Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Samuel, textures on April 14, 2008| Leave a Comment »
The seer Samuel’s proximity to YHWH’s counsel makes him the pivotal figure in the Saul narrative. His gaze penetrates the smoky gray of events, illuminating in forboding sentences the direction that YHWH would have them go.
Samuel must have made unpleasant company, not the kind for smalltalk and hors d’oeuvres. One felt his presence as an interruption. Like the prophets of which he would become a prototype, Samuel was more often than not both late and unwelcome. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Luke, Samuel, textures on April 12, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Israel’s first and short-lived king, Saul by name, is arguably the Hebrew Bible’s most tragic figure. He bears that peculiar curse that consists of great things happening to him. He does not invite them. In fact he seems bent on fleeing the tectonic movement of events that bring inexorable fame upon his large, fragile shoulders. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Luke, Samuel, textures on April 8, 2008| Leave a Comment »
We believe that faith unites a family. Sometimes it does, though more seldom than we imagine.
Aging Eli felt a deep foreboding when reports of his sons’ comportment as self-serving priests reached his dulling ears. He pleads with them to change their ways, but does not offer understanding on the basis of ‘family’. The language is of covenantal repercussions, of cutting off and being cut off. In a short time Eli’s sons would be dead. Their stolen meat would do them no good then and Eli would be forbidden the unrestrained grief a father feels over righteous sons. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Ruth, textures on April 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »
One almost feels a wry heavenly smile hovering over the proceedings as the short story of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz ambles towards its contented dénoument. The wily grandmother-to-be joins the submissive and diligent protagonist and the sturdy, good-hearted male rescuer to produce an unlikely ending that is full of YHWH’s blessing. Events bring the wish that YHWH might bless into the concrete reality of Bethlehem’s space and time. A child is born and an old lady gets her name back.
So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the LORD made her conceive, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.’ Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse. The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, ‘A son has been born to Naomi.’ They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David. Now these are the descendants of Perez: Perez became the father of Hezron, Hezron of Ram, Ram of Amminadab, Amminadab of Nahshon, Nahshon of Salmon, Salmon of Boaz, Boaz of Obed, Obed of Jesse, and Jesse of David.
The wry smile must have come down and shaped itself upon the lips of Israelite generations, for the last words of this little story end with David’s name. Who could have guessed that an indigent Moabite should become the monarch’s ancestress?
One wonders what else can be accomplished when little men and women, unobserved by those who make and write history, act mercifully in time of need. Perhaps YHWH’s favorite among his repertoire of means is found in this scenario.
The text has a name for it. It is called blessing.
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Ruth, textures on April 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »
The narrator of the book of Ruth is exact about his setting. He places his moving story in ‘the days when the judges were judging Israel’. What is more, he gives his merciful and strong hero a pedigree that links it to the Book of Judges. Boaz is of the family of a certain Elimelech.
Mere assonance and historical proximity remind one of Abimelech, born to Gideon and his concubine, a bloody-handed figure of ill repute. A very good man finds his place among the roster of bad men who populate the pages of the Book of Judges. Not all flowed crimson, not all was dark, not all turned violent and craven in the tribal confederacy of the conquest years, it would seem. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Judges, textures on April 5, 2008| Leave a Comment »
it would be difficult to find in the Hebrew Bible a story of more brazen awfulness than that of the Levite traveler and his concubine on their ill-fated layover in Gibeah of Benjamin. The conduct of the ‘men of the city’ is miscreant. Their overnight host, so generous in his rescuing invitation that they pass the night in his home, responds with inexplicable calculation to the pressure that his townsmen bring to bear. Finally, the Levite himself responds to the outrage with one of his own. He cuts up the body of his concubine and sends the pieces to the tribes of the Israelite confederacy, demanding a reaction to the horror that has gone down in Benjamin:
‘Get up,’ he said to her, ‘we are going.’ But there was no answer. Then he put her on the donkey; and the man set out for his home. When he had entered his house, he took a knife, and grasping his concubine he cut her into twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. Then he commanded the men whom he sent, saying, ‘Thus shall you say to all the Israelites, “Has such a thing ever happened since the day that the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt until this day? Consider it, take counsel, and speak out.”‘
The wording of his complaint seems intended to provoke reflection on the Israelite project as well as to demand immediate retribution. His time frame, within which he claims for his experience a shattering uniqueness, is bookended on the early side by reference to ‘the day that the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt’. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Judges, textures on April 4, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Samson’s rage against the Philistines comes across as righteous, though there is hardly a white hat to be found in this entire story. Samson himself hardly wears one. Nor does anyone who figures in the rent-a-priest tale that follows hold up well under the lens of Deuteronomistic ideals.
The book of Judges is punctuated by a recurring assessment that ‘In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes’. On the one hand, this could be read as a technical description of decentralized self-rule. But it seems likely that there is more here than the evolution of Israelite political structures in the time before monarchy took hold. The phrase ‘what was right in their own eyes’ casts a dark light on the moral and spiritual chaos in which Israel found itself enveloped. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Luke, textures on March 31, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Even among a people less awkward about the unseen than we, the sick woman of Luke must have been shattered by the sudden strangeness of events. Grasping at Jesus as he passed by, she made meaningful contact and felt her long-standing illness reshaped into wholeness as she did so.
She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his clothes, and immediately her hemorrhage stopped. Then Jesus asked, ‘Who touched me?’ When all denied it, Peter said, ‘Master, the crowds surround you and press in on you.’ But Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me.’
For a disquieting moment, the narrative lurches in the direction of magic. Impersonal force seems to surge from Jesus into a person who makes the right mechanical move: ‘If only I could touch him …’ (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Judges, textures on March 30, 2008| Leave a Comment »
An odd incongruity flavors the pages of the Book of Judges. Amid the stories of Israel’s vicious cycle of declension and the heroic feats of warrior ‘judges’, there is little exemplary behavior that aligns itself with the ethical counsel of the Hebrew Bible. Far more chaos appears than order, more idiosyncratic episodes than steady walking in right ways.
The book makes for great reading. Its heroic figures claimed their place in my memory in boyhood and remain there still. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Luke, textures on March 29, 2008| Leave a Comment »
While at table in the home of a certain Simon—one must not fall prey to the pious instinct to hold it against this host that he is a Pharisee—Jesus’ conviviality with the assembled men is interrupted when a ‘sinnner woman’ falls at his feet. She anoints them with a bottle made for the job but adds the improvisation of bathing them with her tears. Her hair serves her for a towel.
There is disapproval round about, not only on the lips of those who think Jesus ought to have known what sort of woman this one is and prevented her making such a scene. Simon himself allows the reader to discern a certain distance from matters of passion, need, and brokenness. In answer to Jesus’ little parable about which of two debtors who are forgiven what they owe is likely to love most, he can hardly fail to answer correctly. Clearly, the one who has been forgiven more. Yet with tell-tale precision, Luke has him begin his response with the words ‘I suppose …’ (more…)
Canter Bridge 