The biblical book of Exodus tosses off some odd and enigmatic scenes in the life of Moses, Israel’s liberator and law-giver. Curiously, his erstwhile Midianite wife Zipporah plays a role in more than one of them.
The narrator allows us to stumble upon details that we feel we should have known but do not. For example, the fact that Moses had ‘sent away’ not only Zipporah but the two sons whom she had borne to him. Continue Reading »
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As they fled their Egyptian taskmasters under the half-truth of worshipping YHWH in the trackless Sinai, the Hebrew slaves displayed a capacity for extraordinary myopia. ‘Were there no graves in Egypt?’, they taunted Moses. ‘Is that why you brought us out here to die?’
Yet bearing along the palpable promise of Joseph’s bones—caught between negotiated servitude and audacious freedom—the complaining ‘sons of Israel’ deserve a bit of empathy. Slavery, a known quantity, is at the least survivable. Freedom is potentially lethal. Continue Reading »
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Contrary to an attractively sentimental reading, John’s account of the miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee is not about Jesus’ common touch, Mary’s maternal affection, or the Master’s interest in the details of our lives (the embarrassment of an under-stocked wine cellar on wedding day, for example).
The event is, for the writer of the Fourth Gospel, neither a personality profile in narrative format nor what we might call a simple ‘miracle’ nor even a ‘problem’ now shifted to the ‘problem solved’ column. It is a sign. Indeed, it is for the writer nothing less than the first of Jesus’ signs. Continue Reading »
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Surely we are due some credit!
We have labored long, we have wept, we have worked our way to exhaustion and back, we have sacrificed leisure, friendships, even love for a most high calling. We asked very little and have only rarely complained. No one knows the price we have paid —and willingly—for the cause.
Then comes this damned Jesus-story about day-laborers hired at intervals by a landowner. The best and the brightest, the earliest risers, the young, ambitious and hungry have worked their butts off from earliest light to put bread on the table and pay a little ahead on Junior’s college tuition. Continue Reading »
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It can be a violent swing to lurch from, say, Jesus’ apocalyptic words to the this-worldly cadence of the biblical Proverbs. ‘Whoever is not with me is against me … Do not think that I have come to bring peace, but a sword!’
These are the kairos-inflected call to decision that come from Jesus lips, though hardly the only tone that he struck.
Yet living in accordance with biblical tonalities requires also that one know how to bring grace and harmony to this earth, not only to decide viscerally to ally one’s self with Jesus’ incoming kingdom.
The proverbs wish one to learn to be a good neighbor:
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The norm in the historiography of the other is to write him out of meaningful history. If it is inconvenient to demean one’s adversary—or if doing so requires too much energy—the obvious alternative is to ignore him.
So does it become possible to make the too trite claim that history is written by the victor. That mantra is more than a half-truth but falls short of the whole. It fails to reflect the complexity of who records and interprets the flow of lives and events and who does not. Continue Reading »
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El estudio de Levítico en el siglo veinte no puede ser resumido sin destacar el nombre de Jacob Milgrom. Los escritos magisteriales de Milgrom dan evidencia de una amorosa imersión en la literatura sacerdotal.
Este erudito crítico logra mostrar en cada sílaba de su acogedora prosa un profundo respeto por los valores que el libro procurar transmitir. Es más, Milgrom considera los ritos sacerdotales como valores inscritos en ceremonia. No se puede comprender una ley levítica en su espléndido—o tedioso—aislamiento. Al contrario, es necesario ver cada pronuncamiento como un elemento en un sistema global que pretende llevar a Israel a la escuela para que ahí aprenda los valores que necesita para realizar una vida significante en la presencia de YHVH.
Si presentas una ofrenda de cereal cocida en la sartén, la ofrenda será de flor de harina sin levadura, amasada con aceite. La partirás en pedazos y le echarás aceite. Es una ofrenda de cereal.
Milgrom afirma que las palabras fallan. Por un lado, no penetran a la comprensión de las personas menos ‘letradas’. Por otro lado, es fácil olvidarlas. Continue Reading »
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John the Baptist appears in the gospels as one of those existential purists who gives himself to few causes, but with all-consuming energy. Fearless before the people who trek to the Jordan to hear his fiery rants, he is equally fearless before a profligate pseudo-king. John cannot be bought. John gives the lie to cynical refrain that ‘every man has his price’. Perhaps most do, perhaps nearly all. Not John.
Yet even this passionate martyr-in-the-making must be conceded a space for his doubts. Imprisoned, John wonders not so much about the veracity of his own calling as about his quick identification of Jesus as the one whose emergence on the scene would signal the successful performance of the Baptist’s task.
When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’ Jesus replied, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.’
John had correctly perceived that YHWH’s next move would prioritize the needy beyond all conventional proportion. He had discovered an antecedent, even in his mind a prediction, of his fiery calling in the vocabulary of the book called Isaiah. That prophetic vision had manifestly anticipated YHWH’s healing presence and both his announcement and enactment of transformative good news for those with empty hands and grumbling bellies. Continue Reading »
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The Jesus whom Matthew presents to us sounds positively Johannine for an instant in Matthew’s eleventh chapter.
At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’
These words come fast on the heels of Jesus’ denunciation of those who will criticize any of his Father’s messengers. They will find John the Baptist’s severe austerity equally as off-putting as Jesus’ party-going. Criticism becomes a convenient and effective tool in the hands of those who simply will not hear.
It is in the wake of this negative appraisal that Jesus’ words turn fondly and with a tone unaccustomed in the three ‘synoptic’ gospels towards the ‘little children’. Continue Reading »
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El horno reclama su espacio en el mantenimiento del equilibrio entre Israel y su Dios cercano.
No puede faltar la participación de manos que saben no quemarse, dedos que han aprendido a ejercer su debida agilidad con fuego y calor que pueden destruir la piel de un ser humano o producir el pan que sustenta si vida.
Si presentas una ofrenda de cereal cocida al horno, ésta será de panes de flor de harina sin levadura, amasados con aceite, o de obleas sin levadura untadas con aceite. Si presentas una ofrenda de cereal cocida en la sartén, la ofrenda será de flor de harina sin levadura, amasada con aceite. La partirás en pedazos y le echarás aceite. Es una ofrenda de cereal.
Los sencillos elementos de la vida cotidiana, en su indicada combinación, agradan al Creador del pueblo en una forma que no se distingue tan radicalmente de su efecto entre la misma comunidad humana que sabe aprovechar de la lluvia y el sol que YHVH crea para sembrar, cosechar y hornear para que la vida continúe un día, una temporada, un año más.
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Canter Bridge 