a day of re-mixing Colossians

... at CMS with Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmat... co-authors of the book "Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire".  Thanks to Jonny for organising the day, it was very interesting.

The day began with the words "Context is everything!"  And what followed in the morning was a through and excellent  unpacking of 3 of the 4 aspects of context important to grappling with Scripture : 1) The Context of Israel - The Jewish (Biblical) story, the religion and culture.  reading the words of Paul through the interpretative net of 1st Century Jewish understanding of God and Torah.  2) The Cultural/Political/Economic context - the impact of Romanization, the values, images and symbols of the Roman Empire.  3) The micro-context, the human stories - Philemon and Onesimus (the story of Onesimus, Philemon's slave who runs away, joins Paul and then returns.  And how Paul speaks in words and actions about slavery/freedom through these events), the stories of the particular community, the Colossian context.  The 4th aspect - Our context was left for the afternoon.

One section that stood out for me was seeking to understand the story of God/Creation through the idea of image-bearing... i.e. how do we understand and live the purpose of being Image-bearers of the divine throughout the God/Creation narrative... beginning at the beginning they asked... 1) How were "we" (Humanity in the narrative) Image-bearers in the goodness of creation - how did we bear fruit in a context of blessing - we multiplied, we tended, we blessed creation. 2) How were "we" Image-bearers post-fall - In a "cursed" context - we did all the above but in pain and struggle!  3) How were we Image-bearers in exile - do we hide and hold on or do we engage - One of my favourite passages was reference, Jeremiah 29v4-7...

4 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

... We become Image-bearers by being peace-makers not "preserving" something.  4) How were we Image-bearers after the return to the land - but this time the land is a place of struggle, of oppression, and of occupation (Greece, Rome)  How were we to be Image-bearers in that context?  Walsh and Keesmat argue that this is where the incarnation comes into play... that in this context Christ enters the world and in doing so begins to teach/model us how to be Image-bearers - how to image God by being fully human.  Christ's message, they said, followed the narrative of Jewish hope since the Fall - that of renewed/restored creation - not simply a message of receiving a pass through the pearly gates, but of a restored earth - Shalom/Soverignty of the creator in creation.

We spent some time, looking at the text and exploring the threads of the three contexts - Jewish, Roman, Colossian - then in the afternoon they began to explore our context in relation to the text.  This was where I started to struggle a bit... for two reasons - first, it was the afternoon after a good lunch, after a morning of listening... to be honest I was struggling to focus and I felt I had enough to go away and wrestle with in my own context... the bit I probably know most about, and first hand!  - second, I felt like we'd made a huge leap over lunch, we'd been exploring the Roman context and it felt like far too easy parallels were being drawn between the Roman Empire and contemporary culture as "Empire", some of which I wanted to/felt we needed to wrestle with/contest before we could move on, but there was no space to do this.  Pete Ward and Richard Passmore tried to question some of the implications of this way of thinking... Pete challenging that equating Culture with an "evil" Empire left little space for a Missiology of misio Dei, rather that it created another empire - a battle metaphor if you like... that Christians need to set themselves apart from the Empire and muster themselves for war!  Richard (I think) made the point that if we could see our culture as an empire then the Church has been part of it's foundation and indeed, structure... and in many instances still is!  To be honest I would question the idea that contemporary culture is a cohesive force with set symbols and story like the Roman Empir, sure there are parallels but we need to be careful of drawing easy and firm lines between them.  I also think there is a danger in setting God against Culture in a dualistic way (a kind of cultural Manichaeism!), We weren't taken that far by any means, but it is there in certain quarters of Christendom and some of the things they suggested felt very separatist, fleeing from culture (labels, Disney etc.) in ways that reminded me of the "Rock Music is evil" sermons of my youth!... there was a lot of wisdom in what they where saying and there are very important questions raised, I guess that there wasn't really enough time... and maybe people where too tired by that point (I know I was) to really wrestle with there extrapolations.

Good day in all, with many things to think and reflect upon.

PS - one of the interesting ideas that cropped up was that of Targum/Targumim - cultural translations of text.

Targum is the distinctive designation of the Aramaic translations or paraphrases of the Old Testament. After the return from exile Aramaic gradually won the ascendancy as the colloquial language over the slowly decaying Hebrew until, from probably the last century before the Christian era, Hebrew was hardly more than the language of the schools and of worship. As the majority of the population ceased to be conversant with the sacred language it became necessary to provide translations for the better understanding of the passages of the Bible read in Hebrew at the liturgical services. Thus to meet this need it became customary to add to the portions of the Scriptures read on the Sabbath an explanatory oral translation — a Targum. (From New Advent)

It struck me that much of what we do liturgically could be described as Targumim, we take texts (Scripture and Liturgy/Prayers) and we translate them into contemporary language and culture... not just linguistically, but in translating we add context and explanation... making meaning, or uncovering meaning.

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