Hunting the Urban Hipster

(Whispering, intoned sotto voce) Today we are at Wegman’s on the hunt for the lone Eastern Pennsylvanian Hipster or Coolus obscurus.

Our guide is big game hunter, Mookie Robinson. Mookie is a tough, white, fearless hunter who has chosen to live in the violent, unrelenting world of millennial, urban life, where only the ironic survive.

We are currently established in the organic food isle of the Wegman’s grocery store. It’s quiet. We first see a beatnik pass.

Suddenly, Mookie crouches to examine some hipster spoor. Chuck Taylor All-Star tracks and a Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle cap. The hipster is close.

Mookie puts out a box of organic gluten-free grains with the label “sustainability” printed on it to lure the hipster out into the open.

We hide behind crates of imported cheeses and wait.

Suddenly, Mookie spots the hipster we’re after.

And there it is! A truly magnificent specimen. The hipster looks to be about six feet tall, with a plaid shirt, bowtie, tight jeans, Sylvia Plath cardigan, and Buddy Holly glasses. The beard weighs two pounds and is easily capable of sopping up a bowl of lintel soup. From the looks of the hipster, it’s probably into knitting, veganism, urban beekeeping, and bookbinding classes. The real embodiment of postmodernism as a spent force, revealing what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics.

The hipster slowly approaches the box of organic food. Two more strides and the hipster could reach out and touch someone with its beard.

Mookie raises his rifle. For the past few months, he’s been rehearsing this moment in his bedroom closet in Brooklyn, aiming, reloading, aiming again. He shoots. The rifle’s thunder is somehow insigni­ficant. The shot catches the hipster in the appropriate place, in the iPod.

But a hipster iPod is a big piece of equipment—it can include thousands of songs from obscure 80s and 90s bands that you’ve probably never heard of, all on continuous shuffle.

Mookie’s bullet did not apparently disrupt the iPod enough to take down the hipster in a single shot. It shakes its head, as if to wag away the pain of distorted indie music. There is a second shot that strikes it in the earbuds. It turns to flee, probably towards its fixed gear bicycle, but its right foreleg has buckled. It drops its iPod. It strives to stand. It steps on the iPod. The earbuds pull it down. Right in the middle of Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up”. The hipster falls without realizing the irony. It’s a success. The hipster is dead. But Mookie must make sure. He fires a final shot. There is nothing more dangerous than a wounded hipster.

But the hunt is not over. With well-practiced skill Mookie skins the hipster. The beard of a full grown male hipster can in fact fetch anything up to $4 on the open market.

The long day is over and it’s back to base camp for a night’s rest.

Jesus and the Shema

The most important prayer in all of Jewish life from its conception down to today is the Shema of Deuteronomy 6 which begins in verse 4 with “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

This was the central prayer of Judaism in the time of Jesus and Paul and the defining statement of Jewish monotheism. Yahweh was the one and only god. He is the creator god. There is no other gods except him. In the world of paganism, this was what defined Jewish worship and was their central theological point.

Now when we come to Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 8, he is addressing the issue of whether or not Christians should eat food that has been sacrificed to idols. To make his point, he references the Shema in verse 6a: “for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him.” His point is twofold.

First, because there is only one God (Yahweh), don’t worry about such pagan sacrifices because there are no gods to be sacrificed to.

Second, because God is the Creator, what he created was good and all food is good to eat.

But in making his point with reference to the Shema in verse 6a, he immediately follows it with 6b: “and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.”

Let’s put this together now:

“For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.”

This is the most amazing and earth shattering statement anyone could make. Paul has put Jesus into the Shema, the supreme Jewish prayer, and equated him with God the Father (Yahweh). This is a reformulated Shema to include Jesus within the Godhead.

As I researched this passage, I found many scholars argue that verse 6 may not even been original to Paul but may be an early Christian confession that Paul is citing to make his point.

The odd thing though is that Paul is not having to argue this concept at all. In his letters, he is arguing about food, circumcision, Torah, and inclusiveness, but just 20 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul (and the rest of the New Testament writers) don’t have to argue to either Gentile or Jewish Christians that Jesus was the embodiment of the Israelite god, Yahweh. This is a statement of fact that everyone seems to agree upon and from which other issues either spring or by which issues are answered.

Two points to be made from this:

First, the idea that Christians (including Jewish Christians) only recognized the divinity of Jesus centuries later with a succession of ecumenical councils does not hold water. Indeed, the first church councils were formed in order to affirm Jesus’ humanity, not his divinity.

Second, this early recognition of Jesus as embodying their creator god, Yahweh, by Jewish Christians lends additional historical evidence to his resurrection. Without the resurrection it’s historically implausible that a group of Jews who knew better would say to themselves, “You know that guy who the Romans crucified in the most shameful way possible? I think that that guy was our creator god. Let’s include him in the Shema.”

Mark 1:1-3 - Who Can Endure the Day of His Coming?

“The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, [the Son of God], as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way’ –  ‘a voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”’” (Mark 1:1-3)

In this surprising introduction to Mark’s Gospel, the writer begins by establishing that this work is about Jesus. The phrase “the Son of God” is here placed in brackets because the oldest and best manuscripts do not contain it. This phrase was some many centuries later by some scribe who correctly understood one of Mark’s primary themes: Jesus is the Son of God (1:11; 3:11; 5:7; 9:7; 12:6; 12:37; 13:32; 14:61; 15:39).

Mark launches his Gospel with two Old Testament quotes, one from Malachi 3:1 and another Isaiah 40:3, though oddly attributing both of them to Isaiah.

Both of these verses concern the coming of Yahweh back to his people after the long spiritual exile that began with the Babylonian Captivity of 588 BCE. Following the destruction of the Temple of Yahweh built by Solomon in Jerusalem, Yahweh was seen to have departed from it and abandoned his people to their sins. Even when the physical exile was over and the construction of a lesser, second Temple in Jerusalem began in 538 BCE, the Jewish people still believed that Yahweh had not properly returned to his Temple and had yet to properly forgive the sins of the people. They knew that Yahweh had saved them from the physical exile but that a further step was needed. In the first century CE, the Jews were still eagerly waiting for Yahweh to return and doing so under the rule of the conquering Roman Empire. When Mark cites these two verses he is specifically stating that Yahweh is returning in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah.

Ominously, the verse in Malachi is followed with the warning “But who can endure the day of his coming?” (3:2). The rest of the book of Malachi deals with the eventual return of Yahweh to his people … but states that this might not be a good thing for everyone, particularly for those who rob and thieve from God (vv. 8-9).

The second part of Malachi 3:1, notes that “Yahweh will suddenly come to his Temple.” This particular verse finds its fulfillment in Mark 11:15-17 when Jesus “cleanses” the Temple and cites Jeremiah 7:11 about the Temple becoming a “den of robbers”. In Jeremiah, this is a warning that if the people do not change their ways, exile is coming. Both the Greek version of Jeremiah 7:11 and in Mark 11:17, the word used for robbers is lestes (λῃστής).

This all comes together in Mark with the realization that Yahweh has returned to his people and to his Temple in the person and work of Jesus. However, though Jesus is offering the end of exile through repentance and the forgiveness of sins, he is also warning everyone that failure to follow his way would lead to another, permanent exile. Who can endure the day of his coming?

Now if we want to go even further down the rabbit hole, we have to ask what this exile was going to look like. What form was it going to take?

For the entirety of his ministry, Jesus had been enacting a grand prophetic parable of what it meant for Yahweh to return to his people, the “Cleansing” of the Temple being only a part. As he closes his so-called “earthly” ministry, Jesus has one more prophetic parable to enact.

In Mark 14:48, when the crowds come to arrest Jesus and take him to be crucified, Jesus says, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me, as you would against a robber (lestes)?”

In Mark 15:27, it is recorded that “They crucified two robbers (lestes) with him, one on his right and one on his left.”

The Romans put Jesus to death between two robbers or brigands, all deemed revolutionary by Roman authorities and deserving of a death reserved for those who went up against the Empire and were to be made an example to everyone else (Mark 15:7). This was the same death that Roman meted out to the Jews who revolted during the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73 CE) when Roman soldiers were crucifying upwards of 500 Jews a day and when the Temple was permanently destroyed. It was general and future Caesar, Titus, who refused to accept the wreath of victory for winning the war, saying, “There is no merit in vanquishing a people forsaken by their own God."

In Jesus’ final parable, he showed what the final exile would look like. It was Rome destroying the Temple and the Jewish people as a nation and crucifying them like revolutionary robbers (lestes). It was Yahweh forsaking his people to their own devices. The people were waiting to be saved from the spiritual Exile but were making the same mistakes that caused the original physical exile. Yahweh was returning to his people and while some would be released from exile, others would find punishment via crucifixion by Rome. Yahweh is coming, who can endure the day of his coming?

It is interesting that it is one of the Roman soldiers crucifying Jesus that sees his death and remarks that “Truly this was a son of a god” (Mark 15:39).

The Satan in the Modern Setting

The Satan emerges in the Jewish religion sometime after the Exile of 587-538 BCE. Possibly of Persian influence, The Satan emerged as an angelic figure whose chief responsibility was the legal accusation of sinners before God. At some point, The Satan began to enjoy his role so much that he set himself against the purposes of God to accuse and conquer humanity for his own purposes. He began to create the problems by which he could accuse humanity before God.

In many ways, the Hebrew mind wrestled with the problem of evil and concluded that the coincidences that come with a close examination of the subject only point to a personal embodiment at work.

In this sense, the Jews and Christians could see The Satan and his daemonic cohorts at work in three areas:

First, The Satan could be at work in individuals.

Second, The Satan could be at work in whole communities.

Thirdly, and most diabolically, The Satan could be at work within the authorities and power structures that dominate a culture, society, nation, government, and local church,

Each of these three areas requires a greater difficulty of prayer and supplication. Yes, I’m afraid that I do not have an antidote for two and three yet apart from the continuing work of the work that God has called the average Christian to do.

Praying for Our Leaders

“First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men,  for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” (1 Timothy 2:1-2)

Why do you think Paul tells the Church to pray for kings and those in authority – and, by logical extension, the nation a Christian finds himself or herself in?

One reason is that God desires that all men and women should be saved and that we should pray that our national leaders come to a saving relationship with God and under his authority.

I think another reason is more practical.

The Roman Empire that ruled the Mediterranean world at the time of Paul and the early Christians had unsuccessfully attempted to force the Jews to pray to Caesar. The monotheistic Jews refused and proved to the Romans that they were willing to die before they would pray to anyone other than Yahweh. The Romans, ever the practical conquerors, wisely decided to offer an exemption to the Jews from participation in Emperor Worship and only asked that they pray for Caesar and pray for Rome. The Jews agreed to this compromise and prayed to Yahweh for Caesar and Rome so that they could lead tranquil and quiet lives and avoid the wrath of Rome.

For quite a while, Roman authorities did not make a distinction between Jews that followed Christ and Jews that didn’t. They realized that there was some controversy among the Jews about a certain “Chrestus” but that it was all and intra-Jewish conflict.

It wasn’t until the Romans began to make that distinction between Jews and Christians that Christians lost the protective exemption from Emperor Worship that Jews enjoyed. That was when the persecution really began.

It’s quite possible that Paul is encouraging the Church to pray for the national authorities so we do not face the persecution that comes from being at odds against the national culture.

The Use of Zakar in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13

The use of zakar is important in both Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. By using it, the OT writers were not simply saying that it is wrong for men to have sexual relations with other men, but that it was wrong for men to sleep with anything male, including male children. That's explicit in Lev. 20:13 that uses both 'isyh and zakar. The OT writers were not just considering consensual male adults but any male-male sexual act. It was an overarching term forbidding all homosexual acts. This is how Paul and others in the first century CE understood these verses. The Greek translation of the OT uses arsenos koite for the translation of " sexual acts with male" in Leviticus 20:13. These two words eventually came together as arsenokoitai which refers to sex acts between males of any age. Paul uses it in 1 Corinthians 6:9 but it's used elsewhere outside of the NT.

Happiness, Joy, and Truth

I’ve often noted that people confuse the concepts of Joy and Happiness. God, who is the author of all things, created a distinction between Joy and Happiness in humans. Too often, humans will experience Happiness in the wrong things and consider it Joy. People can be Happy that some event has occurred and falsely associate it with the Joy that life can offer.

Christian Joy is not synonymous with any form of Happiness to which most people are accustomed. True Joy – Christian Joy - is Happiness with Truth. With Truth. It is Happiness in the knowledge that one is in sync with the reality of the universe, i.e., God. Indeed, it is often a Happiness that exists even in times of persecution, suffering, and death because it is grounded in the reality of God.

Happiness without Truth is ultimately joyless. It is usually deceitful. It is frequently consummation of all one thinks they want followed by bitter disappointment. It is like finally dating that one person you’ve always wanted to date only to realize that the initial Happiness is followed by pain, disappointment, and sometimes the realization that it was never meant to be. And it was never meant to be because it was never grounded in reality to begin with. One problem is that people associate love with emotion and lust (or sexual attraction) … but not with Truth. Truth is just as an important factor in love as emotion and sexual attraction. The Truth of who we attach ourselves to – whether it conforms to the Truth of reality – is just as important as the emotion and sexual attraction involved. Someone might say, “I love this person.” To that I say, “Good. You are supposed to love that person. You’re supposed to love everyone. But how you are to express that love depends upon the Truth of reality and not solely upon subjective emotions and sexual attraction.”

In the same way, Happiness without the Truth is fleeting because it is without foundation, without Truth. It is a lusting for life but not a connection to the reality that is life’s foundation (apologies to Iggy Pop: good song). It is sucking on the foam but not drinking in the latte … and then being angry and disappointed that the coffee doesn’t taste that good. Unfortunately, most people in such a situation do not respond with self-reflection and repentance but a further, bitter fist-shaking at reality, characterizing it as society being constructed against them.

Thus, Happiness without Truth is joyless and ends in bitter disappointment. Christian Joy is Happiness with Truth that endures even in persecution, suffering, and a society constructed against Truth.

Thinking in Plato

I started re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia last week. I’ve usually read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe about twice a year since I was about seven years – it being one of my top ten favorite books. In recent years, I’ve started reading the other six books in the series at least once in the year. I find that like the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante, and Joyce, the Chronicles has the ability to expand one’s consciousness and imagination and, therefore, deserves repeated readings over a lifetime.

While reading these books I often find it helpful to consult Paul F. Ford’s Companion to Narnia and Michael Ward’s definitive work on the subject, Planet Narnia. Both of these works help the reader dig deeper into the construction and design of the series, as well as the theology and philosophy that undergirds the work.

The night before last I was reading Ford’s companion to the series and saw this entry on the Platonic philosophies inherent in the work:

“Plato saw the Socratic method of questioning as a necessary consciousness-raising antidote to the human tendency to shrink back from the fullness of reality into a superficial existence. In such a reduced state the human spirit will mistake the most immediate appearances for reality itself. Self-deception is a recurring factor in this constriction of consciousness since it is easy enough to hold an opinion but hard work to actually know what one is talking about.”

Options for Bible-Believers with Difficulties in Interpretation of ANE

One of the difficulties of interpreting the Bible in the post-Enlightenment age is comprehending how ancient cultures communicated reality to one another. And the farther back you go the more bizarre the cultural communication can seem to modern minds.

One example of this is how Jewish religious authors from 200 BCE to 100 CE used apocalyptic literature. This ancient genre uses symbolism, poetic language, cataclysmic imagery, fantastical creatures, and both a truncated and an expanded and even an overlapping account of history in order to give a spiritual interpretation of historical events. More often than not modern minds will respond in two ways: 1) they will accept this genre but interpret it too literally or 2) they will reject it because they can’t interpret it literally.

But if we go back even further into ancient near eastern literature things get even more bizarre.

The Egyptians, as well as the other cultures of the Ancient Near East (ANE), often exaggerated, allegorized and symbolized certain aspects of their concrete world in order to make important points. Often these non-literal techniques were applied to religious and historical reality to make important theological, political and ethnic points.

Such methods of interpreting reality were common in all the cultures of the Ancient Near East. In fact, they appear to be common to most ancient cultures from the Chinese to the Mayans. To this end, we have Egyptian, Mayan, Chinese, Sumerian, and Assyrian kings with exceptionally long reigns.

Here are some examples from the Early Dynastic I period of the Sumerian kings list:

• Alulim of Eridug: (28800 years)
• Alalgar of Eridug: (36000 years)
• En-Men-Lu-Ana of Bad-Tibira: (43200 years)
• En-Men-Gal-Ana of Bad-Tibira: (28800 years)
• Dumuzi of Bad-Tibira, the shepherd: (36000 years)
• En-Sipad-Zid-Ana of Larag: (28800 years)
• En-Men-Dur-Ana of Zimbir: (21000 years)
• Ubara-Tutu of Shuruppag: (18600 years)

Now when we turn to the Bible we read of the exceptionally long lives of people like Adam, Enoch, Noah, and Methuselah. How are we to interpret and/or understand something that seems so foreign to our contemporary understanding or reality? I think believers who hold the Scriptures to be high authority have three options:

1)      They can say, “I don’t know what other ancient cultures were doing, but I believe what the Bible says is true and people used to live hundreds of years.”

2)      They can say, “I understand there is something quite culturally foreign to my understanding going on here. People probably did not live hundreds of years but that’s not the point the Bible is trying to make. I still believe what the Bible says is true, but I’m going to interpret in light of its contemporary culture and not my own.”

3)      They can say, “I have no idea what is going on here. I don’t know what to believe. However, I trust God and believe the Bible. I don’t have to make a definite decision on something like this in order to be a fully formed follower of Christ.”

I’m not advocating any particular option above the others. I think all three of these are perfectly acceptable approaches for the purposes of personal growth and Kingdom expansion. My point was just to point out one of the difficulties of Biblical interpretation and how different Bible-believing Christians can approach this problem.

Modern Church Growth

The modern church growth movement began in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Christian researchers and scholars (prominently with the Fuller Seminary School) began to study the apparent numerical decline in mainline dominations and the beginnings of decline in evangelical churches. The result was a scientific approach to what made some churches grow and other churches decline. The results of numerous studies and subsequent how-to-books led to the explosion of church plants, contemporary churches, and the rise of the megachurch in the late eighties and through the late nineties. The results of this was (in my opinion) a tremendous church revival and refocus on the cultural execution of the church. Hence, we began to see seeker-sensitive services, contemporary worship services, topical preaching, multiple services, the proliferation of ministry programs, emphases on entertainment/recreation, corporate/business models, marketing, and the extreme focus on numerical growth. These techniques were adopted by many Boomer generation and a few Gen X pastors.

The tide began to turn away from such approaches in the late 90s and through today. Many of the megachurches that pioneered these earlier methods began to find that while their attendance grew numerically, the spiritual growth of their members had not grown. Other contemporary pastors also began to react against the focus on numbers, programs, and perceived shallow teaching. We then began to see the growth of the Emergent Church, which is a both an extension of the contemporary church movement and a reaction against it, and the focus on more authentic religious experiences. At the same time, later born Gen Xers and Millennials began to similarly cry not only for a more authentic religious experience but a more outward focus of church purposes (i.e., the Missional Church). It seemed that the work of such missional scholars as Bosch, Nida, and Hesselgrave became extremely relevant to modern church growth. The focus has now become intentional mission work outside the church in the neighborhoods, affecting both the spiritual and physical needs of the community.

Some of the techniques of today’s contemporary church growth include more authentic and integrated forms of worship, narrative preaching, diversified understandings of corporate worship/church attendance, emphasis on missional living, creative spirituality, small groups, and an even greater reliance on technology and social media. Certainly some of these techniques existed in various ways in the past, just as many past techniques continue to work (contemporary worship, multiple services, marketing, etc.).

As America further becomes a post-“Christian” nation and the Biblical worldview becomes even more foreign to the culture, more missional methods of church ministerial work will become necessary. We can no longer regard the church as an institution to which outsiders must come in order to receive a certain product, namely, the gospel and all its associated benefits. Churches can no longer exist for the members and depend on pastors and staff to evangelize the lost. The local church and its members will need to define and organize themselves in terms of mission – each as body and member being sent to take the gospel to and incarnate the gospel with their specific community and culture. Thus, the local church must redefine its nature and create a new paradigm in which it is seen as missional in nature, instead of attractional in nature. Instead of churches attempting to attract people to churches through church programs, churches must instead take the gospel outside of the church and engage society with the gospel, often by being involved not only in missions and evangelism but also in social justice movements. How we do “church” will need to be more embedded in the community.

Authenticity will be important. There are millennial aged people who are even embracing more liturgical churches because they have the appearance (justified or not) of being more authentic. Contemporary churches can have the bad reputation of being more flash, fluff, buzz, and pre-manufactured and less substantive. But contemporary, traditional, liturgical, charismatic, and emergent can all be useful models of ministering to whomever God is directing you, provided there is that authenticity (though you might not necessarily receive numerical growth).

Right along with the need for greater authenticity, in a post-“Christian” culture, the need to reeducate people about the Biblical narrative is essential, primarily with children but also with adults. Learning the grand narrative of the Bible is essential to creating a proper worldview. At the same time, grounding a believer in the grand narrative also provides him or her with a mission, THE mission, on which to fully participate as a member of the Church.

Just like in the nineties, contemporary churches are going to have to change and adapt to the culture in order to achieve Kingdom goals. What worked 20 years ago may no longer do so. For such churches to continually rely on nineties methods of church growth is simply to become another traditional church embracing the inevitable decline into religious irrelevance.

Majors and Minors

Christians often distinguish between the Major prophetic books of the Bible (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel) and the Minor prophetic books (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi).

A mentor of mine once said that there is no such distinction between major and minor, greater or lesser. All prophecies (i.e., communication from God to his people) are major. Each prophetic book fits a specific situation that needs to be addressed. Each book is performing a specific function necessary to achieve God’s goals in this world for his Kingdom.

In the same way, there is no major or minor, greater or lesser position in the church – only the position to which God has called you to serve. Each position is equally important because God is using each position to achieve his goals and grow his Kingdom here on earth.

At the same time, while there is no important or unimportant position, there are right and wrong positions. Are you serving in the right position? Are you serving in the wrong position? Are you serving at all?

God expects every Christian to serve in some capacity. Figure out what that position is and know that it is just as important as any other position in the church.

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

You’ve all heard about one of the Ten Commandments that states: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

Most people have inherited the traditional assumption that this commandment means to not speak God’s name in specific ways such as “Oh, God!” and “[gosh darn it]”.

The problem with this particular, traditional interpretation is that it doesn’t line up with what the Scripture actually says. If the verse meant that we should not speak God’s name “inappropriate” ways it would say “speak” (דָּבַר) and not “take” (נָשָׂא). The Hebrew word for “take” here is nasa' and in the Qal Imperfect means “to carry”, “to bear”, and “to lift up”.

In actuality, the meaning of this commandment is that no one who is a believer, a follower of God, should take the name of God, should say they are a follower of God, and then behave in a manner which suggests they are not. For us it means, “Don’t say you are a Christian and then behave in an un-Christian-like manner.” Don’t lift up the name of God if you are going to live your life like someone who doesn’t know who God is. Don’t bear the name of God in public if you’re going to act like a pagan in public. As my Old Testament seminary professor said about this the meaning of this verse, “Don’t make God look bad.” To do so is to be a believer in vain (שָׁוְא, shav'), which means in “emptiness” or “futility”. To say you are a believer and to act as an unbeliever is to be a believer in absolute futility. You might as well then be an unbeliever.

The Feeding of the 5000: Jesus and the New Exodus

Jesus frequently referred to himself as a prophet and behaved as one. He frequently prophesized, performed miracles similar to that of Old Testament prophets, gave prophetic parables, and performed actions that can only be described as enacted parables. Actions such as withering a fig tree, raising the dead, and cleansing the Temple were not just acts of power meant to impress the disciples but pointed towards a higher truth of God’s immediate actions in the world right then and there in Jesus’ ministry.

The main thrust of his prophetic mission, as he understood it, was to enact Yahweh coming to Zion, God returning to his people, the Lord bringing his people out of Exile by the forgiveness of sins. At the same time, Jesus giving the prophetic warning that if the people refused to believe in him (i.e., follow his way of being the people of God) then God would allow the Romans to destroy them (see Matthew 24-25; Luke 21:10-38; Revelation 4-19). God was fulfilling his promises in Jesus but the people were missing it.

So when we come to Jesus’ Feeding of the 5000 people (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-14) we can assuredly expect that Jesus is not just feeding people and not simply exhibiting his power to impress the disciples.

For the past few month the Children’s Ministry has been covering many of the miracles of Jesus and explaining to the kids how they show Jesus’ power over creation and how God was supporting Jesus’ ministry. That, of course, is all true and its good milk that tastes like meat for the spiritually young. However, there is, as I’ve suggested, more to Jesus’ action that to build excitement among the faithful.

John, in his Gospel, does the best job of interpreting Jesus’ actions by having him explain in his version that he is “the bread of life” (John 6:35, 48). He further states that “Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which comes down from heaven, and gives life unto the world” (John 6:32-33). John is writing his Gospel long after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE but he still maintains the connection to Moses in the wilderness.

When we turn back to a less “spiritual” account as found in the Synoptic Gospels, we are still drawn to the comparison of Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness. Jesus has been reconstituting Israel around himself by appointing 12 disciples (12 tribes of Israel), giving new commandments ala Moses (the Sermon on the Mount), and eventually holding a new Passover meal (the Last Supper). In feeding the 5000, Jesus assumes another role of Moses: providing the manna from heaven.

For Jesus’ contemporaries, these actions pointed to the idea of Exodus from captivity. The Jews of Jesus’ day still believed that they were in spiritual exile due to their sins and they were waiting for a spiritual exodus when God would return to his people and release them. In enacting these parables, Jesus was associating himself with Moses and declaring that he was the promised deliver, here to bring the people out of captivity.

The prophetic act of feeding 5000 people was not simply an act of wonder performed to amaze the crowds like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat. This was a pointed declaration that Jesus was a great prophet, a new Moses, sent by God to deliver his people out of their spiritual captivity.

Christian Leadership vs Secular Leadership

Part of Jesus’ ministry was a reconstituting of the relationships of life, particularly as it applies to the people of God. Much of his teaching is a putting to rights of many of the ways in which think about human relationships between men and women, parent and child, God and Man, Church and State, Jew and Gentile, friend and enemy, pastor and parishioner, and employer and employee. Much of these teachings, radical as they were at the time, have become commonplace in Western thinking; other teachings still seem profoundly contrary to how we think the world generally works (e.g., he first shall be last, the last shall be first; prohibitions against lawsuits; going the extra mile; pacifism; etc.).

Here is what Jesus taught regarding leadership:

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be servant of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45)

We often read these verses and appreciate it in theory … but then fail to put it into practice, either out of ignorance or defiance to the truth. As always, we need our thinking transformed by the renewing of our minds through the submission of our thought processes to what God is doing (Romans 12:2).

A good way of distinguishing between the two forms of leadership presented in the Scriptures is as follows:

Secular leadership proceeds from the idea that “You all work for me”.

Christian leadership proceeds from the idea that “I work for all of you”.

Again, this Christian conception of leadership is a radical reversal of how the world thinks and works.

As Paul worked it out in his writings, pastoring/ministering becomes a process of equipping other believers to do the work of the Kingdom of God (Ephesians 4:12-16). It is in no way a position of honor and prestige but of servile grunt work, empowering others to reach their God-given potential. It is not “what can you do for me?” but “what can I do for you?”

Again, this is not how we normally think of leadership. We are far too colored by our inherited worldview with which we unconsciously and unquestionably read the Scriptures and then put unbiblical concepts into practice. We are conformed to the patterns of this world because we do not even think there is another way, and that pattern colors the way we interpret Scripture. Worldviews are like glasses that we wear to see the world around us. The difficulty is that we have to take the glasses off to look at them … but then we can no longer see what we’re looking at.

Unsurprisingly, the Christian view of leadership is a far more effective means of achieving Kingdom goals … because that’s how it was designed to work. All other methods are counterproductive, hindering legitimate Kingdom work. If we are to achieve the radical reformulation of relationships that was inaugurated by Jesus’ ministry we must apply those radical methods. In order to achieve the future, we must live the future in the present. This is part of the meaning of Jesus and his ministry being the first fruits of New Creation (1 Cor 15:20-23).

First and Last Interactions between Yahweh and Man in the J-Source

I was thinking today about the J (or Yahwist) source of the Pentateuch. Interestingly, Yahweh’s first interaction with Man in this work is his forming man out of the dust/dirt of the ground (Genesis 2:7) and then subsequently telling him that from the ground Man was created and to the ground Man returns (Genesis 3:19). If you turn all the way to the end of Deuteronomy 34, Yahweh’s last interaction with Man in the J-source is his burying Moses (Deuteronomy 34:5-6).

Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers

Last night I finished reading Hermann Broch’s epic trilogy, The Sleepwalkers. Broch was an Austrian Christian novelist and is considered (along with Joyce, Mann, Musil, Proust, and Kazantzakis) to be one of the premier modernist writers. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1886, Broch converted to Christianity in 1909 and began writing in 1926. The Sleepwalkers was his first novel.

The Sleepwalkers is a work about the disintegration of values, specifically the decline in thinking and behavior that occurred between fin de siècle Europe and the end of World War I. During those 30 years, we are introduced to dozens of characters in various places, though three main characters (Joachim von Pasenow, August Esch, and Huguenau) are the philosophical and narrative focus.

Book One, The Romantic, is more of a straightforward novel and deals with both von Pasenow’s disgust and participation in the decline of values.

Book Two, The Anarchist, with its expressionistic prose, follows the life of socialist Esch as he struggles with the substance-less of his social progressivism.

Book Three, The Realist, is written in the style of pure modernism, like that of Joyce’s Ulysses. Characters from the previous books come together and interact within Broch’s philosophical plotting. It contains parallel stories of a young woman alienated from her family; of shell-shocked and mutilated soldiers and field hospital nurses; and that of a Salvation Army girl in Berlin. The plot of each chapter determines the genre used (occasional verse for the story of a Salvation Army girl, journalistic style of the hospital chapters, etc.). While the previous books subtly touched upon religious themes, here, in book three, his conception of the theology and philosophy of Christianity are on full display. Huguenau is the focus of this book. He is a war deserter who pretends to be a businessman and publisher in order to cheat Esch out of his newspaper and ingratiate himself to Pasenow.

The most unusual element of the third novel is the multi-part essay titled The Disintegration of Values. It both comments upon the plots and characters while examining the Western world’s descent from communal values following the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation.

This was a really amazing book. Probably the best Christian work I’ve ever read. It was also a very difficult read (only Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, Doctor Faustus, and In Search of Lost Time have been more difficult).

An Excellent Woman (Proverbs 31)

For those more traditional Christians who believe it is unwise for a woman/wife to work outside of the home, here are few verses from Proverbs 31 giving qualities of an excellent or virtuous woman:

“She is like merchant ships; She brings her food from afar.” (v. 14)

“She considers a field and buys it; From her earnings she plants a vineyard.” (v. 16)

“She makes linen garments and sells them, And supplies belts to the tradesmen.” (v. 24)

"Your Body is a Temple"

“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19)

One of the problems with English translations of this verse is that our language does not differentiate the singular “your” from the plural “your”.

In the Greek of this verse the “your” is plural (ὑμῶν) while “body” (σῶμα) is singular. Paul is here speaking into a group of individuals about their communal body and not to their individual bodies. The same is true in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 2 Corinthians 6:16.

In no place does Paul (or any other New Testament writer) describe an individual Christian’s body as being a temple. If he had, he would have written “Your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit”.

The only time an individual is referred to as a temple is Jesus whose body is a temple (John 2:19-21; Revelation 21:22). The Church (universal) is also referred to as the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27; Romans 12:5; Ephesians 4:12; 5:23; Colossians 1:18). Therefore, the Church (an aggregate of individual believers) = the body of Christ = a temple of the Holy Spirit.

Tubal-cain in Genesis 4:22

While I was reading through the early chapters of Genesis, I came to the name Tubal-cain in Genesis 4:22.

“As for Zillah, she also gave birth to Tubal-cain, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron.”

The Hebrew of his name is תּוּבַל  קַיִן and can be transliterated as Tuwbal Qayin and is pronounced as tü·val' kah'·yin. The “b” is pronounced as a “v”.

I read one “commentary” (before seminary) that suggested that the name Tubal-cain eventually descended down to Tuval-Cain and then to Tu Vulcan and then to Vulcan, the Roman god of of fire, volcanoes, metalworking, and the forge in Roman mythology.

The idea was that Tubal-cain (forger of all implements of bronze and iron) came down through mythology as Vulcan (the god of metalworking and the forge).

I don’t think this theory is in anyway true … but it still appears in the margins of my Bible in ink.

A Time to Lie

I recently mentioned my theory (based on Micah 3:5-7) that people who lie, demagogue, and deceive lose their ability to comprehend reality and the truth. While reading through the book of Exodus this week I was reminded of one exception to this rule. There actually is a proper time to lie.

In Exodus 1:15-21, Pharaoh tells the Hebrew midwives to put to death every male child that is born. But the midwives feared God and did not do as Pharaoh commanded, instead saying, “Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife can get to them.”

Essentially, the midwives lie to Pharaoh in order to protect the male babies from being killed.

Verses 20-21 are the kicker: “So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied, and became very mighty. Because the midwives feared God, He established households for them.”

Essentially, God blessed the midwives for lying to the authorities in order to protect the lives of others.

From this passage we can learn that lying to save someone from certain death is not a sin and is something for which God may bless one.

So all those Christians who housed Jews from the Nazis and lied to the authorities … God was pleased with their lies.

Origin, Headship, Authority, and Sanctification in Paul

The issue of male/female source/origin (and authority) is touched upon by Paul in 1^st Corinthians. He references in 11:11-12 the interdependence of men and women based upon their supposed interconnected origin. Paul previously references this interconnection in 7:4 when he teaches that husbands and wives have authority over each other’s bodies. This link of origin is Paul’s basis for his egalitarian approach to male-female (or female-male) relationships. Both man and wife are to have authority over the other, both are to submit to the other (Ephesians 5:21).

In both 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5, Paul references the concept of headship. Despite the common interpretation of this referring directly to “authority”, the actual understanding of head (kephale; κεφαλή) in these passages should be understood as “source” or “origin” (as in head of a river). God is the source of Christ, Christ is the source of the Church, man is the source of the woman, and woman is the source of the man. However, it is because of this mutual origin that women and men are both mutually submissive and mutually authoritarian over each other. (This reminds me of some of the paradoxes of Jesus: the least shall be great [Luke 9:8]; leaders are to be servants [Luke 22:25-26])

One of the purposes of this connection of source and subjectivity and mutual love is process of sanctification. Sanctification is the process of becoming more Christ-like, more God-like, and less sinful. Paul references the link between Christ and the Church and Man and Woman in Ephesians 5, noting that the commonality of bodies (vv. 30-31) is the source of sanctification (vv. 26-27).

Going back to 1 Corinthians 7, having established that husbands and wives have authority over each other (v. 4) and having just previously stated that male and female bodies come together as one (6:16), Paul states husbands and wives sanctify each other and then sanctify their children.

Therefore, God is the source by which Christ is sanctified because they are one (John 10:30), Christ is the source by which the Church is sanctified because they are one, and husbands and wives are the source by which each other are sanctified because they are one.