gregoryjenks

Author: Gregory C. Jenks

  • Preaching the Old Testament

    A sermon by Dr Anthony Rees for the ‘Debate the Preacher’ series at St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Brisbane on Sunday, 9 February 2014. Published here at Anthony’s request.

    Last week we commenced on a four week series—Why Bother with the Old Testament?  My colleague, Rev Dr Greg Jenks gave a fascinating reflection on this, inviting us to imagine a bible without the law, a bible without the prophets, a bible without the poems.  What sort of bible would that leave us with?  A narrow one, a lighter one—and not only in size.  Greg’s position was that we should bother with the Old Testament.  For the sake of the series, I considered proposing an alternative view.  But I need you to understand something.  I am writing my second book on the book of Numbers.  To be clear, if there is a book we have not bothered with, it is Numbers.  So if word got out that I had claimed that we need not bother with the OT, that would have been very bad for me.

    Greg began by playing a little with this title—Why Bother with the Old Testament?  Is this a question, or a statement?  If it is a question, how should we inflect it?  I want to suggest that the question itself assumes that we should bother with the Old Testament.  Even if we ultimately come to a point of rejection, we can only get there through a process of bothering.  But ‘bother’ itself is ambiguous.  To bother can mean to pay attention to, to attempt to understand.  In this sense it has a positive meaning.  But I say to my son, stop bothering your sister, by which I mean agitate, disturb, and it is generally not said positively.  Can we agitate the Old Testament—can we mess with it, can we play with it, can we bother it.  If we do, is it positive or negative?  Plenty of things I read, and write, suggest that we can—but that is for another time.

    What I want to do tonight is to pick up on something that came out of the discussion which followed Greg’s sermon.  If we affirm that we should bother with the OT, how should that manifest itself in our worshipping community?  The simple answer was that we should devote preaching to it—a recognition that much, if not all of our preaching tends to focus in on the NT readings.  For a long time, that meant Paul, and the reinforcement of doctrine.  But in more recent decades, as we have understood that our lives are a narrative, not a series of propositional statements, the gospel narrative has become a more potent source for preaching.  I have to make clear that this focus on NT preaching is not universal.  Indeed, I suspect it is a western phenomenon.  In the rural areas of Fiji, you might be lucky to hear one NT sermon a month.  The same is true of Africa.  I preached a sermon from John in Kenya a few years ago, and I think the local minister was very surprised.

    So I am going to preach from an OT text—but I want to do so as a way of demonstrating what I think is another compelling reason for us to hold onto the OT.  That is, that the OT gives us an emotional vocabulary to express our human experience, that is far richer than what we find in the NT.  Much of this is lost, due to the tragically sterilising work of the lectionary compilers.  But if we were in a sense, to reclaim our scriptures, we might be surprised at what we find.  Actually, my experience is that people are always surprised at what they find.

    PSALM 22

    For centuries, one figure dominated our interpretation of the psalms; David, the charismatic, god fearing, heroic King of biblical Israel, whose story we read in the books of Solomon, Kings and Chronicles.  This king, warrior, singer and song writer was thought to be the writer of many of the psalms we have collected in this book.  The superscriptions made it clear.  A psalm of David.  It was thought that at least some of these psalms could be traced to particular events in the story of David’s life as we read it in the historical books.  For example, psalm 51 has been thought to be written as a response to David’s actions with Bathsheba; in some sense, a display of contrition in light of his moral failing.  The psalms inspired readers, being, as Ellen Davis puts it, the spontaneous outpourings of a pious King’s heart.

    The twentieth century fractured that romantic view.  No longer are these psalms valued for their insight into David’s life, which is now considered to be essentially unknowable, but instead for the way in which their more generalized language and forms have made them accessible to generations of worshippers.  These songs belong not to David, but to all those who worship the God of Israel.  As Davis says again, they are intensely personal, and yet, not private.  Their response of faith to human experience ensures that they serve as the single most important resource for both Jewish and Christian prayer.

    So it is with psalm 22, a lament, perhaps the supreme example of lament in the psalms.  The psalm divides into two major sections. Vss 1-21 are what we might generally refer to as the lament, vss 22-31 being a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance.  The distinction between the two sections is so sharp that some scholars have suggested that these two fragments may have come from separate authors, or at least represent two independent compositions.  If we were interested in looking for an author, this may well be a clue to us.  However, if we approach the psalm with a view to reading it as a liturgical work, what we see instead is not discontinuity, but rather, a liturgical process; the lamenting prayer makes way for the praise and thanksgiving which follows the assurance of God’s gracious response.

    My, God, My God, why have you forsaken me?  The opening question leads to another—why are you so far from helping, from the words of my roaring?  And a further complaint—I cry, day and night, but find no rest, by which he means not peace, but rather, no reason to stop crying, God’s abandonment is still real to our psalmist.  This is an interesting problem.  The psalter is full of assertions that God does not abandon his people (see Psalms 9, 27, 37, 38, 71), and yet what we have in this psalm is a writer in despair, complaining bitterly at God’s abandonment.  Despite his bitterness, the writer is still some way from turning away from God.  His cry reveals his desperation, twice calling ‘my God’, what Calvin notes as a distinct profession of faith, the cry of a believer.

    The shift in vs 3 highlights the gravity of the psalmist’s theological problem.  The essence of Israelite covenant faith is that trust in God leads to deliverance.    This is the story of ‘our’ ancestors, those who cried out, trusted and found deliverance.  This story is the praise upon which Yhwh is enthroned!  The use of ‘our’ is instructive also.  There is an understanding that personal distress can be held together with a common history.  The prayer for personal deliverance is spoken in the midst of others.  This idea reiterates Davis’ comment; it is personal, but not private.

    At vs 6 the tone changes again.  The psalmist reveals something of his circumstances.  He is a worm—an object of derision, of insignificance.  People around him taunt him—all who see me, he says.  The taunts reveal to us the nature of the psalmist’s mental turmoil; God’s apparent inaction justifies the taunts of the mockers.  Their taunts have a tinge of truth to them; ‘let Yhwh deliver —let him deliver the one in whom he delights’—their taunt echoes the historical recollection of the ancestors who were ‘delivered’ in vs 4.  The irony is cutting.  God’s abandonment seems evident to the onlookers, their jibes are internalised by the psalmist.

    Again the focus shifts at verse 9.  A pattern has emerged: vs 3 commences with the words, ‘But you’, verse six, ‘But I’, and at verse nine, ‘But you’, though this time a little more emphatically.  The psalmist again looks at God’s action in the past, though this time not with Israel, but with himself.  God is imaged as a midwife, taking him from the womb and placing him on the mother’s breast.  God, the gentle, caring, compassionate midwife is tenderly concerned for the well being of this new life.  God has been intimately involved in the development of our psalmist, so much so that he proclaims, ‘since my mother bore me, you have been my god’, forming an inclusio with the opening cry of the psalm—my god, my god—god who has always been my god, why have you forsaken me?  The opening section concludes with a plea which affords us a glimpse of what lies ahead—do not be far, trouble is all around, there is no one to help.

    Vss 12-18 reveal an ever deepening despair and unravelling of the psalmist.  The language is metaphorical, the imagery powerful.  His enemies are described as wild animals; bulls, lions and dogs.  The animals are symbols of non human strength.  They are animals that represent a threat to human existence.  In the ancient world they could also represent demonic forces, an image which dramatically heightens the picture of fear that is being painted.  They surround him, stalk him and appear ready to pounce on their prey.  They seem to be ever closing—vivid contrast to God’s supposed distance.  The psalmist’s physical state is disastrous—his energy is consumed, his body battered, his heart melts, his mouth is dried out—he is fatigued and thirsty beyond the ability to speak, death is assured.  So certain are the enemies of his demise that they cast lots for his clothing—this man is beyond hope.  In fact, in the midst of this litany of disaster, God does appear, but only to lay the victim in the dust, symbolising the apparent certainty of death.

    Vs 19—But you, and here the psalmist names God Yhwh for the first time, and prays not for closeness, but for deliverance, for help.  Vss 20-21 are remarkable; ‘deliver my soul from the sword, my life (my only one) from the power of the dog; save me from the mouth of the lion’, and then, remarkably, ‘from the horn of the wild ox you have rescued me!’—the perfect tense immediately changes the tenor of the text.  No longer is this a psalm of petition, of imploring god to be close, of crying out for divine help.  This is now a prayer of assurance, you have rescued me!

    The praise that follows unfolds in sharp distinction to the lament from which it proceeds.  The lament is marked by a sense of entrapment, of an ever tightening circle of danger.  The praise and thanksgiving section however, moves ever outward in its expression, moving from brothers and sisters, to the congregation, to the offspring of Jacob, to the ends of the earth—all the families of nations, those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.  All of humanity is caught up in the psalmists vision of praise to the almighty god of his deliverance.  It hints at Isaiah’s vision—that the whole of the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God, though its scope is even wider.

    While the universal vision that this portion of the psalm presents is breathtaking, these verses contain other significant statements that we mustn’t ignore.  Vs 22 places the psalmist in the presence of friends, in opposition to the enemies that have surrounded him to this point.  That he is in the midst of the congregation also tells us that what is being described is a liturgical, religious event.  This is extended in vss 25-26, where having offered his vows in recognition of God’s action, the psalmist joins in a thanksgiving meal.  This is a symbol both of a reconciled community and fellowship with God.  The psalmist, who had previously approached death exclaims to those with whom he shares ‘may your hearts live forever’.

    The language of verse 26 is particularly significant.  The poor (the afflicted, the lowly) shall eat and be satisfied, those who ‘seek’ will praise the Lord.  James Luther Mays sees here a clear redefining of who Israel is.  It is not the trouble he has faced which has made the psalmist lowly or afflicted.  This suffering has happened to him  ‘as’ one of the lowly, and God’s response shows that he is the God of the lowly, of the afflicted, not in circumstance, but in being.  This too reaches back to vs 24 and is a realisation that God’s apparent absence was an illusion.  So the psalmist answers his own complaint—he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried.  The meal then is not just a meal of physical nourishment, but also represents a spiritual fill for those who continue to be ‘lowly’.

    In response to God’s actions on behalf of the psalmist, the nations are called to praise god.  This is an unusual move, as the nations are often pictured as god’s enemies (Ps 2).  Even more peculiar is that they are said to ‘remember’, and ‘turn’, verbs which are commonly implored of Israel.  And then they will worship, or ‘bow low’.  Interestingly, Israel is frequently warned against becoming like the nations.  Here, the nations are to become ‘like Israel’, the clear implication being that Yhwh rules the nations.

    The ever widening circle even encompasses those who have died or have not yet lived.  This lends the psalm an eschatological character, particularly with the future tense verbs of vss 27 onwards.  Death comes to all, but the delivering acts of God will be told from generation to generation; he has done it.

    The sufferer of the psalm experiences the terror of human mortality, acutely aware of god’s absence and the presence of enemies.  The prayer of the psalmist offers us a paradigm for expressing our own suffering—to use it is to set one’s self within the paradigm.  For Christians, this psalm has taken on special significance, since Jesus’ appropriation of the psalm joins him with the countless others—the company of the afflicted, and he becomes one with them in the midst of suffering.  Jesus’ use of the psalm invites us to pray with him in the midst of our own turmoil.

    But this psalm, in the end, is not about suffering.  It is, finishing with the words of Ellen Davis, about the possibility, efficacy and necessity of giving praise to god’.  He has done it.

  • Epiphany 5A (9 February 2014)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12) & Psalm 112:1-9 (10)
    • 1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16)
    • Matthew 5:13-20

    Introduction

    This week’s notes focus especially on the Gospel reading, and suggest a way of reading Matthew that takes seriously his interpretation of Jesus and the implications for those who would be disciples of Christ.

    Gospel: Matthew 5:13-20

    This section of Matthew’s Gospel presents many challenges for Christians who elevate faith to a solitary and exclusive place in the divine economy. When Paul’s letters are read through the traditional lenses refined by theologians in the Augustine/Luther trajectory, it does seem that Matthew (like James) fails the “TC” (Theological Correctness) test. For Matthew, for James, for John (and most likely for Paul as well), salvation was not an outcome achieved by giving assent to a set of propositions but a benefit available to humans because of the faithfulness of Jesus and requiring in return a certain faithfulness on the part of the beneficiaries. As with the ancient covenant faithfulness of Torah observance, this intentional piety was not to secure God’s blessings but to express gratitude for them.

    It is no surprise then to find Matthew representing Jesus as the master Rabbi, calling on his disciples to practice a visible piety that would exceed (rather than replace) the piety of the scribes and Pharisees.

    A review of the different interpretations of discipleship preserved in the Sayings Gospel Q, Thomas, Paul, Mark, John and and Luke would provide some idea of the range of options that were available to Matthew when he came to write his own interpretation of Jesus and discipleship

    From the sources employed, we can see that Matthew has started with Mark and Q, and yet he has created his own interpretation that addressed the question of how to be faithful to Jesus and Torah in the devastating aftermath of the loss of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 CE.

    For Jewish Christians (such as the author of the Gospel of Matthew must be presumed to have been), the loss of Jerusalem and its temple would have been a deep tragedy. The stark failure of both Jewish and Christian apocalyptic hopes would have weighed heavily on Matthew and his community.

    God had not saved the people. Jesus had not appeared in glory as both Paul and Mark had urged people to expect. “This generation” had indeed passed away without seeing the Kingdom come in its power. What was left? What could stand the test of time?

    Matthew must also have known that many Jesus people were finding themselves excluded from the Jewish synagogues. As Jewish communities sought to pick up the pieces the one great symbol left was the Torah, and the synagogue was the place where Torah was celebrated and applied to lived practice. In the absence of nation and temple, the Torah had become the defining hallmark of Jews.

    Where Mark had dismissed traditional forms of Jewish life in confident expectation that Jesus would soon appear to inaugurate a new Kingdom, Matthew took a different path.

    The Gospel of Matthew represents Jesus as something like a new Moses, and represents Christianity as a way of being deeply faithful to Torah. Rather than calling for a choice between Jesus and Torah, Matthew affirms Jesus as the great teacher of Torah for a community that embraced both Jew and Gentile.

    The apocalyptic drama that so captivated Paul and Mark has been toned down. Jesus remains the one to whom all authority is given (Matt 28:19) but this divine authority is expressed through his presence with the community as they teach the Torah of Jesus to all humanity until the end of the age. Matthew and his community see themselves as here for the long haul. They are not expecting an early return of the Messiah.

    Matthew creates a birth legend for Jesus that reflects the Moses Haggadah that was developing in Jewish folklore around that time. In the sermon on the mount Matthew has created an extended teaching block that sets up Jesus as the great teacher of Torah, and carefully affirms that Jesus has come to fulfil the Torah not abolish it. Indeed not even the tiniest scribal markings will be lost from the sacred text! The classic statement of this principle occurs in the programmatic speech that Matthew creates in what we call the Sermon on the Mount:

    Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. [Matt 5:17–20]

    In his treatment of Jesus’ parables (see especially chapter 13), Matthew shows an appreciation that the teachings of Jesus are for everyone — not just for the inner circle, as Mark had suggested. Compare the following texts:

    When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that
    “‘they may indeed look, but not perceive,
    and may indeed listen, but not understand;
    so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’”
    [Mark 4:10–12]

    Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:
    “I will open my mouth to speak in parables;
    I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.”
    [Matthew 13:34–35]

    The contrast could hardly be more stark. Where Mark sees Jesus as the property of a special clique, Matthew has a universal vision for the relevance of Jesus. His picture of a scribe (i.e., a Torah scholar) who becomes a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is someone able to bring out what is new as well as what is old from their treasures.

    One can barely imagine Paul speaking of Heaven’s scribe!

    At the heart of Jesus’ teachings on Torah, as in his disputes with the scribes, is a call for people to embrace the demands of Torah and to practice a personal piety that reflects the character and holiness of God.

    Matthew has co-opted the Sayings Gospel Q into his story of Jesus. Mark’s narrative of the Strong Man has been diluted with a strong dose of Jesus the non-apocalyptic sage. He has come to terms with the destruction of Jerusalem, and seeks a durable relationship with the wider community of the Torah.

    Burton Mack described the significance of Matthew in these terms:

    The remarkable thing about Matthew’s story is that, though completely dependent on Q and Mark for the bulk of his material, it achieved a character for Jesus and a tenor for his teachings that were totally different from either precursor. In Matthew’s mind, Jesus appeared as the very flowering of the wisdom and spirit intrinsic to the Jewish tradition and religion. He stepped forth as a teacher in the tradition of Moses and his Torah, not to set it aside, but to explicate its significance as an ethic of personal piety, a call to holiness at the level of attitude and motivation. In Matthew’s language, Jesus said that one could and should be “pure in heart” (Matt. 5:8).
    [Who Wrote the New Testament, 1995:162f]

    It is therefore no surprise — given his place in the historical development of the Gospel tradition and his setting with a deeply troubled Judaism in the aftermath of 70 CE — that Matthew did not take the path chosen by either the Gospel of John or Luke-Acts. His theological orbit revolved around the Torah, not the Hellenistic concept of logos; and Jesus was the promised Emmanuel born to a maiden, not the divine Son making a passing visit to the world of darkness. The most keenly felt social dynamics were those of exclusion by the synagogue, not persecution by the empire.

    We could perhaps summarize Matthew’s interpretation of Jesus as neither fire insurance nor jail pass nor divine therapist. Matthew’s community did not feel that the end of the world was imminent, they did not fear incarceration by the authorities, nor did they find themselves torn apart by internal schisms.

    The immediate reality for Matthew’s community was provided by Torah as the ancient expression of God’s demands on their lives, and the prophetic wisdom of Jesus as the master teacher of Torah obedience — from the heart. They shared a vision of a community that included Gentiles while also reflecting the holiness of God, but they did not buy into the radical visions of Mark and John or the accommodating pretensions of Luke.

    Matthew’s people lived as disciples of Christ in a world that offered other more exciting visions of faith, as well as less demanding models of faithfulness. His interpretation of Jesus called for radical holiness without breaking the bonds of affection with other Torah-observant Jews.

    As it happened, Matthew’s vision was a minority voice in a church that was opting for Luke’s vision: a modified Paul (see Acts) with a cosmic Christ who is no threat to the status quo. Christianity would soon become a majority Gentile religion with aspirations to be accepted in the Roman world. The major debate would soon become whether to excise the Old Testament from the Christian Bible and eliminate the Jewish legacy within Christianity, not how best to observe Torah!

    Between them the gospels attributed to Matthew and Luke may have defeated Marcion, but Luke’s version of Paul would become the classic account of Christianity. We would become a Gentile Church and Matthew’s story of Jesus would simply become the bridge between the Old Testament and the Church.

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

     

    Music Suggestions

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.

  • Why bother with the Old Testament

    A sermon for the ‘Debate the Preacher’ series at St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Brisbane on Sunday, 2 February 2014.

    It has fallen to me to begin this new series of ‘Debate the Preacher’ as we explore the significance of the ‘Old Testament’ for us today. Over the four Sundays of February we shall have an opportunity to hear different scholars from St Francis Theological College offer perspectives on the contributions that this part of the Bible makes to our lives today.

    Speaking of perspectives, what are we to make of the title for this series? How do we imagine the title to be punctuated? To put it another way, is our topic a question or an argument?

    Have you come here this evening expecting to be told why you should actually bother with the OT? Or have you come to hear someone tell you it is OK not to bother with that part of the Bible? Those are very different perspectives and we can signal the difference by the way we punctuate the sentence. 

    So whether you have come to seek release from the challenge of reading the OT, or seeking to be persuaded that this is actually something you should do, we have each come with some assumptions. We also come from particular contexts and life experiences. All of this will shape our perspectives, and meaning is largely constructed through the perspective of the interpreter. You may find what I say confronting or challenging, traditional or revisionist, helpful or a waste of time. What I will have said will be the same, but your perspective will largely determine what you make of my words.

    And then to the debate after the service ends …

    Defining our terms

    One of the first challenges we may face when thinking about the OT is which set of books is  intended, and what is the best way to name them these days. We can start with the latter issue since that opens the way for the deeper issue of which texts comprise the OT.

    It is common these days to find Christian people seeking to avoid the term, ‘Old Testament’. In its place we typically find terms such as ‘Hebrew Bible’, or ‘Jewish Scriptures’. There are good reasons for doing that, as well as even stronger reasons—in my mind—not to do so.

    The positive reasons for dropping the label ‘Old Testament’ begin with the unfortunate perception that ‘Old’ implies ‘no longer of value’. In a consumer culture obsessed by the quest for the latest new thing, clearly a ‘New’ Testament is better than an ‘Old’ Testament. Quite apart from the age profile of the average Anglican congregation, one might expect such an argument to have little appeal in Anglican circles. We value tradition and do not chase after the latest new thing.

    More insidiously, ‘Old Testament’ can suggest a supersessionist attitude towards Jews and their religion, and reinforce latent Christian anti-Semitism. The traditional name for these books within the Bible that we share with Jews does tend to imply that the religion centred around those books is an earlier and less-developed version of the latest ‘religious operating system’ that we enjoy as Christians.

    On this side of the Holocaust, Christians are rightly sensitive to anything that smacks of supersessionism or excludes Jews as the despised other. For many people, calling these books the ‘Hebrew Bible’ or the ‘Jewish Scriptures’ is an overdue recognition of our debt to Judaism and of the historical reality that two-thirds of the Christian Bible belongs first of all to the Jews.

    However, despite my sympathy with all these arguments, I do not accept the fashion of re-badging two-thirds of our Bible in this way. In my view the Christian scriptures known as the ‘Old Testament’ are related to the Jewish scriptures, perhaps better described as the Tanakh, but are not to be confused with them.

    The reason for this is very simple, and it is connected with the fact that there is no such thing as ‘the Christian Bible’, but rather a great many different variants of the Christian Bible. The collection of biblical writings that passes as ‘the Bible’ for most Westeners these days is not the ancient Bible of Christianity, but a novel form of the Bible created at the time of the European Reformation for the use of Protestant faith communities in NW Europe.

    Up until the Reformation—and therefore for more than one thousand years—the normative form of the Christian Bible was an enlarged version of the Old Testament together with the commonly-accepted books of the New Testament. The Christian OT derived from the ancient Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures, and included a dozen or so additional writings not included in the normative Hebrew version of the Jewish Bible. These were parallel and competing versions of the Jewish Bible, until the Protestants decided to adopt the Jewish set of books for their Old Testament as part of their protest against Rome. In the East, of course, there were none of these internal debates over the contents and form of the Bible, and the ancient Greek Bible with its larger OT continues to be the canonical text of the Orthodox religious communities.

    When the Protestant Reformers took upon themselves to reshape the OT within the Christian Bible they only half completed the job. They deleted the books found only in the Greek version, but kept the remaining books in the same sequence as found in the Septuagint Greek and the Latin Vulgate versions. The end result was a Protestant OT that contained only the books found in the Tanakh, but arranged them in the traditional Christian order that differs significantly from the Jewish arrangement.

    That was not simply a sloppy job. It actually created a third form of the OT, even if it is one that most Western people mistake for the original Bible. We now have a Jewish set of Scriptures with 22 books arranged in three sections, a Catholic/Orthodox Old Testament with around 52 books arranged in five sections, and a Protestant Old Testament with 39 books also arranged in the same five sections. These are not the only variations, but they are the major ones and suffice for our purposes this evening.

    Except when I am intending to refer to the Jewish Scriptures (in which case I use the term, Tanakh), I therefore insist on using ‘Old Testament’ for the first two-thirds of my Christian Bible. There is an ancient and obvious link between the Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh, but they are not the same document. What I am speaking about this evening is not the role of the Tanakh in the life of the Christian community, but the role of Old Testament.

    In doing that I am conscious that my OT may not be the same as yours. That is most likely because I am using the ancient Christian Old Testament while you may be using a Protestant edition of the OT that deliberately choose to exclude a dozen or writings that had been part of the biblical inheritance of Christians since the first century. Those so-called ‘apocryphal’ books continue to form part of the Bible for Anglicans, Orthodox and Roman Catholics.

    As an aside, let me just add that this diversity in the forms of the Bible does not faze me. In fact, I appreciate that diversity and I claim it as part of my biblical authority to hold opinions that someone else may not approve. If the Great Church cannot even agree on what books constitute the Bible, then I think I can cut myself a bit of slack on a number of other disputed beliefs and practices as well.

    Why is the place of the OT in Christianity up for debate?

    Given the historical aspects of the Old Testament as ancient part of the biblical legacy of Christianity, why are we beginning this conversation over a month of Sundays? The reason is, of course, that all of us feel some degree of discomfort when engaging with these ancient Jewish texts that now form two-thirds of our Bible.

    Let me absolutely plain here: these are Jewish texts. They constitute the largest part of the Christian Bible, but they are not Christian texts. They are canonical texts for Christians, but in accepting them in that way we are adopting into our context documents that come from another very different context.

    Out of our desire to acknowledge and respect the Jewishness of these texts we may feel that there is something awkward about even using them these days as Christians. Just as we would no longer consider it appropriate (I hope) for a group of Christians to celebrate a Passover Seder during Holy Week, should we stop using their Scriptures and just make do with our own? For reasons that will be covered later, this is not my view; but it is one with which I have some sympathy.

    We sometimes hear it said that we are a ‘NT church’ and therefore should not pay as much attention to the Old Testament. Indeed a colleague said exactly that at Clergy Summer School last month. It is almost as if a biblical passage from the OT only has relevance for us if we can find a NT text to affirm it or modify it in some way. This is a view with which I have almost no sympathy, and it drives me to affirm that we are a ‘biblical church’, rather than a NT church. Not a ‘Bible Church’, mind you; but a biblical church! There is a difference even if we cannot parse it out this evening.

    Part of the reason for this series that we are beginning tonight is that we do sense some profound differences between OT and NT. This is right to do, and far better than reading the OT so thoroughly through our Christian perspectives that these ancient Jewish texts only speak with a Christian accent. But a growing awareness of those differences, and the need to redress almost 2,000 years of Christian anti-Semitism, can cause us to lose our nerve when it comes to reading these texts.

    The ‘problem’ of the Old Testament

    There are a great many complexities and challenges about reading the OT as Christians, just as there are when Jewish people seek to read the same texts as Jews. I have rehearsed some of these in other places, so I will not recite them again here.

    Suffice to say that the length and complexity of the OT, and its cultural distance from our time and place—as well as its uncritical acceptance of violence, patriarchy, gender discrimination—all combine to make these texts problematic for Christians in the twenty-first century. This is compounded by issues around literal readings of these ancient pre-modern texts, and perceived conflicts with history and science.

    The power of the Old Testament

    Rather than focus on the things that make it tricky for us to use the OT, I want to sketch some of the positive reasons why we should make the best use we can of these ancient Jewish texts that constitute such a large proportion of our Christian Bibles.

    First of all, the OT provides historical depth to our tradition. Even when the events themselves are not historical, these are ancient stories and ancient songs that derive from the historical experience of our ancestors in the faith. Their contexts were different from ours, and their beliefs about God are not the same as ours, but they represent the mountain spring from which the river of faith flows. The faith that matters to us did not begin with Jesus and was certainly not created in the last few hundred years. It has ancient roots deep behind historical memory. Some of us are privileged to visit the biblical lands and dig up the past with our own hands, but for most of us the OT is our birth certificate as people of faith.

    Secondly, the OT simply covers a larger sample of life and holiness than NT offers. Most likely we can account for the creation of all of the NT writings within about 100 years of Easter. Some would argue that much less time is needed, but I prefer this is more modest claim. During that one hundred years and across the limited range of texts gathered into the NT, there is a much smaller sample of life and faith than we find in the OT. Many issues are just not addressed directly in the NT, but we find texts within the OT that do so—and they invite us into an engagement with Scripture (and with the Spirit of Christ).

    A third reason for bothering with these ancient Jewish texts in the Christian Bible is that these are the formative texts of the Western religious tradition. In saying that I am conscious that these are actually ‘Eastern’  texts, even though they have shaped the Western tradition so deeply. If we want to understand our own cultural tradition we simply have to engage with the writings of the Old Testament.

    Far more than a cultural legacy is involved at this point. These are challenging spiritual texts: the Law, the Prophets, the Poems. The Law invites us to imagine ourselves in a covenant with God, and it is a communal covenant rather than simply a private quest for salvation. The Prophets challenge us to be authentic about living out the implications of that covenant, and to focus on the things that really matter: mercy, justice, humility. And the Poems of Israel provide us with a songsheet for the human soul as we pass through times of success and times of tragedy.

    The danger of a Christianity without the Old Testament

    The idea of ceasing to bother with the Old Testament is not a new one. It was a very real option for Christians in the middle of the second century. By that time a majority of Christians were not of Jewish descent, and some Christians considered too close an association with Judaism to be a negative element following successive Jewish revolts against Roman rule. Indeed, some Jews were also eager to dissociate themselves from Christianity and sharpen the divide between the two religions.

    Marcion (ca. 85–160 CE) was a Christian leader from what today we could call northern Turkey. He was something of a lightning rod for those Christians seeking to discard the Jewish aspects of Christianity, and get rid of the Old Testament. While often represented as a heretic and trouble-maker, Marcion may actually have been a traditionalist who argued for a view that was contested in his own time. However that may have been, the debate that Marcion brought to focus with his publication of the very first edition of the New Testament, led ultimately to the NT as we know it today—and to the affirmation that the OT is an essential part of the Christian Bible.

    We owe Marcion a deep debt, and especially for his unintended consequence of making us claim our Jewish heritage as an essential element of Christianity.

    To discard the OT from our Bibles—or even just from our lectionaries—would be to suffer a loss of access to these profoundly spiritual texts. Can we really contemplate a Bible without the Law? A Bible without the Prophets of Israel? A Bible without Job or the Psalms?

    Such a truncated Bible would mean we could never understand either Jesus or Paul. They were both Jews, of course. Their Bible was the Tanakh, or—in Paul’s case—the Septuagint.

    Worse still, if we are not willing to ‘bother’ with the OT we shall end up with an excessively spiritualised and individualised Christianity. ‘Me and Jesus’ too often substitutes for the biblical faith that calls us to participate in intentional covenantal communities of faithfulness. The OT is absolutely essential for a Christianity that offers more than fire insurance or get-out-of-jail cards for isolated individuals.

    Finally, and most importantly, a Christianity without the OT will lead us back to Auschwitz. Christian anti-Semitism is fed by self-serving Christian rejection of the Jews and their Bible. A Christianity without the OT is not Christianity at all, but a Jesus cult that promotes a toxic religious message that is bad for everyone, and fatal for the Jews.

    So, yes, I think we should bother with the Old Testament!

  • Epiphany 4A (2 February 2014)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Micah 6:1-8 and Psalm 15
    • 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
    • Matthew 5:1-12

    Introduction

    This week the lectionary serves up a rich feast of readings, with several classic texts all being read in the liturgical community on the one day:

    • Micah 6, with its call to get the basics right
    • 1 Corinthians 1, with its celebration of the centrality of the cross to Christian identity and practice
    • Matthew 5:1-12, the beatitudes

    First Reading: What does the Lord require?

    With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:6–8 NRSV)

    The prophetic focus on the few things that really matter is part of a trajectory in Jewish religious thought, found also in the Jesus tradition and its rabbinic parallels:

    This tradition has its parallels in rabbinic traditions about Hillel:

    A proselyte approached Hillel with the request Hillel teach him the whole of the Torah while the student stood on one foot. Hillel responded, “What you find hateful do not do to another. This is the whole of the Law. Everything else is commentary. Now go learn that!” (Babylonian Talmud, Makkot 23b-24a)

    Second Reading: The foolishness of God

    In a kind of ironic reversal of the Wisdom tradition, a trajectory especially at home among the elite scribal classes of ancient Judaism, Paul celebrates the “foolishness of God:”

    For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
    Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Cor 1:18–31 NRSV)

    Not only does Paul reverse the typical religious valuation of “wisdom” over “folly”—he identifies the counter-cultural wisdom of God with the cross.

    This is one of the earliest Christian texts to assign such religious significance to the crucifixion of Jesus. Coming as it does from the mid-50s of the first century, this passage provides an insight into the ways that the death of Jesus, including specifically the dishonorable circumstances of his death as a victim of imperial violence, was being transformed from a point of shame to a distinctive element of Christian self-understanding. Much later the cross would become the public symbol for Christanity, but here already it is becoming the point of differentiation from Jews and “Greeks.”

    We can see another early expression of this focus on the cross in the Christ Hymn from Philippians 2:

    Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who,
    though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
    but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
    And being found in human form,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death
    —even death on a cross.
    Therefore God also highly exalted him
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
    so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
    and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:5–11 NRSV)

    Gospel: Beatitudes

    The Jesus Seminar and the Beatitudes

    None of the beatitudes in Matthew score a red result, unlike the version found in Luke 6. The Seminar considered the sayings addressed to the gentle, the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers to be inauthentic. While Samuel Lachs offers some textual emendations that provide for a better fit of these sayings with the core beatitudes, it still seems unlikely that these sayings can be attributed to Jesus.

    For ease of reference, the Seminar’s voting decisions are shown in the color-coded text that follows:

    3 Congratulations to the poor in spirit!
    Heaven’s domain belongs to them.
    4 Congratulations to those who grieve!
    They will be consoled.
    5 Congratulations to the gentle!
    They will inherit the earth.
    6 Congratulations to those who hunger and thirst for justice!
    They will have a feast.
    7 Congratulations to the merciful!
    They will receive mercy.
    8 Congratulations to those with undefiled hearts!
    They will see God.
    9 Congratulations to those who work for peace!
    They will be known as God’s children.
    10 Congratulations to those who have suffered
    persecution for the sake of justice!
    Heaven’s domain belongs to them.
    11 “Congratulations to you when they denounce you
    and persecute you and spread malicious gossip about you
    because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad! In heaven you
    will be more than compensated. Remember, this is how they persecuted
    the prophets who preceded you.
    [Scholars Version]

    For a wider list of beatitudes in ancient Jewish and Christian texts, see the Beatitudes page.

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

     

    Music Suggestions

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.

  • Epiphany 3A (26 January 2014)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Isaiah 9:1-4 & Psalm 27:1, 4-9
    • 1 Corinthians 1:10-18
    • Matthew 4:12-23

    First Reading: Galilee of the nations

    The brief oracle from Isaiah 9:1-4 is chosen for this week because of its intertextual link with the passage from Matthew 4. That link is, of course, retrospective with Matthew finding in its ancient words a highly valued biblical “prophecy” that Galilee would be the location for a remarkable messianic event. This positive valuation of Galilee in Matthew stands in contrast with the southern antipathy to Galilee that we find expressed in the Gospel of John:

    When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, “This is really the prophet.” Others said, “This is the Messiah.” But some asked, “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he? Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” So there was a division in the crowd because of him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. Then the temple police went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not arrest him?” The police answered, “Never has anyone spoken like this!” Then the Pharisees replied, “Surely you have not been deceived too, have you? Has any one of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law—they are accursed.” Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus before, and who was one of them, asked, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” They replied, “Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you? Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee.” (John 7:40–52 NRSV)

    Second Reading: Unity that transcends factions

    Last week the lectionary commenced a series of selections from 1 Corinthians, not necessarily Paul’s first letter to the community but perhaps simply the longer of the two collections of correspondence to Corinth.

    Despite the prominence of the Corinthian congregation in subsequent Christian imagination (due in no small degree to the influence of Paul’s surviving correspondence with this church), surprisingly little is known of the ancient city from archaeology. For a glimpse of what we do have by way of physical remains from this important city of ancient Greece, see the following selected links:

    In this week’s passage Paul is berating the Corinthians for their factionalism (what would he make of 21C Christianity with our entrenched factions and parties?) and appealing for them to appreciate their fundamental unity as devotees of Jesus Christ. The foolishness of a crucified god—the scandal (shock value) of that statement has been blunted for us by the passage of time—is held up as superior to their partisan claims to status relative to one another.

    Gospel: Jesus calls the fishers of Capernaum

    Fishing for Humans

    Meier has an extended discussion of the disciples in the third volume of A Marginal Jew [III,19-285]. One of the elements of discipleship that he considers is the initiative taken by Jesus in calling particular persons to be his followers:

    One striking trait, found in a number of different Gospel sources, is that Jesus seizes the initiative in calling people to follow him. Three clear examples are given in the Marcan tradition: the call of the first four disciples (Peter, Andrew, James, and John) in Mark 1:16-20; the call of Levi the toll collector in 2:14; and the (unsuccessful) call of the rich man in Mark 10:17-22. In each case, Jesus issues a peremptory call to follow him, a call addressed to people who have not taken the initiative of asking to follow him. (p. 50)

    Meier also notes that the promise to become fishers of humans is only made to Andrew and Peter; and is not extended to James and John.

    When he does turn to the question of historicity, Meier asserts that the term “to fish humans” [halieis anthropon] is sufficiently distinctive to be identified as a phrase deriving from Jesus:

    The exact phrase never occurs in the OT, and the metaphor of fishing for human beings (or using a hook to catch them) is relatively rare. When it occurs, it always has a hostile sense of capturing or killing human beings [n. 122 refers to Jer 16:16; Ezek 29:4-5; Amos 4:2; Hab 1:14-17]. The metaphor occurs at times in the Qumran literature, likewise in a negative context of destruction or judgment [n. 123 refers to 1QH 3:26; 5:7-8]. The metaphor of “catching men” is also found with a negative sense in later rabbinic literature. Thus, there is no real parallel to Jesus’ positive, salvific use of the metaphor in the Jewish tradition before or after him. (p. 160)

     

    Capernaum

    The small fishing village of Capernaum seems to have been the center of Jesus’ activity in Galilee.

    John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts (HarperSanFranccisco, 2001) devote several pages to a discussion of Capernaum in the First Century (pp. 81-97).

    The most salient features to note are as follows:

    • POPULATION: around 1,000 persons on 25 acres of land
    • BUILDINGS: none of the Greco-Roman architecture of a significant urban center: no gates, no defensive fortifications, no civic structures (theater, amphitheater, hippodrome), no public bathhouse, no public latrine, no basilica for civic gatherings or commerical activities, no constructed agora (market) with shops and storage facilities
    • STREETS: no sign of planning in layout of streets, no streets appear to have been paved, no channels for running water, sewage disposed on the site, no plaster surfaces, no decorative fresco, no marble of any kind, no ceramic roofs tiles (contra Luke 5:19)
    • INSCRIPTIONS: none from 1C or earlier have been found
    • HOUSES: used local dark basalt, crooked wooden beams, straw, reeds, mud. Poor quality of construction. No evidence of skilled craftsmen. Mostly single storeys and with thatched roofs (as implied in Mark’s version of Jesus healing a paralysed man). Several abutting rooms centered around a courtyard. usually just a single entrance.
    • BOATS: lakeside location supported a fishing industry, but town shows no evidence of wealth. The discovery of a 1C fishing boat in 1986 (during a drought that lowered the water level) confirms the impression of a community struggling to survive but with considerable ingenuity in making the most of limited resources.

    In one of his classic turns of phrase, Crossan describes Capernaum as “not a sought-after spot, but a good place to get away from, with easy access across the Sea of Galilee to any side.” (p. 81)

    The following poem by Gene Stecher reflects on the significance of this site as the center of Jesus’ activity:

    Capernaum, 1000 persons on 25 acres,
    Egypt/India trade route a couple miles off,
    Honorable locals do commerical fishing,
    Dishonorable locals do toll collecting,
    Didn’t take well to Jesus missionaries,
    same as Chorazin and Bethsaida.

    Impressive at assemblies, no scribal mush.
    Words grounded in personal authority,
    Formal teaching,
    Commanded action.
    A rise to fame [a price to pay]!

    Some guy with demons is making a commotion,
    Calling Jesus God’s Holy One.
    He wasn’t disappointed,
    But a huge struggle for the genuine self!

    Dare we be called Holy One,
    confronting both inner and outer demons,
    Rooted in the Ground of personal authority,
    how untried and unknown is this power?
    “Why are you so cowardly?
    You still don’t trust do you?” (Mk 4:40)

    The following articles may be of interest:

    • BiblePlaces – photographs and brief notes on the Capernaum ruins[1]
    • See Capernaum for brief notes on the ancient site of Capernaum.
    • Jesus Seminar – the Seminar voted Red to the proposition that Capernaum was a key center for Jesus’ activities in the Galilee, but the tradition has been developed and preserved in very different ways by each of the evangelists:

    – MARK constructs an artificial “day in the ministry of Jesus” stretching from 1:21 to 1:39
    – MATTHEW simply notes that Capernaum was the main location for Jesus, and then connects that with his theme of fulfilled prophecies.
    – LUKE develops a visit to the Nazareth synagogue in 4:16-30 as the opening scene of Jesus’ public ministry, with Capernaum simply the next stop on his travels.
    – JOHN also records a tradition that has Jesus and his followers staying for a period at Capernaum.

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

    Australia Day

    As January 26 is also Australia Day, some communities may wish to use a Great Thanksgiving Prayer that reflects Australian themes:

     

    Progressive Liturgies

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

     

    Music Suggestions

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.

  • Epiphany 2A (19 January 2014)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Isaiah 49:1-7 & Psalm 40:1-11
    • 1Corinthians 1:1-9
    • John 1:29-42

    The Epiphany Cycle

    Over the next few weeks we will complete a longer than usual Epiphany cycle due to the relatively late date for Easter this year. As usual, the readings will mostly come from Isaiah, 1 Corinthians and the gospel of the year (in this case, Matthew).

    During the course of Epiphany each year the lectionary invites us to reflect on a selection of Gospel “snapshots” of Jesus as the revelation of God.

    The Year A lectionary texts for Epiphany are as follows:

    • First Sunday after Epiphany (Baptism of Jesus): Matt 3:13-17
    • Second Sunday after Epiphany (John’s disciples find Jesus): John 1:29-42
    • Third Sunday after Epiphany (Jesus in Galilee): Matt 4:12-23
    • Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (The Beatitudes): Matt 5:1-12
    • Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Light, Salt and Torah): Matt 5:13-20
    • Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (The New Torah): Matt 5:21-37
    • Seventh Sunday after Epiphany (Love of Enemies): Matt 5:38-48
    • Last Sunday after Epiphany (Transfiguration): Matt 17:1-9

    John’s disciples find Jesus

    The way that the GJohn introduces the disciples into the narrative is quite unlike the more familiar accounts in the Synoptic Gospels.

    Mark 1:16-20 sets the call in Galilee, and makes no mention of any previous affiliation of these persons with John the Baptist:

    As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea–for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

    Matthew simply makes minor adjustments to the details when taking over this tradition from Mark:

    As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea–for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. [Matt 4:18-22]

    While Luke tells the story very differently, it remains a lakeside encounter in the Galilee:

    Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him. [Luke 5:1-11]

    Presumably GJohn has connected the first of Jesus’ disciples with John the Baptist because that reflected something of the spiritual history of those who shaped the Johannine community, or perhaps because John had been posthumously pressed into service as something of a symbol within their tradition. There is no reason to think that GJohn has any access to reliable historical information, since the portrait of JBap in GJohn is entirely subsumed to the figure of Christ.

    John the Baptist in the Gospel of John

    It is interesting to note the way that GJohn represents John the Baptist.

    Barnes Tatum [John the Baptist and Jesus. 1994:75-81] provides a helpful guide to the ten passages in GJohn that refer to John the Baptist.

    He begins, however, by noting that GJohn never uses “the Baptizer” when referring to John. Immediately that alerts us to a different view of John within the Johannine community.

    JBap appears twice in the poetic prologue to the Gospel:

    1. John 1:6-8

    There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
    He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.
    He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

    2. John 1:15

    (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said,
    ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”)

    A further four references to JBap occur in the first chapter of GJohn:

    3. John 1:19-24

    This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said,
    “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
    “Make straight the way of the Lord,’”
    as the prophet Isaiah said.
    Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.

    4. John 1:25-28

    They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

    5. John 1:29-34

    The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

    6. John 1:35-42

    The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

    The remaining references to JBap are as follows:

    7. John 3:22-30

    After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptized — John, of course, had not yet been thrown into prison. Now a discussion about purification arose between John’s disciples and a Jew. They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” John answered, “No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.’ He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.”

    8. John 4:1-4

    Now when Jesus1 learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” — although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized — he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria.

    9. John 5:30-38

    “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me. If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.

    10. John 10:40-42

    He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. Many came to him, and they were saying, “John performed no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there.

    When considering GJohn’s treatment of JBap in the light of these ten passages, Tatum notes that GJohn (unlike the Synoptics) has chosen not to interpret JBap as the fulfillment of Malachi 3:1 –

    See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me,
    and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.
    The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight —
    indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

    Barnes Tatum continues:

    Therefore, how has John presented JB? With singular focus, John presents JB as a witness testifying to Jesus’ identity as the One from God. Here JB appears quite differently than in Q. JB in Q asks whether or not Jesus is the coming one; and Jesus subsequently praises JB, but declares the least in God’s domain to be greater than he. JB in John has become the first Christian. Only on the basis of the portrayal of JB in John could the later church have made JB into a Christian saint, as the church did. (p. 79, emphasis original)

    Because of this deliberate focus on JBap as a witness to Jesus, all other aspects of the historical activity of JBap are omitted or left understated:

    • JBap does not proclaim a baptism of repentance and the significance of John’s baptism is left unexplained;
    • There is no mention of John’s ascetic lifestyle;
    • John’s arrest is mentioned in passing, but no details of his fate are provided

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

    Music Suggestions

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.

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