Alastair's Adversaria

And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all. — Luke 7:17-19

“Oh that all could touch you and be healed!
But have you not made us the tassels of your garment
for a bleeding world to grasp?”

O Lord, make us instruments of Thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let us sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that we may not

So much seek to be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born into eternal life.

– St. Francis of Assisi

Kerby Goff works with Campus Crusade for Christ in Oklahoma and is part of Bridgeway Church in Oklahoma City. He graduated from Texas A&M University with a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering, which he does not use. He blogs at blogkerby.blogspot.com. He thinks church history is cool, and his friends laugh at him (not with him) when he makes Bible jokes. He also loves asian food and all things asian so much so that his patriotism often comes into question. He spends most of his time reading, running, cooking, and hanging out with college students, especially international students.

After watching a film on the life of Dietrich Bonheoffer a few days ago, the question of violence has been tugging insistently at my heart. Naturally, then, I would like to explore the text at the heart of Bonheoffer’s peculiar variety of non-violence which nonetheless led him to be involved in the assassination plot for which he gave his life.

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. — Matthew 5:38-41

Leaving aside the question of whether Jesus’ teachings add up to a categorical prohibition against the use of violence, there are a number of points concerning which disciples of all traditions can come to basic agreement.

Violence is a form of self-righteousness. To demand an eye in return for an eye is to pronounce righteousness for ourselves before men. It is an attempt to do for ourselves what God has promised to do on our behalf.

Violence is a form of misplaced allegiance. When we place our trust in coercive force, be it wielded by the State or our own hands, we betray our allegiance to the One Who wields the sword at His pleasure.

Violence is a form of doubt. By resorting to violence, we take the Lord’s name upon ourselves: Yahweh Yireh. We doubt that God will see to it – that He will deliver us from our dilemma – and so we seek to deliver ourselves.

Violence, manifested in litigiousness, jingoism, or physical aggression, has no place in the life of a disciple of Christ. Let us repent of our self-righteousness and unbelief. In conclusion, allow me to share a favorite poem of mine, the story of Abraham and Isaac retold from the perspective of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Wilfred Owen

Chris Jones is a former member of the blogosphere. His former blog, The Thinkery, is now operated by someone else, and everyone should add it to their reading lists. Chris presently teaches high school Policy Debate, which he finds very fulfilling. Though he is merely a layman, his academic interests include language and theology, especially textual criticism. He would like to get involved with missionary work eventually.

In my work as campus minister at a Christian school, it often falls to me to answer questions from my Southern Baptist co-workers regarding some of my allegiance to the Christian year. A few days ago a farmer working on our campus farm stopped by to ask me about the Ash Wednesday service he saw promoted in the campus newsletter. When someone has no understanding of the Christian year or the place of seasons and celebrations in Christian history, it’s hard to know where to start in explaining the value of things that the person may only understand as bad because they are “Catholic.”

So I’ve developed a bit of a “sell” to explain the Christian year to my Baptist friends. I’m not unrealistic, but I am hopeful that somewhere in what I have to say, I’ll at least stir up some curiosity.

I like to think about it like this:

The Bible encourages us to not be “pressed” into the world’s mold. When I was growing up, I understood that to have to do with sin, but now I understand that all kinds of things encourage or discourage me in following Jesus closely. The value system of the world; its finances; its media and, yes, its calendar.

I live my live by a Calendar that’s a mixture of my American culture, the school where I work and some family traditions. Christians in the first centuries of the church lived in cultures that shaped their thinking using calendars dominated by politics and pagan religious observances. To resist the “mold” of their culture, it only made sense to make the calendar a Christ-centered story.

So the Christian year began, and evolved, not as a way to honor any church, but as a way to honor Christ — all year long. The year follows his life, passion and ministry. The significant times of the Church calendar invite us to come to Bethlehem, find the empty tomb, and on Ash Wednesday, begin the long walk with Jesus to the cross.

Some of the things in that calendar go back to the very earliest centuries of the history of the church. Others came along many centuries later. Not all of the Christian year needs to be understood or appreciated for it to be a way to shape our worship, family life and personal devotion.

Our goal is to be shaped by Christ, and constantly mindful of what he has done for us. In the seasons of the church year, we hear the stories of Jesus from the scripture, and we’re always invited to join the story, meditate on Jesus and deepen our identification with him.

Is this putting one day above another, as some of the Puritans objected? No…it’s putting Christ above everything. When I make the lectionary (another post) the companion of my journey through the Christian year, I feel I’ve literally joined the great crowd of witnesses, moving through life and into eternity led by the great shepherd, Jesus Christ.

The Christian year is a powerful way of filling my life with Christ, and being shaped by his Gospel. It puts me in the company of other believers, and it reminds me of the most important story that can affect my life: the story of Jesus.

Michael Spencer has been the campus minister at the Oneida Baptist Institute in Kentucky, USA, for 15 years, where he preaches, teaches and ministers to hundreds of students from around the world. His blog is www.internetmonk.com.

In an article, ‘The Costly Loss of Lament’ [JSOT (1986) 57-71], Walter Brueggemann address the manner in which lament seems to have dropped out of the ‘functioning canon’, identifying some of the unfortunate results of this.

One loss that results from the absence of lament is the loss of genuine covenant interaction because the second party to the covenant (the petitioner) has become voiceless or has a voice that is permitted to speak only praise and doxology. Where lament is absent, covenant comes into being only as a celebration of joy and well-being. Or in political categories, the greater party is surrounded by subjects who are always ‘yes men and women’ form whom ‘never is heard a discouraging word’. Since such a celebrative, consenting silence does not square with reality, covenant minus lament is finally a practice of denial, cover up, and pretense, which sanctions social control.

Brueggemann goes on to argue that lament allows for healthy forms of personality development that are largely precluded in its absence. He explores the analogy of a mother’s relationship with her child. For her child to develop ego-strength the mother must not take excessive initiative, but must be open to and encourage the initiative of the child and be responsive to it. He goes on to observe:

Where there is lament, the believer is able to take initiative with God and so develop over against God the ego strength that is necessary for responsible faith. But where the capacity to initiate lament is absent, one is left only with praise and doxology. God then is omnipotent, always to be praised. The believer is nothing, and can uncritically praise or accept guilt where life with God does not function properly. The outcome is a ‘False Self’, bad faith which is based in fear and guilt and lived out as resentful or self-deceptive works of righteousness. The absence of lament makes a religion of coercive obedience the only possibility.

I do not suggest that biblical faith be reduced to psychological categories, but I find this parallel suggestive. It suggests that the God who evokes and responds to lament is not omnipotent in any conventional sense or surrounded by docile reactors. Rather, this God is like a mother who dreams with this infant, that the infant may sone day grow into a responsible, mature covenant partner who can enter into serious communion and conversation. In such a serious communion and conversation, there comes genuine obedience, which is not a contrived need to please, but a genuine, yielding commitment.

Where there is no lament through which the believer takes the initiative, God is experienced like an omnipotent mother. What is left for the believer then is a false narcissism which keeps hoping for a centred self, but which lacks the ego strength for a real self to emerge. What is at issue here, as Calvin understood so well, is a true understanding of the human self, but at the same time, a radical discernment of this God who is capable of and willing to be respondent and not only initiator.

This may not be the most helpful way of expressing the point, but the point is important nonetheless. It resonates with my concern to articulate a synergistic doctrine of providence. God wants us as His children to become His co-workers and vicegerents in His creation. For this reason God creates space in which we can seek, question and even challenge his providential dealings with us and the world. God wants us to be active participants in His providential rule, not merely passive sufferers of it. I do not want to suggest for a moment that God is anything less than omnipotent. However, His omnipotence is not an omnipotence held over against us. Rather, God’s omnipotence is a gracious omnipotence that encourages and facilitates our growth into responsible and mature rule in His creation and is not merely acted out upon us.

Brueggemann proceeds to observe that the absence of lament leads to the ‘stifling of the question of theodicy,’ by which he refers to the ‘capacity to raise and legitimate questions of justice in terms of social goods, social access, and social power.’ The lament is not merely a ‘religious gesture’ seeking ‘simple religious succor,’ but seeks to ‘mobilize God in the arena of public life.’ But using the lament form regularly, ‘Israel kept the justice question visible and legitimate.’ Brueggemann claims:

Where the lament is absent, the normal mode of the theodicy question is forfeited. When the lament form is censured, justice questions cannot be asked and eventually become invisible and illegitimate. Instead we learn to settle for questions of ‘meaning’, and we reduce the issues to resolutions of love. But the categories of meaning and love do not touch the public systemic questions about which biblical faith is relentlessly concerned. A community of faith which negates lament soon concludes that the hard issues of justice are improper questions to pose at the throne, because the throne seems to be only a place of praise. I believe it thus follows that if justice questions are improper questions at the throne (which is a conclusion drawn through liturgic use), they soon appear to be improper questions in public places, in schools, in hospitals, with the government, and eventually even in the courts. Justice questions disappear into civility and docility. The order of the day comes to seem absolute, beyond question, and we are left with only grim obedience and eventually despair. The point of access for serious change has been forfeited when the propriety of this speech form is denied.

Preserving lament in the Church (and other neglected forms, like the imprecatory psalm) is of great importance if we are to have the maturity to act as God’s representatives in the world. The loss of lament has often been accompanied by a philosophical and theological process of truce-making with the presence of evil in the world. Evil is there simply to be suffered and lived with; the idea of evil and injustice as enemies to be attacked and to challenge God about is lost. The result is the legitimization of the status quo.

Lament is a way of approaching theodicy that has largely been abandoned for philosophical explanations that seek to dissolve a theoretical perplexity and leave our existential crises unaddressed. The ‘resolution’ that is offered is an abstract theological excuse, rather than an answer that takes the form of divine action in history. We tend to read back our questions of theodicy into the biblical text. However, if we follow our definition of the term, the theodicy offered by the book of Job, for instance, is quite limited and unsatisfactory. The ‘theodicy’ that seems to be given is that of divine action of deliverance and vindication in history, rather than theoretical explanation. The questions of Job are not silenced by compelling theological answers (such answers are noticeably absent), so much as by the reality of YHWH’s personal presence and action in his plight.

And as Jesus returned, the multitude welcomed Him, for they had all been waiting for Him. And behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was an official of the synagogue; and he fell at Jesus’ feet, and began to entreat Him to come to his house; for he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, and she was dying. But as He went, the multitudes were pressing against Him. And a woman who had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and could not be healed by anyone, came up behind Him, and touched the fringe of His cloak; and immediately her hemorrhage stopped. And Jesus said, “Who is the one who touched Me?” And while they were all denying it, Peter said, “Master, the multitudes are crowding and pressing upon You.” But Jesus said, “Someone did touch Me, for I was aware that power had gone out of Me.” And when the woman saw that she had not escaped notice, she came trembling and fell down before Him, and declared in the presence of all the people the reason why she had touched Him, and how she had been immediately healed. And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” — Luke 8:40-48

It’s hard to imagine the fear that must have clawed at her. What if she was wrong about him, and… he saw her do what she hoped to do. Surely he would be furious.

She had been singled out, shamed and embarrassed by others for many years. That was hardly new, but the familiarity did nothing to lessen the pain of exclusion and repulsion; and the thought of his finger angrily pointing her out — with so many people watching — was terrifying to her. The anxiety must have added its own nausea to the discomfort that had been with her for twelve years. But her desire to be without shame and whole was greater than her fears about the eyes and thoughts of her neighbors and friends. She covered her head, shut the door behind her and made her way towards the crowds.

She was right to be concerned. Since the time of Moses, Israel’s God had protected his people from his wrath by erecting a series of ceremonial walls and fences. The law graciously made known what was and was not allowed into his presence. Only the clean, perfect and pure could be admitted. The others….well, they had best keep a distance.

Impurity was everywhere, and its influence and strength seemed unassailable. How could it be any other way? Toss a white linen into a puddle of mud and which wins out: dirtiness or cleanliness? Lay a rotting carcass on a kitchen table and which extends it foothold in the world: purity or corruption? The answer is obvious- the linen becomes soiled and the tabletop nasty.

It’s a rule of creation as radical as gravity, itself. And God’s law took this into account: Touch an unclean thing, and you become unclean. Handle impurity, and you became impure. Simple. Clear. Common sense, really.

The woman in the story was unclean. The constant vaginal bleeding made her so.
Again, common sense, but lest there was any doubt — God had said as much.

But she hoped, none the less. She found him surrounded by those who belonged- those whose touch would go unnoticed by the priests and guardians. She reached out an unclean hand and touched his garment. Impurity soiling purity, and… he stopped.

Something counterintuitive and unimaginable, like fish multiplying endlessly or waves parting at the touch of priest’s feet, had taken place: The linen had touched the mud and the mud had been transformed. The putrid flesh that had been laid on the clean table had itself become an extravagant feast.

Our God is not a god of common sense. He recreates a world of Carnival — a world turned on its head. In his kingdom the last is first, weakness conquers strength and impurity is overrun by purity and wholeness.

Perhaps many saw only a sick woman, made well. But for those with eyes to see, all of creation had shifted and run backwards. Quietly, almost passively our Lord had tipped his hand and shown what he and his Father were up to.

How the kingdom of hell and death must have staggered and backed away. I can imagine demonic chests and bellies in the crowd being sucked in to avoid contact with this man and now… this woman; for who knew how far this influence ran.

Purity had become the contagion.

Pain, guilt and shame were no longer reasons to hide from God. He swallowed up each for this precious woman and gave her his own life.

His Kingdom still runs wildly backwards, but he must be sought. He must be touched. He has told us where he can be found- with his people, in his word and sacraments. He’s waiting to turn and smile at our fearful effort. Life, inclusion and wholeness are still offered there, waiting to pass from holy to filthy hand.

Phil James is the father of six and husband to Sandi. A repenting TR, he currently worships at Anglican Church of the Redeemer in Chattanooga, Tennessee (www.acotr.com). He enjoys Feta cheese, reading, winemaking, and blogging at Dappled Thoughts (www.dappledthoughts.blogspot.com). Currently, he’s also on a Terrence Fischer movie kick. He misses Theologia’s Forums and Jonny Quest reruns on the Boomerang Channel.

Prayer for his family (five daughters!) and for wisdom as he tries to figure out what the gospel has to say to business (especially employee/employer relationships) is greatly coveted.