Matthew's Geneaology: A Vindication of Mary

I recently started reading the Book of Matthew in order to prepare for teaching the middle schoolers come September. However, in my own reading I came to a rather interesting conclusion that I hope to turn into a legitimate article but for now am just sketching out.

In Matthew’s genealogy he lists forty fathers, one named brother who lineage is not described (Zerah, 1:3) and more than eleven unnamed brothers (Judah’s and Jechoniah’s). In the sea of all these men Matthew mentions one unnamed woman, the wife of Uriah, and only four named women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Mary. Without a doubt in my mind these four other women were intentionally choices, women whose stories would resonate with the Jewish-Christian part of the Matthean community. Interestingly enough, in my limited personal collection of books on the Gospel of Matthew only one makes reference to the four women is Douglas R.A. Hare’s Matthew. He explains their inclusion as necessary to remind “the Jewish and Gentile readers of the Gospel that G-d’s great plan of salvation included Gentiles, even unrighteous Gentiles.” (6) Like Hare’s other conclusions, my additional volumes are concerned with what the genealogy says about Jesus and who he is. Instead, I would like to consider what the reference to these four women tells the audience about Mary.

Who are these women? A pretend-harlot, a for real harlot, a foreign woman, and a woman who commits adultery (though whether or not she had a choice is debatable since David was the king) and then ascends to power through her role as wife of David and son of King Solomon. 

Tamar turns to the custom of her people as laid out by G-d and is redeemed. Rahab acknowledges the power and existence of G-d and in doing so saves her family. Ruth takes on the yolk of G-d and saves herself and her mother-in-law from suffering and starvation. Bathsheba becomes mother to King Solomon, one of the most prosperous kings to ever rule the land of Israel and makes him King by relying on a promise made to her in front of G-d. No matter how questionable each woman’s background or choices seem (depending on the modern or ancient reader) each woman is ultimately vindicated by her faith in G-d. And thus so will be Mary.

Seth Godin + Horror Movies

For the past few days I have been reading Seth Godin's book, Tribes (We Need You to Lead Us). It is a quick 150 page read with no chapters and innumerable subheadings. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and the only thing I wished is that it had been online with tons of hyperlinks so I could look up all the people he was noting in his anecdotes as I was reading as opposed to getting sucked into the next section and intending to come back to them later. Godin gives you just enough information about these people to be tantalizing.

So what is a tribe? "A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea." (1) Godin goes on to note that people enjoy being part of tribes and participate in many of them. Reflect on your own tribes and you will realize this is true. However, I realized that many of the tribes that I would say I participate in do not have a leader so are they therefore not tribes?

For example, I love Horror Movies. When I meet another horror movie fan we enter into our own realm of name dropping and jargon but there is not one horror movie critic or afficiando whose opinion I look to in order to be inspired or motivated to watch more Horror movies. But there is a definitive difference between people who watch horror movies and people who don't.

Seth Godin would call the Horror Movie tribe stuck because it lacks a movement. And this is entirely true. Where have the Wes Cravens and John Carpenters of the world gone? What about the Tom Savinis or the Jamie Lee Curtises? No one has stepped in to fill their shoes. No one is currently leading in the horror movies tribe. For a genre that is incredibly popular there are no names from today's generation or directors or actors/actresses that make you automatically want to go see the horror movie they are in.  It's sad. Horror Movies are stuck.

What would the ideal leader look like? Godin says "Leaders make a ruckus." (19) The guy who directed the Saw movies made a ruckus with the first one. The latter ones...not so much. Maybe he's stuck too. The last movie to make a ruckus was Paranormal Activity and what before that? I'm not sure; which is surprising since the word is almost synonymous with the genre.

What can we as tribe members do? We must transform "our shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change." (25) What is our goal? To see horror movies that leave us unnerved to leave the shower curtain closed and make us scream. To be fascinated by the dark parts of the mind, lulled into sympathy and then shocked back into the terror of what is happening before our very eyes. (Zombie movies may be the leader?)

In order for an idea to spread it has to be a good idea. And the person with the idea must believe in it. Perhaps we no longer believe there are unique ideas; most everything feels like a play on something else or is an adaptation of something else. What do horror movie fans believe, now?

I think Seth Godin would tell me to get off my soap box and make something happen. New Blog time.

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I realize this post has nothing to do with Christianity, but it's where my mind is right now. I am also pretty sure that the goal of Seth Godin's book was so that it could be applied to any and all tribes. And it did give me a lot to think about in terms of my goals for religious education. The story that stood out most to me was about a woman who wanted to get into the furniture business. Instead of presenting investors with sketches she went out and had her furniture built with the company's signature fabric on it. Similarly, I think if I want middle school RE at my church to go the way I want it to I have to take Godin's advice:

"Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow."

Since the semester is almost over I believe I will use this blog for the summer as  away to catalogue both my secular exploits and my creation of a curriculum that does what I believe it should for middle schoolers. Excited doesn't even begin to cover it.

How would Jesus deconstruct?

He would start by handing out copies annotated copies of the New Testament.

I just finished reading What would Jesus Deconstruct? by John D. Caputo and the question that titles this blog post is what I came away with. Using the book In His Steps* as an underlying symbol in his work, Caputo, continued to ask the question of what would happen if Jesus showed up, unannounced, anywhere two or three are gathered. If he saw people picketing abortion clinics or hung around ministries which made worth a primary virtue what side of Jesus would we see? How would he respond? John makes educated guesses at how Jesus would respond but never places restrictions on this hypothetical response based on the limits of his own imagination. Caputo also shares his own views based on his understanding of the NT and they are insightful as a kick to the gut by a prophet (check out page 114).

What is fascinating about Caputo's work is that reading it is more like a reminder of what already exists in the Scripture. What he says and how he says it is mind-blowing but it is not new. To say that Jesus loved children and the poor, was against hypocrites and war and believed that we must love the outcast and the enemy is not new. To say that we must uphold the teachings of Jesus in how we live our lives is not new. Nonetheless Caputo is a master craftsman of writing in a way that all at once leaves you energized and at the same time uncomfortable. If one was to pick up the New Testament, I think this is a good way for it to be read.

To return to my original thought at the beginning of this post I don't know that Caputo would agree to me as to how Jesus would deconstruct the systems around him. This book was full of wondering how Jesus would respond to our actions but the question was never raised

How would Jesus react to reading a copy of the New Testament? 

 I think we all have a clear idea of how he would respond to a commercialized Christmas and the millions of children who die every year of starvation. But the question I just raised is the one on which I would love someone to speculate. Maybe he would annotate it. Maybe he would sharpie out all the parts he didn't like. Maybe he would burn it to make a point. Who can say?

The one challenge I had in reading this book was in trying to explain a story from the text to my partner. We got into a long discussion about the relationship between church and state. What I read and took as an imperative to be true to my beliefs in the public sphere,

It is our responsibility to breathe with the spirit of Jesus, to implement, to invent, to convert this poetics into a praxis, which means to make the political order resonate with the radicality of someone whose vision was not precisely political (95)

Alex took this to mean advocating for a Christian state. . 

My response is this. Last week one of my classes visited CrossRoads, which is an organization designed to help women recently released for incarceration get back on their feet. We asked the nun whose ministry this was how she saw her faith fitting into her work. She answered (paraphrasing) in this way:

I should never have to say that I am a Christian. It should be evident enough my actions that I should never have to name myself as such.

 I think this is more what Caputo is getting at then a "Christian state." I imagine Dr. Caputo would be more in line with the thinking of St. Francis, "preach the gospel always, if necessary use words."*

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and it left much for me to mull over and chew on. Highly recommended.

(*I think both Charles Sheldon and Dr. Caputo would be disappointed to see the cover of this version)
(*Seeing as the first response to this quote via this link is to say that the gospel has nothing to say about helping the poor)

Selective Proof Texting is Not a Gift of the Holy Spirit

This post is my paper for Christian Ethics. We were asked to review a case study in which a Presbyterian congregation is choosing whether or not to become a More Light congregation. We were asked to take a stance on the resolution "Shepherd Presbyterian Church will not exclude any active member from election or ordination to office on the basis of race, class, gender, marital status or sexual orientation." I also wrote this paper keeping in mind that a More Light congregation had their church building burned down (arson) this past week.

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G-d does not want us to ground our decisions in fear and prejudice but in love. Therefore, before a decision can be made several factors must be taken into account. First we must consider what it means to be an elected or ordained member of this congregation. The journey to ordination or election begins with an inner sense of call on the part of the individual. That call to a specific vocation comes from G-d who chooses people according to G-d’s will and who are we to place obstacles in the path of that call? Remember who Moses and Paul were before G-d revealed Himself and His plans to them; G-d calls people from all walks of life to serve G-d and the faithful community. It has been stated that to be a minister is a responsibility and not a right; however, I would respectfully disagree and say that to be a minister is a right; it is both a right and a responsibility bestowed by G-d on those whom G-d calls to serve.

The role of the minister is to lead a congregation, to love and be accessible to the parishioners, to serve them, to teach them, to share in their joys and their sorrows and to walk with them along their own faith journeys. The role of the lay leadership is much the same though it seems to involve considerably more committee meetings. If the church can be compared to the body then the leadership are the feet, the foundation upon which the rest of the body stands and which must serve the body, without which they would simply be motionless, dead parts. Therefore the congregation must ask itself: what makes the feet unserviceable to the rest of the body?

If the leadership is the feet then the Bible is the heart. Therefore we must take the words of Scripture seriously in deciding this matter. If we are honest then the challenge we face today is to acknowledge that we pick and choose which passages we apply to our daily lives. Consider the words found in 2nd Timothy; we looked for the historical purpose of those words and other passages that speak against female authority in the church and did not find them binding to our lives today. If we did, women would not be ministers in the Presbyterian denomination and one would not be pastoring this particular congregation. There is much from the Bible that after prayer and discussion we choose to leave to the wayside. Do the prohibitions against homosexual acts in the Bible not warrant the same consideration we gave to the passages against women taking roles in the church?

If “by their fruits you shall know them” is a guiding principle in Christian life then we must look deep into our souls and ask what it means for our community to exclude those who love Christ and want to serve G-d? There is a lot of fear in the community that allowing homosexual people into leadership roles is the gateway to moral relativism and a free-for-all moral attitude. We must look to the experience of More Light congregations before we take our assumptions to be fact; has this degradation of family oriented services and a divided church been their experience? We must also look to our own experience; has having homosexual members in the congregation and on this board led to catastrophe? At what point does the exception become the rule?

Margaret Farley describes love as an active response, writing “When I love you I want you to be….to be full and firm in being.”How can we, following the words of Jesus to love our neighbors as ourselves, force our brothers and sisters to choose one innate part of themselves over another innate part, the call from G-d? We must take an active response as a congregation to affirm the resolution before us because it is the right thing to do. Selective proof-texting of the Scripture is not one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and is not what Jesus has called us to do. As a church body we are called to speak truth to power even if that means turning the lens upon ourselves. As a congregation we have the power to ordain elders and deacons and by becoming a More Light congregation we stand in solidarity with our lgbtq brothers and sisters in listening to G-d’s call for them to become ministers and we stand in hope that the regional session will come to the same understanding. The church is a unified body but that unity cannot stand without its feet. To affirm this resolution is to acknowledge that the body of Christ does not cut off potential feet, feet that will dance when the body rejoices and soldier on when the body suffers, because the toes are painted with rainbows.

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Thoughts and Responses would be appreciated =) 

Doctor Says, "The Christmas Tree Needs to Come Down"

What does that even mean? Well, essentially, our Christmas Tree is still up. We started taking it down Saturday night and yet it is still here with most of its decorations. I think it may be a symbol for the need for things to happen in a timely manner or they will never get done. The tree may no come down until we move out of this apartment and it has to be packed with everything else.

I went to the doctor yesterday and was told that I needed to get on top of my stress in order to stop feeling so tired. My response is to eat some delicious challah and followed by some Irish soda bread.

I am debating what to do about my final project. It's something I need to figure out this week. I have put my feelers out to people at GTU about the film project but haven't heard anything back. So I have to figure out my back up project. I'll have to see Professor Clayton. Perhaps I will do an anthropological study on active virtual churches and what we in "first life" churches can learn from them. And combine it with cyber ethics.

I'll figure it out.