Author: ppadmin

“John’s act of writing a gospel, what he claims about Christ, and how he makes these claims, all represent fundamental rejection and subservience of Caesar’s power. . . . John believed that Christ is in every way superior to Caesar. . . . He reverses the normal public meaning of Jesus’ encounter with the agents of the Roman Empire” (p. ix).

Thatcher points out that the same story can have quite different meanings, e.g., a Jewish delegation meeting with Roman emperor, Caligula. One report, the official minutes of the encounter, shows the Jewish support of the emperor. Philo, a Jewish writer, points out what the Jewish delegation really felt.  The story illustrates the two faces every victim of imperial power must always wear. “These things happened,” Philo says, “but they didn’t mean what the people in power thought they meant” (pp. 23-25).  Thatcher develops his theory of public and “hidden transcripts,” “the little traditions,” the counter memories” (p. 26). “Every situation of conflict between Jesus and the authorities may be read at two levels: the normal public meaning of the events, and in John’s ‘little tradition,’ reinterpretation of those events as expressions of Christ’s absolute sovereignty” (p. 46).

In John’s story the Romans are not in control. The Jewish authorities, on whom Caesar depends, granting them the status of Roman prefects, are helpless, unable to stop Jesus’ mission or even protect their own interests (John 12, 18). Crucifixion was a major part of Roman policy of intimidation and control, but in John’s story fulfilled prophecy (e.g., division of Jesus’ clothing, Jesus’ death, the piercing with a spear) make the ultimate story of defeat end in conquest (p. 107). Jesus is in control to the very end. Even the Roman political order is not in final control. In John’s story, Pilate (the Roman governor) appears in seven scenes, without the results he wishes (28 verses; in the synoptics, Pilate gets a combined total of 37 verses), and  the Roman governor “is afraid” (19:8). Even after his vicious scourging, Jesus continues his words coherently against Pilate (19:12). Rome’s victims followed Rome’s script; Jesus has his own script (even washing his disciples’ feet—a sharp retort to Roman imperial practise).

This is a wonderful compilation of 29 theologians and comments on their work as seen in the empires they wrote in. They range from Paul, through Calvin, Luther, Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr, and end with several present-day African theologians. The rationale of the anthology is to see how differing imperial and cultural perspectives affected their writing. The editors point to the tensions between the Christian tradition and the empire in the infancy narratives—the presence of Caesar Augustus and of Herod.

The convening of church councils focused the tensions of the empire and the book details the intersection of theology and empire. “Without understanding how we are shaped by empire, we cannot properly identify those institutions, and insights that point us beyond the horizons of empire” (pp. 10, 13).

I will touch only on St. Paul and on east African theologian John Mbiti, but each of the people surveyed demonstrates the effect his or her particular empire had on their theology. Paul is an interesting example; Tatha Wiley points out how her readers’ perspectives, shaped by their empire, affected the interpretation of Paul, and she points out two Pauline analyses, the one reflecting the early church’s empire influence. The empire’s influence is driven not only in the writer (Paul) but in the interpretation (pp. 56, 57). Perkinson’s summary of Mbiti focuses on the concept of “time”: “present future” that extends only six months hence, and the “present” that is “yesterday” (p. 463)—time is largely two-dimensional, focused on past and present. Or how would one gain concrete perspective on the precise place where “Christianity” can be distinguished from “imperial violence” (p. 460)?

In these essays, Leslie Jamison is Frida Kahlo on the printed page. Pain is her subject; her objective is to feel her way into somber communion, a common sharing.

As a medical actor Leslie works to transcend the script: "I am not just an unmarried woman faking seizures for pocket money." In her portrayal of sundry sicknesses unto death, Leslie strives to make the medical students realize "a root system of loss stretches radial and rhizomatic under the entire territory of my life." This is not an act; this is the journey.

As a teachers/tourist in Nicaragua, Leslie is accosted by a purse snatcher in Granada, who smashes her in the face with his fist. "My nose was broken. The bones of the bridge got shifted. The flesh swelled like it was trying to hide the fracture beneath. This is how speech swells around memory. How intellect swells around hurt."

Brueggemann emphasizes the force of words in molding the nation: Words generate a cultural/historical movement, words are advocates for specific tasks, words identify the central features of the community’s story and self awareness, words are warnings against ignoring consequences. Sometimes words explode in remarkable imagination (e.g., the impact of Rachel, whose story is told in Genesis but which comes again in Jeremiah and in Matthew), and to the community of faith today. Brueggemann cites the Holocaust as a point along Rachel’s story, but her weeping goes well beyond even that, to the homeless of our cities, and to the tragedies of children caught in Syria and Iraq (or in the treatment of aboriginal cultures faced by forced abduction of their children as a result of assimilationist ideologies). The text keeps surfacing as a weapon of the weak (p. 9).  It is a powerful reminder that the “prophetic tradition preserves for us those staggering enactments of redemptive madness” (p. 19). And that’s only the first chapter of the book.

Brueggemann deals equally devastatingly with other texts. He draws attention to Amos 9:7, where Amos confronted his listeners with the pointed reference that Yahweh was not really just a tribal god; Ethiopians, Philistines, Arameans and Israelites are all part of Yahweh’s redeeming act, a radical pluralism (p. 97). And he emphasizes the task of words in Israel (in their liturgy, in their festivals) in remaining an intentional, distinctive country in the world dominated by Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and Persia, and of how Israel maintained its identity in and under the empire with the gifts of texts and words.  The church needs to keep its identity vibrant through the “daily discipline and practises” of our Christian faith story (p. 87).  Wow!  What a book! —Vern Ratzlaff, pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

This collection of 13 essays was compiled when the United States was still the virtually unchallenged player on the world political scene, in the aftermath of Bush and 9/11; today, sharply reduced political and military influences puts these essays into a different perspective.  But some of the essays remain remarkably prescient, speaking to the issues of “loving neighbours in a globalized world,” “international justice,” “being Christian in an Age of Americanism” and emphasizing the “transnational nature of Christian discipleship.”  The essays still raise the basic issues of what the church’s message is and what discipleship urges on us.

Two essays especially focused my agenda. (Mennonite) Arthur Paul Boers draws on pastoral leadership as a component of counter-empire living, emphasizing the contribution of worship and of community; underscoring the need for mentors, saints and models, of testimonies of those who have stood against the empire and its war making preoccupation; the need for strategies in dealing with media (including the personal aspects of fasting and abstinence, p. 168).  Lillian Daniel outlines how the ordo (the typical Sunday morning order of worship), through text and liturgy, focuses on how “many of the questions about empire get hit upon with frightening regularity (p. 174).”  Through, e.g. the psalms, we in the empire are reminded that “we come from a long lineage of life’s losers” (p. 175).  The announcements, prayer requests, confession, passing of the peace, the offertory, the communion table—remind us that in the “bones of worship each Sunday we find the tools with which to recognize blasphemy when we walk the streets on Monday or watch the news on Tuesday. . . . Our salvation lies in the practices of worship that subverts the paltry promise of empire” (p. 182).

A wonderful book. —Vern Ratzlaff, pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada