Advent This study explores the Advent readings from the Gospel of Luke taken from the Revised Common Lectionary for Year C.

AgendasAgenda 1: Luke has his own agenda for this gospel. He seems to have modelled his gospel on the gospel of Mark, and taken other Jesus stories from a source known as "Q" (from the German Quelle meaning Source) which he shared with the author of Matthew.

Luke was written for Christian folk.

I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. (Luke 1:3-4)

Luke is the longest of the four gospels and was probably written between 80 and 100 AD; ie, more than 50 years after Jesus' death.

Agenda 2: The church calendar imposes another agenda over Luke. The first reading of the year is from Luke chapter 21! We divide the year into six main seasons which we use to remind and remember as we seek to model our lives on "the Jesus life." The underlying themes of hope and fear, birth, growth, struggle and death, are the themes which shape any human life.

Agenda 3: Then there is the agenda of this present study. It seeks to help us be conscious about the way we think about our own journey. What shapes the way we use our Christian traditions to understand our own life?

My experience is that we often do not take the time to consider the foundations of our thinking and study. It greatly enriches our understanding.

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This is particularly important because we live in a time when the church's self-understanding is in rapid transition, as is our understanding of the scriptures at the centre of our tradition.

Agenda 4: Why are you reading Luke? Or this study?

And as I will repeat often: There are no "right answers" for this study; it is about understanding ourselves in the world. What is most important is to begin to articulate our own answers, and to live by them.

What is Advent?The church calendar divides the year into seasons. , Each season has a theological theme and mood. We distinguish them with different colours and decorations, and ways of praying. There tend to be set readings for each season. The Uniting Church uses the Revised Common Lectionary.

The UCA Lectionary notes (2014) says Advent is: A season of preparation, beginning on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, in which the Church recalls its hope and expectation in the coming of Christ, past, present and future. (The colour for Advent is violet or purple.)

Andrew Prior

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Foundations What is this book called Luke and what is Advent?

Some thoughts on religion… and that book[Karen] Armstrong argues that "what religion really means is that we have the potential to encounter and have a relationship with eternal forces. This side of our lives is not reducible to rational thought. (David Tacey, Beyond Literal Belief: Religion as Metaphor Garratt Publishing 2015 pp37)

A religion is like a language that one must have begun to learn before being able to grasp what is being said in it (G.A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age SPCK, London (1984) p. 33 quoted by Andrew Dutney: https://andrewfdutney.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/what-is-religion-anyway/)

Questions:What does religion mean for me? What does/should religion not mean?Am I religious?

There are no "right answers" for this study; the questions are about understanding ourselves in the world.

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BooksAlthough simple folk can experience the grace of God— and possibly have more access to it than intellectuals— as soon as we touch on the "words of God" we enter the field of culture and need to be aware of complexities. There is no such thing as an "unmediated" experience of God's words, and when I hear preachers claim that we have to "return to the gospel message," I can only wonder what they have in mind.

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There is no contact with truth except through a cultural context. The uneducated* cannot read sacred texts unaided, not unless they are gifted with poetic intelligence. They cannot read them as they might read articles in newspapers. If they do, the stories are nothing more than fairy tales. The nearest equivalents to the scriptures today would be visionary poetry or mystical writings. (Tacey op. cit. pp19)

Uneducated does not mean "doesn't have a university degree." It means "has not learned how to discern the nature of the literature being read."

In fact, whenever we pick up a book, we all, without thinking, do some of what Tacey is talking about. For example:

What characterises these books?A recipe bookThe manual for your dishwasherMy Life by General Peter CosgroveThe Works of Wilfred Owen (World War I poet) The AdvertiserThe Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (Mann Booker prize for fiction 2014)The Hobbit JRR TolkienNew Idea

Question: How would you describe the Bible? What separates it from these other publications? Where is it similar?

Question: What do you think of this statement by Ricard Beck at Experimental Theology? (http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com.au/) Remember: There are no "right answers" for this study; the questions are about understanding ourselves in the world.

We all have a hermeneutic. We are all interpreting the text to some degree. We are all privileging--deferring to--certain values, doctrines, creedal commitments, traditions, or biblical texts. Something

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somewhere is trumping something else. In a document as multivocal as the Old and New Testament this is unavoidable.

So we all have a hermeneutic. The only question is whether you are consciously vs. unconsciously using a hermeneutic. Fundamentalists are interpreting the text unconsciously. Fundamentalists are interpreting the text right and left, they are just unaware that they are doing so.

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GriefWe should not underestimate how much the questions in this study may affect the foundations of our thinking. David Tacey affirms that different ways of understanding scripture "offer … transformative spiritual vistas and insights," but says

… it is hard to realise this if, for instance, one has spent sixty years of one's life in … literal mode. One needs time to grieve… This is not an intellectual exercise, or a university lesson in hermeneutics. It is a believer's life we are talking about. (Beyond Literal Belief pp 90)

My experienceAs I one day sat and squarely faced the question as to whether there might be `errors' in the Bible, that maybe Methuselah didn't live to nine hundred and whatever it was, I had a sudden vision which terrified me. For a brief moment I looked at the world without my inerrant Bible and felt like I was going insane. Visually, it was like being on the very edge at top of the black Grenfell tower in the city and swaying out over the edge. But somehow my shoes were stuck to the parapet and I didn't fall off; I just swayed back in. It was a horrible experience. The darkness almost swallowed me up and destroyed me. I felt [that] if I had fallen off there I would have fallen forever. So I was unable to face the questions about the Bible until a couple of years later. It was too psychologically dangerous. I needed my 'Father Christmas.'

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But later, as I described this experience to a friend, he said, "Aha! The moment of revelation!" And I saw he was right. That terrifying blackness had been something of God showing me more of reality; showing me the reality that the world and the Bible was not the neat package I had worked out for myself. But it had frightened me because it was destroying my ordered world and offering me something different. Something that was better and more accurate, but frightening because I couldn't understand it and control it.

Now I have a new story. Theologically I would describe it as God showing me that I was not on the solid tower in our first picture. God was showing me I was on the edge of an ice floe floating out over nothingness. But God was saying, "If you trust me, you can step off. You can walk on the water of nothingness. You can walk away from your present position from which you haven't been able to escape, to somewhere better which will make more sense of life for you." And I did- later. But I had to tell new stories so that I could see the same experience of blackness as something good from God, rather than a thing of terror. (Andrew Prior: https://onemansweb.org/models-of-god.html This page is a review of Sallie McFague's Models of God)

The World of Luke

MythThis study uses the word myth in its technical sense. Myth does not mean untrue. A myth is a story. In our context it is often a foundational human story which reflects the deep realities of our being. To read myth as empirically true or false like "the door is open," is what the philosophers call a category mistake; it completely misunderstands what myth is.

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The Literature of the Time: A Crash CourseThe problem faced by the disciples was: how were they going to talk about their experience of Jesus? They solved the problem by searching the Hebrew scriptures for God language, and when they found it they wrapped it around Jesus—not because these words described things that actually happened, but because they were the only words big enough to make sense out of their experience. So the disciples used the narratives of miracles to demonstrate the presence of God in Jesus. (John Shelby Spong Jesus for the Non-religious pp69)

Scripture writers were inventing miracles to describe what they felt about Jesus and his authority. As Spong puts it, "miracles represented the only way first-century Jewish people could stretch human language sufficiently to allow them to communicate what they believed they had encountered in Jesus." But for us this convention has backfired:

Today that first-century supernatural language not only blinds us to the meaning of Jesus, but actually distorts Jesus for us. (John Shelby Spong Jesus for the Non-religious pp95)

The above is an extended quotation from Tacey (pp11). He goes on to say:

Historical reporting was not seen as appropriate for sacred narratives, nor was it seen as revelatory or interesting. It wasn't used because it could not capture the presence of God in creation. Because of the confusion in the public mind about the nature and purpose of scripture, scholarship has emphasised that the biblical writers were not intending to deceive. In a brilliant encapsulation of the conundrum John Dominic Crossan writes:

My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb

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enough to take them literally. They knew what they were doing; we don't. (John Dominic Crossan Who is Jesus? Westminster John Knox pp79)

Question: Does this differ from the understanding you have of the bible? What differs? What emotions does it raise for you?

Tacey says

Because readers want the scriptures to be "true," they apply the standard of truth they most readily understand. But this is not how truth was understood two thousand years ago. … Thus we have to reverse conventional opinion. Instead of a literal reading being the "religious" one, we need to see that only a metaphorical approach yields the genuinely religious reading. (pp17-18)

[Story] is a doorway into another kind of consciousness… There is a great difference between fact and truth. [Story] provides us not with facts of history but with truths of spirit. These truths never "happened" in time or space, but they are true for all time.

[Stories]… tell us of events that are real, not in the sense of having happened just like that, but in the sense of being the kind of thing that is always happening. (Frye)

… Only in our time are we beginning to understand how primary mythopoesis is. It is the most ancient form of art, but it is art that embodies the sacred and tells of the divine. . (pp 18-19)

Once the imagination is functioning we don’t need the miracles to be literally true, because as soon as we perceive their meaning they have performed their function. Miracles are for those who don't see spirit always already at work. (pp60)

Question: What is true? How do you understand the truth of the information in your dishwasher manual compared to the truth that a

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parent or parent loves you, or the truth of a proverb such as: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?

Question: Which of these three statements leaves you most comfortable, and which makes you uncomfortable? Do you find any of them adequate?

When the Bible "is historically accurate, it is only accidentally so: reporting was not of the slightest interest to its writers. They had a story to tell which could only be told by myth and metaphor: what they wrote became a source of vision rather than doctrine. The Bible is, with unimportant exceptions, written in the literary language of myth and metaphor. (Northrop Frye, quoted by Tacey pp 17)

It was not the intention of the biblical writers "to be read in a literal way" as they worked in "the mixed medium of parable and history" as they wrote "the Jesus story." (Tacey pp40) The key question is: What is Jesus' significance? The facts in the gospels are like the facts in Shakespeare's Henry V, for example. There was a Henry, and the play follows the outline of his life, but Shakespeare is using the story to communicate his own message and agenda.

Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives. (Chicago Statement of Inerrancy 1978)

Continuing the question: What lead to your choice? What is discomforting or inadequate about the "uncomfortable" statements.

Again: There are no "right answers" for this study; the questions are about understanding ourselves in the world.

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Responding to the textWhat this study is seeking to do is not to give all the answers. It is designed to model a methodology for approaching the text. This methodology is as much art as science; we can gain an instinct for which questions to ask of a particular text. Our ability to be insightful in our questions will grow with practice.

Tacey says that "the story of Jesus enables us to see the life of the spirit: the Jesus story opens a window to the soul." (op. cit. 59) He goes on to say "that the Jesus story is about the secret life of us… a story about the life of the human soul." (pp 63)

This means that at least as important as the text, is our response to the text, especially our emotional response. So the key question I always ask in Bible studies is: What are your emotions after reading this? Boredom, confusion, anger, fear, curiosity…?

Only then do I begin to apply literary and critical tools to analyse the text. If we do not see that the biblical texts have the underlying aim of "opening us up," then we are as deluded as the person who seeks wisdom for living in a David Jones catalogue, or their dishwasher user's guide.

A note: You have seen me use the term [story]. I have substituted story for myth because, as Tacey says, the technical literary term myth "means 'sacred story' whereas the modern term 'myth' has been debased and refers to falsity." (pp2)

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Reading which may be helpfulIn Defence of Doubt Val Webb (Second Edition) Val WebbMetaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language Sallie McFagueBeyond Literal Belief: Religion as Metaphor David Tacey

InterpretationThere are some 'tips' to reading this ancient book.

1. Our first questions. What emotions does this raise in me? No rights or wrongs.

2. Always look for the parallel stories in the Old Testament! The biblical authors use a technique called Midrash.

Our literary convention is to footnote our writing to establish its authority. We point back to the recognised authorities who support our thesis.

But Midrash does more: "everything to be venerated in the present must be connected with a sacred moment in the past." A particular form of this is Haggadah which interprets a story by relating it to a sacred story from the past. A classic example:

Moses went down to the water of the Red Sea, and the waters parted. Joshua went down to the Jordan, and the waters parted. But when Jesus went down to the Jordan, the heaven was opened! (Luke 3:21)

3. How would Jesus' people read this story?What was their situation?What were their hopes and fears?How can I find out answers to these questions?

4. What are our hopes and fears?5. When I put my hopes, fears and emotions together, what will I do?

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Week One

The Gospel for Week 1Luke 21:25-36

The lectionary is artificial in that it takes a short piece of text which can disguise the place and the role of the text in the whole book. Always look before and after for context! I have included the whole of Chapter 21 and the beginning of Chapter 22. The reading is highlighted in grey.

In the original texts you can see there are no headings. They are not in the text! Neither are the verses. The original texts had no punctuation either, and no spaces between the words! The text is all capitals!

Question: What might that mean for the text we are reading?

The Text: Luke 21:25-36[Jesus] looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; 2he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins.3He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; 4for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’

5 When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6‘As for these things

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that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’

7 They asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’ 8And he said, ‘Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and, “The time is near!” Do not go after them.

9 ‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’10Then he said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

12 ‘But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13This will give you an opportunity to testify. 14So make up your minds not to prepare your defence in advance; 15for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. 16You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17You will be hated by all because of my name. 18But not a hair of your head will perish. 19By your endurance you will gain your souls.

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20 ‘When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. 21Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out in the country must not enter it; 22for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfilment of all that is written. 23Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people; 24they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

25 ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. 28Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’

29 Then he told them a parable: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees;30as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. 31So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. 33Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

34 ‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, 35like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. 36Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.’

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37 Every day he was teaching in the temple, and at night he would go out and spend the night on the Mount of Olives, as it was called. 38And all the people would get up early in the morning to listen to him in the temple.

Now the festival of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was near. 2The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to put Jesus to death, for they were afraid of the people.

3 Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve; 4he went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him to them. 5They were greatly pleased and agreed to give him money. 6So he consented and began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them when no crowd was present.

Responding to the textA reminder: What this study is seeking to do is not to give all the answers. It is designed to model a methodology for approaching the text. This methodology is as much art as science; we can gain an instinct for which questions to ask of a particular text.

Tacey says that "the story of Jesus enables us to see the life of the spirit: the Jesus story opens a window to the soul." (op. cit. 59) He goes on to say "that the Jesus story is about the secret life of us… a story about the life of the human soul." (pp 63)

This means that at least as important as the text, is our response to the text, especially our emotional response. So the key question is:

What are your emotions after reading this? Boredom, confusion, anger, fear, curiosity…?

There is no "right response" to a text, but our emotions key into what the text may say to us. Reading our emotions is important: I knew a child who,

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when faced with something distasteful, would yawn prodigiously and begin to fall asleep! What does my anger/fear/curiosity/enthusiasm etc signify? My little friend's boredom was not his primary emotion; it signified something else!

A Place to Start: Imagine we had to get the week's gospel reading onto the front page of the news sheet! What would we leave out? All the padding we remove to produce the Pilgrim Church Condensed Version is where the author has taken the basic tradition and added layers of meaning.

In this text, we have:Repetition and Qualifiers You can see an example of this in the yellow highlighting. Why not just a person? Why a woman? Why a widow? Why poor? Why the repetition? These are a way of saying Take note. This is important.

Question: Can you find other repetition?

Qualifiers We saw the poor widow. There are other qualifiers.

Questions: What are the other qualifiers you can find? Why might he say:"Mount of Olives – as it was called?"

Names and Titles What are the names in the current text? This is one of the areas we can miss if we are focussed on a literal reading. Names are almost always

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included for a reason in Biblical texts: the names are part of the message. Why is Judas not just Judas, but Judas called Iscariot?

Factually, we might call him Judas called Iscariot because that is his name. But in symbolic, metaphorical, and literary readings the qualifiers to his name (and other qualifiers) often carry the meaning of the story.

But sometimes a name is just a name! Iscariot is simply a Greek transcription of the Hebrew "man of Kerioth." It distinguishes this Judas from Judas the son of James (Luke 6:16) another one of the disciples, according to Luke. The commentator Fitzmyer (Luke Vol 1 pp 620) says the interpretations that it related to the Latin word sicarius— the daggermen— or the Aramaic seqarya— false one, liar— are unlikely.

Questions: What are the other names and titles you can find? How would you decide if they were significant?

Who are the actors or players?Who are the players in this drama? What is the role of each player?JesusJudasRich peoplePoor widowpeoplethe crowdSon of ManSatan - Diablos

Note that the nameless people have a role in the drama.

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PlaceWhere does the action happen? Location is used to add to the message. What is significant about the locations; ie why did things happen here and not somewhere else?

Temple Mount of Olive Jerusalem

Context of our text Our set lectionary text is the grey highlighted text. Always look at the context of the reading, because the lectionary introduces artificial division that may not correlate with the author's intentions!

Chapter 21 begins with the destruction of Jerusalem; specifically verses 1-24. When Luke is writing this has already happened. (66-70 CE)

Question: Since people already know this detail— Luke is clearly describing a horrible event that was in living memory— what is the purpose of putting it in? If you were a Jewish or Christian person in the time of Luke, what would these words be saying to you? How would you feel?

Our TextThe tone changes at verse 25. It goes from the destruction of Jerusalem to a more general tone. It also reflects passages from the Old Testament and books written between the Old and New Testaments.

"…signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations…" are a trope for that time when God will intervene decisively in the affairs of earth and put things to right. Today we have tropes like nuclear holocaust to deal with our fears for the future. Can you

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see the trope of dystopia in movies like "The Road" or "The War of the Worlds" (I'm thinking of the Tom Cruise version) or "The Matrix" or "Mad Max."

Question: What is the truth in the trope, and what is the fiction? Or in other words, what is the metaphor saying to us?

Question: What does Luke sit next to the trope of God's decisive intervention? Look at verses 29, and 34.

Interpretation How do we make sense of this text?

We have alerted ourselves to our own emotions, which colour what we see in the text. We've been asking questions about the text which help us see how people of Jesus' time might have read the text; we've looked at their situation and hopes and fears…

Our interpretation is to ask where this all intersects with our hopes and fears. This is where the art begins!

A method:

In my own words…Imagine being with a friend who makes you feel safe and who is sincerely interested in your opinion.

Tell them in a few words how you feel about what you have been reading and thinking— the questions, challenges, emotions. What is the text saying to you? Where does it challenge you? What does it question about the way you are living?

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Remember: the issue is not first of all what is right, wrong, or able to be sustained in an argument, about the meaning of the text. It is to allow the text to "open you up" to the spirit around you. A later step can be to refine your "technical" understanding of the text.

Week Two

The Gospel for Week 2 Luke 3:1-6

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low,and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; 6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’

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Responding to the textWhat are your emotions after reading this? Boredom, confusion, anger, fear, curiosity….? There is no right response, but our emotions key into what the text may say to us.

Are their questions that "pop into your mind" when you read the text?

Remember all "… that padding we removed to produce the Pilgrim Church Condensed Version?" Underline all the padding! How would you tell the story in 50 words or less for a radio competition?

The Artificial LectionaryIf you look carefully you can see there is a more or less self-contained narrative or story which stretches from Verse one to verse 20 in Chapter Three. The lectionary has cut it in two for week two and three of Advent.

How would you approach the text? Can you see natural connections between items that have been severed by the lectionary?

Names, Titles, Geography/Place Names and geography are almost always included for a reason in Biblical text. They are part of the message. WildernessJordanAbileneItureaJudeaGalileeTrachonitis

Question: What do the names and titles tell you?Emperor TiberiusPontius Pilate was governor of Judea

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Herod was ruler of Galileehis brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and TrachonitisLysanias ruler of Abileneduring the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphasthe word of God came to John son of Zechariah.

Note: He does not call him John the Baptist; he calls him son of Zechariah.

Who are the actors? In the last study we asked, "Who are the players in this drama?" Who is the key person in the text this week? What has Luke already told us about him? This last question is a key question. We read the bible in bits and pieces. The people of Jesus' time, who listened, would remember that:

Luke 1… the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. 14You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, 15for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. 16He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’

Question: What is the geography about? Can you see a basic contrast in the geography which parallels two groups of names— The geography and borders imposed by Rome vs the geography of God: in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan…

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Quoting the Old Testament "… proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah…"

What this form of quotation of the Old Testament by the New Testament does is tell us to interpret / think about "repentance for the forgiveness of sins" in the context of the Old Testament quotation.

Our literary style today teaches us to quote only the words we need to support our argument. The only reason our reader should need to go back to the text we quote, is to check if we are telling the truth, or are quoting in context. The quote should hold all the information our reader needs.

But in the time of Luke, it was assumed that you would know the context of the quotation and, quite possibly, know the surrounding text by heart! So where he quotes these few verses from Isaiah, we would be more likely to say something like, "If you want to see what I am talking about here, go and read Isaiah Chapter 40— there isn't room to quote it all here, or, I haven't got copyright clearance to put it all in."

There were no chapters and verses in the texts of the day. You were expected to recognise the part of the scroll of Isaiah from which the quotation came, and go and read it, if you didn't know it by heart! The quotation was to help you find the right part of the scroll.

And, of course, the quoting of the text assumes we know the background of Isaiah 40!

Consequence: When the text quotes the OT, we should go and read the text before and after the quotation, and ask ourselves how Luke's first century Jewish contemporaries would have been in the habit of interpreting that text. You can see why you can spend your whole life studying this stuff!

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Some Context: Isaiah 40-55 is commonly called Deutero-Isaiah. (i.e., second Isaiah) It's a well-recognised self-contained section within Isaiah, which reflects upon Israel's return from exile in Babylon— it may even be reading the signs of the time and making a prediction! It calls the Persian Emperor Cyrus, who allowed some of the exiles to return home, God's Anointed One; also known as, Messiah! (Isa 45:1)

Questions: What does putting the ideas of repentance and forgiveness of sins next to a text about a return from exile say to you? Who causes or engineers the return from exile?

What is the overwhelming affect or emotion in Isaiah 40? What does that say about Luke's understanding of the significance of John the Baptist? Does John sound like Isaiah?

JargonOne of our problems as Christians, is that we get used to our own language, and sometimes forget what it means. Have you ever had that experience where someone asks you what something obvious means and you can't get it into a short explanation?

We will deal with this in the next study, but for now:What does repentance actually mean? Is it just being sorry?What is forgiveness?What is sin?

In my own words…

Do the exercise: Imagine being with a friend who makes you feel safe and who is sincerely interested in your opinion. Tell them in a few words how you feel about what you have been reading and thinking— the questions, challenges, emotions. What is the text saying to you? What is the affect? Remember: the issue is not first of all what is right, wrong, or able to be

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sustained in an argument. It is to allow the text to "open you up" to the spirit around you.

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Week Three

The Gospel for Week 3 Luke 3:7-18In the last study, we saw how the story has been divided in two by the lectionary. So I have included some of last week's reading in the square brackets for context:

[3(John) went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low,and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; 6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ]

7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’

10 And the crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’ 11In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’ 12Even tax-collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’13He said to them, ‘Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.’14Soldiers also

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asked him, ‘And we, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.’

15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. 19But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, 20added to them all by shutting up John in prison.

Responding to the textWhat are your emotions after reading this? Boredom, confusion, anger, fear, curiosity…. ?

Imagine we had to get the text above on to the front page of the news sheet! What would we leave out? All that padding we removed to produce the Pilgrim Church Condensed Version is where the author has taken the basic tradition and added layers of meaning.

Repetition: In this text we have crowds, and sharing. Can you find other repetition? One thing that might not strike us as repetition is the reference to tax collectors and soldiers! This list (repetition) is a list of "not nice" people; aka sinners. What does this repetition tell us?

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Names and Titles and actors Who are the players in this drama? What are the titles?

Herod, Soldiers, tax collectors, the people, crowdswhoever….

Can you find others?

Herod the ruler… brood of vipers… children of Abrahamoffspring of Abraham…

Can you find others?

Brood of vipers: "Name calling involves accusations of deviance. If made to stick in public, negative names undermined a person's or group's place in a society and threatened ostracism or expulsion. "Brood of vipers" (literally, " offspring of snakes," "snake bastards") would be as insulting a label as one could imagine in a society in which social standing and the honor bound up with it are fundamentally a function of birth." (Malina and Rohrbau. Social Science Commentary)

Do you see how children of Abraham is a contrast to brood of vipers? Does societal honour and standing count for anything in John's understanding? What counts for John?

What is the role of each player? How would you feel if you were part of the establishment, and belonged to the "good" people of the land, after you heard this?

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PlaceWhere does the action happen? This is the same question we asked last week, and it seems like there is no specification to the place except that he speaks of the crowds who came out… What might that mean? Who does not come out? In what place do they stay?

Left Jerusalem, left the establishment, left the place of corruption. Only Herod is not there!

MethodA part of what "classic" literature offers us is a multi-valency or multiple levels of meaning. It sparks imagination. No one ever has the full answer. Someone might say, "You're only imagining it!" and that could be true. We may be reading into the text (eisegesis) instead of reading out of the text (exegesis). And we should be careful of reading too much in. But what we read in, even if it is quite wrong, should lead us to ask, "Why? What does what I see here say to me about me, and where I am in life?"

The Action and contextWe were told in the previous reading that John had a "baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." This is what Malina says about forgiveness of sins:

In an honor-shame society, sin is a breach of interpersonal relations. In the Gospels the closest analogy to the forgiveness of sins is the forgiveness of debts (Matt. 6:12; see Luke 11:4), an analogy drawn from pervasive peasant experience. Debt threatened loss of land, livelihood, family. It made persons poor, that is, unable to maintain their social position. Forgiveness would thus have had the character of restoration,

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a return to both self-sufficiency and one's place in the community. Since the introspective, guilt-oriented outlook of industrialized societies did not exist, it is unlikely that forgiveness meant psychological healing. Instead, forgiveness by God meant being divinely restored to one's position and therefore being freed from fear of loss at the hands of God. (On Luke 3:1-20)

Can you see how the response John demands of people brings restoration to one's position? Think back to Isaiah 40: this was Israel "being divinely restored… and freed from fear of loss at the hands of God!"

Baptism in Jesus' time was washing signifying purification or consecration.

In Mediterranean antiquity, water, fire, and spirit (literally, wind) were liquids that could be poured out or poured into someone (=infused). "Baptism" is a transliterated word meaning "dipping" in a liquid, whether water, fire, or wind. John the Dipper's river dipping "for repentance," would have taken place after the rainy season, when the water of the shallow Jordan was deep and warm enough for people to step into the river. The dipping in "holy wind" and "fire" by the one "who is coming" is a dipping of judgment as the winnowing wind separates the chaff, which is then burned (as fuel, in cooking or brickmaking - never for heating, except in the baths of the wealthy) (Malina)

Question: If you were a Jewish or Christian person in the time of Luke, what might these words about baptism in spirit be saying to you? How would you feel?

Do you remember being baptised? What did it mean for you?

What is the difference between John and the "one who is more powerful than I?"

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Week Four

The Gospel for Week 4 Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)26 In the sixth month [of Elizabeth's pregnancy] the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’29But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. 31And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ 34Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ 35The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37For nothing will be impossible with God.’ 38Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.

39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child

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in my womb leapt for joy. 45And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’

46 And Mary said,‘My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, 48 for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

56 And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.

Responding to the textWhat are your emotions after reading this? Boredom, confusion, anger, fear, curiosity….?

Question: What does it mean when readers burst into extended poetry?

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The Key Question for Week Four:How do we read the text?This reading drags us right back to the nature of interpretation.

One level of interpretation of this text is clear: the birth of Jesus, in Luke's eyes, is a beginning, a sign that already God

has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

We are to interpret Jesus as the fulfilment of God's desire for justice. He is the fulfilment of all Israel's hopes: "He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

The birth announcement is also an example of Midrash similar to that employed at Jesus' baptism. We said near the beginning of this study that

Moses went down to the water of the Red Sea, and the waters parted. Joshua went down to the Jordan, and the waters parted. But when Jesus went down to the Jordan, the heaven was opened! (Luke 3:21)

In the case of Jesus' birth, we could say that Sarah had been old and without children, but God acted to bring to birth in her the "father of many nations." (Genesis 17, 18) Hannah had no children, but God gave her a son who became a great prophet of Israel. (1 Samuel 1) Elizabeth was old and without children, but God gave her a son to "make ready a people prepared for the Lord." (Luke 1:17) Mary, by contrast, is young, is a virgin (the text repeats this three times) and yet is given a son who is to be called "God saves."

32He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33He

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will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. (Luke 1)

When Mary "sings" the Magnificat it is strongly based around the words of Hannah's song in 1 Samuel 2. We are meant to remember Hannah and the other mothers.

If we have any sensitivity to issues of justice, the Magnificat (Latin for Blessed) is an inspiring text.

But how do we read it when the very basis of the text is a virgin birth, which we now know to be a biological impossibility for human beings?

If this week's reading were, in fact, the manual for our dishwasher, we would stop reading. We would not read on to the Magnificat, because the book was clearly in error, and not to be trusted. How do we hold to the hope of the Magnificat in the face of the non sense (in 21st century terms) of the virgin birth?

Question: How do you deal with this tension? (There is no right answer.)

PrinciplesWhere does a biblical story sit among the great stories of humanity? The bible is not unique; it is the universal human story embedded in culture. The great stories— the myths— reflect some of the essence of our humanity. For example, Walter Wink said of the Babylonian creation story that, "its basic mythic structure spread as far as Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Germany, Ireland, India, and China." (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/cpt/article_060823wink.shtml)

Wink goes on in that article to say that the Genesis adaptations of that myth are written to contradict its vision of the divine. The Bible sits within, and argues with— 'it riffs upon,' the universal stories.

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The Virgin Birth: A Universal StoryThe Virgin birth is one of the recurring underlying stories of humanity. Miraculous births are a common place. We have already mentioned Isaac, Samue,l and John the Baptist. We can add Jacob and Esau, (Genesis 25) Joseph, (Genesis 30:22) the child Immanuel in Isaiah 7. (Note the Hebrew in Isaiah 7 says young woman, not virgin) This is a trope that indicates that God is involved in the birth. It is part of the divine plan for Israel.

Virgin births stories are associated with Romulus and Remus (the founders of Rome), Helen of Troy, Oedipus, Alexander the Great, Augustus… The Wikipedia article on miraculous births shows the shows the breadth of this story across multiple cultures, and any number of web sites will argue about the veracity of such claims. These are very often polemical sites arguing about literal veracity and not asking why such stories arise. What do they say about how we exist as human beings? Do they say something to us about the birth of the divine, or a sensibility of the divine, within us? Tacey says it bluntly: "God comes to birth in my soul, and not only in the soul of Jesus. That is what the myth announces." (Beyond Literal Belief pp100)

Are we twice-born?The notion of being twice-born is common in religions. It's seen most clearly in Christianity in John 3: you must be born again. What causes us to see more deeply? What divine miracle makes us aware of the spiritual dimension of life? Where did this 'birth' from clever animal to some-One deeper come from?

Question: In a world which is focussed on the surface of things, which finds its meaning in the consumption of material things, what caused you to see below and within?

Question: What do you hear in Meister Eckhart's sermon?

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I affirm that had the Virgin not first borne God spiritually He would never have been born from her in bodily fashion. A certain woman said to Christ, “Blessed is the womb that bear Thee.” To which Christ answered, “Nay, rather blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it.” It is more worthy of God that He be born spiritually of every pure and virgin soul, than that He be born of Mary. Hereby we should understand that humanity is, so to speak, the Son of God born from all eternity. (Meister Eckhart's Sermons III)

Mythopoesis: Writing our own storyMythopoeisis or mythopoeia is a word from the Greek "myth making." Poetry is a making which derives from the same origins. Mythopoeisis is used today as a description of a literary genre where "The authors… integrate traditional mythological themes and archetypes into fiction." Tolkien's great work, The Lord of the Rings, is a prime example.

But mythopoeis could also be a description of our own discipleship. It is to 'write' our own life story as we listen to the great universal stories of humanity, and, in particular, to the great stories of our Christian faith.

Our society seeks to impose stories upon us. Media overflows with propaganda from those wishing to sell us goods which will (allegedly) provide us with happiness to those wishing sell us a political vision so that we will vote for them? Which vision will you choose… or will you write your own story?

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It is naïve to think we can produce a story out of nothing. Those who try always reflect the culture around them, and the great universal stories or myths bubble up into their own story.

Religion provides a tried and tested story. Living the discipline steers us on well-worn and proven paths and warns us of the dangers and pitfalls of life. Our own western culture lives too much in the surface of things and has become unconscious of its stories.

Perhaps in becoming conscious of the stories by which we live, and by "writing and living" our own we open ourselves more fully to the advent of the divine within us.

Theology is mostly fiction......but then, isn't seeing any of the earththe telling of a story?

Pilgrim..... what story will you tell?which tale will be your guideand your sustenance through long nightsround small fires?

Leave the centre of life's plateauwhere evil comes on its own terms.Go out to the edges and live.Depart from the prison of insecure certainty....Leave the lieTravel across the breaking iceSeek a GodMake a story.

I was lost in a white waste land.My fictions dissolved around meI froze,Lost on a breaking sheet, thin underfoot.

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But I could feel the ice moveand after a timeI could see edges again.

Theology is mostly fiction...but, I thought,"Stark on ice perhaps I will be exposed to whatever is.There will be no hiding behind pastel landscapes;no safe deceptions."I want this.I have always felt the ice moving.Theology is mostly fiction...yet it gives me edgesas it dares explore grinding ice. ('Jane Thomas')

Question: What is the story you will tell?

The Seasons of the YearAdventA season of preparation, beginning on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, in which the Church recalls its hope and expectation in the coming of Christ, past, present and future. (The colour is violet or purple.)

Christmas: The Christmas-Epiphany season includes Christmas Eve/Day and the twelve days of Christmas. It recalls the stories of the birth and infancy of Christ. The Church in this time celebrates the wonder of the incarnation; the season concludes with Epiphany. (Not to be confused with the Christmas season which begins in the stores in mid to late September and ends on Christmas Day, to be followed by the Boxing Day sales, The New Year's Test and Hot Cross Buns.)

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After Epiphany: A period in which the Church reflects on the manifestation of Christ to all people. The Baptism of the Lord is the first Sunday of this period. On the last Sunday, we hear the readings for the Transfiguration of the Lord. The length of this period varies depending on the date of Easter. (People often abbreviate this to Epiphany)

Lent: A season of preparation and discipline that begins with Ash Wednesday and concludes at sundown on Holy Saturday. During the forty weekdays and six Sundays in Lent, the Church remembers the life and ministry of Jesus and renews its commitment to him in Christian discipleship. The season is the traditional time to prepare for baptisms and confirmations to be celebrated at the Easter Vigil or on Easter Sunday, or during the season of Easter.

Easter: The great fifty days of Easter includes eight Sundays beginning with the Easter Vigil and concluding on the Day of Pentecost. The season celebrates the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

After Pentecost: A period of time that varies in length depending on whether Easter is early or late. In this period, the Church recalls its faith in the Holy Trinity. It seeks to relate its faith as a people of God to Christ’s mission in the world. It commences with Trinity Sunday and concludes with the feast of Christ the King. (Often shortened to Pentecost.)

Source: Documents at https://assembly.uca.org.au/cudw/worship-resources-and-publications/item/863-the-lectionary

Direct Biblical quotations in this study are taken from The New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. This study is copyright to Andrew Prior, but may be reproduced for non-commercial use as a study guide.

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