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03/28/2014

Textweek ATLAS links April 13, 2014, Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday

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/palmsa.htm

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

April 13, 2014
Palm/Passion Sunday

“Frequently when we read Isa 50:4-9 or the psalm texts on suffering and violence, we, as people of faith, identity with the sufferer. This is understandable, because all people experience suffering in a smaller or greater measure and need to hear the confidence and hope expressed in the biblical texts. However, in addition to the suffering victim, the above texts speak of those who are the oppressors. In order to hear the whole of these scriptures, we need to consider whether we are at times on the side of the victimizers.”

 

“This article compares the experiences portrayed by the psalmists in Psalm 31 and Psalm 102, both psalms of lament, with the current concept of major depression. It concludes by exploring how the insights of the psalms may be applied in pastoral care directed toward those who suffer from depression.”

“Lament psalms typically address God, but in this adaptation the contemporary community also becomes a hearer: they "cry out to us from the depths of the horror." Perhaps the transformation is not as radical as it first seems. If we imagine a cultic setting for Israel's lament psalms, words addressed to God would be heard by other members of the community.” 

“The psalmist's passionate descent into the particularity of his or her own suffering and despair is finally transformed by a faith that conquers anxiety, doubt, and despair. (See James E. Loder and W.Jim Neidhardt, The Knight's Move: The Helational Logic of the Spint in Theology and Science [Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1992].) God's power becomes the very ground and basis of the life and existence of the psalmist.”

“The world in which we live is no more welcoming of this story, no more open to this "mind," than was Roman Philippi. We are inundated with narratives that promise life found in superior force, in acquiring the best looks, the best bank accounts, the best weapons, the best "stuff." We are told that life is secured by our winning—socially, economically, politically, religiously—and everyone else losing. There is little room for the claim that the obedient death and resurrection of Jesus is the story of God's ultimate loving victory, the defining reality for all the world.”

“Jesus ' mission to revitalize Israel brought him into conflict with Roman and Jewish leaders, and to a shameful death by crucifixion. So he died as he had lived: committed to the ways of God, he rejected the quest for power and status. His followers were thus able to hold together his elevated status as Messiah and his scandalous death on a cross.”

“Understood through the prism of the Hebrew Bible, Matt 27:57-66 is more than an account of a touching gesture after the nightmare of the crucifixion. It is the story of a bold declaration, by a religious leader who has much to lose, that the life of the condemned and crucified Jesus was honorable.” 

“It was not just that the Jewish leaders and the crowd who were complicit in Jesus' death; his own disciples abandoned him to his fate.”

“The Aqedah thus plays a major role in the Matthean Gethsemane and arrest sequence. It emphasizes Jesus' general obedience by appropriating a specific type; reveals that his death resulted from obedience to the divine plan, not a mere human conspiracy; gives his sacrifice as a rationale for his nonviolence; and functions as positive apologetic. The subtle mechanism of allusion increasing its very force, the passage powerfully demonstrates more than that Jesus is not brigand nor magician nor coward. Jesus is in fact cut from the same cloth as Isaac, who faced his sacrificial death with incomparable obedience and courage.”

“Matthew's version of the scene of betrayal and arrest raises our awareness of the many faces of violence. In the dark of night a "friend" and a mob came to arrest Jesus; violence led to more violence and soon even those who had been followers were pulled down into the vortex of hate and fear. Upon first reading of the text we fear that Judas and the mob have "overpowered" Jesus and we are aware of what lies ahead. A closer reading, however, reveals that power and violence are not the same. Jesus does nothing in response to the violence inflicted upon him, by betrayal, by clubs and swords, by desertion. But, as W.D. Davies and Dale Allison rightly note, Jesus' ‘inactivity is full of meaning’…”

“This section opens with Jesus' anti-triumphal entry to Jerusalem (21:1-11). Entry processions by an emperor, governor, or military commander into cities were carefully choreographed displays of imperial power and greatness involving processions, crowds, hymns, welcome speeches by elites, and a cultic act. All of these elements are present in this scene (except the elite speeches of welcome!) but are refrained to critique Roman power.” (Section on Matthew 21 begins on page 431.)

When the city is aroused (literally "shaken") by Jesus' entry to ask "Who is this?", the crowds accompanying Jesus carry out the command; but they do so with the formal pronouncement: "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee." Such sudden relinquishing of all messianic titles and all supernatural or triumphalist claims, such shocking reference to Jesus' historical origin in apparent disavowal of any appeal to Bethlehem as his origin to verify his Davidic credentials, can hardly be accidental. It does not seem to be intended to suggest the crowd's stupidity. It rather finalizes in a breathtaking way the claim that the whole pericope has been driving home: Jerusalem's king, the authentic bearer of David's name, the fulfiller of all those dreams of restoration, the One coming in God's name to impart God's blessing, is this real historical figure, this Jesus who is entering the city to die.

03/28/2014 at 01:34 PM |

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