Matthew J. Distefano's Blog, page 5
February 17, 2020
Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany
February 10, 2020
Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany
February 2, 2020
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
January 26, 2020
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 19, 2020
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 12, 2020
Baptism of the Lord
January 6, 2020
Epiphany of the Lord
January 2, 2020
New Year’s Day
Nativity of the Lord, Proper III
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” ~ John 1:1–14
In the beginning was the Bible, and the Bible was with
God, and the Bible was God—well, at least according to some wayward Evangelicals.
But that’s not what John’s Prologue says, now does it? The Word became flesh.
The Word didn’t become paper; the Word became flesh, and, as Brad Jersak says,
grew a beard around age 18. Now, whether Christ had a beard, or was unable to
grow one like yours truly, is not the point. The point is that the Word became
flesh.
So, what is the Word? Some say the bird, bird, bird,
the bird is the word, but I, following in the footsteps of Greek pre-Socratic
philosophers, say unto you that the Word, or rather, the Logos, is that
which structures the world. As Heraclitus once said, the Logos is the
principle by which, “things which are put together are both whole and not
whole, brought together and taken apart, in harmony and out of harmony; one
thing arises from all things, and all things arise from one thing.”[1] What was this “structuring
principle.” Duh! War. Conflict. Strife. Heraclitus goes on to say that, “On the
one hand war is the father of all, on the other, the king of everything. On the
one hand it designates gods, on the other, it shows who is human. On the one
hand it makes men slaves, on the other, it makes them free.”[2] And again: “It is
necessary to understand that war is common, strife is customary, and all things
happen because of strife and necessity.”[3]
Is this true, however? Is it true that war, violence,
retribution, strife, and conflict hold all things together? No. And yes. No in
that the true Logos that John is describing is far from such things. As René Girard discusses in Things
Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, “The Johannine Logos is foreign
to any kind of violence; it is therefore forever expelled, an absent Logos that
never has had any direct, determining influence over human cultures.”[4] But on the other hand,
yes, the Logos of our human cultures and religions—being brought about by
our mimetic nature and our propensity toward achieving peace at the expense of
our laundry list of scapegoats—are structured by violence. Again, here’s
Girard: “These cultures are based on the Heraclitean Logos, the Logos of
expulsion, the Logos of violence, which, if it is not recognized, can provide
the foundation of a culture.”[5]
This is just the Greek context of the Logos, however.
There is also the Jewish context, which is a bit different. Biblical scholar
Raymond E. Brown identifies four possible ideas of what “the Word” can come to
mean within Judaism.[6] Essentially, they are 1)
The Word of the Lord (i.e., God communicating actual words through his
prophets), 2) Personified Wisdom (i.e., that which works with God in creating
the cosmos), 3) Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew bible), and 4) The use
of Memra in the Targums (i.e., Memra being used as a stand in for
God’s voice in order to eliminate an anthropomorphic understanding of God).[7]
Now, regardless of what we think of all this, the
point being is that in place of all these potential understandings of “the
Logos/Word,” Christ is now going to be seen as front and center in whatever we
think structures all of reality. It’s not violence or strife, or even Torah
itself (or, more accurately, one’s interpretation of Torah, which John’s Gospel
will go on to say how even that is used to inflict violence upon one another:
see John 19:7); that which structures all things and brings all things into
being is the Christ.
Of course, none of this should be seen as a knock against
Torah, or the Bible, or anything of that nature. It’s simply to say that these
things need their proper hermeneutical lens, which is the nonviolent Logos
of God (i.e., Christ). You see, no matter what we think of Scripture, no matter
what our theory of inspiration is, everything comes down to interpretation. We
are never approaching it tabula rasa, that is, with a blank slate. It’s always
filtered through our subjective grids and filters, which are in place thanks to
our current cultural climate. Which means, we need something more concrete, one
that is with God and actually is God. Again, that is Christ, the Word made
flesh, the one who brings grace and truth (John 1:18).
[1] Fragment 10.
[2] Fragment 53.
[3] Fragment 80.
[4] Girard, Things Hidden, 271.
[5] Ibid.
[6] See Brown, The Gospel According
to John, 520.
[7] Hardin, The Jesus Driven Life,
267–68.
Fourth Sunday of Advent
“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’” ~ Matthew 1:18–25
Ah, the virgin birth. What a conundrum this story has
caused for us in the post-postmodern world! How could a baby be born without,
how should I put it, biological considerations? An act of God? Maybe. A
misreading of the story? Perhaps (after all, “virgin” is probably not the best
translation of the Hebrew word “almah,” which most likely simply means
“young woman”). But we’re not going to focus on that so much because I
think if we think in purely biological terms, then we’re going to miss the main
point of the story.
To my mind, what’s at stake for us isn’t how God could
possibly impregnate a woman without using sperm—that’s a rather crude way of
thinking about this story—but more about how God chooses to act in the world.
That is to say, whereas many of the gods throughout history used force and
coercion to get their way, God doesn’t.
For instance, let’s take a look at Zeus for a second,
because it’s no secret that gods like him conceiving children with mortals is
no new tale. As the story goes, once upon a time Zeus impregnated a princess
named Danae, against her will mind you, by streaming through a golden shower
(not that kind of golden shower, perverts!). This is nothing new for him,
because he has a list of rape victims a mile long (Alcmene, Callisto, Leda, and
others). Zeus is not the only one making sons of gods through force, however.
In the Arcadian myth, Poseidon transforms into a horse, rapes his older sister
Demeter, resulting in her giving birth to a goddess named Despoina (gross,
right?).
To that end, what I’m trying to say is that we need to
read the so-called virgin birth myth of Jesus as a polemic against how other
gods operate in the world. Sure, gods use force and coercion to get their way,
but God through the Holy Spirit operates on another level. It’s not through
force but through love that Jesus is born. That’s the difference, and it’s a
big one because throughout Jesus’ life, one of his main missions was to show us
who and what God was like. And while the mercy and forgiveness he showed on the
cross was him at his best, the birth narrative offers insights into his character
as well, so long as we don’t miss the point of the story by being overly
literalistic in our approach.
Another consideration for us when approaching this
story is this business of Joseph being a righteous man and wanting to divorce
Mary because of what he thought was infidelity. You see, Joseph, being a good
Jew, “plays by the rules of sacred society,” as Paul Neuchterlein puts it.[1] In other words, this was
going to be a birth that didn’t fit with what living a sacred life looked like,
so Joseph wasn’t going to get down with that. Here’s the thing, though. It
wasn’t supposed to. Sacred and secular were going to be blown open by this
child; the rules of the game were going out the window.
We get a glimpse of this a few verses earlier, in the
genealogical list. Included in list of 42 fathers, four mothers along with Mary
are inserted. Why is this important? Because all four—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and
Bathsheba—were viewed as sexually immoral vis-à-vis the sons from the line of
David. Again, the rules of the game are tossed out the window because this was
supposed to be a “pure” line from Abraham to Jesus. It was supposed to be a
clean, straight line, but in reality, turned out to be a rather crooked one.
The take away, then, is that just because we have certain
expectations about what is pure vs. what is dirty, what is sacred vs. what is
secular, what is righteous vs. what is wicked, doesn’t mean that God is going
to let us stay there. He’s in the business of blowing open our boxes, and does
so when he incarnates himself into the world.
May we have the heart to pay attention and may we have the courage to jump outside of our sacred safe-spaces, because in all reality, there is no such thing as a sacred/secular divide.
Amen.
[1] Neuchterlein, “Advent 4A,” sec. 3,
para. 1.
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