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Archive for the ‘textures’ Category

a most human temple: Ephesians 2

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 28, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The apostle Paul has few compunctions about mixing metaphors, particularly when straining for descriptors of God and his redeemed people. In the second chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, he weaves together metaphors of citizenship and temple construction. When read against the background of the Hebrew Bible, this is not an unlikely amalgamation of images. Temple, after all, is shot through with communitarian and nationalistic overtones. Citizenship, in the same context, always means belonging in a community that worships this god or these gods and not some other. (more…)

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continuities: Galatians 6

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 26, 2008| Leave a Comment »

A strong theology of creation permits Paul—like the recorders of the Bible’s wisdom traditions—to trace the way of things by long, thoughtful observation. Even in a letter shot through with reflection upon the spirit-flesh dichotomy, Paul is simply to describe with organic language and as both promise and warning the way things work:

Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up.

Paul mines what are to him the evident continuities in life with pastoral intent. He does not want the Galatian Christians to forge with their attitudes and behaviors a future that turns out to look and smell not like blessing but rather like a curse. His desire for them is that they should invest life and energy in projects and a way of life that cultivates the soil that gives—eventually and enduringly—a sustaining harvest. (more…)

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fear itself: Galatians 5

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 25, 2008| Leave a Comment »

For a man as determined as he is to safeguard the Christian’s freedom from any moral and legal encumbrance that does not align itself with the logic of Jesus’ cross, the apostle Paul is shockingly severe with regard to those who breach moral boundaries:

I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The apostle makes this fear-inspiring warning with regard to those who practice ‘the works of the flesh’. Paul bifurcates the existential energy available to humankind. For him, there are just two: spirit and flesh. (more…)

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all in: Galatians 3

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »

We have only scarce evidence regarding the shape of Paul’s personality, yet his temperament must have exuded a certain feistiness. It was doubtless an unpleasant thing to discover that one had crossed him. What looks from this distance like an irascible edginess must not be taken as a transparent defect but rather linked, at least in part, to his impassioned jealousy for ‘the nations’ or ‘the gentiles’. When he articulates his own vocation in the letter to the Galatians, he defines it in these very terms, sketching out the boundaries of an embassy ‘to the nations’ that stands over against, say, Cephas’ calling ‘to the circumcision’. (more…)

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woman: Song of Solomon 7

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 22, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The poet’s description of the Shunamite beauty in Song of Solomon is breathtaking. Meticulously, he employs his craft from her head to her toe, painting a portrait of her body that sets a reader back on his heels.

Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
the work of a master hand.

It is understandable that pious minds should so quickly have had recourse to allegory, for it is convenient—though in a way, quite sad—to look away from this fresh, fleshly enchantment of a man for his beloved woman and to focus instead on YHWH’s love for Israel or Christ’s for his church. Such symbolic reframing of love’s rushing words goes back to our earliest post-biblical interpretative works. (more…)

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ravished: Song of Solomon 4

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 21, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The uninhibited poet of Song of Solomon paints the portrait of two lovers drunk with love.

Each longs for the body, the company, the love of the other. Each describes in lavish detail the beauty of love’s object. Both are driven to behavior bordering on the outlandish by the surge of love’s private frenzy.

You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride,
you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes,
with one jewel of your necklace.

(more…)

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heroic love: 1 Corinthians 16

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »

For partisans of language practice that erases the gendered aspects of the way people speak and write, the apostle Paul’s vocabulary as he wraps up his first letter to the Corinthians could be embarrassing.

Be courageous, he tells them. His word is andrizesthe, a verb associated with the noun aner, for ‘man/male’. A less circumspect translation in times before such matters had become part of our consciousness might have rendered this ‘Be men!’, or ‘Play the man!’. Readers female and male would have known what he meant and felt themselves called to a common response. (more…)

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bound for glory: 1 Corinthians 15

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 5, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Biblical realism is not given to flights of fancy. The biblical understanding of the human creature is tenaciously realistic about both his frailty and his enormous capacity for evil. The first chapters of the biblical anthology tell us that man and woman are glorious creatures, saturated with qualities that affiliate them more with the Creator than with the creation of which they are undeniably a part. It is this very grandeur that frames the fracturing of the divine image in humankind as tragedy rather than a merely regrettable accident.

If, as the old table prayer puts it, ‘God is great … God is good …’, the biblical witness might be paraphrased as claiming that ‘Humans are great … but humans are not good …’ (more…)

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all for building up: 1 Corinthians 14

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 3, 2008| Leave a Comment »

It is common to imagine that Paul’s discussion with the Corinthians in this place is about spiritual gifts or even about glossolalia, the phenomenon of speaking in an unknown language.

It is not.

Paul’s intense concern to help the Corinthian church get the thing right is about selfishness over against a concern for the integrity and maturation of the community. ‘Speaking in tongues’ is merely the occasion. (more…)

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straight ahead: Proverbs 4

Posted in textures, tagged , , on September 2, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The conventional biblical wisdom found in the book of Proverbs entwines the thread of proximity with that of exertion. That is to say, one of the collection’s principal burdens is to persuade the young man or woman that wisdom is available. Indeed, personified as Lady Wisdom, she stands in the street and calls out to passersby. One need not sail over the horizon to find wisdom. It is right here, right now.

On the other hand, wisdom becomes the province of those who exert heroically constant efforts to acquire it. If it is near, it is not easy. If it is on offer, it is not cheap. To acquire wisdom—this indeed is the noblest of ambitions in the book’s purview—is to commit oneself to the a lifelong pursuit that takes its shape against formidable odds.

It is easy to be foolish. The law of moral entropy, though the Proverbs nowhere use this language, assures us that those who do not battle for wisdom will necessarily end up fools. Wisdom is sweet, but it is not humankind’s destiny. To get wisdom is to swim against the current every day, for a lifetime. There is no end to the effort. Indeed, one of the book’s energizing convictions is that the wise are set up not so much to remain in that status but to get still further wisdom. The book does not worry itself overmuch about the destination. It is far more concerned with wisdom’s path, with the listening, submitting, humbly aggressive practice that brings the prize within reach. (more…)

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