Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • When the Climax Isn’t (Palms and Passion, Cycle B)

    This week I did some reading on the lectionary, and even led a discussion on Wednesday, but due to work on some new book releases I never had time to write.  There is one theme that came to mind when I was looking at the two liturgies–palms and passion.

    In teaching Bible study I like to use a couple of key stories.  The first is the story of Jonah and what I call “the Jonah problem.”  Now this doesn’t refer to the possibility of large fish swallowing people whole and said people surviving for days, then being spit up on shore.  That’s an interesting point to discuss, but even more important is the issue that comes up at the end.

    Jonah, whose preaching has been wildly successful, beyond the dreams of any evangelist that I know, is discouraged.  Down and out.  Suicidal even!  Why?  Because the story seems to him to have come to an end, and the end isn’t what he wanted.

    We often think that Jonah’s big problem with going to Nineveh was fear of the Ninevites.  I imagine he was afraid.  The Assyrians were not known by their foes as nice people.  But more importantly, I think, Jonah didn’t like the Ninevites.  He’d really have preferred to see them all consumed.  He ran away primarily because if the Ninevites didn’t hear the message, they wouldn’t respond, and they’d all be dead.  To Jonah, this was a good thing.  (Now before you go condemning him, think of your worst enemies, no, not the guy who taunts you at work.  Perhaps a serial killer.)

    So Jonah gets the wrong ending, which incidentally isn’t the actual end, as in the end the Ninevites get wiped out and it was many centuries before the site was even identified again.

    Jonah expected and was looking for one ending, and he got another.  He didn’t recognize what God was doing, because God didn’t do what he expected.

    The disciples have a similar problem.  To them, Palm Sunday should have been an end, or at least the beginning of one.  It should have been the end of them being the down-and-out, scum from Galilee, Jews of a lower class under the domination of Rome.  Palm Sunday was the thing that was supposed to happen.

    But in Mark 11:1-11, which is our gospel passage for the liturgy of the Palms, Jesus goes into Jerusalem to the temple, looks around, and then leaves.  It all falls flat.  Nothing comes of it.

    But the real climax was coming soon–the cross.  Of course, even though they had been told about it many times.  It just didn’t sink in. It didn’t become real to them.

    I had the experience of talking to a Sunday School class once immediately after what might have been a controversial sermon.  The interesting thing was that the minister had spoken against religious pluralism and in favor of salvation by grace.  The class members tended to think one got into heaven by being good enough, that the benefit of Christianity over other religions was that Jesus gave us a better example of how to live.

    But they liked the sermon anyhow.  They thought the pastor had said just what they thought.  Now I had heard the same sermon, and he said no such thing.  I talked to him and confirmed it.  He intended to say, and said, what I thought I had heard.  I know I’m perfectly capable of error in hearing, so I checked this carefully.

    During the class, however, I tried to explain what I thought he had said, and heard the same line repeated.  It was as though the actual message simply couldn’t penetrate.

    I think that’s where the disciples were.  Since the message of the cross made no sense at all, they had to try to interpret their way around it and come to understand it as meaning something other than it was.  So they thought Palm Sunday should be the beginning of the end, followed, of course, by Jesus taking the throne and driving out the Romans, whereas Jesus knew that the cross was coming.

    Now on Easter Sunday we get another high–the resurrection.  But have you noticed that again, the ending isn’t really quite there yet?  Oh yes, Jesus has paid the price and salvation is ours.  But that coming kingdom is both now and not yet.  The structure of the Christian year points that out to us, if we will pay attention.

    Good Friday must come before Easter.  Being the body of Christ here comes before the rest of heaven.  The apparent end of the story, isn’t really the end.

     

  • I Hope He is Right

    Gaegan Goddard’s Political Wire reports that John McCain thinks he will be the last candidate to accept federal matching funds. One of the best savings, though small, we could make at the federal level would be to end public financing and also end all of the regulations on fundraising except for transparency.

  • Broken Covenant Restored (Lent 5B/Jer. 31:31-34)

    In a previous post I mentioned that one problem we have with understanding forgiveness is that we tend to make excuses and to blame others rather than feel guilt on our own account.  Everything is OK, and we’re “not too bad.”

    We also lose the impact of some of the richest texts about salvtion, because we lack that sense of inevitability in judgment and the results that are sure to follow sin.  Read 2 Kings 24 as Jehoiakim serves the king of Babylon for three years and then rebels.  Jehoiachin replaces him and escapes with his life because he surrenders himself to Babylon.

    You might think this meant some sort of forgiveness, but no!  Look at the list of things that happen after this surrender.  Treasure is taken, people are taken, a new puppet king is put in Jehoiachin’s place.  There is, in effect, a new covenant.  This covenant is not like the old one–it is worse.  When Zedekiah rebels as well (see 2 Kings 25) the entire nation is taken into exile.

    Again, there is a new covenant with the remnant, but again the new covenant is much worse.

    The key fact here, one which would have been well known and expected throughout the Ancient Near East, is that a new covenant that replaced a broken one was bound to be worse.

    So here comes God.  “I’m going to make a new covenant.  It won’t be like the old one.”  In our New Testament mentality in which all is better, we hear that as a prediction of good things–and indeed it was.  But to the hearers, hearing the “new covenant language” and then the accusation that they had broken the old one would have been a terrifying thing.  New covenants that replaced broken ones were not better–they were always worse.

    But then we have the working of God’s grace.  The new covenant, even though it replaced a broken one, even though the old one made God Israel’s “lawful lord” (I prefer this to “husband” on grounds of context, although there are good linguistic arguments in favor of husband) and Israel had rebelled.  Thus the expectation could be darkness, destruction, and gloom.

    But instead, we have a new covenant that is better than the old, that makes new people who will be obedient.  Instead of just punishment, we have grace, empowering grace, that makes each one know what is right and wrong.  Goodness is placed within.

    Isn’t grace powerful?

  • The Problem with Being OK (Lent 5B)

    Let me apologize for my failure to write this week.  I was busy with book releases, and had little time to write.  I did read and think, however!

    One of the great problems for Christianity in the world tdoay is our general feeling of being OK.  Forgiveness is hard in a world where we find it easy to excuse wrongdoing.  In the ancient world there was a sense of fear of the gods, of the results of doing wrong.  Being ceremonially unclean was an important issue and one which one would feel compelled to rectify.  It was nothing like the sort of feeling we get when we skip church too many times.

    In our texts we see the contrast multiple times.  In Jeremiah 31:31-34 we see the mystery of a broken covenant that can be replaced by a new and better one.  Broken covenants often resulted in death.  While a new covernant might be made with a country by a conqueror, it was likely that the old king and/or those responsible for breaking the covenant would be dead.  We don’t take breaking agreements that seriously today.

    Psalm 51 is a prayer of penitence that reflects a deep sense of guilt.  No excuses, no shifting of the blame.  The Psalmist is definitely not OK, and he knows it.  True penitence results from a very real understanding and feeling that something has gone very wrong and must be corrected.

    When we look at the texts of redemption in the New Testament, we will fail to see them in all their beauty unless we recover the sense of wrongness from which we are to be redeemed.

    The prolem with being OK is that you don’t think anything needs to be fixed.

  • Embracing the Mysteriousness of God

    First, let me put away another mystery, though I doubt anyone was wondering that much. I’ve been working on a couple of new book releases and the resulting schedule kept me from blogging most of the week. No mystery there!

    The word “mystery” is rather popular today, but only in the sense of something to be solved through the application of proper efforts and skilled detective work. We like mysteries because we like to solve them.

    That’s why I used the word “mysteriousness.” God is essentially mysterious, not in a sense of something that will be solved, but rather in the sense of something–or Someone–who will ever elude our best efforts to understand.

    This is a piece of baggage that comes with the notion of a God who is infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, or anything similar. We cannot totally comprehend infinity. We cannot really embrace all knowledge. As soon as we attribute such characteristics to God, we are doomed to a certain amount of mystery, in fact a very substantial amount of mystery.

    I encounter this most frequently in discussing Biblical inspiration. Why could God not have made the Bible more straightforward, or speak to us in ways that leave no doubt? Why can’t he answer all our questions? Why doesn’t he make his presence more clearly manifest?

    Those are good questions, and ones I’m not about to answer! That’s not my topic here.

    There’s a certain conversation that takes place between Christian believers and others that goes something like this: Question about Christianity, Answer, Question about Christianity, Answer, … Excessively difficult question about Christianity, “God is a mystery.”

    Now many people have a problem with this resort to mystery. It seems like a dodge or perhaps sidestep. I have a problem with it as well, but only in its positioning. It shouldn’t be the last resort; it should be embraced at the first.

    I believe in the doctrine of infinite ignorance. God is infinite, suggesting there is an infinity to know about God. I am finite, so any amount of knowledge I hold is finite. Subtract any finite amount from infinity, and you still have infinity. Therefore I am infinitely ignorant of God.

    I would like to note I am not saying that I know nothing at all of God. Invert that statement, and one must note that the fact that any finite amount subtracted from infinity leave infinity does not mean that the finite portion is non-existent or even negligible from the proper point of view.

    What I am suggesting is that, as Christians, we embrace first God’s mystery. Celebrate how much beyond us he is. Give the “that’s a mystery” response first rather than as a last resort.

    We’re stuck with God as mystery, because if we make him fully comprehensible he will no longer be God, at least not in the sense meant by Bible writers and by Christians through the ages.

    This may not satisfy questioners, but it is, at least, honest and open from the start. No I don’t know all there is to know about God. I only know a very, very small amount. I’m willing to share with you my attempts at understanding, but I’m always aware of the size of my subject.

  • Ken Ham Strikes a Blow for Integrity – NOT

    Read more at Exploring our Matrix.

  • NCIS Acoustic Accuracy

    … or not. Since I’m a fan of NCIS, I couldn’t resist linking to this post on The Austringer. I definitely didn’t know any of that stuff!

  • Tell Your Story

    I talk about this quite a bit (here, for example), but I don’t think it can be emphasized enough.  It’s very difficult to get people to listen to your theology, your theories about how God works.  It’s much easier to get them to listen–and understand–when they hear your story.

    Psalm 107 from this week’s lectionary (Lent 4B) emphasizes this in verse 2.  In the KJV we have “let the redeemed of the Lord say so.”  The TNIV makes it sound more direct:

    Let the redeemed of the LORD tell their story–

    those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,

    those he gathered from the lands,

    from east and west, from north and south.  — Psalm 107:2-3 (TNIV)

    This was my weakness during my theological education.  Note I did not call it a weakness of the theological training. It was my weakness during that training.

    I was very strong academically.  I learned lots.  I enjoyed absorbing the knowledge.  But two factors worked against this knowledge being useful.  First, I was not involved in the story of faith myself.  While taking my MA in Religion, and learning so much about the backgrounds of the Bible and the ancient near east, I attended church only three times.  I was not part of the community.  Second, I was in no way interested in sharing my own story with others.  I wanted to share my knowledge, but not my experience.

    Many people see problems in seminaries today and claim that young people come back from seminary much less spiritual, much less on fire than when they left.  I can’t back up that view personally.  While I see these young folks come back somewhat changed, I don’t see the same degree of loss.  But to the extent that I do see the problem, it seems to me that they have gotten into the battle between the value of knowledge and experience, of personal understanding versus personal contact and connection.

    If you are one of the LORD’s redeemed folks, then talk about it.  Talk about your own experience.  Make the theology real through the story of the gospel itself and through the story of the way the gospel has “happened” in your own life.

     

  • Liberal illiberalism: Olbermann on Banks and News Outlets

    Keith Olbermann, regularly angry about many things, is angry about the bank bonuses. (I blogged some about this here.) His answer?

    Break up the banks. Regulate the financial industries, to within an inch of their existences. Roll back corporate legal protections. Make liable the officers of corporations, for their debts, and for their deeds. Resurrect the rallying cry of a hundred years past: bust the trusts! (from MSNBC)

    It amazes me how quick people on either side of the political spectrum are to throw law, reason, and caution to the winds when they’re angry about something. If the Bush administration, for example, had gone after businesses in such a manner because of some security issue, doubtless Olbermann would have been shocked at their perfidy–rightly so. There are right and wrong ways to go about these things.

    But more importantly, the reason the banks are behaving badly with the money they were given is that:

    a) they behaved badly
    b) they got in trouble
    c) the government bailed them out without asking them to change their behavior

    In other words, our government has been rewarding just this behavior. We’re asking when who knew what. But my question is this: What reason did anyone have to expect anything different? The obvious result of a set of actions takes place, and people are shocked.

    But Olbermann, who is quite capable of recognizing something unconstitutional or illegal (or sometimes even stupid) when done by his opponents is unable to see it when he himself proposes it. What he suggests in that paragraph involves punishing the guilty with the innocent, destroying the very foundation of corporate law, and would certainly tromp right on across constitutional boundaries.

    But Olbermann is not finished. Because the media didn’t get out the information, we need to get the government to make sure that the media is fair and that good information get out. Remember, this is the same government that failed to provide any reason why these people should not behave in this manner. People who can’t even write a decent contract for a loan are then asked to make sure that the American people get accurate information.

    Never mind that he is now jumping all over the first amendment. He’s on a roll. If people don’t choose good information sources, make sure that they have to do so.

    Like this:

    Make sure both sides are heard. Re-regulate the radio and television industries to limit station ownership and demand diversity of management and product. Re-instate the old rules that denied one man all the voices in a public square. End all waivers of multiple ownership of television stations and networks and newspapers in the same market. (from MSNBC)

    He continues by calling for similar regulation for the cable industry.

    This is rampant stupidity. Olbermann wants to limit ownership to produce diversity. I think that was wrong even when there were limited broadcast outlets, but in the modern world, it is close to insane. People are not that limited as to what they can hear, but even more, there’s no reason to expect that having the government decide what is “in the public interest” and what the people need to hear is going to somehow improve the flow of information.

    Besides some folks in the corporate world, who is close to the information here? The government. And who is falling flat and lying to cover it up? Those very government agencies charged with the task of keeping it from happening!

    So let’s see. In order to improve the regulation, let’s give the people who failed more power, to “[r]egulate the financial industries, to within an inch of their existences.” Of course we have been told all along that these institutions must somehow be protected. But when the veneer is stripped off, we get down to the real idea–let’s destroy them.

    Having admitted that goal, Olbermann proposes similar treatment for media outlets. Can one doubt that destruction of even the value that there remains in our media would be the ultimate result?

    I am often called liberal, and I don’t argue. I am certainly libertarian. When it’s time to deal with issues such as the rights of the accused at trial, a willingness to provide every opportunity for exoneration if there is evidence, providing safety nets to the weakest folks in our society, or taming rampant militarism in foreign policy, I am rightfully called liberal. I don’t reject the label, even though I prefer “passionate moderate.”

    But there are plenty of liberals running around who don’t deserve the title. When “liberal” spells handing all the power to government, and none to the people, then it isn’t “liberal.” With the same passion that I want to make sure that someone accused of a crime receives due process and eventually receives justice, I also want to make sure that a trader on Wall Street who has broken no law should not be deprived of his lawful earnings. If they are undeserved (and these bonuses are) there are proper ways of dealing with it.

    The Republicans have been accused of having contempt for people who are from cities, or are part of the intellectual elites, or various other folks who are’t from the “real America.” The Democrats have been accused of despising small town America, gun owners, church-goers and so forth.

    Unfortunately, it appears to me that both accusations are absolutely right. To some on the liberal side of the spectrum the guy who does his ordinary job for an ordinary work week, and spends the weekend in a hunting blind with his rifle or his shotgun, then heads off to church on Sunday moring just isn’t real. To some of the folks on the right–and now on the left as well, if you work in investment instead of digging a ditch or being a university professor, you aren’t quite real and your rights don’t matter.

    It may be stupid for a company to give bonuses to those who produced catastrophe, but there is a proper forum for action on such things, and that is the shareholders’ meeting. What about the public money? If we didn’t want it used in that way, we should have specified that in the law, just as a lender might when making a loan.

    Now we have representatives and senators who presumably meant it when they swore to uphold the constitution, voting for a special law to tax certain people’s specific earnings. It’s ridiculous. They know better. They’re using the legislative process to make people believe they’re truly outraged, but in doing so they’re expressing contempt for the constitution they chose to uphold. (To those who are going to say “What did you expect of Keith Olbermann?” I will call attention to the actual lawmakers who seem to be singing from the same hymnal.)

    After my criticisms of Republicans over the years there have been some who wondered why I will not in turn register as a Democrat. Well, you can see it in action right now. My problem, a problem I intend to keep, is that I care about the rights of rich people and poor, ditch diggers and Wall Street investors, college professors, builders, waitresses–everyone who tries to produce at all.

    I believe they should have the opportunity to carry out their business under a rational set of laws. If the law isn’t rational, you need to blame the people who wrote it and pretended it was something different, not the people who did their best to work under it.

    But even more importantly, I believe that people must have the opportunity to seek their own sources of information, even if they choose Fox News, or newspapers of which Keith Olbermann doesn’t approve. You do not diversity the flow of information by limiting it.

    I try to accept it when I’m called a liberal, because it’s usually the result of beliefs I hold very dear. I think the fear of the label is silly. But when you call for regulating banks “to within an inch of their existences” or when you want the government to make sure the media is “fair” then either you’re not a liberal or I’m not.

    I won’t fight over the label. I’ll just call the ideas stupid and destructive.

  • Charter School Blocked

    I’d like to get some more information on this story about a charter school that would target high school dropouts.

    I know we’re all fighting over money right now, but it seems like this is a good place for innovation. It’s always possible that there really is a problem with the way the money will be spent, but off hand I’m concerned about this one.

    Any readers from that area have a comment? I might actually have to go to google and do some “work”! 🙂