Here are some items from last Sunday’s LCMS church activities.
A. The main Scripture of the service was John 3, in which Jesus has a
secret conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus. Jesus tells Nicodemus
that he must be born again, and Nicodemus incredulously wonders how a
man can go into his mother’s womb a second time. We had a skit in which
the prosecutor interrogated Nicodemus. Nicodemus said that he first
became interested in Jesus after Jesus displayed passion for God by
cleansing the Temple. Nicodemus, too, disliked the selling that went on
in the Temple, for it made the Temple look like a marketplace. But he
tolerated it, since at least it made the Temple some money.
B. I am wondering what exactly the setting of these skits is supposed
to be. I initially thought that the setting was Jesus’s trial, but
Nicodemus was talking as if Jesus had already died and was buried, so
that must not be it. At the same time, the prosecutor was saying that
perhaps Jesus should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, after
hearing that Jesus had said one must be born again.
C. Aside from the question of setting, the prosecutor’s statement
about insanity got me thinking about Nicodemus’s bafflement at Jesus’s
statement. Over two decades ago, I read John MacArthur’s The Gospel According to Jesus,
and MacArthur doubted that Nicodemus in John 3 interpreted Jesus
literally to be saying that a person had to be physically born a second
time. For MacArthur, Nicodemus’s problem was spiritual: he did not want
to repent and surrender to God, which going into one’s mother’s womb a
second time symbolized. One might think that the Jewish authorities
would recognize simile and metaphor when they saw them, both from a
common sense standpoint and also because rabbinic literature includes
figurative language. But, in the Gospel of John, people appear to be
more obtuse than that. Nicodemus misunderstands “born again.” The woman
at the well in John 4 thinks that Jesus is saying she can literally
drink a certain kind of water and never thirst again, meaning she need
not come to the well anymore. The Jews in John 6 ask incredulously how
Jesus can give them his flesh to eat. They interpret Jesus
hyper-literally, and thus Jesus’s word make no sense to them. C.S. Lewis
popularized the “Lord-Liar-Lunatic” trilemma: either Jesus is God as he
claims, or he is insane, like someone who claims to be a poached egg.
Interestingly, Jesus’s critics heard him and thought that he was insane
(John 10:20).
D. The pastor commented that Jesus’s critics thought Jesus was being
illogical, yet Jesus had logic. John 1 calls him the logos, after all, a
term used for the order that underlies the cosmos. Jesus’s logic is
that we cannot save ourselves but need God to save us. Nicodemus asked
if he himself needed to go into his mother’s womb a second time, as if
Nicodemus needed to act. Jesus, however, stressed that Jesus came from
heaven and was God’s way of salvation.
E. The Sunday school class will be studying the Book of Hosea.
Specifically, the pastor will focus on passages in Hosea that the New
Testament quotes. In the first session, the pastor gave background about
Hosea. Northern Israel was prosperous, and Israel’s enemies were in a
such a state of disarray that they largely left Israel alone. Israel
felt that she was doing just fine with God, and Israel in her prosperity
forgot God. We, too, tend to forget God when things are going well.
True, but Israel did not figure that it needed no religion at all, for
it worshiped Baal. I may ask about that in the future, though I am shy
about asking questions.
F. The pastor said that Hosea was grouped with the Twelve because the
Jews liked fives. The Pentateuch consisted of five books, so the Jews
who put together the Hebrew Bible grouped other things into five. In the
case of the prophets, they had five books: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
Daniel, and the Book of the Twelve. The point that arises in my mind, of
course, is that the Jewish Tanak places Daniel in the Writings section,
not in the Prophets section. Moreover, the prophetic writings of the
Tanak include, not only books such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, but also
Joshua and I-II Samuel. There may still be something to what the pastor
is saying, though. The Jews did like to groups things in five: the Book
of Psalms has five sections, for example. Plus, the Septuagint includes Daniel among the prophetic writings.
G. The pastor talked about how prophets became institutionalized as
an office, such that people could be trained to be prophets, as occurred
in the prophetic schools of Elijah and Elisha. God sometimes called
prophets charismatically, as he did with Amos, who was not an official
prophet. But there was also a prophetic office. I wondered how a person
could be “trained” to be a prophet: either one heard from God or one did
not. Can one be “trained” to hear from God? Well, in modern day
charismatic circles, there is such a notion. Was that the case back
then? The pastor replied by saying that people may have been part of
multi-generational prophetic families, and they were waiting to hear the
divine call; he also said that prophets were the prototypes to the
scribes, the interpreters of the law, which would make them preachers
who can receive training. A lady in the class remarked that, even if
official prophets did not hear from God, they could still claim to do so
and deliver a false message, like the false prophets in the Bible. In
the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah’s school preserves and passes on his sayings
(Isaiah 8). Isaiah hears from God, and his students pass on (and even
interpret) what Isaiah hears. That scenario does not really fit the
prophetic schools of Elijah and Elisha, who did not write books. Still,
perhaps their students continued their legacy. I recall a presentation
that someone delivered about prophecy at Hebrew Union College. The
presenter went into studies about traditional as opposed to charismatic
prophecy, and, unfortunately, I do not remember the meat of what she
said. The Anchor Bible Dictionary did not entirely help on
this. It did say that, in some countries of the ancient Near East,
institutional prophecy included divination, and my guess is that this
would entail training. How do you read the goat entrails? The biblical
religion shies away from divination, though. Were people appointed to
prophetic office after they manifested gifts? Could gifts be passed on
to students, as Elijah did with Elisha?
H. Some of the things that were said brought to my mind scholarly
discussions. The youth pastor said that Nicodemus probably became a
believer because he took care of Jesus’s body after Jesus’s death, which
was not done for criminals. That brings to mind the debate that Bart Ehrman put on the table
about whether Jesus was historically buried. Acts 13:28-29 says that
the Jewish leaders as a group buried Jesus. When Joseph of Arimathea and
Nicodemus buried Jesus in John 19:38-40, was that out of piety, or were
they acting as representatives of the Sanhedrin? Could it be both:
someone at the Sanhedrin needed to bury Jesus, since that was its job,
and, out of their devotion to Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus
volunteered?
I. The pastor said that Hosea treats Israel’s time in the wilderness
after the Exodus as a honeymoon (see Hosea 2:15), in contrast with her
forgetfulness of God amidst prosperity. After the Exodus, Israel was in
love with God; Jeremiah 2:2-3 follows that vein. The pastor contrasted
that with how the Pentateuch depicts the wilderness period: Israel
complains, and God sends serpents to bite the Israelites. Scholars have
held that these reflect different traditions
about the wilderness period. Many of them would doubt that the
Pentateuch’s wilderness stories are historical but rather reflect later
political agendas: the dispute between the priests and the Levites, for
instance. If one wants to treat both the positive and negative
traditions about Israel’s wilderness period as historical, I suppose one
can. Israel was enthusiastic about God at first but then complained, or
God at times chooses to look at Israel through rose-colored glasses, or
to focus on the positive rather than the negative.