Timothy & Countering The Culture (part 11)

Not only would the Roman governors look upon Christians with suspicious eyes, it would be difficult to doubt that Christians would happily return the favor.  While there is certainly an element of Christianity that rightly and responsibly challenges the power of governments, calls the world’s rulers to account, challenges arrogant actions and arrogations of power, and regularly holds up restraining hands that tell governments that “you go here and no further,” there is, of course, a legitimate role for governments.  For balance and a response, those same hands that are held up in attempts to restrain governments, insisting that they not go beyond their rightful place as the church says “we’ll take it from here,” are then to be turned outwards, with arms extended wide to embrace and deal with the issues to which the church of Christ must address itself.   

Naturally, Paul recognizes the potential for unhelpful and unhealthy conflict between the members of the church and temporal powers.  Concordantly, he urges that ‘requests, prayers, intercessions, and thanks be offered on behalf of all people, even for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a peaceful and quite life in all godliness and dignity.  Such prayer for all is good and welcomed before God our Savior, since He wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:1a-4).  Though at one level this may appear to be an acquiescence, is it not an effective counter-cultural witness?  Christians, of course, are to be the greatest of earthly citizens because they are also citizens of the kingdom of heaven that looks to the renewal of the whole of creation (not an escape to heaven). 

Now, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the Christians, who, owing to their “atheism” (because they did not worship the Roman gods or Caesar), their “cannibalism” (for the words that accompanied their communal meals), and their lack of participation at the temples (which were also the markets and the center of public activity) that was taken to portend a destruction of social cohesiveness, experienced persecution at the hands of governing authorities, would look upon those persecutors as their enemies.  Therefore, this prayer for all people, including kings and governing authorities, was a strict following of the teachings of Jesus, who demanded His disciples to “love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44-45a – realizing that Matthew was probably not in circulation and may not yet have taken the shape in which it is now to be found at the time of the composition of the letter, and therefore, the passing along of the words of Jesus would have been based upon Paul’s knowledge of the Jesus tradition). 

These words reach a second level in the face of the Jew and Gentile divisions in Ephesus (and other cities whose churches may have been recipients of the letter now called Ephesians), with these divisions addressed in the second chapter of Ephesians.  The insistence that the Creator God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” speaks to the lingering hesitation on the part of ethnic Israel to grant Gentiles status as full and legitimate members of the covenant people of the Creator God. 

So while praying for those that may potentially be perceived or actually be enemies is counter-cultural, so too is Paul’s insistence that Israel’s God wants all people groups to be saved (come under the provisions of His covenant), with this running counter to the Jewish culture that wanted to continue to reserve their God’s blessings to Israel alone, and who attempted to enforce this restriction by insisting that Gentiles needed to adopt the covenant markers of Judaism (primarily circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath-keeping) to indicate their participation under their God’s covenant. 

Good Conduct, Good Deeds, Good Works (part 13)

Christians, as would be expected, were to be different.  Their table was to represent far more.  Their table represented their Lord and their God and His rule, so it had to be different and it had to look different.  It had to (and has to) command the attention of the watching world.  Peter writes “So they are astonished when you do not rush with them into the same flood of wickedness, and they vilify you” (4:4). 

As has been noted, Christians (noting that this letter is the only New Testament letter to employ the term) were accused of heinous activity in association with their meals (e.g. cannibalism), while also being charged with atheism and with having a destructive effect on the social cohesion of their communities and of the empire itself.  Indeed, vilification took place and it did so in conjunction with the derisive name of “Christian” (kristianos as opposed to kaisarianos), so it is quite interesting that Peter takes up its usage in the sixteenth verse of this chapter, mentioning suffering “as a Christian,” as well as in the third verse, using it negatively with the term “non-Christians.” 

Based on what comes in between the use of non-Christian and Christian, it becomes strikingly clear that Christians were to be primarily identified by their meal practice.  The socially defining meal table would be the place that their sensibilities would develop, and be the place from which would stream their good works for the benefit of their communities and ultimately the world.  This would, of course, be in keeping with the fact that those with whom the Creator God has entered into covenant, have largely been identified by meal practice of some form. 

This is patently obvious when it comes to the Jews, as the major provisions of their God’s covenant with them involved keeping His Sabbaths, which were the feasts ordained in the Mosaic law.  This also included dietary laws that would come to be used as a means to readily identify an individual as being in good covenant standing and able to participate in the rule of the covenant God.  This notion, however, stretches back to the very first covenant of Scripture. 

Genesis records that “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the orchard in Eden to care for it and to maintain it.  Then the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.’” (2:15-17)  There, the bearer of the divine covenant, who was charged to represent the Creator God in and for the whole of the creation, has his covenant marked out by what could be easily termed as meal practice. 

Maintaining that position in Genesis, the next covenant, which the Creator God made with Noah when He “blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’” (9:1), was codified with “You may eat any moving thing that lives.  As I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.  But you must not eat meat with its life (that is, its blood) in it” (9:3-4). 

Moving on to Abraham, and though one does not see any type of meal associated with the initial report of the Creator God’s covenant with him that occurs in chapter twelve of Genesis, one does find such a thing just two chapters later.  After Abraham defeats the kings that had captured his nephew, the author reports that “Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine” (14:18a), learning that “he was the priest of the Most High God” (14:18b).  

Problems For James (part 1)

My brothers and sisters, do not show prejudice if you possess faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. – James 2:1  (NET)

Social stratification and the recognition of distinctions (delineation) was so incredibly ingrained within the culture, be it Jewish or Greco-Roman culture (with concerns about dining with only people of the covenant or with maintaining proper social boundaries at the table), that it was inevitable that this societal force, if left un-restrained and unchecked, would quickly make its way into the churches, undoing and unmaking what it is that Jesus had exampled, demanded, and defended via His portrayal in the Gospels. 

The church, as a community, was marked out as peculiar by its table practices, which can be seen in the fact that many of the charges leveled against it, precipitating much persecution, had to do with accusations of cannibalism.  Such accusations, naturally, represented a lack of understanding about the celebration of the eucharist/Lord’s Supper/communion.  Regardless, it demonstrates that there was something distinctive about Christian meal practice that drew attention.  This, of course, was an excellent follow-on to Jesus’ meal practice, as it most certainly attracted all kinds of attention. 

Any type of activity within the church of Jesus that drew distinctions between one person and another, or which treated one person or type of person as a more worthy or exalted or honored member of the kingdom, when viewed through the lens of the Jesus tradition, would be problematic.  Distinctions and associated divisions could multiply quickly and become entrenched, and this would always be a risk for the church, both then and now. 

Social forces are notoriously difficult to combat, but since Jesus went to a cross and urged His disciples to take up a cross as well (and those words are to be heard within the context of the shame and horror that the cross represented), it can be reasoned that difficulties in the combat of the forces in operation within this world are not to be looked upon as a deterrent for those that confess Jesus as Lord.  Difficulties are to be expected and encountered with love and compassion, and a willingness to suffer the greatest of indignities, if need be, in the encounter. 

Though it does not initially appear to be specifically related to a meal, one must keep in mind the importance of Christian meal practice and its prominent place in the church that was seeking to embody the kingdom ethics and principles put into operation by Jesus (which were so readily seen at His table(s) that were given context by the idea of the messianic banquet that would serve to identify the Creator God’s redeeming activity on behalf of His people), while also remembering the prevailing forces of societal stratification and division, as this problem of the drawing of distinctions is encountered within the church community that is being addressed in the book of James.