We continued our discussion of Stanley Hauerwas’s essay, “Discipleship as a Craft, Church as a Disciplined Community.” We picked up discovering his preference for brick buildings over glass buildings. Sure, he’s from a family of brick layers and he’s using the analogy of bricklaying to talk about discipleship, but here he’s critiquing modern liberalism – at least one form of modern liberalism that was in view when he wrote in 1991.
The glass building works as part of his argument against liberalism in two ways. First, he claims that building such buildings takes less skill than building brick buildings. I don’t know enough about construction trades to judge this claim. Second, a primary purpose in building a building conceived as “multipurpose” (need this be the same thing as a glass building?) shows lack of commitment to the authority present in tradition constituted crafts like bricklaying. I wasn’t willing to go that far with him. We did note that in our experience temporary buildings are common. When a church building gets to 40-50 years old we begin to think it obsolete. It might be obsolete in terms of construction: air conditioning, access, and energy usage that might have been deemed adequate when built, might not be cost effective to renovate now. The church building might also be obsolete in terms of location.
More important in our discussion was the role of mastery in a discipline/craft. When I become an apprentice I attach myself to someone who know and understands more than I do, but also one who has the know how to do the work. The authority of the master is not primarily a matter of power or tenure. It is not a solo act. The authority of the master comes from the master’s long submission to the discipline and the community that embodies it.
Stanley Hauerwas came from a family of bricklayers. It’s natural then, that as he looks for a craft to analogize to discipleship, he settles on bricklaying
OUR DISCUSSION of this section of his essay, “Discipleship as a Craft, Church as a Disciplined Community,” finally arrived at the “craft” bit. We saw that there is such a thing as “mastery” involved in a craft. We talked about the modern concept of being a church member (different from the biblical concept of membership) and being a disciple.
Though you’ve likely never heard of Mani, Manichaeism or a Manichaean view of the world is still very popular.
When Manichaeism looks at the world they see an absolute distinction between good and evil. There is no middle ground, nothing in between, just good and evil.
Have you noticed that such a view is still popular? We easily divide people into the “good” and the “evil.” Thinking this way, we commonly think of ourselves as some of the “good,” and all those who differ from us as the “evil.”
Have you seen this way of thinking, this way of assessing people? Maybe you’ve not only seen it but tried it out for yourself. If you haven’t done it yourself, maybe you’ve been the target of Manichaean thinking: Some person or group who thinking of themselves as wholly “good” has cast you, since you differ in some way, as “evil.”
Do you think this is a good way to operate? If you think this way about people, what have been the benefits to you and the people around you? If you’ve been the object of Manichaean assessment by others, has that been beneficial?
We’re still in Holy Week, racing toward the cross. Jesus knows it. Sanhedrin leaders are plotting for it. The Romans are uneasy. The disciples are confused. Yet in the midst of everything happening this episode had many laugh out loud moments.
As with the previous episodes of the season, this one is also framed by the opening conversation from Jesus’ Upper Room Discourse. This time most of what he says is taken from John 14. Curiously one of the things onscreen Jesus says is exactly opposite what John 14:17 Jesus says. In the Bible we read Jesus saying of the Holy Spirit, “He lives with you and will be in you.” In this episode Jesus says, “He dwells in you and will be with you.” The key difference is in the tense of the verbs. “Lives” and “dwells” are both acceptable translations of the Greek verb we see in the text. Reading the rest of Jesus’ teaching here in John, seeing the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost in Acts, and reading teaching elsewhere in the New Testament, the future tense of the second clause makes more sense. The Holy Spirit is currently with them. In the future, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit will be in them. So it looks like the movie got this exactly wrong by having Jesus say the Holy Spirit was currently in them. But then I pulled out my Greek New Testament and saw that there was a textual variant there. What they had Jesus say fits with one of the variants (a variant I haven’t seen used in the main English translations I’ve looked at). Here’s the textual note from the NET Bible:
tc Some early and significant witnesses (P B D* W 1 565 it) have ἐστιν (estin, “he is”) instead of ἔσται (estai, “he will be”) here, while other weighty witnesses (P א A D L Θ Ψ ƒ 33 M as well as several versions and fathers), read the future tense. When one considers transcriptional evidence, ἐστιν is the more difficult reading and better explains the rise of the future tense reading, but it must be noted that both P and D were corrected from the present tense to the future. If ἐστιν were the original reading, one would expect a few manuscripts to be corrected to read the present when they originally read the future, but that is not the case. When one considers what the author would have written, the future is on much stronger ground. The immediate context (both in 14:16 and in the chapter as a whole) points to the future, and the theology of the book regards the advent of the Spirit as a decidedly future event (see, e.g., 7:39 and 16:7). The present tense could have arisen from an error of sight on the part of some scribes or more likely from an error of thought as scribes reflected upon the present role of the Spirit. Although a decision is difficult, the future tense is most likely authentic. For further discussion on this textual problem, see James M. Hamilton, Jr., “He Is with You and He Will Be in You” (Ph.D. diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2003), 213-20.
In a previous episode when Jesus has done something astonishing, something that challenges the status quo, he was asked, “By whose authority do you do these things?” His answer then was, “My own.” The same question and the same answer happen in this episode, this time with reference to his cleansing of the temple. Having not seen that in any scriptural texts, I’ll again say that if I were making the movie I wouldn’t have put those words in his mouth.
Shmuel, confronted with the possibility that when Jesus says, “Tear down this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” he is not threatening the temple but prophesying its destruction, turns to Jeremiah. “Jeremiah,” he says, “was the last person who prophesied the destruction of the temple. See what that led to – they threw him in a pit!” (Paraphrased) I couldn’t what Shmuel thought about Jeremiah’s action – whether he should or shouldn’t have spoken the word of the LORD against the temple. I was also left wondering why such a thought didn’t at least raise the possibility Jesus could be following in the steps of Jeremiah – as a true prophet.
I notice that Jesus doesn’t give the disciples much in the way of a heads up as to what to expect. Sure, he’s already told them several times that he’s going up to Jerusalem, that the leaders of the people will reject him, beat him, kill him, and that he’ll rise on the third day. For all the good it did them at the time, he might as well have been speaking in Chinese. We do see Judas, however. As Bible readers we know where he’s going. Reflecting on Jesus’ confrontation with the leaders of the people, Judas says mournfully, “This week there is a chance for the Messiah to unite all the people.” So far in his eyes, Jesus is blowing that opportunity. It looks like he’s being set up to try to force Jesus’ hand.
At the end of the episode Jesus is on the Mount of Olives. For a brief time a few of his disciples join him and we hear the content of the Olivet Discourse. Then after they’ve left him alone (at his request) he weeps over Jerusalem. He knows what they’re going to do. He knows what they’re missing out on. He knows what’s going to be coming their way. His heart of love is broken for them.
I see Jesus acting that way toward Jerusalem and I wonder if his followers in this age will be willing to have a broken heart for those we reckon as opponents today. It sure looks like we’re much happier with angry, “flip the tables,” proclaim judgment Jesus, than the weeping Jesus.
I just finished a sermon series on Jesus vs the gods. The “gods” I referred to in the messages were names from the ancient world: Greco-Roman names plus one, Mammon, from the Semitic world. Those their names aren’t as much in use today (though given some of the recent re-paganization, we’ll see what happens), the ideas and values they embodied are still quite popular.
Season 5 depicts the beginning of Passion Week. It’s framed by teaching of Jesus from the Upper Room Discourse in the Gospel of John with bits from Luke 22.
The sharpest bit from Luke 22 is v.36. In the NIV Jesus says, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” Generations since have not known quite what to do with what Jesus says about swords. On the one hand, we have the vast majority of Jesus’s words – and all his actions – that point in the direction of pacifism, of not using swords. Reading the Book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament the first generation certainly doesn’t look like “sword people.” The Chosen adds the line, “Ultimately your protection comes from above” to point back in this direction. On the other hand, we have the human tendency toward violence. We want to use swords (or better yet, in our day, guns) to defend ourselves. When we hear Jesus saying, “Sell your cloak so you can afford a weapon for self-defense,” we feel justified in our inclination.
John 2 is also featured in this episode. First, the climax is Jesus “cleansing the temple.” Though it likely happened once, and that once in the week leading up to his crucifixion, John puts it at the beginning, in Jesus first trip (first during his ministry) to Jerusalem. There is also a return to the story of Thomas. We have flashbacks to Thomas and his girlfriend packing up their wares to serve wine at the wedding in Cana, the first story in John 2. Those flashbacks set us up for Thomas’s confrontations with that girlfriend’s parents.
One of the strengths of the visual format is showing how big the temple business was. It took huge amounts of work to keep the sacrificial machinery going. Any disruption in the money changing and animal buying would put a kink in the flow of activity.
Caiaphas, the high priest, is a major focus of the episode. In his conversation with Herod we see that he has received a revelation from God and is staking his action on that revelation. We see that revelation in John 11. He’s been told that it’s “Necessary for one man to die for the nation.” Caiaphas is absolutely sure that he understands this revelation. Here’s Jesus, a false Messiah, causing a big ruckus in Jerusalem. Pilate has threatened Caiaphas – it’s his job to keep the peace, to prevent riots. If the Romans have to send in the troops to put down a riot, the people will certainly suffer. Caiaphas is sure that wants him to lead the saving of his nation by doing away with Jesus the messianic pretender.
A simple reading of history shows that Caiaphas’s being absolutely sure of himself yet absolutely wrong is not a rare thing. We seem to take such stances frequently.
By the end of the episode everyone seems convinced Jesus has gone mad. Caiaphas is hardened in his interpretation of the revelation. The crowds are stunned. Judas thinks Jesus has blown his opportunity to play the crowds into crowning him king.
Last week we looked at this paragraph in Stanley Hauerwas’s essay, “Discipleship as a Craft, Church as a Disciplined Community.”
For example, one of the great problems facing liberal and conservative churches alike is that their membership has been schooled on the distinction between public and private morality. Liberal and conservative alike assume that they have a right generally to do pretty much what they want, as long as what they do does not entail undue harm to others. The fact that such a distinction is incoherent even in the wider political society does little to help us challenge an even more problematic character in relationship to the church. Yet if salvation is genuinely social, then there can be no place for a distinction that invites us to assume, for example, that we have ownership over our bodies and possessions in a way that is not under the discipline of the whole church.[emphasis added]
Our culture is highly individualistic. Christians, live others in this culture, are formed by this individualism. Individualism is the air we breath. It just seems natural. Because we’re individualists, we easily assume that salvation is an individual thing: I “get saved.” I “go to heaven when I die.” I get to live in “MY mansion” in heaven. What we looked at in this most recent class was support for the belief, put forward without argument by Hauerwas, that “salvation is genuinely social.” By looking at passages like Genesis 12, Exodus 19, 1 Peter 2, and especially Ephesians 2, we see that from the very beginning God’s objective is to have a people who are his very own. Being part of this people is part of what salvation is about.
The essay we’ve been looking at, “Discipleship as a Craft, Church as a Disciplined Community,” was written with a particular audience in mind. He writes,
In this respect it is interesting to note how we—that is, those of us in mainstream traditions–tend to think about the loss of membership by mainstream churches and the growth of so-called conservative churches. Churches characterized by compassion and care no longer are able to retain membership, particularly that of their own children, whereas conservative churches that make moral conformity and/or discipline their primary focus continue to grow. Those of us in liberal churches tend to explain this development by noting that people cannot stand freedom, and therefore, in a confusing world devoid of community, seek authority. Conservative churches are growing, but their growth is only a sign of pathology.
The group I’m leading through this essay are members of my church, a Global Methodist congregation. We think of ourselves as a “conservative” church, an “other” to the audience Hauerwas is addressing. We feel like his “we” doesn’t include us. The readers of The Christian Century in 1991 make up an audience different from our church – and likely also different from readers of that magazine today. But there are other complications as well.
Even those of us who reckon ourselves to be “conservative” in American churches think and act like “liberals,” valuing authentic freely made decisions by individuals above all else. None of us like being told what to do. We easily come back with the juvenile, “You’re not the boss of me.” His observation here is that churches that maintain a form of authority (better, discipline) are the churches that are growing. This has been true for most of the past forty years, but it’s unclear if this is still the case. My own guess is that the form of church life he advocates in this essay is good and necessary, but not sufficient. We still need a move of God lest we entrust ourselves to method.
Hauerwas speaks of conservative churches as focusing on “moral conformity.” While there is often a message of moral conformity in such churches, it is an illusion to think that messages of moral conformity do not play a role in nonconservative churches. Instead, there is a difference of moral vision, a different conception of the goods to be pursued.
At the end of the discussion we begin a discussion of Hauerwas’s later line, “Yet if salvation is genuinely social…” on the assumption that given the individualism of our culture and of American Christianity, the idea of salvation being social will not be obvious to all.
We continued our discussion of Stanley Hauerwas’s essay from The Christian Century (1991), “Discipleship as a Craft, Church as Disciplined Community.” We spent most the time talking about our culture’s infatuation with autonomous individualism and how that infatuation shows up in church. Hauerwas uses the conclusion of Dead Poets Society to make his point.
He says,
Such a view of ethics [what we see in our culture, circa 1991] can appear quite anticonventional, but even the anticonventional stance gains its power by appeal to what anyone would think upon reflection. This can be nicely illustrated in terms of the recent movie, The Dead Poets Society. It is an entertaining, popular movie that appeals to our moral sensibilities. The movie depicts a young and creative teacher battling what appears to be the unthinking authoritarianism of the school as well as his students’ (at first) uncomprehending resistance to his teaching method. The young teacher, whose subject is romantic poetry, which may or may not be all that important, takes as his primary pedagogical task helping his students think for themselves. We watch him slowly awaken one student after another to the possibility of their own talents and potential. At the end, even though he has been fired by the school, we are thrilled as his students find the ability to stand against authority, to think for themselves.
Our culture assumes there are two options: either we “think for ourselves” or we “mindlessly give in to authority.” The first is obviously the right thing in our culture. That we should think for ourselves is true; that thinking for ourselves means thinking by ourselves, is a profound mistake.
The ethic of “thinking for ourselves” is related to the ethic of “being countercultural.” The culture, or to use a word we see in scripture, the “world,” is something we Christians differentiate ourselves from. We resist its guidance. There are two big challenges with this. First, all of us are in the world, being formed by the world. Second, the world is not monolithic. We can be counter to one part of culture while in complete captivity to another.
He continues:
This movie seems to be a wonderful testimony to the independence of spirit that democracies putatively want to encourage. Yet I can think of no more conformist message in liberal societies than the idea that students should learn to think for themselves. What must be said is that most students in our society do not have minds well enough trained to think. A central pedagogical task is to tell students that their problem is that they do not have minds worth making up. That is why training is so important, because training involves the formation of the self through submission to authority that will provide people with the virtues necessary to make reasoned judgment.
Hauerwas stomps on cultural orthodoxy here. How can we as Christian leaders have our minds formed – and contribute to the forming of others – so our minds can be relied upon to think well for ourselves? What he says here about “training” is essential – and we know it’s essential in other domains of life. Hauerwas is going to want to make these same claims about students in church, in Christian settings.
The church’s situation is not unlike the problems of what it means to be a teacher in a society shaped by an ethos that produces movies like The Dead Poets Society. Determined by past presuppositions about the importance of commitment for the living of the Christian life, we have underwritten a voluntaristic conception of the Christian faith, which presupposes that one can become a Christian without training. The difficulty is that once such a position has been established, any alternative cannot help appearing as an authoritarian imposition.
The simple “decision to follow Jesus” is a good starting point. That alone, however, won’t result in our being Christian disciples.
We’re back to watching The Chosen on Wednesday nights. Here are a few thoughts & observations from episode 1.
The biblical parts of the episode (as opposed to the imaginative parts) are mostly drawn from John 12, 16, and a bit of 17. The episode opens with Jesus talking to the disciples in the Upper Room and segues back to his Triumphal Entry a few days before. The disciples are alternating between feeling absolutely sure they know what’s happening to total incomprehension. Jesus, knowing exactly what lies ahead, doesn’t project the level of excitement the disciples do. The happiest we see him is when he stumbles into a betrothal ceremony.
Jesus’ friends among the Jewish religious leaders confront him when he’s on the verge of entering Jerusalem. They don’t think anything good will come from what he’s about to do. They fear for his safety. The biblical symbolism accompanying Jesus – the donkey he’s riding, the palm branches and cries of “Hosanna” – are speaking more loudly than he himself is. These guys sincerely wanted to help Jesus. I wonder how often we sincerely want to help Jesus but, like them, miss the point.
No one looks more excited than Judas. He is absolutely sure this is the time Jesus will openly claim the kingship.
The filmmakers get something right about the relationship between Pilate and Caiaphas: Pilate’s big concern was that there be no riots. Whatever else Caiaphas did, he needed to keep the peace.
There is a small group of anti-Jesus people who have arrived in Jerusalem shortly after Jesus and his band. They are absolutely sure Jesus is a false prophet who is leading the people astray. They are convinced that in opposing Jesus they are doing God’s work. I was reminded of Saul in Acts 9 “breathing out murderous threats.”
Bandits No More 