Abram Went (Genesis 12:1-4)

ABRAM WENT
By j. SNODGRASS

NRS Genesis 12:1 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him…

“Abram Went” was the birth of a whole new kind of story – Up to this point, narratives from Babylon and Egypt, Syria and even Canaan were all faced in the same direction: from the chaos of primeval water and wilderness to the order of plantations and cities. For thousands of years since the rise of civilization, stories had been told of Gods draining swamps and building canals to establish plantations. The Epic of Gilgamesh centers around a character who is between God and man (two thirds God and one third man, however that works out) who builds the great walls of the city of Uruk, from which we get the modern name “Iraq.” Then we have stories of great kings, all of them civilization-builders, turning wilderness to cities, chaos to order.

And then comes Abraham, whom Elie Weisel calls “A minority of one,” this one guy going in the opposite direction, swimming against the tide of progress, from the city to the unknown wilderness, from empire to nomadic tribalism, from organization to chaos (and in case Abram’s life ever got too organized, God gave him Sarah). God does not tell us or Abraham where he’s going to, only where he’s going from. “The LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house’” (Genesis 12:1) This line – country, kindred, household – is a dramatic narrowing-in, like a series of satellite images zooming in from “I live in America, I live in Hendersonville North Carolina, I live in the Snodgrass house.”

COUNTRY, COMMUNITY, COMPOUND

Abram’s country was Babylon (by the Biblical chronology, this was the original Babylon, centuries before the neo-Babylon of the Babylonian exile). In modern Babylon (which, for whatever reason, we call “America”) we cherish an illusion called the “separation of church and state.” But in old Babylon, church and state were imagined as the same thing – the state of peasants, accountants and a king was believed to be a miniature replica of the gods: peasant-gods, accountant-gods and a king God. The peasant gods (like guardian angels, everybody had one) would complain to the accountant-gods who would pass their complaints up to the king god (and on earth as it was in heaven) and the king God would yawn because they were always interrupting his naps, and poise his finger above a big red button. The king god had an arsenal of WMD’s, weapons of mass destruction, including plague, famine, infertility and flood. And he’d say “if you wake me up from my nap one more time I am going to wipe you out.” And then the accountant gods would report this back to the peasant gods and life would continue as before. From a peasant’s perspective it was pretty much like Bank of America by phone – you call and get transferred around a lot and finally hang up with nothing resolved. And here’s this renegade God calling this one guy to leave all that behind. God called Abram to leave his country.

God also called Abram to leave his “kindred,” meaning his community (like a small town where everyone’s related). A person’s only identity was community – each member bore the full imprint of the community from childhood, carried the community in adulthood (which started at eleven), and then passed the community on to the next generation as faithfully as they could. We are told in Genesis that Abram’s kindred community is called “Shem,” known to us as the Semites. Inside of this community was the father’s house, usually meaning a multi-generational family compound under the supervision of a father or grandfather who was the household king and household high-priest. He was responsible for venerating the ancestral shrine and bossing all the women and children around.

In Abram’s case, this was his father Terah, who presided over a three-generation household (his sons, daughters-in-law and his grandson Lot). All that the Bible tells us about Terah is that he moved his family from the mighty city of Ur to the donkey-trading outpost of Haran, and he served other gods. (Joshua 24:2) Though the Bible tells us very little about him, Rabbis over the centuries have filled in some of the blanks with Midrash (a process like medical skin-grafting – adapting a story from elsewhere in the Bible to cover a hole in the narrative). So we have the beloved Midrash story of Terah the idol-maker who left his young son Abram in charge of the shop one day. A woman brought a bowl of grain as a gift for one of the statues, and Abram got an idea – he went around and smashed all the idols but the largest one, and put a mallet in its hand. When Terah returned and saw the wreckage, Abram explained that the biggest of the gods had smashed all the others. Terah argued that these gods were capable of no such action (or any action at all) and Abram said “May your ears hear what your mouth has spoken.” This is loosely based on the story of Gideon from the book of Judges. We then have another Midrash where Terah got so mad he handed Abram over to the king of Babylon, who threw him into a fiery furnace, which Abram escaped in a scene reminiscent of the three young men in the book of Daniel. These are rabbinic stories – the Bible itself is pretty quiet on the character of Terah.

THE INDIVIDUAL

We live with a newfangled invention, an illusion called “the individual,” but the individual did not yet exist in Abram’s time – a powerful case could be made that the individual was invented with this story about Abram. In Abram’s day, the only way to be what we could call an “individual” was to be banished, exiled, kicked out of home and country. But that didn’t make you a “rugged individual” or a “self-made man,” that made you a dead person. A dead person who was so badly befuddled (which was how you got kicked out in the first place)… So badly befuddled that you didn’t know yet that you were a dead person. And then within a few days of banishment you figured it out, collapsed in a desert somewhere, you finally realized “Oh, I’m on my own. And now I die.”

In Abram’s case, he has not been banished, but has answered a call to leave all this behind, his place, his people and his identity. Will he die alone in the wilderness? Yes, we may look back on it now and say “No, he’s doing fine.” But follow his story and you’ll see this question at every turn – he has banished himself, will he die? Canaan, when he arrives there, is in the midst of a famine – will he die? Then he goes to Egypt, cons the Pharaoh and gets caught – will he die? He and his wife grow older and older without offspring – will they die? By the old Babylonian conventional wisdom, you go off on your own, there’s a famine, you get caught lying to a king, your wife is barren, you die, die, die and die. What makes Abram’s story so unique in its own place and time is that he actually survives.

What makes the story so unique in any time is that Abram’s sons survive after he banishes one and nearly chops the other in half. But that’s another story.

WHAT GOD CAN DO

Genesis 12:2 God said, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great.”

This should first remind us of Genesis 11:4, where the builders of Babel say to themselves, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4) Then God comes around, sabotages their nation and turns their name into a joke (“Babel,” meaning “Confusion”). The key difference here is that the city-builders say “let us build…and let us make a name for ourselves” – what the civilization-builders think they can do for themselves, God knows He can do for Abram.

Genesis 12:3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

The “blessing” referred to here is fertility and abundance – those who support Abram will share in God’s promise of fertility and abundance to him (such as it is – the fertility aspect of Abram’s blessing runs into obvious delays). Those who mess with Abram will be cursed, as we read in the stories of Pharaoh and king Abimelech laying claim to Abram’s wife, with disastrous results in both cases – God causes infertility in both kingdoms until Sara is restored to Abram.

Genesis 12:4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him…

The final piece of Abram’s first encounter with God is Abram’s response – silence. He does what he’s told, but never says a word. There is an Abrahamic silence that characterizes this pivotal figure, adding to his power and mystery. Actually, Abram’s silence is usually cherished more than Abram’s voice, because almost every time he opens his mouth, he puts his foot in it (there’s that expression – he only opened his mouth to switch feet). “Yeah, Sarah, tell Pharaoh you’re my sister so things will go well for me.” “She’s your slave-girl, do what you want.” “Um, God, would you spare Sodom if there were ten decent people there?” There’s a reason nobody prints a Bible with ‘Words of Abraham in Red.’

Abram’s silence in this story speaks volumes about a person’s revolve to obey the will of God. In departing from country, community and compound, Abram effectively declares himself dead, stares bravely into the abyss of identity, faces total annihilation, renounces everything familiar for something unseen. And by the power of God Abram does not disappear, but crosses a border into fulfillment, legend, a new beginning.

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For more information on Abraham, I’ve written quite a bit about him in my book GENESIS AND THE RISE OF CIVILIZATION (Available at amazon.com or from the trunk of my car.)

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I’m also excited to announce that I’ll be co-teaching a Bible course this June – “AKEDAH: The Binding of Isaac in History, Text and Tradition” with Rabbi Phil Cohen. It’ll take place Thursday evenings, June 7th, 14th and 21st at Providence Baptist Church (1201 Oakland St. Hendersonville, NC)

Interfaith Views on Immigration (Judaism, Christianity and Islam)

INTERFAITH IMMIGRATION FORUM

[Note - On May 6th, the Interfaith Ministerial Assocation (IMA) of Henderson County presented a panel discussion with representatives of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Unitarian Universalism to discuss immigration in faith and action. What do our sacred texts and faith traditions say on the subject, and what do our faith communities do? The offerings of the panelists were inspiring, but will not be reprinted here. However, I wanted to share the piece I wrote as an introduction to the event.]

Religious texts and traditions are notoriously two-sided on political issues.

Upon arriving in the Americas, some settlers looked to their faith tradition for guidance on how to interact with the native population and found Biblical advice like ‘when a household or community welcomes you, greet them with peace, share what you know, help with the chores and accept their hospitality.’ (Matthew 10:11-13, paraphrased) But it seems the majority of settlers looked to the Biblical book of Joshua, which told them (I’m paraphrasing here) thou shalt kill ‘em all. Ironically, there were Native American tribes who enacted the Biblical model of feeding and sheltering the stranger, which we celebrate every year on Thanksgiving.

Later the issue of slavery nearly tore this country apart. And again, religious traditions were available as ammunition for both sides of the debate. The beloved Biblical Noah (common ancestor of all Jews, Christians and Muslims) landed the famous ark, planted the first vineyard, embarked on the first Biblical bender, woke up with the first hangover, and blearily invented slavery. (Yes, it’s in the Bible, Genesis 9:25) But then we turn the page and we’re reading Exodus, where God sides with the Hebrew slaves against their Egyptian oppressors. Turn the page again and we’re reading Deuteronomy, where the liberated Hebrew slaves get permission to have slaves of their own, but they must liberate each slave after six years of service – and pay them for the work they did. (Deuteronomy 15:12-14)

In the twentieth century, religious traditions have been found for use on both sides of the debate about the rights of women. And believers have scoured their sacred texts for authoritative arguments for and against the rights of homosexuals. I once heard a Christian preacher say “People are always arguing Jesus was a republican, Jesus was a democrat, Jesus was on this side of the issue, Jesus was on that side of the issue – people are always trying to pin him down, and he keeps rising up again.”

But then we get to this current issue of immigration – what do our sacred writings and faith traditions tell us about how to deal with outsiders entering the land? Do we have a right to exclude? Or do we have a responsibility to include? And suddenly, we’re not hearing a debate about what our faith traditions say on the subject. Many devout Christians seem to believe we must seal our borders, persecute a stranger in need, reject a laborer from our fields – but they’re not quoting Jesus about it. Because he never said that. They’re not quoting Moses about it, because Moses was an immigrant – every major character in the first five books of the Bible was an undocumented immigrant, beginning with Adam and Eve.

Abraham, the common ancestor of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, was the classic immigrant – he left Iraq to find a place where he could work, raise a family, and practice his religious beliefs in peace. And when he finally found a place to settle, we have a story of how he saw three foreigners wandering in the desert, ran out to greet them and implored them to share his hospitality. Jews, Christians and Muslims are encouraged to follow his example (not in everything, Abraham did a lot of questionable stuff, but definitely in this).

When Muhammad received his revelation from God, the hostility of his neighbors caused him to leave the land of his birth and find acceptance for his religion elsewhere – the Islamic Calendar begins not with the revelation but with Muhammad’s migration to Medina, where Islam found fertile ground to grow. In the Quran we read, “Those who believed and adopted exile…in the cause of Allah, as well as those who gave (them) asylum and aid–these are (all) friends and protectors, one of another.” (Al Anfal 8:72)

Americans who claim the right to refuse hospitality don’t have much backing from sacred text and tradition, and so remain silent on the subject. But Americans who believe that our God calls us to share what we have and shelter the stranger will find that we have much to draw from in our sacred writings and traditions – and a responsibility to bring this sacred wisdom into the debate.

New Book(s) by j. SNODGRASS

I’ve been honored and excited by responses to my book, GENESIS AND THE RISE OF CIVILIZATION (Available on Amazon.com and other online retailers).  I sent a copy to Daniel Quinn, whose books ISHMAEL and THE STORY OF B inspired the book.  He called it “a remarkably readable and enlightening volume” and put it on the top of his list of Suggested Readings (link: http://www.ishmael.org/Education/Readings/)  An amazing honor for which I’m very grateful.

I’m also very pleased to announce that my second book, WORDS (BETWEEN THE LINES OF AGE) has just become available.  It contains edited transcripts of Bible Course I’ve taught on Empires in the Bible, Deuteronomy, Jesus Vs. Rome, and Christianity’s Troubled Relationship with the Human Body (a preview of which is available on this site, in the posts called “The Body.”)

Identity Crisis (A Sermon)

IDENTITY CRISIS
A Sermon on Psalm 30 and Mark 1:40-45
By j. SNODGRASS
Delivered February 12, 2012

Psalm 30:1 I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
2 O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
3 O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.
4 Sing praises to the LORD, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.
5 For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
6 As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.”
7 By your favor, O LORD, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed.
8 To you, O LORD, I cried, and to the LORD I made supplication:
9 “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?
10 Hear, O LORD, and be gracious to me! O LORD, be my helper!”
11 You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
12 so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever. (NRS)

When I was back there in seminary school, they told me that, when preparing for a sermon, you should read the source text a hundred times, keep looking at it every day of the week, and each time you read it, the story would look a little different. And that proved doubly true for me this week, as I printed the Biblical texts and folded them into my back pocket, and then we drove our children to Florida to visit their grandfather. And Mickey Mouse. And that text, every time I looked at it, the words themselves looked deeper, wider, as I kept sweating in the Florida heat, the printed page in my pocket blended and swirled into an un-readable psychedelic tie-dye. A Rorschach ink-blot test – what do you see? A hungry frog, two horses dancing…the eye of God…or a cake somebody left out in the rain.

Orlando Florida is crazy, a run-down suburb of Disney-world city, a feudal plantation surrounding the Magic Kingdom. And you bring your children there, and the giant statues, lighted signs and gift-shops drive them insane. The scorching sun and pouring rain take turns blurring all the colors together. And then you enter the Disney Vatican itself, the swirling vortex, the dark hungry heart of the American dream. They should have a sign at the gate: “Abandon hope of making your next mortgage payment, all ye who enter here.” And in the midst of all this kaleidescopic insanity, you wish there was a rock you could cling to, or a ship’s mast you could tie yourself to and resist the sirens’ calls (there be mermaids and monsters in Disney-World) and you realize… Right there in your back pocket you’ve got a page of holy scripture to guide you, to remind you who you are… And you pull it out… And the printed words have melted in sweat, it’s as blurry and distorted as everything else.

I guess I could have called this sermon “Fear and Loathing in Disney-World,” and I hope you’ll believe me when I say there were no intoxicants on this crazy trip except too much sun, not enough water, and some questionable shrimp at an all-night buffet. But for some reason this seems like an appropriate way to begin this sermon, which… Before leaving for Florida, I read through Psalm 30 several times, and decided this sermon would be called “Identity Crisis.”

The singer of this Psalm doesn’t know who he is. (We don’t even know if it’s a ‘He’ or a ‘She,’ but I’ll say ‘He’ to make it sound more Biblical.) He needs God to tell him who he is, but the language of God is mysterious. When the singer was rich, he thought he knew who he was, and who he would always be, “I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved.’ By your favor, O LORD, you had established me as strong as a mountain.” (Psalm 30:6-7) He believed that the language of God was numbers: coins in his pocket, balance at the bank, acres of property. He believed that this was how God told him who he was.

And then came the crash: his money was gone, he felt like he was sinking in quicksand toward death with enemies pointing and laughing. He believed that the language of God was jeers and insults from people who hated him. He believed that this was how God told him who he was. But then he was rescued and restored (we’re not told here whether he was restored financially, but I’d like to think his renewed faith at the end was fuller than his hollow prosperity-faith at the beginning.) Now he believes that the language of God is joy, and he will respond with joyful praise and give thanks forever. He believes that this is how God finally tells him who he is.

We don’t know the identity of our singer, but he reminds me of someone I know pretty well: The United States of America in the year 2012. For fifty years we said “We shall never be moved, by God’s favor we have been set up as an eternal mountain.” And then we sunk into the mire of an economic recession, other nations pointed at us and laughed, God rejected the prayer printed on our dollar-bill (“In God We Trust”)… How does the story end? Will we be restored financially? Or will we as a nation learn something deeper about who we really are?

But this sermon is not called “Economic Crisis,” it’s called “Identity Crisis.” So let’s stay with that. I don’t know if anybody else here has ever had an identity crisis. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have, but maybe some of you haven’t. I’m a creative person, one of millions who suffer from a disorder called “Artism,” which makes me say and do socially inappropriate things and then my wife says “he doesn’t mean any harm, he’s just artistic.” I define my identity by whatever creative project I’m working on, which means if I sit still for five minutes I have an identity crisis.

And I’m a guy, which means I’m nobody unless strangers know who I am. I don’t ask my wife or my Mom or my sister who I am, I’d rather stop some random person on the street and demand, “Who am I?” And if they say “I don’t know,” that means I’m nobody. Of course, times are changing and identity crisis changes too: This isn’t thirty years ago, when you had to cause some public disturbance and then wait for the morning paper so you could find out who you are – these days there are social network websites where you can get minute-by-minute updates on your identity. How many friends do I have? What are my likes and dislikes? Has my relationship status changed since three o’clock?

I don’t really do the social network thing. I show up every now and then and find a pile of birthday greetings, which let me know I haven’t been on at least since May. I do something else – I keep a part of my seventeen-year-old self around, and every so often I ask him, “Wallflower wallflower in the mirror, Do you think I’m cool?” And he interrogates me – “Are you still angry all the time?” “Yes, I’m still angry all the time.” “Do you still struggle against all forms of human authority?” “Yes, I still struggle against authority, that’s why I’m still broke all the time.” “Do you shave and wear a suit?” “Only when I’m preaching.” “Only…what?” Sometimes he’s inclined to be supportive, but not often. He is, after all, seventeen. (Little jerk.)

Really I should be asking my thirteen-year-old self. “Do you think I’m cool?” “Have you kissed a girl?” “Yes, I… I actually have a beautiful wife and two children.” “Wow! You’re more spectacular than Batman!” I should say here, my thirteen-year-old self… Actually, let’s come back to that in a minute.

In or Gospel text, Mark 1:40-45, a leper begs Jesus for money and Jesus doesn’t have any (Jesus never carries any money in the Gospels), but there’s something else Jesus can do for this leper. Instead of giving him some change, Jesus changes his life. There’s that scene in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian where lepers are begging “Alms for a leper?” and one of them jumps up and says “Alms for an ex-leper?” And he explains that he was begging for money and suddenly Jesus showed up and cured him, and now his livelihood as a beggar is ruined. The joke (and God forgive me for explaining a Monty Python joke) is that Jesus has cured the man’s diseased chemistry, but has not cured the man’s diseased identity. His body has been restored, but not his role as a member of the community.

Is this the way Jesus operated? No, absolutely not. And this story says so, but we need to read it carefully. Mark 1:42 “Immediately the leprosy left him, AND he was made clean.” These are two distinct actions: there’s the physical cure, “the leprosy left him,” and there’s the social cure “he was made clean,” clean here meaning “socially acceptable.” In first-century Israel, you had to be clean by the standards of the Torah in order to get a job, get married, be allowed in the Temple: in order to be a full member of the community, you had to be “clean” by Temple standards. Like today you need a social security card and a clean criminal record to vote and get a middle-class job. Jesus cured the man’s leprosy and declared him a full citizen, and then immediately instructs the man to go to the Temple, which was like the DMV, take care of the bureaucratic paperwork, and pay his taxes. (Mark 1:44) And no, I’m not commenting on any current political issues, just putting Mark 1:44 in modern terms.

Something else we need to think about in modern terms is Biblical “Leprosy.” What’s referred to as “Leprosy” in the Bible is any imperfection in the skin, from a particularly bad pimple to full-blown rotting alive leprosy. My thirteen-year-old self was a leper, I admit it. I had bad acne, and I went seeking salvation in Oxy Medicated Pads, which made me an oxy-moron, because it wasn’t pimples that kept girls away – I was also fifty pounds overweight and couldn’t carry a conversation about anything but comic-books. I’d love to say that Jesus could heal someone from comic-book addiction, exorcise that demon like Spider-man defeating his alien monster-costume… Maybe that’s why Jesus always argued with the pharisees. Can you imagine? Jesus walks into a Pharisee Convention, they’re arguing with each-other.

“I’m telling you for the last time, Morris, if Elijah battled Moses, Elijah would win with his fantastic fire-balls!”

“Ah, but Leonard you forget that Elijah’s fire-power would be useless Moses’s wall-of-water!”

And Jesus says “You guys spend way too much time talking about super-heroes. Go join the boy-scouts or something, help an old lady across the street, then you can be a hero too!” (Did Jesus cure my teenage skin condition? I’d like to say so, but I don’t know for sure. And Satan keeps whispering in my ear, “No, it was Charles Darwin who cured your pimples so you could get better representation in the gene-pool.”) As a thirteen-year-old I was a leper with pimples, but I was also a nerd with Twinkies and comic books. So if Jesus had walked up and touched my face and made all the acne go away, I still would have had the same social problems. I needed two healings: physical and social.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus heals the man’s chemistry crisis AND his identity crisis. A leper says “If you choose, you can make me clean,” (Mark 1:40) the man is saying “I’m a piece of filth, but I believe I can be a person.” And Jesus says “Alright, then you’re a person!” In our Psalm reading, God heals the singer’s economic crisis AND his identity crisis (again, not necessarily by giving the guy a hand-out, but by showing him that joy and gratitude are better than money.) The guy says “I’m dead in the grave, but I believe I can be alive,” and God responds “Alright, then you’re alive!”

Years ago, I said “I’m a pale and pimply nerd, but I believe I can be a husband and father.” It took some time, but God finally said “Alright, then you’re a husband and father!” Earlier this week I felt like a sheep getting fleeced by Mickey Mouse. I said “I’m livestock getting shorn and chopped up and eaten by Disney, but I believe I can be a Bible-teacher.” And God said “Alright, then you’re a Bible teacher!” I don’t know yet if that trip to Disney-city is going to end up costing me my house, but I believe that the Kingdom of God is more real and more powerful than the Magic Kingdom. And that will pull me through my next identity crisis.

If you should find yourself in an identity crisis, as a person or as a community, I hope that you will remember these Biblical stories. And remember that it in the times when we don’t know who we are, the voice of God is not interested in what you or your enemies think you are, God is asking, “What do you believe you can be?”

The Body, Part II: Biology and its Discontents

THE BODY
SESSION TWO: BIOLOGY AND ITS DISCONTENTS
BY j. SNODGRASS

A homeless man with no money is giving out all-you-can-eat whole-wheat bread and fish.

A multi-billion dollar franchise corporation is giving out a cracker and a sip of water with some wine in it.

This is one of the great mysteries of faith.

The word “feast” gets thrown around a lot in Christian circles, usually referring to a piece of bread the size of my thumb-nail, or perhaps a factory-stamped communion wafer, with a sip (or a dip) of watered-down wine or grape-juice. Ironically, this is somehow connected with Jesus, who referred to himself as a “glutton and a drunk.” (Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:34) If he walked into a room and saw only this on the table, he probably would have asked… “So where’s the feast? If this is my last supper, where’s the food?” Even prisoners in first century Judea probably got more for dinner than a sliver of bread and a sip of water. But as we all know, the Communion “feast” is not there to feed our bodies, it’s there to feed our spirits. It’s a symbolic feast. A symbolic cannibal feast, when you really think about it, but let’s not really think about that.

We have a report of the “Last Supper” in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 11:23-26) which was copied into the Gospel of Mark (Mark 14:22-24) and then copied into the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (John’s Gospel does not contain what we know as “The Last Supper.”) And in this report, the bread and wine are indeed symbolic of Jesus’ body and blood. But let’s put this aside for now, the symbolic feast, and look at the other reports of Jesus eating and feeding.

Jesus’ first miracle or “sign” in John’s Gospel is at the wedding in Cana: at some point in the festivities, Jesus’ mother walks up to him and says, “There’s no more wine.” Jesus asks, “What’s that got to do with me?” (John 2:3-4, paraphrased) Well clearly she thought it had something to do with Jesus, and his twelve buddies, and all those groupies that followed him on tour. She seemed to think it was her son’s responsibility to replace all that wine, six jars holding twenty or thirty gallons each. (John 2:6) There’s that whiskery old communion-joke that Jesus turned water into wine and then the church spent two thousand years turning wine into water.

Of course, the most famous stories of Jesus serving food are the feedings in the wilderness: In Mark 6, Jesus feeds five thousand Judeans with five loaves and two fish, then in Mark 8 Jesus feeds four thousand gentiles with seven loaves and “a few small fish.” (Mark 8:7) There are numerous theories on how this played out, maybe this was the first-ever Christian pot-luck, but I’m not that interested in the mechanics of it – I once watched my father bless enough food for fifty people, and then a hundred and fifty people stuffed their faces and everybody walked away full. That’s a fact, and since then I’ve lost my appetite for trying to explain this miracle away.

My interest here is in what the Gospel says after the two feedings: “And all ate and were filled,” Mark 6:42, and “They ate and were filled” again in Mark 8:8. Both times the thousands went away full, and there were left-overs, which really means everyone was full. They ate and were filled. Calorie-wise, if a modern church service means a communion chip and a sip (or dip) plus half a donut, then a full-grown man like me would have to attend six different services on a Sunday to “eat and be filled.” And then I’d be hungry again an hour and a half later, because it’s all bleached flour.

But here in the Gospel is a homeless man with no money, feeding thousands of people all-you-can-eat bread and fish. Jesus wasn’t a priest, telling you to line up for your chip-and-dip, he was more like a Jewish grandmother, always saying “Eat some more, you’re skin and bones! Put some more fish on your plate!” This wasn’t just theological feeding, it was biological feeding! And we’ve got to deal with that. What made early Christianity so uncomfortable about giving people actual food?

For one thing, biological food has unfortunate side-effects. We all know what it turns into, the “S-H” word: shame. It’s pretty hard to think of yourself as a god-like spiritual being while you’re making biological human shame. William Shakespeare said “What a piece of work is man…in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of this world, the paragon of animals.” Our faculties of reason do make us like divine beings, but our gastro-intestinal systems also make us like animals. Part angel, part animal. Incredible powers of appreciation, prognostication and intention, coupled with distasteful needs for mastication, digestion and defecation. I know this sounds awful, but our subject is Christianity’s troubled relationship with the human body, and bodies have by-products. Even Einstein had to go to the think-tank. Even the president has to go to the oval office. Even Moses made a Deuteronomy. And though I can’t prove it, I suspect that there is a toilet somewhere in the Vatican. Someday Dan Brown and I are going to find it, or die trying.

I don’t know about you, but as a Bible-teacher, potty-talk makes me very uncomfortable. I have two small children and a dog, which makes me responsible for the biological waste of four creatures. And I used to have a job scrubbing public toilets in New York City. But that’s business (pun intended), and this is supposed to be fun. I didn’t get a Masters Degree in the Bible to stand here and tell bathroom jokes. But let’s stay with this for just another minute. And if anybody gets up and walks out of the room I promise I will make a joke about you heading for the potty.

What would Jesus do? He didn’t make any potty jokes, did he? Actually yes, in Mark 7:18 he says “Whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer…It is what comes out of a person that defiles.” (Mark 7:18-20) This is the only potty-joke from Jesus we know of, a masterful play on words concerning dietary purity and the uncleanliness of human waste, which is metaphorically linked with saying ugly things. Jesus makes the joke that condemnatory speech is like fecal material. But how could someone as wise and wonderful as Jesus stoop to the level of bathroom humor?

The author of Matthew’s Gospel copies this joke, but cleans it up to make it more presentable: “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” (Matthew 15:11, emphasis added) Note that the double meaning is gone – by specifying the mouth, Matthew confines this statement to food coming in and words coming out. Luke, also copying Mark, drops this saying altogether, and John’s Jesus, whose feet don’t touch the ground, makes no reference to any such thing.

The author of Matthew’s Gospel does actually preserve one potty-joke, it’s a pretty obscure one. Actually one of Jesus’ best-known statements: “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” (Matthew 5:39) No, the cheek isn’t the joke. Assuming the average person is right-handed, a slap on the right cheek would mean they were using their left hand, which, in the days before toilet paper… You know, come to think of it, let’s just move on.

There’s an old expression, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Reading the Bible, we get to see God walking, talking, breathing, smiting, embracing, smiting some more, and in Exodus 33:23, when Moses asks to see God’s face, God shows Moses His naked back-side instead (hey, I didn’t write the Bible, I just read it and teach what’s in it.) But obviously any similarity between God and a biological being ends there. God is not an animal. So then the obvious question is…why do we have to be animals? If God wants us to be perfect, then why did God design us to do unclean things? If God wanted us all to be like monks, why did God make us all like addicts? And then design our bodies to remind us of our addiction with by-products?

In a way, you could say that scatology led to eschatology: (anybody who laughed at that joke gets a discount on my book) a belief that our pure spirits are prisoners of our impure biological bodies, and a desire for God to set us free by drastically changing or ending the physical world. This doomsday scenario is popular among the religious right in America, who constantly remind us that this nation was initially colonized by “Puritans” meaning people obsessed with Purity.

PURITANS

The “Puritans” of Jesus’ day were the Pharisees. In the time the Gospel of Mark was written, the Pharisees were a leading sect of Judaism, because the Temple and all of its priests were busy getting destroyed by Rome. But in Jesus’ day, the Pharisees were a radical right-wing purity-faction. They were not in charge of anything. They were, like the Jesus people, a noisy minority. The Gospel stories show debates between Jesus and the Pharisees (and also several scenes where Jesus and the Pharisees eat socially together.) And many critical scholars see these debates as inventions of the Gospel authors. But I think Jesus did have to debate the Pharisees, like two candidates in the presidential primaries, not least of which because people in Jesus’ time would have had a hard time telling Jesus people and Pharisees apart. In a sense, they were both puritanical reform factions, but the Pharisees were concerned with ritual purity issues while the Jesus people were more concerned with social and economic issues: the pure essence of the Mosaic laws. To the Pharisees, Jesus was illegitimate because he ignored ritual purity. To Jesus, the Pharisees were illegitimate because they ignored social justice.

Mark 7:1 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him,
2 they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.
3 (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders;
4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.)
5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
6 He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;
7 in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

The Pharisees observe Jesus and his buddies at the dinner-table and ask, basically, “Were you born in a barn?” Technically yes, according to Luke’s Gospel. But Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees – in their insistence on purity, they’ve missed the most fundamental point of the law: that children of Israel are meant to take care of each-other. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke contain other criticisms of the Pharisees (from a collection of sayings known as “Q,” which is older than Mark’s Gospel), and we’re going to look at a section from Matthew where Jesus attacks what the Pharisees are most proud of: their purity. In keeping with this session and this series, listen for what Jesus says about eating and purity:

Matthew 23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.
24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.”

Next we’re going to look at two stories that take place after the resurrection of Jesus. One is found only in Luke, one is found only in John. These communities were separate, these Gospels were not coordinated. But I want us to listen to what is told about Jesus and food, and think about what is similar.

Luke 24:13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem,
14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.
15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them,
16 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him…
27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.
29 But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.
30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.
31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

John 21:3 Simon Peter said to [the other disciples], “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
4 Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.
5 Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.”
6 He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.
7 That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.
8 But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.
9 When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread.
10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.”
11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn.
12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord.
13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.

We’re going to close out today’s lesson with the continuation of the scene in John we we were just looking at. Peter, we must remember here, represents the beginning of the Christian Church. And as Peter betrayed Jesus three times during the trial, now Jesus will tell Peter three times what he and the Christian Church must do:

John 21:15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
16 A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.”
17 He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”

A homeless man with no money is giving out all-you-can-eat whole-wheat bread and fish.

A multi-billion dollar franchise corporation is giving out a cracker and a sip of water with some wine in it.

This is one of the great mysteries of faith.

Early Christianity was incredibly uncomfortable about bodies, that’s why we have monasticism, people going off alone into caves and torturing their bodies, that whole self-flagellation thing – they’re trying to get their bodies to shut up, stop clouding their thoughts and let them concentrate on pure spiritual things. When you hear about apocalyptic cults, they want God to release their spirits from their bodies so they can worship in peace. Our bodies and biological needs poison the well of faith, and faith is always a struggle between the two dies of the human being, angel and animal.

Our bodies are always talking to us, always getting between us and pure spirituality. My body needs food and cigarettes, my body wants sex, and sometimes my body needs to visit the bathroom. When you have children, that only complicates matters further, because then you have more biological bodies between you and God. I say prayers, I study and teach the Bible, I’d like to think I lead some kind of spiritual life, but when it comes comes down between my theological business and my childrens’ biological business, keeping my children alive will always come first. Spiritual immortality will always lose to the quest for biological immortality through my offspring. This passage from John, where Jesus says “Feed my lambs…tend my sheep…feed my sheep,” of course we could read this as spiritual, metaphorical, dis-embodied. But we need to remember that this was Jesus, and when he talked about feeding, there was always a biological aspect.

There’s the question – was Jesus invented by the early Church? And one way of answering that question is that Jesus really disagrees with early Christianity about bodies. Why would the early Church invent someone who disagreed with them on this fundamental issue? Jesus loved having a body, and he was affirming of bodies. We’re taught (by oppressors) that Jesus only cared about spiritual freedom, but you can’t read his teachings and ignore that he cared about physical freedom too. I’d like to think Jesus enjoyed his body in every way possible, and I’m not frightened by any way he might have done that, but all we can prove is that he loved to eat and drink. Let’s not forget that that only time in his ministry we see Jesus falter, is when God is going to take his body away. And Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, he wants to keep his body. He loves having a body. But Jesus lets it go, God breaks his body and takes it away, and then gives it back to him. This is the crux of the whole New Testament: Jesus loves having a body, God takes it away, but then gives it back to him.

The Nicene creed says “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” Who actually believes that anymore? But when we look at these post-resurrection scenes in Luke and John, we see that the resurrected body of Jesus is absolutely important: he breaks bread, he interacts with the physical world, and that’s when they recognize him. In other post-resurrection scenes he tells the disciples to touch his wounded body so that they will believe that God gave his body back. Jesus did not return as a dis-embodied ghost, his resurrection was not only spiritual, but physical. The Gospels are very clear about that. And if it makes us uncomfortable, that means we have to deal with it.

The Body, Part I: Mass Neurosis / Demon Invasion

THE BODY
SESSION ONE: MASS NEUROSIS / DEMON INVASION
BY j. SNODGRASS

MASS NEUROSIS

To paraphrase Doctor Sigmund Freud, neurosis is a private religion. And religion is a public neurosis. The neurotic has certain actions that must be performed regularly, repetitively, step by step, always in the same sequence. This is known today as obsessive-compulsive behavior. Let’s take, for example, the case of John S. Names would normally be changed to protect the innocent, but we’re in a church – nobody’s innocent here.

John S. is an obsessive collector of old rock & roll vinyl records. So, while his peers access a song by typing the title into a computer and clicking ‘enter,’ John S. carefully pulls a record from a shelf, removes its plastic sleeve and sets it down, removes its cardboard sleeve and sets it down on top of the plastic sleeve, removes its paper sleeve…and let’s keep in mind, this is neurotic, not erotic…He places the record on the turntable touching only the edge and the label, and then carefully moves the stylus to the track he wants to hear. It is a ritual, he says, so that by the time the song begins, he’s really ready to hear it.

It’s the word ‘ritual’ that interests me about this case. I hear about someone going through all this to hear a song, and I’d say “Yeah, he’s neurotic.” But what about the priest and the communion chalice? They don’t just dump some wine in a cup. It’s the cup, covered by layer of linen and a layer of cardboard. The layers are removed, the chalice is revealed, the wine and water are poured, the chalice is raised, ritual incantations are said or sung – same time, same place, same motions, same words, every week. If I didn’t know what religion was, I’d have a hard time distinguishing the priest and his chalice from the nerd and his records.

There are people in the world who pray five times a day, at the same basic times, always facing in the same direction. There are people who brush their teeth five times a day, at the same basic times, facing the same mirror. There are people who don’t eat shrimp. And then there’s me – if I could, I would eat shrimp five times a day, at the same times, always facing in the same direction. But it wouldn’t be my religion, I don’t seek salvation from the cockroach of the sea, I just wish I could add that to my collection of neuroses.

The Torah (the first five books of the Bible) contains Ten Commandments… Plus six hundred and three more commandments. Six hundred and thirteen in total. The ten you know, that’s like a “Greatest Hits” collection. Six hundred and thirteen laws about how to wash your hands, how to cook dinner, how to worship, how to clean up a mess… Well, obviously the list goes on. And on. And on – it’s no coincidence that Freud, who called religion a public neurosis, grew up Jewish. The Torah contains six hundred and thirteen laws covering every aspect of life, and all of these laws are for a single purpose: Purity. Worship must be pure, every individual must be pure so that the community can be pure, un-defiled. The individual has a body that must be kept pure and the community is a body that must be kept pure. Moses and the Hebrews leaving slavery in Egypt probably did come up with Ten Commandments, and a few more. Bodily purity and community purity were important because they had just been slaves: their bodies had been someone else’s property. They got out of that situation and developed a keen interest in hygiene, personal and community hygiene.

But most of those six hundred and thirteen commandments come from another time, seven or eight centuries later, when Israel was invaded by the Empire of Babylon. I don’t want to get too nasty about this, but the body of Israel was forcefully invaded by the Babylonian Empire. And it’s an unfortunate accident of history that the word “Babylonian” sort of resembles our English word “Baloney,” because the Babylonian Empire was dead-serious about tearing people apart. They were destroyers of culture. They were kidnappers and rapists of nations.

And it was Israel the abducted hostage and brutalized victim that came up with most of those six hundred and thirteen purity laws. The laws were designed to keep some cultural dignity alive by striving to preserve bodily and community purity. And it worked. Of all the nations subjugated by the Babylonian Empire, the Israelites managed to maintain their cultural identity. Babylon fell almost fifteen centuries ago, Judaism is still around.

After the Babylonian Empire fell, the Israelites were subjugated by the Persian Empire, then the Greeks, then Rome. But the system was already in place – Judean culture would survive. Neurosis would keep it alive. And then someone said, “All these laws are suffocating me! We need freedom from the law!” That wasn’t Jesus, by the way, it was Paul. And he met with some resistance. Well of course he did. Judaism had survived by neurosis for almost seven hundred years at that point. Throwing out the law was a touchy subject.

(Just to be clear on something here before we move on: I’m not writing this to pick on Judaism. As a teenager I once did a Woody Allen impersonation that lasted three straight years, so I actually think of ‘neurotic’ as a complement. From where I’m standing, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Dentistry all seem equally neurotic.)

DEMON INVASION

In the early centuries of Christianity, and still in certain fundamentalist circles, the theory on the Gospels is that John is an eyewitness report (because the Gospel of John says so), Matthew and Luke were written next, and then someone cut a bunch of stuff out of Matthew’s Gospel to make a condensed digest version, called the Gospel of Mark.

This is the perfect opposite of how competent scholars suggest the Gospels were composed. Mark was first, around 70 CE, then two different groups of people expanded on the Gospel of Mark, combining it with other sources to produce the Gospels of Matthew and Luke around 100 CE. Then someone else who had access to certain material found in Mark (but probably not Mark’s Gospel itself) assembled the Gospel of John around 130 CE.

There were also about twenty other Gospels written in this general period, which are not in our Bible. And the reason they were not included ties in with the subject of this course: bodies. Specifically one body, the body of the Christ. You may hear about “Gnostic Gospels,” forbidden texts, tantalizing finds and remnants, then read one and say… So what? You may not even notice what’s different, except they tend to be light on story and heavy on teachings. The reason these Gospels had to be forbidden is that there was a rumor going around that the Christ did not have a physical body, that the Christ was pure spirit. And so to combat this rumor, any Gospel that did not clearly demonstrate the physical body of Jesus was banned and burned. Four Gospels were chosen that had one thing in common: the total destruction of the body of the Christ. When you read the Passion narratives and see Jesus whipped and tortured and crucified and dead on the cross, there’s no doubt that he had a physical body. That’s a tangent from our lesson today, but it’s important.

Back to the sequence of the four Canonical Gospels – when we read them in the traditional order (John, Luke, Matthew, Mark) we have to wonder… What’s up with Mark and the demons? Why all this attention to Jesus battling demons? Jesus was a lover, not a fighter! But we turn the sequence around, knowing Mark’s Gospel is the oldest, and we really have to deal with this. Because in the earliest Canonical Gospel, Jesus was an exorcist. One by one, the Gospels written after Mark down-played the exorcism, until John’s Gospel when Jesus doesn’t fight demons at all. And when I say “fight,” what I really mean is, “fight.” There’s a gradual shift in the Gospels, toward faith-healing which is very peaceful, and away from exorcism, which is violent. Some of you may have read books or seen movies about exorcism – you basically have to beat the person up, or tie them down and torture them, to get a demon out. It’s messy. It’s not pretty. It doesn’t look good on a stained-glass window (…And here’s Jesus getting puked on by a schizophrenic…) There’s a very good reason that Christianity has pushed Jesus-the-exorcist into the margins. But we’ve got to deal with it.

Mark, chapter one, Jesus is quickly baptized, hears a voice from the sky tell him he’s the Son of God (but nobody else hears it) and immediately he’s driven out into the wilderness to confront Satan. Mark’s Gospel covers this in one line, there’s no dialogue, no three temptations from Satan like we find in Matthew and Luke. (1:13) He comes back, gathers a few disciples, and goes to teach in the Synagogue. (And it happens that fast – Mark’s entire Gospel is one breathless run-on sentence.)

Mark 1:23 Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit,
24 and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”
25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”
26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.
27 They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching– with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”
28 At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee…
34 And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

I said a moment ago that Jesus heard the voice from the sky saying he was the Son of God but nobody else heard it. This is very important, because Mark’s Gospel is written as a mystery: the identity of Jesus is a secret, that’s why he’s always ordering people he’s healed not to tell anyone. Nobody knows his true identity until half-way through. Except for the demons (“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Mark 1:24, 1:34 and 5:7, which we’ll see in a minute.) Our next story is in the middle of the Gospel:

Mark 8:27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”
28 And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
29 He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.”
30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Jesus has a secret identity, and here at the exact middle of the Gospel between baptism and crucifixion, one person figures it out. Peter, who says “You are the Messiah,” the Christ. Jesus orders Peter not to tell anyone, but then look at what happens next: Peter tempts Jesus to escape from suffering and Jesus calls Peter “Satan,” the head demon. Remember, up to this point, only the demons have known Jesus’ secret identity. And when Peter figures out Jesus’ secret, Jesus assumes that Peter must have turned and joined the side of the demons.

Who are these demons? What do we make of this? Not many of us believe in demons these days, although we do believe in microscopic monsters called “germ” and “virus” that invade peoples’ bodies, which… When you think of it, Jesus could actually have saved millions of lives by inventing rubber gloves. Anyway, nobody back then knew about the demons we believe in today. What demons did they believe in?

Demons are almost entirely absent from the Old Testament – if you read my book of Genesis you’ll see that demons were actually edited out of Hebrew texts. So where did they come from? One way of examining this is to look at the four beasts in the book of Daniel, composed in the Greek period, about two hundred years before the time of Jesus. In Daniel seven, there is a description of four beasts: a lion, a bear, a leopard, and something else… A horned monster that cannot be compared to any animal. The lion represents the Assyrian Empire, which invaded Israel, then lost its power and was replaced by the Babylonian and Persian empires (the bear and leopard), which also invaded Israel and then lost power and fell. These were the Mesopotamian empires, in the land known today as Iraq.

The fourth beast is the Greek Empire, and unlike the Mesopotamian Empires, there is nothing familiar or recognizable about it. It is totally other, a monster unlike anything anyone had ever seen. It was decided that nothing written later than Daniel would be allowed in the Hebrew Bible, because Greek culture was so pervasive and persuasive, that anything written during the Greek period might be defiled by Greek thought – might introduce an impurity into the sacred literature, poisoning the well of sacred knowledge. (A collection of Books from this period appears in some Bibles as the Apocrypha.)

And the Bible falls silent on the subject of monsters and demons until Mark’s Gospel, and then there’s the eruption of mythical monsters in the book of Revelation. So one way to look at these demons is to say that the beast, the demon, represents Greece and its successor, Rome. Unfamiliar Mediterranean Empires with unrecognizable culture. And these “Demons” have invaded and “possessed” the “body” of Israel, defiling it. And now we come back to our opening subject, the obsessive-compulsive neurosis about purity. In the body of the individual and, by extension, in the “body” of Israel. “Possession” by “demons” causes impurity. Let’s see if we can apply this to a well-known Gospel story, Jesus and the Gerasene Demoniac. We’ve looked at Mark 1 and Mark 8, this story is in between, in chapter 5.

NRS Mark 5:1 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes.
2 And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him.
3 He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain;
4 for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him.
5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.
6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him;
7 and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.”
8 For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”
9 Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.”
10 He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.
11 Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding;
12 and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.”
13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
14 The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened.
15 They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.
16 Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it.
17 Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood.

Impurity is all over this story, set in “the tombs,” which is not a modern grave-yard with green grass and bodies underground. Tombs in Jesus’ day were caves or carved stone mausoleums, above-ground, where bodies would be laid out on slabs for a year before the bones would be collected and placed in a clay box and stacked with other boxes. So graveyards were incredibly “unclean.” And then there’s the pigs, also considered unclean. Finally, there’s exorcism itself, which usually involved projectile vomit, blood, and other bodily fluids. Again – Exorcism was violent and messy. That’s why “Legion” here begs Jesus not to torment him (5:7, see also the convulsions and screaming in Mark 1:26. The exorcisms in Mark 1 and Mark 5 share numerous parallels.)

The obvious place to start looking for empire in this story is the name, “Legion,” meaning a couple thousand Roman soldiers. And after begging Jesus not to make them “leave the country,” the demons jump into the bodies of two thousand pigs. This is significant, because a Roman legion with the pig as its mascot would destroy the Jerusalem Temple at around the same time the Gospel of Mark was written. This story in its original Greek contains other military terminology to let us know that Jesus is here confronting the Roman occupation force: the “demons” possessing the “body” of Judea, causing natives to defile themselves with madness and self-destructive behavior. And how does the confrontation end? With “Legion” drowning in the sea, like Pharaoh’s army.

The most frightening thing about this story is not the demons, not the exorcism, it’s the public reaction: The villagers find out that Jesus has confronted Rome, and they beg him to leave. And two thousand years later, we are still asking Jesus the exorcist to leave. The Jesus who defeats demons and challenges the Empire is as dark and dirty and dangerous now as he was then. And churches all over the world are asking that Jesus not to come around. And it’s too bad, because we Americans are living in an occupied country, never mind that Wall Street is on US soil, they’re as remote from us as Rome was from Judea. We are not states, we are the fifty colonies of Wall Street, and the Jesus we need right now is Mark’s messy exorcist. But we keep begging him to leave our neighborhood.

Rebirth of the Sun

REBIRTH OF THE SUN
By j. SNODGRASS
(Interfaith prayer Service for Peace, 29 December 2011)

One late afternoon a couple weeks ago, I was practicing the piano, and suddenly the whole house went dark. Being a Bible-teacher, I’m no stranger to sudden loss of electricity so I finished playing the song. Then I went and picked the kids up from day-care, it was pitch-black by the time we got back – all the surrounding houses and street-lamps were out. I made a fire in the fireplace and immediately the kids started asking “Can we watch Batman?” No. “Can we watch Cinderella?” No. “What about Batman?” No, we can’t watch anything. I can play you a sad song on the piano. And they both shouted, “No!”

We did have some free entertainment, watching the electric company guys working on the poles. I thought it would be a half-hour episode, but it turned out to be a seven-hour Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia movie-marathon of these guys working to restore electricity. Which they eventually did, and just as the children fell asleep every light and electronic device in the house suddenly burst on at once, followed by the clatter of my midnight Decathlon, sprinting through the house turning everything off again.

A black-out in December. Total darkness at five in the evening. If it had been July I would have brought the kids outside, fired up the grill, cooked everything in the freezer, invited the neighborhood and built a bonfire when the sun went down – at nine. But it was December, dark and cold, and all I could think was ‘get the children home, build a fire, make sandwiches, play sad songs on the piano.’ This thing happened and my first impulse as a parent was to find shelter, huddle, wait it out.

And I was reminded of an earlier time in human history – actually all of human history except the last hundred years or so. When the sun went down, it was dark. Wherever you were, that’s where you stayed. The electric light, the television, the computer, all the things we use to avoid the darkness and isolation of winter, these are brand new in the human story. Fire, the ability to keep fire, the ability to make fire… Some archaeologists say a million, some say half a million years ago, human beings began to control fire. So we were around maybe two, maybe two and a half million years before we learned to make fire.

We need to sit with this a minute, because we don’t have December blackouts often enough. Darkness. Isolation. Fear. The sun keeps rising later and later, setting earlier and earlier, darkness fills more and more of the day. Like walking through a tunnel that gets narrower and narrower ahead of you, and then… And then what? Will daylight keep getting shorter and shorter until light ceases to exist, shadows prevail, and the land is dark forever? Is this the year that the sun dies?

Then something happens. Just when it seems all hope is lost, someone realizes that today was longer than yesterday. The light will return, it’ll still be cold a while but there will be spring again. Flowers will bloom, waters will thaw and flow, birds will return and sing. People will dance. With sun-tans. The sun is born again.

And even though it’s cold, from their caves and huts and piles of animal skins, human beings emerge. Crawling out from under their fear and isolation, they come together for a moment of joy and togetherness. They celebrate light and heat and some force in the universe that has granted this small, fragile, vulnerable creature another year of life. And they tell their stories. And they sing their songs. And they share their food. And they bring out the best of what a human being has, because life will go on, and we’re in it together.

It’s no coincidence that people all over the world celebrate a holiday near the Winter Solstice. And it’s easy to get caught up in the cultural differences, the local color and decorative details of these festivals. By doing that, by focusing on those differences, we can turn late December back into a season of isolation and fear. But kids – don’t make me turn this car around. I think there’s light at the end of this tunnel.

For millions of years, people all over the world have celebrated the same thing at the same time for the same reason, but because of boundaries of land, language and culture, they did not know it. We are here today, and the theme of our service is to cross those boundaries in peace. And I do not believe it is coincidence that we are doing this now, in this time of year when people long for togetherness. When the lonely human being realizes… It’s not me and my coat against the cold winter. It’s me and my community against the cold isolation. And the encroaching darkness will not prevail. The light is returning.

j. Snodgrass’s book, Genesis and the Rise of Civilization is available from the trunk of his car, and from Amazon.com.