Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Daniel, textures on November 9, 2007| Leave a Comment »
When biblical prophets and seers look to the future that lies still over their horizon, they peer though a wide lens. The scope and scale become vast.
As the Ancient of Days appears in the book of Daniel’s seventh chapter, we are told that:
A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.
Posted in textures, tagged 2 John, biblical reflection, John, textures on November 8, 2007| Leave a Comment »
The Johannine letters obsess over a matter that seems a point of detail to readers intoxicated with the idea that action rather than ideas are the important thing. Jesus’ ‘coming in the flesh’ is stated over and over as a deadly serious litmus test by which true believers may be discerned over against those who traffic in lies. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Daniel, textures on November 8, 2007| Leave a Comment »
It is so often this way when the Lord or his messenger confronts a prophet-to-be in the biblical literature. The chosen mortal quakes in fear, falls upon his face, confesses that he’s nothing but a child, trembles in awe of the messenger and his Sender. One recognizes a familar pattern, a classifiable response. It is usually this way when heaven and earth mingle, the men and women at the seam of these two realities suffering the almost unspeakable angst that accompanies the unsought terror of standing at the juncture. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical studies, Daniel, textures on November 6, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Daniel, this Jewish advisor in the court of a foreign king, has perfected self-control and diplomatic restraint. He is able to recognize the majesty of a pagan king in terms amenable to the king and acceptable to the standards of Daniel’s truth. His self-image is not on the table, the hair-trigger of religious and ethnic sensitivity has not been set, the safety lock is turned to ‘on’. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged 1 John, biblical reflection, John, textures on November 5, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Among the strongest claims that the New Testament makes bold to present is the idea of our divine parentage and, therefore, our family likeness to Jesus. Awash in the notion of love as the foundational component of Christian life, the first Johannine letter discerns divine initiative at the root of this familial inclusion. Paul would have called it ‘adoption’. The Johannine tradition captures the same objective while avoiding that distinctive Pauline vocabulary:
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Daniel, textures on November 4, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Before the book of Daniel even gets to the Babylonian king’s weird dream and self-destructive behavior with his would-be advisors, a remarkable scenario is unfolded before the reader: the faithful Jew in the court of the foreign king. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Jeremiah, textures on November 2, 2007| 2 Comments »
When the Bible traffics in unconditional promises and everlasting guarantees, the modern reader easily loses the thread. This is in part because our view of history is less dramatic than that assumed by large portions of the biblical narrative.
We read such promise as verbal guarantee of an uninterrupted status quo. On the contrary, the narrative itself posits a dilemma that YHWH cannot or will not leave unresolved. Its point of reference is not the each-minute-of-all-minutes status of a promise, but rather the final outcome of history or of some large segment of history. YHWH is presumed to rule sovereignly over the story and to promise that a certain outcome will stand. It is understood that interruption and hiatus will from time to time be the experience of the people, a matter that creates both tension and expectation. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Jeremiah, textures on November 1, 2007| Leave a Comment »
With an unusual dramatic touch, Jeremiah faces off against a YHWH-prophet whose message of good news and spectacular deliverance from the Babylonian besieger must have sounded with a welcome ring in encircled Jerusalem. Hananiah’s symbolic and verbal artistry can be understood in a manner that aligns them with the more lyric moments of the book of Isaiah or even the consoling passages within the book of Jeremiah itself. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, textures, Titus on October 31, 2007| Leave a Comment »
For a man who occasionally becomes quite difficult to comprehend, Paul and his tradition have only the most modest tolerance for people who complicate straight-forward things. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Jeremiah, textures on October 31, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Jeremiah comes down to us not only as the weeping prophet. He is also a most realistic seer.
The text allows us to intuit the presence of many prophetic good-timers, making their rounds in the streets of besieged Jerusalem and claiming against the evidence of the Babylonian troops just over the wall that YHWH would never allow his prime-time city to be destroyed. They proclaimed an imminent miracle, an inviolable city, and an unconditional divine choice. (more…)
