October 4: Our Place in Creation

This week’s lectionary texts: Job 1:1 and 2:1-10 or Genesis 2:18-24, Psalm 26 or Psalm 8, Hebrews 1:1-4 and 2:5-12, and Mark 10:2-16.



When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. -- Psalm 8:3-5

As someone with an amateur interest in astronomy, I have found myself thinking – on more than one occasion – about the idea behind the psalmist’s words in Psalm 8. This universe of ours is huge – indescribably, unimaginably huge. The image here, known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, gives us a glimpse of just a few of the billions of galaxies scattered through space. I’m sure most people have had the experience of peering up into a bright night sky, gazing at the stars, and thinking, “It’s beautiful, but it makes me feel so small.”

Yet one of the themes running through this week’s lectionary texts is the notion that while this universe we call home may be a staggeringly enormous place, human beings have been given an honored position by God. After all, we read in Genesis, God grants Adam the honor of naming every other living being: “So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 2:19).

Continuing in this vein, the psalmist adds, “You have given [human beings] dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas” (Psalm 8:6-8).

At first glance, passages like these can seem like an exciting license to do whatever we choose. If we are just “a little lower than God,” with dominion over all of God’s works, don’t we have free reign over the earth and its creatures? Indeed, some have interpreted such texts to mean just that.

But I would like to propose that if we believe that human beings have been granted special favor by God – special standing on this planet, or in this universe – we have likewise been tasked with the responsibility to act with great love and care towards our fellow creatures. See, for instance, Jesus’ admonition that “from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48).

We humans are lucky creatures. We live on a beautiful planet. We can speak, sing, dance, and play. We can compose incredible pieces of music or works of literature; we can engage in wonderful acts of caring and compassion. We can be agents of love and service in our families and our communities, and the world at large.

Sometimes, though, we forget that being human means that, if we're not careful, we can also be agents of cruelty, or of wastefulness and destruction. We need to be constantly aware that our actions, big or small, have consequences for ourselves, our neighbors, and our world. These days there's more talk than ever about being "green" and environmentally conscious -- and that's a terrific thing! But let's not let the ongoing dialogue about care for our fellow creatures and our planet become just background noise.

In Hebrews, we read, "For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters" (Hebrews 2:11). That's a pretty powerful image. We may be tiny in relation to the whole universe, but Christ still calls us his sisters and brothers.

Having been given such a gift, perhaps one of the best ways to respond is to think about ways that we can be a gift to our world -- whether by making an effort to eat locally, adopting a rescue animal, composting our kitchen scraps, riding a bike to work, or any of the myriad other ways to take care of creation.


For a sobering look at how much of an impact our lifestyle can have on the earth, check out this footprint quiz.

Photo credit here.

Sept 27: Vashti and Esther

Earlier this year, Jonathan Page of Memorial church in an interview describes pros and cons of following the lectionary during the church calendar year. A benefit of a pre-set path of readings is securing a level of diversity. Rather than returning to readings one is most comfortable with, pastors link in to a pattern which ensures that each week, readings will come from Hebrew Scripture, the New Testament, the Psalms, and the Gospels. This built-in structure creates an element of universality as churches in different geographical areas follow the same readings, and pastors are not faced with the temptation to keep circling around their favorite passages.

However, a drawback of reading the Bible through the lectionary is that so-called minor characters may end up getting short shrift. Instead of reading a book from beginning to end, as readers may well do who follow the daily lectionary, often the passages considered most central, and thus most well-known, form the lectionary text for worship. On this fall schedule, the book of Esther appears once, this upcoming week; later the book of Ruth will be read over the course of two weeks. This has the result that congregations focus on the clearest protagonists, in this case Mordecai and Esther. However, in this case the character Vashti is described as an intriguing counterpart to Esther, and this week I would like to focus on how this character is presented in the text.

The book of Esther stands out in Scripture for having two distinct parts, which a translation into a modern language initially conceals. According to the New Oxford Annotated Bible notes, the Esther manuscript which is written in Hebrew is dated to the Hellenistic period of approximately the fourth-third century BCE, before tension between Jews and Gentiles worsened during the period of the Maccabeans. Because unlike figures such as David and Solomon, the lives of major characters in the text are not confirmed by non-Biblical texts; for example, Persian history does not mention figures such as Vashti and Esther.

For this reason the text is described as a novella, not a text whose original audience would understand it as purporting to record history exactly. Ahasuerus is possibly King Xerxes I, whose wife was Amestris, and no mention of a Vashti or Esther (Hadassah is the Jewish name) is made in Persian royal history. One can conclude that the book of Esther was written to make a point about justice triumphing against all odds, and “. . . paradoxically, the need for the oppressed to act shrewdly and boldly for that justice to prevail” (708 HB). This text reflects the work of a writer familiar with Persian customs and language, yet it does not mention terms central to other Hebrew Scripture: “The Persian king, for instance, is mentioned 190 times, but the God of Israel not once; nor are such basic Jewish themes as the Law, covenant, prayer, dietary regulations, or Jerusalem. Because fate is an acknowledged factor in the story, some readers suggest that God, though hidden, is arranging the events” (708 HB).

Strikingly, when the text was translated into Greek in the Septuagint for Diaspora Jews, 107 verses were added. The added verses are not accepted as canonical by Jews (708 HB). However, a possible motivation for the added verses would be to make the story have a more explicitly religious theme. The Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible lists additions to the Book of Esther here.

Michael Coogan summarizes how these additions change the nature of the original Hebrew text:

“The Greek version of the book of Esther adds repeated references to God guiding events and includes lengthy prayers by Mordecai and Esther, making them both more pious than they are in the Hebrew version. Esther is now an observant Jew, who fears God and keeps his commandments, hates that she sleeps with one who is uncircumsized, and apparently observes the dietary laws” (Coogan, 530, without pg references).

This text plays a major cultural role in modern-day Judaism, serving as the basis for Purim, a holiday that celebrates the deliverance of the Jews from their enemies. Christian communities celebrate Esther as an example of a woman who liberated her people, risking her life by approaching the king without an official invitation. The lectionary passage from this week includes the speech she makes to the king, begging that the lives of her people the Jews be spared:

So the king and Haman went to dine with Queen Esther, and as they were drinking wine on that second day, the king again asked, "Queen Esther, what is your petition? It will be given you. What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be granted."
Then Queen Esther answered, "If I have found favor with you, O king, and if it pleases your majesty, grant me my life—this is my petition. And spare my people—this is my request. For I and my people have been sold for destruction and slaughter and annihilation. If we had merely been sold as male and female slaves, I would have kept quiet, because no such distress would justify disturbing the king.” (7:1-4).
However the depictions of vengeance against enemies has also been troubling to modern audiences. The letters written as a result of Esther’s speech justify killing of women and children: “By these letters the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to assemble and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, with their children and women, and to plunder their goods . . .” (8:11). According to NOAB, “the bloodthirsty language, however, derives from the story’s symmetric pattern of reversals, not from any historical reality. Furthermore, the Hebrew version of Esther, in contrast to the Greek version, does not view all Gentiles negatively” (HB 708-709).

Finally, an interesting aspect of modern Esther feminist commentary includes a focus on the character of Vashti. The role Vashti plays in the text is ostensibly small: her refusal to appear before the king and his colleagues while they are drinking during a banquet, possibly naked, causes her to lose her position as queen and sets off the chain of events bringing Esther to power. Writers such as Elizabeth Wurtzel see in her refusal to appear as the “entertainment” at a banquet an example of a woman refusing to submit to patriarchal gender norms. In his essay “Purim: Vashti as a Feminist Hero,” Rabbi Arthur Waskow at the Shalom Center writes,

“My own reading of the Megillah is that it is made up of two intertwined jokes -- very powerful, and in one case bloody, but jokes nevertheless. The second one is the one we all have learned -- what Haman wants to do to the Jews is what happens to him, and he brings it on his own head. That's the bloody joke. The FIRST one (it starts earlier in the story) is that Ahasuerus's decision that no woman is going to tell him what to do puts into motion the train of affairs that ends by his doing EXACTLY what Esther tells him to do. Structurally, this is the same joke as the first one.

There is even one Rabbinic midrash (from a solitary forward-looking man) that the Memucan who advises the king to do Vashti in is --- woddayaknow??!! -- really HAMAN!! And indeed the text hints strongly -- see the similarity between the "people scattered throughout the country who obey their own laws" as the Jews and applying this to Memucan's fear of women in the same way -- that anti-Semitism and anti-feminism are deeply intertwined.”

Complete texts for this week’s lectionary include Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; Psalm 124; James 5:13-20; and Mark 9:38-50.

Sources include The Old Testament: a Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures by Michael Coogan.

Photo credit here.

Sept. 20: the Anonymous Exorcist

"Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."
"Do not stop him," Jesus said. "No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward."

The concept of exorcism is beguiling. The passage from this week’s Gospel of Mark reading features the so-called Anonymous Exorcist, also referred to in Luke 9: 49-50. The reader is never given a picture of the exorcist in action. We only learn of him through indirect speech: “Teacher,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name . . .” Yet this brief passage raises significant questions, including: what role does exorcism play in the Gospel of Mark? How do the exorcist narratives—there are three more—illuminate Jesus Christ as portrayed by Mark? And finally, on a practical level, what does exorcism entail?

Etymology of the modern-day word “exorcism” is described here:

“. . . driving out (an evil spirit) by prayers, ceremonies . . . from Late Latin exorcizare, from Greek exorkizein, "exorcise, to bind by oath" (ex-, "out of" + horkizein, "to cause" or "to make a person swear, to administer an oath to", from horkos, "oath"; also literally, limitation, binding). As noted above, "oath" is to be found at the etymological heart of exorcise, a term going back to the Greek word exorkizein, meaning "to swear in, to take an oath by, to conjure", and "to exorcise".

In this particular verse, Mark seems to drawing a parallel between Jesus and Moses, as portrayed in the book of Numbers in Hebrew Scripture. After the Israelites complain about life in the wilderness, Moses in turn asks Yahweh for relief. Yahweh’s answer is as follows, asking Moses to gather seventy elders of Israel: “I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself (11:17). After Yahweh extends the spirit that was give to Moses to the elders, Moses is informed by a young man:

“Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. . . But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them! And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp. (27-30).

When applying this passage to a congregation today, one can make an interpretive move that the editors of the New Oxford Annotated Bible make: “The movement is not to be defensive or controlling” (NT 75). Thus this passage can be read as a strong sign, not only to passively wait for healing to arrive from an outside source, but to actively take initiative. Virtually all we know about the Anonymous Exorcist was that he was not one of the Twelve Disciples, yet he was successful in driving out demons in Jesus’ name. John and his companions do not tell the Exorcist to stop because his work is fraudulous, or ineffective, thus giving their group a bad reputation. They object merely because he is using Christ’s name, yet not “one of us.”

Jesus’ response is to legitimize the Exorcist who he has never met or seen. He describes doing good works as a method for in effect drawing near to him: “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.”

Thus, it is possible to read the Anonymous Exorcist as a model for would-be leaders whose voices have historically not been heard. Both Jesus, and Moses in the parallel passage, rebuke their followers for drawing too tight a fence around their communities of faith. It is also notable that the Exorcist is neither invited, nor forced, to join Jesus and the disciples. The narrative leaves the reader with the view that he continues to do his work offstage, with Jesus’ commendation. The passage can in this regard be read as pointing to different but parallel spiritual paths.

One great source for readers interested in more information about exorcism is Eric Sorenson’s Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity (Mohr Siebeck, 2002).

The author brings a sustained focus on linguistics and historical breadth to this specific study. He contextualizes exorcisms depicted in the New Testament with similar passages in the Hebrew Scriptures--drawing on the traditions of prophets Daniel and Ezekiel in particular--as well as in non-Biblical texts from Mesopotamia and the Greco-Roman world from this time period. He also pays particular attention to the rich and varied Greek and Hebrew words depicting, not just exorcism narratives, but instances in which a figure receives "the spirit of the Lord."

A strength of this book is the extent to which the author reads exorcist narratives side by side, putting them into conversation with each other. Explaining that the Gospel of Mark offers the first existing evidence of exorcism in the Christian tradition, Sorenson how, unlike Luke, Mark uses different verbs for Jesus’ exorcisms that the verbs that describe healing (Sorenson, 135-136). He focuses on three narratives in Mark in which Jesus performs an exorcism: Mark 1:23-28, the man in synagogue (also in Luke); Mark 5:9, the Gerasene demon named Legion; and Mark 9:21, 29, the speechless boy (both in Matthew and Luke.)

Sorenson argues that the exorcism scenes in Mark are not written with the goal of informing others how to repeat them—in other words, they are not “How To” narratives. The words Jesus says are written in the Greek imperative tense (138), but there is no one formula highlighted as singularly effective. Rather, the success of the exorcisms comes from Jesus’ spiritual authority. Sorenson writes,

"In contrast to the Marcan healings which can employ several distinct actions, the exorcisms in Mark are simply wrought, often performed only a command or a rebuke. . . For this reason the Gospel of Mark can be immediately distinguished from the Mesopotamian ritual manuals . . . Further, Mark’s austere descriptions set Jesus’ technique in contrast, perhaps deliberately so, with the elaborate methods known to have existed for other exorcists outside of the New Testament" (Sorenson, 136).

Sorenson also explores similarity between the exorcism and healing narratives, as indicative of divine agency relieving suffering:

“Aggressiveness pervades Jesus’ and the disciples’ interactions with the hostile demonic world. The synoptic authors work on the assumption that exorcism reveals the exorcist as a mediator of divine power that constrains and overthrows and equally aggressive evil that has willfully caused innocent people to suffer” (Sorenson, 138).

The photo credit can be found here, and bibliographical (and ordering) information on Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity can be found here.

The complete lectionary readings for this weeks are Proverbs 31:10-31 or Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22; Psalm 1 or Psalm 54; James 3:13 - 4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37 (optional Hebrew reading: Jeremiah 11:18-20).

--Elizabeth Fels

Sept 13: Freedom of Religion in the Military

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels." (Mark 8:34-38)

Although the phrase “take up your cross” for modern audiences has an obvious connotation with Christianity, the original audience to whom this comment was directed would have understood it as a reference to capital punishment for political rebels under the Roman Empire. The New Oxford Annotated Bible glosses the Gospel passage from this week’s lectionary thus:

“. . . the Romans used crucifixion as a gruesome means of terrorizing subject peoples by hanging rebels and agitators from crosses for several days until they suffocated to death. They required condemned provincials to carry the crossbeam on which they were about to be hung” (73 NT).

In this passage, Jesus, while inviting onlookers to join him and his disciples, warns them that, like he himself, they should be willing to “take up their cross.” He thus seems to equate discipleship with a commitment that transcends basic survival mechanisms: faith worth having is something for which one should be willing to risk life on earth. This is a teaching that is repeated in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Matthew 16:24-28 reads,

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

The wording in Luke 9:23 is almost identical:

Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.’

The word “daily” seems to suggest that the sentence is intended as a metaphor, with the phrase “take up the cross” symbolizing willingness to undergo hardship on behalf of one’s faith. For the first-century audience, this symbol would specifically resonate within the political realm. Extended information on what kinds of people were crucified during this time period and why can be found in the Jewish Encyclopedia here:

Citing Aurelius Victor Cæsar among other sources, this article explains that, while “a Jewish court could not have passed a sentence of death by crucifixion without violating the Jewish law,” crucifixion was part of the Roman penal code. Although Roman citizens were exempt from this punishment, it was proscribed for

“piracy, highway robbery, assassination, forgery, false testimony, mutiny, high treason, rebellion (see Pauly-Wissowa, "Real-Encyc." s.v. "Crux"; Josephus, "B. J." v. 11, § 1). Soldiers that deserted to the enemy and slaves who denounced their masters ("delatio domini") were also punished by death on the cross.”

Recently I had a conversation about conflicts between religious morals and obligations imposed by one’s national citizenship. The Iraq war is an event that clearly has deeply divided American religious communities, with practitioners citing the values they have from their Christian faith to justify either supporting, or opposing, the war.

In an episode of the now-syndicated Boston Legal, a character refuses to pay taxes as an act of protest against the Iraq war. When she is prosecuted by the Federal Government, the show’s main lawyer defends her in court. An acquaintance argued that if one accepts the proposition that the Iraq war is unjust, whether according to international law or the personal moral convictions of an individuals, the act of paying taxes in effect causes you to contribute to a cause you find unjust, as taxes support US military operations.

Regardless of whether or not one believes that going to war in Iraq was morally justified, recent narratives about soldiers deserting citing “moral” beliefs raise important questions about the extent to which freedom of religion is permitted by the State. To name one example, Sgt. Ricky Clousing, a born-again Christian from Washington State trained as an interrogator, underwent a crisis of conscience after deployment in Iraq in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. An article posted on The American View describes Clousing’s dilemma thus:

"Sgt. Ricky Clousing went to war in Iraq because, he said, he believed he would simultaneously be serving his nation and serving God. But after more than four months on the streets of Baghdad and Mosul interrogating Iraqis rounded up by American troops, Sergeant Clousing said, he began to believe that he was serving neither.

He said he saw American soldiers shoot and kill an unarmed Iraqi teenager, and rode in an Army Humvee that sideswiped Iraqi cars and shot an old man’s sheep for fun — both incidents Sergeant Clousing reported to superiors. He said his work as an interrogator led him to conclude that the occupation was creating a cycle of anti-American resentment and violence. After months of soul-searching on his return to Fort Bragg, Sergeant Clousing, 24, failed to report for duty one day."

Clousing refused to leave the army on the pretense of claiming to be mentally unstable, homosexual, or a conscientious objector:

“(He) said he could not file for conscientious objector status because he could not honestly say he was opposed to all war. . . He tried to talk with his church friends in Washington. Some understood him, but others said he had to support the government because of a biblical injunction to ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.’”

After deserting the army and turning himself in, Clousing was sentenced to three months in prison. Under the current Uniform Code of Military Justice, the maximum penalty for desertion during time of war is death. A video of Clousing explaining his reasons for desertion can be found here. According to Military.com, there were 4,698 army deserters from 2007 alone.

Narratives such as this one raise questions such as the following: should the United States allow soldiers to leave the army under the 1st Amendment ostensibly granting freedom of religion, if soldiers claim that participating in the military violates their religious beliefs? Readers with comments are welcome to share thoughts.

Lectionary readings for this week include Proverbs 1:20-33; Psalm 19; James 3:1-12; and Mark 8:27-38.

Photo source here.

--Elizabeth Fels

Sept. 6: Rod and Serpent

What does it profit, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James:2:14-17)

In the national health care debate, both those supporting an affordable public option and those opposing expanding the government’s role in health care have cited Christian values in service of their claims. The book of James, from which the next series of New Testament lectionary readings comes, speaks to questions concerning what is the right role of Christians and Churches toward those in extreme need of aid.

The passage for this week, James 2:1-17, is one of the core texts from the works vrs. faith debate. Of the four figures in the NT called “James,” the author is believed to have been the brother of Jesus, a leader of the Jerusalem church who was martyred in the 60s AD. After James’ death the book of James was sent in letter form to Diaspora churches in approximately the 80s or 90s. Thus the goal of the letter was to provide leadership and affirmation of core values to churches outside of Jerusalem.

The letter is written in a rhetorical style using exhortations and the imperative tense on topics of moral instruction. Thus it can be described as following in the tradition of Hebrew wisdom literature, for example Proverbs, the Wisdom of Solomon, and Jesus’s sayings in Mark and Luke (NOAB 389). James’ exhortation of his audience not to differentiate between the poor and rich, using concrete, direct images, resonates with Jesus’s narratives showing social expectations reversed, such as the Sermon on the Mount:

For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your synagogue, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take more notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? (James 2:2-4).

In this particular passage, James makes a direct appeal to Jewish law to justify his strong social justice message against class prejudice: You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Here James is referencing social legislation in the Torah, in particular Leviticus 19:18. This is arguably the passage Jesus quotes in Gospel narratives: You shall not . . . bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. Thus the book of James demonstrates how core values proclaimed by the church in Jerusalem carried on Jesus and the apostles’ Jewish heritage.

Nora Becker describes passages from other NT books that reference James in a helpful commentary here. She references James extending the mission of the early Church beyond the immediate community:

‘Brothers, listen to me, Simon has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God’ (Acts 15:12-14, 19).

The book of James was condemned by Martin Luther as an “epistle of straw,” for ostensibly departing from Paul’s claim that justification, or being in the right relationship with God, comes from faith alone (NOAB 387). Bob Chochola makes the argument that faith vs. works is a false dichotomy here. Chochola writes,

“James would ask, “What good is it? If you say you have faith, but don’t show it by your actions?” This is a good question indeed. What comes through loud and clear in the Book of James is that action indeed puts your money where your mouth is. He attacks the notion that being a Christian is simply a matter of accepting a few spiritual truths without experiencing any real change in behavior or thinking.”

In national health care debate, the question of how to demonstrate one’s faith through actions has strongly shaped discourse in religious communities. On one hand, politicians and constituents who oppose increased government spending in the field of health care and the current bill use religious rhetoric to support their position. For example, a site called “Christian Active Media” lists a polemic article by Peter Fleckenstein. It is a representative summary of arguments against health care reform, the sound bites of which can be heard in Town Hall coverage. Among them:

“Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient’s health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.”

The writer rails against expansion of government in the Offices of the Surgeon General, including “Public Health Services, Minority Health, Women’s Health.” The kind of rhetoric used to oppose sex education in public schools is also used to oppose health care services in schools: “PG 994 School Based Health Clinics will be integrated into the school environment. Say Government Brainwash!”

On the other side of the aisle, Steven Waldman of Beliefnet.com argues explicitly that Obama’s efforts to lead health care reform should be “less Christian.” By this term he means that the value emphasized most should be justice, not compassion.

Waldman argues that appealing to altruism alone won’t build the consensus needed to cover the 40 million uninsured Americans. In particular, he calls attention to the insurance industry excluding would-be customers due to “pre-existing conditions,” documented elsewhere here and here.

Waldman recommends emphasizing justice rather than compassion alone as a value motivating reform:

--A system is immoral if it allows (or encourages) insurance companies to turn you away exactly when you need help most. (Thanks to exclusions for "pre-existing conditions.") That's unfair.
--A system is immoral if it allows (and incentivizes) insurance companies to write policies full of fine print that leaves shocked patients with devastating bills. That's dishonest.
--A system is immoral if it means that losing one's job means not only losing income but the ability to take your child to the doctor. That's cruel.

Finally, an affiliate of Jewish News describes communication between the Obama administration and Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders regarding the values informing the push for health reform here.

Ezra Klein is a Jewish blogger I admire with the Washington Post who covers health care reform extensively.

If readers would like to share which arguments on this topic they find most effective and why, please feel free to comment. Other lectionary passages for this week are Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 or Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 125 or Psalm 146; and Mark 7:24-37.

Rod and Serpent graphic credit.

--Elizabeth Fels

August 30: Gender-bending in the Song of Songs

In the film The Wedding Crashers, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play two young men who pretend to be guests at weddings in order to attend the lavish receptions. In one scene the two characters, seated in church just before the Bible reading at a wedding, place a bet on whether the text will be from Song of Songs or I Corinthians 13. Vince Vaughn makes the losing bet on Song of Songs, grumbling as the reader begins, “Love is patient, love is kind . . .”

This scene indicates the extent to which the Song of Songs has become a familiar fixture in American culture. The verses from this week’s lectionary reading, 2:8-13 may be familiar to those of us who have been on the wedding circuit this summer. The Song was also a source of inspiration for Chagall, who created paintings intended as its illustrations:

8 Listen! My lover!
Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
9 My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Look! There he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattice.
10 My lover spoke and said to me,
"Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, and come with me.
11 See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
12 Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree forms its early fruit;
the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
my beautiful one, come with me.



The authorship of the Song of Songs is unknown. Although Solomon is referenced in the text, words which may have a Greek, Persian, or Arabic origin have caused scholars to date the Song to the post-exilic period (NOAB, 959). In her essay “Ten Things Every Feminist Should Know about the Song of Songs,” appearing in The Song of Songs: a Feminist Companion to the Bible,” Cheryl Exum begins by acknowledging the extent to which this book is beloved by feminist theologians. She writes:

“At first glance, the Song of Songs seems to be a woman’s text: it boldly celebrates female desire, and the behavior of the woman . . . does not conform to the social norms we can construct from the rest of the Bible. A woman initiates sexual encounters; a woman roams the streets looking for her lover; a woman speaks openly about her desire; there is no indication that the couple or couples we meet in the Song are married, yet they are clearly lovers, at least on the level of double entendre.”

Alicia Ostriker is a Jewish feminist theologian who finds positive meaning in the Song. In her own essay, “A Holy of Holies,” she approaches the Song as both a love poem and an allegory of God’s love for Israel: “It is no accident that every mystical tradition on earth speaks of God as the beloved . . . If elsewhere we must divide the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular,’ that division is annihilated in the Song.”

Ostriker goes on to characterize the Song as a “countertext” within the biblical canon. By this term, she means a text that does not portray and affirm hierarchical relationships between God and humans on the one hand, and men and women, on the other that are found in other books of the Bible. She writes that the song “. . . offers and extraordinarily egalitarian image of mutual love and desire” that can lead the reader to “the possibility of a mutually delighting love-relationship with God, which is not contingent on obedience or subordination” (Ostriker, 37).

She calls attention to how the speaker invites her lover, not to her father’s house, but to her mother’s house, in 3:4 and 8:2; the images imply the mother may have taught her daughter about sexuality. Ostriker also reads the refrain line to the Daughters of Jerusalem not to “awaken love until it is ready” as an image of romantic love in opposition to marriage arranged by parents for reasons of economics or social standing—or a relationship in which one partner is dominant (Ostriker, 46).

Exum and Ostriker both focus on the passage 5:2-8, in which the female speaker seeks her beloved and is beaten:

I sought him, but did not find him;
I called him, but he gave no answer.
Making their rounds in the city
the sentinels found me;
they beat me, they wounded me,
they took away my mantle,
those sentinels of the walls.
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
if you find my beloved,
tell him this:
I am faint with love.

Ostriker reads this passage as a plea for greater inclusion for women within their religious tradition. Coming from a tradition of theology in which women’s religious experience is emphasized, Ostriker connects this passage to ostracizing of women in modern times. She gives examples of how women are not always allowed to act as equal participants in worship: “Women who dare to pray aloud at the Kotel (the Western or ‘Wailing’ Wall at Jerusalem) have been spat on, cursed, called whore. . . . Although nothing in halakhah (rabbinic law) actually forbids these women’s activity, the Supreme Court of Israel pronounces that ‘custom’ should be observed” (Ostriker, 53).

Cheryl Exum reads the Song as certainly gender-bending, but not necessarily as the strong image of gender equality with regard to love, sex, and the body that Ostriker does. In her essay, she begins by stating that the Song does not purport to describe an actual woman—it is a series of love poems and an artistic creation. She goes through possible scenarios of authorship, including David Cline’s suggestion that the Song is a male fantasy: a male writer creating his ideal dream woman (Exum, 28).

Expressing surprise that a culture with strict regulations concerning female sexuality (insofar as early Biblical texts indicate) would produce the Song, Exum then describes how a poet might create an imaginative vision of what life might be like outside social norms. She highlight explicit gender-bending in the Song’s imagery: the woman is often described using military imagery such as warrior shields, a defensive wall, towers, while the man’s body is compared to ivory, sapphires, and alabaster. Exum quotes Daphne Merkin: “Any putatively male love object described with . . . such a decidedly female sense of adornment presents ripe territory for study” (Exum, 30).

Exum focuses on currents that run counter to the image of egalitarian passion. She points out the elusiveness of the male lover who bounds over hills, but comes and goes—in the beating scene, the woman is searching for her lover who knocks on her door but then abruptly leaves. She questions, “Does his freedom of movement reflect a social reality that she has internalized, since that is how she thinks of him?” (Exum, 30). Responding to theologians who read the beating scene as a figment of the woman’s dream, Exum wonders whether the poet wants to depict a woman with a sense of threat, if this is what she dreams about. Her final conclusion affirms the Song’s complex portrait of desire:

“Our protagonist is assertive, determined, and, not least important, vulnerable. This combination makes her an irresistible subject for further feminist investigation. Feminist readers of this Best of Songs might to well to say to the ancient authors and traditionalists who preserved it for us, ‘Thanks for your text, and I’ll decide how to read it.’” (Exum, 35).

Other lectionary readings for this week include Psalm 45: 1-2, 6-9; James 1:17-27; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

--Elizabeth Fels

Source: Brenner, Athalya, and Fontaine, Carole R., eds. The Song of Songs: a Feminist Companion to the Bible. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.

Chagall photo credits here and here.

August 23: Vampires

56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. (John 6)

I was told in preparation for the AP Literature exam, “if you don’t know what to write, argue that the central figure is intended to be read as a Christ-symbol.” Milking one’s religious heritage to score points on a test is not necessarily the best advice, apart from the fact that this strategy would work better for some characters than others. Tom Robinson: sure; Hamlet: stretching it. However, for centuries artists have incorporated central elements of the Christian narrative—atonement, resurrection, eternal life—
in narratives about redemption. One part of pop culture that explicitly appropriates, and interrogates, narrative elements from the Gospels is the HBO Vampire series True Blood. The show is based on the novels of Charlaine Harris, a senior warden at her town’s Episcopal Church.

One of the most interesting aspects of what one might call the Christian narrative thread in True Blood is its interrogation of revenge. While the show follows basic vampire genre conventions in showing lots of fangs and gore, in addition to hand-to-hand combat and chase scenes, the show’s major source of tension lately has not been “Will she escape?” or “What’s behind that door?” but, “Should one return violence with violence?”

In the world of the show, the production of synthetic blood has allowed vampires to come out of the closet, so to speak, living openly with humans. There is a thinly veiled extended metaphor between vampires and homosexuals. For example, at one point the characters see on television news that Vermont has just starting recognizing marriages between vampires and humans. In another instance, a young man introduces his vampire girlfriend to his mother; although the girlfriend is eager for acceptance, the young man’s mother announces that she will never condone her son’s relationship with a partner “who can’t have children.”

The last shows focus on rising tension between a self-identified Christian community called The Fellowship of the Sun and the vampires of Dallas, Texas, who are attempting to integrate into society or mainstream. The head pastor of the Fellowship, Steve Newlin, claims that his father was killed by a vampire, and sets the eradication of vampires as the goal of his church. “We are fighting for God’s green earth, and daytime, and Christmas, and Easter eggs, and all that is sacred and good! We are fighting for…human rights, human rights,” the pastor and his wife claim on national TV—when asked to justify why their church armed a suicide bomber who killed both vampires and humans.



The character who my former colleague would identify as the “Christ-symbol” is a 2000-year old vampire named Godric, the Sheriff of the Dallas vampire community. Godric does not purport to be divine, or to assist humans in building a relationship with God. What he does do is explicitly take a stance against the use of violence to end violence, or returning evil with evil. When the Fellowship attempts to kidnap a vampire to be killed in a gruesome ceremony, Godric reasons that they will not stop until they succeed, and accordingly allows himself to be captured.

Two vampire characters that embody different ways of responding to violence are Godric and Stan. Dressed in a black cowboy hat and rippling with muscle, Stan demands that vampires respond to the Fellowship simply by killing them—after all, the vampires are immeasurably stronger—and organizes a vampire squad to attack the church. Godric however appears in time to do what one might call conflict mediation. He asks the humans whether they are prepared to die for their leader, and in response they calm down and slowly exit. Losing respect among vampires who long to take revenge through violence does not deter Godric.

While I will not give away the final plot turn, the most recent show entitled “I Will Rise Up” brings the Christian narrative thread in True Blood to a resolution. In so doing, the show offers a modern interpretation of questions at the core of the crucifixion narratives: what does it mean for a single individual to atone for the wrongdoing of a group? What are plausible motivations to not demand eye for an eye and return violence with violence? In presenting scenarios in which wronged groups and individuals decline to take revenge, and in explicitly integrating Christian imagery into its plotlines, True Blood illustrates the practice of mercy and the great personal cost that can accompany it.

The complete lectionary readings for this week are John 6:56-69; Ephesians 6:10-20; 1 Kings 8:(1,6,10-11), 22-30, 41-43; and Psalm 84.

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