“To the ends of the earth, not to the end of our tethers”

Simon Barrow of Ekklesia writes on the missiological aspect of the current strife in the Anglican Communion. We’ve been here before, he says – as early as the first century CE and the angst between Peter and Paul, between Jewish-Christians and Gentile-Christians:

What does all this have to teach us today? Well, it might suggest to us that Jerusalem isn’t always right – or wrong! It might make us ponder the idea that if we take the Bible seriously, then scriptural precedent… should not become an obstacle to the Good News and to God’s gracious work among those we may have come to think of as unclean or unworthy. The mission of Acts is to the ends of the earth, not to the end of our tethers.

Fissiparity

Surely it’s only a matter of time before some biblical archaeologist somewhere uncovers a fragment of parchment with a textual variant for Matthew 18:20…

For where two or three are gathered in my name, there is schism in the midst of them.

An anointed State?

In ancient Jerusalem the dominant description of reality revolved around the conviction that (a) the temple is YHWH’s permanent residence; (b) the monarchy is YHWH’s chosen agent; and therefore (c) the city is safe from and immune to the threats of history. Mutatis mutandis, the dominant description of reality in U.S. society is that (a) democratic capitalism is the wave of the future that is sure to produce peace and prosperity; (b) the United States is God’s chosen agent in the spread of the gospel of democratic capitalism; and (c) the United States is by divine assurance immune to the threats of history. In both ancient Israel and the current sense of self in the United States, there is a theologically rooted exceptionalism that imagines privilege and entitlement of idolatrous proportion… We have, in the U.S. church, spent a very long time ceding over our evangelical voice to accommodation, to an alliance with U.S. exceptionalism and a timid refusal to say what we know most deeply. [W. Brueggemann, The Word Militant (Fortress Press 2007), 18]

Brueggemann writes in and to the contemporary U.S. situation; I as a Briton would be the first to add that his critique applies no less strongly to British colonialism and empire of recent centuries.

My dog’s got no nose…

… how does it smell? Awful.

Inspired by Scott Bailey’s take on an age-old question, here are some Biblical and theological snippets ripe for redaction. But go read Scott’s, it’s better.

Moses: Take a dog, a male one year old without blemish, and bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting. There Aaron shall cut off its nose.

Isaiah: And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a dog of unclean nose, and I live among a nation of unclean noses…” Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my nose with it and said: “Now that this has touched your nose, your sense of smell has departed and your aroma is blotted out.”

Amos: And the LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A dog with no nose.” Then the LORD said, “See, the stench of injustice rises in the midst of my people Israel, yet they smell it not.”

John of Patmos: Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great dog, with seven heads and ten tongues, and no nose on any of its heads.

Origen: But since our present object is not to make inquiry about every case, but about the passage before us, let us, adopting a figurative interpretation, consider who we may say the dog was, and what was his nose which was absent, and what is meant by the dog smelling.

Augustine of Hippo: Canis extra ecclesiam naris non habet.

Bultmann: Our task is to demythologize such accounts of noseless dogs.

Girard: Mimetic rivalry dictates that a dog must be singled out. The one with no nose is the obvious victim; see how quickly a pretext of its foul smell is adduced as evidence of its guilt! Through this mechanism of scapegoating and violence, harmony is restored to the community until the mimetic cycle begins once again.

Hauerwas: In the colony, the community founded upon non-violence, the stinking dog has no need of a nose.

Jesus: Let those who have noses, smell.