WWFBSTW Meme

Hurray for gaudy acronyms! WWFBSTW, according to Drew Tatusko, means “What Would Five Biblical Studies Types Write?” And he tagged me (Thanks Drew!):

This meme is very simple. You choose five Biblical studies types and invent a post that they might have written over the last couple of months. Those parodied are entitled, yea, obligated to tag five other bibliobloggers in similar fashion. Don’t forget to link to this original post.

Here goes:

James McGrath: “How Dr. Who LOST His Intelligent Design When He Tried to Learn Mandaic”
Ben Myers: “St. Paul’s Taste in Theology Does Not Include Pornographic Worship”
Scot McKnight: “According to the Gospel of Ruth, James Dobson Does Not Speak For Conservatives”
Chris Heard: “How to Maintain an Audience Without Posting Anything”
Michael Halcomb: “Why Steve Carell Should Not Produce a Comic Version of Genesis 2”

My apologies if you’ve already been tagged. Actually, you have my apologies for tagging you at all! ;)

Holy Saturday - A Day For Death and Doubt

We know virtually nothing of Holy Saturday; only Matthew dates any events to the day between Jesus' death and resurrection: a late story of guards being set at the tomb. The other Gospels skip by without a word. Nowhere are we told what the disciples were doing. No miracles are reported, no visions of God, no resurrection appearances, nothing. God, it seems, was absent that day - like so many days since. It was a day worth forgetting, I suppose. Jesus was dead, well and truly, and hope had died with him. Our focus, rightfully, has fixed on the bright morning of Easter, but perhaps a little less haste is in order.

It is worth lingering with the doubt and uncertainty of that Saturday. Doubt can be healthful, scrubbing away our pious illusions and pseudo-knowledge, revealing the raw edges of life that we would prefer to leave hidden. We Christians tend to read the Gospels in hindsight; we already know the ending and don’t often bother with the mess in between. But it is good to see the mess, for our own lives are full of it. We too experience many a dark day when the death of God seems more real than his resurrection. Whatever we would prefer, death and doubt are as much a part of the Christian experience as life and hope, and even Easter does not fully erase this paradox.

The tensions and disagreements (nay, contradictions) between the Gospel accounts are too often dismissed or ignored, but today is a good day to remember them. We know Jesus was crucified on Friday, and that on Sunday his tomb was found empty, almost certainly by some of the women who had been following him. We know that in the coming weeks his disciples became convinced, in spite of themselves, that Jesus was alive again. But we know also of their initial doubts; their confusion has been canonized into the scattered reports of Jesus' appearances.

In a couple of posts at Exploring our Matrix, James McGrath explores these tensions, but they cay be summarized easily: Who first visited the tomb? Women, certainly, but which ones? The four Gospels disagree. And what did they see there? An angel, or was it a young man? Sitting on the rolled-back stone as in Matthew? Or in the tomb as in Mark? Or were there two as in Luke and John? What about the disciples? Did they run to the tomb themselves as John claims? Or was it only later – the Gospels disagree on where – that they first saw him? Ignoring these tensions would be dishonest, but also unhelpful. The truth is that whatever we believe about Easter, we are left with reconstructions, ambiguities, doubt. God, it seems, did not see fit to give us an unquestionable account; the Gospels have not been harmonized, and we can be grateful for that.

For doubt is not merely negative; it is purifying, both historically and personally. It reminds us of our finit perspectives, that the experience of God is always a little beyond us, broader than we can take in. It leaves us grasping, and that is a good thing. Garrison Keillor expresses this better than I can (HT: Shuck and Jive):

There is comfort for the doubter in the Passion story. You are not alone. Jesus’s cry from the cross was a cry of incredulity. The apostle [Peter] denied even knowing Jesus three times. The guy spent years with Jesus, saw the miracles up close, the raising of Lazarus, the demons cast out, the sick healed, the water-walking trick, all of the special effects, but when the cards were down, he said, “Who? Me? No way.”

He repented. I would too, but not quite yet.

Skepticism is a stimulant, not to be repressed. It is an antidote to smugness and the great glow of satisfaction one gains from being right. You know the self-righteous — I’ve been one myself — the little extra topspin they put on the truth, their ostentatious modesty, the pleasure they take in being beautifully modulated and cool and correct when others are falling apart. Jesus was rougher on those people than He was on the adulterers and prostitutes.

So I will sit in the doubter’s chair for a while and see what is to be learned back there.

On Holy Saturday, we could all spend some time in that chair.

Holy Week without Jesus’ Death and Resurrection?

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Apparently, the Christian publisher First Look has actually removed all references to Jesus’ death and resurrection from its preschool age Sunday School curriculum (HT: Mere Comments). Their explanation sounds like something straight out of The Wittenburg Door:

In order to be sensitive to the physical, intellectual, and emotional development of preschoolers, First Look has chosen not to include the Easter story in our curriculum. Instead, we are focusing on the Last Supper, when Jesus shared a meal and spent time with the people He loved. We have made this choice because the crucifixion is simply too violent for preschoolers. And if we skip the crucifixion and go straight to the resurrection, then preschoolers would be confused....

However, we know that some of you use First Look in your five-year-old and kindergarten classrooms. To accommodate your needs, we have included an alternative ending to the Bible story that tells a simple version of the Easter story.

My first reaction to this was mild shock. I mean, it’s not as though Easter were the reason we teach Sunday School to begin with. No, it might frighten or confuse the children so we’ll relegate it to an “alternative ending!”

But after mulling it over, I have a hard time feeling enraged about this. Perhaps they are wrong. Perhaps they have bought into the self-esteem myth and ignored the fact that many three and four year-olds can indeed understand Jesus’ death and resurrection. But many preschoolers are not capable of understanding this, and it makes sense to save the story until they can. It is not as though First Look is proposing that we don’t teach Easter at all, merely that we wait until elementary school, when it will make more sense.

The way they have approached this seems ill-advised (an “alternative ending,” really?) but I actually rather appreciate the sentiment. Personally, I have known about Jesus’ death and resurrection for as long as I can remember. One of my very earliest memories was “praying the prayer” with my mother when I was five years old. I certainly thought I knew Jesus, but it was only many years later that I really did.

It wasn’t until late elementary school – when the first of my great-grandmothers died – that I even understood the concept of death in any real way, and even then I don’t recall connecting that to Jesus. I certainly didn’t live any differently because of it. I was a terror in elementary school, the kid Sunday School teachers feared and other parents told their kids to avoid. It wasn't until Middle School that I first realized the meaning of the Gospel, and it came from reading Tolkien.

My dad had read The Hobbit to my brothers and I as kids, and that story always stuck with me. So in 6th grade when my English class allowed us to choose what book to read, I ambitiously choose The Lord of the Rings. I still remember reading the first few chapters of The Two Towers for the first time, certain (like Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas and the rest) that Gandalf was dead, and experiencing the fear and confusion surrounding his unexpected appearances (of which, unlike in the movies, there are several). Suddenly realizing that Gandalf had been restored to life, only then did I finally understand what it must have been like for Jesus’ first disciples. To know that Jesus, their hope, was dead, and then suddenly and unexpectedly to discover that, beyond all hope, he was alive!

I thank God for Tolkien, but it frustrates me that it took a work of fantasy for me to really hear the Gospel for the first time, when I had in fact been hearing the story my whole life. The problem, I think, is precisely that I had been hearing it my whole life. By pounding these stories into our children from such an early age (long before they can have any conception of its meaning), we seem to be numbing them to its power. At least, that’s what happened to me, and I doubt I am alone.

Of course our kids need to hear about Easter! Tolkien’s take on the event would not have had the impact that it did on me if I hadn’t been so familiar with the Gospel first. But does it need to be so early? I’m not sure. Easter can hardly seem like Good News, if it doesn’t seem like News.