Glory and Shame in Wittenberg

The weekend trip to Germany was great – and the chance to look around Wittenberg was really worthwhile.  Here are three pictures that display the glory and shame of the period associated with this immensely influential town:

The first picture is of the (rebuilt) church where Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door back in 1517, thus beginning the Protestant Reformation.  It was beautiful, covered by snow.  We also visited Lutherhaus and Melanchthonhaus, which were full of Reformation treasures…

The second picture is taken inside the Stadtkirche – the main church of Wittenberg, in which Luther frequently preached.  The picture depicts Luther preaching “Christ, and him crucified” to the people of God…

And now for the shame: I was astonished to find out about this feature, which is on the outside of the very same Stadtkirche: It depicts “the Jews” suckling on a pig, and licking its behind.  What an ugly reminder of the anti-Semitism that marrs Luther’s legacy…

Mark’s Rhetoric of Reticence

Why does Mark appear so restrained in his presentation of Jesus?  He holds back on Messianic references, hints opaquely at divinity, constantly emphasises the failure of Jesus’ disciples, and refuses to actually show readers the resurrected Jesus, ending on a note of disappointing uncertainty.

Two recent approaches I’ve encountered to this issue are worthy of consideration:

Firstly, a few weeks ago I heard Richard Hays speak about the flow of Mark’s Gospel.  He suggested that Mark takes as his key rhetorical principle the explanation of Jesus’ use of parables in chapter 4: To those who are followers, the parables invite further understanding; to those who are proud challengers, the parables resist capture and explanation.  Similarly, Hays suggests, the Gospel of Mark itself prefers to suggest and allude, inviting the follower into the path of the cross, rather than to spell things out in bold polemical claims.

Secondly, the theological reading of Mark by Craig Hovey (which I have now finished and highly recommend) suggests that Mark is attempting to shape the church’s expectations of its Messiah with the quiet shame of the cross: A church that longs for the type of glory that is exemplified in the world’s rulers needs to be kept from justifying its own pursuit of this glory by appealing to the visible certainty of resurrection appearances – as if the resurrection simply serves to confirm that, after all, we CAN seek worldly honour and esteem and power and glory.

Indeed, the question of why Mark is so reticent in his presentation of the resurrection in ch.16 is perhaps parallel to the question of why Paul defers discussion of the resurrection to the end of 1 Corinthians: The resurrection cannot be seen or grasped in the present, without pursuing the way of the cross, which is its necessary pre-requisite.

There is no resurrection of the dead

I’m working on 1 Corinthians 15 at the moment, and a number of interesting things keep striking me.  Significantly, I’m considering what might have been meant by those who said that there was no resurrection of the dead.

Many commentators seem to think that this can be explained by reasoning that the resurrection-deniers in Corinth preferred the idea of the immortality of the soul to the idea of the raising of bodies: The chief problem, it is said, is a Greek distaste for physicality.  However, I find this problematic for a few reasons:

• Of the six generally agreed upon sections in ch15, only one carries the theme and terminology of bodies – vv35-49… and within this section, it’s only from 35-44 that bodies are central.
• I don’t see why a problem with resurrection based on a general distaste for physicality wouldn’t have been dealt with by Paul in the 18 months that he had spent in Corinth
• The most consistent problem in ch15 seems to be a distaste for death itself – and indeed, a Corinthian distaste for cruciformity has pervaded the whole letter…

Here in the climactic chapter, Paul brings his response to Corinthian cruciphobic pride to a fitting conclusion: Those who are proudly claiming that there is no resurrection of the dead need to learn that, on the contrary, there is no resurrection of the living: They are called to embrace the labour of cruciformity, knowing that human death is the pre-requisite for the divine gift of resurrection.

Treasure

“Christ crucified,” Paul says.  What great things does that treasure contain?…  Stay, do not pass on, do not despise, do not insult.  Wait, examine.  There may be something within that will give you much delight.  You may find “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived.”

Augustine, Sermon 160.1-5

the lion is the lamb

Although I didn’t care for the rhetoric of the post, I was saddened to read here about the Christian pastor who loves “authoritative” Jesus but has no time for “vulnerable” Jesus: He has said in a magazine interview…

“Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity. “

He cannot worship a guy he can beat up…  I guess the Roman guards thought the same thing.

“Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him.  They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head.  They put a staff in his right hand as a scepter.  Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him.  ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ they said.  They spat on him, and took the staff and struckhim on the head again and again.  After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him.  Then they led him away to crucify him.”  Matthew 27:27-31, TNIV