Thinking About The Cup (March 2016)

by Wye Huxford

During the season of Lent we are encouraged to do the kind of self-reflection that compels us to focus on our own spiritual maturity – or sometimes immaturity! While that can sometimes be a very sobering period in life, few would deny its importance if we are truly to spend these forty days in a productive fashion.

Reading the gospel accounts of Jesus' life is one of the ways that can be helpful to us in creating the kind of stage in our lives where we can play out the role of growing spiritually. The lectionary readings for this year are from the Gospel of Luke, but I would encourage all of us to read all four!

One of the images that almost always attracts my attention when I read the gospels is what I call "the image of the cup." The Greek word behind our English word "cup" is pretty basic Greek vocabulary. It simply means "cup," as in something from which you drink. Yet as Flannery O'Conner once said of characters in a story, sometimes words carry much more meaning than their mere meaning.

In Mark and Matthew, we meet the word "cup" in that rather infamous story of James and John wanting to have chief seats in the kingdom. They were, perhaps, overly influenced by an aggressive mother who wanted the best for her sons. Whatever the case, Jesus asks them, "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Mark 10:38). With a bit of overconfidence, they reply, "Yes, we are." But they were hardly thinking of "cup" as Jesus was.

In the Synoptic accounts of the Lord's Supper, as well as in 1 Corinthians 11, we are told that Jesus "took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it." That is a pretty powerful image to associate with the word "cup."

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, "remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." The imagery in these accounts, as well as in John 17, is one of a great struggle regarding the looming cross before Jesus. I wonder if, upon hearing the prayer, James and John would still have answered "Yes, we are."

In the original building for Cherry Log Christian Church, the chancel area behind the pulpit was built from beautiful stones from the North Georgia mountains. I still remember the first time I was sitting in the building at a preaching seminar led by the late Dr. Fred Craddock. All of a sudden, out of nowhere it seemed, I noticed that outlined in the stones was the image of a chalice – a cup. It took me a while to see it, but once I saw it I kept looking at the stone wall to make sure it was there! It kept grabbing my attention – a simple cup.

I'm hoping that during this season of Lent the "cup" keeps drawing me back into focus on what being Christian is all about. Our faith, in signficant ways, is a "faith of the cup." As was Jesus, may we willingly bear whatever that "cup" may be in our service to Him who bore it for us.

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NEWS

by Beth Langstaff

In its new location in the centre of Tübingen, the Institute now has a guest room for visiting scholars. During the winter semester, we were excited to welcome our first guests. 

At the beginning of December, Maria Sokolskaya from the Institut für Judaistik in Bern was the first guest to stay overnight at the Institute.  She was visiting Tübingen to read a paper at the German-English Colloquium on "Philo's Bible: The Septuagint?"

Another Colloquium presenter, Beatrice Wyss, was in town at the beginning of February, and she too stayed overnight in the guest room.  She also read a paper on Philo of Alexandria's Interpretation of Genesis 1, in particular, the fifth and sixth days of creation (interesting that the animals that live on the earth and human beings, male and female, were all created on the sixth day).

Finally, in the second week of February, we were very pleased to welcome Loren, Lois, and Nathan Stuckenbruck to the Institute for a few days. Loren is Professor at the Protestant Faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He is also a member of the EES Board of Directors. During their visit, Loren and I were able to meet with Professor Michael Tilly to start planning for the next symposium here in Tübingen, planned for October 2018. This symposium will focus on the Lord's Prayer.

Fairness Counts (February 2016)

by Wye Huxford

Despite both growing up hearing it and saying it to my own children as a parent, the old adage "Life isn't fair" doesn't speak to how life ought to be, but how life sometimes is.  Followers of Jesus should never be satisfied with that idea as a description of how things ought to be.

As a child growing up, I spent lots of time with my paternal grandparents who lived less than a mile down the country road from my parents' house.  I suspect it had something to do with the favored status I perceived I occupied with my grandparents, the fascination with the farm, and the reality that grandparents are generally easier on kids than parents.

I remember lots of lessons from those days.  In addition to being a dairy farmer, my grandfather grew crops that required lots of manual labor and back in those days, that meant people's livelihood was typically earned in doing this kind of work.  Nearly always people were paid at the end of the day, every day.  My grandmother would often remind my grandfather of the warning in James 5:4.  "Listen!  The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts"  (NRSV).  I don't think she did that because my grandfather was dishonest, but because she wanted to make sure everyone was treated fairly – justly.

That whole paragraph in James 5:1-6 is one that any of us living in modern culture ought to review occasionally.  It is all about treating people justly.  While James' specific illustration seems to speak to the issue of paying just wages, it seems to me that the overriding principle in play is whether or not I treat people in every context of life justly.  In a culture where manual labor was predominant, it is no surprise that James uses the idea of paying just wages as the vehicle in which he reminds his readers of just treatment of others.  He surely is thinking about Deuteronomy 24:14, 15.  Or to use Jesus' words, the need to treat others in the context of loving God and loving neighbor.

Do I treat students in my classes justly?  If not, will their voices cry out in judgment?  What about restaurant owners who pay less than minimum wage in the name of "tips make up the difference"?  Or even more personally for most of us the customers in restaurants who tip so poorly there is no way we help "make up the difference."  Then there is the bureaucratic reach of government employees who seem to enjoy being difficult.  And court systems who treat the accused with the kind of disdain that should never be in a believer's heart.  And banks whose interest rates far exceed reason.  Or businesses who resort to price gouging in times of disaster and who sell inferior products at outrageous prices.

Of course it is easy simply to say "that's how the system works."  "Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's better than any alternative, so too bad about the abuses."  "The courts are supposed to punish the guilty, so tough luck if you're caught in the system."  "It's not my fault she can get a job only at some local mom and pop, meat-and-two-vegetables kind of place."

All the while, we watch our own treasures increase and fail to hear the cries of those treated unjustly that reach the ears of the Lord of the hosts.

"But I'm not rich" becomes our immediate mode of defense.  Yet compared to those who first read James, we are all pretty rich – and we dare not dismiss these words so casually.

I didn't realize it growing up, but looking at life from this end of the journey, I 'm grateful for the regular reminder of my grandmother that justice matters – and it always matters.  If justice matters, I won't become rich at the expense of laborers; and I won't become powerful at the expense of the marginal; I won't pad my resumé at the expense of the accused; and I won't excuse myself because "that's the way things are."

Life really isn't fair – but that is no excuse for a believer to contribute to the unfairness.

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NEWS

by Beth Langstaff

In December, we had a special presentation at the New Testament Colloquium, one which drew many visitors, both students and professors.  Professor Bruce McCormack from Princeton Theological Seminary and Professor Alexandra Pârvan from the University of Pitesti in Romania took turns reading a paper they had written together on "Immutability, Impassibility and Suffering: Steps toward a 'psychological ontology' of God." The paper was unusual in a number of respects: it reflected insights from different disciplines (Bruce McCormack is a systematic theologian and Alexandra Pârvan has degrees in philosophy and psychology); it explored the ways in which Augustine of Hippo and Karl Barth might address the question of "who God is"; and it highlighted points at which both presenters were prepared to take the insights of Augustine and Barth in new and intriguing directions.

McCormack and Pârvan proposed a "psychological" approach to the divine being and attributes.  The answer to the question as to "what God is" is simply "who God is" as he reveals himself to us in Christ. The affirmation that "God is immutable," therefore, cannot be discussed or defined apart from the way in which God reveals himself and relates to us human beings in Christ. Suffering is not incompatible with God's attribute of always being what he is. God's being-for-us, for human beings, in love, sacrifice, and suffering is thus an eternal part of God's being, of who God is.

The paper provoked a long and lively discussion.  Professor emeritus Jürgen Moltmann, who attended the session, raised the first and last questions of the evening. Informal conversations continued long after the evening had come to an official close.

Of Springs and Cisterns (January 2016)

by Wye Huxford

My wife and I were both in graduate school, had part-time jobs, and a weekend ministry in a little church in rural Kentucky. As summer approached the issue of Vacation Bible School arose and somehow we convinced the church to do an evening VBS – despite the "we've never done it that way" initial response.

I was taking first year Hebrew, a decision that might not have been among my best, and Vicki was taking a class required as a part of her graduate degree in music.  We both were in class, worked a few hours in our part-time jobs, Vicki practiced for her masters degree organ recital, we drove to Kentucky in late afternoon, did VBS, drove back home, and got ready for class the next day.

Friday night, sometime around 9 p.m., VBS was almost over.  It was the "best VBS we've ever had" said one of the "we've never done it that way before" folks. We were both dead tired.  One of the men in the church suddenly came up to me and said, "We are out of water." First of all, I didn't know you could do that in the U.S. – be out of water – and second of all, why was he telling me.

The church had a mobile home next door to the building and we often spent the weekends there.  We were planning on doing that on this particular Friday night. But there was no water.

A family in the church told us we could come over and shower and get some water to bring back with us for coffee the next morning. The man who first told me about the problem said, "We will have the cistern refilled in the morning."

"Cistern?" I wasn't sure what one was, much less aware that was the source of our weekend drinking water! Growing up in the low country of South Carolina where water was just a few feet below ground level, I never imagined that the best approach to running water in this part of Kentucky would be a cistern.

Early that Saturday morning, I heard a truck backing up to the church building and curiosity got the best of me. By the time I got outside, they had pushed back a cover to a huge cement cistern on the back of the church building – something I had never noticed before. As the cistern filled, I noticed all manner of bugs, leaves, and assorted debris floating to the top. Eventually there was what looked like the carcass of a long-since deceased Mocking Bird! The water truck guy took a net and "cleaned it out for me."

Even though this was long before the common availability of bottled water, I don't think we ever failed to have some bottled water for drinking and cooking on the weekends after that.

As Jeremiah begins his explanation, on behalf of the Lord, for why Israel is in such deep trouble with God, he says:

Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
declares the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils;
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water."

Jeremiah 2:12, 13 ESV

I never read those words without thinking about that Mocking Bird carcass on the back of a little Kentucky church building. It reminds me of how foolish it is to walk away from a fountain of living water hoping to drink from a cistern that can hold no water. I suspect this great prophetic text could have been in the mind of Jesus when He told the woman in Samaria "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:14).

So the question I am asking myself – and hoping you will ask yourself – at the beginning of a new year is simply this: "Where are you getting your drinking water?"

Springs or cisterns?

A little later Jeremiah, still speaking about Israel's forsaking of God, will say, "They were not ashamed at all, they did not know how to blush" (Jeremiah 6:15). That sounds an awful lot like our culture right now – and it probably reflects our seeking after empty cisterns rather than fountains of living water.

So – the question: springs or cisterns?

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EES PROPERTY UPDATE

Good News!

The sale of the EES building in Tübingen is final! The proceeds from the sale of Wilhelmstrasse 100 have been received and are being used to pay off outstanding debt and for the establishment of the Earl and OttieMearl Stuckenbruck Trust Fund. The sale of the condo is pending and should be finalized in January.

The sale of the two properties relieves the indebtedness of EES, but not the daily operating expenses.  So regular support to the work of EES is still needed.  We appreciate your continued financial and prayer support for the EES ministry.

Finally Here

by Wye Huxford

Thanksgiving Day can come no later than it does this year.  Last year, as the logic of "how the calendar works" suggests, it was as early as it can be.  If nothing else, that makes it a bit of an issue if one uses Thanksgiving Day as the official day it is okay to put up the live Christmas tree in your house!

If you've been reading the news or watching the news, you know there is a bit of a cultural controversy about the invasion of Thanksgiving Day by the big box stores who plan to open late on Thanksgiving Day for an early Black Friday event or two.  Thanksgiving may still remain the most uncluttered of our major civic holidays — but it has begun to skate on thin ice.

On the early Monday morning news in Atlanta there was a story about families who began their "camping out" at Best Buy last weekend in order to make sure they were first in line late Thursday when the store opens. Someone described it as a kind of "week-long tailgating" experience.  The family said that camping out has become a "family tradition."  For the first time in several years, it is pretty cold in Atlanta right now — and I just have to wonder about a family tradition that causes one to camp out in front of a big box store for over a week in very cold and, later this week, very rainy weather just to be first in line to spend money on gadgets that are nice, but certainly not necessary for life.

While the big box corporations take a beating in the public conversation about making their employees come to work Thanksgiving afternoon, the truth is they would not be doing that if we didn't camp out for a week just to be first in line to get a discounted iPad!  Sure, they are after higher sales margins — but how is that more materialistic and greedy than the fact that we line up at their front doors to be part of the stampede toward saving a few dollars on our purchases?  There may be a little of that old adage "the pot calling the kettle black" going on here.

Don't misunderstand — I have an iPad and an iPhone.  I'm fascinated by how much technology can help me do my job more efficiently.  I'm a pretty generous buyer of Christmas gifts for my family and like to find a good bargain with the best of them.  I've even bought a gift or two already, though in reality I like the thrill of Christmas Eve shopping!

But camping out for a week to be first in line at Best Buy?  I hope that really isn't the commentary on our culture it seems to be.  I'm no psychologist, but I'm guessing there is a little bit of "I wonder if I can get on television" going on here.  Maybe it is a bit of "I'm bored and lonely; let's go camp out in a parking lot."  There could be some sense of "I'm using my money wisely by buying this stuff at greatly reduced prices."  But that one doesn't make much sense to me when compared to giving up a week of life — maybe work — maybe Thanksgiving Dinner — maybe time with family you don't often see — all in the name of being first in a sale line for gadgets that are outdated long before the next Thanksgiving comes around.

It is pretty late in the month of November — as late as it can be and still be Thanksgiving.  I've been reading the Psalms of Ascent during the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.  They have made me more mindful than ever of all that I have to be thankful for and the multiple ways in which God, "the maker of heaven and earth" engages in the lives of His people.

Psalm 121 might say it best:

The Lord watches over you —

the Lord is your shade at our right hand;

the sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all harm —

he will watch over your coming and going

both now and forevermore.

(Psalm 121:5-8)

If that's true, then I know that there is much more to my life than being first in line at a sale; and I know that I have much to be thankful for this Thursday.  And now it's time to get the Christmas tree in place.

Trivialities

by Wye Huxford

Anyone familiar with Matthew 23 knows that when you read that chapter you are entering Jesus' most intense and direct criticism of the religious world into which He was sent as Redeemer.  It all seems to revolve around the primary concern on the part of Jesus that the religious teachers were teaching one thing and doing something else.  "Do whatever they teach you and follow it," Jesus says, "but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach"  (23:3).

Jesus then proceeds to announce a series of seven woes, each of them denouncing the emptiness of religious ritual that isn't acted out in the daily living of those who lead.  In six of the seven statements of woe, Jesus uses the word hypocrite as the indictment of their approach to serving God.  In one of the statements (beginning in verse 16) the indicting phrase is "blind fools."

For me, the most telling of this series of indicting comments on how faith sometimes gets practiced is the one found in verses 23 and 24.  There Jesus acknowledges their attention to detail - they "tithe mint, dill, and cumin."  That's pretty intense.  They are determined, apparently, to tithe everything - even the tiny little value produced by the herb garden in their backyards.

But in doing that, they have ignored "the weightier matters of the law:  justice and mercy and faith."  In my mind, I can see them walking by a man like Lazarus in Luke's story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19ff) while rushing to get to the Temple with a teaspoon of dill as the tithe from this year's crop.  Jesus doesn't suggest that they should not have tithed - but that it is so easy for religious people to let trivial things trump the gospel.

This little statement ends with the absurdity of straining out the gnats while choking on a camel.  Both gnats and camels were "unclean" according to the Law, but how odd that they would make sure the tiny little gnats were strained out as they attempted to swallow a camel whole.

My guess is that these ancient Jewish teachers aren't the last people to choke to death on camel stew!  The truth is that we often allow trivial things to get in the way of what is essential to being just, merciful, and faithful.  William Willimon talks about this reality in his book Calling and Character .  In a chapter talking about the sacrifices that those called to ministry must face, he says, "The cross teaches us to have no qualms about suffering in service to the gospel.  What is immoral is not one's suffering in service to the gospel, but rather one's suffering in service to triviality"  (page 113).

Leave it to Jesus not to give us the simple answer we so desperately want.  We live in an age where we are drawn to "simple and easy" and yet Jesus seems so unimpressed by "simple and easy."  So He doesn't tell me in this text just to ignore what, in comparison to justice, mercy, and faith, seem so trivial.  Rather He tells me don't let the fact that I do those trivial things convince me that I can ignore the more weighty things.  Allowing the weightier things to have a place in my life is what gives the trivial things real meaning.

Jesus doesn't seem to be "anti-ritual" here as much as He seems to want ritual to have meaning.  That happens only to the extent that we allow gospel to trump trivialities.  Even if I end up suffering for the gospel, I should not be reluctant; have no qualms about it.

Sometime around mid-November we believers in the U.S. start thinking about Thanksgiving.  Despite more and more commercial encroachment every year, it still seems to me to be the most untarnished of our holidays.  Perhaps this year's season of thanksgiving can be a time to look carefully at our own lives in the context of gospel versus triviality.  We can thank God for those times when gospel trumps trivialities and ask for His help in getting better at justice, mercy, and faith rather than merely tithing the herb garden!

Choking to death on camel stew seems a painful way to go!