Week 2: Guidelines for Community/Culture

Maybe before dinner tonight  (to make us hungry)..or after (for dessert)..... we'll show this short clip which helpfully summarizes some of our discussion last week:  "Apple or oranges?":


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TONIGHT'S DISCUSSION OUTLINE
GETTING STARTED/REVIEW:

• APPPLES AND ORANGES
• FOUR QUESTIONS
• REVIEW OF LAST WEEK, WITH MORE ON TWO OF OUR "LITERARY WORLD"  SYMBOLS: CHIASM AND INTERCALATION

TONIGHT'S BIBLICAL THEME: "GUIDELINES FOR COMMUNITY":

• TEN COMMANDMENTS AND WEDDINGS
• BUILDING A FENCE AROUND TORAH/LAUGHING BRIDE
• COMMUNITY HERMENUTIC

CULTURE:

• CULTURAL
• CROSS-CULTURAL
• COUNTER CULTURAL

WRAPPING (NOT 'RAPPING) UP:

• INTEGRATING SET THEORY
• INTRODUCTION TO PHILEMON
• HOMEWORK HELP

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After asking (not answering yet) our four quick questions (fill in the answers immediately with your very first gut instinct):

• 1)"In England, they drive on the ___________ side of the road"
• 2)"Boy, you can sure tell that_______________ is at work in the secular world nowadays!  All you have to do is look around!"
• 3)"Israel is on the continent of __________."
• 4)How many of you are in a cross-cultural marriage? ____

...and a quick review of our symbols:

...and adding a bit more info on two of them  (#3 and 5, chiasm and intercalation):
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?' 

            So the last will be first,
                               and the first will be last.

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And they can grow larger, and the parallelism can be more general, thematic.
And getting over VERSE-ITIS helps a lot in seeing chiasm in the big sweep.  This is Genesis 6:

Somtimes chiasms  are are so large that they  almost become a genre..or encompass an entire book.




Check this:

"Chiastic Understanding of the Gospel According to Matthew," 

by James B. Jordan

For another SUGGESTED BOOK-WIDE CHIASM OF MATTHEW,see:

 page 9 here.

These videos may help:


(200 points)

In fact, they can become as large as life,  See

James B. Jordan, “Chiasm and Life” in Biblical Theology Basics:

“Very much of human life is ‘there and back again,’ or chiastic. This is how God has designed human beings to live in the world. It is so obvious that we don’t notice it. But it is everywhere. This shape of human life arises ultimately from the give and take of the three Persons of God, as the Father sends the Spirit to the Son and the Son sends the Spirit back to the Father. We can see that literary chiasm is not a mere curiosity, a mere poetic device to structure the text. It arises from the very life of God, and is played out in the structure of the lives of the images of God in many ways and at many levels. It is because human beings live and move so often chiastically, that poets often find themselves drawn to chiastic writing. God creates chiasms out of His inner life, and so do the images of God.

Biblical chiasms are perfect. That is, they are perfectly matched to the human chiasms they address and transform. As we become more and more sensitive to Biblical chiasms, we will become more and more sensitive to one aspect of the true nature of human life under God. We will be transformed from bad human chiasms into good human chiasms. In this way, becoming sensitive to chiasm can be of practical transformative value to human life, though in deep ways that probably cannot be explained or preached very well.

One further thought. We saw in our previous essay that chiasms often have a double climax, one in the middle and the greatest at the end. The food we bought at market is put away in the cupboard and refrigerator when we get back home. Moving forward to a final climax is what all literature does, whether it has a middle climax or not. (Shakespeare’s five-act plays always move to a climax in the third and in the fifth acts.) This is just another way that human life matches literary production, in the Bible as well as in uninspired human literature. Becoming familiar with the shape and flow of Biblical texts will have a transforming effect on human life.”

James B. Jordan, “Chiasm and Life” in Biblical Theology Basics.

-link, Michael Bull’s blog: Theology you can eat and drink

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Mike Rinaldi, a Visalian, and filmmaker (and Fresno Pacific grad) told this   story at the first "Gathering to Bless Christians in the Arts":
Blake Snyder, the screenwriter behind the classicSave The Cat"  book became a Christian not long before he died. 

Often at this point in such a story, folks ask "Who led him to Christ?" 

Go ahead and ask. 

The answer is: 

Chiasm. 

It happened in large part because Mike, not even knowing if such a well-known and busy writer would respond to his email, asked him if he had heard about chiasm. 

Turns out Snyder was fascinated with it all, and Mike was able to point out chiastic structure and shape in scriptwriting....and one thing led to another...and then in Scripture. 

All roads, and all chiasms, lead to the Center and Source. 


Mike, of course, learned chiasm in THIS CLASS.
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we'll pick up right where we left off:

On the mountain.

We'll watch the rest of the first Mt. Sinai video, which we started last week (an excerpt of the segment from last week is posted on last week's post...and above)


..

Then we'll introduce  Colbert (interviewing a congressman about the Ten Commandments), which

turns out to have several helpful serious points about the "literary world" of   the  topic Here it is:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Better Know a District - Lynn Westmoreland Update
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

and the "question of the day"..

Off the top of your head, list words and ideas that come to mind when you think of the story of the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mt Sinai.

Then scroll down for the question..

Was "wedding" on your list?

                                        .....or "love"?

What does all this have to do with a wedding?

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AS A WEDDING:

The second  Ray VanderLaan video  on Mount Sinai  is  not online but both

episodes are on this DVD.

The second one dealt with the many"historical world" hyperlinks from Ten Commandments to wedding.

Too bad  the video is not  online, but most of the study guide IS..

see pp.197-251  here

THANKFULLY, though, here are ) the wedding videos of the Laughing Bride... these actually apply to our "historical world" conversation comparing the giving of the commandments to a wedding imagery:
Remember the 10 Commandments as a wedding?
Watch this:

Bonus: the processional:


Here is a longer version with yet some more classic moments.

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---PS Here is my wedding and funeral book story:

CLick:"It happens every time you officiate a wedding"

Check out this card I was handed at the wedding:

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---and if Jesus is a NEW MOSES of sorts, then we should look at

SERMON ON THE MOUNT:
Discussion on how Jesus was interpreting/reinterpreting the law of Moses/Torah(Matt 5:17-48).
Some would suggest that he is using the rabbi's technique of "Building a fence around the TORAH."

For example, if you are tempted to overeat, one strategy would be to build a literal fence around the refrigerator...or the equivalent: don't keep snacks around.

See:

What does building a fence around the Torah mean? 

Some wonder of this is what Jesus is doing here.  See:
Jesus' Antitheses - Could they be his attempt to build a fence around the Torah?

One can see how this could turn to legalism...and when do you stop building fences? See:

A Fence Around the Law

Greg Camp and Laura Roberts write:

In each of the five examples, Jesus begins by citing an existing commandment. His following statement may be translated as either "And I say to you... " or as "But I say to you ...” The first option shows Jesus' comments to be in keeping with the commandments, therefore his words will be an expansion or commentary on the law. This is good, standard rabbinic technique. He is offering his authoritative interpretation, or amplification, to God's torah, as rabbis would do after reading the torah aloud in the synagogue. The second translation puts Jesus in tension with the law, or at least with the contemporary interpretations that were being offered. Jesus is being established as an authoritative teacher who stands in the same rabbinic tradition of other rabbis, but is being portrayed as qualitatively superior to their legal reasoning.

After citing a law Jesus then proceeds to amplify, or "build a hedge" around the law. This was a common practice of commenting on how to put a law into practice or on how to take steps to avoid breaking the law. The idea was that if you built a safe wall of auxiliary laws around the central law, then you would have ample warning before you ever came close to breaking the central law. A modern example might be that if you were trying to diet you would need to exercise more and eat less. In order to make sure that that happened you might dispose of all fats and sweets in the house so as not to be tempted. Additionally, you might begin to carry other types of snacks or drink with you so as to have a substitute if temptation came around, and so forth. In the first example of not killing, Jesus builds a hedge that involves not being angry and not using certain types of language about others. One of the difficulties is that it becomes very difficult not to break his hedges. This might drive his hearers to believe that he is a hyper-Pharisee. Some interpreters have wanted to argue that Jesus does this in order to drive us to grace—except grace is never mentioned in this context. This is a wrong-headed approach to get out of the clear message that Jesus is proclaiming: you must have a transformed life. By building his hedges, Jesus is really getting to the heart of what the law was about. In the first example, the intent is not just to get people not to kill each other (though that is a good thing to avoid), rather it is there to promote a different attitude about how to live together. Taken together, the 10 Words (Commandments) and the other laws which follow in Exodus-Numbers paint a picture of a people who will look out for one another rather than just avoiding doing injury to one another. This becomes clear in Jesus’ solution at the end of the first example. The solution is not to throw yourself on grace or to become paralyzed by fear, but to seek right relations with the other person. There seems to be an implicit acknowledgment that problems will arise. The solution is to seek the best for the other person and for the relationship. This is the heart of the law.  The problem with the law is that it can only keep you from sin, but it cannot make you do good.  The rabbi Hillel said “what is hateful to you, do not do to others.”  In 7:12, Jesus provides his own interpretation “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.”  He changes the saying from refraining from sin, to actively doing good.  The thesis statement in 5:20 is “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” This then is how to exceed, or go beyond the law.  In each of the five examples, the way to exceed the law is to make the relationship right.

Instead of drawing a new line in the sand that you are not supposed to cross before you are considered guilty, Jesus, confirms that the center is "love your neighbor" and then just draws an arrow (vector) and tells you to go do it. There is never a point at which you are able to finally fulfill the commandment to love. You can never say that you have loved enough. In the gospel of Matthew, the supreme example of this is Jesus' own life and death. His obedience and love knew no boundaries.  --by Greg Camp and Laura Roberts




Ted Grimsrud, in "God's Healing Stragegy" suggests:

 "A better way [as opposed to legalistically egislating morality] to approach [the commandments] would be to ask first, 'What does this commandment teach us about God?'...Hence, the point of the commandments is not establishing absolute, impersonal, even coercive rules which must never be violated.  The point rather is that a loving God desires ongoing relationships of care and respect....Paul's interpretation of the Law in Romans 13 makes clear the deepest meaning of the law not as rule-following, but as being open to God's love and finding ways to express that love towards others: 'The commandments..are summed up in this word, Love your neighbor as yourself.'"  (pp. 33-34)

It's an "elevated righteousness" that seems to be called for.  Your text (p, 269) uses the phrase "higher righteousness," but I prefer the "elevated phrase" because
a)The U2 connection (:
b)"elevation" is a classic Jewish form of prayer"

...For the chasid, prayer is not something one recites, it is rather an exercise that one performs, or an
experience that one enters into.... There is no room for inhibition...singing and dancing are essential means by which ...he expresses his emotional cleaving to God….but
that desire for God has to be so overwhelming that any extraneous thoughts are excluded…If distractions are erotic in nature…and (one) faces up to the predominance of the sexual urge at both conscious and subconscious levels, and
its capacity to intrude even during prayer...then he has learned to take measures…Chasidism dealt with this by introducing the doctrine of the "elevation of strange
thoughts." This...technique not of sublimation, but of thought conversion, whereby the beauty or desirability of the woman is latched upon and used not as a sexual but rather as a mental and spiritual stimulus.... taught to "elevate" these thoughts by substituting the beauty of God for the
physical beauty that is currently bewitching us. (The pray-er) has learned to immediately contrast the pale reflection of beauty that humans are endowed with, on the one hand, and the supreme Divine source of authentic and enduring beauty,
on the other…-"Blessed are You: A Comprehensive Guide to Jewish Prayer," by Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen, copyright 1993. , link

More on U2 and Elevation here

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But it can get tricky living the elevated life, building fences around Law...If not prayerful/careful, one can become legalistic...Ever noticed the CHIASM Jesus uses to comment on the litmus test for law-keeping, the SABBATH?  "The Sabbath was made for humans,
                                   not humans for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27)...

I'll never forget taking the elevator from our towering Jerusalem hotel room down to the lobby for breakfast one Saturday.

Not only could I not push the lobby button,

but the elevator stopped automatically on every floor.
I wondered if I would make it down for lunch.

When I ordered, I realized that the waitress was not writing down any orders;
even the most complicated ones.

Writing was "work" on the sabbath,
as was pushing elevator buttons.
Thus, the "sabbath elevator"

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OK,  below is the backstory of the "LAUGHING BRIDE," which illustrates "building a fence around the Torah":

Oh, a  bonus: when we read the "beatitudes," the first section of the Sermon on the Mount:
-- do you catch any inclusio?
--Any chiasm  (seee this  and this)
See 5:38-7:15 in this clip:


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CULTURE
We'll suggest Jesus (in his historical world) was

• CULTURAL
• CROSS-CULTURAL
• COUNTER-CULTURAL

1)CULTURAL:


"All divine revelation
 is culturally mediated."
-Leonard Sweet, "Aqua Church 2.0," p.. 67...context

"Culture/matrix is with you...even when you go to church"

"Gaithers on Crack":





What is culture?
What isn’t culture?
Paul Hiebert explains that culture is the “learned patterns of behavior, ideas and products characteristic of a [group of people]."

Culture is "a way of thinking, feeling and acting by one or more people."



How many of you raised your hands for being in a cross-cultural marriage (Hopefully, all married people...I didn't say 'cross-racial')

2)CROSS-CULTURAL:
How many of you raised your hands for being in a cross-cultural marriage (Hopefully, all married people...I didn't say 'cross-racial')

DanNainan:

BUT before we go any further:



Those four questions from the top of the page/evening?

 Click here  (or review the "Gaithers on Crack" video above) to see my suggested "right answers." to the first two
questions , and the  first 24 seconds of the video below for answer to the 3rd:

Did you get it right?

Discuss how your answers to the  4 questions get you thinking about cross-cultural sensitivity and ethnocentrism..


This map will also mean a lot to you after tonight's class:

 
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3)COUNTER-CULTURAL:
 We'll just introduce this, and pick it up next time..
 see John 5:19, 30, Philippians 2:5-11....also Acts 10:38


So the last will be first,
and the first will be last:
How counter-cultural is that?

map credit kingPin68

More versions here.







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WRAPPING UP:

-Connect anything we are talking about to "set theory"  (bounded and centered sets from last week's post..

-If we have time, we'll read through Philemon to get oriented to your final project

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--- On the "Great Person" survey (see directions, page 21 of syllabus, you may conduct your survey via Facebook (status, tagged notes etc)/Twitter, or you may do all interviews via video

--Don't miss the "small print" at the bottom of page 21: This assignment includes a one-page essay.

If you did the interviews via video, you may do the essay on video as well (video of you processing the results out loud).

-Reminder of what we've said before:  a)Be sure you are working off the revised sylalbus (*see syllabus tab at top of page), and 

b)You'll notice some of the questions in the textbook relate to Scriptures we deleted from assigned readings.  But you will usually be able to answer the questions based on the textbook section, and your own opinion, without necessarily reading the related Scriptures.

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