Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Daniel, texture on April 6, 2012| 3 Comments »
The best way to become wiser is to be wise in the first place.
Wisdom is a progressive ordering of one’s life. It is cumulative. The more one learns, the more one can learn. In the context of that blending of wisdom and apocalyptic traditions that occurs in the book of Daniel, a key criterion for Daniel’s reception of divine revelation when failure would have meant death was to have become wise prior to the crisis. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Daniel, textures on April 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »
It is not as though Daniel and his friends in the biblical book that bears his name lack credentials. The book’s introductory narrative places them among the cream of the Israelite exiles.
Then (the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar) commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace … (Daniel 1.3–4 ESV)
These men come from good stock and have made the most of the opportunities that good circumstance affords. They are scholar-athletes who have not apologized for the exertions required to discover wisdom and cultivate knowledge. Our populist ideology might fault them for having ‘pursued learning’. The text, by contrast, considers this to be evidence of their honorable nature. They are socially poised. Put these guys in any situation and they’ll know how to handle themselves.
Their shoes are shined. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Daniel, textures on April 3, 2012| 2 Comments »
Daniel stands out in a superficial reading of the book that bears his name as a Golden Boy, a larger-than-life Man of Principle who was destined before time to stare down the powers and prove the superiority of Israel’s God in a pagan environment.
No reading undercuts the true nature of the text more easily than this facile understanding of heroism as a thing that simply had to be.
Real human beings never experience heroism as predetermined, an indelible script written into their days. After the glorious deed, the heroic figure is often more surprised than anyone that he turned out to be … well … a hero. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs, textures on April 2, 2012| 2 Comments »
The land is solid and unimaginative.
Meetings of farmers—men and women who work the land seldom sentimentalize it—are not hotbeds of speculation. Men and women of the soil are sensible folk with down-to-earth concerns and an eye on the bottom line.
You don’t debate the land. The land is what it is, a given.
Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense. (Proverbs 12:11 ESV)
Biblical wisdom, too, represents an existential terra firma. It is not given to flights of fancy, ruminations about the unseen, esoterica wrapped up in shiny paper. The wisdom tradition finds it hard to respect speculators. They are, at best, a distraction. At worst, they are fools. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical interpretation, Luke, textures on March 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »
It is difficult, absent the strong smells and hideous noises that cling to chaos and its victims, to read off the page the full horror of the scene:
When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.’ For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him. He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert.) (Luke 8:27–29 ESV)
Yet the deepest terror of the moment lurks neither in the sight nor in the sound of it. Rather, it comes to us in the single word with which this poor man responds to Jesus’ probing question:
Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Legion,’ for many demons had entered him. (Luke 8:30 ESV) (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on March 26, 2012| 3 Comments »
It is almost impossible, at death’s door, to imagine life.
Death always boasts its inevitability. Stripped of its loud theatrics, death is not half as fearsome. But it prefers that secret not get out. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical interpretation, Luke, textures on March 26, 2012| 2 Comments »
Jesus’ attention is so often drawn to women with no way out of their predicament.
As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ (Luke 7:12–13 NRSV)
The narrative’s description of the unnamed woman, bereft now of a son and perhaps of her last reliable companion and provider, leaves her alone in a crowd. The details are both sparse and stark. The dead man had been her only son. Her husband had preceded their son in death. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Deuteronomy, textures on March 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »
When the book of Deuteronomy places the terrified Hebrew slaves before Mount Horeb, they are doubly afraid.
The nascent people of Israel fear not only the traditionally lethal prospect of seeing YHWH. They also express mortal fear of hearing him. The people’s terror of sensory contact with YHWH leads to their counter-proposal that Moses serve as mediator between the Liberator of Sinai and the only half-grateful beneficiaries of his salvation. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Exodus, textures on February 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »
With something like the explanatory potency of Genesis’ account of human origins, the story of the Hebrew slaves fleeing their ‘house of servitude’ in the book of Exodus strikes the hearer with stunning immediacy. We recognize our own terror in theirs, hemmed in by the sea ahead, besieged by the tromping of Egyptian boots, driven near to madness by the neighing of Egyptian horses behind them.
The Egyptians—all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, horsemen and troops—pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they camped by the sea near Pi Hahiroth, opposite Baal Zephon. As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the LORD.
It is too familiar, this trapped-ness, these dashed hopes of freedom, these adrenaline regrets. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Genesis, textures on January 7, 2012| 2 Comments »
We sometimes believe God would listen to us if we could just calm things down a little and finish up the dusting.
The patriarchal narratives of Genesis offer no support to such an idea. Hagar’s remarkable interaction with Abraham’s God is unruly from start to finish. Yet the son of this servant of Abraham’s wife Sarai is named to honor God’s listening skills and the place of Hagar’s encounter with him after his powers of observation.
Nothing about the story escapes the prevailing unruliness. (more…)
Canter Bridge 