This week's comedian, Taylor Mason. We watched the first two clips:

Then after dinner, we split up into two groups. It turned out to be boys vs. girls.
The guys left campus on a sign hunt for half and hour, using clues I gave them. This was a reminder about texts and signs. The pics below may remind of you of some of their adventures.

Click here to see my funny signs collection.
Remember how we defined "sign":

Text: any message in any medium, designed to communicate anything
Sign: any message in any medium, designed to communicate anything about something else
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The girls and I had a powerfully moving time, which had something to do with giving our life"timelines".
We will have the guys do it next time.

Read this to see the the idea, and see our timelines below.

---------------
Great work on the Moodle. Here are some of your suggestions for the "grid":

We talked about the "grid" being Jesus in this video:

Somehow...everyone has to decide which commandments make the "bucket".
For example:

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THE COMMANDMENT TO KISS:

That the Bible explicitly mentions this practice five times:

Romans 16.16a — "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν φιλήματι ἁγίῳ).
I Corinthians 16.20b — "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Greek:ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν φιλήματι ἁγίῳ).
II Corinthians 13.12a — "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Greek:ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν ἁγίῳ φιλήματι).
I Thessalonians 5.26 — "Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss" (Greek:ἀσπάσασθε τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς πάντας ἐν φιλήματι ἁγίῳ).
I Peter 5.14a — "Greet one another with a kiss of love" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν φιλήματι ἀγάπης).

...makes it a classic case study in how to apply

any scriptures that we assume need a cultural equivalent to out taking them literally.

On this issue of interpretation:

Brian Dodd's discussion of the "interpretive bridge" is helpful (p. 19 here)

as is

Ron Martoia's posts on the "two buckets" (see"The Two Bucket Theory Examined" here).

I really recommend you read both above links, then get back to us.

We learned that, counterintuitively to our guesses from this end of the cultural bridge, it seems the early church's holy kissing was almost always... on the lips!

The reason is powerful: that form on kiss implied equality...a kiss on the cheeks implied one person was inferior. Nothing like a Kingdom Kiss as an acted parable and reminder that in Christ we are equal! Of course, today, when we look at cultural equivalents like the "holy hug", "holy handshake," we might not realize that that, too, began as a Kingdom equalizer:

In fact, handshaking, which can seem quite prosaic today, was popularised byQuakers as a sign of equality under God, rather than stratified system ofetiquette of seventeenth century England
-link

Ironically, the kiss of inclusion became a kiss of exclusion (from centered to bounded set):

Just as kissing had many different meanings in the wider ancient world, so too early Christians interpreted the kiss in various ways. Because ancient kissing was often seen as a familiar gesture, many early Christians kissed each other to help construct themselves as a new sort of family, a family of Christ. Similarly, in the Greco-Roman world, kissing often was seen as involving a transfer of spirit; when you kissed someone else you literally gave them part of your soul. The early church expanded on this and claimed that, when Christians kissed, they exchanged the Holy Spirit with one another. Christians also emphasized the kiss as an indication of mutual forgiveness (it’s from here that we get the term “kiss of peace”). These different meanings influenced and were influenced by the sorts of rituals kissing became associated with. For example, because the kiss helped exchange spirit, it made perfect sense for it to become part of baptism and ordination, rituals in which you wanted the Holy Spirit to descend and enter the initiate. The flip side of the coin is that before someone was baptized you wouldn’t want to kiss them. Early Christians often believed that previous to exorcism and baptism people were inevitably demon possessed. Given that they also thought that kissing resulted in spiritual exchange, it’s pretty clear why you wouldn’t want to kiss non-Christians. I sometimes think of this as an ancient form of “cooties.” It resulted in early Christian debates over whether one could kiss a pagan relative, if one should kiss a potential heretic, or if Jews even had a kiss.
-Penn, link

We incorporated insights from these and other articles linked below, and quoted the only book on the topic, "Kissing Christians" by Michael Penn. You'll note some of the articles below include interview with him. We particularly enjoyed some of the early fathers and teachers' comments and guidelines on the practice.

One early guideline, for real (wonder if this was in the weekly "bulletin"):

1)No French Kissing!
2)If you come back for seconds, because you liked the first kiss too much, you may be going to hell!!

Clement of Alexandra (c.150 - c. 215):

"There are those who do nothing but make the church resound with the kiss."

Chrysostom (4th C):

“We are the temple of Christ, and when we kiss each other
we are kissing the porch and entrance of the temple.”

Augustine (4th C):

"when your lips draw close to the lips of your brother, let your heart not draw away."

One interview with Michael Penn:

By Rich Barlow

Whoever said ''a kiss is just a kiss" didn't know their theological history. During Christianity's first five centuries, ritual kissing -- on the lips -- was a vital part of worship, says Michael P. Penn, who teaches religion at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley. In that context, kissing helped Christians define themselves as a family of faith, he writes in his new book, ''Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church" (University of Pennsylvania Press). Excerpts from a recent interview follow.

Q: Let me start with the basic question: Who kissed whom?

A: In the first two centuries [AD], men may kiss men, women women, but also you would have men and women kissing one another. In future centuries, there continued to be a debate over who should kiss whom. In later years, Christians will no longer have men and women kissing each other, but only men men, women women. [Christians had] debates on whether or not priests could kiss the laity, on whether you should kiss a non-Christian relative in the normal, everyday situation, even debates over whether Jews have a kiss or not.

Q: When in the service was the kiss performed?

A: Our earliest references would be a kiss that would follow a communal prayer. Later on, it gets increasingly associated with the Eucharist and also occurs in part of the rites of baptism and in ordination rites. You have Christians kissing each other as an everyday greeting or also martyrs, before they're killed, kissing one another.

Q: What was the theological significance?

A: In antiquity, a kiss on the lips was seen as transferring a little bit of one's spirit to the other person. You have a lot of early -- I kind of think of them almost as Greco-Roman Harlequin -- novels that speak of the kiss as this transfer of spirit. Christians modify it a bit, to suggest that when Christians kiss each other, they don't just exchange their own spirit, but also share a part of the Holy Spirit with one another. So the kiss is seen as a way to bind the community together.

There's another side, though. There was a concern that kissing an individual who has promised to join the Christian community but isn't yet baptized should be avoided, because the spirit that would be transferred wouldn't be a holy spirit but a demonic spirit. So you have the kiss working as this ritual of exclusion.

Q: Did Christian leaders worry about the erotic overtones?

A: We have only two explicit references to this concern. One says, essentially, to kiss with a closed and chaste mouth, which suggests that a few of these kisses may have been too erotic. The other one warns against those who kiss a second time because they liked the first one so much.

Judas kissing Jesus [to betray him] terrifies them a lot more than eroticism. There's this evil intention behind it. Early Christian writers use the kiss of Judas to warn that it's not just how you practice the kiss, but what you're thinking. If you kiss another Christian while keeping evil in your heart against them, you are repeating Judas' betrayal.

Q: When did kissing fall out of favor?

A: In the third century, men and women are no longer to kiss one another. Early Christians met in what we think of as a house church -- you meet in someone's living room, essentially. Starting in the third century, when Christians [worship] in a public forum, this familial kiss is less appropriate. It's also a time where Christianity becomes concerned with making sure women and men are categorically separated. In the fourth century, that clergy and laity become increasingly distant. You start having prohibitions against clergy and laity kissing one another.

The ritual kiss never entirely died out. We still have it as an exchange of peace [in Christian services]. We see it in the kissing of the pope's ring. In Catholicism, a priest may kiss a ritual object.

Q: What would Christianity have been without the kiss?

A: What I find exciting is to see how what we think of as trivial is so central to early Christian self-understanding. Our earliest Christian writing, Paul's letter to the First Thessalonians, talks about the ritual kiss, albeit briefly. We have hundreds of early Christian references to this ritual. For these authors, it was anything but trivial.
-LINK
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ARTICLES if interested:

-Ritual kissing key for early Christians

Wikipedia article on Holy Kiss

Kiss and Tell the Gospel

Michael Penn explains what the early church meant by the "holy kiss."

On Kissing: A Q&A with Michael Penn

-PUCKER UP by Martin Marty

GREET ONE ANOTHER WITH A HOLY KISS (PDF)

The Holy Kiss of Love: Are We Keeping This Command?

I Corinthians 16-II Corinthians 1: Greet One Another with a Holy Kiss

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How do we decide on the bucket?

TWO BUCKETS:

__________________________ _____________________

Ron Martoia:

Deciding what to apply and what to discard might be the fundamental question when reading the biblical text. I think it is fair to say that whatever system, church, denomination, or exposure you have had to biblical material the guiding question always has been, “which things in this passage apply and what things don’t.”

To phrase it with a bit more sophistication; what truths in the scripture are eternal and therefore relevant and what in the text is cultural and therefore no longer applicable? This is the two bucket theory: there is an eternal and ever relevant bucket and a cultural and irrelevant-to-my-life bucket. If I am correct this is and has been the guiding question in college and seminary hermeneutics classes for a long long time, probably the last couple centuries. So the academy continues to come up with theories about how to more carefully discern what stuff goes in which bucket.

Sound academic? Well on that technical level it might be but it is profoundly practical and affects every single bible reader today. Should women be forbidden to wear gold, pearls and braid their hair, because that is what I Timothy 2 literally says. Or pray only when their head is covered because that is what I Corinthians 11 says? It’s easy to say those are in the cultural bucket and therefore irrelevant. But when did they get put in that bucket? Who decided? When did they stop being eternal, applicable and inspired truth?

What about genocide in Numbers 31, which bucket?

What about selling all we have and holding it in common Acts 2.42-47? Which bucket?

The two bucket theory is built on a far too modern metaphor for this new world in which we live. My guess is most of us have not only heard this metaphor or something like it, but actually have it as the operating set of lenses with which we view our bible reading. Metaphors are images we use to give us insight. But we have to remember the limits of metaphors. They are merely illustrative. Metaphors work because there is a an element of truth that connects and clarifies. But metaphors breakdown and are culture specific. Metaphors that work today may not work tomorrow. We have been referring to the Bible as an “Owners Manual for Life,” and that is a metaphor has outlasted it’s welcome. Life simply can’t be negotiated with an owners manual. Life is too dynamic and too situational to yield to simple looked up entries in an index that refers us to a page for “the answer.”

And when I say “we” have been using the bible this way, I mean me and a host of other pastoral and professorial friends and colleagues. Guilty as charged we have propagated this messy myth. First let’s just admit that the idea of an owners manual implies a widget or gadget that needs a manual. That is distinctly modern. I just don’t see Justin Martyr or Origen, Thomas Aquinas of Martin Luther using this metaphor. I am not thinking they would have known what an owner’s manual was. Second, let’s admit that the metaphor implies a comprehensiveness in the manual that it simply can’t support. What do I mean?

When we make ridiculous and outlandish claims that if you have questions, the Bible has answers, that if you have issues the Bible has a way through it; we are placing on the good book a burden it can’t begin to carry nor was it written to do so. There are numerous things the bible doesn’t address and because of it’s historical location couldn’t begin to address. Third, let’s admit part of our love of using the metaphor of the owner’s manual is because it reduces the wild, inconsistent text (yes it is inconsistent – more on that later) and a difficult and hard to understand text into something that is as easy to use as the little manual I got with my toaster oven.

Let’s lay aside the old question that leads us to the two bucket approach. And instead of asking what is cultural and irrelevant and what is eternal and applicable how about if we acknowledge the entire text is cultural and that none of it is written to an audience in 2010 and in spite of what we are often told, inspiration does not make it universally applicable. So what about this as a new possibility?…

How does an inspired text exert or exercise a shaping influence on the life of the reader(s)? The key word is “how?” In the past it was through extracting what we thought were timeless truths from a time bound text, sort of trying to figure out the eternal kernel in the culture bound husk. But what if we admit the obvious, it is all cultural and it can’t be otherwise.

When we acknowledge it is all cultural that is not he same thing as saying it is all irrelevant. That would be to attach this new question to the previous two bucket question where what is cultural is considered irrelevant. What we are doing here is saying the two bucket question was a manufactured polarity or duality. The whole biblical text was written by people in very particular cultures, to people within very particular cultures making EVERTHING that was said very particular. So how does a text with cultural particularity or specificity exercise influence and shaping authority…a generation later, a culture away, a millennium or two later?

Now there might be other questions that could be asked and I am all ears to hear some of the ideas out there. So please fire away. But let’s at least start with this new question.

This new question opens us up to some challenging but very fruitful possibilities. Here is how. The old two bucket question broke down because we realized as cultures evolve values change. Now I know to a Christian that sounds like heresy…but that is simply our poor training we have unreflectively engaged. We all would agree the cultural value placed on the institution of slavery has changed or the value place on woman being silent or the institution of child sacrifice (God literally asking Abraham to kill his first born son in the inspired text). These have all changed through time. That observation, and the reason the bucket theory breaks down, is part of our way forward…I think.

What happens when we start to call out that each culture being written to and each author writing is at a particular stage of development or stage of cultural progress and we HAVE to take THAT into consideration as we think about the bible?

If we ponder this new question what other possible metaphors emerge that we might consider successors to the “owner’s manual?” How about a jazz score? A drama script? A classic?

This is the question and the potential metaphors I explore in the my Zondervan published “The Bible As Improv: Seeing and Living the Script in New Ways.”

-Ron Martoia

Are there THREE buckets?

See this from Adam Hamilton:

In my upcoming book, Making Sense of the Bible, I suggest that there are three “buckets” into which scriptures fall:

Scriptures that express God’s heart, character and timeless will for human beings.
Scriptures that expressed God’s will in a particular time, but are no longer binding.
Scriptures that never fully expressed the heart, character or will of God.

Bucket one scriptures include passages like the two great commandments: love God and love your neighbor. They include passages that call us to “do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God,” and to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Most of the Bible fits into this category – capturing God’s heart, character and timeless will for humanity.

Bucket two scriptures, those that expressed God’s will for his people in a specific time and circumstances but which do not express the timeless will of God, include the command that males be circumcised, commands regarding animal sacrifices, clean and unclean foods, and hundreds of other passages in the Law. The Apostles, in Acts 15, determined that most of the laws like these were no longer binding upon Christians.

The idea of a third bucket, passages that never reflected God’s heart and will, is disconcerting to some. It challenges some deeply held beliefs about how God spoke and continues to speak through the biblical authors. Here are a few examples of scripture I don’t believe ever accurately captured God’s heart, character, or will: Leviticus 21:9 requires that if the daughter of a priest becomes a prostitute she must be burned to death. In Exodus 21:20-21, God permits slave-owners to beat their slaves with rods provided they don’t die within the first 48 hours after the beating “for the slave is his property.” God commands the destruction of every man, woman, and child in 31 Canaanite cities and later killis 70,000 Israelites in punishment for David taking a census. These passages seem to me to be completely inconsistent with the God revealed in Jesus Christ who cared for prostitutes, commanded that we love our enemies, and gave his life to save sinners.

Whether you believe in two buckets or three, the question remains,Which bucket do the five passages of scripture that reference same-sex intimacy fall into? more? See this

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A bit more on CHIASM from last week:

So far, we have looked at small chiasms, where the parallelism is "literally" in the words ("First shall be last" etc.)...but look how even that chiasm grows:

Matthew 20... But we note how important is was NOT to go with standard chapter division, but start one verse before, so the grand chiasm (s) below emerged. "Literary world" is crucial (without it, we succumb to Verse-itis):

But many who are first will be last,
and many who are last will be first.

For the kingdom of heaven is like: a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard.
He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing last in the marketplace doing nothing.
He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.'
So they went. "He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing? 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered. "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.' "When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.' "The workers who were hired (last), about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' "But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I AM generous?'

So the last will be first,
and the first will be last.

You might remember Rob Bell mentioned a chiastic element to "seasons" in Genesis 1's days of creation in Week 1's film.-watch BELOW to review

..From the one hour mark through 1:09. (this section is also where he talks about the OTHER creation story:

You might even see the creation accounts as chaism:

a 1:1-3 bareness of matter
b 1:4-5 separation of light and darkness
c 1:6-8 separation of the waters above and the waters below
d 1:9-10 separation of dry land and the sea
e 1:11-13 fulfilling of the earth
f 1:14-19 filling of the sky with lights to govern and to measure time
g 1:20-23 filling of the waters below and the waters above with animals
h 1:24-25 filling the land with animals (living beings)
i 1:26 God's concept of mankind
j 1:27 creation of mankind, transfer of image
k 1:28 mankind's habitat - the earth
l 1:29-30 the basis of food for the living creatures
m 1:31 the heavens and earth made, day 6
n 2:1 God creation completed in content
o 2:2a God's creation completed in time
p 2:2b God rests on the 7th day
x 2:3a THE HOLY GOD BOTH BLESSES AND SANCTIFIES
p' 2:3b God rests on the 7th day
o' 2:3c God's works created and made
n' 2:4a the heavens and earth created (finished, completed)
m' 2:4b the heavens and earth made in a timespan
l' 2:5-6 basis for life in the garden plants, moisture
k' 2:7a man's origin = dust
j' 2:7b man's creation, transfer of life
i' 2:8 man's place = the garden
h' 2:9 filling the garden with plants (tree of life)
g' 2:10-14 filling the garden with water
f' 2:15-17 filling the garden with a caretaker + measure for good and evil
e' 2:18 fulfilling Adam's life
d' 2:19-20 separation (discerning, naming) of the animals
c' 2:21-23 separation of man and woman
b' 2:24 separation of parents and children
a' 2:25 bareness of man

(link)

CHIASMs they can grow larger, and the parallelism can be more general, thematic.

And getting over VERSE-ITIS helps a lot in seeing chiasm in the big sweep. This is Genesis 6:

Or the tower of Babel in Genesis 11:

link

And we're only in the FIRST book of the Bible (:

Sometimes chiasms are are so large that they almost become a genre..or encompass an entire book.

In fact, they can become as large as life, See
James B. Jordan, “Chiasm and Life” in Biblical Theology Basics:

“Very much of human life is ‘there and back again,’ or chiastic. This is how God has designed human beings to live in the world. It is so obvious that we don’t notice it. But it is everywhere. This shape of human life arises ultimately from the give and take of the three Persons of God, as the Father sends the Spirit to the Son and the Son sends the Spirit back to the Father. We can see that literary chiasm is not a mere curiosity, a mere poetic device to structure the text. It arises from the very life of God, and is played out in the structure of the lives of the images of God in many ways and at many levels. It is because human beings live and move so often chiastically, that poets often find themselves drawn to chiastic writing. God creates chiasms out of His inner life, and so do the images of God.

Biblical chiasms are perfect. That is, they are perfectly matched to the human chiasms they address and transform. As we become more and more sensitive to Biblical chiasms, we will become more and more sensitive to one aspect of the true nature of human life under God. We will be transformed from bad human chiasms into good human chiasms. In this way, becoming sensitive to chiasm can be of practical transformative value to human life, though in deep ways that probably cannot be explained or preached very well.

One further thought. We saw in our previous essay that chiasms often have a double climax, one in the middle and the greatest at the end. The food we bought at market is put away in the cupboard and refrigerator when we get back home. Moving forward to a final climax is what all literature does, whether it has a middle climax or not. (Shakespeare’s five-act plays always move to a climax in the third and in the fifth acts.) This is just another way that human life matches literary production, in the Bible as well as in uninspired human literature. Becoming familiar with the shape and flow of Biblical texts will have a transforming effect on human life.”

James B. Jordan, “Chiasm and Life” in Biblical Theology Basics.

-link, Michael Bull’s blog: Theology you can eat and drink

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Mike Rinaldi, a Visalian, and filmmaker (and Fresno Pacific grad) told this story at the first "Gathering to Bless Christians in the Arts":
Blake Snyder, the screenwriter behind the classicSave The Cat" book became a Christian not long before he died.

Often at this point in such a story, folks ask "Who led him to Christ?"

Go ahead and ask.

The answer is:

Chiasm.

It happened in large part because Mike, not even knowing if such a well-known and busy writer would respond to his email, asked him if he had heard about chiasm.

Turns out Snyder was fascinated with it all, and Mike was able to point out chiastic structure and shape in scriptwriting....and one thing led to another...and then in Scripture.

All roads, and all chiasms, lead to the Center and Source.

Mike, of course, learned chiasm in THIS CLASS.
--

Interpreting songs as text, is great practice for reading Bible, and writing your signature.

In class, we interpreted together this version of the U2 song "Sleep Like a Baby."\
On the Moodle, we'll interpret another version of the same song.
I

Venn it:

"Sleep Like A Baby Tonight"
Morning, your toast, your tea and sugar
Read about the politician’s lover
Go through the day like knife through butter
Why don’t you
You dress in the colors of forgiveness
Your eyes as red as Christmas
Purple robes are folded on the kitchen chair
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams, everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like someone else’s suicide
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Dreams
It’s a dirty business, dreaming
Where there is silence and not screaming
Where there’s no daylight, there’s no healing
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams, everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like a suicide
But you’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Hope is where the door is
When the church is where the war is
Where no one can feel no one else’s pain
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
In your dreams, everything is alright
Tomorrow dawns like a suicide
But you’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight
Sleep like a baby tonight
Like a bird, your dreams take a flight
Like St. Francis covered in light
You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight

----

Congressman on the ten commandments..watch here

---

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SERMON ON THE MOUNT, Mathew chapter 5

Video of this lecture, which we introduced in class.

Remember:

Who was the sermon addressed to?
Why did he teach on a MOUNTAIN?
Why did Jesus sit down to teach?

When we read the "beatitudes," the first section of the Sermon on the Mount: -- do you catch any inclusio? (Note the first and last beatitudes (only) of chapter 5 end

with a promise of the kingdom of heaven, implying that the other promises in between "being filled," "inherit the earth," "be comforted" all have to do with Kingdom

--and if Jesus is a NEW MOSES of sorts, then we should look at

SERMON ON THE MOUNT: Discussion on how Jesus was interpreting/reinterpreting the law of Moses/Torah(Matt 5:17-48). Some would suggest that he is using the rabbi's technique of "Building a fence around the TORAH."

For example, if you are tempted to overeat, one strategy would be to build a literal fence around the refrigerator...or the equivalent: don't keep snacks around. See:

What does building a fence around the Torah mean?

Some wonder of this is what Jesus is doing here. See: Jesus' Antitheses - Could they be his attempt to build a fence around the Torah?

One can see how this could turn to legalism...and when do you stop building fences? See:

A Fence Around the Law

Greg Camp and Laura Roberts write:

In each of the five examples, Jesus begins by citing an existing commandment. His following statement may be translated as either "And I say to you... " or as "But I say to you ...” The first option shows Jesus' comments to be in keeping with the commandments, therefore his words will be an expansion or commentary on the law. This is good, standard rabbinic technique. He is offering his authoritative interpretation, or amplification, to God's torah, as rabbis would do after reading the torah aloud in the synagogue. The second translation puts Jesus in tension with the law, or at least with the contemporary interpretations that were being offered. Jesus is being established as an authoritative teacher who stands in the same rabbinic tradition of other rabbis, but is being portrayed as qualitatively superior to their legal reasoning.

After citing a law Jesus then proceeds to amplify, or "build a hedge" around the law. This was a common practice of commenting on how to put a law into practice or on how to take steps to avoid breaking the law. The idea was that if you built a safe wall of auxiliary laws around the central law, then you would have ample warning before you ever came close to breaking the central law. A modern example might be that if you were trying to diet you would need to exercise more and eat less. In order to make sure that that happened you might dispose of all fats and sweets in the house so as not to be tempted. Additionally, you might begin to carry other types of snacks or drink with you so as to have a substitute if temptation came around, and so forth. In the first example of not killing, Jesus builds a hedge that involves not being angry and not using certain types of language about others. One of the difficulties is that it becomes very difficult not to break his hedges. This might drive his hearers to believe that he is a hyper-Pharisee. Some interpreters have wanted to argue that Jesus does this in order to drive us to grace—except grace is never mentioned in this context. This is a wrong-headed approach to get out of the clear message that Jesus is proclaiming: you must have a transformed life. By building his hedges, Jesus is really getting to the heart of what the law was about. In the first example, the intent is not just to get people not to kill each other (though that is a good thing to avoid), rather it is there to promote a different attitude about how to live together. Taken together, the 10 Words (Commandments) and the other laws which follow in Exodus-Numbers paint a picture of a people who will look out for one another rather than just avoiding doing injury to one another. This becomes clear in Jesus’ solution at the end of the first example. The solution is not to throw yourself on grace or to become paralyzed by fear, but to seek right relations with the other person. There seems to be an implicit acknowledgment that problems will arise. The solution is to seek the best for the other person and for the relationship. This is the heart of the law. The problem with the law is that it can only keep you from sin, but it cannot make you do good. The rabbi Hillel said “what is hateful to you, do not do to others.” In 7:12, Jesus provides his own interpretation “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.” He changes the saying from refraining from sin, to actively doing good. The thesis statement in 5:20 is “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” This then is how to exceed, or go beyond the law. In each of the five examples, the way to exceed the law is to make the relationship right.

Instead of drawing a new line in the sand that you are not supposed to cross before you are considered guilty, Jesus, confirms that the center is "love your neighbor" and then just draws an arrow (vector) and tells you to go do it. There is never a point at which you are able to finally fulfill the commandment to love. You can never say that you have loved enough. In the gospel of Matthew, the supreme example of this is Jesus' own life and death. His obedience and love knew no boundaries. --by Greg Camp and Laura Roberts

One can see how this could turn to legalism...and when do you stop building fences? See: A Fence Around the Law

---- on the 6 antitheses of the Sermon on The Mount, remember my Paraguay stories?

"Ever committed adultery, John?" (oops...)

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OK, below is the backstory of the "LAUGHING BRIDE," which illustrates "building a fence around the Torah":

How do you name the difference in the shift of the 6 case studies? What does it feel like Jesus is doing? He's making the law______:

harder?
easier?

Is he making it impossible on purpose?

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.. A quick trip up the mountain"..SEE BELOW:
Students can manually mark this item complete: 7)"...and Moses went up to God": a ten-hour trip in two miniutes

OK it's not a quick trip at all, but this assignment will be (just a few minutes!)

The tour guide and group in that video had to make a

6,000 foot climb,

including ten hours of hiking, riding several camels,

eating two meals on the way, and drinking over 100 bottles of water!

But what's really amazing is what the text says Moses did! Watch now, and post a few sentences in response about what it said, and how this is an example of the need to read the Bible in context (con-text), and a Three Worlds Perspective.

-------- -Ten commandments as a wedding:

and the "question of the day". .

Off the top of your head, list words and ideas that come to mind when you think of the story of the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mt Sinai.

Then scroll down for the question..

Was "wedding" on your list?

.....or "love"?

What does all this have to do with a wedding?

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AS A WEDDING:

We watched "HE LED YOU LIKE A BRIDE," a Ray Vander Laan "Faith Lessons" video from Mount Sinai. Here is the complete video bove , which is on this DVD.

IT dealt with the many"historical world"hyperlinks from Ten Commandments to wedding.

Here's a study guide for the video:..

see pp.197-251 here

Often when I officiate weddings, and the groom is nervous, I try to lighten the mood. I pull out my little black book in front of all the groomsmen and fake a shocking, "Oh my goodness, I accidentally brought my funeral book by mistake!! But I'll just read from it anyway..i mean it's the same idea. Is that OK?" Then there is a laugh of relief when they realize I'm kidding!
But at Margaret and Paul's wedding.....

for the first time, I couldn'tfind my wedding book right away, so i did actually bring the funeral book instead. It didn't really matter, as after doing years of weddings I don't need the book, I just use it to stick little sticky notes in for the sermon, prompts, names etc....oh, and to look pastoral and cool.
So I just crossed out the big title "FUNERAL" on the spine with a black marker, so folks wouldn't see it while I was up front (:
Then for a laugh and a few pics, after the service, I rubbed off the ink so you could read it.

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:Set theory: