[Oe List ...] 1/09/20, Progressing Spirit: Carl Krieg: Jesus' Women Disciples; Spong revisited
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Jan 9 04:15:31 PST 2020
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.yiv2836949942mcnTextContent, #yiv2836949942 #yiv2836949942templateHeader .yiv2836949942mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv2836949942 #yiv2836949942templateBody .yiv2836949942mcnTextContent, #yiv2836949942 #yiv2836949942templateBody .yiv2836949942mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv2836949942 #yiv2836949942templateFooter .yiv2836949942mcnTextContent, #yiv2836949942 #yiv2836949942templateFooter .yiv2836949942mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } It all goes together: institutional patriarchy
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Jesus' Women Disciples
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| Essay by Dr. Carl Krieg
January 9, 2020
Ever since human beings began to relate their experience to one another, it has proven difficult to differentiate the facts of the story from the teller’s interpretation of the facts. Anyone paying attention to US politics today is painfully aware of this situation, but it has always been true, and it was as true in the first century as it is today.
The early Christian Writings present a variety of interpreted fact, told from perspectives that emerged from the better part of a century in various cultural contexts. The fundamentalist assertion that these writings are the absolute and inerrant word of God is but a feeble and false attempt to evade the fact/interpretation dichotomy. Barring that particular escape route, what we must do is what modern biblical scholarship has always done, and that is to apply critical investigative tools to the understanding of the material before us. Even then, however, there is no guarantee that there will be a scholarly consensus, leaving modern would-be disciples of Jesus in the position of studying the evidence, and then trying to figure out what makes sense to them, at least for the moment and until shown otherwise. I say all this as context for a simple but radical assertion that makes sense to me, that Jesus’ disciples were not just twelve men, but included both men and women.
This simple assertion is much more involved and complicated than it seems. If Jesus’ extended family included women, why do we hear so little about them? And when we do, why is there denigration, such that we are led to believe that they were previously possessed by demons? What was that family of friends like, and why does it transmogrify into an institutional structure before the century ends? Who caused that to happen? How did that change impact the faith and belief of that community? Finally, on what basis do we answer any of these questions, given the parochial and patriarchal nature of our sources?
If centuries of hard labor and diligent study by biblical scholars have not been able to achieve consensus on any of this, including and incorporating all the investigative tools of the 21st century, the most we can do here is ask what may be some new questions. I am not a biblical scholar, and the most I can do is to listen and learn as best I can, and then try to make sense of the challenge. When it involves understanding Jesus, we do well to follow Anselm’s dictum, fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding.
Let’s begin with the scant references to women that we do have. From Mark 15:41 “Now there were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, who, when he was in Galilee, followed Jesus, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.”
>From the later gospels we are given the names of other women, bringing the full list to Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, Salome, two other Marys, and Zebedee’s wife, as well as “the others”. We are also told that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection. Even replacing the idea of a physical rising with a spiritual, it is telling that the church, patriarchal as it was at the end of the first century, included the primacy of the women on this score.
Luke, writing perhaps 20 years after Mark, adds two other notes. “Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means”. Luke 8: 1-3
First, we read that they not only followed, but also provided for the group out of their means. But in a change from the earlier gospel, we are now told that these women had previously been possessed. What’s going on here? Probably the easiest answer to that question is to see the direction in which the first century is headed, best exemplified by 1 Timothy, dated at the end of the first century, where we read:
“…women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion.
Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”
Women, however, are not the only ones who are no longer equal, even in the church. We also read from 1 Timothy:
“Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed.”
And from 1 Peter: “Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him… Honor the emperor… Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to the kind and gentle but also to the overbearing”.
Jesus created a family of friends wherein all were equal and shared in the joy of God’s new creation, Paul tried to continue that vision in the small churches that he founded, wherein there was neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, and now the later church has rejected that vision and institutionalized both slavery and the subjugation of women.
The structure of the community has totally changed, but so also, it would seem, has the theology. I have argued elsewhere that Jesus was a gift of God who manifested in his life the love and compassion that forms the essence of who we all are. The disciples and others, men and women, found in him what it meant to be human, what it meant to find meaning in life, and they were so excited about this discovery that they wanted to share it with everybody. But somehow, as time went on, the “purpose” of Jesus was transformed into a sacrificial death on the cross, a propitiation of an angry god that somehow atoned for our sin. And now there was only one redeemer for all mankind, one who had paid the price for all who believed. Not only so, but the power to distribute that forgiveness was now in the hands of the church and its priests. And so we ask: how did this transformation occur, and why?
Additionally, what was originally a common meal shared by the Jesus family evolved into a sacrament, the focal point of the distribution of God’s forgiveness, also controlled by the priest. How and why did that happen?
Furthermore, the fullness of life that Jesus made available in his family of friends became an eschatological reality, and the focus shifted to a future coming of Jesus wherein we all become subjected to a judgment of our behavior. Heaven or hell. The shift from current joy to future judgment was linked to the vicarious atonement and the ecclesiastically controlled distribution of God’s grace.
Lastly, one’s faith active in love now became belief in doctrine about salvation, doctrine proclaimed by the church and based on selected writings that became canon, a canon established by the church and, as one might expect, interpreted by that church.
I fully realize that all this is subject to intense debate, and that the majority position is quite the opposite of my proposals. It is on these issues, however, that I believe students of the church must direct their attention. Was Jesus’ purpose to create a microcosm of a loving and fulfilling humanity, that included all people, to show the world what life could be, or was his purpose to be a sacrifice for sin? Was his purpose to create this microcosm here and now, or to warn us about a future judgment? to create this microcosm or to put all power in the hands of priests? to create this community or to fall back into the clutch of the rich and powerful, wherein slaves and women were kept in their place?
Throughout the period of the early church, positions that challenged the majority were declared heretical, and the winners of theological debate were declared to be orthodox. In this process, control tightened as power was centralized. Emperor Constantine’s demand that the church hierarchy settle disputes, accomplished in commanding the gathering of the Council of Nicaea in 325, is the epitome of the rich and powerful influencing the direction that the church had to take. We must assume and expect that in the earlier centuries they held equal sway. And that is why we no longer hear about the role of the women who were the disciples of Jesus. The status quo could not bear the radical implications of that new social order. It is also why all of us, including slaves, are advised to submit to the authorities who are ordained by God.
It all goes together: institutional patriarchy, vicarious atonement, one redeemer, future judgment, priests who administer and control “Word and sacrament”, submission to existing power structure, and the subjugation of women, are part and parcel of the demise of what Jesus sought to create. Unfortunately, the earliest church could not withstand the social structure and pressure of the society into which it was born, a structure controlled by the combined power of religious, economic and governmental authority. Our hope today must be that we can regain the vision that Jesus held before us. It is time for that change.
~ Dr. Carl Krieg
Read online here
About the Author
Dr. Carl Krieg received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Fortress Press published his first book, What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith, and his recent The Void and the Vision. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife, Margaret, in Norwich, VT.
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Question & Answer
Q: By Tom
I’m a mostly retired (progressive) Presbyterian pastor who is working (less than) part time with an amazing — generous, dwindling, compassionate, creative and dying urban congregation. Some of the saints have been “here” for 50 years… and they’ve never “done” any regular Bible Study! Lot’s of simple Sunday sermons. No background, history, context…. They’re faithful, mostly ‘literal,’ pretty accepting and curious… in a “gosh, we never thought of that, before…” sort of way. How can I encourage (what gentle effective resources are there?) their actual “study” of the Bible, and not just smile at their one-dimensional acceptance of its stories and layered meanings? I (try to) lead an hour or so Bible Study before each of my two-Sundays-a- month preaching gigs… and am amazed at (and grateful for) their participation, receptivity, and curiosity… about the coming Sunday’s texts. How can I offer a more systematic, “remedial,” wholistic approach to the great Biblical stories, promises and callings?
A: By Rev. Jessica Shine
Dear Tom,
I love your heart for the people you’ve been called to serve and I equally love your value of the Sacred Text! I also love the congregation’s willingness and interest in studying and learning together with you.
First, let me say this is a normal congregation, as far as Bible study goes. Some fundamentalists like to pride themselves on a different understanding of the word, and yet the typical congregation knows about as little as any other slice of Christianity. Similar to politics, we’re not used to fact-checking or reading outside of what we’ve been told. Then we begin to see text through only that lens and box ourselves into a theology that may or may not be helpful. Even though it sounded good at the time!
It also sounds like you’re off to a great start! What helped me in the local church in getting people to study for themselves was to model it; through my teaching/preaching up front as I told stories about my own devotional/study life. It also helps that you’ve got them in a group already, so they’re ‘test-driving’ what you’ve been teaching them in a safe group setting.
In my opinion, the next step would be to give them tools to encourage their own study, and invite them to bring that back to your group. I’d also try to invite a few other voices with various perspectives on sacred text. Perhaps a 5-minute perspective during a sermon from a local rabbi or imam on that same text from their tradition. Or a guest minister from your town could share a different perspective in your group study and why they believe it, of course safety would be a necessity as no one wants to feel as though they’re being converted.
A couple of resources that have helped me in my work have been simple acronyms I’ve picked up along the way. One is called SOAP (scripture, observe, apply, prayer). This is a simple way to help folks create a devotional habit and try out their own understanding. The first step is to select a scripture, this can be a book you read through together, or following the liturgical calendar. Then to observe the text as though you were there, use your senses (what do you see, hear, smell, feel, taste). Then application, in other words how does this matter to me? Then offering a prayer of gratitude. I enjoy using this process as I journal because it helps me save my reflections and I’m able to go back to them. The application is the ‘meat’ for me, as I’ve never understood the value of just ‘reading’ something without experiencing it and wrestling with it!
There are also great resources on the ProgressiveChristianity.org website! Under the “Resources” tab, click on “Plan your Gathering”. Then scroll to select what you need based on a book of the Bible or a topic. A great one listed is Marcus Borg’s Evolution of the Word”. Perhaps you have a favorite that has helped in your journey of faith. In any case, you’re doing a great job of guiding. Thank you for getting them into the text rather than just talking about it!
Blessings on the continued journey!
~ Rev. Jessica Shine
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Jessica Shine earned degrees in theology and divinity, but still hasn’t figured out how to walk on water. Despite this, she was ordained to ministry by the Seventh-day Adventist church and continues offering spiritual care as a clergy member of The CHI Interfaith Community (based in Berkeley, CA). With two decades of experience serving church communities, police officers, hospital staff, and teenagers, Shine has a passion for people and a skill for communicating in transformative ways. She is a descendant of Mexican, Indian, and Western European immigrants. Her spirituality began in childhood, was influenced by Jimmy Swaggart and Mother Theresa, and continues in the Pacific Northwest. She dwells on lands where Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla and many other tribes made their homes. Shine also co-hosts a podcast on death and dying called “Done For” (available on iTunes, Google, and at doneforpodcast.com).
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| Correction to last week's Q&A re: original language of the Bible
It is generally agreed by historians that Jesus and his disciples primarily spoke Aramaic, the common language of Judea in the first century AD, most likely a Galilean dialect distinguishable from that of Jerusalem. The texts were mainly written in Biblical Hebrew, with some portions (notably in Daniel and Ezra) in Biblical Aramaic. Biblical Hebrew, sometimes called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language. The very first translation of the Hebrew Bible was into Greek. Biblical Languages
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
Origins of the Bible, Part XIV:
Jeremiah, the Prophet of Doom
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
October 9, 2008
The book of Jeremiah, the second of the Major Prophets in the Bible after Isaiah, is not only a large and complicated piece of writing, but it exhibits no narrative line that can easily be followed or recalled. Most people, including most clergy, could not cite a single passage from this book if you asked them to do so. The book of Jeremiah does not lend itself to memorable prose. I know of no major scholarly work that has been done specifically on this book. No one comes to mind who might be called a “Jeremiah scholar”. Yet this book has shaped many aspects of our religious history and quite specifically has helped to form the Christian story. Many of the familiar images that were incorporated into the birth narratives in the gospels of Matthew and Luke were originally found in Jeremiah. In chapters 26 and 27, Israel is referred to as a virgin who is to bring forth God’s firstborn son, who will keep Israel as a shepherd keeps his flock. It is an image out of Jeremiah that portrays Rachel as “weeping for her children who were not”, which Matthew quotes as the biblical basis for his story of King Herod killing the innocent boy babies in Bethlehem, in his effort to remove God’s deliverer. The words in Jeremiah, “a righteous branch shall spring forth from the root of Jesse”, the father of King David, “who will be called the Lord our righteousness”, may have led to the popular theme that Jesus was the heir to the throne of David. The Hebrew word for root is “nazir”, which may be what Matthew was referring to when he wrote that the prophets say Jesus would be called a “Nazarene”. Even the story of Mary and Joseph finding no room in the inn, told only by Luke, may have been based on a passage from Jeremiah, who refers to “the hope of Israel” being treated as a stranger in the land by being turned aside”, not able to stay “for even a night”. Other biblical themes that find mention in Jeremiah deserve a brief mention.
1. Jeremiah along with Ezekiel, his younger colleague, are the biblical voices suggesting that individualism is beginning to appear in the land of Israel about the 6th Century BC. “Every one shall die of his own sins”, writes Jeremiah. Individualism will shape substantially the Jewish idea of life after death that emerges in their sacred writings, called the Apocrypha, around 200 BC.
2. There is in Jeremiah a hint of universalism that challenges the ancient tribal mentality. This prophet has God refer to Nebuchadnezzar twice as “my servant” and he sees the threat that the Babylonians represent as God’s instrument for punishing the waywardness of God’s people.
3. A theme finding expression in Matthew’s Parable of the Judgment identifying God with justice appears in Jeremiah, who writes that “to know God is also to know the poor and needy”.
4. The identification of Israel with a fig tree not bearing fruit and on which even the leaves have withered, may be the origin of the story told in Mark that Jesus laid a curse on a fig tree for not bearing fruit, just before the cleansing of the Temple. That fig tree withered to its roots.
5. The words of the Negro Spiritual “There is a balm in Gilead” come from a text in Jeremiah.
6. Jeremiah, like the book of Job, wrestled with the problem of evil. “Why do the ways of the wicked prosper?” he asked.
7. The early Christians called themselves “the followers of the way”. That name may come from Jeremiah, who portrays God as setting before the Jews a choice between the way of life and the way of death and demanding that they choose.
Other texts from Jeremiah have been used to illumine current events. One thinks of the present condition of the American economy, especially in light of the seven hundred-billion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, when one reads in Jeremiah that “everyone is greedy for unjust gain…they do not even know how to blush”. To read of the insurance giant AIG spending $400,000 to entertain lavishly their independent agents just days after they had been given billions of taxpayer dollars to rescue them from bankruptcy, is a case in point. They do not realize how out of touch they are. “They don’t even blush”, nor do they “get it…”
My favorite personal recollection involving a text from Jeremiah came at the start of the first Iraq war in 1991. President George H. W. Bush, trying to perfume his military efforts to push back Saddam Hussein, had Billy Graham come to pray with him at the White House as the bombs began to fall. Using religion for political purposes seems to run in that family. Outside the White House that same night were anti-war protestor and pickets led by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Edmond Browning. One of the signs carried in that silent procession quoted words from Jeremiah, “My heart is beating wildly. I cannot keep silent for I hear the sound of the trumpet and the alarm of war…”
Jeremiah writes of a sense of destiny, maybe even a sense of being pre-ordained or predestined for a particular role in life. As such he has been the inspiration for many who found themselves in the right place at the right time – and were able to change history. That was what it meant, in Jeremiah’s words, to assume the mantle of the prophet. God is reported to have said to Jeremiah in this book, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you to be a prophet to the nations”. Setting Jeremiah in the context of the time through which he lived and about which he wrote might be helpful. His was a particularly difficult and turbulent period of Jewish history. Everything in this book reflects that fact. The Northern Kingdom of Israel had been destroyed in 721 BC by the Assyrians, who ruled the world with an iron hand until they were overthrown by the Babylonians around the year 612 BC. Jeremiah watched the struggle between the Egyptians, the Assyrians and the rising power of the Babylonians, as power ebbed and flowed in the region between those two dates. His sympathies seemed to be with the Assyrians, so he was destined not to be a winner. His little country of Judah had escaped the destruction that had befallen the Northern Kingdom, only by accepting vassal status to the Assyrians, so they viewed with alarm the rise of Babylonian power. As a small country they were regularly little more than pawns in the hands of the competing nations of the Middle East. It was best for them when the major powers were tied up jockeying for power against each other. This situation had existed before Assyria fell to the Babylonians, so Judah had enjoyed a period of “Indian summer”. It was during this period that the book of Deuteronomy appeared and the Deuteronomic Reforms took place in the land of Judah. Jeremiah may have been involved with those reforms. Some Old Testament scholars think that Jeremiah was the author of the book of Deuteronomy and was involved in the placing of this book into the walls of the Temple where it could be “discovered” during the time of renovations under the popular King Josiah around the year 621 BC. However, that is not universally agreed to, though it remains a possibility.
The hopes of Judah at that time in its history were vested in King Josiah. This young king had succeeded to the throne in 640 BC, when he was only eight years old. He was enormously popular with the priests and the prophets because of his genuine religious interests. There is even the suggestion that one of the prophets had been his regent prior to the time he came of age and that his religious devotion was the result of that. The Deuteronomic Reforms, about which I have written earlier in this series (Origins of the Bible – Part VI – sent my me on 16th May 2008 – Wes), were very pleasing and affirming to the religious leaders. The prophet Huldah had even suggested when these reforms were being carried out that God’s blessing would be on Judah at least as long as King Josiah lived. So much of their hope and their sense of the security of God’s blessing rested in Josiah, who was thought to be their guarantor of God’s favor. That is why his death at the young age of thirty-nine was deemed to be almost like the end of the world. Pharaoh Necho of Egypt had marched to war hoping to claim some of Assyria’s empire for itself. King Josiah, a former ally of Assyria, set out to intercept the Egyptian force in a battle on the plains of Megiddo in 609 BC. The Jews were defeated and King Josiah was struck down.
History unraveled for the Jews from that point on. With Josiah’s death Judah’s sense of security died. Their Assyrian protector was no longer able to come to their aid. The powerful Babylonians were rising. Judah was on the wrong side of history. In less than ten years the Babylonians would be besieging Jerusalem. When Jerusalem fell in 596 BC, the Babylonian Exile began. Jeremiah saw this impending calamity and warned of its coming with regularity. No one heeded him. His message was so relentless and so hopeless that they actually wanted to kill him. Jerusalem was a city that had not been invaded for four hundred years. People did not believe that it could be taken. He likened what was about to befall Judah to the time when they were slaves in Egypt. No image could have been more fearful. When his message came true and his nation was prostrate, Jeremiah was carted off to Egypt, where he died in poverty and of a broken spirit. One image of Jeremiah is that of a weeping prophet, even a madman. Both are accurate. Time, however, is usually a prophet’s greatest friend. At some time after his death the words of Jeremiah were added to the sacred story of the Jews and thus were preserved as scripture. So we have access to his words, painful though some of them are and his truth was validated. The job of the prophet is to illumine the pain, not to eliminate it, to help people walk through it and to transcend it. It is not helpful to deny the pain and pretend that there is another reality in which the pain is not present. Jeremiah was in this tradition. Perhaps that is what the world needs today as it stands on the brink of a worldwide recession and all the political dislocation that this will inevitably bring.
~ John Shelby Spong
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Announcements
Breathe: A Gathering for Women in Spiritual Leadership
Hosted by Diana Butler Bass
April 26 -28, Clearwater Beach, FL.
Bring: Your heart, your hopes, your wisdom. We all know it. These are hard days for women who are clergy, writers, spiritual directors, and educators in faith communities and public callings. We persist, but feel exhausted. We speak, but struggle for wisdom. We serve, but forget ourselves. We need a place to breathe. Together. READ ON ...
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