An earlier version of this pay was mistakenly published early
Then YHWH said to Cain “Where is your brother Abel?”
“I don’t know” answered Cain, “Does my brother, the keeper of sheep, need a keeper?”
YHWH replied, “What have you done? Can’t you hear it? Your brother’s blood is screaming out to me from the ground!”
–Genesis 4:9-10
I’ve struggled to write this post. On the one hand, I’ve felt so inadequately placed to even begin to address the issues surrounding the most recent series of murders of Black men and women at the hands of current or former police officers: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. I had originally planned to write about Ahmaud Arbery, and then the news of Breonna Taylor came out. I thought to write about what happened there and the challenge it presents the Church. Then the video of George Floyd being murdered before us by an officer of the state was posted.
I will not be posting that video here. It is shocking, it is uneasy, it is also far too common. A High School classmate of mine, who now teaches rhetoric, has spoken about the uneasy tension such videos have. On the one hand, people want to be informed, and they should know what’s happening. On the other, the history of public lynching in the US gives the viewing of the video an even darker tone than it had before. Make no mistake, when you saw the video, you saw a man being murdered. So what do we say to that?
I am not a black. I am an almost middle-aged, white man who grew up in the American Southwest. My college education was primarily in the American Southwest and South. As a result, I recognize I am ill-equipped to approach this topic. So I’ve been listening.
I’ve pointed people to other resources, to black authors, especially those in the Black Theology and Womanist Theology traditions. I’ll continue to do so (James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree should be required reading for whites in churches and Delores S Williams’s Sisters in the Wilderness for all men). Before I get too far into this, I want to be clear: this is the perspective of one white man. I can only lisp where others, due to their education and experience, are better equipped to speak.
Despite this, I recognize that while it is tantamount that priority and preference be given to black voices above white voices like mine, it is also extremely important that I not be completely silent in these conversations. With that in mind, I will not be entirely silent. This is partly so people of color might know they are not standing alone. Whatever privilege I inherited by virtue of my birth and history, I hope to use in order to lift up black voices.
Also, I am still learning. I will never not be learning. I may falter and fall. But I won’t let fear of failure keep me from adding my voice to the voices of many others.
Above all else, I would hope my white friends would hear this: it is not enough to simply not be a racist.
You must move toward being anti-racist. That journey starts with listening, recognition and educating yourself. I hope to contribute to that process. I hope that, together, we might learn to listen.
As God declared to Cain, “Your brother’s blood cries out to me”. The implication is that Cain should be able to hear the blood cry out too, if only he tried to listen. By not listening, Cain continues to do violence to Abel. In the same way, even though we may not have performed an explicitly racist act, even though you were not the cop with his knee on George Floyd’s neck, by not listening, by not letting the blood of the black saints cry out to you from the ground, you perpetuate the violence against them. All of those unjustly slain as part of system set up to keep them down. So I hope to acknowledge, on the one hand, the blood on my own hands, and to give voice, on the other, to the blood that cries out.
For those of you still with me, I’m going to start next time by examining these most recent cases.
“You do whatever you need to do to protect your family”
“If you need to protect yourself, that’s fine, just don’t try to force me to do anything”
“If I’m willing to take that risk what’s the big deal? I’m not asking you to do so”
“Everyone just has to do what they think is right for themselves.”
Last week, I shared about the fear that is driving a lot of responses to the current Coronavirus situation. The quotes above are not made up, but ones written or spoken to me or someone I know very closely. I want to make clear that I am not living out of fear, but I will (again) be addressing the thought processes behind these types of statements. At the end of last week’s post, I noted the biblical mandate to love one another is the exact solution to fear. That’s what I’m hoping to explore in this post. Besides sounding like a twentieth century Spanish novel, I firmly believe that love is the appropriate response during this pandemic time. So what does that look like.
Not me, but you
The first thing I would like to note is that, for many of us living in free and open societies, we have a view of individual rights as supreme. I do not mean to cast aspersions on the idea of how important individual liberty from government is. This is, no doubt, behind the strong reactions against government orders to wear face masks or to stay home.
But that’s not the way of Jesus.
The Jesus way is one of putting yourself second. “Don’t do anything for your own desires or wishes” writes Paul to the Philippians,
“Instead, humbly put others ahead of yourselves, for you are no longer meant to look at your interests, as individuals, but to the interests of others. In these relationships, one to the other, unite your mind with Jesus Christ, who, though he was fully God, didn’t think this was something to grab onto for his sake. Instead, he emptied himself completely, becoming fully a servant, by taking on the image of man. Being fully man to any who would examine him, he humbled himself still further, obeying authority to death–yes even a death upon a cross.
It is for this reason that God raised him to the highest place, giving his name a high place also, that at Jesus’s name, every knee would [humbly] bow, in heaven, on earth, and even under the earth, and every tongue proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, [solely] for the glory of God the Father.”
Philippians 2:3-11
I do not mean, by pointing to this passage, that one should blindly follow the state as though such allegiance is what it means to love your neighbor. Instead, I urge you look to the above passage and consider how we might best love our neighbor during this time. It is possible that what the state asks of us, and what God asks of us, happen to coincide. The bible clearly lays out the division between state and the Kingdom of God, while still acknowledging the authority of the former. But that’s not the point.
The point is that your own personal rights, no matter how valid or justified they are, are always placed behind the rights of others. So I ask the question again, how do we love one another? How do we drive out fear? By putting our rights behind those of others. We consider their values first.
The Whole and the Individual
A lot of reactions are going around about different aspects of the government response to the present pandemic (I will state again that it is real, it is not part of a conspiracy, and it is serious). One strain of argument I have heard countless times is “Why can’t I decide to take the risk for myself to…go back to work/go to the store/not wear a mask/not socially distance?” This is usually backed up by some declaration of “you do what’s right for you.”
Except, that’s not how life together works. If you live within a society, you are automatically bound to other members of that society. In the same way that within a
family one person’s actions affect everyone else, so it is within a broader society.
The reason that fire departments exist as a municipal entity is because one neighbor’s home on fire is a threat to every neighbor’s home. There was a time, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, where private fire departments would only hose down houses whose members had paid their fees. The results were disastrous, including, among many other issues, the Great Fire of London.
We should think of public health in much the same way. Your decision not to socially distance, doesn’t just affect you; particularly so when there is a long incubation period and asymptomatic transmission as is the case in the current situation. It affects the whole.
The same issue goes for masks. Cloth masks do very little to protect the wearer from getting a disease. They do something, but not much. To protect the wearer you need a properly fitted N95 mask (and most people don’t know how to properly wear one). That’s not their point. The reason that masks are common in many cultures is not because the wearer is worried about getting a disease, it’s because the wearer is concerned with not spreading the disease.
A cloth mask doesn’t mitigate all spread of disease. It does effectively remove a lot of water droplets (part of normal speech and breathing) that can hang in the air and carry the disease (but because it does not prevent all such spread, it only works in conjunction with distancing). However, masks do almost nothing to protect the wearer; and they only work when a significant portion of the population wears them, washes hands frequently, and maintains distance from those with whom they do not live.
I do not wear a mask because I fear for myself. I do not wear one to look out for my own family. I wear one for you. Even if you refuse to wear one out of some sense of freedom, thus putting my family I risk, I will continue to wear one. Because it is the loving thing to do.
A PR Problem
My wife, who has asthma among other health factors and is thus at increased risk of death from COVID-19, pointed out, amidst her frustration, that the politicization of mask wearing seems largely due to a PR problem.
In Houston, where I live, local authorities mandated that masks be worn, but offered no reasoning as to why it should be done. These local authorities are mostly from the Democratic party. The (mostly Republican) state authorities saw this, and immediately issued an order superseding the one of local authorities to not require face masks. The result was that the order in place to wear masks lasted only a couple of days, ones where the police openly acknowledged they would not enforce it.
The result is that many are actively refusing to wear masks or socially distance for the sake of making a political statement. They want to make it clear that “the government doesn’t tell me what to do.” Such persons are correct that they have every right to do so. But that is not love.
Nor are they correct in giving an individualistic account of things where “you do what you need to do and I’ll do what I need to do.” What you do affects me and what I do affects you. It is unavoidable. Perhaps the appeal should have been made on the basis, then, of love.
As my wife continued, she noted,
“It’s frustrating because the same people who are actively pushing back on these rules are the same people who would give you the shirt off their backs. The ones who would not only lend you their truck, but help you load and unload it and not ask for anything in return. A lot of these people are the exact ones who would be willing to make sacrifices for others if they were only asked in the right way.
“They need new PR. The message should have been
‘We’re Texans. Texans care for people. Texans help people. Right now there’s this virus and it is putting your grandma at risk. Not just your grandma, but everybody’s grandma. Wearing a mask is one of many things that can help our grandmas and lots of other people too. It may be uncomfortable, but we’re Texans and we can do this. We’re Texans and Texans help people’
There would have been open carry protesters, with masks on, handing out masks to everybody without one as they walked into Kroger and HEB.”
So I’m asking you, as a Christian, to show love for one another. You show love by staying home, by wearing a mask and staying distant when you have to go out, and by taking this seriously.
I absolutely understand the desire for many to get back to work. I have many close to me whom I know are struggling financially and unable to work. There are understandable fears and worries related to that. At the same time, though, is it worth the risk not just to that person, but to countless others? The failure of our society to care for the financial well-being of its citizens does not mitigate the responsibility to care for one another’s physical well-being. That is a false choice, and a dangerous one at that. Should something be done? Of course. How we do that, though, must be considered from a position of love, not financial well-being.
We show love by putting others ahead of our own rights, thoughts and desires. We defer to others.
For this reason, as we are fully encircled by such a cloud of witnesses, having set down every weight and the easily entangling sin, we should run with endurance the course laying before us.
Hebrews 12:1
This week, I’m going to explore a bit more the theme I introduced last time. Last week, I focused more on what worship means across physical space and briefly mentioned the concept of worshiping across time as well. I’d like to press into that latter point.
Witness
Certainly, this seems to be part of what is at play in the Hebrews passage here as the author lays out the claim that we should run course given to us, presumably the course of our lives that God has called us to run, in large part because of the many saints who are now cheering us on now. Giving weight to that interpretation is fact that Hebrews 11 lists several of the members of that great cloud.
To be sure, these weren’t exceptionally faithful men and women, though we often think
them such. The witness to faithfulness that they are is not a witness to their own faithfulness, that would make little sense in context. Rather, they are witness to the
faithfulness of God. Jephthah, a man whose most well known act is to make a vow in the midst of faithlessness, and Abraham, a man known for lying about his wife twice, for not believing God would start a nation through him and was considered righteous for believing God once, are not men known because of their great faith. Instead it is because God was faithful to them. They are witnesses to the faithfulness of God.
In the same way, you are part of that cloud. When the Author of Hebrews describes the cheering crowd of this cloud of witnesses, you, the believer, are simultaneously the athlete for whom they are cheering, and also part of that crowd. The language of cloud encircling you is very specific. It is not just a stadium around you, it is one into which you are fully enveloped. You are in the very presence of these people and they are in yours. While we are presently unable to be present incarnationally with the saints of our local community, for when God justifies you by faith you are made a saint, we are nevertheless spiritually, present with the saints throughout the ages.
Language to our Prayers
Not infrequently, I will pick up the Book of Common Prayer. To be sure, I come from a non-liturgical tradition (Baptist). While I did attend an Anglican Church during our time in England, it was what might be termed “low church.” So the book of common prayer wasn’t absent, but it wasn’t something you needed to read from every service. My affection for the old Anglican prayer book goes back much further than this anyway.
The book of Common Prayer was originally the work of Thomas Cranmer in the Sixteenth Century, however it was, in many ways, a collaborative effort. Over the years the book has been slightly adapted and modified, the language has been updated, but its core has remained largely unchanged. The book has been used for almost 500 years among English speaking saints.
I went to an interdenominational divinity school. The faculty member with whom I became closest was the Revd Dr Wilton Bunch, who was also an Anglican Priest. I had started attending, in addition to my Baptist Church services, some Anglican early morning prayer services at a fairly high church Episcopal Church in College. During my time at divinity school, I continued the practice by attending the midday Anglican service.
One day, while talking to Dr Bunch about Anglican traditions and the book of common prayer. I commented on the beauty of its language. I asked him what he liked most about it. He looked at me and said “The most wonderful thing about it, I think, is that it gives a language to your prayers when words fail you. When you are too full of sorrow or too full of joy, we can reach for the book and find a language, one that has been spoken by many before us, to help us express our inner most feelings to God.” This has stuck with me over the years.
We read the book of Psalms in much the same way. It’s easy to think of the Psalms as a hymnal of sorts, indeed some Psalms likely were sung. But it’s interesting that there are more Psalms of lament and imprecation (asking for God to bring calamity upon enemies) than there are of praise and thanksgiving. At their root, the Psalms are prayers of Ancient Saints. This does not exclude them from being songs as well, but when we read them as giving us a language to our inner hearts, they come alive in new ways.
This past Sunday the church I attend (virtually for now) began with a recitation of the Apostle’s Creed, some version of which has been recited in churches since at least the second century. We concluded, as we do every week, with the Doxology (also known as the Old 100), finding a different way to join with the saints in a song sung for three hundred years (first sung in 1709). Perhaps your church finds other ways to connect with host of Saints from decades, centuries or millennia past.
Regardless, as you get up and go about your day, perhaps not straying from the house even once today, as you pray or read, or even think about God, in a very real and very important sense, you do not do so alone. You are encompassed and enveloped in a great cloud of witnesses. You too, bear witness to faithfulness of God, as Christ was faithful to you, not only unto death but beyond it to new life. So praise God with all the saints.
“For where two or three gather in my name, I am there in their midst”
Mathew 18:20
After the Ascension of Christ, one of the big questions that presses the Church is, “Where is Christ?” Those from a more reformed perspective might immediately state “seated at the hand of the Father.” If you grew up in more Baptist or Wesleyan/Arminian circles, your answer might be “in my heart.”
Personally, I’m inclined to agree with the reformed perspective, despite much of my theology leaning in the Arminian direction. When I started my PhD, the movement that was beginning at the King’s College London Theology department was known as “Transformative Theology.” It began, at least for some, with that same question: where is Christ? I never joined the project, really, in large part because of my disagreement over the response to this question. Christ rose as a bodily human, albeit one with a transformed body. He ascended still in that body. Whatever else you might say about heaven or paradise, whatever your view of life after death, there is at least one human in the presence of the father, Jesus Christ. The incarnation, and even moreso the resurrection, represented a change in God.
Not a change in the nature of God, the language of Philippians 2 (μορφη) makes it clear that the change was in the appearance and representation of the Son, not his fundamental nature. But this change, as I understand the scripture, was a lasting one that continues on today. So if Jesus is physically embodied as a particular human, and as that human seated at God’s right hand, or standing before the throne, he remains in heaven. So when posed with the question of “Where is Christ?” I want to turn the question to also state that “His Spirit is with us.”
The Trinity
The doctrine of the Trinity is an interesting doctrine. On the one hand, the early Church Fathers were very clear to note that the Son is not the Father is not the Spirit. On the other hand, they also want to affirm the doctrine of circumincession, the idea that each person of the Trinity is interpenetrated by each other person of the Trinity while also remaining distinct.
The way this distinction is usually maintained is by saying only the Father begets, only the Son is begotten, and only the Spirit proceeds (whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son or from the Father and the Son was one of many of the precipitating factors behind the split of Easter Orthodox Churches and the Western Churches). To that distinction I might only add that only the Son is incarnate. True there is some discussion of God taking on a temporary human form, such as when YHWH visits Abraham a year prior to the birth of his son with Sarah or when Jacob wrestles with Elohim by the Jabbok river at night, but the kind of full embodiment and lasting incarnation seems unique to the Son.
Regardless, the connection between the three persons of the Trinity is somewhat fluid. Augustine, among many others probably first by Gregory of Nazianzus, referred to it as a kind of circle dance (περιχωρησις). Each member of the Trinity inhabits the space of each other member of the Trinity without assuming the identity of that person of the Trinity. The fundamental entity (ουσια) exists as three fundamental realities (υποστασις) turning and spilling one into the other. So when Christ declares at his departure that the disciples will receive the Holy Spirit, in a very real sense, the Spirit is also a real presence of Christ. So while it is certainly correct to say that Jesus is “seated at the right hand of the Father,” it is also as correct to declare that Jesus is “within my heart” by the power and presence of the Spirit.
Where is Christ?
This brings us back to the quote above. I have long considered the above passage a reason to gather together as a Church. Of course the Bible presents us with many reasons to gather, but one of them, I thought, was that there needs to be at least two people together in order for Christ to be there two. Indeed, Matthew 18 seems to speak at length about the Church and its power. But I think to narrowly focus on physical proximity misses something. And, in an age of social distancing and the (understandable) censure of large gatherings, where the location of Christ matters.
Surely physical presence is important. If it were not so, God would not need to become incarnate in the the person of Christ. When this is over, I will enjoy being physically present with so many others, there are many whom I look forward to hugging (and I am not a hugger). But the physical presence is not what this passage is about. By the Spirit, God is always with the Christian. So much so that the Spirit often prayers and intercedes on our behalf when we are unaware (Romans 8:26). So we have the presence of the Spirit even when we are alone.
Instead, the more narrow passage where this is located is discussing the work of the Church, not the gathering of the Church (that’s important, but addressed elsewhere). Instead, as the Church comes together and meets in one Spirit about some work, so does Christ also join them in the same Spirit. Whatever we bind, he will bind, whatever we loose, he will loose. God in Christ is in the midst of our work, of our worship, or our prayer. So, as you pray alone, feeling isolated from others, know that as the Church prays with you, so also there is Christ, in your midst. In the midst of your loneliness, join the prayers of the Saints (among whom you are now counted) and feel their presence along with the presence of Christ.
The gathering together, then, is not restricted by either time or space. If you are gathering individually in your homes, but around the same worship, you are not alone and Christ is in your midst. If you are reading through the Book of Common Prayer, or through a passage of the Bible, you are joining with saints throughout the ages. Where two or three are gathered, even across distances of time and space, there is Christ, in the midst of them.
“Comfort ye, Comfort ye my people”
says your God
“Speak comfort to Jerusalem,
and cry unto her
that warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
for she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.”
A voice of one crying out:
“Prepare, in the dessert, the road of the LORD;
make straight a highway for our God.
Every valley will be raised.
every mountain and hill will be made low;
the rough will become smooth and the rugged become plain.
And the LORD’s Glory will be revealed,
and all will see it together
for the mouth of the LORD has declared it.”
Isaiah 40:1-5
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com
The season leading up to Easter is known, in liturgical traditions, as Lent. During these forty days Christians fast from something. Usually you hear people saying they’ll give up one item or habit, such as chocolate, or sleeping in rather than an outright fast, but still a noticeable shift. It’s meant to recall other significant periods of forty. Forty days of fasting that Jesus experienced between his baptism and temptation, forty days of rain upon Noah’s ark, forty years of wandering and waiting in the untamed lands between Egypt and Canaan. It is also meant to recall the period of exile in Babylon. Here, it was not forty, but seventy years of exile. Exile to pay back the land its Sabbath that had been neglected and forgotten.
When Easter ends, the fasting should stop, there is great celebration. In more liturgical traditions (such as Roman Catholic or Anglican churches) they might not use the word “hallelujah” from Ash Wednesday until Easter. So when it reappears in the church, it’s a big deal. Celebration, rejoicing. Christ has come back from the dead, laying death down in its grave! The time for fasting is over! It’s time for celebration and feasting, a fore-echo of the wedding supper of the lamb.
This year, many hundreds of millions, if not billions, experienced a taste of some form of fasting or exile, if not necessarily voluntarily, due to the now ubiquitous term “social distancing.” Still, it may have been made more bearable for some as it seemed appropriate for Christians to be more secluded, to spend time struggling, and to have more isolation during the period of Lent, even while we wish and pray the circumstances were more voluntary and less dire. But now, Easter has come. Shouldn’t this fasting and exile be over? Shouldn’t we be coming out of homes, seeing and touching, interacting, and playing and dancing? Shouldn’t the exile of businesses be over and done? Shouldn’t I be able to go to a restaurant, or to a movie theater, or to a coffee shop, or library, or classroom? Why isn’t the exile over?
The bible has a lot to say about exile. During graduation season, which this year will be more than a little different, many seniors receive cards quoting the prophet Jeremiah “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper and not harm you, plans for bright hope and a future.” The greater context for this passage is, of course, that this message of hope and good will is delivered on the eve of exile. None that could hear and understand it would return back to that land. They would die in exile. Many of their children would be born, grow old, and die in exile. Knowing this, Jeremiah goes out and buys a parcel of land. “I’ll be back for this” he declares; but Jeremiah is never seen again once exile comes.
In the New Testament, after the resurrection, the early Church waited for the soon return of Jesus. They heard his words that “I go to prepare a place for you. If I go, I will come back” and waited…and waited…and waited. The delay in Christ’s return, it seems, caused something of a crisis. This is likely behind Paul’s admonishment to the Thessalonians to continue working as they wait for the return. It may even be a large part of the reason John wrote his letters to the seven churches in Revelation. The people were stuck between Easter and the end of exile (and exile under Roman Emperors renown for their persecution like Nero and later Diocletian, no less). The Resurrection had come, Jesus had ascended, but still they waited. This period, where the tension between the already present and still coming Kingdom of God is felt strongest, continues on today. As citizens of another country, we Christians live in exile, one that has not yet ended. The message for those in exile is one of hope.
The book of Isaiah spends roughly 39 chapters hammering at the people to turn from their sin to avoid exile. In chapter 40, Isaiah changes his tone and audience. The prophet begins to speak not to those who lived prior to exile, but to those who have come through the other side. His opening words are “comfort.”
Opening words are often important, especially in ancient literature. The Iliad begins with “Rage, rage of Achilles” signifying a major theme that would be that hero’s undoing. At this critical shift, the prophet’s words to the people are “Comfort.”
It’s important, I think, to acknowledge that Isaiah wrote this prior to the end of exile (prior, even, to the beginning of exile). All throughout the years of laboring and waiting and wondering when or if it would ever end, the people of God could look to God’s words of “Comfort” to “my people.”
And so, as this exile feels a bit more acute with the onset of isolation, quarantine, social distancing, shuttered businesses, lost jobs, financial strain, and so much death and mourning all due to a virus most of us scarcely understand, we can still look to these words: “Comfort, Comfort.” God, though not seen as expressly, closely and intimately as before, is still active. He is still working. God is preparing a straight, level, even and therefore swift path in the dessert. All will see it the Glory of God because God Himself has declared it will be so. And on that glorious day, God will bring comfort.
“In this world you will have trouble” Jesus assured his disciples as his death drew near, “but take heart, I have overcome the world.” So in your own exile, take heart, and hear the words of comfort. This is not the end. This is the tension and sorry that comes with anticipation!
Something that has really stuck with me about the account of the events of Good Friday was probably best summarized in a talk given by N.T. Wright. He begins talking about this question of authority that Jesus and Pilate had a conversation about (what amounted to his official trial). There’s quite a bit of background to this question that, in the talk I heard, Wright doesn’t really have time to get into. Essentially, Pilate is trying to ascertain whether Jesus is guilty of sedition, of trying overthrow the empire to establish his own Kingdom. It turns out, Jesus is 100% guilty of that charge, but not in the way that Pilate had suspected. The whole dialogue is spread of John 18 and 19.
Pilate asks if Jesus is a King. Jesus responds by asking why he would think such a thing. Heavily implied in Jesus’s response is that Pilate actually has no authority, but does as others ask him. Yet soon it comes about where we have a key line from Jesus “My Kingdom is not from this (ek tos) world.” This is not saying there is a kingdom and it exists somewhere, but not here. Instead, Jesus is boldly declaring that his kingdom does not arise out of this world. It comes from somewhere else. Because it comes from somewhere else, it will be achieved in a radically different way. Jesus is basically telling Pilate that the Kingdom is coming from God himself, and Jesus’s death will only accelerate its arrival. This is why Pilate tries to release him.
The crowd having none of it, Pilate tries to make him king, in a mocking sort of manner, and in the cruelest way possible. Pilate seeks to make him a king completely according to the ways of this world, through violence and insult. Yet it is to no avail. Instead the people remind Pilate of Jesus’s claim, he claimed to be “the Son of God.”
There is a heavy nuance we often miss today in our modern sensibility. Jesus’s claim to be the “Son of God” was not, exclusively, a claim to divinity. There are other, much more explicit passages about that (“I and the Father are one.” “Before Abraham was, I AM (ego eimi)”). Instead, it’s important to note that, by this time, the Roman emperor had taken on a very specific title: son of the gods. It is for this reason Pilate became terrified. This is a true and unmistakable revolution. It also leads Pilate back to touting his authority, rebellions must be squelched, after all.
It is here that Jesus reminds Pilate of what authority actually looks like. Pilate claims to have authority, but any authority he has “comes from above.” The dual meaning here is that it comes only from Caesar, who is in authority over Pilate, but also that it comes from God. That is if he has authority. As it turns out, Pilate does not act like one with authority. His wish, at that point, is to be done with Jesus and not to crucify him, yet he succumbs to the will of the people, those over whom he claims to have authority. Pilate wants to release Jesus, but that is in violation of his authority from Caesar. Still he wants to to release Jesus, but his authority is taken away by the crowds.
And it brings me back to this line from the lecture by N. T. Wright.
“Pilate and Jesus have this debate about authority and who has authority and where authority comes from. Pilate hands Jesus over to be crucified, and Jesus wins.”
Pilate cannot let it go, and must admit Jesus is King, because he acted with authority. And there, on the cross, he is inaugurated. The Kingdom of God has broken into our world. The sorrow of the Friday will turn to joy on the Sunday. But let us not skip over the sorrow too quickly.
Today is Maundy Thursday. This is the day when the events of the “upper room” occurred. It is also the night of the Garden of Gethsemane and arrest of Jesus. Through this night the cup, used in passover, takes on a special significance. In this post, I’m going to attempt to briefly outline some of them.
The Cup was a Marriage Proposal
In first century Jewish marriage proposals, wine took on a special significance. In the proposal, the tale end of it, after a marriage covenant was actually drawn up and agreed upon by the groom, father of the bride and the bride, it would be sealed with a toast between the groom and the bride. The groom would pour wine and offer it to his (hopefully soon-to-be) bride, with the promise that “This is a covenant in my blood” or something similar. To accept she would drink it. To reject the request (because hers was the final decision) she would simply return the cup.
20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. (Luke 22:20, NIV)
The Cup is a Promise
The groom, after such a proposal was accepted, would promise not to drink wine again until he saw the bride again, on their wedding day. He would then go to make a bridal suite ready, which was a room attached to his Father’s house. He would stock it and prepare it to make everything perfect, returning to take his bride for their wedding day at a time she would not expect, to foster a sense of expectation and excitement everyday that today would be the day she would see her groom coming for her. In the meantime, the bride to be was encouraged to regularly drink small amounts of wine, each time reminding her that her groom would be coming for her. Today could be the day.
2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14:2-3, NIV)
“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.2 Five of them were foolish and five were wise.3 The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them.4 The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps.5 The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. 6 “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ 7 “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps.8 The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ 9 “‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ 10 “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. 11 “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ 12 “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ 13 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”
(Matthew 25:1-13, NIV)
29 I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom. (Matthew 26:29, NIV)
“do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19b)
The Cup is Also Tragic
Jesus directly prays that the cup he is to drink, the cup of death, will pass from him. This is an honest and human response. If there is ever any doubt that Jesus knows what it is like to be a human, here it is. It is only because he became incarnate as a frail, finite, person–the infinite in the finite–that we can have life in his name. Maundy Thursday reminds us to prepare ourselves for Good Friday. Without the death of the cross there is no resurrection of the dead. And in Christ’s dying, we ourselves die, so that by his rising, we may find life abundant.
39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39, NIV)
The name “Maundy” comes from the Latin for commandment. We are commanded to love one another in the same way Christ loved us. Even when, or perhaps especially when, we don’t feel like it.
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35, NIV)
I didn’t really believe it at first, but there it was, right on my Facebook feed. Someone talking about how the lunar eclipse that happened on Tuesday. Or, in their terms, the “blood moon.” I don’t really blame them, there are people who like to stir up hysteria and they make very convincing arguments with nice rhetoric. But they are mistaken about it, and usually don’t really care how often they are wrong (and if you look at the track record of the sorts of people who cause these hysterias they are almost always wrong). Nor was simply talking about the moon a problem. I mean everybody was talking about it. This was one of the clearest and fullest lunar eclipse of our lifetimes, and so it is a rare opportunity to view the moon looking almost entirely red. No, the problem was that the talk focused entirely upon a discussion of how the end of the world is about to happen at any minute. Now it may be the case that the end of world really is about to happen at minute, but it has nothing to do with the “blood moon” and here are three reasons why:
1. This is not the first lunar eclipse and it won’t be the last
This point is really pretty obvious. It is true that most ancients and medievalists thought the red moon or “blood moon” was a bad omen, but they thought that because it occurred periodically. However, when bad things followed such an event, it was really just a case of confirmation bias. That’s a phenomenon where you only pay attention to observations that confirm your already held suspicion. It’s not proof, it’s selective observation. “But this one’s different” I’ve heard and seen people say. Well…
2. This lunar eclipse is not really that different
It’s different in the sense that it looks a lot clearer and more obvious than most lunar eclipses we will likely witness in our lifetime. But it’s not different in the sense of paying attention to specific dates and times, etc. Do you know who set about creating calendars and such? People did. They are a social convention. Now, it is true that they’ve conformed generally to some external phenomenon, like the revolution of the earth around the sun, or the lunar cycle (note: the current Jewish Calendar is somewhere between the two). Still, it is ultimately a human invention. The Holy Days enacted in Scripture are an example of God accommodating his revelation to us. At least that seems to be the opinion of Paul in the 2nd chapter of Colossians (NIV):
16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.18 Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.19 They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.
In fact, the obsession with timing specific days and alignment with the planets as somehow an omen is not routed in Christianity. Instead, you would expect to find that sort of thing in Astrology and Paganism (both ancient and modern or neo-paganism).
“But” someone will object “what about those bible verses?”
3. Those Bible verses don’t necessarily mean what you think they do
There are, by my count, exactly three verses of the bible that refer to a red moon. And one of those is a New Testament passage explicitly quoting an Old Testament passage. So let’s look at that one first.
In Joel 2, it reads:
28 “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. 29 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. 30 I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 31 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. (NIV)
Now that doesn’t sound so bleak. I mean, it does call it a “dreadful day of the Lord,” but the Hebrew text uses words in different ways than we do. I mean what’s with the prominence of “Fear of the Lord” in Proverbs. Does that mean we should be scared and hiding from God, or does fear mean something else? Does “dreadful” mean something else? This becomes particularly clear in the context of the chapter. Immediately prior to this section, the prophet Joel describes the restoration of the land and provision from God, and immediately after Joel notes that all who call upon God will be saved. That’s not very bleak at all. In fact, if we look to the New Testament, we see how they understood its fulfillment.
At the beginning of Acts, immediately after the outpouring of the Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost, Peter gets up and starts shouting that this very passage has just been fulfilled. After all, the Spirit is being poured out on all of the church, not just an individual (as had been the case in the Old Testament). What’s more, he quotes the bit about the sun being black and the moon being blood during what, by all accounts, seems to be a pleasant day (people are outside celebrating this festival and no one is terrified). There’s no black sun and no red moon. What gives? It could be that the black sun and red moon mean something else entirely.
One more passage before I come back to that. In Revelation 6 we have the following appear:
12 I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red,13 and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind.14 The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. (NIV)
It’s always interesting to me how different people treat the book of Revelation. (Sidenote: pet peeve of most biblical scholars: putting an “s” on the end of Revelation. If you know one, try it out and watch them squirm a little before apologizing). Everyone talks about taking it “literally” but what they mean by that varies.
-Revelation mentions that there will be two prophets against the city of Babylon? Well then, we better look for exactly two men who are prophesying against a pagan city, bonus points if that city is actually named Babylon.
-Revelation talks about a beast rising up out of the sea, a third of the stars falling from heaven? Well, I mean it’s not a “beast” but a person. And those stars are demons. Clearly a metaphor.
-Revelation mentions Jesus standing at the door and knocking? Well that is not bound to a specific time period in any way shape or form. Come on, give us some credit.
Here’s the problem with the above. How literal one takes Revelation depends upon how literal the one doing the reading decides to take it. And it usually is a personal choice, with little to no respect (or even awareness) of the genre in which the book was written. It’s read like a modern book, and one that the reader knows based upon a gut feeling (that gut feeling is not the Spirit, by the way. The Spirit is expressed in the full body of believers known as the Church). So we read it “literally” when it is convenient, and dispense with literality any time it is convenient or interesting to do so. That’s a problem. Revelation is a hard book to understand. I don’t claim to fully comprehend it, but while I’m willing to admit that, I do understand it on some level.
So what’s going on here?
Well John, the author of Revelation, is very adept at blending into Revelation and referencing a wide variety of Old Testament symbols. He doesn’t do so explicitly (partly because that would violate the genre in which he’s writing), but it is permeating by the Hebrew Bible. Given that the only reference to a red moon found in the Old Testament is in Joel, we should probably see if there is any overlap. For Joel, the use of the images of a black sun and red moon were indications of the end of the world. Not because Joel thought there natural occurrences would actually foretell the end of the world, but because this was an already established motif. Other cultures sure seemed to think that, but Joel didn’t (or, at the very least, Peter quoting Joel didn’t believe that). They are merely a more poetic way of talking about the end of history.
That fits pretty well with Revelation, but it doesn’t explain why Peter references it in Acts.
It helps if we understand that Peter was a Jew, not a Gentile Christian. As such, he had certain expectations about how the world would end. During the first century, this included a belief in the “resurrection of the dead.” Peter, and all the early church, wholeheartedly believed that Jesus was raised from the dead. For the early church, then, that meant the end of history wasn’t only eminent, but already present. The end of the world had come. Indeed, one question that 1-2 Thessalonians and Revelation are all trying to deal with is how the end of the world could have so clearly arrived, and yet the world not be over yet. It is then that the church began to make sense of Jesus’ statements that “A time is coming and is now here.” This is two Kingdoms theology. The end of the world has come, it has come in the Kingdom of God, which is the Church as it should be. It is at war with the kingdom of the world. Yet, in light of the resurrection of Christ and Pentecost, the kingdom of this world has already lost to the Kingdom of God. The end of the world has already happened. It’s coming, yes, but it’s already here. Maranatha!
First things first. This is not a practical joke. I am making a serious claim about the movie “Noah” as a cultural phenomenon (not necessarily about the movie itself). So, full disclosure: this is not a review. You can read a good review from an evangelical perspective (with links to many more) at Christianity Today. Also, this is not even really a comment on the content of the movie. I get it, some people find it very questionable. Noah was a righteous man in bible, and isn’t shown as one here (actually, he is said to have found favor first, and only then described as righteous. The author of Hebrews (ch. 11) very heavily implies Noah’s righteousness is a direct result of this “favor” from God, not the other way around, something very much in keeping with Pauline theology). But this isn’t about that.
There’s also some debate about whether this is even a Christian themed movie. To be sure, Aronofsky likes to ask very big and very deep questions in his films, but these tend to be more about the nature of being human and how we relate to each other. The Bible, in contrast, is not (fundamentally) about people, but is about God. It’s written to people, but it’s written about God. But this isn’t about that either. This is about the impact that media has in our very visual culture. So here are some reasons that “Noah” may have a more positive impact on the culture than other Christian-themed movies.
1) People who aren’t Christians will go to see it
Say what you will about God’s not Dead, or other such movies. The truth is, very few who are outside of Christianity will ever consider going on their own (and not as a favor to a friend). The same is not true of “Noah.” Why? Because it has already sparked so many conversations about it. Conversations drive people to explore. In contrast dogmatic answers drive people to shut down and stop engaging. One is much more effective than the other and fostering genuine searching.
2) People are talking about it
Like everywhere. You can’t seem to avoid talking about it, or reading about, or seeing it somewhere. Everyone has an opinion about this and everyone (at least in the US it seems) has heard about it. This is sort of a spin off of number 1, so I’ll leave it at that.
3) They are actually pointing people back to the text
Here’s something that bothers me about many (but not all) Christian movies: they don’t actively encourage people to read their bibles. Sometimes there is a note and the beginning or end (not always), but often there is not. Even where there is, who actually reads those and thinks, “ok, I’m going to do that”? And even if you did, did you remember when you got home? People want to be entertained and anything that takes them out of that mindset is very hard. This is why I was very encouraged to see this:
That’s an ad for the movie appearing in the New York Times. Let me say that again: that’s an ad for the movie. Yet they included in their ad, under no real obligation to do so, a link that (if you were reading on a phone or tablet) you could click and then immediately download the entire bible. What’s more the “bibleapp” is specifically designed to encourage more reading of the bible than just handing it to someone. This is fantastic. I don’t really care if you see the movie or not. They are pointing people directly to the source material outside of the movie-going experience. Not only that, they have removed virtually all barriers to reading the bible. Do we not believe that the bible is powerful, transformative and redemptive? Anytime someone is pointed back to the revelatory witness of God’s redemptive work in history, I am excited. That has a lot more potential to foster change than virtually anything else we do.
In the end, I don’t really care if you see the movie or not, but I do think we should, at the very least, be ready to engage in positive conversations about what people have seen. Again, I’m not saying you should say you liked it if you didn’t, but if someone who is not a Christian is excited after having watched it, redirect that passion back to God and God’s word (encourage more conversation). The last thing we should do is try to squash that enthusiasm right off the bat with diatribes against its accuracy. This is a rather unique opportunity here, let’s not waste it trying to show how right we are and how wrong everyone else is.
But what do I know? Let me know what you think?
UPDATE: It looks like the film hassubstantially increased the number of people reading the bible:
age has been updated, but its core has remained largely unchanged. The book has been used for almost 500 years among English speaking saints.
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