Mark and His Rooms

Who is Mark, the author of the Gospel which bears his name? It is a commonplace that he wrote in Rome, and that what he wrote was largely the content of Peter’s preaching. He is sometimes known by the double name John-Mark, assuming that the man mentioned in Acts chapters 12, 13, and 15 is the same as the author.

Scholars are conflicted: some see Mark as the earliest of the four Gospels, while other view Mark as an epitome written after the others had been fixed. Richard Lenski writes:

Mark is first mentioned in Acts 12:12, where he is named only incidentally to distinguish his mother Mary from the other Marys mentioned in the New Testament. Peter, released from prison by an angel, went to the house of this woman, which seems to have been near by. This was in the spring of the year 44, at the time of the Passover. The fact that this is called her house indicates that she was a widow at this time, but how long her husband had been dead, or what name he bore, is not known. Mark was very likely present among the many who prayed for Peter. It is worth noting that here, where we first hear of Mark, it is in connection with Peter; the last we hear of him, when he wrote the Gospel in Rome, shows him again in closest association with Peter.

Because Mary’s house is mentioned in Acts, some readers have assumed that a special significance is to be attached to it. Is Mary’s house in Acts, mentioned with its “upper room,” to be identified with “upper room” narratives in the first five books of the New Testament?

Yet there must have been, at that time and in that region, thousands of houses, and other buildings, which had “upper rooms.” Probability is against the identification, even if we reduce the field to those in and around Jerusalem.

Much has been made of this house of Mary’s. It is made the house in which Jesus ate the last Passover and instituted the Holy Supper; likewise, the house to which the eleven returned after the ascension of Jesus, and where ten days later the Spirit descended upon the assembled disciples (Acts 2:1, 2).

There are two different words in play. In Mark 14:15, one Greek noun is used for the upper room; in Acts 1:13 a different noun is used. Some English translations obscure the fact that two different words are used; other translations make it more obvious.

Both words mean “an upper room,” and in the latter passage the article refers to this room as one that was well known. The man bearing the pitcher of water is supposed to be Mark’s father. Mark is said to have been present at the Lord’s last Passover and at the institution of the Supper. He is also supposed to have followed to Gethsemane, with only a linen cloth cast about him (Mark 14:51). All this is ingenious enough but hardly convincing. We cannot believe that, if Mark had been present fully dressed in the upper room with Jesus, he would have left the house and gone through the streets out to Gethsemane clad only in a linen sheet. Every detail in the story of the last Passover leaves the impression that no one was present in the upper room except Jesus and the disciples. Mark was not there to wash the feet of the guests, Jesus himself had to wash the feet of the Twelve.

Does any doctrine or article of faith hang on the question about these rooms? Probably not. Mark’s narrative is known for its speed. Would it be in Mark’s character to introduce subtle allusions? If Mark wanted to draw our attention to the upper room, would he have given it a more prominent role in his narrative?

Perhaps it is worth noting that an upper room was usually quieter and less likely to be disrupted. Both in Mark 14:15 and in Acts 1:13 (and possibly Acts 12:12), God placed the followers of Jesus, not in a busy market square in the center of town, but in place appropriate to His plans for them.

Wrangling about Wright

The writings of N.T. Wright are long and complex. These texts have attracted passionate fans and animated detractors, who in turn write their own long and complex texts. Nicholas Thomas Wright, responding to them, writes more long and complex texts, and so we descend into the swamp of polemic theology.

Theologians in disputation tend toward hyperbole, and so the reader might want to be wary when he is assured that a certain text is “orthodox” - it will probably contain a dash of heresy. Likewise, a text advertised as “heretical” will probably include a fair dose of orthodoxy.

Setting aside both real and feigned controversy, a look at Tom Wright’s words can, in any case, be an occasion for reflection. The wrangling about Wright and his critics will perhaps eventually be forgotten in a century or two, but meditation on Jesus and His Word is always worthwhile.

In a 2009 book titled Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, Wright sets out the book’s program in a preface. He writes that the concept of justification is contentious because

the question is about the nature and scope of salvation. Many Christians in the Western world, for many centuries now, have seen “salvation” as meaning “going to heaven when you die.” I and others have argued that that is inadequate. In the Bible, salvation is not God's rescue of people from the world but the rescue of the world itself.

While it is true that many lay Christians casually or superficially equate salvation with entry into the afterlife, a diverse spectrum of informed theologians, who might otherwise agree on little, concur with Wright. He acknowledges that he is offering a truism. He contends, however, that while this truth is widely acknowledged, the full implications of it are rarely calculated.

Another way of stating this problem is to note that the word ‘salvation’ has a wide sense and a narrow sense. Those who preach to the common man are fond of saying that “there’s nothing more to salvation than Jesus, but there’s more to Jesus than salvation.” If we understand this slogan to be using ‘salvation’ in the narrow sense, i.e. restricted to the question of how one gets into the afterlife, then it’s expressing a sentiment similar to what Wright is expressing.

One might point to the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, where Paul writes about Jesus that

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

If the word ‘salvation’ means ‘reconciling all things in heaven and on earth to God,’ then ‘salvation’ refers to a bit more than simply getting individual humans into the afterlife. So at least part of what Wright is saying here is that we need sort out the broad sense and the narrow sense of the word ‘salvation’ and the various contexts in which we use that word.

It is progress to clarify that the word ‘salvation’ has both a broad sense and a narrow sense, but there is more to the matter than that. Further investigation into the question will, however, be helped by more careful and consistent use of vocabulary. Instead of ‘salvation,’ for example, one could say either ‘entry into the afterlife’ or ‘God’s project to reconcile all aspects of creation to Himself.’

If the first task in Wright’s preface to this particular book is to ask about the ‘what’ of salvation, the next task is to ask about the ‘how.’ He writes:

Second, the question is about the means of salvation, how it is accomplished.

To this question, Wright answers with some variation of the common notion of substitutionary atonement, organized by God’s grace and accessed through faith. Here, too, Wright has lots of company, and in one, or more, major currents of theology. But he adds that many instances of this common theme underemphasize or underappreciate the role of the Holy Spirit.

Some formulations of atonement, substitutionary or otherwise, make it the activity of the Father and the Son, and give the impression that the Holy Spirit was out playing golf while the whole thing happened. Wright argues that the Holy Spirit is an integral part of salvation. Wright could have helped himself here to Luther’s phrasing: the Holy Spirit “calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies” the followers of Jesus. Wright does not quote these words of Luther, but it seems that he is reaching for a similar concept.

The next task which Wright sets for his book is about the nature of justification and its relation to salvation. Again, definition of words is a central part of the task.

Third, the question is about the meaning of justification, what the term and its cognates actually refer to. Some Christians have used terms like justification and salvation as though they were almost interchangeable, but this is clearly untrue to Scripture itself.

There is certainly nothing new about asking provocative questions related to these topics, or initiating debate about them. That’s been going on for 2,000 years. Is Wright saying anything new? He would probably give the traditional theologian’s answer - that, no, he’s saying something very old - as old as the text of the New Testament itself.

It is nearly pointless to attempt to analyze who - Wright or his critics - is ‘orthodox’ or ‘heretical’ - because those words, in turn, have ever shifting definitions.

Wright does seem to be working to contextualize Jesus as a Jew, as placed within a Heilsgeschichte which took place, at least for its first 2,000 years, in a Hebrew cultural context and an Israelite social context. In this, too, he is neither alone nor the first. Already in the late nineteenth century, theologians who followed the concept of the Heilsgeschichte to its logical conclusion understood the need for exploring the context of Jesus, including His Jewishness.

In exploring the interrelations between, and the definitions of, salvation and justification, the playing field for both Wright and his opponents must be a clear statement of grace - that which is unearned, unmerited, freely given: a gift. In layman’s terms, the usual avoidance of speaking about the individual “accepting” Jesus, and to speak rather of “receiving Jesus,” and in general to speak not about what believer does, but rather about what Jesus does and did.

There is room for substantial variation and divergence, even mutual exclusivity, on that field. To stray from that field, however, is to be clearly out of bounds.

The word ‘justification’ in New Testament Greek has legal overtones - to have been justified in a court of law - and Wright will point to key passages in the New Testament which emphasize the courtroom image. The problem for us is, of course, that we are not justifiable - we are sinners. We are born with a corrupt and flawed sinful nature, and we further go on to commit actively, or omit passively, our own sins. We are guilty. What can it mean, then, that we are justified? How can God treat us as innocent? This has led to endless theological wrangling along the lines that God attributes to us a justified status - He labels us ‘just’ - a notion sometimes called ‘forensic’ justification.

To use a simple analogy: if a man owes a large debt, one which he can’t possibly pay, and another man pays it for him, the clerk will mark the first man’s paper with the word ‘paid’ - even though the man did not pay his bill. The payment has been attributed to him.

To gain insight into justification and salvation, Wright urges the reader to consider that

Paul’s doctrine of justification is about the work of Jesus the Messiah of Israel.

Whatever Jesus did then, and whatever he’s doing now, Wright tells us, He did and does as the Jewish Messiah. The fact that He’s generous enough to include Gentiles in no way entails a repudiation of His Judaism. Here, naturally, we speak of a first-century Judaism, not of what might be called ‘Judaism’ 2,000 years later. Jesus finds His context in a robust Judaism which was willing to consider the supernatural, willing to consider an afterlife, and willing to at consider Jesus and His teachings - many of the adherents of that Judaism also became the first adherents of Jesus, and they saw no internal contradiction in doing so.

The second step which Wright takes in exploring the relation between justification and salvation is to examine the concept of covenant as it unfolds in the Heilsgeschichte. Taken as one continuous narratives from the call of Abraham to Christ’s resurrection and to the day of Pentecost, ‘covenant’ is an essential concept in any version of the Heilsgeschichte.

Paul’s doctrine of justification is therefore about what we may call the covenant — the covenant God made with Abraham, the covenant whose purpose was from the beginning the saving call of a worldwide family through whom God’s saving purposes for the world were to be realized.

A third step in Wright’s exploration of the connection between justification and salvation is the exploration of the courtroom image. As already noted, ‘justification’ is a bit of Greek legal jargon. But beyond this, there are other courtroom vocabulary in the New Testament - an extended legal metaphor.

Perhaps, however, this legal talk is not so metaphorical. God is a judge, humans stand accused, there is an accuser against the humans, and there is an advocate for the humans. This is, literally, a trial.

Paul's doctrine of justification is focused on the divine lawcourt. God, as judge, “finds in favor of,” and hence acquits from their sin, those who believe in Jesus Christ.

The fourth and final step which Wright outlines for his project is to look at the end: the Heilsgeschichte does not end with the day of Pentecost, it continues into the future, to a day when God unveils a new heaven and a new earth.

Paul's doctrine of justification is bound up with eschatology, that is, his vision of God's future for the whole world and for his people.

Any version of the Heilsgeschichte which fails to include some version of a finite end to the Heilsgeschichte - which is at the same time a concrete beginning of a new paradise - is incomplete. The starting point of this Heilsgeschichte, a covenant made with Abraham, includes already a vision of the renovation of all creation.

The project which Wright sets out for his book is, at first glance, neither new nor very heretical. But, as theologians say, taking delight in their deliberately ironic use of a common idiom, the devil is in the details.

Freely-Given Grace

God is habitually about the business of given people something better than what they deserve. Yet we humans are ever tempted to think that somehow we have persuaded God, by our good behavior, to give us something - or we’re thinking that we have a right to request something from God because of what we’ve done.

Facing this repeated error - arrogance, really - on the part of people, Moses gave a stern lecture to the Israelites as they were about to enter the Promised Land. He wanted them to be clear about why they were going to occupy or possess this land:

After Yahweh your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “Yahweh has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh is going to drive them out before you. It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, Yahweh your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that Yahweh your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiffnecked people.

To make sure that that the people understood what Moses was trying to say, Joshua, who led after the death of Moses, reminded the people of this fact, and gave more details. Joshua was speaking around 1406 B.C., but cited events that happened prior to 1446 B.C.:

Joshua said to all the people, “This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods.’”

Joshua is directing the people’s attention to the starting-point of their history: the beginning of the Heilsgeschichte, the beginning of salvation history. Abraham was called by God to be a foundation of the redemption process, not because Abraham was so righteous, but because God wanted to display His ability to defeat sin, death, and the devil.

Around 2091 B.C., God chose Abraham to be the head of tribe. This tribe, through a long and complex history, would become a nation. That nation would host the Messiah.

God chose Abraham to launch the process by which the Messiah would arrive. It was not because of Abraham’s righteousness that God chose him. Abraham lived in the city of Ur, east of the Euphrates, a part of the Babylonian region. It may be difficult to reconstruct exactly which belief system Abraham held prior to God’s call. But we can say with certainty that Ur was a civilization thoroughly steeped in polytheistic paganism, featuring gruesome human sacrifices.

In any case, Joshua informs us that Abraham’s father, Terah, worshipped idols.

When God rescued the people from slavery and brought them out of Egypt, around 1446 B.C., it was not because they had been so faithful and righteous. During the 400 years of the their time in that country, they had also worshipped idols. Joshua says,

“Now fear Yahweh and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve Yahweh.”

What is the impact of these texts 3,000 years later? We are reminded that we do not have our blessings - our material possessions, our spiritual faith, or our personal relationships - because we’re such nice people.

We are sinners. We are doubly sinful: once because we’re born with a corrupt nature, and twice because we commit our own sins.

But God gives us things far nicer than we deserve. The only reasonable option we have is to thank Him. We can sometimes do that by praising Him, and sometimes by serving our fellow human. It is comforting to know that we are getting better than what we’ve earned!

Isaiah's Bed Metaphor

Isaiah’s poetry is rich in inventive use of language. His metaphors, similes, and imagery are creative. This is true of the other Hebrew prophets as well. In chapter twenty-eight, Isaiah warns the city of Jerusalem that it will fall.

He tells the inhabitants of this city that their efforts to provide for their own security by means of diplomatic treaties (cf. Isaiah 30:2 and Hosea 12:1) will be in vain. He refers to Egypt and Assyria, with whom Judah had made such treaties, as ‘death’ and ‘Sheol’ because not only would those treaties fail to provide the anticipated protection, but also because Egypt and Assyria would be among the nations to attack Judah.

By contrast, true protection had already been instituted by God, a stability labeled a ‘foundation’ and a ‘cornerstone.’ But the inhabitants of Judah have rejected this provision. Beyond the immediate context of Judah’s national defense in the 700s and 600s B.C., this message reminds readers to find their confidence and security only in Jesus.

God will enable these aggressive nations to attack both kingdoms - Israel and Judah. (They had been one united Israelite kingdom until Solomon’s death, when they split after a civil war.) God will allow suffering to overtake Judah, which is a brief deviation from His normal pattern. For this reason, Isaiah calls His actions in this case ‘strange’ and ‘alien’ - Philip Melanchthon describes it this way:

He calls it the “strange” work of the Lord when He terrifies, because to make alive and comfort is God's own proper work. But He terrifies, Isaiah says, for this reason - that there may be a place for comfort and making alive. For hearts that are secure and do not feel God’s wrath hate consolation. In this manner Scripture is accustomed to join these two, the terrors and the consolation. It does this to teach that there are these chief parts in repentance: contrition and faith that comforts and justifies. Neither do we see how the nature of repentance can be presented more clearly and simply. For the two chief works of God in men are these, to terrify, and to justify and make alive those who have been terrified. Into these two works all Scripture has been distributed. The one part is the Law, which shows, reproves, and condemns sins. The other part is the Gospel, i.e., the promise of grace bestowed in Christ.

Isaiah goes on to examine the productive nature of God’s wrath. Although God allows misery to overtake Judah, it is not merely a negative and destructive process. God habitually brings good out of evil. The devil may take momentary delight when God briefly loosens the restraints which limit his activity. But the devil’s happiness soon fades when God extracts something good from the evil which the devil has wrought.

The prophet expresses this in an agricultural metaphor. The farmer’s actions toward the earth may seem violent - ‘ploughing’ and ‘opening’ and ‘harrowing’ - but they are only for a time, and they are for a constructive purpose. Seed will be sown and a harvest reaped.

Likewise, the actions of the harvest can be violent - ‘threshing’ and ‘beating’ and ‘crushing’ - but these actions are likewise limited in duration and produce nutritious and healthy food.

Therefore hear the word of Yahweh, you scoffers,
who rule this people in Jerusalem!

Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death,
and with Sheol we have an agreement,

when the overwhelming whip passes through
it will not come to us,

for we have made lies our refuge,
and in falsehood we have taken shelter”;

therefore thus says the Lord God,
“Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion,
a stone, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation:
‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’
And I will make justice the line,
and righteousness the plumb line;
and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies,
and waters will overwhelm the shelter.”

Then your covenant with death will be annulled,
and your agreement with Sheol will not stand;

when the overwhelming scourge passes through,
you will be beaten down by it.
As often as it passes through it will take you;
for morning by morning it will pass through,
by day and by night;
and it will be sheer terror to understand the message.

For the bed is too short to stretch oneself on,
and the covering too narrow to wrap oneself in.

For Yahweh will rise up as on Mount Perazim;
as in the Valley of Gibeon he will be roused;

to do his deed — strange is his deed!
and to work his work — alien is his work!

Now therefore do not scoff,
lest your bonds be made strong;
for I have heard a decree of destruction
from the Lord God of hosts against the whole land.

Give ear, and hear my voice;
give attention, and hear my speech.

Does he who plows for sowing plow continually?
Does he continually open and harrow his ground?

When he has leveled its surface,
does he not scatter dill, sow cumin,
and put in wheat in rows
and barley in its proper place,
and emmer as the border?

For he is rightly instructed;
his God teaches him.

Dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
nor is a cart wheel rolled over cumin,

but dill is beaten out with a stick,
and cumin with a rod.

Does one crush grain for bread?
No, he does not thresh it forever;
when he drives his cart wheel over it
with his horses, he does not crush it.
This also comes from Yahweh of hosts;
he is wonderful in counsel
and excellent in wisdom.

In the midst of this passage, Isaiah uses an unusual metaphor - a bed which is too short and a blanket which is too narrow. Physically and concretely, such circumstances would keep the prospective sleeper ill at ease and in a process of continual rearrangement.

God’s wrath, and the message explaining God’s wrath, leave the listener restless. Lasting inner peace arrives only with Jesus and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. Martin Luther writes:

Two proverbial comparisons are used: The bed is short, the cover is narrow; and so one has to adjust to the situation. Therefore also by affliction we are driven to the Word away from our presumption. Jerome applies this to marriage, where the husband says to his wife: “The bed is narrow, it cannot hold both me, your husband, and an adulterer. Either I or the adulterer has to fall out of it.” Thus Christ, our Husband, cannot be there at the same time as our presumption. One has to fall. But this thought of Jerome’s is allegorical. Let us understand it literally concerning distress. For just as the shortness of the bed keeps us from stretching our limbs but makes us pull them up so that we do not fall out and get cold, so distress holds us together so that we do not fall away from the Word of God, neither in good times or in affliction, but by faith abide in it. The cross teaches us how to snuggle up, since in good times we sometimes stroll and stray, inwardly by presumption and outwardly by our endeavors, our lusts and luxuries, and other evils.

Johann Peter Lange and Philip Schaff reflect on the dialectical moment in preaching which creates discomfort - that which is the “Law” in the “Law and Gospel” paradigm:

Is not that a dreadful preaching, when one finds himself in a situation which is fittingly compared to a bed that is too short, or a to a covering that is too narrow? - This is a distressful condition. For resistance is encountered on all sides, and the means are insufficient to any undertaking.

The Law, then, is a complex thing. It is a conviction of one’s own sin and guilt, which is in itself already a complex, inasmuch as one has one’s own committed sins as well as one’s inherited sinful nature; but it is also a sense of doom about the consequences of that guilt. Additionally, it is a restlessness, an Angst, which leaves one without inner peace.

For the ancient residents of Judah, as well as for the modern soul, relief arrives with Jesus. No treaties with Egypt and Assyria - no postmodern efforts to find a meaningful foundation in one’s emotions - are effective in soothing the soul, and are in fact eventually to inflict further anxiety upon the soul.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and He breaks into our uncomfortable bed of spiritual turmoil, bringing not only peace, but hope, and the possibility of meaning by means of serving one’s fellow man.

Pope Francis - His Moral Perspective?

One need not be a practicing Roman Catholic to find pope-watching to be a thought-provoking pastime. The papacy, even if one must honestly disagree with its dogma, is nonetheless a source of interesting ideas.

Naturally, general public interest in the workings of the Roman Catholic church is shaped by reporting which centers either on only socially controversial questions, or on the intrigue generated by the selection of a new pope.

But a more reflective consideration of the material goes past the superficial presentations in the news media.

Both the non-Catholic and the anti-Catholic media covered offhand remarks made by Pope Francis I shortly after he took office in 2013. Prematurely reading ideas into the pontiff’s words, they later experienced, as Kathleen Parker writes,

chagrin to some who too soon interpreted Francis’s broad compassion as a precursor to doctrinal changes related to marriage.

Learning that Francis was not preparing a rebellion against the church’s expressed understanding of marriage, the disappointed media reverted to its previous pattern of alternatingly ignoring or disparaging the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Thus there was little coverage when Francis

delivered a pastoral message that is consistent with the church’s long-held beliefs on marriage.

While the media insist on oversimplifying the narrative - either the pope will stay with tradition or flatly oppose it - they missed the more important development. Pope Francis has indeed made, or is at least attempting to make, a major change in the Roman Catholic church’s perspective on homosexuality. As Kathleen Parker frames it,

What’s different is his language. He has sought fresh ways to see and think about things.

Francis has continued the obvious stance of the Roman Catholic church: it is a sin to engage willfully, physically, and deliberately in homosexual genital contact.

But Francis has made a major departure from past patterns of statements on the topic. What he seems to be articulating is a view in which the church’s major task is not moralizing, denouncing sin, or placing disproportionately large amounts of effort into justifying the moral stance.

Perhaps Francis is expressing the notion that the church should make clear moral statements, but not invest large efforts into producing argumentation and social action surrounding those statements. In short, maybe Francis is saying that the church as been placing too much energy into what are called the ‘culture wars.’

To deemphasize the culture wars is not, however, to stop engaging the culture or to stop resolutely affirming moral teaching. It is precisely this point which eludes much reporting. Francis is

unyielding in his definition of family — a man and woman joined in marriage.

One idea which one might attribute to Francis is this: the church should say, yes, voluntary homosexual behavior is a sin, but the church has other important business to do. The church should and must enunciate unambiguous ethical propositions, but then proceed to feed the poor and preach the Gospel of Jesus.

The church should not let itself get bogged down in endless debates about human sexuality, nor let itself be baited by those in the public arena who are continually attempting to provoke it.

Unequivocal moral declarations should be made, but should not become the major focus of the church. Every effort should be made to ensure that positive ministry is the centerpiece of the organized church.

On such a point, an interesting comparison can be made between the Roman Catholic church and the Salvation Army. The latter organization has made clear moral statements about human sexuality, but has made them in passing, and maintained ministering to the physical and spiritual needs of the poor as its major mission and the vast majority of its effort. Is Francis attempting to nudge his church in a similar direction?

Francis clearly has suggested that he wants to make pastoral changes without changing doctrine.

Under this interpretation, Francis is in no way compromising the moral stance of the church. He is simply placing it within a larger vision of the church’s proper functions.

Comparing homosexuality to other sins is instructive. Smoking cigarettes, failing to properly maintain one’s physical possessions, using inappropriate words in public or in private, failing to eat a proper amount vegetables, failing to donate to charities which care for the poor - all are sins. Why allow the church’s energy to be consumed in great disproportion about one particular sin?

To be sure, there are other interpretations of Francis. With so many reporters writing about the Vatican, any number of opinions about the current pope are available. Time will tell which are correct.

To all appearances, however, it seems that Francis is urging the church to move forward in positive ministry, spreading the love of Jesus to all people, because it is a foundational point of dogma that all people are sinners.

In this way, those who engage in homosexual acts are no different than anyone else: all are sinners, all are hopeless and helpless without Jesus, and all can receive hope and help from Jesus. All humans are utterly dependent on God’s forgiveness for their grave moral failures.

Without weakening the church’s moral determination on questions of human sexuality, Francis appears to be expressing the idea that the church needs simply to move forward in positive ministry. Once the clear ethical proposition has been expressed, the matter is settled. Energy is better used to feed the poor and declare God’s love to all people.

Our Human Nature: Blind and Asleep

The New Testament uses the metaphors of sleep and blindness to describe our human nature. We go through this life, through this world, spiritually asleep, or at least very groggy - and spiritually blind, or at least very myopic.

A person walking in such a condition is a danger to himself and to others. With an unsteady gait and bad vision, he’s likely to collide with something or someone. Damage or injury will result.

On a spiritual level, we humans aren’t likely to see or fully comprehend the dangers around us - sin, death, and the devil - or understand the dangers from within - our own sinful nature.

We can’t see the good paths which have been opened to us - and if we could see them, our shaky steps would soon stumble. We can’t see the Savior who’s there to help us.

C.F.W. Walther, who was president of the Missouri Synod in 1847, served in that capacity until 1850 and again from 1864 to 1878. In addition, he headed Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, where he also taught theology (1850–87). Regarding the spiritual fogginess which is human nature, Walther wrote:

Ach, meine Lieben, unselig ist der Mensch, welcher aus diesem natürlichen geistlichen Schlaf nicht schon hier erwacht! Dieser geistliche Schlaf ist nichts anderes, als der sichere Vorbote des ewigen Todes oder, was dasselbe ist, der ewigen Verdammnis. Allenthalben schallt uns daher in Gottes Wort die Stimme entgegen: „Wache auf, der du schläfst, und stehe auf von den Toten, so wird dich Christus erleuchten.“ Diese Stimme ertönt auch in unserer heutigen Sonntagsepistel. O, so gebe denn Gott, daß sie heute nicht nur in unser Ohr, sondern auch in unser aller Herz dringe, daraus allen Schlaf der Sünde verscheuche und uns zu einem neuen Leben in Christo erwecke! - Doch ehe wir dieser Stimme unser Ohr leihen, laß uns vorher den Herrn selbst hierzu um seines Heiligen Geistes Gnade anrufen in stillem Gebete. -

Being human, we go through our earthly existence with impaired spiritual consciousness and impaired spiritual vision. Our only hope is that Jesus takes us by the hand, and leads us, sometimes pulling us against our wills, sometimes picking us up and carrying us.

On our own, we are helpless, witless, and clueless.

We are not doomed to be this way forever. There is a better future. Jesus will lead us, sleepy and imperceptive as we are, through this life.

In eternity, however, God will remake us - we will see clearly (I Cor 13:12) and will be fully awake and alert.

Geopolitical Nightmares

Questions become complicated when ethics, spirituality, politics, and history intersect. The Middle East is a region full of such intersections.

Palestinian think Mitri Raheb wrestles with questions about the Israeli-Palestinian tensions. Those tensions, he argues, are set in the larger context of the world-historical relations between the Middle East and the rest of the earth.

The western end of the Mediterranean has been the object of tug-of-war struggles between major world powers for millennia. Egypt and Babylon, Persia and Greece, Rome and its successors, and the Ottoman Empire, to name only a few, have successively desired, fought over, or occupied this region.

The small and diverse ethnic groups who have been the successive native inhabitants of the region feel themselves to be pawns in struggles between bigger players. The ethical challenges posed by the situations there, by the area’s history, and by competing theological interpretations of the region’s events are complex.

From which perspectives can or should this part of the world be considered? To the Europeans it’s east; to the Asians it’s west. Mitri Raheb reminds us that we should be aware of our perspective - that we will not achieve a perfectly neutral “objective” assessment of the region. Everyone is somewhere, and from that point, he sees the world. If we cannot achieve the ideal neutrality, then at least we should be conscious of that circumstance as we proceed with our considerations. Raheb writes:

I’m often invited to speak about issues related to the so-called Middle East. I like to commence these occasions by stating that this is terminology that sounds obvious, as if everyone knows what we are talking about, and yet it is a misleading. The question to pose is: middle of where and east of what? Once this question is asked, people realize that that we are dealing with a Eurocentric view of the world. Only by looking at our region of the planet from Europe does one see it as east / southeast. To distinguish it from the Far East, Europeans first called it the Near East and later the Middle East.

Imperialism has shaped the region. From Persians to Alexander the Great, from Mohammed’s first conquests to the Ottomans, the Levant has been the object of imperial ambition. The Seljuk Turks fought viciously in 1098 A.D. against Egypt’s Fatimid caliphate to conquer and occupy Israel: that would not be the only time that Muslims killed Muslims in a power struggle over this coveted bit a real estate.

The terminology, Mitri Raheb asserts, used to discuss the region has been shaped by these centuries of imperial ambition:

It is noteworthy that the term was coined in the mid-nineteenth century when Europe was at the height of its power. The region’s name is thus closely related to imperial power. The use of the term because widespread only after the collapse of a vast Ottoman Empire that had held the region together for hundreds of years. The designation of the Middle East is therefore part and parcel of the colonial history of the region.

While many empires - both those arising in the Middle East, and those from outside it - have sought to control or occupy Canaan, it has been the European interests which have been blamed the most. Perhaps because their presence in the region has not been one of merely military occupation, but one of cultural and economic influence. Such influence may be, in some ways, more bitterly resented than the stationing of soldiers in the region.

While Europe developed a growing artistic and scientific culture, the formerly thriving civilizations of the Middle East became less creative under the influence of Islam: the burst of intellectual activity which energized chemistry, mathematics, physics, architecture, and music had its roots in Europe and blossomed there, while Muslim lands produced ever fewer inventions and discoveries.

Aware of their decline and nostalgic for the former cultural glories which surrounded lands like Babylon, Persia, and Egypt, residents of the Middle East resented being named by Europe. Scholar Marc Van De Mieroop writes:

Reconceptualizing the Orient as the Near / Middle East and Far East vis-a-vis Europe reaffirmed the central position of Europe in this imagery and further peripheralized the East, Europe being the Metropolis.

The powerful resentment, arising from the knowledge that Middle East had once been a center of civilization and was now on the margins of it, and from the palpable sense of decline among those who lived there, was directed toward Europe, a latecomer to civilization, which was now surpassing it Ancient Near Eastern cultural parents.

This sense of humiliation needed a scapegoat: Europe would be blamed by Islam for the damage which had been inflicted upon the region. Salim Tamari writes:

The idea of the Middle East cannot be separated from the power to create and impose categories of knowledge on the rest of the world. The Middle East exists because the West has possessed sufficient power to give the idea substance. In this regard the colonial past and the imperial present are parts of the equation that make the Middle East real.

Yet Europe is not guiltless. It could have intervened to rescue the endangered cultural energy and creativity of the Middle East. It could have presented a more humane face at certain key points in the convoluted narrative of the Crusades. Mitri Raheb notes also that the region is ill-defined: the terminology is not a precise name.

But behind this name is not just a colonial perspective but an intrinsic identity question. The Middle East is not easy to pinpoint, because it has no definition or boundaries. While to some and in certain contexts it once meant the whole of the area from India to in the east to Morocco in the west, and from Turkey in the north to Sudan in the south, it is understood today more or less as the area covering the Arabian Gulf to the east, and Syria and Iraq to the north, encompassing Egypt in the west, and as far south as the Sudan.

The diversity within the Middle East makes it difficult to define: not only a spectrum of quarreling Islamic sects, but Jews outside of Israel and Christians scattered across the region form a religious smorgasbord. The Iranians are ethnically Persians, not Arabs. The Turks and Kurds likewise have a unique non-Arab heritage.

One important feature of the Middle East is that it has no “middle” or center. Rather, it has different centers of power separated by deserts and/or mountain chains.

Yet by forming narratives about empires and imperialism, we risk losing sight of humanity. All the parties in the Middle East, and all the parties outside of it, share the common human condition: they are tragically flawed yet contain traces of an original divine image. The commit moral evils, yet are deeply loved by a generous God.

Geographically speaking, part of the Middle East is located in Asia, but part is also found in North Africa. In fact, the bulk of the Middle East could be called West Asia. This is the term used, for example, at the United Nations. The other portion is still referred to as North Africa.

If all the people in and around the Middle East share the same human nature, then they share the same needs, and the same inability to provide for them. It doesn’t matter whom we blame for a long history of injustice. What matters is obtaining justice, and that’s the one thing that humans can’t do. We dare not rely on our efforts to put things right: the only possible outcome of such attempts will be even more injustice.

Justice is divine, and peace is a fruit of God’s intervention, not humanity’s efforts.

Historically speaking, and for over a millennium, from Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC to Charlemagne in the eighth century AD, the nexus of the region was located in the west, where the Mediterranean was the center and the region became part of “Europe.” The rise of Islam and its spread throughout the Middle East pulled the region away from Europe’s sphere of influence, making it part of the Arab-Islamic world.

It is no mere coincidence that Jesus did His major work in this region of the world. He chose it as the proper stage for His mission to help humanity.

Religiously speaking, the region changed religion at least four times, from “paganism” to Judaism, to Christianity, to Islam. Because of these not inconsiderable realities, the region was incapable of self-definition and thus the prevailing empires imposed their weltpolitik.

Geopolitical considerations lead ultimately to a thousand dead ends. Hope is divinely dispensed, and humans can only respond with gratitude. There are possibilities for good things to happen in the Middle East - justice and peace and reconciliation - but they will not be brought about by human effort.