Andrew's View of the Week

Now I am really having doubts about this blog.  Is it such a good idea?

It is taking far more energy than I thought it would and I’ve not been able to get near the goal I set out for.  I could spend a life time just dealing with the stories I’ve read up till now – and there are still six days left till Easter.

Maybe that is why most Christian churches these days largely ignore the events of Monday through Wednesday and focus on the end of the week.  There are other reasons but I’ll avoid being cynical today.

There are two elements in understanding any story in the Bible, the intellectual connection and the emotional connection.  As a Methodist and would be scholar I tend to approach the Bible from an intellectual perspective and try to turn it into a scholarly exercise by rationally understanding every word in the text and all the nuances of those words – what do they mean now, what did they mean then, how did the meanings change, what are the elements of the translation?

But yet it is the feeling – the emotional response I get to these stories that most affect me.  Sitting in a Good Friday service, it’s not the intellectual notion that Jesus died for us but rather the overwhelming sadness I feel for the story that truly connects and informs my soul.  Don’t think about it, feel about it.

So for today I am leaving the intellectual analysis on the road side and just reporting my feelings.

The story is overwhelming.  Jesus is like a whirlwind on Tuesday – we see the fig tree he cursed, dead; Jesus’s authority is challenged; Jesus challenges the religious authorities, etc.  Plus we get a number of basic Christian stories and teachings, “Render unto Caesar,” the story of the vineyard, the wife and the brothers, the great commandment, the widow and the coins and prophesies of the apocalypse.

If I were following Jesus around on Tuesday I’d be a little worried.  What is going on here?  Is this guy right?

Reading the story today I am more than just a bit overwhelmed and more than a bit sure that I don’t understand but a fraction of it and after reading Borg and Crossan a little concerned that my traditionally held views and understandings might be wrong.

Emotions for the day? Fatigue, confusion, and doubt.  The emotional question is, “can I carry on with this?”

My head hurts.

I am sure it’s going to explode.

Lessons learned so far:

1. I write too much.
2. It’s harder than it looks
3. There is a lot to learn
4. There isn’t enough time to write down everything I’ve learned
5. I am a horrible proof reader (didn’t have time to get this post prof red, sory)
6. I should admit defeat and move on but I am not going to.

Time is the killer.  I start reading a passage and looking up references and then the next thing I know an hour has passed and I’ve written nothing.  Yet I’ve learned vast amounts and have changed my view of the events.

My heart yearns to be able to tell that story right and to get in all the subtleties but it is moving too fast.  I can’t take it all in.

On Monday Jesus curses a fig tree and has a temper tantrum in the temple which ends with the chief priests trying to figure a way to kill him.  From the description in the book of Mark I’d want to at least give Jesus a time out for not playing nice, but kill him?

In the gospel Jesus chastises the temple by saying, “But you have made it a den of robbers.”  Don’t know about you, but ‘den of robbers’ brings up in my mind images of a bad 1950’s movie that might have been titled something like, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” with a bunch of guys with bad tans, bandanas tied on their heads and flying magic carpets against a painted background.  In this film Charles Heston plays the good guy with baggy pants and a curved sword and arrives at the last minute, saves the girl and kills all the robbers without spilling a drop of blood.  “Den of robbers” is a term we don’t use much but it doesn’t sound nice – possibly worse than the movie that just played in my mind.

If the priests want to kill Jesus because of an insult there must be something more behind the words.

Now it is time to turn to Borg and Crossan.

Well now I get it.  According to “The Last Week” the chief priests were really collaborators with the Romans in enforcing a domination system that was oppressing the people.  The temple had become an extension of Roman domination and had stopped playing it’s traditional role of caring for the sick, poor, widows and orphans.  It in fact was helping to collect the taxes that were sent to Rome in tribute.  The temple had lost all of their traditional roles. Religion and charity and had become a tool to rob the Jewish people of their land and wealth and to ensure that the people compiled with Roman rule.

More about this in my next post.

Today is the day that Jesus did that triumphal march into Jerusalem on a donkey or a colt depending on the gospel and translation your reading.  It is also the day than many pastors around the world thrust a palm branch into the hands of the members of their congregation and invite them to follow them out of the building and around in public making fools of themselves.

Well some feel like fools others get into it and wave their branches proudly at on coming traffic.  Me?  Well I am stuck in the middle – a little foolish and halfway waved my palm branch not entirely sure if the whole exercise is worth the effort and wondering if I can find my pew again where I left my glasses.  I am thinking that next year I’ll get a bigger palm branch.  That will make it seem like I am really into the procession and allow me to hide my face at the same time.

Take a moment to read the account of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem in Mark 11:1-11. …

Done?

Sounds like a big deal right?  So why when I was walking around my church I did feel a little like I was moving out of step with the rest of the world?  The traffic on the street in front of our church didn’t stop.  By standards didn’t jump in and start signing praises.  Has my faith become irrelevant in this world?  I wonder if there were people marching with Jesus that wondered, “Is this the thing?  Will this change anything?”

Reading the passage again there is one word that always stands out, ‘colt.’  I’ve been thinking about that.  You hear a lot about Jesus ride this donkey.  Strangely enough my pastor used that word as a theme in his sermon today (I’ve decided to ignore the fact that he ‘stole’ my idea and am going to press on).

We’ve also heard that Jesus came into Jerusalem on a donkey.  I have no real experience with either the words or with the animals.  I live in a city with cars.  I rode a donkey once and I’ve been on a horse twice and both times watched carefully by the people that led us tourists down the trail on these animals.

I guess if you don’t have a car you’d ride a colt or a donkey or something.  Makes sense to me that Jesus would need something to ride at the head of the parade.  So what’s the big deal?  Jesus is an important dude he should get a ride.  I’d let him borrow my car or colt or whatever.  Heck I’d even pay for the gas or hay or whatever.

Now read the first chapter in Borg and Crossan.  Turns out that there was another big march in town that day – the Romans were also showing up for Passover but this time as a show of imperial power.  There were a lot of people in town for the Passover and the Romans had a tradition of marching on that day to show off their power and remind the population that they ruled and had the power to enforce their will.

While the Romans are marching in on big powerful war horses, Jesus comes riding in on a little colt thumbing his noise at the powerful and accusing them of doing evil.

There is one other intertext reference to consider in Zechariah 9:9 where the writer describes how the king of kings, messiah will arrive by saying, “… your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Oh my.  So if I am putting the bits together correctly, Jesus is riding to Jerusalem as the messiah – the one that will restore God’s kingdom to earth, restore justice and kick the Romans and their collaborators the Jewish religious authorities out of power.

All from the back of a colt with a rag tag band of followers and the few people in Jerusalem that didn’t go over to see better staged and likely more impressive Roman military procession (bet the Romans had drums and trumpets, maybe even popcorn or the first century equivalent of pop corn whatever that was).

The hard thing for me is that – well, okay, if I were alive back then, in those times, I’d have gone to see the Romans.  I love a good military march, especially with trumpets and drums. The failing that I feel is that I am not sure I would have had the courage to show up and support Jesus in a cause that is right and just.

In this world today there is plenty of injustice, plenty of despair and plenty of people in need.  The question is, “do I have the courage to show up and be a fool in Jesus’s parade?”