Modine in Manila

One Year Later

2009-06-16T08:07:00.004+08:00

I thought it appropriate to use my first real blog post in forever to reflect on my achieving one year in Manila. Today, actually, is day #365 of my life in the Philippines. I arrived just after 9:00 in the morning June 17, 2008. It's been a fun year, and many more exciting things are to come. Turns out that I don't have anything much more profound to say than that.

Reading List: May 2009

2009-06-01T14:25:00.004+08:00

I feel a little bad that my posting has dried up. Maybe I can rectify that in the near future, but most of my writing juices these days are sapped with the preparation of the two books to be released later this year. Anyway, here's what I read in May:

James L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction
James L. Kugel, The Great Poems of the Bible: A Reader's Companion with New Translations
Thomas W. Overholt, Channels of Prophecy: The Social Dynamics of Prophetic Activity
Brett W. Hawkins, Nashville Metro: The Politics of City-County Consolidation
A. J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
Harvey H. Guthrie, Israel’s Sacred Songs: A Study of Dominant Themes
George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation
Harald Lindström, Wesley and Sanctification (54 of 218 pages)

Reading List--April 2009

2009-05-07T08:45:00.004+08:00

Most likely because the semester is over, I read a lot in April. Even with preparing for a summer class and editing two different book projects I still read the highest number of pages this year.

George Buttrick, So We Believe, So We Pray (145 of 226 pages)
Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur (trans. Keith Baines)
Isaac Asimov, A Choice of Catastrophes: The Disasters That Threaten Our World
Sally Pont, Fields of Honor: The Golden Age of College Football and the Men Who Created It
Carol Meyers, Households and Holiness: The Religious Culture of Israelite Women
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
James Carroll, Toward a New Catholic Church: The Promise of Reform
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

The Second Sunday of Easter: Seen and Unseen

2009-04-19T06:45:00.007+08:00

Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31

The "Old Testament" lesson (see previous cliched complaints of the absence of OT readings in the Easter season) and the Psalm have in the main to do with the unity of believers. As one might expect, this was something of a big deal especially in the early going, when Israel--and, later, the Church--was fighting to keep itself intact against the various intrusions of the wider society. And I'm going to refuse to get into the pseudo-communistic implications of Acts 4. The small "c" should be taken note of. It may be that this little passage in Acts 4 is a description of ideality, not reality, since immediately following upon it is one of those "scare into compliance" stories, with Ananias and Sapphira holding back some of the money from their property sale and saying that they brought everything. Nevertheless, the idea of harmony among the believing community is a good thing, even if stories like Acts 5 with its penalties for noncompliance are not especially helpful. As for the Psalm, it stays more on the ideal level without threats of violence against those who are not in the fold, or not completely in the fold.

The two passages from John--setting aside the fact that they're not from the same author, and probably not from the Apostle John--strike a different note from the unity of the believers, and a slightly different note from one another. Actually, one of the arguments in favor of common authorship for the Gospel and Epistles of John is their common concern for having seen and bearing witness to what has been seen. This emphasis comes out in the two passages today. In the Gospel text, "Doubting Thomas" is upbraided for only confessing faith in Christ when he sees the wounds in his hands. This lends us to the interpretation that we shouldn't ever doubt what is told us by God's authorized representatives, a kind of clerical triumphalism. It also ignores the fact that, earlier in the passage, the other disciples do not rejoice until AFTER they have seen the nail prints and the spear wound. It is rather easy, furthermore, to extract a general principle from Jesus' last statement, "Blessed are those who have not yet seen, and yet have come to believe." For that matter, this makes us better not only than "Doubting Thomas," but also of the rest of the disciples, for they didn't rejoice until after they had seen either. Something to think about.

But, then again, is it really the point that we be "better" than the disciples, who only rejoiced when they saw? Paul later called himself an eyewitness of the resurrection, although he himself and no one else actually saw it, except perhaps for the Roman soldiers, who weren't going to say anything for fear of having their heads lopped off anyway. So it was a big deal for the early Christians to trust the testimony of those who had seen. For that matter, both the Gospel and the First Epistle of John commend their readers to the testimony of "John" in whose name they are written. We know that his testimony is true, asserts the Gospel. We speak to you of the things we have seen, says the Epistle. There is certainly something to that.

But Jesus says in the Gospel text that those who have not seen are blessed when they come to believe. The Gospel of John has lots of healings of blind people, and for that matter begins its presentation talking about hoe the Logos was the light of the world, and how John (the Baptist, not the Apostle) came to bear witness to the light. In speaking this way, John (the Apostle, not the Baptist) bears his own testimony to that which he has seen and heard, looked at and touched with his hands, concerning the word of life. So, then, even though they probably do not go back to the same author and even though neither one probably go back to the Apostle John, nevertheless they are both concerned with vision and witness and testimony. Because "John" has seen, his testimony is true. Because we have not seen, our testimony is true. Therefore, whether seeing or unseeing, the key is bearing witness, living in unity, keeping from sin, and waiting for the Day when all things shall be seen. Amen.

Easter Sunday: Become What You Already Are

2009-04-14T10:19:00.008+08:00

I am posting this a couple of days late, for a few reasons. The main reason is that the Internet was down at my apartment Saturday and Sunday. The other reason was that I was a little upset at what went on in the Easter service I attended, for reasons that I will not reveal. But, in any event:

Acts 10:34-43 OR Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; I Corinthians 15:1-11 OR Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18; Mark 16:1-8

Of course, I am going to select the Old Testament reading. During the Easter season, the OT gets short changed a little bit by the lectionary. But that's another matter. A few years ago I was taking a course in the theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, from one of the most influential teachers I've ever had, Craig Keen. The light finally came on for me when I suggested in class that Pannenberg's view was that, in the Resurrection, Jesus became, in the eyes of the disciples, what he had always been in the eyes of God. I think about that line, oddly enough, every time I see the old Disney movie The Lion King. This movie is based rather loosely on Hamlet, without, of course, most of the killing and the adultery and stuff, which wouldn't make a lot of sense for the kiddos.

In the Crucifixion, Jesus won the victory over sin's ultimate weapon. In the Resurrection, Jesus won the victory over death's ultimate weapon. The lectionary passages for Easter highlight that a new day has come. In the case of the identity of Jesus, he became in the eyes of his disciples what he already was. And in the extension of the offer of salvation to all of the world, the intention of God became in our eyes what it had always been. The Gospel lesson from John makes the same point. Thomas was not there when the disciples first saw Jesus, and he doubted, which has given him the unfortunate name "Doubting Thomas." Jesus chides Thomas for believing once he has finally seen, and then gives a promise that those who have not seen and yet have come to believe are blessed. That means us. And that means all who will hear the message because of us. Easter is a triumphant shout of victory, but it is also a battle cry. That Jesus was resurrected doesn't necessarily mean that we are blessed over against all the other great religions of the world, but it does mean that something new has happened. And when we see it, we recognize that this is the way it was supposed to be all along. Amen.

Holy Saturday: Catharsis

2009-04-11T06:16:00.003+08:00

Job 14:1-14 OR Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24; Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16; 1 Peter 4:1-8; Matthew 27:57-66 OR John 19:38-42

Different traditions of Christianity emphasize different days of Holy Weekend. The Roman Catholic pilgrims I watched outside the front gate of the seminary--thousands of them--emphasize the penitential aspects of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Some Protestants emphasize the glorious aspects of Easter Sunday, almost to downplay or ignore the very real suffering of Jesus on Good Friday. I try to hold the two of them together in my mind, but I am not always successful. In some ways the day of Holy Saturday is the most important of the two, because in it the turn is made from sorrow to joy. Many churches, in fact, have a midnight worship service in order to emphasize this turn.

The turn from sorrow to joy, especially coming from the penitential season of Lent into the celebratory season of Easter, is a great catharitic experience. There is somewhat of an emotional release, although it is not merely an emotional release. This is the grand old story of the faith. And we are telling it and acting it over again. That is all that needs to be said. That is all that can be said. Amen.

Good Friday: Not with a Whimper, but with a Bang

2009-04-10T21:23:00.003+08:00

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-26 OR Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

I'm writing this at the end of Good Friday, after the service I attended to hear, again, the Seven Last Words and reflections on them. I did not understand much of the latter, as the service was in Tagalog and my skills in that language are lacking. I did, however, resonate with the Seventh Last Word, "Tapos na!" "It is finished." This is a triumphant shout, not a cry of defeat.

I do not remember who wrote the lines, but I am always struck by

This is how the world ends,
this is how the world ends,
this is how the world ends,
not with a bang, but with a whimper.

But, instead, the world of Jesus the human, God become human and living among us in the world (he came to his own, but the world received him not) ended with a bang and not with a whimper. The Lamb left the world, crucified by the Romans at the instigation of the Jews, but as a Lion. And thus ended and began the greatest story the world has ever known. There is neither more nor less that needs to be said about that. Tapos na! was a cry of victory, that what Jesus came to do was accomplished.

One of my favorite "Jesus films" is The Last Temptation of Christ, a movie which got the evangelical community in the USA up in arms when it was released, in part for its depiction of Jesus imagining--as it turns out, with the help of Satan--living a life as a man, including being married first to Mary Magadalene and then to Mary and Martha of Bethany, begetting several children by the latter. With the exception of this and one or two other years, I have watched this movie either on Good Friday or Silent Saturday every year. At the end of the film and the novel, Jesus, having been returned to the Cross, shouts "It is accomplished!" What is meant by this line in Nikos Kazantzakis' novel and Martin Scorsese's film is that, in the words of George Orwell, Jesus "had won the victory over himself." Jesus had finally overcome the doubts that beset him throughout his career as "Not just a man, but the Son of Man, and more than that, the Son of God, and more than that, God."

The novel and the film explore in depth the human side of Jesus, which too often we miss in our proclamation. Unfortunately, some preaching about Jesus tends to be functionally Docetic. All of the Christological heresies agreed with orthodoxy that Jesus was God, but their disagreements and, ultimately, in the eyes of the Church, errors were constituted by various ways of denying that Jesus actually became human. So, for Kazantzakis, Tapos na! meant that Jesus became what he always was. This is precisely, I think, what we should be confessing about Jesus. On the one hand, Jesus' resurrection made him become, in the eyes of his disciples, what he always had been. But, on the other hand, in accepting his mission, and refusing the last temptation--which was to come down from the Cross, live and die as a man--he became in his own eyes what he had always been. And, in so doing, he also said, "It is finished!" to the old way of human life, living in bondage to the law of sin and death. By his death on the Cross, Jesus overcame sin's ultimate weapon. By his resurrection, Jesus overcame death's ultimate weapon. Tapos na! Amen.

Maundy Thursday: The Funded Mandate

2009-04-10T05:49:00.004+08:00

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10) 11-14; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17; 31b-35

I'm actually writing this entry on Good Friday, because I spent all day yesterday escorting the Work and Witness team on campus on a sightseeing trip. We spent time going up to a beautiful waterfall, enjoying the richness of creation with a view toward praising the creator. Two of us, one of the team members and I, took the additional step of being pulled under the falls on a bamboo raft. This got us exceedingly wet, but we got to enjoy an extra view of various caves and wonderful rock formations behind the falls. So, anyway, that's where I spent Maundy Thursday, and then I ate a Passover meal, of sorts, with my faculty colleague who is the main sponsor of this work team and the team members. I thought I simply couldn't leave out Maundy Thursday as I did with one of the Sundays of Lent. I probably should have written an entry like this for each of the days of Holy Week. I didn't, though, because of responsibilties related to the wrapping up of the semester. Enough of the excuses.

Maundy Thursday has been a significant day for me in the Christian calendar since I was first introduced to some special practices involved with it when I was a teenager. The church we attended at that time practiced foot-washing on Maundy Thursday, an idea which instantly turned me offand in which I consequently never participated. This is in part related to my own squeamishness, but also because the theological significance of the rite was not fully explained to us. This was a failure of the catechetical operation of that particular church, though I am not setting out in this piece to be critical of former churches.

The association of Maundy Thursday with the institution of the Eucharist was communicated to me in college. Then, in seminary, Holy Week took on an especially significant flavor, as Maundy Thursday services--in which I often publicly read Scripture during Eucharist--were joined with the Service of Darkness on Good Friday. I intend to post a Good Friday meditation later today, but I am also attending a service at Antipolo First Church of the Nazarene at 3:00 PM, which I think is perhaps the most appropriate time to have a Good Friday service, for it is the "ninth hour" of the day when our Lord is said to have died.

I once preached a Maundy Thursday sermon under the title "Funded Mandate." At the time, the phrase "unfunded mandate" was all the rage in the American political scene, describing the complaints of state and local leadership that the federal government was mandating certain things (really savage things, by the way, like making facilities accessible to the physically challenged) without providing funds necessary to come into compliance. The name "Maundy Thursday" comes from the Latin Vulgate translation of John 13:34--I give you a mandatum novatum, a new commandment, that you love one another.

That this commandment comes in the midst of Jesus washing the disciples' feet is what was not properly communicated to me when I was a kid. This is the supremely funded mandate, for throughout the Gospel of John Jesus is shown to be doing for the disciples everything that God has done for him--sending them into the world, providing comfort and direction, protecting them from evil. As, therefore, Christ has loved us, so we are to love one another, as says the second part of John 13:34. We are not merely commanded to come into compliance with a new directive from the leadership (a really savage thing, by the way, like loving one another) and left to find our own resources to do it, but instead we are but following the example of Christ. And he left us yet a further example by what happened to him the day after washing his disciples' feet. Though we might not be called to do exactly that in following the further example, nevertheless we are called to follow the example of Christ in expending our lives for the redemption of the world. This is a mandate which we must follow. But there is funding available. Amen.

Palm Sunday: Fully in the Light Again, We See the Cross

2009-04-05T08:16:00.003+08:00

Isaiah 40:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:1-15:47 OR Mark 15:(1-39)40-47

It is something of a cliche' to highlight the contrast between the chorus' lines "Hosanna! King of the Jews!" on Palm Sunday and "Crucify him!" on Good Friday. So I will not do that. But I do remember once attending Eucharist at an Episcopal Church some years ago on Palm Sunday. After receiving the Sacrament--or maybe it was before; my memory is unclear--someone pressed into our hands a blunted nail. This was to indicate something of the role each one of us had to play in the crucifixion of Jesus. While, at the time, it wasn't a very healthy thing for me to hear, as I was going through a rather dark spiritual time, it does indicate something interesting. In a way, even though none of us drove the nails, we all had a part in the death of Jesus, because it was for our sin that he died.

The Mel Gibson movie The Passion of the Christ, supposedly, showed Gibson's own hand driving the nail into Jesus' wrist. I suppose it would have spoiled the illusion to have left Gibson's wristwatch in the shot, since of course first century CE Roman soldiers didn't know anything of Timex or Rolex or whatever it is Gibson owns and wears. But, at the same time, it would have made a rather profound theological statement, even as did the blunted nail pressed into my hand wherever it was and whenever it was.

I have a dim recollection of an exchange in another film, The Shawshank Redemption. Andy DuFresne is talking to Red Ellis (Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman) and he says, "I killed my wife, Red. I didn't pull the trigger, but I pushed her away" into the arms of the lover with whom she was murdered. Red tries to console Andy: "That doesn't make you a murderer. Bad husband, maybe." But there is a hint of unreality to Red's words. In the same way, I didn't drive the nails into the wrists of Jesus, but it was for me that this was done. And so, surrounded by the great cloud of witness, I cast aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely, and run the race that is marked out for me, keeping my eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of my faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame.

Hebrews got it right. The light has fully dawned. We have come out of the dark wood of Lent, thinking that the difficult part of our journey is over. But, just around that bend up there... Amen.

Reading List--March 2009

2009-04-03T09:48:00.005+08:00

Philip R. Davies and John Rogerson, The Old Testament World (2nd. ed.; 116 of 245 pages)
Nancy Eiesland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability
Samuel Noah Kramer, History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History
George Buttrick, So We Believe, So We Pray (81 of 226 pages)

AP Story Mentions APNTS

2009-04-01T06:15:00.008+08:00

March 31, 6:15 PM EDT

Giraffe to Receive Master of Divinity

By ANN DAYAMO
AP Education Writer

Taytay, Rizal, Philippines (AP)--Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary (APNTS), located in the suburbs of Manila, has always prided itself on providing quality graduate theological education to students from many different cultures. This year is no exception. In commencement services to be held on the Seminary's campus Saturday, April 4, a giraffe will march in the graduation ceremony, receiving his Master of Divinity degree along with seven human counterparts from three different countries.

The Rev. Mr. Steven Fulsian is the first non-human to take courses in the twenty-five year history of APNTS. Mr. Fulsian says, "It was hard for me to adjust to the low ceilings, but through the help of God I have been able to finish my degree in only four years." Before coming to the Seminary, Mr. Fulsian, an ordained minister in the Saharan Holiness Church, had established and maintained a ministry geared toward the physical and spiritual needs of giraffes in his native Kenya. "I hope," he continues, "that my success will encourage other non-humans to pursue theological education."

Mr. Fulsian's academic pursuits were not without their challenges, however. According to Dr. Floyd Cunningham, president of APNTS, "Our initial fear was not Steven's height, but his ability to communicate in English." Due to the existence of hundreds of languages and dialects throughout the Asia-Pacific region APNTS serves, all instruction at the Seminary is conducted in English. Incoming students whose native language is not English are required to pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Master of Divinity students like Mr. Fulsian must pass with a minimum TOEFL score of 500, while candidates for some other degrees must achieve at least 550. Though Mr. Fulsian had learned a good deal of English on an informal basis, listening to missionaries teaching English to children in Kenya, he had certain physiological difficulties which made speaking a bit of a chore. In addition, the English used in academic theology is more sophisticated than the typical conversational English to which Mr. Fulsian had previously been exposed. Upon his arrival at the APNTS campus in July 2005, Mr. Fulsian's initial TOEFL score was 460, insufficient to begin taking graduate classes. However, students scoring between 450 and 499 are allowed provisional acceptance and the privilege of taking non-credit English courses. Mr. Fulsian spent his first year of study in such courses, under the tutelage of Professor Beverly Gruver. Mrs. Gruver says, "Steven fervently applied himself to the study of English, and achieved one of the highest levels of improvement in TOEFL scores ever seen at APNTS." When Mr. Fulsian took the TOEFL again the next July, his score was 575, sufficient to enroll in any degree program offered by the Seminary.

Mr. Fulsian's physical stature also contributed to his unique experience. The APNTS campus is built on two adjoining, hilly plots of land in the Manila suburb of Taytay. Human students often complain of the arduous climb, especially of the 40 steps up to the main classroom building, known as Owens Hall, after the founding president of the Seminary. The Seminary conceded to Mr. Fulsian's needs by providing secure platforms at strategic points along the hill where he could stand and be able to stick his head through open windows to participate in class. In addition, computer operators and reading assistants were employed throughout Mr. Fulsian's stay at the Seminary to compensate for his lack of fingers. Mr. Fulsian praised the Seminary's efforts to accomodate his imposing physical presence. "APNTS really opened their doors," he says. Then, correcting himself, he continues, "I mean, their windows to me, and I am forever in their debt." Mr. Fulsian's height will also necessitate a change in the typical graduation exercises. Normally students wear academic gowns and walk across the stage one at a time to receive a hood from faculty members, decorated with the colors of the degree and the Seminary. In Mr. Fulsian's case, the gown and the stage march are excluded, but he will be given a hood. After the ceremony, when he stretches to his full height, the hood will settle across his shoulders as it is designed to do.

Master of Divinity graduates at APNTS are required to complete 90 semester hours, not including any remedial English study that may be needed. The Seminary also offers the degrees of Master of Arts in Religious Education, Master of Arts in Christian Communication, and Master of Science in Theology. APNTS is a graduate school in the Wesleyan tradition, preparing men and women--and, now, giraffes--for Christlike leadership and excellence in ministries.

Great line

2009-03-29T21:38:00.001+08:00

Reading student papers, I came up with a great line on the fly. It was in response to a bright student's suggestion that the student was not keen enough to grasp certain important issues:

"False humility winds up, in the end, being more false than humble."

The Fifth Sunday in Lent: Is That Light up ahead?

2009-03-29T06:05:00.003+08:00

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12 OR Psalm 119:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

I returned to my dark wood/light fading metaphor of Lent before checking out the lectionary passages for today. I have discovered the title couldn't be more apt. For the lectionary texts today (choosing either Psalm option) seem to signal a shift from darkness to light, from the coldness of night to the warmth of a dawning new day. Jeremiah's "new covenant" passage is justifiably famous in Christian circles, and even though I would quibble with a too-hasty Christologizing of this promise, reading it in the light of Christ is not prima facie abusive of the significance of the text. What gets us into problems is, once we see that a certain text may point forward to Christ, or that Christ may fill full the significance of a given text (and the emphasis is very important), then we assume that Christ is what the authors/editors/compilers of the text in question had in mind first, middle, and last.

Such an assertion is impossible, and indeed is the ultimate root not only of ignorance of the Old Testament but perhaps some anti-Semitic sentiment as well. (NOTE: I do not suggest that ALL anti-Semitism comes from hasty Christologizing of the Old Testament; such a suggestion would suffer from several logical fallacies: ad hominem, post hoc ergo propter hoc, equivocation, and probably many others). There is simply NO WAY that Isaiah of Jerusalem had Jesus in the manger in mind when he gave the promise to King Ahaz that is now enshrined in Isaiah 7:14 and Christmas cantatas from here to eternity. But, that does not mean that Matthew was mistaken or untoward in suggesting that Jesus' coming was like the baby promised so long ago: he will be called Immanuel, for he will save his people from their sins.

In one of my classes this week (the last week of the semester), I believe Old Testament Theology, we were discussing this very point, or at least a similar one. It is one of my maxims that the NT can say it fulfilled the OT, but that in no way exhausts the signficance of the OT. This is a very important point, but it should also not imprison us the other way either. There is nothing to say that there could not be more events to which the prophecies of the OT could be reasonably applied (what the NT means by "fulfillment"). Thus, in the present economic crisis, the word of Jeremiah could be that a new day is coming, in which Yahweh will enter into a new covenant with his people, even though they broke the old one through casual misuse of their financial futures to have the latest gadget or maintain their profit margin on the backs of the poor. This is a word that can be spoken to us. And it is one to which we should listen.

The significance of Psalm 51 and its penitential wailing for the season of Lent should be easy to see, so I'll pass it by without comment. Psalm 119, however, seems to strike a similar chord to Jeremiah 31. In inquiring after how young people can keep their ways pure, this Psalm in some way hits on the theme that the young people do, indeed, have an opportunity to live better than their parents. In the old style capitalist mindset, "young people living better than their parents" meant that they were more wealthy, more secure, more gadgets, more cars, bigger houses, more this, bigger that, more the other thing. And we sacrificed our futures to get it, so now those chickens have come home to roost. The vision of Psalm 119, however, seems to be different--young people living better than their parents is not getting more and keeping more and having more and wanting more--but keeping fast to the law of God, which throughout the OT always has a concern for building up treasure where moth and rust do not destroy, to borrow a NT phrase.

The Hebrews and John passages speak to a similar theme. The sermon of Hebrews suggests that Jesus has brought about a new way of living, by being designated as high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. I haven't any idea what this is supposed to mean, other than to dive into the etymology of Melchizedek and say it means "the king of righteousness." And the lyrical statements of Jesus in John 12, namely that the king of righteousness must die in order to produce life in his disciples is very poignant in this time of economic struggle. Something in our world is dying, or was already dead but we didn't notice the smell of the rotting corpse until just a few months ago. And although the death of Jesus was ultimately a happy thing in that it brought about the victory over sin and death, it was still a very painful thing for him and for those who followed him and witnessed it. And ran away. Would that we not run away in the sight of the death of the old way of doing things in our world, but instead construct a brighter future, entering into a new covenant with God. Amen.

The Fourth Sunday in Lent: Once Bitten, Twice Shy

2009-03-22T06:50:00.003+08:00

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

This is yet another of those times when the connection between the various lectionary texts is rather easy to make. The Numbers and John passages make reference to the same event: Yahweh sending poisonous snakes to attack rebellious Israelites, then Moses setting up an image of a snake that people would just look toward and be healed. This is now enshrined in the hymn, "Look and Live:

"Look and live, my brother live!
Look to Jesus now and live!
'Tis recorded in his word, hallelujah!
It is only that you look and live!

Later on, this snake image that Moses is to have set up in the wilderness--and never mind the Second Commandment implications--was removed as part of King Hezekiah's reform efforts. But Jesus uses the image--or John's Jesus uses the image, or John suggests that Jesus might have used the image, or the Johannine community had the theological framework in which Jesus might or might not have used such an image (I'm gonna bang my head against the wall)--as an analogy to what is going to happen to himself soon enough. He is the ultimate thing to be lifted up at God's command for the salvation of humanity.

The Psalms and Ephesians texts also seem to move in the same circles. This is not at all to suggest--as if anyone would think that I would suggest such a thing--that whoever wrote the Ephesians passage had the Psalm text in mind, but it is interesting when things written from a vastly different perspective and several thousands of years apart hit on the same theme independently. Both talk about having moved out of a previous sinful existence and having gone on to a new way. Even though we were "rich" in trespasses, God was richer in mercy and poured out that mercy upon us.

You know what? I don't think there's anything more to be said about that. Amen.

A Paper of Brilliance

2009-03-21T06:37:00.004+08:00

Last night I read a really great student paper. Like usual, it needs a fair amount of tweaking to make it spectacular, but it employed a creative strategy that flooded light into the drudgery of grading.

First, a note on "drudgery of grading:" I would much rather check the fourteen zillion papers I have in the file folder over here to my left and in various folders on the harddrive than be withering to death in a bank window, but that doesn't mean that grading is not often boring work.

Second, I will not reveal any details of the paper: the author, the course, the creative strategy that got me so happy. The student will know the results soon enough, and it is up to the student (even avoiding gendered pronouns here) if the student wants to do anything further with the paper. I offered the student assistance in shaping the paper up for publication, but I am leaving the decision up to the student as to what the student wants to do with it.

Reading this paper energized me for the reading of the rest of the slush pile. And for that I am thankful.

The Third Sunday in Lent: Halfway through a Dark Wood

2009-03-15T04:06:00.005+08:00

I didn't post a Christian year reflection last week, principally because I spent the Second Sunday in Lent and the Monday following in airplanes and airports making my way back from Nashville to Manila. Along the way I lost about 12 hours in an instant as my plane to Tokyo crossed the International Date Line. I suppose this was fair since I had been given the opportunity to live February 28 twice. But I digress.

Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

The Sundays in Lent "don't count." That is, the 40 days of Lent are meant as a kind of sorrowful preparation for the deep anguish of Holy Week and the amazing triumph of Easter. But Sunday is the weekly celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. This weekly remembrance, weekly reliving (what the earliest Christians called anamnesis) of God's ultimate victory over sin's ultimate weapon, trumps everything else that might go on on a particular day. So when the day of a Saint or some other feast happens to fall on a Sunday, it is usually transferred to the following Monday in order to compensate. In a sense, then, all of Lent's somberness is transferred to the weekdays, in order to compensate for the fact that we cannot fast while the bridegroom is with us (Mk 2:19); and when is the bridegroom with us if not when the community of faith gathers together to celebrate the Resurrection?

All of that was said to say this: we are almost halfway through the dark wood of Lent. Yesterday, Saturday, was the 16th day of Lent. We will actually pass the halfway point next Thursday, the 20th day. But as we look forward throughout this entire season to the ultimate victory over the ultimate problem humans and the world face, we can also look forward to the halfway mark, because it will have been in our grasp and gone back out of it by the time we get to the next day that doesn't count for Lent because it counts for so much more. The following is the text of a sermon I once had prepared to preach at a Lenten service. As I recall, something got in the way and i was unable to deliver it, but the sentiment is still powerful. NOTE: The sermon makes reference to Isaiah 49:8-15, which is the Old Testament lesson for the Wednesday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent in Year C.

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, the party going off to confront the Dragon has eventually to go through a dark forest called Mirkwood. A guide tells them that

“Your way through Mirkwood is dark, dangerous, and difficult.” By and by, they come to the edge of the forest, only then to discover that the wizard Gandalf is not to accompany them through the dark wood.

They despair at this news, but Gandalf says, “We may meet again before it is all over, and then of course we may not. That depends on your luck and on your courage and sense.” After a few minutes more of conversation, Gandalf rides away, and the party hears his voice from afar: “Good-bye! Be good, take care of yourselves—and DON’T LEAVE THE PATH!”

The unlikely hero, Bilbo Baggins, wanted to know if there was some other way to get where they were going without having to go through the dark wood. He is told, no, this is not possible, because they would have to go many, many miles out of the way, and even then they would not have a journey free from peril. And so they proceed together into the dark wood, on to the adventures and the dangers that await them.

We’ve been going through a dark wood, after a fashion, for just under three weeks now. It is a dark, dangerous and difficult time. Yesterday was the sixteenth day in Lent, not counting Sundays, so we’re short of halfway through the dark wood. Things are about to turn in our favor, but they haven't quite yet. Sometimes I feel like Bilbo Baggins, wondering if there is any way to get to the goal of our journey without having to go through the dark wood of Lent. But there really isn’t another way, and in any case it’s not a very safe road. The world we live in is not a very safe one, not a very happy one, and in the end we all will face the same fate. And we all must stay on the path. For if we get off the path, then we will be lost.

This Old Testament Lesson is the Word of the Lord for people who are halfway through a dark wood. The Second Isaiah, as it is called, is written to a group of people who are seeing things about to turn in their favor, but they haven’t quite yet. The Babylonian Empire was in decline, and the people from whom the Empire had taken their land could not have been happier. The prophet, seeing the events unfolding on the stage of world politics, testified that the God of Judah was in control of all world history, so that great nations and kingdoms would rise and fall at God’s command. Even if the nations and kingdoms thought that it was by their own might that they had the success they enjoyed, the prophet has a much different view. In this way, the people of God could rejoice in God’s faithfulness and could resist the power of the colonizers. At the beginning of the Exile, they were understandably sad, they were despairing, because their sinfulness had brought them to the edge of a dark wood, and they felt that God had abandoned them. It was a dark, dangerous and difficult time. Really, God hadn’t abandoned them, but instead forced them to go through this experience because he wanted to reestablish a relationship with them. This relationship could not be reestablished until they had gone through the dark wood of having their lives uprooted and their inheritance taken away. When they no longer could depend on the promises of old, when they had to rely on their luck and their courage, they had gotten to the point where they could journey back toward wholeness. While they might have wished that things could have been restored, and they could have gotten on in their journey as the people of God without having to go through the dark wood of Exile, really there was no other way. They had to stay on the path.

The Persian Empire, maneuvering to take control of the ancient near East at the time Second Isaiah was written, you see, had a much different way of dealing with captive and subjugated peoples than did their predecessors. The Babylonians moved their subjects away from their homelands in order to sever the ties between people and land, so as to keep rebellion down to a minimum—because, they thought, people will always fight harder to defend their own turf. The Persians, on the other hand, sought to create loyalty by moving subjugated peoples back to their homelands, and Judah (now called Yehud, but that’s another matter) was no exception. The prophet and the people to whom he preached expected this to happen not too far into the future, but it hadn’t happened yet. They were halfway through the dark wood, but only halfway. It was a dark, dangerous and difficult time. If they only stayed on the path, they would come through the Exile, be allowed to return to their land, and once again enjoy the benefits of a relationship with God.

And so we, too, are called to go through the dark wood, the dark wood of Lent. We know the end of the story. We know that Bilbo Baggins is ultimately successful in defeating the Dragon, we know that the people of Yehud did come back to their land, we know that Easter is just a few short weeks away. But we are still only halfway through the dark wood.

We might wish there were another way to get through to the goal of our journey, triumphant Easter Sunday and the death of death. But there is no other way. Even in the dark, dangerous and difficult time of Lent, things will begin to turn. In a couple of weeks we will again hear Jesus’ prayer in the Garden, wondering if it were possible to get to the end of his journey without going through the dark wood, which in his case was the dark wood of the Cross. Things are about to turn in our favor, and we are about to see the goodness of God once again in our lives. That is, we may meet with God again, depending not so much on our luck as on our courage and sense and faithfulness.

We will meet with God again. If only we stay on the path. Amen.

Reading List--February 2009

2009-03-01T20:21:00.005+08:00

Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (42 of 153 pages)
William H. Willimon, Word, Water, Wine and Bread: How Worship Has Changed over the Years
H. Grady Davis, Design for Preaching
Ernst Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress: The Significance of Protestantism for the Rise of the Modern World
Philip R. Davies and John Rogerson, The Old Testament World (2nd ed.; 129 of 245 pages)

Maybe someday I'll add comments about these books, but I doubt it.

First Sunday in Lent: The Light is Fading Fast

2009-03-01T19:26:00.014+08:00

Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-10;1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15

The light is fading fast. I really do not like the Season of Lent. I understand why it is there: to prepare for Holy Week and Easter through a season of penitence. But even though I am generally a very introspective person by nature, I do not like the window that Lent not only throws open on my soul but forces me to look into. I don't want to see that, generally. White-washed tomb and all that. I think it is very interesting that the Old Testament lesson is the reestablishment of the covenant between God and the world after the flood. This is sort of a "this is how the world is" moment, as opposed to the "this is how the world used to be" moment of the history leading up to the flood. In the book of Genesis there is one more story in the "this is how the world used to be" sort of moment: the tower of Babel with its common language and common ambition for humanity, neither of which were the case either at the time of the authors nor at the present time.

The new covenant between God and the world established after the flood includes the provision that God will never again destroy the world by water. This is perhaps a reflection of the ancient motif from other flood stories that the gods became disturbed at their own destructive potential, but I'll leave that point aside for now. After Noah makes his sacrifice, God's wrath is appeased, and the relationship is reestablished. That is often how it works, even if it is present fashion to want to downplay notions of God's wrath in favor of God's mercy and care for creation. Especially coming off my recent experience at the environmental responsibility conference, I would tend in this direction as well. God does in fact care for creation, even if God was willing to destroy creation through water because of the sinfulness of humanity. That in itself says something.

But our texts also include Psalm 25, one of the great hymns of trusting in God in the face of many enemies. While this was not the case for Noah, since he and his family were the only humans and so there were not any enemies, soon enough sin and judgment entered back into the world. But for the singer of Psalm 25, trust is cast upon God in the hopes that God will honor that trust and not put the worshiper to shame. The Psalmist also calls God to remember the promises that were given before. Could these promises that God is called to remember include the promise not to destroy the earth by water again? It is certainly possible, for this is indeed a promise of God.

The passage from 1 Peter indicates something similar, specifically from a Christian standpoint. The judgment has come, just like it did with Noah. The judgment that should have been laid on humanity was instead laid upon Jesus. Nevermind the substitutionary atonement potential in this statement; the point is rather that God has hung his war bow up in the sky. God does not desire that anyone should perish, but that all should come to repentance. That is the essence of the Gospel. That is what it really means when Jesus was baptized, and when the Spirit of God descended upon him with God's judgment that he was the beloved. Even the beloved was sacrificed so that there could be redemption. And even the beloved world was sacrificed so that there could be a renewed relationship between God, humanity, and creation. We pray only that God will not remember our previous sins against us, and the ultimate promise of the Gospel is that God forgets. We are now fully into the swing of the dark wood of Lent. And the light from the meadow now has failed. In spite of the wonderful potential that inheres in the willingness of God to forgive even after his punishment and judgment are meted out, still we have to go through the punishment, through the scourging. And even if we do not like what we see when we are forced to look into the darkness of our souls by the window thrown open by Lent, we stay on the path, praying that God will remember us even as he forgets out sin. Amen.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2009-02-27T10:01:00.002+08:00

Preparing to fly to the States tomorrow for the Wesleyan Theological Society annual meeting. I'm also speaking at a couple of churches while I'm in the States, and I'm a good bit nervous about that. I've checked in for the flight to Seattle, but I need some assistance doing so for the flight to Nashville, since check in will not become available until 4 AM tomorrow Manila time, at which point I will already be in the car on the way to the airport. So I asked my brother to take care of it for me, since the time for him will be 2 PM; much more manageable.

Anyway, I never do realize how much there is to do to get ready for a flight. Even though I'm only going to be gone nine days, there is a significant amount of things to be taken care of. Certainly not the least of these is printing out student papers that are turned in today in order that I can grade them on the planes. I do not know how much I will actually get done, but I have lofty ambitions at any rate. I also have to finish typing up manuscript/notes for my deputation services, but that shouldn't take a huge amount of time either. I'm already about half finished. All of this means I probably should quit blogging and get back at it. :-)

Ash Wednesday: The Light from the Meadow Hasn't Failed Yet

2009-02-25T06:15:00.003+08:00

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 OR Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 51:1-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Naturally, all of the texts chosen for reading today deal with human sinfulness and the consciousness of it. That is the point of Ash Wednesday, beginning the journey into the long, dark wood of Lent. I will use this metaphor throughout these Lenten reflections: journeying through a dark wood. Lent is always a particularly disturbing time for me. I struggle with the "Lenten fast" every year, trying to determine something to "give up for Lent." For the longest time, I resisted this Christian practice. I saw it as trite, a pathetic attempt to identify with the suffering of Christ for just forty days (not counting Sundays), especially in the cases of people who gave up chocolate or sweets or something that they enjoyed, only to pick it up again after Easter. But then I learned the further dimension of Lent: the point of the giving up is not to give something up for a little bit, but to use the time or moeny you would have spent in acquiring that something or doing that something instead in the furtherance of some spiritual, charitable, or otherwise lofty purpose. Once I realized that, I felt a lot more at ease with the spiritual practice of giving something up for Lent. So I'm setting aside the money I would spend on my sodas at lunch for a special offering on Easter Sunday. I have not yet determined the direction this ought to go in, but that's something I can think about later.

A warning is also sounded in the Gospel lesson about making a public display of the Lenten fast. "But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matt 6:3-4). This is part of a lengthly list of warnings against public piety, which has always resonated with me in particular. Even when I am speaking at a church or otherwise in a prominent position, I do not like really to be in front of people practicing religion. I do not think religion is a fully private matter, and indeed that that sort of thinking has opened up Protestant Christianity in particular to all sorts of abuses and misunderstandings. But there is defintely something to be said about not wearing one's religion on the sleeve.

But we're just at the beginning of the path through the dark wood. The light from the meadow of Epiphany hasn't quite dimmed yet. More properly, the light from Transfiguration Mountain hasn't quite faded away yet. At the same time, we are drawn inexorably on the path of Lent, the path of suffering that ultimately leads to the ultimate horror of "Good" Friday. So there is a pall of gloom cast over this season. That, beyond all else, is why the Lenten fast should not be treated as a flippant sort of thing. It matters. It is a serious thing. It is a serious call for devotion. It is a serious call for devotion to the Lord who did not go up into glory without first suffering pain. And that is what Lent is about. Amen.

Transfiguration Sunday: Did You See That?

2009-02-22T06:53:00.005+08:00

The Feast of the Transfiguration is a major feast of the Church normally celebrated on August 6. But on today, the Last Sunday of Lent, the Gospel lesson is always of the Transfiguration, so this has come to be called Transfiguration Sunday.

2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9

And again, the creators of the lectionary have brought together a collection of terms that each spin on a particular axis, but their orbits are not even. They are, indeed, unlike the planets, not even in the same direction. In this case, the axis is to be understood as the faithful seeing the things of the divine.

In the story of the assumption of Elijah in 2 Kgs, the senior prophet tells his your assistant Elisha that he must stop while the master goes on. But, repeatedly, from Elisha: "As Yahweh lives, as as you yourself live, I will not leave you. And various members of the company of the prophets come out to remind Elisha that his master is to be taken today, and, repeatedly, "I know. Keep silent." Elisha is not content to remain with his master; he knows that the master must go on--this will become important later on. The climax of the story comes in Elijah's charge that if Elisha sees the chariot of God taking him up into heaven, then Elisha will receive what he has asked for, a double portion of Elijah's spirit. In other words, if Elisha is faithful to see, then his faith will be rewarded.

Psalm 50's spinning on this axis runs in an entirely different direction. In v 5, the direction is entirely from God: "Gather my faithful ones!" The obvious idea is that God wants to see all those who have made a covenant with him by sacrifice, but the clear implication is that the faithful ones will by this action be able to see him. They have been faithful, they are being rewarded, and God says it is time for the reward to begin. It is a supremely eschatological statement, and one that will get replayed throughout apocalyptic literature, particularly in the scenes after the cataclysmic judgments have been rendered on the earth. This, essentially, is the answer to the question of the martyrs under the altar in Revelation, "How long, O Lord?" Wait a little while more, and I will call you.

From 2 Cor 4, the idea of the faithful having true sight and the unfaithful being blinded comes out most clearly. This does not mean that this text has Mercury's orbit to the concept, but just that its particular spin does not have the narrative or theological elaboration that we found in 2 Kgs 2 and Ps 50. If our gospel is veiled, says Paul, it is only veiled against those who are perishing, because they have been kept from seeing the true light. Paul does not proclaim himself as Lord, but he proclaims Jesus for the sake of the Corinthians and all his other audiences. The final verse of the passage links creation and redemption in a powerful way, thus contributing to the ongoing debates with Gnosticism and its deprecation of the natural order. God is the God of all it, says Paul, says the New Testament, and says the Church.

Finally, the transfiguration story itself in Mark 9 picks up on a similar theme as 2 Kgs 2. In v 5, Peter says that it is very good to be here, and he proposes to build three shacks, one for Jesus and one each for his two heavenly visitors. Notice that he doesn't bother with the accomodations he, James and John will use. The theme of course picked up from 2 Kgs is that Elisha never thought of the idea that he would remain with Elijah forever. In fact, this formed part of his hissing rebuke to the company of the prophets: "Yes I know. Keep silent." Maybe he was trying to steel his own nerves for what is about to happen, yet Peter does not have that same compunction. So he desires to stay here; this is the only thing he knows to say, for he is absolutely terrified. The allaying of these fears is given through the heavenly voice, the confirmation of God on the mission of Jesus.

So, did you see that? What? I didn't see it. Oh, too bad, it was really interesting. Maybe you'll catch it next time. Amen.

The List

2009-02-21T06:28:00.003+08:00

I say every so often, mostly as a joke, that I have a list of things that I absolutely MUST experience here in the Philippines. Some of the things are legitimate (visit Corregidor Island and the Bataan Death March site, visit the site of the battle where Magellan died, eat balut, etc.) but a few things just get added on once they've already been accomplished, like get pickpocketed. One of my students suggested to be, jokingly of course, that if I had not had getting picked on my list, then it wouldn't have happened. :-) But, a new bizarre add to The List just made its appearance: spend two nights in the hospital.

The story begins, I believe, a week ago, Friday, February 13th. I had just attended a conference on ecological responsibility in Makati and was making my way home in the hot afternoon sun. I chose the wrong method of transportation and wound up taking myself quite far out of the way. So this exposure weakened my immune system, which was then assualted full-bore by a virus carried by a visitor from the regional office in Singapore, who happens to be staying in the guest house next to me. By his experience, it should have been one of those twenty-four-hour, what-was-that-I-don't-care-because-I'm-better-now sorts of things. But for me it was rather different.

Compounded by an insanely-cold cinema on Saturday night, Valentine's Day, I was already well on the way to Sickville by the time I got home late Saturday. Sunday I was into a full-blown head cold with body aches and fever. As I tried to sleep it off, the fever kept breaking throughout the day on Sunday, lathering my body with sweat and creating the ultimate physical problem that resulted in hospitalization--dehydration. I simply was not able to drink enough water to combat the loss of fluids through sweat, and in truth even water would not have fully done the trick.

I went to the ER for a checkup on Monday night and got and even more fearsome word, that I might have contracted Dengue Fever, one of the dreaded, and quite often deadly, tropical diseases around these parts. I was told to come back to the hospital on Wednesday to have blood work done again to see if the measurements would have fallen into critical levels, so I went home and shuffled around like an old man. Every muscle ached. It was hard to raise my arms to elbow level, let alone above my head. So friends began to look after me, come visit me for lunch, and so on. By Tuesday night I made the decision to cancel the rest of my classes for the week, which sent torrents of well-wishes pouring in from my students, seeing as how this was the first many of them heard about my illness.

When I went back to the hospital on Wednesday, we got the Run Around Sue treatment for a bit, which certainly didn't help my mood. When we finally got to see a doctor, she took one look at me, heard me speak about three sentences, and confined me to the hospital with severe dehydration and, ultimately, a urinary tract infection. They set up an IV with fluid replenishment and did another blood test. They were not able to definitely rule out Dengue Fever until Thursday morning, which was a great sigh of relief. I did feel almost instantly better and by Thursday I felt I could go home, but the doctor wanted me to stay because of the low saline content of my blood. So stay I did, fitfully trying to get comfortable in a hospital bed, trying to eat, and being unsuccessful, Filipino hospital food. Eventually I gave up and just ate the fruit and crackers that people had brought me. By that time, even the smell of the food from the dietary area was turning my stomach. I was visited by the president and by one other faculty colleague, as well as several times by my girlfriend, all of which warmed my heart.

Getting discharged was a difficult matter. The doctor said on Thursday that she would release me on Friday morning, but apparently she did not communicate this to the nurses, for they did not seem to know about this. It seems she has residency at several hospitals and clinics in the area, as to most Filipino MDs. But eventually she came by around 4 and released me even faster than she had admitted me. I am due to go back next Friday for another pee-in-the-cup routine, but other than that it appears that I am up and out of the woods and on the way to full recovery.

Thanks be to God that it was not Dengue, which would have confined me to the hospital for a minium of six weeks and destroyed my plans to go to the States next week. Thanks be to God for caring friends and coworkers who went out of their way to comfort me. Thanks be to God for medicine, and for the ability to pay for it. And thanks be to God for recovery. One more thing checked off The List.

Keep Door Close at all Times

2009-02-21T06:25:00.001+08:00

The title of this post is a sign noticed at the Manila East Medical Center as I was being discharged yesterday. It's amazing how the lack of one letter can make a perfectly normal statement into a completely incomprehensible one.

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany: Little Steps Matter

2009-02-15T06:18:00.003+08:00

2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45

The Old Testament and Gospel Lessons have in common a curing of leprosy. It is an established fact that this word covered a variety of skin diseases that we have now identified and labeled with appropriately different terms: rashes, skin cancer, burns, eczema, psoriasis, and so on. But the details of the particular disease do not matter so much as the healing from them.

In both cases, there is a choice to be made. In Captain Naaman's case, he has to choose whether he is going to follow the advice of the man of God from Israel. He perhaps rightly thinks that the rivers of Aram are much better than dirty disgusting Jordan. But the servant girl (or perhaps somebody else) shrewdly asks him, "If he had asked you to do something difficult, wouldn't you have done it?" The idea of doing something very simple to bring about a great effect was brought home to me this week as I attended and presented to a conference on ecological responsibility. This really was a life-changing event, and I will make some immediate changes in my life. If I take cloth bags to go shopping, then that is a small step indeed. I have eight or so bags that I could use for this purpose, which is about the maximum that I could carry from the store anyway on public transit. If I go to the store about 3 times a month, and average 5-7 bags each time I go, then if my math is correct that is anywhere from 15-21 plastic bags that don't get used. Sometimes I have despaired of doing anything to help the environment, because all I hear is that the damage is irreversible. But I heard exactly the opposite this week. I have a choice what to do, just like Naaman. And I'm not being asked to do anything difficult. Little steps matter. If I don't do what I know I ought to do just because it will take me a couple of extra minutes, or it will cost me a few extra dollars, then what does that say about my spiritual condition? Now, I'm not going to become a militant environmentalist, yelling at other people when they do not do what I do, for as was pointed out at the conference, such behavior is naught but a new Pharisaism.

What are you doing? Amen.

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany: What's my motivation?

2009-02-08T06:12:00.008+08:00

Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-11, 20c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

A few years ago there was a Sprite commercial in the States that started off with these three tough young guys playing a pick-up basketball game. They talked for a few seconds about how tough they were, how much better they were at basketball, etc., and then someone from offscreen yelled "CUT!" and the illusion was broken. No longer were these three tough young guys playing basketball, but now they were arrogant, sniveling-artist, prima-donna type actors. "Don't speak that way to ME, little man," one says to the director, in a high-class British accent that belies his tough-guy jock exterior. "I studied SHAKESPEARE at CAMBRIDGE!" Then another one wants to know a question of acting method. In an insecure voice, he says, "Wait...wait...what's my motivation?"

I immediately thought if this last line as I read the Epistle Lesson for today. This is Paul's "all things to everyone" speech, or theological chameleonism. I can certainly imagine what lies behind this speech, what, in the words of the actor from the Sprite commercial, is Paul's "motivation." According to his opponents (whose words we have to supply here, but it seems reasonable to do so), Paul is being what my Filipino friends call plastik. That word means just what it sounds like in English--plastic, unreal, synthetic, molding himself to whatever model he needs to fit whatever crowd he's with. In short, such a person is ungenuine, not living up to the courage of his convictions. In a way, although the situations in Rome and Corinth were quite different, one might use Paul's great exhortation in Rom 12 against him in 1 Cor 9, and perhaps something exactly like this lay behind 1 Cor 9. But, for Paul, even his seeming inconsistency contributes to a bedrock of security--his belief in and communication of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, of which he was made an eyewitness, indeed the last of them all (1 Cor 15:8).

The Gospel Lesson for today, Mark 1:29-38, although not indicating something of Jesus' desire to appear one way to one crowd, and another way to another, nevertheless discusses a similar thing. Simon and the disciples find Jesus hiding off somewhere, and they say that everyone is looking for him. In this case, those who seek do not find (see Matt 7:8; Lk 11:10), but instead Jesus wants to spread his message even to those other towns. One might say that those who do not seek him are finding him. Perhaps better, one might say that God in Jesus is the one who seeks. I do not remember the source, but I heard someone give--or someone told me that he/she heard it, or whatever--a very trenchant comment regarding "seeker-sensitive" worship such as that you will find at the large megachurches and many smaller evangelical churches trying to mimic their model and become large megachurches themselves. (Aside: even the pastors of these great megachurches, in their prodigious amounts of books they seem to be able to write even while pastoring multiple thousands of people, say that you can't do it like we did; and yet we try.) This person said, "There is no problem with 'seeker-sensitive' worship, just so long as we understand that GOD is the seeker!"

This comment, while it was directed as a criticism against some contemporary worship practices (a late 20th/early 21st century version of Finney's "new measures?"), at the same time it was a prescient theological comment. And it seems to be in line both with how Paul defends himself in 1 Cor 9 and how Jesus determines to not reward those who are seeking him in the immediate situation and instead go off seeking others. For that matter, this is consistent also with the parable of the sheep; the shepherd leaves the 99 and goes off in search of the lost one. And there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner coming to repentance than ninety-nine who do not need repentance. Thanks be to God.

The Old Testament contributions this week, both Isa 40 and Ps 147, contribute to the theme in an overarching sort of way. By testifying to the greatness and majesty and, in particular, sovereignty of God, these texts signify that God can move things about as God wills, without any reference or deference to that in which humans put their trust. Paul and Jesus seem to be plugged into that greater mission, such that the seeming permanence of certain human institutions, whether those be political or theological institutions, are but as nothing for God the Seeker. So this is why Jesus can avoid those who are searching for him and instead go off in search of others who haven't yet heard his name. And this is why Paul can appear to leave his convictions at the door when he models himself to those who are inside, but really he is plugging himself into a motivation greater than the "convictions" that he held so dear (see also Phil 3).

It is a great and glorious revelation, a gift from God, to discover that we do not have to mold to a particular form. Would that we really did allow for diversity in worship, so that by all means we might win some. How revolutionary would THAT be for Christian ministry, worship, evangelism, and discipleship? Amen.

What were you doing last year?

2009-02-06T21:49:00.004+08:00

I've already told this story before, in a sermon/testimony in front of the student prayer meeting back in August (I think), but it certainly bears repeating. This is a significant day for for me, to which point I shall return in a moment. But first, to quote my seminary president, from a time before this was my seminary and before he was the president:

Dr. Modine,

Greetings from Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary. Our school is located near Manila in the Philippines...

We are looking for a teacher in Old Testament...

Would you be interested in applying for this position?

Thus began the whirlwind tour. And this message was dated February 6, 2008.

Yep. One year ago today. Four months and eleven days after that message, I had wheels down in Manila. That was an amazingly fast turnaround by anyone's reckoning, and even though "normal" is merely a setting on a dryer, my situation was not "normal" by any stretch of the imagination.

This email, my response to it, and the machinations that took place to evaluate, appoint, and train me together constituted the fulfillment of a more-than-decade-old dream. Thanks be to God. Amen.

RIP Grandpa (Sort of), or maybe Uncle

2009-02-05T07:42:00.003+08:00

I learned that, on the same day I posted the entry about my readings for January, one of my theological influences died in his sleep. Dr. John Allan Knight, former General Superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene (roughly equivalent to bishop, but not considered a third order of ministry), former educator and university president, historical theologian, passed away during the night on February 1.

Dr. Knight was part of a great shift in Wesleyan/holiness theology, the implications of which are still being felt. He contributed, along with Dr. Mildred Bangs Wynkoop(†), Dr. William Greathouse, Dr. H. Ray Dunning, Dr. Rob Staples, and a few others the idea that sin and holiness are relational, not substantival terms. That is, the sin that is "removed" in entire sanctification is not a thing that is cut out by the Divine Surgeon as would a human surgeon remove a cancerous tumor or a wart. Or, as I expressed it in Doctrine of Holiness class yesterday, sin is not a microchip that is removed by the Divine IT Guy. Rather, sin is a perversion of relationship (to God, to other humans, to the earth, to the self) and holiness a restoration of that relationship which was marred, but not lost, not totally depraved, in the fall of humanity. The restoration of the Imago Dei is a reorientation of the relationship of freedom, such that a person can be free for God, for the Other, for the earth, and from self-domination.

Alternatively, if sin is a thing, a substance, then this renders both the Incarnation and salvation logically impossible. The Incarnation becomes impossible since, if sin is a thing that defines the essential quality of humanity then Christ could not have become fully human. (Aside: The objection could be raised that Christ did not take on fallen human nature, but human nature as it was supposed to be, in its "pre-fall" state; but this is Docetism.) It further renders salvation impossible because the removal of something that is absolutely definitional of humanity, then salvation would leave behind something less than a human; a biblically abhorrent idea.

Well, anyway, we pray for the family of Dr. John Allan Knight, and the church that misses him.

Reading list--January 2009

2009-02-01T06:57:00.004+08:00

I'm starting something else new with this entry. I may not continue it, because I may not (probably will not) continue the frenetic pace of reading I've established in January. I always start a year with grand intentions, only to fall off by the middle of February, or at least the beginning of March, but here goes anyway:

Hans Küng, On Being a Christian (started in 2008)
C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom
Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus
William Barclay, The Apostle's Creed for Everyman
Jill Middlemas, The Templeless Age: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the "Exile"
Susan Niditch, Folklore and the Hebrew Bible
Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (111 of 153 pages)

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany: How to move on

2009-02-01T06:01:00.008+08:00

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28

It is interesting that the Deuteronomic "test for prophets" should be the Old Testament reading just after I dealt with that text in class. Specifically, in Old Testament Theology we were discussing the issue of what it means to evaluate the claim that someone has been sent from God. The lectionary text cuts off before what I think is the most important, and yet most difficult to understand, part of Deut 18. For verses 21-22 go on to suggest that, in time to come, people may ask how to decide whether a prophet is from Yahweh. The crucial point there is whether the prophecy or prediction comes true. And it is perhaps better to say "prediction" there instead of "prophecy" in order to avoid the unfortunate identification of prophecy with predicting the future. There was something to that, certainly, but this is not the only thing that the prophets did. The prophets understood the present situation to a greater degree than their contemporaries, and were able to make "predictions" of the future based on that deeper understanding, but they were not in any sense exclusively lookers into the future, like modern-day fortune tellers or the quack of quacks Nostradamus. We should perhaps better think of the Old Testament prophets, in a way, like political pollsters. These people look for the likely behavior of voters in a given election (or even a hypothetical election), and while their predictions are usually fairly accurate, there is always the possibility of surprise on the actual election day. In that sense, no one REALLY knows the future. Knowing the future is more to be understood along the lines of having a more comprehensive knowledge of the possibilities that exist and how to actualize one or the other of them, and the implications that flow from that, and how to actualize one or the other of them, and so on.

Perhaps the only place where this test for prophets is actually applied is Jeremiah 28, the dispute between Jeremiah and Hananiah. There, Hananiah predicts more-or-less immediate restoration for the land, and Jeremiah adds onto Deut 18 the further condition that a prophet who predicts peace is the only one who should be thus tested. But Hananiah dies two months later, rather than having time to wait the full two years of his prophecy to see whether it fails or succeeds. As it turns out, Hananiah was not correct, but we can naturally ask the question whether he would be considered a martyr for the true faith if he was. In any event, both of them certainly had followers/disciples that carried on and supported their message, though it appears that a too-facile, too-hopeful prediction such as that associated with Hananiah soon faded off into the background, like often happens with hopeful predictions in the face of overwhelmingly negative situations.

Psalm 111 and 1 Corinthians 8 also deal with different religious kinds of affirmations. The Psalm is a praise to God for the works he has created. They are established forever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness. This seems to indicate something of humanity following in God's example, which is indeed a quite good religious idea. Mark 1 also suggests that Jesus followed in the example of John the Baptist, preaching a gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Specifically, 1 Cor 8 and Mk 1 have to do with doing the work of God by setting aside the works of darkness. This is, it could be said, the "negative side" of the Gospel. Although, as was noted in my Doctrine of Holiness class on Friday, cutting out darkness is indeed a positive thing, a thing to be celebrated, it is "negative" in the sense of "subtracting," in this case subtracting evil and all those things which battle against the purposes of God. John Wesley said that those attitudes and actions that remain within a Christian after salvation are those things which war against the purposes of Christ, and which are progressively removed through growth in grace. See Rom 7 in particular for a Scriptural account of such indwelling sin, that continually crouches at the door (Gen 4, Heb 12), but which we can master through the help of God.

Human life is all about transitions, and religion and theology make it their business to speak important words in the midst of those transitions. Birth to maturation, maturation to feebleness, feebleness to death, death to life, these are the places where religion makes its home. And for all the times in between, God is to be praised, for his works will be established forever. And the gates of hell will not be able to withstand the onslaught. Amen.

Another passing

2009-02-01T05:55:00.002+08:00

Kuya Mike, a much beloved member of the staff, went to be with his Lord on Saturday. That now makes three people directly connected with our campus who have passed away in the previous five months. I suppose this is one of the things that happens when you have people who have been working in one place for 25 years as is the case with some of our staff members, but still...and in any event that doesn't even begin to make sense of what happened with little EJ. I tempted to say that God is wise, that his mercy and compassion far outstrip human understanding and leave it at that. While this is true, somehow in the middle of shock and grief it seems like a cop-out...

Inter-Seminary Sports Fest

2009-01-25T07:41:00.003+08:00

I was defeated. Soundly. Once again, on the chessboard, I made some silly blunders upon which my opponent capitalized, and I very quickly found myself on the losing end of the proposition. The tournament was a team format, with school A pitting three players against school B, and the school with the greater number of wins advancing on. In the two matches we played, we only won two games. Our best player won both his games, while I and the third player were both sorely overmatched. Because of one team's default, however, we had a chance to get into the finals with a win in the second match. But my performance in the second game was even more dismal than the first; I was checkmated in less than thirty moves. And then I came home and tried to console myself through some online chess victories, only to see myself make several more key blunders and lose a number of them in a row. Maybe I just need to quit playing for a while. It's not like I don't have a lot to do...

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany: Hope extended...again...

2009-01-25T06:58:00.010+08:00

Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

The book of Jonah, it can be said, is a midrash (=Scriptural storytelling) on the vision Jeremiah has of the house of the potter in Jeremiah 18. Especially significant is the line, "God changed his mind about the calamity that he has said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it (v 10). See Jer 18:7-8 for the specific language, in a promise form, that is given in Jonah 3 in a narrative form. And specifically for Jonah, while this should be a cause of rejoicing, since his evangelistic crusade in the evil city of Nineveh had such tremendous success, it was only a reason for more bitter complaint against God. This is exactly the opposite of what we should expect to hear from this preacher, but then again the entire book of Jonah is exactly the opposite of what we would expect to hear from the Bible.

The initial resistance and, in Jonah's case, flight, is not out of the ordinary. Most of the prophets are shown as initially resisting the divine call in some fashion (see Exod 3, Isa 6, Jer 1). But whereas Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah eventually "enjoyed" their careers and the "success" their preaching had, Jonah is presented as a sulker and a complainer. Jonah represents the typical attitude of Israelites in the post-exilic period who thought that the worship of Yahweh should be confined to those who could establish their proper ethnic identity. The whole story of Jonah and the conversion of Nineveh was a bomb dropped on that exclusive claim. But Jonah is still left sulking, thinking, sweltering under the hot sun--and perhaps that is as good a metaphor as any for the reaction that this little midrash might have gotten.

The common theme running through the lectionary passages for this week is putting trust in God especially in view of how short the time is. Both Testaments deal with the expectation of a quick end to the world and its frustration. As with mamny other groups throughout history, Jews and Christians very quickly developed strategies for reinterpreting the hope of an imminent end of the world into a longer expectation, and a resultant ethic for the time in-between. This shows the brilliance of both groups in that they did not abandon their hopes when they were frustrated; instaed, they recommitted themselves to God and God's promises in the sure and certain hope that these things would come about just as they had been foretold.

At the beginning of a new year, we are always confronted with a choice: will we participate in this creative reworking of hope, or will we abandon it this time since it continues to lie unfulfilled? It seems like the question must be decided in favor of the former, since the nature of hope is that it, well, hopes...and hope does not disappoint, for God in his love has poured the Holy Spirit into our hearts (Rom 5:4). Hope does not disappoint, even when hope itself is disappointed. Will 2009 be the year our hopes are finally realized? Perhaps, depending on the hope: new love, new job, new house, whatever. How about this: will 2009 be the year our Hope is finally realized? Perhaps not, but we still live in the expectancy, for hope--and Hope--will finally not be snuffed out. Amen.

Ping pong and chess

2009-01-23T06:36:00.004+08:00

Over the last couple of days, I have been practicing for the upcoming Inter-Seminary Sports Fest, which is exactly what it sounds like. I don't recall having an event like this when I was in seminary in the States, but that's a secondary matter relating to how seminaries of different traditions interact with one another. If the results of my "friendlies" are any indication, I should be out of the two tournaments for which I am registered in relatively short order.

I have signed up for chess and ping pong. I realize you cannot get two more opposite sports (except maybe darts and decathlon) but whatever. On Wednesday I was obliterated in four chess matches against one of our students who is also signed up to play, though he may not because he's going also to be taking photographs of the event. I made some blunders, and he capitalized on them brilliantly, and I got smashed.

In ping pong, the results were the same. Last night I was defeated in three straight games by a student playing ping pong in ISSF (though a different one from the chess guy). The scores were 21-14, 21-13, and 21-10, convincing and crushing defeats. My only decent performance was in the first game, in which we were back-and-forth tied until 9-9, then he pulled out ahead 12-9 and didn't look back.

Incidentally, this brings my overall ping pong record at APNTS to a disappointing 1-3.

How many ways can you say I've got a lot to do?

2009-01-22T08:03:00.003+08:00

Under the gun, behind the eight ball, long way to go and a short time to get there...

Let's see:

I'm writing a paper for a conference here in Manila next month.
I'm writing a paper for a conference in Indiana in March.
I'm editing a book manuscript due at the end of June.
I'm editing a book manuscript due at the beginning of August.
I'm thinking about a proposal for a conference in Louisiana in November (proposals due March 1).
I'd like to get my grading done and back to my students in a timely manner.
I'm preparing my lectures on the fly, usually the night before, which cannot be good for quality and depth, or something.
I'm trying to be a good and attentive boyfriend, which I am discovering takes a lot of effort and a lot of time...but the benefits far outweigh the necessary investment.
I'm also shepherding a student through the writing of a master's thesis due in the middle of March.
I'm also (supposed to be) in touch with the folks at the other Nazarene Theological Seminary on a collaborative project.

Geesh! I never thought the life of a professor would be so busy. Every bit of it is better than withering to death in a bank teller window, but still...

Prayer for January 20, 2009

2009-01-21T09:31:00.003+08:00

Lord God Almighty, you have made all people of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace. Give to the people of my country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany: What do you see?

2009-01-18T07:12:00.008+08:00

1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20); Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51

The reading from 1 Samuel is important for me personally, because in my Historical Books class this semester we just began discussion of the book of 1 Samuel this past Thursday. Explication of the call of Samuel, with the Voice from heaven and the transition in leadership from the evil of Eli's house to the good of Samuel's house will next occupy our attention. It is quite ironic that eventually the house of Samuel will turn evil as well, because just as the sons of Eli--Hophni and Phineas--are scoundrels out for personal gain, so in 1 Sam 8 the sons of Samuel--Joel and Abjiah--are declared unfit to rule by the people of the land, and they consequently demand of Samuel that he appoint for them a king, like the other nations around them. The end of the book of Judges very simply states that "In those days there was no king in Israel, and all the people did what was right in their own eyes." On the one hand, this statement is a direct endorsement of the development of monarchy in Israel, even in the fact of the fable of Jotham (Judg 9) and the warnings Samuel gives about what exactly a king will do to the people when once absolute power is ceded to him (1 Sam 8) and, for that matter, Yahweh's assurance to Samuel that they are rejecting Him, not him, as king over them. And the name of Samuel's second son is "Abijah," which means "Yahweh is my father." And the name of Gideon's son, who took the throne for himself (becoming, oddly, the first king of Israel, not Saul), was named Abimelech, "My father is king." Very interesting names in there.

Up until the kings are established, it is only when someone's son succeeds him that things are bad: Abimelech succeeding Gideon, Hopni and Phineas succeeding Eli, and Joel and Abijah succeeding Samuel. It strikes me that the transitions are important, especially as they deal with the finding out of sin. Yahweh goes on to tell Samuel that the sins of Eli's house have brought condemnation, and his line will be cut off. But through Samuel God will establish a new way. Even if eventually the same judgment is made of Samuel's house, God still has a plan, according to the text, and the institution of kingship is not, as some writers mistakingly suggest, the beginning of the end in terms of "good" Israelite society. True enough, a lot of the kings are scoundrels, but their sin is almost always found out, even in the case of the great king David. When it comes down to it, you simply cannot act for your own advantage, as the passage from 1 Corinthians indicates. God who knit us together in our inward parts (Psalm 139) will be able to find even those things that we are successfully hiding from others: our church members, our pastor, our friends, our coworkers, our students, our spouses, ourselves.

The opposite side of this comes in the Gospel text, where Philip tells Nathanael to come and see this one whom the former says is the one about whom the prophets have been prophesying for many years. Nathanael is doubtful, wondering if worthwhile anything can come out of the hills. It is somewhat refreshing to read that even the disciples had the same kind of cultural provinciality that often affects us. It's almost comforting. But I can hear a bit of embarrassment in Nathanael's words to Jesus, because he has just expressed to Philip his rather derisive opinion of everything and everyone that comes from Nazareth. I have had this experience on more than one occasion, having had a prejudicially negative opinion of someone only to find that person respects me very much, or at least is not at all deserving of my negative attitude. Whether or not I express those opinions--and I usually don't, because I find I always get into trouble when I do--I always feel that at least on some level the other person is being nice to me in order to heap burning coals on my head (Prov 25:22, Rom 12:20). There is no chance that such people know what thoughts I have had about them before meeting them, but there is every chance in the world, indeed it is certain, that Jesus knew what Nathanael had been saying about him just before he and Philip came around the bend in the road. The rebuke of Nathanael goes on a little bit further, with Jesus telling him he will see even greater things than what has already happened. At the end of John's Gospel, a similar rebuke is sounded against Realistic Thomas, and the promise given to him is that those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe (i.e., the readers of John's Gospel in the first century and the twenty-first) are blessed in just the same way as those who have seen and touched Jesus for themselves.

Sin will always find you out (Num 32:23), but thanks be to God that his glorious gift is given to us no matter what our sin. It is not for those who deserve it, but for those who ask for it. "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you" (Matt 7:7). When I was twelve or thirteen (somewhere in that neighborhood) I started to write a Christian rock song that I never finished. The song was to start with the band singing a capella those words from Matt 7:7, and parallels, with the capline: "Jesus knows your mind!" Jesus is the one who searches us and knows us (Ps 139), and promises to us that even though we think we have seen great things, we will indeed see even greater things than these. But blessed, even still, are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe. Amen.

White hair should not follow black

2009-01-17T07:20:00.002+08:00

Our campus is in mourning this Saturday morning.

Yesterday we learned the tragic news that the five-year-old son of two of our staff persons died from diphtheria. They had been at a public hospital for infectious and communicable diseases here in Manila since Sunday or Monday. They had initially thought the little guy had the mumps, because there was the tell-tale swelling on at least one side of his face. But, as it turned out, the real diagnosis was much more severe.

I have no idea of the source, or even if it is authentic to China, but I am given to understand that there is a Chinese proverb that runs, "White hair should never follow black." Wherever I read this interpreted this saying as saying (wow, the puns are thick today) that the older generation should not outlive the younger generation. This is a bit of folksy wisdom from all over the world, I would imagine, so there is no particular reason that this statement should be Chinese specifically. It is never supposed to happen that the little ones die before their parents, and especially not when the little ones are still little. I find I don't have any grand theological answers. And that's ok.

Another first

2009-01-16T06:36:00.002+08:00

This morning (actually in four hours from right now) I will attend my first thesis proposal defense. A student whom I inherited is finishing his thesis for the Master of Science in Theology. I have discussed his situation in other entries from time to time. But this is my first proposal defense not only as a professor, but period. When I was in graduate school, my institution did not require an oral defense of the proposal. Instead it got shipped off to my readers who approved it and then off to an interdisciplinary committee of the graduate school. This interdisciplinary committee rejected it the first time (which, incidentally, was the 15th or 16th actual draft) then accepted it the next time. By that point, I had already written a significant amount of the dissertation, so it was just a few months from approval of my proposal (March I think) to graduation (October). So this will be an interesting experience. This particular student is very talented and articulate, so he shouldn't have any problem...and if he does, it sort of becomes my problem because I am his adviser.

The Baptism of the Lord: Yeah, we're going to get you wet

2009-01-11T07:00:00.004+08:00

Responsibilities this past week kept me from posting a meditation last Tuesday, the date of the Epiphany. I'm sure no one is finding these things the only source of spiritual nourishment, so I am not too worried.

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

Seeing Psalm 29 in the readings for today reminds me of a conversation I had Friday night at the birthday party we threw for the Asia-Pacific regional director, in town for the district assembly yesterday. A friend asked me what was going on with Gen 6:1-4 and the "sons of God" marrying the "daughters of humanity" and creating the giant race called the Nephilim. I suggested it was probably some kind of strange holdover from ancient pagan mythology left in the Bible because it was in the found in the traditional teachings about the old ancient world before even the peoples of antiquity showed up, or something. She said, "Well, if it's old pagan mythology I don't think it belongs in the Bible," or something similar. I said, "Well, yeah, you're probably right. But the biblical writers didn't agree, and so now it is what it is." This is not a bad thing, not something that should be left out or ignored or explained away; clearly the ancient writers and editors did not have as big a problem with it as we do.

Something similar is going on, undoubtedly, with Psalm 29. For when you compare Psalm 29:1-2 to Psalm 96:7-8, you see a definite shift in emphasis. The language of the two Psalms is almost identical, except for the "persons" to whom the summons is addressed. In Ps 29, the summons is to "divine beings," unfortunately but understandably translated as "mighty ones" by the NIV. Ps 29 surely represents something of the older polytheistic context in which ancient Israel came to be. While monotheism was insisted upon with varying degrees of strenuousness throught the history of ancient Israel, it did not finally win the day over polytheistic or henotheistic understandings until the Maccabean Revolt in the middle of the second century BCE (reflected in the apocalyptic book of Daniel).

For that matter, the polytheistic environoment may perhaps lie behind the presentation of the (first) creation story in Gen 1. Since this probably came into being in contrast to polytheistic Babylonia's creation myths, the Gen 1 creation myth (and YES, it is a myth, for myth does not equal falsehood) depersonalizes the stuff upon which God acts in creation as opposed to the battle between the gods that goes on in the Babylonian stuff. But later on down in the Gen 1 creation myth, God says "Let us make humanity in our own image..." This is not (NOT!) a hint of Trinitarian theology, but probably some kind of leftover from polytheism. This is not a bad thing, not something that should be left out or ignored or explained away; clearly the ancient writers and editors did not have as big a problem with it as we do.

The Acts 19 and Mk 1 passages both discuss the baptism of John the Baptist, which was a baptism for repentance. When I was preparing my lecture on NT backgrounds for the doctrine of holiness, delivered Friday, the discussion between Paul and the Ephesian converts caused me to stop short. Paul asks the converts how they were baptized, and they say it was into John's baptism. BUT THEN PAUL BAPTIZED THEM AGAIN. This seems to go against everything I have come to understand about the unrepeatability of baptism. There surely has to be an explanation in New Testament scholarship or in theology for this one. I haven't investigated it. But then again, perhaps I need to take my own advice and let it be. This is not a bad thing, not something that should be left out or ignored or explained away; clearly the ancient writers and editors did not have as big a problem with it as we do.

When I was young, the little sister of one of my friends absolutely hated it when we sprayed her with the hose, which is probably why we continued to do it. "My mom told me I'm not supposed to get wet!" she would scream, which never made any sense to me. It's hot out today, you'll be dry in a few minutes, I thought, so why even tell your mom that you got wet? Jesus submitted to baptism in order to fulfill all righteousness. So following the example of our Lord, and his institution of baptism by offering himself as a participant in it (just like he participated in the Eucharist at Calvary), we baptize in the name of the Trinity, even if we cannot find a hint of it in the plural pronouns ascribed to God in Gen 1.

Is baptism necessary for salvation? Yes. Not in the sense that this is some kind of magical rite that convinces God to save you; this is part of the old polytheistic environment that we should, and have, cast aside. But it is necessary for salvation in that it is the rite of entry into the Church, into Christian fellowship, into Christian maturity. And there is no salvation outside the Church; so says St. Chrysostom. So, yeah, sorry, we're going to get you wet. Not with a hose, probably--unless there is no other water available--but with the water of repentance, to signify your desire to live a life free from sin. For, in the words of Paul's great baptismal meditation, we "should consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Rom 6:11). Amen.

The fastest district superintendent election I've ever seen

2009-01-11T06:40:00.002+08:00

Yesterday at District Assembly, the Metro Manila district elected a district superintendent. I wanted to go and watch because I've seen superintendent elections (well, one anyway) in the States and I was curious to see if it would be anything like my previous experience.

Any ordained elder before the age of 70 (I'm not sure if there is a age floor) can be elected district superintendent. Whether or not the person so chosen accepts the election is another matter, of course. It is typical practice now to use the first ballot as a nominating ballot, then limit successive votes to those persons who received votes at first, in order specifically to prevent Billy Bob Joe Fred from not getting any votes until ballot 17 and then taking just enough to keep Rev. So-and-so from being elected. For the chair to declare an election, one candidate must receive two-thirds of the votes cast in any one ballot. This prevents the parliamentary move of a block of voters geting up and leaving the bar to protest a protracted or especially contentious election. I do not know if this unusual parliamentary move has ever been made, but I think it would be kind of foolish anyway, since it would cause a candidate to suddenly need 20 out of 30 votes--or something--instead of 126 out of 188. For that matter, if all the supporters of Rev. So-and-so got up and left because they and the supporters of Rev. Thus-and-such kept at an impasse, then all they would do is assure the election of Rev. Thus-and-such. And if there was agreement for supporters of both sides to leave in equal numbers, then why couldn't they just agree on a candidate...and so on.

When a DS was elected in Tennessee some years ago, it look eighteen ballots or something, and the person they chose wound up not accepting anyway. In my experience, and this may only be the case in the States, I don't know, one to four candidates may jockey for position at the top of the slate for a few rounds then the eventual winner picks up more and more steam as the voting goes along, sometimes rather limping over the 2/3 tape. But it was not the case here. On the nominating ballot, there was a clear, convincing choice at the top. The person eventually elected was nominated with 70 more votes than anyone else received on the nominating ballot. It only took three rounds to elect him. He was one of my students last semester, but I should think that if that had anything to do with it it was in spite of instead of because of, you know? I did not stay long enough to hear his comments to the assembly, and I haven't heard of anything strange happening like someone rejecting that clear of an expression of a district's will, but I'm sure that means there is a new district superintendent in Metro Manila. Congratulations and God bless.

The Bowl Championship Series works!!

2009-01-04T06:47:00.002+08:00

Utah in 2005. Boise State in 2007. Utah again in 2009.

The only non-BCS-conference school to qualify for a BCS bowl and then lose was Hawaii in the 2008 Sugar Bowl. That makes 3-1. I used to be an advocate for a playoff system in FBS/I-A of college football. But what settled the issue for me was the pounding that Utah gave Alabama in the Sugar Bowl this year. True enough, they did not hang 50 points on the Crimson Tide, and they probably will not have a legitimate shot at splitting the national title, but they will certainly get some votes, just because they are the only undefeated team. Now, Boise State was the only undefeated team after the 2007 bowls (if memory serves), but even though I have been a Broncos fan my entire football life I understood that Boise State did not deserve to share the title with Florida that year, particularly after the latter had made such a definitive statement in the BCS title game against Ohio State.

But let me return to 3-1. Let us analyze these games. Last year, Georgia housed Hawaii. Blah, blah, blah. Yawn. Wake me up when it gets interesting. This is not surprising; in fact this is what is supposed to happen, if the arrogant folks in the major conferences (and, by the way, the majority of their rabid, generally unthinking, fans) are right in what they say, that the major conference teams are simply better than the others. This is why a team like Boise State this year, which went 12-0, did not get into the BCS again, with that slot instead going to Utah. This turns out to have been the correct decision, with Boise State losing the Flower Pot Bowl and Utah thumping Alabama by two touchdowns. Alabama! By two touchdowns! Boise State had its third undefeated regular season in the past five years, but they got shut out, correctly, because the competition they face does not merit them getting a bite of the pie. At least not this year. But, in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl, Utah destroyed Pittsburgh, though admittedly a weaker team, thus setting the stage for non-BCS conference teams to continue to have success against the big kids. True enough, Boise State did not put a hurting on Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl the way Utah did against Pittsburgh and later against Alabama. But still Boise State-Oklahoma will, has to, go down as one of the greatest games in the history of college football.

What does all this mean?

The non-BCS-conference teams are 3-1 in BCS games. And, lest we forget, Utah didn't play the Air Force Academy in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl or the 2007 Sugar Bowl. They played Pittsburgh from the Big East and Alabama from the SEC. Boise State didn't play Texas-El Paso in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. (Nothing against the Air Force Academy or Texas-El Paso; understand the point!) They played Oklahoma from the Big Twelve.

Still think a non-BCS-conference team will never get a shot at the national title game? Don't hold your breath. A .750 winning percentage means that these "lesser" teams are improving.

And that means that the BCS has done exactly what it was intended to do. You can argue until you're blue in the face about how this or that team should have been selected over that or this team in such-and-such title game. Blah, blah, blah. Yawn. Wake me up when it gets interesting. But the far more important point in the entire discussion about the BCS is 3-1. The non-BCS-conference teams have a winning record in BCS games against the BCS-conference teams.

The Bowl Championship Series works.

The Second Sunday after Christmas: Breathlessly awaiting the promise

2009-01-04T06:00:00.004+08:00

Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 147:12-20; Ephesians 1:3-14; John (1-9)10-18

First, a note on the texts. Both the Old Testament and the Psalm readings for today have alternatives listed out of the Apocrypha. Sirach 24:1-12 is listed as an alternative for the OT, and Wisdom of Solomon 10:15-21 for the Psalm. But, in the words of a preacher I used to know, "I'm a good Protestant," so I'm not going to bother with the Apocrypha.

I make New Year's Resolutions every year. Of course, mine are mostly the standard ones: lose weight, don't procrastinate, don't make my temper so great, and so on. I know I'll fail at most of them, or at least not have as much success as I'd like to have. But I make my resolutions anyway, perhaps because it is part of my somewhat breathless anticipation of what this future, this new year, will hold.

The text from Jeremiah is part of the Book of Consolation, the material that seems to turn toward the people in, well, consolation, binding up the wounds of exile and seeming to hold out a promise for the future. It is not quite correct to see the prophetic words turning exclusively from judgment to salvation with the exile, for there are oracles of salvation before the exile and oracles of judgment after the exile. But with Jeremiah and with Second Isaiah (Isa 40-55), there does seem to be an emphasis on God not wanting just to punish the people for their sins, but also to purify them in order that they can live a new life with him under the covenant, sometimes expressed as a new covenant, as later in Jeremiah 31.

Psalm 147, as part of the Hallelujah collection at the end of the Psalter, expresses a similar sentiment. God will strengthen the bars of Jerusalem's gates, making it secure forever. This is a nice promise that, while not necessarily worked out in experience, is still to be made and believed. It is not quite satisfactory, I'll admit, to push off the Ultimate Fulfillment of the Promise into the time of the end, but there is certainly something to be said for groups holding on to a particular promise increasing in membership and in fervency even when the prediction comes to naught.

Ephesians 1:3-14 is one of my favorite passages in the entire Bible. In Greek, this is one sentence. That's right. What gets chopped up into five or six sentences in most English translations, mainly because English teachers do not like run-on sentences, is one long string of participle after participle. It almost gives the sense of a speaker stumbling over the words in the excitement to get them all out. A negative picture of this is the series of servants reporting to Job on all the tragedies that have come on first his possessions and then his family: "While he was still speaking, yet another came up and said..." But Paul--or the one writing in the name of Paul; I am not qualified to take a position on that question--keeps stumbling over the excitement of the message, adding more and more to it to create as comprehensive as possible a picture of what it means to live in the promises of God.

John 1 seems almost not to fit amongst all these breathless, somewhat dreamy promises. True enough, the promise that it speaks of surpasses all of these others, but the language in which it is described is much more formal, almost staid. Yet even in the midst of all the stuffiness of a Hellenistic rhetortician, you can still hear the breathlessness if you listen closely enough. Take a minute to read these words from John in a staccato, catching your breath sort of fashion and you'll see what I mean: "There was a man, uh...sent from God, whose name was, um, John, uh. He came to bear...witness to the light, so that...whew...all might believe through him. Uh...he, um...himself, he was not the light, but he came to...bear...witness to the light. The true...light, the light which enlightens everyone, was...coming, um, into the, uh, world."

Breathlessness. Excitement. Anticipation. That is how the promise of God, which reached ultimate fulfillment in Jesus (see Heb 1) was treated by those who experienced it, or by those who learned at the feet of those who experienced it. And the turning over the leaf from the punishment of exile into the new hope of the life afterward expresses a similar kind of thing: God is coming back to us. Life will be different in this New Year. And as we stand just inside the door of a new year, our anticipation is not the same as what others anticipate. Sure, we're making resolutions and promises to do better with this or that, but the newness of life represented in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ ultimately renders all such resolutions important but not Important, significant but not Significant. In the light of this Christ, while we still live in the world, we are not of the world. In the light of this Christ, although we breathlessly await the fulfilling of the promise, we do not live aloof from the concerns of the world. This is the great tension, the great anticipation in which we find ourselves. Ultimately, we are so torn that we cannot adequately express it, but instead we keep getting tangled up in the breathless retelling of the promise. Amen.

New Year's Day: "We must not commit the sin of turning our backs on time."

2009-01-01T17:23:00.008+08:00

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13; Psalm 8; Revelation 21:1-6a; Matthew 25:31-46

The readings this time deal in a very clear way with the passage of time. The Old Testament reading is significant for me because Ecclesiastes is one of my top three favorite books in the canon. If I had not written my doctoral dissertation on Jeremiah, than either Job or Ecclesiastes would have been in focus. I might have even investigated this somewhat depressing poem about there being a season for everything, and a time for every purpose under heaven. The entire book of Ecclesiastes is depressing, really, chasing after all sorts of things that are supposed to satisfy but in the end are found wanting. Ultimately Ecclesiastes does sound a kind of positive note, with a theological twist, but it is a kind of resignation, an ultimate casting of everything upon the will of a generally inscrutable God. This is typical of later Hebrew thinking in antiquity, leading a scholar such as Jack Miles to wonder if God loses interest.

But then this is balanced with Psalm 8, a hymn that shows all of humanity, all of creation, in praise of Yahweh as the sovereign, whose name is majestic over all the earth. Whereas Ecclesiastes 3 suggests that the ultimate good of humankind is, essentially, to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die, Psalm 8 says that Yahweh has taken such great regard for humanity as to make them just a little lower than the gods. True enough, this reflects a much earlier form of Hebrew religion than Ecclesiastes, and it is much closer to the polytheistic environment in which Israel came to be, but the contrast is illuminating nonetheless.

When I saw that Ecclesiastes 3 was paired with Psalm 8, I immediately saw Tom Hanks' character in Cast Away, which is in itself a pun. Twice in the movie, once before his ordeal and once after, Chuck Noland (=No Land, =Homeless) says that "We must not commit the sin of turning our backs on time." Time is important, and transitons in time are important, for even though, as Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun, we do long for the time when the new heaven and the new earth come, and the Son of Man sets up his judgment throne, as said by the passages from Revelation and Matthew, respectively. The hope of the final judgment is not, as Nietzsche says, the product of an unrequited sense of vengeance, but a genuine trust in God that things will come to the conclusion that he intends. Even if the world has gotten off the track, indeed as far back as the first couple, whenever that was or if they even existed, but mistakes by humans do not ultimately thwart the plan of God. This is what our confession of faith means when we say that Christ was destined before the foundation of the world--in the time before time began--to be the redeeming sacrifice. The death and resurrection of Jesus was not "Plan B," was not God returning to the drawing board and ginning up some new plans after the humans messed everything up.

Chuck No Land is much more thoughtful the second time he says that we should not commit the sin of turning our backs on time. No moments can be relived, except in the furtive experiences of memory. This can lead us to an ultimate resigned depression, as with Ecclesiastes. It can also lead us to a sure and certain hope that God will wipe away every tear, as with Revelation. Enjoying ourselves and our days as long as we live, taking care to take care for others, giving praise to Yahweh, following Jesus Christ--these are the things that make for new life under the sun. And under the Son. Amen.

Holy Name of Jesus/Solemnity of Mary:

2009-01-01T09:06:00.008+08:00

Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 8; Galatians 4:4-7 OR Philippians 2:5-13; Luke 2:15-21

Manigong Bagong Taon! Feliz Año Nuevo! Happy New Year!

In the liturgical calendar, there are two entries for New Year's Day. This first is the Holy Name of Jesus, also intended to commemorate Jesus' circumcision, as he was one born of a woman, born under the law (Gal 4:4). In some traditions, most notably the Roman Catholic, this first service/Mass on New Year's Day is designed especially to give honor to the name of Mary. I read just yesterday a Roman Catholic writer ( Hans Küng) on Marian devotion. He recognized that it is a significant problem between Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox, this special position given to Mary as co-redeemer and queen of heaven. Küng admitted that this is not found in the New Testament, but is a much later theological development, and so he issued a call for reevaluating it in light of the pressing need for ecumencial dialogue and cooperation. He was writing this in 1974 (interestingly enough, the year of my birth), so the book On being a Christian was a hefty contribution to the important conversations about ecumenism that had been going on for some time, but were codified in the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). I have spoken in some of these other posts about approaching a devotion of Mary, though I am not at all prepared to make the step that my Catholic brothers and sisters have.

In any event, devotion of and even prayers to Mary have been the subject of much strife between Protestants and Catholics even as far back as the Reformation. Protestants and Catholics are more in agreement, though not any less concerned with, the Jewishness of Jesus. If we confess, as we do in the Creed, that Jesus became a human, then we have to say that he lived in human history, at a particular place, at a particular time, within a particular religious/political system. The eighth day was the day of circumcision for Jewish males, and so on January 1 that is what we commemorate. That's why I like the Galatians passage for today; Jesus was born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those under the law. Paul says elsewhere in this letter than the law was the "school master" until Christ came, and because of the coming of Christ all of the traditional distinctions are done away with. This is an important point for ecumenical dialogue, for although Paul certainly did not have in mind the tragically fractured state in which the Church of Jesus Christ finds itself in the morning of the 21st century, he was dealing with class, social, racial, gender, and other sorts of divisons operating throughout 1st century CE Hellenistic society.

The priestly blessing in Numbers 6 is one of the really cool texts of the Old Testament. It was also one of the first I learned to recite in Hebrew. The blessing of Yahweh, it is my prayer, should be upon everyone in this new year. This is a typical sentiment when the calendar turns over, but it's not trite or hackneyed for being typical. For while it might be expected among religious people to invoke the blessing of the higher power or the fates or wisdom or whatever, and for those in the Judeo-Christian tradition specifically to invoke the name of Yahweh, this is not at all how people in "the world" do things. They'll celebrate with fireworks or with drinking or revelry or whatever it is they do, and they'll deal with the appropriate consequences the next day, whether cleaning up burnt stumps of firecrackers or nursing a hangover. Then they'll go on with their lives, empty and yet thinking they are fulfilled. What sort of blessing are you looking for this year? Amen.

Rest in peace, Uncle John, but sorry, there's no handicapped parking in Heaven

2009-01-01T07:37:00.010+08:00

My father informed me via email that my uncle John Modine passed away around 10 PM, December 30, which would have been about 2 PM on New Year's Eve for me. He had been battling multiple sclerosis for many years, and as those who are familiar with this horrid disease know it was an increasingly losing fight. But Dad did go on to say that Uncle John had become a Christian some time ago through the efforts of a pastor visiting the nursing home where he lived. Thanks be to God for that.

I just added the second part of the title of this post under a flash of inspiration: "but, sorry, there's no handicapped parking in heaven." I realize it is a quite sappy phrase, but I can be allowed a bit of sap in the aftermath of the passing of family. See, Uncle John had been confined to a wheelchair for the last few years of his life. I saw him last probably 5 years or so ago and even then he was not looking very good. He was a rather active person before the disease attacked him, and so I am sure he is active again now in heaven with his Lord.

Whenever I think of people getting saved later in life, and especially near death, as in Uncle John's case, my mind immediately goes back to the parable of the brothers, what is usually called the parable of the prodigal son, in Luke 15. A much overlooked point of this parable, in the midst of the wonderful news of even someone who has actively rejected the father's house (=salvation) being joyfully received upon returning, is the conversation between the father and the older brother while the party is going on. The older son complains that he has always been faithful, he has always done his work, and papa never even threw a small party for him and his friends. "But THIS SON of yours," and I am sure the emphasis was just like that, coming out of the older brother's resentment and desire not to have further relations with the prodigal. The father says to him, "Everything I have ever had is yours. But we had to celebrate, for THIS BROTHER of yours was dead and is alive again." Once again, I think that the emphasis was just like this. Have a relationship with your brother as I have with my son, says the father. That part of interpreting the parable is left open, because there is no more to the story.

I link it up with the parable of the workers in the vineyard in Matthew 20. There, the slackers who work only an hour get paid the same that the people who worked all day, and that makes the latter decidedly unhappy. But the point of the parable is that the landowner does what is considered right, so go your way. If the day's wage is equated with salvation, and I think it's legitimate to do so (even though we should recognize the danger we face in coming close to works righteousness), then those who have been around forever do not have any extra bonus compared with those who came along only very late in the day. So also, those who have been Christians their entire lives have the same gift as those who confess their sins and trust in God for salvation only at the very end of life. Incidentally, this is the problem I have with the contemporary chorus often sung in evangelical churches like mine nowadays, "Come, now is the time to worship." The offending line is this:

One day every tongue will confess you are God,
one day every knee will bow.
Still the greatest treasure remains for those
who gladly choose you now.

This is so wrong that I refuse to sing it when this chorus is sung in church services that I attend. It seems to be exactly against things like Luke 15 and Matthew 20. While the eschatological vision of every tongue confessing the lordship of God is correct, it is heinous to suggest that those who choose him now, however gladly, can expect a greater treasure than those who wait. By contrast, deathbed confessions and the stories of them that are told afterward are very powerful parts of Christian literature. This is precisely because even those who rejected God and Christ for many years, either by refusing to heed the call (Matthew 20) or by actively turning their backs on faith (Luke 15), can be redeemed and will be redeemed when they finally come and answer the call of faith. While Uncle John did not confess Christ is Lord at the very hour of his death, but rather some time before, nevertheless he has the same gift that I do after being a Christian for 22 of my 34 years.

And that, my friends, is NOT sappy.

First New Year's Eve in the Philippines

2008-12-31T07:11:00.003+08:00

I hear from everyone that New Year's Eve is a very festive, very loud occasion in the Philippines. A student told me last evening, in fact, that I'll be hearing fireworks explode throughout the day today (and indeed I have been hearing them steadily for over a week), but between 11:30 PM and 1:30 AM on New Year's Day, she said it will sound like we're in the middle of a battle. I'm actually looking forward to it. I'll be off in the mountains with a great view of the displays around the area, and then I'll get a ride back to the seminary after everything is over. It's too bad I don't have a camera to record it as best I can.

On the camera: I have ordered a replacement and it should hopefully get to my colleague in Kansas in time for her to bring it back in her luggage. If not, the husband of the one who described the battle (himself also a student) is going back to the States for some meetings in January and he'll be able to bring it back. So I'll be cameraless for as little as two weeks or as long as six weeks. No big deal. I'm really thankful for loving supporters (i.e., family).

I looked at my own travel plans to come to the States in March. It looks like I can get a great deal for a flight to Nashville in the end of February, returning the first week of March. I'm still hoping and praying for support for my friend to come along. I've sent out a couple of appeals, but we'll see how that goes. Of course, we don't even know if he'd be granted a visa, since the US has seemed to tighten its controls on persons coming from the Philippines, even with American sponsors and for short-term trips. We'll see. Keep praying.

I'm going to try in the next few weeks to set up links to show people how they can help, but I haven't figured that out with Blogger yet. I'm sort of treating this blog like the standard "missionary newsletter," and so this is one of the things that goes into that kind of document. Anyhow, prayer is the most important means of support. Partnering is, of course, another. But that's all I'll say. I promise.

The First Sunday after Christmas: The persistence of memory and the vicissitudes of tradition

2008-12-28T05:49:00.007+08:00

Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 148; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:22-40

It has become something of a standard line for me to complain about how all of the decorations go up earlier and earlier every year and then seem to be torn down as soon as possible after the Christmas holiday. In certain ways, this is even more pronounced in the Philippines than it is in the States, if such can even be conceived considering how grossly materialistic the majority of Americans are and have been for the entirety of their history of relative prosperity. But beyond this standard critique of the misuse (in an active sense) or the misunderstanding (in a passive sense) of the concept of time, the relationship between memory and anticipation seems to me to be an important one.

I need to air out a pet peeve. In my tradition, it has become something of a emotionally-driven practice to translate the Aramaic term Abba as used by/attributed to Jesus in the Gospels (and in our text from Galatians today) as "Daddy." This is designed to indicate something of the closeness and familiarity with which God the Son is said to have approached God the Father. True enough, "Father and Son," or, in view of the community, "Father and children" is a more intimate relationship than "King and subjects," one of the principal ways in which the relationship been God and Israel was metaphorized in the Old Testament. It is certainly not as initimate as "husband and wife," though that in itself and for separate reasons is subject to the vicissitudes of tradition, for the ways in which husbands treated wives in the Old and New Testaments--and in later Christian tradition and practice--is something of an embarrasment for Christianity.

But Abba is not--NOT!--"Daddy." This is used in my tradition to suggest that we can come running to God when we have skinned our knees or something and say "Daddy daddy daddy," or when God has come home from work we can go running through the house and jump up into his waiting arms and squeal, happily, "Daddy daddy daddy!" Aside from the oddity indeed of a thirty-year-old upper-middle class skilled laborer calling anyone--much less his heavenly Father--"Daddy," translating Abba as "Daddy" makes absolutely no connection to my own piety. The name of God is much too exalted for that, and turning this into "Daddy" comes, I fear, dangerously close to breaking the Third Commandment. Those who preach this, further, link it up--in a grotesque sort of textual patch-work--with the injunctions to become like little children and thus be fit for the kingdom of heaven (a works-righteousness sort of thing in its own right whose setting aside must be set aside for another time). But, to my knowledge, I have never called my father "Daddy." Once I did when I was fifteen, just to kid him, and he got very offended and angry. This is a word that makes absolutely no sense to me. And I surely would not approach God would this word. Now, there is an intimacy and a closeness that defines the relationship of the Christian community with God, and for that matter of individual Christian believers with God, but this is not to be expressed through the milquetoast sort of emotionalism that lies crouching at the door of translating Abba as "Daddy." We can go running to God when we've skinned our knees or whatever, and we can go running into his waiting arms for his embrace. But the closeness of the relationship that we can have does not mean that we need become blubbering fools.

On a recent shopping trip, I saw a most interesting painting. It was obviously intended to recall Salvador Dali's The persistence of memory (1931)--you know, the one with the melting clocks. I cannot remember now what the title of this send-up was, but the striking feature was melting computer accouterments--floppy disks, CD-ROMs, keyboards, mice, and so on. I told myself I should remember that, but of course I did not. I know the title had something to do with memory, and the fact that I cannot remember this title that has to do with memory illustrates well the point that I am trying to make in this devotion.

Memory, in order for it to be persistent, must be continually worked at, like the muscles of an athlete must be continually worked in order to avoid atrophication. The great sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (d. 2002) maintained that the things taken for granted, especially within "primitive" societies, the things that did not need explanation, were where the real life of a community lay. He labeled this ideas with the curiously-chosen Greek term doxa, necessarily adding the notion of assumedness to this word's semantic domain. "Excellence," said Bourdieu, "ceases to exist when one asks whether it can be taught." What he meant by this was that once systematization of tradition enters in, then tradition will of necessity become traditionalism, and it will then be open to the negotiations and vicissitudes of changing traditions.

The readings for today can be somewhat shoved under this particular lens. In the story of the purification of Jesus and Mary "according to the law of Moses," they came to the temple and offered the proper sacrifices. The time of uncleanness for a woman bearing a male child was much shorter than the time of uncleanness for a woman bearing a female child, according to the Old Testament law. This has been reinterpreted in some feminist and womanist scholarship to give greater pride of place to the birth of females, for why should it be in the doxa of our society that a greater period of inaction is to be equated with a greater degree of uncleanness, and therefore less value for the girl that has been born (and borne)? This is something that has been subjected to the negotiations of changing traditions, and this is part of the evolution of societies as they grow out of old, once-but-no-longer-useful traditions and embrace new and different ways of looking at life and the world.

So Mary and Jesus are doing what is necessary in order to continue on into the future, while at the same time old Simeon has come to the end of his life, and now can be released in peace because his eyes have seen the Savior, a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of God's people Israel. By having developed this story, the Lukan community showed that while Mary and Jesus were good, pious Jews, fulfilling the commandments of the law, at the same time this baby represented a new initiative on the part of God. The coming of Jesus was an innovation, was subject to the negotiations and vicissitudes of what was then a well-established tradition of rapport between this particular God and this particular people. But then again, it was also very much in line with this tradition.

But what of the persistence of memory? Mary and Jesus remembered the commandments of the law, for Jesus was born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might redeem all those who are born under the law. We remember the traditions of Christmas even amongst all the gloppy emotionalism that is tied into it in our modern consumer societies. We remember the closeness of the relationship that existed between Father and Son and that we by extension can have through him. And while, assumedly, just about everything we teach and say and think and do is subject to the negotiations and vicissitudes of changing traditions, let this remain in our doxa, our excellence that will not cease to exist even if we ask whether it can be taught: we will "praise the name of Yahweh, for his name alone is exalted, his glory is above earth and heaven. He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his faithful, for the people of Israel who are close to him. Praise Yahweh" (Psalm 148:13-14). Amen.

Prayer

2008-12-27T09:48:00.003+08:00

Manalangin tayo!

Panginoon, maraming salamat po sa araw na ito.
Maraming salamat din po sa Anak ninyo.
Maraming salamat din po sa Biblya ninyo.
Maraming salamat din po sa simbahan ninyo.
Maraming salamat din po sa buhay ko.
Maraming salamat din po sa pamilya ko.
Maraming salamat din po sa mga kaibigan ko.
Maraming salamat din po sa trabaho ko.
Maraming salamat din po sa mga estudyante ko.
Maraming salamat din po sa mga titser ko.
At maraming salamat din po sa lahat ng ibinigay ninyo sa akin. Amen.

Corregidor Island

2008-12-27T08:00:00.002+08:00

Took a day-trip out to Corregidor Island at the mouth of Manila Bay yesterday. Corregidor has been one of the principal fortified places protecting the capital city from attack by sea for hundreds of years. One of the many things we learned on the tour was that the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922--signed by the United States, the British Empire, the Empire of Japan, the French Third Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy--specifically prevented the United States from improving the fortifications on the island, which would indirectly lead to the island falling to the Japanese, after a five-month battle, in May 1942. Against an attack from the sea Corregidor was well prepared, including the so-called "invisible guns of Corregidor," batteries that raised up to fire at approaching ships then were lowered again away from counterattack for reloading. However, against an attack from the air, such as that executed first by the Japanese and then by the Americans retaking the island in 1945, Corregidor was largely defenseless.

I am a history buff. Even though history as such is not in my academic interests, nevertheless my field is--in a manner of speaking--about history, and so it is natural, I think, that I should be enraptured by discussions of historical kinds of things. I am particularly fascinated by military history, which I think is unusual because there is not much in my family history in the way of proud military tradition. True enough, my father served in Vietnam, but you would be hard-pressed to find any significant heroics on the battlefield coming from the Modines. Perhaps this is because we ultimately come from the neutral country of Sweden, which seems more interested in fortifying its countryside with saunas and ski lodges than artillery installations and foxholes.

Anyhow, Corregidor was the site of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's famous line "I shall return!" The General was ordered to Australia by President Roosevelt, and beginning in the summer of 1944 he was in charge of a campaign that came west and north from a base in Australia to sytematically retake the lands conquered by Japan, achieving ultimate victory in September 1945. I said to my girlfriend that it would have been very interesting indeed to have taken this tour with some of my Japanese students, of which there are currently four at the seminary. The tour guide was obviously slanted in his presentation in favor of the American and Filipino side of the story, but this was not in any respect a weakness. A quite knowledgeable guide, he did have a couple of funny lines, including asking after the difference between the Filipino and American soldiers depicted, arms around each other's shoulders, helping each other, in front of the Pacific War Memorial. When no one gave the "right answer," he said it was simple, really: "The Filipino is the more handsome one!"

The memorial itself is so constructed that the sun on May 6 at noon is to shine directly on the "memorial altar" inside the structure. Futher, on that day the sun rises and sets exactly through the openings in the side of the building. This is one of several features designed to remember May 6, 1942, the day Corregidor fell to the forces of Imperial Japan. Some others are meant to recall February 26, 1945, the date of the final liberation of Corregidor; and March 7, 1945, the date Gen. MacArthur finally made good on his promise that he would return.

One of the most interesting things our guide said was to quote from memory the announcement of the fall of Bataan Peninsula (April 9, 1942) on the Voice of Freedom, as well as the communique' issued by Gen. John Wainwright to President Roosevelt the day before the official surrender of Corregidor and the rest of the Philippines to Japan. The fall of Bataan was also the beginning of the infamous "Death March," which was designed not only for brutality, but also to provide a long line of human shields as cover for the Japanese refortification of Bataan in order to continue their fight for the Philippines. The commanding general of Japan had promised the emperor to deliver the Philippines in 50 days' time, but the "Battling Bastards of Bataan" and the guns of Corregidor held out for an amazing five months against overwhelming odds. Corregidor did not hold as much strategic importance for the Japanese in terms of defending the Philippines as it had for the Americans and Filipinos, but it was still important enough--for military as well as sentimental reasons--to warrant a separate attack when the Americans came back to retake the Philippines. Today it is one of the prided tourist locations in the islands.

Next I want to see Bataan...

Christmas Day, Proper 3: Head of the class

2008-12-25T20:31:00.011+08:00

Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98; Hebrews 1:1-4(5-12); John 1:1-14

The final set of texts for the Nativity departs from the Mark texts generally used throughout Year B and goes to the quasi-philosophical Gospel opening, John's discourse about the Word being made flesh and dwelling among humans. I once preached on this text, describing how the author(s) of the Fourth Gospel used a word from philosophical Greek to explain how a new world had come about through this odd, upper-middle class itinerant preacher from Galilee. A note, though, on "upper-middle class." While at first this sounds like an anachronism, it is much better to describe Jesus the Nazareth carpenter as an upwardly mobile member of society than with the term "peasant," which in today's English conjures up the image of a laborer working solely for the benefit of a superior, without any hope of advancement beyond meager, subsistence conditions--and sometimes even worse conditions than that. In earlier usage, "peasant" simply meant "country dweller," or one who did not live in the larger cities or in and around the castle or manor house. Such persons could be very wealthy indeed, in relative terms at least, and especially someone in skilled profession such as scribe, blacksmith, tanner, vintner...or carpenter.

I can illustrate this difference with reference to my own situation. Compared to my country of origin, the salary I am paid is nothing near what I should expect to earn in a similar position, even coming in with no experience. However, in comparison to the average salary in the Philippines, I am near the top, though certainly not at it. Nevertheless, I am a "peasant" in the old sense of the term; although I live near Manila, I am definitely not involved in the centers of power. And I am a worker whose job requires a specialized skill and set of knowledge, just like a vulcanizing shop, an auto mechanic, an information technology person...or a carpenter. It is a matter of perspective. Something has been lost in the equation of "peasant" with unskilled, subsistence labor. And while Jesus was not at the center of power, he was definitely familiar with it. He was of course quite versed in the ways of the Pharisees--again, people who had a specialized skill, and who were thus "upper-middle class" type of people, but not necessarily involved in the central operation of things. If Jesus was not himself a Pharisee (which argument I believe can be made) then he knew enough about how they operated, or the Gospel writers knew enough about how they operated at any rate, to be able to criticize them exactly at the point where they had gotten off the track: emphasizing the smallest points of the law and thereby, in the American idiom, missing the forest for the trees.

The text from Isaiah 52 is written to those who are about to come back from exile, indicating that Yahweh is returning to Zion. It is natural to see this as a Messianic text, though that was perhaps not part of the original intent. In the Christian confession, Jesus is the son of Yahweh, and indeed Yahweh himself in the flesh (John 1:1, 14). So Yahweh, the LORD, has indeed returned to Zion--but not in the way people would expect. Part of the reason why Jesus angered so many people, as should be well known by now, is that he quite simply failed to live up to the expectations of a Davidic/militaristic Messiah, ridding the nation of the presence of the pagan Romans and reestablishing the Kingdom of David as it should be. It was all very post-colonial, this Messianic expectation, even though I realize that applying a term from late-twentieth century political philosophy and cultural criticism is a rather large anachronism. But for all his familiarity with the skills necessary for the work of a carpenter, for all his familiarity with the ways and means of the Pharisees, for all his better-than-prescient understanding of his earthly mission (and I think that at least some of this is historically probable), Jesus was at the head of the class. He was not JUST a carpenter, even though being just a carpenter was quite an honorable and lucrative position. He was not JUST a preacher and interpreter of the law, although being just a preacher and interpreter of the law also garnered a person a rather well-thought-of place in the society of 1st century CE Jewry; this is in spite of Jesus' rather persistent disclamations of his own authority and position. Near the end of his life, he again says to Pontius Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world, for if it were, his followers would be conducting a military operation not only to free the boss from the clutches of the Roman procurator, but also establish the kingdom by force with Jesus himself taking his rightful place. The Triumphal Entry was not triumphant at all; but, if Jesus' kingdom were of this world, then it would be. The Entry would then be every bit as pompous (in the positive sense of that word) as the entry of the victorious, newly crowned Caesars into Rome. But it was not this way, not for this King.

For this king, as the author of the book of Hebrews maintains, represented a new initiative on the part of God toward the people of the earth. In many and various ways God spoke to the ancestors by the prophets, but now he has spoken to us by a Son. The word has become flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of an only begotten Son, full of grace and truth. This is something new. Yahweh has demonstrated his victory over sin in the sight of all the nations. Whereas Psalm 98 is talking specifically about a military type of victory, as it stands in the context of these other readings for Christmas Day it is given a new kind of meaning, an explicitly Christological one at that. Jesus was just a carpenter, of which there were many. Jesus was just a preacher, of which there were many. Jesus was just an interpreter of the law, of which there were many. Jesus was just a prophet, of which there were many. Jesus was just a messianic claimant, of which there were many. Jesus was just a man, of which there were many. But he was more, so much more. He is the exact reflection of God's very being (the Greek word in Heb 1:3 is character). And, Phil 2 tells us, he did not consider equality with God something to be exploited, or even though he had the very nature of God at his disposal, nevertheless he humbled himself--not divesting himself entirely of his divinity, as if he were even able to do such a thing--and identified himself with us in our weakness. Jesus took on our class, living as an upper-middle class, skilled laborer, preaching, teaching, interpreting the law, healing the sick...and showing us how to live in a way that was not merely subsistence, that was not merely turning over all the gains of our labor to a superior and then walking away with nothing. This was a new way to live, and we are still today figuring out the implications of this message. I shouldn't think we will ever master it. Amen.

Christmas Day, Proper 2: Don't stop believing

2008-12-25T18:04:00.007+08:00

Isaiah 62:6-12; Psalm 97; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:(1-7)8-20

It is no surprise at all that the first two Propers for Christmas Day have the same chapter from Luke as the Gospel reading. The nativity scene from Luke is well-known, with no room at the inn, the stable, the manger, the shepherds, the angels, and all the rest. "Nativity scenes" of course get it all wrong, because we're not talking about a wooden barn, and the wizards/magicians/sages/astrologers/whatever they were were not present in the manger, but only showed up later, as recorded in Matthew. But the incorrectness/anachronism of manger scenes aside, the point of Luke's infancy narratives seems to be all about the humble beginnings of this one who seemed to know a lot about what he was doing even at an early age. After all, it is Luke that later records that Jesus said he had to be about his father's business when he was twelve. How would a kid realistically know that? But, so far as the Gospel of Luke is concerned, there is something special about this boy, who otherwise would have been written off as yet another precocious kid of whom the world is filled with abundant examples.

Speaking of precociousness, the Isaiah passage seems to indicate that the worshippers are called on to keep bugging Yahweh until he does what he has promised to do. In this specific case, it is establish[ing] Jerusalem and mak[ing] it renowed through all the earth." This insistence that Yahweh do something is not asking him to do something innovative, but rather to complete a promise given long ago to Abraham, even though the children of Israel broke the covenant repeatedly. The God of the Bible is never one finally to give up on his creatures. Might we not extend this willingness to save as far as possible, and even beyond the limits of what we might think is possible? This is a point to ponder, and if God is a God of love--as we confess--then there might be much more here than meets the eye. But the persistence in asking God, in "reminding" God of something he has promised, in the language of Isa 62, carries the same sentiment, so it seems to me, of the final line of the book of Revelation: "Amen, come Lord Jesus." The Aramaic word there is the somewhat enigmatic Maran atha. This word can also be written Marana tha. The former means "Our Lord, come," while the latter means, "The Lord has come." Both ideas are captured by the single word and, as texts from the first century did not have spaces, owing to the expense of papyrus roles and the need to use up as much of the available space as possible. So we pray that our Lord will soon come, will make good on the promises he has made to us and to our ancestors. And we also bear witness to the fact that our Lord has come, and it is this first coming that we celebrate in particular today.

Psalm 97 is a remnant of the old polytheistic systems out of which the faith of Israel arose; this is in particular reflected in v 9; if Yahweh is exalted above all other gods, this is not the same thing as saying, in accordance with the language of the latter prophets, and especially Third Isaiah from which the Old Testament lesson comes, that Yahweh is the only God over all the earth. Even though this remant is there, however, and even though the final victory of monotheism was not achieved until the Maccabean revolt in the second century BCE (reflected in the book of Daniel), the movement toward monotheism is an inexorable one, and indeed a monotheistic lacquer, so to speak, has been brushed back over the earlier materials to give at least the appearance that this theological idea was in place from the first days of Israel.

And again to Titus, this time from chapter 3. Verse 7 in especially striking. Salvation from sin is clearly not the only story, or not entirely the story. We have also become heirs of eternal life through what Jesus has done, coming to earth as a human, dying, and being raised by the power of God. We also walk in newness of life, says Paul in Romans 6, "dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus" (v 11). But what Titus 3:7 says is that we have become heirs "according to the hope of eternal life." This is why we are to keep on asking, keep on insisting, that God live up to God's word and deliver us from the law of sin and death (Rom 7). It is possible to live free from sin in this life. This is the hope of eternal life, that God will finally deliver on his promises in this life, in this present evil age, and the gates of Hell will not be able to stand against the church that he builds on the rock, the foundation stone, of our confession, with Peter, that he is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And we wait for the fulfilling of the promise, but we do not wait in vain. For as we continue to ask, continue to demand, continue to insist, the promise comes through in ways we cannot even imagine. Amen.

"Maranatha!" is a cry of the heart,
that's hopeful yet weary of waiting.
While it may be joyful with the burdens it bears,
it's sick with anticpating!

To long for the Promised One day after day,
and the promise that soon he'd return;
it's certain that waiting's the most bitter lesson
a believing heart has to learn.

"Maranatha!"
How many more moments must this waiting last?
"Maranatha!"
We long for the time when all time is past.
A commotion, a call, then that will be all;
though it's not yet the hour
the minutes are ticking away!

"Maranatha" is the shout of the few
who so long in history've been hiding,
who truly believe that the sound of that call
might actually hasten his coming!

For no eye has seen and no ear has yet heard,
and no mind has ever conceived,
the joy of the moment when he will appear
to the wonder of all who believe!

"Maranatha!"
How many more moments must this waiting last?
"Maranatha!"
We long for the time when all time is past.
A commotion, a call, then that will be all;
though it's not yet the hour
the minutes are ticking away!

"Maranatha!"
How hungry we are just to see your face!
"Parousia!"
To finally fall in one long embrace!
A commotion, a call, then that will be all;
though it's not yet the hour
the minutes are ticking away!
--Michael Card, "Marantha"

Old traditions with new people II

2008-12-25T09:46:00.002+08:00

I did not realize it until the game was about 3/4 over, but I did participate in another Modine family ritual last night. This time it was playing Monopoly on Christmas Eve, starting late at night and ending early on Christmas morning. My opponents were the two oldest children--one girl and one boy--of one of my faculty colleagues, who had never played Monopoly before. So I was teaching them how to do it as they went along.

My brother's strategy of collecting the railroads and the utilities ultimately paid off for the girl, the eventual winner of the game. I had bought and/or traded for three of the railroads and I had both utilities. I was offering the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars to the girl for the fourth railroad, but she was very stubborn. Eventually I made a blunder and offered her the three railroads and both utilities for the two properties I needed to completely own Second Street, except of course for the Electric Company. She accepted this, and then both I and her brother immediately began landing on the railroads and the utilities every time we went around the board. Of course, she also always missed the magentas and the oranges on Second Street, usually taking a ride on her own Pennsylvania Railroad or visiting the power substation, if she did not fly past the street all together with boxcars on the dice. Her brother, initially out into a commanding lead with both sets of blue properties (though he never improved Boardwalk and Park Place), soon had to demolish the houses he had on First Street since he kept landing on the railroads owned by his sister.

I kept advising her when to build on Third Street, which she owned entirely except for the Chance square in between Indiana and Kentucky Avenues. I kept saying, "Well, here we come around the corner and you probably will miss my orange guys over here. Even if you hit them, it won't cost you much money." For I never had more than two houses on either the orange or the magenta properties on Second Street. I avoided a usual mistake in building too quickly, but I fell victim to another usual blunder, like I said, and made a devastatingly bad trade. I do not think she ever landed on the oranges, though she did hit the magentas a few times.

Soon enough, and mainly because I was getting tired, I conceded, tore down the houses I had left, gave the unimproved properties to the boy, and encouraged him to quit as well. By this time he had mortgaged the greens, the dark blues, and all of the light blues except Connecticut Avenue. But he refused to concede. Then I advised the girl to shell out $900 and put hotels all along Third Street. I kept calling it the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but she insisted on the much prettier name of Marigold Street. Anyhow, I instituted a lightning round, because I wanted it to be over so I could go home and go to bed, since I was due to talk to the family at 8:00 AM and it was already past midnight. The seminary president came along a couple of times to observe the carnage, and I said again that it shouldn't be long before the boy was bankrupt. During the lightning round, he hit the Free Parking lottery (not in the official rules, but whatever), but he landed on one of the reds the next turn, and then Ventor Avenue the turn after that. And that was it.

All told, the girl owned the purples (which her brother hit a couple of times), the utilities, the railroads, the reds, and the yellows. She even gave him some grace a couple of times when he hit her stuff. She never offered this grace to me, and I wouldn't have accepted it anyway, because I wanted to lose and get it over already. It truly was a dominating performance, especially since she came back from a cash-poor position early on. It was a stroke of luck that she landed on Atlantic Avenue (the last unclaimed lot to be purchased), and it was my error to trade everything away for Second Street.

Maybe someday I'll learn how to play Monopoly.

Christmas Day, Proper 1: Building the cross with the wood from the manger

2008-12-25T06:23:00.007+08:00

Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

I should probably have posted this one yesterday, so that I could have gotten something in for Christmas Eve as well, but that's ok. My original intent was to post this just after midnight so that I could have written a meditation for "Midnight Mass" or whatever. But then after I left the noche buena party last night, I was exhausted, mainly from having been trounced in Monopoly by a little girl who had never played before...more on that in the next entry. So I will try to post something after I get home from the faculty luncheon today for Proper 2, then this evening for the Proper 3, so that I can get in all the Christmas texts in the Revised Common Lectionary.

Today, I notice an odd contrast in Isa 9:3. The people, in giving thanks to the deliverance of Yahweh, "rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder." On the one hand, this crams together domestic and military imagery. Now, unlike a good number of my friends in the scholarly circles, I am certainly no pacifist, but this juxtaposition strikes me as very odd indeed. This is not to mention that other peoples "not from around here" can rejoice along with us in a bountiful harvest, though probably not in our dividing of plunder--most likely since their having been defeated by us is the reason why we can divide plunder in the first place. On the other hand, however, this confluence of argicultural and military metaphors reminds me of ways in which the Christmas and the Easter stories have been merged in quite powerful ways in reflecting on the life of Jesus. Though Jesus was all human, crying even at the last possible moment for his Father to take away the cup of punishment from him, it seems that throughout his life he was always living with a view toward his death. "Didn't you know that I had to be about the things of my Father," said the twelve-year-old Jesus to Mary. This little bit of pre-teen backsass is probably a later insertion of the post-Easter community, but it gives an important insight into what they believed about Jesus, that he knew what he was doing all along.

I really want to talk about the passage from Titus. The most relevant verse for what I'm talking about is v 14: "He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds." Back before my understanding of my calling changed away from parish ministry and toward teaching, I always loved to preach from obscure passages like this one. Actually, I still do like to preach from obscure passages, like the chapel message I delivered last month on the entrance of Elihu into the dialogues of Job (Job 32:1-5). But really, this little verse in Titus has a lot of punch. It really packs the entirety of the Christian message all together: Jesus gave himself in order to deliver us from sin. Once delivered from sin, we were purified to live a holy life before him (this has great relevance for holiness theology). Having had these two works of grace, we become zealous for doing the good deeds that are the proper response to the grace that has come to our lives. Never, never, never, never should anyone ever say that we earn God's favor, that there is something God requires of us before he is graceful and merciful. God's action is always first. But there is a response of faith required. But, further, the command of God is not something that we are unable to maintain or fulfill--which would make God a tyrant. Instead, God's grace is even given to empower us to respond properly in faith for what he has done for us. Amen.

Old traditions with new people

2008-12-24T07:33:00.002+08:00

My first Christmas in another country than my family is hard. I have been apart from my family over the holidays before, so it's not that so much. But this is the first time I have been 15,000 miles and thirteen time zones away. But, unlike people in the past who have gone on missionary service, I am blessed to have the Internet for connection back to the homeland. I chatted with the fam yesterday, and we've got it planned to connect at 8 AM Christmas Day (which, for them, is 6 PM Christmas Eve), so at least I'll get to see them and hear them as they open gifts and enjoy the time together, even if I am not there to be able to physically touch them.

Part of my therapy this season has been to share some of my old family traditions with new friends here in this place. One of these is the Modine Waffle Supper. This is perhaps the first time anyone has ever written about this with all capital letters. But it is a tradition in my family to eat waffles for dinner on Christmas Eve. I didn't do this on Christmas Eve, nor did I do it for dinner, but I still shared it with new friends. I invited my girlfriend and the ladies from her office to enjoy the Modine Waffle Lunch with me yesterday, December 23. Part of the Waffle Supper (or Lunch) is to have a wide array of waffle topping choices. There is the usual maple syrup, but we like to have apple butter, strawberry jam, etc., along with chokecherry syrup (an Idaho staple). Yesterday we had maple syup, blueberry preserves, peanut butter, and chocolate sauce. The point of this, for the heartiest waffle eaters, is to enjoy one waffle square with each of the topping offerings. So I had one with maple syrup, one with blueberry jam, one with chocolate sauce, and one with peanut butter--then another one with maple syrup just for fun. One of the ladies topped all her waffles with salt and pepper. I'm not sure what to do with that one, but like I told her, if that's what she likes then go for it.

I was blessed to have friends share this time with me, even if I didn't get to do this with family. And they were homemade waffles, as opposed to the greasy spoon ones I had in New Jersey the last time I was separated from my family over the holidays. No good. Having these friends has gone a long way toward battling against and ultimately triumphing over the depression that could very well have attached on to me this season, especially since I am so far away from the ones I love. And I also have people I love here. That makes a huge difference.

Christmas gifts

2008-12-23T06:54:00.002+08:00

I was able through a faculty colleague to send gifts for my family members home for Christmas. We will connect over webcam on the evening of their Christmas Eve. Incidentally, I wonder if that is Christmas Eve eve. :-)

But I have not yet gotten a gift for that special someone. She'll read this later and I suppose that's ok, but I have to be careful in what I say. The biggest problem is that I am never out to any potential gift-buying place without her. I asked one of my American friends to come along this morning, and also to lend a little female perspective, but it doesn't look like that's going to be able to happen. Everyone's busy, see, and so I'm pretty much in a bind. S.O. says it's okay not to come bearing gifts, but we all know what that means, don't we kids? I may have to break my general rule and just go down to the mall myself later today. With my major piece of electronic equipment already stolen I think the risk is minimized. Haha.

So I'm just going to go and find something. I cannot come empty-handed. Cannot!

The Fourth Sunday of Advent: Delusions of grandeur?

2008-12-21T07:39:00.006+08:00

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Luke 1:46b-55 OR Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

I thought about titling this blogpost/meditation on the lines of something like "making the impossible possible" or "the glorious impossible" or something like that. But I fear that the emphasis on the impossibility of the Incarnation are quickly becoming trite. So I am searching for a different metaphor, a different way of talking about this in order to keep it fresh in my own mind. That is, admittedly, part of my goal in writing meditations on the Revised Common Lectionary texts for this year: to increase my own creativity and thinking about the mysteries of the Christian faith.

Recently I watched on YouTube videos related to the heretic Catholic sect the Palmarian Church. I had been looking at various of the "Habemus Papum!" videos relating to the last few popes and this stuff was in the "Related Videos" section. I am of course not endorsing anything related to this sect, but it was interesting. For the present purposes, one of these videos was a five-minute-long (claimed, unprovably, to be "unedited") video of the former head of the sect, the Anti-Pope Gregory XVII apparently having a vision of the risen Christ in the Palmarian Cathedral at Seville.

Many of the comments on this video are, typically, the kind of vulgar trash one expects from comments on the Internet. But one I found suggested that all Anti-Pope Gregory would need to do is kneel, cross himself, and look up toward the ceiling a few times and then say later that he had seen a vision of Christ. No one else, of course, later said they had seen the same thing the Anti-Pope had, but none of them denied the authenticity of the vision later. Orthodox Christians are in general agreement that it was a hoax and a delusion of grandeur, but the Palmarians are in similar general agreement of the opposite.

A possibility which must be admitted, particularly in the current climate among the biblical studies guild, is that the assurance King David receives of the permanence of his dynasty is just this sort of posturing. In other words, especially since no one but Nathan the prophet sees or hears this promise of God to the king, there may be some unreality to it. Come to think of it, the vision of 2 Sam 7 is one step further removed from the YouTube video of Anti-Pope Gregory. In the latter case, the one having the vision of success is the leader himself, whereas in 2 Sam 7 the promise is given as a command to the prophet to promise these things to the king. All this is to say that I have begun to pay more and more attention to the details behind dialogues--and especially divine promises--as they appear in the Old Testament. Lots of people have already done this, so it's not like I'm blazing any new trails here. But it is at least possible that the writers of 2 Sam have some sort of ideological interest in the preservation of the Davidic dynasty, which in view of later events comes to frustration anyway.

The easy thing to do here is to draw a contrast between David as the powerful ruler and Mary as the humble servant of the Lord. For Mary in the Gospel lesson is given a great promise as well. In fact, her promise is even greater than the one commanded of Nathan to give to David--she will bear the Son of God. And she is not of a high position to begin with as opposed to the king, such that the greater promise is given to the one who begins with a lower position. There is something to be said there about Jesus' oft-repeated dictum that in the Kingdom of God the last will be first and the first will be last. But, more still, there is no mediation of a prophet here. Mary's conversation with God has a mediator, sure, the angel Gabriel, but at least we have a direct report of the conversation, rather than, like 1 Sam 7, a command to go have a conversation. And Mary is in no position to have delusions of grandeur; in fact, in the tradition of OT prophets, she initially resists the divine word, only to have reassurance that God will be with her (see Jer 1, Exod 3, Isa 6, Judg 6, among many others).

Am I approaching something like a veneration of Mary here? Well, yes and no. Along the same lines that I suggested above, namely that the story of God's promise of a forever-enduring line to David could have been a later insertion for the purposes of theological propaganda, so also could the calling of Mary (and this language should in fact be used here) be seen as a later insertion by someone interested in giving theological justification for the veneration of Mary. But, like a lot of scholarly investigation, this kind of thing also teeters on the edge of sophistry. How far do you push the argument that just about everything in Scripture was put into Scripture to serve certain theological and ideological interests?

Of course, the opposite argument can be made, namely that the experience of Mary (leaving David aside for the moment) was genuine, which does not make necessary any sort of veneration of Mary. Mary may rather be considered as an example of how one ought to act in the presence and in the promise of God. In that way, she is a prophet, one who has been admitted, at least after a fashion, into the counsels of the Most High and given a special task through that experience. By reaching out to the lowly, the humble servant of God, the foundations of the revolution that would be accomplished through Jesus were laid. Even if I do not agree with the position of some that this puts Mary into a privileged position in our devotion, it does say something significant about how God acts in the world.

King David may have had delusions of grandeur. Anti-Pope Gregory may have had delusions of grandeur. But Mary had no grandeur with which to delude herself. And that is precisely how she as a prophet brings us to God. "With what shall I approach the LORD?" asked Micah. "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God," is the answer. God does not command things that cannot be fulfilled, only to punish people for failing to keep his commands. If he did so, then he would be a tyrant, unworthy of worship.

In the calling of Mary to bear the Son of God, and so to change the world, God reached out to the lowly and lifted her--and them, and us--up to himself. And this is the glorious impossible. Amen.

Sixth emberary

2008-12-17T06:10:00.003+08:00

Today, December 17, 2008, marks six months since I achieved "wheels down" in the Philippines. I can't really call it an "anniversary," because that word implies marking the passage of years, hence "anni-." But I could not find a definition for "emberary" on reference.com--suggestions for alternate spelling included:

embracery: an attempt to influence a judge or jury by corrupt means
embry- (variant of embyro-): before a vowel [hmmm]
ambery: of the color of amber
embarras: I do this enough to myself to know what it means.

Anyway, so it seems I have invented a word. Or maybe reference.com just is not aware of its use. I do not have much time to blog this morning, because responsibilities continue even on this day which probably only has significance for me. After all, it is just Wednesday, and Doctrine of Holiness class convenes in 50 minutes. This means I should sign off the computer and get ready for the day. But for some reason I don't want to. And I just spilled coffee on my shirt--another indication that this is a day like any other.

Till next time...

The Third Sunday of Advent: Lifting up the lowly

2008-12-14T06:31:00.006+08:00

Is 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126 OR Luke 1:47-55; 1 Thess 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

I think it's more than a little ironic that I'm posting about lifting up the lowly on the morning after someone lowly lifted from my pocket something that belonged to me and made it something that belonged to her. I suppose there is a bit of a perverse sort of Robin Hood thing going on there, robbing from the rich to give to the poor, or whatever. I can insert all the standard denials that I am certainly not rich by American standards, that I give to worthy causes all the time, that I don't act like other people are beneath me because they get paid less, blah blah blah. But there is something interesting in that experience. For it was coupled with an earlier experience of literally being followed around a store with expensive fare--mainly trendy organizational type stuff for the home: space savers, cutlery sets, flatware, dishes, etc.

I know we were followed around because my girlfriend had a large bag on her shoulder, and on a certain level I do not mind being followed at all, for I am surely not going to steal anything, and those who watch me to make sure I don't are only wasting their time. But I first wondered, then immediately felt guilty and sought God's forgiveness for wondering, if we fit the "profile" of people who would steal things from a trendy household items store. I began to feel uncomfortable not just at the fact that a certain guy, and later a lady, worker was following us around, but at the obvious way he was doing it. As I continued to reflect on the experience even as it was happening, I supposed this is how certain ethnic groups in the States--particularly African-Americans, but this experience certainly is not limited to them--feel at expensive stores when they get hounded like that. Now, I have no illusions that one experience in a trendy store in the Philippines is anything like the unjust and immoral behavior effected on African-Americans or any similarly oppressed group in the States, but I have to think it was at least analogous. Workers in this situation are not eager to make a sale, like most Filipino store workers I have come across--almost so eager to help that I want to yell at them to go away--but they are watching over the things like hawks, just certain that those who fall under their scrutiny will justify it by their action. My girlfriend, as we were leaving, rather defiantly showed our main observer the bag with the book I had purchased earlier, in order, she said, to prove that they had no business watching us like that.

So the reading from Isaiah, which is the reading Jesus is said to have expounded upon in his first sermon at the Nazareth synagogue, is all about proclaiming liberation for captives and healing for the oppressed. The Philippines is nothing if not oppressed, as was demonstrated by our experience last evening in the two malls--overbearing scrutiny in one and coordinated, clearly desperate, theft in the other. Humanity has a long way to go in repairing relationships between people, and particularly between people groups: whether the Us vs. Them is Filipinos vs. Americans; "Whites" vs. African Americans (the former term being itself a racist epithet used of the oppressors--who come from many ethnic backgrounds--by the oppressed; "Islam" vs. the "West" (again, both terms being illogically comprehensive); or even the Hatfields and the McCoys.

Yahweh loves justice much more than burnt offering, so much so that it could be said that Yahweh hates burnt offering, hates ritual, even hates people coming to Church on Sunday morning.

Another item from last night. I just looked at my receipt from the bookstore at which I had bought the book shown so defiantly to the worker at the kitschy store (a biography of Pontius Pilate). The cashier's name was "Mary Grace." The alternative Psalm for today's lections comes from the Song of Mary in Luke 1, probably consciously designed to mirror the song of Hannah in 1 Samuel, as they pick up on many of the same themes, and in particular the exaltation of the lowly and the concomitant bringing down of the lofty. That Mary Grace was my cashier last night is one of those serendipitous kinds of things. I am very upset about what happened to me last night, both the scrutiny and the theft, but I rely upon the grace of God, as communicated through his servant Mary, who proclaimed to the angel that she would have it be according to his word. There is something quite powerful in that. Momentary injustice stings, but the sting fades after a while--provided the momentary injustice does not become systemic as it unfortunately too often has. When momentary injustice does become systemic, then it is incumbent upon all of us, and in particular those who find themselves a part of the dominant group, to set themselves and their interests aside, to work for justice and mercy instead of gain. This is a lesson that I needed to learn, even though I say that I am not rich by American standards, that I give to worthy causes all the time, that I don't act like other people are beneath me because they get paid less, blah blah blah.

For it is even in moments of experiencing momentary discomfort analogous to, but certainly not on the same level as, the systemic injustice experienced by other people that elements of grace shine through. Especially when Mary Grace sells you a book about Pontius Pilate. Amen.

Well, it was bound to happen

2008-12-14T05:59:00.005+08:00

I became the victim of a pickpocket ring last night. Neither I nor my girlfriend were hurt--thanks be to God--but I did lose my digital camera, an important piece of my connection back home during this foreign assignment.

I had gone to SM Megamall--for those of my readers familiar with Manila landmarks--to look for a stand to elevate my laptop so as to correct the problems I have been having with posture and my arms hurting over the last few weeks. Refer to "My arm hurts" for more information. Anyhow, the malls in the Philippines are always very crowded, but the definition of "very crowded" takes on an entirely different level in the holiday season. I was already a bit cranky from having maneuvered my way around all eleven million citizens of Manila--or so it seemed to my hyperbole-prone imagination--when we got to the escalator.

Typically what happens with theft in Manila is that it will be a non-confrontational act with several people working in collusion. Once the mark is identified, a coordinated effort will ensue to direct him or her into a less-open space, at which time one or more members of the gang will create a distraction or an obstruction. When the mark is sufficiently hindered or distracted, one or more other members of the gang will hit the loot. In my case, I wear an over-the-shoulder-and-neck satchel (what some Americans derisively call a "man purse" or, shortened, a "murse") in which I carry my important things, precisely to combat the persistent threat of pickpockets. Generally the only thing I carry in my pockets is a handkerchief and, as far as I'm concerned, they can have a square foot of fabric saturated with my sweat. Maybe they can sell it on eBay when I become famous. Haha.

A few steps ahead of me on the escalator was a slightly obese Filipino wearing a pink polo shirt. He was carrying one of the ubiquitous cell phones and texting, which it seems that many Filipinos, like many Americans, have gotten very adept at doing. There had already been some jostling with some of the others on the escalator. When we got to the top, Pink Polo decided the metal landing was a perfect place to stop and concentrate on the message he was tapping out. This caused a tremendous crush of people as the escalator continued to deliver its charges. I believe that, in the few seconds it took to extricate ourselves from the sea of people--including my physically shoving Pink Polo and yelling at him briefly over my shoulder for causing the traffic jam--one of the other members of the gang, and probably the young girl with whom I had jostled as we boarded the escalator and who had given me a dirty look as we did so, quickly and quietly unzipped the top pocket of my murse, took the camera in its protective case, reclosed the bag, and departed. When I was demonstrating this possibility later--after I had discovered the theft--it was taking me five seconds or so to complete the entire motion. This was still ample time to have done so in the commotion on the escalator, but I am sure these professional thieves could do this in two or three seconds.

I was, and still am, heartsick, because this is, as I have said, the principal way for me to keep people back home informed of what I do and see. However, it was only a thing. We were not hurt, as was a colleague of mine who has been robbed and beaten twice--uncharacteristically for the Philippines, which is generally not a violent country. I have been told it is not a matter of "if" you will be robbed here, but "when." Well, my "when" was about 7:45 on Saturday, December 13, 2008. When was yours?

My arm hurts

2008-12-11T07:11:00.002+08:00

Went to see the campus nurse the other day. I have been having intermittent (both in occurrence and in severity) pain in my right arm. I discovered that it is likely not the dreaded carpal tunnel syndrome, since the pain is down the ulnar nerve and not the medial nerve where that particular problem usually surfaces. However, it probably is related to my posture while typing on the computer, an activity I do often as a teacher and writer. It has resulted in the immediate term in a general absence of lecture notes from class or, if I bring them, they are material from old classes or very sketchy, more-outline-than-text PowerPoint presentations. But for the longer term something needs to be done, and quickly. I have gotten recommendations for devices that will help angle the laptop when I'm in my office, or the external keyboard when I am at home, that should help to lessen this. Like I say, it's not serious at this point, and my belief that it's not serious is evidenced by the fact that I'm talking about it on a blog post. But it is something to pray about. I'm going on Saturday to one of the larger malls in the area, at whose computer store I should be able to find a lightweight, rubber laptop stand like the one used by a friend of mine. Stay tuned and stay praying...

Faculty devotions and meeting

2008-12-08T07:54:00.001+08:00

I have just a few minutes before faculty devotions begin. Today is the first non-holiday Monday of the month, so we will have our monthly faculty meeting this morning. As the most junior member of the faculty, secretarial duties fall to me. It's a low-face-on-the-totem-pole sort of thing. Which is okay, I guess. But I'm really praying for the potential new faculty members we may have coming next hear...haha. I suppose it's selfish of me to be praying like that. Just for the record, I'm not; I just thought it would sound funny if I said I was. Anyway, this cannot be a long post because it is now 7:58 and everything gets started at 8:00. I don't really want to be late since my office is right next door to the room where we have our devotions so it would look kind of bad if I were the last one to arrive...

The Second Sunday of Advent: The new becomes old and the old becomes new

2008-12-07T01:58:00.007+08:00

I was admonished in a friendly, though motherly (mainly because of the one doing the admonishing) sort of way to keep up better with my blog, because there are a lot of people who depend on this forum to keep up with my life and experiences in the Philippines. So I am starting to follow those instructions with my Sundays of the Christian year devotionals/reflections.

Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

I said to my mother yesterday morning that the subtitle of the blog is, after all, "experiences and reflections teaching Old Testament in the Philippines." The reflections part I get down just fine. And I was very good in the first weeks and months with posting about the experiences, because everything was new and different to me.

But now I have ridden jeepneys more than a hundred times. The experiences that were, back in June and July, new and exciting, are now old hat. The lectionary texts for today, the Second Sunday in Advent, seem to emphasize in different sorts of ways the turning over the old into the new. The American expression most apt is "turning over a new leaf," and though one might rightly wonder why a new leaf being turned over is supposed to mean that one is correcting one's life, that is the expression that we use. Advent is a time of preparation, yes, but it is also a time of renewal. Many of my friends and family in the States are complaining of snow getting in the way and the cold settling in. But others are contemplating the beauty of the snowfall.

And old commercial I suddenly remembered praised snow as "the cold pack pressed over nature's boo-boo," which, although it was meant to sound funny, is actually rather profound. The winter is a time of dormancy and expectation, but also renewal--just like Advent. This is probably why Advent was put in the Christian year in the winter. I know that Christmas is a Christianization of the pagan rites surrounding the winter solstice, okay, but that doesn't make Christmas a holiday that should be avoided. Typically, the "have you thought about this???" emails and blog posts are making their way around the internet this season, and one in particular I noted said that Christmas was not a Christian holiday at all because of its original pagan connotations. I shook my head in surprise at the ignorance of this idea. The same thing happens when otherwise well-meaning Christians and churches substitute "fall festival" for Halloween, a holiday that they think has some kind of odd pagan connotations, sacrificing cats and whatnot. but Halloween is a Christianization of the old pagan celebrations of the autumnal equinox. One of the principal things connected with that was the festival of Samhain (pronounced, so I have read, "SAU-win"), which was a harvest festival, a fall festival. Do you see the problem here?

Well, this meditation went rather far afield of its original intent. Things that I write often do that. Let's see if I can reconnect it. The promises of restoration in Isaiah 40 and Psalm 85 clearly go together. But the Psalm has a very interesting element: verse 8 reads that God "will speak peace to his people, to his godly ones, / but let them not turn back to folly." Salvation is from death, from sin, from pride, from egocentricity, from mistreatment of other people and exploitation of the natural world...and it is from hell, but the point is not to cry out for salvation to God, then simply return to doing all the things from which you needed saving in the first place (Jer 7:10).

I am teaching Historical Books this semester, and the dominant theme of the book of Judges, to which we have not yet come in our discussion, is the people of Israel continually returning to the same folly and error after the death of whatever judge whose exploits had just been described in the book. The ultimate pessimistic conclusion of the book of Judges is that "in those days there was no king in Israel, and all the people did what was right in their own eyes" (Judg 21:25). But the texts for today indicate rather an optimism, a firm confidence that we may indeed "lay aside every weight, and the sin which clings so closely, and run the race that is marked out for us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb 12:1b-2).

I am also teaching Doctrine of Holiness this semester, and through the lectures so far in that class I have been emphasizing the positive, the optimistic aspects of holiness theology. Too often, the doctrine of holiness has been lost in a maze of rules laid out by well-meaning people in order to distinguish the holy ones from the non-holy ones. I think this is not the way we should go, for it tends in the way of a suffocating legalism. Life should indeed be about optimism, the optimism of grace. Sin can be set aside in this life.

Let me say that again. Sin can be set aside in this life. Sin can be set aside. In this life. Sin. Can. Be. Set. Aside. In. This. Life. We need not pray that we "confess to [God] all the sins we have committed, in thought, word, and deed, against [his] divine majesty." This is far too pessimistic, far too limiting of the human potential to rise above doing merely what is right in our own eyes. God does not wish that anyone would perish, as the reading from 2 Peter maintains, but that all should come to repentance. This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as Mark 1 claims for itself. We do not need to live in the situation where "sin is crouching at your door, and its desire will be for you, but you must master it" (Gen 4:7b).

So, far from being a time that should be avoided by Christians because of its pagan connotations, Advent and Christmas represent a cold pack pressed against an old boo-boo, the stain of sin, the broken down and marred image of God in our lives. It is broken down, it is marred...but it is not lost. It can be restored. And it has been restored. Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God. Amen.

O come, Divine Messiah,
The world in silence waits the day
When hope shall sing its triumph,
And sadness flee away.

Dear Savior haste!
Come, come to earth.
Dispel the night and show Thy face,
And bid us hail the dawn of grace.
O come, Divine Messiah,
The world in silence waits the day
When hope shall sing its triumph,
And sadness flee away.

O Thou whom nations sighed for,
Whom priest and prophet long foretold,
Wilt break the captive fetters,
Redeem the long lost fold.

Dear Savior haste!
Come, come to earth.
Dispel the night and show Thy face,
And bid us hail the dawn of grace.
O come, Divine Messiah,
The world in silence waits the day
When hope shall sing its triumph,
And sadness flee away.

Post # 100--Anticlimactic, anyone?

2008-11-30T18:06:00.004+08:00

I don't have anything in particular to say at the moment. I just wanted to get post# 100 of this blog published before the end of November.

I've been sick today. Not violently sick, but just the standard rot: flushed face, body aches, sore throat. I'm working on my second round of hot tea; perhaps that will help me. Moan. Even writing about it sounds overwhelming pathetic. But I am also dealing with the post-NaNoWriMo letdown. It's not exactly like postpartum depression, but not exactly unlike it, either. Focusing all of my creative energies--indeed, almost all of my energies--into such a truncated exercise inevitably results in deflation after it is over, even if, as in my case, one has succeeded in the challenge one set before oneself. Blech. I do not really feel like doing anything serious right now, which is perhaps a good indication that I shouldn't do anything serious right now.

The First Sunday of Advent: Happy new year, Church

2008-11-30T06:28:00.005+08:00

I am embarking upon an experiment this year (and yes, the year starts now...more on that in a moment). My goal is to post about the Sundays of the Christian Year throughout this entire year from Today, the First Sunday of Advent, through the Feast Day of Christ the King, next November 22. Obviously, I have never tried such an ambitious project in a blog, seeing as how I've only had a blog for six months. But I have never even done this sort of thing with pen and paper, even though I have thought about doing so a number of times. The intention here is that I will not only increase my own devotion, but that I might also contribute some thoughts to other people that can take it up and read it...or click on it and read it, or whatever.

I'm not going to post the texts of the Scripture lessons for each Sunday, partly because of copyrights attached to the variations translations and partly because I do not want to set a precedent for myself of translating everything before I post it, because if I then fail at the assignment sometime during the year (as is bound to happen), then I will feel unnecessarily bad. So, here are the texts, taken this and every Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary:

Isaiah 64:1-9; Ps. 80:1-7, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37

Here in the Philippines, the malls and so forth have been playing Christmas music since sometime in September. I'm starting to get to the point where I don't even hear it, and I think that's rather more tragic than if it were starting to annoy me. Insert the standard critique from a Christian standpoint about the commercialization of Christmas here.

But, more significantly, perhaps, the commercialization of Christmas turns December 25 into an anticlimax. I've preached about this before on a few occasions. And I always get upset every year when the Christmas decorations come down, usually on December 26. The retailers get going on the teardown quickly, because after all they have to get the Valentine's Day foolishness up and running. I have described it also in terms of being a baseball fan. You may substitute your appropriate favorite sport. I do not wear the cap for my favorite (awful) team starting with spring training and then take it off on the first day of the season and refuse to wear it again until the pitchers and catchers report to Arizona the next year. But this is what we do when we decorate our homes, churches, workplaces, etc., for Christmas, and play Christmas music incessantly from September, only to shut it off immediately after the dust settles on December 26.

By its design, Advent is a time of preparation, an expectant waiting for the arrival of the Messiah. This is why I like the "older" text of the Charles Wesley hymn, "Hark! The herald angels sing!" Of course, this is a Christmas hymn, but allow me the indulgence for the moment. When I was growing up, we would always sing "Long desired, behold him come, / offspring of the Virgin's womb." But over the last few years I have noticed increasingly this same line as: "Late in time, behold him come, / offspring of the favored one!" I have also seen and sung "Long desired" with "favored one" and "Late it time" with "Virgin's womb." I am sure that the difference in the second line has to do with a tendency to shy away from Virgin Birth language, but they are both biblical expressions referring to the mother of Jesus. What I am more interested in is the first line, however. It seems that "long desired" and "late it time" are similar expressions (homoilogoi) but they are not the same expression (homologoi). "Long desired" captures the sense of expectant waiting far better, in my estimation, than "late in time." The latter seems to imply an attitude of "What took you so long?" which is, I fear, the wrong way to approach the Messiah. To say, "We've been waiting for you, like, forever," is hyperbole in the best sense, exaggeration for dramatic effect, but "It's about time you showed up!" seems petulant and silly. After all, it is not for us "to know the times or the dates that the Father has set by his own authority" (Acts 1:7, NIV). Amen.

Veni, veni Emmanuel,
Captivum solve Israel,
Qui gemit in exilio
Privatus Dei Filio.
Gaude, gaude! Emmanuel
nascetur pro te, Israel.

Veni, o Jesse Virgula;
Ex hostis tuos ungula,
De specu tuos tartari
Deduc et antro barathri.
Gaude, gaude! Emmanuel
nascetur pro te, Israel.

Veni, veni, o Oriens
Solare nos adveniens;
Noctis depele nebulas
Dirasque noctis tenebras.
Gaude, gaude! Emmanuel
nascetur pro te, Israel.

Veni clavis Davidica;
Regna reclude caelica;
Fac iter tutum superum,
Et claude vias inferum.
Gaude, gaude! Emmanuel
nascetur pro te, Israel.

Veni, veni Adonai,
Qui populo in Sinai
Legem dedisti vertice,
In majestate gloriae.
Gaude, gaude! Emmanuel
nascetur pro te, Israel.

The ego wall

2008-11-28T09:36:00.000+08:00

I have finally gotten my diplomas framed and they look very nice, if i say so myself (which I just did). I will hang them up and take photos later. I am very happy that this is taken care of. Short post, but hey, that says all that needs saying.

Have you considered my servant Elihu?

2008-11-28T09:32:00.008+08:00

Job 32:1-5
(1) Now these three men stopped trying to convince Job, for he was righteous in his own eyes. (2) But Elihu son of Barchiel the Buzite was not satisfied, becoming very angry with Job, who was arrogant enough to justify himself before God. (3) He also angry with the three friends, because they could not find a way to answer Job, yet they still condemned him. (4) Now Elihu had waited before speaking to Job because they were older than he was, (5) but when Elihu saw that the three men could not refute Job he could not restrain himself any longer.

I was a sophomore in college when email first became widely available. Even in the early days of the Internet, everyone who was paying attention realized what a powerful tool this was going to be, and what potential it had for both great good and great evil. It also was not very long before people began to sell themselves and their knowledge on the Internet, and publicizing their talents via mass emails. Now, mass emails like this are very common, and steps have been taken and are being continually refined by the creators of email delivery programs to stop this unwanted “spam” email.

I remember one such occasion, an early “spam” that I received, this time during the first semester of my senior year in college, or two years after I had first gotten an email address of my own. The email came from a first-year student, advertising to everyone on campus that he was able to help them answer any questions they had about the Bible, and he was offering free subscriptions to an email newsletter he was putting together that would answer these important questions for anyone who was interested. As I think about it now, this was not only one of the first “spam” messages I received, but also it was the one of the first times I was invited to subscribe to regular delivery of something through email and the Internet. (Now, I have many such active subscriptions, but then I hardly understood the power of this new tool that had come into the world seemingly overnight.)

I responded to this young man in a very arrogant manner, as I recall the situation. I said, “I am a senior religion major, so I do not need your help with anything,” or something like that. He gave a cheerful response, “OK, thank you!” or “OK, God bless you!” or something like that, but the exchange had gotten me to think about what I said to people and how I treated them. I even wrote an article for the school newspaper about it, suggesting that any major on the campus might be better served if they did not treat offers like this in an arrogant manner, but were instead a little more open to what non-experts had to say, even if they turned out to be all wrong. I thought that religion majors like myself were particularly tempted in this area, since matters like the interpretation of Scripture and understanding theology were not the exclusive realm of those trained in the academic study of religion, like I was involved in, and in which I continued to be involved through nine more years of study after I graduated from college. Although I may or may not have agreed with the young man who offered his services in answering questions about the Bible, it was not right of me to have treated him so flippantly. That was a lesson I needed to learn, and I was thankful for the opportunity, even if I had to learn the lesson through making a mistake and having God correct me.

A similar kind of thing, it seems to me, is going on in the book of Job when it comes to be Elihu’s turn to speak. The general consensus among scholars is that this lengthy section running from chapter 32 to chapter 37, was inserted into the book of Job, because there is no answer given to the speech of Elihu. The entire structure of the book of Job is a lengthy, philosophical reflection on the problem of unjust suffering. Chapter 1 begins by describing how Job was the richest man in the valley, and how he was super pious to boot. Then a bet of sorts takes place between the satan and God, to see whether Job really is faithful to God or if he just trusts in him because of all the blessings he receives. So all of these terrible things happen first to his possessions, and then to his family members, and then to Job himself. And then the three friends come to comfort him, and then to engage him in a lengthy debate. They feel that Job has some unconfessed sin in his heart, for which God is correctly punishing him. You see, this is the theology under which the friends operated. And, for that matter, this is the theology under which Job operates. Job never disagrees with the fundamental theological opinion that obedience to God results in blessing from God, and disobedience to God results in punishment from God. He merely asserts throughout the dialogues that this theological system needs a bit of clarification, because it simply does not apply in his case. He is righteous, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil. As a matter of fact, both the narrator and God make this judgment about Job, and even though he never quite says this about himself, he does believe himself to be justified before God. And there is where the problem lies.

But I have become convinced that Elihu’s speeches belong right where they are in the book of Job. There is a saying that the wisdom of experience is the best kind of wisdom, or something like that. The truth behind that saying is that you can learn a great deal indeed from people who have more experience than you do, and in particular from your elders. This is part of what Elihu’s speech is about, at least in the early going. He has deferred, so Job 32 tells us, to the wisdom of experience, to the three friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. But he has lost patience with them, because they were unable to refute Job, even though they thought him to be in the wrong. And for that matter, he has also lost patience with Job, for Job has been arrogant enough to attempt to justify himself in the sight of God. Elihu has decided it is time for him to speak, for none of his elders have gotten the matter right.

It is true that in the movement of the dialogue no one responds to Elihu, for beginning with chapter 38 God moves in and responds to Job, but this response is not a response, but rather a challenge. Were you there at the foundation of the earth? says God. So why do you dare question me? says God. Not even God responds to Elihu, and so this is why many people think that these six chapters were added to the dialogue later. But if you pay close enough attention to what is going on, you will notice that the nature of God’s response to Job is that he hasn’t gotten it right. And God ultimately says to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar that they are in the wrong, so they haven’t gotten it right either. What this says to me is that Elihu is the most right of all. True enough, God eventually declares Job to be correct over against the three friends, and Job goes and offers a sacrifice for the three friends, just like he used to do for his children before they were taken away from him, and God accepts the sacrifice and vindicates the three friends on the basis of the righteousness of Job, who is blameless and upright, fears God and turns away from evil. This is in fact what God told the satan about Job: “Have you considered my servant Job? He is blameless and upright, one who fears God and turns away from evil.”

But no one responds to Elihu. He is not even dismissed in the same way that I dismissed the young man who was offering sincere help in understanding the Bible all those years ago. I think there is something important about that. After all, if there is something to be said for the wisdom of age and experience, then there is also something to be said for the wisdom of youth and fresh thinking. For Elihu, neither Job nor the three friends were right. And the narrator, or God, gives implicit assent to what Elihu has to say, for no one, not even God, tries to refute him. In Hebrew, “Elihu” means “he is my God,” so even in the name of this character who only shows up at the end of a long dialogue and who is ignored by everyone else there is a theological point to be made. But perhaps we should not be so quick to ignore what Elihu has to say as Job, the three friends, and even God appear to be.

And perhaps we should not be so quick to ignore the contributions of others who do not fit our pattern of what a knowledgeable person looks like, or what a person who has something important to say looks like. And don’t we, here, face that same kind of temptation, day after day, as we continually interact with people who look differently than we do, who speak differently than we do, who come from cultures that are different from ours, who think about things and the world differently than we do? At least in my culture, someone like Elihu might have been dismissed in the same way that I dismissed that other guy who sent out the mass email. True enough, I may not have been satisfied with what he had to say, but it was over the line for me to dismiss him like that. And it just might be over the line for Job and his three friends to have dismissed Elihu like they did, without even so much as an acknowledgement of what he had to say.

Do not be so quick to judge the ability of someone to contribute something meaningful to your life. The reading from Ecclesiastes suggests that remembering God, your creator, in the days of your youth is the way to find life under the sun. The reading from Matthew suggests that unless we become like little children, we have no place in the kingdom of God. And what does it mean to become like a little child, what does it mean to remember your Creator in the days of your youth? It is, simply, this: to be open, to not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, to look to the needs of others and not to your own, to build new bridges, to set aside your notions of what authority looks like, or what truth looks like, or what effectiveness looks like, or what honor looks like, or shame, or beauty, or wisdom, or knowledge, or meaningfulness, or Godliness, or…

Have you considered my servant Elihu? Amen.

The first day II

2008-11-25T17:40:00.003+08:00

Sitting here eating some stew with buttered bread and a cup of water, I thought it a good idea to take stock of this day. Today was the first day of class in the second semester. I now have a full schedule, meaning three subjects, this semester, and so it promises to be an even busier time than last semester, if such can be imagined. Thankfully I have reduced my number of open writing projects to two from four, with a third proposal still in evaluation by a program committee.

And, once again, I have very large class sizes. The Historical Books course was 9, then it was 8, now it is 10. Old Testament Theology was 11 after preregistration, and now it is 14. But Doctrine of Holiness, the keystone course for the seminary, the one that makes me the most nervous upon recognizing my own inadequacy, has 32 students. It was after preregistration set at 23, then leapt 8 more following registration week last week (amongst all the silver anniversary celebration), and now one more was added this afternoon. WOW. That course meets for the first time tomorrow, at the wonderful hour of 7:30. It seems strangely appropriate for a theology course to be that early in the morning. We will see how it goes. Pray for me, eh?

I also found out that my good friend and colleague has received the invitation letter from the Wesleyan Theological Society to use in his visa application. Now we just have to find the money for his visa interview at the US Embassy, plus funds to cover his trip. That's another prayer request, kids.

Anyway, back to it...I'm going to work on some writing tonight, mainly nearing the end of NaNoWriMo. As of now, I am just over 46,000 words, just 3828 to the end. And the end is Saturday, November 30. It's been fun, and though in retrospect I probably should not have taken the month to work on a straight creative project, I do not regret having done so.

Congratulations, Mr. President

2008-11-20T12:56:00.003+08:00

The buzz about campus today was the inauguration ceremony for the fifth President of Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary, Dr. Floyd Timothy Cunningham. Dr. Cunningham has been teaching church history at APNTS since the school's inception in 1983, and has held many posts since then, chaplain and dean of students, academic dean, regional education coordinator for the Church of the Nazarene, missionary pastor and church planter, and so on. The continuity of leadership represented by Dr. Cunningham's unanimous election by the board of trustees earlier this year represents significant hope for the future of the seminary. This was also my first academic procession as a member of a faculty. I was honored to have a part in this drama, reading the Old Testament lesson, but also showing my support of the leadership through my presence and attendance at the event.

I also saw again the person whose initial recommendation that started the ball rolling--very quickly--to come here to APNTS. He reaffirmed his confidence and comfort with his choice, which made me feel really valued. I was able to tell many people today how short the turnaround was from first contact by Dr. Cunningham (before he was elected president) to arrival on the ground in Manila (4 months and 11 days). My head is still spinning around at how quickly everything happened...but then again, is that not how God usually works?

I will post pictures of the inauguration in due course, most likely to my Facebook account. Right now, I have syllabi to write for the second semester which starts Monday.

Hmmpf

2008-11-15T07:09:00.005+08:00

I was really upset with myself yesterday.

I've spend most of the past week working (haha) from home, but I went into the office yesterday because I had some things to print and my printer is there and not here. I discovered on my arrival that one of my diplomas had a really nasty spot on it. I cannot tell definitively if it is a water mark, mildew, or if some critter has left me a...ahem...present. But anyway, I was really upset with myself, since although I have dodged a bullet for several months and not noticed any damage on my yet-to-be-framed diplomas, yesterday there was some. If I had gotten them framed like I should have, then this wouldn't have happened, so I complained bitterly to myself and, later, to my girlfriend. Now, a day later, it's something I can laugh about.

This is the story of my life, learning from errors of omission. Further lessons have come in some students being unhappy with their grades. It isn't as is I do not know what they are going to say when they come and talk to me. Many of the things I did wrong--and I did do some things wrong; I have no problem admitting that--have already been addressed, at least in my mind, and the changes will be implemented in the next semester. And, again, if the conversation is approached with the attitude of "How can I do better?" rather than "You sack of dirt, how could you give me a grade like that?" then I am more apt to listen and ofter advice, and even admit my own faults. Nobody's perfect. Especially not me.

What I learned my first semester in seminary

2008-11-10T11:28:00.001+08:00

Well, ok, it's not my first semester IN seminary, but my first semester as a seminary prof. The distinction is a real one, but I can use the term anyway.

I've learned that people are passionate about what they do. Most people genuinely care for their studies and want to improve themselves. They are working on being involved in various kinds of ministries, and so they want to be prepared to engage in those sorts of things. I have often come up against the idea that the preparation for and the practice of ministry should be thought of in opposition to one another. How this tune usually gets played is some variation of the theme, "God told me, 'What are you spending all this time in school for? Get out there and DO ministry!'" That's really an unfortunate position to take. I keep coming back to the dictum of J. B. Chapman, one of the earliest Nazarene General Superintendents, who said that, given 10 years to do ministry, he would rather spend five in preparation, because he would feel that he would accomplish more in the remaining five years than if he had spent the entire ten years in the practice of ministry. Theory and practice do NOT oppose one another. Theory does NOT get in the way of practice. Education is important.

That being said, another thing I've learned is that sometimes even the people with the greatest potential will disappoint you. I need not give any details about this, but it makes me ache to put a low mark on someone's record. It really does. And at the end of the day, even if I have more justification than just the impression I got from the students' work and behavior how well s'ya was engaged in the subject, it still hurts me tremendously. I do not want to give out A grades to everyone (unless they earn it!) because then an A becomes a C (average), but I also do not want to give out F grades like candy and I do not want to appear vindictive.

The third thing I've learned is that I really do not know what I'm doing. It is all trial and error in this process, and I've seen some things that need to be continued and some others that need to be dropped for the next time I go through this (starting two weeks from today). It is unfortunate when students get caught between the gears of this learning process, but in some respects that is unavoidable.

The fourth thing is that it is really hard to grade things period. Especially in a discipline such as mine, when there is a lot that is open to discussion and mediation, it is very difficult to apply some objective standard which can later be explained and defended. I've already had one student come and ask me how to improve a grade, which I think is good, because that demonstrates that s'ya is willing to do better, and wants to do better. But it's hard work.

Anyhow, even though I haven't posted for quite a while, since I've been buried in grading and working on various writing projects, I'll bring this entry to a close now. I will improve as time marches on, and my students will as well, and I imagine we will all be better for it.

Last day of school!

2008-10-23T05:18:00.002+08:00

I woke up even earlier than usual this morning so I thought I'd make a note of this being the last regular day of classes. My first semester as a professor has rocketed by. I still have much to do...a stack of thirty or so papers to grade, plus a final exam being administered in one class--and, in fact, today to one student who petitioned to take it early--and a take-home final in the other. All in all, it has been a very successful semester. I have already seen some changes that are necessary for the next time I teach these classes, or the next time I teach an upper division Bible class (next semester), etc.

I'm drinking lots of coffee right now to counteract the negative effects of having woken up early. I hope I'll be able to make it through the busy day without crashing. We will see.

I remember that, when I was a student, the last day of class was always a significant day for me. I've always been a sucker for transitions, and usually when I know something's about to end I'm anxious for it to go ahead and end so that I can get on to the next thing. In some ways, that's how I feel about this semester...I'm excited to get on to the next one, especially since I'll be teaching something way outside my expertise yet close to my heart, and what in many ways is the keystone course of the seminary--Doctrine of Holiness. It should be exciting.

Long time, no post

2008-10-17T05:56:00.002+08:00

I haven't blogged in a really long time. I feel a little bad about that, because this is one of my primary organs for staying in touch with the people back home. I can say that I've been busy, which is true: one week left to go in the semester; two long writing projects on the docket with the possibility for two shorter ones to be added on; still adjusting to a new culture; preparing for classes next semester, all of which are again new preps and one of which is an outside-the-specialization new prep; and various other things.

But the fact of the matter is that I've just been lazy.

I've been more likely in the down time I have to watch old episodes of The twilight zone on YouTube or play online chess. On the latter, I'm about to give up, because I'm getting frustrated at how pathetically bad I am at it. I cannot seem to improve my play there, so I'm going to quit for a while.

The unfortunate thing about my inattention to the blog as of late is that I missed the opportunity to post about the centennial of the Church of the Nazarene on the date it was being celebrated. I even had in mind the proper title for the post: "Happy birthday, church" or something similiarly corny. Perhaps it's better that I didn't do that because I wouldn't have been happy with the bad line.

In any event, I intend to do better in the coming months about staying up with the blog, and also to spend less time wasting time. I recognize in all of this that there are some philosophical assumptions under which I am operating about time and responsibilities, but I don't have time (haha) to explore those right now. In a little less than an hour, I'm headed off to the US Embassy in Manila to cast my vote in the presidential election. And, as Forrest Gump put it so eloquently, "That's all I have to say about that." I generally detest talking about politics, so I'm glad it's somewhat expected that I don't talk about politics during this assignment. Normally, professors would be very interested and involved making political statements. But this professor bucks that trend, and even if it weren't in my contract to avoid discussing political matters, I would, because I just hate talking about it.

I'd much rather lose at online chess.

The shack IV--HERE BE SPOILERS

2008-09-29T21:39:00.009+08:00

Thinking about it some more, it is odd, as a student said to me today, that "one book could hit all those hands" of the different Christological heresies. So I'll back off that portion of my critique for now. I can come back to it and cite what I found for evidence of these things if anyone is interested. I'm not.

But here is the critique of organized religion. As I said in a previous post, the equation of organized religion with institutional Christianity is an assumption questionable for entirely different reasons, which I will leave aside for the moment. In literary theory, the 20th century Russian formalist critic Mikhail Bakhtin did significant work in examining the distinction between two different kinds of narrative speech. These usually apply to works of fiction, but not always. On the one hand, Bakhtin defines "reporting speech" as what the narrator says to tell the story. For example, Mack (protagonist in The shack) receives an odd letter in his mailbox, slips and falls on the driveway, borrows his friend's jeep, etc. etc. etc. What Bakhtin calls "reported speech," on the other hand, is the narrator telling us what x or y said to a or b, and what a or b responded, and so on. Often, both the "reporting speech" and the "reported speech" betray the point of view/interests of the narrator (express or implied) and/or author much more than that of the characters themselves.

How does this come to play in The shack? First of all, I criticized the book for having far too much dialogue or reported speech and, consequently, far too little action or reporting speech. Secondly, the implied narrator's viewpoint comes through quite clearly in the following couple of passages put into the mouth of Jesus. For those who are not paying attention, ascribing these words to Jesus may well grant them a particular kind of authority, since, well...it's Jesus. Consider the following:

"Put simply, these terrors are tools that men use to prop up their illusions of security and control. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of the future. These institutions, these structures and ideologies, are all a vain effort to create some sense of certainty and security where there isn't any. It's all fake! Systems cannot provide you security, only I can." (179-80)

This statement put into the mouth of Jesus reminds me a lot more of Freud and Marx than St. Francis or Marcarius the Egyptian! And it gets worse. Again from "Jesus:"

"Mack, the world system is what it is. Institutions, systems, ideologies and all the vain, futile efforts of humanity that go with them are everywhere, and interaction with all of them is unavoidable. But I've given you freedom to overcome any system of power in which you find yourself, be it religious, economic, social or political. You will grow in the freedom to be inside or outside all kinds of systems and to move freely between and among them. Together, you an I can be in it and not of it." (181)

But the clearest example of all of this comes a few pages earlier. In this last example, there is a bit of reporting speech that demonstrates how the implied narrator wants us to read Jesus' words in a certain way:

"Marriage is not an institution. It's a relationship." Jesus paused, his voice steady and patient. "Like I said, I don't create institutions; that's an assumption from those who want to play God. So me, I'm not too big on religion," Jesus said a little sarcastically, "and not very fond of politics or economics either." Jesus' visage darkened considerably. "And why should I be? They are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoul and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of these three?" (179, emphasis added)

And, now for the 50-kiloton bomb to be dropped on The shack. This last quote from "Jesus" is no better than the similar quote from the character "Leigh Teabing" in The DaVinci code! I do not own that horrid book either, filled with errors of historical fact as it is, and I was unable to find the quote to which I'm alluding in the movie version, but it essentially accuses Christianity of being the most murderous sect ever to arrive on the planet Earth, the cause of all manner of suffering and injustice, and Teabing wanted the lie on which Christianity was built--according to the plot of The DaVinci code--exposed so that the whole stinking edifice could be brought down onto itself. I have publicly illustrated my avoidance of The shack by reference to how long I avoided reading The DaVinci code, so it is interesting, and more than a little ironic, that I have boiled over in rage at The shack for essentially the same reasons as what generated that reaction in The DaVinci code--lies, innuendo, half-truth, rumor, sophistry, and cariacature of real historical Christianity for the author's own misguided ends. Cloaked in the veil of a well-written story--at least The DaVinci code had that in its favor; The shack does not--this seething attack on a straw figure "organized religion" is pathetic and trite. It is no better than Bertrand Russell in Why I am not a Christian. All of these people ought to know better and ought to be better abreast of the facts before they lash out in attack without really understanding the "enemy."

And this is not even to get to the racist undertones of the novel's presentation of God as a semi-inarticulate black woman (119) who is always cooking for everybody else. It bothers me tremendously that God is Aunt Jemima! Yet, later on p. 218, Aunt Jemima has become General Lee, or perhaps Colonel Sanders (complete with long white beard), for "This morning, you're going to need a Father" (219). This is the scene where God and Mack go off to see the remains of his little girl, which is what gets everything started at the beginning of the novel.

I could go on, but it's nearly 10:30 PM and I have to teach in the morning, so... Suffice it to say, that The shack, far from being the new Pilgrim's progress, should rather be assigned to a dark corner of a library somewhere, with a sign on the shelf like they used to put up in medieval monasteries: Hic sunt leones, "Here be monsters."

The shack III--HERE BE SPOILERS

2008-09-27T08:34:00.002+08:00

I don't have time to post a lengthy response to The shack. I may post such later when I get done with my work for today. But I can say briefly that it is something other than historic Christian theology. It is infected with just about all of the major Christological heresies from the first few centuries CE: Docetism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Sabellianism, Monophysitism, Monothelitism, Gnosticism. The only one I didn't see what Arianism, which I suppose is a point in the novel's favor.

A point for later: the book attacks organized religion, which is equated with institutional Christianity, a separately questionable assumption. The attack is carried out from the standpoint of a Christian. The "about the author" blurb on the back cover brags that the author was raised by missionary parents "among a stone-age tribe." Incidentally, though he shares a name with the author, the implied narrator doesn't seem to have this in his background. So this is an attack upon Christianity from within Christianity, much like what one finds in Søren Kierkegaard (see esp. An attack upon Christendom). But at least Kierkegaard knew what he was doing.

And not only this, but from the standpoint of a writer it is filled with technical errors and general aesthetical unpleasantness. I can't imagine where front-cover blurbist Eugene Peterson--a writer of whose books I own at least six and respect very deeply--gets the idea that this book can be for this generation what The pilgrim's progress was for its time. To paraphrase the best line from the 1988 US Vice-Presidential debate (credit to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen): "I knew John Bunyan. John Bunyan was a friend of mine. Author, you're no John Bunyan!"

The shack II

2008-09-26T07:25:00.002+08:00

It's a fast read. I read about half the book in a little over three hours yesterday. I read a little bit over breakfast and dinner, but then sat down about 8:00 last night and read most of it. And I've gotten a few more pages in this morning. But now I'm at the computer blogposting (is that a verb?) and I have to write a couple of lectures today, so "fun stuff" has to wait.

Preliminary report: It is interesting, and I can see why it would capture the popular imagination, but (as expected) I have a few mild-to-serious issues with it. More to come, perhaps...but I don't want to prejudice one of my commenters who is reading it for a book club.

The shack

2008-09-25T19:26:00.002+08:00

I've been working on lectures all day today and my brain is mush. I prepared two lectures for Intro to Old Testament and one for Pentateuch. My goal this Reading and Research week has been to finish the lecture prep for the remainder of the semester, so that I can focus on other projects through October (mainly the Jeremiah commentary project).

I am about to turn off the computer for the evening (it's 7:32 PM, early shut-off for me), but I wanted to post about getting ready to read The shack, a novel that has gained some notoriety of late. I borrowed it from a friend and I am a few pages in already. It's interesting, seemingly having to do with theodicy and dark nights of the soul, in the former of which I'm interested as a scholar and the latter of which I myself experienced a few years back. When a book gets this much hype in the popular press, I generally try to avoid it on principle. It took me several years to read The DaVinci Code, for example, although I almost picked it up when it was first published and before all the hoopla started. I hadn't heard of The shack until this same friend asked me about it. He says he's interested to hear what I might have to say about it. To be honest, so am I.

What will heaven smell like?

2008-09-23T07:15:00.005+08:00

I had a thought in the middle of the night, and although thoughts in the middle of the night usually are scary propositions, I stumbled out into the front room and found a piece of paper to scribble it on. I discovered, later, when I had resumed full consciousness (coffee helps) that I had written this new note over an old note that had been fulfilled and scratched out. But even though I could not read it, I still remembered the thought, perhaps simply because of having stumbled out of bed to write it down at 1:30 in the morning or whatever godawful time it was.

The thought is this: What will heaven smell like? Scripture and both Jewish and Christian extracanonical apocalyptic literature abound with descriptions of what the faithful who endure to the end will see, hear, taste, and touch on the other side of the cord--or whatever--but to my recollection there is not much at all in the way of what the faithful will smell when they get to heaven.

By contrast, there is plenty of description of what hell smells like: sulfur, brimstone, burnt things, rottenness, dankness, probably even waste material, decaying flesh...all sorts of wonderful things that you love reading about, especially right after breakfast. Near Manila as I am, my nose is filled will all manner of unsavory aromas, such that Han Solo's complaint to Princess Leia was the first thing on my mind when I stepped out of the airport into the city back in June. I've gotten used to diesel fumes, though my lungs are probably filled with soot by now, and you never quite get used to the odor of a public market with fresh fish (including the heads) mixed with chicken mixed with durian mixed with pork mixed with mangoes mixed with avocadoes mixed with rice mixed with various and sundry vegetables mixed with...well, you get the idea.

But, alas...I can recall nothing from apocalyptic literature on what heaven should smell like. There are descriptions of sights: angels, golden streets, heavenly host, visions of God, sometimes clouds. There are descriptions of things to touch: beautiful buildings, tapestries, again with the golden streets. There are descriptions of sounds: harps, pleasant conversation, unceasing worship of God. There are descriptions of tastes: sumptuous food (that seems never to make you fat), abundant drinks, fruits, vegetables--all the great stuff I might find at the public market, but without the scent. And that "without the scent" has a dual meaning, of course. On one level, the (generally) good food available at a public market often is masked over by the mixed aroma, and so in heaven you don't have the unpleasant smells to go with the food. But on the other level, there is no description of what anything would smell like. To conclude, this idiomatic question seems oddly appropriate:

Is this a cutting off of the nose to spite the face?

Reading and research week

2008-09-22T08:21:00.001+08:00

This is reading and research week at Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary. It is designed to give students time to work on semester projects without having to attend class in the meantime. When I was a student at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, I never used the similar week for reading and research, but always for another "R & R." I suspect many of the students here are doing the same, which is fine. It's good to have a break sometimes, but now as a professor R & R week will actually be spent doing reading and research--preparing the last few lectures for this semester, getting started on next, and working on various writing projects. I have much to do, and none of it includes making posts to a blog. :-)

Scriptures read for class devotions: Week 12

2008-09-22T08:08:00.002+08:00

I confess. I've quit reading the Hebrew even before the end of the first semester like I promised in the last post. It just seemed pedantic, especially toward the end of the semester when less and less people are there right as class begins. I've even stopped being worried about duplicating a particular reading in class or trying to fit the Scripture chosen to the topic of the lecture that day. The former is a good thing, because I needn't worry about such simple things, but the latter is somewhat more serious because it may tend toward eisegesis or at least a rather contorted interpretation. But, in any event, here are the English-only biblical texts read in class this past week:

Intro to Old Testament:
9/16 Ezekiel 37:1-14
9/18 Micah 6:6-8

Pentateuch:
9/16 Numbers 6:22-27
9/18 Numbers 9:15-9:23

Scriptures read for class devotions: Week 11

2008-09-12T10:05:00.002+08:00

I've finally come to a decision. I am not going to continue the Hebrew readings in subsequent semesters. It's been interesting, and it has helped me gain a new appreciation for the language of the Bible, and it has generated in some students the desire to know more...but on the other hand it has created a good bit of stress and it is of dubious pedagogical value. The stress it has generated has mostly to do with my desire to avoid duplication of passages in either of the classes, but also with sometimes having forgotten to practice and learn one in time for a class meeting on Tuesday or Thursday. As for the dubious pedagogical value, it seems that this, like other attempts at innovation, catches the minds of some students while flying unreachably over the heads of others. The promise of a given innovation, in my mind, lies in the proportion of students who "get it" to those who either do not understand the practice or think that it is pedantic. If A=>B+C, then the practice should be continued. But, alas, in this case it is not. I will continue it through the end of this semsester (five weeks), but will stop afterward. Pedagogical value aside, it is also of dubious spiritual value as a devotional practice which, should, after all, be the main point of the exercise, especially seeing how I have titled most of the relevant blog posts as "Scriptures read for class devotions:"

Intro to Old Testament
9/9 Isaiah 40:1-8
9/11 Jeremiah 20:7-9

Pentateuch
9/9 Leviticus 18:1-4
9/11 Numbers 24:1-9

Sayang (too bad)

2008-09-12T09:58:00.002+08:00

I took my last formal Tagalog lesson today. I am picking up the language well, but I simply do not have (or cannot find, or have not made) the time to study. I am pretty well a perfectionist, or I set high standards for myself at any rate, so I cannot do something half-heartedly. I want to be able to put my full effort into it or not do it at all. Throughout the ten weeks or so that I had these lessons on Friday mornings, I found I was sitting down late Thursday night cramming over my materials, which is simply insufficient. And even this past week when I was ill and canceled class, the extra week to prepare did not make me any better prepared. I still sat down late last night and crammed over my notes for a little bit. So my teacher gave me some good information about verbs and such, seeing as how it was the last session. I may try to pick it up again later, but for now I cannot. It simply isn't a priority, since the principle language is English within the compound anyway, and I can ply my friends for vocabulary and informal lessons. Sayang.

No time

2008-09-10T10:12:00.000+08:00

I see I'm heading toward another very lean month in terms of blog posts. Do not really have time to correct that right now, as small groups are about to begin. In any event, while posting to the blog is very important for communication back home, it's not really a priority now with the semester winding toward a close. I'll do better. I promise.

Top ten bad Bible geek jokes

2008-09-04T17:19:00.005+08:00

I don't know why I'm doing this, but I am sick today so I can chalk it up to delirium if anyone asks. ;-) I posted the first of these on a NT PhD student's Facebook wall, and it got me to thinking about others that could be made. Any non-specialist who gets these needs a thorough head exam:

I don't like reading Wrede. He's too secretive.
I heard when Robert Funk arrived at the pearly gates the angels did the marble thing to see if he got in.
Know how Wellhausen first came up with JEDP? Alpha-Bits.
No way David could beat Goliath. He had to be juicin'!
Did Inigo Montoya get the idea from Ehud?
I wonder what funny stories the Ammonites and the Moabites told about Israel's ancestry.
If Bugs Bunny were an Israelite: "Shoulda taken that left turn at `Aradluquerque!"
Matthew's a man, Mark's a lion, Luke's an ox, John's an eagle. Is Jeremiah a frog?
If Bultmann got the whirlwind speech: "Demythologize this, pal!"
C. H. Dodd never realized his eschatology was so influential.

Wow...those are really bad. I wonder if there's a competition somewhere for bad jokes...

Scriptures read for class devotions: Week 10

2008-09-04T15:04:00.002+08:00

It's hard to believe that I'm already on the down side of my first semester as a teacher. It's been an extremely fun couple of months, but also taxing and stretching in ways I could never have imagined. With this week's Scriptures, there is a gap because of having called off Pentateuch class today, but here are the rest of them. (I'm not sure if I'm going to continue this practice in the next and following semesters, or revamp my strategy/rules for it. Stay tuned.):

Intro to Old Testament
9/2 2 Kings 18:1-8
9/14 Deuteronomy 18:18-22

Pentateuch
9/2 Deuteronomy 28:1-6

Sick

2008-09-04T14:53:00.002+08:00

Sick for the first time in the Philippines. Stuffy head, runny nose, body aches--the whole nine. Actually called off class this afternoon, something I wouldn't usually think to do. I'm relaxing now, drinking lots of fluids, and letting myself heal. It's a good thing this happened on a Thursday so I have the weekend to recuperate.

Prepositions, pre-positions

2008-09-02T15:09:00.003+08:00

Wow...I feel ashamed, kinda. I looked over the blog archive and saw: 30 posts in June, 35 posts in July...and 11 posts in August. I've allowed myself to get behind, in my class preparation, in my language lessons, in my blog...well, I'll try to do better in the future. I'm not about to say that I'm having a hard time keeping everything going. After all, I am still engaging in my dream employment, putting to work the degree I spent so long trying to achieve. And I'm serving the church to boot...you just can't get any better than that.

Chapel sermon by one of my faculty colleagues this morning really made me think. She said, in part, "So much of our theology as we speak it in English depends upon and revolves around our prepositions." I'm not sure if that's an accurate quote, but it's close enough. Her essential point is when we come to the Cross, when we are at the Cross, when we are near the Cross, we realize that Jesus was not just on the Cross, but that he came through the Cross to save us.

Jesus, keep me near the Cross,
there a precious fountain,
Free to all, a healing stream
flows from Calv'ry's mountain!

Near the Cross, a trembling soul,
love and mercy found me;
there the Bright and Morning Star
sheds its beams around me.

Near the Cross! O Lamb of God,
bring its scenes before me;
help me walk from day to day
with its shadows o'er me.

Near the Cross I'll watch and wait,
helping, trusting ever,
Till I reach the golden strand,
just beyond the river.

In the Cross, in the Cross,
be my glory ever,
till my raptured soul shall find
rest beyond the river.
--Fannie J. Crosby (1869)

Update on the bank

2008-08-28T16:00:00.002+08:00

It is truly a tragic story. Like I have said, I am very glad none of my coworkers were hurt in the bank robbery, but there is more. The robber was found dead later that day (or early the next day, I cannot remember which), having hung himself in a tree. I pray for him and his family. And I pray for my family of former coworkers. That's it.

"I have written what I have written!"

2008-08-28T15:37:00.006+08:00

Text of devotional meditation at the meeting this past Wednesday night. The textual basis is John 19:1-37, which I did not read for consideration of time. A slightly expanded form of this material was once a Good Friday sermon preached in church:

In the history of history, writing has always played an important role. As an aspiring writer myself, it struck me how many references to writing we find in the Passion Narrative according to John. No less than nine times in John chapter 19, we read about something that was written, or about something that happened that fulfilled Scripture (which was written), or about the reason why something written had been written.

The first reference to writing comes in verse 7. The Jewish leaders insist to Pilate that in their law—their written law—that Jesus has committed a crime worthy of death. But the problem is that, in the situation of Roman domination, the Jewish authorities didn’t have the authority to put Jesus to death. Pilate decides eventually to give in to their request, thinking—quite naturally—that putting one innocent man to death would be far better than sparing him and inciting a revolt in the process.

The next four references to writing in the Gospel all have to do with the inscription that Pilate orders to be made and nailed to the top of Jesus’ cross. This was a usual practice in those days, but this inscription is unusual, because the criminal is unusual. Pilate has written here, “The King of the Jews.” Since the place where Jesus was crucified is near the city, lots of Jews get to read this, which is, after all, the point. So the Jewish leaders say that Pilate should write instead, “This man said he was the King of the Jews.” Pilate says that he has written what he has written.

Next come three notices, in verse 24, verse 28 and verse 37, that something happened in the course of Jesus’ time on the cross that fulfilled a specific prophecy in the Old Testament. In this way, the New Testament demonstrates that, the life and ministry of Jesus was both something very new and something very much in line with the promises of God throughout the history of God’s dealings with the people, or throughout the history of history. And God inspired the story of Jesus to be written in this way so that this continuity in the midst of innovation would be clear to those who are paying attention.

The final reference to writing comes in verse 35, and it is perhaps a bit more oblique than the others. The Gospel writer tells us that the one who testifies to these things—whose memory is preserved in this written document—is a reliable witness, and that his testimony can be trusted. The ends of the last three chapters of John’s Gospel have similar references, in fact, to certain things having been written about Jesus for a specific purpose. John 19:35 says that the one who saw these things is reliable, and that is why these things have been written. Because his testimony is true, you—the reader can read what has been written and come to believe. John 20:30-31 tell us that Jesus did lots of other things in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But the ones that are written are written for a specific purpose, that you—the reader—can come to believe that the Messiah, is Jesus, the Son of God, and that through believing you may come to have life in his name. And John 21:24-25 make the boldest statement of all. After another note that the one who testified to these things is reliable, the writer makes the startling suggestion that all the other things that Jesus did could have been written down, but that there wouldn’t be enough room in the entire world for the books that would have to be written.

So where does this leave us on a Wednesday night, far away from the spectacle of Good Friday? What do we read as we pass by the Cross? What has been written for us? Why was the story written in this way? In the history of history, writing has always played an important role. And this is no less true in the writings testifying to the life of Jesus, God’s ultimate move toward humanity to save us from the fate that we deserve through our sin. Through his death, Jesus won the victory over sin. Through his resurrection, Jesus won the victory over death. So why was it written this way? We might still ask God, why did your son have to die so that we might live? Why couldn’t it be, as Jesus himself prayed in the garden, that this cup could pass from him? Why couldn’t God have written something else?

The answer? “I have written what I have written!” AMEN.

Scriptures read for class devotions: Week 9

2008-08-28T15:33:00.003+08:00

Like last week, in one of the classes there was only one text read because of the midterm exam. I have also been a little more intentional this week in lining up the devotional text read with the topic of that day's discussion:

Intro to OT:
8/26 Joshua 24:14-17
8/28 1 Samuel 2:1-10

Pentateuch
8/26 Leviticus 26:3-13

Life is short

2008-08-24T22:03:00.002+08:00

Wow. Yesterday, I learned from my old supervisor that the bank where I used to work was robbed on Friday afternoon. I don't know any more details than what was on the news; because I'm no longer an insider, they cannot share those things with me anymore. Praise God, no one was injured, but they are understandably pretty shaken up.

I find it more than a little disturbing, because this is not the first time I left a bank just before it was robbed. When I was in Kansas City, I helped out at another branch that was short-handed for a couple of weeks, then literally the next week after I left it was robbed. Twice. I am not about to say that God was looking out for me or something and got me out of the way of trouble, because such is an alarming theology. Jesus said, "as for those eighteen who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them, do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem" (Luke 13:5). I simply refuse to say that my friends and former coworkers who were there had it coming or something silly like that; but that is indeed the inescapable implication when someone says that God delivered him/her from some sort of tragedy or momentous experience that others had to go through. If memory serves, I preached on this text the first sermon I delivered after September 11. I spoke publicly on it at any rate, whether it was a sermon or a Sunday school lesson or whatever it was, because I think it was decidedly appropriate for that connection.

Turns out that later that day the man who committed the robbery killed himself. A resident found him hanging from a tree in the backyard, which is in itself a rather creepy thing to have happen. We can only wonder what desperation led him to go in and threaten he had a bomb, which turned out not to be the case (the thing he brought in with him, and later left in the bank, was harmless, though they did properly check it out). And then we can only further wonder why he then committed suicide. It is a dangerous world, and life is short. I am thankful that I did not have to experience this, sure, and I sympathize with my former coworkers, sure, and I pray for the family of that man, sure...but at the end of the day (and this is the end of the day), I do not know what to think about this. Theodicy is one of the most important and yet most disturbing theological concepts...more on this later.

There's always room for one more

2008-08-22T16:49:00.008+08:00

This is the text of the sermon I delivered in chapel Thursday, August 21. Purihin ang Diyos, it was received well:

Riding back to the seminary from the airport, I was given a brief cultural introduction to the Philippines by Kuya Ed Viado, Kuya Eric Zane and his wife Ate Linda. Honestly, I do not remember much of what they said—I had just gotten finished with a twenty-four-hour-long plane ride that took me from Boise, ID, to Seattle, WA, and from there to Taipei, Taiwan, and from there to Manila. But one thing I do remember is that Kuya Eric said to me, “In the Philippines, there is always room for one more.”

In the States, we highly value personal space and the definition of a group over against the outsiders, those that do not belong. Some groups are more inclusive than others, while yet others pride themselves on exactly how exclusive they can be. But it is not so in the Philippines. There is always room for one more. Empty space is begging to be filled up. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you can fit it in there, even if it’s by the nose of a jeepney or the wheel of a tricycle, then you can do it, and in fact, you must do it.

But what of the ones who are excluded? In my culture, we do not have much concern for them, for precisely because they are not part of the group with which we identify and whose identity and integrity we have sworn ourselves to maintain, they do not matter for us. As for those who do not fit in, it is as if they do not exist. I remember my own experiences of being excluded, shut out from the in crowd, and ignored. I remember how it felt. And I did not like it.

In the final scene of the 1984 movie Revenge of the Nerds, one of the principal characters has just complained of a great injustice done to him and his fraternity brothers in college, forced to band together because they had been excluded by the rest of the community due to their status as intellectually gifted but socially inept young people. After winning the crowd to his cause, he holds an altar call of sorts, calling all others who have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down—ostracized because of their status. It’s a silly movie, but in many ways it is an accurate depiction of how the excluded are treated, no matter what the community of which they long to be a part. I remember how I felt wanting to be a part of the in crowd, or at least not to be ridiculed by the in crowd. Sometimes the only attention the in crowd paid to me was when they circled their desks around mine and hurled insults at me, one after the other, until I cried. I remember how it felt. And I did not like it.

For sometimes those who are excluded begin to think that they are unworthy, that there will never be a place for them. Over the past dozen years or so, this feeling has erupted from time to time in the US in deadly ways, with the stepped on, left out, picked on, put down resorting to violence to right the wrongs they perceive in the way they were treated. But more often than not people in this situation react like I did, turning toward themselves and withdrawing into despair and hopelessness. I wonder if some of you are like that? In a seminary, we are taught all sorts of things, how to exegete Scripture and how to think theologically and how to understand missions and how to prepare sermons and how to engage in sound educational practice and the lessons we can be taught by the history of the church and how to properly manage resources and how to plan strategically…but sometimes what gets missed is the most important part. For we never seem to hear how to negotiate how to engage forming and leading an inclusive community of believers when we ourselves know nothing but being excluded. Oh, we get good, don’t we, at hiding our true emotions, our feeling of inferiority, the sometimes crushing sense that there will never be a place for us at the table. But we remember, don’t we, how we felt wanting to be accepted, wanting to be loved, wanting not to be ridiculed, wanting not to be shut out. We remember how it felt. And we did not like it.

Isaiah 56:1-8

(1) Thus says Yahweh:

Maintain justice and perform righteousness,

for my salvation will come near,

and my vindication will approach.

(2) Blessed is the person who does this,

the human being who holds fast to it,

who keeps my Sabbath and does not profane it,

who keeps away from works of evil.

(3) Let not the foreigner say,

(the one who has bound himself to Yahweh),

“Yahweh will irrevocably cut me off from his people!”

And let not the eunuch say,

“I am only a shriveled up tree!”

(4) For thus says Yahweh:

The eunuchs who keep my Sabbath,

who choose what pleases me,

and who hold fast to my convenant,

(5) to them I will give within my house and a memorial and a name,

which is better than sons and daughters.

An everlasting name will I give them,

which will never be cut off.

(6) And the foreigners who join to Yahweh,

to minister to and love the name of Yahweh,

and to be his servants,

all who keep the Sabbath and do not profane it,

who hold fast to my covenant—

(7) I will bring them to my holy mountain,

and I will make them joyful in my house of prayer.

Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices

will be accepted on my altar.

For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations!

(8) Thus says Lord Yahweh,

who gathers the dispersed of Israel:

I will gather others,

in addition to those already gathered.

This prophet, commonly referred to as third Isaiah, is writing at a time when the exile is over, and the people—such as they are—have come back to the land—such as it is—and found it a desolate place, and many of them are probably even seeing it for the first time. Yet they have their traditions and their memories, their texts and their meditations, to tell them what it was like way back when, when the people had first been ushered out of the land of Egypt, out from the house of slavery, and into a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. But now, the milk has gone sour and the honey has become wax. Now, the good and broad land is bad and broken down.

Something had gone terribly wrong to get them into this situation. And so now they were being given a new opportunity, a chance to reconstitute their life together of faithfulness to Yahweh, of trust in his covenant, of adherence to his statutes and ordinances. In the post-exilic period, this is precisely where the decision had to be taken as to how the new community, coming out of exile, was to be constituted. For, you see, the profound experience of exile, loss of land and temple—and sometimes life—was not just for a punitive purpose but it also served a purgative purpose. That is, it represented not only judgment on previous sin but also cleansing so that a new life of faithfulness to God and faithfulness to the covenant could be lived out. Sounds simple, right? Well, it might sound simple, but it really was not a simple matter at all, and this is one of the many places where the Bible shows itself to be a living document, reflective of real, live, real-life debates as to what exactly it meant to live a life faithful to God. The Bible gives us a wonderful glimpse into the disagreements, disputes, and discontinuities that were alive in the post-exilic community, and these things can only be reconciled at great peril, at the expense of sacrificing credibility and diving headlong into credulity.

One side of one of these disagreements can be found here in our text, set over against the vision of the new temple in Ezekiel, as well as the condemnation of so-called “mixed” marriages in Ezra and Nehemiah among others. It is perhaps reasonable to assume that third Isaiah and the Ezekiel/Ezra/Nehemiah complexes of tradition represented the views of various parties in the discussions going on in post-exilic Judaism. What is important to note is that both of these groups were interested in faithfulness to Yahweh, in keeping his covenant, in maintaining justice and performing righteousness, as verse 1 of our text commands. But exactly how that was to be worked out was what was at issue, and we as the inheritors of this biblical tradition are much the richer that the editors of the Bible did not smooth out the wrinkles and the fractures that warp the text and threaten, so it seems, to tear it apart.

The specific issue at play, it seems, in the discussion is the place of the previously excluded in the community of the faithful, chosen people. The word here for “foreigners” is neker, which has a much more negative connotation than the word ger, ‘resident alien.’ The latter were allowed to participate in such important things as the Passover meal (Exodus 12:48), but the former were not (12:43).

One option was to hold the belief that allowing nekarim into the sanctuary was one of the things that defiled it so much that Yahweh’s anger burned hot against the city and the country, and so that was why, among other things, that they found themselves in the situation of exile. So elimination of foreigners from the temple and the land would be the best way to reconstitute the life of faithful Israel in the land of promise, the land which should be flowing with milk and honey but was presently fouled by sour milk and clogged by wax. So there were laws established that everyone should divorce their foreign wives and husbands, that the purity of the land and the community is to be reestablished, so that Yahweh’s anger will be stilled and he will not come again at his people and allow them to be overrun by a filthy, uncircumcised people as they had allowed themselves so to be in the past.

Third Isaiah, however, takes another option. He (or she) suggests that the new community should be more inclusive, not less. The theological theme introduced here is, admittedly, a rather radical innovation when you consider it alongside the many texts excluding non-Israelites from the service of Yahweh and from a position among the blessed community. But at the same time, there are hints of an inclusivity, something approaching universalism (but without some of the theological load that that particular word carries in our understanding), at various points in the story. In any event, the perspective of third Isaiah is that foreigners, nekarim, should indeed be admitted to the land and the service of Yahweh. The thought behind this is perhaps that the exclusion, the mistreatment, of those people, the stepped on, left out, picked on, put down is what caused the souring of the milk and the congealing of the honey.

But third Isaiah is not willing to let just anyone in, but he (or she) is establishing what might be called a “path to citizenship.” Third Isaiah says that those foreigners who have joined themselves to Yahweh, who minister in his service and who love his name, are not to say that Yahweh will surely cut them off from his people. These new membership requirements have nothing to do with the present status of these people as foreigners, those not born of Israelite or Judean parentage (which was a somewhat difficult matter to prove in those days anyway).

But the radical, expansive vision of the community that third Isaiah supports does not end there. This prophet also includes eunuchs in the reconstituted people of God. There is a great opportunity here to include more people who have previously been cut off—an unfortunate term when we’re discussing eunuchs, but we’ll use it anyway—in the blessed life that is offered to those who are faithful to Yahweh. Third Isaiah says that the eunuch should not say, “I am only a shriveled up tree,” not able to fulfill the command of God at the creation of humanity to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. Eunuchs had, by becoming eunuchs, rendered themselves fit for service in the imperial court and, therefore, unfit for the service of Yahweh.

The same words used of the foreigners—keep the Sabbath and do not defile it, hold fast to my covenant—are used of the eunuchs who are now, in this expansionistic vision, allowed to join in the community of the faithful. Salvation comes from the community, and those who would join in the community are subject to the demands laid on the community. It does not have anything to do with their past condition of having made themselves fit for service in the imperial court. If they are willing in the present to keep Yahweh’s covenant, to keep the Sabbath and not defile it, then the door is open for them.

So what about the excluded, the stepped on, left out, picked on, put down? It is a usual response to turn inward and refuse to expose oneself to further hurt at the mistreatment afforded by others. It is another usual response to erupt in violence, to seek revenge on those who have wronged one in the past. But the vision of third Isaiah is that the community of the faithful should be more expansive, more universalistic, more open than it was under the old way of doing the covenant. I am thankful that the Bible contains these competing visions, and allows the tension between them to remain unresolved, for that leaves the decision up to us.

When we are in the position of deciding who is to be included and who is to be excluded from the in group, whether that in group is the socially involved people in a high school or a college (or a seminary!) or a nation, or a church, then we have to decide. Will we follow the vision of Ezekiel/Ezra/Nehemiah, judging people based on their present and their past, based on their status as foreigners or those who have crossed a rather arbitrary boundary? The foreigners belong to another kingdom and the eunuchs have made themselves fit for another kingdom, but they desire to join up with us now. Or will we follow the vision of third Isaiah, and of Ruth, and of the saving of Rahab in the battle of Jericho, and allow in all those who, in spite of their present or their past, have committed themselves to following God’s commands just as we do, to keep his Sabbaths and not defile them, to take pleasure in that in which he takes pleasure, to minister and serve in his temple, to love his name?

And what about when we are the excluded, the stepped on, left out, picked on, put down? Whether your experience is like mine, sitting in the middle of an hour-long, multidirectional volley of insults, or whether your experience is different than mine, excluded based on something you are or the decisions you have made, there is a decision for me and for you and for all of us to take. The vision of the faithful community that is offered by third Isaiah is an expansive one, wherein those previously excluded, whether on the basis of their present or their past, need not either retreat within themselves or lash out in a vain attempt at revenge. There is nothing wrong with you! You are not excluded! If you would but commit yourself to remain faithful to what God requires, then that is the only mark of citizenship in God’s community.

Sometimes in a seminary, we allow ourselves to put on a mask of having everything put together, of being free from the pain and exclusion and hurt of the past, of being immune to poor treatment by our coworkers, our classmates, our family. Oh, we get good, don’t we, at hiding our true emotions, our feeling of inferiority, the sometimes crushing sense that there will never be a place for us at the table. But we remember, don’t we, how we felt wanting to be accepted, wanting to be loved, wanting not to be ridiculed, wanting not to be shut out. We remember how it felt. And we did not like it. But the vision of third Isaiah, which invites us in to an ever-expanding vision of God, shows us that our present and our past, while they are important in defining who we are, need not be any sort of barrier into a helpful and hopeful future. If you have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down—ostracized because of your status—then the beauty of this vision, the beauty of the Gospel, is that you, even you, can “let the Son of God enfold you, with his Spirit and his love, let him fill your heart and satisfy your soul. Oh let him have the things that hold you, and his Spirit like a dove, will descend upon your life and make you whole…Oh come and sing this song with gladness, as your hearts are filled with joy—lift your hands in sweet surrender to his name. Oh give him all your tears and sadness, give him all your years of pain, and you'll enter into life in Jesus' name.”

At the foot of the Cross, there is always room for one more. Amen.

(Benediction) At the foot of the Cross, there is always room for one more. Give him all your years of sadness, give him all your years of pain, and even if you have been excluded because of your present and your past, you may even now enter into life. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Scriptures read for class devotions: Week 8

2008-08-22T16:32:00.001+08:00

I was a little lazy this week, doubling up the readings on Tuesday. I also skipped Thursday in the Intro class, since there was a midterm and I wanted to maximize the available time for the students to complete the test. Similarly, Pentateuch class has a midterm next Thursday so there will be one fewer then as well:

Intro to OT:
8/19 Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Pentateuch:
8/19 Deuteronomy 6:1-9
8/21 Leviticus 19:1-4

I haven't been nearly as systematic or intentional about this as I should have. Perhaps in subsequent semesters I can do better. After all, this was a last-minute inspiration, as I have already said.

The tyranny of language

2008-08-18T08:16:00.003+08:00

One of the things drilled into me as a graduate student (both on the master's and doctoral levels) was the power, the terrible power, of language. Sometimes without even realizing it, we can say things that exclude others or make them feel less valuable or valued--and I'm sure there is a philosophical distinction between those similarly spelled words. In my present context, this shows up rather frequently in the American idioms that pepper my speech. (And even "pepper my speech" is an American idiom!) With many of these, I just take their meaning for granted (what the late Pierre Bourdieu would call doxa). But I have learned, and am indeed still learning, to see the nonverbal clues on my students' faces that indicate bewilderment. When I see The Look, I usually catch myself and go back and define what I just said. ;-)

Another way this came up in the last few days is a discussion with the Master of Science in Theology (MST) student to whom I've been assigned as adviser. By the way, Master of Science in Theology is a very Thomistic-sounding degree, perhaps to be expected in a country whose dominant theological and educational ethos is Roman Catholic. But I digress. In reading over the student's sketch of his first chapter, I said that he needed to italicize something, "because it's a word in a foreign language." I was thinking about that particular phrase this morning, and I realized how another American cultural assumption came into play by how I said that. To wit: saying that a non-English word was "foreign" implies, quite simply, that all non-English words are foreign. Even though they are so to me, as English is my heart-language, nevertheless it highlighted for me a cultural-linguistic bias in my own mind which I had previously taken for granted. But now I am in an Asian context. More properly, I am in a multicultural, English-as-a-second-language (ESL) context, so American assumptions about the priority of English as a language need to be called into question.

Unfortunately, the more precise statement is also the more cumbersome. Rather than saying, "All foreign (i.e., non-English) words written with English characters should be italicized or underlined," it should be "All words from languages other than the primary language of the document, and written with the characters of that primary language, should be italicized, underlined, or similarly identified as different from the remainder of the text." That is an awfully complex statement, but it is accurate. The seminary catalog does say that all non-English words should be italicized or underlined, but this does not betray the same cultural-linguistic bias becuase the rule is built on the assumption of English being the language of all instruction, discussion, and writing at the seminary. Whether that assumption reflects a bias is another matter that I will not explore, except to say that it is a matter of practicality to enforce a common language in multicultural environment. English was chosen as the language of official seminary business because it is one of the official languages of the Philippines and also many Filipinos can speak it, whereas they sometimes have difficulty communicating even amongst themselves in the multivariate languages spoken in the archipelago.

So I will continue to say that non-English words need to be italicized when it comes to written documents at the seminary, but forever after I will remember that even talking about the differences between languages can lead to favoring one language over another. Oh, that the Tower of Babel had never been built and that God had not confused our languages...

Scriptures read for class devotions: Week 7

2008-08-15T13:59:00.002+08:00

This week's Scriptures represent, I think, a turning of the corner in the practice/discipline I'm developing. For I decided at the last minute before Thursday's Pentateuch meeting to read the Hebrew of the Ten Commandments in Exodus. I was able to read more quickly than I have in the past, with the exception of passages with which I was already familiar for aloud reading. I had never read the Ten Commandments in Hebrew out loud until that time, and the ease with which it flowed convinces me that, by the grace of God, my skill is improving. As for the English translations, those are aided somewhat by the arrival of my parallel-column Hebrew/English Jewish Publication Society Tanakh. ;-) I don't feel as bad about cheating with the English.

Intro to Old Testament:
8/12 Deuteronomy 26:1-11
8/14 Psalm 117

Pentateuch
8/12 Exodus 15:1-18
8/14 Exodus 20:1-17

The big box II

2008-08-13T21:38:00.002+08:00

Everything arrived safe and sound in the big box. There is some cosmetic damage to a few of the books, but nothing a good squish job in between a couple of heavy ones can't fix. Public shout-out to my brother, who expertly handled the loading of the stuff with the moving company. It's always a little uncomfortable to turn your valuables over to the control of another person. In my case, I did this twice, once to my brother and once to the moving company. And then to the truck driver and then to the ship crew and then to the receiving company here in the Philippines, and on and on. Even when the person handling things for you is a trusted member of your family, it's a cause for more than a bit of uneasiness and more than a few sleepless (or less sleepful, or something) nights.

I've actually spent quite a bit of time and money acquiring those things, a fact which, admittedly, causes me to stop short when I think of the poverty and general condition of human misery that I see here on a daily basis. I say here that I have only the appearance of being rich (I was taught this afternoon how to say that in Tagalog but I've forgotten), but at the same time the culture in which I was raised carries a strong element of the need to acquire things as a part of acquiring status and respect. I know I didn't say that properly, because I am still trying to process the differences between the society in which I live as a ger (Hebrew; 'resident alien, foreigner') and the society to which I am accustomed. It is a difficult transition, but I am slowly, ever so slowly making the leap. More to come...

Driving and the big box

2008-08-13T14:26:00.002+08:00

Just came off my first experience driving in the Philippines. Actually, it was my first experience driving outside of North America. I've driven in Canada some (and of course extensively in the States), but nowhere else. I had lunch with the field strategy coordinator and his wife, and he handed me the keys to drive back to campus. It wasn't a long trip, and there wasn't much traffic this time, but it was good. When I got to Tikling Junction (=asphalt death trap), I just got into the left lane and followed a large flatbed truck through the intersection. We figured, correctly, that no one would challenge the truck for position. If I just hugged its bumper, then I would come through Tikling with no problem. And that is how it was.

Oh, and the other big news is that the big box is on its way across Manila right now (we think). It is supposed to be delivered sometime this afternoon, estimated around 4:00 PM (90 minutes from right now). This has the majority of my library plus a few household items that will make me feel more at home here. I am hesitant to see what it actually looks like, and a little worried about it. But God has controlled everything else, so why should I suspect that this would not work out as well?

Scriptures read for class devotions: Week 6

2008-08-07T15:25:00.003+08:00

This was a hard week. I didn't have anything prepared as of this morning for either of my classes, so I pulled out a softball for Intro (one that I had already used for Pentateuch). As far as Pentateuch goes, I was thinking about the "my ancestor was a wandering Aramaean" bit from Deut 26, but I couldn't get it together in time. I had a difficult time selecting the passages, and I even looked at some of the Daily Office readings. These were singularly unhelpful, since the "Old Testament" reading for today was from the Apocrypha. While the book of Judith is wonderful, I'm too much of a Protestant to use that stuff. And I don't have it in Hebrew anyway, which is part of the reason why it wasn't in the OT canon to begin with.

Intro to OT:
8/5 Jeremiah 31:31-34
8/7 Genesis 2:1-4a

Pentateuch:
8/5 Genesis 32:23-32 [Eng. 22-31]
8/7 Genesis 2:18-25

The idea to use the story of the creation of the woman from the side of the man was a kind of deus ex machina for me, seeing as how I had just about given up on not using something twice in the same class. I was tempted to go back to the priestly blessing in Numbers 6, since that's a really great text. But Genesis 2 leapt out at me (and plus I already know that one well in Hebrew).

Scriptures read for class devotions: week 5

2008-07-31T15:57:00.003+08:00

It's getting harder to prepare the Hebrew readings for each class session, rather than easier as I thought it might as I gained more experience in this practice. But I will not give it up; rather, I may take time in the next couple of days to plan out what I'll use the remainder of the semester in each class, since I didn't even select my passages until late last evening. I was still practicing the Pentateuch reading just before lunch, with class meeting at 1:30 PM and, as you'll see, I cheated again somewhat and doubled up one of the readings. However, it's only partially cheating, because I have been working through in Intro to OT some of the call stories. I've done Joshua, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and now Moses. Perhaps I'll find some others since, again, I can choose anything in the canon. This is not to mention that I'm a bit leery about sticking too closely to the Psalms because, even though these are wonderful material for what I'm doing, I don't want to get too much reading out of one book or even one block of literature in that class.

Intro to OT:
7/29 Isaiah 6:1-8
7/31 Exodus 3:1-15

Pentateuch
7/29 Exodus 3:1-15
7/31 Genesis 45:1-11

Course offerings update

2008-07-29T15:41:00.003+08:00

I've been asked by the president of the seminary to teach Doctrine of Holiness in Semester II, and to compensate Biblical Hebrew is being put off until Sem II 09-10, by which time there may be a theologian in place at least in an adjunct relationship. I'm bummed about not teaching Hebrew, because that's where my passion lies, particularly because it's language. But Doctrine of Holiness is a keystone of the curriculum in a holiness seminary, so I am willing to take on the challenge. It's also upsetting that Hebrew is being put off because a couple of students have expressed interest in Hebrew, mainly because of my practice of reading from the Hebrew Bible in class devotions. But I can possibly fold Hebrew instruction into the Historical Books class if anyone expresses any interest. We'll see. And I'm also not entirely opposed to overloading, though that is probably an option of last resort, especially in view of each course being a new preparation for me still, and Doctrein of Holiness is an out-of-the-field new prep on top of it.

It will be a challenge, because even though I am convinced of the correctness of holiness doctrine, I am not a trained theologian so I am being called on to stretch myself in ways not previously imagined. I think this is a good thing for me, not least because it looks pretty on the CV when I go back into the hopper for other jobs. And it is certainly also a good thing for the school, because this is a required course, and many students may not have had opportunity to take it yet. So we'll see. Basically, I need to start preparation now...