When Clarence Jordan and his wife Florence started the Koinonia Farm
in 1942, one of the principles he established for everyone who would
join the community was that they sell their possessions and give them to
the community, which would operate out of a common purse. Jordan didn't
adopt this practice because of his reading of Karl Marx but because of
his belief that it was a biblical, specifically a New Testament,
mandate. Today's reading from the book of Acts shows that the Jerusalem
church in the first century operated on a similar principle: "Now the
whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one
claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned
was held in common." For many today, the notion of paying more than the
bare minimum in taxes (and sometimes less than the bare minimum) is
rejected as socialism (as if it were a bad word) and as somehow contrary
to the teachings of the Bible. In fact, as this passage shows, hoarding
one's wealth in the face of human need is anti-biblical, and thus
anti-Christian. The phrase "prosperity gospel" is an oxymoron, for the
concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is anything but good news
for the billions of people on the planet who struggle to find enough
food to satisfy their hunger, who have no access to clean drinking water
(or, if they have access, they are charged more than they can afford by
multinational corporations that "own" their water), who have no
opportunity to obtain a good education, who watch their children and
other loved ones die because they can't afford the medicine required to
keep them alive. For all these people the so-called prosperity gospel
is not evangel (good news) but rather kakangel (bad news). The example
set by the early church challenges those of us who identify with the
Christ movement to let go of our attachment to the things we possess, to
build relationships with people instead of objects. But, some will
object, pooling our resources is antithetical to capitalism, which
everyone knows is the economic system God approves of! On the contrary,
the identification of capitalism with Christianity is one of the great
heresies of modern times. The Bible doesn't prescribe any particular
approach to economics, and of course the modern world is quite different
from the ancient world, so even if such an economic system were
prescribed, it wouldn't be applicable today. Nevertheless, there are
certain biblical principles that do carry forward to the present day,
one of which is the necessity of caring for the poor and marginalized in
the community. How did the sharing of resources work out for the
first-century Jerusalem church? We don't hear anything about individual
church members getting rich, nor do we hear of foundations being
established, but we do know one consequence of their decision to have a
common purse: "There was not a needy person among them, for as many as
owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was
sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to
each as any had need." There are plenty of needy people among us today,
and even more distributed throughout the world, so whatever we're doing
today isn't working nearly as well as the approach of the early church.
Caring for the poor is not just a charitable idea, it's a biblical
mandate. As Bill Lane Doulos, an associate of Clarence Jordan, wrote in
Cotton Patch Parables of Liberation, "The gulf between ourselves
and the poor is the gulf between ourselves and God."
Psalm 133 (first published 23 April 2006)
In the wake of Hamas setting up its new government in Palestine, Israel
has cut off all payments of tax revenues collected for the Palestinian
Authority. Palestinians launch missiles at Israeli cities, and Israeli
planes shoot missiles at the homes and businesses of suspected terrorists.
The election, which was probably an inner-Palestinian rebuke of Fatah
corruption and impotence, has increased the tension between Israelis and
Palestinians almost to the breaking point. Israel threatens to make
unilateral decisions regarding its border with Palestine, and new
Palestinian members of parliament call for the destruction of the state of
Israel. The current situation--indeed, the situation for much of the past
60 years--is an ironic mockery of the psalmist's words in Psalm 133: "How
very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity." The
flip side of this statement is also true: "When kindred cannot get along
with one another, life is miserable, desperate, and even dangerous." It
is a shame that not enough leaders on either side, nor their strongest
ideological supporters in other countries, nor a sufficient number of
religious leaders of various persuasions, have taken a strong stand
against violence and in favor of peaceful solutions, respect, and even a
sense of family. Humans focus far too much on the things that divide
us--ethnicity, language, skin color, country of origin, religion--and far
too little on the things that unite us--basic human decency, world
citizenship, common stewardship of the planet, a commitment to make the
world a better place for our children and grandchildren. A Palestinian
who hates an Israeli also hates his future descendants, who might be
descended from an Israeli on one side of her family, as well as from
Palestinians. An Israeli who hates a Palestinian and wants to build a
wall to cage him in like an animal is only engaging in prophetic
self-fulfillment, for people who are treated like animals often lash out
at their captors, like an animal might. The answer to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies not in walls, or denunciations, or
official recognition of governments, or tax revenues, or missiles, or
invective. The answer lies in an honest evaluation of current and future
prospects, both with and without an agreement. It requires changed
positions on both sides of the border. Above all it requires respect for
and, eventually, friendship with those who will one day be former enemies.
Ethnic and religious conflicts have existed since the beginning of
recorded history, but most have been resolved in the distant past. The
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is arguably the most significant disagreement
in the world today, because of the strategic locations of the two
countries. Resolving this long-standing conflict will be a tremendous
blessing for everyone, "like the precious oil on the head, running down
upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his
robes."
1 John 1:1-2:2 (first published 23 April 2006)
The recently published Gospel of Judas contains a passage in which
Jesus tells Judas, "You will exceed all of them, for you will sacrifice
the man that clothes me." The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic gospel, a
gospel that sees Jesus as a divine being trapped inside a human body. If
Judas will hand Jesus over to be killed, he will "sacrifice the man that
clothes me," or in other words, free the real Jesus from the fleshly body
that presently restricts him. There were many different varieties of
Gnostics in the first two or three Christian centuries, with different
sets of beliefs, but they all believed that human flesh was something to
be overcome so that the spirit could truly live. One early group of
Gnostics was called the Docetists. They believed that Jesus did not
really have an earthly body at all: he only seemed (Greek
dokéō) to have one. By postulating the absence of a
sinful body, the Docetists were able to think of Jesus much more easily as
a divine being. Apparently people who held beliefs similar to the
Docetists lived around the recipients of the letter we call 1 John. The
letter begins with one of the New Testament's clearest testimonies to the
humanity of Jesus: "We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we
have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and
touched with our hands, concerning the word of life." The unnamed author
of this letter (traditionally John the apostle) makes it perfectly clear
that Jesus has come in the flesh and that his body was real, not
imaginary. In the movie The Passion of the Christ, the director,
Mel Gibson, tries to emphasize Jesus' humanity by focusing so much
attention on his suffering, particularly in the scourging scene, probably
the most graphically violent scene in any movie ever made (in part because
of the length of the scene). However, the extremity of the violence
causes some viewers to tune out in order to cope with it, and it has
caused at least one person I know to think that Jesus' stamina throughout
his ordeal, plus the fact that he doesn't pass out from the pain, suggests
that Jesus' divinity is being emphasized as much as his humanity.
Ironically, then, the movie might be interpreted as deemphasizing Jesus'
humanity rather than emphasizing it, as it is usually interpreted. In
contrast to this, I saw another movie this week that puts a completely
different spin on Jesus' passion. To End All Wars is based on a
true story of Allied prisoners in a Japanese POW camp in Southeast Asia
during World War II. This film also has quite a bit of violence, but it
also shows the power of Jesus' words, interpreted in the context of what
passes for a classical education in the midst of the war, to transform
people. In this movie, the prisoners suffer at the hands of their
enemies, but many of them learn to accept their situation and even
transcend it through the powerful example of Jesus' life and words.
"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his
friends," Jesus said. Also, "Love your enemies. Do good to those who
persecute you." The prisoners begin to learn how to put these words into
practice, and the end result is a remarkable testimony to the power of a
single, human life, lived in the power of God, to transform ordinary human
beings into people who are extraordinary. A fully divine Jesus with only
limited humanity has little power to inspire us to emulate him. Only a
Jesus whose participation in the divine does not diminish his full
humanity can give us the courage to live our lives according to his
example.
John 20:19-31 (first published 23 April 2006)
Sometimes I wish I had been a contemporary of Jesus and had observed his teachings, his ministry, and even his suffering. Even more, wouldn't it have been amazing to have been in the upper room when Jesus appeared to the frightened disciples? If only I had seen all that with my own eyes, I think, I would be a better Christian. But what does Jesus say to Thomas? "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." It sounds like Jesus was talking about you and me! Believing in Jesus because you've actually seen him with your own eyes is good, but even better is believing without seeing. Those who believe without seeing--all of us believers today--actually have an advantage, Jesus says, over those who were eyewitnesses. But how do we know what to believe, when there are so many different options? Did Jesus really live a sinless life or didn't he? Was he literally raised from the dead, or only figuratively? Did he literally walk through walls or was it a vision? These are reasonable questions to ask, since many of us are trained to think critically, but they are not really the most important questions. Here are some examples of more important questions. Based on the testimony of various gospel writers and other early Christians concerning Jesus' life, how should we live our own lives? If we have experienced the power of the resurrection in our own lives, are we also willing to partake in the fellowship of his sufferings? If we have encountered Christ in a real and meaningful way on one or more occasions in our own lives, how has it inspired us to modify our behavior, life goals, attitudes, or actions? Rather than lament the fact that we weren't around to see Jesus in real life, we should be celebrating our fortune at having come to faith in an age of disbelief and selfishness. Then we should go out and live our lives in the power of our encounter with God through Christ.