textweek

Luke 14:25-33

Interesting thoughts at Preaching Peace by Michael Hardin and Jeff Krantz:

"Honestly, I don’t’ think we can preach this passage authentically until we’ve come to grips with our own fear as pastors of an ekklesia in which the members have such a sense of their own spiritual authority that they have no need of a “stipendiary” ministry. Not that there won’t be shepherds, just not professional ones. This is the first thing that most of us have to die to before we can preach this text with authority."

I'm cheering them (and Jesus!) on quite comfortably, here, until I stop and generalize this to my own situation. What are the things that I am being called to "hate"/"prefer other than". I'm wondering if this isn't the other side of the dialectic to the "faithfulness" to family, tradition, etc. I hear Christ calling me to explore rather completely the other side of the story of my former allegiances - even those I find most dear. It's not that those allegiances are "bad" or even "unhelpful". (Though, I'm guessing that it could easily be argued that Luke and Luke's Jesus thought that they were!) It's that there is always another side of the dialectic - another "opposite" - that I'm forgetting, especially as I seek to be committed completely, even to Christ. What does it mean to continue to explore that dialectic - that synthesis of opposites - not to find some "mid point", but to continue to explore the opposites in their entirety as they evolve? To be COMPLETELY faithful/loyal/committed, and COMPLETELY free from allegiance to all but God-self - the indefinable? Interesting to contemplate, and difficult not to just leave it with the contemplation and go "home"!

At Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Paul Neuchterlein writes:

"The Greek word for "possessions" in vs. 33 is an interesting one. It is a participial noun ta hyparchonta, from the verb hyparcho, which is a compound word from the words hypo, "under," archo, "to begin" (the noun arche can also indicate power). It's not even listed in Kittel's TDNT, but the Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker lexicon has its most common meaning as: exist (really), be present, be at one's disposal. Things which are at one's disposal are one's possessions or means. BAGD also indicates that in Homeric Greek this word is often used as a substitute for einai (inf.), the "to be" verb. I take it that this "really exist" is an intensive form of "to be.""

"The "therefore" in vs. 33 might provide the key to interpretation: "So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." Our fallenness might be posed in terms of the problems we have with possessions. Think of the things that are most dear to us: mother and father, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself. Couldn't our problem be defined as wanting to possess these people? We don't want to simply live our lives as gift, we want to possess our lives as something we earn. We cling to our lives. These sayings, then, would carry a similar message as, "Those who cling to their lives will lose them, and those who give up their lives for my sake will gain them." Life is not something to grasp after. It is something to give away and then receive back as a free gift. This goes for our relationships, too. Those we love are not something to cling to, they are something we have to be willing to give away, in order that we might be able to receive them as gift."

At The Center of Concern Sunday Reflections:

"Jesus further says that we should even renounce members of our family. One way to think of this strange command is to see it an invitation to freedom – as an invitation or radical challenge not to see any person as a possession – as a person that we “own.” Unless parents “let go” of their children, there can be no healthy adult relationship.

Unless we treat each other as adults, filled with the dignity and freedom that comes from God, we cannot really be Christian brothers and sisters."

Thoughts from John S. Kavanaugh at Saint Louis University's Center for Liturgy:

"Clearly [Jesus] is speaking here of renouncing our loved ones as possessions or as barriers to the redeeming cross. We can never possess another. (This is why Paul, in his Letter to Philemon, undercuts slavery by insisting that Onesimus is not a slave, but a loved brother.) What is more, we can never be another's god. Nor can another human serve as ours. No one can save us but Christ.

I cannot speak from direct experience of having spouse or children, but I suspect that there is a great and paradoxical truth in what Jesus says. If we treat our children as if they are either our possessions or our gods, it will not only be impossible to follow Christ; it will be impossible to love them. We will strangle them by clinging to them as if they were our property or crush them with the impossible burden of saving us and making us happy."

Also at Saint Louis University, John J. Pilch on the historical cultural context of the gospel reading:

"A follower of Jesus who ceased "networking" by means of meals would jeopardize a family's very existence. The disciple must then choose between allegiance to the family and allegiance to Jesus. Choosing Jesus is thus equivalent to letting one's family go, "hating" the family. Hate is more suitably translated "prefer," that is, one who "hates" family actually prefers another group to the family.

Recall the tight-knit nature of the Middle-Eastern family. The ideal marriage partner is a first cousin. Sons, married and single, remain with the father. Everyone "controls" one another. Life in these circumstances can be very stifling, very suffocating. Following Jesus and joining a new, fictive family would be very liberating and exhilarating."

From William Loader's First Thoughts:

"Domestication confines religion to the domus, the home and family. In Jesus’ teaching we regularly meet challenges directed against so-called family values. To read Jesus as enjoining literal hatred of one’s family is to miss the point and mishear the rhetoric. But such shocking rhetoric reflects a view that families can constrict growth, become oppressive demons, and bring death rather than life. According to Mark, Jesus’ own (family) though he was mad and sought in their terms to rescue him (3:20-21, 31-35).

People today can recite a range of experiences about family demonics. Sometimes it is blatant abuse, whether by parent of child or among siblings or in marriage. Sometimes the destructiveness is more ‘innocent’: the peace and ‘goodness’ of family has suppressed self exploration and generation of self worth to the point where long after their passing the parents, internalised, continue to dictate terms and only with careful therapy can the soul find release. Sometimes it is much bigger than personal freedom and manifests itself in closed minds, eyes trained not to see, ears not to hear, lives self-preoccupied with often a kind of private goodness but no heart for compassion and justice in the world. Sometimes family has simply been one player in a social conspiracy which has written a gendered script which waits to be torn up. Dethroning such gods brings trauma for all concerned; it means giving up what has been ‘one’s own life’ in order to find oneself (and find others)."

For more background on the "family" thang, check out James A. Sanders, "The Family in the Bible," Biblical Theology Bulletin 2002.

Again, I think that it is very difficult not to read these texts as rhetorically difficult for others, but as "comfortable" (even within odd reversals!) for ourselves. I'm not certain that our task in teaching, preaching, exegeting, or even doing academic work is to make them "difficult" for either ourselves or others. (Though I'm not sure that's not our task, at least occasionally.) It can be an interesting exercise to explore how various interpreters reflect the values of their own time/place/communities in their interpretations, and to attempt to do so without "judging" too quickly which ones are "right" and which ones are "wrong". It can be interesting to attempt to do so without coming too quickly to what their issue obviously "is". How difficult is it to hold these interpretations in tension without needing to synthesize them into some static "truth" which is basically meaningless in any specific situation? (Which I hear as at least some of what this passage is warning against.) How do we keep our faithfulness "alive"?

William Sloane Coffin at PBS Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

There's an interview this morning at PBS Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, with William Sloane Coffin.

"It's clear to me, two things: that almost every square inch of the Earth's surface is soaked with the tears and blood of the innocent, and it's not God's doing. It's our doing. That's human malpractice. Don't chalk it up to God. Every time people say, when they see the innocent suffering, every time they lift their eyes to heaven and say, 'God, how could you let this happen?' it's well to remember that exactly at that moment God is asking exactly the same question of us: 'How could you let this happen?' So you have to take responsibility. If you back off from every little controversy in your life you're not alive, and what's more, you're boring."

Kübler-Ross

At Beliefnet, an interesting perspective on the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and its influence on popular culture: "The Revenge of Kübler-Ross," by Ellen Leventry:

"When Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote of the five stages of grief in her seminal work "On Death and Dying" 35 years ago, she wasn't referring to soundstages. But you wouldn't know that from flipping through a copy of TV Guide. From HBO's "Six Feet Under" to Showtime's "Dead Like Me," television is bringing death and grieving straight into our living rooms. Right, as it turns out, where Kübler-Ross and a host of other experts say it should be."

NPR All Things Considered Tribute to Hospice Pioneer Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:

"Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who revolutionized the way the world looks at terminally ill patients, has died at age 78. Her book On Death and Dying launched her career as a pioneer for hospice care. John Biewen of American Radioworks reports."

Luke 14:1, 7-14

As usual, Sarah Dylan Breuer has posted thoughts at Dylan's Lectionary Blog which are helpful for me:

"People at both ends of this pride spectrum, though, have something in common: they're deeply concerned with boundaries, with what's right and wrong, with what's appropriate, with who deserves what, and they have a very hard time seeing anyone -- themselves or their neighbors -- getting something that's given 'out of bounds.'"

I've been thinking a lot this past week about the integration of various dialectics, and this is a good practical example of one. It seems to me that these integrations can happen in just about any way in the abstract, but in the concrete - in "lived life" - they are quite specific. Yet these sorts of integrations are not static even in their particularity, but always active. Probably that wouldn't preach, but luckily, I don't have to preach it!

At Paul Nuechterlein's Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary:

"In Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg put a number of things quite clearly which are helpful in reading this gospel passage. One is his characterization of Jesus as a teacher of Wisdom (and later as God's Wisdom incarnate) and the accompanying distinction between conventional wisdom and alternative wisdom (see especially pages 75-81). In Luke 14:8-11, Jesus begins his teaching with some nifty conventional wisdom. But in 14:12-14 he is his more typical self in going far beyond conventional wisdom to an alternative wisdom that subverts the conventional wisdom.

Borg's earlier distinction between a politics of holiness vs. a politics of compassion (see especially pages 53-56) help characterize the difference between conventional wisdom and alternative wisdom. According to conventional wisdom, where one sits at the table is a function of one's rank of holiness or prestige; and whether one is even allowed to partake of the common meal is a function of purity. Jesus regularly bashed this purity system, a system of community order, with his behavior and teachings around common meals. This gospel gives another example."

Nuechterlein goes on to speak about this in terms of a Girardian analysis of purity systems, and the "new law" which Jesus/Paul re-presented and communicated. I continue to wonder about the "new law" and/or the communication of Jesus and Paul as the other side of a dialectic instead of yet another universal absolute. The "law of compassion" then becomes something that we can integrate in a concrete way into our own lives, instead of rhetorical absolute which only "works" within abstractions.

Once, while in an adult Sunday School class, I was teaching (OK, preaching!) about not storing up riches, or about not having thought about social position or about something like that. A woman in her 50's, who has cerebral palsy, began to speak. She had learned to speak as an adult, and decoding her speech was sometimes difficult. She said that she was very glad that her father (now deceased) had worried about his position in society and had thought to "store riches" to provide for her and for her mother (who had set aside economic security in order to raise her daughter).

I've thought a lot about that woman's comments. Do we too quickly say what we think the "answer" is - some counter-culture abstraction, perhaps, or something we think we "should" be according to abstract moral rules, albeit "Christian" rules? And, in doing so, are we claiming our place at the "table" - a position of honor within a community with a set of values which may be alternative, but are a set of values nonetheless? What are we missing here? What is Jesus saying to US about our own behavior, and about how to integrate his message about God more fully into our concrete lives?

NPR : Math and the Mona Lisa

NPR : Math and the Mona Lisa - An interesting article about perception and interpretation of a particular "text". with implications for other interpreters.

"How did Leonardo da Vinci use math to influence the way we see the Mona Lisa? And how does our visual system affect our perception of that, and other, works of art? A look at math, biology and the science of viewing art."

The Middle East and the West

At NPR's All Things Considered, 1098-2004 - The Middle East and the West - A Troubled History.

"NPR's Mike Shuster begins a six-part series on the long, turbulent history of Western involvement in the Middle East, beginning in the late 11th century with the start of the Christian Crusades."

Includes multimedia timeline, maps, photos, bios, etc. Now online: "The Crusades: Two Centuries of Holy War" :

"In the late 11th century, the Pope of Rome declares a crusade to seize Jerusalem from the Arabs, who have held the Holy Land for centuries. In just a few years, European knights seize the city, slaughtering most of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants and launching two centuries of holy war."

Tony Campolo on Evangelical Christianity

At BeliefNet: "'Evangelical Christianity Has Been Hijacked': An Interview with Tony Campolo", interview by Laura Sheahen:

"Evangelical leader, sociology professor, and Baptist minister Tony Campolo made headlines in the 1990s when he agreed to be a spiritual counselor to President Bill Clinton. A self-described Bible-believing Christian, he has drawn fire from his fellow evangelicals for his stance on contemporary issues like homosexuality. He talked with Beliefnet recently about his new book, Speaking My Mind."

John the Baptist's Cave

If you've not read this news story, check out the articles and comments at The Bible and Interpretation , Mark Goodacre's New Testament Gateway Weblog, and the article at Christianity Today: "Bring Me the Stead of John the Baptist." It's always interesting to compare different folks' takes on these things, and to consider how different folks understand the stakes. (And then, of course, to turn the analysis inward when considering more personal "discoveries"!)

Luke 13:10-17

Some things I've read this week that have helped me think in different ways about this gospel passage:

At Paul Neuchterlein's Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary:

"This Gospel story is a splendid one that shows Jesus unbinding someone through his work, which is portrayed not as a proper resting but as a proper sabbath work. Sabbath work is precisely work that frees us to finally do the work that we are created to do, that all of creation is created to do: praise God. This woman is able to be unbound from the burden of Satanic work so that she is immediately able to do her proper work as a beloved creature of God. She is freed to praise her Creator. Jesus seemingly gives us an example not of sabbath rest but of the sabbath work of re-orienting our work in a way that liberates it."

At Preaching Peace, by Michael Hardin and Jeff Krantz:

"Illness, by it’s very nature, is an arbitrary distinction. Is illness the presence of germs? No. We all carry them all the time. Mental illness is even more arbitrary. It is basically a way of perceiving reality that doesn’t conform that of the majority. In Soviet Russia, it’s the place dissidents were sent. “You don’t understand the wisdom of Marxism? You must be crazy!” (Michael and I have been called crazy by angry readers from time to time.) Healing is not restoration to “sameness.” It is being freed from the association between certain states and being “afflicted.” (That is, in some sense, cursed, or having some kind of moral deficit.) Preaching Good News then means preaching healing in this new way."

At Mary Hinkle's Pilgrim Preaching:

"We and the people to whom we preach have much more in common with the bent-over woman than with the one who heals her. Read alongside that woman this week. Figure out what power holds you with her "captive to restricted movement, to the inability to meet another person face-to-face, and to a world defined by the piece of ground around [your] own toes or looked at always on a slant" (Ringe, 187). It is that power which Jesus defeats when he unbinds the woman and all those likewise bound."

From Brian Stoffregen's Exegetical Notes at Mark Vitalis Hoffman's CrossMarks site are particularly interesting read with the link from Tikkun, below. From Stoffregen:

"It is the synagogue leader who calls Jesus' actions "healing" (therapeuo in v. 14 twice) -- and thus a "work". He doesn't see it as the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy of releasing from bondage -- or a re-enactment of the Exodus journey from slavery to freedom."

I'm hearing this week's gospel text as a proclamation of freedom from all sorts of bondages. It's fairly easy for us to look at how others have made liberation into bondage, freedom into more "rules", set up unhelpful (and even evil) systems, etc. Our own liberation from these things is one thing, and an encouraging message! At the same time, how do we, in our OWN "correctness" set up these sorts of things - even in the name of our own faithfulness, or in the name of re-creating and assuring continuing relationship with God? How do our own "God-given" systems keep others captive? How do we keep ourselves captive by the very things we have set up to keep ourselves faithful? In what ways does God liberate us from ourselves? In what ways do we need to liberate ourselves from our selves? What are each of us - as individuals and as various communities - holding onto in order to be "safe" from relationship with God? How are we keeping ourselves and others "bent over"? And how do we integrate the equal truths inherent in opposition to these claims, questions, and thoughts - the truths that others see so well as occasional (or inevitable!) consequence to this kind of freedom? How do we live out paradoxes of responsibility and freedom - of ordering our lives faithfully and being called to live them with abandon - in our concrete lives? Exactly how deep IS the stasis from which we are called?

Shabbat and Luke 13

Interesting thoughts at Tikkun's "What Is Shabbat, the Sabbath, Really About?"At this link you'll find commentary on Shabbat on the Politics of Meaning and Shabbat,
The Need for Ecological Awareness, The Need for Spiritual Awareness, Shabbat as a Spiritual Practice, The Basic Principles of Shabbat Practice, and Shabbat as a Message of Liberation.

"We are not stuck in a world of oppression. We are created in the image of God and hence embody this God energy in the universe. Our task is to recreate the world so that it conforms to the highest ethical and spiritual values. Lest we forget about this during our very busy and productive weeks, we are given Shabbat, a weekly reminder of our own experience of liberation from Egypt, and hence a reminder that we should not think of ourselves as trapped by reality or forced to define ourselves by what seems possible at the moment. Instead, we should reconnect with the transformative energy in the universe --God-- and be open to struggling to change the world."