Faith Seeking Understanding

When you read through Leviticus you surely will notice what an odd book it is.

  • In Leviticus you will read detailed accounts of which animals are clean and can be eaten countered by which animals are unclean and should not even be touched.
  • You’ll read specific instructions about which parts of the calf or goat are to be turned into smoke after they have been sacrificed and which parts are to be roasted and served to the priests and their families for dinner.
  • You’ll read the descriptions of the High Priest’s ceremonial clothing; even his linen underwear!
  • And you’ll read lots and lots about blood.

Why on earth does the church of the 21st century read this odd and ancient text? How on earth is this the “Word of the Lord” for us Moderns?

Continue reading “Faith Seeking Understanding”

Psalm 69

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me…

Psalm 69 is the longest and most complex of the laments.

As in all the psalms (as in all of life), there is juxtaposition of complaint and praise, of pain and confidence. This Both/And experience of crucifixion and resurrection reminds us that faith endures and sustains because of the eschatological hope for God’s promised redemption.

More in number than the hairs of my head
    are those who hate me without cause…

The images of this psalm are vivid as they describe the flood of overwhelming persecution. In the understanding of the psalmist, the tortures are unjustified and unjust. He remains faithful in the midst of the faithlessness of his tormentors and argues that his own troubles have come to him because of his trust in God.

Continue reading “Psalm 69”

Three Days in the Belly

On many an Easter morning, we wipe tears of joy as we share in the baptism of some of God’s precious children. Easter is a perfect time to celebrate baptism because for us Christians, it pictures death and resurrection.

That’s what this life with Christ is all about: dying to ourselves, admitting we can’t save ourselves, recognizing our own helplessness, giving ourselves over to the Source of all life – The Life that burst from the tomb on that Easter morn long ago – so that, in our own dying we too trust we will find new life.

Baptism gathers up all this multitude of meaning and symbolizes all this mystery.

Death.

Resurrection.

We see hints of it even in the little story of Jonah tucked away in our Old Testament.

You remember Jonah. It’s a wonderful story, a kind of parable about human folly and divine mercy. In the story, Jonah is called by God to preach repentance to his mortal enemies (not at all a pleasing assignment) so he promptly boarded a ship that was headed in exactly the opposite direction. But then a great storm rose up out of the chaos of the sea and threatened to swallow the ship and everyone on it, and Jonah figured out that he had not been very successful hiding from God. He convinced the sailors to toss him overboard so that they might save themselves. Sure enough – immediately the sea grew calm while Jonah sank into its depths.

But God had a surprise waiting for Jonah. A mixed blessing was ready for him.

A great sea creature gulped him down and saved him from drowning. And here is Jonah – in the belly of the beast – for three long days and three long nights.

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And we hear Jonah’s prayer from the deep darkness: 

Out of the belly of Sheol I cried and the Lord heard my voice.

The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me, weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains.

And yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God.

When Jonah finally was able to die to himself and his own plans and schemes; when he admitted he couldn’t save himself; when he recognized his helplessness and gave himself over to the Source of all life, then the Lord spoke to the sea monster, and it spat out Jonah onto the dry land.

In the Gospel of Matthew, there is an odd exchange between Jesus and some religious folks who wanted Jesus to prove he was the Messiah. “Give us a sign. Give us proof that you are the Anointed One of God,” they demanded.

But Jesus answered them: …no sign will be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth .

Matthew 12:39-40
The sign Jesus offers is an odd one, don’t you think?

Jonah’s sign – Jonah in the belly for three days. Jonah in the depths of the sea, at the roots of the mountains, with the seaweed wrapped around his head. This is a good sign? How can the sign Jesus offers as hope be something that comes from our most hopeless situations?

I’m guessing most of us live much of our lives in the belly of some monster or another. Disease that swallows up all our energy and sucks us dry. Broken relationships that break our hearts and overwhelm us with grief or anger or loneliness, A job that sometimes feels like a black hole with no glimmer of light and air. Financial worries that flood us with fear and anxiety. Death itself: those whom we have loved, hands we have held, lips we have kissed, sunken into the dark places of the earth.

But it’s there, right there in the despair that we find God at work.

And sometimes we discover – like Jonah did – that the belly of the beast actually saved us, kept us, preserved us for a time and gave us a chance to see life from a different perspective.

It is good for us to stare death in the face, to acknowledge our finitude, to recognize the fragile and temporal nature of our living. It is good for us to be challenged to turn away from putting our trust in our own selves and to turn toward God – depending on God’s strength, God’s wisdom, God’s power for our living.

It is good to remember that God is God and we are not.

And it is good to remember that God is constantly at work creating life out of death. Sometimes we take life for granted; it’s hard to see God working on behalf of life when we are living pretty well and we think we have everything under control. But when we find ourselves in the belly of a monster, we know what dying feels like. We remember how hopelessness can wash over us like mighty waters as we sink deeper and deeper into despair.

That’s when we hold on to the sign of Jonah because if we are watching for the signs and signals Spirit is weaving into every hopeless situation, we will be able to see God’s glimmer of light in our every darkness; and we will be able to hold on to hope.

Jonah’s sign also reminds us that our own “three days” in the belly of the beast will not go on forever. In the language symbols of the Bible, “three days” means: “whenever the time is right.”

  • Whenever the soil and the seed discern it’s time for the sprout to push up towards the sun.
  • Whenever the womb and the baby discern it’s time for labor to begin.
  • Whenever the Spirit moves.

Whatever it may mean that God’s time is “right,” that’s when one thing passes and another comes into being. It’s good to remember that our days in the belly are not forever.

We can trust this because life itself teaches us that winter will pass and spring will always come; because the flowers bloom again and the frogs sing again and because the darkest night will always fade into the bright light of day.

But there is yet another reason we trust, we believe, we hold onto hope.

Because The Story of Scripture confesses that there was a time in human history when God broke in and disrupted the normal cycles of living and dying. There was a time that the sign of Jonah pointed to when the Spirit of Life reached into the tomb after three days in the belly of the monster and defeated its power. There was a time when – in the power of the resurrected life of Jesus Christ – death died.

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And so hope lives.

And so we are Easter People.

Whatever the belly of darkness and hopelessness that swallows us or those we love, we hold onto this hope – that the God of Life is constantly at work creating life out of every death.

Christ is risen.

Christ is risen indeed.

Living in The Story readings for Week 13

Jonah

Psalm 18

Psalm 66

Psalm 69

Matthew 26-28

2 Corinthians 12-13

Psalm 118

O give thanks to the Lord, for the Lord is good;

God’s steadfast love endures forever!

Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”

Let the house of Aaron say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”

Let those who fear the Lord say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”

Psalm 118 begins and ends as several praise psalms do: alluding to the formulaic understanding of Yahweh’s steadfast love to the thousandth generation (i.e. forever.)

This affirmation of God’s steadfastness is followed by three stanzas recalling times of trouble, perilous times, events in which Yahweh intervened and “became my salvation.” Here is a psalm of New Orientation, a prayer of praise and confidence that – no matter what – God is at work in the world and in love with his people.

Continue reading “Psalm 118”

As You Read. Weeks 12 & 13. Esther and Jonah.

As you read the fascinating books of Esther and Jonah, think of them as within the genre of short stories or novellas. Watch the way the storyteller sets the plot and develops the characters. Listen for the historical context: they both are told within the real history of Israel.

Consider how these stories address the core eternal questions: Who is God? Who are we as God’s people?

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The story of Esther and her uncle Mordecai are tales from the Diaspora.

After the Exile, many of those who had been forced to leave their homes in Palestine made new homes in Babylon. After their release, many of the Jews returned to rebuild their devastated country but many Jews and their descendants built new lives in foreign lands all over the world.

(During the time of Jesus, there were probably more Jews living in Alexandria Egypt than there were living in Jerusalem. And remember the stories you’ve heard about the Jews Paul encountered on his missionary journeys; Jews were well-established citizens in cities all across the Roman Empire.)

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In spite of this wide spread presence and the good intentions of Jews to be good citizens in their adopted nations, history (as well as current events!) document repeated pogroms and periods of persecution against the Jews. A popular Jewish saying even in our day is: “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.” That’s the Esther story in a nutshell.

Continue reading “As You Read. Weeks 12 & 13. Esther and Jonah.”

If I Perish, I Perish

Several years ago, my husband Jerry and I attended Purim at the synagogue of our friend Rabbi Jeffery. Purim celebrates and commemorates the story of Esther and this particular synagogue service we attended was truly a hoot.

I normally don’t describe worship services as a “hoot;”  but that was before I participated in Purim.

Purim for brochure

The children dressed in costumes: most of the girls as Esther; many of the boys as the king or as Mordecai. Even some of the adults got into the fun; one couple we saw came as Groucho and Harpo!

The Scripture was cantored, that is, sung in a disciplined singsong as is typical in every Jewish worship service. All the reading, of course, was done in its original language, Hebrew. But even those of us who could not understand the Hebrew, even we recognized when the name of the hated Haman was pronounced. And whenever his name was mentioned, we booed and hissed and rattled our noisemakers trying to drown out the sound of his name.

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Afterwards, when we gathered for refreshments in the community room, the favorite cookie to gobble up was called “Haman’s Ear.”

That’s why I say it was a hoot.

Jewish worshipers really get into Purim. They “get into it” by thoroughly enjoying themselves and having fun with the story. But they also get into it by making it personal.

During Passover, at every Seder meal Jewish worshipers affirm: “God delivered US from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” So at Purim and other times as they remember their history, they confess: “WE have been saved from disaster.”

In 2014, around the season of Purim, yet another hater of the Jews sought to wreak havoc and destroy. At the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park Kansas, an angry, pathetic, shriveled up soul killed three people, but in a strange and tragic twist, none of the victims were Jewish.

Continue reading “If I Perish, I Perish”

Luke’s Jesus

Luke-icon

Luke wrote his gospel at least twenty years after Mark, probably with a copy of Mark’s well known narrative in front of him as he composed. Much of Mark is quoted verbatim and Mark’s basic chronology is recreated in Luke.

But Luke had his own sources as well. And he had his own purposes.

How does one tell a story so remarkable? How does one find words and images that give credence to something so unbelievable—and yet believed and trusted by more and more people throughout the Roman Empire as Luke wrote his account of the Christ event?

Luke admits he was not an eyewitness rather he interviewed those who were and he sought to honor their faithful memories; sought to honor their faith.

But Luke had his own perspective as well.

Distance can offer the gift of the big picture; it can provide a sense of how the various chapters of The Story build upon one another. Luke definitely understood Jesus to be crux and climax of The Story of God’s ongoing, grace-full, redeeming work in Israel.

For Luke and the other gospel writers, it is Jesus who weaves together all other stories; Jesus who reveals something brand new in the universe.

Like Matthew, Luke presents Jesus as one who fulfills the Scripture.

The larger-than-life characters at the beginning set the stage:

  • Zechariah and Elizabeth’s son, John, was “filled with the spirit and power of Elijah” from conception;
  • Mary was told her son, Jesus, would receive the throne of his ancestor King David;
  • Mary’s Magnificat celebrates the God who continues to be faithful to the promise made to Abraham;
  • the devout man Simeon recognized in the infant Jesus “the consolation of Israel” and
  • the prophet Anna named him as the one Israel had been looking for—the redeemer of Jerusalem.

Like both Mark and Matthew, Luke’s Jesus affirms that the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus was “necessary.”

Then the Risen Jesus said to the astonished disciples: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

Luke 24:44-48

And like Mark, the Lucan disciples were unable to comprehend the meaning of Jesus before the cross. The Christ event could only be understood through the lens of the resurrection. The disciples could only comprehend meaning when their eyes and minds had been “opened” by the Crucified and Resurrected Christ.

But different from Matthew, Luke’s revelation of who this Jesus is comes quietly, artfully; as in any good story, clues are laid like breadcrumbs.

Richard Hays calls this Luke’s “intertextuality.” (I draw heavily for this reflection from Hays’ excellent book: Reading Backwards.) Although Luke the narrator does not often announce that such and such happened “in order to fulfill what was spoken in the Scriptures,” Luke’s characters clearly are acting in the same grand drama that Israel has been enacting from the time of Abraham.

Many of the Old Testament echoes in Luke do not function as direct typological pre-figurations of events in the life of Jesus. Still less do they function as proof texts. Rather, they create a broader and subtler effect: they create a narrative world thick with scriptural memory.

Richard B. Hays
“A narrative world thick with scriptural memory.”

Luke weaves delicate threads of the ancient story into the fabric of his own story of Jesus so that any perceptive reader can see the same God, the same Spirit, the same work of redemption revealed now in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Luke skillfully tells the Jesus story with gentle intersections of the Hebrew story and intriguing intimations that the God of Israel is embodied in this one: Son of God and Lord.

Of course the other gospel writers see Jesus as “Son of God” as well.

  • It was heard as an allusion to royalty: “son” like the king was God’s son.
  • It was heard as an allusion to humanity: “son” like Israel was God’s chosen.
  • It was heard intimating Isaac, the beloved only son of Abraham, offered and received back as if in resurrection.

But there is more …

[In Luke,] Jesus’ origins are mysteriously divine, and his personal identity is closely bound with God’s own being in a way that transcends the God-relation of any of Israel’s past kings or prophets.

Hays

Thus Luke’s (and Matthew’s) description of a virgin birth:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you [the angel announced to Mary]; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.

Luke 1:35

Gospel Christology says there is something unique about Jesus as “son” and so both Luke and Matthew seek to express that mystery in their stories of a virginal conception. These stories need not be interpreted as anatomical or physiological; these stories are meant to be theological.

The virgin birth is a metaphorical way to talk about that which is beyond our understanding. This is a method of communicating the Church’s confession that this Jesus is “mysteriously divine.”

“What does this mean?” the New Testament theologians persistently asked.

And we continue to ask: “What does this mean?
tetragrammaton

All of the gospel writers referred to Jesus as “son of God,” but Luke is the only one who regularly uses “Lord” as a title for Jesus.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Tetragrammaton is the four-letter “name” for God; it was not often written for it was too holy. So ancient writers in the Hebrew Scriptures substituted the title Adoniah -“Lord”- for the one God, Creator and Redeemer of Israel.

(Whenever you see the word “LORD” printed in your Old Testaments with small caps you can recognize that as an indication of the original word derived from the ancient Tetragrammaton. My font in this blog won’t allow the small caps so I can’t show you here.)

When Luke boldly proclaims Jesus of Nazareth as “Lord,” he continues this tradition.

  • “Why has the mother of my Lord come to me? Elizabeth asks the newly pregnant Mary.
  • “Unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord,” the angels proclaim to the shepherds.
  • “The Lord turned and looked at Peter,” after the cock crowed signaling Peter’s denial.
  • “The Lord has risen indeed…” the disciples testified to one another with a burning in their hearts.

Throughout, Luke demonstrates an exceptionally “high” Christology—that is, he “suggests a mysterious fusion of divine and human identity in the figure of Jesus” (Hays).

Unlike the other three gospels, Luke is the only one who wrote a second volume to the story: the Acts of the Apostles.

Throughout this sequel, the preachers proclaim unabashedly, explicitly, as Peter did in his Pentecost sermon: “Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Then, in Acts 10, Peter boldly declares to Cornelius the centurion: “[God] sent the word to the sons of Israel by proclaiming the gospel of peace through Jesus Christ; this one is Lord of all.”

The statement is bold on two levels: the confession insists that Jesus IS Lord and Caesar is NOT.

But the proclamation also ascribes to Jesus a place in the fundamental confession of Israel:

Hear O Israel, the LORD our God: the LORD alone.

Gone the delicate threads woven quietly, subtly. Now the confession is bright and bold: God-in-Christ has redeemed—and is redeeming—all people, all things, all creation.

Jesus the Christ is Lord of all.

Richard B. Hays, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014).

Psalm 27

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
    whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
    of whom shall I be afraid?

Walter Brueggemann says this stated premise of Psalm 27 insists that “nothing … is severe enough to shake confidence in Yahweh who is light, salvation, and stronghold.”

We Christians will hear in the background the similar confidence of St. Paul: “… nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Do you see the couplets and the parallelisms in this psalm?

This way of repeating and reinforcing an idea demonstrates a major characteristic of poetry and we especially can see it in the poetry of the psalms.

The repetition offers a bold message of deep confidence. This psalmist has been besieged by troubles before and has experienced the unfailing faithfulness of Yahweh.

Though an army encamp against me,
    my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me,
    yet I will be confident.

Here again is God’s Great “Nevertheless.”

Even though disasters are looming; even though real danger threatens; even though life may be collapsing all around me … Yet. Nevertheless … I trust.

Continue reading “Psalm 27”

Amy-Jill Levine on “the Jewish Jesus”


Elizabeth Palmer interviews Amy-Jill Levine March 13, 2019

Amy-Jill Levine. Photo © Daniel DuBois / Vanderbilt University.

Amy-Jill Levine, who teaches New Testament and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt, is the author of The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus and coeditor of The Jewish Annotated New Testament. She has also written (with Sandy Eisenberg Sasso) several children’s books, including Who Counts? 100 Sheep, 10 Coins, and 2 Sons.

Dr. Levine is a member of an Orthodox synagogue and speaks frequently in Christian congregations. Her most recent book is Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week, designed for use in group discussions.

How did you as a Jewish scholar come to focus on the New Testament? What is it about Jesus that drew you in?

I think Jesus is fascinating. Plus he’s Jewish, so he’s one of ours. The more I read not only the words attributed to him but also the stories told about him, the more intriguing I find the material.

I also have very much worried about the anti-Jewish views that frequently surface in studies about Jesus. A number of Christian commentators feel the need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good. Instead of portraying Jesus as a Jew talking to other Jews, he becomes in their views the first Christian, the one who invented divine grace, mercy, and love, and all that other good stuff. Such views neglect the presence of these same virtues within Jesus’ own Jewish context…

Continue Reading Knowing and preaching the Jewish Jesushere at Christian Century

As You Read. Week 11. Tabernacle.

As you read this week’s Living in The Story scriptures, watch how several important stories and themes intertwine with one other.

  • See the people of Israel filled with passion to give extravagantly to create the Tabernacle, a holy place for God’s Glory to “dwell.”
  • See the passion of the God who had created them, called them, rescued them and brought them on eagles’ wings to God’s own self.
  • See Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration filled with passion for the vision of glory he was allowed to witness.
  • See also the passion of the Christ, who – when he left this glorious mountaintop experience – walked resolutely toward the paradoxical glory of the Cross.

As you read Exodus 35-40, relax and enjoy the story – the way it is told and the pictures it creates in your imagination. Don’t over analyze; let the beauty and generosity wash over you.

Continue reading “As You Read. Week 11. Tabernacle.”