Monday is complete review for final in class/course evaluations.
Wed. is study groups in class
Fri is exam. Servicerproject assignments due
WEEK AFTER THAT, week of 4/30:
MON: This is our 'official ' exam time. But remember we took exam previous week.
However, if you prefer to wait till today, that's fine; but let me know, as you'll have to take the exam in the ASC,
We are required to meet for this session, so we will have a party in the room.
Adventure/Missions due unless prior arrangements made,
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FOUR OPTIONS (pick one) if you want to skip a question on the final.
(one of the questions starred):
1)By Monday class time, post underneath this, in the comments section, the link to a song (YouTube video) you challenge me to find something Christian to give a short devotional on on 4/30. If you don't have one of the accounts, sign in as 'anonymous," but be sure to give your name in the post.
2)Read this article (short summary of part of it here) on "apostolic genius" and write a 2-3 paragraph summary or response to it by Mon 4/23 (email or bring to class
3)Stop by this weekend (Fri 7-9:30pm or Sat 8:30 to 3:30, and be prepared to give a 2 minute "Who is Jesus to me?" testimony to a JCC class I am teaching for older students (Degree Completion) in Marpeck 103 (Note; I said Marpeck 107 in class, but it's 103.
4)Bring a stack of magazines (you don't need) to class Monday
Well, if you were in 'class' today at St. Arbuck's..
And if you noted on the class schedule the topic was "The
Church in EPIC Times"..
You might get that one of the reasons we took this field trip was to follow up on our discussion from last class (see post on 4/16) and get some help on question #14 on the final exam.
the "modern" and "Gutenberg" world (RRWI=Rational, Representative. Word-Based, Individual)
-the "postmodern' and "Google" world (EPIC=Experiential, Participatory, Image-Driven)
Leonard Sweet not only created the EPIC acronym, but wrote the nook, "The Gospel According to Starbucks," in which he suggests that the church can learn a lot about our current EPIC (Experiential, Participatory, Image-Driven, Connectivity) culture.
In what ways do you see Starbucks as living out an EPIC ethic?
Read some excerpts and summaries of his book, see this and this.
Now note Van DerLaan's slideshow on Greek vs. Hebrew culture here and here.
Audiohere
Finally, remember our conversations about bounded sets and centered sets.
Could these three grids collate? See this article (scroll to part C), for example, on sets and Greek/Hebrew.
RRWI/Gutenberg EPIC/Google
Greek Hebrew
Bounded Set Centered Set
Sweet suggests that we are living in the century (21)that is most like Jesus' century (1st) than any before.
Times are EPIC for church in culture.
Churches in our area even meet at Starbuck's.
No wonder they call it St. Arbuck's..
Today we are walking through much of question #14 on the final.
We introduced the topic of "church and culture" in a lighthearted way by watching this pastor's prayer at a NASCAR race, as it raises all kinds of issues about how we engage "secular culture. (:
>>First, we picked up the RRWI /EPIC Discussion that we ran out of time for on 4/11. But on that post and right here below is the link to what RRWI /EPIC means:
See my article pp.. 38-39 here (or as a PDF pp. 36-37 here)
>>Secondly, we watched "Salt of the Earth," which raised fascinating quetions about church and culture.
Summary:
The Salt of the Earth
The City of Sardis
Located on Mount Tmolus in southern Turkey, the city of Sardis stood at
the crossroads of Asia Minor, the most prosperous, powerful, fertile,
and pagan province of the entire Roman Empire. First-century Sardis had a
unique blend of residents: faithful Jews and Christians who worshiped
God blended with influential pagans who worshiped the Roman emperor and
gods such as Artemis and Cybele.
Sardis is of particular interest because it apparently had a very
visible Christian church and because the apostle John issued a strong
warning to them. "I know your deeds," he wrote, "you have a reputation
of being alive but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is
about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of
my God" (Rev. 3:1-2).
What led John to such say strong words to this community of faith in
Sardis? Was it because they were slowly compromising what they believed
with the pagans among them? Or where there other reasons that John's
words became such a powerful teaching for those believers who chose to
live at the crossroads of their world?
John's Warning
Sardis was probably occupied first by the Hittites, and then by the
Lydians. About 550 BC, the most famous Lydian king, Croesus (known as
the richest man in the world) was besieged by Cyrus the Persian.
Croesus, who had become apathetic and lazy, fortified himself in the
acropolis of Sardis, and Cyrus could not capture him.
One afternoon, a Persian soldier named Lagoras watched a Lydian soldier
sneak down the back wall of Sardis in order to retrieve his helmet that
had fallen. Deducing that a secret trail existed, Lagoras told Cyrus,
whose army snuck up that little path at night, surprised the Lydian
army, and conquered the city. Croesus hadn't been as careful about the
city's defense as he should have been, and he and his people paid for
that mistake with their lives.
This story relates closely to the strong metaphor the apostle John used
when he warned the church of Sardis: "I know your deeds; you have a
reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up!... But if you do
not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what
time I will come to you." (Rev. 3:1-3).
Given the history of their city, the Christians in Sardis understood
this imagery all too well. John, drawing on this common experience of
Sardis, was probably implying that they needed to stay watchful and
alert in order to maintain their Christian walk. Dr. George Barna,
contemporary Christian market research analyst, produces evidence
supporting his belief that the biggest problem in modern Christianity is
spiritual complacency. Similarly, John was warning the people of Sardis
to be careful to stay watchful, alert, and alive to what was going on
in their lives, otherwise they might become apathetic or make a mistake
that would cause their witness to a watching world to collapse.
The Shops
On each side of the wide paved road running through Sardis were rows of
great Greek columns, spaced equally apart. From those columns to the
wall beyond was a roof-a shade or a place out of the rain or sun. Beyond
the wall would be a number of doorways that led into small shops,
almost like a modern shopping mall. But
what archaeologists have found on that street in Sardis is fascinating.
In a number of the shops, Jewish or Christians symbols;crosses,
menorahs, rings with crosses in them, and even the "fish- symbol" have
been discovered. A number of defaced pagan articles have been found. In
one instance, a pagan goddess had been removed from the back of a
lion-shaped lamp, which had been patched and reused. In another place,
large Christian crosses had been chiseled over pagan symbols on
tombstones that had been used to make a dye vat.
It appears that God-fearing shop owners in that extremely pagan culture
were making a clear statement that they stood for God and were
attempting to reclaim anti-God, pagan articles. These ordinary shop
owners taking a stand in their extremely pagan culture can provide a
contemporary message for Christians today as well.
The Synagogue
One of the most impressive ruins in Sardis is that of the Greek
gymnasium and Roman bathhouse. The gymnasium was the center of Greek
culture, the means by which they passed on their Hellenistic worldview
that the human being, not God, was the center of the universe. Within
the gymnasium, students trained their bodies and minds. They read
literature about the Greek gods and studied mathematics, philosophy, and
medicine. They also enjoyed the pleasures and vices of the Roman baths.
Yet, in the corner of that immoral, self-glorifying gymnasium,
archaeologists have uncovered the largest synagogue of that time period
ever found! The presence of the synagogue in the gymnasium, as well as
the presence of the defaced pagan symbols within the synagogue,a public
fountain, a table with Roman eagles, and pairs of ions that typically
represented the goddess Cybele,ask the question "why?" Did the Jews of
Sardis place their synagogue in the gymnasium in order to influence the
pagan culture around them, or had they so adapted to the pagan way of
life that they saw no discrepancy between worshiping God and
participating in the activities of the gymnasium?
The Church
The most ancient ruins in the area of Sardis are along the southern
banks of the Pactolus River. In the middle of these ruins stood the
large, open-aired shrine initially consecrated to Cybele. When the
Greeks arrived in about 330 BC, they built a huge temple to Artemis,
their goddess of fertility, and absorbed the grossly immoral worship of
Cybele into their worship. The ruins of this temple, which was one of
the seven largest Greek temples in the world, stands as a testimony to
the popularity and power of the Artemis cult.
Yet, in one corner of this temple stands a tiny Christian church that
was built during the fourth century! Why did Christians build a church
inside a pagan temple? Were they seeking to reclaim the temple, which
was probably nearly abandoned at that time, for God? Or had they become
so comfortable in their pagan world that their worship of God blended in
with the pagan worship that surrounded them?
Salt of the Earth
The most ancient ruins in the area of Sardis are along the southern
banks of the Pactolus River. In the middle of these ruins stood the
large, open-aired shrine initially consecrated to Cybele. When the
Greeks arrived in about 330 BC, they built a huge temple to Artemis,
their goddess of fertility, and absorbed the grossly immoral worship of
Cybele into their worship. The ruins of this temple, which was one of
the seven largest Greek temples in the world, stands as a testimony to
the popularity and power of the Artemis cult.
Yet, in one corner of this temple stands a tiny Christian church that
was built during the fourth century! Why did Christians build a church
inside a pagan temple? Were they seeking to reclaim the temple, which
was probably nearly abandoned at that time, for God? Or had they become
so comfortable in their pagan world that their worship of God blended in
with the pagan worship that surrounded them? LINK
>>>Thirdly, we read through Matthew 18:18-20 . Grear observations on Jesus still being a Jewish New Moses/"With You" who is calling disciples to a radically cross-cultural mission: "Make disciples of all NATIONS (same word as GENTILES) DROP-DOWN BOX!
For possible chiasms in this chapter, see this and tihis.
Remember, the word "church" is used only of people , literally "called out people": ekklesia.
Remember how we defined culture. Small case and upper case C.
Leonard Sweet: "all divine revelation is culturally mediated"
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PS Don't forget: I won't take attendance Wed, but anyone who is at Starbucks (St. Arbuck's) on Kings Cauyon and Clovis by 11:15 (strict deadline) gets a free drink. For once, we will meet in the marketplace for some interesting observations on church and culture/marketplace. If you need a ride, meet in the classroom, but I'll be leaving at 11:01, and I have room for two in my car...
>>We finished watching the "Roll Away the Stone" video which we started last week (see notes here 4/9 here) to help us on the quiz Friday..
Some notes from radio interview related to the video:
.“I’d like
to take this chance to share a few thoughts with you
today. God put something very different in my
life when I was about 19. I had a chance to go to
Israel and study, and when I was there, I discovered
that there was an element in my own Christian
background that had been somewhat lacking.
I began to discover
that if you put the Bible back
into its Jewish setting, ( it’s a Jewish book,
written by Jewish people, to Jewish people, initially
at least ), it suddenly comes alive in new and
different ways. Now that’s not to say
it’s not for Gentiles, or that it doesn’t
have a timeless message, of course it does!
It’s to say that it has an additional
nuance of meaning that can be found if you look at
the Bible in the setting in which God placed it.
I call it thinking Hebrew, and I’ve been involved
in my career as a teacher for many years, trying to
understand what does it mean, if we put the Bible back
into that setting? I would like to share a couple
thoughts coming out of that context with you.
I
remember very clearly sitting in an Orthodox Jewish
classroom, listening to a Jewish man lecture, a
brilliant Jewish individual, not a Christian, and he
was describing the marriage customs of the first
century Jewish people in the land of Israel. I
sat there as a Christian, not Jewish, I’m
Gentile, Dutch no less, and I’m sitting in the
classroom, and I’m listening to this Orthodox Jew
describe marriage. And he described how a young man
would reach marrying age, and the young man and his
father would pick out a family in the land of Israel
that had a daughter, a Godly family that had a
daughter, that would be an appropriate wife.
…And the young man and his father would go to
the young girl’s house and they would sit and
negotiate the bride price, because the loss of a
daughter was an enormous loss. When they’d
arrived at the price that was to be paid for this young
girl, 14, 15, 16 years of age, the young man would then
ask her to marry him, but he did it in a very Jewish
way.
The
young man’s father would take a flask of wine. He
would pour a cup of wine and hand it to his son The son
would then turn to the young woman, and with all the
solemnity of an oath before Almighty God Himself, that
young man would take that cup of wine and say to that
young woman, “This cup is a new covenant in my
blood, which I offer to you.” In other
words, “I love you. I’ll be your
faithful husband. Will you be my
bride?”
And
tears came to my eyes as I recognized Jesus at the last
Supper with His collection of Jewish disciples, who
knew the Passover liturgy since they were old enough to
think. Suddenly in the middle of the liturgy,
after the third cup, completely out of place, Jesus, on
His way to pay the bride price with His own blood,
turns to those disciples and says to them in the
language of the culture, “This cup is the New
Covenant in my blood”. I love you, Will you
be my bride?
And
every single time you sit in your fellowship or your
community in your Church, and your Elder, your Pastor,
or whoever leads the Service, turns to you and offers
you the cup, Jesus, in the language of the culture says
to you, “I love you”, and the only way I
can describe the depths and the passion of that love is
to say, “Will you be my wife? -Ray Van Der Laan
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.>>We walked through these four questions from the final exam:
1)Say as much as you can about the Feast of FirstFruits, especially as it may relate to Jesus' death
See short video below and article links for answers
2)Say as much as you can about Feast of Passover/Passover Seder/Freast of Unleavened Bread, especially as it may relate to Jesus' death. Comment on why the DaVinci seating arrangement is wrong.
Help:
pp. 193-204 of the study guide to today's"The Final Passover" video will remind you of much of the content..click here
3)What is your view of the Trinity at the Cross? Include discussion of Psalm 22 and intertextuality. Do you think God the Father temporarily abandined/.forsook Jesus on the Criss? Was the fellwoship of the Trinity broken? Why or why not? Why is your answer important?
Help:
Monday's post here, comment on the "I have a dream" reference" in the article under "penal substitution" there
Some videos made by JCCers last year for the "Who is Jesus to Them" assignment due Friday are
below.
Remember: See syllabus for instructions. Video or power is OK instead of paper. We also said today that if you want to focus on one group or two (Pharisees, Sadducees, or, for example, note the times Pharisees and sadducees are mentioned together) instead of the three required greups mentioned in syllabus). that' s fine.
Also, makes use of BibleGateway.com
You can put terms in the search bar, for example, here are all the places in Matthew where "Pharisees and Sadducees" are mentioned together
Note: Here is "Jesus' Facebook Feed for Holy Week".
Remember thar we said you could create your own version of this as a "mission" to replace to quizzes
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ATONEMENT cont.
Christus Victor view" we covered this last week, and will cover more below, especially in videos comparing/contrasting it with Penal substitutiuon. Aslan, Matrix approximate this view
Penal substitution:
The penal substitution theory.. It was proposed by John Calvin and other Protestant reformers. Instead of focusing on God's honor, it focuses on God's justice. This theory states that Jesus died on the cross as a substitute for mankind, taking our place. God imputed our sin to Jesus, and imputed the righteousness of Jesus to us. The Satisfaction Theory / Penal Substitution
Penal Substitutiuon and/or Christus Vuictoir. Two videos:
"God cant look at you because you're sinful. He can only look at Jesus, or look at you through Jesus."
"on the cross, Jesus was temporarily but literally forsaken/abandoned by God the Father, because he was carrying the weight of our guilt and sin, and God is too holy to be involved in that."
??
Check this article:
Christians usually respond that God had to turn his back on Jesus because Jesus took on the sin of the whole world, and God can't look upon sin, so he turned away. We hear this in sermons and worship songs. "The Father turns his face away." "God can't stand sin, so he turned his back on Jesus."
On one level this provides a tidy theological answer. But at a more visceral, emotional level, it's still unsatisfying. In our own families, when a child has erred, we might get mad at them. But would we forsake them? Abandon them? Kill them? There was a case last year of parents with a very strict form of discipline. They thought their daughter was "rebellious," so they starved her and beat her. They locked their daughter out of the house in the middle of winter. She froze to death. We call that child abuse.
Is that what God did to Jesus? Left him on the cross to die?
This also raises the theological problem of the broken Trinity. Christians are Trinitarian; we believe that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally united in purpose and divine love. But does the Father break fellowship with the Son on the cross? Are they pitted against each other? Cross-Cultural PerspectivesWe in the West live in a predominantly guilt-based culture; we tend to think in terms of guilt and punishment. When someone is guilty, they must be punished. So if Jesus took on our guilt and sin, the punishment is death. God's justice must be satisfied, so Jesus must be executed. It's disturbing, but that's how we understand the story.
But much of the world, including the ancient biblical world, thinks less in terms of guilt and more in terms of shame and honor. A few years ago I read the book The Bookseller of Kabul, about life in Afghanistan. And some of the most disturbing parts were the descriptions of honor killings. A woman somehow brings shame to a family, and she is killed to take away the shame and to restore honor. It doesn't matter if she committed adultery or was raped. It doesn't matter if she was the perpetrator or the victim. If she has been made impure, the impurity must be removed to restore family honor. And in many cases, a father will kill his daughter. Or a woman's brothers will kill her. It will be described as an accident, but everybody knows what happened.
So modern objections to Christianity say that this is the essence of Christian teaching on the Cross. God's son has been made impure, tainted by the sin of the world. So God restores his honor by killing his son. This puts us Christians in a bind. If we defend this theology of the Cross, then it seems like our Christianity does the same thing as honor killings in Afghanistan. And we lose our basis for saying that those honor killings are wrong, because our God does the same thing. Does he?...
...I find it interesting that Matthew and Mark tell us that some of the hearers misheard Jesus. That opens up the possibility that the same has been true for others, and for us. Have we misunderstood this cry from the cross? The crucifixion narratives do not explicitly tell us what Jesus' cry meant. Both Matthew and Mark record the cry, but neither unpacks the meaning. They just let it stand. Neither actually says that God turned his face away, turned his back on Jesus, or abandoned him. That's an assumption that we bring to the text. It doesn't come from the passage itself.Here's the key biblical insight that changed everything for me in how I read this passage. It's a simple historical fact about how Israelites cited their Scriptures. They didn't identify passages by chapter numbers or verse numbers. Verse numbers weren't invented yet. Their Scriptures did not have little numbers in the text. So how they referenced a passage was to quote it, especially the first line. So the book of Genesis, in Hebrew, is not called Genesis. It's called, "In the beginning." Exodus is "Names." We similarly evoke a larger body of work with just a line of allusion: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
That's why Jesus often says, "It is written" or "You have heard it said." He doesn't say, "Deuteronomy 8:3 says this." No, he says, "It is written, 'Man does not live by bread alone.' " That's just the way they did it.
So when Jesus says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" he's saying, "Psalm 22." He expected his hearers to catch the literary allusion. And his hearers should have thought of the whole thing, not just the first verse: "I am … scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. … I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax. … My mouth is dried up … my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. … All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment."
Is Jesus saying "I have been forsaken by God"? No. He's declaring, "Psalm 22! Pay attention! This psalm, this messianic psalm, applies to me! Do you see it? Do you see the uncanny way that my death is fulfilling this psalm?"
Jesus has done this before. At the beginning of his ministry, in Luke 4, he read the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue, saying, "The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Then to make things completely clear, he said, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
That's what Jesus is saying on the cross. When he says, "My God, my God," he's saying, "Psalm 22. Today Psalm 22 is fulfilled in your hearing. I am the embodiment of this psalm. I am its fulfillment." A Psalm of Lament and VindicationPsalm 22 is one of many psalms that fit a particular lyrical pattern. We call them the psalms of lament. They usually begin with a complaint to God, rehearsing the wrongs and injustices that have been experienced by the psalmist. Psalm 5: "Listen to my words, Lord. Consider my lament." Psalm 10: "Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" Psalm 13: "How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?" Psalm 74: "O God, why have you rejected us forever?" This is a common pattern in the Psalms. This opening lament usually goes on for a stanza or two. But then the psalm pivots. The psalmist remembers the works of God, and the psalm concludes on a note of hope. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that these psalms were Israel's way of ordering their grief and making sense of their sorrow. Today, we'd call it "processing." They would recount their troubles, but by the end of the psalm, they declared their confidence in God.
That's what's happening in Psalm 22. It starts out with the psalmist feeling forsaken and abandoned. "Why have you forsaken me? … I cry out by day, but you do not answer." But he's not literally forsaken, any more than the other psalms mean that God was literally forgetting the psalmist forever. It's expressing how the psalmist felt at the time.
But that's not the end of the story. Like the other psalms of lament, there's a pivot point. Several, in fact. Verse 9: "Yet you brought me out of the womb … from my mother's womb you have been my God." Verse 19: "But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me." The psalm is not a psalm of forsakenness. It starts out that way, but it shifts to confidence in God's deliverance. Verse 22: "I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you." And here's the key verse, verse 24: "For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help."
Here is a direct refutation of the notion that the Father turned his face away from the Son. But the refutation is not as important as the pivot. Jesus is declaring: Right now, you are witnessing Psalm 22. I seem forsaken right now, but my death is not the end of the story. God has not despised my suffering. I will be vindicated. The Lord has heard my cry. Because death is not the end. Verse 30–31: "Future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!"
Jesus is not saying that God has forsaken him. He's declaring the opposite. He's saying that God is with him, even in this time of seeming abandonment, and that God will vindicate him by raising him from the dead.
The closest modern analogy I can come up with might be something like this. Imagine that later on this election year, this summer, the President is on the campaign trail. And despite his security, an assassin gets in and shoots him. As the President falls to the ground, he says, "I still have a dream." And then he dies.
Now imagine everybody saying, "Hmmm, his last words were 'I still have a dream.' I wonder what that means. What was his dream? Was he napping on the campaign bus? What was it about?" No, we'd all recognize that he was making an allusion to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech. He'd be saying that this dream is still alive, that it did not stop with MLK's death, and it would not stop with his.
It's the same way with "My God, my God" on the cross. It's a biblical allusion, and the point of Psalm 22 is not about being forsaken. After all, David wrote Psalm 22. Was David saying that God had forsaken him forever? No. The literary genre of the psalm of lament shows that David was saying that he felt like God had forsaken him. That the odds were against him. That things looked really bad right then. But that was not the end of the story. David still had confidence that God would hear his cry. God did not abandon David. And God did not abandon Jesus. The clearest evidence of that, besides the rest of Psalm 22, is Jesus' final words on the cross, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." The Father had not forsaken him. God was still his Father. Jesus was still his Son -Link, full article
We watched the section from 1:20:27 to 1:28:54 ("God screaming alongside us":
"Guilt says I've done something wrong; shame says there is something wrong with me.
Guilt says I've made a mistake; shame says I am a mistake.
Guilt says what did was not good; shame says I am no good."
Bradshaw (1988).
--
From Mark Baker, FPU:
A Japanese pastor asked Norman Kraus, a Mennonite missionary, “Why did Jesus have to die?” The pastor immediately clarified that he knew the answer – that Jesus had to die to pay the penalty for sins that God required – but that he did not find that explanation satisfying. Kraus pondered the question over the course of several months. He concluded that the traditional penal satisfaction explanation of the atonement was intelligible in a guilt-based society such as ours, which understood wrongs as an infraction against a legal or moral code. This guilt could be remedied through punishment that would relieve guilt. However, that same explanation would feel foreign and unintelligible in a shame-based society like Japan where both the wrong committed and the remedy are understood and felt in more relational ways. The wrongdoer is ridiculed or removed and hence feels alienation and shame, not guilt. When Kraus set aside the penal satisfaction model and read with new eyes, he found rich biblical material, including specific references to shame, that allowed him to proclaim to the Japanese how the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ provides freedom from the burden of shame and restores their relationship with God. By opening up to more than one Biblical explanation to the atonement, we can talk of Jesus bearing our shame and healing our alienation, in an ultimate sense, through the cross and resurrection. This has great evangelistic potential and pastoral significance not only in “shame based” cultures, but also in North America where people can be burdened by both guilt and shame. FPU link -
Hebrews (12:2)… “Jesus endured the cross, despised it’s shame for the….joy set before him!”
Jesus Christ prayed, at least implied, the whole gamut of emotionton in Psalm 22.
So can we.
The account of Jesus’ dying words in John actually could be made to infer that Jesus did in fact pray aloud the entire Psalm…or at least the first and last line… to give context and contour, no matter how real...and really troubling...the fulness of what he was experiencing.
Jesus, as John tellingly tells us, cried out the famous words…the “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” line “in a loud voice.” Then it is relayed that someone offered him a sponge with wine vinegar. (Matthew, not John, notes that Jesus had said “I thirst.) Then a fascinating, intriguing fact that only John highlights: “And then, after receiving the drink, he cried out again in a loud voice” (emphasis mine). This second crying out has puzzled Bible readers for years: What did he say? Was it anything audible? Was it the “eighth saying from they cross”, just one that never got transcribed?
There is actually a chance that we know exactly what he cried out that second time.
With the help of John.
The mentioning of the wine vinegar sponge being lifted to Jesus is immediately followed…not in Matthew, but only in John… not by Jesus offering up a generic loud cry. Jon alone tells us exactly what Jesus said. I’m reading it now; watch this: “The wine was lifted to his lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said…..
‘It... is…. finished.’
With that , he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”
So according to John’s journal, the literal last words of Jesus were not a helpless “My God, Why…” but a hearty “It is finished.”
Three words which are strikingly similar to the literal last words of Psalm 22.
Look at them. One version even translates the last line of Psalm 22; “It is finished”
Many scholars recognize the similarity in the structure of the Hebrew (of Psalm 22) This last line is usually rendered something like in the NIV “He (God) has done it.”
Jesus’s cry on the cross, “It is finished” doesn’t specifically mention God having done or finished something; so we often assume it means “It is finished…I, Jesus, have finished the saving act of dying on the cross.” That of course, is true and key. But in the Greek language grammar, it may well be what we call a ”divine passive”…a sentence that doesn’t specifically mention God, but implies it. Like we might say “Someone is watching out for you.” Or “I was touched.” So it may be “It is finished; God has done it.”
The last line of Psalm 22 may have been the last line of Jesus on Friday.
He may have forced himself, as he was dying, to say and pray aloud, the whole thing.
Did you ever wonder why Jesus said “I thirst” right in the middle of dying? Maybe he was right in the middle of a long Psalm, but he knew he had to get it all said.
For our sake.
Again, whether or not Jesus literally prayed the first line only, the first and closing line (a common framing technique in Bible days, a framing device, an “inclusio”), or the entire psalm, the message is the same salty one:
“I feel this whole psalm. My guts are literally being wrenched. I wonder why God is doing this to me. But I am sensing it will work out; that God is finishing something.”
Even the (very conservative)Dallas Theological commentaries assume this, so this is not just some "liberal" agenda:
"That Jesus died naked was part of the shame which He bore for our sins. " -link
Which means this picture (found on a blog with no credit) is likely wrong(Jesus looks too white).
...and largely right (What Jesus is wearing).
I answered a question about this a few years ago, I would write it a bit differently know, but here it is:
First of all, it is probable that (again, contrary to nearly all artwork and movies), Jesus hung on the cross absolutely naked. This was a typical way of crucifixion, to increase the shame factor. Romans might occasionally add a loincloth type of garment as a token concession and nod to Jewish sensitivity; but not very often, it would seem. Of course, once we get past the emotive and cultural shock of imagining Jesus naked, we realize that if He indeed die naked, the symbolism is profound and prophetic: In Scripture, Jesus is called the "Second Adam". As such, it would make sense that He died "naked and unashamed." We are also told that "cursed is he who dies on a tree." The nakedness was a sign and enfolding of shame and token of curse. And the wonderful story of Corrie ten Boom and family, told in the book and movie "The Hiding Place," relates. One of the turning points of her ability to endure the Ravensbruck concentration camp, particularly the shame of walking naked past the male guards, was her conviction that Jesus too was shamed and stripped naked before guards. "Finally, it dawned on me," she preached once," that this (shaming through nakedness) happened to Jesus too..., and Jesus is my example, and now it is happening to me, then I am simply doing what Jesus did." She concluded, "I know that Jesus gave me that thought and it gave me peace. It gave me comfort and I could bear the shame and cruel treatment." (continued )
Stephen Seamands, in "Wounds That Heal," (much of it a free read here) stirs me to wonder if shaming is always perpetrated in two stages:
1)forced/involuntary/public nakedness (literal or emotional) nakedness of soul may be even worse) 2)the promise of continued shaming beyond death (by dishonoring our name after we are gone, or sending us to hell in the afterlife ).
Seamands quotes the most important theologian you have never heard of,Frank Lake, and that section reminds how vital it might be to doggedly defend the doctrine (that most evangelicals seem to think is unspeakable, even though very conservative Dallas Seminary professors claim it is necessary, let alone Martin Hengel in his classic book "Crucifixion)"that Jesus died completely naked...especially that he might completely identify with, incarnate; convert and subvert our shame, particularly of sexual abuse or memories:
Crucifixions were purposely carried out in public..Executioners heightened the shame by turning the gruesome personal ordeal into grisly public entertainment..In most paintings, films and artistic depictions, the crucified figure of Jesus is partially covered with a loincloth. But in the ancient world, the victim was always crucified naked. The shameful exposure often continued after death since it was common for the victim to be denied burial..Hengel explains, ...'What it meant for man in antiquity to be refused burial, and the dishonor that went with it, can hardly be appreciated by modern man.'...Frank Lake expresses the truth powerfully in describing Christ's experience of shame in nakedness:'He hangs on the Cross naked. Both the innocent who were not loved and the guilty who have spurned love are ashamed. Both have something to hide. Clothing is the symbol of hiding what we are ashamed to reveal. In His own innocence He is identified with the innocent in nakedness...He was so deprived of His natural clothing of transfigured beauty and glory that men, seeing Him thus, shrank away from Him. The whole world will see this King appearing in all beauty and glory, because He allowed both..to be utterly taken away.'-Seamands, pp 49-50
That some well-meaning folks suggest we should never mention his nakedness, that doing so is so wrong as to be satanic... that we should fear thinking about genitalia, is represented here:
That he may have been naked is as about as important as what kind of nails were used to nail him there. Copper? Bronze? Iron? Who cares?! Was the crown of thorns made of Briar thorns or Thistle? Who cares?
Did Jesus die? Who cares? (Bear with me).
Did Jesus lay down his life willingly and by his own power, and then take it back up again just as willingly and just as powerfully? THAT is the point.
Don't get distracted by images of genetalia! [sic] And let's face it; as soon as you hear someone say "Jesus died naked on a cross", that's the first thing that pops into your carnal, fleshly, sinful mind. As soon as you hear it, you are IMMEDIATELY distracted.
That man who is telling you that may not know that he's being used as a servant of Satan; but he is.
-link
Of course, I feel for this position, and am aware that the naked Jesus doctrine could be terribly abused...But I fear that ironically, it may be crucial to recover/uncover. It may not be a "required doctrine,"....but..
Anyway..
Several pages later, Seamands, in a discussion on the practical relevance of the Trinity (Note:see his entire wonderful book on this important topic):
'My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?' On the cross, Christ gave expression not only to his own sorrow and disappointment, and ours, but also to God's...At the foot of the cross, our mournful cries of lament are always welcome...
...This cry is the only place in the gospels where Jesus didn't address God with the personal, intimate, 'My Father,'...
..On the cross, the bonds of trust between the Father and the Son seem to disintegrate. As theologian Jurgen Moltmann says, 'The love that binds the one to the other is transformed into a dividing curse.'....Yet at the cross, the Father and the Son are never more united, never more bound together. They are one in their surrender, one in their self-giving. The Father surrenders the Son...The Son, in turn, surrenders himself...So {they} are united even in their separation, held together by their oneness of will and purpose
-Seamands, 67-68
More on the dynamics of God forsaking God here, and more on the trinitarian centrality of all this by clicking the "trinity" label below this post.
Finally, Seamands helps me grasp that Jesus died not only for our shame, but our rage (rage, of course, is often enacted as a reaction to shame). Rage, ironically, is what literally killed Jesus (and shamed him into nakedness):
Christ became the innocent, willing victim of their rage. But not only their [those at the cross] rage -ours too. Frank Lake is right: 'We attended the Crucifixion in our crowds, turned on our Healer..'-Seamands, 69
Which of course, leads to Jesus healing us precisely when we deserve it least and need it most. Naked and (un)ashamed.
"sees the atonement of Christ as reversing the course of mankind from disobedience to obedience. It believes that Christ’s life recapitulated all the stages of human life and in doing so reversed the course of disobedience initiated by Adam."^[1]^
This view originated with Irenaeus (125-202 AD). He sees Christ as the new Adam, who systematically undoes what Adam did. Thus, where Adam was disobedient concerning God's edict concerning the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Christ was obedient even to death on the wood of a tree. Irenaeus is the first to draw comparisons between Eve and Mary, contrasting the faithlessness of the former with the faithfulness of the latter. In addition to reversing the wrongs done by Adam, Irenaeus thinks of Christ as "recapitulating" or "summing up" human life.^[2]^ LINK
Although sometimes absent from summaries of atonement theories,[1] generally overviews of the history of the doctrine of the atonement include a section about the “recapitulation” view of the atonement, which was first clearly formulated by Irenaeus.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
In the recapitulation view of the atonement, Christ is seen as the new Adam who succeeds where Adam failed.[10] Christ undoes the wrong that Adam did and, because of his union with humanity, leads humankind on to eternal life (including morality).[11]
Through man’s disobedience the process of the evolution of the human race went wrong, and the course of its wrongness could neither be halted nor reverses by any human means. But in Jesus Christ the whole course of human evolution was perfectly carried out and realised in obedience to the purpose of God.
The moral influence view of the atonement teaches that the purpose and work of Jesus Christ was to bring positive moral change to humanity. This moral change came through the teachings and example of Jesus, the Christian movement he founded, and the inspiring effect of his martyrdom and resurrection. It is one of the oldest views of the atonement in Christian theology and a prevalent view for most of Christian history
But
what archaeologists have found on that street in Sardis is fascinating.
In a number of the shops, Jewish or Christians symbols;crosses,
menorahs, rings with crosses in them, and even the "fish- symbol" have
been discovered. A number of defaced pagan articles have been found. In
one instance, a pagan goddess had been removed from the back of a
lion-shaped lamp, which had been patched and reused. In another place,
large Christian crosses had been chiseled over pagan symbols on
tombstones that had been used to make a dye vat.
