Theology From Exile Volume II: The Year of Matthew

 I decided to take a look at this book for a handful of reasons: one is that I preach in churches that use RCL; another is that this book seemed to promise commentary on the RCL readings in a way that would bring out the Empire-resistance themes. I was also intrigued by the suggestion in the blurb that insights also from creation spirituality were part of the commentary.

Now, of course, the difficulty of reviewing a book like this within 30 days of receiving it*, is that it is a commentary on the weekly readings, so it's not a regular 'read-straight-through' sort of book since it's meant to be consulted on a a week by week or at least 'as needed' basis and each set of commentary pondered on the way to writing and performing a sermon. This makes it quite hard to read in the same way as a novel or standard book with a unitary argument, thesis or theme. And what is really needed is to 'road test' the volume over several months actual usage in informing the preparation for preaching. So what I'm doing here is having read the readings and commentary for about 3 months' worth of Sunday readings, to give an impression of the kind of commentary being offered. It's a little harder to comment directly on how well the material worked as stimulus for preaching.

The first thing to say is that I think I will continue to refer to the commentary pieces in this volume as a prepare for preaching. This is because the comments I have read do seem to me to have the kinds of insights that could provide the seed of a sermon. There is a useful reference to the kinds of insights that come from the work of people like John Dominic Crossan on the economic and political effects of the Roman Empire on Judea, Galilee and the rest which can yield interesting possibilities in understanding the gospels and epistles. Also an attentiveness to the environmental dimensions of it all are potentially useful to someone like me who is keen to help people to value justice, peace and the integrity of creation in discipleship and therefore in preaching.

What, I guess, I find less helpful is the way that the volume picks up the sometimes strident enemising of more traditional approaches to scripture and theology. Partly this is because I'm not fully 'with the program' that the author is signed up for: I'm not committedly materialist in my philosophical presuppositions, I do tend to think that the Jesus Seminar approach to the texts is unnecessarily skeptical and somewhat belligerent. I sometimes think that creation spirituality is more New Age than orthodox Christian. (That said I think that CS does alert us to distortions of orthodoxy and challenges us to reconsider the tradition and the way that we translate it for contemporary life). So in using the volume, I will not be automatically taking on board all of the perspectives but I do expect that some of the insights will be productive for me and that in wrestling with the things I'm less convinced by or even sense I disagree with, I will be challenged to develop my own thinking and appreciation of the texts more fully and carefully.

I do find myself, as I read, sometimes musing over a certain irony. There is a new orthodoxy espoused which reads the Bible as a manifesto for political resistance and change of a particular sort (I happen to agree with the thrust of this), but I do find it odd that while undermining these writings as Scripture, they are yet being used as in some way authoritative or at least as validating resistance to Empire. This feels a little parasitic on the tradition and I can't really see any reason for retaining it except to access the more general religiosity of north American society compared with Britain and Europe. I'm not sure that holding on to the tradition seems as useful politically in GB and EU and that the kind of orthodox radical approach of people like Jim Wallis or Shane Claiborne is more likely to feel authentic.

*Disclosure of Material Connection: This was a condition of getting a review copy; I received this book free from the  publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255 -even though I am British, residing in Britain.
Theology From Exile Volume II: The Year of Matthew eBook: Sea Raven: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Tohu wa Bohu

I preached in College last Thursday. A number of people have been commenting since then how helpful they had found it. So for those who might value being able to reflect on bits of it again, I'm reproducing it here. I rarely preach from full notes like these, but the style required a closer attention to wording than I normally give. The numbers refer to slide accompaniments.

Gen 1:1 - 5 ; Mk 1:4ff

Riff-Sermon
Introductory slide is [1] -not for viewing start with [2]

Tohu wƏ bohu [2]
A formless void: formlessness and void; chaotic and empty; unstructured and unpopulated; shapeless and blank; formless and desolate; void and empty; disordered and uncultivated; unformatted and awaiting input .... a right mess wi nowt much appning.

To be alive means dealing with tohu w' bohu.

Tohu wƏ bohu [3]
Chaotic and unfulfilled. Peering ever more closely at fundamental particles, quarks, gluons, is to find randomness, mere probability rather than immutable laws, unpredictability at the very heart of what we think so solid and dependable: matter and energy. Our very being emerges from the wildness, the unpredictable, yes; the chaos of fundamental physical reality. Somehow reality is such that the randomness generates fields, areas and spaces of order, and more... and more... Somehow reality is such that even chaos is caught up into the making of order.

To examine through the eyes of physics and maths the nature and the equations of material reality is to find tohu w' bohu.

And in the beginning there is still a new story, a story telling us good news; for the Spirit of God hovers over the equations, and God is still saying “Let there be...” and there is ...

Tohu wƏ bohu [4]
Words to signal a main point in a counter-story for the people of God. Those who oppress them tell themselves a myth of epic primal battle between chaos and order. This story queries the Empire's foundational story in which might is right, and where order and peace are founded on bloodshed and suppression. Where the world, and everything in it, is reconstituted from the offal -the blood-soaked guts- of the defeated opponent. A myth of origins where the message is that peace and order come at the end of a sword. A myth justifying the suppression of the mass of people in the service of the few. A myth to tell human beings that we are worth little and the gods hardly care provided they get their cut.

To be oppressed is to suffer the consequences of other people's fear of tohu w' bohu.

In the beginning is a new story, a story telling us good news.
And the spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters....

Tohu wƏ bohu [5]
No primal chaos monster to be defeated and gutted here. Just a calm scene-setting. A simple bringing-into-being.
No inscribing of violence into the very ground of being here. Just the power and intimacy of God's breath, God's spirit, God's life-force flowing, hovering, brooding, sweeping over all that God makes.
Here is no titanic struggle to give legitimacy to the exploiting of the hard graft of a slave population sweating for others' gain. Just some simple words to bring about
something new,
something beautiful,
something for everyone.

To be exploited means to be forced to handle other people's tohu w' bohu.

In the beginning is a new story, a story telling us good news.
And the spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters....
And God saw that it was good

Tohu wƏ bohu [6]
Unstructured and empty. A phrase that could speak to a people who enter a wilderness. In a wilderness there are no streets, no familiar landmarks no directions. There is no sense of what is dangerous and what is safe. No fields, no food, no visible means of support.
What could a story like this mean to those forced to journey through the wild-erness, the wildness?
To enter a wilderness is to enter into tohu w' bohu

Yet, in the beginning is a new story, a story telling us good news.
For the breath of God breathes through the experience. And God said “Let there be...”

Tohu wƏ bohu [7]
Disordered and blank. Chaotic and empty: that's how it must have felt for God's people hoiked off to Babylon; how to make sense of it all? Old securities gone. New ways not yet established. The mess and distress of finding new livelihoods, dealing with the prejudice and contempt of new neighbours, and most of all not knowing what the future could hold or whether we could dare to hope. Where God had been: where Temple had stood ... blank; erased; silence ...

To go into exile is to enter into tohu w' bohu

Yet, in the beginning is a new story, a story telling us good news.
For the Spirit of God brooded over it all, and God said 'Let there be light'.

Tohu wƏ bohu [7]
Formless and void.
Later Jesus was to observe that the people of God were like sheep without a shepherd. Sheep!? All over the place. Facing different directions. Direction-less, wandering about. But for now, it's down into the water. Going in with the crowds, part of a people who are all over the place, and awaiting a shepherd. Making common cause with them, entering the turmoil and confusion. Waters of Baptism: waters of creation. And the Spirit hovers over the waters and over the Word-made-flesh.

For, in the beginning is a new story, a story telling us good news.
And the Spirit of God brooded over it all, and God speaks in flesh and blood ....

Tohu wƏ bohu [8]
Meaningless and empty. To watch one die who had seemed to sum up in himself the hopes of a people, the purposes of God and even the very presence of the Divine caught up in the meaninglessness of an imperial injustice, ground between the competing blind forces of Empire, collaboration and resistance, identity and conformity, money and power. Such a death seems so ... meaningless. And without him life seems so ..... empty

Yet, in the beginning is a new story, a story telling us good news.
For the Spirit of God brooded over the meaninglessness and emptiness, and God had a further word to speak.

Tohu wƏ bohu [9]
Messy and uncertain.
A young woman lies in the road behind the car that hit her. Her injuries mean that in about 11 hours surgeons will have to decide to amputate her leg.
For her family, for her church and for many many people whose lives that family's touch, there begins a time of messy uncertainty; a formless void awaiting developments form the conflicting forces at work in and around that life.

To be caught up in a serious and life-changing accident is to enter into tohu w' bohu

Yet, in the beginning is a new story, a story telling us good news.
For the Spirit of God broods over the experience. And God speaks yet a further word...

Tohu wƏ bohu [10]
confusing and awaiting. A young woman certain of the call of God on her life for ordination. Trained at one of the finest colleges, clearly gifted and creative. Yet stymied time and again in a search for a curacy: passed from diocese to diocese; from bishop to DDO. From pillar to post. A husband needing to know where to request a transfer to for his work. How to make sense of call and lack of opportunity?

To await proper opportunities is to confront tohu w' bohu

Yet, in the beginning is a new story, a story telling us good news.
For the breeze of God stirs through the experience. And God speaks a creative word.

Tohu wƏ bohu [11]
Meaningless and empty. A man is told he will be made redundant. This threatens not only his livelihood, but his sense of call, and of value and even threatens homelessness for a whole family. Things don't make sense, information is conflicting, emotional forces swing and eddy around him and within him.

To become jobless is to be rubbed raw against tohu w' bohu

Yet, in the beginning is a new story, a story telling us good news.
For the breath of God breathes through the experience. And God speaks hope and creates afresh.

Tohu wƏ bohu [12]
A nation in turmoil; being torn between revenge and justice, hope and coming to terms with a horrendous past of oppression and abuse. Voices and forces compete to offer futures but so many seem to offer peace only through shedding the blood of those designated enemies. The danger is the forces that could be unleashed in reversing the racial power status threaten chaos, anarchy and might is right community building. A world watches in trepidation and ... prayer ...

To rebuild a nation is to stand amidst and be seared by tohu w' bohu

Yet, in the beginning is a new story, a story telling us good news.
For the wind of God blows through the nation. And God speaks and old yet ever new word ...

Tohu wƏ bohu [13]
Among the first words of scripture; but not the last.
The Spirit of God still hovers over tohu w' bohu
The breath of God still whispers through the tohu w' bohu
the Wind of God still whistles around the tohu w' bohu.
And God says:
Let there be artists and entrepreneurs
bringers of justice and makers of peace
wise and servant leaders
prophets and pastors
tellers of truth
healers
And there were.
And God saw that it was good.
And evening came and morning came. The sixth day.

Amen. [14]

Guilt-felt and the gospel

Steve Hollinghurst is right. Well, I have to say that of this post of his; it's pretty much what I wrote in 1986 as part of a college study on how people came to Christian faith. My suspicion was that, although we preached forgiveness of sins and freedom from guilt, what people actually responded to was not that. In the course of my investigations I came to the conclusion that most people in the west were not coming to faith out of a conviction of sinfulness and so with a real sense of wanting forgiveness. But the problem is that our Evangelical gospel is focused on this idea and so the instinct has been to begin to preach guilt arousal, to create a need for forgiveness which our formula can then be applied to. Rather than actually find out how the gospel might address contemporary concerns, we have opted instead for the advertisers' way of stimulating 'need' for our product. Of course, given what that is, we come over therefore as pretty negative and moralistic in a bad sort of way.

Steve puts it into cultural analytic mode as he writes,

the idea of conversion as an individual decision based on a personal guilty conscience as a true guide is deeply dependent on a modernist view of humanity. this view both views me as an individual and secondly as a positive individual who is, if I can truly connect with myself , an individual whose reason and reaction will indeed be true. What if actually my conscience is false? What if I feel no guilt for that which God might condemn me, or feel guilt for that of which I should feel none? what if taking that into account, and in today's world both those seem to be true, my guilt was not a product of a divinely guided conscience but a product of a lapsed Christendom in which me guilt was induced by past church experience and thus able to be revived by contemporary church preaching? ... OK most people do suffer feelings of guilt, but they are both often different from what Christianity suggests we ought to feel guilty about, and increasingly assuaged by the sentiment 'well I’m only human' which in modernity and especially post modernity is a perfectly good justification (I don't think it is as a Christian by the way). further to this, as the power of Christendom guilt wears off, the preaching of a gospel geared to it leads to a rejection of the gospel, either as a crutch for the weak and guilty, that is people worse than me, or as something that is moralizing and guilt inducing when no guilt is due. The gospel becomes either at best good news for the truly bad (i.e. only a few) or bad news full stop.

Steve's tentative suggestion is

Might the gospel that frees us from sin and death be the gospel that says, actually you can be like Jesus? Might preaching what we could become, rather than seeking to make us feel guilty for what we are, be not only 'good news' for today?

I think he's onto something in the sense that much searching today is about how to become more than we sense or fear ourselves to be. There's an amazing amount of stuff going on in our culture that is about aspiring to be more, to unlock our potential, to develop the godlike within us. Perhaps we should be less frightened of this and look more fully at the idea of divinisation not as a prequel to a deficit view of humanity so much as to inviting us to partner with God in the big-picture and find our place in a potential that is not bought at the expense of others but for the welfare of all ...

A couple of us at our church have recently begun to wonder what outreach would look like if we based it on the idea that a foretaste of heaven would be to help people to explore and discover things about themselves, positively, that liberate their creativity and expand their /our range of abilities. We like the idea of basing a Christian 'message' on human potential not being left solely to heaven to develop but to begin the project in the here-and-now. This came out of a feeling that heaven might be a place where the many possibilities we each have could be explored because there is clearly more to each of us than the opportunities of this life can allow; surely heaven must be a place where such exploration could go on, and on ...

On Earth as in Heaven: a guilty conscience?