canned laughter

Matthew 14

Jesus practiced a solitary form of prayer, alone on a mountain or in
the wilderness, fasting, and speaking to the universal Dad. His prayer
or meditation put him in an altered state (I think). Maybe he learned
this from John the Baptist, or maybe he learned it independently of
the baptizer, but they both seemed to practice a kind of mysticism
that used fasting and prayer to contact another reality, or another
perspective, another reference point, and maybe today people like this
are put under psychiatric care and medicated back to the norm. This is
why many said they were demon-possessed (psychotic) and others said
they were prophets.
When Jesus went into the wilderness after being baptized and initiated
into John's movement, he didn't talk to God, he talked to Satan and
the various traps he encounters could be the various pitfalls faced by
all the Jews of his generation, repeating the mistakes of the
Israelites in the wilderness, or creating a imitation empire, or
self-destructing by "tempting God." I haven't worked out this idea
yet. Maybe the temptations also correspond to roles he is expected to
play, as miracle worker, or as king of an empire, or as dead messiah?
Jesus didn't become a leader until John was put in prison. His style
is very different. The crowds don't go to him at first. He goes to the
people of Galilee, visiting different towns, and gets accepted or
rejected. He has a new revolutionary message and it is said he works
miracles. When John is killed Jesus seeks solitude, to be "apart." But
the crowds follow him, because John the Baptist is dead and Jesus is
IT, but many say Jesus is the reincarnation of John, who may have been
the reincarnation of Elijah. His compassion overrides his need for
privacy and he declares the spontaneous gathering a free festival. His
disciples are against this and claim there isn't enough food for
everybody, but Jesus officiates, like a priest, or a god, and there is
a surplus left over. After the crowds leave, Jesus gets his time alone
and the disciples get in a boat and get caught in a storm. When they
see him coming, and they are miles from shore, they think he is a
ghost. Jesus gives the classic "Fear not" of a Buddha and Peter tests
him, tempts him, but falls into his own fears. Now they think he is
Son of God. They have been travelling all over Galilee with him, but
he has become uncanny to them.
The earlier miracles were for individuals, people who were sick and
isolated. The feeding of the multitude met the ordinary collective
need for daily bread and could be read as a parable of the redistribution
of wealth, or as an expectation the masses had for their messiah.

flowering mask

today's hang up

face

parabolic curveballs

Matthew 12:46 - 13:58

"My people, hear my teaching;
    listen to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth with a parable;
    I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
3 things we have heard and known,
    things our ancestors have told us." Psalm 78

These parables of the kingdom are bookended by two stories involving Jesus' family. Do they reflect some distancing between the gospel writer's community and those in the Jesus movement loyal to Jesus' "brethren," particularly James, who were more conservative in regard to traditions and also more nationalistic? I have no idea. Jesus says his real mother and sisters brothers are the community of faith who will make the potential kingdom a reality. He is so obviously speaking figuratively here it feels stupid to point out that he doesn't mean his followers undergo a change of DNA or undergo a metaphysical transformation from son of a human dad to son of God. Why is it hard to see that the same poetic license is involved in calling Jesus the Son? Or is he saying that the community of faithful constitute a mother deity?

Jesus' disciples didn't all fast and weren't particularly observant to the traditions but they do his Father's will because they believe Jesus' revelation is true, or can be true, if they believe. If it has the potential to be true? I'm asking.

 The parable of the sower, speaking of "potens" - seed planting, and the potentials realized and unrealized. What kind of sower sows this way? What kind of Darwinist reading of this rather random diaspora could be done? (Thoreau's notes on the dispersion of seeds) Birds are natural sowers of seeds. Is Jesus the sower? He's broadcasting the news but only a few will understand it and will commit to acting on what they understand, but they will be fruitful. God's covenant to Abraham and promise to multiply his seed and give them possession of that still-disputed real estate comes to mind, and also John's warning that God can make sons of Abraham out of the rocks, and the Diaspora following the war with Rome.
The parable of the darnel (weeds) mixed in with the wheat, that will be separated out, bundled and burnt at "the end of the age."
The parable of the mustard seeds potential.
He uses the idea of a seed, or of cultivation as a metaphor in different ways to describe the creation of a new culture (leavening?) that realizes the prophetic message of a potential kingdom, the messianic age.

In the first century of what might as well be called the Christian Era, after the destruction of the second temple, some Jews joined a new cult that declared a new age of faith prepared by the early phase and based on the ministry and/or sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, a man whose thoughts and actions we only know through writings collected by his followers.
I don't believe this man had a plan for establishing the State of Israel and destroying the Dome of the Rock to re-establish the Jewish Temple where he will sit and be King of the Universe. Many people do believe something like this, including people I know and love. I have no desire to ridicule this belief in my blog, but I do want to explore what these writings collected by a specific community could have meant for that group. Did they believe Jesus' essential mission was to offer himself as a sacrifice, did they believe he came back to life and ascended to heaven and that he would return in their lifetime? Did Jesus teach this?
 I don't want to get hung-up on the historical Jesus myth. The story of Jesus, even stripped of the supernatural, and revised like Jefferson and Tolstoy and other post-Enlightenment readers, or given a modern misreading by post-Existentialist readers, or adapting to left or right political propaganda. like using old wineskins to carry new wine, created a culture out of scraps of an old culture destroyed in the insurrections of first century Palestine.

Jesus was conceived out of wedlock, but his stepfather and his mother called him a child of God. By the time he was thirty he had to decide to find out for himself if he was son of God or just some bastard, so he went  to meet the prophet many thought was Ezekiel, because who else would know? John identified Jesus as "Son of God" -- as the potential new king who could establish utopia.
This new Ezekiel put Jesus through an ordeal that began with being baptized in the Jordan and followed with a vision quest that was a forty day period of fasting "in the wilderness" that was a ritual reenactment of Israel's forty years in the wilderness in which the initiate is faced with the same temptations the nation faced in its history myth, temptations that questioned the national identity and the collective vision and faithfulness. The history myth tells the story of the Law and of the future kingdom that has no human king and the law is internalized. The prophets were the poet activists who described this future and criticized the nation for failing to be true to its potential and for injustice and bad ideology.

This gospel reading quotes Psalm 78, " I will open my mouth with a parable." This psalm was sung in the temple and tells the story of Israel's history myth and God's great deeds of liberation and providence, and reminds the listeners of God's punishment of Israel when it was faithless. The prophet is warning them as he reminds them of the promise.

"He drove out nations before them
    and allotted their lands to them as an inheritance;
    he settled the tribes of Israel in their homes.
But they put God to the test
    and rebelled against the Most High;
    they did not keep his statutes.
57 Like their ancestors they were disloyal and faithless,
    as unreliable as a faulty bow.
58 They angered him with their high places;
    they aroused his jealousy with their idols.
59 When God heard them, he was furious;
    he rejected Israel completely."

Like John, Jesus is teaching the prophetic message of rebuke and hope. Unlike John, he is teaching in parables. Is it to keep himself from getting arrested he speaks in code only some will understand? Only those who know scriptures? "With a parable he told them nothing." Only those whose interest is triggered and who will try to find out what he means? What is the hidden treasure or the pearl of great value? How will the good and the evil be sorted out at the end of the age? 

"Prophets are not without honor," The carpenter's son said wryly. 

Monday School

                                          Occupy Wall Street 2011

Matthew, chapters 11 and 12

"On that day the deaf will hear when a book is read, and the eyes of the blind will see out of impenetrable darkness. The lowly will once again rejoice in the Lord, and the poor exult in the Holy One of Israel."
Isn't Isaiah obviously speaking figuratively? Yet Jesus gives the reports of the blind and deaf being healed, lepers cleansed, the lame walking, the dead raised, as evidence that he is the Messiah. Isaiah went on to promise that those who "by falsehood deny justice to the innocent -- all these will be cut down." This is the unspoken part of Jesus' message to John.
John was still in prison and possibly having doubts about Jesus, based on what he had been hearing from his own disciples. Earlier, John's followers had asked why Jesus and his disciples didn't fast like John did, and Jesus responded that fasting was inappropriate when "the bridegroom," the Messiah, was present, they would mourn when he is taken away from them.
The prophet Malachi said Elijah would return before the terrible day of judgment. There is no historical evidence of destruction coming to the Galilean cities Jesus cursed, but he compared them to Tyre and Sidon, which Ezekiel condemned for not distributing their great wealth among the poor, and one of the signs that Jesus gave that he was the Messiah (or Christ) was that the good news was being brought to the poor.
Isaiah's prophecy envisions a collective enlightenment accompanying social transformation, a new ethos and spirituality, like the new wine that cannot be contained by old wineskins. Malachi had said that Elijah would return before this Messianic age and there was widespread belief that John was Elijah, because he was hairy and had a wide leather belt, but probably also because of the prophetic authority of his criticism of the priests who were appointed by Herod. John was known for his righteousness, respected by "the Jews" for his observance of Law, his fasting, his abstinence from alcohol. Jesus was being criticized for his laxity in regard to the Sabbath, and for drinking wine with tax collectors and non-observant Jews (sinners).
The gospels show the conflict between Jesus and ultra-orthodox Pharisees and scribes by accusing them of taking offense with the miraculous healing, Jesus' signs of power. Not that they doubted that such miracles occurred, but that they attributed his power to Beelzebul. Jesus had said that his disciples would also be accused of being in league with Beelzebul. In 2 Kings Elijah had shown that Beelzebul did not have the power and authority Yahweh has, in whose name Elijah could call fire down from heaven to wipe out an army. By accusing Jesus of being Elijah's nemesis, the Pharisees were driving a wedge between him and the new Elijah. Was John the new Elijah? Not literally but he is, if you believe, Jesus said. John was the one who prepared the way for the terrible day of the Lord, and now that time was here and the ritual fasting and abstinence practiced by John were out of date.

What did Jesus mean when he said, "Since the time of John the Baptist the kingdom of Heaven has been subjected to violence and violent men are taking it by force?"  I don't know. This is often taken to mean that those who are faithful are forcefully claiming the promised kingdom, but it is also interpreted as a reference to the violence of those resisting the kingdom, such as Herod throwing John in prison, or Pharisees plotting against Jesus. The latter interpretation, which I prefer, is consistent with "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God" and "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake," while the former recalls "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword," which he said before warning his followers that families will be divided by his message.  At the end of today's reading he says "'Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?' And pointing to his disciples, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.'"
Are Jesus' curses upon cities who reject his message terrorist threats of retaliation, or warnings of the natural consequences of injustice? I don't know.
Isaiah's prophecy that Israel is Yahweh's servant, proclaiming justice to the Gentile nations, is claimed by the Matthew community as referring to Jesus the Messiah, in whom "the nations shall put their hope." The kingdom of heaven is all about peace and justice, but the kingdom of heaven is in a state of siege.

Isaiah 42: 1-4
"I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not wrangle or cry aloud,nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope."
Matthew 11: 28-30
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will hve you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke s easy, and my burden is light."