Tag Archives: Scripture

Ancient History Made Contemporary and Compelling

Colleen Kwong is a pastor and an artist (potter). We began bumping into each other and exchanging our work a few years ago at church conventions. My fingers trace her clay labyrinth that sits on my desk. I sent her a proof copy of Wormwood and Gall, and she soon replied that she “devoured” it and sent the following review.

Who would think that a book that begins with “On a late summer’s day in the reign of Emperor Vespasian…” would be a page-turner?! And yet, RW Holmen has taken a page from ancient history and made it feel utterly contemporary and compelling.

He describes the sensory atmosphere of first century Jerusalem and environs with such ferocity that one feels, smells, sees, hears, and tastes the desperation and the occasional delight of those present in that place.

As with other writings that engage historical settings, we know the ending before we begin, but Holmen is able to take us on the journey with the protagonist Markos (the reconstructed imagined writer of the gospel of Mark) with such clarity that we feel the urgency of the time.

For the knowledgeable historian, this book offers insights into the very human aspects and possible scenario for the writing of Mark’s gospel. For those with less historical knowledge, it provides enough factual information to make the story understandable in its historical context.

Holmen hints at the power of the person Jesus through his contacts with Jesus’ relatives and friends, but does not overpower us with the usual saccharine media portrayal of “knowing Jesus as Christ.” He manages to give glimpses into the hope and possibilities of following the Christ as shown in those who knew Jesus and attempt to follow the teachings and example of Godly living. All this in a time that was brutal, where loss is great, and hope is almost unimaginable. Personal decision making and community responsibility is lived out by the book’s characters in varying ways, each having to live with their decisions, and some questioning the meaning of it all.

It is in this world of destruction, tragedy, chaos and confusion that Markos and his circle struggle for a sense of humanity and meaning. And, lucky for us, Markos is able to record it for us, as he is a scribe.

Thanks to RW Holmen for also being a scribe, doing the hard work of researching, recording, imagining, and reconstructing a possible scenario of the writing of the Gospel of Mark. This book would be a wonderful addition to a Bible study, to give life to the characters that often seem distant, and to invite us into a world that, though distant in time and place, feels contemporary through Holmen’s writing.

Wormwood and Gall: an odd book title

The Hollywood screenwriter who hopes to bring A Wretched Man to a movie screen near you, once complimented me on my imaginative, and sometimes provocative, book titles: A Wretched Man, Gonna Stick my Sword in the Golden Sand, Queer Clergy. I could add my current work in progress, Lady Liberty is a Bitch. So, where does Wormwood and Gall come from? For starters, Wormwood is a medicinal herb, and gall is bitter bile.WormwoodandGall.FRONT

Of course, Paul’s own self-designation provides the title for A Wretched Man. “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Romans 7:24. Similarly, Wormwood and Gall derives from a Biblical reference: in this case, a lament for Jerusalem:

How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal.

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, and his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 1:1 & 3:19-22

This lament aptly suggests the novel’s theme. In the midst of despair as Roman legions besiege Jerusalem, and all seems lost, a narrator scribes ink strokes on a papyrus scroll to bolster courage and inspire hope in the beleaguered remnant of Jesus followers, four decades after his crucifixion. The novel characterizes Markos (Greek for “Mark”) as someone who wrestles with existential questions as to the meaning, or meaninglessness, of life.

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James: the dangerous brother of Jesus

James and Jesus iconMany scholars suggest that the brother of Jesus known as James the Just is the most forgotten man in Christian history. “I didn’t know Jesus had a brother,” is often the first response when his name is mentioned. The evidence is compelling; according to numerous references in the canonical gospels of the New Testament, the book of Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s authentic letters, contemporary historian Josephus, the non-canonical gospel of Thomas, and early histories of the church, Jesus not only had a brother, but a very important brother, the primary leader of the Jesus movement in the decades following the crucifixion.

What? The leader of the early church? Why don’t the folks in the pews know about this? How could such an influential person in the early history of Christianity be forgotten? Ironic. Or is it? Could it be that the church has largely ignored James precisely because of his relationship to Jesus? Could it be that he was not forgotten but intentionally erased from the story?

It is axiomatic that the victors write the history, and James was the leader of the losing side in the first great conflict in church history. After the crucifixion, the original followers of the slain messiah regrouped in Jerusalem, including Peter and the other disciples, and it was here that James soon ascended to leadership. This core group of proto-Christians (it is anachronistic to apply “Christian” to this early movement) was Jewish.

Enter an outsider. A Greek-educated Diaspora Jew who insisted that he had been called to be an apostle to the Gentiles, who argued that traditional rules of Israelite religion didn’t apply to his Gentile converts, who became an independent missionary in defiance of James’ authority, and who established his own power base in regions far beyond the influence of Jerusalem. Paul of Tarsus was the thorn in the side of James.

Although James and the Jerusalem establishment may have won the early skirmishes, the emerging Christian church would soon be Pauline and Gentile, due in no small part to the vagaries of history and the Jewish civil war. With Jerusalem destroyed, just a few years after the deaths of Paul and James, Jewish Christians could not contend with the Paulines who were better suited for survival in the Greco-Roman world. Although vestiges of this internecine conflict persisted and may be traced through the compilation of the gospels and into the second century, the developing Christian orthodoxy was decidedly Pauline and the legacy of James diminished.

To 21st century sensibilities, the ancient controversies over circumcision, dietary rules, and Sabbath and festival observances seem unimportant.  Why should old conflicts be dredged up? Why is the current scholarly rediscovery of James important or even relevant?

In a word, Christology. Nothing has so divided Christians from the earliest days to the present–scholars, clergy and laity–than the conflicting answers to Jesus’ nagging question, “Who do you say that I am?” For some, it is a test, and the correct dogmatic response assures one’s salvation; for others, however, the question is a call to wonder.

In the early centuries, there were two great centers of Christian scholarship located in Alexandria of Egypt (the 2nd largest city of the Roman empire after Rome itself) and Antioch of Syria (the third largest city). Christian scholars from Antioch argued for the humanity of Jesus while competing scholars across the Mediterranean in Alexandria stressed his divinity. A scholar named Arius, who may have studied in each city, proposed a middle ground–that Jesus was somewhere between divine and human. Emperor Constantine convened the Council at Nicaea to settle the dispute, and a political compromise ensued. Was Jesus human? Yes. Was Jesus divine? Yes. Instead of either/or, the assembled bishops declared both/and. Truly human and truly divine was the political compromise, hammered out first at Nicaea and then at Chalcedon, that may have settled the debate de jure but not de facto.

Was the issue resolved? If so, why do modern-day evangelicals accuse the rest of Christendom of being soft on the divinity of Jesus? Why do liberal scholars, including many in the Jesus seminar, stress the humanity of the man from Nazareth?

Enter James. James is relevant to the ongoing Christological controversies.  James scholar Robert Eisenman ends his tome (James the Brother of Jesus) with this challenging statement, “Who and whatever James was, so was Jesus.” Many would disagree, but Eisenman’s statement frames the debate and defines the importance of James scholarship. This also brings us back to the original premise that James is not merely forgotten but has been intentionally written out of church history.

Ireneaus, the second-century heresy hunter, saw the problem, and he declared the views of the Jewish-Christian Ebionites (heirs of the James legacy?) to be heretical with a deficient Christology: “their opinions … represented Jesus as having not been born of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation.”

St. Jerome saw the problem. Around 400 CE, Jerome suggested that James and the other siblings of Jesus mentioned in Scripture were really cousins. At the heart of Jerome’s rejection of a human brother for Jesus is the high Christology of the church. There was no room on the divine family tree for mere human branches.

For many, the divinity of Jesus is the hallmark of Christianity, the sine qua non, and thus James is dangerous. Do we dare to ask the lesser-known man from Nazareth–James, the brother–“Who do you say that Jesus is?”

 

 

“I’m not a scientist, man”

Galileo by Giusto SustermansEver since the Roman Inquisition decreed that Galileo was “vehemently suspect of heresy” for suggesting the sun stood still while the earth revolved around it, the interplay of science and religious belief has been problematic for the church.  In the ensuing centuries as the age of reason, of enlightenment, and of rationalism dominated western thought, church folk could either accept or reject scientific data, and Christians inexorably moved into one of two camps.

The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of “liberal Protestantism” which freely embraced science and empiricism … faith seeking understanding.  Scripture was subjected to scientific and historical analysis, the so-called “historical critical method.”  For this camp, it was “both-and.”

For others, the dilemma was easily solved: If science contradicted traditional, Biblical understanding, science must be rejected.  For this camp, it was “either-or.”

The Presbyterians in the 1920s served as proxy for the whole of Christendom in the so-called “Fundamentalist-Modernist” controversy.  Presbyterian scholars chafed under imposed dogmatic “fundamentals.” Emanating from Auburn University, theologians circulated a document proclaiming the freedom of conscience and the right of dissent—the so-called “Auburn Affirmation.”  A commission was formed, and the 1927 Presbyterian General Assembly adopted the commission’s progressive report; the modernists had prevailed and the fundamentalists had lost.

    But the rift in Christianity wasn’t healed, and the two camps grew further apart.  Historian David Hollinger suggests using the terminology “ecumenical” for the progressives and “evangelical” for the conservatives.  The terms imply an outward versus insular attitude.  In the Church of England decision this week to preclude female bishops, the “evangelical” camp prevailed.  In the recent legislative wrangling within the modern-day Presbyterian Church over LGBT ordination, the evangelicals lost; this was also the recent experience of the Episcopal Church, the Lutherans of the ELCA, and the United Church of Christ.  All these “ecumenical” denominations have endorsed gay clergy.  Meanwhile, evangelical Christianity continues to loudly defend its non-scientific worldview.

This is the religious background to the political point of this post.

In the last generation, the United States has witnessed the rise of the religious right.  More than that, evangelical religionists have come to occupy a dominant position within the Republican party.  When presumably intelligent and educated Senator Marco Rubio visited Iowa this week, he professed ignorance when asked a simple scientific question about the age of the earth:

“I’m not a scientist, man … It’s one of the great mysteries …  It is a dispute among theologians.”

Nobel prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman responds,  “What about the geologists?”

Here is the profoundly frightening part.  By wedding itself to the evangelicals, the Republican party has embraced ignorance, and Marco Rubio is constrained to play dumb for fear of alienating the Iowa base.  Krugman puts it this way:

Reading Mr. Rubio’s interview is like driving through a deeply eroded canyon; all at once, you can clearly see what lies below the superficial landscape. Like striated rock beds that speak of deep time, his inability to acknowledge scientific evidence speaks of the anti-rational mind-set that has taken over his political party.

Evolution versus creationism and global warming are obvious public policy issues affected by Republican know-nothingism.  Less obvious is economic theory: austerity versus stimulus during a down economy or the lack of evidence to support supply-side, trickle down policies.  As with their evangelical religionist cronies, the Republican preference is for dogma over empiricism.

Lest we dismiss Krugman as just another liberal Democrat, consider the sentiments of Ross Douthat, one of the handful of Republican commentators willing to acknowledge the emperor wears no clothes.

The fact that the “conservatives vs. science” framework is frequently unfair doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t exist, or that Republican politicians should just get a free pass for tiptoeing around it. No matter how you spin it, Rubio’s bets-hedging non-answer isn’t exactly a great indicator about the state of the party he might aspire to lead … it’s still neither politically helpful nor intellectually healthy for a minority political party to pick pointless fights with the nation’s scientific and technical elite.

So much for the vacuous impact on public policy wrought by the marriage of evangelicals and politicians.  What about the impact on religious institutions?  On religion itself?  Evangelicals love to beat their chest and point to declining membership in the ecumenical denominations in a post-Christian America.  But it is not just the old mainline denominations—it is Christianity and religion in general.  We have previously posted about this issue and quoted a review of the recent book American Grace which:

makes the case that the alliance of religion with conservative politics is driving young adults away from religion …. Among the conclusions [of a major survey] is this one: “The association between religion and politics (and especially religion’s intolerance of homosexuality) was the single strongest factor in this portentous shift.”

And Douthat the Republican agrees:

the goal of Christianity is supposed to be the conversion of every human heart — yes, scientists and intellectuals included — and the central claim of Christianity is that the faith offers, not a particular political agenda or an economic program, but the true story of the world entire. The more Christians convince themselves that their faith’s core is identical with the modern innovation of fundamentalism, and in direct conflict with the best available modern biology and geology, the less attainable that goal and the less tenable that central claim.

Why did Paul persecute the early church?

When I wrote my historical novel about Paul the apostle (A Wretched Man),  I wrestled with some thorny historical questions, including this one.  Last month, I was asked to read and review Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist.   I once again encountered the question, and I found Ehrman’s answer to be less than convincing.

First, some background.  Paul twice mentioned his role as persecutor but without any details.  As with much of his writing, Paul assumed his listeners already knew the story so he didn’t elaborate.  Paul wrote to the Corinthians,

For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 1 Cor 15:9 (NRSV)

In the most autobiographical of his writings, Paul speaks to the Galatians,

You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. Gal 1:13 (NRSV)

In neither instance, does Paul offer a clue as to what he did, exactly, or why he did it.

the-stoning-of-stephen-by-rembrandt-1625Of course, the Acts of the Apostles goes into much greater detail: Jerusalem persecution, stoning of Stephen, sent to Damascus by the High Priest to arrest the followers of Jesus, etc.

The common assumption is that Paul persecuted the early followers of Jesus because they claimed he was the long-expected messiah.  Does that really make sense? Why would such a claim have been offensive to Paul or the Hebrew populace? While that may have been the reason why the Romans and their puppets, the High Priest and his crowd, feared Jesus and caused his execution, that hardly explains why Paul and the populace would have persecuted his followers after his death.

Ehrman initially agrees,

There was nothing blasphemous about calling a Jewish teacher the messiah. That happened on and off throughout the history of Judaism, and it still happens in our day. In itself, the claim that someone is the messiah is not blasphemous or, necessarily, problematic (though it may strike outsiders—and usually does—as a bit crazed).

This statement strikes me as eminently reasonable and debunks the traditional assumption that the early church was persecuted because they claimed Jesus had been the messiah. There has to be more to it.

Ehrman’s response is that the claim that Jesus was the crucified messiah is what greatly offended Paul and the others, because no strain of traditional Jewish messianic expectations suggested a crucified messiah.  While that may well be true, I fail to see the offense.  Here is where I part with Ehrman.  If anything, such a claim would only make its proponents sound even crazier but hardly blasphemous to the point of widespread persecution and arrest.

Back to Stephen.

What did Stephen do or say that caused his arrest and execution?  Why did they “stir up the people against him”?  Because he spoke “blasphemous words against God and Moses,” “against this holy place and the law,” and because he said that Jesus would “destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed down.”

No where was there any complaint that he claimed Jesus was the messiah, crucified or not.  The charges against him were that he denied the basic tenets of Hebrew religion … adherence to the law of Moses and temple sacrifice.  In Stephen’s long speech to the Sanhedrin, he concluded,

“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears … You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.”

There could be no greater offense than to question circumcision and failure to keep the law.  Stephen challenged the basic Hebrew self-understanding and thus their standing before God.  To a devout Pharisee, zealous for the law, as Paul claimed to be, this was the crux of the matter.  This would also tie in closely with Paul’s Damascus road experience, in which his life took a 180 degree turn away from zealotry for the law to his law-free gospel message.  Furthermore, it also ties in with the ongoing conflict between Paul and the “mother church” back in Jerusalem over the requirements of circumcision and dietary niceties.

That’s my answer, Professor Ehrman’s opinion notwithstanding, and that was also the answer I proposed in the Wretched Man novel.

Did Jesus Exist?

Mention the University of North Carolina during March madness, and the Tar Heels basketball team will come to mind–the Religious Studies department, not so much.  But, Chapel Hill professor Bart D. Ehrman made March news of his own with the release of his latest book, Did Jesus Exist?
Professor Ehrman  has carved out his own slice of fame as a best-selling author of historical books of the early Christian era, offering his own take on the recurring quest to discover the historical Jesus.

Ehrman’s popularity stems from his down-to-earth writing style that targets the folks in the pews rather than the scholarly elites of the academy—and always with tantalizing hints of controversy.  Not that his views are outside the scholarly consensus; to the contrary, Ehrman interprets the findings of the academic community for a lay audience.

Ehrman is often about debunking simplistic Christian notions learned in third grade Sunday school.  Not so with his current book.  This time, he takes on the conspiratorially-minded “mythicists” who would argue that early Christian writers, primarily the person behind the gospel of Mark, created a Christ out of whole cloth; in other words, they made him up.

From the outset, Ehrman makes it clear that there is overwhelming evidence that there really was a Jesus of Nazareth and that no serious, credible scholar would disagree. He’s probably right, but that begs the question: “why respond to a few crackpots and internet blog conspiracists who won’t accept your evidence anyway?” It would seem his task is akin to arguing with political “birthers”.

Are there thick theological layers to the gospels?  Yes.  Did the gospel compilers awkwardly attempt to squeeze Jesus into preexisting Hebrew models?  Yes.  Does the Jesus of the third grade Sunday school class misconstrue the historical person?  Yes.  Are some gospel episodes fabrications?  Yes.  Ehrman argues that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.  The leap of the mythicists from these starting points to the conclusion that Jesus never existed goes well beyond reason and the evidence.

So, what is Ehrman’s essential argument and what evidence does he cite to support it?

The reality is that every single author who mentions Jesus—pagan, Christian, or Jewish—was fully convinced that he at least lived.  Even the enemies of the Jesus movement thought so; among their many slurs against the religion, his nonexistence is never one of them.  pp. 171-72.

Ehrman meticulously takes the reader through the earliest sources, including canonical and non-canonical gospels, letters, early Roman and Jewish authors, and the oral and written traditions that predated and served as source material for the gospel accounts.  He identifies the independent strains that underlie the gospels.  Ehrman concludes that there are multiple sources that go back to the decade following Jesus’ death and each early story begins with the premise that there was a Jewish man named Jesus “known to be a preacher and teacher, who was crucified … in Judea during the reign of Roman emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea.”  That the stories contain theological interpretations doesn’t negate this common root assumption.

Most importantly, Ehrman cites Paul the apostle, which is ironic since the mythicists base much of their argument on the fact that Paul writes little about the life of Jesus.  True enough, says Ehrman, but what Paul does say is compelling.  According to Paul’s written account in his letter to the Galatians, he traveled to Jerusalem where he visited Peter and James, “the brother of the Lord”, a few years after the crucifixion.

Paul was personally acquainted with … Peter and James.  Peter was Jesus’ closest confidant throughout his public ministry and James was his actual brother.  Paul knew them for decades, starting [soon after the crucifixion].  It is hard to imagine how Jesus could have been made up.  Paul knew his best friend and his brother. p. 173.

The more intriguing question for me,  Ehrman, and a century’s worth of scholarship that goes back, at least, to Albert Schweitzer and his Quest of the Historical Jesus is not did he exist but who was he?  What did Jesus of Nazareth do?  Believe?  Say?  Finally, in the last of his three sections, Ehrman gets around to what is really interesting to all but the conspiracy-minded—Who was the historical Jesus?  His conclusion?  Turns out he thinks Schweitzer had it right all along:

I agree with Schweitzer and virtually all scholars in the field since his day that Jesus existed, that he was ineluctably Jewish, that there is historical information about him in the Gospels, and that we can therefore know some things about what he said and did.  Moreover, I would agree with Schweitzer’s overarching view, that Jesus is best understood as a Jewish prophet who anticipated a cataclysmic break in history in the very near future, when God would destroy the forces of evil to bring in his own kingdom here on earth.  p.14.

Let the theologizing begin.

 

**Disclaimer.  I was given a complimentary copy of the book by a publicist representing the author/publisher and asked to offer a review.

Interpreting Paul the apostle

Paul is such fun.

While his preeminent importance in the development of normative Christian doctrine is indisputable, his writings are enigmatic at best and indecipherable at worst.  What is the heart of Paul?  Does Paul reveal himself in Galatians 3:28, the so-called “Christian magna carta” —no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female—or in other writings that seemingly support slavery and the subjugation of women?

Paul also finds himself plopped down in the midst of 21st century debates over gays.  Again, the question arises whether he was the great inclusivist who encouraged Gentile participation in the early church without precondition, without the proper male genitalia, against the wishes of church leaders, and contrary to scripture and centuries of tradition, or was he the greatest gay-basher in history?  Though his “vice lists” have been dubiously translated to include homosexuality, his ranting in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans may be the favorite “clobber passage” of modern gay-bashers.

they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

26 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. 29 They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.

How do modern exegetes unpack these harsh words?  Yes, this passage is about idolatry, first and foremost.  The evils of homosexual behavior are his assumption not his point.  Yes, Paul’s words must be viewed from the cultural perspective of the 1st century Greco-Roman world, and yes, Paul must be understood as a Jew learned in the law to include the Levitical abominations.  These influences certainly colored his perception, and it is unfair to ask a 21st century question of this 1st century man.  He simply would have harbored a radically different understanding of human sexuality than we do today.

But, we can go further.  What was Paul’s central theme of his letter to the Romans?  Grace.  That humankind is made right with God through God’s own offer of welcome and not through human effort, achievement, or merit—“works of the law” in Pauline terms.  Trust God and rely upon that promise (faith).  Paul works this out as he wrestles with the premise of Hebrew religion that Jews are God’s chosen over against his view that Gentiles should also be included.  Justification by grace through faith and not by works is the simplified summary.  So, if these are Paul’s themes in his letter to the Romans, where do his introductory remarks (quoted above) fit in?

Paul is setting a trap.  He is speaking to Jewish listeners, and he gets them nodding as he recites their cultural stereotypes about the unclean gentiles.  But wait, he suggests as chapter two unfolds, aren’t we Jews also guilty of breaking the rules?  How are we different?  Don’t we also depend upon God’s grace?  And then Paul is off and running with his interplay of the themes of grace, faith, works, Jew and Gentile, etc. throughout the remainder of his letter to the Romans.

In doing research for my current book project about the history of the movement for full inclusion of gays in the life of the church, I came across a succinct version of this exegesis, which came in a 1977 Presbyterian debate.  George Edwards of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, a member of a Presbyterian Task Force on homosexuality, spoke these words:

Paul says here that “God gave them up to dishonorable passions”.  Is this, then, Paul’s theology?  Of course not!  God never gave anybody up!  What kind of theology would that be?  Paul is here using a rhetorical device to get his legalistic reader all worked up in self-righteous frenzy before he hits him over the head with his own inadequacy and dependency on God’s grace.**

Perhaps we can take meaning from this passage of Paul after all.  Perhaps it is a clobber passage that offers an analogy for our current debate, but no, not to strike gays but to slam the “self-righteous frenzy” of 21st century legalists and to point them, and all of us, toward our inadequacies and dependency on God’s grace.

Paul, you sly fox.  What a wretched man you are.  Sounds like a good book title.

 

**Quoted in Chris Glaser, Uncommon Calling: A Gay Christian’s Struggle to Serve the Church (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988) p. 164.

Earliest Christian Manuscript Discovered

Arbel CavesAntiquities experts have released the contents of a Christian manuscript that may predate Paul’s letters and the gospels.  Discovered in one of the many caves of the Arbel cliffs overlooking the Sea of Galilee, the fragment appears to be an early version of a passage that later appeared in Mark and the Synoptic gospels.  Carbon dating places the document in the third or fourth decade of the first century near the time of the crucifixion.  Some suggest the fragment contains the actual words of Jesus of Nazareth.

Here is the translation from the Aramaic text:

Ancient manuscriptSome Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to marry a man or a woman to marry a woman?  He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.  But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has not made to lay together, let no one join in marriage.”

I apologize for my  falsehood.  Of course, no such text has been discovered or exists; yet, the actual passage on divorce, which has nothing to do with same-gender relationships, has been coopted by conservative defenders of “biblical marriage”, who latch onto the phrase “God made them male and female” and take it out of the context.  As the nation and our churches wrestle with marriage equality issues, this divorce text has become the “clobber passage” du jour.  My purely fictive version of Jesus’ teaching on divorce is no less perverse than the interpretation that twists this passage into authority against marriage equality.  I have merely written down in plain language what some infer from the text.

When you see it in black and white, it seems rather far-fetched, doesn’t it?  Is my fictive version equivalent to the actual version below?  Of course not, yet some would have you believe so.  Exegesis is the process of getting ‘out’ of the text what is truly there in the first place. The opposite of exegesis is eisogesis. This is the process of putting ‘into’ the text something that wasn’t intended by the author.

For reference sake, here is the actual text from Mark 10:2-9 (NRSV).

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Reconciling in Christ nationwide celebration

The “Reconciling in Christ” movement functions  as an ancillary activity of Lutherans Concerned North America (LCNA), which is the well-organized and successful Lutheran LGBTQ advocacy group.  From the LCNA website:

The Reconciling in Christ (RIC) Program recognizes Lutheran congregations that welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) believers. The complete Reconciling in Christ Roster now exceeds 450 settings, including congregations, synods, colleges, seminaries, and other organizations.

Yesterday, January 30th, many RIC congregations celebrated their RIC status.  What follows is a sampling of blogosphere comments from RIC folks around the country.

From St. Andrew Lutheran Church of Parsipanny, New Jersey.

About ten years ago, our congregation voted, UNANIMOUSLY, to adopt a statement that we would be open and welcoming to ALL people who seek to know Christ, regardless of any discriminating factor, including their sexual orientation or gender identity. We became part of a community of believers, affiliated with Lutherans Concerned/North America, to adopt this statement. By doing so, we became a Reconciling in Christ (RIC) Congregation.

This one of the things I love about my congregation. We voted unanimously to become RIC because it is part of the culture of who we are. There were no dissenters. We all knew this was the right thing to do. We were already living it; we should just say it out loud. All are welcome here.

[W]e really DO care. We DO care that you are here with us. We DO care that you feel welcome here. We DO care that you find a relationship with God and work to draw closer to Him. We DO care that you should not feel judged by the people here. We DO care that your gifts and talents are recognized and valued here. We DO care that you find fellowship with the other members of the body of Christ who worship here. We DO care…because you are a child of God… our brother or sister in Christ Jesus.

From St. Michael’s Church of Philadelphia:

Not only for once a year on “Reconciling in Christ Sunday”…but for everyday!  A message we at St. Michael’s proudly uphold:

“All Are Welcome, All Are Welcome, All Are Welcome…Welcome Here”

A South Carolina newspaper reported that Reformation Lutheran of Columbia is becoming rejuvenated, along with its inner city neighborhood:

… an influx of urban pioneers, many of them gay and lesbian, began buying up the arts-and-crafts cottages and other homes that had fallen into disrepair.

The congregation decided to reach out to its new neighbors but found that many were suspicious of the church. That’s when the congregation underwent a series of conversations that let it to become a congregation intentional in its mission and outreach. Now the church, with 150 members, is a vital part of the community.

My wife and I were privileged to attend the celebratory service at St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Mn.  For those who know the history of LGBTQ advocacy within the ELCA, St Paul Reformation is an iconic congregation.  It was the first RIC congregation dating to 1984.  It is the parish of Pastor Anita Hill, a national figure in the ELCA movement toward gay inclusion.  Other prominent members include the lesbian couple, Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart, who made history in San Francisco nearly twenty years ago, and Emily Eastwood, the executive director of LCNA.  Click here for an earlier post about the recent Rite of Reception for Hill, Frost, and Zillhart which officially welcomed them to the clergy roster of the ELCA.  We greeted all of these folks yesterday.  Frost delivered the sermon, her first since becoming rostered (her current call is to a hospice ministry), and she told me that she and Phyllis will return to their former San Francisco congregation on February 27th for an historic celebration in which the St Francis congregation, once expelled, will formally return to the ELCA. 

I was honored to play a small part by addressing the adult forum.  We discussed the apostle Paul’s struggle with the Jerusalem leadership of the early Jesus movement and their “yes, but” attitude toward Gentile inclusion in the early church and the parallels with the current struggle for full inclusion of the LGBTQ community.