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02/06/2014

Textweek/ATLAS links Lent 1A March 9, 2014

Studying lectionary texts? Here are some starting places for study at ATLA this week. If you are the graduate of an accredited U.S. theological school, you may have free access to these articles through your school. Check ATLAS access options. You can find full lists of ATLAS recommended articles for this week at The Text This Week's page for this week's texts:

http://www.textweek.com/yeara/lenta1.htm

Lent 1A
March 9, 2014

“Trying to name and define evil's manifestations is helpful but not primary in getting a right perspective on Satan's place in our spiritual trials. First and foremost in this task is learning to discern the voice of God, the true Guide. To obey originally meant to hear. Whatever else evil and the devil may be, they are sources of misdirected calls. Like Jesus, we are called to tune our ears to one voice: to learn, to hear, to obey.”

 

“On the other hand, though, this is also a story about Israel—or, as Matthew might have it, about the church, because the church is called to be what Israel is called to be. There are several clues Matthew drops to suggest that this story about Jesus is also a story about us.”

 

Abstract: “This article traces the theme of royal power through the lectionary readings in Matthew during the seasons of Lent and Easter, culminating in Trinity Sunday. An examination of major turning points in Matthew's story of Jesus—temptation, transfiguration, triumphal entry, passion, resurrection, and farewell—demonstrates Jesus' re-definition of kingship as obedience and service. Matthew characterizes Jesus as the perfect example of true righteousness, consistently obedient to the Father's will. As a result, Jesus possesses absolute and eternal power, and he commands his disciples to draw on that power and his presence as they make other disciples throughout the earth.”

 

“As far as I can tell, what Adam and Jesus are both tempted by is the chance to play God. In Adam's case, it was the chance to break out of his dependence on God and know both good and evil for himself. In Jesus' case, it was the chance to feed every hunger, to be superman, to control all the kingdoms of the earth. God never offers those things, incidentally— Satan is the only one who offers them, with a thousand strings attached.”

 

“Lent is a spiritual task, and so also political, one of learning to see and to interpret with sight as clear as Jesus' here in the wilderness's stark relief and to interpret God, ourselves, indeed all reality, accordingly. Politically and spiritually, it is to live ever more fully by being drawn by God into the life of One who sees clearly.”

 

“Just as Jesus is depicted as recapitulating Israel's wilderness temptation through a dialogue on Deuteronomy, we are able to recapitulate his wilderness temptation by a dialogue on the temptation narrative, so that his story becomes ours to live forward as our own.”

 

Abstract: “The story of Jesus' temptations in the wilderness originated as a Palestinian Christian response to persecution under Agrippa I during the aftermath of the Caligula crisis (c. 42 CE). Jesus, in isolation from human society, is challenged by Satan but repudiates incitement to idolatry and betrayal of God. In so doing he serves as an antitype to Agrippa, from the perspective of those whom he persecuted. The story is preserved and developed in diverse strands of the Gospel tradition, of which the most elaborate is the triple temptation story in Q.”

 

 

Stegner, William Richard, "The Temptation Narrative: A Study in the Use of Scripture by Early Jewish Christians,"Biblical Research, 1990.
  EBSCO ATLASerials, Religion Collection
  EBSCO ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials

 

Abstract: “The Temptation narrative is a literary deposit of early Jewish Christianity and shows how they used the Old Testament to witness to Jesus. They quoted sentences, phrases, and words to refer to Old Testament stories. The wilderness generation furnished types and exegetical traditions of the time gave background.”

 

Abstract: “In a study based on his recent book Missing the Mark : Sin and Its Consequences in Biblical Theology, Mark Biddle explores the story of Genesis 3 and concludes that the church must reaffirm the Good News that God created a good world and that God values authentic humanity enough to create it and affirms it in the incarnation. The phenomenon of shame, as old as Adam and Eve, and the cult of self-esteem, founded by the serpent, both now rampant in our culture, indicate that members of our society acutely feel the effects of their sin.”

 

 

Abstract: “The creation account of Genesis 2-3 describes a basic social contradiction facing the Judahite royal élite, namely, the struggle between royal social and economic interests and the peasant class. The narrator solves this social contradiction in favour of the royal elite by portraying the first couple as peasants who must submit to the royal centralized authority of the state represented in the character of Yahweh. The narrative of the couple's revolt against Yahweh is a literary expression of the social threat of peasant unrest and rebellion. By couching the social symbolic equivalent of peasant rebellion in a cosmogony, the narrator portrays peasant unrest as natural and endemic to the rural setting. Peasants are thus painted as a constant threat calling for strong measures of elitist control.”

 

“Sometimes it seems like we have a love-hate relationship with deception. On the one hand, we suspect that we should not do it. On the other hand, it sure does seem helpful sometimes. Our moral ambivalence about deception reminds me of the student who jumbled up his Bible quotations and came up with: "A lie is an abomination to the Lord . . . and a very present help in trouble." We just are not certain about how we are supposed to understand or deal with this thing called deception—we are not certain how to deal with it as individual Christians, and we are not certain how to deal with it as leaders in the church.”

 

 

“How does Christ exercise his dominion and lordship except as one who serves? How will we, who are called by Jesus to do likewise, exercise dominion in life in our world?”

 

“’We have met the enemy, and he is us,’ said Pogo, The ‘us’ is our sinful self, which can be disposed of only by dying to faith in our own power to believe and rising to faith as the daily gift of Christ For this, we need a preacher, the bringer of an external word to which we can cling.”

 

“In a day when confession of sins is often seen as out of step with culture, preaching and teaching the penitential psalms can awaken people to the power of this central aspect of the good news of Christian faith.”

02/06/2014 at 12:35 PM |

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