modern austerity of Quaker meetinghouses is the end product of that movement. We are wise to not altogether disown it -- at least until we full appreciated it.


For me the idols of this world are corporate logos and national emblems. Golden Arches. Canadian Tire. Calvin Klein. The Gap. Exxon. It troubles me to see national flags displayed in church sanctuaries. This because these are representations of the powers and principalities that overrule us.

And yet. This attitude is a very liberal Christian kinda attitude. It too is socially constructed. I point my finger -- power principalities idolatries -- at all this stuff and conveniently turn a blind eye to what my own devotions to the powers that constrain my life. Where am I then?

Sixth Trumpet Sounds/Reveleation 9:13-21

The sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a single voice issuing from the four horns of the golden altar in God's presence. It spoke to the sixth angel with the trumpet, and said, 'Release the four angels that are chained up at the great river Euphrates.'

These four angels had been ready for this hour of this day of this month of this year, and ready to destroy a third of the human race. I learnt how many there were in their army: twice ten thousand times ten thousand mounted men. In my vision I saw the horses, and the riders with their breastplates of flame colour, hyacinth-blue and sulphur-yellow; the horses had lions' heads, and fire, smoke and sulphur were coming from their mouths. It was by these three plagues, the fire, the smoke and the sulphur coming from their mouths, that the one third of the human race was killed. All the horses' power was in their mouths and their tails: their tails were like snakes, and had heads which inflicted wounds.

But the rest of the human race, who escaped death by these plagues, refused either to abandon their own handiwork or to stop worshipping devils, the idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood that can neither see nor hear nor move. Nor did they give up their murdering, or witchcraft, or fornication or stealing.

Jacques Is Back!

Jacques Ellul saw this whole section of trumpets and woes as the center of Revelation. "It is there that we must situate what follows: in particular the judgment, because the judgment and the end of the world cannot be read or understood except in terms of the judgment which has fallen upon the Son of God; and those who are condemned in the final destruction are not men but the rebellious powers who are described for us in the central section, upon whom men depend and whom men represent only figuratively. It is indeed the action of these Satanic powers that in every circumstance provokes death in the Apocalypse, and not at all, never directly, the action of God upon men....

"Before studying the 'plagues' in the perspective that we have indicated, it is necessary to make at least two remarks. The first is that each act of God in Jesus Christ implies an aspect of catastrophe for the men enclosed in the world, in solidarity with the world, separated from God, and in conflict with him. Man is so much the prey of the powers, so closely associated with their work, enjoys himself so thoroughly to their profit, desires so much all that they offer, conceives his life to such a degree separated from God, that every approach of God, every positive work of God, appears to him as an unacceptable disturbance and finally an attack upon him. When God comes to deliver him, he does not at all perceive his liberation; he protests against the breaking of those marvelous objects, which are his chains or the doors of his prison, the adored chains....

"The second remark is that since Jesus Christ incarnates all humanity... all that which happens to him is in reality a catastrophe for the entire human race... But also, inversely, all that happens to humanity is in reality that which falls upon Jesus... Thus we must never read the plagues and judgments of the Apocalypse outside of this perspective of perfect, absolute, unbreakable association between Christ and men--all men, those of the past and of the future, those of all races and religions: man, the sole and unique Adam, come from the hands of the Father with his billions of possibilities, which are the billions of our visages."