A Fresh Perspective

In the movie Sandy Bottom Orchestra, based on the novel by Garrison Keillor, Norman and Ingrid Green relocate to Sandy Bottom in Northern Wisconsin from Minneapolis . Norman operates the locale dairy, while Ingrid is choir director at Bethesda Lutheran Church . The choir struggles through a number of  challenges and differences as they prepare for a classical concert to be performed at the annual Dairy Days festival. Ingrid’s harsh attitude and approach leads to conflict with Pastor Sikes who fires her. In the aftermath of her firing, she pours herself into a campaign to save a historic old building that the mayor wants to tear down. At a campaign rally she discovers that Pastor Sikes’ wife is hospitalized in Minneapolis for severe clinical depression, leaving the pastor to care for their three sons. Despite her anger at being fired, she is deeply impacted by the minister’s plight. Secretly she prepares a week’s worth of food and leaves it at the minister’s door. She ...

Whereas the normal human response to violence is either fight or flight, Jesus offers a third way: nonviolent direct action. Theologian, Walter Wink in his book, Engaging the Powers , articulated a penetrating exposition of this passage that I want to draw upon here. Wink pointed out that the word translated “resist” ( antistenai ) in this context means “to resist violently, to revolt or rebel, to engage in an insurrection.” Jesus is not forbidding all resistance, rather he is saying, “Do not react violently to evil, do not counter evil with evil, do not allow violence to cause you to react violently.” What follows are three examples from his culture of nonviolent direct action. First, Jesus says, “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” The context here is not a brawl or fistfight where the intent is to harm or injure; rather, this is an example of one who has power and clout using it to humiliate and insult one who does not. To strike the right cheek with...

It is easy to conclude from Paul’s correspondence with the church at Corinth that numerous tensions were present in that congregation. In 1 Corinthians 3:1-9, Paul mentions jealousies, quarrels, and divisions where members were posturing around certain leaders. Some said that were followers of Apollos; others claimed to be followers of Paul. And apparently they were jealous of one another and bickering back and forth. It is quite possible that Paul and Apollos had some real differences in matters of theology and in the practice of that theology. We don’t know, but that would have not been surprising. There was a great deal of diversity in the early Jesus movement. Here Paul tries to sublimate their differences within a wider perspective. He says: “What is Apollos? What is Paul? We are just servants in God’s field. I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the growth.” Paul argues that if there is any growth at all, it is ultimately because of God, the divine life and energy th...

I have found that many Christians are better able to cope with tensions in life in general than they are able to cope with tensions in their spiritual and religious life. There are reasons for this, I’m sure, but I am not going to speculate on what they may be. It’s enough to acknowledge the reality. For whatever reason there are many Christians who are willing to overlook real paradoxes and contradictions, and settle for superficial solutions. Tensions abound—in the biblical text, in our faith communities and relationships, and in our individual lives—and yet these tensions are often consistently ignored, denied, and trivialized in favor of simplistic answers, dogmatic certitudes, and quick fixes. Matthew 5:17-19 presents a case in point. Apparently there were tensions in Matthew’s church over the place and validity of the Jewish law for disciples of Jesus. Should the Jewish law have authority in the church and in discipleship to Jesus? This question may seem strange to us to...

According to a recent Pew report, almost 1 in 5 Americans identify themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” It is a growing trend. At one time these words (spiritual and religious) were used interchangeably. Not so much today. In contemporary speech the word spiritual is more associated with personal or private experience, while the word religious is usually connected to communal, institutional, and organizational religious life. Those who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious reject traditional organized religion as the sole, or even the most valuable means of advancing one’s spiritual growth. In 1 Corinthians 2:1-16 Paul is continuing to contrast the wisdom of God with the wisdom of the world, a discussion began at 1:18. Within this broader context he talks about what it means to be spiritual. Now let’s be clear from the outset: Paul connects Christian spirituality with Christian community. We can discuss whether or not we agree with Paul, but for Paul himse...

In the first paragraph after the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:13-16), Jesus’ disciples are directly addressed as the salt and light of the world. Light as a metaphor hardly needs comment; salt may be less obvious. Salt functioned as a spice as it does today, but it also functioned (in an age without refrigeration) as a preservative. I suspect both meanings are intended. Disciples of Jesus can have a preserving function in our world by living according to the wisdom of God rather than the wisdom of the world (the domination system). Communities of disciples of Jesus can help preserve some of the virtues and qualities so essential to our true humanity, like compassion, mercy, justice, humility, honesty, etc. And these qualities do need preserving. John Pierce, editor of Baptist Today , in a recent editorial told about coming across a historical marker along the Tennessee Riverwalk that chilled him as much as the cold wind and falling temperatures he was walking in. It was Preside...

It is difficult to know how much of this passage, if any, originated with Jesus and how much is to be attributed to the author/redactor of the Gospel. Either way, it’s in our sacred text and we are faced with the task of making sense of these words from Matthew’s Jesus. What is Matthew’s Jesus saying? The most obvious reading is that Matthew’s Jesus takes a strict view of the Jewish law. But how then can this text be reconciled with a text like Matt. 12:1-8, where Jesus clearly disregards Sabbath law, offering as justification an example from the life of David where David clearly violates the Torah requirements regarding the sacred bread in the holy place? The tensions/contradictions these differing responses to the Jewish law create are not easily resolved. What may have prompted the writer in 5:17-20 to be so insistent (or so over-the-top) on the continued validity of the Jewish law? Part of the answer is that he is preparing the way for the antitheses that come next in ...

The antithesis Paul develops between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world in his correspondence with the Corinthians was most likely prompted by the spiritual arrogance of some in the Corinthian church who were claiming to have special wisdom and knowledge of God, and therefore were deserving special honors and status. When Paul talks about the wisdom of the world he is not talking about Greek philosophical wisdom; rather, he has particularly in view the wisdom that crucified Jesus. The wisdom of the world is the wisdom of the domination system that attempts to shape society according to its own self-interest. Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in The First Paul call the wisdom of the world “the normalcy of the world, the way life most commonly is, the way things are.” The wisdom of the world is expressed anytime individuals, governments, organizations, institutions, communities, and societies act in their own self-interest. It is the wisdom of “might makes right” ...