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Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Week 4: Philemon Questions/Signs for Quiz/Culture/Temple Tantrum and Soreq/Theme 4: Prophecy



INTERTEXTUALITY/HYPERLINKING:

This means one text quotes another text.  When both texts are biblical, this is often called cross-referencing.  When we get into today's theme, we;ll see intertexting between The Ten Commandments (OT) and The Sermon on the Mount (NT)
One of Chris Harrison's projects is called "Visualizing the Bible":


"Christoph Römhild sent me his interesting biblical cross-references data set. This lead to the first of three visualizations. Intrigued by the complexity of the Bible, I derived a new data set by parsing the King James Bible and extracting people and places. One of the resulting visualizations is a biblical social network. The other visualization shows how people and places are distributed throughout the text."  Chris Harrison-

But why should I tell you when I can show you?:


"The bar graph that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible. Books alternate in color between white and light gray. The length of each bar denotes the number of verses in the chapter. Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible is depicted by a single arc - the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect." .More info about this chart, and charts of the Bible as a social network  here.


NOTE: Sometimes the text "intertexted" to is from another text or genre.

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ACTED PARABLE: TEMPLE TANTRUM:


check out what happened when some former students of mine crashed a class I was teaching! Folks like Sts. Juan RiveraJennifer Adams Zeb Brownand Kayla Kirklin Cook. Check it out, Barbara Giddings-Boring! They were hired to interrupt m... See More



-INTERCALATION/SANDWICHING
-DOUBLE PASTE
-HEMISTICHE



INTERCALATION is a "sandwiching" technique. where a story/theme is told/repeated at the beginning and ened of a section, suggesting that if a different story appears in between, it too is related thematically.  We looked at  this outline of Mark 11:

CURSING OF FIG FREE
CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE
CURSING OF THE FIG TREE


We discussed how the cursing of the fig tree was Jesus' commentary of nationalism/racism/prejudice, because fig trees are often a symbol of national Israel.  That the fig  tree cursing story is "cut in  two" by the inserting/"intercalating" of the temple cleansing, suggested that Jesus action in the temple was also commentary on prejuidice...which become more obvious when we realize the moneychangers and dovesellers are set up in the "court of the Gentiles," which kept the temple from being a "house of prayer FOR ALL NATIONS (GENTILES).

This theme becomes even more clear when we note that Jesus  statement was a quote from Isaiah 56:68, and the context there (of course) is against prejudice in the temple.


double paste: Often, two Scriptures/texts are combined into a new one. Ex. : Jesus says “My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves.” The first clause (before the comma) is from Isaiah 56:6-8, and the second is from Jeremiah 7:11  
 

hemistiche/ellipsis: when the last section of a well-known phrase is omitted foremphasis: Matthew says "My house shall be a house of prayer......," intentionally
leaving out
the "...for all nations" clause.



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 class discussion on Matthew 21 (

Three Acted Parables about Nationalism)

especially focusing on the temple tantrum..


Note, the chapter started with "Palm Sunday":
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we watched the "Lamb of God" video and discussed how it was actually a nationalistic misunderstanding.  If Jesus showed up personally in your church Sunday, would you wave the American flag at him, and ask him to run for president? Post your answer in the comments section below...at bottom of this post





a)Van Der Laan:

Jesus on his way to Jerusalem
On the Sunday before Passover, Jesus came out of the wilderness on the eastern side of the Mount of Olives (just as the prophecy said the Messiah would come).
People spread cloaks and branches on the road before him. Then the disciples ?began, joyfully, to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen? (Luke 19:37). The crowd began shouting, ?Hosanna,? a slogan of the ultra-nationalistic Zealots, which meant, ?Please save us! Give us freedom! We?re sick of these Romans!?
The Palm Branches
The people also waved palm branches, a symbol that had once been placed on Jewish coins when the Jewish nation was free. Thus the palm branches were not a symbol of peace and love, as Christians usually assume; they were a symbol of Jewish nationalism, an expression of the people?s desire for political freedom   __LINK to full article


b)FPU prof Tim Geddert:

Palm Sunday is a day of pomp and pageantry. Many church sanctuaries are decorated with palm fronds. I’ve even been in a church that literally sent a donkey down the aisle with a Jesus-figure on it. We cheer with the crowds—shout our hosannas—praising God exuberantly as Jesus the king enters the royal city.
But if Matthew, the gospel writer, attended one of our Palm Sunday services, I fear he would respond in dismay, “Don’t you get it?” We call Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem “The Triumphal Entry,” and just like the Jerusalem crowds, we fail to notice that Jesus is holding back tears.
Jesus did not intend for this to be a victory march into Jerusalem, a political rally to muster popular support or a publicity stunt for some worthy project. Jesus was staging a protest—a protest against the empire-building ways of the world.
LINK: full article :Parade Or Protest March

c)From Table Dallas:

Eugene Cho wrote a blog post back in 2009 about the irony of Palm Sunday:
The image of Palm Sunday is one of the greatest ironies.  Jesus Christ – the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, the Morning Star, the Savior of all Humanity, and we can list descriptives after descriptives – rides into a procession of “Hosanna, Hosanna…Hosanna in the Highest” - on a donkey – aka - an ass.
He goes on to say it’s like his friend Shane Claiborne once said, “that a modern equivalent of such an incredulous image is of the most powerful person in our modern world, the United States President, riding into a procession…on a unicycle.”
          -Link 


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FOR ALL THE NATIONS: BY RAY VANDER LAAN:

 Through the prophet Isaiah, God spoke of the Temple as ?a house of prayer for all the nations? (Isa. 56:7). The Temple represented his presence among his people, and he wanted all believers to have access to him.
Even during the Old Testament era, God spoke specifically about allowing non-Jewish people to his Temple: ?And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord ? these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer? (Isa. 56:7).
Unfortunately, the Temple authorities of Jesus? day forgot God?s desire for all people to worship freely at the Temple. Moneychangers had settled into the Gentile court, along with those who sold sacrificial animals and other religious merchandise. Their activities probably disrupted the Gentiles trying to worship there.
When Jesus entered the Temple area, he cleared the court of these moneychangers and vendors. Today, we often attribute his anger to the fact that they turned the temple area into a business enterprise. But Jesus was probably angry for another reason as well.
As he drove out the vendors, Jesus quoted the passage from Isaiah, ?Is it not written: ?My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations??? The vendors had been inconsiderate of Gentile believers. Their willingness to disrupt Gentile worship and prayers reflected a callous attitude of indifference toward the spiritual needs of Gentiles.
Through his anger and actions, Jesus reminded everyone nearby that God cared for Jew and Gentile alike. He showed his followers that God?s Temple was to be a holy place of prayer and worship for all believers. - Van Der Laan

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Excerpts from a good Andreana Reale article in which she sheds light on Palm Sunday and theTemple Tantrum:

,, Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem actually echoes a custom that would have been familiar to people living in the Greco-Roman world, when the gospels were written.
Simon Maccabeus was a Jewish general who was part of the Maccabean Revolt that occurred two centuries before Christ, which liberated the Jewish people from Greek rule. Maccabeus entered Jerusalem with praise and palm leaves—making a beeline to the Temple to have it ritually cleansed from all the idol worship that was taking place. With the Jewish people now bearing the brunt of yet another foreign ruler (this time the Romans), Jesus’ parade into Jerusalem—complete with praise and palm leaves—was a strong claim that He was the leader who would liberate the people.
Except that in this case, Jesus isn’t riding a military horse, but a humble donkey. How triumphant is Jesus’ “triumphant entry”—on a donkey He doesn’t own, surrounded by peasants from the countryside, approaching a bunch of Jews who want to kill Him?
And so He enters the Temple. In the Greco-Roman world, the classic “triumphant entry” was usually followed by some sort of ritual—making a sacrifice at the Temple, for example, as was the legendary case of Alexander the Great. Jesus’ “ritual” was to attempt to drive out those making a profit in the Temple.
The chaotic commerce taking place—entrepreneurs selling birds and animals as well as wine, oil and salt for use in Temple sacrifices—epitomized much more than general disrespect. It also symbolised a whole system that was founded on oppression and injustice.
In Matthew, Mark and John, for example, Jesus chose specifically to overturn the tables of the pigeon sellers, since these were the staple commodities that marginalised people like women and lepers used to be made ritually clean by the system. Perhaps it was this system that Jesus was referring to when He accused the people of making the Temple “a den of robbers” (Mt 21.13; Mk 11.17; Lk 19.46).
Andreana Reale



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So Jesus is intertexting and ddouble pasting two Scriptures  and making a new one.
But he leaves out the most important part "FOR ALL NATIONS"...which means he is hemistiching and making that phrase even more significant by it's absence,
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"If anyone says to this mountain, 'Go throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done.'  (Mark 11:23). If you want to be charismatic about it, you can pretend this refers to the mountain of your circumstances--but that is taking the passage out of context.  Jesus was not referring to the mountain of circumstances.  When he referred to 'this mountain,' I believe (based in part on Zech  4:6-9) that he was looking at the Temple Mount, and indicating that "the mountain on which the temple sits is going to be removed, referring to its destruction by the Romans..

Much of what Jesus said was intended to clue people in to the fact that the religous system of the day would be overthrown, but we miss much if it because we Americanize it, making it say what we want it to say,  We turn the parables into fables or moral stories instead of living prophecies  that pertain as much to us as to the audience that first heard them."
-Steve Gray, "When The KIngdom Comes," p..31

“Indeed, read in its immediate context, Jesus’ subsequent instruction to the disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain..’ can refer only to the mountain on which the temple is built!... For him, the time of the temple is no more.” 


"The word about the mountain being cast into the sea.....spoken in Jerusalem, would naturallly refer to the Temple mount.  The saying is not simply a miscellaneous comment on how prayer and faith can do such things as curse fig trees.  It is a very specific word of judgement: the Temple mountain is, figuratively speaking, to be taken up and cast into the sea."
 -N,T. Wright,  "Jesus and the Victory of God," p.422 


see also:



By intercalating the story of the cursing of the fig tree within that of Jesus' obstruction of the normal activity of the temple, Mark interprets Jesus' action in the temple not merely as its cleansing but its cursing. For him, the time of the temple is no more, for it has lost its fecundity. Indeed , read in its immediate context, Jesus' subsequent instruction to the disciples, "Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea'" can refer only to the mountain on which the temple is built!

What is Jesus' concern with the temple? Why does he regard it as extraneous to God's purpose?
Hints may be found in the mixed citation of Mark 11:17, part of which derives from Isaiah 56:7, the other from 11:7. Intended as a house of prayer for all the nations, the temple has been transformed by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem into a den of brigands. That is, the temple has been perverted in favor of both socioreligious aims (the exclusion of Gentiles as potential recipients of divine reconciliation) and politico-economic purposes (legitimizing and
consolidating the power of the chief priests, whose teaching might be realized even in the plundering of even a poor widow's livelihood-cf 12:41-44)....

...In 12:10-11, Jesus uses temple imagery from Psalm 118 to refer to his own rejection and vindication, and in the process, documents his expectation of a new temple, inclusive of 'others' (12:9, Gentiles?) This is the community of his disciples.
-John T, Carroll and Joel B. Green, "The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity," p. 32-33


FIG TREE: FOLLOW SCRIPTURES WHERE IT IS A SYMBOL OF NATIONIAL ISRAEL/jERUSALEM/GOD'S BOUNDED SET:
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NT Wright on the temple:
Jesus as New Temple:


Three thought experiments.
  • -Think if I offered you a drivers license, claiming  i had authority to issue it
  • -Think if someone destroyed all bank records and evidence of any debt you have owe
  • -Think  what would happen if you pointed at something, hoping your dog would look at it.
Now watch this short  and important video above  for explanations:




N.T. Wright, "The Challenge of Jesus": 



Jesus’ clash with the Pharisees came about not because he was an antinomian or because he believed in justification by faith while they believed in justification by works but because his kingdom-agenda for Israel demanded that Israel leave off her frantic and paranoid self-defense, reinforced as it now was by the ancestral codes, and embrace instead the vocation to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth. I therefore propose that the clash between Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries, especially the Pharisees, must be seen in terms of alternative political agendas generated by alternative eschatological beliefs and expectations. (58)

His attitude to the Temple was not "this institution needs reforming," nor "the wrong people are running this place," nor yet "piety can function elsewhere too." His deepest belief regarding the temple was eschatological: the time had come for God to judge the entire institution. It had come to symbolize the injustice that characterized the society on the inside and on the outside, the rejection of the vocation to be the light of the world, the city set on a hill that would draw to itself all the peoples of the world. (64)

…Jesus acted and spoke as if he was in some sense called to do and be what the Temple was and did. His offer of forgiveness, with no prior condition of Temple-worship or sacrifice, was the equivalent of someone in our world offering as a private individual to issue someone else a passport or a driver’s license. He was undercutting the official system and claiming by implication to be establishing a new one in its place. (65)  NT WRIGHT

See: 

Jesus and the Temple Destruction: Did Jesus say he would destroy the temple?

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More on Jesus' temple tantrum as against the racist religious system, and not all about "don't sell stuff in church.":
By intercalating the story of the cursing of the fig tree within that of Jesus' obstruction of the normal activity of the temple, Mark interprets Jesus' action in the temple not merely as its cleansing but its cursing. For him, the time of the temple is no more, for it has lost its fecundity. Indeed , read in its immediate context, Jesus' subsequent instruction to the disciples, "Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea'" can refer only to the mountain on which the temple is built!

What is Jesus' concern with the temple? Why does he regard it as extraneous to God's purpose?
Hints may be found in the mixed citation of Mark 11:17, part of which derives from Isaiah 56:7, the other from 11:7. Intended as a house of prayer for all the nations, the temple has been transformed by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem into a den of brigands. That is, the temple has been perverted in favor of both socioreligious aims (the exclusion of Gentiles as potential recipients of divine reconciliation) and politico-economic purposes (legitimizing and
consolidating the power of the chief priests, whose teaching might be realized even in the plundering of even a poor widow's livelihood-cf 12:41-44)....

...In 12:10-11, Jesus uses temple imagery from Psalm 118 to refer to his own rejection and vindication, and in the process, documents his expectation of a new temple, inclusive of 'others' (12:9, Gentiles?) This is the community of his disciples.
-John T, Carroll and Joel B. Green, "The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity," p. 32-33


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 Temple Warning Inscription:

The Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was surrounded by a fence (balustrade) with a sign (soreq)  that was about 5 ft. [1.5 m.] high.  On this fence were mounted inscriptions in Latin and Greek forbidding Gentiles from entering the temple area proper.
One complete inscription was found in Jerusalem and is now on display on the second floor of the “Archaeological Museum” in Istanbul.
The Greek text has been translated:  “Foreigners must not enter inside the balustrade or into the forecourt around the sanctuary.  Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.”  Compare the accusation against Paul found in Acts 21:28 and Paul’s comments in Ephesians 2:14—“the dividing wall.”
Translation from Elwell, Walter A., and Yarbrough, Robert W., eds.  Readings from the First–Century World: Primary Sources for New Testament Study.  Encountering Biblical Studies, general editor and New Testament editor Walter A. Elwell.  Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998, p. 83. Click Here
Temple Warning Inscription

 


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 TEMPLE TANTRUM



You'll also remember this video. "You're not supposed to be having fun in church; you're supposed to be praying and reading your Bibles!!":



A whole cluster of meanings help us grasp the huge shadow of the temple encounter in Matthew 21.  Here are four..



If portrays Jesus as King, but a very different one than expected. One that was revisited with the testations yet again, and passed the test by subverting expectations and empire.
Jesus is King...but what kind of king will he be?
This was the shape of the temptations:
"Since you are the Son, what kind of Son will you be?"


-More one each below:



1 Racism as core issue, not commercialism:


a)Article By Dave Wainscott
“Temple Tantrums For All Nations"
Salt Fresno Magazine, Jan 2011:







Some revolutionaries from all nations overlooking the Temple Mount, on our 2004 trip


I have actually heard people say they fear holding a bake sale anywhere on church property…they think a divine lightning bolt might drop.



Some go as far as to question the propriety of youth group fundraisers (even in the lobby), or flinch at setting up a table anywhere in a church building (especially the “sanctuary”) where a visiting speaker or singer sells books or CDs.  “I don’t want to get zapped!”



All trace their well-meaning concerns to the “obvious” Scripture:

"Remember when Jesus cast out the moneychangers and dovesellers?"

It is astounding how rare it is to hear someone comment on the classic "temple tantrum" Scripture without turning it into a mere moralism:



"Better not sell stuff in church!”

Any serious study of the passage concludes that the most obvious reason Jesus was angry was not commercialism, but:




racism.



I heard that head-scratching.



The tables the Lord was intent on overturning were those of prejudice.

I heard that “Huh?”



A brief study of the passage…in context…will reorient us:


Again, most contemporary Americans assume that Jesus’ anger was due to his being upset about the buying and selling.  But note that Jesus didn't say "Quit buying and selling!” His outburst was, "My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations" (Mark 11:17, emphasis mine).   He was not merely saying what he felt, but directly quoting Isaiah (56:6-8), whose context is clearly not about commercialism, but adamantly about letting foreigners and outcasts have a place in the “house of prayer for all nations”; for all nations, not just the Jewish nation.   Christ was likely upset not that  moneychangers were doing business, but that they were making it their business to do so disruptfully and disrespectfully in the "outer court;”  in  the “Court of the Gentiles” (“Gentiles” means “all other nations but Jews”).   This was



the only place where "foreigners" could have a “pew” to attend the international prayer meeting that was temple worship.   Merchants were making the temple  "a den of thieves" not  (just) by overcharging for doves and money, but by (more insidiously) robbing precious people of  “all nations”  a place to pray, and the God-given right  to "access access" to God.


Money-changing and doveselling were not inherently the problem.  In fact they were required;  t proper currency and “worship materials” were part of the procedure and protocol.  It’s true that the merchants may  have been overcharging and noisy, but it is where and how they are doing so that incites Jesus to righteous anger.


The problem is never tables.  It’s what must be tabled:


marginalization of people of a different tribe or tongue who are only wanting to worship with the rest of us.


In the biblical era, it went without saying that when someone quoted a Scripture, they were assuming and importing the context.  So we often miss that Jesus is quoting a Scripture in his temple encounter, let alone which Scripture and  context.  Everyone back then immediately got the reference: “Oh, I get it, he’s preaching Isaiah, he must really love foreigners!”:
 Foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord…all who hold fast to my covenant-these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.(Isaiah 56:6-8, emphases mine)
Gary Molander, faithful Fresnan and cofounder of Floodgate Productions, has articulated it succinctly:


“The classic interpretation suggests that people were buying and selling stuff in God’s house, and that’s not okay.  So for churches that have a coffee bar, Jesus might toss the latte machine out the window.
I wonder if something else is going on here, and I wonder if the Old Testament passage Jesus quotes informs our understanding?…Here’s the point:
Those who are considered marginalized and not worthy of love, but who love God and are pursuing Him, are not out.  They’re in..


Those who are considered nationally unclean, but who love God and are pursuing Him, are not out.  They’re in.


God’s heart is for Christ’s Church to become a light to the world, not an exclusive club.  And when well-meaning people block that invitation, God gets really, really ticked.”
(Gary Molander, http://www.garymo.com/2010/03/who-cant-attend-your-church/)

Still reeling?  Hang on, one more test:


How often have you heard the Scripture  about “speak to the mountain and it will be gone” invoked , with the “obvious” meaning being “the mountain of your circumstances” or “the mountain of obstacles”?  Sounds good, and that will preach.   But again,  a quick glance at the context of that saying  of Jesus reveals nary a mention of metaphorical obstacles.   In fact, we find it (Mark 11:21-22) directly after the “temple tantrum.”  And consider where Jesus and the disciples are: still near the temple,  and still stunned by the  “object lesson” Jesus had just given there  about prejudice.  And know that everyone back then knew what most today don’t:  that one way to talk about the temple was to call it “the mountain” (Isaiah 2:1, for example: “the mountain of the Lord’s temple”) .


Which is why most scholars would agree with Joel Green and John Carroll:
“Indeed, read in its immediate context, Jesus’ subsequent instruction to the disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain..’ can refer only to the mountain on which the temple is built!... For him, the time of the temple is no more.”  (“The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity,” p. 32, emphasis mine).
In Jesus’ time, the temple system of worship had become far too embedded with prejudice.  So Jesus suggests that his followers actually pray such a system, such a mountain, be gone.


Soon it literally was.


In our day, the temple is us: the church.


And the church-temple  is called to pray a moving, mountain-moving, prayer:


“What keeps us from being a house of prayer for all nations?”


Or as Gary Molander summarizes:


“Who can’t attend your church?” -Dave Wainscott, Salt Fresno Magazine
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So Jesus is intertexting and ddouble pasting two Scriptues 
 and making a new one.
But he leaves out the most important part "FOR ALL NATIONS"...which means he is hemistiching and making that phrase even more significant by it's absence,

b)As a follow-up to the temple tantrum of Jesus as targeting racism more than commercialism (see this, and these). if it's a new concept, and if you always though it was about "Don't sell stuff in church!"  I find  Bartholomew and Goheen's analysis intriguing.  They read it as  racism/prejudice/nationalism/"separatism"   AND  a "spirit of violence".

Does the former always lead to the latter?:


"...God has chosen the people of Israel to dwell among the nations so that all  nations can enter teh covenant with God.  But the temple Jesus now enters now functions in quite a different way, supporting a separatist cause, cutting Israelites off from their neighbors.  Furthermore, the spirit encouraged within the temle is one of violence and destruction: it had become a 'den of revolutionaries' (Mark 11:17, authors' translation). Israel has turned its election into separatist privilege....a new temple, Jesus' resurrection life in the renewed people of God, can become the light for the nations that God intends."  (The Drama of Scripture, p, 176)


In the footnote to the above the authors clarify:


"The Greek word here is Iestes ansd most likely refers to revolutionaries who sought to obverthrow Rome with violence, see also on Mk 14:48, 15:27, John 18;40, see NT Wright, Jesus and The Victory of God, 419-20
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Hey, maybe Jesus- concern WAS commercialism after all:
is racism + violence=commercialism?


Also...this called to mind Erwin McManus in "The Barbarian Way":


"God always revolts against religions he starts"
That's a shock value statement, of course.
So it can't be "truly" true.
But it speaks the truth in part; and is partly true.

But two questions:


  • Didn't the fact that the temple was not completely separatist/sectarian even in the "Old" Testament (one of the passages Jesus quotes ..to counter racism..in the tantrum is Isaiah 56:6-8) help?  Was the religion/temple of God in Judaism inherently racist, even if God-ordained?  Weren't the dovesellers/moneychangers the violators, not temple  Judaism itself?
  • If we picture God "revolting" we might ironically envision him as a  but too "violent.


Jesus comes off violently peaceful (not violently peaceful  in the temple..


c)You'll want to read "temple tantrum/ which curtain was torn?"
for more help on this theme.  Remember the "Getting Ripped" inclusio discussion we had last Friday.
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Kingdom   -NOT PLACE                         BUT GRACE
-NOT REALM                                        BUT REIGN AND RULE



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T

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PHILEMON

NT. Wright's  s comments about the letter here,and his study questions on pages 55-57 here). 
Here below is his complete Tyndale commentary on Philemon:










  



Here's a "word cloud" representation of word frequency in Philemon.  What do you notice?:

Philemon Word Cloud
Philemon  Word Cloud

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Sample signature paper excerpt.  Any mistakes?
Not since Moses’s day had there been a leader like Paul.  In a sense, Paul was the most important leader mentioned in the bible.  Not only was he an Apostle, but the most prominent  and clear headed one ever mentioned by God in his Word.   Maybe the most prominent character in Christianity’s history.  Due to his special calling, his ability to face prosecution and abuse, his status as an Elder and his great Faith, he ranks highly, even though he is not one of the original 12 Disciples, and wasn’t even mentioned in the Biblical texts that discuss Jesus’s earthly days.
In a way, you could compare him to today’s Pope, or the President of the United States—or more appropriately, the Senior Pastor of a large church or the Bishop of a denomination.  Think of him like a modern Saint, a person that has great Spiritual courage and skill.  A person that  loves God and His ways.  Which makes him all the more remarkeable in the way he treated Onesimus’s owner, Philemon.  Philemon was a humble man, that had a Church in his house, and that owned Philemon as a slave.    In its own unique way, the paradox of Paul the great leader being kind and compassionate to people of lower Economic status like Onesimus (a lowly Slave) shows that he was also a great sheperd not one who would Lord it over people.  He had no allusions of being the King.
Let's examine in detail the world of Paul, Philemon and Onesimus--the 3 key players in a story with abundent  lessons for our day.  In a funny verse, the Bible says "a dog returns to it's own vomit."     Thinking about an animal being attracted to there own vomit is a strong image and thought provoking. This remind's me of  the religous leaders Jesus confronted in the Temple.  One Sunday, my Pastor preached on this.  Matthew 11:15, " Jesus said, "My house shall be a House of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers."  When people think they're more imporatnt then others based on Religion or Race,  the affect is  divine anger.  I have thought alot about why Followers of God would ever think they are holier then other people.   Or how they could justify hating a person that was innocent or poorer then them.  It's a mystery to me, and a headscratching one at that.   I sometimes literally loose my mind over things like these.

Think about someone that dessecrated the Alter of a Church, or think's it's alright to have a prejudist attitude.  What an extordinary embarassment for priviledged people to act that way; witholding grace from a person that is in need.  Our professor talked about this one day when we did a practise for this signature assignment.
"Thirteen commandments" common errors in signature paper:

 
This sample is presented  primarily for mechanics/typos to give an example of a paper that might;ve been an A, but would flunk due to mechanics/errors alone.  Review the syllabus and rubric carefully .  Paper is here
(all New Testament word clouds here)  
Often those in caregiving careers/ministries...such as yourselves..
face a deep dilemma and profound paradox.. you care intensely..but ironically,
you live and work  embedded in a system/matrix that "cannot" care.

Have you noticed that certain professions;
clergy, funeral directors, counselors doctors and NURSES
have "inhouse" jokes that might seem irreverent to outsiders to our "bounded set."?  At its best, it's one way of keeping your sanity and remaining caring.
Watch this  below...( well listen anyway, it's only audio) for a humorous example from those famous "theologians," Cheech and Chong (!!)in an old skit about Friday night employees of the E.R.:





Click the title below to read a related hilarious story:
one of my all-time favorite stories. Unfortunately, it's true!
From Eugene Peterson's "Under the Unpredictable Plant:

Sex and Drugs in Church: Peterson on Why the System Can't Care




All this to tie into "Hospitals and Those In Them) Need the Word of God," Fresno pastor Chris Erdman's amazing chapter 14 in "Countdown to Sunday," four pages that for me are as chillingly accurate,
and practically pastoral as anything in the massive "pastoral help" library.
As a pastor still wet behind my ears, I truly felt intimidated by the bravado of hospital technology and shrank before it. I didn't know then that the hospital itself, as much as the patients I went to visit, also needed to hear the Word of God in order to be what God intended it to be--an agent of divine grace, occupying its place as servant, not master...

I might not always carry a Bible [on hospital visits], but I always carry a text in mind that I speak among all the bleeps and blips and pokes. Hosting the text there among the gods of steel and electricity and drugs and know-how is vital work. The technology no longer intimidates me...

..So today, as I enter hospital doors and walk those hallways and sit beside beds and in waiting rooms and open those texts of ours. I don't stand and shout the Word--it's a power that doesn't need my strength or my energy. As I do, I not oy see the persons who need this Word leaning in, but I sense the walls themselves bending near...The real weapons that bring wholeness and peace are not machines but words, as small and feeble as they may seem. And all we have to do is mutter them.
Chris Erdman, "Countdown to Sunday," pp 71-73.


Reading this in the very real context and contour of a week of hospital visits to thesweetest saint imaginable; surrounded helplessly but not hopelessly by those bleeps and pokes and machines has brought tears to my eyes and whole images from Chris's chapter to bear on the situation.
I have never been one for wanting to look very pastorly/religious on hospital calls. I don't even park in the clergy parking! 

And like a good stealth pastor, I keep my small pocket Bible tucked away.

But I can now pull it out to pay a pastoral (and prophetic) call on the relentless beeping heart monitor. Gently, I rage against the machine; I do not welcome myself to it or its domain.
Instead, I Word it back to its creative and redemptive purpose. And I have seen, like Chris, "medical people who know firsthand the limits of these gods and who themselves long to hear the Bible read in this place that often intimidates them too--they've seen the soft underbelly of the beast that demands their homage."



"Resistance is the protest of those who hope,"
as Jürgen Moltmann has it ( "The Power of the Powerless").

(above excerpted from my blog post: "Gentle Rage Against the HospitalMachines"

------------------------------------------
I really recommend

Chapter 5 of "Hospital Ministry,' (ed. by Holst)
"Hospitalization: A Rite of Passage"  by John Katonah..
We'll summarize it in class, but it is complete here below

(click each page to read, then click again to enlarge):







Related reading:


>>Here is a link  to read  which critiques Katonah's s three stages (see pp 302-303, about stripping but not consummating )

>>Another book suggests prayers/liturgies(click to read) that nurses/caregivers can offer  to accompany each of the three stages.
-----------------------+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



butty
As Ted Baxter used to to say, "It all started




 at a 5, 000 watt radio station in Fresno,  Californiua..."

Well, what you are about to see all started with a slideshow of 50 or so funny signs
 (typos, bad translations, double entendres, non-sequiturs, headscratchers etc) from around the world;  to accompany my teaching for church, and  at camp on the Seven Signs of Jesus in John's Gospel.

It has now become multiple photo albums on Facebook.

Ted Baxter would be proud; Many were taken right here in Fresno, California

Enjoy, and keep 'em coming!

Links below, here you go:






 ----------------------





C
ULTURE AND KINGDOM



buy the shirt
I always enjoy asking classes these
  three questions below..

 If you missed class today, just fill in the blank (or answer the question)
for #1-3 below with your first gut-instinct  before reading any further down.

1)"In England, they drive on the ___________ right side of the road."
2)What continent is Israel on?
3)"Man, you can sure tell _____ is at work nowadays in the secular world!  All you have to do is look around!"


------------


For answers:


1) Watch the "Gaithers on Crack" video below, and read this
article.
2)Click and read: Half of American Christians can't find earth 






CULTURE and KINGDOM.

We often take "culture" for granted, as it is simply the way we (one or more person) thinks and feels.
(Note: we didn't say "race"...and we are defining "culture" broadly.  So, all marriages are cross-cultural, even if both persons are of the same race, as everyone thinks/feels differently, and has different "cultural" preferences.
It's "all around us...even when we go to church," just as Morpheus said to Neo about 'the matrix':

Because of this, we are often blinded to our culture and how we "see through it."  Do fish even know they are in water?
It's easy to assume our cultural identity or preference is the "best" or "right" way (as in a bounded set that everyone should be in)....or the way everyone else sees/interprets  things.



"We don't see things as they are,
 we see things as we are."
 -Anaïs Nin



"G So, re: culture, and the central question of our class,
Who is Jesus is Matthew?:


He is:


a) someone who is cultural:
he was a member of a culture ( Remember your social inventory, when you reflected on your cultural, and biculturalism.  Was Jesus bicultural in any way?
How did you respond to the suggestion that Jesus was Asian?  What other 'cultures' was he part of?).
Consider: "All divine revelation is culturally mediated." (Leonard Sweet, "Aqua Church 2.0," p.. 67...context).

b)someone who often was, and whose message often  was,  counter-cultural. ('the first shall be last," etc....  see The Upside Down Kingdom  textbook)

c)someone whose ministry and message were  cross-cultural (not just to Jews, etc).

----





-for 'fun"...text-related words
--

=




 




1)"In England, they drive on the ___________ right side of the road."
2)What continent is Israel on?
3)"Man, you can sure tell _____ is at work nowadays in the secular world!  All you have to do is look around!"

We noted that (unlike which side of the road is "right" in England!), the 'direction" in which the Kingdom originates is "both ways":  from the future, and from the past.
KKGuess how many times the word "pastor" shows up in the New Testament...then click here to see. 
Surprised by that result?  Make it a plural.  How about "pastors" (plural)?  
----------------------------------- 

-- Theme 4:
 


t is helpful to think of prophecy as:

a).not just
fore-telling (predicting the future)

but

forth-telling  (telling forth truth)


b)often having multiple applications and fulfillments, to different "contemporary worlds" and across time.
We'll  used this diagram to illustrate:


-Who was Immanuel?
-Who does "out of Egypt, I have called my son" refer to ?


--








  • Jesus Says Those “Left Behind” Are The Lucky Ones (the most ironic thing the movie won’t tell you)

  • --

  • Matthew 24:6 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[f] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left behind. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left behind.
  • 42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready,because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

  • --
  • Luke 17
  •  Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. 23 People will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. 24 For the Son of Man in his day[d] will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. 25 But first he must suffer many thingsand be rejected by this generation.
    26 “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.
    28 “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29 But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.
    30 “It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. 31 On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything.32 Remember Lot’s wife! 33 Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it. 34 I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. 35 Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.” [36] [e]
    37 “Where, Lord? [Where will they be taken?]” they asked.
    He replied, “Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.

  • --

  • p
    You did ALL your homework in class.  So..other than Moodle (usual), NO homework.  But you are strongly encouraged to write a draft of signature paper to bring  next week
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