teachings of jesus: wisdom tradition

Transcription

1 teachings of jesus: wisdom tradition Active Listening Concepts and Vocabulary: Subversive Wisdom: Personal Individual Justice: Aphorism: Guerilla theatre: Purity Code: Jonah (RSV & ESV) When God saw how [the Ninevites] turned from their evil ways, God repented of the evil he said he would do to them; and he did not do it. But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he was angry. He prayed to the LORD and said, "O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." Luke (NRSV) And again [Jesus] said, "To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened." Orientation Readings Using humor, story, irony and even cynicism, the wisdom tradition is often associated with the mystical or spiritual aspects of various faith traditions. It seeks to enable people to cope with the why s? of life without resorting to shallow, unsatisfying answers. -- Living the Questions Saving Jesus 2006 Living the Questions Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition - 1

2 Wisdom people ask: Why do the innocent weep? Why do the great suffer? Deuteronomy says, Well, you deserve what you get and you get what you deserve. Then Job speaks up and says, Don t try to sell me that bill of goods! -- Harrell Beck, Wisdom Tradition When Jesus tells a parable, what he is doing is making the audience think for themselves. If Jesus just wants to give a sermon, he can tell them what he wants to say. -- John Dominic Crossan, Saving Jesus People who aren t comfortable with ambiguity are really stuck. They ve got a lot of things they can t do: they can t read poetry, they can t read novels, and they can t watch TV. They can t read the gospels. They ve really cut themselves off. They re really reduced to reading lawyers texts. A lawyer is a person who thinks ambiguity is a bad thing, so you try to define the contract or the will so that nobody can break it. Well, even legal texts are ambiguous -- that s why you have to go to court and solve them. So it doesn t work. Part of the problem is, if you really think things have simple meanings, then we have to have interchangeable brains so that we have exactly the same experience; exactly the same meaning. That doesn t happen. --Brandon Scott on parables, from an interview for Saving Jesus As the anger built against Jesus and the radical new kind of community that he was forming, where no one was unclean and accepting people who are unacceptable in society, that anger started with those kinds of stories that Jesus told. People must have been stung. -- Helen Prejean, Saving Jesus Systemic and structural injustice is the line item in a budget that guarantees that half a million kids will be hurt six months from now -- and sort of nobody did it. It just sort of happened. There is personal individual justice. There is also systemic and structural justice and God watches over both. -- John Dominic Crossan, Saving Jesus What we get in churches today is Jesus as mommy. I mean he s usually got really good hair and a long white dress and you know that that can t possible be historical. He s gentle Jesus, meek and mild, and what s not to like? A Jesus who s gentle and meek and mild and everybody loves him cannot possible be historical. Again, he s got to be edgy enough for people to want to kill him and you don t want to kill, you know, mommy Jesus. -- A.J. Levine, Saving Jesus Saving Jesus 2006 Living the Questions Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition - 2

3 Proverbs personifies wisdom as a woman, translated in the Greek as Sophia. In Proverbs 8.5, this feminine voice of God utters words usually reserved for divinity: "Whoever finds me finds life. Although solidly rooted in Biblical, orthodox Christian, and Gnostic traditions (with even the Gospels portraying Jesus as a purveyor of Sophia or feminine wisdom in Luke and Matthew), the recent effort to reclaim Sophia as a legitimate expression of the divine feminine has met resistance. -- Living the Questions The tremendous influence of the wisdom literature in the Old Testament meant that Saint Paul could use the word Christ, Word, & Wisdom interchangeably. -- Harrell Beck, Asking the Big Questions Wisdom literature is concerned for the meaning of life, mostly by an appeal to experience. Strictly speaking, wisdom is something more than intelligence but includes it, more than knowledge though needs it, more than information though often depends upon it. Wisdom is little concerned for traditional religious thought, being mostly focused on human solutions or, as we might say today, with a humanist perspective. -- Culver Bill Nelson, essay: Wisdom Literature in the Hebrew Scriptures The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine. -- Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine The whole wisdom tradition is that nobody gives you the answers. The search for God is a quest that you and others with you go on. -- Stephen Patterson, Saving Jesus The poet Rilke says we should live the questions -- let them seep into us. And so not knowing is very appropriate. We re living in a time of great upheaval and great peril -- and our species obviously does not have all the answers. No one religion has all the answers. No one tribe, ethnicity or anything else has all the answers. We need to draw out all the wisdom we can get at this time in history. Living the questions and posing the questions to our various wisdom traditions is a very valuable exercise at this time. -- Matthew Fox, Saving Jesus Saving Jesus 2006 Living the Questions Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition - 3

4 Questions for Personal Reflection What are some of the characteristics of wisdom teaching? How is a parable different from a sermon? What might be some of the differences between mommy Jesus and Sophia Jesus? Discussion Questions (following each DVD chapter or entire program) Chapter 1 According to Scott, what are some examples of ways the Jewish tradition pokes fun at itself? What does Borg mean when he says that the path of Jesus is the way that leads beyond convention? Chapter 2 According to Crossan, how does the Parable of the Mustard Seed suggest that it might just be safer to keep God out of one s affairs? Chapter 3 Describe the difference between personal individual justice and systemic and structural justice. Chapter 4 Why can t gentle Jesus, meek and mild possibly be historical? How are some of Jesus sayings discussed by Levine different than how you may have interpreted them in the past? Saving Jesus 2006 Living the Questions Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition - 4

5 Chapter 5 How is the story of the Good Samaritan an example of the kind of radical wisdom being taught by Jesus? Chapter 6 Why is the Parable of the Leaven so radical for Scott? Additional Questions One element of the Deuteronomistic code is that riches and wealth are a reward from God for living a righteous life. What contrasting values do Jesus wisdom teachings present? Matthew 5.45 has Jesus say: God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. In what ways does this sentiment fit into the wisdom tradition? Scott suggests that there are two ways to approach the spiritual life: guilt and fear as the motivator, or love and life as the motivator. Explain. Saving Jesus Theme Question What element or learning from today s session will be most important in Saving Jesus in the 21 st century? Contributors in DVD Session 6: Marcus Borg: Jesus scholar, author of "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" & "The Heart of Christianity" Walter Brueggemann: Old Testament professor, author of "The Prophetic Imagination" & "Finally Comes the Poet" John Dominic Crossan: Jesus scholar, author of "Jesus, a Revolutionary Biography" Amy-Jill Levine: New Testament professor, Vanderbilt Divinity School Stephen Patterson: New Testament professor, author of "The God of Jesus" & "Beyond the Passion" Helen Prejean: Roman Catholic Sister, author of "Dead Man Walking" Bernard Brandon Scott: New Testament professor, author of "Hear Then the Parable" Saving Jesus 2006 Living the Questions Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition - 5