FOR THE LESSONS FOR THIS SUNDAY (BCP LECTIONARY) http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB/Pentecost/BProp12.html
Jesus has just fed the multitude with the scarcity of his offering and in the process he has reenacted Exodus. This ritual re-enactment of Exodus retrieves the ancient historical memory, the grand transition from slavery and scarcity to freedom and needlessness [The desert experience was not one of abundance, but of needlessness, they had food and water, they had a purpose and with every day of desert walk another slave-man died and a new freedom was birthed] However, Jews of the first century, specially the am-ha-aretz, people of the earth, found themselves without milk, honey or freedom. The situation of the poor was a desperate one, no wonder Jesus was popular, not only he could heal, but also fed multitudes. The poor in Palestine very well could be wondering what happened with the Lord’s promise? Some seem to have everything and most of the people have barely to eat.
The radical difference between the Exodus promise and the situation of need and oppression of the Israel of the first century has to have an impact on the theological thinking of the day. The cause and effect of Jewish thought would place the burden of the broken promise squarely on the people themselves. If they did not prosper, if they did not have their share of the milk and honey was because they were sinners.
Jesus breaks away from cause and effect and restates the theological question on entirely different premises. He is the new Moses who has come to bring a new Kingdom, a new Promised Land, and invites the multitude to sit in groupings (remaking of the tribes?) while partaking of the messianic banquet, so the feeding has to be seen not as a question of practical expediency (they have nothing to eat and neither we have enough to offer to them and the towns are far away ad it is late) but rather the Jesus response to the theological question of the day, are we the way we are, living as slaves and hungry on the promised land because ourselves or our forefathers sinned? The feeding of all is a response in the negative, all were fed transforming scarcity in needlessness.
There is an interesting phrase in today’s portion “they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” which was the word used for pharaoh’s heart during the Exodus story Ex 7,13 and following. It confirms Jesus’s intentionality offering the messianic banquet that have just taken place.
Again the Exodus motif continues here, crossing a body of water, the different mediums, the disciples on a boat buffeted by the sudden gales of lake Galilee, Jesus walking on water. Moses parted the waters, so Elijah did, while Jesus walked over it. Both Moses and Elijah have to part the waters first and then walk on the dry water bed. Jesus on the other hand was above that. He not only walks on water but he joins them on the boat and calms the storm. For Jesus water was no obstacle, while for Moses and Elijah (the two other guys on the Mount of Transfiguration) it was: it needed to be pushed aside for them to walk. There is implicit claim to divinity here which becomes explicit in the adoration scene on Matthew in the expanded version of this same episode (Matthew 14,33).
Friday, July 28, 2006
Saturday, July 22, 2006
ABUNDANCE AND SCARCITY
Mark 6:30-56 Picnic by the lake alson known as the feeding of the 5,000
bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+6:30-56&vnum=yes&version=nrsv
-have you se the back of a computer in many places -maze of cables- computer/monitor/printer is a 3 in one -scanner, fax, copier and printer- video camera and microphone, additional portable hard-disk, USB expander, lamps, palm pilot cradle, voice over IP box, internet bridge, not only that I am messy but also a sign of abundance- I can buy all of those things, while most of the world will be lucky to have electricity
-speaking of electricity, no one know how important is something until you have a shortage of it, that goes for everything in life -in Spanish we have a saying - nadie sabe lo que tiene hasta que lo pierde- no one know what one has until one loss it-
How many things depend on the abundance of resources of this country
Look at our health care. I had a tooth ache in the far away island of Malaita in the Solomon Islands, when I went to Kilofi Hospital for being white I was looked after immediately and quite frankly I had such a tooth ache that I did not care. I recoiled at the look of the dental office, not your Park Avenue dentist, I forgot how medical facilities operate in the Developing World, but the pain was too strong for me to be prissy and the dentist was very efficient and provided me for free with the medications I needed and in a few days my pain was gone.
Healthcare has becoming so expensive because I suspect that pharmaceutical-industry generates and finances a constant stream of studies that justifies the increase use of resources, many of them outright useless at best and mortal at worst. Now Americans are told to get rid of the nasty regular bacteria who has lived thousands of years on kitchens. We are told that we now have to be aseptically clean, almost surgically. And I will say nothing of the chemically managed feelings that we are supposed to have a control off via zoloft and prozac and the like.
Feelings, deeper communications of the soul, heart to heart, face to face, within the reach of someone’s aroma, that come about only and more successfully when there is an abundance of wasted unstructured time, are almost impossible these days. People get home drained of energy, work not only pays better than in Melanesia but also suck up our very soul. In the area of communication we have an abundance, I will call obscene, of mediums for it, and yet increasingly we are trapped in a sort of social autism, unable to break out of ourselves and reach to others. Fear mongering in this era of terrorism and war just comes handy to solidify and reinforced the steel door behind which our souls live in terrifying solitude.
Speaking of war, the katyushkas missiles being dropped on Israel by Hezbollah, literally “The Party of God”, are wreaking death and destruction in the very same area where Jesus over 2,000 years ago asked hungry people to recline on the green grass and taking just five loaves and two fish, and acknowledging where all blessings come from, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave it to them and he divided the two fish. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of leftovers of the bread and the fish.
What an irony, the chosen people of God, Israel and the Party of God “Hezbollah”, bombing each other senseless, while the innocent caught in the crossfire are called “unfortunate casualties”. And the setting for so much destruction and death on the Israeli side is where we believe God, acting powerfully as Creator, transformed the scarcity of five loaves of bread and two fish to feed many who were hungry.
Right off the bat, I got to tell you that we are making the world more skeptical when they hear god-speak, and I say we, because specially in the US we have contributed to aggravate and additionally planning to do nothing, it seems, to prevent further deterioration of the situation in the Middle East. So sometimes, let us not be surprised that the world refuses to believe. Here do we have two conflicting views about God or we have the useful manipulation of and by the way blasphemy, of using the name of God, to further a geopolitical agenda? It is hard to separate one form the other, because I think in the historical memory of nations in the area, both politics and religion become undistinguishable.
Who does not know about Exodus? If you bring to mind the Exodus story and read the passage again you will see and find a number of considerable clues that lead me to think of a small scale re-enactment of the exodus story. Crossing of a body of water. God feeding his people -manna and quails then, bread and fish now- the scarcity of it all, the desert place setting, Moses I in the Book of Numbers 27:17 prays to G-d that the wandering people of Israel do not become “like sheep without a shepherd”, Jesus saw them with compassion, because they looked like they could use some direction, some shepherding. The were arranged in groupings like it is described in Exodus 18:25.
Jesus takes the position of a host giving a banquet for his guests.260 The gestures by which Jesus blesses the bread before giving it to the disciples to distribute (v. 41) recall the eucharistic blessing (Mark 14:22), even though the meal itself does not consist of bread and wine. The fact that there were five loaves and the two fish and they amount to seven items should not be overlooked, since the number seven in Judaic tradition stands as the time of God, the Sabbath -remember the disciples went away to rest to a deserted place- was the seventh day of the week, the Jubilee Year, seven year cycles of seven, was also known as the Sabbath of Sabbaths.
The numbers seven and twelve in the narration are not accidental, they were signs posts known by about everybody in Israel that this what was happening was no simple picnic, but it was about God and his people and their legendary journey from the Egypt, land of slavery and oppression to the Promised Land, land of abundance flowing with milk and honey. They were not allowed to keep leftovers in the Exodus story (Exodus 16:21), just what they needed for the day. Jesus on the other hand commands to collect the leftovers from them.
The primary function of the feeding miracle in this section of the Gospel is to demonstrate that the people now have a true shepherd in Jesus. The banquet in the messianic age would repeat the wilderness miracle of yonder.
Land flowing with milk and honey was God’s promise to Israel, to walk the burning sand of the desert, seeking freedom and material wealth. But Jesus audience were probably wondering what had happened with God’s promise. The Temple establishment was willing to explain it away by blaming people for their sins, interiorizing responsibility for their own misfortunes and removing any traces of it from the landowner class, enabling self-aggression through guilt, destroying in their historical memory the liberation implied in Exodus.
For twenty three years I have worked more that my fair share, and me too like the disciples, sometimes did not even have time to eat. We in clericoland have this thing called a sabbatical year every seven and if I succeed raising the funds I will be on my way to Amsterdam, to study at Vrije Universitet. This will be my first sabbatical in twenty three years of ordained ministry. Not a day goes by in which I do not have doubts about the whole idea, or where I prefer to stay home overblowing my own importance for the development of this congregation or I find reason with the kitchen project to stay put. I spend the whole of my seminary education looking after two parishes on the weekends and when I went to Canada I worked as associated priest in two parishes as well. But everyday, at the end of the day, when I feel really tired, tired from within, I realize that I have to do this. So talk to people who are tired about rest and will tell you a story.
Jesus re-enacting the Exodus myth by the Sea of Galilee, indeed a make-believe Red Sea, is reclaiming that foundational story of Israel and resetting it on a context of utopia, hope begetting new time, new Sabbath of rest for the exhausted laborers of Israel, for those whose milk and honey was stolen by the people in charge and who now collaborate with the Roman Empire forcing the poor, who eat from day to day, to pay high taxes to a foreign power that oppress and shames them. No wonder the disciples could not eat! No wondwer the multitudes followed him everywhere he went!
Jesus’s movement was in its peak of popularity. The whole story here is one of abundance and hope. However, lest we forget, when Jesus dies on a cross, he dies alone.
Seven were the years of famine with which God castigated Egypt and seven were the years of abundance
bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+6:30-56&vnum=yes&version=nrsv
-have you se the back of a computer in many places -maze of cables- computer/monitor/printer is a 3 in one -scanner, fax, copier and printer- video camera and microphone, additional portable hard-disk, USB expander, lamps, palm pilot cradle, voice over IP box, internet bridge, not only that I am messy but also a sign of abundance- I can buy all of those things, while most of the world will be lucky to have electricity
-speaking of electricity, no one know how important is something until you have a shortage of it, that goes for everything in life -in Spanish we have a saying - nadie sabe lo que tiene hasta que lo pierde- no one know what one has until one loss it-
How many things depend on the abundance of resources of this country
Look at our health care. I had a tooth ache in the far away island of Malaita in the Solomon Islands, when I went to Kilofi Hospital for being white I was looked after immediately and quite frankly I had such a tooth ache that I did not care. I recoiled at the look of the dental office, not your Park Avenue dentist, I forgot how medical facilities operate in the Developing World, but the pain was too strong for me to be prissy and the dentist was very efficient and provided me for free with the medications I needed and in a few days my pain was gone.
Healthcare has becoming so expensive because I suspect that pharmaceutical-industry generates and finances a constant stream of studies that justifies the increase use of resources, many of them outright useless at best and mortal at worst. Now Americans are told to get rid of the nasty regular bacteria who has lived thousands of years on kitchens. We are told that we now have to be aseptically clean, almost surgically. And I will say nothing of the chemically managed feelings that we are supposed to have a control off via zoloft and prozac and the like.
Feelings, deeper communications of the soul, heart to heart, face to face, within the reach of someone’s aroma, that come about only and more successfully when there is an abundance of wasted unstructured time, are almost impossible these days. People get home drained of energy, work not only pays better than in Melanesia but also suck up our very soul. In the area of communication we have an abundance, I will call obscene, of mediums for it, and yet increasingly we are trapped in a sort of social autism, unable to break out of ourselves and reach to others. Fear mongering in this era of terrorism and war just comes handy to solidify and reinforced the steel door behind which our souls live in terrifying solitude.
Speaking of war, the katyushkas missiles being dropped on Israel by Hezbollah, literally “The Party of God”, are wreaking death and destruction in the very same area where Jesus over 2,000 years ago asked hungry people to recline on the green grass and taking just five loaves and two fish, and acknowledging where all blessings come from, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave it to them and he divided the two fish. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of leftovers of the bread and the fish.
What an irony, the chosen people of God, Israel and the Party of God “Hezbollah”, bombing each other senseless, while the innocent caught in the crossfire are called “unfortunate casualties”. And the setting for so much destruction and death on the Israeli side is where we believe God, acting powerfully as Creator, transformed the scarcity of five loaves of bread and two fish to feed many who were hungry.
Right off the bat, I got to tell you that we are making the world more skeptical when they hear god-speak, and I say we, because specially in the US we have contributed to aggravate and additionally planning to do nothing, it seems, to prevent further deterioration of the situation in the Middle East. So sometimes, let us not be surprised that the world refuses to believe. Here do we have two conflicting views about God or we have the useful manipulation of and by the way blasphemy, of using the name of God, to further a geopolitical agenda? It is hard to separate one form the other, because I think in the historical memory of nations in the area, both politics and religion become undistinguishable.
Who does not know about Exodus? If you bring to mind the Exodus story and read the passage again you will see and find a number of considerable clues that lead me to think of a small scale re-enactment of the exodus story. Crossing of a body of water. God feeding his people -manna and quails then, bread and fish now- the scarcity of it all, the desert place setting, Moses I in the Book of Numbers 27:17 prays to G-d that the wandering people of Israel do not become “like sheep without a shepherd”, Jesus saw them with compassion, because they looked like they could use some direction, some shepherding. The were arranged in groupings like it is described in Exodus 18:25.
Jesus takes the position of a host giving a banquet for his guests.260 The gestures by which Jesus blesses the bread before giving it to the disciples to distribute (v. 41) recall the eucharistic blessing (Mark 14:22), even though the meal itself does not consist of bread and wine. The fact that there were five loaves and the two fish and they amount to seven items should not be overlooked, since the number seven in Judaic tradition stands as the time of God, the Sabbath -remember the disciples went away to rest to a deserted place- was the seventh day of the week, the Jubilee Year, seven year cycles of seven, was also known as the Sabbath of Sabbaths.
The numbers seven and twelve in the narration are not accidental, they were signs posts known by about everybody in Israel that this what was happening was no simple picnic, but it was about God and his people and their legendary journey from the Egypt, land of slavery and oppression to the Promised Land, land of abundance flowing with milk and honey. They were not allowed to keep leftovers in the Exodus story (Exodus 16:21), just what they needed for the day. Jesus on the other hand commands to collect the leftovers from them.
The primary function of the feeding miracle in this section of the Gospel is to demonstrate that the people now have a true shepherd in Jesus. The banquet in the messianic age would repeat the wilderness miracle of yonder.
Land flowing with milk and honey was God’s promise to Israel, to walk the burning sand of the desert, seeking freedom and material wealth. But Jesus audience were probably wondering what had happened with God’s promise. The Temple establishment was willing to explain it away by blaming people for their sins, interiorizing responsibility for their own misfortunes and removing any traces of it from the landowner class, enabling self-aggression through guilt, destroying in their historical memory the liberation implied in Exodus.
For twenty three years I have worked more that my fair share, and me too like the disciples, sometimes did not even have time to eat. We in clericoland have this thing called a sabbatical year every seven and if I succeed raising the funds I will be on my way to Amsterdam, to study at Vrije Universitet. This will be my first sabbatical in twenty three years of ordained ministry. Not a day goes by in which I do not have doubts about the whole idea, or where I prefer to stay home overblowing my own importance for the development of this congregation or I find reason with the kitchen project to stay put. I spend the whole of my seminary education looking after two parishes on the weekends and when I went to Canada I worked as associated priest in two parishes as well. But everyday, at the end of the day, when I feel really tired, tired from within, I realize that I have to do this. So talk to people who are tired about rest and will tell you a story.
Jesus re-enacting the Exodus myth by the Sea of Galilee, indeed a make-believe Red Sea, is reclaiming that foundational story of Israel and resetting it on a context of utopia, hope begetting new time, new Sabbath of rest for the exhausted laborers of Israel, for those whose milk and honey was stolen by the people in charge and who now collaborate with the Roman Empire forcing the poor, who eat from day to day, to pay high taxes to a foreign power that oppress and shames them. No wonder the disciples could not eat! No wondwer the multitudes followed him everywhere he went!
Jesus’s movement was in its peak of popularity. The whole story here is one of abundance and hope. However, lest we forget, when Jesus dies on a cross, he dies alone.
Seven were the years of famine with which God castigated Egypt and seven were the years of abundance
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Jesus Homelessness and Faith Hospitality
Mark 6:6-13
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark%206:6b-13&version=31
The Evangelical Seminary of Matanzas in Cuba is my alma mater, this is sixty year old foundation of the Methodists, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches in Cuba. At "SET" as we called, is where I went to do my first four years of theological education. As part of our training students were in charge of organizing the daily services at the strikingly beautiful Chapel of the Resurrection, part of the Episcopal Church contribution to the seminary in 1955.
Seminarians had liberty to experiment with services at the chapel, since we were all from different denominations, there was no official liturgy. Some of us used that liberty, quite liberally at times. One of the times when iwasas my turn to organize the service. I closed the doors of the chapel, gathered the students on the steps, it was February which meant that it was chilly, grey and windy. I forbade the use of hymnals or any other book including the bible. I crossed to pieces of fallen branches on the floor in front of us and told the students that the III World War has just ended fifty years ago and we were a very small group of Christians gathering for worship, no books survived the war and church buildings were badly damaged and the institutional church has ceased to operate.
So for worship we had only our memories to rely on, there was no pastoral leadership and therefore the service will be as we decided it to be. Someone quoted scripture and talk about it, someone ask to pray for the world and we sang a couple of stanzas of hymns that we all could remember and then we disbanded.
I asked afterwards, as it was the custom, for an evaluation of the experience. The responses were mixed as it was to be expected. Most of the people felt uncomfortable because of the weather, and somewhat depressed, nevertheless they thought that the experience was a valid one. Since Christianity should not depend on the shelter of venerable and fine buildings or the existence of an institutional cast of theologians to lead it, or any particular structure for ancient and appreciated as it may be. It was somewhat odd, because the experience took place in the bosom of a seminary that as an institution exist to educate and form institutional agents of the institutional church.
I have never forgotten the experience, and I do belong happily to a tradition -the Anglican tradition- that is full of stuff. Tunics more than one and in many colors and shapes, thuribles, incenses, bells, musicians, and fine and well sheltered buildings. People tell me all the time that they are precisely attracted to the "stuff" of the Anglican worship, performed with dignity and good taste.
However, no matter how much the "incidentals" and "trappings" of my visually obsessed mind are important to me, I got to admit that in order to be church we need just our faith. Just like in my Cuban seminary, perhaps not triumphant, nor joyous and perhaps somewhat depressed, we needed just to believe. Neither buildings, or institutions or budgets or even scripture. Just our faith. The Church in Cuba was a witness to that.
There was an important lesson in that "service", one in which we were willing to relinquish the fantasy of control and share in Jesus deep homelessness. Not only the Redeemer of the World, the son of the living God, has willingly and freely subject himself to the limitations of time, space and human evil for our love sake, but He who had created all things did not have a place where to lay his head. Jesus and those who followed him were homeless by choice.
In the passage last Sunday, we saw another dimension and perhaps a deeper sense of Jesus homelessness. The people who saw him grow from a child to a man, the people who thought that knew Jesus well, his customer base, his village friends and foes, his extended family and his own close family have just shamed him in public. They have disowned Him, have question his legitimacy, have called him back to his old "metier", the one that he was only good for. So He has not just no place to lay his head on, but his has no home, nor village, nor family and certainly no job to go back to. His homelessness has gone deeper, he is now more than ever, freely albeit painfully, in the hands of the stranger who wishes to offer him hospitality. In any way, he is also free, no affecting present and prospective customers, nor plying a prophetic trade of divination by which he could enrich family and friends, having no "customers" either by building or religious, he can say whatever He wants.
He knows that the longing for being in control has a darker and sinister side, the side of violence. The fantasy of being in control fuels every kind of pathological violence because we deep down know how vulnerable and fallible we all are, the pressure is then to keep turning up the intensity of language and extremism of action to fill the void. Said Archbishop Rowan Williams addressing just recently the Synod of the Church of England in the wake of the Bombay bombings and the first anniversary of the London Subway bombings and he continues:
Serving God by organizing slaughter and suicide and random killings in order to promote God's honor or his justice makes it a god that can not be trusted. God is too weak to look after his own honor and we are the strong ones who must step in to help him. Such is the underlying blasphemy at work. End of quote.
Only by deepening his own homelessness and encouraging his disciples to follow suit, sending them without bag, nor money, a staff and the clothes on their backs and relying absolutely on the hospitality of strangers, embracing their powerlessness is for Jesus the way, the only way, to bring honor to God and his Good News because -there is no prophet without honor except in his hometown, among his kinfolk and his family- The power to expel sinister lurking demons of falsehood and pretense is by releasing the power of the mirage over our visually controlled perceptions.
Our God indeed is a God of paradox, whose power is found in powerlessness, whose honor is promoted by our relinquishing and releasing of any and all proprietary claims to his grace and love. Whose grace abounds where the sin is greater, whose light can not be put out by the thickest darkness, who has overcome death by dying on a cross, whose arms were open up in an embrace of the whole world by having them nailed to the cross by the Roman army. Yes it is absurd, absurd by the ways of the world, but in that absurdity I do believe, and I invite you to believe as well.
I do not want to sale to you religious cocaine by telling you that everything will be alright if you join the way of the cross. I am not going to invite you to defend GodÂ’s honor because he does that by delivering himself powerless to the world. I am not even, at least not today, give you an intellectually suitable and well reasoned proposition and exposition of the Christian message. I am just going to ask you to embrace that you all along knew just too well, namely that you and I, are vulnerable and fallible and that our area of control is simply minuscule.
I am going to ask you to accompany Jesus in his homelessness, both personally and as a community of faith. And to trust that there will be always people in the world, no matter how horrible it gets (and it is not getting any prettier lately) willing to offer Jesus and his message hospitality by believing that he has honor in this his adopted family and that we need nothing but our faith to be part of that family who has been given power exorcisehigh to exorcize the demons of this world, the demons of death, fanaticism, war and greed.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark%206:6b-13&version=31
The Evangelical Seminary of Matanzas in Cuba is my alma mater, this is sixty year old foundation of the Methodists, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches in Cuba. At "SET" as we called, is where I went to do my first four years of theological education. As part of our training students were in charge of organizing the daily services at the strikingly beautiful Chapel of the Resurrection, part of the Episcopal Church contribution to the seminary in 1955.
Seminarians had liberty to experiment with services at the chapel, since we were all from different denominations, there was no official liturgy. Some of us used that liberty, quite liberally at times. One of the times when iwasas my turn to organize the service. I closed the doors of the chapel, gathered the students on the steps, it was February which meant that it was chilly, grey and windy. I forbade the use of hymnals or any other book including the bible. I crossed to pieces of fallen branches on the floor in front of us and told the students that the III World War has just ended fifty years ago and we were a very small group of Christians gathering for worship, no books survived the war and church buildings were badly damaged and the institutional church has ceased to operate.
So for worship we had only our memories to rely on, there was no pastoral leadership and therefore the service will be as we decided it to be. Someone quoted scripture and talk about it, someone ask to pray for the world and we sang a couple of stanzas of hymns that we all could remember and then we disbanded.
I asked afterwards, as it was the custom, for an evaluation of the experience. The responses were mixed as it was to be expected. Most of the people felt uncomfortable because of the weather, and somewhat depressed, nevertheless they thought that the experience was a valid one. Since Christianity should not depend on the shelter of venerable and fine buildings or the existence of an institutional cast of theologians to lead it, or any particular structure for ancient and appreciated as it may be. It was somewhat odd, because the experience took place in the bosom of a seminary that as an institution exist to educate and form institutional agents of the institutional church.
I have never forgotten the experience, and I do belong happily to a tradition -the Anglican tradition- that is full of stuff. Tunics more than one and in many colors and shapes, thuribles, incenses, bells, musicians, and fine and well sheltered buildings. People tell me all the time that they are precisely attracted to the "stuff" of the Anglican worship, performed with dignity and good taste.
However, no matter how much the "incidentals" and "trappings" of my visually obsessed mind are important to me, I got to admit that in order to be church we need just our faith. Just like in my Cuban seminary, perhaps not triumphant, nor joyous and perhaps somewhat depressed, we needed just to believe. Neither buildings, or institutions or budgets or even scripture. Just our faith. The Church in Cuba was a witness to that.
There was an important lesson in that "service", one in which we were willing to relinquish the fantasy of control and share in Jesus deep homelessness. Not only the Redeemer of the World, the son of the living God, has willingly and freely subject himself to the limitations of time, space and human evil for our love sake, but He who had created all things did not have a place where to lay his head. Jesus and those who followed him were homeless by choice.
In the passage last Sunday, we saw another dimension and perhaps a deeper sense of Jesus homelessness. The people who saw him grow from a child to a man, the people who thought that knew Jesus well, his customer base, his village friends and foes, his extended family and his own close family have just shamed him in public. They have disowned Him, have question his legitimacy, have called him back to his old "metier", the one that he was only good for. So He has not just no place to lay his head on, but his has no home, nor village, nor family and certainly no job to go back to. His homelessness has gone deeper, he is now more than ever, freely albeit painfully, in the hands of the stranger who wishes to offer him hospitality. In any way, he is also free, no affecting present and prospective customers, nor plying a prophetic trade of divination by which he could enrich family and friends, having no "customers" either by building or religious, he can say whatever He wants.
He knows that the longing for being in control has a darker and sinister side, the side of violence. The fantasy of being in control fuels every kind of pathological violence because we deep down know how vulnerable and fallible we all are, the pressure is then to keep turning up the intensity of language and extremism of action to fill the void. Said Archbishop Rowan Williams addressing just recently the Synod of the Church of England in the wake of the Bombay bombings and the first anniversary of the London Subway bombings and he continues:
Serving God by organizing slaughter and suicide and random killings in order to promote God's honor or his justice makes it a god that can not be trusted. God is too weak to look after his own honor and we are the strong ones who must step in to help him. Such is the underlying blasphemy at work. End of quote.
Only by deepening his own homelessness and encouraging his disciples to follow suit, sending them without bag, nor money, a staff and the clothes on their backs and relying absolutely on the hospitality of strangers, embracing their powerlessness is for Jesus the way, the only way, to bring honor to God and his Good News because -there is no prophet without honor except in his hometown, among his kinfolk and his family- The power to expel sinister lurking demons of falsehood and pretense is by releasing the power of the mirage over our visually controlled perceptions.
Our God indeed is a God of paradox, whose power is found in powerlessness, whose honor is promoted by our relinquishing and releasing of any and all proprietary claims to his grace and love. Whose grace abounds where the sin is greater, whose light can not be put out by the thickest darkness, who has overcome death by dying on a cross, whose arms were open up in an embrace of the whole world by having them nailed to the cross by the Roman army. Yes it is absurd, absurd by the ways of the world, but in that absurdity I do believe, and I invite you to believe as well.
I do not want to sale to you religious cocaine by telling you that everything will be alright if you join the way of the cross. I am not going to invite you to defend GodÂ’s honor because he does that by delivering himself powerless to the world. I am not even, at least not today, give you an intellectually suitable and well reasoned proposition and exposition of the Christian message. I am just going to ask you to embrace that you all along knew just too well, namely that you and I, are vulnerable and fallible and that our area of control is simply minuscule.
I am going to ask you to accompany Jesus in his homelessness, both personally and as a community of faith. And to trust that there will be always people in the world, no matter how horrible it gets (and it is not getting any prettier lately) willing to offer Jesus and his message hospitality by believing that he has honor in this his adopted family and that we need nothing but our faith to be part of that family who has been given power exorcisehigh to exorcize the demons of this world, the demons of death, fanaticism, war and greed.
Friday, July 07, 2006
July 9/2006 Shame in your own town and no frills mission
Mark 6:1-13 http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=19288918
The people were not questioning neither Jesus’s wisdom or his deeds of power, the question for them was authenticity, was this from God or from whom? How this transformation took place, how Jesus became a rabbi/scribe, who was his teacher? Where did he go to study?. He grew up with the staple local synagogue preaching and study of Torah, which everyone else in town got, so from where he got the guts to talk so incredibly daring. In a society where you have to be a pupil for a long time before going solo in any profession we know nothing of Jesus’s teachers. Where does the power [deeds] and wisdom [teaching] of this man, they knew to have a “proper place” in their village, comes from, where and who provided him with this new honor of teacher, beyond the honor he was entitled and born for like building houses or tables?
In order to understand the outrage of Jesus’s fellow villagers is important we take a look at the issue of shame and honor in 1rst Century Palestine:
"Honor" is a positive social value. It is the status which a person claims, in combination with the social group's affirmation of that claim. Conversely, for a person to make a claim of honor and then be rebuffed by the community results in the individual being humiliated, labeled as ridiculous or contemptuous, and treated with appropriate disdain. In other words, honor is not simple self-esteem or pride; it is a status-claim which is affirmed by the community. It is tied to the symbols of power, sexual status, gender, and religion. Consequently, it is a social, rather than a psychological, value. How Honorable! How Shameful! A Cultural Analysis of Matthew's Makarisms and Reproaches K. C. HANSON Fortress Press
Conversely, Jesus has not paid his dues in town to lay claim to an honor higher that his social status of builder could allow him to. And as consequence his fellow villagers rebuffed him and by doing so, remind him of his place in town: You are a menial worker (tekton, carpenter), a bastard (Son of Mary) and you should be here helping your large family. This is where you belong.
Any one so shamed, needed through verbal dueling to re-establish his honor or face to the consequences of disrepute. So Jesus retort is very important in this context.
“Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” It looks he was quoting Scripture, but he was not, we do not know the source of the quote, which by the way has gone into mainstream western culture. My guess is that he was quoting a saying, a piece of practical wisdom that flourishes in the heart, in the crumbling “old quarter” of any culture, refined through many years of trial and error, of accumulated experience.
His rebuttal deprives his hometown villagers, his kinsmen and his own close family of any claim to his newly acquired honor. Dominic Crossan comes to our help to explain:
If Jesus was a well-known magician, healer, or miracle-worker, first, his immediate family, and, next, his village, would expect to benefit from and partake in the handling of that fame and those gifts. Any Mediterranean peasant would expect an expanding ripple of patronage-clientage to go out from Jesus, through his family and his village, to the outside world. But what Jesus did, in turning his back on Nazareth and on his family, was repudiate such brokerage, and that, rather than belief or disbelief, was the heart of the problem.
Then if we are to understand that Jesus ministry of both teaching and healing is not based on the patronage-clientage dynamic, nor his honor was to bring wealth to his hometown or family. One can understand then what follows with his no-frill mission.
Jesus response to this challenge to his honor is go on doing mission. Then he went about among the villages teaching, he entrust the disciples with the two jobs that have caused scandal among his neighbors in the village, his relatives and his family they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. And they were to do that, not by hoarding the gifts with they were empowered but by relaying entirely on people’s hospitality. Total reliance on the other, no bread, no bag, no money. One tunic, a par of sandals and a staff that was the only things permitted.
He was not speaking just for his neighbor, his relatives and immediate family but he was setting up a foundational mode in which his ministry and the ministry of the disciples and by extension the ministry of the church was to operate.
Healing and teaching were part and parcel of ministry, not just repenting but also restoring wholeness. Service and Word were not to be competing partners but one and the same part of Christian ministry. The second point I want to make is that ministry was not a commodity that culture could trade following the laws of the marketplace.
What are the implications, if any, of this passage for this community as it tries to both serve and minister to Astoria, New York City in the
The people were not questioning neither Jesus’s wisdom or his deeds of power, the question for them was authenticity, was this from God or from whom? How this transformation took place, how Jesus became a rabbi/scribe, who was his teacher? Where did he go to study?. He grew up with the staple local synagogue preaching and study of Torah, which everyone else in town got, so from where he got the guts to talk so incredibly daring. In a society where you have to be a pupil for a long time before going solo in any profession we know nothing of Jesus’s teachers. Where does the power [deeds] and wisdom [teaching] of this man, they knew to have a “proper place” in their village, comes from, where and who provided him with this new honor of teacher, beyond the honor he was entitled and born for like building houses or tables?
In order to understand the outrage of Jesus’s fellow villagers is important we take a look at the issue of shame and honor in 1rst Century Palestine:
"Honor" is a positive social value. It is the status which a person claims, in combination with the social group's affirmation of that claim. Conversely, for a person to make a claim of honor and then be rebuffed by the community results in the individual being humiliated, labeled as ridiculous or contemptuous, and treated with appropriate disdain. In other words, honor is not simple self-esteem or pride; it is a status-claim which is affirmed by the community. It is tied to the symbols of power, sexual status, gender, and religion. Consequently, it is a social, rather than a psychological, value. How Honorable! How Shameful! A Cultural Analysis of Matthew's Makarisms and Reproaches K. C. HANSON Fortress Press
Conversely, Jesus has not paid his dues in town to lay claim to an honor higher that his social status of builder could allow him to. And as consequence his fellow villagers rebuffed him and by doing so, remind him of his place in town: You are a menial worker (tekton, carpenter), a bastard (Son of Mary) and you should be here helping your large family. This is where you belong.
Any one so shamed, needed through verbal dueling to re-establish his honor or face to the consequences of disrepute. So Jesus retort is very important in this context.
“Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” It looks he was quoting Scripture, but he was not, we do not know the source of the quote, which by the way has gone into mainstream western culture. My guess is that he was quoting a saying, a piece of practical wisdom that flourishes in the heart, in the crumbling “old quarter” of any culture, refined through many years of trial and error, of accumulated experience.
His rebuttal deprives his hometown villagers, his kinsmen and his own close family of any claim to his newly acquired honor. Dominic Crossan comes to our help to explain:
If Jesus was a well-known magician, healer, or miracle-worker, first, his immediate family, and, next, his village, would expect to benefit from and partake in the handling of that fame and those gifts. Any Mediterranean peasant would expect an expanding ripple of patronage-clientage to go out from Jesus, through his family and his village, to the outside world. But what Jesus did, in turning his back on Nazareth and on his family, was repudiate such brokerage, and that, rather than belief or disbelief, was the heart of the problem.
Then if we are to understand that Jesus ministry of both teaching and healing is not based on the patronage-clientage dynamic, nor his honor was to bring wealth to his hometown or family. One can understand then what follows with his no-frill mission.
Jesus response to this challenge to his honor is go on doing mission. Then he went about among the villages teaching, he entrust the disciples with the two jobs that have caused scandal among his neighbors in the village, his relatives and his family they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. And they were to do that, not by hoarding the gifts with they were empowered but by relaying entirely on people’s hospitality. Total reliance on the other, no bread, no bag, no money. One tunic, a par of sandals and a staff that was the only things permitted.
He was not speaking just for his neighbor, his relatives and immediate family but he was setting up a foundational mode in which his ministry and the ministry of the disciples and by extension the ministry of the church was to operate.
Healing and teaching were part and parcel of ministry, not just repenting but also restoring wholeness. Service and Word were not to be competing partners but one and the same part of Christian ministry. The second point I want to make is that ministry was not a commodity that culture could trade following the laws of the marketplace.
What are the implications, if any, of this passage for this community as it tries to both serve and minister to Astoria, New York City in the
Monday, July 03, 2006
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Working on the sermon for Sunday and I have found such a treasure trove of material that I am some what overwhelmed.
The double-healing story of the daughter of Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5:21-43) seems to connect through the number 12, diverging or converging around that central axle.
The fact that the girl is 12 years of age and the woman have suffered for 12 years her disease, make me think that is not simple coincidence, is it that the 12 stands for the people of Israel? the 12 Tribes? The people from whom the woman was excluded due her particular sickness and the people that the girl was about to depart?.
Jairus, leader of the synagogue instersects his story of grace and healing with an equal story of an excluded member of it?
The woman ostracised as she was risks everything to touch Jesus and Jairus risks his reputation to seek Jesus healing touch (lay your hands on her)
The double-healing story of the daughter of Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5:21-43) seems to connect through the number 12, diverging or converging around that central axle.
The fact that the girl is 12 years of age and the woman have suffered for 12 years her disease, make me think that is not simple coincidence, is it that the 12 stands for the people of Israel? the 12 Tribes? The people from whom the woman was excluded due her particular sickness and the people that the girl was about to depart?.
Jairus, leader of the synagogue instersects his story of grace and healing with an equal story of an excluded member of it?
The woman ostracised as she was risks everything to touch Jesus and Jairus risks his reputation to seek Jesus healing touch (lay your hands on her)
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