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Archive for the ‘textures’ Category

skin in the game: John 10

Posted in textures, tagged , on May 18, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Jesus’ claims the ultimate solidarity with those whom he calls ‘my sheep’.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. (John 10:11–13 ESV)

It is possible to imagine that even the most responsible hired hand would practice the craft of shepherding with excellence.

But not at the cost of his life. (more…)

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minor league stuff: Proverbs 15

Posted in textures, tagged , , on May 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »

We find it convenient to hide behind our supposed complexity, our nuance, our shades of gray.

There exists a genuine sophistication, and it is entirely worthy of admiration. Yet we so easily fall prey to its diminutive imposter: my complexity as my refusal to give an answer to those who matter most. To stake a claim. To declare who I am and commit to remaining that person, growing as that person, becoming strong and wise as that person.

We prefer to keep all our convenient options open. (more…)

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getting it wrong: John 7

Posted in textures, tagged , , on May 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Misplaced certainty leads to the most regrettable errors.

Jesus’ teaching moved the hearts and minds of the masses. They had heard nothing like this, so compelling it stirred the deepest longings, so clear it seemed a window into truth, so accompanied by power that it must have come from God himself.

Yet they knew their facts, and those facts left no room for Jesus. (more…)

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no secrets: Proverbs 15

Posted in textures, tagged , , on May 11, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Thing is, the biblical Proverbs have less to say about YHWH than you’d expect.

He is assumed to be the guarantor of the way things are, because that’s the way he made them. But he’s hardly the loquacious divinity who can’t stop talking. Rather, one learns about him indirectly, by scrutinizing what he’s made. (more…)

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finishing well: Proverbs 14

Posted in textures, tagged , , on May 9, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Truth is a little tricky to corner.

It does not surrender itself easily, requiring of its seeker a bit of diligence to prove his or her worth.

Biblical wisdom traffics in two dynamics that work out this evasiveness in space and time. (more…)

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not a stupid question: John 5

Posted in textures, tagged , , on May 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Jesus performed surgery with questions.

The gospels describe him wielding the interrogative like a scalpel. At first sight, these can sound like stupid questions. No doubt onlookers scoffed. He must have known this, yet he pressed into his surgical task with uncommon persistence. (more…)

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John the Baptizer’s clarity: John 3

Posted in textures, tagged , , on May 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »

One wishes we had more of the Baptizer’s words.

What we have makes him sound a little like a provider of set speeches. Every syllable seems burdened with meaning, adding up to become sentences that are always profound. One wonders what his smaller talk was like. (more…)

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discerning the textures: Proverbs 14

Posted in textures, tagged , , on May 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.
One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless. (Proverbs 14:15–16 ESV)

Life comes at us in textures and layers. Many of the latter are transparent to the careful observer. Under scrutiny, they can be seen through to what lies beneath.

The person who has practiced wisdom nearly forgets that life is this way, so accustomed does she become to living thoughtfully. For her, first impressions are merely that. The first glimpse, to be followed by careful reflection and—soon—sacrificed to the more complete picture.

That is to say, the wise person studies life. It would be facile to turn this into caricature, to imagine that this kind of life knows nothing of spontaneity, of artistry, of joy. That would be, again, rushing carelessly to conclusions, which is what the simple do as a matter of course.

In reality, the wise woman’s eyes often sparkle with discovery. She is alive to the manifold artistry, design, and hidden delight that she discovers in human interaction, in ‘nature’, in the ordered chaos of a good community living out its good life, in the unlikely trajectories of recovery and restoration.

The wise man ponders, sometimes with the furrowed brow of concentration. He gazes upon others with the half-smile of the discoverer who leans forward into conversation, into life.

One knows that a venomous snake may lurk in this riotously flowered garden. So one treads carefully rather than standing feebly on the asphalt parking lot next door.

The simple believes that everything is simple. The prudent knows better, deciding to walk here rather than there. Here where the angle of view is better and one lives long to tell of it.

 

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primeval speech: John 1

Posted in textures, tagged , , on May 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »

If the conceit of the modern mind is that God is inaccessible to rational investigation, then the self-flattery of our post-modern moment is that I will define for myself who my god is to be.
Both fail to align with the biblical witness, which portrays a God who speaks. For the hungry of heart, this may be un detalle pequeño e importante.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. (John 1:1–2 ESV)

The Gospel of John’s opening declaration—redolent of the Hebrew Bible’s majestic creation narrative—is that God was forever poised to express himself. The Word was with God long before our ears existed to hear. Indeed, John dares to claim, the Word was in some way God.

The modern mind reels, for it so seldom hears God speak. The post-modern mind quakes, or ought to, because if this is true then it does not have the first word and is likely also to lose the last.

A cast of scholarly mind that understood this divine logos to represent a divine rationality deeply impressed upon creation has been largely superseded by a more hebraic understanding that the Word denotes expression, communication, the taking of initiative in relationship. This is almost certainly correct.

Perhaps this bit of solemn poetry is merely that, a religiously intoxicated howling into the dark night’s air. If so, the most that can honestly be said for it is that it is somehow appealing in its archaic sentimentality.

Or maybe this is, as the author of the gospel called John seems to want to claim, the truest thing that he knows how to say.

In that case both our modern silence and our post-modern self-fascination are symptomatic not of the Word gone mute, but rather of our hardness of hearing. This ought to strike us both as deeply threatening and as profoundly promising.

For if the Word speaks still, then we may soon find ourselves hearing.

We would not be the first to plead expectantly for ears to hear.

 

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resistance: Luke 23

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 28, 2015| Leave a Comment »

When evil has become official policy, initial resistance is no less courageous for its quiet beginnings.

Luke narrates how 1st-century Jewish religious officialdom and the humid presence of Rome managed to collaborate in executing Jesus, this despite unsuccessful thrashing around for justifiable reasons to do so.

Not everyone agreed. But against this powerfully convenient coalition, what was one to do?

Now there was a man named Joseph, from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man, who had not consented to their decision and action; and he was looking for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. (Luke 23:50–52 ESV)

This Joseph of Arimathea is described, as a righteous minority in a conflictive moment that demands silence and cooperation often is, from a variety of angles.

He was ‘a good and righteous man’. One surmises that it was this strength of character that explains his failure to ‘consent to their decision and action’ regarding the swift dispatching of Jesus to the rolls of for-a-while messiahs.

Yet there is more to Joseph. His eyes were among those that scan the landscape fore evidence that the God of Israel is quietly on the move. He was ‘looking’, this Joseph, ‘for the kingdom of God’. Most would imagine that the descriptions of power and the powerful were pretty well complete by the time one had taken the Herods and the Pilates into account.

Joseph did not. He was awaiting something more, something deeper, something enduring, something beyond the self-referential conspiracies of the religious and political elite.

What do you do in such dangerous times?

For Joseph, you do the next, merciful thing. You ask Pilate for the dead man’s body and give it a decent burial.

Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid him in a tomb cut in stone, where no one had ever yet been laid. (Luke 23:53 ESV)

Such is the this-worldly care of men and women who are better than this world, yet in loving it look for its true king.

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