Category: Living in The Story blogs

Some years ago, a young man came to my pastor’s office looking for a new church. We talked for a while and I learned the story of his struggle with alcohol addiction. He was already active in an AA group but he believed a church community might also help turn his life around. I called the pastor at a nearby community church to find out more about their recovery program and it sounded like a good fit for this man who was living life on survival mode. We stayed in touch for several months; I often wonder how he is doing now.

Sometimes some people need rules, structure, clear definitions. This makes sense to us when we are raising our children; independence and healthy self-sufficiency can only come through a process of growing through stages and practicing living within some kind of protective environment. This makes sense to us when we remember our own journey toward maturity.

Continue reading “The Law of the Lord”

Matthew probably wrote his gospel around the year 90. That’s about sixty years after Jesus; sixty years from the time of the life of Jesus to the time of Matthew’s telling of the story. Have you ever thought about what happened during those six decades that may have shaped Matthew’s version of the gospel?

None of us knows for sure, of course, but scholars do a good job of uncovering clues and offering helpful theories about how the writings of Scripture were composed and edited and placed together to form the Christian Canon. Here are some very broad brushstrokes:

• Jesus walked and talked and lived and died as a Jew in Palestine around the year 30, and even while he was alive, stories about him began to circulate. After his death, Jesus’ people were passionate to continue to tell the stories and share their faith that Jesus was, in fact, the one whom God had sent: the Messiah, the Christ. Some of these faithful Jews told stories of his teachings, some told about his miracles; some people repeated his parables and some made sure the story of his martyrdom was well known near and far.
• It was around the year 35, that Saul the Pharisee (while persecuting these Jesus people) was encountered by the Risen Christ on a road to Damascus. Then Saul-turned-Paul began a significant and far-flung mission to non-Jews, the “Gentiles.” Paul traveled extensively and wrote letters that reflected the understanding of the meaning of the Christ event from his Pauline perspective.
• Around the year 70, Mark wrote the first gospel. Mark may well have created this genre, this type of writing that communicated the good news about the Christ in a manner very different from the isolated stories of the oral tradition and the letters from the Pauline tradition. Mark gathered together many of the various stories of miracles, parables and teachings and wove them into a chronological narrative.
• Also around the year 70, the Jewish people in Palestine were embroiled in a war with Rome. The land was devastated and Jerusalem was leveled. This is when the great Temple was destroyed and still has not been rebuilt to this day. Because of the destruction of the Temple, Judaism was in turmoil. The Temple sect (the Sadducees, previous movers and shakers of Israel) lost power and the Pharisees stepped into the leadership void. Jews who did not believe Jesus was the promised Messiah were increasingly in tension with their fellow Jews who did accept Jesus as the Christ. In some cases, Jewish Christians were ousted from their synagogues and the bitterness grew.
• Around the year 90, Matthew took Mark’s gospel with its basic outline and chronology and added other Jesus stories from the various oral traditions. There is a birth narrative and a Sermon on the Mount, for example (both rendered quite differently between Matthew and Luke, by the way). Probably Matthew and his community came from Antioch in Syria far to the north of Jerusalem. Probably Matthew and his tradition were closely aligned with Peter and possibly at odds with the tradition advocated by Paul. It’s likely that Matthew and his community continued many Jewish practices as they accepted Jesus as their promised Messiah.

An account of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham…

Matthew 1:1

Thus Matthew begins his story. From the opening words, Matthew places Jesus squarely in the middle of his Jewish tradition. Jesus is Messiah, Christ, the One Anointed by God to speak and act definitively in God’s name. He is son of David, the great king. He is son of Abraham, the father of all nations. From the opening to the close of Matthew’s story, Jesus is the faithful Jew living totally in God’s will.

Besides placing Jesus within the tradition of Abraham and David, Matthew also fixes Jesus firmly in the line of Moses. Throughout Matthew’s gospel, there are numerous comparisons between Moses, the Law Giver, and Jesus, the one who fulfills, completes, affirms and accomplishes the Law. (Some of those associations are discussed in another Living in The Story blog: The Law of the Lord.) Just as there are five books in the Pentateuch (the Books of Moses) so there are five major discourses of Jesus in Matthew. Just as Moses experienced significant events on mountaintops, so Jesus is pictured on the mountain of the great sermon, on the mountain of transfiguration and on the mountain of his farewell in the final verses of Matthew’s story. The coupling of Jesus and Moses gives a telling insight about Matthew’s Christology, his understanding of the Christ.

Besides seeing Jesus as the one who fulfills the Law, Matthew also sees Jesus’ whole life as fulfilling the whole of Scripture. Some 61 times in 28 chapters, Matthew quotes the Hebrew Scriptures directly. Numerous other times, he paraphrases and alludes to sayings and images that come from the Old Testament: 294 allusions, more than ten in each chapter. Since Matthew is steeped in his tradition of Judaism, as he reflects on the life of Jesus and the meaning of the Christ event in light of the ancient Scriptures, he cannot help but see connections. This is the framework within which Matthew tells The Story.

And it is a story beautifully told. The fact that this gospel is placed first within the Canon of the New Testament says something about the way it was honored by the early Christian community. The Gospel according to Matthew bridges the gap between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures. Matthew introduces Jesus as the one who continues the tradition of Abraham, Moses and David while at the same time transforming the tradition, opening it up to non-Jews. Now the call for Abraham’s descendants to become a “blessing for the nations” has become – in Jesus Christ – a reality.

Besides being our most “Jewish” gospel, Matthew also is the most “churchly” gospel. Mark and Luke and John say nothing about the ekklesia, the called-out community that came to be known as “church” but Matthew uses the word twice. Of course all the gospel writers are telling the story to their various congregations from within their various traditions, but it’s interesting to see the way Matthew places the later reality of his church community within the story of Jesus a generation earlier.

That’s a good reminder that all of the gospels are written with a kind of dual vision: both the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus can be recognized in the telling of these stories. The Jesus of the gospels is always both the 30 A.D. Jesus and the Crucified and Resurrected Christ.

It’s also a good reminder that none of these gospels was written to offer objective history. Matthew (and the other writings of the Bible) are confessions of faith, written by believers for believers. Instead of objective history, think of them as theological history or historical theology. In this way of understanding canonical sacred storytelling (whether some of these events happened in time and space or not), the stories still speak deep and profound truth. The stories tell us something immensely true about the God made known in Jesus the Christ and something very true about ourselves.

Matthew ends his story on a mountain with the resurrected Jesus giving final instructions to his disciples:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

• The Jesus who fulfilled the Law is now the final authority in heaven and earth.
• The Jesus who emerged from a particular people and a specific tradition is now the Christ for all the nations.
• The Jesus who died is now with us always – to the end of the world.
• And for Matthew, the Spirit of the Risen Christ continues to speak within and to the church.

My thanks to my teacher and friend, Dr. M. Eugene Boring. His commentary on Matthew in The New Interpreters’ Bible (volume 8) has been very helpful. (Abingdon Press, 1995).

What does this mean, Amma?

What does what mean, dear one?

Baba says we need to kill my lamb tonight. I love this lamb. He’s my friend. Why does he have to die?

Oh dear one, I know this is hard. But dying is part of living. Everything that lives dies sometime. People need to eat so we can live, and your lamb will help us live and grow strong. When we have our special supper tonight, we will give thanks for the life of your lamb.

Baba says it’s a special night. Why is tonight different from any other night? What does this mean?

Come here, my child. Let me tell you a story. Long, long ago we were slaves in Egypt. It was a very bad time. Many people died. Many in our family were hurting and sad and afraid. We cried out to God, and God heard our cries and rescued us. The Lord brought us out from Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm; the Lord saved us with marvelous signs and wonders.

Tonight we celebrate Passover. Tonight we remember.

I remember the story, Amma, but sometimes it scares me. I don’t like the part about the frogs.

I know that sounds scary, dear one. But think of the story this way: the Lord our God is Creator of the entire universe and God intends for all the created beings to live in wholeness and shalom. So imagine how all God’s creation – maybe even frogs – joined together to fight against our oppression and to help deliver us.

The Lord our God loves us and will do anything to save us.

When we tell the story today all these years later, we also remember how God delivered us from captivity in Babylon. In every Passover, we remember all the ways God hears our cries and rescues us.

At Passover, we remember God’s past salvation and we put our hope in God’s future redemption.

And remember this: whenever we tell the story about the frogs and the other awful things that happened, we tell it with sadness. We will dip our finger into the cup of salvation tonight and remove one drop of wine for each plague: Blood, Frogs, Lice, Darkness
, Death.

Our joy is less whenever we remember the suffering of others – even the suffering of our enemies. Our salvation is not completely full until all people can be free.

But Amma, my lamb! Why does this lamb have to die?

He is the Passover lamb, dear one. When we share this meal your lamb will provide for us, we will share life together. We will remember that we are one family, one people of God. When our ancestors put his blood on their doorposts, they were marked as God’s people who had placed themselves under God’s care. Just as the Lord our God made covenant with our fathers – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – now God has made covenant with us – an entire people – and has bound us together as family, bound us together with blood.

In his death, the Passover Lamb gives us life.

Baba took me to Jerusalem today and I saw a man. He looked at me. I think he likes me. But we heard some people say he has to die.

Amma, what does this mean?

****************

Dr. Lance Pape teaches preaching at Brite Divinity School and often speaks and writes about the process of remembering. A good preacher, he would say, helps God’s people remember. He commented on this particular passage from Exodus in a recent lecture and he noted:

The practice of remembering God’s deliverance from slavery is so integral to Israel’s identity that instruction for the ritual reenactment of the decisive night is actually interwoven with the telling of the event itself. The original narrative depiction of Passover deliverance is already infused with the charge to remember the wrongs suffered, to remember God’s rescue, and to remember it all rightly.

Whether the liberation from Egypt is a story that is set in time or one of those deeply true stories that transcends time, no one will ever know. But its power continues to give life and hope to oppressed people in every age.

Oppression of any kind (the story suggests) is never God’s will. God’s way is liberation, freedom, wholeness, life – and God is ever at work in the world bringing life. This call to “remember rightly” includes the call to remember the wrongs done by and to the human family and to stand boldly in opposition – as Moses did – to any abusive power; to stand against all the Pharoahs of the earth.

And the call to “remember rightly” includes the memory of the Passover lamb.

The Passover lamb is strength for the journey; it is the one around whom the community gathers, the sharing of whose life binds the community together. It is celebration and sustenance. This is the meaning for the sacrificial lamb.

Here is the a strong tradition that weaves throughout the biblical texts: the tradition of community and covenant.

• Abraham killed the fatted calf to welcome his angelic guests.
• The father killed the fatted calf to welcome home his prodigal son.
• Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, signifying them as part of his kinship community.

The Passover lamb represents to us the covenant that God has initiated with all of us unlikely people; the life God is willing to share with us; the community God intends to build in us.

Dr. Pape develops this theme in his lecture:

The Lord’s Supper is a re-imagining of the Passover meal in which Israel is helped to rightly remember the events of Exodus.

And Christians are called to “remember rightly” the events of the cross. Even today, as our Jewish brothers and sisters gather around the Seder table and recite these words: “WE were slaves in Egypt …” So each Sunday, Christians acknowledge our slavery to sin and brokenness.

“On the night he was betrayed…” begin the words of institution.

When we say these words in our own ritual reenactment, we remember that it was Jesus’ friends who betrayed him. And when we remember rightly, we understand how WE share in that same failure, still betraying and denying and abandoning the One who feeds us and transfuses us with his own life.

But even so (Pape says) we are invited to come to the Table to share his torn body as the bread of reconciliation, and to take wine on our lips as the seal of a new covenant in his shed blood … Christians are taught how to remember rightly by the one who chose to remember his own terrible wrongdoing in a way that brings reconciliation and new life.

Dr. Lance Pape, unpublished lecture

This image of Passover re-imagined; this mystery of the Lamb that was slain reigning now and forever as Lord of all; this picture of God creating a community of redeemed and reconciled people with broken bread and blood of the covenant; this invitation by the Crucified and Risen Christ, beckoning all of us wounded and scarred people with his own nail-scarred hands – all this draws us to the Table.

And Christ’s Table is open to all.

Living in The Story readings for Week 8: Exodus

Exodus 1-15

Psalm 24

Psalm 90

Psalm 105

Mark 11-16

Ephesians

I don’t know if it’s because of the Broadway musical or because of Sunday School stories long ago, but it seems like a lot of people know at least a little bit about the story of Joseph. Maybe it’s his Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.

Maybe it’s all the bad things that kept happening to this really nice person: the betrayal by his jealous, callous brothers; slavery in the far away land of Egypt; betrayal again, injustice, prison, hopelessness… How these numerous wrongs must have festered in those long dark nights of Joseph’s suffering!

But then – by a series of odd circumstances – Joseph comes into the favor of the king and is raised to unimaginable prestige and power in his “adopted” land of Egypt. This is great story telling: a strong lead character who faces multiple challenges to his deep moral core; a panoply of interesting villains; unlikely plot twists; Technicolor dreams, poetic justice, reconciliation and a happy-ever-after-ending.

But one thing that comes to mind when I read Joseph’s story is: how on earth was he able to forgive such injustice and betrayal?

If you have ever been hurt deeply, you know it is not easy to forgive.

And you know it may not happen quickly. Forgiveness is a process; it must be engaged with intention and attention. In order to truly forgive, we must begin with the willingness to even want to enter into the process of forgiveness. We first have to be willing to want to forgive before we can hope to make it to the actual act of forgiveness.

And it helps to enter the process of forgiveness keenly aware of how very badly WE need to forgive; how forgiveness is for us as much (or more) than it is for the other person.

You have heard the old saw “forgive and forget” but I will argue that is not only impossible, it is also unwise. God may be able to forgive and forget but that’s not usually how it works for us humans. Experiences that have been seared into our souls leave indelible marks that change us in deep ways, and because we are human, those events stay with us; some things we just cannot forget.

Besides, I think there is something biblical and wise about remembering: remembering who we are and where we come from and what we’ve learned along the way. I believe a key part of faithful and wise living is our remembering – remembering even past hurts.

For one thing, remembering honors the pain we have borne. We don’t dismiss it and downplay it because betrayal hurts and the remembering of it acknowledges how damaging and deadly sin can be. When we remember, we do not stuff our feelings or dismiss that hurt. Rather we honor the significance of the wrong that has been done to us. We grieve the damage done to relationship; we grieve the loss of trust. We don’t say it’s okay, that it doesn’t matter, because it does matter. It matters to us. It matters to the health and to the witness of the entire community. It matters to God.

For another thing, in our remembering we hold each other accountable to right behavior and Christ like living. We don’t make excuses for people who have hurt or harmed someone else; we don’t let them off the hook. Destructive behaviors need to be exposed and confronted. Healing happens in the light; toxic festering is what happens in the darkness of denial.

Have you ever been hurt by a minister? Me too.

Have you ever been hurt by Christians? Me too.

Have you ever hurt someone else and broken faith with another who trusted you? Me too.

Right remembering not only recollects the wrongs done to me, it also remembers how easy it is for me to inflict hurt on others. Right remembering makes us wise and keeps us humble.

Continue reading “Forgive and Forget ?!?!”

Most likely, Mark’s was the first gospel. Some scholars even believe Mark invented the gospel genre and provided the basic framework that both Matthew and Luke followed twenty years later.

Mark’s story is bold, quick and on the move.

Mark’s Jesus is bold, controversial and focused.

Mark begins the story of Jesus with an incomplete sentence: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” In a way, his opening functions as a title.

Later when Jesus was baptized, a voice spoke from heaven: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Mark’s Jesus is again referred to as “son.”

“… out of Egypt I called my son,” the God of Hosea proclaimed centuries before, signifying Israel as the first to be called the “beloved son” of the Most High.

So now what did it mean for Mark and his Christian community to say that this Jesus is the “son of God?”

For Mark “son” is a category of being.

When Mark uses this word to refer to Jesus, he’s not suggesting that Jesus is the next generation of God like we think of our sons and daughters.

Also it is not a term that designates gender, rather “son” in this context means one who belongs to a particular type, a particular category.

Jesus comes from the classification: “God.”

Jesus exists within the category of being: “divine.”

For Mark, Jesus as “Son of God” suggests that Jesus is truly God.

But Mark’s Jesus is of another category as well because all throughout his gospel, Mark speaks of Jesus as the “Son of Man.”

Jesus comes from the classification: “human.”

Jesus exists within the category of being “mortal.”

For Mark, Jesus as “Son of Man” suggests that Jesus is truly human.

Mark’s Jesus throughout this brilliant narrative is always “both-and.” Mark’s Christology (Mark’s way of talking about the Christ) sees him as both fully human and fully divine.

Mark’s Jesus shows us who God is.

Mark’s Jesus teaches us who we are—who we are meant to be.

As Mark tells The Story in his gospel he tells us truth, deep and profound truth, but he tells this indescribable truth in beautiful, simple stories.

We don’t know whether all these stories happened in history the way Mark tells them; probably not. Mark’s way is a theological story telling: he assumes the flesh and blood reality of the man Jesus of Nazareth but his gospel ponders what it means that heaven intersected earth in the life of Jesus.

It is meaning that is significant for Mark: Who is God? Who are we? Why does this matter? What does this mean?

Later Christians will grapple with this “truly human-truly divine” mystery and attempt to distill it into creedal statements. Later Christians will let its theological nuance divide them into camps. Later Christians will imagine they could come up with neat explanations and contain such truth in well-defined boxes.

But Mark is wise enough to recognize how indescribable this mystery actually is. So when Mark grapples with this “truly human-truly divine” conundrum, he does it with story.

Mark’s gospel is simple and complex. It is clear and also filled with ambiguity. It’s straightforward and multilayered.

Like every good story, Mark’s Gospel stays with you and won’t let you go.

One thing that stays with you is the odd way the people in the story just don’t get Jesus. Mark’s Jesus is misunderstood at every turn. “Who IS this?!?” the characters in Mark’s story say again and again.

But we who are listening in to the story; we who are watching from the audience, get to overhear the narrator set the stage; we hear the storyteller telling us more clearly about this Jesus who is Son of God, Son of Man. Unlike John the baptizer and the other disciples, we the audience can hear the voice that Jesus heard, the voice that split the heavens:

You are my Son, my Beloved.

Most of the other characters in the story Mark tells don’t have that divine perspective. But strangely, interestingly, the demons called Jesus of Nazareth the “Holy One of God …” (1:24). Interestingly, courageously, the centurion confessed the crucified Jesus as Son of God (15:39).

But no one else got Jesus during the entire telling of Mark’s story because of Mark’s brilliant rhetorical device that contemplates the mystery of the truly human-truly divine One.

We call this the Messianic Secret.

Jesus as Messiah/Christ—anointed and appointed by God to reveal God and to bring the kingdom of God—is known only in the way of the cross.

Jesus as Son of Man/Son of God—truly human and truly divine—is known only in the resurrection.

Any effort to get Jesus by any other means than faith and faithfulness, trust and entrusting ourselves to the Way of Christ is totally inadequate.

So as you read Mark’s Gospel and ponder Mark’s Jesus, ask yourself two questions:

1) “What does this Jesus show me about who God is?”

2) “What does this Jesus teach me about what it means to be truly human?”

Read slowly. Take your time. Stop when something strikes you as important and just think about it for a while. Pray. Trust that God is still speaking.

Trust that this God who is Creator and Sustainer, who is the Beginning and the End of The Big Overarching Story of creation is always also writing something new and wonderful and mysterious into each one of our individual stories.

The Gospel of Mark is a great read and a good way to get to know more about the good news of Jesus Christ.

From the prophet’s call to prepare the way of God; from the voice splitting the heavens and declaring favor on the beloved Son; from the message of Jesus proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of God has come near, all the way to the abrupt, open-ended, uncomfortable close of the Gospel according to Mark (16:8) – it’s all only the beginning of the good news, Mark tells us.

Mark’s Jesus is always “going ahead” and disciples are always called to follow. The women at the tomb, Peter and the other disciples…there are countless stories of what God has done and is doing in countless lives – including our own.

As Mark’s story transitions from the story of the crucified Jesus to the mystery of the resurrected Christ, we readers realize we are no longer observers sitting in Mark’s audience.

The Story is not over.

The Gospel according to Mark sees US as written into The Story. It is we who are challenged to “go and tell,” to be witnesses of the invisible, inscrutable reality of the risen Christ. WE have become participants in the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Man.

Make time to watch Alec McCowen’s brilliant recitation of Mark, now available on YouTube