Trajectory--The New Covenant in Christ
One of the oldest, continuously occupied villages in Alaska is the village of Healy Lake. Archaeologists estimate that the Healy Lake Athabascans have enjoyed continual habitation there for over 11,000 years. My family members are newcomers to the lake. We began going there in 1967 (I think). We helped one family build a cabin there and later built one ourselves. It is a place of life and beauty and has become an especially sacred place in my heart.
We travel by boat to Healy Lake in the summer, launching in the Tanana River near Delta Jct., cruising downstream to the mouth of the Healy River and then up the Healy for a few miles to Healy Lake, itself. Crossing the lake one can’t help but notice the skeleton branches of dead treetops sticking up, out of the water. Clearly, at one time there were significant, forest ecosystem-supporting islands there.
As we cross the lake I remember enjoying a picnic at the top of one of those now-submerged islands with my mother, brother and sister. I remember Healy Lake Fourth of July pig roasts on another island, an annual tradition for the Healy Lake community. I remember the way the Healy River reappeared upstream from the lake and snaked its way through the swamp. We used to stand on its banks and hunt ducks as they flew across the flats. All of that land is under water now, gone due to the vagaries of human life and of nature.
Most of the islands rest on lenses of glacier ice left from the retreat of the Donnelly Glacier hundreds of years ago. The ice lenses supporting those islands had hit a stability point where they remained more-or-less permanently frozen due to the insulation from the taiga forest provided from the sun. In past decades human caused climate change has changed that balance. River drainage, responding to the conditions provided by climate change, has caused the mouth of the river to silt up, raising the river. Warmer temperatures have exacerbated the problem, causing more ice to melt. The combination causes the ice lenses to melt and the waters to rise. Now we just see the “dead bones” of the islands in the form of dead tree branches marking where so much land had stood for millennia, disappearing only a few decades ago.
There is much that the land and the water have to teach us. One can speak of human sin, I suppose…or of human ignorance because there really are lessons to learn here. Today I prefer to think about it in terms of how difficult it is to predict the consequences of our actions, and our need to always be vigilant and responsive. We need to be ready to see what is happening in the world, and to think about how we are to live responsibly and responsively to the changes we see happening around us. The current efforts to get the people of the world to respond to climate change is a part of that.
We see this ability to change our thinking and respond in no less of an authority than the Holy Bible. Although a lot of inertia has been building in recent decades to deride the Bible either as a holy writing, or as an authority, it is still received as God’s Word by more than a billion people on the planet. Yet, in recent decades the voices speaking of the God’s revelation in the Bible as an unfolding process have been outshouted by other voices insisting on interpreting the Bible as God’s infallible Law. Somehow, despite Jesus’ great efforts to move away from a Law-based religion to a gospel-based (good news of freedom from the law) religion, contemporary efforts have brought us back to an oxymoronic spirituality: a Christianity that is as short on love and compassion as it is on its ability to learn. But is this really where the Bible would lead us? Are Christians left with either rejecting the Bible (and probably their faith) as authoritative or becoming fundamentalist, pharisaic anti-Christians?
The way I composed that last sentence it should be clear that my response to all this is a resounding “no!” The better response I want to advocate does require that Christians trust their heart and use their brain in interpreting both scripture and the signs of the times, however. Interpretation is hard work, and it sometimes feels messy because there are no formulaic rules for determining an outcome. On the other hand, Judeo-Christian teaching about God has always been about living in “right relationship” with God and with God’s creation. Relationships always require hard work, and they are always a bit messy. So, I believe that even the messiness of interpretation “feels right.”
What I want to propose is that there is a trajectory in the teaching of scriptures that we must notice and pay attention to, if we are to be faithful to “right relationships” under God. As we identify this trajectory, it will become one of the markers for proper interpretation of scripture in times of social change.
For Christians this idea of trajectory should not come as a total surprise. We have always maintained that a proper interpretation of all scripture, including the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament), must be understood in the light of the birth of Jesus. If the Christ appeared uniquely in the man, Jesus, after billions of years of time had already passed, then it is clear that God was doing something new in the appearance of this Jesus. For Christians all history focuses on Jesus as the embodiment of God and of God’s new covenant with the created order. Faithful religion after Jesus should look different than faithful religion before Jesus, not because God’s desires for creation have changed, but because God took action in Jesus to change things between God and the created order. God especially took action in Jesus to change things for human awareness. The birth of Jesus was a special proclamation of the Word, so that we would understand God differently and relate to God differently. Inevitably, relating to God differently also means relating to God’s creation (our neighbors, both human and all other neighbor creature) differently. It is this difference in understanding and relationship that I am calling trajectory.
In his recent book, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did (Metanoia Books: 2014) Derek Flood reflects this rather old concept in a fresh way. Conservatives, he complains, look at scriptures describing genocide in the conquest of Canaan and other abhorrent uses of violence by the faithful in the Bible, and rationalize why such violence is really a good thing, no matter what their brain or their gut says. After all, who in their right heart and mind would say something like, “Genocide is bad unless God tells me to do it”? Yet, an inerrant view of scripture forces exactly that kind of thinking and has fueled wars, domestic violence, racism in all its forms, slave trades and other economic exploitation and, ultimately, the collapse currently under way do to the exploitation of the environment.
Many respected theologians (Jürgen Moltmann, Walter Brueggeman and Douglas John Hall come immediately to mind), have long held that certitude, i.e. reaching an opinion that does not allow hearing other perspectives (or the New Thing God is revealing through the Word), is not only dangerous theology, but always leads to violence. This is so, because certitude is always related to a false sense of the sacred, and a belief that “our view” is so right that it must be forced on others to avoid offending God and to avoid God’s wrath.
That Christ, whose new commandment was that we must love one another as the God loves us in Jesus, should be used as the excuse for such evil as the Crusades, the Inquisition, the War of Roses, the Irish-British conflicts—not to mention racism in all its forms, the ongoing abuse of women and children by religious men, etc.—is absolutely ludicrous. The advent and teaching of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, requires that all of that Old Testament, hierarchical world view be tossed on its ear.
Flood points out that before Jesus there was an ongoing debate underway in the Jewish leadership between viewing God as primarily Law-giver, and as Enforcer of the Law with eternal punishment, versus a view of God as compassionate and saving, not destroying forever but always offering salvation to the beloved. With the arrival and ministry of Jesus, God revealed and declared forever that God’s true nature is not punitive but nurturing (we all become members of God’s family); that true discipleship is not law-based, but grace-based; and that the scripture of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus, and require re-interpretation based on this new revelation of God that came in Jesus Christ. In short, Jesus settles the debate.
Flood points out that Jesus most commonly teaches and demonstrates his stance through actions that pushed people to understand the Law as more than just rules. Jesus pressed people into an hermeneutic based on justice flowing out of a compassionate heart rather than just a legalistic mind. “You have heard it said that you shall not kill…You have heard it said and eye for an eye…but I say to you that anyone who is angry with their brother and sister…do not resist an evildoer….Jesus called people out of punishment and judgment into the restoration of right relationships with God, with our fellow human beings and with all creation.
On at least one occasion, however Jesus went even further in his reinterpretation of scripture. According to Luke when Jesus appeared in Nazareth to declare himself as the Christ, he drastically reinterpreted a passage from Isaiah by leaving off “the day of God’s Vengeance” in Isaiah 61:2. This was the verse that the people had believed meant that God would punish the Romans, and especially the Roman military, through the Messiah. Buy leaving this off Jesus began his ministry with a consistent theme. “For Jesus the correct interpretation of scripture always comes down to how we love” (Flood: ch. ?).
As a common practice, reinterpreting of scripture to remove violence as an acceptable outcome was not used by Jesus as much as Paul. Jesus simply claimed authority to reinterpret the “depth” of the meaning of scripture to the Word behind the scripture, rather than the traditional interpretation—see his talk of healing on the Sabbath, because God is always at work on the Sabbath, which led the religious leaders to condemn him because he made himself equal to God.
Paul, on the other hand, purposefully used ostensibly violence supporting scripture in his efforts to describe this New Day in Jesus as love based, not law or violence based.
[Re: Psalm 18:41-49 and Deut 32:43 as re-interpreted by Paul in Rom.15:9]
Paul has removed the references to violence against Gentiles, and re-contextualized these passages to instead declare God’s mercy in Christ for Gentiles. This constitutes a major redefinition of how salvation is conceived: Instead of salvation meaning God “delivering” the ancient Israelites from the hands of their enemies through military victory (as described in Psalm 18, which Paul is quoting from), Paul now understands salvation to mean the restoration of all people in Christ, including those same “enemy” Gentiles. (Flood: Kindle Locations 797-801).
For Paul, this New Day in Jesus helps us catch the trajectory of the revelation of God’s will. Humans simply cannot grasp God fully in any age. We always are blinded by our own worldview, our own culture and the experiences that shape our own perspectives. God therefore condescends (a calvinist term) to give us as much as we can take at a time. Even coming in Jesus required God to condescend, not thinking of God’s glory as something to grasp, but becoming humble, taking creaturely form, leading as the servant of all, and dying on our behalf (Philippians 2:5ff).
This is the trajectory of scripture interpretation given by the Christian witness. The
trajectory is always to a justice that is based more and more on grace and reconciliation than on condemnation and punishment. It is a trajectory of widening circles including more peoples and not fewer peoples. It is a trajectory based on more inclusiveness and less hierarchy. It is a trajectory based on seeing God in all situations and all things, rather than only sometimes and in some places. It is a trajectory based on honesty and not deception, and of fearlessly unveiling more truth rather than more control.
This is why the gospel message is so powerful in all aspects of life. Why do we always subvert it for our own control? And why are we so shy to proclaim and live-out that trajectory in our own dealings in this generation? We simply cannot stand for women being subjected to male autocracy. We cannot stand for the privileged classes holding others back in the name of trickle-down, relationship-free compassion. We cannot embrace racism, or ethno-centric colonialism in our economic systems or in our societal attitudes. We cannot watch the natural order suffer so dramatically, even threatening collapse—not if we claim to be followers of the Christ. Such continual crucifixions of the Christ-in-and-through-all-things cannot be a part of the Christian way
As we cross the lake I remember enjoying a picnic at the top of one of those now-submerged islands with my mother, brother and sister. I remember Healy Lake Fourth of July pig roasts on another island, an annual tradition for the Healy Lake community. I remember the way the Healy River reappeared upstream from the lake and snaked its way through the swamp. We used to stand on its banks and hunt ducks as they flew across the flats. All of that land is under water now, gone due to the vagaries of human life and of nature.
Most of the islands rest on lenses of glacier ice left from the retreat of the Donnelly Glacier hundreds of years ago. The ice lenses supporting those islands had hit a stability point where they remained more-or-less permanently frozen due to the insulation from the taiga forest provided from the sun. In past decades human caused climate change has changed that balance. River drainage, responding to the conditions provided by climate change, has caused the mouth of the river to silt up, raising the river. Warmer temperatures have exacerbated the problem, causing more ice to melt. The combination causes the ice lenses to melt and the waters to rise. Now we just see the “dead bones” of the islands in the form of dead tree branches marking where so much land had stood for millennia, disappearing only a few decades ago.
There is much that the land and the water have to teach us. One can speak of human sin, I suppose…or of human ignorance because there really are lessons to learn here. Today I prefer to think about it in terms of how difficult it is to predict the consequences of our actions, and our need to always be vigilant and responsive. We need to be ready to see what is happening in the world, and to think about how we are to live responsibly and responsively to the changes we see happening around us. The current efforts to get the people of the world to respond to climate change is a part of that.
We see this ability to change our thinking and respond in no less of an authority than the Holy Bible. Although a lot of inertia has been building in recent decades to deride the Bible either as a holy writing, or as an authority, it is still received as God’s Word by more than a billion people on the planet. Yet, in recent decades the voices speaking of the God’s revelation in the Bible as an unfolding process have been outshouted by other voices insisting on interpreting the Bible as God’s infallible Law. Somehow, despite Jesus’ great efforts to move away from a Law-based religion to a gospel-based (good news of freedom from the law) religion, contemporary efforts have brought us back to an oxymoronic spirituality: a Christianity that is as short on love and compassion as it is on its ability to learn. But is this really where the Bible would lead us? Are Christians left with either rejecting the Bible (and probably their faith) as authoritative or becoming fundamentalist, pharisaic anti-Christians?
The way I composed that last sentence it should be clear that my response to all this is a resounding “no!” The better response I want to advocate does require that Christians trust their heart and use their brain in interpreting both scripture and the signs of the times, however. Interpretation is hard work, and it sometimes feels messy because there are no formulaic rules for determining an outcome. On the other hand, Judeo-Christian teaching about God has always been about living in “right relationship” with God and with God’s creation. Relationships always require hard work, and they are always a bit messy. So, I believe that even the messiness of interpretation “feels right.”
What I want to propose is that there is a trajectory in the teaching of scriptures that we must notice and pay attention to, if we are to be faithful to “right relationships” under God. As we identify this trajectory, it will become one of the markers for proper interpretation of scripture in times of social change.
For Christians this idea of trajectory should not come as a total surprise. We have always maintained that a proper interpretation of all scripture, including the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament), must be understood in the light of the birth of Jesus. If the Christ appeared uniquely in the man, Jesus, after billions of years of time had already passed, then it is clear that God was doing something new in the appearance of this Jesus. For Christians all history focuses on Jesus as the embodiment of God and of God’s new covenant with the created order. Faithful religion after Jesus should look different than faithful religion before Jesus, not because God’s desires for creation have changed, but because God took action in Jesus to change things between God and the created order. God especially took action in Jesus to change things for human awareness. The birth of Jesus was a special proclamation of the Word, so that we would understand God differently and relate to God differently. Inevitably, relating to God differently also means relating to God’s creation (our neighbors, both human and all other neighbor creature) differently. It is this difference in understanding and relationship that I am calling trajectory.
In his recent book, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did (Metanoia Books: 2014) Derek Flood reflects this rather old concept in a fresh way. Conservatives, he complains, look at scriptures describing genocide in the conquest of Canaan and other abhorrent uses of violence by the faithful in the Bible, and rationalize why such violence is really a good thing, no matter what their brain or their gut says. After all, who in their right heart and mind would say something like, “Genocide is bad unless God tells me to do it”? Yet, an inerrant view of scripture forces exactly that kind of thinking and has fueled wars, domestic violence, racism in all its forms, slave trades and other economic exploitation and, ultimately, the collapse currently under way do to the exploitation of the environment.
Many respected theologians (Jürgen Moltmann, Walter Brueggeman and Douglas John Hall come immediately to mind), have long held that certitude, i.e. reaching an opinion that does not allow hearing other perspectives (or the New Thing God is revealing through the Word), is not only dangerous theology, but always leads to violence. This is so, because certitude is always related to a false sense of the sacred, and a belief that “our view” is so right that it must be forced on others to avoid offending God and to avoid God’s wrath.
That Christ, whose new commandment was that we must love one another as the God loves us in Jesus, should be used as the excuse for such evil as the Crusades, the Inquisition, the War of Roses, the Irish-British conflicts—not to mention racism in all its forms, the ongoing abuse of women and children by religious men, etc.—is absolutely ludicrous. The advent and teaching of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, requires that all of that Old Testament, hierarchical world view be tossed on its ear.
Flood points out that before Jesus there was an ongoing debate underway in the Jewish leadership between viewing God as primarily Law-giver, and as Enforcer of the Law with eternal punishment, versus a view of God as compassionate and saving, not destroying forever but always offering salvation to the beloved. With the arrival and ministry of Jesus, God revealed and declared forever that God’s true nature is not punitive but nurturing (we all become members of God’s family); that true discipleship is not law-based, but grace-based; and that the scripture of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus, and require re-interpretation based on this new revelation of God that came in Jesus Christ. In short, Jesus settles the debate.
Flood points out that Jesus most commonly teaches and demonstrates his stance through actions that pushed people to understand the Law as more than just rules. Jesus pressed people into an hermeneutic based on justice flowing out of a compassionate heart rather than just a legalistic mind. “You have heard it said that you shall not kill…You have heard it said and eye for an eye…but I say to you that anyone who is angry with their brother and sister…do not resist an evildoer….Jesus called people out of punishment and judgment into the restoration of right relationships with God, with our fellow human beings and with all creation.
On at least one occasion, however Jesus went even further in his reinterpretation of scripture. According to Luke when Jesus appeared in Nazareth to declare himself as the Christ, he drastically reinterpreted a passage from Isaiah by leaving off “the day of God’s Vengeance” in Isaiah 61:2. This was the verse that the people had believed meant that God would punish the Romans, and especially the Roman military, through the Messiah. Buy leaving this off Jesus began his ministry with a consistent theme. “For Jesus the correct interpretation of scripture always comes down to how we love” (Flood: ch. ?).
As a common practice, reinterpreting of scripture to remove violence as an acceptable outcome was not used by Jesus as much as Paul. Jesus simply claimed authority to reinterpret the “depth” of the meaning of scripture to the Word behind the scripture, rather than the traditional interpretation—see his talk of healing on the Sabbath, because God is always at work on the Sabbath, which led the religious leaders to condemn him because he made himself equal to God.
Paul, on the other hand, purposefully used ostensibly violence supporting scripture in his efforts to describe this New Day in Jesus as love based, not law or violence based.
[Re: Psalm 18:41-49 and Deut 32:43 as re-interpreted by Paul in Rom.15:9]
Paul has removed the references to violence against Gentiles, and re-contextualized these passages to instead declare God’s mercy in Christ for Gentiles. This constitutes a major redefinition of how salvation is conceived: Instead of salvation meaning God “delivering” the ancient Israelites from the hands of their enemies through military victory (as described in Psalm 18, which Paul is quoting from), Paul now understands salvation to mean the restoration of all people in Christ, including those same “enemy” Gentiles. (Flood: Kindle Locations 797-801).
For Paul, this New Day in Jesus helps us catch the trajectory of the revelation of God’s will. Humans simply cannot grasp God fully in any age. We always are blinded by our own worldview, our own culture and the experiences that shape our own perspectives. God therefore condescends (a calvinist term) to give us as much as we can take at a time. Even coming in Jesus required God to condescend, not thinking of God’s glory as something to grasp, but becoming humble, taking creaturely form, leading as the servant of all, and dying on our behalf (Philippians 2:5ff).
This is the trajectory of scripture interpretation given by the Christian witness. The
trajectory is always to a justice that is based more and more on grace and reconciliation than on condemnation and punishment. It is a trajectory of widening circles including more peoples and not fewer peoples. It is a trajectory based on more inclusiveness and less hierarchy. It is a trajectory based on seeing God in all situations and all things, rather than only sometimes and in some places. It is a trajectory based on honesty and not deception, and of fearlessly unveiling more truth rather than more control.
This is why the gospel message is so powerful in all aspects of life. Why do we always subvert it for our own control? And why are we so shy to proclaim and live-out that trajectory in our own dealings in this generation? We simply cannot stand for women being subjected to male autocracy. We cannot stand for the privileged classes holding others back in the name of trickle-down, relationship-free compassion. We cannot embrace racism, or ethno-centric colonialism in our economic systems or in our societal attitudes. We cannot watch the natural order suffer so dramatically, even threatening collapse—not if we claim to be followers of the Christ. Such continual crucifixions of the Christ-in-and-through-all-things cannot be a part of the Christian way
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