---
Aggregate Kraybill (p. 19)illustrates the point of community over self by discussing the distinction between an aggregate and a collectivity. An aggregate as a group of people who occupy a time and space together but lack any true community (i.e. people at a crosswalk). The key is that they do not influence each other .
iCollectivity "The Kingdom of God is a collectivity ( (not an aggregate)--a network of persons....more than a series of individualized email connections linking the King to each subject..These individuals “influence each other, formulate common goals, and together decide how to reach them." (Kraybill, p. 19)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Buckets:
the Holy Kiss for today..on a bridge and in a bucket
"There is the kiss and the counterkiss, and if one wins, we both lose." -Walter Brueggemann ----------------
We covered the biblical tradition of the "holy kiss" in our gathering last Sunday.
It was a lot of fun. We started with a game of Hangman;
We had "Holy _ _ _ _" on the whiteboard when folks came in!
They has to guess what four letter word filled in the blank to make this a phrase that appears in Scripture. When i said "yes" to the first guess of "S," you should have heard the comments!
That the Bible explicitly mentions this practice five times:
- Romans 16.16a — "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν φιλήματι ἁγίῳ).
- I Corinthians 16.20b — "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν φιλήματι ἁγίῳ).
- II Corinthians 13.12a — "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν ἁγίῳ φιλήματι).
- I Thessalonians 5.26 — "Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς πάντας ἐν φιλήματι ἁγίῳ).
- I Peter 5.14a — "Greet one another with a kiss of love" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν φιλήματι ἀγάπης).
any scriptures that we assume need a cultural equivalent to out taking them literally.
(Though some of our folks took the "holy kiss" literally Sunday..no, not on the lips....I wish I had video..someone post the stories!(:...)
On this issue of interpretation:
- Brian Dodd's discussion of the "interpretive bridge" is helpful (p. 19 here)
- Ron Martoia's posts on the "two buckets" (see "The Two Bucket Theory Examined" here).
I really recommend you read both above links, then get back to us.
They helped us when we tackled women in leadership, and homosexuality.
We learned that, counterintuitively to our guesses from this end of the cultural bridge, it seems the early church's holy kissing was almost always... on the lips!
The reason is powerful: that form on kiss implied equality...a kiss on the cheeks implied one person was inferior. Nothing like a Kingdom Kiss as an acted parable and reminder that in Christ we are equal! Of course, today, when we look at cultural equivalents like the "holy hug", "holy handshake," we might not realize that that, too, began as a Kingdom equalizer:
Ironically, the kiss of inclusion became a kiss of exclusion (from centered to bounded set):
In fact, handshaking, which can seem quite prosaic today, was popularised by Quakersas a sign of equality under God, rather than stratified system of etiquette of seventeenth century England
-link
Just as kissing had many different meanings in the wider ancient world, so too early Christians interpreted the kiss in various ways. Because ancient kissing was often seen as a familiar gesture, many early Christians kissed each other to help construct themselves as a new sort of family, a family of Christ. Similarly, in the Greco-Roman world, kissing often was seen as involving a transfer of spirit; when you kissed someone else you literally gave them part of your soul. The early church expanded on this and claimed that, when Christians kissed, they exchanged the Holy Spirit with one another. Christians also emphasized the kiss as an indication of mutual forgiveness (it’s from here that we get the term “kiss of peace”). These different meanings influenced and were influenced by the sorts of rituals kissing became associated with. For example, because the kiss helped exchange spirit, it made perfect sense for it to become part of baptism and ordination, rituals in which you wanted the Holy Spirit to descend and enter the initiate. The flip side of the coin is that before someone was baptized you wouldn’t want to kiss them. Early Christians often believed that previous to exorcism and baptism people were inevitably demon possessed. Given that they also thought that kissing resulted in spiritual exchange, it’s pretty clear why you wouldn’t want to kiss non-Christians. I sometimes think of this as an ancient form of “cooties.” It resulted in early Christian debates over whether one could kiss a pagan relative, if one should kiss a potential heretic, or if Jews even had a kiss.
-Penn, link
We incorporated insights from these and other articles linked below, and quoted the only book on the topic, "Kissing Christians" by Michael Penn. You'll note some of the articles below include interview with him. We particularly enjoyed some of the early fathers and teachers' comments and guidelines on the practice.
One early guideline, for real (wonder if this was in the weekly "bulletin"):
1)No French Kissing!
2)If you come back for seconds, because you liked the first kiss too much, you may be going to hell!!
Clement of Alexandra (c.150 - c. 215):
"There are those who do nothing but make the church resound with the kiss."
Chrysostom (4th C):
“We are the temple of Christ, and when we kiss each other
we are kissing the porch and entrance of the temple.”
Augustine (4th C):
"when your lips draw close to the lips of your brother, let your heart not draw away."
One interview with Michael Penn:
ARTICLES:Whoever said ''a kiss is just a kiss" didn't know their theological history. During Christianity's first five centuries, ritual kissing -- on the lips -- was a vital part of worship, says Michael P. Penn, who teaches religion at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley. In that context, kissing helped Christians define themselves as a family of faith, he writes in his new book, ''Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church" (University of Pennsylvania Press). Excerpts from a recent interview follow.Q: Let me start with the basic question: Who kissed whom?A: In the first two centuries [AD], men may kissmen, women women, but also you would have men and women kissing one another. In future centuries, there continued to be a debate over who should kiss whom. In later years, Christians will no longer have men and women kissing each other, but only men men, women women. [Christians had] debates on whether or not priests could kiss the laity, on whether you should kiss a non-Christian relative in the normal, everyday situation, even debates over whether Jews have a kiss or not.
Q: When in the service was the kiss performed?A: Our earliest references would be a kiss that would follow a communal prayer. Later on, it gets increasingly associated with the Eucharist and also occurs in part of the rites of baptism and in ordination rites. You have Christians kissing each other as an everyday greeting or also martyrs, before they're killed, kissing one another.Q: What was the theological significance?A: In antiquity, a kiss on the lips was seen as transferring a little bit of one's spirit to the other person. You have a lot of early -- I kind of think of them almost as Greco-Roman Harlequin -- novels that speak of the kiss as this transfer of spirit. Christians modify it a bit, to suggest that when Christians kiss each other, they don't just exchange their own spirit, but also share a part of the Holy Spirit with one another. So the kiss is seen as a way to bind the community together.There's another side, though. There was a concern that kissing an individual who has promised to join the Christian community but isn't yet baptized should be avoided, because the spirit that would be transferred wouldn't be a holy spirit but a demonic spirit. So you have the kiss working as this ritual of exclusion.Q: Did Christian leaders worry about the erotic overtones?A: We have only two explicit references to this concern. One says, essentially, to kiss with a closed and chaste mouth, which suggests that a few of these kisses may have been too erotic. The other one warns against those who kiss a second time because they liked the first one so much.Judas kissing Jesus [to betray him] terrifies them a lot more than eroticism. There's this evil intention behind it. Early Christian writers use the kiss of Judas to warn that it's not just how you practice the kiss, but what you're thinking. If you kiss another Christian while keeping evil in your heart against them, you are repeating Judas' betrayal.Q: When did kissing fall out of favor?A: In the third century, men and women are no longer to kiss one another. Early Christians met in what we think of as a house church -- you meet in someone's living room, essentially. Starting in the third century, when Christians [worship] in a public forum, this familial kiss is less appropriate. It's also a time where Christianity becomes concerned with making sure women and men are categorically separated. In the fourth century, that clergy and laity become increasingly distant. You start having prohibitions against clergy and laity kissing one another.The ritual kiss never entirely died out. We still have it as an exchange of peace [in Christian services]. We see it in the kissing of the pope's ring. In Catholicism, a priest may kiss a ritual object.Q: What would Christianity have been without the kiss?A: What I find exciting is to see how what we think of as trivial is so central to early Christian self-understanding. Our earliest Christian writing, Paul's letter to the First Thessalonians, talks about the ritual kiss, albeit briefly. We have hundreds of early Christian references to this ritual. For these authors, it was anything but trivial.-LINK
----------------------------
Wikipedia article on Holy Kiss Kiss and Tell the Gospel Michael Penn explains what the early church meant by the "holy kiss." On Kissing: A Q&A with Michael Penn -PUCKER UP by Martin Marty GREET ONE ANOTHER WITH A HOLY KISS (PDF) The Holy Kiss of Love: Are We Keeping This Command? I Corinthians 16-II Corinthians 1: Greet One Another with a Holy Kiss
Links and quotes below
Gotta love so much about this film..like Eugene calling Rolling Stone Magazine "Rolling Stones"..
and a mosh pit a "mash pit." (;
If you like the hilarious story (excerpted above) about how EP first turned Bono down, there's a whole video of EP on that and more here.
--
EP:
"At twelve years old , [the psalms] showed me that imagination was a way to get inside the truth.
....translating a psalm...To try to get them to realize that praying wasn't being nice before God.. The psalms are not pretty; they're not nice...just pray this psalm.. It's not smooth; it's not nice, it's not pretty; but it's honest. And I think we're trying for honesty..which is very, very hard in our culture.
We need to find a way to cuss...without cussing. And the imprecatory psalms surely do that.
We've got to some way in context; and the context is the whole Bible; whole psalter...to tell people how mad we are.
...We have crosses in every room in this house. But when I look at those, I don't think of decoration; I think 'This is the world we live in..and it's a world with a lot of crosses . ' And I would just like to spend my life in doing something about that through Scripture, through preaching, through friendship. My years are getting shorter, and I don't have many left; but I don't want to escape the violence..."
Bono:
"The only way we can approach God..if we're honest..is through metaphor; through symbol. So art becomes essential; not decorative.
..The psalmist is brutally honest about the explosive joy that he's feeling and the deep sorrow or confusion, and it's that that sets the psalms apart for me.And I often think,
'Why isn't church music more like that'? ..
...I'm talking about dishonesty. I find in a lot of Christian art ..a lot of dishonesty. I think it's a shame because these people are vulnerable to God (in a good way)...porous; open.. I would love if this conversation would inspire people who are writing these beautiful.., gospel songs: write a song about their bad marriage; write a song about how they're pissed off at the government. Because that's what God wants from you: the truth... The truth will set you free; it will blow things apart. Why I'm suspicious of Christians is because of this lack of realism..and I'd love to see more of that in art and life and music."
(answering "What is the work of the artist..in acknowledging the intensity; the reality of the feeling without indulging the feeling?").
Having feelings is perfectly normal. ...David danced naked in front of the troops; that's one reason I like him .. abandonment... very important... understanding our bodies as well as our minds and ourspirits. The Three-Personed God --The Trinity--is reflected in our body, mind and spirit..,We really do ignore this.
--
EP prays:
"Be with us as we continue our lives of serving You with poetry, with the arts, with psalm, finding ways to enter into what You're already doing: not calculating the chances, but doing what's right there, what You've already started doing..."
Listen for the prophetic summary in the last two words of the film
...from Mrs. Peterson.
--------------------------
See:
- Story of the film, along related quotes with resources
- Behind the scenes
Bono audio: God at the 9" Nails Gig
atu2:"The Message Author Says U2's Message is Refreshing, Faithful, and Honest
--
David Crowder (the"flippin' semiotician")'s "soooo Crowder" T-shirt with the F-word
T shirt called "Ancient Chinese Secret." Don't leave the blog now, all offended. (: Read the story of this T-shirt below
Any list of great books on the Psalms would include Eugene Peterson's amazing "Answering God" (see "Eugene Peterson on loud farts"), works by Bruegemann (of course) and....
...did you know David Crowder wrote a book on the Psalms? It's"Praise Habit:Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi"
...and it's a ...well, Crowderesque...devotional on selected psalms. Here's a hilarious highlight, from the book's conclusion:
 |
| T shirt called "Ancient Chinese Secret." Don't leave the blog now, all offended. (: Read the story of this T-shirt below |
Any list of great books on the Psalms would include Eugene Peterson's amazing "Answering God" (see "Eugene Peterson on loud farts"), works by Bruegemann (of course) and....
...and it's a ...well, Crowderesque...devotional on selected psalms. Here's a hilarious highlight, from the book's conclusion:
The Ancient Chinese Secret - by David Crowder
Se-mi-ot-ics n
1. the study of signs and symbols of all kinds, what they mean and how they relate to the things or ideas they refer to.
I bought a T-shirt in Washington, D.C. It was red. It said "Ancient Chinese Secret" on the front. Below this statement, it had writing, which I assumed to be Chinese. Never assume. My sushi friend Shelley was there when I picked it out. I held it up, and she said, "Oh, that is soooo Crowder." I put it on that very day. I ate lunch in it sitting across from the pastors of the church where we were playing music later that evening. As I made my way across the stage, heading for our bus that was parked outside, our lighting technician stopped me and said, "Wow. You are brave."
"Yes. Well, brave how? I mean, what do you mean 'brave'?"
"The shirt. You know the secret right?"
"Well, yeah." I nervously responded in an uncertain chuckle. It is embarrassing to wear a shirt and not know what it means. "Wait, what? You mean you know Chinese? Wow. So, huh, well what does it say? I don't know the secret. I don't know Chinese. What's the secret?"
"Oh, it's in English."
"What? No! I studied this shirt at the store like a flipping semiotician. It is most certainly not in English. That I am sure of."
"It is in English. Turn the shirt sideways then read."
It was most definitely in English. Granted, it was intended to be cleverly hidden in ornate, faux Chinese brushstrokes, but once spotted it was unmistakable. I was wearing a shirt that said, "Go F#$@ Yourself!" It was all I could see now. How had I missed this? I am not a semiotician. I sat across from pastors eating hamburgers, laughing and smiling, while the whole time this was written on my chest!
Stuff in life happens, and we try to make sense of it. So we look carefully. What could this moment, this tragedy, this weight, this mountain, this tearing, this violence, this frenzy that is life be teaching us? What is being said here? And then someone points out, "Hey, it says, 'Go F#$@ Yourself!'" and you've had it on the whole time.
Se-mi-ot-ics n
2. the study of identifying the ways that various symptoms indicate the disease that underlies them. (Medical)
The real message, the thing that is scribbled barely legible, the thing that's always there, underlying, is—we need rescue.
Things aren't as they should be. When your eyes focus and this becomes visible, you can't tear your eyes from it. And you start to see that there are those all around us who wait in begging wonder. "What is wrong? I am here. I am here, and I need you to notice. At times I'm waving my arms above my head, screaming it. At times I am too frightened to move, but always I am here, and I want you to notice. And in the dark I am afraid. I lie with my hand on my chest waiting for the tapping to come. Things aren't as they should be. There are symptoms. You see it in my eyes. I have seen it in your eyes, too.
Come to Jesus
To follow Jesus doesn't remove us from the stuff of life. It is not resolution. It is tension and journey. In 1 John 2:6 it says,"Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." Jesus was in the world, engaged, alive, involved, making a difference. To follow Him, we must do the same. His prayer for us in John 17 is "Not that you take them out of the world ..." and "As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world" (verses 15, 18).
This is what God has done for us. He has come into our condition. He has come to bring us back. He has come and embraced us. He has come and covered us in Himself. Watch this Christ. Watch as He is accused of being a drunkard, of associating with tax collectors. Watch as He brings healing to the afflicted, love to prostitutes, forgiveness to sinners. Watch as He climbs the hill bearing His destruction on His back. Watch as blood and water flow. Watch as salvation comes to us all. Watch as glory ascends to come again. Watch and fall in love with a God who does not resolve, whose rescue is never-ending. Whose prayer is that you would be that rescue. Who sends you to be that rescue.
Be courageous. Even as you stand there hiding in the bushes, shaking to the bottom of your toes, frightened of what's to follow, what consequences will come of it, know that evil will not prevail. That you are not alone. That you bring the kingdom of God, and there is hope. There is hope always. And others will walk out of dark places and see you standing there, arms outstretched, given completely to this hope.
Praise is response. Praise happens when there is revelation, and there is revelation waiting for us around every bend, in places we would not suspect.
Our task is to live with eyes wide open to God's greatness because when we see the imprint of the creator, our insides will swell with devotion, our hearts will erupt with thankfulness. You will live, breathe and radiate praise. The habit isn't in learning "how to praise"; it is in reminding yourself "who to praise." It is a remembering of who you are. It is a remembering of your identity. Praise is redeemed and redefined with rescue.
When you have been found by grace, your identity is swallowed in Christ. You are enveloped by Him, clothed in His merciful sacrifice. To live in this remembrance is to bring awareness of Christ into your every encounter. In this awareness you bring His embrace to the things you embrace.
You Are Here
There is a sign in my favorite restaurant, 1424, which happens to be located directly across the street from my house, that hangs by the bar and states, in black letters on a pale-yellow background, "You Are Here."
I call often for takeout. I pretend that they are my residential kitchen staff that just so happens to cook the most flavorful foods on the planet. The chef's name is Bill, and he knows exactly how I like my pork tenderloin. We have never discussed it; he just knows. He's always known. And as I wait for my order to be packed in white Styrofoam and placed in a plastic bag for transport, I sit at the bar and read, "You Are Here," and it brings a comfort and solidity to things. You often hear or encounter inspirational art convincing you to live as if today is the last, to engage each moment as if it were all we had, but usually this is married to the idea that it is. That this is it.
There is nothing more than now. All we get is what we suck out of this moment. But I disagree. I read, "You Are Here," and I am equally inspired to be fully present in this moment, but it is not because that is all I have, but because I am bringing something more. I am bringing the very kingdom of God.
I read, "You Are Here," and I, ignoring the dramatic punctuation of finality, think, "The kingdom of God is sitting at this bar, waiting to bring something better."
We are to be rescue. We are to be redemption. We are to carry the story of God to the ones waiting. To the ones with their hands on their chest, begging you to notice that things aren't right. And this is praise. You are the note sounding in a thousand different rooms. There are chords and reflective surfaces around you. There is context.
Sometimes life comes at us with the delicacy of a sunset, and other times it comes with the rawness of sushi and the bitter bite of wasabi. Sometimes the tears will be because you cannot stand empty-eyed in the presence of such beauty, and sometimes they will be full of fire, but notice/know this: You are here. You Are Here! You are here, and you are not alone.
Look me in the eyes. Can you feel the fabric on your skin? It is woven from the threads of love. Pay attention to the way it folds around you, sense its softness, brush the hair of your arms as you lift them toward the heavens in unencumbered declaration.
It is the coverings of rescue that you feel. It is a flood. It is an ocean. It is a sea that has no bottom, for there is no end to it. To be fully present in the rescue and recreation of Christ is to embrace what God does for us, and this is the best thing we can do for Him.-David Crowder, pp, 152-153 Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi
oo
Sleep Like a Baby version 1
Morning, your toast
Your tea and sugar
Read about the politician’s lover
Go through the day
Like a knife through butter
Why don’t you
You dress in the colours of forgiveness
Your eyes as red as Christmas
Purple robes are folded on the kitchen chair
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like someone else’s suicide
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Dreams
It’s a dirty business, dreaming
Where there is silence and not screaming
Where there’s no daylight
There’s no healing, no no
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like a suicide
But you’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Hope is where the door is
When the church is where the war is
Where no one can feel no one else’s pain
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like a suicide
But you’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Sleep like a baby tonight
Like a bird, your dreams take flight
Like St. Francis covered in light
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Sleep Like A Baby Tonight" version 2 (Alternate Perspective Mix)
Wake
In the morning when you wake up
You won’t have much
But you’ll have enough
When you are weakest
I’ll be strong enough for you
Dreams
Yeah, the ones where you are fearless
Can’t break what’s broken
You are tearless
Steal back your innocence
That’s what they stole from you
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Not everything can be so black and white
There are demons in the broad daylight
But you can sleep like a baby tonight
Stop
Where you stand right now
Just stop
Don’t think or look down at the drop
The people staring from the street
Don’t know what you’ve got
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
No, not everything can be so black and white
There are demons in the broad daylight
But you can sleep like a baby tonight
Hope is where the door is
When home is where the war is
Where nobody can feel no one else’s pain
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Not everything can be so black and so white
There are demons in the broad daylight
You’ve got to sleep like a baby tonight
Sleep like a baby tonight
Where you stand
Where you fall is where I kneel
To take your heart back to where you can feel
Like a child, a child
--
Se-mi-ot-ics n
1. the study of signs and symbols of all kinds, what they mean and how they relate to the things or ideas they refer to.
I bought a T-shirt in Washington, D.C. It was red. It said "Ancient Chinese Secret" on the front. Below this statement, it had writing, which I assumed to be Chinese. Never assume. My sushi friend Shelley was there when I picked it out. I held it up, and she said, "Oh, that is soooo Crowder." I put it on that very day. I ate lunch in it sitting across from the pastors of the church where we were playing music later that evening. As I made my way across the stage, heading for our bus that was parked outside, our lighting technician stopped me and said, "Wow. You are brave."
"Yes. Well, brave how? I mean, what do you mean 'brave'?"
"The shirt. You know the secret right?"
"Well, yeah." I nervously responded in an uncertain chuckle. It is embarrassing to wear a shirt and not know what it means. "Wait, what? You mean you know Chinese? Wow. So, huh, well what does it say? I don't know the secret. I don't know Chinese. What's the secret?"
"Oh, it's in English."
"What? No! I studied this shirt at the store like a flipping semiotician. It is most certainly not in English. That I am sure of."
"It is in English. Turn the shirt sideways then read."
It was most definitely in English. Granted, it was intended to be cleverly hidden in ornate, faux Chinese brushstrokes, but once spotted it was unmistakable. I was wearing a shirt that said, "Go F#$@ Yourself!" It was all I could see now. How had I missed this? I am not a semiotician. I sat across from pastors eating hamburgers, laughing and smiling, while the whole time this was written on my chest!
Stuff in life happens, and we try to make sense of it. So we look carefully. What could this moment, this tragedy, this weight, this mountain, this tearing, this violence, this frenzy that is life be teaching us? What is being said here? And then someone points out, "Hey, it says, 'Go F#$@ Yourself!'" and you've had it on the whole time.
Se-mi-ot-ics n
2. the study of identifying the ways that various symptoms indicate the disease that underlies them. (Medical)
The real message, the thing that is scribbled barely legible, the thing that's always there, underlying, is—we need rescue.Things aren't as they should be. When your eyes focus and this becomes visible, you can't tear your eyes from it. And you start to see that there are those all around us who wait in begging wonder. "What is wrong? I am here. I am here, and I need you to notice. At times I'm waving my arms above my head, screaming it. At times I am too frightened to move, but always I am here, and I want you to notice. And in the dark I am afraid. I lie with my hand on my chest waiting for the tapping to come. Things aren't as they should be. There are symptoms. You see it in my eyes. I have seen it in your eyes, too.
Come to Jesus
To follow Jesus doesn't remove us from the stuff of life. It is not resolution. It is tension and journey. In 1 John 2:6 it says,"Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." Jesus was in the world, engaged, alive, involved, making a difference. To follow Him, we must do the same. His prayer for us in John 17 is "Not that you take them out of the world ..." and "As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world" (verses 15, 18).
This is what God has done for us. He has come into our condition. He has come to bring us back. He has come and embraced us. He has come and covered us in Himself. Watch this Christ. Watch as He is accused of being a drunkard, of associating with tax collectors. Watch as He brings healing to the afflicted, love to prostitutes, forgiveness to sinners. Watch as He climbs the hill bearing His destruction on His back. Watch as blood and water flow. Watch as salvation comes to us all. Watch as glory ascends to come again. Watch and fall in love with a God who does not resolve, whose rescue is never-ending. Whose prayer is that you would be that rescue. Who sends you to be that rescue.Be courageous. Even as you stand there hiding in the bushes, shaking to the bottom of your toes, frightened of what's to follow, what consequences will come of it, know that evil will not prevail. That you are not alone. That you bring the kingdom of God, and there is hope. There is hope always. And others will walk out of dark places and see you standing there, arms outstretched, given completely to this hope.Our task is to live with eyes wide open to God's greatness because when we see the imprint of the creator, our insides will swell with devotion, our hearts will erupt with thankfulness. You will live, breathe and radiate praise. The habit isn't in learning "how to praise"; it is in reminding yourself "who to praise." It is a remembering of who you are. It is a remembering of your identity. Praise is redeemed and redefined with rescue.
Praise is response. Praise happens when there is revelation, and there is revelation waiting for us around every bend, in places we would not suspect.
When you have been found by grace, your identity is swallowed in Christ. You are enveloped by Him, clothed in His merciful sacrifice. To live in this remembrance is to bring awareness of Christ into your every encounter. In this awareness you bring His embrace to the things you embrace.
You Are Here
There is a sign in my favorite restaurant, 1424, which happens to be located directly across the street from my house, that hangs by the bar and states, in black letters on a pale-yellow background, "You Are Here."
There is nothing more than now. All we get is what we suck out of this moment. But I disagree. I read, "You Are Here," and I am equally inspired to be fully present in this moment, but it is not because that is all I have, but because I am bringing something more. I am bringing the very kingdom of God.
We are to be rescue. We are to be redemption. We are to carry the story of God to the ones waiting. To the ones with their hands on their chest, begging you to notice that things aren't right. And this is praise. You are the note sounding in a thousand different rooms. There are chords and reflective surfaces around you. There is context.
Sometimes life comes at us with the delicacy of a sunset, and other times it comes with the rawness of sushi and the bitter bite of wasabi. Sometimes the tears will be because you cannot stand empty-eyed in the presence of such beauty, and sometimes they will be full of fire, but notice/know this: You are here. You Are Here! You are here, and you are not alone.
Look me in the eyes. Can you feel the fabric on your skin? It is woven from the threads of love. Pay attention to the way it folds around you, sense its softness, brush the hair of your arms as you lift them toward the heavens in unencumbered declaration.
It is the coverings of rescue that you feel. It is a flood. It is an ocean. It is a sea that has no bottom, for there is no end to it. To be fully present in the rescue and recreation of Christ is to embrace what God does for us, and this is the best thing we can do for Him.-David Crowder, pp, 152-153 Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi
Sleep Like a Baby version 1
Morning, your toast
Your tea and sugar
Read about the politician’s lover
Go through the day
Like a knife through butter
Why don’t you
You dress in the colours of forgiveness
Your eyes as red as Christmas
Purple robes are folded on the kitchen chair
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like someone else’s suicide
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Dreams
It’s a dirty business, dreaming
Where there is silence and not screaming
Where there’s no daylight
There’s no healing, no no
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like a suicide
But you’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Hope is where the door is
When the church is where the war is
Where no one can feel no one else’s pain
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like a suicide
But you’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Sleep like a baby tonight
Like a bird, your dreams take flight
Like St. Francis covered in light
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Your tea and sugar
Read about the politician’s lover
Go through the day
Like a knife through butter
Why don’t you
You dress in the colours of forgiveness
Your eyes as red as Christmas
Purple robes are folded on the kitchen chair
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like someone else’s suicide
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Dreams
It’s a dirty business, dreaming
Where there is silence and not screaming
Where there’s no daylight
There’s no healing, no no
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like a suicide
But you’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Hope is where the door is
When the church is where the war is
Where no one can feel no one else’s pain
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like a suicide
But you’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Sleep like a baby tonight
Like a bird, your dreams take flight
Like St. Francis covered in light
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Sleep Like A Baby Tonight" version 2 (Alternate Perspective Mix)
Wake
In the morning when you wake up
You won’t have much
But you’ll have enough
When you are weakest
I’ll be strong enough for you
Dreams
Yeah, the ones where you are fearless
Can’t break what’s broken
You are tearless
Steal back your innocence
That’s what they stole from you
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Not everything can be so black and white
There are demons in the broad daylight
But you can sleep like a baby tonight
Stop
Where you stand right now
Just stop
Don’t think or look down at the drop
The people staring from the street
Don’t know what you’ve got
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
No, not everything can be so black and white
There are demons in the broad daylight
But you can sleep like a baby tonight
Hope is where the door is
When home is where the war is
Where nobody can feel no one else’s pain
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Not everything can be so black and so white
There are demons in the broad daylight
You’ve got to sleep like a baby tonight
Sleep like a baby tonight
Where you stand
Where you fall is where I kneel
To take your heart back to where you can feel
Like a child, a child
--
---
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If, for your paper, you want to consider chiasm in Philemon, after searching out any such structures yourselves (which you are getting good at!) consider:
---
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If, for your paper, you want to consider chiasm in Philemon, after searching out any such structures yourselves (which you are getting good at!) consider:
- PHILEMON AS CHIASM WITH VERSE 14 AS CENTER
- THE SAME CHIASM AS ABOVE, WITH MORE DETAIL
- SAME CHIASM , SEEN A BIT DIFFERENTLY
- SAME CHIASM, DIFFERENTLY AGAIN
- -----------------------------------------
- INTERESTING INCLUSIO AND CHIASM OF NAMES IN PHILEMON
- -------------------------------------------------
- CHIASM IN PHILEMON 5
- SAME PHILEMON 5 CHIASM
------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
ATONEMENT
When Jesus died , what was his death intended ti accomplish (Atonement, At-one0ment)
Keltic Ken of KRDU asks people at Manchester North shopping center:
What is Good Friday? Why is it good?
What is atonement?
At-one-ment: How does Jesus' death and resurrection make us ":at one" with God?
Here are the first two theories:
- 'Christus Victor" (CV on the chart); Jesus death trumped/triumphed over the devil, evil, and the "tyrant" of the law, sin death// see below
- "Marry Me" (MM on the chart): Jesus death was a wedding proposal, based on imagery in the Passover liturgy. see THIS
1)CHRISTUS VICTORYY:
---
---Matrix Revolutions...ending:
Click here to watch all 4 parts at once..
OR
Part 1 (click here)
(Check the cross over Neo's head at 1:26 at that click)
-----------------------
Part 2: is embedded below..
Check the crosses at 2:00 amd 2:56
What Scripture at 3:15?
--
part 3Here
part 4:
...........
-------
see also:
- "No Victor: deux machina"
---------------------------------------------------------------------
ATONEMENT
When Jesus died , what was his death intended ti accomplish (Atonement, At-one0ment)
Keltic Ken of KRDU asks people at Manchester North shopping center:
What is Good Friday? Why is it good?
What is atonement?
At-one-ment: How does Jesus' death and resurrection make us ":at one" with God?
Here are the first two theories:- 'Christus Victor" (CV on the chart); Jesus death trumped/triumphed over the devil, evil, and the "tyrant" of the law, sin death// see below
- "Marry Me" (MM on the chart): Jesus death was a wedding proposal, based on imagery in the Passover liturgy. see THIS
1)CHRISTUS VICTORYY:
---
---Matrix Revolutions...ending:
Click here to watch all 4 parts at once..
OR
Part 1 (click here)
(Check the cross over Neo's head at 1:26 at that click)
-----------------------
Part 2: is embedded below..
Check the crosses at 2:00 amd 2:56
What Scripture at 3:15?
--
part 3Here
part 4:
...........
-------
see also:
- "No Victor: deux machina"
Christus Victor
Christus Victor (Christ the Victor) is a view of the atonement taken from the title of Gustaf Aulén’s groundbreaking book, first published in 1931, where he drew attention back to the early church’s Ransom theory. In Christus Victor, the atonement is viewed as divine conflict and victory over the hostile powers that hold humanity in subjection. Aulén argues that the classic Ransom theory is not so much a rational systematic theory as it is a drama, a passion story of God triumphing over the powers and liberating humanity from the bondage of sin. As Gustav Aulén writes, “the work of Christ is first and foremost a victory over the powers which hold mankind in bondage: sin, death, and the devil.”[1]
The Ransom Theory was predominant in the early church and for the first thousand years of church history and supported by all Greek Church Fathers from Irenaeus to John of Damascus. To mention only the most important names Origen, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom. The Christus Victor view was also dominant among the Latin Fathers of the Patristic period including Ambrose, Augustine, Leo the Great, and Gregory the Great.
A major shift occurred when Anselm of Canterbury published his Cur Deos Homo around 1097 AD which marks the point where the predominate understanding of the atonement shifted from the ransom theory to the Satisfaction Doctrine in the Roman Catholic Church and subsequently the Protestant Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church still holds to the Ransom or Christus Victor view. This is built upon the understanding of the atonement put forward by Irenaeus, called “recapitulation”.[2]
As the term Christus Victor indicates, the idea of “ransom” should not be seen in terms (as Anselm did) of a business transaction, but more of a rescue or liberation of humanity from the slavery of sin. Unlike the Satisfaction or Penal-substitution views of the atonement rooted in the idea of Christ paying the penalty of sin to satisfy the demands of justice, the Christus Victor view is rooted in the incarnation and how Christ entered into human misery and wickedness and thus redeemed it. Irenaeus called this “Recapitulation” (re-creation). As it is often expressed: “Jesus became what we are so that we could become what he is”. LINK
--
More:
- "Christus Victor" atonement (see p, 148 of "Teaching the Bible through popular culture and the
The Ransom Theory was predominant in the early church and for the first thousand years of church history and supported by all Greek Church Fathers from Irenaeus to John of Damascus. To mention only the most important names Origen, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom. The Christus Victor view was also dominant among the Latin Fathers of the Patristic period including Ambrose, Augustine, Leo the Great, and Gregory the Great.
A major shift occurred when Anselm of Canterbury published his Cur Deos Homo around 1097 AD which marks the point where the predominate understanding of the atonement shifted from the ransom theory to the Satisfaction Doctrine in the Roman Catholic Church and subsequently the Protestant Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church still holds to the Ransom or Christus Victor view. This is built upon the understanding of the atonement put forward by Irenaeus, called “recapitulation”.[2]
As the term Christus Victor indicates, the idea of “ransom” should not be seen in terms (as Anselm did) of a business transaction, but more of a rescue or liberation of humanity from the slavery of sin. Unlike the Satisfaction or Penal-substitution views of the atonement rooted in the idea of Christ paying the penalty of sin to satisfy the demands of justice, the Christus Victor view is rooted in the incarnation and how Christ entered into human misery and wickedness and thus redeemed it. Irenaeus called this “Recapitulation” (re-creation). As it is often expressed: “Jesus became what we are so that we could become what he is”. LINK
Anabaptism, Christus Victor, Postmodernity
Where else does a "Christus Victor": show up in literature/film?
C.S. Lewis, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe":
\
See:
The Beautiful Victory of the Cross and the Table of Aslan
- ---
2)"MARRY ME":
In the VanDer Laan video that we watched most of today, "Roll Away the Stone," we learned that:
When a couple was to be married, the fathers would negotiate the bride price. Once the bargain was struck, the groom would offer a cup of wine to his bride to be — declaring his love and pledging his life. She could either accept it or not. If she accepted the cup, she accepted the offer and pledged her love and life to him.
The Passover meal has four cups of wine. The third cup is the cup of redemption (or salvation). The host says a prayer and then passes the cup. “Blessed are you, oh God, king of the universe, creator of this fruit of the vine. He then declared this cup the blood of the new covenant — a new promise, in essence offering a pledge of his life.
When we take communion, God is declaring his love to us, and when we take the cup, we are returning his offer — promising our love and lives to God.
The bride-price paid by Jesus was high — his very life. It was so high that he asked God to let this “cup” pass from him.
The Lord’s Supper is a meal with God after a fellowship offering — it’s eating a meal with God. LINK
s-
Penal substitution:
The penal substitution theory.. It was proposed by John Calvin and other Protestant reformers. Instead of focusing on God's honor, it focuses on God's justice. This theory states that Jesus died on the cross as a substitute for mankind, taking our place. God imputed our sin to Jesus, and imputed the righteousness of Jesus to us.
The Satisfaction Theory / Penal Substitution
Penal Substitutiuon and/or Christus Vuictoir. Two videos:
Penal Substitution or Christus Victor (on theories of the atonement) from :redux on Vimeo.
See also:
From FPU"S Mark Baker:
- ---
2)"MARRY ME":
In the VanDer Laan video that we watched most of today, "Roll Away the Stone," we learned that:When a couple was to be married, the fathers would negotiate the bride price. Once the bargain was struck, the groom would offer a cup of wine to his bride to be — declaring his love and pledging his life. She could either accept it or not. If she accepted the cup, she accepted the offer and pledged her love and life to him.
The Passover meal has four cups of wine. The third cup is the cup of redemption (or salvation). The host says a prayer and then passes the cup. “Blessed are you, oh God, king of the universe, creator of this fruit of the vine. He then declared this cup the blood of the new covenant — a new promise, in essence offering a pledge of his life.
When we take communion, God is declaring his love to us, and when we take the cup, we are returning his offer — promising our love and lives to God.
The bride-price paid by Jesus was high — his very life. It was so high that he asked God to let this “cup” pass from him.
The Lord’s Supper is a meal with God after a fellowship offering — it’s eating a meal with God. LINK
s-Penal substitution:
The penal substitution theory.. It was proposed by John Calvin and other Protestant reformers. Instead of focusing on God's honor, it focuses on God's justice. This theory states that Jesus died on the cross as a substitute for mankind, taking our place. God imputed our sin to Jesus, and imputed the righteousness of Jesus to us.
The Satisfaction Theory / Penal Substitution
Penal Substitutiuon and/or Christus Vuictoir. Two videos:
Penal Substitution or Christus Victor (on theories of the atonement) from :redux on Vimeo.
See also:
From FPU"S Mark Baker:
Baker: Resources on the Atonement - Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary
Penal Substitution vs. Christus Victor
Have you ever heard:
"God cant look at you because you're sinful. He can only look at Jesus, or look at you through Jesus."
"on the cross, Jesus was temporarily but literally forsaken/abandoned by God the Father, because he was carrying the weight of our guilt and sin, and God is too holy to be involved in that."
??
Check this article:
Christians usually respond that God had to turn his back on Jesus because Jesus took on the sin of the whole world, and God can't look upon sin, so he turned away. We hear this in sermons and worship songs. "The Father turns his face away." "God can't stand sin, so he turned his back on Jesus."
On one level this provides a tidy theological answer. But at a more visceral, emotional level, it's still unsatisfying. In our own families, when a child has erred, we might get mad at them. But would we forsake them? Abandon them? Kill them? There was a case last year of parents with a very strict form of discipline. They thought their daughter was "rebellious," so they starved her and beat her. They locked their daughter out of the house in the middle of winter. She froze to death. We call that child abuse.
Is that what God did to Jesus? Left him on the cross to die?
This also raises the theological problem of the broken Trinity. Christians are Trinitarian; we believe that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally united in purpose and divine love. But does the Father break fellowship with the Son on the cross? Are they pitted against each other?
Cross-Cultural PerspectivesWe in the West live in a predominantly guilt-based culture; we tend to think in terms of guilt and punishment. When someone is guilty, they must be punished. So if Jesus took on our guilt and sin, the punishment is death. God's justice must be satisfied, so Jesus must be executed. It's disturbing, but that's how we understand the story.
But much of the world, including the ancient biblical world, thinks less in terms of guilt and more in terms of shame and honor. A few years ago I read the book The Bookseller of Kabul, about life in Afghanistan. And some of the most disturbing parts were the descriptions of honor killings. A woman somehow brings shame to a family, and she is killed to take away the shame and to restore honor. It doesn't matter if she committed adultery or was raped. It doesn't matter if she was the perpetrator or the victim. If she has been made impure, the impurity must be removed to restore family honor. And in many cases, a father will kill his daughter. Or a woman's brothers will kill her. It will be described as an accident, but everybody knows what happened.
So modern objections to Christianity say that this is the essence of Christian teaching on the Cross. God's son has been made impure, tainted by the sin of the world. So God restores his honor by killing his son. This puts us Christians in a bind. If we defend this theology of the Cross, then it seems like our Christianity does the same thing as honor killings in Afghanistan. And we lose our basis for saying that those honor killings are wrong, because our God does the same thing. Does he?...
...I find it interesting that Matthew and Mark tell us that some of the hearers misheard Jesus. That opens up the possibility that the same has been true for others, and for us. Have we misunderstood this cry from the cross? The crucifixion narratives do not explicitly tell us what Jesus' cry meant. Both Matthew and Mark record the cry, but neither unpacks the meaning. They just let it stand. Neither actually says that God turned his face away, turned his back on Jesus, or abandoned him. That's an assumption that we bring to the text. It doesn't come from the passage itself.Here's the key biblical insight that changed everything for me in how I read this passage. It's a simple historical fact about how Israelites cited their Scriptures. They didn't identify passages by chapter numbers or verse numbers. Verse numbers weren't invented yet. Their Scriptures did not have little numbers in the text. So how they referenced a passage was to quote it, especially the first line. So the book of Genesis, in Hebrew, is not called Genesis. It's called, "In the beginning." Exodus is "Names." We similarly evoke a larger body of work with just a line of allusion: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
That's why Jesus often says, "It is written" or "You have heard it said." He doesn't say, "Deuteronomy 8:3 says this." No, he says, "It is written, 'Man does not live by bread alone.' " That's just the way they did it.
So when Jesus says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" he's saying, "Psalm 22." He expected his hearers to catch the literary allusion. And his hearers should have thought of the whole thing, not just the first verse: "I am … scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. … I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax. … My mouth is dried up … my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. … All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment."
Is Jesus saying "I have been forsaken by God"? No. He's declaring, "Psalm 22! Pay attention! This psalm, this messianic psalm, applies to me! Do you see it? Do you see the uncanny way that my death is fulfilling this psalm?"
Jesus has done this before. At the beginning of his ministry, in Luke 4, he read the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue, saying, "The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Then to make things completely clear, he said, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
That's what Jesus is saying on the cross. When he says, "My God, my God," he's saying, "Psalm 22. Today Psalm 22 is fulfilled in your hearing. I am the embodiment of this psalm. I am its fulfillment."
A Psalm of Lament and VindicationPsalm 22 is one of many psalms that fit a particular lyrical pattern. We call them the psalms of lament. They usually begin with a complaint to God, rehearsing the wrongs and injustices that have been experienced by the psalmist. Psalm 5: "Listen to my words, Lord. Consider my lament." Psalm 10: "Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" Psalm 13: "How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?" Psalm 74: "O God, why have you rejected us forever?"
This is a common pattern in the Psalms. This opening lament usually goes on for a stanza or two. But then the psalm pivots. The psalmist remembers the works of God, and the psalm concludes on a note of hope. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that these psalms were Israel's way of ordering their grief and making sense of their sorrow. Today, we'd call it "processing." They would recount their troubles, but by the end of the psalm, they declared their confidence in God.
That's what's happening in Psalm 22. It starts out with the psalmist feeling forsaken and abandoned. "Why have you forsaken me? … I cry out by day, but you do not answer." But he's not literally forsaken, any more than the other psalms mean that God was literally forgetting the psalmist forever. It's expressing how the psalmist felt at the time.
But that's not the end of the story. Like the other psalms of lament, there's a pivot point. Several, in fact. Verse 9: "Yet you brought me out of the womb … from my mother's womb you have been my God." Verse 19: "But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me." The psalm is not a psalm of forsakenness. It starts out that way, but it shifts to confidence in God's deliverance. Verse 22: "I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you." And here's the key verse, verse 24: "For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help."
Here is a direct refutation of the notion that the Father turned his face away from the Son. But the refutation is not as important as the pivot. Jesus is declaring: Right now, you are witnessing Psalm 22. I seem forsaken right now, but my death is not the end of the story. God has not despised my suffering. I will be vindicated. The Lord has heard my cry. Because death is not the end. Verse 30–31: "Future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!"
Jesus is not saying that God has forsaken him. He's declaring the opposite. He's saying that God is with him, even in this time of seeming abandonment, and that God will vindicate him by raising him from the dead.
The closest modern analogy I can come up with might be something like this. Imagine that later on this election year, this summer, the President is on the campaign trail. And despite his security, an assassin gets in and shoots him. As the President falls to the ground, he says, "I still have a dream." And then he dies.
Now imagine everybody saying, "Hmmm, his last words were 'I still have a dream.' I wonder what that means. What was his dream? Was he napping on the campaign bus? What was it about?" No, we'd all recognize that he was making an allusion to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech. He'd be saying that this dream is still alive, that it did not stop with MLK's death, and it would not stop with his.
It's the same way with "My God, my God" on the cross. It's a biblical allusion, and the point of Psalm 22 is not about being forsaken. After all, David wrote Psalm 22. Was David saying that God had forsaken him forever? No. The literary genre of the psalm of lament shows that David was saying that he felt like God had forsaken him. That the odds were against him. That things looked really bad right then. But that was not the end of the story. David still had confidence that God would hear his cry. God did not abandon David. And God did not abandon Jesus. The clearest evidence of that, besides the rest of Psalm 22, is Jesus' final words on the cross, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." The Father had not forsaken him. God was still his Father. Jesus was still his Son -Link, full article
We watched the section from 1:20:27 to 1:28:54 ("God screaming alongside us":
Penal Substitution vs. Christus Victor
Have you ever heard:
"God cant look at you because you're sinful. He can only look at Jesus, or look at you through Jesus."
"on the cross, Jesus was temporarily but literally forsaken/abandoned by God the Father, because he was carrying the weight of our guilt and sin, and God is too holy to be involved in that."
??
Check this article:Christians usually respond that God had to turn his back on Jesus because Jesus took on the sin of the whole world, and God can't look upon sin, so he turned away. We hear this in sermons and worship songs. "The Father turns his face away." "God can't stand sin, so he turned his back on Jesus."
On one level this provides a tidy theological answer. But at a more visceral, emotional level, it's still unsatisfying. In our own families, when a child has erred, we might get mad at them. But would we forsake them? Abandon them? Kill them? There was a case last year of parents with a very strict form of discipline. They thought their daughter was "rebellious," so they starved her and beat her. They locked their daughter out of the house in the middle of winter. She froze to death. We call that child abuse.
Is that what God did to Jesus? Left him on the cross to die?
This also raises the theological problem of the broken Trinity. Christians are Trinitarian; we believe that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally united in purpose and divine love. But does the Father break fellowship with the Son on the cross? Are they pitted against each other?
Cross-Cultural PerspectivesWe in the West live in a predominantly guilt-based culture; we tend to think in terms of guilt and punishment. When someone is guilty, they must be punished. So if Jesus took on our guilt and sin, the punishment is death. God's justice must be satisfied, so Jesus must be executed. It's disturbing, but that's how we understand the story.
But much of the world, including the ancient biblical world, thinks less in terms of guilt and more in terms of shame and honor. A few years ago I read the book The Bookseller of Kabul, about life in Afghanistan. And some of the most disturbing parts were the descriptions of honor killings. A woman somehow brings shame to a family, and she is killed to take away the shame and to restore honor. It doesn't matter if she committed adultery or was raped. It doesn't matter if she was the perpetrator or the victim. If she has been made impure, the impurity must be removed to restore family honor. And in many cases, a father will kill his daughter. Or a woman's brothers will kill her. It will be described as an accident, but everybody knows what happened.
So modern objections to Christianity say that this is the essence of Christian teaching on the Cross. God's son has been made impure, tainted by the sin of the world. So God restores his honor by killing his son. This puts us Christians in a bind. If we defend this theology of the Cross, then it seems like our Christianity does the same thing as honor killings in Afghanistan. And we lose our basis for saying that those honor killings are wrong, because our God does the same thing. Does he?......I find it interesting that Matthew and Mark tell us that some of the hearers misheard Jesus. That opens up the possibility that the same has been true for others, and for us. Have we misunderstood this cry from the cross? The crucifixion narratives do not explicitly tell us what Jesus' cry meant. Both Matthew and Mark record the cry, but neither unpacks the meaning. They just let it stand. Neither actually says that God turned his face away, turned his back on Jesus, or abandoned him. That's an assumption that we bring to the text. It doesn't come from the passage itself.Here's the key biblical insight that changed everything for me in how I read this passage. It's a simple historical fact about how Israelites cited their Scriptures. They didn't identify passages by chapter numbers or verse numbers. Verse numbers weren't invented yet. Their Scriptures did not have little numbers in the text. So how they referenced a passage was to quote it, especially the first line. So the book of Genesis, in Hebrew, is not called Genesis. It's called, "In the beginning." Exodus is "Names." We similarly evoke a larger body of work with just a line of allusion: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
That's why Jesus often says, "It is written" or "You have heard it said." He doesn't say, "Deuteronomy 8:3 says this." No, he says, "It is written, 'Man does not live by bread alone.' " That's just the way they did it.
So when Jesus says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" he's saying, "Psalm 22." He expected his hearers to catch the literary allusion. And his hearers should have thought of the whole thing, not just the first verse: "I am … scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. … I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax. … My mouth is dried up … my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. … All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment."
Is Jesus saying "I have been forsaken by God"? No. He's declaring, "Psalm 22! Pay attention! This psalm, this messianic psalm, applies to me! Do you see it? Do you see the uncanny way that my death is fulfilling this psalm?"
Jesus has done this before. At the beginning of his ministry, in Luke 4, he read the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue, saying, "The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Then to make things completely clear, he said, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
That's what Jesus is saying on the cross. When he says, "My God, my God," he's saying, "Psalm 22. Today Psalm 22 is fulfilled in your hearing. I am the embodiment of this psalm. I am its fulfillment."
A Psalm of Lament and VindicationPsalm 22 is one of many psalms that fit a particular lyrical pattern. We call them the psalms of lament. They usually begin with a complaint to God, rehearsing the wrongs and injustices that have been experienced by the psalmist. Psalm 5: "Listen to my words, Lord. Consider my lament." Psalm 10: "Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" Psalm 13: "How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?" Psalm 74: "O God, why have you rejected us forever?"
This is a common pattern in the Psalms. This opening lament usually goes on for a stanza or two. But then the psalm pivots. The psalmist remembers the works of God, and the psalm concludes on a note of hope. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that these psalms were Israel's way of ordering their grief and making sense of their sorrow. Today, we'd call it "processing." They would recount their troubles, but by the end of the psalm, they declared their confidence in God.
That's what's happening in Psalm 22. It starts out with the psalmist feeling forsaken and abandoned. "Why have you forsaken me? … I cry out by day, but you do not answer." But he's not literally forsaken, any more than the other psalms mean that God was literally forgetting the psalmist forever. It's expressing how the psalmist felt at the time.
But that's not the end of the story. Like the other psalms of lament, there's a pivot point. Several, in fact. Verse 9: "Yet you brought me out of the womb … from my mother's womb you have been my God." Verse 19: "But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me." The psalm is not a psalm of forsakenness. It starts out that way, but it shifts to confidence in God's deliverance. Verse 22: "I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you." And here's the key verse, verse 24: "For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help."
Here is a direct refutation of the notion that the Father turned his face away from the Son. But the refutation is not as important as the pivot. Jesus is declaring: Right now, you are witnessing Psalm 22. I seem forsaken right now, but my death is not the end of the story. God has not despised my suffering. I will be vindicated. The Lord has heard my cry. Because death is not the end. Verse 30–31: "Future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!"
Jesus is not saying that God has forsaken him. He's declaring the opposite. He's saying that God is with him, even in this time of seeming abandonment, and that God will vindicate him by raising him from the dead.
The closest modern analogy I can come up with might be something like this. Imagine that later on this election year, this summer, the President is on the campaign trail. And despite his security, an assassin gets in and shoots him. As the President falls to the ground, he says, "I still have a dream." And then he dies.
Now imagine everybody saying, "Hmmm, his last words were 'I still have a dream.' I wonder what that means. What was his dream? Was he napping on the campaign bus? What was it about?" No, we'd all recognize that he was making an allusion to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech. He'd be saying that this dream is still alive, that it did not stop with MLK's death, and it would not stop with his.
It's the same way with "My God, my God" on the cross. It's a biblical allusion, and the point of Psalm 22 is not about being forsaken. After all, David wrote Psalm 22. Was David saying that God had forsaken him forever? No. The literary genre of the psalm of lament shows that David was saying that he felt like God had forsaken him. That the odds were against him. That things looked really bad right then. But that was not the end of the story. David still had confidence that God would hear his cry. God did not abandon David. And God did not abandon Jesus. The clearest evidence of that, besides the rest of Psalm 22, is Jesus' final words on the cross, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." The Father had not forsaken him. God was still his Father. Jesus was still his Son -Link, full article
We watched the section from 1:20:27 to 1:28:54 ("God screaming alongside us":
