Peace Messenger

Colossians Remixed - 10

Book Discussion Series, Week 10 (conclusion)
Chapter 11, "An Ethic of Liberation" & Chapter 12, "A Suffering Ethic"

An Ethic of Liberation

Paul’s instructions in Colossians 3:81-4:1, and a similar passage in Ephesians 5, have frequently been interpreted as reflecting the “household codes” of Greco-Roman society, perhaps made kinder and gentler, but not fundamentally challenging the structures of slavery and patriarchy.  The authors of Colossians Remixed, however, draw on the reference in 3:24 to the inheritance promised to slaves from Christ, their true Master, in making the case that this passage is consistent with the liberating message of the overall letter.

The term “inheritance” invokes the Old Testament narrative of Israel’s redemption from slavery to sonship, to which the practices of Sabbath and jubilee point. The practices of Sabbath bring “rest and freedom for slaves,” while the jubilee, “the climax of the Sabbath” centers on slaves receiving their lost inheritance. Thus:

The letter is clear if you know the story, if you are aware of the way our God has acted in history up to now. In contrast to the economics of empire, Paul here proclaims the countereconomics of Sabbath and jubilee rooted in the forgiving love of Jesus. By telling the slaves in our midst that they have an “inheritance,” Paul is recalling for us the traditions of jubilee; he is reminding us that Israel’s story – and now, through Jesus, our story – is a slave-freeing story (208).

Similarly, “the Sabbath laws applied equally to women….Rest and freedom are for men and women equally, whether slave or free” (210).

Here is an exercise in hearing the New Testament with Old Testament ears, as the authors admonished us in Chapter Two.  It deserves, and requires, a careful listen.

A Suffering Ethic

Paul concludes his letter to the Colossians with a reminder about his “chains” of imprisonment (4:18), and the final chapter of Colossians Remixed sets forth the reality that being the church – the body of Christ – means sharing the same conflicts with the “principalities and powers” of the present age that led Him to the cross.

We are called to proclaim and embody the gospel of a crucified Messiah. The gospel challenges the principalities and powers of our own age. This gospel proclaims that reconciliation is manifest in a community that is renewed in the image of Jesus, a community that shares in the sufferings of Jesus in its attempt to bring peace to the social, economic, political, racial and ethnic divisions that sin has caused in the world (232).

In sum, the gospel invitation to a culture deeply suspicious of truth claims and the power agendas behind them is “come into the embrace of the Other who rules, but from a cross, who is sovereign but wears a crown of thorns” (233).

Colossians Remixed - 9

Book Discussion Series, Week 9

Colossians Remixed, Chapter 10: "An Ethic of Community"

From an “ethic of secession” (“strip off the old self …”), Colossians 3 progresses to an “ethic of community” (“clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility …”).  While insisting that Paul’s exhortations do not constitute an oppressive “series of absolutes,” Walsh and Keesmaat emphasize that they are rooted in a particular narrative, namely, the narrative of Christ “died, buried, risen, ascended and coming again” (200).  Taking the path opened by that narrative requires a choice that “invariably requires rejecting other paths.”  It means moving beyond the “postmodern mall,” where abundant and wide-ranging options are kept continually open (170).

The virtues and practices expressed in Colossians 3 comprise a “political vision” that transcends but is not detached from the public life of “the empire.”  And the authors get down to specifics on how a Colossians 3-shaped political vision might be lived out.  War, bananas, diapers, bicycles and much more come into consideration.  As for electoral politics, the authors make clear that an “alternative community” based on Paul’s gospel would not stand in aloofness from the need in the society around them:

For our family, municipal elections have become one of our favorite events as we take the kids to our local councilor’s office and get busy going door to door to get him reelected.  That this man is a Christian is a bonus for us, but we would support him even if he weren’t.  You see, his politics demonstrate the character of Christ. His first political questions about any policy or conflict have to do with justice, kindness and service to the most vulnerable. Such a politician is rare and needs our support (192).

Spend some time with this chapter, and see if you aren’t in some way stirred before very long.

Colossians Remixed - 8

Book Discussion Series, Week 8

Colossians Remixed, Chapter 9: "An Ethic of Secession"

Following Paul’s turn to particulars about behavior in chapter 3 of Colossians, Part 3 of Colossians Remixed takes up “praxis.”  The “subversive ethics” remixed from the apostle’s letter both subverts the modernist project of empire and proposes an alternative to a postmodern embrace of nihilism.

“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above….” (3:1). Paul’s resurrection ethic “refuses to bow the knee to the empire and its idols.”  And, it lifts our vision beyond present brokenness of the world to the hope of Christ’s restorative rule, a vision that provides “radical direction” for our lives.

Can this message this message be good news for postmodernists – identifying as it does with their questions but offering different answers?  Chapter 9 wrestles further with that issue, contending that an ethic which at times may superficially appear absolutistic and other-worldly, is in fact an “intimately relational ethic” and a “narrative ethic” grounded in the biblical story of creation and renewal of fully embodied life.

Colossians Remixed - 7

Book Discussion series, Week 7

Colossians Remixed, Chapter 7, "What is Truth?" & Chapter 8, "Faithful Improvisations and Idolatrous Lies"

What is Truth?

If the gospel is not about a violently-totalizing “regime of truth” (Chapter 6), are its claims objectively true for everyone?  In dialogue format, Chapter 7 wrestles with a foundational dilemma concerning the nature of truth.  Against the concern that postmodern insights about truth as the product of power games leave us adrift in relativism, the authors point to the Enlightenment’s deification of human reason.

Paul wants those who read and hear his letter “to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is Christ himself, in whom are hidden all treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:1-4).  This passage suggests that knowledge of truth is linked with being “united in love” and truth is finally not about “a correspondence between ideas and facts” but is “embodied in a person.”

A passage from the book Ministry of Healing (1905) by Ellen White seems pertinent to discussion of this chapter:

By the power of His grace manifested in the transformation of character the world is to be convinced that God has sent His Son as its Redeemer. No other influence that can surround the human soul has such power as the influence of an unselfish life. The strongest argument in favor of the gospel is a loving and lovable Christian (470).

Faithful Improvisations and Idoatrous Lies

Along with a targum on 2:8-3:4, Chapter 8 provides further explain the authors' interpretive method.  The targum attempts “faithful improvisation” grounded not only in the historical and literary contexts of Colossians, but also the biblical story as whole, and at the same time immersed in the specifics of the postmodern context of today’s readers.

Thus, Paul’s critique of the deceitful, controlling “philosophy” that sought to captivate the imaginations the Colossian believers (2:8) becomes in the targum a double-edged resistance to both modernist and post-modernist idolatrous claims on our imaginations.  On the one side, the gospel exposes the falsehood of the "modernist metanarrative of civilizational progress manifest in an aggressive conquering of colonized peoples, so-called scientific objectivism, a technological will to power and a market capitalism that would commodify all of life (139)."

On the other side, the gospel lays open the impotence of the “postmodern vision of laid-back pluralism” to do anything about the violence, marginalization of “the other” and genocide that it repudiates:

[The postmodern vision] fails to see that the real issue of violence, exclusion and marginalization goes much deeper – it lies in the violence, rebellion and deceitfulness of the human heart. Self-imposed postmodern guilt trips can do nothing to heal the heart and can do nothing to stop the violence.  Only the exhaustion of that violence on the cross can begin a real restoration (138-139).

Colossians Remixed - 6: Regimes of Truth and the Word of Truth

Book Discussion Series, Week 6

Does the gospel of “the kingdom of [God’s] beloved Son” (Col. 1:13) constitute what philosopher Michel Foucault called a “regime of truth”? Truth, Foucault claimed, is not some objective reality beyond us, but a product of power. The political structures that impose power – “multiple forms of constraint” to suppress opposition, he called “regimes of truth.”

Walsh and Keesmaat observe that Colossians clearly is a “worldview text,” pointing to a comprehensive vision of life that speaks to all the great questions of meaning. But they propose that “the kingdom of God’s beloved Son” differs from the totalizing, violently imposed regimes of truth that postmodern thinkers seek to deconstruct:

…[W]hile regimes of truth invariably trade on the sense of guilt and unworthiness of their subjects, this kingdom is rooted in forgiveness….[T]he kingdom of the beloved Son is a reign of forgiving and welcoming inclusion.

…[I]n profound contrast to regimes of truth with their multiple forms of constraint, the kingdom of the beloved Son is a kingdom won not through violence imposed on others but through violence imposed upon the Son [see Col. 2:13-15] (110).

Paul’s gospel does make “universalizing claims” in the context of a power struggle.

But note how the struggle is won. Not by might versus might, not by regime overtaking regime, but by sacrificial love absorbing violence and fury of the powers (111).

How do we square this understanding with the prevailing pattern of Christendom turning the gospel into a violently-imposed “regime of truth”? In view of that historical and contemporary reality, how is it possible to bear authentic witness to the gospel Paul wrote about in the letter to the Colossians?

Colossians Remixed - 5

Truth Remixed: Contested Imaginations – A / Book Discussion Series, Week 5

Chapter 5: “Subversive Poetry and Contested Imagination”

What captures our imagination? Walsh and Keesmaat describe Colossians 1:15-20 as “subversive poetry” because it takes the imagery through which Rome deepened the hold of empire over hearts and minds and attributes it instead to Jesus Christ.

As soon as [Paul] made references to “image of God,” “firstborn” and “first place,” everyone with ears to hear would know that he was contrasting Jesus with Caesar. Remember, in the imperial cult and throughout the empire it was proclaimed that Caesar was “equal to the Beginning of all things.” It was the emperor who “restored order” and was the “beginning of life and vitality.” Moreover, Caesar was the “savior” who had “put an end to war and…set all things in order” and therefore was proclaimed as “god-manifest.” And putting together “head” and “body” would immediately conjure up both Hellenistic ideas of Zeus as the sovereign head of the body of the cosmos and images of Caesar (or Rome) as the head (the sovereign source) of the body politic of empire (89-90).

What are the imperial forces and imagery that seek to captivate our imaginations today? In another targum, the authors suggest the “centralizing of military power in the Pentagon, the imagination industry symbolized by Disney,” and corporations such as Microsoft and AT&T whose “advertising and corporate images seem to epitomize the dynamics of a cybernetically driven corporate capitalism.” What do you think?

Colossians Remixed - 4

2008 Book Discussion Series, Week 4

Chapter 4: Contested Fruitfulness in the Shadow of Empire

The gospel, Paul writes to the Colossians, is “bearing fruit and growing in the whole world” and also “bearing fruit among yourselves” (1:5-6). Walsh and Keesmaat contend that “bearing fruit” would have been much more than simply a general metaphor in the setting of an empire that “encodes in the imagery of everyday life – on public arches, statues and buildings – the claim that Rome and its emperor are the beneficent provider and guarantor of all fruitfulness.” The gospel contests Rome’s claim of “imperial fruitfulness,” raising the decisive question, “Whose gospel is the source of a fruitfulness that will last and sustain the world – the gospel of Caesar or the gospel of Jesus?” (74-75)

In keeping with their recommendation to “hear the New Testament with Old Testament ears,” the authors highlight the centrality of “fruitfulness” in the narrative of Israel’s vocation of bearing witness to an “alternative social vision” that challenged the claims of ancient empires and their gods to be the sources of abundance, security and fertility. In Isaiah 58, for example, the call to “loose the bonds of injustice” and “let the oppressed go free” (v. 6) is followed by a promise of fertility – being like a “watered garden” whose waters never fail (v. 11). Here and elsewhere, Sabbath observance is linked with rejection of “consumptive economic practices” and the practices of justice and mercy (72-73).

Comments welcomed from all readers of this chapter! Does the discussion of “contested fruitfulness,” for example, enrich and stretch your conception of spirituality, or does is mainly clash with and confuse your understanding of what it means to bear fruit through Christ?

Colossians Remixed - 3: Discerning Empire

“I know that her story and mine couldn’t both be true. Either Caesar had brought forgiveness of our sins, fruitfulness and peace through the great victories he had wrought, or Jesus had brought forgiveness of our sins, fruitfulness and peace through his paradoxical victory on a Roman cross.”

Nympha, we learn from Colossians 4:15, was the leader of a Christian congregation in nearby Laodicea. Walsh and Keesmaat imagine Nympha reflecting on the good news about Jesus from another prominent, wealthy woman, Lydia of Thyatira. Through this device, grounded in extensive scholarship, the authors bring us into the historical context of the letter to the Colossians, the first-century world of the Pax Romana. And they draw attention to striking parallels with our twenty-first century context:

In Colossians Paul is telling a story that is an alternative to the mythology of empire. Mythology is always about salvation, peace and prosperity. Rome found salvation in the universal peace of the age after Augustus. The “American Empire” finds salvation in economic progress and global control. Paul tells a story about a salvation rooted in Christ, historical sovereignty located in a victim of the empire, and prosperity that bears fruit in the whole world (62-63).

Please “post a comment” on what strikes you most about this “placing” of Colossians in its historical context, and what that might mean for how we read the text today.

Colossians Remixed - 2: Colossians and Disquieted Globalization

Context Remixed: Colossians and Empire - B / 2008 Book Discussion Series, Week 2

Walsh and Keesmaat use the rabbinic interpretive exercise called targum – an extended paraphrase putting an ancient text into contemporary idiom – to help us discern how Colossians connects with our post-9/11/01 context of “global disquiet.” As an example, here’s part of their targum’s take on the hope Paul writes about in 1:5-6:

You didn’t get this hope from cable television, and you didn’t find it on the Net. This hope walked into your life, hollering itself hoarse out on the streets, in the classroom, down at the pub and in the public square, when you first heard the good news of whole life restoration in Christ. This gospel is the Word of truth – it is the life-giving, creation-calling, covenant-making, always faithful servant Word that takes flesh in Jesus, who is the truth….Now the Word of truth is producing the fruit of radical discipleship, demonstrated in passion for justice, evocative art and drama, restorative stewardship of our ecological home, education for faithful living, integral evangelism, and liturgy that shapes an imagination in alternative to the empire’s.

“Uh, excuse me, but your translation seemed to add an awful lot to the text.” Thus begins a dialog in which the authors’ defend their targum to a moderately skeptical reader, citing overtones of several powerful passages from the Hebrew scriptures in Colossians 1:1-14, such as: Psalm 85:10-11; Hosea 4:1-3, and Isaiah 11:1-9.

“Post a comment” below on Colossians Remixed, Chapter 2. After reading this chapter, for example, what are your thoughts about authors’ advice to “hear the New Testament with Old Testament ears”?

Colossians Remixed - 1

Context Remixed: Colossians and Empire – A / Spring 2008 Discussion Series, Week 1

Preface and Chapter 1, “Placing Ourselves: Globalization and Postmodernity” (go to Coming Soon...Colossians Remixed! for an introduction to the discussion series)

In establishing context for a reading of Paul’s first century letter to the Colossians, authors Walsh and Keesmaat begin with the context of twenty-first century readers. They characterize that cultural context as one in which “postmodern disquiet” blends paradoxically with “cybernetic global optimism” in a “global consumerist empire.”

We are introduced to “William,” a law student who has worked in international finance, and who becomes the authors’ dialogue partner in grappling with the significance of the ancient New Testament letter in today’s world. Though alienated from the Christianity in which he was raised, William has returned to theism, but is having a problem with the Bible. He says that “as soon as I open it I bump up against the absolute. Actually it is more that the absolute punches me in the face whenever I read this book” (16). A text asserting Truth with a capital T grates harshly against a postmodern hermeneutic of suspicion and “incredulity toward all metanarratives.”

With regard to Colossians, particularly such passages as 1:9, 1:17, and passages on sex and the flesh in chapter 3, William has this to say:

You posit a divine authority that structures and orders the world in a certain way, attribute that authority to yourself as author of the letter, wipe out any opposition that suggests things might be looked at differently, put clear restrictions on personal and communal life, and then top it all off with a divine sanction for patriarchy and slavery. And you want a postmodern person at the beginning of the twenty-first century to read this text, learn from it and maybe even receive it as divinely inspired Scripture? I don’t think so! (18)

There we have it: the challenge – and what a challenge it is! – for our entire discussion series.

"Post a comment" below to express your questions and observations based on the Preface and Chapter 1 of Colossians Remixed. Does the cultural context portrayed there resonate with your own life experience and outlook?