Tag Archives: Intertextuality

Matthew 3: 1-12 The Herald of the Kingdom of Heaven

Cristofano Allori, John the Baptist in the Desert, 17th Century

Matthew 3: 1-12

Parallel Mark 1: 2-8, Luke 3: 1-17

¹ In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ² “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” ³ This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'”

⁴ Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, ⁶ and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

⁷ But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸ Bear fruit worthy of repentance. ⁹ Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. ¹⁰ Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

¹¹ “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Some time later we arrive at the beginning of story of Jesus as an adult and to set the stage for that story we are introduced to John the Baptist who will share a common message with Jesus but a different role within that message. John will be the Elijah character who proceeds the promised messiah, but there is much more to the story than just preparing the way for the messiah’s coming. Here the story builds on what was revealed to us in the first two chapters to prepare us for the advent of the kingdom of heaven.

Place matters in the gospels and the wilderness of Judea along the Jordan river is a place that is rich in meaning. Wilderness indicates a place away from Jerusalem, Judea and all the inhabited region along the Jordan. It is unsettled and because of that it has the connotation of being a place where one may encounter danger or the divine. The wilderness is the place of baptism, of being joined to the community of the faithful and it is the place of devilish temptation where one’s identity is continually questioned. It can be a place where the voice of God may speak to the one who is listening, and it can also be a place where the demonic voices drive a person to madness. Israel had to pass through the wilderness to become the people of God, they would pass through the Red Sea on leaving Egypt and the Jordan on entering the promised land. The wilderness can also be the place where God’s creative power does new things, particularly the rich language of Isaiah is relevant here:

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43: 19, see also Isaiah 35 and Jeremiah 31: 2)

The beautiful and hopeful language of Isaiah 43 along with Isaiah 35 and Jeremiah 31 add resonance to this theme, these hopeful passages spoken to an exiled people about God making a way in the wilderness and creating a new people enrich our hearing of the hope embodied in this strange prophet in a wilderness space.

The message that John the Baptist is summarized with the exact words that Jesus will use later in the gospel (Matthew 4: 17; 10:7). Both Mark and Luke include the ministry of John the Baptist to introduce the ministry of Jesus, but Matthew links the proclamation of John the Baptist explicitly to the later proclamation the good news that Jesus will proclaim. Both will run into challenges with the Pharisees, Sadducees and Herod and the other political powers, yet according to Matthew they are both sharing a common proclamation. As O. Wesley Allen Jr. state, “the difference between John and Jesus is not their message but the role they play in relation to that message.” (Allen, 2013, p. 35)

Scripture now speaks to give its direct voice to the role that John the Baptist will play in this story. Matthew instead of adopting the mashup of multiple verses used in Mark uses Isaiah 40:3 to identify John as “the voice crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the LORD, make his paths straight.’” Isaiah 40 is a message of comfort and hope to a people who have been exiled and may have felt forgotten by their God, but now Isaiah announces that God is indeed coming and that the people shall see the glory of the LORD together.

John is linked visually with Elijah by wearing clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist. Elijah is described in 2 Kings 1:8 as “a hairy man with a leather belt around his waist.” As mentioned above there was an expectation that Elijah would proceed the coming of the messiah, this hope comes both from the manner that Elijah’s death is recorded in 2 Kings 2 and in Malachi (the book that immediately proceeds Matthew in the way many bibles are organized) in the final chapter we hear of a time when God will judge the unrighteous and will lift up the righteous and in this judgment and exaltation:

Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse. (Malachi 4: 5-6)

The God of Israel is a God who desires repentance. As the prophet Joel can remind the people, “Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love’ (Joel 2: 13, see also Deuteronomy 30:2, this portion of Joel picks up the language of the thirteen attributes of God from Exodus 34: 6-7) and we hear in Malachi that the expected Elijah was to go before the advent of the Lord to turn families back to the way they were intended to embody so that they would be among the righteous and not the unrighteous ones. They would be those who were greeting the advent of the kingdom of heaven with joy instead of with lamentation.

This first herald of the advancing kingdom of heaven is not the lavishly dressed and well fed ambassador we might see attempting to negotiate a peace treaty between two nations but is instead a strangely dressed (but typologically familiar) prophet who eats the diet of the poorest in the desert (but which was ritually clean). In a kingdom where the poor in spirit are blessed and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled, where the merciful and peacemakers are those who embody what this kingdom is about, the kingdoms of this world will look more like the kingdom of Egypt that the Israelites escaped from than their hoped for reign where God was their king in the promised land. This heavenly kingdom will be different than the kingdom of Judea or the empire of Rome, but that doesn’t mean that Rome and Herod Antipas wouldn’t hear this proclamation as a challenge to their own kingdoms and wouldn’t oppose it with every tool at their possession.

When the Pharisees and Sadducees arrive in the wilderness to investigate what is occurring with the movement around John the Baptist, we may be surprised by the confrontational language that John uses towards them. For most people who have been trained in reading scripture recently there has been a reappraisal of the Pharisees and Sadducees viewing both movements in a more positive light than the previous generations of scholarship. Often the Pharisees and the Sadducees became embodiments of a legalistic and rigid worldview in Christian writing and like Judaism in general most writing about these two movements was polemical in nature. Hopefully I can provide a more nuanced approach to the topic as we move through the gospel, but it is worth noting that in general both the Pharisees and the Sadducees will find themselves aligned on with the forces opposed initially to John and later to Jesus. Neither group is completely aligned with the goals of the political powers of Herod Antipas in Galilee or Pontus Pilate in Judea, but they have negotiated a way of working with these powers and maintaining their position. There is no separation of church and state in the ancient world, and any close look at the political world of the time of Jesus will quickly illuminate a connection between the religious authorities and the political.

The Pharisees and Sadducees are both movements within second temple Judaism that are connected with both local and national power, and they have struggled with each other for influence for generations, but they are still tied to the existing networks of power. I believe this alliance with the existing networks of power is behind the criticism of John the Baptist when he calls them a brood of vipers fleeing wrath and challenges them to bear fruits worthy of repentance. In John’s view their reforms are not enough, God is doing something new. This symbolically rich baptism of repentance is reconstituting Israel to begin again in a new and forgiven state. The Pharisees were a reform movement attempting to be faithful to the law by reclaiming practices of holiness and the Sadducees were focused on maintaining proper worship at the temple by the priesthood, but John stands within a long line of prophets who continually call the people of Israel to see that repentance is more than ritual or religious practice. As Anna Case-Winters can state, “If they “change their minds” it will change their lives. Where is the evidence of this? Ritual purity without righteousness counts for nothing. This message is strong in the ethical tradition of Judaism.” (Case-Winters, 2015, p. 46) [1]

Matthew wants us to hear John the Baptist in concert with Jesus and just like John using the language of the kingdom of heaven to introduce what his proclamation is about we will also hear almost identical words come from Jesus’ mouth towards the Pharisees about being a brood of vipers and bearing fruit worthy of repentance.

Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure. I tell you, on the day of judgment, you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. (Matthew 12: 33-37)

Jesus, in Matthew, can be both gracious and direct. He will embody both the prophetic hope and the prophetic critique. John foreshadows this by letting us know that Christ’s coming and the advent of the kingdom of heaven will not be a painless process for everyone. Forgiveness often means that something must die, repentance means that one must turn one’s back on something to turn towards that which you are returning to and grace while it is given freely may indeed cost the recipient much in terms of their relationship with family and the existing power structures of the world. The coming of Jesus means that some trees will be cut down and thrown into the fire so that those with good fruit have the space to flourish providing their fruit in each season for the healing of the nations.

Even though Matthew begins his telling of Jesus’ story with a genealogy he lets us know early that genealogy is not enough. Here in John’s accusation taps again into language from the prophet Isaiah:

Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the LORD. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many. (Isaiah 53: 1-2)

In Isaiah’s time he is speaking to an Israel that has already drained the cup of the Lord’s wrath (Is. 53:17) but now John is speaking to a people who are being offered a cup at the banquet of the Lord, but like those who will later refuse their place at the wedding banquet (see Matthew 22: 1-14) they will find themselves receiving the king’s judgment because they refused the invitation to turn away from the things that concerned them, their own negotiated settlements with the powers of the day and instead would mistreat and abuse the messengers of the banquet.

J.Ross Wagner in 2000 published a work called Heralds of the Good News: Paul and Isaiah in Concert in the Letter of Romans and if you haven’t guessed by the string of quotations from Isaiah referenced in these initial chapters I believe that Matthew as a herald of the kingdom is placing John the Baptist and later Jesus’ ministry in a key that would be in harmony with the prophetic hope and challenge of Isaiah in particular and other prophets as well. For years Christians have mined the prophet Isaiah for prooftexts that, cut off from their context, could be used as predictors for Jesus’ life and ministry but what if, instead, we actually allowed Isaiah’s words and hope to provide language and richness to the experience of Jesus narrated by Matthew. As I have argued from the beginning of these reflections, Matthew’s narration of Jesus’ story is a uniquely Hebrew way of reading the story of Jesus and as we immerse ourselves in Matthew’s gospel we should expect to be swimming in waters deeply infused with the words of the law, the prophets, the narrative and the poetry of the Hebrew people. Yet one of the major rivers flowing into the deep sea of Matthew’s gospel is the prophet Isaiah with his vision of hope and reinterpretation of what Israel’s identity is to be.

We are introduced here with the actions of John the Baptist baptizing those coming into wilderness a key piece of what Matthew will continue to reinforce: the identity of the chosen people. In a context where the people of Jerusalem and all Judea is now attached to the Roman empire and its emissaries (including the religious authorities in Jerusalem) John is making a prophetic break from the temple and its leaders. What will define the reconstituted Israel will be the God of Israel rather than the newly rebuilt temple but instead an orientation towards the approaching kingdom of heaven. They stand at the Jordan river awaiting a new Joshua to bring them into the kingdom that their Lord has promised them. And to use one final image from the prophet Isaiah they are reminded:

But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear for I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you, Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. Do not fear for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43: 1-7

Yet John the Baptist is merely a herald of the good news, but the gospel (and the play on words here is that gospel and good news are the same Greek work euangellion) is not merely about the proclamation of the kingdom of heaven but its advent. One greater than John is coming, John can stand in the waters of the Jordan and reorient the people of God, but he cannot bring in the kingdom. Ultimately, for Matthew, he wants us to see that God will be with the people calling them by name, passing through the waters with them and gathering them from the ends of the earth. John sees God’s harvest approaching where the faithful will be gathered together and not consumed by the flames that are to come.

I’ve hinted that this will be a gracious reading of Matthew’s gospel and if John the Baptist and Jesus both can advocate this type of division between chaff and wheat some might ask from our context where the grace can be in the judgment. Working through Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Jeremiah and Revelation you have to come to terms with the judgment of God against those forces either within or beyond the boundaries of the community which have set their will against their creator: Egypt, the people of Israel and Judah, Babylon and Rome all come under God’s judgment for the sake of the life and witness of God’s people and the prosperity of the world. Yet, God’s judgment is always preceded with an opportunity for repentance, with a chance for those who will be sorted to return to the Lord who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. God is not content to allows things to remain the way things are, to allow the ways of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon or Rome to be the truth. As Miroslav Volf can state insightfully, “In Pilate’s world, truth and justice were fruits of Caesar’s sword. In Jesus’ kingdom, truth and justice are alternatives to Caesar’s sword.” (Volf, 1996, p. 275) John in heralding the advent of the kingdom of heaven is offering the people to turn to an alternative to Rome or Herod Antipas’ reign, the kingdom of heaven is an alternative to the empire of Rome. A God who changes the world without judgment is, in Volf’s words, a pleasant captivity of the liberal mind[2]. (Volf, 1996, p. 304)

The challenge of John to the religious authorities of his day should also give pause to those with ears to hear when they are tempted to closely align with the political powers of their own day. As one of my readings outside of the work I’ve done on Matthew I’ve been going through Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings in the critical years of 1932-33 where the National Socialist Party rose to power and successfully asserted influence on the state churches (Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed) in Germany and effectively coopted the majority of practicing Christians into the rise of the policies that would unfold while the Nazis remained in power until the end of World War II and the destruction of much of Germany. Even though in the United States there is a separation between church and state there is still a great lure to being closely situated to those in political power. Like the people of Israel being reconstituted here in the wilderness of the Jordan, there are times where we will need to return to our own baptism and be reminded that our trust is in the Lord our God who created us and who passed through the waters with us and that we as people of God are called to an alternative to the empires of this world.

[1] See for example Isaiah 29: 13 or Amos 5: 21-24 as two examples of times where God speaks to a people who may be worshipping correctly and yet are not living reformed lives, I also believe that this is behind much of the critique of the prophet Jeremiah during the reforms in reign of Josiah: the people may be worshipping correctly but their lives are still oriented around a way of life that does not reflect the values God desired for Judah (and Israel as a whole).

[2] The liberal mind has little to do with liberal verses conservative politics and instead references the liberalism that arose with the age of Enlightenment upon which both conservative and liberal political groups find their reference. Key to this disenchanted view of the world is a God who is no longer active in the secular sphere but is concerned only with the spiritual realities. This is a very different God than we encounter in the Bible.

Revelation 1 Opening Revelation

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Diego Velazquez, Saint John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos (1619-1620)

I have struggled with how to begin this since this has seemed like a Herculean task to approach a book which has given rise to any number of wild and disparate interpretations both recently and throughout the history of the church. If the brief survey of the history of interpretation of Revelation I wrote and my own study of church history and biblical interpretation has shown me anything it is that any reading of scripture is a provisional reading that is informed by the time and position of the interpreter—and yet scripture in its own living way continues to speak across the millennia. So, it is in a sense of humility that I begin this reading of Revelation. This is a reading of one pastor who comes to this strange book with a sense of wonder and awe as we enter into the mysteries that John the Seer relates to us in his recording of this vision. I begin having some sense of where this is going because I’ve been working through the book as a whole as I attempt this beginning, so here are some aspects that inform this reading:

This reading is canonical in the dual sense that I am beginning with the belief that Revelation is both a part of the broader canon that Christians consider the scripture and that its placement within that canon also shapes the way we hear Revelation. The same God, the same Jesus who is witnessed to throughout the rest of the scriptures is who we encounter in Revelation. There will be portions of Revelation that can only be clear in hearing it in dialogue with the rest of scripture.
It is intertextual in the sense that I will often refer back to other places throughout scripture where Revelation’s images resonate. Revelation is a much clearer and richer document when one listens closely to Ezekiel, Daniel, Exodus, Psalms, Deuteronomy and the gospels and Paul’s letters. John the Seer was either a Jewish Christian or a gentile extremely well steeped in the language of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) since it is rare when Revelation does not subtly echo these scriptures.
That the God of Revelation is the loving God we encounter in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. This is about a God who does love the world as John 3: 16 reminds us. This is about a God who is the creator who does care about this world God created. In that sense it will be an ecological reading. It will also be a gracious reading. My work with Jeremiah and Exodus has given me some empathy for the way God’s involvement with humanity comes at a cost: God becomes brokenhearted about the state of the world and the state of God’s people.
The God of Revelation chooses sides and is not the unmoved mover of deist and philosophical thought. This is not a new thing in scripture. The story of the Exodus is a story of a God who chooses those who are oppressed and weak and intervenes. The book of Revelation is a similar story. Like in the book of the Exodus, we will also see God use an incredible amount of restraint allowing time and space for repentance and renewal. The cry of the saints, “How long Lord” which echoes the words of the Psalmist, indicate the cost of God’s patience and yet God will not ultimately allow the forces that work against God’s will for the world to prevail.
The violent language of the book of Revelation has often been a source of discomfort for interpreters, much like the more violent portions of the Hebrew Scriptures. In some ways we will see some of this language has been misinterpreted but I do think we need to wrestle with the violence that is a part of this book. Much more on this as we proceed into the images of Revelation.
Revelation is a profoundly anti-imperial book. Specifically, the empire of this time is the Roman empire. This also is nothing new for the scriptures. From the book of Genesis onward there has always been a suspicion of the claims of nations, kings and empires. The story of the Exodus, which is the foundational story for the Jewish people, is a story of God taking a people out of the empire of the day and creating a way for them to be a different kind of society. Revelation with its calls to ‘flee from Babylon’ stands within this tradition. In this sense it is a work that gives us a lens to understand our own interactions within our own societies, nations and world. Revelation is not the only voice within the scripture which addresses how people of faith live and work within the empire, but it is also not a lone or outlying voice in the broader scriptures.

Revelation 1:1-8

¹ The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place; he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, ² who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.

³ Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near.

⁴ John to the seven churches that are in Asia:

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, ⁵ and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, ⁶ and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

⁷ Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.

⁸ “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Revelation, sometimes called the Apocalypse from the Greek title of the book, gets its title from the opening line which declares it is a revelation of Jesus Christ. Without entering into a long conversation about ‘apocalyptic literature’ I think perhaps a good place to start is with the meaning of the word Revelation or apocalypse. An apocalypse, in the way we normally use this term, typically means something like an event involving destruction on a catastrophic scale or something that involves the final destruction of the world. But the translation of apocalypse to revelation is telling. Revelation means something which is revealed or disclosed and that is what this book claims to be. While the book of Revelation does point to a conflict between the forces that are at work destroying the world and God’s unwillingness, as world’s Creator, to let these forces of death and destruction continue to exercise power and dominion forever it is more concerned with disclosing the images seen than anything else. The book is a book of hope filled with powerful images that continue to resonate thousands of years later. John, the named author of Revelation, writes down these visions to disclose them to church of his time and by extension to the church of our time.

The John of Revelation is probably not the same John who wrote the gospel of John and the letters of John. Ever since Dionysius of Alexandria (d. 264) showed that the two works could not come from the same person because of writing style and content the position of Revelation has been questioned. Dionysius and eventually the church accepted Revelation as a part of the canon but without apostolic authorship there would continue to be questions about the authority of Revelation. (Koester, 2014, p. 34) Yet, Revelation is a part of the collection of works we consider as our scriptures and regardless of the apostolicity of the author has been valued throughout the church’s life. John, or John the Seer as I will sometimes refer to him, attempts to put into words that which seems to defy description. His language is the language of the scriptures, what the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (or ELCA, the denomination I am a part of) in its Book of Faith initiative would refer to the first language of faith.

John considers this a prophesy and the language of this first chapter resonates strongly with the call scenes of the prophets into service to testify to the word of the Lord (see for example Isaiah 6: 1-13; Jeremiah 1: 4-10 and Ezekiel 1:1-3:11). John’s self-understanding is probably that of a prophet, one who has been called to deliver a message on behalf of God. The prophets point to a different way of understanding the world in light of God’s revelation to them. They often are unpopular with those in authority since they are calling their hearers back to God’s alternative way of living in the world. John’s message to the church should be heard in this light. This will become clearer as we approach the letters to the seven churches in chapters two and three.

John also, like Paul and other writers of the Christian epistles, is writing a letter and this first chapter holds many similarities to letters like the letters to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, etc. While John is addressing the seven churches in Asia (modern day Turkey) who we will encounter in the following chapters we will find the number seven is significant in the book of Revelation since it denotes completion or wholeness and so while this is a letter to seven specific churches it is also a letter or book to the larger church. Like the letters that Paul writes these introductions can densely packed with language that articulate key points of the author’s faith. These key affirmations include:

‘from him who is and who was and who is to come’ this way of referring to God probably goes back to the divine name, “YHWH” that God gives Moses in Exodus 3: 13-22. The circular way of naming God without actually saying the name of God probably also reflects the desire not to violate the commandment about using the Lord’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7, Deuteronomy 5: 11)
‘Seven spirits before the throne’ as mentioned above seven will appear continually throughout Revelation to denote completion or wholeness. Below we will see seven stars and seven lampstands and the seven spirits may well be connected to the seven eyes for the lamb or the seven churches.
Jesus Christ as ‘faithful witness,’ ‘first born of the dead’ and the ‘ruler of the kings of the earth’ uses several titles to refer to Jesus which each can be unpacked briefly. Jesus as faithful witness becomes the model or icon that the readers of Revelation are to emulate. The word for witness is the word which ‘martyr’ comes from and that is an important concept for Revelation. While being a faithful witness does not require death or suffering in a society that is established in a manner that is counter to God’s will it will often be uncomfortable and involve persecution. ‘First born of the dead’ resonates strongly with the Pauline language used to describe the impact of Jesus’ resurrection (Romans 8:29, Colossians 1: 15,18). ‘Ruler of the kings of the earth’ also resonates with Pauline language for who Christ ultimately is, even though the powers and principalities seem to exercise power they will also bow with everything on heaven and earth to the resurrected Christ (ex. Philippians 2: 9-11)
‘to him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood’ again reflects the language of places like Romans 3:25 where Paul can use sacrificial language in relation to Jesus’ death on the cross. This will also be important in the gospel of John in particular in its way of describing Jesus’ death. In this light the image of Jesus as the sacrificed lamb throughout Revelation expands this image.
‘made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father’ these words are a particularly audacious claim made early in the book which refers back to Exodus 19: 5-6 and point to what the role of the church is for the book of Revelation. The church is now joined to the vocation and calling of Israel, and in many ways the church becomes Israel. This is an audacious claim and yet it also points to the critical roll that John identifies for these churches receiving this message.

John then transitions into their shared hope of Christ’s return which every eye will see. Those who witnessed faithfully and those who opposed Christ will see and be confronted with the kingship of Jesus. It will be an event that impacts all the people of the earth, not only Israel or the church. Much like the closing of the book these initial confessions end like a prayer.

Finally, in this opening is the first use of ‘Alpha and Omega’ and another reference to the one ‘who is and was and who is to come.’ This is significant because in this revelation of Jesus Christ we will soon see this language paralleled in the description of Jesus and this will become one of the several places where the New Testament points to a close correlation between Jesus and the LORD the God of Israel. In the Christological controversies of the early church where they attempted to find language to talk about Jesus the New Testament’s way of using titles reserved for God for Jesus would prove decisive as the early Christians began to understand the Jesus was a revelation of the God of Israel.

Revelation 1: 9-11

⁹ I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. ¹⁰ I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet ¹¹ saying, “Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”

John indicates his connection with the churches receiving the letter. He is one of them who shares in their struggles who live in the time in between the resurrection and Christ’s return. In this time the powers and principalities continue to call for allegiance and at times worship and yet as followers of the resurrected Christ and the LORD the God of Israel they are called to have only one God, one Lord. John is on Patmos, an island in the Aegean Sea about forty miles southwest of Miletus and Ephesus on the sea route to Corinth and Athens. John may have been sent to Patmos by regional authorities because of his testimony but he is also the only person we have a witness of being sent to Patmos and there is no evidence it was a prison colony. Yet, John is isolated from these seven communities he is writing to on that day he receives the vision. Like the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures and the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians he is, “in the spirit” most likely on a Sunday (the day of the Lord’s resurrection) but possibly on a Saturday (the Sabbath). The voice like a loud trumpet resembles the language of Exodus 19:16 and 20:18 where God speaks to the people. Yet the voice like a trumpet is hearable as language and instructs John to write what he sees and send it on to the seven churches.

Revelation 1: 12-20

Goslar, Friedhof Hildersheimer Strasse, Grabmonument aus dem 19. Jahrhundert, Christusdarstellun nach Offenbarung

¹² Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, ¹³ and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. ¹⁴ His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, ¹⁵ his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. ¹⁶ In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force.

¹⁷ When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, ¹⁸ and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. ¹⁹ Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this. ²⁰ As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

John turns toward the voice mentioned above and the begins to write what he sees in the book we have. The vision is full of symbolism and echoes of the scriptures. ‘One like the Son of Man,’ is an image that goes back to Daniel 7:13-14, “As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being (son of man) coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.” This is what is referred to when Jesus uses the ‘Son of Man’ title in the gospels. Because of this usage by Jesus in the gospels we shouldn’t be surprised that the speaker is Jesus. Yet, Jesus also has the traits of the Ancient one (God) spoken of immediately prior to the ‘Son of Man’ quotation from Daniel “As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head was like pure wool; his throne was like fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence. A thousand thousands served him and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him. The court sat in judgment and the books were opened.” (Daniel 7: 9-10) We begin to see the ways in which Revelation links Jesus to the Lord the God of Israel, something that will continue throughout this initial vision. The initial description of the resurrected Christ appearing to John is an awesome and fear inducing sight for the seer.

The sharp two-edged sword which comes out of his mouth will be a recurring image in Revelation. On the one hand, it does refer to speech as in Isaiah 49:2 when the servant of the Lord’s mouth is like a sharp sword. On the other hand, it is also the force by which Christ defeats evil, how truth overcomes the lies. The word of God is never a tame thing that should be wielded carelessly, it can cut both the church and the nations as it will here in Revelation.

John, overwhelmed by the image, falls down at the feet of the risen Christ, and unlike later when he bows down to another messenger he is not corrected. Falling at the feet of the risen Christ is an acceptable response and John is met with encouragement. “Do not be afraid” is a frequent instruction upon hearing from God or receiving God’s message. Now Jesus uses words for himself that are patterned after the words the Lord God uses, he is the ‘first and last’ paralleled to ‘Alpha and Omega’ and ‘the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever;” paralleled to ‘him who is and who was and who is to come.’

Jesus now holds the keys to Death and Hades. Even though in this time the forces of destruction can kill the faithful and send them to the realm of Death and Hades the book of Revelation looks towards that time when Christ claims this power and opens the realm of Death and Hades causing them to surrender those held there. Death remains real for the followers of the risen Christ, but it is not the final reality. As Paul could say, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6: 5)

The image of seven stars and the seven lampstands is one of the few explained images in the book of Revelation itself. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches themselves. This image takes on an additional resonance when one realizes that the lampstands in the image is like the lampstand for the tabernacle and later temple (Exodus 25: 17-22). This is another place where Revelation makes an audacious connection between the churches and Israel. As mentioned above when discussing Revelation 1:6 when the calling of Israel is used now the imagery of Israel also gets linked to the churches.

Mark’s Portrait of Jesus and The World He Lived in Part 4

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Mark’s Portrait of Jesus and The World He Lived in Part 4: A Scripture Shaped World

Scroll of the Book of Isaiah

When I originally did my presentation on the Gospel of Mark and the way that it interacts with the world in which Jesus lived and breathed I left out a very important part, the way the Gospel of Mark interacts with the Scriptures (at this time the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament most likely in its Greek translation the Septuagint) and uses the language and world of the scriptures to find a way to talk about who Jesus is and what the Kingdom of God means in a world of the Roman empire, Second Temple Judaism and a world where the conflict between good and evil was viewed in terms of conflict between various spiritual forces. Inhabiting a Jewish world where the language of the scriptures would have been a critical part of that world it is not surprising that Mark uses scriptures to help illuminate who Jesus is and to allude to a deeper engagement with the story of the God of Israel and the people of that God.

The question of Mark as a reader of scripture is normally handled by looking at the explicit places where the gospel quotes the scriptures and often without taking some time to examine the broader question of how Mark is using these scriptures to show who Jesus is. Richard B. Hay’s recent work on the way that the gospel authors utilized scriptures is a helpful and generative study of this question in a much more holistic light. In examining the interaction between the way that the Hebrew Scriptures were read by Mark and the way they form a linguistic world that the gospel is able to access Hays argues:

And upon rereading, we discover numerous passages scattered through this Gospel that offer intimations of a disturbing truth: Jesus’ identity with the one God of Israel. Unlike the Gospel of John—which explicitly declares that Jesus is the Logos, the Son who is one with the Father—Mark shies away from overt ontological declarations. Nonetheless, Mark’s Gospel suggests that Jesus is, in some way that defies comprehension, the embodiment of God’s presence. Mark never quite dares to articulate this claim explicitly; it is too scandalous for direct speech. For Mark, the character of God’s presence in Jesus is a mystery that can be approached only by indirection, through riddle-like allusion to the OT. (Hays, 2014, p. 19f.)Emphasis authors.

From the first direct citation in Mark 1: 2-3 which weaves together Malachi 3.1, and Isaiah 40.3, both passages which link back to the LORD, the God of Israel being the one who is coming, Malachi pointing to the LORD coming in judgment and Isaiah who proclaims the LORD God coming with might to rule and to gather together the people of Israel. Right at the very beginning there are the audacious and bold claims about the one who is coming, and yet throughout the narrative of Mark the characters in the story will wonder and will have the secret kept from them who this Jesus is. The demons may know who Jesus is but they are silenced, others may have flashes of who Jesus is but they are also told not to speak to anyone about it, Jesus’ identity is a mystery that is ultimately revealed by his actions and the way these actions resonate with the story of who God is in relation to God’s people.

Many of the conflicts that emerge between Jesus and the Pharisees early in the gospel revolve around Jesus doing things that are reserved for the God of Israel. In Mark 2.1-12, when Jesus heals the paralytic man who is lowered through his roof the accusation is, “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And the scriptures do highlight in several places that the God of Israel does forgive sins, for example Hays lifts up Exodus 34.6-7:

The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation.

A similar dynamic is at play with Jesus declaring he is Lord of the Sabbath at the end of chapter 2, where now Jesus is able to interpret what the commands of God mean and becomes an authoritative interpreter of the scriptures. Perhaps this is some of the wonder that Mark records in 1.22 where the crowds are amazed at him teaching as one with authority. Mark continues, through Jesus’ actions, to invite us to wonder who Jesus is and how he is connected with the God of Israel, from his healings and exorcisms to the walking on water in Mark 4. 35-41 where the disciples wonder, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” and whether Mark directly evokes Psalm 107 or not, it provides an evocative answer to the question, “Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress; he made the storms be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.” Psalm 107. 28f. Continuing in the story of the feeding of the five thousand with the evoking of the image of the people as sheep without a shepherd there are numerous allusions to the LORD, the God of Israel being the shepherd of the people, most memorably Psalm 23, but more pointedly Ezekiel 34 which rails against the leaders of Ezekiel’s time who have not proved to be faithful shepherd and in response the LORD declares, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the LORD God.” Ezekiel 34.15. We are left to wonder after each event who is this Jesus, and how is he able to speak in ways that reflect God’s speech, how is he able to act in ways that reflect God’s actions and how does he embody the presence of the God of Israel who has drawn near with God’s kingdom. Mark points us continually to the suggestive but never overt answer that Jesus is fulfilling the role that God has promised to fulfill in the scriptures. That Jesus can forgive, can be Lord of Sabbath, can master the elements and the demonic forces that threaten God’s people and can be the faithful shepherd that the people has longed for.

Mark continues to invite those with eyes to see and ears to hear to sit and wonder about who Jesus is and to listen to the frequently allusive way in which the language of scriptures helps to paint this picture in a suggestive way. Yet it is a mystery that Mark invites his readers into, the mystery of the kingdom of God that arrives in parables rather than outright proclamation. Most of Jesus’ overt quotations of scriptures come at the end of the book of Mark where the question of who Jesus is comes to its ironic and sharply contested conclusion. Jesus’ authority is continually questioned by the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the scribes and the chief priests and Jesus continues not only to allude to scripture but to embody it. Whether it is the allusion to Jeremiah’s temple sermon when Jesus enters the temple in Mark 11.17 and contrasting it with the vision of Isaiah in 56.7 and Jesus continuing to embody the role of Jeremiah in conflict with the temple of his day (see the previous post particularly on Jesus and Jeremiah), and the way this plays into the image of the cursed fig tree and the oracle of Jeremiah 8.13. The allusion to Isaiah 5 with both the parable of the wicked tenants in Mark 12. 1-12 and the denunciation of the scribes in Mark 12. 38-40. The language of Daniel 7 forms the answer to the High Priest in the trial where Jesus is accused of blasphemy, but also forms the background for the Son of Man imagery used throughout the gospel. Mark uses these images poetically and sometime Jesus seems to take on the role of the God of Israel, other times Jesus walks in the place of Israel and is able to cry out to their God, sometimes he is the fulfillment of the hope of Israel and the scriptures, and yet in every place Mark leaves us with the mystery of the kingdom of God. Yet the use of scriptures continually points that somehow, evocatively, in Jesus we in some way encounter the divine presence of the God of Israel. Mark is not interested in explaining how this comes to be but rather inviting us into the journey and experience of the new people of God trying to find the language to explain who this Jesus was and what he did and finding in the language of the Hebrew Scriptures a vast set of hopes and expectations and words that describe the relationship of God to God’s people. And into that web of images the experience of Jesus mysteriously seems to fall and we wonder with the first hearers of the message what that means for our experience of this Jesus Christ the Son of God whose gospel we receive from Mark.

Review of Reading Backwards by Richard B. Hays

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READING BACKWARDS: FIGURAL CHRISTOLOGY AND THE FOURFOLD GOSPEL WITNESS, by Richard B. Hays. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014. 155pp $34.95

Richard B. Hays began his work of examining how the earliest followers of Jesus were interpreters of scriptures in 1989 with his work The Echoes of Scriptures in the Letters of Paul. Twenty five years later, after changing the dynamic of the way many people view Paul’s engagement with the Hebrew Scriptures Professor Hays now gives us a short introduction into what he states he hopes will be a much larger projects examining each of the evangelist’s engagement with the scriptures, but this short and provocative work should help continue the conversion of the imagination he challenged his readers to see in Paul now in the voice and words of the authors of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. The book is the adaptation of the Hulsean Lectures presented at Cambridge University in the fall of 2013 and the spring of 2014 and is a work that will encourage its readers to understand the manner in which these early evangelists use the Hebrew Scriptures prefigure their experience of Christ.

The relationship of the Hebrew Scriptures to the New Testament is an important question for the church, but one that has often been overlooked. Richard B. Hays invites us into an exercise in learning to place ourselves in the evangelists’ places and see these scriptural texts that they used through their own eyes. Dr. Hays is convinced that “the Gospels teach us how to the OT, and –at the same time—the OT teaches us how to read the Gospels.”(4, emphasis author’s) Rather than seeing the evangelists as proof-texting pieces of the Hebrew Scriptures to make a certain points but rather invoke a set of rich and intertextual relations between the experience of the words of Jesus and the experience of his followers with the vision and world presented by the portions of scripture that the evangelists cite or allude to. The readings of each of the four gospels that are presented in Reading Backwards provide a rich and concise with the way in which each gospel distinctively uses scripture to paint its picture of Jesus.

The Gospel of Mark tells a story that is more suggestive and allusive in its narrative style and likewise many of Mark’s uses of the scriptures are allusive as well. Mark rarely quotes scripture but frequently uses language that alludes to how Jesus’ work and God’s work are mysteriously linked. Mark intimates that Jesus is, “in some way that defies comprehension the embodiment of God’s presence. Mark never quite dares to articulate this claim explicitly; it is too scandalous for direct speech. For Mark the character of God’s presence in Jesus is a mystery that can only be approached by riddle-like allusions to the OT.” (19f.) By looking at the way Mark creatively cites and alludes to scripture from the beginning of the story in Mark 1: 2-3 and running through the crucifixion narrative examining the way the larger context of the scriptural allusions to open the readers to the mystery of Jesus’ relationship with the God of Israel. Mark’s characteristic tension holds this identity in suspension as well, never overtly coming out and claiming Jesus’ identity but rather in a poetic way hides this answer in order that it might be revealed to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Mark attempts to lead his readers into an exploration of the mysterious way in which Jesus is recognized as the embodiment of the God of Israel.

The Gospel of Matthew is much more explicit in its claims and the ways in which it uses scriptures. Matthew quotes scripture explicitly more than any of the other evangelists and from his first citation of Isaiah 7.14 in the birth narrative where Jesus is titled God is with us until the end of the gospel where all authority has been given to Jesus who will be with them forever Matthew presents, in a much more direct way, that Jesus is the presence of God among the people and the appropriate response is to worship the living presence of God who is present with them. Matthew uses a combination of scripture quotations as well as allusions to the Old Testament stories, like Herod in the slaughter of the innocents certainly would be heard as echoing Pharaoh’s decree in the Exodus narrative, to show how Jesus comes to embody not only God’s presence but also comes to be the fulfillment of the hopes of the law and the prophets. Where Mark encourages us to explore the mystery of the way divine presence of the God of Israel is present in Jesus, Matthew wants us to see this presence in order that we may worship God where God has now been found.

Luke reads the scriptures in a way that points to Jesus being the one who is the hope of Israel. From the prophecy of Zechariah, where God is praised for having “looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.”(Luke 1.68) to the journey with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus where these disciples, in their sadness, say, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” (Luke 24. 21) Hays invites us to read again how Jesus might be seen in Moses and the prophets and how Luke might use the scriptures to help us see who Jesus is. Luke uses language and events that reflect the type of things that happened in the stories of the scriptures while never simply the same. The effect is to create a powerful but indistinct relation between the saving acts of God in the story of Israel and the liberating acts of fulfillment in the story of Jesus. (59)

For John’s gospel the fundamental hermeneutical claim is that the scriptures are the ones that bear witness to Jesus, but to understand those same scriptures one must first come to Jesus to receive life. This retrospective reading of Israel’s scriptures allows John to use a more visual set of images and figures from the narrative of the people where Jesus through verbal echoes and direct quotations link Jesus with both the wisdom of God as well as the images of the temple and sacrifice. Through these images John wants to illustrate that Jesus is not only the temple—but also the place where God’s presences comes to meet us and deliver us into union with the divine presence. (82) Since John understands Jesus as the Logos of God the entire narrative, the temple, sacrifice and the festivals of Judaism are a rich set of signs and symbols of God’s activity in the life and presence of Jesus.

In this short work with numerous illuminating explorations of the way the evangelists read their scriptures and the scriptures provide a fuller meaning to the telling of the story of Jesus, Richard B. Hays invites the reader to discover a gospel shaped hermeneutic. This, he argues, involves a complex poetic sensibility that pays attention to the narrative arc of the scriptures. Hays argues that the more we explore the way the evangelists explore the scriptures the more clearly it is apparent that each of the evangelists in their own unique portrayal point to Jesus being the embodiment of the God of Israel. This short work, which continues Richard B. Hays long work with intertextuality and the art of reading scripture, is a very generative and helpful introduction to the deep question of how the evangelists became interpreters of the scriptures and how the experience of Jesus reframed their reading of scripture while scripture gave them the language and symbols to express the mystery of who Jesus is to their communities.

Sign of the Rose

Searchings: Sacred and Secular