A new take on the Parable of the Ten Virgins, by Bryan Berghoef
And he told them this parable:
At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten servants who went out to meet their master. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took no weapons nor did they take any means of defense with them. The wise ones, however, took care to bring swords along with their concealed knives. The master was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
At midnight the cry rang out: “An intruder! Defend yourselves!”Continue Reading..
In a recent conversation about the Bible, I referred to it as “a collection of texts known as the Bible.” Someone responded:
In the collection known as the Bible?? I’m sorry, my friend, but you have gone off the deep end…
This response was a bit of a surprise. The fact that the Bible is comprised of various books by various authors is common knowledge to anyone who has taken a single religion class in high school or college, or to anyone who has actually opened a Bible. As a young child, I was required to memorize “the books of the Bible.” Continue Reading..
Holy Week begins this Sunday. It is a familiar week, beginning with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. But maybe so familiar that we still aren’t quite hearing the full story.
Marcus Borg reminds us that there was not one, but two processions entering Jerusalem that year. Two very different processions. “They proclaimed two very different and contrasting visions of how this world can and should be: the kingdom of God versus the kingdoms, the powers, of this world. The former is about justice and the end of violence. The latter are about domination and exploitation. On Friday, the rulers of this world kill Jesus. On Easter, God says “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the powers that executed him.
Thus Palm Sunday announces the central conflict of Holy Week. The conflict persists. That conflict continues wherever injustice and violence abound. Holy Week is not about less than that.”
In the spirit of the One who came in peace, and in the wake of this week’s continued violence in our world, a prayer for peace. May it bless you this week.
Great God, who has told us “Vengeance is mine,” save us from ourselves, save us from the vengeance in our hearts and the acid in our souls. Save us from our desire to hurt as we have been hurt, to punish as we have been punished, to terrorize as we have been terrorized. Give us the strength it takes to listen rather than to judge, to trust rather than to fear, to try again and again to make peace even when peace eludes us. We ask, O God, for the grace to be our best selves. We ask for the vision to be builders of the human community rather than its destroyers. We ask for the humility as a people to understand the fears and hopes of other peoples. We ask for the love it takes to bequeath to the children of the world to come more than the failures of our own making. We ask for the heart it takes to care for all the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq, of Palestine and Israel as well as for ourselves. Give us the depth of soul, O God, to constrain our might, to resist the temptations of power to refuse to attack the attackable, to understand that vengeance begets violence, and to bring peace–not war–wherever we go. For You, O God, have been merciful to us. For You, O God, have been patient with us. For You, O God, have been gracious to us. And so may we be merciful and patient and gracious and trusting with these others whom you also love. This we ask through Jesus, the one without vengeance in his heart. This we ask forever and ever. Amen —A Prayer for World Peace,
by Sister Joan Chittister, of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie (source)
A guest post by theologian and scholar Marcus Borg – a fitting addition to our series on Atonement. (This piece originally appeared on patheos.com)
American Christians are deeply divided by the cross of Jesus – namely, by how they see the meanings of his death. At the risk of labels and broad generalizations, “conservative” Christians generally believe a “payment” understanding of the cross: Jesus died to pay for our sins so we can be forgiven.
Most “progressive” Christians (at least a majority) have great difficulty with the “payment” understanding. Many reject it. Some insist that rather than focusing on Jesus’s death, we should instead focus on his life and teachings. They are right about what they affirm, even as they also risk impoverishing the meaning of Jesus by de-emphasizing the cross.
It is the central Christian symbol. And ubiquitous. Perhaps even the most widely-worn piece of jewelry. Its centrality goes back to the beginnings of Christianity. In one of the earliest New Testament documents, Paul in the early 50s summarized “the gospel” he had taught to his community in Corinth as “Christ crucified” (I Cor. 1-2). In the New Testament gospels beginning with Mark around 70, the story of Jesus’s final week and its climax in crucifixion and resurrection dominates their narratives. All four devote more than a fourth of their gospels to Jesus’s final week. And all anticipate the end of Jesus’s life earlier in their narratives. It is as if they are saying: you can’t tell the story of Jesus unless you tell the story of the cross.
Thus for Christianity from its beginning, the cross has always mattered. The crucial question is: what does it mean? Why does it matter? What is its significance?
The most common meaning in much of Christianity today is the “payment” understanding: Jesus died to pay for our sins. Insisted upon by “conservative” Christians, it is foundational and fundamental to their theology. Its influence extends beyond. Many, perhaps most, of today’s mainline Protestant and Catholics grew up with it even if perhaps in a softer version. The language of most Christian liturgies is shaped by the payment understanding and thus reinforces it through ritual repetition.
But the payment understanding has serious problems, both historical and theological. The historical problem: the payment understanding was not central in the first thousand years of Christianity. In the New Testament, it is at most a minor metaphor. Some scholars argue that it is not there at all. I am inclined to agree.
But regardless of the verdict on that question, the first systematic articulation of the cross as “payment for sin” happened just over nine hundred years ago in 1098 in St. Anselm’s treatise Cur Deus Homo? Its Latin title means, “Why Did God Become Human?” Anselm’s purpose was to provide a rational argument for the necessity of the incarnation and death of Jesus.
He did so with a cultural model drawn from his time and place: the relationship of a medieval lord to his peasants. If a peasant disobeyed the lord, could the lord simply forgive if he wanted to? No. Because that might imply that disobedience didn’t matter that much. Instead, compensation must be made. Nothing less than the honor and order of the lord were at stake.
Anselm then applied that model to our relationship with God. We have been disobedient and deserve to be punished. And yet God loves us and wants to forgive us. But the price of sin must be paid. Jesus as a human being who was also divine and thus perfect and without sin did that.
To repeat: familiar as it is, the payment understanding is less than a thousand years old. On historical grounds, it is not ancient Christianity, not traditional Christianity, not orthodox Christianity, even though it has over the last several centuries become dominant in Western Christianity. It has become a lens through which a number of New Testament passages that seem to support it are seen. But without that lens, they can be understood quite differently.
The theological difficulties of the payment understanding are even more serious. It seriously distorts the story of Jesus and the meaning of the cross:
*Makes Jesus’s death part of God’s plan of salvation – indeed, God’s will. It had to happen so that we can be forgiven. Really?
*Emphasizes God’s wrath and that it must be satisfied. But is that what God is like?
*Makes Jesus’s death more important than his life, and thus obscures his message and what he was passionate about (for example, Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ focuses on the last 18 hours of his life).
*Makes believing in Jesus more important than following him
*Makes Easter irrelevant. Of course, Christians who believe that Jesus paid for our sins also emphasize Easter. But there is no intrinsic connection between his death and resurrection. What matters most is that he paid for our sins.
Given the theological implications of the payment understanding, it is not surprising that progressive as well as many moderate Christians have problems with it. They should be problems for all Christians.
The rejection of the payment understanding does not make Jesus’s death irrelevant for Christians. On the contrary, it has robust meanings in the gospels and the New Testament as a whole. In my next blog, I will describe those. The purpose of this blog is to invite conversation about the payment understanding and its effects upon Christianity.
Marcus J. Borg is Canon Theologian at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon. Internationally known in both academic and church circles as a biblical and Jesus scholar, he was Hundere Chair of Religion and Culture in the Philosophy Department at Oregon State University until his retirement in 2007. He is the author of many books including Reading the Bible Again for the First Time
A recent article in The Banner, the online and print magazine of the Christian Reformed Church, began with the following:
I suspect that a thousand years from now Christians will look back at the 21st century and say, “How could Christians have let themselves think that?” They’d have in mind our theology—some of the doctrines that are so precious to us and that we consider to be the backbone of Christianity.
Some saw this as provocative. Some as overstating the case. Others as unthinkable.
My thought was, “People are already saying this now.”
The article more or less centers around the issue of evolution, which, at least in one form or another, has attained a near consensus status among scientists as being part of the process of the development of life on earth, including all animal life. Animal life includes people, which is in many ways where the rub is.
Are we, as C.S. Lewis puts it in the Chronicles of Narnia, the “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve”?
Scientists argue that it is not genetically possible for present DNA diversity to have issued from a single pair of ancestors in recent history.
So the writer of the provocative article in the Banner rightly notes that we must begin to assess certain readings and/or doctrines which seem to rely upon a view of the world which may not, in the end, be accurate.
Yet some would say, can’t we just read the Bible literally? Well, no. At least not accurately (with regard to science. Or literature).
The biblical depiction of human origins, if taken literally, presents Adam as the very first human being ever created. He was not the product of an evolutionary process, but a special creation of God a few thousand years before Jesus—roughly speaking, about 6000 years ago. Every single human being that has ever lived can trace his/her genetic history to that one person.
This is a problem because it is at odds with everything else we know about the past from the natural sciences and cultural remains.
There are human cultural remains dating well over 100,000 years ago. One recent example is 130,000-year-old stone tools found on Crete. (Their presence on an island presumes seafaring ability at that time.) Ritual/religious structures are known to have existed as far back as 40,000-70,000 years ago. Recently, a temple complex was found in Turkey dating to about 11,500 years ago—7,000 years before the Pyramids.
In addition to cultural artifacts, there is also the scientific data from the various natural sciences that support a very old earth (4.5 billion years old) and the evolutionary development of life on it—things most readers of this Web site hardly need me to point out. Most recently, the genetic evidence for common descent has, in the view of most everyone trained in the field, lent great support to the antiquity of humanity and sharing a common ancestry with primates.
So reading the Bible literally is problematic for scientific and historic reasons. And there is another reason:
There is a third line of evidence that is a problem for a literal reading of the Adam story. Archaeological evidence gathered over the last 150 years or so has helped us understand the religions of the ancient Near East during and long before the Old Testament period. As is well known, Genesis 1 and the Adam story bear unmistakable resemblances to the stories of other peoples—none of which we would ever think of taking as historical depictions of origins.
Bingo.
And many people realize this, and have realized it for some time.
But apparently not certain readers of the Banner.
Objections ranged from: “Asking a whole lot of big complex questions without any attempt to answer it is not helpful” to “This article should have never made print” to “This article implicitly affirmed a lot of heretical propositions” and finally, “Is it possible to overture Synod to remove and replace the editor of the Banner for behavior so damaging to the well being of the churches?”
There were many more reactions, some of which were very thoughtful, others of which were more of the above (and worse!).
Was it a perfect article? I suppose not. But neither was it terrible. It opens the door to further dialogue, and that’s what we need. It is OK to ask a lot of big questions. And not only OK, imperative. Asking questions is an important, crucial step in learning anything.
Whenever you are no longer allowed to ask questions, you can safely assume you’re no longer in a good place.
We should be asking questions, and not just about tomorrow’s theology a thousand years from now, but about what we might, by grappling with Scripture, science, and the best of human understanding, believe today about ourselves, our world, and God.
Many are already doing it, and we should join them.
A guest post by Kyle Roberts. This piece originally appeared on the Cultivare blog on Patheos.
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Jesus was born into a world of violence. A world where demented people kill innocent children.
It’s right there in the infancy narrative of the first gospel (in the order in your Bibles). It’s easy to miss, because we don’t often focus on it in our telling of the Christmas story–understandably so.
Matthew 2:16-18 tells the story of the “massacre of the innocents.” When Herod learns that a presumed threat to his throne was born in Bethlehem, he orders all male infants under age 2 in Bethlehem and surrounding area to be killed. An angel warns Joseph, who subsequently removes the baby Jesus from danger.
Tony Jones and James McGrath recently had an interesting back and forth as to the historicity of this account, and what that means for how we might understand suffering and God’s will. McGrath pointed out that the only evidence of this particular tragic event occurring is Matthew’s account itself (nothing in the other gospels–canonical or non–or in early histories like Josephus’). There is significant debate as to whether the account tells about a historical event or whether Matthew created or borrowed a fictional story. In any case, the story connected Jesus’s story with Moses’ (remember Miriam’s basket?) and underscored the significance of Jesus of Nazareth and his Messianic identity. McGrath takes the account as mythological–and is relieved by that. If it actually happened, it would suggest that God only cares about his own family (he sent an angel to warn Joseph, but not those other families — Weren’t there enough angels to go around?)
Tony Jones, on the other hand, insists that the story is historical and suggests that to consider otherwise is to silence the cries of the victims.
Guido Reni, 1611
It’s easy to sense the heart behind both positions. On McGrath’s side is a concern that we not see divine providence behind every tragedy. Surely God’s will is not that little, innocent children die. Can we really believe that God takes sides? And even if we were to interpret Scripture this way, we dare not apply that logic to contemporary, tragic events.
On the other hand, I get where Jones is coming from. While we can’t prove the event is historical, we certainly can’t be certain that it didn’t happen. So why risk silencing the voices of the victims and burying their faces under the genre of mythology?
For my part, I accept the story’s basic historicity (it’s certainly not out of character for Herod to do such a thing–indeed, he slaughtered his own sons, if we believe Josephus). But the really important element, for our purposes, is the theological message.
There’s an important lesson Matthew is telling through this story.
In his contribution to the Global Bible Commentary, Alejandro Duarte reads the gospel of Matthew through the lens of the second chapter, and the massacre of the innocents in particular. He suggests that Matthew is contrasting the kingship of Jesus with the kingship of Herod. Duarte recognizes the disjunction, the “divine injustice” that “Jesus was saved while the other children in Bethlehem were not…” This seems in contrast with the purpose of the mission of Jesus, which is to “save his people from their sins.” Salvation, Duarte insists, includes the “harm that awaits them in their daily lives.”
Massacre of the Innocents
The disjunction, the tension is certainly there in the text (why was the Savior’s birth seemingly interlaced with the death of other children?). Why isn’t Matthew as troubled as we are by the implication that God somehow orchestrated this tragic scenario? Why didn’t God simply strike Herod dead–or keep the news from him? Why not save the others? Duarte suggests that the tension is due to the greater point Matthew is making: we have on display, here two kinds of royalty, two kinds of king.
Herod is a fearful and ferocious king–fearful of losing his power and ferocious toward his enemies. He makes use of his strength to wield his weapon of war and to vanquish those who threaten him. Herod’s power is the power of empire, the power of brute strength. Herod is a bully king. And Jesus? Jesus is the opposite: a baby, born to a poor illegitimate family, “dependent and passive.” While he is recognized as a unique figure, he is “weak and vulnerable,” dependent on God. The power of Jesus is exemplified by his birth as a vulnerable baby in a dingy manger. The tension from the beginning of Jesus’ incarnate life–as the birth of the Messiah occurs in the midst of the death of innocent, little ones–follows all the way through to Jesus’ act of sacrifice on the cross, in which he shows his solidarity with the powerless and ends the power of the powerful. Evil and suffering meet their end at the cross (even if the end-game must still be played out).
Christ came into a world where innocent children died. Christ “comes” again and again in a world–this we proclaim this during advent season) of intense suffering, a world where innocent children, “Holy Innocents” still die, whether by gunfire, errant drone strikes, starvation, thirst or disease.
Jesus shows us that the death of innocent children is not God’s will–and he prayed that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. The ultimate disjunction we live with is that God’s will is too often not done on earth as it is in heaven. God does not force his way. God creates space for freedom–even for evil and tragic suffering. And he urges obedience to the call of justice. While we pray that prayer, and hope in the advent of Jesus, we must also rise up and do whatever lies in our power to right wrongs and protect the innocent. But we must follow the model of Jesus the baby and the crucified one. He was a different sort of King than Herod. And we must not lose hope that the birth of Jesus means the eventual death of the kind of power that too often rules our world.
We had a great turnout last night at Harmony Brewing Company, in Eastown, Grand Rapids. This little brewery has been open since February, and features a cozy atmosphere, spins some good tunes (last night was Vinyl Thursday), and brews up some great offerings.
A few of us started off with Jackson’s Joy Fall Festival Ale, which was a good, if a bit sweet, oktoberfest-style ale. Others jumped in with the Hideout IPA, which was a stand-in for the usual Fiddlestix IPA. My favorite on their board is the Star Stuff Belgian Dubbel. The Black Squirrel Porter was unfortunately also tapped out.
About a dozen of us squeezed in together in the upper-level, a small, quiet space of about 10 or 12 tables. A couple familiar faces, a few Pub Theology first-timers, and some regulars made for a great discussion.
The sheet had the following topics:
1. True or False: the better you can articulate what you believe, the more spiritually mature you are.
2. How do certain [spiritual] practices open you up to new possibilities?
3. Is there a difference between the Word of God & the words of scripture?
4. Is it ever wrong to try to convert someone from one religion to another?
5. What’s the difference between Christian education and indoctrination?
6. Is a believer [ontologically] different from a nonbeliever?
Getting to the bottom of things.
We kicked off the evening on the first topic, and there was immediate push back to the notion that ‘spiritual maturity’ is linked to the ability to speak well about one’s beliefs.
Immediate counter-examples were offered: an older person who has a wisdom and maturity about him but is not a good source for systematic theology; a mother who lives in a way that bespeaks spiritual maturity (it was noted that there is more than one way to articulate things, we shouldn’t limit it to verbal articulation).
Another person thought the whole notion of ‘spiritual maturity’ was dubious. “Doesn’t that whole idea speak of having arrived? Does one ever arrive? Isn’t spiritual maturity that thing you strive for but never reach?”
We then mused about whether the church often falls into the trap of equating these two things: articulation and maturity. In my own tradition, it’s when you can say what you believe, when you can give the right answers, that we acknowledge that you have reached at least some level of spiritual achievement that you weren’t at before. Perhaps there are other means for evaluating faith — in fact I’m sure there are, and I think many of us are wanting to think more holistically about what it means to grow in one’s faith, beyond just words.
At the same time, someone noted that if you can’t at a basic level explain what you believe, perhaps you have some work to do. Fair enough.
The second topic had us discussing the various practices that lead to spiritual growth, and open one up to new possibilities, new ways of experiencing God, or living into one’s experience of God. Things like prayer, meditation, Scripture reading were mentioned, as well as getting involved in justice issues like poverty, slave trade, etc. “My faith is deepened as I seek to live among those who are marginalized in our society.”
One person noted that in his own very evangelical tradition, spiritual maturity equaled the ability to share the gospel with someone else: “How many people have you led to Christ?”
This led us naturally into topic no. 4: Is it ever wrong to convert someone to another religion?
There was some hesitation. It was initially noted that there are certainly wrong ways to share one’s faith: the in-your-face model, the used-car-salesman-routine, the forcing-awkward-family-relationships routine. Yet some felt, if eternal things are at stake – how could it be wrong to convert someone?
Then one person at the end of the table piped up: “Absolutely. There are times it is flat out wrong to disrespect someone else’s culture and religion by trying to convert them. I have friends in Buddhist and Hindu countries and I don’t think it would be right at all to go in there and try to convert them. I plan on seeing my Muslim and Buddhist friends in heaven. But maybe that means I’m not a real Christian.”
This provocative perspective made some uncomfortable while others cheered. What do you think?
We ended the evening on topic no.3: Is there a difference between the Word of God and the words of scripture?
This took us many places, but we began by looking at the perspective that there are two books in which God speaks to us – one, the book of the Bible, the other, the book of creation. It was noted that in a recent NPR story a person from a more evangelical background noted that someone could not believe in evolution and be a Christian. “This drives me crazy! How can we not be willing to find God in the world he has made, even if that forces us to reconsider some of our [long-held] theological positions?”
We then wondered about extrabiblical books, other gospels, the apocrypha, and so on. Are these ‘God’s Word’ in any sense? How does canon come into play, and should we restrict the Holy Spirit to speaking only through what ‘made it in’? And what about other traditions that include other books? Or what about books that were left out, were those for spiritual or political reasons, or some other reason altogether? Finally we wondered, what about words in the Scriptures themselves that portray God in a less than flattering light. Are these too the “Word of God”, or are there instances in the canon where we see humanity struggling to understand God, and perhaps not always getting it right? This latter line of thinking made several mutter “Marcion” under their breath, and made plenty nervous. Others felt these were legitimate questions that we should be able to ask.
In the end, it was a great night. Good beer, new relationships, honest conversation. All agreed that the pub is a place to have these open and honest conversations, to have our thinking pushed, and to recognize that God just might be bigger than we’ve thought. (And of course we ended in plenty of time to watch the Detroit Tigers beat the Oakland A’s behind the arm of Justin Verlander!).
— Feel free to weigh in on any of the above topics in the comment section below!
“Always two there are, master and apprentice.” ~ Yoda
On Sunday at Watershed we looked at John 5:19-20 and saw it as a ‘parable of apprenticeship.’ (Wes Howard-Brook)
Jesus watching the Father to see how he acts, and to act likewise in the world.
watching, learning, doing
We noted that throughout history, fathers have taught their sons a particular trade.
NT Wright notes:
“This is becoming more rare today in the Western world, but there are still plenty of places where it is the normal and expected thing for sons to follow fathers into the family business. And, particularly where the business involves working at a skilled trade with one’s hands, apprenticeship means literally being side by side, with the son watching every move that the father makes and learning to do it in exactly the same way. That is how many traditional skills are handed down from generation to generation, sometimes over hundreds of years.”
Listen to John 5:19-20 in light of this:
Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.”
NT Wright notes that Jesus is explaining more fully how it is that Israel’s God is working in a new way, and how he, Jesus is watching carefully to see how it’s being done, so as to do it alongside the father and in keeping with his style and plan.
This is exactly what Jesus has said earlier in v.17: “My father is always at his work to this very day, and I too, am working.”
In my reading this morning at the home of my new Minnesota couchsurfing friends (though I guess I’m the one who’s couchsurfing!), I came across Mark Scandrette’s Practicing the Way of Jesus. (Apparently he’ll be at the conference later this week).
An appropriate book in light of what we studied together on Sunday. Here’s a taste from the first chapter:
“In a holistically-oriented culture, skeptical people are less convinced by purely rational arguments about why Christianity is true, and more curious to see whether Christian belief and practice actually make a positive difference in the character of a person’s life. Knowing the transformational promise of the gospel, it is fair to ask whether a person who claims to have a relationship with Jesus exhibits more peace and less stress, handles crisis with more grace, experiences less fear and anxiety, manifests more joy, is overcoming anger and their addictions or compulsions, enjoys more fulfilling relationships, exercises more compassion, lives more consciously or loves more boldly. In any culture, but especially in one that yearns for holistic integration, the most compelling argument for the validity of the Christian faith is a community that practices the way of Jesus by seeking a life together in the kingdom of love (John 13:35).
And yet, a tremendous gap exists in our society between the way of radical love embodied and taught by Jesus and the reputation and experience of the average Christian. We simply aren’t experiencing the kind of whole-person transformation that we instinctively long for (and that a watching world expects to see).
This suggests the need for a renewed understanding of the gospel and more effective approaches to discipleship. Though our understanding of the gospel is becoming more holistic, our most prevalent formation practices don’t fully account for this. We can be frustrated by this gap and become critics, or be inspired by a larger vision of the kingdom and get creative.
I believe what is needed, in this transitional era, are communities of experimentation — creative spaces where we have permission to ask questions and take risks together to practice the Way.”
If you haven’t read Scandrette’s book – pick up a copy, or borrow a friend’s. Hoping to get a copy for the Watershed library!
Love to hear thoughts/reactions on what it means for us to be apprentices, disciples, to be those who live in the way of Jesus, and don’t just talk about it.
Lectio Divina is the Latin for ‘Holy Reading’ and was a form and approach to praying with Scripture that was common among medieval religious orders. The value of Lectio Divina was rediscovered in the twentieth century.
Essentially Lectio Divina involves taking a short passage of Scripture and pondering it. This can be done alone or in a group, and normally involves prolonged periods of silence.
Instructions
Choose a reader. The reader will read the text through four times, slowly, with a time of silence between each reading. Allow the words to wash over you. Be present. What is God saying to you right here and now? Open yourself to His Words.
From the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John:
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water. . .”
People think I moved left because I wanted to compromise with the world, because I wanted to fit in better.
