Saturday Night Theologian
5 March 2006

Genesis 9:8-17

On Tuesday, the people of New Orleans celebrated Mardi Gras, a frenetic, over the top, wild exuberance of a party. After Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding, many people, both natives of New Orleans and outsiders, wondered if staging the traditional Mardi Gras parades was a good idea. Much of the city still lies under a coating of mud and debris, many homes and businesses will never be rebuilt, and more than a thousand people died during and after the storm. Yet there were others who said, "We have to celebrate Mardi Gras, just to prove that the city still has vitality and that the flood isn't the final word in the life of the city." After Noah emerged from the ark, God said to him, "I am establishing my covenant with you and with your descendants after you." This covenant covered not only Noah and his family but also all the animals from the ark that were destined to repopulate the earth. God promised, "Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." Though some of the people of New Orleans might have questioned God's veracity concerning this particular promise as they waited on their rooftops for rescue late last summer, the festivities of Mardi Gras prove that, though it was devastating, the flood did not destroy the city. But there's more to New Orleans than just one big party, for Mardi Gras is immediately followed a day later by Ash Wednesday, a day of repentance and introspection, a day when Christians commit themselves to walk with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem for the next forty days. That many who celebrate the excesses of Mardi Gras do not also observe the solemnity of Lent is irrelevant, for celebration and repentance are concepts that are too big to be contained in individual people's lives. The people of God as a community celebrate the joy of living another day, and the people of God as a community commit themselves to walk with their Lord to his passion. The biblical flood story juxtaposes disaster with celebration, and so does real life. After the flood comes life, hope, promise, repentance, and commitment. Like the people of New Orleans, let us learn this lesson during the Lenten season.

For another discussion of this passage, click here.

Psalm 25:1-10

Former California congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham was sentenced this week to eight years and four months in prison, after pleading guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes. A contrite Cunningham said before sentencing that he would accept without complaint whatever punishment the court handed down. Although none of us has ever accepted $2.4 million in bribes, we should all feel some empathy with the former congressman. We have all done things that we knew were wrong, and we have all been in the position of having to ask for forgiveness. The psalmist asks God, "Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness' sake, O Lord!" Or maybe it should say, "For goodness' sake, O Lord!" There come times in all our lives when we want to ask God, and other people as well, "Please distinguish in your mind my sins from me as a person!" There are certain people who have gone down in history as those who have committed great sins. When we think of Adolf Hitler, Timothy McVeigh, or David Koresh, it is unlikely that we think of anything other than the Holocaust, the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, or the conflagration at the compound outside Waco. Several months ago I saw a German movie called Downfall about the last days of Hitler, a true story based on the account of his secretary. The movie makes no attempt to mask the evil committed by Hitler, Himmler, or others who were in the bunker during the last week of World War II in Europe, yet it also shows Hitler as a human being, a person who grows tired, feels bewildered as his world come crashing down around him, and even shows affection for some of those around him. One of the problems with demonizing Hitler and others who have committed horrific crimes is that it puts them beyond the pale of humanity. When we cast another human being out of the human race for his sins, we threaten ourselves with the same fate. Maybe our sins aren't as great as a Timothy McVeigh, but who can really foresee the consequences of our acts of greed, selfishness, or xenophobia? Fortunately for us, God is perfectly capable of separating the person from the sin, and though we deserve justice, God often grants mercy. If God grants mercy to us sinners, we need to grant mercy to other sinners as well, for though their sins may be more spectacular, at their core they are people like we are, people God longs to bring back into the human-divine fellowship that we can all share.

For another discussion of this passage, click here.

1 Peter 3:18-22

When someone sins, who suffers because of it? In some cases no one suffers, and the persons simply "gets away" with the sin, at least apparently. In other cases the person who sins suffers. For example, if a person who breaks into a house and steals something is caught by the police, that person will go to jail, suffering for his sin. Another way in which the person who sins might suffer is through guilt over the sin, even if no one else knows about it. In many cases, however, it is not the person committing the sin who suffers, but rather another, innocent person. When an individual commits armed robbery and isn't caught, it is the person who was robbed who suffers, both in the immediate fear and loss of the robbery and also over the long term in the loss of a sense of security. The first verse in our reading from 1 Peter begins, "For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God." As Christians, we're used to language of this sort. We understand that Jesus died for our sins, and in fact, many manuscripts actually say that Christ died rather than suffered for our sins, though the original reading was almost certainly suffered. I want to focus on two aspects of this verse that we might not think about quite as often. First, if we set aside traditional soteriological thinking about Christ's death as an Atonement and focus on the act of one person suffering because of another's sins, we realize that this sort of thing happens every day. Victims suffer for the sins of the criminals. Women suffer for the sins of men. The poor suffer for the sins of the rich. The weak suffer for the sins of the powerful. Jesus is a perfect example of the latter. So are the victims of wars from Iraq to the Sudan. The powerful flex their muscles and struggle with one another, and those without power suffer disproportionately. Second, the reading says that Christ suffered in order to bring us to God. How does one person's suffering bring us to God? The traditional theological answer is that Christ's death in some mysterious way (which varies, depending on the theory of the Atonement that is applied) reconciles us to God. Viewing Jesus as a representative of those most often victimized in society, how does the suffering of the poor or weak reconcile the rich or the middle class to God? It doesn't, unless we are able to see Christ's suffering in the suffering of those most like him. Only when we see Christ in the face of the poor who suffer will we realize our need not just to feel sorry for them but to repent of our sin, the first step in being reconciled to God. We who are rich need to repent of our greed, our selfishness, our nationalism, our arrogance, and our apathy, because all of these sins lead to the victimization of the poor. Just as important as these personal realizations, we also need to recognize the structural sins that cause the poor to suffer and work to rid society of these unjust structures as well. Sin will always cause suffering, so the best way to reduce suffering is to identify the sins, personal or structural, that are causing others to suffer and eliminate them.

For another discussion of this passage, click here.

Mark 1:9-15

Although the first three gospels are called collectively the Synoptic Gospels, their outlook on the life of Jesus is hardly identical. Matthew and Luke follow Mark, each in its own way, and sometimes they share a story with one another that is not found in Mark at all. The origin of these passages in Matthew and Luke that agree with one another where Mark has little or no text is generally attributed to a now missing source called Q, an abbreviation for the German Quelle, or source. The temptation of Jesus is one of the earliest such passages in the Synoptic Gospels, but unlike most examples of Q in Matthew and Luke, there is a corresponding fragment of the story in Mark. We almost never read it, however, for it lacks the dramatic scenes of Satan tempting Jesus three times and Jesus overcoming the temptation three times while quoting scripture. Verse 13 provides a cursory sketch of Jesus' temptation experience: Jesus was there forty days, he was tempted by Satan, he was with the wild animals (a point not mentioned in Matthew and Luke, a discussion of which will have to wait for another occasion), and the angels ministered to him. Verse 12, however, offers a picture that is considerably different from Matthew and Luke. Whereas the latter two both use different Greek words to explain that Jesus was led into the wilderness, Mark uses a much more forceful word. Most modern versions of Mark say that Jesus was driven out into the wilderness, which is a good translation, but it is important to note that this word in Greek is the same that Mark uses in 1:34 to describe Jesus' ministry of casting out demons. An equally valid translation, then, could say that Jesus was cast out into the wilderness. The contrasting use of this verb in these two passages signifies an important theological point. In 1:12, the Spirit (of God) casts Jesus out into the wilderness, a place of desolation often thought of as the abode of demons and remote from God. However, although Mark offers no details, Jesus clearly overcomes the temptations and defeats Satan, robbing him of his power (the angels signify Jesus' triumph). Fortified by his experience in the wilderness, Jesus returns to the "civilized world," the world where Satan traditionally has less sway, and he begins casting out unclean spirits, also called demons. The Spirit casts Jesus into the wilderness to confront and overcome the forces of evil, and when Jesus returns from the wilderness, having already demonstrated his prowess over evil there, he demonstrates his power over evil in the inhabited world as well. The temptation story in Mark, then, functions not as a showcase for Jesus' knowledge of scripture and intellectual defeat of Satan, but as an explanation of the source of Jesus' power over Satan in the world of ordinary humans. The same Jesus who, almost unbelievably, was driven by the Spirit of God into the jaws of evil emerges triumphant, ready to take the fight to the enemy. Jesus has been empowered for ministry: he has submitted to the power of the Spirit of God, and he has appropriated the power of God for his work in the world.

For another discussion of this passage, click here.