Blue Cord

Marcel Marceau passed away last weekend. His last words were, “I have decided to become a mime.” It is reported that he died quietly, but the spokesman for his family had no comment. According to his will, he wanted to be cremated, having spent the better part of his career trapped in a box. He is survived by his imaginary dog.

Out of respect, I ask all of you to join me in a moment of noise.

Last week, I wrote a post about humanism ransacking religious festivals and rituals for their own purposes. Several people have picked up on this and written their own posts on the subject.

James Pate had some thoughts and musings in a post whose title says it all: “But It Is My Tradition, Too”. James writes,

What exactly is wrong with Christians holding a seder, or incorporating elements of Judaism into their faith life? The Exodus is part of the Christian tradition as much as it is part of Judaism. And, sure, there are things that the Exodus means to Christians that it does not mean to Jews, such as the Passover lamb pointing to Christ’s sacrifice. But why can’t a Christian celebrate God’s activity in history on behalf of his people Israel? And why can’t a Christian do so while acknowledging that the Exodus story has specific significance for him, a Christian?

James is correct, of course, that the exodus is a part of Christian tradition. We should celebrate it as an example of God’s liberating work. The seder, however, is not a part of Christian tradition. Early Jewish Christians still celebrated Jewish holidays, but Gentile Christians did not, at least not in their original form. The seder became the Eucharist. The exodus is the central saving event for Jews. But for Christians, that event has been eclipsed by the cross.

The seder is central and unique to Judaism. It is almost a sine qua non. When outsiders, even well-meaning outsiders, take the seder and use it for their own purposes, they are taking something central and using it in a peripheral way. That to me seems insulting. It also amounts to cultural plagiarism, since we are taking something that our culture did not create and saying that it is ours to do with as we please.

In other words, we can celebrate the exodus as Christians, but we need to find a means other than the seder for doing so.

Aside from the seder, James does agree that syncretism is a bad thing, a point that is also picked up by John Hobbins in his post “Why Unitarianism is on a Roll”.  Both James and John (and Peter, I assume) point to an essay by John Levenson entitled “The Problem with Salad Bowl Religion”.  Levenson has some great things to say about syncretism.  The following paragraph cuts to the heart of the matter:

At the deepest level, an act performed in order to subordinate one’s own will to the will of God is vastly different from the identical act performed in pursuit of other goals—self-expression, aesthetic pleasure, familial nostalgia, ethnic identification, whatever. The motivation, of course, is not transparent, and if we go only by appearances, syncretistic worship that includes Jewish elements looks like a hyphenation of traditional Judaism with other things. In fact, it is only the semblances of the Jewish observance that have been imported. Their deeper authorization—the unique claims of the Covenant of Sinai upon the people Israel—have been tacitly but thoroughly denied.

The problem with the buffet style approach to religion is that it gets things backwards.  When we pick and choose from religions, we mold the religion to fit us.  But religion is supposed to be about religion molding us to be the people that God wants us to be.

The comparison with a buffet is apt.  When we eat meals chosen by a trained nutritionist, we have a well-balanced diet that provides us with all the protein, carbs, fiber, and vitamins that our bodies need.  I don’t know about you, but that is not what happens when I go to a buffet.  I end up eating foods I like, and the foods I like are not particularly healthy.  In the same way, few people are able to design their own well-balanced and nutritious spiritual diet.

Right now, we are covering digital photography in the graphic design classes that I am taking. In the process of this, I came across an interesting company web site that takes religious observances to a new level. The company is B&H Foto and Electronics. It is located in New York City, but also does business on the web.

The owners of the company are Jewish, so naturally they observe Jewish holidays. As one would expect, the store is closed on those holidays, including extended holidays. But not only are their physical stores closed; their website will not take orders either. Right now if you go to their site, you may browse, but they have a pop-up that notes that the site will not take orders until this Saturday at 8:00 pm.

The seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, nor thy web server in thy midst. (Exod.20:10 for the 21st century).

For the past month, I have been trying to get through From Gaza to Jerusalem: An Old Testament Theology. I bought the book a few years ago at the annual SBL meeting. This is my second attempt at reading it, and for the second time I am giving up.

The book is authored by Donald Keyser, professor of religion at Campbell University, who died in March 2006. As far as I can tell, this is the only book he wrote. Being a church history professor, he asked Wayne Ballard,¹ an OT scholar, to help him with the book. Although he began as an assistant, Ballard eventually became the co-author.

Unfortunately, I am rather disappointed with the book. The book is intended to be used as an introductory OT theology. Keyser wrote it because he did not find any OT theology books he could use when teaching OT. But the book comes out sounding like Sunday School material.

The trend in recent OT theologies is to highlight the multiple voices that are found within the OT. This leads to a very textured reading of the Bible. By contrast, Keyser’s theology comes out rather two dimensional. This may, in part, be due to Keyser’s decision to structure the book according to the standard categories of systematic theology (e.g., God, humanity, creation, sin). While these concepts are certainly part of the OT, the OT does not center its own discussion around these loci.

The book is intended to be very basic, so I can’t fault it for not being a more in-depth treatment. But I can’t recommend it even for church Bible studies, at least not ones that want to study the theology in the Bible. It seems to me that what the book presents is not a theology of the OT so much as a theology that has been informed by the OT. The latter is certainly a valuable thing, but it is not an OT theology.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has used this book to teach OT theology, especially if they had a more favorable reaction to it than I did.

1. Ballard currently teaches at Carson-Newman College, my alma mater. [back]

Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Proper 21 (series reading)

This reading is the final reading in the six week series on Jeremiah.  The first two verses sets the date of this oracle in 587 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar (here called Nebuchadrezzar) is besieging Jerusalem. This is the second siege of Jerusalem.  When it is over, Jerusalem and its temple will lie in ruins and a good portion of the people of Judah will find themselves carried off to Babylon.

In the reading, Jeremiah is basically under house arrest at the order of the king due to previous prophecies. While he is there, his cousin Hanamel comes to him and offers to sell him a piece of property in their ancestral town of Anathoth.  Hanamel apparently has to sell the property, and according to the Torah it must be sold to someone in the family (Lev. 25:25). Jeremiah purchases the property for sixteen shekels of silver.

From an economic standpoint, this is a bad move.  When a foreign army is besieging your city, it is not a good time to be investing in real estate.  The entire area is about to belong to Babylon, and they are not particularly interested in who owned individual lots prior to their arrival.

But Jeremiah’s purchase of the field in Anathoth is an act of hope.  Jeremiah has prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile, but he also knows that this is not the end of Israel.  God will bring the people back to the land again.  Jeremiah may never make use of the field, but his children and grand-children will.  Jeremiah not only believes that God will return the people, but is willing to bet money on it.