This lovely book by Nikki Grimes (author) and Paul Morin (illustrator) is a poetic reimagining of Genesis 1.
Songs for the Season
These are a couple by Rend Collective that I’ve been singing lately; they have something to say that I need to hear, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Sing it from the Shackles
Rescuer
The Sermon on the Mount as gospel
Additional comments on structure:
Paying attention to the structure of the Sermon on the Mount can be difficult, because it isn’t linear in its argument, and doesn’t flow the way essays and speeches in Western culture do. As a result, there’s little agreement among scholars on its structure—or even if it has one. Some, like W. D. Davies, go so far as to conclude that it has none at all, but is merely “an agglomeration of sources and even of snippets of tradition.” This allows us to read it as a disjointed jumble of topics with little real coherence or unity.
I believe the Sermon has a strong structure which makes sense if we understand and remember the common literary structures of the Old Testament, and particularly its use of parallelism. Parallelism of various types is common in the literature of the ancient world, both for aesthetic effect and as an aid to memory—which was of great importance in those largely pre-literate cultures. The Old Testament is no exception. Most simply, we see parallelism in individual verses, such as the step parallelism (AB A’B’ pattern) of Isaiah 28:17:
I will make justice the measuring line,
and righteousness the plumb line.
In verses like Isaiah 41:9, we see an AB B’A’ pattern, called inverted parallelism or chiasm:
I took you from the ends of the earth,
and from its farthest corners I called you.
(The word “chiasm” comes from the Greek letter X (pronounced khi); if one draws lines between the parallel elements in these lines, they form an X.)
These basic forms can be extended beyond just two lines into more complex parallels.
This is especially true of inverted parallelism, which scholars like Kenneth Bailey argue is used to structure paragraphs, whole passages, and perhaps even entire biblical books. These larger forms are also commonly referred to as chiasms or chiastic structures; since the original visual metaphor is lost on this scale, however, I prefer the term “ring composition” for these texts. In such literary units, the parallelism serves a purpose beyond the aesthetic or the mnemonic: it also functions in part to shape and reinforce the message and meaning of the text. The climax of the piece typically comes not at the end but in the center section around which it turns. The opening and closing sections are next in importance because they set the theme of the composition and provide the context for its argument.
I believe the Sermon on the Mount is a ring composition, and that understanding this opens up the meaning of the text and helps us make sense of its more obscure parts. Viewed in this way, for instance, it isn’t necessary to say, “The connection of Matt. 7:1–11 (cf. Luke 6:37–38, 41–42) to the preceding context is not easy to discern,” or to conclude that Matthew 7:6 is a “detached unrelated saying,” as David L. Turner does, because the structure shows us the connections.
The Sermon on the Mount as Ring Composition
A 5:1-10 The way of the disciple: already blessed
B 5:11-16 The way of the disciple: marks of a true disciple
C 5:17-20 Thesis: Jesus fulfills the Law and the Prophets
D 5:21-37 The true application of the law (correcting misuse)
E 5:38-48 Trust in God (contrast with Gentiles)
F 6:1-6 Reward: earth vs. heaven
G 6:7-8 On prayer: trust
H 6:9-13 Lord’s Prayer
G` 6:14-15 On prayer: forgiveness
F` 6:16-24 Reward: earth vs. heaven
E` 6:25-34 Trust in God (contrast with Gentiles)
D` 7:1-6 The true application of the law (correcting misuse)
G“ 7:7-11 On prayer: trust
C` 7:12 Thesis: Jesus summarizes the Law and the Prophets
B` 7:13-23 Two ways: marks of a false disciple
A` 7:24-29 Two ways: already blessed/already cursed
E: God’s character: justice, longsuffering, ḥesed, including his provision for the world
E:` God’s character: his care for us, illustrated by his provision for the world
Lent in the Time of COVID-19
I’ve been spending a lot of time the last few weeks thinking about the fact that this pandemic season of physical distancing and isolation is a Lenten season, and trying to figure out what to do with that. I wasn’t getting a lot of traction until I read an article this week in Christianity Today‘s annual issue for pastors on Evagrius Ponticus and the sin of acedia—which is usually translated “sloth” in English, but means much more than that. I gave myself a while today to think out loud about it.
Waiting Is Not Easy!
Ah, the wit and whimsy of Mo Willems . . .
The God of Sight and Blindness
After healing the man born blind, Jesus said, “I have come into this world for judgment, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” In saying that, he was playing a variation on a theme which appears in a number of places in Scripture—the section often called “Second Isaiah,” chapters 40-55, is one prominent example—but nowhere more importantly than in two psalms, 115 and 135. These are, I believe, the key for us in understanding the language of blindness and sight in the word of God. Listen—this is Psalm 115:2-11.
Why do the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
Our God is in the heavens;
he does whatever he pleases.
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak;
eyes, but cannot see.
They have ears, but cannot hear;
noses, but cannot smell.
They have hands, but cannot feel;
feet, but cannot walk;
nor can they make a sound with their throats.
Those who make them become like them,
and so do all who trust in them.
O house of Israel, trust in the Lord!
He is their help and their shield.
O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord!
He is their help and their shield.
You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord!
He is their help and their shield.
Do you see? We become like what we worship. Idolatry produces spiritual blindness. This is what Jesus is on about: simply by being who and what he was, he revealed the truth of people’s hearts as they either drew near to him or clung hard to their idols. We don’t think of the Pharisees as idolaters, but they were; their religion—and their place in it—was their idol, and they unhesitatingly chose it over God, and so they were blinded to what was happening right in front of them.
That same reality underlies the story of Elisha and the Syrian army and God’s most remarkable act of deliverance. Please open your Bibles to 2 Kings 6, and let’s walk through that passage this morning; we’ll be looking at verses 8-23. Read more
The Promise of Deliverance
(Genesis 11:27-12:7, 15:1-18, 17:1-16; Romans 4:2-5, 16b-25; Hebrews 11:8-9a)
That’s the scale and scope of God’s plan. That’s the size of his purpose: the redemption of nothing less than everything. As we saw last week, God has been a God of deliverance from the moment our first parents sinned. There’s a popular idea that “the God of the Old Testament” is all about fire and brimstone and judgment and wrath, while Jesus and the New Testament give us a God who’s all about love and mercy and forgiveness—don’t believe it, it’s bunk. Pure tripe. Right from the first, God has been on about redemption and deliverance for those who are enslaved by sin and oppressed by death. Yes, his wrath is a real thing: it’s the wrath of the lover against anyone and anything that hurts the beloved. His wrath is against sin and death. If we cling to our sin kicking and screaming, then his wrath falls on us as well as a consequence; but if we let him work, it becomes the surgeon’s scalpel to cut us free from the power of sin and death. God is in the deliverance business—all in, full stop.
Follow Me!
Note: the video is longer than the audio as it includes a bit more than just the sermon proper.
This is the hinge of the gospel of Luke. To this point, Jesus has had a spectacular ministry career. He has established himself as a teacher who speaks with authority, he’s done spectacular miracles—everything is rolling along beautifully. And then, instead of capitalizing on his success as any smart preacher would, Jesus tossed it all aside and—as Rich Mullins put it—“set his face like a flint toward Jerusalem.” Everything that happens in Luke from now into chapter 19, in what’s commonly called the Travel Narrative, happens on the way to the cross.
Radical Followers
In Teaching a Stone to Talk, in one of my favorite paragraphs ever written by anybody anywhere, Annie Dillard writes,
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.
It’s in that spirit, I think, that we should come before this passage, because it’s at this point in the Gospel of John that things really start getting bumpy. The gospels tell a story of increasing division between Jesus and the religious folk as they move from skeptical curiosity through entrenched opposition to murderous fury—a division that Jesus doesn’t desire but also doesn’t try to prevent. In John, the major shift happens in chapters 9 through 11. The healing of the blind man in chapter 9, as Deborah showed us two weeks ago, ups the ante for the Pharisees, making him a much more alarming threat to them than he had been. The raising of Lazarus in chapter 11, which Tom will talk about in two weeks, brings the chief priests fully on board with the conviction that Jesus must be killed. And in between? In our passage this morning, we see Jesus put a wedge in the crack between himself and the Jewish leadership and bring the splitting maul down hard.
It’s important to be clear about something here: there’s a difference between being a divisive figure and being a divider. For dividers, turning people against each other is the point—it’s a means to an end, a tactic or strategy in the service of their agenda. Think Lee Atwater, James Carville, Karl Rove. Jesus didn’t desire division; he wasn’t dividing people in order to conquer them. But anyone who stands strongly for truth will be a divisive figure, both loved and hated—and sometimes by the same people at the same time. Dr. King was a divisive figure, because—like Jesus—he spoke truths that many people didn’t want to hear. Great unifiers are great compromisers; and sometimes, as with the Constitution, they compromise not only their principles but their integrity for the sake of unity.
Jesus is the light of the world, and—as John makes very clear—light divides the world into those who love the light and those who love the darkness, just by existing. Read more