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Posts Tagged ‘biblical reflection’

core and flex: 1 Corinthians 9

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

Knowing precisely who we are is the key to spiritual versatility.

A solid core renders possible myriad accommodations without sliding over into hypocrisy. The apostle Paul was so seized by his encounter with Christ, so anchored ‘in Christ’, that he could walk the walk and talk the talk of all kinds of human beings.

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. (1 Corinthians 9:20–23 ESV)

Perhaps followers of Jesus worry overmuch about ‘acting out of our gifting’, of ‘being true to ourselves’. (more…)

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grief’s terrible family: John 19

Posted in textures, tagged , , on May 31, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Though we would never willingly hire its services, grief is an accomplished unifier.

One of the ways that Jesus’ experience takes in that of pained humanity is his acquaintance with grief, and of its adoptive requirements.

But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (John 19:25–27 ESV)

The ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ is likely a humble self-depiction of the Fourth Gospel’s author. Some strength of friendship, very close to sibling affection, linked Jesus and this man in an almost family way. Among Jesus’ dying words from the cross comes this formalizing of family, produced not by biology’s traceable accidents but rather by the unforeseen sinews of friendship that link friends more closely than brothers, and occasionally draw a weeping mother into its awesome web. (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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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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happy face: Proverbs 14

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

Heartbreak is not only the wolf at the door. It is also the ant in the cupboard, already inside the house and waiting only to be discovered.

Even in laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief. (Proverbs 14:13 ESV)

Because biblical wisdom is so thoroughly committed to the world as it actually is, it is serially impatient with euphorias and tenaciously opposed to utopias. (more…)

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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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Peter’s end: Luke 22

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »

By all reckoning, it should have been the end of Peter’s story.

Like Judas, he might have hanged himself. Or turned recluse. Or lurched in his bitterness towards Stockholm Syndrome, throwing in his lot with Jesus’ taunters.

And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly. (Luke 22:61–62 ESV)

A text familiar with tears and their descriptors takes special care to characterize Peter’s particular kind of weeping. ‘He went out and wept bitterly.’

Nothing is left for Peter, even if Jesus‘ life might stagger on for a few more hours before the killing is over.

Indeed Luke’s narrative never pauses to allow a polite space for Peter’s grief. Hurrying on from Jesus’ and Peter’s fateful locking of glances, he reports:

Now the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him. They also blindfolded him and kept asking him, ‘Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?’ And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him. (Luke 22:63–65 ESV)

But Peter is ended.

His credibility gone, his soul crushed by his own unforeseen betrayal of this man for whom he had vowed to die, what can possibly become of this once audacious follower of Jesus, whom the text now with increasing frequency calls simply ‘the Lord’?

Yet, stunningly, Peter is not over.

The events unfolding before eyes that have perhaps read them too quickly, too often, would produce more than one resurrection from the dead. Peter, the New Testament will lead us to understand, had a future, indeed a complex, contentious, and fruitful one.

Nor does the resurrection count end at just two.

For we are all Peter ended, capable of the unthinkable and often its very perpetrators, shattered by our own weak hand.

Yet we are all potentially Peter remade, remembering our nadir not as our end, but rather our beginning.

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no shit: Proverbs 14

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »

No biblical proverb has challenged the delicacy of its translators more than 14.4. The squirming is like unto a spectator sport.

If there are no oxen the crib is clean, But a rich harvest comes through the strength of the ox. (Proverbs 14:4 JPS)

Clearly, the conditions of productivity are in play. (more…)

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Gethsemane’s searing silence: Luke 22

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »

It is probably impossible for us credibly to imagine Jesus’ solitude in the garden called Gethsemane.

As his heart and mind writhed in agony before his impending execution and the lived experience of abandonment by his Father, his friends, too, deserted him for sleep. (more…)

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