The Subversiveness of Easter
March 21, 2008
What in the world is Easter about? It makes no sense to celebrate the gruesome death of a minor country preacher, making a virtue, as Nietzsche warned, of failure.
There’s no subtlety to the symbolism of the alternative celebration of fertility this weekend, all eggs and rabbits and rainbows and yeah, we get it. Yet the odd, dark events of that ancient Passover/Easter weekend warrant a closer look. For here some important matters are being transacted in disguise, in irony, in spite of the intentions of some of the lead characters in the drama.
As Jesus submits himself completely to leaders of the Jewish religion of the day, he finally tells them who he is—Messiah and the divine Son of Man—only for the light of this final revelation to expose the dark logic of their understanding and motives. Since they will not accept him as Lord, he must be a blasphemer. And since they will not worship him as God, they must destroy him as Beelzebul. For all of their great religious tradition and learning, their custodianship of what Paul sums up as “the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2), when their God finally comes to save them, they not only fail to recognize him, but take him to be exactly the opposite, the Enemy.
The Romans, representing the rest of humanity, the Gentiles, demonstrate the hollowness of their own purported glory. For as Jesus then submits to the Roman legal system, the pride of that civilization, it evanesces under the slight pressure of expediency. Jesus becomes a nuisance, and the massive integrity of Roman law is easily set aside, as a cardboard façade, to dispose of him. So much, then, for all those marble columns and domes and pavements (let the reader understand). Rome was, indeed, built on sand after all.
“Let There Be Peace on Earth…”
December 31, 2007
As 2008 dawns in the midst of the Twelve Days of Christmas, how we long for peace: for shalom, that great Biblical word for the flourishing of each individual, each relationship, and the cosmos as a whole in harmony with God.
Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus as the one foretold to be “the Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6), the one who came to bring “shalom on earth,” as the angels declared to the shepherds (Luke 2:14). And it is only as we look to Jesus that we will have the peace he promised (John 14:27).
One doesn’t need to be a Christian, of course, to long for peace, to work for peace, and to enjoy seeing peace on earth–in part, here and there, for a while. And let’s acknowledge that we Christians are as capable of wreaking “non-peace” as anyone else.
The fundamental Christian hope, however, is of the “peaceable kingdom” to come, when Jesus returns to set things finally right. And the Christian joy is to experience something of that peace already in the present age of tumult and trouble.
So my kids are wondering, having spent the last week or so at home full-time with Professor Papa, why the theologian doesn’t radiate peace, why I don’t characteristically walk into the room as a soothing breeze of calm and delight, trailing clouds of quiet happiness in my wake.
Jesus, Muhammad, a Sudanese Teddy Bear, Irshad Manji, and Me
December 27, 2007
Irshad Manji, a Canadian activist who cajoles and confronts her fellow Muslims from the theological left of Islam, recently asked some of her acquaintances what we thought of a case in the Sudan that received international attention.
An English teacher in that country invited her 7-year-old students to name their class teddy bear. The overwhelming choice was “Muhammad,” so they were then all sent home with assignments regarding their mascot.
But a staffer at the school complained that the 54-year-old teacher, Gillian Gibbons, intended to insult the Prophet. Charges were laid, Ms. Gibbons was put in prison and threatened with flogging, she was tried and found guilty, and then Sudan’s president pardoned her after considerable diplomacy at a high level and angry demonstrations on street level. (Read about it here.)
Ms. Manji, now living in New York, got into a vigorous discussion with a Sudanese cab driver about it all. (Vigorous discussions are Irshad’s stock in trade!) She blogged about it, and asked a few of us for some responses–especially asking the interesting Christmastime question, “What would Jesus do?”
I replied instead to the related question of “What would Jesus have me do?” and Irshad excerpted a bit of my answer on her blog. As for what Jesus would have done if he had been on site in Sudan, well, here are some thoughts on that question, also.
“Red-Letter Christians”: A Bad Idea with a Bad Name, Alas
October 22, 2007
Being a “red-letter Christian” sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University, activist, pundit, and provocateur, tells us that he wants to obey the very words of Jesus, those words that in previous generations of Bible publishing were printed in red.
His comrade Jim Wallis of the Sojourners Fellowship, also known as an activist, pundit, and provocateur, shares this self-designation and thinks that such an approach to Christian discipleship will transcend the division of American political culture between the left and right, Democrat and Republican.
So isn’t being a red-letter Christian (RLC) a good thing?
Well, first, let’s agree that Christians should try to follow Jesus. No problem there. But the trouble with the RLC concept begins immediately afterward.
Jesus, I’m NOT in Love with You
September 16, 2007
One of the blights upon the hymnological landscape today is the continued presence of what we can fairly call the “love song to Jesus” genre. It’s been around as long as there has been Christian pop music–and even earlier, depending on what you make of sentimental gospel songs in the nineteenth century, eighteenth-century revivalist hymns, and especially a lot of the mystical poetry-cum-lyrics of certain medieval saints.
Today our congregation was asked to sing, “Jesus, I’m in love with you”–a line that shows up, in one permutation or another, in several songs that occur frequently in our worship leaders’ rotation.
Well, I didn’t sing it. It’s wrong, and I try not to sing wrong lyrics.
Both Christian and Muslim? Sort of…
June 28, 2007
The Seattle Times reports that Rev. Dr. Ann Holmes Reading, an Episcopal priest, has announced that she has been a Muslim for the last fifteen months. The conversion of a clergyperson of one faith to another is newsworthy, perhaps, but Dr. Holmes Reading has surprised people by declaring that she is both Christian and Muslim.
Her bishop has backed her, saying that he finds “the interfaith possibilities exciting,” while the leaders of her Islamic study centre welcome her. Other Episcopal and Islamic clergy, however, find the whole notion preposterous–indeed, heretical and blasphemous. Even the newspaper runs a list of contradictory doctrines.
The question at the heart of this interfaith controversy, of course, is what “faiths” are going to be “inter-ing.”
A correspondent recently wrote: “I’m more baffled than ever about the Atonement. I sometimes feel like banging my head against the wall because of the conflict between the emotion and the logic. Why do you think a loving, merciful creator would demand a blood sacrifice?”
As Christians throughout the world commemorate the crucifixion of a whipped-raw Jesus on Good Friday, and as they symbolically eat Christ’s body and drink his blood on Easter Sunday, one might well ask: What in God’s name is going on?
Shults & Stackhouse on Violence and God
February 24, 2007
I don’t know that I have met Dr. LeRon Shults, but he is a highly respected American theologian who recently took a job in Norway. He has recently posted some “work in progress” regarding the influential anthropologist René Girard and the implications of his views for Christian theology, especially of the atonement.
Many of you are about to stop reading now, and that’s fine! But for those who are interested, your servant took exception to one or two things in Professor Shults’s post and we engaged in what became a rather extended to-and-fro that the theologically-minded might find interesting here.
Define your terms–such as, say, “Jesus”
January 19, 2007
Last night I enjoyed speaking on the question, “Who Is Jesus?” to a full lecture hall at the University of British Columbia (UBC), with which my school, Regent College, is affiliated.
UBC has some of the highest entrance standards in Canada and is well regarded as a top-grade university. There are no dumb students there. These are among the best and brightest.
Before my talk, however, the sponsoring group (University Campus Ministries) ran a short video comprised of clips of interviews they had conducted recently with students at UBC on the question of the night: “Who is Jesus?”
We got to meet about a dozen students in the video. The students were a diverse bunch: male and female, several nationalities, various majors. And not one of them came within a mile of identifying Jesus with how he is portrayed in the Gospels.
Is the New Testament Reliable?
January 18, 2007
During my recent talk at the University of British Columbia on “Who Is Jesus?” I promised a short bibliography for those interested in questions raised about the reliability of the New Testament by the “Jesus Seminar,” The Da Vinci Code, Prof. Elaine Pagels, and others on the popular religious landscape. There is much confusion among even educated people today–sometimes especially among educated people today–about whether the New Testament, and the gospels in particular, render a trustworthy historical portrait of Jesus (quite apart from the question of whether or not we should regard the Bible as Holy Scripture, of course).
As a professional historian myself, who has studied not only the Bible but also the history of Biblical studies, I understand why people hold various views on these matters. Historical argument is never an open-and-shut case, but is always a matter of weighing evidence and argument for the most likely explanation. But after thirty years of academic historical study, I have come to this simple conclusion: There sure are a lot of good reasons to trust Matthew, Mark, Luke and John–and Paul–when they say that Jesus said this or did that. So I do.
