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We started class with this important "Jesus and the Terminator" video..which will become really relevant to our discussion later on Jesus and violence:Then, something violent happend in class (:
Some gangsters/terrorists barged into the room right in the middle of class, yelling that what we were doing was blasphemy, overturning the tables...and worse: ripping the head of the teddy bear my wife gave me when we were engaged, and ripping up a book that my now-departed grandma gave me!
...
..or something like that. It turns out it was all staged. The hoodlums were hired.It was all to give us a visual image of what it might have felt like for those in the temple felt like when Jesus barged in and overturned the tables...and ripping off the head of their prized possession: the temple.
(See Monday's post).
- EMPIRE
- EXPECTATIONS
- ETHNOCENTRISM
We made the case that he did all three. Note the three overlap in reality, as they literallydo on the chart:
We offered several example today.
On the First "E": subversion of empire:
=
he early Christian church, living as an
- alternative
- counter-cultural
- Upside Down Kingdom
community and comunitas (within the Matrix/ Roman Empire; in but not of it)
had to decide how to respond to the empire/emperors.
Here below are two "literary/historical world" examples of one of their key responses:
Subvert/satirize it.
(How do you compare this response to culture/government/empire
to those of the Pharisees,Sadducces, Zealots and Romans (discussed 9/22, see here)
a)The Crucifixion/Resurrection accounts in the gospels:
Especially in Mark, the "Literary world" styling and "Historical world" background ofJesus' crucifixion scene seems set up to satirize empire, and encourage subversion. Here is a summary below from Shane Claiborne's book, "Jesus For President":
Coronation and Procession (8 steps):
1. Caesar: The Praetorian guard (six thousand soldiers) gathered in the Praetorium. The would-be Caesar was brought into the middle of the gathering.1. Jesus: Jesus was brought to the Praetorium in Jerusalem. And the whole company of soldiers (at least two hundred) gathered there.-----------------2. Caesar: A purple robe was placed on the candidate. They were also given an olive-leaf wreath made of gold and a sceptre for the authority of Rome.2. Jesus: Soldiers brought Jesus a wreath (of thorns), a sceptre (an old stick), and a purple robe.-------------------3. Caesar: Caesar was loudly acclaimed as triumphant by the Praetorian Guard.3. Jesus: Sarcastically, the soldiers acclaimed, mocked, and paid homage to Jesus.----------------4. Caesar: A procession through the streets began. Caesar walked with a sacrificial bull and a slave with an axe to kill the bull behind him.4. Jesus: The procession began. But instead of a bull the would-be king and god became the sacrifice and Simon of Cyrene was to carry the cross.----------------5. Caesar: The procession moved to the highest hill in Rome, the Capitolene hill (‘head hill’).5. Jesus: Jesus was led up to Golgotha (in Aramaic ‘head hill’).----------------6. Caesar: The candidate stood before the temple altar and was offered a bowl of wine mixed with myrrh, which he was to refuse. The wine was then poured onto the bull and the bull was then killed.6. Jesus: He was offered wine, and he refused. Right after, it is written, “And they crucified him.”----------------7. Caesar: The Caesar-to-be gathered his second in command on his right hand and his third on his left.7. Jesus: Next came the account of those being crucified on his right and left.----------------8. Caesar: The crowd acclaimed the inaugurated emperor. And for the divine seal of approval, the gods would send signs, such as a flock of doves or a solar eclipse.8. Jesus: He was again acclaimed (mocked) and a divine sign confirmed God’s presence (the temple curtain ripped in two). Finally, the Roman guard, who undoubtedly pledged allegiance to Caesar, the other ‘Son of God’, was converted and acclaimed this man as the Son of God.---------------------- This extraordinary symbolism would have been unmistakable to the first readers of the Gospel. The crown of thorns, the purple robe, the royal staff; the whole section leading up to the crucifixion reads like the coronation of Jesus! At the apex of this passage is the Roman Centurion’s exclamation that “Surely this man was the Son of God!” He saw how Jesus died and became the first evangelist. His realisation tears apart his whole view of the world and reveals the fallacy of earthly empire and the nature of the true King.Mark is trying to show us where our allegiance should lie. At the foot of the cross, when even those that Jesus loved must have been bewildered (only failed Messiahs hung on crosses), a Roman Centurion proclaimed that Jesus was the Son of God! The journey to the cross was the final coronation of the Son of God, the rightful King, who in the cross defeated sin and death.-Link: Shapevine
BONUS:
----1. Caesar: The Praetorian guard (six thousand soldiers) gathered in the Praetorium. The would-be Caesar was brought into the middle of the gathering.
1. Jesus: Jesus was brought to the Praetorium in Jerusalem. And the whole company of soldiers (at least two hundred) gathered there.
-----------------
2. Caesar: A purple robe was placed on the candidate. They were also given an olive-leaf wreath made of gold and a sceptre for the authority of Rome.
2. Jesus: Soldiers brought Jesus a wreath (of thorns), a sceptre (an old stick), and a purple robe.
-------------------
3. Caesar: Caesar was loudly acclaimed as triumphant by the Praetorian Guard.
3. Jesus: Sarcastically, the soldiers acclaimed, mocked, and paid homage to Jesus.
----------------
4. Caesar: A procession through the streets began. Caesar walked with a sacrificial bull and a slave with an axe to kill the bull behind him.
4. Jesus: The procession began. But instead of a bull the would-be king and god became the sacrifice and Simon of Cyrene was to carry the cross.
----------------
5. Caesar: The procession moved to the highest hill in Rome, the Capitolene hill (‘head hill’).
5. Jesus: Jesus was led up to Golgotha (in Aramaic ‘head hill’).
----------------
6. Caesar: The candidate stood before the temple altar and was offered a bowl of wine mixed with myrrh, which he was to refuse. The wine was then poured onto the bull and the bull was then killed.
6. Jesus: He was offered wine, and he refused. Right after, it is written, “And they crucified him.”
----------------
7. Caesar: The Caesar-to-be gathered his second in command on his right hand and his third on his left.
7. Jesus: Next came the account of those being crucified on his right and left.
----------------
8. Caesar: The crowd acclaimed the inaugurated emperor. And for the divine seal of approval, the gods would send signs, such as a flock of doves or a solar eclipse.
8. Jesus: He was again acclaimed (mocked) and a divine sign confirmed God’s presence (the temple curtain ripped in two). Finally, the Roman guard, who undoubtedly pledged allegiance to Caesar, the other ‘Son of God’, was converted and acclaimed this man as the Son of God.
----------------------
This extraordinary symbolism would have been unmistakable to the first readers of the Gospel. The crown of thorns, the purple robe, the royal staff; the whole section leading up to the crucifixion reads like the coronation of Jesus! At the apex of this passage is the Roman Centurion’s exclamation that “Surely this man was the Son of God!” He saw how Jesus died and became the first evangelist. His realisation tears apart his whole view of the world and reveals the fallacy of earthly empire and the nature of the true King.
Mark is trying to show us where our allegiance should lie. At the foot of the cross, when even those that Jesus loved must have been bewildered (only failed Messiahs hung on crosses), a Roman Centurion proclaimed that Jesus was the Son of God! The journey to the cross was the final coronation of the Son of God, the rightful King, who in the cross defeated sin and death.
-Link: Shapevine On the Second E: Subversion of Expectations:
we watched the "Lamb of God" video and discussed how "Palm Sunday" was actually a nationalistic misunderstanding. If Jesus showed up personally in your church Sunday, would you wave the American flag at him, and ask him to run for president?
Post your answer in the comments section below...at bottom of this post.The video is not online, but a summary is here.
Questions from the video content on the Final Exam:
What is the significance of
- the day Jesus rode into town
- palm branches
- the 2nd time Jesus cried
a)Van Der Laan:
Jesus on his way to Jerusalem
On the Sunday before Passover, Jesus came out of the wilderness on the eastern side of the Mount of Olives (just as the prophecy said the Messiah would come).
People spread cloaks and branches on the road before him. Then the disciples ?began, joyfully, to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen? (Luke 19:37). The crowd began shouting, ?Hosanna,? a slogan of the ultra-nationalistic Zealots, which meant, ?Please save us! Give us freedom! We?re sick of these Romans!?
The Palm Branches
The people also waved palm branches, a symbol that had once been placed on Jewish coins when the Jewish nation was free. Thus the palm branches were not a symbol of peace and love, as Christians usually assume; they were a symbol of Jewish nationalism, an expression of the people?s desire for political freedom __LINK to full article
b)FPU prof Tim Geddert:
Palm Sunday is a day of pomp and pageantry. Many church sanctuaries are decorated with palm fronds. I’ve even been in a church that literally sent a donkey down the aisle with a Jesus-figure on it. We cheer with the crowds—shout our hosannas—praising God exuberantly as Jesus the king enters the royal city.
But if Matthew, the gospel writer, attended one of our Palm Sunday services, I fear he would respond in dismay, “Don’t you get it?” We call Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem “The Triumphal Entry,” and just like the Jerusalem crowds, we fail to notice that Jesus is holding back tears.
Jesus did not intend for this to be a victory march into Jerusalem, a political rally to muster popular support or a publicity stunt for some worthy project. Jesus was staging a protest—a protest against the empire-building ways of the world.
LINK: full article :Parade Or Protest March
c)From Table Dallas:
Eugene Cho wrote a blog post back in 2009 about the irony of Palm Sunday:-Link
The image of Palm Sunday is one of the greatest ironies. Jesus Christ – the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, the Morning Star, the Savior of all Humanity, and we can list descriptives after descriptives – rides into a procession of “Hosanna, Hosanna…Hosanna in the Highest” - on a donkey – aka - an ass.He goes on to say it’s like his friend Shane Claiborne once said, “that a modern equivalent of such an incredulous image is of the most powerful person in our modern world, the United States President, riding into a procession…on a unicycle.”
The Third E: Subversion of Ethnocentrism:
Survey Monday's post to see how most everything in chapter 21ties to the theme of racism/prejuidice/exclusivism/bounded setness (fig tree, "this mountain" etc. Today we have seen that Palm Sunday fits as well.
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ANABAPTTIST< MENNONITE>AMISH
Be sure to be up to date on reading "Amish Grace," as it will be well-represented on the final.
We began introducing Amish, by looking at some Venns and bounded sets/subsets
-All Amish are Mennonite
Not all Mennonite are Amish (a chiasm, you might note.)
-Mennonite USA, Mennonite Brethren and Amish are all Mennonite
- Not all Mennonites are Mennonite USA, Mennonite Brethren or Amish
Part of the theological tradition of Anabaptists is
SUBVERSION OF VIOLENCE.
Great discussion today about how to define subversion, compared to conversion..
-con=with
-sub=under
To subvert is to take back, (redeem, re-deem) something.someone by taking it on it's own ground.
Often this involves risk, satire..like the Jesus movies we have watched.
Like Jesus crucfixion parodying the coronation of the emperor.
Question: If Anabaptists are called to subvert violence, how do they do so?
Can you "fight" violence with violence?
What might a peaceful violence look like.
Are the Matrix movies violent if you see them as portraying spiritual warfare,
where the violence is not against people, but evil principalities?
-In the Amish school shootings, how did the Amish subvert the violence that came againsts them?
--
Related, how does Jesus death..NAKED..subvert, and not just convert shame?
See:
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Jesus subverts violence:
And Jesus had come as the Prince of Peace. “If only you’d known,” he sobbed out through his tears, “on this day — even you! — what peace meant. But now it’s hidden, and you can’t see it.” Enemies will come, he said. “They won’t leave one single stone on another, because you didn’t know the moment when God was visiting you” (Luke 19:42-44).
Israel’s God was coming back at last, and they couldn’t see it. Why not? Because they were looking in entirely the wrong direction. The Temple, and the city of which the Temple was the focal point, had come to symbolize violent national revolution. Instead of being the light of the world, the city on the hill that should let its light shine out to the nations, it was determined to keep the light for itself. The Temple was not just redundant; not just a place of economic oppression. It had become a symbol of Israel’s violent ambition, a sign that Israel’s ancient vocation had been turned inside out. In Luke’s gospel, the scene of Jesus arriving in Jerusalem balances the scene near the start in which Jesus goes to Nazareth and risks his neck by declaring God’s blessing on the pagan nations. Then it was the synagogue; now it’s the Temple -NT WRIGHT
--
Wright says:
..[W]herever we look, it appears that Jesus was aware of a great battle in which he was already involved and that would, before too long, reach some kind of climax.
This was not, it seems, the battle that his contemporaries, including his own followers, expected him to fight. It wasn't even
the same sort of battle--though Jesus used the language of battle to describe it. Indeed, as the Sermon on the Mount seems to indicate, fighting itself, in the normal physical sense, was precisely what he was not going to do. There was a different kind of battle in the offing, a battle that had already begun. In this battle, it was by no means as clear as those around Jesus would have liked who was on which side, or indeed whether "sides" was the right way to look at things. The battle in question was a different sort of thing, because it had a different sort of enemy.,,
The battle Jesus was fighting was against the satan.,,:
Many modern writers, understandably, have tried to marginalize this theme, but we can't expect to push aside such a central part of the tradition and make serious progress. It is, of course, difficult for most people in the modern Western world to know what to make of it all; that's one of the points on which the strong wind of modern skepticism has done its work well, and the shrill retort from "traditionalists," insisting on seeing everything in terms of "supernatural" issues, hardly helps either. As C.S. Lewis points out in the introduction to his famous Screwtape Letters, the modern world divides into those who are obsessed with demonic powers and those who mock them as outdated rubbish. Neither approach, Lewis insists, does justice to reality. I'm with Lewis on this. Despite the caricatures, the obsession, and the sheer muddle that people often get themselves into on this subject, there is such a thing as a dark force that seems to take over people, movements, and sometimes whole countries, a force or (as it sometimes seems) a set of forces that can make people do things they would never normally do...
You might have thought the history of the twentieth century would provide plenty of examples of this [a dark force taking over people, movements and countries], but many still choose to resist the conclusion--despite the increasing use in public life of the language of "force" (economic "forces," political "forces," peer "pressure," and so on). In recent scholarship, Walter Wink in particular has offered a sharp and compelling analysis of "the powers" and the way they function in today's world as much as in yesterday's.
..Without the perspective that sees evil as a dark force that stands behindhuman reality, the issue of "good" and "bad" in our world is easy to decipher. It is fatally easy, and I mean fatally easy, to typecast "people like us" as basically good and "people like them" as basically evil. This is a danger we in our day should be aware of, after the disastrous attempts by some Western leaders to speak about an "axis of evil" and then go to war to obliterate it. We turn ourselves into angels and "the other lot" into demons; we "demonize" our opponents. This is a convenient tool for avoiding to have to think, but it is disastrous for both our thinking and our behavior.
But when you take seriously the existence and malevolence of non-human forces that are capable of using "us" as well as "them" in the service of evil, the focus shifts. As the hazy and shadowy realities come into view, what we thought was clear and straightforward becomes blurred. Life becomes more complex, but arguably more realistic. The traditional lines of friend and foe are not so easy to draw. You can no longer assume that "that lot" are simply agents of the devil and "this lot"--us and our friends--are automatically on God's side. If there is an enemy at work, it is a subtle, cunning enemy, much too clever to allow itself to be identified simply with one person, one group, or one nation. Only twice in the gospel story does Jesus address "the satan" directly by that title: once when rebuking him in the temptation narrative (Matt. 4:10), and again when he is rebuking his closest associate (Mark 8:33) for resisting God's strange plan. The line between good and evil is clear at the level of God, on the one hand, and the satan on the other. It is much, much less clear as it passes through human beings, individually and collectively.
Somehow it appears that Jesus's battle with the satan [begun with his temptation in the desert], which was the battle for God's kingdom to be established on earth as it is in heaven, reached its climax in his death. This is a strange, dark, and powerful theme to which we shall return. For the moment the point is clear: Jesus is indeed fighting what he takes to be the battle against the real enemies of the people of God, but it is not the battle his followers or the wider group of onlookers was expecting him to fight. Jesus has redefined the royal task around his own vision of where the real problem lies. And he has thereby redefined his own vocation, which he takes to be the true vocation of Israel's king: to fight and win the key battle, the battle that will set his people free and establish God's sovereign and saving rule, through his own suffering and death. (link)
NOW>>scroll to top of page and watch "Jesus and the Terminator" again.
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