Something Better

I’m teaching Hebrews again this term. Haven’t taught Hebrews in a while, and I’m having fun getting back into it. Had forgotten how elegant the writer’s Greek is. It’s not just that he uses hapax legomena (literally, “once spoken,” words that occur nowhere else in the New Testament), but it’s also his beautiful way of forming his syntax. He just puts words together elegantly. He uses inclusio (ending a thought where he began it); chiasmus (ordering thoughts in an “X” pattern); asyndeton (combining words or ideas one after the other without benefit of connecting conjunctions); and anaphora (literally, “born up,” referring to the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive clauses), just to mention a few.

Moreover, Hebrews presents what is, without a doubt, the most thorough-going homiletical commentary (called midrash in Jewish, and Jewish-Christian, thought) of the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) anywhere in the Bible. He is thoroughly at home in the Old Testament scriptures, and he expects his audience to be as well (which is no small part of the difficulty contemporary audiences have in understanding Hebrews!).

But as impressive as his Greek is and his knowledge and use of the Old Testament scriptures, that’s not what strikes me about Hebrews. Rather, it’s his pastoral theology. To be sure, Hebrews employs theological models and metaphors not frequently found in the New Testament: Christ as High Priest; the Christian life as journey, athletic contest, and pilgrimage; Christ as Pioneer; Christ as Yom Kippur sacrifice, again to name a few. But all of this high-flown language and complex theology is pressed into the service of a single pastoral concern: There ought to be a difference between “church” and “culture.” The refrain throughout Hebrews is “something better” (kreitton ti). Though we don’t know for certain what all the issues were among the believers to whom Hebrews was written, this much we know: They were experiencing hostility, alienation, ostracism, and even outright persecution from the dominant culture (the paganism of the Roman Empire) simply because they were Christians. Apparently, the price for being Christian in the culture had become so great that some were no longer willing to pay it. They longed for the good ole days when they were part of Judaism, enjoying the protection of the Roman Empire. Some, apparently, were contemplating a return to Judaism, abandoning Christianity altogether. Being Christian had made them “outsiders” and “strangers” and “foreigners on the earth,” and they didn’t like it (see Hebrews 11:13).

This is a consistent theme, not only in Hebrews, but in several New Testament documents from the same period (Ephesians and 1 Peter to mention two). It seems that once Christianity had sufficiently distinguished itself from the parent religion (Judaism), the Roman Empire, correctly perceiving the new religion as a threat to the culture, started to come down on the young movement in both subtle and overt ways. Many Christians, uncomfortable with this “resident alien” status, adopted the old adage, “In order to get along, just go along.” They blended in, fit in, accommodated, adapted, assimilated…so much so that for some Christian communities, one couldn’t really tell where “culture” stopped and “church” started. And for the writer of Hebrews it raised a question: Do “church” and “culture” really refer to the same people, just in different settings? (Fred Craddock commenting on Hebrews 11).

It was a good question. Still is. Cultural assimilation is always the challenge for the church when it tries to hold in tension being “in the world” but not “of the world.” Moreover, the church has always chafed at being a “minority movement.” Everybody likes to be popular. To be sure, we couch it in the language of evangelism (“We’re just doing whatever it takes to win people for Christ”), but the real motivation for cultural assimilation, one suspects, is survival – numerical, political, economic, cultural. And so the church settles in and settles down and snuggles up to the popular culture convinced that the only way to make it in “this world” is to look just like the world. (Elsewhere I've called this "consumer church." See my blog The Purpose-Driven Church) We assimilate, accommodate, acculturate, emulate. “You got day care; we got day care. You got Starbucks; we got Starbucks. You got a kickin’ band; we got a kickin’ band.” We’re afraid that if we ask too much, people will stop coming…and giving. Besides, there’s always a better “show” down the street if we demand too much. “Come to our church; we’ll ask nothing, demand nothing, change nothing, require nothing. Matter of fact, we look and feel just like the world out there! Come on in; you’ll feel right at home.”

Do “church” and “culture” really refer to the same people, just in different settings? And if so, what’s the point of going to church anyway? If the church is just Starbucks with a thin veneer of Christianity smeared over, why not just go to Starbucks? They’re open longer hours and take American Express.

And yet, we still go to church. We still suffer through all those shallow, silly, sophomoric Sundays hoping that maybe today might be the day when “church” emerges from “culture” and reminds us of the difference it makes to be Christian in the world. Some of us, it seems, still want something more... “something better.”

Baptist to the Bone

A reliquary (stone box containing sacred relics) was discovered last month on the Black Sea island of Sveti Ivan off the coast of Bulgaria. Inside were eight pieces of bone, including pieces of a skull, face, and a tooth. Because there is a monastery on the island which claims John the Baptist as its patron saint, the excavation leader, Kazimir Popkonstantinov, suggests that the bones might belong to the Baptist. The possibility is strengthened, he suggests, by the fact that found alongside the reliquary was a small sandstone box with a Greek inscription that said, “God, save your servant Thomas. To St. John. June 24.” June 24 is the date celebrated by Christians as the birthday of John the Baptist, and the inscription suggests that a pilgrim had come to the monastery to seek the Baptist’s blessing in the place where, he believed, John’s bones resided. (Click here for full story)

There is, in fact, a long history of “cult of relics” in which relics, including the alleged bones of saints, were collected and kept in sacred locations – sometimes in religious centers such as Rome or Constantinople (if you’ve been to Istanbul, modern Constantinople, you’ve no doubt seen the humerus on display at the Topkapi alleging to be John the Baptist’s), and sometimes at the sites associated with the saint. Of course, it’s impossible finally to vindicate these claims by modern evidentiary standards. As Popkonstantinov put it: “As far as I know there is no database with DNA profiles of the saints.” Nonetheless, because these associations are generally quite early, some as early as the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries AD, one cannot simply dismiss them as without historical value. While ancients were unencumbered with our notions of empirical evidence, they nonetheless established their own “chain of evidence” of sorts in that they erected shrines or houses of worship or monasteries or other religious structures at holy sites. The fact that these structures came to be associated so early with the person or event thereby honored or remembered constitutes physical evidence of a sort for the claim. “Of all the places they could have chosen, they chose this one,” goes the reasoning. Hence, it is probable (and when it comes to historical evidence, “probability” is the best we can ever do) that the associations are not without some merit.

The bigger issue at stake is whether, and to what degree, faith requires evidence or proof to validate it. Generally, the “group think” on this subject is both binary and polar, if not polarizing. Some say that because Christianity is a historical religion making historical claims, then if it can be shown that any one of those claims is fraudulent Christianity itself is in ruins. Others go to the other extreme and suggest that not only does faith not need evidence or proof to validate it, but the search for evidence and proof is itself counterproductive, an act of unbelief. Rudolf Bultmann, the chief proponent of this latter view, was alleged to have said: “Were they to find the bones of Jesus, my faith would be wholly unaffected.”

But faith and reason need not be enemies. It is only human to want some physical, tactile connection with the object of one’s faith. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Letters and Papers from Prison, made this very point when, writing to his parents to thank them for a package of cookies and sweets they had sent him in Tegel, he wrote: However certain I am of the spiritual bond between all of you and myself, the spirit always seems to want some visible token of this union of love and remembrance, and then material things become the vehicles of spiritual realities. I suppose it is rather like the need felt in all religions for sacraments.

While archaeology and historical research cannot and will not convince the skeptic, that fact in and of itself does not invalidate the effort. Moreover, it was Christ himself who enjoined us to love God with our minds, and not just our hearts. To be sure, proof and evidence can only take us so far down the road to faith. And it seems to be true that for him who will believe, final proof is unnecessary; but for him who will not believe, final proof is never final. But the distance between the believing heart and the doubting mind need not be as great as some suspect…or fear.

Of course, if they’d found a heated baptistery and a pair of waders….

The James ossuary (pictured above) was on display at the Royal Ontario Museum from November 15, 2002 to January 5, 2003.

Church Family

One day, a religious “know-it-all” approached Jesus and asked him to choose among the 613 commandments enjoined upon the religious of Jesus’ day (613 = 365 – one for every day of the year, plus 248 – one for every bone of the human body). Jesus captured it with two simple obligations: Love God; love your neighbor. In this claim, Jesus was reaching back to the teachers of Torah (Ex. 20:16f.; Lev. 19:18), and stretching forward to the teachers of the Church (Paul – Rom. 13:9 and James 2:8), in affirming the solidarity and unanimity of biblical voices calling for a “good neighbor policy” as an essential characteristic of the life of faith.

In Jesus’ culture, where there were no governmentally sanctioned support systems to ensure the ethical treatment of strangers, hospitality (“loving one’s neighbor”) was not just a courtesy, it was a vital part of the social fabric. I have a Christian Palestinian friend who lives in Beth Jala, a small village near Bethlehem. Every time I visit in his home, he embraces me, kisses me on both cheeks, and says, “My home is your home; my possessions are your possessions; they are yours; do with them as you will, for you are not a stranger in my house.” Of course, he doesn’t mean that literally (Don’t try to make off with his television set!), but he does mean that seriously. It is a part of his faith in God that He turns us from “strangers” into “neighbors.”

And so it is in the church of Jesus Christ. I note that one of the most frequently cited adjectives in church literature is “family.” “Come join our church family,” we’re told. “We’re like a family here,” they say. “Where you’re a member of our family,” some claim. When a congregation these days is referred to in collective fashion, it is most usually with the phrase “church family.” We mean by that, I presume, that our relationships have been formed and forged by a common history that binds us together in ways not easily accessible to those who have not shared our history and story. Two observations: (1) I find it ironic that the contemporary church should prefer this familial language for self-description in light of the fact that one of the most frequently cited critiques of the early Church by the Roman Empire was that it was anti­-family. That’s because the Christian claim upon the people of God was so complete, so radical, so absolute that it often set father against son, mother against daughter, brother against brother. In the early Church, family was not a “drop-in affair;” (2) there is no place so lonely as a family reunion when you’re not “family.” Is that why the concept of “neighbor” is so important in the Scriptures? Perhaps so.

I know this: As Christians we are commanded to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” What does that mean for the church, for you and me? I don’t know for sure. But I think it means moving out of our familiar and familial comfort zone looking for new “neighbors” to know and love, rather than huddling with our own all the time. I think it means that. I think it means inviting the stranger inside the “inner ring,” as C. S. Lewis called it. I think it means that. I think it means a warm smile, a firm handshake, a welcome pew, a place at the Table, and the kind of “inclusive love” that turns stranger into neighbor. I think it means that.

Edwin Markham’s (1852-1940), Outwitted, puts it this way:

He drew a circle that shut me out/Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout./But Love and I had the wit to win:/We drew a circle that took him in!

Sabbath*

We’d been looking forward to it for weeks – our weekend getaway to the mountains to recharge our batteries and rejuvenate our souls. After a while the business of life, no matter how necessary or otherwise rewarding, just gets redundant, repetitive, routine. We needed a break; we needed some perspective; we needed a Sabbath.

When we get that way, we usually head to our favorite place – the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The former hunting lodge of George Vanderbilt, the Inn has the rustic charm and scenic beauty that is for us a place of Sabbath – rest, refreshment and rejuvenation. It refreshes our souls…“re-souls our souls,” as the Hebrew of 2 Sam. 16:14 puts it. I love the language of that passage. David, fleeing his son, Absalom, who had usurped his throne, abandoned Jerusalem and trekked to the wilderness of Judea, most likely the oasis of En Gedi. And when he arrived at the Jordan, bone weary and dog tired, the text says, “and there he refreshed himself.” But that hardly does justice to the original Hebrew which says, “and there he re-souled his soul (Heb. vaynaphesh, nephesh being Hebrew for “soul”). That’s what the Parkway and the Inn does for us – it “re-souls our souls.”

But when we arrived on Sunday afternoon, the fog on the mountain was as thick as pea soup. You couldn’t see a thing! No driving on the Parkway visiting the scenic overlooks; no photographing wildflowers; no picking wild blueberries – just gray pea soup. We checked into our room, had dinner, and then retreated to our balcony to “enjoy the view.” We knew the mountains were there; we just couldn’t see them. For two days we stumbled around in the fog trying to gain our footing and our perspective. Then, on Tuesday morning the fog lifted and there they were – the mountains in all their regal splendor. They had been there all along. And it occurred to me that this cloudy confinement was just what we needed – vayanaphesh. It was for us Sabbath. We sat and talked and reflected with no agenda, no lists, no deadlines. The coerced confinement had enabled us to rest in the deep, biblical sense of that word – to “re-soul our souls.”

As I sat there in the foggy tranquility of a Sabbath Sunday, I couldn’t help but think of David’s song of solitude (Did he write it at En Gedi?) in Psalm 37:7:

Be still before the LORD, and wait patiently for him.

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently…

Be still before the LORD and wait…

Be still before the LORD…

Be still…

Be….

*For more on this concept, see Don Postema's Catch Your Breath: God's Invitation to Sabbath Rest