What kind of person are you?
Are you the kind that will humbly admit when you are wrong?
Simply say, “I was wrong.” “I was misinformed.”
“I didn’t know.” “Thank you for educating me.”
Or…do you stick to your guns…even when you begin to realize you are wrong.
Will you try to win an argument even though you know you are wrong?
How far are you willing to go to protect a flawed idea?
Or to overlook a mistaken assumption?
Or to keep intact a broken theory?
Global Climate Change…
The Presidents Birth Certificate…
Weapons of Mass Destruction…
Larry King is a robot…oh, that one is just me?
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When it comes to some of our cherished theological formulas, apparently many of us are willing to go pretty far.
Mark Marty reminded me of Galileo who’s achievements in the 17th century, included:
· building the first high-powered astronomical telescope;
· showing that the velocities of falling bodies are not proportional to their weights;
· coming up with the ideas behind Newton's laws of motion;
· and confirming the Copernican theory of the solar system.
All those things we learned in school as fact, but…
because he believed that the planets revolved around the sun, and not the Earth, Galileo was denounced as a heretic by the church in Rome.
And if Galileo was correct, then the church and it’s teachings, that the earth was the center of the universe was wrong…and that just couldn’t be.
Galileo faced the Inquisition and was forced to renounce those beliefs publicly…of course his theories proved to be correct.
So how long did it take the church to admit they were wrong?
The Vatican officially acquitted Galileo in 1993, 360 years after his indictment.
Now that is stubborn ignorance in the face of truth.
Another, case in point could be this story about Zacchaeus,
which I – and apparently most interpreters over the ages – have taught to be a classic repentance story.
You know how the story goes…
Zaccheaus, this wee little man, goes searching for Jesus.
But Jesus is searching for him, he has some explaining to do, he’s been a bad man…just listen to the grumbling crowd. Zacchaeus, means "clean" or "innocent,” but as a tax collector, he is un-clean and a sinner. No respectable person, no observant, faithful person should go to Zacchaeus’ home and eat with him. But, praise Jesus, Zacchaeus realizes his sins, confesses, repents and is forgiven. Jesus proclaims, “Look salvation has come to this house for he too is a descendent of Abraham and Sarah.”
Great story, with it’s own song to boot! All about the need to confess so God can forgive you and you can receive salvation. But in the spirit of a faith reformed, always in need of being reformed… what if this isn't what the story is about at all?
You see there is some disagreement on how to translate this passage.
It’s a minor change to a sentence but possibly a major change to the meaning of the story.
Bruce Malina points out that the verb tenses here for "give" and "pay back" are present tense, and NOT future tense as shown in most English translations: "will give," "will pay back." So contrary to most contemporary translations (including both the NRSV and NIV), the tense of the verbs in Zacchaeus' declaration in the 8th verse are present tense, not future tense. The affect this has on the story is this…now Zacchaeus isn't pledging, "Look, half of my possessions I will give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much."
That’s the way we grew up being told the story, but what if instead, Zacchaeus is boasting (probably in response to the grumbling of the crowd),
"Look, half of my possessions I give to the poor...[and] I pay back four times" – as in right now, already, as a matter of practice.
The Message actually has an honest translation of Verses 7-8:
Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, "What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?"
Zacchaeus just stood there, a little stunned. He stammered apologetically, "Master, I give away half my income to the poor—and if I'm caught cheating, I pay four times the damages."
Richard Swanson writes in his book, Provoking the Gospel of Luke, “The surprise in this story is that the outcast is the observant one. This is a scene of revelation, not of redemption."
So what's going on with the disagreement in tense?
Well, it turns out those who translate the verbs as future tense appeal to a grammatical category called a present-future tense or futuristic present.
The funny thing with this interpretation is…if you look in Greek grammer, it will tell you there is this thing called a futuristic present, that sometimes the present tense is used to explain future actions…and then it will say…see Luke 19:8.
Yes, that's right: the only occurrence of this verb tense is Luke 19:8. Rather than translate this sentence in the present tense – which of course would not fit with interpreting this as a repentance scene – a new grammatical category has been created that occurs once and only once.
So what's up with that?
So what's up with that?
Well, maybe they are right and this is the only place this present future tense is used…
But it could also be… some flawed ideas die hard, and one of the most cherished Christian ideas is that you have to repent, ask for forgivness, to receive God’s forgiveness.
Notice that Zacchaeus does not repent of his occupation; he does not give up being a chief tax collector. Like all of us, Zacchaeus remains compromised, impure, sinning.
One possible moral of this story is to realize that salvation does not require, nor result in, perfection. Salvation in this lifetime is not about the end state. Salvation is the process, the healing and reconciling that is needed for creating right relationships within which compromised, impure, and sinful people - like us - can live within, in response to, and toward, the realm of God.
Many of us struggle to imagine that God would just forgive sin, apart from some meaningful repentance.
After all, if God just forgave us, what would become of God's justice?
What if, however, God doesn't care as much about justice as we do?
That is, what if justice wasn't the primary category God uses all along?
Maybe justice is our way of tracking each other,
our way of defining each other,
our way of keeping count, of keeping score,
of following who's in and who's out,
who's up and who's down.
If this is so, if God's love regularly trumps God's justice –
and I believe this is Jesus life and death message –
then we're operating with flawed categories.
God, Jesus, the whole biblical story, as it turns out, isn't primarily about justice but about relationship, God's deep, abiding, tenacious desire to be in relationship with each and all of us.
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