MetaCatholic

Peter Kirk takes me to task in a comment on a previous post. My statement that “mission” as we use the word today wasn’t part of the agenda for the mission of Jesus in the gospels was incidental to the points I was making there. It also seemed to me moderately obvious, that “mission” pre-church, in Judea and Galilee, pre-crucifixion and resurrection (never mind cultural differences or history) was going to be something different, and that theological work would be and will be needed to move from A to B. I had not expected serious disagreement on that point, but it seems I need to elaborate.

Let me suggest that there are three broad positions that can be taken about any particular part of scripture:

1. That (scripture) and this (what we are doing today) are talking about the same thing.
2. That (scripture) has nothing to do with this (what we are doing today)
3. There are connections between that and this, which we need to make in the work of reading and interpretation.

Let’s take a couple of genuine examples. Some catholics have read the word episkopos in the NT, and assumed something like a full-blown diocesan bishop in apostolic succession. That = this. Some protestants have read episkopos in the NT and have seen a function, but not a ministerial office. That ≠ this. Others again have worked at how to relate the patterns of the NT to the patterns of today.

Then there is speaking in tongues. For the larger part of Christian history that ≠ this. Instead they were most generally taken as a sign of possession. What the NT described was a unique action of the Spirit in the apostolic age. For a large number of contemporary charismatics and pentecostalists that = this. It is unproveable (and IMO unclear) what connection the contemporary phenomenon of glossolalia has with Paul’s “other kinds of tongues” (ἑτέρῳ γένη γλωσσῶν – 1 Cor 12:10) or Luke’s “speaking in other languages” (λαλεῖν ἑτέραις γλώσσαις – Acts 2:4) or indeed even whether Paul and Luke refer to the same phenomenon. Work must be done to relate them together.

I don’t believe that these different positions mark different kinds of churchmanship or tradition. I suspect that all of us, to one degree or another, actually hold all three of them on different points, quite un-self-consciously adopting position 1 (that=this) on matters congenial to us, and position 2 (that ≠ this) on those ideas that are either uncongenial, haven’t even occurred to us.

I would, however, submit that in theory the third position is the only one we can take on every part of scripture, and that it is the role of the tradition, and the contemporary community, (and for those who insist that piety is explicit, the Holy Spirit) to make us aware when we have all too easily slipped into either of the first two positions without even noticing it.

When I first read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (I’m one of those sad enough to clear my diary for publication day!) I found it the least satisfactory of the books. Puzzling over why this was, I decided that it was because the larger story arc of the series had actually taken over from the particular story arc in the book. That in Phoenix was not strong enough to hold its own in tension with the greater plot. To a large extent I find the film more satisfying as a self-contained story, even though the greater story now looms dominant around the individual episode.

The “set pieces” of the book are all there and vividly brought to the screen, even if the story line is (as always) stripped down with some details altered. But one of the reasons the film feels more complete than the book is the vividly and imaginatively rendered battle of magic in the Ministry. Though considerably simplified from the book, the main ingredients are all brought to life, and despite being special effect heavy, the actors aren’t dramatically overwhelmed. Indeed the death of Sirius is more powerfully rendered in the film, as Potter and Black fight for a moment side by side, with Sirius for a moment calling Harry by his father’s name, just before he is killed and passes through the veil. The visual power of the whole denouement, matched by the emotional power of the bereavement, and the visual strength of the final internal struggle of Voldemort with Harry, is followed by only a short tidying up of the plot-line, and means that effectively the film ends with a dramatically satisfying climax.

The second reason the film has a more complete story-line is that the question of Harry Potter being taken over by Voldemort comes more to the foreground than it does in the book. First, because the dialogue about Harry being possessed is altered and now between Harry and Sirius and not Harry and Ginny, and carries more emotional power. Second, because the film makes much more of Voldemort attempting to possess Harry at the end (coming quick on the heels of a an effective presentation of Harry using an Unforgivable Curse). Rather than a quick moment of narrative, followed by exposition by Dumbledore, it becomes a major visual focus enhanced by special effects, and a good performance from Radcliffe. The inner drama of Harry’s battle is well presented, and brings a number of disparate strands of the film together. Harry’s inner torment, and the threat of Voldemort, together with the problems of aloneness and alienation from his friends, reach a unified resolution.

The other great strength of the film (which here is very faithful to the book) is the magnificent performance of Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge, who well demonstrates that “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” In one sense, her performance almost shows the weakness of having narratives with characters of pure evil, like Voldemort. Her saccharinely menacing pink fluffiness, and her pursuit of cruelty in the name of protection, offers a picture of evil that is far more complex than that of those who actively pursue and embody it. This picture of goodness corrupted offers an interesting counterpoint to Harry’s own fear about whether he will be corrupted. It is perhaps a shame that more was not made in the film of the bullying antics of James Potter to Severus Snape, which in the book were disturbing to Harry who could no longer hero-worship his father in quite the same way as before.

In sum, this is not only a greatly enjoyable film, but, for the first time, by its making some of the themes of the book more explicit, it is, I think, not only a good (and faithful) interpretation of the novel, but actually a better and more complete narrative.

Maggi Dawn comes out of the closet about her dislike of the word “missional” which has been gaining some recent currency. As she notes (but read the whole post)

I also notice that, like lots of buzzwords, “missional” has now begun to function like one of those shorthand terms to identify yourself with a particular brand of Christianity. That can be a kind of tribal identity thing - you say you belong to a missional, intentional community, and I say so do I, and that identifies us to one another that we are “in the same club”.

One blogging author who’s been making a lot of the word in reflecting on the gospels is Scot McKnight, who has been running a series on the Missional Jesus which starts here. First, I want to acknowledge that in all sorts of ways this is a very positive series of biblical reflections on the church learning its pattern of mission from Jesus’ way of mission. Scot is a very generous, careful and thoughtful exegete a good practical teacher and theologian, and a prolific blogger who gives a lot of pastoral attention and advice to his readers. I don’t want this to be heard simply as carping.

Nonetheless, alarm bells really started going off in my head when he said:

I have been tossing around in my head for months, if not more than a year, whether or not the word “Pharisee” can be defined as “those who are non-missional to the other.”

In a comment on that post (to which he responded positively and with a significant degree of agreement) I said:

I think I’d be extremely concerned about defining Pharisee in this way. Apart from the fact that I don’t think it does justice to the historical context by imposing questions they were not asking and answers they were not giving on them, it seems to me too like what Christians of the past have done with disastrous consequences: making “Pharisee” and later “Jew” a code-word and symbol for an attitude among other Christians with whom one disagrees, as Luther did with the Catholics of his day. I don’t think this is what you would intend, but I implore you not to go there. It is asking for a “Jesus good, Pharisee bad” stereotyping of both history and contemporary church arguments.

On the one hand, I agree that the church needs to identify what Jesus did, and the way in which he did it, and learn from it. On the other hand, I’m really quite anxious (rather like Maggi) about the ways in which this easily spills over into a tribal identification.

I think (as I noted in a previous post) that Jesus and the Pharisees were both passionate about the kingdom of God. (I recognise that I asserted my views there, more than argued them.) Both Jesus and the Pharisees were operating in a context of the expected vindication and renewal of God’s people. “Mission” in the sense we use that word today, simply wasn’t on their agenda. Where they differed was in their understanding of how God was acting, and would act to bring that kingdom into being.

At the risk of gross generalization and over-simplification, and of sounding ignorant of decades of careful gospel and historical Jesus scholarship, Jesus believed that to respond to him was to respond to God, and that when someone did respond to him, it showed that God was working in that person to forgive them and bring them into the kingdom. Wherever Jesus was, there was the opportunity to respond to God.

In one sense, this affirms a great deal of what those who are arguing today for a “missional” approach are on about. In another sense, it leaves us with a serious question. When Jesus was walking around Galilee in the flesh, it was relatively easy to see what responding to him might look like. It is less easy to define that now, and so the church in many ways is right to ask the sort of question the Pharisees were asking then on the basis of Torah: “What counts as a pattern of faithful obedience?” The difference is that Christians today ask that question on the basis of Jesus.

One answer is given by the whole panoply of “entering the church” complete with sacramental initiation and obedient membership of the community once founded on Peter and now bound together under Peter’s successor. Papa Ratzi has been busy reaffirming that one recently. Another is given by the “I’ve got Jesus in my heart” docetic existentialism of some sectors of evangelicalism. Those are the extremes. But we perhaps need more humility in recognising that the question is not an easy one, and simply introducing a new “missional” division fails to acknowledge that, after 2000 years of history, all of us are much closer to being in the place of the Pharisees seeking to define faithful and expectant obedience to God.