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<\/a><\/p>\nPastors have a frequent question when they begin to discover\u00a0mimetic theory<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s great. But how does it preach?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Reverend Tom Truby shows that mimetic theory is a powerful tool that enables pastors to preach the Gospel in a way that is meaningful and refreshing to the modern world. Each Wednesday, Teaching Nonviolent Atonement will highlight his sermons as an example of preaching the Gospel through mimetic theory.<\/em><\/p>\n In this sermon, Tom explains how Jesus opens our minds to understand the violence attributed to God within the scriptures. Jesus teaches us to interpret scripture in a manner that \u201cgives us a way of separating the tragic human story swimming in violence from God\u2019s story bathed in love.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Year C, The Ascension Jesus Shows Us How to Read the Bible<\/strong><\/p>\n The Bible has always been hard to understand and more often than not misinterpreted.\u00a0 Even the disciples didn\u2019t understand their scriptures, most of which we think of as the Old Testament today.\u00a0 In Luke 24 Jesus is preparing his disciples for his final departure, not when he dies on the cross, but when he leaves planet earth and ascends out of their sight. One of the last things he gives them is a way to understand scripture. I think we too might find his way helpful.<\/p>\n He frames what he is about to tell them by saying, \u201cThese are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you.\u201d\u00a0 By calling them his last words he underlines how important they are. He could have said this is my hermeneutic but people would have complained (inside joke. My church teases me for using big words). He tells them that \u201ceverything written about me in the Law from Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.\u201d\u00a0 He assumes that the entire Jewish scripture is about him.\u00a0 It\u2019s the lead up to his cross and resurrection, the event the disciples have been going through for the last 40 days.\u00a0 And we know that this is the last of those 40 as Jesus is about to ascend.<\/p>\n Jesus believes the stories of Genesis, the point of the prophets, and the poetry of the psalms provide the necessary background to what has just happened.\u00a0 There is hidden meaning in scripture and he is about to give them the key so that they can see it. The story begun in the Old Testament must be fulfilled and he has come to be that fulfillment.<\/p>\n With all the components of revelation now finished except the Ascension, Luke steps back and says, \u201cHe opened their minds to understand the scriptures.\u201d\u00a0 The application of this key has opened my mind so that I am no longer afraid of the violence in the Old Testament and it does not contradict my view that God is love and nothing but love. So just before his ascension he gives them the interpretive key, turns the switch and the engine of understand begins humming for the first time.\u00a0(I pulled out my car keys gestured with them in hand).<\/p>\n He says, \u201cthis is what is written: the Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.\u201d That\u2019s the key. Like all keys, it\u2019s small and does not appear to have the power to turn on such a powerful and complex engine. The entire scripture is fulfilled, brought to completion, achieved when Christ suffers death on a cross and then rises from the dead on the third day. The death and resurrection of Christ is the central event that makes it possible to understand everything, even the violence in the Old Testament. Let me try to explain how I think this works.<\/p>\n All through the Old Testament the writers of the law, like all other cultures in their time, thought God sanctioned their violence and invasions, their genocides and shunnings, their animal sacrifices and human stoning. You see, they tended to make God into an extension of themselves and use the idea of God to justify their violence.\u00a0 We still do this today with our enemies so we can\u2019t be too critical.\u00a0 This is why the texts in the Old Testament so often say God told them to do terrible acts of violence.\u00a0 Just because they said it does not make it so.<\/p>\n Along came the prophets with a deeper understanding.\u00a0 We have those too. They opposed sacrifice of all kinds, both human and animal, and saw through the lies the culture used to oppress the poor and helpless. When they were at their best they said God did not want sacrifice but rather mercy, compassion and justice. Usually their voices were silenced because the culture turned on them and killed them.<\/p>\n The Psalms, a different genre, often presents the world through the eyes of the victim, the one cornered and about to be killed.\u00a0 Among other things they tell us how it feels to be the one surrounded by those who hate you for no reason and soon will destroy you though you are innocent.\u00a0 When the psalms were written it was a new thing to portray life from this perspective.\u00a0 It\u2019s not new now because we live after Jesus showed us the victimage mechanism but it was new then.<\/p>\n The cross changed the world forever making it impossible to totally ignore the victim after it.\u00a0 In fact the world has changed so much since Christ injected a new knowledge into our midst that now the persecutors often try to convince us that they are actually the victims.\u00a0 It\u2019s the contemporary way of justifying violence.<\/p>\n So we have the Old Testament story of how humans used violence to control and limit violence, though it didn\u2019t work very well, it was better than nothing.\u00a0 And then in the midst of that story we have outbreaks of forgiveness, like Joseph who forgave his brothers and saved their lives even though they had cursed him.\u00a0 And we have Job who refused to accept that God had cursed him even though his wife and all his friends said God had. Always there is the main story and the quieter story within that contradicts it.\u00a0 The fuss and froth of human agitation subverted by the still small voice of God seems to be the story Jesus sees in the Old Testament.<\/p>\n Jesus ties his story to the story hidden in the midst of the larger story.\u00a0 The larger story sends Jesus to be condemned on a cross.\u00a0 Like so many before and since, he dies at the hands of \u201cthe righteous\u201d who think they are doing the will of God and he dies at the hands of empire who sees him as a threat.\u00a0 When it happened to Christ, the son of God, humans were forced to see what they had been doing since civilization began and Cain killed Abel. This revelation fulfills the Old Testament by showing where the major story takes us.\u00a0 Now everyone with eyes to see can see how wrong we have been.<\/p>\n Yes, the larger story found its fulfillment in the suffering of the Christ, but the still small voice of God\u2019s love found its vindication when Christ rises from the dead on the third day. The resurrection confirms the power of the story hidden in the tumult of the Bible.\u00a0 On this last Sunday of Easter it\u2019s natural to think about the meaning and power of the resurrection.\u00a0 The resurrection contradicts the major story and confirms the hidden one. It reveals God\u2019s character; God\u2019s love, compassion and mercy.<\/p>\n And so the Bible contains two stories tangled together and Jesus provides the key to untangling them.\u00a0 It\u2019s the story of humans filled with the frothing and foam of human ambition, greed, arrogance and violence.\u00a0 We need the Old Testament to tell this major story and to enclose the hidden one, where God subverts it.\u00a0 The suffering of Jesus and his being raised from the dead on the third day gives us the other story; softer, subtler, quieter and hidden in the larger story.\u00a0 His story gives us a way of separating the tragic human story swimming in violence from God\u2019s story bathed in love. When we view the Old and New Testaments through the lens of the suffering and risen Jesus, we see things we were blind to before. Now we don\u2019t need to be afraid of the violence in scripture because we have a way of understanding it.<\/p>\n Jesus said, \u201cA change of heart and life for the forgiveness of sins must be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.\u201d Before Jesus our hearts and lives have been in bondage to the larger story of violence, rejection, and fear.\u00a0 But Jesus has subverted that story and given us a new one.\u00a0 This is the story that we preach and witness to as real.\u00a0 As we preach it to the nations we discover it changing our hearts and our lives too.<\/p>\n To help spread the story Jesus promised to send them a helper. He tells them to wait for it in Jerusalem after he has left.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t want them to panic.\u00a0 The helper will come, he said, relax and trust it.<\/p>\n \u201cHe led them out as far as Bethany, where he lifted his hands and blessed them<\/u>.\u00a0 As he blessed them, he left them and was taken up to heaven. They worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem overwhelmed with joy.\u00a0 (They didn\u2019t panic.) And they were continuously in the temple praising God.<\/p>\n Ten days later the Spirit came.\u00a0 We call that day \u201cthe Day of Pentecost\u201d and we wear red to remember it.<\/p>\n Image: Wikimedia: \u201cStained glass window of Jesus Teaching attriguted to the Quaker City Glass Company of Philadelphia.\u201d St. Matthew\u2019s Lutheran Church in Charleston, SC.<\/a>\u00a0Creative Commons License.<\/a> Some changes made.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nMay 8th<\/sup>, 2016
\nThomas L. Truby
\nLuke 24:44-53<\/a><\/p>\n