(no subject)
I'm way behind on this one, but mari4212 will want the notes anyway. This is the last of our lenten sunday school classes. Since then, we've gon through palm Sunday and Easter, and i've been swamped with Boy Scout training and issues.
In the final session of our study, we are looking at the last Supper, and viewing it as the final symbolic action that Jesus took to break free from loss and melancholy, in order to become an agent of salvation.
The scriptural reference used is Mark 14:21 and following verses. The actions are familiar; at the Passover feast, Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples, with the words 'This is my body'. At the end of the meal, he took a cup of wine, gave thanks and passed it to the disciples, saying 'This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for many".
Many of the most memorable and meaningful actions that Jesus took were at table. This seemed to be deliberate on Jesus’ part. John Dominic Crossan writes that "for Jesus, the table was a miniature model of the kingdom". Many of the parables also likened the kingdom of God to a feast.
A particularly important parable is the one in which a king invites many people to a wedding feast. The invited guests don’t show up, and the king orders his servants to travel the highways and byways, inviting anyone they could find, until the hall was filled for the feast. This parable is found in Matthew and Luke, as well as in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, and (since it is found in identical form in Matthew and Luke) in the sayings gospel "Q". The kind of random search would have brought in all classes, all sexes, all ranks of people, saints and sinners - all mixed together and equal at the feast.
Jesus himself lived out this parable by constantly eating with "sinners and tax collectors". Not mentioned by Larry was the ancient Semitic practice of hospitality, which meant that at a desert oasis, you had to provide food and water to anyone, even an enemy. On the other hand, if you ate with that enemy, you were required to reconcile with that enemy. Therefore, Jesus’ habit of eating with the "sinners and tax collectors" meant that he was obligated to be reconciled with them, in an open, egalitarian table fellowship. In contrast, the Pharisees were a renewal movement, seeking to strengthen Judaism and their common Jewish identity by having ritually pure people eat ritually pure meals. The Pharisees practiced table fellowship too, but it was an exclusive one. No wonder they quarreled with Jesus.
There are other examples of this emphasis on the banquet as an image of the kingdom of God. The feeding miracles were eschatological dramatizations of what the kingdom of God would be - feasts where all would be welcome and hosted by God. In the Sermon on the Plain, Luke cites the beatitude "Blessed are the hungry, for they shall be filled".
And now, we return to psychology. We have been viewing Jesus as a utopian melancholic, an idealist entranced by a utopian vision, but traumatized by the death of that vision. The response to this melancholy is either a turn to mania, or to despair. It turns out that many utopian melancholics become preoccupied by food and obsessed with diet. They respond in one of two ways. Martin Luther exemplifies one extreme, becoming a voracious eater and drinker, ultimately suffering from his overindulgence. Mahatma Gandhi shows the other extreme, displaying an ascetic, abstemious eater, almost starving himself to death several times. Interestingly, Gandhi first encountered Christians and Christianity in London, when he was seeking out vegetarians.
Why the preoccupation with food? For one thing, it’s something the melancholic can control. Food is also closely tied with maternal care and feeding, and with hope. Eric Ericksen says "Our first firmament is our mother’s face, shining above, giving out nourishment. Having tasted and sensed it, we remain part of it and eventually become strong enough to leave it." Utopian melancholics become fixated on another hope, and when that hope dies, and melancholy begins, they respond by internalizing the failed hope, and by internalizing that initial hope of maternal care. In the struggle with that failed internalized hope, mania results when the self overcomes the hope; and gluttony an overconsumption can be a consequence. Luther’s gluttony was an expression of his will to live, sometimes described as "melancholy with teeth in it". When the internalized hope overcomes the self, depletion and despair is the result, shown by abstention from food, as in the case of Gandhi.
Jesus appears to be much closer to Luther than to Gandhi. His enemies accused him of being a glutton and a wine drinker. While Jesus DID fast, he never encouraged fasting as a spiritual discipline for his disciples. In his teaching, he ruled out the more extreme food rules, saying "Nothing that goes into a man can defile him, only what comes out of him."
The Last Supper is particularly illustrative of Jesus attitude towards food, and actually points to a third way of response to melancholy, not gluttony (mania) or asceticism (depletion).
From the text, Jesus sent two disciples into Jerusalem, and told them to follow a man carrying a water jar, then to ask about a guest room in the home that he entered, and there to prepare the feast. The first significant thing about the story is how difficult it would ordinarily be for out-of-town Galileans to find a room in town where they could actually celebrate the Passover feast, due to the large number of pilgrims compared to the size of the city. The preparations were very elaborate and involved, and include obtaining an unblemished 1 year old lamb, taking it to the temple to be ritually slaughtered, and then properly cooked.
Once the feast began, the first significant action Jesus took was giving one last prophecy that he would be betrayed, literally "handed over", by one of those who was eating with him. The prophecy echoes those in Mark 8, 9 and 10. This would have been the bitterest possible blow, the ultimate breaking of the inclusive table fellowship and an ultimate violation of the hospitality code. The natural reaction of a melancholic (or even a normal person not suffering from melancholy) would be a loss of appetite, or the temptation to start binge drinking. Instead, Jesus takes a different approach - taking a symbolic action, breaking free from the captivity to loss, and becoming an agent of change.
He then institutes the Eucharist, by taking bread, blessing it, breaking it and announcing "Take, eat, this is my body." At the end of the meal, he gives thanks for the wine, gives it to them, and tells them "This is my blood, poured out for the new covenant. Whenever you do this, you do it I remembrance of me."
The sharing of the wine directly implies a sacrifice, recalling the blood of the Passover lamb, and the blood poured out in sacrifice any time a covenant is made. The principle behind this blood sacrifice was "May the same thing happen to me (my blood completely poured out) if I break this covenant."
In Jesus view, the death of his original vision (the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God) had been irretrievably broken, by the killing of John the Baptist, and by the opposition of the Jewish authorities. The old covenant was broken. In the three symbolic actions we have been discussing, Jesus seeks to establish a new covenant:
· The entry into Jerusalem - I will answer the call.
· Cleansing of the temple - I will repair the break in the covenant
· Last Supper - I will lay down my life to achieve this.
To return to the thesis that Jesus was a utopian melancholic, who has been driven to the melancholy by the death of the idealized hope - the battle within the melancholic is between the self and the idealized, internalized hope. When the self triumphs over the internal hope, the response is manic activity, over consumption, and self-destructive excess. When the hope overcomes the self, the result is despair, depression, depletion and possibly suicide.
Jesus chooses a third path - he decides to share himself and his internalized hope with others, through these symbolic acts, and most especially the Eucharist. This abolishes the boundary between himself and others, so that we believers become the Body of Christ, his new self in the world.
We do this when we practice the same open fellowship in our lives and in our world, today. Jesus didn’t get to experience the Kingdom of God in his own life (only in his death), but by giving his life to us, we get to experience at least part of that life, a life lived in relationship and service to others, as a new reality. In this way, we share in the passions of Christ, so long as we share in his fellowship and in his ministry.
My personal reaction to this and the previous lessons is that I am not yet completely ready to accept a depressed or melancholic Savior.
Part of it lies in the narrative. Larry would have us believe that everything was sweetness and light until about halfway through Jesus' ministry, when opposition by the Jewish authorities and the murder of John the Baptist triggered the melancholy. The evidence used to show the melancholy (predictions of His own betrayal and death, weeping at the death of Lazarus, agony in the garden, feelng of forsakenness on the cross) is supposed to extend all the way through Jesus life, to the moment of His death. On the other hand, the evidence for Jesus' active management of His melancholy, the entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the temple and the last Supper all occur during the middle of the narrative.
There's also the matter of the actual trigger. There's an old saying that just because you are paranoid DOESN'T mean that everyone isn't out to get you. In the same context, being melancholic doesn't mean that the "bad guys" aren't out to oppose you either. The initial lack of opposition to Jesus and His message may just mean that the Jewish authorities weren't aware of Him yet. The Temple authorities were dispatching what they saw as false messiahs on a regular basis, and Jesus wouldn't have been that much different to them. Jesus' response that he would be betrayed and suffer death wasn't despair - it was the stark truth, amply verified by what happened to every other messianic figure. Jesus was unique in predicting that he would be raised again from the dead, and I believe it was that faith in His Father's actions that gave Him the courge to go on. The REAL temptation that Jesus faced was more likely the apparent hopelessness of the situation and unbelief that God would actually carry him through.
In the final session of our study, we are looking at the last Supper, and viewing it as the final symbolic action that Jesus took to break free from loss and melancholy, in order to become an agent of salvation.
The scriptural reference used is Mark 14:21 and following verses. The actions are familiar; at the Passover feast, Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples, with the words 'This is my body'. At the end of the meal, he took a cup of wine, gave thanks and passed it to the disciples, saying 'This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for many".
Many of the most memorable and meaningful actions that Jesus took were at table. This seemed to be deliberate on Jesus’ part. John Dominic Crossan writes that "for Jesus, the table was a miniature model of the kingdom". Many of the parables also likened the kingdom of God to a feast.
A particularly important parable is the one in which a king invites many people to a wedding feast. The invited guests don’t show up, and the king orders his servants to travel the highways and byways, inviting anyone they could find, until the hall was filled for the feast. This parable is found in Matthew and Luke, as well as in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, and (since it is found in identical form in Matthew and Luke) in the sayings gospel "Q". The kind of random search would have brought in all classes, all sexes, all ranks of people, saints and sinners - all mixed together and equal at the feast.
Jesus himself lived out this parable by constantly eating with "sinners and tax collectors". Not mentioned by Larry was the ancient Semitic practice of hospitality, which meant that at a desert oasis, you had to provide food and water to anyone, even an enemy. On the other hand, if you ate with that enemy, you were required to reconcile with that enemy. Therefore, Jesus’ habit of eating with the "sinners and tax collectors" meant that he was obligated to be reconciled with them, in an open, egalitarian table fellowship. In contrast, the Pharisees were a renewal movement, seeking to strengthen Judaism and their common Jewish identity by having ritually pure people eat ritually pure meals. The Pharisees practiced table fellowship too, but it was an exclusive one. No wonder they quarreled with Jesus.
There are other examples of this emphasis on the banquet as an image of the kingdom of God. The feeding miracles were eschatological dramatizations of what the kingdom of God would be - feasts where all would be welcome and hosted by God. In the Sermon on the Plain, Luke cites the beatitude "Blessed are the hungry, for they shall be filled".
And now, we return to psychology. We have been viewing Jesus as a utopian melancholic, an idealist entranced by a utopian vision, but traumatized by the death of that vision. The response to this melancholy is either a turn to mania, or to despair. It turns out that many utopian melancholics become preoccupied by food and obsessed with diet. They respond in one of two ways. Martin Luther exemplifies one extreme, becoming a voracious eater and drinker, ultimately suffering from his overindulgence. Mahatma Gandhi shows the other extreme, displaying an ascetic, abstemious eater, almost starving himself to death several times. Interestingly, Gandhi first encountered Christians and Christianity in London, when he was seeking out vegetarians.
Why the preoccupation with food? For one thing, it’s something the melancholic can control. Food is also closely tied with maternal care and feeding, and with hope. Eric Ericksen says "Our first firmament is our mother’s face, shining above, giving out nourishment. Having tasted and sensed it, we remain part of it and eventually become strong enough to leave it." Utopian melancholics become fixated on another hope, and when that hope dies, and melancholy begins, they respond by internalizing the failed hope, and by internalizing that initial hope of maternal care. In the struggle with that failed internalized hope, mania results when the self overcomes the hope; and gluttony an overconsumption can be a consequence. Luther’s gluttony was an expression of his will to live, sometimes described as "melancholy with teeth in it". When the internalized hope overcomes the self, depletion and despair is the result, shown by abstention from food, as in the case of Gandhi.
Jesus appears to be much closer to Luther than to Gandhi. His enemies accused him of being a glutton and a wine drinker. While Jesus DID fast, he never encouraged fasting as a spiritual discipline for his disciples. In his teaching, he ruled out the more extreme food rules, saying "Nothing that goes into a man can defile him, only what comes out of him."
The Last Supper is particularly illustrative of Jesus attitude towards food, and actually points to a third way of response to melancholy, not gluttony (mania) or asceticism (depletion).
From the text, Jesus sent two disciples into Jerusalem, and told them to follow a man carrying a water jar, then to ask about a guest room in the home that he entered, and there to prepare the feast. The first significant thing about the story is how difficult it would ordinarily be for out-of-town Galileans to find a room in town where they could actually celebrate the Passover feast, due to the large number of pilgrims compared to the size of the city. The preparations were very elaborate and involved, and include obtaining an unblemished 1 year old lamb, taking it to the temple to be ritually slaughtered, and then properly cooked.
Once the feast began, the first significant action Jesus took was giving one last prophecy that he would be betrayed, literally "handed over", by one of those who was eating with him. The prophecy echoes those in Mark 8, 9 and 10. This would have been the bitterest possible blow, the ultimate breaking of the inclusive table fellowship and an ultimate violation of the hospitality code. The natural reaction of a melancholic (or even a normal person not suffering from melancholy) would be a loss of appetite, or the temptation to start binge drinking. Instead, Jesus takes a different approach - taking a symbolic action, breaking free from the captivity to loss, and becoming an agent of change.
He then institutes the Eucharist, by taking bread, blessing it, breaking it and announcing "Take, eat, this is my body." At the end of the meal, he gives thanks for the wine, gives it to them, and tells them "This is my blood, poured out for the new covenant. Whenever you do this, you do it I remembrance of me."
The sharing of the wine directly implies a sacrifice, recalling the blood of the Passover lamb, and the blood poured out in sacrifice any time a covenant is made. The principle behind this blood sacrifice was "May the same thing happen to me (my blood completely poured out) if I break this covenant."
In Jesus view, the death of his original vision (the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God) had been irretrievably broken, by the killing of John the Baptist, and by the opposition of the Jewish authorities. The old covenant was broken. In the three symbolic actions we have been discussing, Jesus seeks to establish a new covenant:
· The entry into Jerusalem - I will answer the call.
· Cleansing of the temple - I will repair the break in the covenant
· Last Supper - I will lay down my life to achieve this.
To return to the thesis that Jesus was a utopian melancholic, who has been driven to the melancholy by the death of the idealized hope - the battle within the melancholic is between the self and the idealized, internalized hope. When the self triumphs over the internal hope, the response is manic activity, over consumption, and self-destructive excess. When the hope overcomes the self, the result is despair, depression, depletion and possibly suicide.
Jesus chooses a third path - he decides to share himself and his internalized hope with others, through these symbolic acts, and most especially the Eucharist. This abolishes the boundary between himself and others, so that we believers become the Body of Christ, his new self in the world.
We do this when we practice the same open fellowship in our lives and in our world, today. Jesus didn’t get to experience the Kingdom of God in his own life (only in his death), but by giving his life to us, we get to experience at least part of that life, a life lived in relationship and service to others, as a new reality. In this way, we share in the passions of Christ, so long as we share in his fellowship and in his ministry.
My personal reaction to this and the previous lessons is that I am not yet completely ready to accept a depressed or melancholic Savior.
Part of it lies in the narrative. Larry would have us believe that everything was sweetness and light until about halfway through Jesus' ministry, when opposition by the Jewish authorities and the murder of John the Baptist triggered the melancholy. The evidence used to show the melancholy (predictions of His own betrayal and death, weeping at the death of Lazarus, agony in the garden, feelng of forsakenness on the cross) is supposed to extend all the way through Jesus life, to the moment of His death. On the other hand, the evidence for Jesus' active management of His melancholy, the entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the temple and the last Supper all occur during the middle of the narrative.
There's also the matter of the actual trigger. There's an old saying that just because you are paranoid DOESN'T mean that everyone isn't out to get you. In the same context, being melancholic doesn't mean that the "bad guys" aren't out to oppose you either. The initial lack of opposition to Jesus and His message may just mean that the Jewish authorities weren't aware of Him yet. The Temple authorities were dispatching what they saw as false messiahs on a regular basis, and Jesus wouldn't have been that much different to them. Jesus' response that he would be betrayed and suffer death wasn't despair - it was the stark truth, amply verified by what happened to every other messianic figure. Jesus was unique in predicting that he would be raised again from the dead, and I believe it was that faith in His Father's actions that gave Him the courge to go on. The REAL temptation that Jesus faced was more likely the apparent hopelessness of the situation and unbelief that God would actually carry him through.