gregoryjenks

Author: Gregory C. Jenks

  • Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (18 August 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Isaiah 5:1-7 and Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19
    • Hebrews 11:29-12:2
    • Luke 12:49-56

     

    First Reading: The vineyard of the Lord

    This week’s passage from Isaiah offers a prophetic parable that would later be taken up in the traditions associated with Jesus, as the parable at 046 The Tenants.

    Second Reading: Exemplars and encouragers

    The reading from Hebrews 11 and 12 continues on from last week. As the catalogue of heroic people of faith gets longer the information provided about each character reduces until eventually we are simply given a list of categories:

    And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.

    Interestingly, not all the events are known to us from extant stories. Even where we do know the traditions to which the author refers they are not always from the canonical traditions of the Hebrew Bible. This list provides a glimpse into the diverse religious literature of the Second Temple period and the popularity of holy adventure tales among people at the time.

    The concluding metaphor of the faithful life as an athletic competition in the gymnasium may not strike us as bold, but it cuts right across ancient Jewish taboos on participating in such events (where the athletes were naked). Despite the profound interest of the Letter to the Hebrews in esoteric Jewish traditions (angels, Melchizedek, temple priesthood, sacrifices, etc), we seem to have a community that is both familiar with the Hellenistic gymnasium and comfortable using it as a metaphor for the holy life.

    Gospel: Jesus, cause of division

    As noted in last week’s notes, Luke has an extended section (Luke 9:51-19:28) in which Jesus is depicted as traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem and where Luke’s treatment of the material differs significantly from Mark.

    One of the aspects of discipleship addressed in that material concerns the controversy and division that could erupt when someone became a Christian. Much as Luke likes to portray Christians as model citizens with a respect for good order, he had to address the reality that Christianity caused division within families and communities, and that discipleship could be costly in social terms.

    The tradition found in Luke is mostly from the Sayings Gospel Q, and in most cases also has parallels in the Gospel of Thomas. This double independent attestation from two very early sources underscores the primitive character of this tradition. To be a disciple was to be embroiled in confict with one’s own kin.
    Fire on Earth

    • Jesus said, “I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I’m guarding it until it blazes.” (Thom 10)
    • “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49)

    Jesus’ Baptism

    • I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! (Luke 12:50)

    Peace or Sword

    • Jesus said, “Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war. For there will be five in a house: there’ll be three against two and two against three, father against son and son against father, 4and they will stand alone.” (Thom 16)
    • Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:51)
    • “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. (Matt 10:34-36)

    Knowing the Times

    • They said to him, “Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you.” He said to them, “You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to examine the present moment.” (Thom 91)
    • He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? (Luke 12:54-56)
    • He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. (Matt 16:2-3)

    These sayings are part of a wider set of traditions that set Jesus in conflict with conventional attitudes towards the family as the primary social reality in the ancient world. See especially the following items:

    In commenting on this conflict in The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan (1991:299-301) writes of the way that it cut across the generations of the traditional patriarchal family:

    The family imagined [in Q] has five members: father, mother, son, daughter, and son’s wife, all living together in the one household. “Note,” as Bruce Malina advises, “that there is no mention of son-in-law, since it was the new wife who moved into her husband’s house, not the husband into the wife’s family” (1981:101). I emphasize immediately that this is not simply saying that families will be split over Jesus, with some believing and some disbelieving. The division imagined cuts between the generations, the two parents against the three children, and vice versa. But it does not tell us which group is on Jesus’ side. We cannot presume that parents are against Jesus and children for him, or vice versa. Indeed, the point is not belief or disbelief at all. It is, just as in Micah 7:6, the normalcy of familial hierarchy that is under attack. The strife is not between believers and non-believers but quite simply, and as it says, between the generations and in both directions. Jesus will tear the hierarchical or patriarchal family in two along the axis of domination and subordination. Second, and even more significant, is that the division imagined cuts across sex and gender. That point is underlined by the version in Gospel of Thomas 16, which, despite having “five in a house: three will be against two, and two against three” gives only one example, and that the dominant male one: “the father against the son and the son against the father.’ That obscures the saying’s point: the split is between generations but across the genders. There can be women just as much as men on the side of Jesus, or on the other side for that matter. I return to that point below in considering Jesus’ missionaries, but even now it is already apparent: what happens to women if the patriarchal family is split asunder?

    A similar point is made with 89 Hating One’s Family [1/2], although the protagonist of the saying is given in masculine gender. The opposition is with one’s “father and mother … brothers and sisters” in Gospel of Thomas 55:1-2, “father and mother” in Gospel of Thomas 101, “father or mother … son or daughter” in Q/Matthew 10:37, and “father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters” in Q/Luke 14:26. In other words, whatever number of generations are mentioned, both genders are always in question. I incline, therefore, to read 89 Hating One’s Family [1/2] in the light of 74 Peace or Sword [1/2] as referring, despite its male format, to both genders. Jesus, on the other hand, refuses to get involved in 97 The Disputed Inheritance [1/2], in which sons disagree over the father’s inheritance. He is not that kind of divider.

    Finally, there is 15 Against Divorce [1/4], an especially well-attested saying of Jesus. The formulation of the divorce law in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is strictly anthropocentric: “when a man takes … marries …writes … puts … sends …” It concerns how a husband divorces a wife and says nothing whatsoever about how a wife divorces a husband. It does not have to do so because the law does not allow it. Unlike, say, Greek, Roman, or Egyptian law at the time of Jesus, Jewish law did not allow the wife to initiate divorce proceedings. Adultery, furthermore, was also androcentric. It was always a crime against male honor and male rights. Seen against such a cultural situation, the texts in 15 Against Divorce [1/4] are strikingly anomalous. That is not because both 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 and Mark 10:10-12, but not its parallel Matthew 19:9, have adapted Jesus’ saying to a wider Greco-Roman ambiance — they therefore forbid divorce either by husband of wife or by wife of husband — it is because the saying of Jesus situates itself directly in the androcentric tradition of Jewish Palestine but says,

    (1) Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery,
    and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.
    (Sayings Gospel Q: 1[or 2?]Q: Luke 16:18 = Matthew 5:31-32)

    (2) Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. (Mark 10:11)

    (3) If he put his wife away and marry another he also commits adultery himself.
    (Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 4.1:6b)

    John Kloppenborg has seen most clearly the implications of the term “adultery” against the Mediterranean background of an anodrocentric or even phallocentric honor and shame ideology. “By saying that the male who disembeds his wife and remarries commits adultery against her … Jesus implies that honor is not (only?) androcentric — I use the term descriptively rather than pejoratively — but (also or equally) gynecentric. Honor is still understood as a pseudo-commodity but it belongs as much to a woman as it does to a man. Hence a man can ‘steal’ his own wife’s honor by divorcing her and remarrying … In Palestine of Jesus’ day, which did not permit women to initiate a divorce, the dignity of women was not … easily guarded. It is for this reason that Jesus uses the dramatic term ‘adultery’ in so surprising a way. He thus brought sharply into focus the wife’s honor. It is as much to be protected and respected as the husband’s honor and the woman is as vulnerable to damage as the male” (1990:195). The opposition here is not just to divorce. To forbid divorce one has only to say that divorce is never legal. That is exactly what happens in the much less radical 252 Moses and Divorce [2/1]. The attack is actually against “androcentric honor whose debilitating effects went far beyond the situation of divorce. It was also the basis for the dehumanization of women, children and non-dominant males” (1990:196). When 74 Peace or Sword [1/2] is read in conjunction with 15 Against Divorce [1/4], Jesus sets parents against children, and wife against husband, sets, in other words, the Kingdom against the Mediterranean. But not just against the Mediterranean alone.

    That final flourish from Crossan’s word processor underscores the challenge implicit in this week’s Gospel. How are the values and assumptions of our society at odds with the Kingdom values proclaimed by Jesus? Is the lack of division between the generations and across the genders a sign that we no longer hold to any alternative values with sufficient tenacity to alarm or alienate those who disagree with us?

    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

    Traditional

    • Glorious things of thee are spoken – AHB 374
    • Through all the changing scenes of life – AHB 30
    • Your hand, O God, has guided – AHB 389

    Contemporary

    • This day God gives me – AHB 570
    • Celtic Alleluia – TiS 257
    • Servant Song – TiS 650
    • Here I am, Lord – TiS 658

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

  • Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (11 August 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 & Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23
    • Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
    • Luke 12:32-40

    First Reading: Isaiah

    This week we continue with the RCL process of sampling various pre-exilic prophetic texts. Having had two weeks where we drew on Amos, followed by two weeks that used texts from Hosea, we now have the first of two weeks that offer passages from Isaiah.

    Unlike his northern contemporaries, Amos and Hosea, Isaiah ben Amoz was a prophet active in the southern kingdom (Judah) during the latter part of the 8C BCE. The famous Immanuel prophecy in Isaiah 7 comes from a crisis when a coalition of anti-Assyrian states (including Israel and Syria) laid siege to Jerusalem in an effort to force the southern state to join their “coalition of the willing.” This “Syro-Ephraimite Crisis” is usually dated 10 years or so before the destruction of Samaria (capital of Israel) in 722 BCE. The collapse of the coalition is also most likely related to the destruction of the 8C Aramaean city whose massive fortifictions have been found at level 5 of the Bethsaida excavations. It seems Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria destroyed that city in 732 while on his way to subdue the kingdom of Israel. Most likely the city (Tzer?) was at that time a key element in the Syrian border defences.

    Like his northern contemporaries, Isaiah attacked the social injustices that were characteristic of life in Judah at the time. He also shared their criticism of the cult of Yahweh with its assumption that God’s blessing could be assured by ritual and offerings.

    These 8C prophets whose literary legacy we have inherited as part of the Jewish scriptures within the Christian Bible challenged the self-serving assumptions of the powerful elites in their own days. Their loyalty was neither to class nor nation, but to the call of God on their lives. Pushed beyond their comfort zones, they helped create a new expression of religion that would eventually escape the limits of tribalism and personal security.

    Second Reading: Letter to the Hebrews

    This weekend the RCL cycle begins a series of 4 readings from Hebrews:

    • Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
    • Hebrews 11:29-12:2
    • Hebrews 12:18-29
    • Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

    The anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews has often been included in the Pauline corpus, but is better considered as part of the General Epistles – along with James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2 & John and Jude.

    The author of this letter was far more interested in Jewish ritual and esoteric speculation about angels and figures such as Melchizedek than Paul seems to have been.

    For further resources on Hebrews, see the relevant page in the Early Christian Writings web site.

    The first of the extracts chosen for the RCL offers a selection from a wider catalogue of exemplars of faith:

    • Abel (vs. 4)
    • Enoch (vs. 5)
    • Noah (vs. 7)
    • Abraham (vss. 8-13)
    • Binding of Isaac (17-19)
    • Isaac (vs. 20)
    • Jacob (vs. 21)
    • Joseph (vs. 22)
    • Moses’ parents (vs. 23)
    • Moses (vss. 24-28)
    • Israelites (vs. 29)
    • Jericho’s walls (vs. 30)
    • Rahab (vs. 31)
    • Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets (vss. 32-38)

    Gospel: Travel light on the kingdom way

    This week’s selection of verses from the Gospel according to Luke seems to be an almost random gathering of traditions. Zooming out some distance may allow us to map the shape of the forest, before we come back in close to study some of the trees by the path this week:
    Taking Luke-Acts as a single work extending over two scrolls, we can see the major divisions:

    • Luke 1:1-4—Prologue
    • 1:5-2:52—Infancy & Childhood
    • 3:1-4:13—Wilderness
    • 4:14-9:50—Galilee
    • 9:51-19:28—Samaria to Jerusalem
    • 19:29-23:56—In Jerusalem
    • 24:1-51 & Acts 1:1-26—The Forty Days in Jerusalem
    • 2:1-8:3—In Jerusalem
    • 8:4-11:18—To Samaria
    • 11:19-15:35—To the Gentiles
    • 15:36-19:20—To Greece
    • 19:21-28:31—To Rome

    This week’s Gospel fragment comes from the major unit (Luke 9:51-19:28) during which Jesus makes his way from Galilee to Jerusalem. This section contains a great diversity of material. It is also the section where Luke most deviates from his written sources (Mark and Q), as the table of Special Luke materials indicates.

    This diverse material collected here in Luke — much of it sayings attributed to Jesus — can be understood as an extended reflection on the meaning of discipleship. As Jesus travels towards his destiny in Jerusalem, Luke explores some of the contours of discipleship in the lives of his readers many decades later.

    As he does throughout the larger “Special Section” of his gospel, in this week’s portion Luke has drawn together material from a mix of sources. In this case, his selections tend to develop themes of constant vigilance in anticipation of the Master’s arrival. The seemingly extended period between Easter and parousia is not to be an excuse for loss of focus.

    While Luke is relatively late in the Gospel tradition, he still writes well before the patristic theologians such as Irenaeus and Hippolytus who would re-schedule the parousia until after the demise of the Roman Empire following the end-time activities of the Antichrist—for more on that theme see Antichrist Myth. Luke has not quite come to terms with the failure of Jesus to return in glory. He still lives with that expectation, even if it is rather more muted than in Paul’s writings from 50 or so years earlier.

    While some Christians today continue to live on the edge of that ancient parousia expectation (witness the success of the Left Behind series), for most people our “date with destiny” lies in our mortality rather than the apocalyptic return of Jesus.

    An “eyes-wide-open” approach to our own mortality seems a healthy element to include in our personal and communal spirituality.

    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.

  • Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (4 August 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Hosea 11:1-11 & Psalm 107:1-9, 43
    • Colossians 3:1-11
    • Luke 12:13-21

    First Reading: Hosea 11:1-11

    This reading from the prophet Hosea provides a compassionate counter balance to the confronting material in chapter one which was listed for reading in the liturgy last weekend. In the opening chapter of the book, God is represented as divorcing his promiscuous spouse (Israel) and disowning the children born of the marriage. Here we have an equally bold characterisation of Yahweh as a compassionate and tender parent, who cannot bear to inflict the punishment that would otherwise befall the people:

    Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
    I took them up in my arms;
    but they did not know that I healed them.
    I led them with cords of human kindness,
    with bands of love.
    I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.
    I bent down to them and fed them. [Hosea 11:3-4]

    It is also worth noting that this chapter is also the source of the “prophecy” cited by Matthew to link the flight to Egypt with the biblical tradition:

    When Israel was a child, I loved him,
    and out of Egypt I called my son. (Matt 2:15)

    Second Reading: Colossian 3:1-11

    This week’s passage from Colossians illustrates the dilemma posed by this letter. Its highly-developed Christology seems to suggest a movement in Paul’s thought towards a very spiritualised (almost Gnostic?) expression of Christian faith, and this might be taken as evidence that the letter is not authentic:

    So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. … Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

    On the other hand, the affirmation of radical equality between members of the Christian community seems very much in keeping with the practice of Jesus and the authentic teaching of Paul preserved in Galatians 3:28:

    As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
    There is no longer Jew or Greek,
    there is no longer slave or free,
    there is no longer male and female;
    for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

    Gospel: Luke 12

    The traditions found in this week’s gospel reading deal with wealth as a spiritual problem, and that sets us up for some challenging engagement with the Jesus tradition this week.

    The disputed inheritance

    The first part of this week’s Gospel is known from both the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Luke.

    A [person said] to him, “Tell my brothers to divide my father’s possessions with me.” He said to the person, “Mister, who made me a divider?” 3He turned to his disciples and said to them, “I’m not a divider, am I?” [Thom 72:1-2, Complete Gospels]

    Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” [Luke 12:13-15, NRSV]

    On the basis of this double independent attestation, Crossan assigns this saying to the Common Sayings Tradition (CST); a set of 37 sayings found in both Q and Thomas. The Common Sayings Tradition is available online in various formats:

    Such a primitive collection of Jesus’ sayings from before the time of the Gospels’ composition would be of great interest to many who look to Jesus for spiritual wisdom; and the more so if it offered access to a Jesus with less dogmatic accretions than the Christ figure we now find inscribed within the canonical Gospels. While the CST proposal requires both the existence of the Sayings Gospel Q and the independence of the earlier traditions now found in Thomas, that seems a reasonable (if not assured) assumption.

    The rich farmer

    This parable has no parallel outside of Luke although it is commonly interpreted as an Example Story, rather than as a parable that functions by means of metaphor.

    While there are many biblical and rabbinic parallels to the moral injunction against greed, the closest we come to the parable itself is the following passage in Ben Sira 11:17-19:

    Some stint and save and thus become rich
    and think that they have achieved something
    and say, “Now I will make myself a good life,
    eat and drink of what I have”
    — but they do not know that their hour is near
    and that they must leave everything to others and die.

    The commentary in The Five Gospels notes the Lukan context (Luke 12:13-34) in which several elements address questions concerning possessions:

    12:13-15 Warning against greed
    12:16-21 Parable of the rich farmer
    12:22-32 Do not be anxious
    12:33-34 Treasure in heaven

    While some Fellows of the Jesus Seminar were influenced by the lack of distinctive traits to distinguish this saying from the typical moral instruction of the wisdom tradition, most noted the simpler version preserved in Thomas (with neither the introductory or concluding remarks found in Luke 12:15 and 12:21 respectively). The commentary continues:

    Further, this parable can be seen as making a metaphorical point similar to that of the other parables that portray an inappropriate response to the coming of God’s imperial rule. Examples include the parables of the money in trust (Luke 19:12b // Matt 25:14-30); the unforgiving slave (Matt 18:23-34); the Pharisee and the toll collector (Luke 18:10-14); and the response of the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). This farmer, like the useless and unforgiving servants, the earnest Pharisee, and the elder brother, fails to respond appropriately to the situation.

    John Dominic Crossan [Historical Jesus, 275] notes that this parable is one of several complexes that express a criticism of wealth. In this case the farmer has not done anything wrong:

    He is simply rich and has the planning problems of such status. But riches do not save you from death’s unexpected arrival.

    Gerd Lüdemann [Jesus, 345f] takes a more sceptical stance on the authenticity of this parable, when he observes:

    The authenticity of this passage is sometimes defended by designating it an ‘eschatological parable’ (J. Jeremias). But it is certainly not that. It is the narrative by a wise man indicating that riches mean nothing in the face of death. As one who knew the traditions of Israel, especially as he had called the poor blessed (6.20), Jesus may have thought that. But each time the context is quite different. If 6.20 is authentic, then 12.16-20 must be inauthentic. Jesus had other concerns than the fate of individual rich men, all the more so as the case mentioned in the parable was not and is not the rule.

    If we seek to read this parable as metaphor rather than as a moral example, we need to shift gear.

    Assuming for the moment that the farmer’s spiritual problem was not his remarkable prosperity (which tends to arouse our envy), what exactly was his problem? Was it the assumption that he had life under control? Did this farmer now see himself as master of his own destiny?

    In a world where so many of his fellow citizens were falling into slave debt, his response to the amazing good fortune that had befallen him seems incompatible with the generosity of Heaven that Jesus celebrated in his actions and his teachings. Rather than proclaiming a messianic banquet and inviting to the feast those unable to repay his hospitality, this farmer wishes to hoard it away for his own benefit in the times to come.

    Is that his fault?

    And how different are we with our response to global need in the face of our amazing and undeserved prosperity?

    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.

  • Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (28 July 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Hosea 1:2-10 & Psalm 85
    • Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)
    • Luke 11:1-13

    First Reading: Hosea 1

    This week we dip into the prophetic traditions associated with Hosea, who (like Amos) was active during the final decades of the ancient kingdom of Israel—that is, the northern and more prosperous of the two Hebrew/Jewish mini-states that developed in Palestine during the first millennium BCE. Unlike Amos, who came from Judah to preach against the rulers of Israel, Hosea was a local prophet—as were figures such as Elijah and Elisha.

    These two societies shared many common traditions, but also held deeply divergent views on some matters. Despite the best efforts of the biblical story-tellers to convince us otherwise, it is most unlikely that they were descendants of Hebrew tribes who had escaped from Egypt several hundred years earlier, nor were their rival societies simply the shattered fragments of a once powerful Davidic empire stretching from the Suez to Mesopotamia.

    Whatever the actual historical realities, the Old Testament is a gift to the world from these two ancient societies that shared a common sense of being in a covenant with a god called Yahweh and, more importantly, shared the growing sense that there could only be one such deity. The roots of western monotheism lie in the tangled story of this religious insight, and Hosea reflects a period when the “Yahweh alone” theology was beginning to assert its profound criticism of idolatry and polytheism.

    Hosea’s own prophetic odyssey begins with the very personal struggle of being married to someone who was sexually unfaithful, and that became a powerful metaphor for the spiritual adultery of Israel who had betrayed her divine Spouse.

    For a useful set of online and traditional resources on the Book of Hosea, see the iTanakh Hosea page.

    Second Reading: Colossians

    This week continues the series of NT passages from Colossians that began last week.

    Colossians is one of the letters whose attribution to Paul is widely questioned by critical scholars. After citing various accounts of the arguments for and against Pauline authorship, Peter Kirby offers this practical advice:

    My position is, thus, that the authenticity of Colossians is a matter over which reasonable people may disagree. As to its dating, we may follow this dictum for Colossians: if authentic, place it as late as possible, but if inauthentic, place it as early as possible. It was probably written towards the middle of the period c. 50-80.

    For a useful set of online and traditional resources on the letter to the Colossians, see Peter Kirby’s Early Christian Writings Colossians page.

    Gospel: Jesus’ teaching on prayer

    Luke has gathered together a number of traditions—mostly from the earliest layer of the Sayings Gospel Q—about Jesus instructing his followers on the subject of prayer.

    The most significant of the items is a version of the Lord’s Prayer that differs in significant respects from the more familiar version drawn from Matthew. There are extensive notes on the Pater Noster at 120 The Lords Prayer, including links to commentary on individual petitions.

    Jesus Database

    • 120 The Lords Prayer: (1a) 1Q: Luke 11:(1)2-4 =(!) Matt 6:9-13; (1b) Gos. Naz. 5; (1c) Pol. Phil. 7:2a; (2) Did. 8:2b.
    • 027 Forgiveness for Forgiveness: (1) 1Q: Luke 11:4a = Matt 6:12; (2) Mark 11:25(26) = Matt 6:14-15; (3) Luke 6:37c; (4a)1 Clem. 13:2b; (4b) Pol. Phil. 2:3b.
    • 449 Friend at Midnight: (1) Luke 11:5-8;
    • 004 Ask Seek Knock: (1a) Gos. Thom. 2 & P. Oxy. 654:2; (1b) Gos. Thom. 92:1; (1c) Gos. Thom. 94; (2) Gos. Heb. 4ab; (3) 1Q: Luke 11:9-10 = Matt 7:7-8; (4) Mark 11:24 = Matt 21:22; (5a) Dial. Sav. 9-12; (5b) Dial. Sav. 20d; (5c) Dial. Sav. 79-80 ; (6a) John 14:13-14; (6b) John 15:7; (6c) John15:16; (6d) John16:23-24; (6e) John 16:26;
    • 149 Good Gifts: (1) 1Q: Luke 11:11-13 = Matt 7:9-11;

    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

    • All my hope on God is founded – AHB 465ii
    • Celtic Alleluia (AOV/TiS)
    • Companions on a Journey
    • Lead us heavenly Father lead us – AHB 492
    • Now thank we all our God – AHB 14
    • Praise the God who changes places – TiS 178
    • Praise to the living God – AHB 7
    • Shine Jesus shine

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

  • Ninth Sunday after Pentecost C (21 July 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Amos 8:1-12 & Psalm 52
    • Colossians 1:15-28
    • Luke 10:38-42

    Gospel: Jesus, Women and Discipleship

    This week’s Gospel is a much-loved episode from Luke. Like the parable of the Good Samaritan that precedes it in Luke’s account, this story is found only in Luke and contributes to Luke’s representation of Christianity as a socially responsible movement that posed no threat either to Empire or privilege.

    More recently, the story of Mary choosing to sit at Jesus’ feet — and the endorsement of her choice by Jesus himself — has been cited as a prime example of Jesus’ counter-cultural affirmation of women. Kathleen Corley (“Feminist Myths of Christrian origins” in the Burton Mack Festschrift, Reimaging Christian Origins ed. Elizabeth A. Castelli & Hal Taussig, 1996) has challenged this as a myth of Christian origins that functions as a foundational narrative for modern Christian feminism, but has little historical value. In Women and the Historical Jesus (2002:60), Kathleen Corley critiques the usual interpretation of this week’s Gospel scene:

    In fact, later gospel portrayals of Jesus at meals do not show him taking a particularly radical stance. For instance, in the story of his meal with Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42), Jesus does encourage Mary, who is seated at his feet. However, although such a position does indicate that Mary is receiving instruction, her posture reflects a more conservative, matronly role, and she remains silent throughout the scene. The more radical stance would have been to invite Mary to recline with him like an equal on a banquet couch, as Jesus does with Salome in the Gospel of Thomas (Thomas 61). In these Lukan stories Jesus does not appear radical in his relationships with women; it is the women who are bold, not Jesus.

    This seems an opportune time to reflect on Jesus’ attitudes towards women and their possible place within his movement.

    Dennis Nineham

    This week’s notes will also open up the possibility of exploring our engagement with the Gospel text by becoming more aware of our own lenses as well as those of Jesus and the evangelists.

    One of the lenses that we may overlook at the top of our nose is the desire for Jesus to be perfect. Indeed, it is not so much a desire as an unexamined assumption. Many take it for granted that Jesus held and practiced pure wisdom, was free of prejudice, and in every sense a model human being. This is related to, but not the same as, the traditional doctrine of the sinlessness of Jesus.

    NT scholar, Dennis Nineham, identified this bias even in radical Christology such as that developed by the “Myth of God Incarnate” theologians in the UK back in the late 1970s. In an epilogue to that collection of essays, Nineham critiqued the ways in which Jesus’ personal integrity and character were assumed even by radical thinkers. A couple of brief extracts might suffice to illustrate the point Nineham was making.

    Nineham cites the Jewish scholar, C.G. Montefiore:

    Jesus is to be regarded as the first great Jewish teacher to frame such a sentence. … yet how much more telling his injunction would have been if we had a single story about his doing good to and praying for a single Rabbi or Pharisee! [Rabbinic Literature and Gospel Teachings, 1930:103]

    We might find ourselves echoing the sentiments of W. Durant, a secular writer whose respect for Jesus is cited by Nineham:

    Our own moral heritage and ideals are so closely bound up with him and formed on his example that we feel injured at finding any flaw in his character. [Caesar and Christ, 1944:561]

    Nineham himself outlines the problems involved in our easy assumption of Jesus’ relevance and perfection:

    Two things at any rate seem clear. First, it is impossible to justify any such claim on purely historical grounds, however wide the net for evidence is cast. … the second point … is that because of the cultural gulf that separates us from Jesus and his times, what moral perfection, or being ‘the man for others’, would have meant to him and his contemporaries might well be significantly different from what such phrases imply for us. We must therefore recognize that if the historical Jesus were to walk into the room …, the first disturbing impression might be not so much of his greatness as his strangeness. To say that, of course, is simply to state a fact about cultural change; it is not in the least to derogate from Jesus’ moral greatness or moral authority in his time. [Myth, 1977:195]

    As the date of Nineham’s essay indicates, not to mention the earlier writers that he cites, this is not a new question. It has been known to NT scholars and theologians for more than a century, and lies at the heart of Kahler’s classic distinction between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. Most recently the sharp edges of this question have been pushed by the Jesus Seminar and Luke Timothy Johnson, respectively.

    So, as we approach this week’s Gospel we most likely have a hermeneutical lens that predisposes us to assume that Jesus was not only a significant spiritual figure, but a moral giant whose sympathies far outpaced those of his own time. For example, we rarely entertain the idea that Jesus lived in a society that embraced slavery and that he may have owned slaves himself. Perhaps of more relevance, we mostly assume that Jesus had “modern” views on the dignity of all persons and that he would have practiced some affirmative action in favor of women and other minorities.

    This week’s Gospel seems to affirm that assumption.

    Jesus is visiting with two sisters, Mary and Martha. Luke does not link them with the Bethany household, that also included Lazarus, but simply presents them as householders in a particular village as Jesus makes his way from Galilee to Jerusalem. These two women make Jesus welcome, and he accepts their hospitality. Were they inn-keepers, or simply supporters of the Jesus movement who chose not to go on the road with Jesus and his followers? Martha busies herself with the tasks involving in offering hospitality, whether as inn-keepers or associate members of the Jesus movement; but Mary settles down at Jesus’ feet to pay attention to his instruction as a teacher of wisdom. Martha snaps, and asks Jesus to send Mary in to help with the work. Jesus affirms the responsibilities Martha has embraced but also the value of the choice Mary has made. There is no resolution to the episode. Its unresolved tension is not unlike many of the parables told by Jesus. Luke leaves the reader to ponder further how they will express their discipleship: in the kitchen or in the study?

    At the very least, then, Kathleen Corley seems correct in her faint praise of Jesus’ response. This is no hero of women’s emancipation, but a sure-footed teacher drawing each woman a little deeper into her own journey of discovery. And he does not offer to make the coffee, either!

    John P. Meier

    In the third volume of his ongoing historical Jesus project [A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. 3. Companions and Competitors. Doubleday, 2001], John P. Meier offers some views on the “unclear boundaries” of discipleship and the participation of women in the Jesus movement. He begins with the following statement of the question as it engages us:

    In our reconstruction of the historical situation of Jesus’ public ministry, should the designation “disciples of Jesus” be restricted to those 1st-century Palestinian Jews who fully met the stringent requirements [of being called by Jesus, joining his itinerant band, and risking danger and hostility] listed above? To put the question more pointedly from our contemporary viewpoint: because only males are specifically depicted as summoned to discipleship by Jesus and because only males are specifically called “disciples” in the Gospels, should modern historians likewise restrict the term to males when describing the historical conditions of Jesus’ ministry? Naturally no one would object if modern writers engaged in homiletics or hermenutics should stretch the term “disciple” to include all present-day believers. But if we are intent on a sober historical reconstruction of the 1st-century situation, scholarly integrity would seem to demand that we follow the usage of our sources. Do our sources favor or undermine the view that the committed female followers of Jesus were considered disciples during the public ministry? (p. 73)

    Meier is defining his terms of reference narrowly: women followers as “disciples” during the public ministry of Jesus; not at the crucifixion, not in the post-Easter period and not in the Christian communities that formed afterwards. He is aware of the recent tendency to construct too grand an edifice on a narrow biblical base, and (characteristically) cautious in what he seeks to establish. (He would doubtless call this “sober historical reconstruction” or even “scholarly integrity,” as if more adventurous inquiry is reckless and lacking in integrity.)

    Problems in the recent debate over women in the ministry of Jesus and in the modern church often stem from pressing the few references beyond what they can tell us. This over-exegeting of the texts available is often fueled in turn by a desire to answer larger questions of relevance, questions that we do not treat here because they never entered the minds of the evangelists. (p. 74)

    It might be asked whether biblical scholarship that excuses itself from questions of faithfulness and justice in the present simply because those were not questions in the minds of the authors is anything more than a religious variant on Nero’s legendary fiddle playing while Rome was aflame? Do we study the texts for historical information, or for wisdom relevant to our questions?

    Within the conservative terms of reference that he has designed for himself, Meier offers several insights of real value. He has no doubt that Jesus had devoted female followers, but is puzzled by the failure of the Gospel tradition ever to give them the description, “disciple.” His solution is not driven by a recognition that the Gospels are late texts that reflect confict over authority and a gradual repression of women relative to the emancipation they enjoyed in the primitive Jesus movement. Rather, Meier thinks that the reality of women’s involvement in the Jesus movement (ca. 28-30 CE) simply got ahead of the available terminology and went unmentioned.

    … during his public ministry, Jesus indeed had committed women followers, but there was literally no feminine noun that could be used to describe them; there was no noun that said “female disciple(s).” (p. 78)

    He concludes:

    We are left, then, with something of a paradox. Did the historical Jesus have women disciples? In name, no; in reality — putting aside the question of an implicit as opposed to an explicit call — yes. Certainly the reality rather than the label would have been what caught most people’s attention. The sight of a group of women — apparently, at least in some cases, without benefit of husbands accompanying them — traveling around the Galilean countryside with an unmarried male who exorcised, healed, and taught them as he taught his male disciples could not help but raise pious eyebrows and provoke impious comments. As it was, Jesus was stigmatized by his critics as a bon vivant, a glutton and drunkard, a friend of toll collectors and sinners (Matt 11:19 par.), a demoniac or mad man (Mark 3:20-30 parr; John 8:48). A traveling entourage of husbandless female supporters, some of whom were former demoniacs who were now giving Jesus money or food, would only have heightened the suspicion and scandal Jesus already faced in a traditional peasant society. Yet, scandal or no scandal, Jesus allowed them to follow and serve him. Whatever the problems of vocabulary, the most probable conclusion is that Jesus viewed and treated these women as disciples. (p. 79f)

    Here we see that Meier has worked his way through to an outcome that fits with the consensus of liberal society, and we have Jesus as a sensitive new age guy who enjoys and respects women; but presumably has no sexual interests. Unfazed by scandal he affirms the women’s right to participate in the Kingdom movement, and he treats them the same as his male followers. Sober scholarship has its rewards?

    Kathleen Corley

    Enter Kathleen Corley, once more. Corley is a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, with a long interest in women in the NT and early Christianity. In Women and the Historical Jesus she takes issue with several of the assumptions that underlie the consensus view of Jesus the modern man with advanced views concerning women.

    Corley observes that studies of women in early Christianity often use a narrative also seen in other fields of research into Christian origins. The Jewish and pagan environment is cast in negative terms, often with significant anti-Jewish stereotyping. A “time of pristine origins” is then proposed, after which one discovers a period of decay during which emerging catholicism reverts to pre-Jesus (and sub-Christian) cultural patterns. Variants of this self-serving narrative are known from other areas, including some contemporary studies of church growth and mission issues. In many cases the hypothetical pristine era (always associated with Jesus) turns out to be remarkably similar to the “new” model now being proposed by the “researcher.”

    Kathleen Corley has done everyone a service by cutting through this clutter with an eyes-wide-open analysis of the actual situation of women in the Roman empire, including Jewish women in Palestine. This is not the place to review her argument in detail, but the following gives a sense of where her research leads.

    The evidence indeed suggests that in first century Judaism women lived lives similar to those of their gentile counterparts, and that a monolithic view of Jewish women’s experience based on a few sources is no longer possible to maintain. (p. 20)

    After reciting numerous areas of private and public life where Jewish women were active in the time of Jesus, Corley cites in some detail the evidence from the conservative religious community at Qumran.

    … women and children represent over thirty percent of all burials so far excavated at the Qumran site. These burials are not on the periphery of the regular graveyards as has previously been proposed, but are interspersed throughout the major gravesites. … the presence of women and children among those buried at Qumran has gone long ignored and unexplained. And yet, the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls mention the presence of women and children in certain assemblies and liturgical celebrations, and regulate marriage and sexual intercourse … The Qumran texts further attest to the ability of women to give judicial testimony in corporate assemblies, and contain elaborations of stories of heroines of the Hebrew Bible … (p. 25)

    Corley’s summary of the situation of Jewish women during the lifetime of Jesus is as follows:

    … it must not be forgotten that the movement initiated by Jesus was both Jewish and Palestinian. Both Jesus’ teaching and the social configuration of his movement further illustrate the cultural diversity present in the Greco-Roman world and first century Palestine. This belies simplistic attempts to label Jesus, or Palestine more generally, as either “Jewish” or “Hellenistic.” While it seems likely that Jesus associated relatively freely with women, the pervasive presence of women in Jewish, Roman and Hellenistic societies generally serves to undermine the contention that this is a special characteristic of Jesus’ movement or an outgrowth of his message of the Kingdom of God. The constituency of Jesus’ movement may rather be seen to reflect changes in the later Hellenistic society, or the social constituency of which he was a part. (p. 26)

    In chapter two of her book, Corley discusses the working women in the Gospel of Mark; with a special focus on Mary Magdalene, Salome, and Joanna. A few snippets from her discussion seem worth including this week as they lift the veil of anonymity from the women whose stories are often obscured in the NT — even if only by our distance from their world.

    … the presence of women among Jesus’ followers was a controversial characteristic of his movement. Mark 2:14-17 records both that Jesus was accused of reclining at table with “tax collectors and sinners” (the latter is a euphemism for “prostitutes”) and that a group of women “followed and served” Jesus throughout his entire ministry (Mark 15:40-41). … The descriptions of these women suggest that at least Mary Magdalene and Salome came from the lower classes of antiquity, and were either working women, hired servants, slaves or runaway slaves. (p. 27)

    Nearly 50% of the women in second temple Palestine were named either Mary (Mariamne) or Salome. … This reinforces the likelihood that Mark preserves the earliest and best list in terms of reflecting the Palestinian situation of Jesus, naming two Marys and one woman named Salome. (p. 32)

    About these women Mark tells us little. Mary Magdalene is the most fixed name of a woman disciple in the tradition. … Rather than identifying her by the more common means of a male relative, Mary’s name indicates that she came from Magdala, a village on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, about three miles north of the city of Tiberius. The identification of Mary with a particular geographical location puts emphasis on the character of that location, rather than on her family, her father or a husband as a means of identifying her. Magdala was one of the better known fishing towns along the Sea of Galilee, and was known to Josephus by the name Tarichea, meaning “salt fish.” Josephus also mentions that the city had a hippodrome, which indicates its Hellenistic character. Since Mark records that many of Jesus’ first male followers came from the ranks of fishermen who worked along the Sea of Galilee (Mark 1:16-20), and that Mary Magdalene was with Jesus from his earliest travels in Galilee (Mark 15:40-41), it is quite likely that Mary Magdalene was a fisherwoman herself. (p. 32f)

    Women among the working poor practiced many trades in antiquity; women could be shopkeepers, butchers, innkeepers, weavers, waitresses, shoemakers, prostitutes, professional mourners and musicians, or fishers. In rural areas women could run farms with their husbands, engage in a trade, or run inns in their homes; in towns and cities women shared the responsibility of managing small businesses. (p. 33)

    The realities of life for lower class women contributed to the elite perception and devaluation of their character, and led to the stereotyping of lower class women as promiscuous, whether this reputation was realized in the form of prostitution or not. The association of Jesus with both working class women and at least one woman of a higher position could further explain the tradition associating him with “sinners/prostitutes” (Matt 21:31-32). Despite her standing, a woman like Joanna might well have been labeled a whore for her association with other women and men beneath her station. (p. 33f)

    The association of Mary Magdalene with demon possession serves to connect her to frequent tomb visitation and the contact with spirits of the dead (necromancy). In Mark, this devalues her witness to the resurrection, and functions to bar her from any connection to the Twelve … However, given that in antiquity possession by gods or spirits was associated with creativity and prophetic powers, any such narrative portrayal of Jesus’ women followers would be problematic. In view of the reports that Jesus himself was thought to be mad (John 8:48; Mark 3:20-21) and possessed by a demon … this charge of demon-possession places Mary Magdalene not in the category of Peter and the Twelve, but that of Jesus, or even John the Baptist (Q 7:33). Since men with such characteristics were commonly labeled as prophets, this charge against Mary Magdalene strongly suggests that she might be identified not merely as a follower of Jesus, but as a prophet who was later demoted by an early Christian tradition that also demoted John. Jesus, John, and Mary would then have all exhibited similar behavior at an early point in their lives. Although she is likely only one of many to have received exorcism from Jesus’ hand, Mary’s prominence in early Christian tradition sets her apart from others merely healed by Jesus. If indeed she was a prophet similar to Jesus and John, her words and sayings either were simply lost, or were incorporated into the Jesus tradition itself. She too began her life in a Galilean village, as a fisherwoman from the village of Magdala, who fished alongside the men on the shores of the Sea of Galilee as did many of the working women of the area. Fisherwoman or not, such a working class woman was one of the several kinds of women who joined Jesus and his retinue. (p. 34f)

    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

    Traditional hymns:

    • Come as you are
    • The Lord is my shepherd
    • Pentecost Prayer
    • God gives us a future

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

  • Eighth Sunday after Pentecost C (14 July 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Amos 7:7-17 & Psalm 82
    • Colossians 1:1-14
    • Luke 10:25-37

    First Reading: Amos 7

    This weekend we begin a series of several readings from the prophetic books of Amos and Hosea:

    • Amos 7:7-17
    • Amos 8:1-12
    • Hosea 1:2-10
    • Hosea 11:1-11

    Amos and Hosea are important as the first of the famous “eighth century (BCE) prophets” whose public activity distinguished them from other prophets who worked under the auspices of the palace or the temple. Both men were active in the northern kingdom of Israel, although Amos seems to have come from the southern kingdom of Judah. While they stood out from their peers on the public payroll, they are our earliest examples of the “Hebrew prophets” whose words have been a sacred treasure for generations of Jews and Christians over more than two millennia. The exact relationship between the prophets and the books that now bear their names is unclear, but their prophetic activity resulted in the formation of texts that would later become part of the Bible. The books would, in time, give these prophets of ancient Israel a legacy that continues to our own time.

    The passage from Amos this week represents the classic conflict between the “freelance” prophet and the religious officials employed in the state cult. The sacred violence encoded in this ancient story will rightly offend modern sensibilities, but the more profound challenge is to our self-serving assumption that theological training and ministerial status within the church or academy make us better placed to discern what the Spirit is saying to the churches. The story celebrates the dignity of the religious amateur; someone with no personal interest in the survival of the religious institutions, but an authentic relationship with the Sacred. Such “outsider insiders” are subversive threats to the temple and its clergy. As Amos, Jeremiah and Jesus all discovered; the religious professionals rarely welcome such a stranger in their midst. Go home! Lock him up. Crucify him!

    The lectionary invites us to reflect on the contrast with the Good Samaritan story. The religious professionals come off badly in that tale as well, while the unwelcome stranger—with an entirely wrong religious pedigree—turns out to be a godsend.

    Second Reading: Colossians

    This weekend we also begin a series of several readings from the letter to the Colossians:

    • Colossians 1:1-14
    • Colossians 1:15-28
    • Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)
    • Colossians 3:1-11

    Colossians is one of the letters attributed to Paul but there continues to be significant debate about its authenticity. For an introduction to the letter, and to the critical issues involved in assessing its character, see the Colossians page in the Early Christian Writings web site.

    The reading this week is from the opening address of the letter, which has been considerably elaborated to include reference to specific persons and events known to the recipients. As the final few lines of this week’s portion indicate, as also does the early Christian hymn that seems be cited in the portion that will be read next week, Colossians expresses a highly developed Christology. Here we see the theological ideas and the devotional language of the “Christ cult” cutting loose from its Jewish moorings and moving out into the deep ocean of contemporary speculative thought. This not only seems inconsistent with Paul’s usual way of describing Jesus, but also to contradict the portrayal of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. In Colossians, the “kingdom/empire of God” that Jesus proclaimed has become the “kingdom/empire of God’s Son” as the messenger becomes the message in the emerging Christology of the early Church. Whether we have some of Paul’s final thoughts on Jesus here, or (more likely) an echo of Paul’s thinking in the words of a later writer, we are some distance from either Jesus’ own self-awareness or the testimony of his earliest followers.

    Gospel: The good Samaritan

    The following notes come from the Jesus Database page for the parable of the Good Samaritan:

     

    John Dominc Crossan

    Crossan discussed this parable in some detail in his classic 1973 study, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus. Crossan took issue with the previous consensus view that the Good Samaritan was an Exemplary Story, arguing instead that it be seen as a parable of reversal. He outlines the significance of the distinction as follows:

    When Jesus gave the Sower parable, for example, his first hearers and his modern readers would probably all agree on one thing: Jesus was not interested in agrarian reform in eastern Galilee. Whatever he might have meant one is immediately certain that agriculture is not the point of the story. But when Jesus tells parables whose content is not some morally neutral activity such as sowing or harvesting but involves a morally significant action, it may or may not be at all so clear if he is giving examples (act/do not act like this) or telling parables.
    It will be argued in this chapter that the parables of reversal have been turned in almost all cases into examples precisely because of this ambiguity. It will also be clear that Luke is especially fond of this type of transformed parable. (p. 55)

    Crossan notes that the question about eternal life seems to have been derived from the Sayings Gospel Q, while the parable seems not to have originally circulated in combination with that question. In addition, the logical inconsistency in the meaning of “neighbor” in the dialogue with the lawyer and in the parable itself suggests that material from two different sources has been combined in Luke 10. As Crossan points out:

    The parable of 10:30-35 would fit quite well with 10:28-29 showing that the neighbor is anyone in need; and it would also fit well with 10:36 indicating that the neighbor is the one who assists another’s need; but it cannot go with both 10:27,29 and 10:36 simultaneously. (p. 58)

    According to Crossan, the “creative moment when 10:25-28 was added to 10:30-36” belongs in the pre-Lukan stage of the tradition. He notes the following formal structure in the unit inherited by Luke:

    Question (lawyer) – 10:25 & 10:29
    Counter-Question (Jesus) – 10:26 & 10:30-36
    Answer (lawyer) – 10:27 & 10:37a
    Counter-answer (Jesus) – 10:28 & 10:37b

    Prior to the creation of a double controversy dialogue, the question of the original meaning of the story as parable remains open.

    First of all, Crossan notes the long description of the actions of the Samaritan (10:34-35) in constrast to the very brief mention of the attack by the robbers and the inaction of the clerics:

    … even in English translation, far more space (66 words) is devoted to this description than to any of the other elements in the story. Why? When the hearer is confronted with the rhetorical question in 10:36 he might negate the process by simply denying that any Samaritan would so act. So, before the question can be put, the hearer must see, feel, and hear the goodness of the Samaritan for himself. The function of 10:34-35 and its detailed description is so to involve the hearer in the activity that the objection is stifled at birth. He has just seen a Samaritan do such a good action in very exact detail. (p. 62)

    The social significance of a Samaritan as hero is critically important to this story:

    If Jesus wanted to teach love of neighbor in distress, it would have sufficed to use the standard folkloric threesome and talk of one person, a second person, and a third person. If he wanted to do this and add a jibe against the clerical circles in Jerusalem, it would have been quite enough to have mentioned priest, Levite, and let the third person be a Jewish lay-person. Most importantly, if he wanted to inculcate love of one’s enemies, it would have been radical enough to have a Jewish person stop and assist a wounded Samaritan. … the internal structure of the story and the historical setting of Jesus’ time agree that the literal point of the story challenges the hearer to put together two impossible and contradictory words for the same person: “Samaritan” (10:33) and “neighbor” (10:36). The whole thrust of the story demands that one say what cannot be said, what is a contradiction in terms: Good-Samaritan. On the lips of the historical Jesus the story demanded that the hearer respond by saying the contradictory, the impossible, the unsay-able. The point is not that one should help the neighbor in need. … But when good (clerics) and bad (Samaritan) become, respectively bad and good, a world is being challenged and we are faced with polar reversal. (p. 62f)

    There remains the issue of how such a powerful parable of reversal could be transposed into an exemplary story. Crossan suggests the transition is easy to understand as the Gospel moved from its original Jewish context to Gentile communities where the sectarian tensions had no significance. The commendable charity of the Samaritan character in the literal meaning of the story offered sufficient insight for the non-Palestinian audience at the same time as its original sectarian edge was lost from view:

    This distinction of two points [literal and metaphorical] is usually clear and noncontroversial in most of the parables of Jesus. Take, for example, the parable of the Wheat and the Darnel in Matt. 13:24-30. Imagine a hearer of Jesus nodding his head in agreement that here was a wise man and that he himself had just learned what to do if ever he found himself in such an agricultural crisis. Our judgment would be immediate: he has missed the point completely; or, more precisely, he has mistaken the literal point for the metaphorical point. … When we move from the “amoral” world of agriculture into parables which present “moral” actions, the danger of confusing the literal and metaphorical is greatly increased. If the protagonist is presented in a downright immoral action, confusion ensues, but at least the distinction between literal and metaphorical is usually maintained. The classic example of this confusion, of course, is the parable of the Unjust Steward in Luke 16:1-7. … But all of this becomes even more distressingly easy to do when the major protagonist of a parable is performing a morally good action on the literal level. In this case it is very simple to remain on this level and convert the parable into an example. This is exactly what has happened to the Good Samaritan in the course of its transmission. (p. 63f)

    Crossan’s final assessment of the Good Samaritan is evocative:

    The literal point confronted the hearers with the necessity of saying the impossible and having their world turned upside down and radically questioned in its presuppositions. The metaphorical point is that just so does the Kingdom of God break abruptly into human consciousness and demand the overturn of prior values, closed options, set judgments, and established conclusions. But the full force of the parabolic challenge is that the just so of the metaphorical level is not ontologically distinct from the the presence of the literal point. The hearer struggling with the contradictory dualism of Good/Samaritan is actually experiencing in and through this the inbreaking of the Kingdom. Not only does it happen like this, it happens in this. (p. 64)

     

    James D.G. Dunn

    Dunn (Jesus Remembered, 2003) observes:

    … in telling the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus must deliberately have intended to shock his hearers by presenting a Samaritan as hero, when Samaritans were usually regarded as half-breeds and apostates (Luke 10:30-37). At the very least, the parable suggests that Jesus’ concern to break down boundaries within Israel may have extended beyond the bounds of Israel, though we should beware of romanticizing Jesus’ conscious intentions at this point.

     

    Robert W. Funk

    Funk made the Good Samaritan a special focus of his work on parables and the poetics of biblical narrative in a series of studies: Parables and Presence (1982), The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (1988) and Honest to Jesus (1996).

    Funk’s characteristic way of approaching the parable is captured in the following sentence:

    Parable interpretation for Jesus is allowing oneself to be drawn into the story as the story line dictates, and then to face the choices the plot presents. (1996:171)

    With that basic principle of interpretation in mind, Funk sketches the emotional responses of the hearers as they recall the dangerous situation of the road between Jerusalem and Jericho (see Wadi Qilt photos) and as they adopt positive or negative responses to the stereotypical representation of the callous clerics. Key to Funk’s interpretation of the parable is the suggestion that the hearers find themselves in the ditch with the victim, watching the priest and Levite pass by and then seeing the approach of a despised Samaritan:

    Who in the audience wanted to let himself or herself be helped by a Samaritan? This is the primary challenge because the appearance of the Samaritan makes sense on no other basis. Had the victim in the ditch been a Samaritan and the hero an ordinary Judean, then the question would have been reversed: who in the Judean audience wanted to play the role of hero to a Samaritan victim? Further, the role of the victim is the inferior role, the role of the helper the superior one. Listeners would have found it more congenial to adopt the role of the helper as their own than to accept the status of victim. (1996:176f)

    Funk offers this interpretation of the parable:

    Once it is understood that the parable is a fantasy — a fantasy about God’s domain, an order of reality that feeds on but ultimately overturns the everyday world — it is but a short step to the view that the story is not about a stickup on Jericho boulevard at all. It is about a new order of things, a new reality that lies beyond, but just barely beyond, the everyday, the humdrum, the habituated. Then the parable is understood as an invitation to cross over. The ability to cross over will depend, of course, on both the tenacity with which one holds to the inherited order of reality, the received world, and on one’s willingness to cut the ties to comfortable tradition. The parable is pitted against the power of the proven. Making the transition under such circumstances does not come easily. But, then, Jesus never suggests that it is easy — only that it is obvious. (1996:177)

    A little later Funk observes:

    The parable, however, is not about Samaritan helpers. It is about victims. No one elects to be beaten, robbed, and left for dead, Yet in this story the way to get help is to be discovered helpless. The parable as a metaphor is permission for the listener to understand himself or herself in just that way. There were many in Jesus’ society who could identify with that possibility without strain. Others could not imagine themselves being helped by a Samaritan. That is where the difference lay: how his listeners understood themselves. In the parable only victims need apply for help. The meaning of the parable cannot be made more explicit than that. Listeners may respond to the parable as they wish. They may accept help or they may refuse it. The story is not tyrannical: it does not dictate. But it does set the terms. (1996:179f)

    Finally, Funk attempts to transpose the parable into a proposition:

    In any restatement we must remember to retain something of the metaphorical quality of the parable itself. That suggests two propositions:

    1. In God’s domain helps comes only to those who have no right to expect it and cannot resist it when it is offered.
    2. Help always comes from the quarter from which one does not and cannot expect it.

    We might reduce these two statements to one:

    In God’s domain help is perpetually a surprise. (1996:180)

    Jesus Seminar

    The commentary in The Five Gospels notes:

    As a metaphorical tale that redraws the map of both the social world and the sacred world, the Seminar regarded this parable as a classic example of the provocative speech of Jesus the parabler.

     

    Samuel Lachs

    Lachs [Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament, 282] notes that some earlier interpreters considered “Samaritan” to be a change introduced by Luke to make his parable more suitable to a Gentile audience. They prefer “Israelite” or even “sinner” (am ha-aretz). More recent parables research (see Crossan and Funk above, as well as Scott below) sees the cognitive dissonance introduced by the appearance of the heroic Samaritan as essential to the point of the parable as told by Jesus.

     

    Gerd Lüdemann

    Lüdemann [Jesus, 332] reflects older German scholarship (Bultmann, Jeremias, et al) who understood this parable to be an Exemplary Story:

    The example story certainly goes back to Jesus and illustrates love of enemy (cf. Matt. 5.44a). Jesus shows how a Samaritan who is hated by the Jews performs a loving service to a Jew whom he really should have hated. The story is so impressive because it is not a Jew who loves his enemy but the Samaritan, regarded as the enemy, who loves a Jew.

    John P. Meier

    In “The Historical Jesus and the Historical Samaritans: What can be Said?” [Biblica 81 (2000) 202-32] Meier opts for the authenticity of this parable:

    Along with many critics, I consider it more likely that, while the Parable of the Good Samaritan shows the redactional style and theology of Luke in its final form and placement, it is not simply a creation of Luke but goes back to his special L tradition. The introductory dialogue between a lawyer and Jesus on the two commandments of love (Luke 10,25-29) seems to be Luke’s recycling of a tradition also found in Mark 12,28-34 || Matt 22,34-40. The exact nature of the source Luke is using (Mark? Q? L?) is debated by scholars. In any case, Luke’s need to refashion an older tradition to make it a suitable introduction to the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the fact that nevertheless the introduction does not perfectly fit what it is supposed to introduce probably indicate that the parable itself is an earlier tradition taken over by Luke and reworked for his larger theological and literary plan. Whether the parable goes back to the historical Jesus is more difficult to say, though Christian piety and sentiment, if not hard-nosed critical arguments, certainly favor the idea.

     

    B. Brandon Scott

    Brandon Scott’s most recent parables study [Re-Imagine the World] devotes a chapter to the Good Samaritan. Scott accepts that Luke has turned an older parable into an example story, and it is to the interpretation of the earlier parable that he devotes most of his discussion (pp. 55-64). While his approach to parable interpretation is very close to that of Crossan or Funk, Scott spends more time exploring some of the features of the parable: for example, the significance of the victim being left “half-dead” (Gk: hemithane):

    If the priest thinks he is dealing with a corpse, he might calculate that he must avoid it, for otherwise he would suffer impurity. According [to] the command in Leviticus, a priest is not allowed to touch a corpse. But in the Mishnah and Talmud there are extended discussions on this verse, making finer and finer graduations all to the point that if the corpse is abandoned, that takes precedence over the Leviticus rule. Taking care of an abandoned corpse takes precedence even over studying the Torah. But then again, all these fine distinctions stem from learned discussions of the rabbis, so a priest, who follows the strict construction of the Torah, might set them aside as just liberal reductions of the Torah’s true meaning. If on the other hand, “half-dead” means that the man is close to the death, then the priest’s duty is clear. He must come to the man’s aid. (p. 59f)

    In the end, Scott offers a similar interpretation of the parable to those given by his Jesus Seminar colleages, Crossan and Funk:

    A hearer has three options.
    “In real life this would never happen. It’s only a story, fiction.”
    Such a person has forfeited the parable’s opportunity of envisioning life anew. Such people remain in the same old world in which they have always dwelt. This is almost always the response of the literal minded, who refuse the option of imagination.
    A second option is to identify with the Samaritan.
    For a hearer who wants to remains in the hero’s role, that is the only alternative. For some few in Jesus’ audience this may have been an option. But such people are already different and do not live by the normal values of the Palestinian world of the first century.
    Finally, a hearer can identify with the man in the ditch.
    If we want to stay in the parable and experience a new world, that is our only available choice. Having begun the parable in expectation of playing the role of the hero, one ends in the role of the victim, being taken care of by one’s mortal and moral enemy. The parable announces that the savior is a Samaritan — the hated one. (p. 62)

    His final comment on the meaning of this parable is as follows:

    Jesus’ parable … point of view is that of the victim, the one in need of help. It proposes a new world in which the wall between us and them no longer exists and even more that one of them can come to the aid of us. (p. 64)

    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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