The Little Friar

Joshua is a hard book for guys like me.  It's basically a story of war and conquest, of the tribes of Israel entering the Promised Land and eradicating and displacing the peoples living in the land. And throughout the story we encounter the practices related to cherem. Cherem (also spelled herem) refers to the wholesale destruction of all living things -- men, women, children and animals -- that God commands when the Israelites captured a city.  The word occurs 21 times in the Old Testament and most of those, eight references, occur in the book of Joshua. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the cherem texts are the most difficult texts in the Bible and that their existence in the Bible may be the single greatest reason why people come to reject the Bible and the faiths built upon it.  Speaking from personal experience, these texts are nearly universally elicited in arguments of folks who want to challenge my claim that the Bible as a whole teaches nonviole...

I'm thinking this morning of a comment that's made to me often (in a variety of ways, of course, but essentially the same content):  Why is it that the version of Christianity I espouse seems to have so little broad, popular appeal? I think I articulate an exciting and attractive vision of the Christian faith.  I'm not one prone to think the way process theologians do.  And while I have certain things in common with the Christian a/theism folks, they don't fully convince me, either. I fail, of course, because the vision of Christian faith that I articulate is a thorough-going biblical vision.  And that's a vision for which I think there's a good fight to be made.  Books like Greg Boyd's God at War and John Caputo's Weakness of God have more in common than folks suspect. I take a cue here from William James, who once said: If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a...

The book of 2 Samuel ends with what many scholars call "appendices", bits of poetry and narrative that are tacked on to the end of the book. These appendices are found in 2 Samuel 21-24. The last story from the appendices, found in Chapter 24, recounts the census David undertakes and God's judgment upon him for doing so. Explanations vary as to why God was angered by the census. For whatever reason, the census was taken as act of hubris by the king, a usurping of God's prerogatives as the True King of Israel. David realizes his sin and confesses. God, through the prophet of Gad, gives David a choice of punishments: Three years of famine, three years of being chased by enemies, or three years of plague. David chooses the plague. And so the destroying angel begins to work, killing 70,000 people. But then something interesting happens. As the destroying angel approaches Jerusalem God changes his mind and says "Enough!": When the angel stretched out his hand to ...

From John 13: It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end ... Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand." "No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my feet." Why does Peter resist? It must be that Peter still doesn't understand the Way of Jesus. In Peter's eyes Jesus is Lord, Messiah, and King. Consequently, it makes no sense f...

In Sara Miles' wonderful book  Take This Bread  she talks about the practice of anointing hands at her church St Gregory. That act of consecration and blessing strikes me as something quite appropriate for Pentecost season. I start by reading Genesis 2.7: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.  The body of Adam had to be filled with the breath/spirit of God to become a living being. In the same way, I argue, the church -- the body of Christ on earth -- must be filled, like Adam was, with the breath/spirit of God. And that's what happened on Pentecost. The body of believers was filled with God's breath and became Christ's living, spirit-filled body on earth. And if that's so, the message of Pentecost is that we are Christ's body on earth. Christ's hands and Christ's feet and Christ's eyes. I'm then reminded of this prayer from St Teresa of Avi...

[T]he principle shared by all radical humanists is that of negating and combating idolatry in every form and shape -- idolatry, in the prophetic sense of worshiping the work of one's own hands and hence making man subservient to things, in this process becoming a thing himself. The idols against which the Old Testament prophets fought were idols in wood and stone, or trees and hills; the idols of our day are leaders, institutions, especially the State, the nation, production, law and order, and every man-made thing. Whether or not one believes in God is a question secondary to whether or not one denies idols. The concept of alienation is the same as the Biblical concept of idolatry. It is man's submission to the things of his creation and to the circumstances of his doing. Whatever may divide believers and non-believers, there is something which unites them if they are true to their common tradition, and that is the common fight against idolatry and the deep conviction that no ...

In the cross Jesus triumphed over the spiritual forces of evil, winning the decisive victory over the principalities and powers.  In Colossians 2.15 this victory is described using distinctive military imagery. NIV And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.  The phrase "public spectacle" refers to the victory parade of a conquering Caesar or King returning to the capital city displaying the spoils and prisoners of war before a cheering and adoring citizenry.  On the cross Jesus is leading just such a victory parade, displaying the disarmed "powers and authorities" and making "a public spectacle of them".  Some other translations that try to bring out this meaning in Col 2.15: CEV There Christ defeated all powers and forces.  He let the whole world see them being led away as prisoners when he celebrated his victory. Good News And on that cross Christ freed himself from the power of ...

One of the more important recent works that explores the relationship of Christianity to politics is C Gavin Rowe's World Upside Down:  Reading Acts in the Greco-Roman Age .   Rowe is associate professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity (Go Devils!) and therefore commands a great deal of my own personal attention when it comes to interpretation issues.  (Though he and I are on different sides of the universalism issue, I have a great deal of respect for his work.) As someone who is concerned with the New Testament's reading of "empire", this book captivates my attention.  That's because his reading is somewhat at odds with the way in which I've learnt to read the New Testament.  According to Rowe, the consensus view among the scholars mitigates against reading the bible as an anti-Empire polemic.  Consensus views in NT scholarship don't end up being consensus views for no reason. There is something in the book of Acts that anti-Empire Christians ne...

Here are my three steps for creating a better world. Step 1:  Cosmopolitanism We need to recognize that, despite our differences, we all seek the same things in life.  We are each citizens of the world.  A global village.  As JFK said, "For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal". Step 2:  Kindness I recently read a quote from the Dali Lama that said, "My religion is kindness".  I love that sentiment. The troubling thing for me is how so few Christians view kindness as being at the heart of their religious practice.  I see this as a serious problem.  I think this is because the Christian moral vision is often too heroic.  Christians say that love -- that big and heroic vision -- is at the heart of their practice.  But as they say this they tip waiters poorly, criticize co-workers too har...

If you ask Roman catholic believers what it is that makes the church distinctive, they will probably begin speaking of the sacramental hierarchy by which the whole church is ordered and held together.  Put the same question to contemporary Protestant theologians, and they will start telling you about 'practices,' those communal behaviors by which the church marks itself out as an alternative social order.  But if you ask a Russian Orthodox believer what makes the church distinctive, she will think at once of holy lives:  when she says the word 'church,' it is not the face of the bishop that comes to mind, nor merely her own face, but the faces of the saints. Why are all the walls of Russian churches so crowded and cluttered with icons of the saints?  It is not because the Orthodox love pictures, but because they love light.  For the icons are not art works, but windows: they are the small openings through which the light of God bursts in upon the gathered ch...

From Thomas Halik 's  essay at Religion and Ethics on two ways of reading the relationship between the Crucifixion and Easter, an argument he makes in his Night of the Confessor : The Easter story can be read in two quite different ways.  Either as a drama in two acts:  in the first act a just and innocent man is sentenced to death and executed, and then, in the second act, is resurrected and accepted by God.  Or as a drama in one act in which both versions of the story take place at the same time. In the first interpretation the "Resurrection" is the happy ending, and the entire story is a typical myth or optimistic fairy tale.  I can hear a story like that and think to myself that that was more or less the way it happened (which people confuse with "faith"), or I can conclude that it didn't happen like that -- or at all (which people confuse with "lack of faith"). Nevertheless it is the second interpretation, the "parallel" one, ...

One of my professors from seminary, Stanley Hauerwas, has assessed American Christianity, and it didn't turn out so well .  He claims we're "too spiritual", that the concerns and life of the Church have become other-worldly and detached from life right here and right now.  The church rarely prays, "Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven".  Rather, the prayer is, "May we get to heaven when we die". I witnessed this yet again yesterday.  So, I have to admit:  Stan is onto something here. Take, for example, the word love  in the Church these days.  Has that word been overly spiritualized? I think it has. Christians often say that they "love everyone".  Their faith compels them to extend love to every person on the planet, friend and enemy alike.  But how do Christians understand this call to love?  What does it mean to love people? As best I can tell, it means the following: To love someone is to wish that they go to heaven. ...

The church is dark as we enter just a few small flickering candles dancing on the windowsills keeping the Vigil so it is hard to see you huddled, as we are, in what seems the gloaming which it isn't because the dawn is coming with its soft light accompanied by birdsong to dance through the open door (shouldn't every church door stand open always?) and fill the long windows with flames allowing us, now in the Easter light, to see each other to see you, my sisters, my brothers as you dance in the aisles and listen to the story of the one who has called us here and given us life, and each other as we pass the bread of heaven and share what was split by the Lamb who was slain He is risen, you say and we respond as the day has now arrived He is risen indeed

Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece , 1512-1516. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless , Christ died for the ungodly .  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:  While we were still sinners, Christ died for us . Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!   Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned -- To be sure, sin was in the world before the law w...

Prof Canon Stanley Hauerwas (one of my profs from seminary) on preaching:

As we walk into the Triduum today, it's appropriate to take a look back over Lent.  What did I learn over the past 40 days?  What did I give up and what cross did I bear? Well, I gave up detours. The Lord, in the Gospel, explains in what His new commandment consists.  He says in St Matthew:  "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'  But I say to you, love your enemies ... pray for those who persecute you."   No doubt, we don't have any enemies in Carmel, but there are feelings.  One feels attracted to this Sister, whereas with regard to another, one would make a long detour in order to avoid meeting her.  And so, without knowing it, she becomes the subject of persecution.  Well, Jesus is telling me that it is this Sister who must be loved ... In this passage from St Therese of Lisieux's Story of a Soul , she describes how we often take "detours" around the annoying and unlikable peop...

I've been thinking a good deal lately about the satan.  A friend and I have been engaging in some conversation about her own life -- particularly, how the accusations and insults that were hurled at her throughout her life, have become the very things she deeply believe about herself.  And it's been an ongoing part of that conversation about the role that the satan plays in those sorts of accusations. I thought this morning of this passage from Luke 10. The seventy-two returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name." Jesus replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." What might his passage mean? I think it's important to focus on the Hebrew word הַשָּׂטָן ( ha-satan ) -- accuser.  So what might it mean that our accuser has "fallen from heaven"? "I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning", Jesus tells us. I think it's important to notice right off the bat that the satan isn...

I tend to resist those theological anthropologies such as are enshrined in the original version of " Alas, And Did My Savior Bleed ".  You know the sorts.  It makes all the rounds during Lent: Would he devote that sacred head   for such a worm as I ? The popularity of this sort of theological anthropology is reflecting in the likes of nonetheless than CS Lewis : Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good -- above all, that we are better than someone else -- I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil.  The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It's derived, of course, from Augustine (in Catholic circles) or Calvin (in Protestant circles).  What I find so difficult about it, though, is that it begins in the wrong place.  I think anthropology should begin in Jesus Christ, not in Ada...