Category: The text as critic

I've slowly been reading Tom Wright's How God Became King. One of the strengths of Wright's overall approach to the New Testament is the way he takes hold of us, grabs our shoulders, and turns us round to look at things from a different perspective. In other words he calls in question the received point of view, and by a tour de force compels consideration of an alternative interpretation of the evidence.

This book is a delight to read, and it helps that I happen to agree almost without demur with his overall thesis  – the Gospels are indeed about the Kingdom of God; and Jesus is the one in whom we see the kingship of God in all the mystery and majesty of love incarnate and the embodied holiness of God. It is unhelpful to create a tension far less a contention between Paul and Jesus – but for that precise reason, Wright is correct to insist that much of New Testament theology and historical study has carried a presumption of  priority for Paul as the theologian par excellence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

A reading of the Gospel that takes them at their face value as accounts of the life, ministry and meaning of Jesus restores a necessary balance and provides the major canonical corrective, holding the balance between event and interpretation, between the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and the lived reflection of the first Christian communities. Gospels and Epistles create an essential conversation between the Gospel of Jesus and hermeneutic reflection emeging from the church's experience in the life of the Spirit. This and much more comes from Wright's characteristic combination of creative scepticism about received assumptions and persuasive argument built on analytic and synthetic control of the full range of material necessary for constructive New Testament theology and history.

I am enjoying this book.

The plaque above is by Ghiberti, from the Florence Baptistry of San Giovanni, and shows the Triumphal Entry – a key event not only for understanding the KIngdom of God, but as an authoritative statement of Christology. I love the work of Ghiberti.

 

 







 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The irony of a vulnerable woman circled by hostile men with rocks at their feet or in their hands; the contrast of soft flesh and tears of terror, with lumps of hard igneous missiles lying in the dry dusty heat; the tragedy of a woman reduced to a case study of man managed Holy Law (the gender is not generic but specific – men were the interpreters of the Law) while they tried to trap and damage one whose whole life was a fulfilling of that law; and yes, that film director's dream of an image of the self-possessed nonchalance of the lead man, tracing something in the sand without saying a word.

In conversation with a good friend yesterday about that displaced but not misplaced Gospel story of the woman taken in adultery. It comes at the start of John chapter 8 and if read there (rather than in the further displaced position of bottom of the page in small type) then it comes immediately before Jesus' outrageous declaration, "I am the Light of the World". Whoever placed it there made one of the great interpretive text critical decisions in the entire formation process of an early church cherishing its foundation documents.

 This is one of the great scandalous stories in a Gospel full of them; this is subversion of power personified in the casual therefore unmistakable authority of one who will look power in the face and die rather than let it win; this is the story of a man and a woman in which neither man nor woman get each other and instead the exposed woman is clothed with dignity, mercy and love, and the departing men are stripped naked of their self righteous postures and sent away judged by their own departure and closed to the realities of the love and mercy that lies at the beating centre of the faith they represent.

It is a story in which the Light of the World blazes with love and the shadow of each person's own sins are seen to fall on the ground behind those who dare stand before the Light and question its truth. As to what Jesus wrote, or doodled, or drew? We'll never know – commentators guess and the possibilities are richly ambiguous. You does your exegesis and you takes your pick – my own modest suggestion, entirely speculative textually, but in the person of Jesus replete with internal probability, is that the phrase 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice' was doodled the first time – and when there was no response and he stood holding the stone and daring them to enact their claimed sinlessness, he knelt and doodled again. And my mind goes to those searing searching words in the Sermon on the Mount about adultery starting in the heart…and he who is without sin becomes a much harder case for men to prove of themselves. Whatever he wrote the second time - they scarpered! 

The painting is by Titian and is in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow.

Last night I did a lot of thinking about anger. I'd been asked to lead the Holy Week Service on the emotions of the Passion, and my allocated theme was anger. You'd think that would be quite straightforward, but the more I read the passion story in all four Gospels the harder it was to pin down just exactly where in the passion story we have unadulterated anger.

I came to the conclusion that anger pure and simple isn't there at all. What is there is that complicated cocktail of dark emotions that underlie the intractable mysteries of human sinfulness, that give rise to violence, hate, cruelty and the ultimate denial of our humanity by the inhumane way we treat other human beings.

You can read what I shared in the file below. I'd be grateful if you respected the copyright on this, but am happy that readers of the blog should be able to read it, and comment if you wish. It is thought in progress, and I'm sure some of it needs second thought. But it does try to take seriously a central paradox of the Passion, how human contrivance and co-ordinated self interest result in torture, injustice and execution.

The two pictures referred to are Peter Howson's Last Supper, currently on exhibition here in Aberdeen Art gallery, and Hieronymus Bosch, Christ Mocked.

Download The Emotions of the Passion

When I was a Christian only a few months I picked up an old Bible in the church I had started going to. Out of it fell a bookmark which if I had kept it, would have been placed alongside other important sacramental objects on my desk, or inside books, or in the top drawer of my desk. I have a very select collection of these souvenirs picked up on my own journey. They are triggers of memory, aides memoires for past blessings, small objects of wonder which when handled kindle gratitude and encourage quiet thoughtfulness. About God, love, friendship, the beauty and gift of life.

Of course I didn't keep that bookmark, one of those vulgar gaudy plastic God reminders- I put it back into the Bible, but not before making sure I remembered the Bible verses written on it.

"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

I wrote those from memory – I still have a head full of verses shaped by the rhythms and cadences of that old translation – I know them off by heart, which is not a bad way of knowing them.

This morning I was reading Maya Angelou's delightful collection of essays and vignettes, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, and I came across a paragraph that took me back to that epiphanic moment at the back of the church, holding a bookmark that told me something I too often forget.

"I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God, constitutes the majority.

That knowledge humbles me, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation."

Sometimes God's Word comes in one word, and for me it was the word "persuaded".

"For I am persuaded…."

Faith is a living persuasion not a dead certainty, and is often more about beingopen to persuasion than already being absolutely sure. And trust presupposes that if I truly believe something I will be prepared to take personal risks on evidence that persuades me. That's what Paul meant, and what Maya Angelou celebrated - they knew what they believed off by heart. It's a good place to stand, that affirmation of faith, For I am persuaded…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the first of an occasional series. Sometimes a sentence or two says so much is needs to be taken with attentive slowness, even clause by clause, allowing it to build towards those moments of insight and recognition that open mind and heart to a richer apprehension of God, the world, ourselves and the infinite variations of those relationships that sustain our existence.

 The prose poem is often enhanced by being written as a form of blank or open verse. I did something like that in the previous post with A W Tozer and William Temple. And have done it before with theologians like Eberhard Jungel, Hans Urs Von Balthasar (I'm under a challenge to get that name included in a sermon without spooking a congregation !) and Kathryn Tanner.

The book Believing Three ways in One God by Nicholas Lash is itself an example of multum in parvo. I've read it twice before and am reading it again – and interested in the pencilled margin notes from last time. The following passage on page 54 has Q in the margin – in JMG code that means quotable, quote it, don't forget it, this is good!

What we call Christianity is supposed to be some kind of school

the purpose of whose pedagogy

 is to foster the conditions  

in which dependence might be relearned as friendship;

conditions in which

the comprehensive taming of chaos by loving order;

of conflict by tranquility,

of discord by harmony,

might be instantiated and proclaimed.

To use the Creed,

to make its articles one's own,

is, therefore,

to be pledged in labour towards the 'kind of heaven and earth'

in which our human work,

might be the finite forms of God's.

Oh yes!

 

 

 The Beatitudes –

these are such potent and condensed logia of Jesus

that there should never be a claim to definitive exegesis –

more a docile yet energetic receptiveness

before a wisdom that subverts the most cherished notions

of a materialist, consumerist and hedonistic mentality

bent on reducing all of life to barcodes, images and strap lines,

in the service of the self-centred project of secular salvation,

and doing so through radical practices and redemptive gestures.

 

No’ a bad wee rant that! Made it up myself!

 

More seriously, I've had reason to revisit the Beatitudes for a study project.

I'm currently reading them slowly each day

in a kind of receptive repetition,

wondering if such attentive pondering

will become a slow absorption of truth,

and create a transformative patience

with values and virtues too outrageously odd

to take at anything other than their face value.

The photo is of Dorothy Day, whose outrageous opposition to racism and injustice led to this outrageous redemptive gesture. She is an embodied Beatitude.

 

 He leads me beside the still waters:

He restores my soul.

The parable of the  Good Samaritan figures highly in my personal rule of life. No big deal in that, it's just a way of trying to pay attention to those around me, notice the realities of the world I work and walk in, and try to embody the compassion of Jesus in ways that are neither by-standing nor walking on the other side of the road. Sometimes being intentional in such attentiveness, and with the Good Samaritan as background theme music, that has meant just doing the decent thing when someone is struggling, needs help and may not even ask. Compassion isn't only emotional sympathy – kindness in action, understanding of another human heart, accompaniment on a hard part of the journey, personal expenditure of time, money or energy – it's all of these.

But now and again with the best will in the world none of that seems possible. Driving to work yesterday along a busy street, a young woman in a shell suit was clinging to a telephone junction box on the pavement. She was swaying, trying to hold on and was obviously distressed either because of what she had taken, or because she couldn't get what she needed. I was in a flow of traffic, passing roadworks with a contraflow, and no way to stop the car for several hundred yards. Several people walked past, one or two smiling but no one stopping, or speaking. Not easy to approach someone who is behaving so much in character with the dependency that has brought her to this place – alcohol, drugs, who knows. But at 7.45 am, she was clearly not where she needed to be. I felt guilty of and on for a while, then forgot about it until I remembered this morning. I wonder where she is. If anyone help-ed her. If she lives near where I saw her.

And I wondered too what is the good, or the use, of now praying for her. I don't know her name, her background, and may never see her again. But I have prayed for her.

That she will find somewhere and sometime, a love that will rescue and redeem.

That someone will have stopped and asked her name and maybe seen her safely home.

That we are forgiven for a world where roadworks, house renovation, traffic flow, and impatient commuters on the way to work or the school run, all conspire to make kindness inconvenient, stopping to help socially unacceptable, compassionate action a nuisance.

And that somewhere deep inside her loneliness and hopelessness, she will discover a love that will hold and enfold her towards wholeness, and recovery, and yes human happiness.

To such petitions I say amen, and trust to the Love that moves the sun and other stars, will move in that no less impressive work of healing a broken life, and yes, through the prayers of this mororist who didn't stop.