Instead, I’ve been too busy reading about the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish.

Well, that and my daughter came down with strep and we’ve been busy making fairies and watching Little House on the Prairie. And we’re moving.

But my delay has mostly been bound up because I’ve been distracted by Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and have been happily geeking out for over a week straight.

(And I am not alone: one friend put me onto the children’s book version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and my husband [kindred geek] said, “Oh, and remember that Star Trek episode when Picard travels to the planet which speaks in metaphor, and he ends up reciting the Epic of Gilgamesh!” Made my heart flutter.  My father, from whom I get most of my geekly tendencies, has several copies of both.  The other day, over at my parents’ home, I realized that I’d forgotten my volumes at my OMG study.  I whispered to my little boy with a traumatic brain injury, “Sweet boy Karl, can you ask Opa whether he has some spare copies of the Enuma Elish?” Which he did, clearly enunciating the title, and giving my father extra cause to pour an extra libation in celebration that geekiness carries more truck in our family than a TBI)

___________________________________

Warning: this is a long post.  But if you want to hear about a paradise, an ark and flood and doves, a tree of life, firmaments being stretched out and so forth that come from literature far older than the familiar tales from Genesis, it’s worth your time to slog through the below, and even more to read up on the links at the far bottom.

Geeks of the world, unite.

___________________________________

I began fussing with the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish because a group of people with whom I work were curious about Noah.

And I can’t, of course, teach about Noah and the Flood without teaching about the different creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2.

And I most assuredly can’t do them any credit if I don’t make a nod to other Ancient Near East literature.

(Utterly unrelated to the task at hand, this little nugget from Gilgamesh [and I love it that my spell-checker knows this word without even being so programmed.  Smart Mac.] caught my little eye.

“Gilgamesh, whither are you wandering? Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands. Gilgamesh, fill your belly, day and night make merry, let days be full of joy, dance and make music day and night. And wear fresh clothes, and wash your head and bathe. Look at the child that is holding your hand, and let your wife delight in your embrace. These things alone are the concern of men.”

Some say it is the oldest recorded advice in literature.

Just saying’.)

But vis-à-vis Old Testament tales of creation and floods, these two stories shaped the texts we know so well…even though we don’t know these primary texts well.

Or at all.

The Enuma Elish was crafted around the 12 century BCE.

It’s a tale of two divine figures, the fresh-water male god Apsu, and the salt-water female god Mummu-Tiamat (she was called Tiamat for short).  Tiamat is depicted also as a dragon from the sea (think, “Leviathan”).

Their, um, waters mingled, and created more gods.  These ragamuffins made Apsu and Tiamut nuts with their racket.

What is inappropriate may be age-appropriate, I always say, but Apsu and Tiamut didn’t see it that way, and decided the best thing to do to quiet the noise was to kill the kids.

The kids, however, found out about this plot, and figured that doing unto others as they intended to do to you was a good policy, and so they offed Apsu.

Tiamat was displeased, and so according to established family dynamics, she decided to go to war with her children: finish them off, once and for all.

The god-lets realized that they had crossed the line, and like it’s been said, if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Desperate to save themselves, they found Marduk, a warrior, who overcame Tiamat’s threat by blowing a wind into her as she gaped her mouth open to devour him.  Into her mouth he flung an arrow; that and the air which filled her belly, distending it, killed her, leaving only a carcass amongst the waters.

And so he split her body like a shell, pressing the top across the skies, and the bottom to become the earth, and insisted that her waters be held back.  He created constellations, and vegetation, and becomes the Man of the Hour.

That is, until the gods realize that he had assigned tasks: one had to be the sun god, one the star god, one the moon god, and so on and so forth.

The gods began to get irritable, and so to appease them, Marduk struck on the idea of creating humankind by mixing up the blood of Tiamat’s general so that the gods would have servants.

The End.

The Epic of Gilgamesh tells a different tale.

It was written around 2000 BCE.

(We’re still working with Epiphany, believe it or not)

King Gilgamesh was unpleasant.  He was a dictator, a rapist, and capricious.  His people cried out to the god Aruru for relief, and Aruru sends Enkidu, a man-beast, who, according to Christine Hayes, was very Adam-esque.  He was to tame Gilgamesh, but before he could, Gilgamesh, who had heard of this Enkidu, sent a woman (perhaps a prostitute?) to tame Enkidu.

The two fell in love, and Enkidu found the inspiration, maturity, and transcendence to address Gilgamesh.

This decision, however, forces him out of paradise: he clothes himself, he loses his relationship and identity with the animals, and can not return.

Long and short of it is that Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight, they become fast friends as a result, and against the better judgment of all, they leave town to fight Humbaba, an evil monster god.

Together they overcome their fears and their disadvantage, and kill Humbaba.  Ishtar, goddess of war and sex (go figure), finds herself attracted to the man behind all of this violence and asks Gilgamesh to marry her.  He, however, doesn’t reciprocate her desire, in part because he’s well aware that she tends to inflict pain on her lovers.

She is displeased.

She vows revenge (trust me, this all has something to do with Epiphany) by way of harnessing the Bull of Heaven, which destroys Gilgamesh’s town Uruk.

But her revenge is short-lived, as Enkidu and Gilgamesh kill the bull and chuck its tail at Ishtar in a spiteful display of victory.

A word to the wise: do not annoy the Ishtars in your life.

In retaliation, she struck Enkidu with a fatal illness, and claimed him.

Gilgamesh was distraught at his death, and set out to discover the gods’ secrets of immortality.  He began a quest, then, and sought Upnapishtim, the legendary immortal human.

Upnapishtim, a very moral man, had been warned in a dream that a tremendous flood was imminent due to the evil of humanity.  He was commanded to build an ark with very specific dimensions, and gather the seeds of all living things to preserve life so that new life could begin after the waters subsided.  Three birds were brought on board and released to see whether land was near.  The dove and the sparrow returned, but the raven disappeared.

The god who caused the flood was reprimanded for the severity of the flood, and as compensation for the destruction, Upnapishtim and his wife were rewarded with eternal life.

This eternal life was not possible to be given to Gilgamesh, who was given yet a parting possibility at youthful living until he died by way of a plant of life at the bottom of the ocean.  He fetched it, only to have it stolen by a serpent.

Crushed by the futility of his quest, Giglamesh returned to Uruk, where he had to face his mortality and die.

Do you see the clear connections between what you’ve read so far and the season of Epiphany?

No, you say? Not at all?  Have I been imbibing of my daughter’s strep medicine, you wonder?

Well, let me help you have an epiphany then.

Clearly, there are overlaps between these two stories and the creation and flood stories in Genesis.  A man and woman in paradise, an ark with dimensions in which righteous creation is saved, firmament spread out keeping the waters above and below at bay, and so on.

Yet while there are similarities between these stories, there are also key differences, both of which reveal (i.e., offer the chance for an epiphany) something of the Jewish/Christian notion of God, and of creation, and of humanity.

Chances are, the ancient Hebrews had heard these stories, not least of all when they were in exile in Babylon.  So the tales were familiar to them.

Christine Hayes, professor at Yale, tells us that the famous first words of Genesis, “In the beginning” would be better translated with the sense of “When from on high,” the beginning words of the Enuma Elish…which are, by the way, “Enuma Elish.”

And she does such marvelous work with the connection between the wind of Marduk, and Tiamat being from the deep, that I’m going to quote her at length here:

Remember the cosmic battle between Marduk and Tiamat: Marduk the storm god, who released his wind against Tiamat, the primeval deep, the primeval water, representing the forces of chaos. And you should immediately hear the great similarities. Our story opens with a temporal clause: “When on high,” “when God began creating”; we have a wind that sweeps over chaotic waters, just like the wind of Marduk released into the face of Tiamat, and the Hebrew term is particularly fascinating. In fact, the text says “and there is darkness on the face of deep.” No definite article. The word “deep” is a proper name, perhaps. The Hebrew word is Tehom. It means “deep” and etymologically it’s exactly the same word as Tiamat: the “at” ending is just feminine. So Tiam, Tehom — it’s the same word, it’s a related word.

THAT’S SO COOL!

But as Christine Hayes points out, these same stories were rejected by adapting them.

Your gods are the moon and the stars and the sun?

Our God made your gods.

Your gods made humans to serve them?

Our God made humans to be in God’s image.  They are in that way sacred.  They are called to tend to creation, not split it, destroy it, and see it as an enemy.

In Genesis, evil need not be seen as inherent in creation.  Instead, God saw it all and called it “good.”  ”Very good,” as a matter of fact.

Instead, evil is a choice that humans have by way of their autonomy.  Hayes notes that although there are all sorts of parallels to the tree of life in Ancient Near Eastern Literature (think of the plant on the bottom of Gilgamesh’s ocean), there is no parallel to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It’s only that tree that humans are commanded to avoid.  She writes:

It’s one of the things about God: he knows good and evil and has chosen the good. The biblical writer asserts of this god that he is absolutely good. The humans will become like gods, knowing good and evil, not because of some magical property in this fruit…but because of the action of disobedience itself. By choosing to eat of the fruit in defiance of God — this is the one thing God says, “Don’t do this! You can have everything else in this garden,” presumably, even, you can eat of the tree of life, right? It doesn’t say you can’t eat of that. Who’s to say they couldn’t eat of that and just live forever? Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[But] it’s by eating of the fruit in defiance of God, human beings learn that they were able to do that, that they are free moral agents. They find that out. They’re able to choose their actions in conformity with God’s will or in defiance of God’s will. So paradoxically, they learn that they have moral autonomy. Remember, they were made in the image of God and they learn that they have moral autonomy by making the defiant choice, the choice for disobedience…

So the very action that brought them a godlike awareness of their moral autonomy was an action that was taken in opposition to God. So we see then that having knowledge of good and evil is no guarantee that one will choose or incline towards the good. That’s what the serpent omitted in his speech. He said if you eat of that fruit, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you’ll become like God. It’s true in one sense but it’s false in another. He sort of omitted to point out… he implies that it’s the power of moral choice alone that is godlike. But the biblical writer will claim in many places that true godliness isn’t simply power, the power to do what one wishes. True godliness means imitation of God, the exercise of one’s power in a manner that is godlike, good, life-affirming and so on. So, it’s the biblical writer’s contention that the god of Israel is not only all-powerful but is essentially and necessarily good.

Such epiphanic good stuff in there, good stuff that is perhaps best seen in relief to these formative stories.

Your gods are options, the ancient Hebrews seemed to say, but here is what our God is about, and not about:

It’s not that we are to be in servitude to other gods (what sort of gods are out there, offering themselves to your life, or to the lives of those whom you love, or to our culture?).

It’s not that creation is evil, and to be despised.

It’s not that immortality is where it’s at.

And it’s not even that the world was created exactly as this is written down.

It’s (in part) that God calmed the chaos; provided for God’s creatures; established expectations of goodness and reverence toward God, creation, and each other; and that creation is, at root, good.

As I told my daughter last Sunday, an epiphany is an a-ha moment, and Epiphany, then, is the season of a-ha moments.

My preparation for this presentation last week yielded a bunch of a-ha moments:

A reminder that the Jewish-Christian tradition did not begin in a vacuum; an offering of new knowledge about ancient Hebrew; a gift of renewed clarity that God loves creating and creatures, and…

an affirmation that I am unapologetically and irreversibly a geek.

Web resources:

Christine Hayes, Yale Professor.  Her lectures seen here can also be viewed online.

Dennis Bratcher, of the Christian Resource Institute.

http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/religion-flood.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

http://eawc.evansville.edu/essays/brown.htm

The NT makes sense (mostly)! So why does the OT make it so hard to be a Christian? A lot of it is so contradictory. What makes it worse is when preachers read too much into an OT passage to support something in the NT, and then you find that in the next chapter or book God does something horrific such as wiping out people or judging people because of what someone else did. Seems the Judge of the OT is not the loving Father of the NT no matter how much spin you put on it. Rant over

A pillar Lutheran theologian by the name of Joseph Sittler once said that he was too good a theologian to think that he was a great one.

I’m of the same mind, which is why, instead of taking this one on alone, this question that has so many key layers, I contacted a truly great theologian to help respond to it with clarity and savvy.

Dr. Murray Haar was a colleague of mine when I taught religion at Augustana College in Sioux Falls.  Although we are no longer colleagues at the same institution, I am grateful that we are yet friends.

He is Jewish, but for a time served as a Lutheran pastor before he returned to the faith of his family and that had once been his.

So he was a perfect fit to send this fine question–and one that has crossed many a Christian mind.

Murray wrote this in candid and pithy and pointed and provocative response:

What some Christians sometimes forget is that for Christians, Jesus is the God of the Old Testament become flesh.  So the Old Testament God is really no different than the New.  Both care about justice and love.  Both are gracious and yet condemn sin.  In point of fact, in the whole New Testament Jesus does not smile once.  He does not sing camp songs.  In fact, he rarely acts with grace or talks about how much he loves people.  His first words in the Gospel of Mark are ones that make him sound like an O.T. prophet, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”  So what we have are charicatures of Jesus as being loving and kindly and sweet and the O.T. God as lacking grace and being violent.  The fact is in the Bible God is God is God, mysterious, ineffable, perplexing, ambiguous, with both a passion for justice and grace.

Thank you Murray.

I recall making a similar point as the questioner to my New Testament professor in seminary.  His steely response is still seared into my little brain:  ”They are the same God.”

One of my favorite quotes from Despicable Me (love that movie) is “It’s so fluffy I’m going to DIE!”

I think that’s how many Christians view Jesus: meek and mild, and, well, ultimately fluffy.

But he wasn’t.

He got ticked.  Turned tables over.  Called people vipers.

That is, I think that this question–which conveys some common beliefs about Judaism, Christianity, and their respective Holy Scriptures–conveys some misunderstandings about them all as well.

The Old Testament, of course, was not written for people to become Christians.  It was written for Jews.  So the questioner is correct that it is disrespectful to read into the OT for NT “prophecies.”  The writers were writing for their time to their context.

That said, the Germans have a great word, one Heilsgeschichte. It means “God’s salvation history,” or God’s saving acts in history.  The idea has a longstanding place in Christian theology, and is meant to show that God has acted on behalf of God’s people in the past, and continues to do so in the present.

And so it is appropriate to look to the Old Testament to see the continuity.

While it is absolutely true that there are troubling stories in the Old Testament, it is key to recall that there are also troubling tales in the New of apparently merciless and capricious judgment (Parable of the Bridesmaids) or perplexing rewards (Parable of the Unjust Steward).

And it is also true that even now, the question of how God can be loving and yet seem to abide, allow, or even create suffering is real to Jew and Christian.

And one more key piece we Christians ought not forget: Jesus was not a Christian, but was a Jew.  And the Scriptures to which he referred were those we commonly call the Old Testament.  So as Dr. Haar notes above, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, the assurance that the One would come, Emmanuel (a Hebrew word), God-With-Us.

So.

It isn’t as simple as dividing God up, splitting God up the middle between the Old and New Testament, as if God were just going through an Old Testament, adolescent-like God phase.

In fact, the more that one pays attention to the relationship of the Old Testament to the New, and that the God of the Old Testament is the same God in the New, the more we’ve got a shot at tamping down anti-Semitism, misrepresentation of Jewish beliefs, Christian triumphalism, and “Bibles” that don’t include the very Scriptures to which Jesus referred.

Upshot of the thumbnail sketch: the notion that there are two Gods just like there are two Testaments is widespread.  But the more you peek at it and poke around in it, the more one notices that there are more consistencies than inconsistencies, more relation than disconnect, and therefore less to rant about and more to reflect upon!

So did I spin out or weave together?

Peace, and thanks to the questioner.

Anna

I was brought up being told that God is everywhere, and all powerful, that those who seek shall find, and that it is quite possible to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, while fearing no evil.

But this kind of teaching seems incongruous with the idea of holy places, or places that God is close to, his power and presence more tangible; places which are the peaks to those shadowy valleys.

I am confident that these places exist.

But that seems at odds with the idea that God is always there, always dependable.

I suppose there’s no reason to expect that God has an even spread, or an even affection for all places or times… but I still feel like I’m missing something, and have never been able to understand this.

What do you think?

Fantastic question, eloquently written, and stimulating to boot.

I’m going to take it in two directions.

First, I once heard of a parent of many children who was asked, “Do you have a favorite?”

The mother said, “Yes.  The sick one.”

That resonates with this mama.

And I think God might appreciate the story too.  That is, I think that God cares for all of God’s children, but is most concerned about those who are suffering.

There are good reasons to make this case, the cross being one of them.  It’s been said by Robert Farrar Capon that the only prerequisite to being raised from the dead is to be dead.  That is, God is in the business of giving life, and so where there is death, there is God.

Many theologians have talked about God’s predisposition toward the forsaken as it concerns poverty: God demonstrates preferential treatment of the poor–and so too God’s people (should).  For example, not to be lost is Luke’s point that just as the poor should be redeemed from their poverty, so too should the rich be redeemed from their poverty.

The point is, then, not that there are places where God is not, but that there are “pet” concerns of God, places and events that most fully reveal what God intends for the world.

The second way of thinking through is concerns more specifically place.  I know that this is more the gist of your question.  Still, the two themes overlap.  More on that in a moment.

The other day I was asked where I found God most of all in my day-to-day life.  I answered that I experience God most profoundly when I am snuggling with my two children before bed, reading with them and warming their feet with my legs wrapped around and over them.  There is a saturation in the air of love and joy in these moments, and I feel here most blessed.

Secondly, if I may say so, my study at OMG seems to have something of God in it, with the wood and the stone and the light and the books and my knowledge of sacred conversations that have and that will take place between these walls.  Some of those who have been here have said that they too feel that this place has a bit of the holy to it.

But naming these two spots also names that I think God is present more clearly in places unique to people’s experiences and relationships.  While I have fondness for other children, nothing captures my heart and gives me peace and announces blessing and grace than snuggling up to these two particular children.  God’s activity is not generic, but relates to and is evidenced in the relationship between specific places and people.

It’s here that I reached up to grab Walter Brueggemann’s terrific book called The Land.  In this volume Brueggemann (an Old Testament scholar of extraordinary brilliance and prose) writes about God’s relationship with the people of Israel and the land.

It is not a simple relationship.

Brueggemann is fascinated by the repeated cycle of landless people being promised land which then becomes lost because the people fixate on the land rather than on justice.  ”When the people are landless, the promise comes; but when the land is secured, it seduces and the people are turned toward loss.”  (175)  Land equals power which becomes more important than the one who bestowed the land in the first place–and more important than that One’s intention for the stewardship of that very same land.

Promise and land are intertwined in the biblical tradition.  Brueggemann points to Ezekiel 36:28 “You shall dwell in the land…you shall be my people, and I will be your God,” and Ezekiel 36:33 “I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt…I, the Lord, have replanted that which was desolate….”  (141)  One can see similar references in Psalm 69:35 (“For God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and people shall dwell there and possess it,”) and Isaiah 61:4-6 (“They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations,”) and Jeremiah 31:23-24 (“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Once more they shall use these words in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I restore their fortunes: “‘The Lord bless you, O habitation of righteousness, O holy hill!’ And Judah and all its cities shall dwell there together, and the farmers and those who wander with their flocks.”).

God’s promises occur in and are about place, because God’s interaction with Israel must take place somewhere, and that somewhere is land.  Land is where God’s shared history with Israel occurs.  (142).  And with his typical poetry, Brueggemann writes that this promised land “is the restoration of livable turf.  The land is redivided to prisoners and other outcasts.  The land is gift given by the One who has pity (Hos. 2:23), who leads and guides (cf. Ps. 23:1-3).  The outcasts are given places and comforted.” (150).

In this way, land becomes a symbol for sustainability and sufficiency (with, yes, a nod to my ELCA tradition in their statement on economic justice).  As Brueggemann states:

It is clear that the land emphasis, which concerns transmission of the inheritance from generation to generation, places the faithful believer in the flow of the generations.  A focus on “now” decisions of faith is untenable because land must be cared for in sustained ways.  It is equally the case that the land possessed or the land promised is by definition a communal concern.  It will not do to make the individual person the unit of decision-making because in both Testaments the land possessed or promised concerns the whole people.  Radical decisions in obedience are of course the stuff of biblical faith, but now it cannot be radical decisions in a private world without brothers and sisters, without pasts and futures, without turf to be managed and cherished as a partner in the decisions.  The unit of decision-making is the community and that always with reference to the land.

…The central problem is not emancipation but rootage, not meaning but belonging, not separation from community but location within it, not isolation from others but placement deliberately between the generation of promise and fulfillment. (186-187).

Do you see how Brueggemann ties land to community?

Do you see the implications for stewardship of land?

water?

resources?

creatures on it?

people on it?

justice?

And here is a fundamental difference between the Jewish tradition and the Christian.

Jews focus on present justice, not, to be clear, because they have to, but because they live out of their relationship with God which calls them into communal well-being.  So, relevant to your question, land issues concern justice issues: is there justice going on in the land?

Christians have tended to spiritualize land.  ”The promised land” is now heaven.  We have a habit of turning our hearts and minds toward that place, and simultaneously turning our hearts and minds away from the desolation of the land–in all its forms–here and now.  We figure if heaven must be God’s focus, it ought to be ours too…at the expense, all too often, of the land.

That is, land, the earth, has become a stage upon which the human drama is played.  That drama often is fairly individualistic, concerning the interplay of “me and Jesus.”

The Lord’s Prayer is awfully Jewish, and awfully helpful here.  Note that the pronouns are all plural (that is, not “My father in heaven….give me this day my daily bread, forgive me my sins…), and that there is this noteworthy petition: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  Land, community, justice, and promise.

So, back to that question of yours:

Both/and.  God does have particular concern for particular places, and God’s presence is everywhere, because God cares about the land and the creatures on it.

That’s my first run-through.  Contributions, anyone?

Today I’m posting something a bit out-of-the ordinary for what I’ve typically done with OMG.

It’s the text of a speech I made at a press conference on Tuesday, Jan. 18th, sponsored by the South Dakota Democrats and the South Dakota wing of Organizing for America, the morphed body of Obama for America Supporters.

The issue at hand is the threatened repeal of the health care legislation passed 2010.  As you’ll read, the matter is very dear to my heart for a number of reasons.

I fully realize that many folks who follow OMG are Republicans, or perhaps Democrats who support the repeal.

I do not mean to offend you.  I do mean to show, however, two things:

1. One’s faith commitments make a difference in one’s politics.

2. Although people on the political right tend to invoke God more than people on the political left, I want to show that it is possible to be a progressive Democrat and a Christian.

Some might think that my overt political opinions might cloud my ability to be theologically open-minded and fair to those who differ: this is one reason why pastors are often discouraged from being open about their voting preferences.

Feminist that I am, I figure that we all have a bias.  Might as well be forthright about it, and then you don’t have to guess what it is!

So, here is my speech, my objection to the Republican agenda to repeal the Health Care Legislation:

__________________________________

Yesterday, our nation remembered Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In March 1966, King, this man whom we recognize because he had a habit of speaking difficult and dangerous truth—not to mention transforming our social justice landscape—gave a speech to the Second National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Chicago.  There he said:

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

And yet, here we sit, 55 years later, having just a year ago moved closer to his vision of health care equality, and yet some awfully powerful people want to bring us back to 1966.

It’s stunning.

I’m so grateful that Amanda Mack invited me to participate in this press conference, because the matter of health care is a big deal in my world.  It’s a big deal for me as a woman who has benefited powerfully from the German health care system—one far more progressive than the one now in place threatened with repeal; it’s a big deal for me as a mother with a child who suffered a traumatic brain injury (now known as a “pre-existing condition”); and it’s a big deal for me as a Christian theologian.

So about that German health care system.

In 2004, tragedy struck my family right when we were gearing up to return to the US after a five-year stint in Regensburg, Germany.  We had been there while I worked on my Ph.D.  Completed, we were one month away from signing for a home here in Sioux Falls.  It was then that my husband and son were hit by a car as they crossed a street.

My husband died five hours later, and my sweetest boy Karl suffered a traumatic brain injury, a trauma so severe that many doctors essentially guaranteed that if he didn’t die, he would be non-communicative for the rest of his life.

Still, the German system didn’t give up on him.

Karl was in ICU for six weeks, and then transported by ambulance to a rehab center in the Alps, where he stayed for another six weeks.

Over the course of those three months, the invoice I would have received would have included three ambulance rides; the intense care for my late husband before he died; truly countless surgeries for my son including the removal of his skull, the freezing of his skull, and the reinsertion of his skull, as well as the insertion of catheters and feeding tubes; MRIs and C-Ts; occupational, physical, and speech therapy; and daily food for my family.

For all of that medical, therapeutic, familial care and more, I paid at most $100 out-of-pocket.

In Germany, you see, not to mention in the health care systems of most every other industrialized nation, health care is bound up with the benefit of being human.

In this country, it has been—and still is, to a significant degree—bound up with the benefit of being employed.

Even post- health care legislation, employment does not guarantee that one has enough coverage, and our system doesn’t recognize that the care of the chronically ill involves much more than health care alone.

Up until 2007, I was employed full-time as a professor.  But the stress of the tragedy, not to mention the continuing pressure and chaos of the life of a single parent (with one child who had special needs, the other who had her own special needs as a small, small child) was clearly taking its toll.  Nothing is more important to me than my two children, and I knew that they needed me more than I was able to be present.  Yet my teaching position in this country was also bound up in health insurance.  And so I found myself choosing for a long time between being centered and present for my children, and providing health care—most pressingly for Karl—and necessary income for them.

This terrible choice never presented itself to my German friends who had suffered a similar tragedy with their three-year-old daughter.  Instead, the German government recognized that by communally supporting those who suffer, the entire society benefits, the benevolent action radiating from the collective commitment to take care of those with medical need.

So as I considered my options, the worry about the limitations of pre-existing conditions and life-time caps was crushing.

These issues still concern me, as I—along with so many other parents and partners to loved ones—now sit on the edge of our seats worrying that the Republican push to repeal health care will threaten yet again our assurance that regardless of when the illness or injury occurred, or the nature of the illness or injury, we will know that we need not choose between financial security and care for our beloveds.

In Karl’s unique case, receiving a traumatic brain injury at three weeks before one turns three makes it impossible to not meet lifetime caps, let alone get around the pre-existing condition clause; that is, when an illness or injury gets you as at the beginning of your life, of when you exist, “lifetime” is a long, long time, and the balance of everything that occurs for the remainder of your days is “pre-existing.”

Now, speaking as a Christian theologian, the Republican push to repeal this literally life-giving legislation offends the integrity of my understanding of who Christians are called to be.

Let me be clear: by no means am I assuming that we are a nation that ought to be governed exclusively by Christian principles.

That said, I am aware that many people who advocate for the repeal of this health care law are Christians, and I would like to make a case using a different set of Christian lenses to show that there is another way of thinking though this.

The Greek word soteria is translated as “salvation,” which in the Greek in point of fact means “health, healing, and wholeness.”  The current effort to dismantle the major advances made in the recent health care legislation stands in radical opposition to this biblical ideal; an ideal clearly present in both the Old and New Testaments, and prophesied, proclaimed, and enacted as a key mark of the reign of God extended to all people—not just those with jobs!  In fact, one could argue that the biblical agenda is that soteria ought to be offered precisely to those without jobs.

The Republican push to repeal also simply stands in radical opposition to the most basic needs of the American people.

In light of this, it is remarkable that this week of all weeks, yesterday’s commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. barely in our rear view mirror, the Republicans continue to try to reverse the health care legislation.

Simultaneously, of course, they reject the prophetic words of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

Quite coincidentally, yesterday I stumbled upon King’s words taken from “A Time to Break Silence,” 1967.

Listen.

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves.  For from his view, we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

For all sorts of reasons, this speech ought to be read these days.

For the moment, however, it seems to me that King’s words are relevant in this present political stew of animosity, this cultural brew of distrust, this morass of ill-will in which we all sit.

Regardless of what Sarah Palin asserts, maps with crosshairs targeting the “brothers [and, in a painful nod to Gabrielle Giffords, sisters] who are called the opposition” hardly demonstrate the nobility of King’s vision.

Now, this is not about Ms. Palin per se.

It is about what it is to be Christian and politically and religiously engaged these days.

Stunning is that sitting at the table with Martin Luther King, Jr. on that occasion in ’67 was Abraham Heschel, Jewish theologian.  (With the deepest respect for one another, the two of them collaborated against the war, poverty, and hate. Being has a fine program on Heschel here in which, among other matters, his friendship with King is explored.) And in his speech, King references Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and Muslims!  From a Christian in 1967!

Here is what he writes:

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing — embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate — ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.”4 Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

Let me be clear: I am a fan of righteous indignation.  And righteous indignation, to be really of the righteous variety, involves action–and at times, political action.

But one can demonstrate righteous indignation without crosshairs, without disavowing compromise, without Hitler-ified photographs of government officials, without screaming voice over voice.

If one does rely on such forms of engagement, be not then surprised that the rhetoric is not only contagious, but effective–for that is what rhetoric intends to do, is it not?  Sway opinion to move toward action?  And should we be stunned if the action is of the ilk of the rhetoric?

Really?

(Let me be clear: the shooter in Tuscon clearly had psychological troubles.  I am not denying that, and believe that while deeply tragic, his actions raise painful awareness of the plight of those with severe mental illness.  That said, I am saying that, crosshairs or no, the culture of violent rhetoric breeds, surprise surprise, violence).

Certainly in this day of rapid informational exchange, of culture rubbing shoulder against culture, of globalization discovered locally, of ecumenism branching ever more into inter-religious dialogue, people come to see that the way that they have done things all along, and perhaps even reflexively, might be wrong.

Humility is what I’m talking about.

The trick, it seems to me, is to be humble while being grounded, while understanding one’s belief, and one’s reasons for this belief.

Relativism is, after all, still a belief.

I do not oppose tenacity.  I am not against assertiveness.  I do not rebel against someone saying, “But as for me and my house….”  In fact, these are the people who are most interesting to me, those who know their identity and live out of it.

But if these same people are myopic in thought, are haughty in belief, are vitriolic in speech and action, then I become wary.

I can not tell you how many conversations I have with people who disavow the Christian Church because of the Loud and the Few within it who employ hostile and arrogant rhetoric.

But we are not all like that!

The Spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., is alive!

But I have said often, as of late, fear trumps reason, and it often trumps the sort of love of which Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke.

So then the question is, how do we engage those who push away, those who incite anger and defensiveness in an attempt to intimidate and manipulate?

Those of you who are psychologists, I need your help here.

I have a theory.

I know a little of brain research, and the sort of brain research that tells of the role of the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, the fight or flight core.

In families where there has been abuse, or in a person who has suffered some sort of trauma, the amygdala is on hyper-alert–and can even be lushly full of neural connections, precisely because it has had to adapt to the context.

Some say that in order to calm the amygdala down, not least of all when it is supremely anxious and reactionary, a chemical reaction needs to occur to short-circuit the over-active thing.

What is needed is touch.  Calm.  Assurance.

I am of the mind that our culture has an over-active amygdala.  So much fear, anxiety, and defensiveness courses through our society.  It is as if we are living in a culture of abuse, or that we collectively suffer a form of PTSD, and ourselves turn into a communal hostile force.

I wonder how King’s words can speak to us, can calm our cultural and societal amygdala down, can remind us that regardless of whether we are Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and so on and so forth, our Great Traditions do all speak of love and compassion.

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus said on that first Maundy Thursday that we are to love one another?

He didn’t say that we are to like one another.  That’s too much to ask.

But to love one another, in the sense of which King spoke, and in the sense of agape, of selfless, giving love, now we might have something.

It takes work.  It’s tough to love those who are yelling at you.  But if one stops to realize that they are afraid of something, that their amygdala is firing, one is summoned to love them despite.  Perhaps were we to collectively love them, we could show them another way? We could help to set a terribly different cultural tone?  A one where we do not forfeit righteous indignation, but we do away with crosshairs and hate-inciting untruths and nuance?

The danger, of course, is that it would be terribly easy to allow abusive behavior to continue in the name of loving-despite.

That’s not what I’m proposing here.

Instead, I’m proposing that those of us whose amygdala is not yet on red-alert, do not succumb!  It is possible to not be dragged into the morass of reactive anger and hate.  It is possible to demonstrate both reason and love.

Insofar as one does, one has a fighting chance to embody the spirit of MLK, Jr., the spirit of which he said, “Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.”

Advent, as you note in your defining of the term, comes from the Latin “to arrive”. We as Christians anticipate the second arrival, or as we commonly say, second “coming”, of Christ while celebrating Christ’s first arrival. In Christ’s first arrival, God offered Her only Son to die for the sake of all who believe (Jn. 3). Jesus rose from the dead in three days, and after remaining on earth for some time, ascended into heaven and is now placed in God’s seat of highest honor before Her throne (or as the creeds put it, God’s “right hand”). Jesus, who is most truly Lord and Son of God, left the earth to come to the point that it is now, in which people die of various diseases and various sufferings, and knew when He left this world that such things would happen (God is omnipotent, and so also Her Son must be). Why would God’s Son leave this world to return again later knowing that such terrible things would take place? What did God have to gain by having Her Son come twice rather than once?

Right.

Short version: I have no idea.

Well, I have ideas, but nothing I’m willing to put out there as the incontestable, incontrovertible truth.

So I’ll humbly put out there a few of those ideas, consoled by the fact that it is great fun wondering about the question, and by the fact that nobody really knows why anything is as it is, so I’m in good company.

The Christian claim that Jesus came, and then left, is characterized by some as tantamount to him saying, “Now, hold that thought!” while, as you point out, suffering goes on unabated.

What’s up with that?

It’s actually a great Advent season question, because it has to do with waiting.

I am increasingly interested in the difference between ‘waiting’ and ‘anticipating.’

If we wait, we are passive.  As I write this, I am waiting for my car to be repaired (sunroof is stuck in the up position, which is an unfortunate matter when my thermometer is registering 8 degrees!).

But there is nothing that I can do to help that car be fixed.  I can only bide my time, doing activities that are unrelated to the reason I’m waiting.

Anticipating, however, involves action.  When we anticipate something, we involve ourself in the act of waiting.

My daughter was on the phone with my sister last night.  Both are named Else, by the way. So Auntie Else asked Elsegirl, “Are you getting ready for Christmas?”  ”Nope,” said my daughter, “but we sure are getting ready for Advent!”

During Advent, and during this period of waiting for God to come again (for what purpose? you have asked), we wait.

But perhaps it is better said that we anticipate, which means (etymologically speaking) “to take before”.  We are, as Else says, getting ready.  Anticipating is like participated waiting.

Christians can learn a lot about waiting from the Jews.

Taped up on my wall at OMG I have a page from the German newspaper Die Zeit, a piece written by the Jewish theologian Elie Wiesel.  (For those who can read German, the link to this same article is here)  In it, he mulls this business of waiting, of anticipating the arrival of the Messiah.  And he writes this:

“Zurzeit träume ich nicht mehr vom Messias. Er besucht meine Träume nicht mehr. Er kam nicht, als er erwartet wurde. Also hat er Verspätung. Macht nichts, der Jude in mir wartet weiter auf ihn.”

“These days, I don’t dream any more about the Messiah.  He doesn’t visit my dreams any more.  He didn’t come when he was expected.  So he’s late.  Doesn’t matter.  The Jew in me will just continue to wait.”

Now, Wiesel is not speaking here about waiting in keeping with the sort of waiting implied in the joke, “Quick!  Jesus is coming!  Look busy!”  Wiesel is speaking about waiting that anticipates the one for whom we are waiting.  It is the very Jewish notion that we hear in John the Baptist’s cry, “Prepare the way of the Lord!”

So some theories are that Jesus did not disappear to some place far away, but rather appears to us now as the breath that moves in us to make the reign of God present.  Some theologians, notably those who teach something called Process Theology, believe that God works in every moment to inject love and compassion into a situation, and that there you see resurrection, there you see God in the fullness of the moment, seeking always to lure us toward the right and the good.

Others, who agree that Jesus did not ascend to some place, think that he ascended to the future.  The resurrection was a “downpayment,” so to speak, a promise-in-action that death does not have the last word.  It is a both/and notion.  God is already here but not yet fully.

I felt this take on matters when I was two months pregnant with my son Karl during December of 2000.  My life had already changed (I was taking new vitamins, not drinking great German beer any more, planning for his new and safe arrival), even though he wasn’t fully here yet.

It is not to be missed that the notion of God as mother resonates throughout Scripture.  Note Isaiah 49:15:

Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?  Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

Feminist scholar Elizabeth Johnson notes that Jesus also compares himself to a mother gathering her chicks (Mt. 23:37).  Note what else she says down below in my “quotes” section.  It is goosebumpy good.

And one effect of this notion is, to quote my mentor Walt Bouman, “Now we know that there is more to do with our lives than preserve them.”

That is, we are now called to be “little Christs,” as C.S. Lewis would say in Mere Christianity.  (“The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.  It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.”)

At this point I am reminded of Lisa Ling, whom I once heard present here in Sioux Falls.  She said that she was not a religious person, but married one.  All of the horrors that she covers as a journalist led her to finally ask her husband, “Why doesn’t your God do anything about this suffering?”  To which he replied, “God did.  God made you.”

In other words, we who call ourselves Christians are called to be ambassadors of the reign of God, being in our selves and in the Church demonstrations, enactments, of life trumping death.  Allow me to also point out yet again that it is critical that Christians figure out what we understand Jesus to be, for that informs (dictates, one could say) who we are as “followers of Jesus.”

The tradition of the theology of the cross suggests that God does not passively sit by, but suffers with us, calling new life out of dark death.  It has often attended to the forgiveness of sins, but since WWII, it has asked the question of what the cross says and does not only for those who are the sinners, but for those sinned upon.

Another approach suggests that this period of time is the “gathering time,” the time when Christians are called to proclaim God’s word to all the world.  Even within this idea, there are (at least) two divergent notions: one says that we need to evangelize so that as many people can be “saved” as possible before Jesus comes again; others say that the point is to proclaim the risen Jesus because in him we see God’s agenda to heal and gather all the world.

Regardless of the ideas of what we’re to be doing in the meantime, your last question still hangs over the entire blog entry so far:

Why would God’s Son leave this world to return again later knowing that such terrible things would take place? What did God have to gain by having Her Son come twice rather than once?

How can there be such suffering in a world created by one whom we proclaim to be good?

There is an idea that although one can make the case that God is good, it might be more accurate to say (merely?) that God is God.

God is wild.

God is a mystery.

Even if you take God out of the equation, existence is a mystery.  It doesn’t make sense.

But for those of us who put some faith in something we call God, it behooves us to figure out what we mean by it, more or less, and what difference it makes.

I’ve begun dancing with a thought, a thought born out of an awareness that it is very easy to judge someone’s actions, or inactions, from a distance–and not particularly creative, either.

However, once stories are told from the inside, once differing and personal perspectives are heard, sometimes what appeared to be a cut-and-dry matter suddenly becomes, well, not that.

And one is compelled toward compassion, toward humility, and toward an appreciation of messiness and complexity, a recognition that life is anything but simple.

I look at the suffering you name, and am fully aware of suffering in my life and of the lives in my sphere, and I wonder too with indignation and with perplexity and with curiosity, “What is up?”

And then I wonder whether I need to apply the same sort of humility and compassion toward God that I strive to apply toward others whose actions cause me indignation and perplexity and curiosity.  Maybe something is up.

I do not know why the Messiah has not come/come again.

Some might see this concession as a cop-out.

I don’t feel particularly cop-outy when I point out my son’s brain injury and remind God loudly of God’s promises.

Nor do I find myself particularly relieved of my pain and indignation when I imagine that there is no God and this is all happenstance.

At the very least, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, we’ve got a story of a God who gives God’s creation freedom–for if we did not have that, then this entire enterprise of life would be a game, a puppet show, an illusory matrix.

And, it seems to me, that is what love relationships are: wild, a mystery.

(Lest we forget, the Latin origin of the word passion means ‘to suffer.’)

The minute that there is the exertion of coercion, we have no longer a love relationship but a controlling relationship.

So there is freedom, and there is consequent suffering.

And the general trajectory of this same story is that God does not desire pain and suffering, but rather wholeness, healing, justice, mercy, and redemption….and God is passionate about that agenda.

So we’re talking about faith in this agenda, and therefore also in this persistent belief that God desires something different than what you so poignantly describe as this apparently persistent reality.

After all, in the very text you cite, namely John 3, verse 17 (which I have never yet seen held up on a placard at a ballgame) says, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Below, then, a smattering of thoughts (more to come: I left a few on the floor at my study) on the matter to round out this entry, and to demonstrate some varying voices weighing in on the matter that I stumbled on as I read up on things.

Thanks ever so much for your question.

Jürgen Moltmann in The Coming of God:

…with the raising of the crucified Christ from the dead, the future of the new creation of al things has already begun in the midst of this dying and transitory world… (136)

The eschatological message of the New Testament–’The End of all things is at hand’ (1 Peter 4.7)–is geared towards resistance, and against resignation. (137)

Elizabeth Johnson in Quest for the Living God:

…seeking the female face of God has profound significance.  By relativizing masculine imagery it lassoes the idol off its pedestal, breaking the stranglehold of patriarchal discourse and its deleterious effects.  God is not literally a father or a king or a lord but something ever so much greater.  Thus is the truth more greatly honored.  This is not to say that male metaphors cannot be used to signify the divine.  Men, too, are created, redeemed, and sanctified by the gracious love of God, and images taken from their lives can function in as adequate or inadequate a way as do images taken from the lives of women.  But naming toward God with female metaphors releases diving mystery from its age-old patriarchal cage so that God can be truly God–incomprehensible source, sustaining power, and goal of the world, holy Wisdom, indwelling Spirit, the ground of being, the beyond in our midst, the absolute future, being itself, mother, matrix, lover, friend, infinite love, the holy mystery that surrounds and supports the world. (99)

[Referring to the multitude of maternal images for God in Scripture] Strongly associated with all these maternal images is divine compassion.  Biblical scholars point out that the Hebrew noun for compassion or merciful love comes from the root word for women’s uterus, rehem, which is also the root for the verb “to show mercy” and the adjective “merciful.”  Here the life-giving physical organ of the female body serves as a concrete metaphor for a distinctly divine way of being, feeling, and acting.  When scripture calls on God for mercy, a frequent theme, it is actually asking the Holy One to treat us with the kind of love a mother has for the child of her womb. “To the responsive imagination,” writes Phyllis Trible, this semantic connection “suggests the meaning of love as selfless participation in life.  The womb protects and nourishes but does not possess and control.  It yields its treasure in order that wholeness and well-being may happen  Truly, it is the way of compassion.”

Alfred North Whitehead in Process and Reality:

What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world.  By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love int he world passes into the love in heaven, and floods back again into the world.  In this sense, God is the great companion–the fellow-sufferer who understands. (532)

Kathryn Tanner in Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity:

Since there may come a time when the world no longer exists, this placement in God cannot e equated with God’s repsence or placement within the world.  A kind of indwelling of God in us is, however, a consequence of life in God, just as incarnation has as its consequence a human life lived by the power ofGod.  In imitation of Christ, we live in God and therfore the life we lead has a kind of composite character to match our new composite personhood: God’s attributes become in some sense our own; they are to shine through our lives in acts that exceed human powers and in that way become established as part of a reborn sense of self. (111)

Douglas John Hall in Professing the Faith:

The theology of the cross is about the courage to enter the darkness so that the light may be seen. (128)

Douglas John Hall in Confessing the Faith:

The “good news” (gospel) is formed over against and in response to the “bad news” of the historical moment. (11)

To wait for God is hard.  It is comparable to the posture of the beggar, who possesses nothing, is dependent, and is constantly made conscious of his inadequacy.  The Christian preacher who waits for God feels bereft in the presence of those who look to him for religious answers to all their questions; his expertise appears bogus; he does not command the respect accorded to those who possess authority in their fields.  Yet, who other than superficial persons can give credence to those who speak and act as if they already possessed….God? (271)

The Bible is well acquainted with Shakespeare’s thought that history may be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  Think only of Sarah’s laughter when she heard “those men” under the tree talking about her forthcoming pregnancy (Gen. 18).  When Israel affirms that hope is a legitimate historical category, applicable to time, applicable to individual life as well as the life of the creation as a whole, it does not do so naively but in the full knowledge that this can never be done easily.  It is a matter of trust in God, not in processes naturally favorable to human welfare. (485)

Emil Fackenheim, Canada’s foremost Jewish theologian and philosopher, now living in Israel, has written that after Auschwitz, hope is for the Jew not an option but a “commandment.”  But hope is authentic only when the Jew remembers–that is to say, remembers not only the ancient “root experience” of the exodus but also the modern one, the Holocaust.  If the data of despair is neglected, then hop–or what will be called hope–will revert to shallow hopefulness, a conditioned reflex of the well off. (488)

Luke Timothy Johnson in The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters:

The…New Testament’s witness insists that jesus did not return from the dead to continue his former life.  That would be good news only for him and his friends and family.  It would not be a new creation.  It would not be good news for all humanity for all ages.

The resurrection is, the whole of the New Testament witness insists, Jesus’ entry into the life and power of God.  To express that truth, the New Testament uses the language not only of resurrection, but they symbol also of Jesus’ ascension and enthronement at God’s right hand. (185-86)

Jesus’ ascent is the premise for the sharing of the gifts (of the Spirit) with others (Eph. 4:11-16).  The ascension of Christ is not a distancing from us but the condition for a new form of intimacy with us. (189)

James Wm. McClendon, Jr. in Systematic Theology: Doctrine:

According to Revelation 5:9f, the sacrificial work of the earthly Jesus has already formed this “royal” people; we exist; the new politics has begun.  As [John Howard] Yoder puts it, “On the average and in the long run, truthtelling and the love of enemy are the effective ways to create and defend culture,” that is, to give viable shape to the world, even in the present age.  Relief work goes farther than war to enable a people to survive; the Red Cross outlasts the Nazi swastika cross. (99)

Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki in God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology:

The great reversal themes in the teaching and life of Jesus call for a radical openness to God’s rule.  Our structures, no matter how inclusive their original intent, tend to harden toward their own preservation and perpetuation, rather than to be continuously open to the needs of inclusive well-being.  The structures are to be in the service of love and justice.  Openness to God’s future calls upon us indeed to create structures, but always to submit those structures to the critique of the demands of God’s radical love.  Faithfulness to the past, when that past is the revelation of God in jesus Christ, calls upon us for a radical openness to new and unexpected forms of inclusive well-being, God’s reign.

Apostolicity, therefore, is a continuity with the past that nevertheless has an essential openness to it.  In every generation and in every Christian there must be a faithfulness to the content of the gospel: our words must point to the Word who is a person, living, crucified, risen.  Therefore, our words must also take the form of ever new interpretations of ways in which we can enact love and justice.  Word and deed together constitute the church’s faithfulness to its apostolic tradition. Constancy and openness form the dynamism whereby the apostolic church witnesses to the world. (141)

God continues in the passage to describe Himself in relationship to mankind as the “God of your fathers”, etc. It would be nice to better understand what God meant (or Moses’s interpretation) of that event.

________________________

Wowza. There’s something to keep a mind moving in the morning.

In short, in Exodus 3:13 and following, God lets God’s name slip. YHWH.

But the name YHWH has been keeping people awake ever since, and apparently you too have maybe lost a few minutes wrangling with it.

Why YHWH? What does that mean?

Bernhard Anderson, Old Testament theologian, calls this text “one of the most cryptic passages in the Old Testament.”

I’d add that to your fantastic adjective “expansive!”

To Moses’ “simple” question, God offers three responses.

1. “I am who I am,” or “I will be who I will be;”

2. “I am;”

3. “The God of your ancestors…”

We have been terribly interested in this “be-ing” piece, this name that in Hebrew is rendered YHWH.

The first person form of the Hebrew word for the verb “to be” is ‘ehyeh. In Hebrew, it would be spelled (transliterated into English now of course!) HYH, namely “I am.” The third person form of this verb (namely “he is”) is YHWH.

Anderson lays out three different ways of thinking through this odd choice of a name, and I’ll lay them out in turn. (All of the following is found in Understanding the Old Testament, 4th Edition, p. 60 and following).

1. One line of thinking puts out there that originally in the text, the word was based on the Hebrew verb for “cause to be,” as in “He makes things happen.” In other words, in the context of the text, it reads, “I bring things into being.” This works nicely grammatically and theologically, if the agenda were to make the case that God was the creator of all things. Martin Noth notes that the “to be” verb used here does not imply merely “existing,” but rather active being, movement. (Exodus: A Commentary, 1962, p. 45).

2. Another theory is that YWHW should be understood simply as “I am.” Some, says Anderson, don’t particularly like this approach, because the idea of thinking about God in some eternal sort of way wasn’t really an issue for the ancient Israelites; it’s actually more of a Greek concern.

That said, the Israelites were concerned about developing an idea about God who was, is, and will continue to be involved in history. Another twist on this approach maintains that the point is that YHWH is, rather than other gods. Anderson quotes R. de Vaux who wrote that the implication here is that YHWH “is the only one who exists for Israel.”

3. Last is the idea that the name means “I will be,” in a future-bound sort of way. Here is a sense of comfort and promise. Moses will not be going forth alone, but rather with God, and the Israelites will not be left alone, but will be with God. As Anderson writes, “…the divine name signifies God, whose being is turned toward the people, who is present in their midst as deliverer, guide, and judge, and who is accessible in worship.”

That said, the text suggests that God is not 100% sure that it’s a good idea to reveal the divine name, for fear that people will try and use it for their own purposes. Think, for a moment, of how wars, church battles, justifications for personal deeds, are engaged with the assumption that “God is on my side.” So the interpretation above implies that God retains control of God’s identity, as in, “I will be whom I will be, not whom you want me to be.”

Still, once you know the name of someone, you can be in relationship. A name can be said in gentleness, love, anger, rejection, consolation, jest. With this in mind, that God offered YHWH suggests God’s willingness to be vulnerable and accessible. In other words, not only the name is of interest here, but the very offering of the name is too. See Terrance Frethiem here, in Interpretation: Exodus, pp. 64 and following.

Much more could be said regarding the name YHWH. Anderson concedes that the “honest truth is that we do not know for sure the source from which Moses received the name Yahweh.” That said, he goes on, the most important matter is what the name meant to early Israel. Here, it seems as if the name YHWH was bound up with the Exodus event, a God who, to quote Exodus 20:2, “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

To that degree, the name YHWH could continue to have relevance for those who call still upon that name. God continues to be, to be creative, to be involved, and to bring new things into being.

Naturally, I’ll start to answer this question with….psychology!

Donald Winnicott (1896-1971) was a British psychoanalyst who researched differing parental styles and their effects on children.  To sketch out the points relevant to this cool question, at one end of the parenting spectrum is authoritarian parenting; at the other, attachment parenting.

Children raised in a household with authoritarian parents have little, if any, opportunity to develop their own selves.  Instead, they are forced to craft their being according to the parental demands and expectations.  The primary parental goal is obedience; when the child is perceived as being disobedient, they are punished.  The parent determines everything, e.g., when and on what basis the baby gets fed, gets affection, and gets affirmation.  The relationship created is based on fear and/or obligation; less on love and respect.  The child conforms into what the parent wants, and develops into what Winnicott named “a false self.”

On the contrary, children raised in a household with parents who invest themselves in attachment parenting are not only allowed, but encouraged, to develop their own identities.  They are expected to make mistakes, and are loved in spite of them and through them.  The primary parental goal is love, and the relationship created is based on trust and engenders respect and investment in each other’s lives.

Enter Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament theologian, who likes Winnicott.  In a fantastic book called Israel’s Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology, Brueggemann wrote, “I propose that if God is experienced in doxology as always unqualifiedly good, fixed, sovereign, in charge, never acting, never impinged upon, it leads worshippers who are docile, passive, and who finally act in bad faith to please God, whatever they may in fact feel.”

So the upshot is that Bruggemann sees that just as some children learn to appease the parent preemptively, so too do some people of God.  That is, out of fear of being damned or punished even in the here and now, people do what they think God wants.  Even praise can become “false” because it is based on doing what God demands as opposed to welling up out of thankfulness and trust.  Lament is not an option, anger, questioning, dispute unthinkable.

Yet in that process, the children/people of God have little if any ownership of the task at hand, let alone in their relationship to God.  They become automatons, puppets, of their parental figure.

Yuck.

Now, I imagine that it is possible that God could have chosen to script our lives for us, or to give us absolute direction.

But would that not have created something like a world of chess, with one player moving “us” inanimate, wooden pieces around?

Or, even if one assumes that the “pieces” can lift up their heads and receive a hint of a nod from the divine player, would the chess piece have real ownership in the move, or take pride in the win?

And in point of fact, one doesn’t know what the best move is until one sees what the next player does…which is impossible until the second player sees how the first moves….or unless we’ve got a player who can see into the future, who knows a plan.

In short, I think that are troubles with hoping for a God-of-the-billboards (and who hasn’t wanted that on occasion….):

1) We could easily become passive participants in life–and even the word “participant” would be called into question, as we would lose ownership in our own choices, waiting for the “dictate” to come from on high;

2) The implications of a God who would give us clues, if not out-right directives, would include a God who then also knew the future…which would imply a God who already had life all laid out…which would also imply that we have no choice, either in small things (do we cross the street at this corner or the one up the block?) or in big things (do I take this job/marry this person/have children).

Of course, this raises the interesting question, ready for another blog….does God know all things?  Does God know the future?  Or is God on the edge of God’s divine seat too?

3)  We would lose out on the dynamism of a living relationship, developing into Winnicott’s and Brueggemann’s “false self.”  We don’t know our uniqueness, our own quirks, our own complexity, because we are so busy trying to appease God’s threatening anger and judgment.

4)  Sometimes, life is messy.  There might not be clear-cut, black and white answers in a given situation.  Sometimes no choice is purely good…or purely bad.  Sometimes we have to do as Dietrich Bonhoeffer did (German theologian who has been elevated to saint-like status in the Lutheran church–for participating in an assassination attempt against Hitler) and do what we think is best in a messy, messy world, trusting humbly in God’s grace.

What do you think?

Now, Lapide has much more to say following these words, thoughts that bear upon Easter Day, so stay tuned for what Lapide does with this notion.

But I believe that I would be remiss, as a Christian theologian, were I not to make mention of the Jews on Good Friday, and Lapide is as good a place to begin as any.

A dark backdrop to the Christian remembrance of Good Friday is a long-standing tradition–tradition beginning even in Christian Scripture–of anti-Semitism, of hate for the Jewish people.

How many of us have been told–and retell–that the Jews killed Jesus?

It’s not that simple.  Nor is this assertion true.

Stephen Wylen has written a helpful book entitled The Jews in the Time of Jesus.  In it, he lingers over the history of what occurred to Jesus vis a vis the Jewish trial.

It’s interesting.

In his chapter, “The Trial of Jesus,” he breaks down the timeline of the betrayal through until the crucifixion.  I’d like to highlight just a few to offer you some mental mulling nuggets over the course of these three most holy days in the Christian calendar.

Wylen presents some pretty convincing evidence disputing not whether Jesus died, but by whom and why.  In the end, he presents the possibility that Jesus was tried not by a full court of the Sanhedrin (a word meaning ‘council,’) but rather by a “kangaroo court,” a sham judicial trial led by the Jewish high priest Caiphas–himself a puppet of the Roman government.

Jesus was by all accounts a political troublemaker.  He preached justice, and had a following, and people were beginning to call him ‘king.’

Those in power who like being there don’t particularly like others who threaten that state of affairs.  This was true not only of some possible Jewish leaders, but more particularly for the Romans.

It is not newsy to state that those who challenge power–not to protect their own, but to redistribute it–tend to end up on a cross of one sort or another.

Now it is true that scripture makes mention of crowds of Jewish people clamoring “crucify him!”  I’ve always been bothered by the weird juxtaposition of the Palm Sunday crowds and the Good Friday crowds.  ”That’s awfully fickle,” I’ve thought.

Some say that that’s the point, that one minute we assert our faith and joy in Jesus, and the next we wish he’d go away.

So there’s meat there to chew on, but Wylen thinks that there might be something more to it than just that.

He wonders whether they serve the same sort of purpose as the Greek chorus in plays, props to make a point and a counterpoint.  That is, “all the Jews” were not at either event, but that the purpose of the crowds in the text was to reaffirm the main point of the immediate plot.

Unfortunately, points out Wylen, both the presence of this Good Friday crowd and the oddity of the Jews purportedly crying out “his blood be upon us and our children” (a reference that is itself in question–why would anyone request to be guilty of murder and have the same conviction be leveled against innocent children?) has made for a world of hurt in the history of the Jewish people.

So the questions for today concern the impact of history, and are posed particularly to the Christian readers of the day:

When we go to our Good Friday services, are we aware of the implicit anti-semitism in our own texts?  When we are asked “Who killed Jesus?” is our first answer “the Jews?”  Are we aware that the texts on this holy of holy days have led to vats of bloodshed against our Jewish sisters and brothers?

And how do we incorporate that truth into our Good Friday reflections?

More tomorrow on the implications of Jesus’ death in Christian theology, and why feminist theologians sometimes get a bit uppity about God the Father’s Son ending up on a cross.

And as an aside, I’ve gotten some fantastic questions which have been submitted on the website.  My most wonderful twirplets are off from school until Monday.  Come Tuesday, I’m on it.

Peace,

Anna

‘Question’ comes from the Latin quæstionem, meaning “a seeking, an inquiry.”  The root of quæstionem is quærere, from where we get ‘query,’ and means ‘to gain, to ask.’ ‘Quest’ comes from the same Latin parents, but picks up an edgy sense of adventure in the 14th Century.

I think asking theological questions is an adventure, is a quest, of sorts.  A regular Indiana Jones-esque pursuit, when you think about it.  Lots of unexpecteds, a high dose of risk, and no small amount of thrill (yes, I know I have a low fun-threshold).

No guarantees on the romance.

A good friend and mentor of mine, Murray Haar, teaches me much from his Jewish tradition.  Two nuggets I’ll pass your way on this winter evening.

First, he says that Christians are not just a bit anxious about questions.

Jews believe that wrangling about and with God, asking the questions, is sacred.  It’s what you do when you are in relationship with God.

Christians, he maintains, get jumpy about them.  We’re almost allergic to them.  What happens if you ask a really good question? You might doubt!  You might disbelieve!  And what happens if in that very moment, you die?

THEN WHAT!!

I think he’s right.

And it’s not just a matter of what happens when you die, but who are you?  What is your identity if you aren’t sure that you believe that Jesus is the Christ?

Even those of us from theological traditions sort of figure that we have the corner on the grace market really, in the end, aren’t so sure.  For if we did, we’d don our Indiana Jones hats, put on our boots, and go.  Whenever we’d get a chance.

Instead, I think we’re quite content to talk about faith and trust and Scripture and belief in God and act like we know what those naturally mean.

My daughter Else (pronounced Elsa) loves questions.  Even at 5, she was asking the questions.  For a while she loved to hear the story of Jesus every night before she went to sleep.  So one night, after telling her (for truly the I-can’t-count-that-highteenth time) all about the women finding an empty tomb, and then learning that Jesus was actually alive again, and wasn’t that a wonderful way to fall asleep, knowing that life wins, that Jesus is stronger than death in the end, Elsegirl looked at me.

“Mommy,” she said slowly, “why didn’t the soldiers kill Jesus the second time that he was alive?”

Dang.

“Wow, baby girl,” I said.  ”I spend most of my non-Mommy time thinking about God.  It’s what I do.  And I wonder about God a lot lot lot.  And that is one question I have never wondered about, and now I am going to wonder it.  A lot lot lot.”

Second Murray thought for the evening.  After yeshiva, his school as a young boy, Murray knew the evening question would not be “What did you learn today?” but rather “Did you ask any good questions today?”

That’s cool.  It’s a habit I now use with my children.

And one I share with you tonight.

What good questions have you asked lately?

Peace,

Anna