Jesus as Renaissance Man: Weird Sayings Continued…

“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth onto an old coat.  The patch will simply pull away from the coat, and you’ll have a worse hole than you started with. People don’t put new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the skins will be split; then the wine will be lost, and the skins will be ruined.  They put new wine into new skins, and then both are fine.”  Matthew 9:16,17  

Maybe this passage seems intimidating because of the traumatic experience I had in an eighth grade home survival class: my teacher, Ms. Gibson, (who, by the way, contrary to any stereotypes about women in home economics, drove a red convertible, had her own tanning bed and looked like Barbie), made me sew pockets for my final project.  I got a “D,” with the result being that I now avoid most things sewing-related.

Personal hang-ups aside, this passage is still a bit weird.  In the previous verses, Jesus has just called Matthew (presumably the same Matthew as the writer of this Gospel) out of a dubious profession of tax collecting and into a life of discipleship. Now we find Jesus taking questions first from the Pharisees and then from John the Baptist’s disciples.  The Pharisees want to know why it is that Jesus spends his time with sinners like tax collectors, today’s equivalent maybe being Wall Street traders, to which Jesus replies that his job “isn’t to call upright people, but sinners.”  John the Baptist’s people want to know why Jesus and his disciples don’t practice the discipline of fasting, (which in their time was a way of remembering all of the tragic things in Israel’s history), to which Jesus replies that wedding guests can’t fast when the party is going on.

And then we get these two analogies from the two very different worlds of sewing and viticulture.  Which, by the way, suggests that Jesus was appealing to a very broad audience of men and women when he said this, since I cannot imagine that men in Jesus’ time did much sewing.  But what is Jesus really trying to say here?

N.T. Wright, in Matthew for Everyone, affirms that Jesus is drawing our attention to the new things Jesus is doing. In this sense, these three different pictures (of a wedding celebration, sewing project and wine-making) are meant to convey how impossible it is to mix the new with the old:  they “have in common…Jesus’ insistence that the new and the old won’t mix.  This doesn’t mean, of course, that the old was bad.  Jesus came, Matthew insists, not to destroy, but to fulfill.  It simply means that morning has broken on a new day, God’s new day, and the practices that were appropriate for the night time are now no longer needed.”

Wright doesn’t recommend reading too much into the details of each picture for what they might imply about Jesus in relation to the Judaism of his day.  I won’t.  But I am obliged to conclude here that Jesus was indeed a “Renaissance Man” in the two senses of the term. First, as an educated carpenter well-versed in the Scriptures, Jesus clearly also had at least some basic, working knowledge of two very different skill sets (sewing and wine-making).  We know that he later turns water into wine at a wedding in Cana, for example.  Who is not to say that he didn’t occasionally sew his own clothes, too?

Then there is also the “renascence” or “rebirth” to which Jesus is gesturing.  The entrance of this God-man onto the stage of human affairs represents a whole new way of “being” for human beings.  Yes, it is the fulfillment of Israel’s deepest yearnings for a Messiah who will redeem their tragic history, so long, sad faces and the dabbing away of tears with our Kleenexes really won’t work at the wedding celebration.  Just like it probably won’t work to put rusty hub caps on a brand new Saab convertible, or to ask a really geriatric model to wear Dolce & Gabbana’s newest line of clothing on a runway in Milan.

“I hope nobody can see my legs in this.”

But Jesus’ debut also represents more than the fulfillment of Israel’s longings for a Messiah.  It represents healing, restoration, and abundant life.  Not just for Israel but for the whole world in the form of “a new heaven and a new earth.”

God’s new world is “being born,” and from now on everything will be different, as Wright describes it.  ”The question for us is whether we are living in that new world ourselves, or whether we keep sneaking back to the old one where we feel more at home,” he writes.

Are we?

Food for Thought: Stephen Colbert on Poverty

Beyond Tribalism

These days my denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), finds itself bracing for the possibility of further membership losses with more congregations jumping ship- this after a majority of presbyteries voted to remove the constitutional requirement that all ministers, elders and deacons  live “in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness” (G-6.0106b in the church’s Book of Order).  In effect, the new language opens the way for gays to serve in ordained ministry by letting everyone’s sexuality and sexual preferences (not just gays’) be a matter of conscience.

The change has given way to some ripple effects.  The National Presbyterian Church of Mexico has severed ties with the PC(USA), ending a 139-year-old relationship.  Now some 2,000 clergy and laity representing about 850 congregations are debating the question of whether to stay or go.

"Should I stay or should I go now? If I go there will be trouble. If I stay it will be double."

In the meantime, a decisive factor will be how well we can answer the question, “How then shall we live together?”  Just last week at a meeting of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, the governing entity of elders and ministers to which I belong, those of us present began to work together towards an answer.  In small break-out groups we were asked to discuss two proposed alternatives to our current form of polity which might allow us to remain unified despite our differences and prevent further splintering of our denomination.

I had arrived late, so had been ushered to one of the few open seats. There I found myself within a rather random assortment of conversation partners who together had been asked to grapple with the various challenges and opportunities presented by these two possible revised forms of government.

If truth be told, I felt a bit uncomfortable.  I didn’t know the people in my circle from Adam or Eve. They were strangers with name tags- our only connection being our leadership in the same denomination and a unifying belief in the saving love of Jesus Christ- and here we were being asked to share our views on a loaded topic.  Six very different people representing six very different congregations, each with very different backgrounds and experiences.  Could authentic and abiding fellowship really be found here?  The question had crossed my mind as we were introducing ourselves.

But then something happened.  The one African American in our group, an elderly gentleman who had been a pastor for many years, began to speak.  He spoke passionately and articulately from a place of real vulnerability and gentle conviction.  He shared from his own personal experience of having grappled with Scripture and in dialogue with others.  He shared about a time when he sat in a room with members of a certain church whose brash, unapologetic rejection of homosexuals as full-fledged members of the body of Christ seemed an awful lot like bigotry; he called us to consider the opportunity presented by this experiment before us, an experiment in a different way of relating to one another that would ask for courage and a new-found dependence on the Holy Spirit.  That would require us to put our money where our mouth is, so that, in the words of the old hymn, “they will know we are Christians by our love.”

He kept talking- so much so that a couple of us exchanged nervous glances, wondering if we would ever get through the questions we were to answer.  But as he spoke, an amazing thing happened:  I began to listen.  To really listen.  To listen without an agenda, without thinking about the next question or what I ought to say next.  Just to listen.  And as I listened, I began to thank God for this man next to me and for each of us sitting there in this circle of mostly strangers, so thankfully different one from another.  All of us called to this place at this time in the life of our churches and denomination.  Here in these moments we had been obliged to encounter one another as persons.  Not as categories of “conservative” or “liberal.”  Not as members of opposing tribes, but as individuals- as saints and sinners wrestling with the complexities of Scripture and the limits of our own experience.

We human beings are instinctively tribalistic: we tend to gravitate to those who are just like us, who look like us, talk like us, think and act like us.  Differences can make us uncomfortable.  So we choose to live in certain neighborhoods over others.  Our children prefer certain cafeteria tables to others.  We attend certain churches rather than others, so that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once put it, America remains never more segregated than on any given Sunday morning.

Last Thursday this kind of tribalism injected itself in an ugly way into the Republican primary debate when an American soldier fighting in Iraq, built like an Iron Man but speaking a bit tentatively, called in with a question:  “In 2010 when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was because I’m a gay soldier and didn’t want to lose my job,” Stephen Hill told the candidates. “Under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that’s been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?”

Hill’s question elicited loud boos from the audience.  Then Rick Santorum answered.  He gave no words of thanks for this man’s service, no gestures of appreciation.  Only boisterous reassurances, to the loud cheers of those present, that “don’t ask, don’t tell” would be reinstated under a Santorum presidency.

Tribalism.  It is about as old as a man and a woman in a garden with an apple and a serpent.  It is in our loins, a bit like sin, and it is everywhere.  All around us everyday.  In the church and out.

I left last week’s exercise in listening to those different from me with an answer to my question.  Can we find unity in our differences and belonging in our diversity?  Can we find fellowship in our separateness?  Yes, by the grace of God we can.  For all of the times we have failed, maybe this time will be different.  Amen.

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Words for a Dying Friend

The entry stone at the Memorial of Moses atop Mount Nebo.

Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho.  There the Lord showed him the whole land…Then the Lord said to [Moses], ‘”This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’  I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.”  And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab….Deut. 34:1-4

A dear friend and her husband who has pancreatic cancer have been on the journey of their life.  A journey that they would never have chosen for themselves, but to which they had been painfully summoned this past January when they first got the diagnosis of cancer. Like Moses and the people of Israel, they had their “promised land”:  this past week, they drove to Houston’s MD Anderson with every expectation that Alex, my friend’s husband, would receive the long-awaited Whipple (a procedure that removes the pancreas along with, among other things, the gallbladder,  stomach bile duct and lymph nodes near the pancreas).

Our friends had been praying and waiting for this drive for weeks now, at times wondering if it would ever happen.  There were the infections- one that had nearly taken his life in the hospital- and the weekly chemo treatments.  The emergency trips to the hospital. The scary falls.

And then there have been the daily realities.  The nausea and vomiting.  Those sickening protein boosts.  The emptying of the bile bag (which my friend had joked was “Gollum” from The Lord of the Rings).  All of this the new normalcy of having to play host 24/7 to an unwanted guest called “cancer.”

I, along with thousands of friends and acquaintances, had been regularly praying for Alex’ healing.  We had been intimately following their journey through the Caring Bridge web site that connects family and friends during times of a loved one’s illness- a total of 41,450 visits made from around the world as of this morning.  Each day I have had the blessing of witnessing the faith, hope and love of this family as they have banded together around their father, brother, husband, and lover.

Yesterday my friends were told that the Whipple would not be possible.  The cancer had spread to the liver.  Like Moses, my friends had been obliged to gaze on their promised land from afar.  The doctors had said Alex could measure the remainder of his life in months.

Shock. Anger. Depression.  Sadness.  Fear.  Doubts.  ”If only’s.”  I wonder if Moses standing on Mount Nebo experienced the same tide of messy emotions that my friends are experiencing right now.

Even as I write this I want to paper over the reality of death and dying with some tidy expression of faith.  I want to say that my friends will beat the odds (a one percent chance of life now, according to the doctors, as if life and death can be predicted like the weather).  I want to ask for a miracle and part of me is still praying for one.

But to do so is also to deny the tragedy inherent in every death: that by definition, death is the violent ripping away of our “promised lands”- if not the Whipple and another decade of life, then the book remaining to be written, or the grandchildren you had wanted to hold, or the places you had hoped to visit.  The list goes on.  In death we are forced to gaze on what lies before us with the naked recognition that we will not have it.  At least not in this life.

Can any consolation be found here, at this juncture where we stand like Moses gazing on what we had hoped would be the land that we would inhabit but which has become painfully elusive to us?  For Christians the answer is resolutely “yes.”  Even as we must walk through the valley of death and fall back against the tragedy of life itself, there is consolation that our lives, like Moses’, are in the hands of “the Lord” who led us on the journey and along the way provided manna from heaven and protection from our enemies, who planted in us the desire for a “promised land” and who will indeed give it to us, only never as we had expected, as if to remind us that our beginning and our end are in Him alone.  To that same God, I give thanks for these dear friends and entrust their journey.

What Would Jesus Do…in Bed?

Rev. Dr. Paul Morehead, whose short-wave radio broadcast from Montgomery, Alabama reportedly reaches an estimated 1.6 million listeners worldwide, has the answer:  Morehead has invented a “what would Jesus do” condom that he claims will help hormonal teenagers abstain from sex.  No joke.

“WWJD condoms are a divinely inspired idea and they work like a charm,” Morehead recently told Your World Report.  “When a young man and a young woman give in to Satan, when they strip down like animals in the wild and prepare themselves for a lusty round of heavy petting and full-blown sex, what better reminder for them to buck up than a WWJD condom with the image of our Lord and Savior right on the package, and then, as a fail-safe measure, also on knobby shaft of the prophylactic itself?”

Morehead continued:  “I’ve tested them with my own teenagers and hardly a weekend passes when one of them doesn’t come back home with a WWJD condom completely unrolled and dangling unused from his or her fingertips or pushed up under the seat of the car as a badge of honor.”

Morehead may have a point here: I suspect just about anybody would find the image of Jesus on a condom to be a pretty big rain on the parade in those hot and heavy moments.  With the procurement of one of those intimidating latex jackets, the hot flames of sexual desire would get a good dousing.  But then again, realistically speaking, what self-respecting teenager would dare to be seen with one of these things in the first place?

What do you think? Is Morehead on to something here or just plain crazy? 

Field Notes on Grace

"Grace of God" in Greek

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a conversation starter:  Where did you last experience “grace” and what did it look like?

In the spirit of Stanley Hauerwas’ latest book, Working with Words, which is one Christian theologian’s exploration of language about God, I want to propose a conversation around “grace” and where we encounter it in the world.  This is not a conversation only for Christians.  It’s for everybody everywhere- and I’m looking for your input regardless of creed or lack thereof.

“Grace” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and I quote, is: “unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification…a virtue coming from God…a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace…approval, favor,  mercy, pardon…a charming or attractive trait or characteristic…a pleasing appearance or effect : charm…ease and suppleness of movement or bearing…used as a title of address or reference for a duke, a duchess, or an archbishop…a short prayer at a meal asking a blessing.”

So the invitation is to share how you have experienced “grace” lately wherever that may be- even in church.  If you haven’t experienced grace lately, you can share how you imagine “grace” to be.

I’ll start.  The other day my family ended up, a bit bored and hungry (it was around lunchtime), at our local playground.  We soon discovered that a mega birthday party for someone we had never met was about to take place.  There were the bouquets of balloons, bounce houses, snow cone machine, tables of food and pony ride.  All for a guest list we were not on.  This was most evidenced by the fact that every person showing up to the party was a well-dressed African American carrying a large present for the now one-year-old birthday girl who would never remember this extravagant fun.  In short, the whole affair was over-the-top in a wonderful, serendipitous way, and we had stumbled into it.

Needless to say, we felt a bit out of place: while the playground appeared to be still open to the public, we had stepped into a private, invitation-only celebration.  We wondered whether we should go.  Our kids were hoping to stay and play.  And so we had lingered just a bit, all the while wondering when would be our cue to leave. 

Just then, the mother of the girl walked over to me, the obvious interloper.  I wondered if this was it- the time when we would be told that the playground had been reserved for the occasion and we needed to leave.

I asked her about the cause for celebration.  She told me. And then the unexpected happened: “You all are welcome to stay and join us for the party. We’ll have snow cones and lots of food.  Help yourselves to everything! And there will be a pony ride, too.”

And so we had stayed.  Uninvited, ill-prepared but lavishly welcomed nonetheless.

Got an intelligence report on grace?  You can either post it in the comments section below or e-mail me at (kristinarobbdover@gmail.com); I’ll share it at the end of the week!

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Was Jesus Racist? An Answer.

An image of terror used by whites against blacks within the last century in my country.

 ’It isn’t right,’ replied Jesus, ‘to take the children’s bread and throw it to  the dogs.’  (from Matthew 15:21-28)

Was Jesus a racist? When after giving the cold shoulder he then indirectly refers to the Canaanite woman who literally throws herself at his feet as a “dog,” Jesus is using a common racial slur that would have been very familiar to Jews and non-Jews (Gentiles) in his time.

I put this question before my now-retired New Testament professor, Christopher Bryan.  Chris has written a number of books, having most recently published with Oxford University Press The Resurrection of the Messiah.  He also sports a dignified English accent, which makes him even more authoritative on the subject.

Chris gives an answer with which I would have to concur: yes.  At one time Jesus was racist, and in Bryan’s words, “there is no sense in getting around it.”

Now that the angry outcry has died down and the pitch forks have been momentarily lowered, I’ll attempt an explanation.  Which begins with a few assumptions- the first being that we are holding in tension here the great mystery of faith that in the “Incarnation” Jesus Christ is both “fully God” and “fully man” (as elucidated most famously at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.).  This mystery can feed all kinds of fun speculation about what “fully God” and “fully man” in union looks like in practice.

What this does not look like is  ”God dressed up” as a man, as Chris is quick to point out.  As a human being, Jesus would have been to a great extent the product of his times.  He would have been born into a particular culture and steeped in its idioms.  He, like us, would have always been learning and growing.  In fact, Luke tells us this twice to make the point:  ”Jesus grew in stature and increased in wisdom in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:40) and “increased in wisdom and in age” (Luke 2:52).

What does this mean?   The fact that Jesus was once a fully human child, with a fully human mother, Mary, suggests- contrary to those spooky, early Renaissance pictures that portray the baby Jesus with the face of a grown man- that Jesus like everybody else had to “grow up.”  He had to learn things and could be wrong or in error at times and in need of correction.  To grow in wisdom is to learn from life’s experiences.  Wisdom requires real-life exchanges that chasten and transform us.

“The difference [between Jesus and us]…is that it took one encounter with one Gentile woman who looked him in the eye, and our Lord got it…he saw it immediately.  That was the perfection of his humanity,” Chris says.

In other words, this is a rare interaction- (in fact the only one we have recorded in our canonized Scriptures)- in which Jesus is brought up short and recognizes his own error.  He makes a mistake and corrects himself by honoring the woman’s faith and healing her daughter.  As Chris used to say in his New Testament Intro class, it is notable here that “the only time Jesus loses an argument” is “with a woman and a foreigner.”

Of course the evil of racism comes in many gradations, from sheer ignorance or error  to entrenched, willful violations of other human beings’ personhood.  In no way do we find any suggestion in Scripture or elsewhere that Jesus’ racism belonged to the latter category. He should not be confused with the few who in my time and place still put Confederate flags on their porches.

And a mistake is different from sin- or so it can be argued.  Augustine does so in his Enchiridion, for instance.  Sin in many instances involves an act of the will, as a willful disregard for what is known to be right.  In this sense, sin is like a child or subject’s rebellion against the known rules of the parents or established authority.

But what about racism as a systemic evil?  Can we reduce its impact on individuals to a matter of mere ignorance? I’m not so sure.  Isn’t sin by definition in the original Greek (hamartia) a broader notion of “missing the mark?” If so, isn’t Jesus “missing the mark” in this passage?  Maybe.  In which case we are left to wrestle with the idea that Jesus was “like us in every way only without sin,” as the writer of Hebrews puts it.  But if Jesus was truly one without sin, then to what degree was he subject to systemic evils like racism, such that he had to, in a sense, relearn how to be perfectly human?  This passage would suggest that at the very least, Jesus made a mistake and had the humility and courage to correct it more quickly than most of us could.

So…was Jesus a racist?  What do you think?  Leave a comment below to prove that there are other people reading this besides my mother.  (I love you, Mom!)  If you’re too shy to post a comment, send me a note (kristinarobbdover@gmail.com) or post a remark on Facebook and I will post these at the end of the week.  This is after all a “fellowship of saints and sinners.”

 

Was Jesus Racist? Weird Jesus Sayings Continued…

 ”A Canaanite woman from [Tyre and Sidon] came out and shouted,  ’Have pity on me, son of David!  My daughter is demon-possessed!  She’s  in a bad way!’  Jesus, however, said nothing at all to her.

 His disciples came up.

 ’Please send her away!,’ they asked.  ’She’s shouting after us.’

 ’I was only sent,’ replied Jesus, ‘to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’

 The woman, however, came and threw herself down at his feet.

 ’Master,’ she said, ‘please help me!’

 ’It isn’t right,’ replied Jesus, ‘to take the children’s bread and throw it to  the dogs.’

 ’I know, Master.  But even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from their  master’s table.’

‘You’ve got great faith, haven’t you, my friend!  All right; let it be as you wish.’

 And her daughter was healed from that moment.”

 Matthew 15:21-28

(Translation from N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone)

I love Jesus, but if I were her (the Canaanite woman) I think I would’ve  slapped him!  When Jesus indirectly calls her a “dog,” he is using a common racial slur used by Jews for Gentiles in his time.  What is going on here?

Of course the larger context is that this woman is desperately seeking help for her daughter.  She has probably exhausted her options. She has heard about Jesus and his healing power and will endure even the most humiliating of interactions if it can secure her daughter’s deliverance.

What I have a whole lot more trouble wrapping my mind around is Jesus’ behavior in this passage.  First he ignores her when she throws herself on his good will.  Then he drops the grenades: first, the comment that he was “only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” followed by the rather racist analogy that “it isn’t right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

This passage is a tough nut to crack and I’m feeling a bit mystified.  Which is why I’ve solicited some help.  Stay tuned for an answer to the question, “Was Jesus a racist?”

Freedom of a Christian

"I'm free to do what I want any old time." Rolling Stones

The sixteenth century father of Protestantism, Martin Luther, knew that human beings simultaneously crave and rebel against freedom.  We find it difficult to be free even when freedom is the very thing we are in search of: we enslave ourselves and others with all kinds of dictates and systems of oppression- sometimes in the name of liberty itself.  Which is why we need Jesus.

In “A Treatise on Christian Liberty” (known more famously as “Freedom of a Christian,” Luther sought to remind his readers that ”the one thing, and only one thing necessary” for Christian life and freedom in the Spirit of Christ was “the Word of God, the Gospel of Christ.”  In other words, knowing Jesus and His Word is the only thing necessary to live freely, abundantly and ethically in and for the world around us.  Nothing else is required.  No secret handshake, no country club pass, and certainly not any one political party platform.

 Centuries following Luther, it appears that at least one  influential segment of modern-day Protestants has been challenging the view that Christian freedom could be so simple and unrefined.  Liberty University, founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell and self-described as “the largest Christian university in the world,” was in the spotlight this past week when presidential hopeful Rick Perry visited.  The school’s chancellor, Jerry Falwell Jr., took the opportunity to clarify that the university’s strong Christian credentials do not mean only Christian candidates are eligible for admission.

“We don’t encourage our students to have a litmus test based on a candidate’s theology,” Falwell said, in an interview Wednesday with National Public Radio. “But the issues are what we care about, where they stand on all the issues that matter — social conservatives to fiscal conservatives — and that’s always been our position.”

Which leaves me a bit confused: is or is not Liberty University a “Christian” university, as opposed to a university for “social conservatives” and “fiscal conservatives” (“Republicans” in other words)?  If the key criterion for admission is actually where candidates “stand on…the issues that matter” to social and fiscal conservatives, as opposed to faith in and relationship with Jesus Christ, would it not be better to change the university’s motto from “40 Years of Training Champions for Christ” to “40 Years of Training Champions for the Republican Party”? The university might even consider dropping the adjective “Christian” wherever it appears in their public relations materials and maybe replacing it with “Republican.”  Just a thought.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

The latest census data out shows that my state of residence, Georgia, is now the third poorest state in the nation, with roughly one in every five Georgians qualifying as “poor” due to unemployment.  The only two states with higher poverty rates are Louisana and Mississippi.

Notably, these three states also boast some of the highest rates of church attendance in the country…

…Is there something wrong with this picture?