Marginal Christianity

Stupidity a l á Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a keen observer of human beings and their history. His profound and acute observations about his German contemporaries who fell prey to Hitler and the Nazi phenomenon are striking in their own right. They appear downright prescient as America faces what can only be judged a cognate phenomenon with the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Bonhoeffer describes what he calls “Stupidity” in an essay “On Stupidity” in his Letters and Papers from Prison . The essay describes this kind of person, probes the nature of their “stupidity,” and observes appropriate responses to them (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison: DBW 8 (Kindle Location 1475-1504). Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition). Description of “Stupid” People These people are not malicious or evil. They cannot be made or convinced to forswear their stupidity. Their prejudgments are immovable overruling or dismissing contrary evidence. Stupid people...

We all know the Christmas story, right? Even if we don’t realize that the angels and shepherds and wise men don’t really belong together in our Nativity scenes we know the basic story from Matthew and Luke and its key point, don’t we? Sure we do – the Savior is born in the manger to a virgin named Mary! And that’s all we really to get, isn’t it? Well, apparently not – because the Bible has a 3 rd Christmas story! Yeah, it really does. And in the most unexpected place. The last place you’d think to look for it. Literally the last – the book of Revelation. That’s right, the book of Revelation. Smack dab in the middle of that strangest of biblical books sits a birth story of the Messiah. Radically and strangely different from Matthew’s and Luke’s stories, I am tempted to borrow Paul Harvey’s trademark phrase and describe John the Seer’s version as “the rest of the story.” It’s found in Revelation 12 and goes something like this: “Revelation does not mention shepherd...

Parable of a Landowner and his Laborers (Mt.20:1-16) I will never forget an Adult Sunday class I sat in on one Sunday on this parable. The teacher, a local insurance salesman, tried to give it his best effort but at the end of the day sadly shook his head and confessed to me that he could not understand how anyone could run a business like that. I told him that was precisely the point! He got it (though he didn’t realize it)! The kingdom of heaven operates on a completely different logic and dynamic than does the commerce of the world where competition, competence, and production govern one’s success. That’s why Jesus told this story in the first place. The clue comes with the description of the workers last hired. The vineyard is a stock symbol for Israel, the landowner is God, and the various workers are classes of people within Israel. The last hired confess they are still available “Because no one has hired us” (v.7). These are the last and the least among the people. ...

I am a Scrooge at Christmas, I admit it. It frustrates my wife. Exasperated, she asked me the other night why I dislike Christmas so much. I’ve been thinking about how I would answer that since then. As far as I can tell, I think a certain experience, family experience, and theological development play key roles. That certain experience happened when I was about 10 years old. My family went to the Christmas Eve service at our church. We arrived late enough to find empty space only on the first pew. I was seated on the aisle. As the choir began to process down the aisle to the choir loft past me, I suddenly burst into tears. Sobbing uncontrollably, my parents tried to settle me down without drawing embarrassing attention to my outburst. I could not explain why I was crying. But after I settled down a bit, I realized that the onset of the service sparked a question in my mind that I couldn’t get rid of and it saddened me deeply. “Why did they have to kill him (Jesus)?” was the q...

Discipleship and Marriage (Mt.19:1-15) Having concluded his teaching on the character of his community, Jesus, followed by the crowds, moved from Galilee to Judea beyond the Jordan from which he has been absent since ch.4 (v.1). Now, however, his New Exodus movement is on its way to Jerusalem, and like a new Joshua he is leading them into the land. He is also a new greater prophet, though no longer the greater than Elisha he has been in recent chapters. “In the last several chapters, He has been an Elisha. He feeds four thousand and then five thousand, heals the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman, gives instruction to His disciples. On the mount of transfiguration, Elijah appears alongside Moses, and Jesus is glorified as the prophet greater than Elijah, the new Elisha. As Jesus enters Judea again, the focus changes. He is no longer like a prophet in the North during the divided kingdom but like a prophet in Judea and Jerusalem, a prophet of the last days of Judah. He is no...

One project I promised myself to do in retirement was work through and write up in as comprehensive a way as I could manage a coherent look on the vexing question of how to read a book, the Bible, birthed in and reflecting a bloody, brutal, and barbaric time as a text for insight and nurture guidance, indeed, a Word of God, for us today. That’s a gargantuan project, of course, but I’m ready to take a run at it. I’ve found a major assist in the recent book published by William Webb and Gordon Oeste, Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric: Wrestling with Troubling War Texts . They have gathered much of the relevant data on these texts and the issues surrounding them and subjected them to analysis with what I have come to myself, with some different nuances, as the kind of approach needed to fairly and faithfully hear their message as God’s word to us today. I will provide a thorough report on each chapter of their book as a first phase of this project. Then I will add some reflections on their...

Matthew 3:1-12 Karl Barth kept a picture of the Isenheim Altarpiece over his desk most of his life. What most captured Barth’s attention was the long, bony finger of John the Baptist pointing to the crucified Jesus Christ hanging agonizingly on the cross. That long, bony finger of the Baptist’s witness to Christ became the central theme for Barth of Christian vocation – witness. I call it Advent giving us the finger! Yes, Advent gives us the finger – the finger of witness. It witnesses to us of Jesus Messiah and his coming to gather and reconstitute Abrahamic Israel from ethnic Israel and calls us to witness to our world of the work of Jesus Messiah through this reconstituted Jewish and then Gentile Abrahamic people. Advent equips us to give the finger (of witness) to the world. We witness -to the darkness of the world in which each Advent dawns, -to the darkness in each of us in whom Advent dawns, -to the new life for Abrahamic Israel – and through ...