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I’ve been told several times that people can tell what I’ve been reading or teaching by what I preach and/or blog, bible study or otherwise. There is no doubt that this is true. The past several months I’ve been reading and teaching Thomas Aquinas – right now in my “Narrative and Law in the OT” class we are reading Thomas’ Treatise on the Law. Thomas’ wisdom has helped me immensely to articulate better convictions that I think are true.

For Thomas, truth is the conformity of the intellect to the thing itself. This is very important, because this conformity comes by way of our senses – what is in our intellect is first in our senses. Yet the intellect is very active in understanding; it is not an inert “blank slate”. Because of the fallenness of humanity, the intellect can also be malformed, not conformed, to what is. Our intellect takes training, and thus requires us to live amid a certain type of people to train us in order to perceive what really is, to allow our minds to be conformed to reality. You want Pastor Deron, not me, to tell you about the electrical wiring in your dwelling place – my intellect has never undergone the hard training and practice that his has to understand such things.

Of course, it is ultimately the saints who know best, for caught up in the Wisdom of God, Jesus Christ, their whole existence has undergone formation into the ultimate Truth, God Godself, and all things in light of God.

Perhaps this is a good entry point into our Scriptures for this week. We hear the hard process of being conformed, made adequate, to what really is while watching the implications of malformation in the Gospel reading. We hear the call to undergo the hard process of re-formation in the Epistle, and some of the hard consequences of being so formed amid a profoundly malformed world in our OT reading.

Matthew 16:21-27

Of course, this passage immediately follows Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah and Jesus’ praise of Peter for this confession. What is the difference between Peter’s confession and his behavior? What does Peter’s behavior and words indicate he has been formed to believe about what it is to be “Messiah” or the “King of the Jews”? Given this, what would Jesus’ words require of Peter? BTW, the issue is not a “spiritual” messiah versus as “political” messiah, because one could not at this time make such a distinction, and Jesus is very much an embodied, physical and political figure. If you are Messiah, you are by nature political! The issue is how the Messiah becomes enthroned and rules over his people.

Why does Jesus rebuke Peter with the words that he does? How does this compare with the praise earlier in the passage? The “cross” of which Jesus speaks is a particular tool that the Romans used to force terror in groups to force conformity to its rule and commitments. How does this help us understand what Jesus asks for us to do in order to be formed in a way to be made to whom he really is? Why does Jesus add the point of final judgment?

Romans 12:1-8

How does Jesus’ response to Peter make this passage understandable? Why must one be transformed in order to then discern what is the will of God? Why can’t one discern God’s will without transformation? How does vv. 3-8 relate to vv. 1-2?

Jeremiah 15:15-21

What are the main characters described in this passage? What is each one’s roles? Why do “I” or “me” experience what “I” or “me” does? How does one need to be formed in order to handle what “I” do? How does the “Lord” treat “me”/”I”?

Given these passages, how does one open oneself to be formed in a way given the reality of our world and our lives? What difference does worship in Word and Sacrament, and being actively engaged in the works of Mercy and Devotion make when we engage in these with a vibrant faith? What happens if faith is missing?

Posted by johnwright at 4:24 PM | Comments (4)

Today the twins go to college (sounds like a name of a Ronald Reagan movie); my new office has two ugly, massive file cabinets that need emptied; Kathy and I have responsibilities for the “PLNU’s Parent Council” to greet those coming to campus; the LEAP program in which I teach starts; and, of course, syllabi and other work remains to begin for next week. Yet it is wonderfully freeing to read these Scriptures in light of the transitions and disorder that constitute my life today.

Within these Scriptures God gives us a sense of the strange, marvelous, mysterious workings of God in the world. We discover ourselves within the frame of these workings, not at the center, but freely and joyfully confessing the center of what is. It is here, in God in Christ, that amid the chaos that surrounds our world. Maybe it’s good to start with the Gospel reading, move to the OT reading from Isaiah, and then move finally to our Epistle reading, a passage that has deeply formed me in the past few years in recognizing its importance.

Matthew 16:13-20

The Gospel reading is Peter’s confession. Several brief things. The region of Caesarea Philippi at the headwaters of the Jordan River was the location of a Temple to Caesar, a center of emperor worship in the inland as one moved toward Damascus. Jesus asks the question in a politically loaded area. Second, of course, Messiah is the name for the King of Israel – not a “spiritual king” versus a “physical king” – obviously Jesus is a real, physical body in the passage. Third, Jesus acts as a real king in granting “keys of the kingdom” to “bind and loose”. Such is the authority of king’s. The brief observations make the discussion more understandable.

Given what we’ve read in the Gospel of Matthew in the past seven or so chapters, why would “people” answer as the disciples say? Why would Jesus shift from language about “son of Man” to “I” in designating himself when he turns the question to the disciples? To whom does Jesus credit Simon’s insight? (notice his Jewish name!) What is the point of this? What is the “rock”? (btw, this is a notoriously difficult question that has been asked through history in the church!) Why does Jesus not commission Peter to build the church? Who builds it? With what? Finally, what is Peter’s and the disciples role? What is the relationship between the church and the kingdom of heaven? Given this, why would Jesus tell his disciples not to tell anyone the truth about who Jesus is?

Isaiah 51:1-6

As you read this passage, who is “you” and who is “me”? What characterizes “you” and “me”? How do “you” and “me” relate to the other characters in the passage? What role does “Zion” play? How does “you” relate to “Zion”? What is the function of “you” in relationship to “the nations”? How do you hear this passage as related to the Gospel passage?

Romans 11:33-36

The Gospel reading shows the movement of fulfillment from the Isaiah reading. In this process, we discover that the words of the prophet are taking up and fulfilled in unanticipated ways in Jesus Christ and the live of the church, arising from the confession of Peter. While the words had a meaning to the “original audience” of the words, these words are not canceled but expanded, lifted, and perfected in Jesus, so much so that the “you” addressed in Isaiah, through our participation in the confession of Peter, becomes “us”.

How does the Romans passage “explain” God? How does it “explain” how the movement from Isaiah to Matthew to us takes place? What does this tell us about our lives, our world? What does it mean for “all things” to be “from God and through God and to God”? Is God a “thing”?
What does this suggest about God and creation? Christians used to – and still should – speak of God’s Providence. Why do we need “faith” and how does “faith” need “hope” and “hope” call for “love”? What is the basis for our faith, hope, and love?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church bears several paragraphs about God’s Providence (302-24; see http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p4.htm#V). How do you think that the catechism describes the movement from the Gospel to the Prophetic reading and summarizes the Romans reading? Why does one need faith in Jesus to understand fully Providence?

302 Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created "in a state of journeying" (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call "divine providence" the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection:

By his providence God protects and governs all things which he has made, "reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well". For "all are open and laid bare to his eyes", even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures.161

303 The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is concrete and immediate; God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history. The sacred books powerfully affirm God's absolute sovereignty over the course of events: "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases."162 And so it is with Christ, "who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens".163 As the book of Proverbs states: "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established."164

304 And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not a "primitive mode of speech", but a profound way of recalling God's primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world,165 and so of educating his people to trust in him. The prayer of the Psalms is the great school of this trust.166

305 Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our heavenly Father who takes care of his children's smallest needs: "Therefore do not be anxious, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?". . . Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well."167

Posted by johnwright at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

I've finally gotten all my books on the shelf in my new office at school -- a long, tedious process that has filled the gaps of my last two weeks. We had our first faculty meetings yesterday; more coming tomorrow. I'm trying to finish today the work that I wanted completed by the end of May. This includes two book reviews and an abstract; in the middle, I hope to work on syllabi.

One book that I have to review is a new book by Regina Mara Schwartz in the important series, Cultural Memory in the Present by Stanford University Press. It is called Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism: When God Left the World. It is a fascinating work, but I think it is mistitled -- it should be "how the repression of the sacramental authority of the church catholic by the rise of the modern state failed to eclipse God". In a real sense it documents the Christian conviction that humans have an innate desire for that which exeeds our reason.

The book describes how the Reformation dismissed the fullness of Christ's mysterious but real Presence in the Eucharist, yet how this sacramental Presence continued to re-emerge in other discourse, particularly in politics and literature -- to use crude imagery, it's repression developed into a type of sacramental "wack-a-mole" -- the doctrine of the Real Presence of God in Christ in the materiality of the bread and the wine re-emerged in the language even secularized authors.

And I do mean repression. The theological shifts of Reformation theology away from the fullness of Christ's Eucharistic presence was accompanied by a rise in the state's co-optation of these Christian symbols like a Saturday Night Live skit. Schwartz, drawing on the best historical scholarship of 16th century England, writes:

Representations of the monarch proliferated at the same time as the systematic destruction of statues in churches, the tearing down of crosses, smashing of funerary monuments, melting down of silver plates, burning of exquisite tapestry and carving, and obliteration of fine art. While Church iconography was destroyed and Church ceremonies were strongly curtailed, the state was simultaneously embracing images and processionals full of pomp and ceremony. . . . Even as it attenuated the substantial character of the Church, the state constructed itself as a substantial entity. If the once-material body of Christ was now a metaphor, conversely, the metaphor of ‘the state’ was now materialized, in spades" (p. 31).

Christopher Dawson, and more recently, Michael Burleigh, have documented a similar, but much more violent shift, in the secularized theological agenda of the French Revolution a century later. The rise of the legitimacy of the contemporary nation-state depended upon, and still depends upon, the sacramental legitimacy stolen from the rites of the church.

The implications of this should be noted for Christians: it is not that Christians are hostile to the modern(ist) European nation-state; it is that the nation-state has lived -- and still lives off its sublimated antagonism that it has towards the church, particularly if the church refuses to sustain its own life by refusing the legimate a transcendental agenda for the state. Schwartz, who does not mask her Jewish commitments against idolatry in her work, continues to help thicken our understanding of the roots of Western secularism: it originated in late medieval shifts in sacramental ecclesiology and exists as a Christian heresy through active coercive repression of the life of the church.

Posted by johnwright at 9:24 AM | Comments (5)

Tonight we resume bible studies. As a pilgrim people called to care for a pilgrimage way-station, vowed to works of mercy, our bible stories are important times for our sanctification through the works of piety. The bible studies are places for the Holy Spirit to renew our faith in God through Christ, enliven our hope amid the labors of our work, and cleanse our hearts with love of God and neighbor. The practice of reading Scripture together is also to bear each others burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ; to encourage each other to engage in the works of mercy and the sacramental practices of the church, and to introduce and welcome others into the fellowship of the congregation.

This week’s Scriptures remind us that as a pilgrim people of our Lord Jesus Christ, we discover our roots in God’s election of the Jews. The image of a “pilgrim people” and the historical emergence of pilgrimage way-stations actually find their origins with synagogues in the Roman Empire. As a people “set apart” from the “nations”, diaspora Jews, Jews living outside the land of Palestine, developed the institutional framework necessary to sustain their minority people in worship of the God of Israel in a world of violence and idolatry. Even though the Roman Empire passed laws to prohibit conversions from their people to synagogues, it was precisely the uniqueness and life-style difference and avoidance of idolatry in worship that drew non-Jewish converts into various synagogues.

From an outsider perspective during these early centuries after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, it was very hard to tell the difference between Christians and Jews. From within, of course, it was very easy – the status of Jesus and participation in the Lord’s Supper and the reading of the Apostolic Writings rather than just the Torah and Prophets distinguished the two. Both groups awaited the Jewish messiah; the issue was whether the Messiah had come or not and whether Jesus was this Messiah. To feel this, perhaps it’s best to begin with the Gospel reading, move into the Epistle, and then to the OT reading tonight.

Matthew 15:21-28

Notice that Jesus goes to the region, not into, Tyre and Sidon. These were coastal cities of non-Jews, but Phoenicians. Jesus stays outside the city into areas, “suburbs” so-to-speak, of the non-Jewish world. How does the “Gentile woman” address Jesus? What is ironic about that? Compare Jesus’ and the disciples’ response to her calls. What is the difference between them – what is the problem with her for Jesus? With the disciples? What makes her faith /her loyalty to Jesus so great? What happens as a result? What happens through this act of wonder to the woman and her daughter? How does she fit within those to whom Jesus was sent? What does both Jesus and her presuppose as true about Jesus?

Romans 11:13-15,29-32

How does Paul “divide up” the persons in the world here? Why would he speak to “the Gentiles”? How does that make Paul’s “people”? Notice that Paul understands “them” in terms of Jesus, whose rejection by the world leads to the worlds reconciliation to God through resurrection. What would be Paul’s purpose in reminding the “gentiles” of such a hope?
Why is it important to know that the “gifts and the calling of God” are “irrevocable”? To whom particularly does Paul refer? Why has God “imprisoned all”, Jew and Gentile alike, into disobedience? What difference does this make for “Jew and Gentile” relations? How does salvation occur? Where now do we see the calling and gifts of God? What does this make a congregation?

Isaiah 56:1-7

Towards what does the prophetic text look? Who is involved? In the Book of Deuteronomy eunuchs are excluded from gathering in the Temple with Israel. Why are they included here? What is it to be included on God’s “holy mountain”? Remember that sacrifices are banquets – who eats together as a result? How therefore does the text define “justice”? Can “justice” be separated from the proper worship of God? How do “sacrifice” and “worship” relate? What is the role of Sabbath? How would you call how the text speaks of this time of salvation to come that includes Gentiles sacrificing to the God of Israel? What is the crucial point to inclusion in worship?

We live in a day where “inclusion” means “tolerance”. According to these texts, what is the basis for “inclusion” for the Gentiles into the life of God’s elect people? How does this differ from “tolerance”? Is this inclusion based upon a “common humanity” or upon God’s election of Israel? How does this help us to define our life and mission in the preaching of the Gospel, the celebration of the sacraments, and life in and among the poor?

Have a wonderful evening!

Posted by johnwright at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)