Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Week 4: Matrix cont, Parables cont- Temple Tantrum as Acted Parable, The Other Side

We continued in TheMatrix: the Oracle scene, the Judas kiss (Cyper cough), the capture of Morpheus, and the beginning of the temple tantrum

Click to see another scene from tonight:

Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.
























--

PARABLE OF THE WORKERS:
So far, we have looked at small chiasms, where the parallelism is "literally" in the words ("First shall be last" etc.)...but look how  even that chiasm grows:

Matthew 20... But we note how important is was NOT to go with standard chapter division, but start one verse before, so the grand chiasm (s)  below emerged.  "Literary world" is crucial (without it, we succumb to Verse-itis):






But many who are first will be last, 
                     and many who are last will be first.

For the kingdom of heaven is like:  a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard.
He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing last in the marketplace doing nothing.
He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.'
So they went. "He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?  'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.   "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.' "When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the 
last ones hired and going on to the first.' "The workers who were hired (last), about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' "But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the  man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I AM  generous?' 
 











Temple tantrum

Racism as core issue, not commercialism:


By intercalating the story of the cursing of the fig tree within that of Jesus' obstruction of the normal activity of the temple, Mark interprets Jesus' action in the temple not merely as its cleansing but its cursing. For him, the time of the temple is no more, for it has lost its fecundity. Indeed , read in its immediate context, Jesus' subsequent instruction to the disciples, "Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea'" can refer only to the mountain on which the temple is built!

What is Jesus' concern with the temple? Why does he regard it as extraneous to God's purpose?
Hints may be found in the mixed citation of Mark 11:17, part of which derives from Isaiah 56:7, the other from 11:7. Intended as a house of prayer for all the nations, the temple has been transformed by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem into a den of brigands. That is, the temple has been perverted in favor of both socioreligious aims (the exclusion of Gentiles as potential recipients of divine reconciliation) and politico-economic purposes (legitimizing and
consolidating the power of the chief priests, whose teaching might be realized even in the plundering of even a poor widow's livelihood-cf 12:41-44)....

...In 12:10-11, Jesus uses temple imagery from Psalm 118 to refer to his own rejection and vindication, and in the process, documents his expectation of a new temple, inclusive of 'others' (12:9, Gentiles?) This is the community of his disciples.
-John T, Carroll and Joel B. Green, "The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity," p. 32-33
--three new signs/symbols to help with the discussion below on Matthew 21:




-INTERCALATION/SANDWICHING

-DOUBLE PASTE
-HEMISTICHE/Ellipsis




INTERCALATION is a "sandwiching" technique. where a story/theme is told/repeated at the beginning and ened of a section, suggesting that if a different story appears in between, it too is related thematically.  We looked at  this outline of Mark 11:

CURSING OF FIG FREE
CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE
CURSING OF THE FIG TREE


We discussed how the cursing of the fig tree was Jesus' commentary of nationalism/racism/prejudice, because fig trees are often a symbol of national Israel.  That the fig  tree cursing story is "cut in  two" by the inserting/"intercalating" of the temple cleansing, suggested that Jesus action in the temple was also commentary on prejuidice...which become more obvious when we realize the moneychangers and dovesellers are set up in the "court of the Gentiles," which kept the temple from being a "house of prayer FOR ALL NATIONS (GENTILES).

This theme becomes even more clear when we note that Jesus  statement was a quote from Isaiah 56:68, and the context there (of course) is against prejudice in the temple.


double paste: Often, two Scriptures/texts are combined into a new one. Ex. : Jesus says “My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves.” The first clause (before the comma) is from Isaiah 56:6-8, and the second is from Jeremiah 7:11  
 

hemistiche/ellipsis: when the last section of a well-known phrase is omitted foremphasis: Matthew says "My house shall be a house of prayer......," intentionally
leaving out
the "...for all nations" clause.



==


-



Article By Dave Wainscott
“Temple Tantrums For All Nations"
Salt Fresno Magazine, Jan 2011:


Some revolutionaries from all nations overlooking the Temple Mount, on our 2004 trip


I have actually heard people say they fear holding a bake sale anywhere on church property…they think a divine lightning bolt might drop.



Some go as far as to question the propriety of youth group fundraisers (even in the lobby), or flinch at setting up a table anywhere in a church building (especially the “sanctuary”) where a visiting speaker or singer sells books or CDs.  “I don’t want to get zapped!”



All trace their well-meaning concerns to the “obvious” Scripture:

"Remember when Jesus cast out the moneychangers and dovesellers?"

It is astounding how rare it is to hear someone comment on the classic "temple tantrum" Scripture without turning it into a mere moralism:



"Better not sell stuff in church!”

Any serious study of the passage concludes that the most obvious reason Jesus was angry was not commercialism, but:




racism.



I heard that head-scratching.



The tables the Lord was intent on overturning were those of prejudice.

I heard that “Huh?”



A brief study of the passage…in context…will reorient us:


Again, most contemporary Americans assume that Jesus’ anger was due to his being upset about the buying and selling.  But note that Jesus didn't say "Quit buying and selling!” His outburst was, "My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations" (Mark 11:17, emphasis mine).   He was not merely saying what he felt, but directly quoting Isaiah (56:6-8), whose context is clearly not about commercialism, but adamantly about letting foreigners and outcasts have a place in the “house of prayer for all nations”; for all nations, not just the Jewish nation.   Christ was likely upset not that  moneychangers were doing business, but that they were making it their business to do so disruptfully and disrespectfully in the "outer court;”  in  the “Court of the Gentiles” (“Gentiles” means “all other nations but Jews”).   This was



The problem is never tables.  It’s what must be tabled:


marginalization of people of a different tribe or tongue who are only wanting to worship with the rest of us.


In the biblical era, it went without saying that when someone quoted a Scripture, they were assuming and importing the context.  So we often miss that Jesus is quoting a Scripture in his temple encounter, let alone which Scripture and  context.  Everyone back then immediately got the reference: “Oh, I get it, he’s preaching Isaiah, he must really love foreigners!”:

 Foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord…all who hold fast to my covenant-these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” (Isaiah 56:6-8, emphases mine)
Gary Molander, faithful Fresnan and cofounder of Floodgate Productions, has articulated it succinctly:
“The classic interpretation suggests that people were buying and selling stuff in God’s house, and that’s not okay.  So for churches that have a coffee bar, Jesus might toss the latte machine out the window.
I wonder if something else is going on here, and I wonder if the Old Testament passage Jesus quotes informs our understanding?…Here’s the point:
Those who are considered marginalized and not worthy of love, but who love God and are pursuing Him, are not out.  They’re in..


Those who are considered nationally unclean, but who love God and are pursuing Him, are not out.  They’re in.


God’s heart is for Christ’s Church to become a light to the world, not an exclusive club.  And when well-meaning people block that invitation, God gets really, really ticked.”
(Gary Molander, http://www.garymo.com/2010/03/who-cant-attend-your-church/)

Still reeling?  Hang on, one more test:


How often have you heard the Scripture  about “speak to the mountain and it will be gone” invoked , with the “obvious” meaning being “the mountain of your circumstances” or “the mountain of obstacles”?  Sounds good, and that will preach.   But again,  a quick glance at the context of that saying  of Jesus reveals nary a mention of metaphorical obstacles.   In fact, we find it (Mark 11:21-22) directly after the “temple tantrum.”  And consider where Jesus and the disciples are: still near the temple,  and still stunned by the  “object lesson” Jesus had just given there  about prejudice.  And know that everyone back then knew what most today don’t:  that one way to talk about the temple was to call it “the mountain” (Isaiah 2:1, for example: “the mountain of the Lord’s temple”) .


Which is why most scholars would agree with Joel Green and John Carroll:

“Indeed, read in its immediate context, Jesus’ subsequent instruction to the disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain..’ can refer only to the mountain on which the temple is built!... For him, the time of the temple is no more.”  (“The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity,” p. 32, emphasis mine).
In Jesus’ time, the temple system of worship had become far too embedded with prejudice.  So Jesus suggests that his followers actually pray such a system, such a mountain, be gone.


Soon it literally was.


In our day, the temple is us: the church.


And the church-temple  is called to pray a moving, mountain-moving, prayer:


“What keeps us from being a house of prayer for all nations?”


Or as Gary Molander summarizes:


“Who can’t attend your church?” -Dave Wainscott, Salt Fresno Magazine

-- 
--------------------
the money changers  were in the Gentile courts of the temple..Jesus' action opened up the plazaso that Gentiles could pray."  -Kraybill, Upside Down Kingdom, p. 151.
-----






--

FOR ALL THE NATIONS: BY RAY VANDER LAAN:

 Through the prophet Isaiah, God spoke of the Temple as ?a house of prayer for all the nations? (Isa. 56:7). The Temple represented his presence among his people, and he wanted all believers to have access to him.
Even during the Old Testament era, God spoke specifically about allowing non-Jewish people to his Temple: ?And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord ? these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer? (Isa. 56:7).
Unfortunately, the Temple authorities of Jesus? day forgot God?s desire for all people to worship freely at the Temple. Moneychangers had settled into the Gentile court, along with those who sold sacrificial animals and other religious merchandise. Their activities probably disrupted the Gentiles trying to worship there.
When Jesus entered the Temple area, he cleared the court of these moneychangers and vendors. Today, we often attribute his anger to the fact that they turned the temple area into a business enterprise. But Jesus was probably angry for another reason as well.
As he drove out the vendors, Jesus quoted the passage from Isaiah, ?Is it not written: ?My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations??? The vendors had been inconsiderate of Gentile believers. Their willingness to disrupt Gentile worship and prayers reflected a callous attitude of indifference toward the spiritual needs of Gentiles.
Through his anger and actions, Jesus reminded everyone nearby that God cared for Jew and Gentile alike. He showed his followers that God?s Temple was to be a holy place of prayer and worship for all believers. - Van Der Laan

---


--

So Jesus is intertexting and ddouble pasting two Scriptures  and making a new one.
But he leaves out the most important part "FOR ALL NATIONS"...which means he is hemistiching and making that phrase even more significant by it's absence,
-----







By intercalating the story of the cursing of the fig tree within that of Jesus' obstruction of the normal activity of the temple, Mark interprets Jesus' action in the temple not merely as its cleansing but its cursing. For him, the time of the temple is no more, for it has lost its fecundity. Indeed , read in its immediate context, Jesus' subsequent instruction to the disciples, "Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea'" can refer only to the mountain on which the temple is built!

What is Jesus' concern with the temple? Why does he regard it as extraneous to God's purpose?
Hints may be found in the mixed citation of Mark 11:17, part of which derives from Isaiah 56:7, the other from 11:7. Intended as a house of prayer for all the nations, the temple has been transformed by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem into a den of brigands. That is, the temple has been perverted in favor of both socioreligious aims (the exclusion of Gentiles as potential recipients of divine reconciliation) and politico-economic purposes (legitimizing and
consolidating the power of the chief priests, whose teaching might be realized even in the plundering of even a poor widow's livelihood-cf 12:41-44)....

...In 12:10-11, Jesus uses temple imagery from Psalm 118 to refer to his own rejection and vindication, and in the process, documents his expectation of a new temple, inclusive of 'others' (12:9, Gentiles?) This is the community of his disciples.
-John T, Carroll and Joel B. Green, "The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity," p. 32-33


------------------------ 


So Jesus is intertexting and ddouble pasting two Scriptues  and making a new one.
But he leaves out the most important part "FOR ALL NATIONS"...which means he is hemistiching and making that phrase even more significant by it's absence,

b)As a follow-up to the temple tantrum of Jesus as targeting racism more than commercialism (see this, and these). if it's a new concept, and if you always though it was about "Don't sell stuff in church!"  I find  Bartholomew and Goheen's analysis intriguing.  They read it as  racism/prejudice/nationalism/"separatism"   AND  a "spirit of violence".


Does the former always lead to the latter?:


"...God has chosen the people of Israel to dwell among the nations so that all  nations can enter teh covenant with God.  But the temple Jesus now enters now functions in quite a different way, supporting a separatist cause, cutting Israelites off from their neighbors.  Furthermore, the spirit encouraged within the temle is one of violence and destruction: it had become a 'den of revolutionaries' (Mark 11:17, authors' translation). Israel has turned its election into separatist privilege....a new temple, Jesus' resurrection life in the renewed people of God, can become the light for the nations that God intends."  (The Drama of Scripture, p, 176)


In the footnote to the above the authors clarify:


"The Greek word here is Iestes ansd most likely refers to revolutionaries who sought to obverthrow Rome with violence, see also on Mk 14:48, 15:27, John 18;40, see NT Wright, Jesus and The Victory of God, 419-20
--

Hey, maybe Jesus- concern WAS commercialism after all:
is racism + violence=commercialism?


Also...this called to mind Erwin McManus in "The Barbarian Way":



"God always revolts against religions he starts"
That's a shock value statement, of course.
So it can't be "truly" true.
But it speaks the truth in part; and is partly true.

But two questions:





Jesus comes off violently peaceful (not violently peaceful  in the temple..


c)You'll want to read "temple tantrum/ which curtain was torn?"
for more help on this theme.  Remember the "Getting Ripped" inclusio discussion we had last Friday.
This article explains how it relates.
-----------------









N.T. Wright, "The Challenge of Jesus":



His attitude to the Temple was not "this institution needs reforming," nor "the wrong people are running this place," nor yet "piety can function elsewhere too." His deepest belief regarding the temple was eschatological: the time had come for God to judge the entire institution. It had come to symbolize the injustice that characterized the society on the inside and on the outside, the rejection of the vocation to be the light of the world, the city set on a hill that would draw to itself all the peoples of the world. (64)


…Jesus acted and spoke as if he was in some sense called to do and be what the Temple was and did. His offer of forgiveness, with no prior condition of Temple-worship or sacrifice, was the equivalent of someone in our world offering as a private individual to issue someone else a passport or a driver’s license. He was undercutting the official system and claiming by implication to be establishing a new one in its place. (65)  NT WRIGHT

See for more


--------
 Remember  the "Orthodox Triangle" of Three Villages vs.  "Decapolis"/Ten Cities?
We'll take a field trip all the way to the dreaded "other side" of the lake today..

RECURRENCE OF THE PHRASE "the other side" IN CHAPTERS 8-10:







------------------

It's called THE OTHER SIDE....The circle is  the Sea of Gallilee.  On the NW corner, you see the "Orthodox Triangle" of Three Jewish Villages (Capernaum, Korazim, Bethsaidad)

vs. the SE side (OR "THE OTHER SIDE"...the pagan side of the   "Decapolis"/Ten Cities.
We'll take a field trip all the way to the dreaded "other side" of the lake today..

We watched two Van Der Laan videos:
 here  and here are some notes.
And here's the slideshow of the first  "field trip" we'll take today:







>>"When Storms Come (Sea of Galilee)"
From that slideshow, pay special attention to   a)why bodies of water had negative "historical world" symbolism  and b)"The Orthodox Triangle" vs.  "the other side": the Decapolis,

More:  here is a significant VanDer Laan article on the Sea of Galilee which touches on its symbolism.
Here also are  notes on  water:





>>"Piercing The Darkness (Decapolis on the Other Side of the Lake"  (CLICK)








OTHER SIDE:

emember  the "Orthodox Triangle" of Three Villages vs.  "Decapolis"/Ten Cities?
We'll take a field trip all the way to the dreaded "other side" of the lake today..

RECURRENCE OF THE PHRASE "the other side" IN CHAPTERS 8-10:







------------------

It's called THE OTHER SIDE....The circle is  the Sea of Gallilee.  On the NW corner, you see the "Orthodox Triangle" of Three Jewish Villages (Capernaum, Korazim, Bethsaidad)

vs. the SE side (OR "THE OTHER SIDE"...the pagan side of the   "Decapolis"/Ten Cities.
We'll take a field trip all the way to the dreaded "other side" of the lake today..

We watched two Van Der Laan videos:
"When Storms Come"

and
"Piercing the Darkness"




The first "Other Side" video ("When Storms Come")  is complete here: 

And here's the slideshowsummary:






>>"When Storms Come (Sea of Galilee)"

also more notes here  

From that slideshow, pay special attention to   a)why bodies of water had negative "historical world" symbolism  and b)"The Orthodox Triangle" vs.  "the other side": the Decapolis,

More:  here is a significant VanDer Laan article on the Sea of Galilee which touches on its symbolism. 
Here also are  notes on  water:



The second video on "The Other Side" theme is not online, but click for a summary:
>>"Piercing The Darkness (Decapolis on the Other Side of the Lake" (CLICK)
         ..more notes  here 







-------------------

  • Note the cross-cultural implications of Jesus' two feedings of  the multitude:
  • see:

    (diagram below by John Stevenson, see 2nd link above)

    Feeding of the 5,000
    Feeding of the 4,000
    Mark 6:34-44
    Mark 8:1-9
    Took place after the multitude had been with Jesus for one day.Took place after the multitude had been with Jesus for three days.
    The multitude was mostly Jewish.The multitude would have been mostly Gentile.
    Took place near Bethsaida  on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee.Took place in the Decapolis on the southeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
    Jesus used 5 loaves and 2 fish.Jesus used 7 loaves and a few small fish.
    There were 12 small baskets of leftovers.There were 7 large baskets of leftovers.

    Q>Who is Jesus in Matthew?  
                  A>The one who is not afraid to go to "THE OTHER SIDE"








 Homework Help:
 


The Heat is On:
Week 5        If in RED, can be skipped                                                                                                                           




Preparation Reading:

Acts chapters 1-15

Galatians, Ephesians, James, 1 John (entirety of each)

Kraybill chapters 11-12

Hauer &Young chapter 13, and pp. 284-293, 296-297, 301-303, 305-311, 314-318  (SKIM)



Preparation Assignments:

Letters to NT Churches Worksheet

Service Project, Log of hours, and Response Essay (see description attached to this syllabus)



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