Continuing the series on nuts and bolts of preaching, the following is from an interview with Jonathan Page, Epps Fellow at Memorial Church in Cambridge. The topic of the interview is the pros and cons of preaching on the Lectionary passages. Jonathan argues against preaching on the Lectionary. Next week I will post a rebuttal from another Massachusetts pastor.
Jonathan will be preaching at June 21 and July 19 at 10 am in Memorial Church, which is located behind the Harvard Yard. Jonathan is passionate about student outreach. During the academic year, he started a service for students in particular, which is held at 9 pm on Sunday nights. He has also written a book on missionaries, described on http://www.newenglandancestors.org/publications/45_7404.asp.
"As I understand it, the lectionary was added following the Vatican II Council. The Roman Catholic Church shifted from a one year lectionary to a three year lectionary as a result of the Council. In order to promote ecumenism, the Protestant churches began to draw up their own three year lectionaries and did their best to follow the RC model whenever possible. Finally, an ecumenical group of Protestant churches drew up the Revised Common Lectionary, which many denominations use today.
So, first and foremost, the lectionary allows all the churches of the United States and abroad to preach the same passages on the same day. Furthermore, the lectionary forces the preacher to address a broad range of texts. If you follow the lectionary, you will cover nearly the entirety of the gospels in a three year cycle, in addition to important sections of the Old Testament and the epistles.
Those are what I see as the two major advantages to using the lectionary: ecumenism and breadth of scriptural reach.
The disadvantages, however, far outweigh the advantages, especially for a liberal minister. With no lectionary, a minister is forced to choose her own scripture passages each week. This means that the minister must come up with a plan for sermons going forward. She cannot simply preach social justice each week or preach a pastoral sermon or one that is heavily theological.
As a minister looks down the calendar she must ask herself, “What does the congregation need at this point?” So the first reason to ditch the lectionary is that it forces a minister to think long term about what she wants her congregation to get out of preaching.
The second reason to avoid the lectionary is theological. The lectionary assumes that sermons should be exegetical and that all of scripture, especially the gospels, deserves to be preached. This is simply false. The Bible must be translated from its own time period into our own. Certain passages, especially the apocalyptic ones, are not relevant to the lives of modern, liberal Christians. I am not awaiting the imminent return of Jesus in the clouds. That belief is tied up in a first century worldview, which I do not believe and neither does my congregation.
Furthermore, not all passages are created equal. We all read a text from our own distinct theological viewpoint. There is no such thing as a coherent “Biblical theology.” It simply does not exist. Marching your way through the text because the lectionary dictates it leads to the lectionary determining the shape of your preaching instead of your theology. Our theology should be the guide for our preaching.
The third and final reason for avoiding the lectionary is that it allows ministers to avoid their teaching responsibility. Preachers end up looking at a text and trying to figure out something to say to the congregation that might be relevant to their lives based on that reading. Far too often, the sermons become a series of personal anecdotes around one particular story in the text. In the end the congregation learns nothing about the Bible or theology or church history.
Mainline congregations are not well versed in the faith, mostly because ministers have stopped teaching them. When there is no lectionary, when a minister must plan out what to preach and teach the congregation, when theology and not an arbitrary text drives the preaching task, congregations learn more about their faith.
Using no lectionary is difficult. It requires a lot of careful thought, but especially for liberal ministers, it is the way to go."
--Elizabeth Fels
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
May 31: Tongues of Fire
The lectionary readings for this week are Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b; Romans 8:22-27; and John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15. I will focus on the reading from Acts. It serves as the foundation for Pentecost, which occurs on the seventh Sunday after Easter and is one of the main events of the Christian liturgical year. I am writing this entry from the perspective of describing Pentecost for someone having only a passing familiarity with it.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Pentecost celebrated in a Christian context dates from the 1st century, and with accounts of it appearing in the writings of Irenaeus and Tertullian. For churches that use vestments, the color of Pentecost is red, symbolizing the love of the Holy Spirit or the tongues of fire. In Italy, there is a custom of scattering rose petals from the ceilings of churches to commemorate the tongues called Pascha rosatum.
The book of Acts is credited as being written by the same author of the Gospel of Luke. The setting of the passage is the Jewish spring barley harvest, described in Lev. 23 and Exodus 34:22, which fell fifty days after Passover.
The writer describes a gathering of Diasphora Jews who have come to Jerusalem to celebrate. There are both Greek and Arab Jews, and their places of origin include Egypt, Libya, and Rome. As the Episcopal priest Jim Callahan writes, it was a great day for multicultural, and a bad day for future lay readers faced with this passage: “Parthians, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, Pamphyilians,” etc.
The beginning of the passage describes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the disciples. The author uses the metaphor of a “violent wind,” then states, “Divided tongues (γλώσσα), as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (2-4).
Shockingly, the author does not show the Jews expressing surprise at the extraordinary image of “tongues of fire” resting on each of the disciples. One can either assume the author uses them as a metaphor, or that his implication is that the tongues were only visible to disciples—or that the assembled company possesses exceptional savoir faire.
The author does, however, show the company expressing shock that each group hears its native language. Thus what the disciples display is not glossolalia, but coherent speech. Some are perplexed, and others wonder if the disciples are drunk: “filled with new wine” (13). Peter’s (to me hilarious) response is that they are not drunk, as “it is only nine o’clock in the morning” (15).
Curiously Luke does not purport to transcribe what the disciples were actually saying. Peter is thus left with the key speech. He continues, “No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
In those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s
great and glorious day.
Peter is citing Joel 2:28-32. Readers might respond to the lines about slaves in different ways. Some might see this passage as an indication of the egalitarian quality of prophetic utterance that the Spirit enables, while others might reject what they see as an implied divinely ordained social hierarchy: as portrayed in these passages, God quickens slaves with prophesy, but does not seem to indicate that they will lose their title of "slaves."
Both the language of Joel and the language of the description of the Holy Spirit are in keeping with other passages from Hebrew Scripture describing theophanies, or appearances of God on earth. In Exodus 19:16-18, Yahweh descends to Mount Sinai in fire, wrapping the mountaintop in smoke. The “rush of a violent wind” signalling the outpouring of the Spirit recalls Genesis 1.2: “. . . while a might wind swept over the face of the waters”. In Luke the Theologian, Francois Bovon cites J Potin’s work on parallels between the gift of the Holy Spirit in Acts and the gift of the Law in Exodus. Potin writes that the exegesis of the Sinai passages in the Jewish community would have influenced the eschatological reflections of the Acts audience: “. . . in a theophany, God is associated with God’s regenerate people. As Acts 2 unfolds with and ideal portrayal of the community of the new covenant, this exegetical influence is confirmed” (Bovon, 259).
Following the German scholar E. Lohse, Bovon describes how, through this narrative, the author of Acts has two main goals: 1) “to signal the beginning of a new stage of redemptive history,” and 2) to establish the universality of the community, indicated by the broad swathe of people (Bovon, 252).
Callahan on the significance of Pentecost for congregations today writes,
“We are not told what they said . . . We are told, however, of the greatest of all miracles: everyone in the house understood each other.” Callahan credits the foundation of modern Christianity, not with Pentecost, but with Good Friday: Christ crucified “asked the Father to forgive us, and a few bewildered, broken-hearted women and men wandered off wondering how they were going to live with that. Pentecost was the day they got their answer: with great joy, and with wind and fire and Spirit, making them look like a bunch of happy drunks in the midst of a numbingly sober and sour world.
They learned that in belonging to God they belonged also to each other. The joy derived from their trusting contained power, power not only to gladden but also to heal and redeem.”
--Elizabeth Fels
Sources:
Bovon, Francois. Luke the Theologian (2nd ed). Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2006.
Coogan, Michael, Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 188-198 NT.
Catholic Encyclopedia quoted by New Advent here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15614b.htm
“Windblown (Acts 2:1-11)” by Jim Callahan, published by The Christian Century:
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1963
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Pentecost celebrated in a Christian context dates from the 1st century, and with accounts of it appearing in the writings of Irenaeus and Tertullian. For churches that use vestments, the color of Pentecost is red, symbolizing the love of the Holy Spirit or the tongues of fire. In Italy, there is a custom of scattering rose petals from the ceilings of churches to commemorate the tongues called Pascha rosatum.
The book of Acts is credited as being written by the same author of the Gospel of Luke. The setting of the passage is the Jewish spring barley harvest, described in Lev. 23 and Exodus 34:22, which fell fifty days after Passover.
The writer describes a gathering of Diasphora Jews who have come to Jerusalem to celebrate. There are both Greek and Arab Jews, and their places of origin include Egypt, Libya, and Rome. As the Episcopal priest Jim Callahan writes, it was a great day for multicultural, and a bad day for future lay readers faced with this passage: “Parthians, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, Pamphyilians,” etc.
The beginning of the passage describes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the disciples. The author uses the metaphor of a “violent wind,” then states, “Divided tongues (γλώσσα), as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (2-4).
Shockingly, the author does not show the Jews expressing surprise at the extraordinary image of “tongues of fire” resting on each of the disciples. One can either assume the author uses them as a metaphor, or that his implication is that the tongues were only visible to disciples—or that the assembled company possesses exceptional savoir faire.
The author does, however, show the company expressing shock that each group hears its native language. Thus what the disciples display is not glossolalia, but coherent speech. Some are perplexed, and others wonder if the disciples are drunk: “filled with new wine” (13). Peter’s (to me hilarious) response is that they are not drunk, as “it is only nine o’clock in the morning” (15).
Curiously Luke does not purport to transcribe what the disciples were actually saying. Peter is thus left with the key speech. He continues, “No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
In those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s
great and glorious day.
Peter is citing Joel 2:28-32. Readers might respond to the lines about slaves in different ways. Some might see this passage as an indication of the egalitarian quality of prophetic utterance that the Spirit enables, while others might reject what they see as an implied divinely ordained social hierarchy: as portrayed in these passages, God quickens slaves with prophesy, but does not seem to indicate that they will lose their title of "slaves."
Both the language of Joel and the language of the description of the Holy Spirit are in keeping with other passages from Hebrew Scripture describing theophanies, or appearances of God on earth. In Exodus 19:16-18, Yahweh descends to Mount Sinai in fire, wrapping the mountaintop in smoke. The “rush of a violent wind” signalling the outpouring of the Spirit recalls Genesis 1.2: “. . . while a might wind swept over the face of the waters”. In Luke the Theologian, Francois Bovon cites J Potin’s work on parallels between the gift of the Holy Spirit in Acts and the gift of the Law in Exodus. Potin writes that the exegesis of the Sinai passages in the Jewish community would have influenced the eschatological reflections of the Acts audience: “. . . in a theophany, God is associated with God’s regenerate people. As Acts 2 unfolds with and ideal portrayal of the community of the new covenant, this exegetical influence is confirmed” (Bovon, 259).
Following the German scholar E. Lohse, Bovon describes how, through this narrative, the author of Acts has two main goals: 1) “to signal the beginning of a new stage of redemptive history,” and 2) to establish the universality of the community, indicated by the broad swathe of people (Bovon, 252).
Callahan on the significance of Pentecost for congregations today writes,
“We are not told what they said . . . We are told, however, of the greatest of all miracles: everyone in the house understood each other.” Callahan credits the foundation of modern Christianity, not with Pentecost, but with Good Friday: Christ crucified “asked the Father to forgive us, and a few bewildered, broken-hearted women and men wandered off wondering how they were going to live with that. Pentecost was the day they got their answer: with great joy, and with wind and fire and Spirit, making them look like a bunch of happy drunks in the midst of a numbingly sober and sour world.
They learned that in belonging to God they belonged also to each other. The joy derived from their trusting contained power, power not only to gladden but also to heal and redeem.”
--Elizabeth Fels
Sources:
Bovon, Francois. Luke the Theologian (2nd ed). Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2006.
Coogan, Michael, Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 188-198 NT.
Catholic Encyclopedia quoted by New Advent here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15614b.htm
“Windblown (Acts 2:1-11)” by Jim Callahan, published by The Christian Century:
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1963
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
May 24: Sermons with Personal Narratives
I am starting a series interviewing Massachusetts pastors on practical aspects of preaching. Recently I heard a sermon that deeply moved me in Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston. Using a metaphor to describe divine mercy, the minister described his own experience of not finding a healthy relationship until later in life, in his 50s. In the sermon, he described the sensation of being too traumatized by past abandonment to be loved—his fear that, as soon as he revealed his emotional scars, his partner would leave him. He then drew an analogy between the experience of God’s unconditional love, and the shock that his relationship remained intact, even strengthened, after he revealed his personal vulnerability.
Afterwards I had a debate with a friend on the topic of sermons in which ministers use material from their personal lives to make a point about theology, or elucidate a biblical narrative, or create a metaphor. “Many people in congregations get uncomfortable when pastors do this,” my friend said. “It is a natural impulse to want to idealize the church’s spiritual leader. People don’t want to hear information that gets in the way of that idealization.”
It was a fair observation, and with that in mind, I asked two pastors from the church Highrock in Arlington for their views on this topic. How would they advise ministers interested in going from the abstract to the specific—who want to incorporate more narratives from personal life into their sermons, but feel concerned about negative reactions from their congregations?
Aaron Engler, Young Adult Ministry, Highrock:
“In our current cultural setting, people are craving and desiring authenticity and sincerity. Taking cues from our cultural context and looking at people like Paul, leadership is not necessarily about charging forward on a white horse, looking impeccable.
Real leadership means 1) to be vulnerable, 2) to give hope. The reality is that sin has been defeated. Death has no sting. I don’t have a problem with opening up, because Christ has suffered for my sin, and in Him I hope. I feel His spirit will strengthen and provide for me and carry me forward.
I would be wary, though, of using the pulpit as a confessional. But it’s highly appropriate to say how you faced sin in the past and came through. To say, ‘I was here, but Christ has redeemed me. I can stand here before you today because Christ has redeemed me, and there is victory.’”
To give a specific example of personal narrative in sermons, I recently heard Dave Swaim preach about the crisis he and his wife faced when, despite prayer, they were unable to have biological children. The Swaims now have three adopted children.
Dave Swaim, Lead Pastor, Highrock (Harvard Divinity School ’00):
“Philip Brooks said, preaching is the way the truth of God’s word passed through the prism of human personality.” I need to digest God’s word before I can express it to them.
People come to church feeling doubt, fear, anger, pain. The only way to show them how to avail themselves of the resources of God’s power, is to talk about times when I’ve been in those situations. People need to know that I am a struggler. They may feel uncomfortable. But unless we admit that we’re wrestling and struggling and discuss it, we’re not going to be victorious.
In The Problem of Pain, CS Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Unless you can identify your own pain, you’re not going to be able to lead other people. I speak out of the times God spoke to me in my own pain.
When interns at Highrock prepare to preach, they turn in an outline with four things: 1) the problem in the text; 2) a corresponding problem in our lives today; 3) the solution in the text; 4) the solution in our lives today.
In this week’s Gospel reading, Joseph and Mary lose Jesus, then find him in the Temple. The problem around which I built my sermon was the sensation of losing Jesus. This is an existential human dilemma: not being able to find God. Then I ask myself, how have I had a genuine encounter with the same thing? Can I give a testimony to show that God has been faithful when I have been in that situation?
Craig Barnes wrote that he is suspicious of every theology that doesn’t stand up in the emergency rooms of life. In a congregation as large as ours, every week there is at least one person there who is desperate, and this is their last chance to hear the word of God before they go out and do a desperate thing.
It’s important not go give false promises in your sermon. Like, “when you pray, God will give you what you need.
You cannot preach a good sermon unless you are willing to mine your own pain for the times you encounter God there. Essential human dilemmas that all of us experience, which transcend culture and demographics."
Starting next week, I will split this post into two entries—one with a Massachusetts pastor about a practical nuts and bolts aspect of preaching, and one on the lectionary. The lectionary readings for this week are Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; I John 5:9-13; and John 17:6-19. This week I will focus on Psalm 1:
1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
nor in the way of offenders has stood,
nor in the session of scoffers has sat.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he murmurs day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
As Robert Alter writes in The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary, this psalm is in the tradition of Wisdom literature. The Psalm develops a theological view of prosperity and suffering that is antithetical to that expressed in the Book of Job. In the latter, Satan argues that Job’s righteousness is merely a result of his happy, comfortable life. When Yahweh (translated as the LORD) calls Satan’s attention to Job’s virtue, Satan counters,
“Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 1:9-11).
This psalm, in contrast, interprets prosperity as directly linked with righteousness. Alter describes Wisdom literature as a genre in literature of the Near East in which universal, as opposed to national, principle for living are articulated. The Psalmist uses physical imagery that would resonate with an audience in a climate with scarce water. The person who anchors his life in divine teaching is like a tree growing near a water source. (Alter, 3-4). Alter writes of the opening verse,
“Walking on a way is a traditional metaphor for pursuing a set of moral choices in life. In this verse, that idea is turned into an elegant narrative sequence in the triadic line—first walking, then standing, then sitting, with the attachment to the company of evildoers becoming increasingly more habitual from one verset to the next” (Alter, 3).
Alter credits Nahum Sarna with positing that the psalm’s first word contains a pun: “the first word of the psalm, ’ashrei, ‘happy,’ may pun on ’ashurim, “steps,” and hence reinforce the walking metaphor” (Alter, 3).
The word hagah in the second verse is often translated as “meditate”; in the New International Version, the line reads, “on his law he meditates day and night.” Alter however writes that a more accurate translation of hagah would be to make a low muttering sound, “which is what one does with a text in a culture where there is no silent reading” (Alter, 3).
Finally, Alter highlights a linguistic parallel between the wicked who will not “stand up in judgment” in verse 5, and the act of “standing” with offenders in verse 1, although the two Hebrew words are different. The psalm posits a final moment of divine judgment, when those who sit with scoffers, like the chaff introduced in verse 4, “will have no leg to stand on (like chaff)” (Alter, 4).
The physical imagery and linguistic puns raise the question of whether or not the psalmist envisions a link between material prosperity and spiritual virtue: “. . . its leaf does not wither—and in all that he does he prospers” (v 3). The question then arises, how might a pastor interpret this passage for a reader who, despite prayer and honest effort, feels himself on the edeg of an abyss?
This question is directly relevant to the current time period, in which many people have the sensation of losing their material stability for reasons beyond their control. Members of a congregation might be resistant to biblical passages that posit that one-to-one connection between virtue and prosperity. However, since the psalmist uses metaphors from the natural world, not images of wealth that one might interpret as realistic (clothes, possessions, splendid architecture), I would argue that it is definitely possible to interpret the “prosperity” envisioned by the psalmist as spiritual, not necessarily material, wealth.
--Elizabeth Fels
Afterwards I had a debate with a friend on the topic of sermons in which ministers use material from their personal lives to make a point about theology, or elucidate a biblical narrative, or create a metaphor. “Many people in congregations get uncomfortable when pastors do this,” my friend said. “It is a natural impulse to want to idealize the church’s spiritual leader. People don’t want to hear information that gets in the way of that idealization.”
It was a fair observation, and with that in mind, I asked two pastors from the church Highrock in Arlington for their views on this topic. How would they advise ministers interested in going from the abstract to the specific—who want to incorporate more narratives from personal life into their sermons, but feel concerned about negative reactions from their congregations?
Aaron Engler, Young Adult Ministry, Highrock:
“In our current cultural setting, people are craving and desiring authenticity and sincerity. Taking cues from our cultural context and looking at people like Paul, leadership is not necessarily about charging forward on a white horse, looking impeccable.
Real leadership means 1) to be vulnerable, 2) to give hope. The reality is that sin has been defeated. Death has no sting. I don’t have a problem with opening up, because Christ has suffered for my sin, and in Him I hope. I feel His spirit will strengthen and provide for me and carry me forward.
I would be wary, though, of using the pulpit as a confessional. But it’s highly appropriate to say how you faced sin in the past and came through. To say, ‘I was here, but Christ has redeemed me. I can stand here before you today because Christ has redeemed me, and there is victory.’”
To give a specific example of personal narrative in sermons, I recently heard Dave Swaim preach about the crisis he and his wife faced when, despite prayer, they were unable to have biological children. The Swaims now have three adopted children.
Dave Swaim, Lead Pastor, Highrock (Harvard Divinity School ’00):
“Philip Brooks said, preaching is the way the truth of God’s word passed through the prism of human personality.” I need to digest God’s word before I can express it to them.
People come to church feeling doubt, fear, anger, pain. The only way to show them how to avail themselves of the resources of God’s power, is to talk about times when I’ve been in those situations. People need to know that I am a struggler. They may feel uncomfortable. But unless we admit that we’re wrestling and struggling and discuss it, we’re not going to be victorious.
In The Problem of Pain, CS Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Unless you can identify your own pain, you’re not going to be able to lead other people. I speak out of the times God spoke to me in my own pain.
When interns at Highrock prepare to preach, they turn in an outline with four things: 1) the problem in the text; 2) a corresponding problem in our lives today; 3) the solution in the text; 4) the solution in our lives today.
In this week’s Gospel reading, Joseph and Mary lose Jesus, then find him in the Temple. The problem around which I built my sermon was the sensation of losing Jesus. This is an existential human dilemma: not being able to find God. Then I ask myself, how have I had a genuine encounter with the same thing? Can I give a testimony to show that God has been faithful when I have been in that situation?
Craig Barnes wrote that he is suspicious of every theology that doesn’t stand up in the emergency rooms of life. In a congregation as large as ours, every week there is at least one person there who is desperate, and this is their last chance to hear the word of God before they go out and do a desperate thing.
It’s important not go give false promises in your sermon. Like, “when you pray, God will give you what you need.
You cannot preach a good sermon unless you are willing to mine your own pain for the times you encounter God there. Essential human dilemmas that all of us experience, which transcend culture and demographics."
Starting next week, I will split this post into two entries—one with a Massachusetts pastor about a practical nuts and bolts aspect of preaching, and one on the lectionary. The lectionary readings for this week are Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; I John 5:9-13; and John 17:6-19. This week I will focus on Psalm 1:
1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
nor in the way of offenders has stood,
nor in the session of scoffers has sat.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he murmurs day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
As Robert Alter writes in The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary, this psalm is in the tradition of Wisdom literature. The Psalm develops a theological view of prosperity and suffering that is antithetical to that expressed in the Book of Job. In the latter, Satan argues that Job’s righteousness is merely a result of his happy, comfortable life. When Yahweh (translated as the LORD) calls Satan’s attention to Job’s virtue, Satan counters,
“Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 1:9-11).
This psalm, in contrast, interprets prosperity as directly linked with righteousness. Alter describes Wisdom literature as a genre in literature of the Near East in which universal, as opposed to national, principle for living are articulated. The Psalmist uses physical imagery that would resonate with an audience in a climate with scarce water. The person who anchors his life in divine teaching is like a tree growing near a water source. (Alter, 3-4). Alter writes of the opening verse,
“Walking on a way is a traditional metaphor for pursuing a set of moral choices in life. In this verse, that idea is turned into an elegant narrative sequence in the triadic line—first walking, then standing, then sitting, with the attachment to the company of evildoers becoming increasingly more habitual from one verset to the next” (Alter, 3).
Alter credits Nahum Sarna with positing that the psalm’s first word contains a pun: “the first word of the psalm, ’ashrei, ‘happy,’ may pun on ’ashurim, “steps,” and hence reinforce the walking metaphor” (Alter, 3).
The word hagah in the second verse is often translated as “meditate”; in the New International Version, the line reads, “on his law he meditates day and night.” Alter however writes that a more accurate translation of hagah would be to make a low muttering sound, “which is what one does with a text in a culture where there is no silent reading” (Alter, 3).
Finally, Alter highlights a linguistic parallel between the wicked who will not “stand up in judgment” in verse 5, and the act of “standing” with offenders in verse 1, although the two Hebrew words are different. The psalm posits a final moment of divine judgment, when those who sit with scoffers, like the chaff introduced in verse 4, “will have no leg to stand on (like chaff)” (Alter, 4).
The physical imagery and linguistic puns raise the question of whether or not the psalmist envisions a link between material prosperity and spiritual virtue: “. . . its leaf does not wither—and in all that he does he prospers” (v 3). The question then arises, how might a pastor interpret this passage for a reader who, despite prayer and honest effort, feels himself on the edeg of an abyss?
This question is directly relevant to the current time period, in which many people have the sensation of losing their material stability for reasons beyond their control. Members of a congregation might be resistant to biblical passages that posit that one-to-one connection between virtue and prosperity. However, since the psalmist uses metaphors from the natural world, not images of wealth that one might interpret as realistic (clothes, possessions, splendid architecture), I would argue that it is definitely possible to interpret the “prosperity” envisioned by the psalmist as spiritual, not necessarily material, wealth.
--Elizabeth Fels
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
May 17: Doulos
The lectionary readings for this week are Acts 10: 44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5: 1-6; and John 15: 9-17. First, I will write about the use of the word δούλος as it is used in the Gospel reading, and second, I will give the transcript of interviews I made with pastors from High Rock church in Arlington. I am starting a series in which I’ll combine notes on the lectionary with interviews from Massachusetts pastors on a practical aspect of delivering sermons.
Part 1)
John 15: 9-17, from the NIV:
9"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.
In Greek, the term I highlighted is δδύλοϐ, or doulos. In English it is either as “slave” or “servant,” depending on the translation. “Servant” is used in the NIV, the King James, and the the New Oxford Annotated Bible; “slave” is used in the New American Standard Bible, the New Living Translation, and the footnote for verse 15 of the New Oxford Annotated Bible. In the NASB, Jesus says, “15"No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
The difference in language stems from ancient Greek having only one word with this implication. In English, the word “servant” implies a voluntary relationship from the side of the laborer. Although Americans use words like “Housekeeper” and “Nanny” for people who provide work in the home, it is assumed that the domestic workers our grandparents would have called servants were at-will employees. “Slave” on the other hand is indelibly associated with economic systems in which human beings are treated as the property of others: lacking the right to leave, refuse to work, or earn wages, whether in the South in the 19th century, or in sites of human trafficking in modern times. Dated to the 13th century, the English word “slave” originated from “Slav,” because during the Holy Roman Empire, many conquered Slavic people were sold into slavery. (1)
One question that readers of this passage might have is, which meaning of doulos would Jesus have intended? Would he and his disciples have understood doulos as containing the meaning of the modern word “slave,” or “servant”?
In A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, doulos is literally defined as “a male slave as an entity in a socio-economic context.” However in the New Testament, the word is used in many different metaphorical contexts.
In Galatian 3:28, Paul refers to slavery in what might have been an early baptismal formula: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Here slavery is refered to as a social distinction that is erased by union with Christ.
Elsewhere Paul refers to slavery in a pejorative sense, implying a state of being controlled by sin. In Romans 16:6-7, he says, “. . . our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7for he who has died is freed from sin.”
In contrast, Christ uses the motif of the slave in a positive sense, implying a radical humility and willingness to serve others. After James and John ask to sit at Christ’s right and left hand, sharing glory, Christ replies, “. . . and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; 28just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." This rhetorical move is in keeping with other passages in which Jesus exaggerates in extraordinary language to make a point. The metaphor, which might have sounded radical at the point of utterance, can also be read as a verbal signpost signifying Christ’s crucifixion. It is also in keeping with the image of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, taken by Christians as a prophecy of Christ as the Messiah.
Finally, the word doulos is also used in metaphors describing the submission of the human soul to God. In Luke 1:38, Mary makes a statement to Gabriel in which this word is often translated as “servant” or “handmaiden,” but which might be translated as slave: “I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Using the equivalent in Hebrew, Prophets as called slaves of God in Jer 25:4, Amos 3:7, and Daniel 9:6. In 2 Corinthians 4:5, the chapter from which the band Jars of Clay take their name, Paul characterizes the apostles and himself as slaves of Christ, sent to serve the Corinthians: “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake.”
One resource that addresses the question of what the lives of slaves were like during the Roman Empire in which Christ and Paul lived is Slavery and Society at Rome, by K. R. Bradley, a professor of Classics and History and Notre Dame (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Bradley writes that it is difficult to learn about the daily life of slaves in the Roman Empire, as accounts of them are written by historians from the slave-holding classes such as Plutarch.
Noting that a slave Plutarch writes about does not even have a name, he argues that slaves’s role was to provide labor; they did not have legal rights, could not own property, or have legally recognized marriages. Many slaves were taken from the ranks of armies that fought against Rome; POWs were sent to slave markets. For this reason, it can be assumed that slaves often lacked a sense of class solidarity, coming from extremely different populations. However, the gladiator Spartacus who led a rebellion of slaves in 73-71 BC that defeated several Roman legions, the followers of which were crucified. After this rebellion, the philosopher Seneca wrote of a proposal in the Roman Senate to make slaves wear distinctive clothing. However, this proposal was not enacted, because it was feared that slaves would then realize their numbers and strength. Bradley writes,
“In the mid-first century AD an anonymous slave murdered his master, a high official in the imperial administration, either because the master had reneged on a promise to set the slave free or because the two were rivals in a sexual intrigue.
The aftermath was disastrous. Roman law required a man's slaves to come to his aid if he were attacked, under penalty of death. The law was enforced against those slaves who had not come to the victim's aid in this case, and all the slaves in the household - allegedly 400 of them - were executed, even though most of them could not possibly have known anything about the murder.” (2)
Learning about the lives of slaves from Roman texts and archeological evidence allows us to recover the radical nature of biblical metaphors in which doulos is used as an analogue for a spiritual state.
--Elizabeth Fels
(1) Online Etymology Dictionary: http://www.etymonline.com
(2) Quotation and information from this section cited from BBC online article http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/slavery_01.shtml.
Danker, Frederick William, ed. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Part 1)
John 15: 9-17, from the NIV:
9"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.
In Greek, the term I highlighted is δδύλοϐ, or doulos. In English it is either as “slave” or “servant,” depending on the translation. “Servant” is used in the NIV, the King James, and the the New Oxford Annotated Bible; “slave” is used in the New American Standard Bible, the New Living Translation, and the footnote for verse 15 of the New Oxford Annotated Bible. In the NASB, Jesus says, “15"No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
The difference in language stems from ancient Greek having only one word with this implication. In English, the word “servant” implies a voluntary relationship from the side of the laborer. Although Americans use words like “Housekeeper” and “Nanny” for people who provide work in the home, it is assumed that the domestic workers our grandparents would have called servants were at-will employees. “Slave” on the other hand is indelibly associated with economic systems in which human beings are treated as the property of others: lacking the right to leave, refuse to work, or earn wages, whether in the South in the 19th century, or in sites of human trafficking in modern times. Dated to the 13th century, the English word “slave” originated from “Slav,” because during the Holy Roman Empire, many conquered Slavic people were sold into slavery. (1)
One question that readers of this passage might have is, which meaning of doulos would Jesus have intended? Would he and his disciples have understood doulos as containing the meaning of the modern word “slave,” or “servant”?
In A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, doulos is literally defined as “a male slave as an entity in a socio-economic context.” However in the New Testament, the word is used in many different metaphorical contexts.
In Galatian 3:28, Paul refers to slavery in what might have been an early baptismal formula: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Here slavery is refered to as a social distinction that is erased by union with Christ.
Elsewhere Paul refers to slavery in a pejorative sense, implying a state of being controlled by sin. In Romans 16:6-7, he says, “. . . our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7for he who has died is freed from sin.”
In contrast, Christ uses the motif of the slave in a positive sense, implying a radical humility and willingness to serve others. After James and John ask to sit at Christ’s right and left hand, sharing glory, Christ replies, “. . . and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; 28just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." This rhetorical move is in keeping with other passages in which Jesus exaggerates in extraordinary language to make a point. The metaphor, which might have sounded radical at the point of utterance, can also be read as a verbal signpost signifying Christ’s crucifixion. It is also in keeping with the image of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, taken by Christians as a prophecy of Christ as the Messiah.
Finally, the word doulos is also used in metaphors describing the submission of the human soul to God. In Luke 1:38, Mary makes a statement to Gabriel in which this word is often translated as “servant” or “handmaiden,” but which might be translated as slave: “I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Using the equivalent in Hebrew, Prophets as called slaves of God in Jer 25:4, Amos 3:7, and Daniel 9:6. In 2 Corinthians 4:5, the chapter from which the band Jars of Clay take their name, Paul characterizes the apostles and himself as slaves of Christ, sent to serve the Corinthians: “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake.”
One resource that addresses the question of what the lives of slaves were like during the Roman Empire in which Christ and Paul lived is Slavery and Society at Rome, by K. R. Bradley, a professor of Classics and History and Notre Dame (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Bradley writes that it is difficult to learn about the daily life of slaves in the Roman Empire, as accounts of them are written by historians from the slave-holding classes such as Plutarch.
Noting that a slave Plutarch writes about does not even have a name, he argues that slaves’s role was to provide labor; they did not have legal rights, could not own property, or have legally recognized marriages. Many slaves were taken from the ranks of armies that fought against Rome; POWs were sent to slave markets. For this reason, it can be assumed that slaves often lacked a sense of class solidarity, coming from extremely different populations. However, the gladiator Spartacus who led a rebellion of slaves in 73-71 BC that defeated several Roman legions, the followers of which were crucified. After this rebellion, the philosopher Seneca wrote of a proposal in the Roman Senate to make slaves wear distinctive clothing. However, this proposal was not enacted, because it was feared that slaves would then realize their numbers and strength. Bradley writes,
“In the mid-first century AD an anonymous slave murdered his master, a high official in the imperial administration, either because the master had reneged on a promise to set the slave free or because the two were rivals in a sexual intrigue.
The aftermath was disastrous. Roman law required a man's slaves to come to his aid if he were attacked, under penalty of death. The law was enforced against those slaves who had not come to the victim's aid in this case, and all the slaves in the household - allegedly 400 of them - were executed, even though most of them could not possibly have known anything about the murder.” (2)
Learning about the lives of slaves from Roman texts and archeological evidence allows us to recover the radical nature of biblical metaphors in which doulos is used as an analogue for a spiritual state.
--Elizabeth Fels
(1) Online Etymology Dictionary: http://www.etymonline.com
(2) Quotation and information from this section cited from BBC online article http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/slavery_01.shtml.
Danker, Frederick William, ed. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
May 10: Beyond the rivers of Ethiopia
The lectionary readings for this week are Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:25-31; 1 John 4:7-21; and John 15:1-8. In this entry, I will focus on the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8.
The events of Acts 8 occur in a context of extreme upheaval in the early Church. In the previous chapter, Luke describes the martyrdom of Stephen in what appears to be a lynching by stoning. The detail of witnesses laying their coats at the feet of Saul (who will become Paul) implies a judicial execution. In the wake of Stephen’s death, the early followers of Jesus leave Jerusalem and disperse to the countryside of Judea and Samaria (8:1). Yet as a result of the persecution, the scattered followers preach the Gospel in new areas. This passage is significant in that it describes the evangelizing of possibly the first non-Jewish converts (notes from NOAB).
Chapter 8 describes two acts of baptism. In order to contextualize the passage in this week’s lectionary, it is useful to compare it to Peter’s encounter with the Samaritans directly preceding. Samaritans were descendents from the inhabitants of Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who occupied that area after the Assyrian invaded and deported the Jewish population in 722 BCE. While Samaritans observed the Pentateuch and considered their ancestors to be the small number of Jews allowed to remain in the Northern Kingdom, Jews returning from exile did not consider them to be authentically Jewish, but rather the descendents of usurpers of land that had previously been theirs. Ezra and Nehemiah went so far as to forbid intermarriage between the two groups (NOAB, Glossary, 552). In The Misunderstood Jew, Amy-Jill Levine argues that although much biblical commentary portrays Samaritans as an oppressed minority, it would be more accurate to regard the two groups as religious rivals (Levine, 148). They shared holy texts, but observed different calendars and worshipped at different temples, as the Samaritan woman at the well indicates to Jesus. In order to recover the punch of the Good Samaritan parable, one might imagine, for example, not a homeless person helping a rich man, but Unitarian helping a Pentecostalist or vice versa.
A significance of the juxtaposition of the Ethiopian Eunuch narrative with the narrative of the Samaritans is that both depict groups outside the demographic of the Apostles’ first followers. Just as the Gospel of Luke emphasizes the role of Gentiles in Jesus’ mission, so the book of Acts shows early Christian leaders reaching across cultural boundaries in order to preach the Gospel.
“Eunuch” in the time period of Acts generally refers to a castrated man who has an official function in the home or government of a ruler. The word’s etymology comes from eune, or “bed,” and ekhein, “to keep.” Unable to have children, eunuchs may have been considered more reliable, as they could neither have children with women in the royal household nor found a rival dynasty to threaten the ruler. However, not having a family to defend them may have also put eunuchs in a position of greater vulnerability.
The passage of this week’s lection begins as follows:
26Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." 27So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. 29The Spirit told Philip, "Go to that chariot and stay near it."
30Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. "Do you understand what you are reading?" Philip asked.
31"How can I," he said, "unless someone explains it to me?" So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
Two aspects that stand out from 26-31 are Philip’s receptiveness to guidance from the Holy Spirit directing him to the Eunuch, and the Eunuch’s desire to be taught. The passage depicts Philip acting as an instrument of the Lord, approaching the chariot at the command of a divine messenger. A contrast Luke draws attention to concerns their difference in what one might call class; the Eunuch is a person of political power, in charge of the royal treasury of Ethiopia. He is leaving Jerusalem, where he acquired a scroll of Isaiah. When Philip approaches him, he is reading the text without comprehension. This section calls to mind Peter Gomes’ introduction to The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind. Gomes states that for many churchgoers, reading the Bible is like overhearing a conversation in fluent French at a neighboring table, trying, yet failing to understand with one’s high school French. However the Eunuch actives reaches out to Philip, requesting assistance.
32The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture:
"He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before the shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
33In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth."
34The eunuch asked Philip, "Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" 35Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
The passage which the Eunuch is reading is Isaiah 53:7-8. This chapter of Isaiah contains what is often called the depiction of the suffering servant, a passage that Christians have interpreted as prophesying Jesus’s suffering, vicarious atonement for human sin, and resurrection. Luke may have also intended the narrative of the Eunuch to resonate with readers familiar with God’s outreach to eunuchs expressed in Isaiah 56:3-5:
Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the LORD say,
"The LORD will surely exclude me from his people."
And let not any eunuch complain,
"I am only a dry tree."
4 For this is what the LORD says:
"To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose what pleases me
and hold fast to my covenant-
5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls
a memorial and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that will not be cut off.
Other passages that highlight the relationship between God and Ethiopia are Zeph 10.3("From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, my scattered ones, shall bring my offering"), and Psalm 68:31 (“let Ethiopia hasten to stretch out to God.”) These passages indicate the important role Africa has in the texts that make up the biblical canon.
The passage from Acts 8 continues:
36As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptized?"38And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. 40Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the Gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.
The following passage from IVP New Testament Commentaries, quoted by biblegateway.com, interprets this passage as in keeping with the overarching motif of radical includion in Luke’s texts:
"One of Luke's great concerns is that obstacles of age (Lk 18:16), religious tradition, old or new (Lk 9:49-50; 11:52), race or ethnic origin (Acts 10:47; 11:17), or physical condition (8:36, if the eunuch were one physically) must not keep people from hearing and applying to themselves the gospel of salvation. His ideal is found in the closing phrase, indeed the closing word, of Acts: "Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ" (28:31). . . . Though Philip is taken away suddenly, the eunuch goes on his way rejoicing. For Luke and us, joy is a manifestation of a person's salvation (8:8; Lk 6:23; 10:20), particularly of reception of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:52)."
This commentary particularly draws attention to the joy felt by the Eunuch which characterizes his conversation. The following is a clip of the Alison Krause song “Down in the River to Pray,” used in the baptism scene in the Coen Brothers film, O Brother Where Art Thou:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBjwMRa_jhg&feature=PlayList&p=23532204B4AD7A0E&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=46
--Elizabeth Fels
Information on the spread of Christianity in Ethiopia can be found in these resources:
http://www.bethel.edu/~letnie/EthiopiaHomepage.html
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/acet/hd_acet.htm
Other sources:
Coogan, Michael, Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Levine, Amy-Jill. The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. New York: HarperOne, 2006.
Bible passages quoted from the New International Bible.
The events of Acts 8 occur in a context of extreme upheaval in the early Church. In the previous chapter, Luke describes the martyrdom of Stephen in what appears to be a lynching by stoning. The detail of witnesses laying their coats at the feet of Saul (who will become Paul) implies a judicial execution. In the wake of Stephen’s death, the early followers of Jesus leave Jerusalem and disperse to the countryside of Judea and Samaria (8:1). Yet as a result of the persecution, the scattered followers preach the Gospel in new areas. This passage is significant in that it describes the evangelizing of possibly the first non-Jewish converts (notes from NOAB).
Chapter 8 describes two acts of baptism. In order to contextualize the passage in this week’s lectionary, it is useful to compare it to Peter’s encounter with the Samaritans directly preceding. Samaritans were descendents from the inhabitants of Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who occupied that area after the Assyrian invaded and deported the Jewish population in 722 BCE. While Samaritans observed the Pentateuch and considered their ancestors to be the small number of Jews allowed to remain in the Northern Kingdom, Jews returning from exile did not consider them to be authentically Jewish, but rather the descendents of usurpers of land that had previously been theirs. Ezra and Nehemiah went so far as to forbid intermarriage between the two groups (NOAB, Glossary, 552). In The Misunderstood Jew, Amy-Jill Levine argues that although much biblical commentary portrays Samaritans as an oppressed minority, it would be more accurate to regard the two groups as religious rivals (Levine, 148). They shared holy texts, but observed different calendars and worshipped at different temples, as the Samaritan woman at the well indicates to Jesus. In order to recover the punch of the Good Samaritan parable, one might imagine, for example, not a homeless person helping a rich man, but Unitarian helping a Pentecostalist or vice versa.
A significance of the juxtaposition of the Ethiopian Eunuch narrative with the narrative of the Samaritans is that both depict groups outside the demographic of the Apostles’ first followers. Just as the Gospel of Luke emphasizes the role of Gentiles in Jesus’ mission, so the book of Acts shows early Christian leaders reaching across cultural boundaries in order to preach the Gospel.
“Eunuch” in the time period of Acts generally refers to a castrated man who has an official function in the home or government of a ruler. The word’s etymology comes from eune, or “bed,” and ekhein, “to keep.” Unable to have children, eunuchs may have been considered more reliable, as they could neither have children with women in the royal household nor found a rival dynasty to threaten the ruler. However, not having a family to defend them may have also put eunuchs in a position of greater vulnerability.
The passage of this week’s lection begins as follows:
26Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." 27So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. 29The Spirit told Philip, "Go to that chariot and stay near it."
30Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. "Do you understand what you are reading?" Philip asked.
31"How can I," he said, "unless someone explains it to me?" So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
Two aspects that stand out from 26-31 are Philip’s receptiveness to guidance from the Holy Spirit directing him to the Eunuch, and the Eunuch’s desire to be taught. The passage depicts Philip acting as an instrument of the Lord, approaching the chariot at the command of a divine messenger. A contrast Luke draws attention to concerns their difference in what one might call class; the Eunuch is a person of political power, in charge of the royal treasury of Ethiopia. He is leaving Jerusalem, where he acquired a scroll of Isaiah. When Philip approaches him, he is reading the text without comprehension. This section calls to mind Peter Gomes’ introduction to The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind. Gomes states that for many churchgoers, reading the Bible is like overhearing a conversation in fluent French at a neighboring table, trying, yet failing to understand with one’s high school French. However the Eunuch actives reaches out to Philip, requesting assistance.
32The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture:
"He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before the shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
33In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth."
34The eunuch asked Philip, "Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" 35Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
The passage which the Eunuch is reading is Isaiah 53:7-8. This chapter of Isaiah contains what is often called the depiction of the suffering servant, a passage that Christians have interpreted as prophesying Jesus’s suffering, vicarious atonement for human sin, and resurrection. Luke may have also intended the narrative of the Eunuch to resonate with readers familiar with God’s outreach to eunuchs expressed in Isaiah 56:3-5:
Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the LORD say,
"The LORD will surely exclude me from his people."
And let not any eunuch complain,
"I am only a dry tree."
4 For this is what the LORD says:
"To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose what pleases me
and hold fast to my covenant-
5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls
a memorial and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that will not be cut off.
Other passages that highlight the relationship between God and Ethiopia are Zeph 10.3("From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, my scattered ones, shall bring my offering"), and Psalm 68:31 (“let Ethiopia hasten to stretch out to God.”) These passages indicate the important role Africa has in the texts that make up the biblical canon.
The passage from Acts 8 continues:
36As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptized?"38And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. 40Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the Gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.
The following passage from IVP New Testament Commentaries, quoted by biblegateway.com, interprets this passage as in keeping with the overarching motif of radical includion in Luke’s texts:
"One of Luke's great concerns is that obstacles of age (Lk 18:16), religious tradition, old or new (Lk 9:49-50; 11:52), race or ethnic origin (Acts 10:47; 11:17), or physical condition (8:36, if the eunuch were one physically) must not keep people from hearing and applying to themselves the gospel of salvation. His ideal is found in the closing phrase, indeed the closing word, of Acts: "Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ" (28:31). . . . Though Philip is taken away suddenly, the eunuch goes on his way rejoicing. For Luke and us, joy is a manifestation of a person's salvation (8:8; Lk 6:23; 10:20), particularly of reception of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:52)."
This commentary particularly draws attention to the joy felt by the Eunuch which characterizes his conversation. The following is a clip of the Alison Krause song “Down in the River to Pray,” used in the baptism scene in the Coen Brothers film, O Brother Where Art Thou:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBjwMRa_jhg&feature=PlayList&p=23532204B4AD7A0E&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=46
--Elizabeth Fels
Information on the spread of Christianity in Ethiopia can be found in these resources:
http://www.bethel.edu/~letnie/EthiopiaHomepage.html
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/acet/hd_acet.htm
Other sources:
Coogan, Michael, Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Levine, Amy-Jill. The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. New York: HarperOne, 2006.
Bible passages quoted from the New International Bible.
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