Confessions of A Commentary Kid

There was a point in my college career when I started to seriously geek out about commentaries. Every serious student at a Christian college needed to pick the commentary series they would defend in a fight to the death. Mine was the NIV Application Commentary. Scholars I respected like Tremper Longman III, Douglas Moo, Darrell Bock, Peter Enns and Scot McKnight wrote some of the commentaries in the series.  Enns and McKnight especially put me over the edge into giddiness.  It was my go-to commentary series. I would sit near it in the library, ready to reference it at a moment’s notice. It was well put together in general, but I especially liked that commentary series because it was more thematic than word by word reading of the text.

For the word by word reading of the text we were assigned the Bible Knowledge Commentary. That is a commentary I would not wish upon anyone. It was assigned reading for some of my classes, and I would dread to read from bold phrase to bold phrase about Greek conjugations and parsing and (insert Charlie Brown’s teacher’s wah-wah voice).

There is a new commentary series put out by IVP called the Resonate Series and I…ahem…resonate with it. This is a commentary series that takes a more contextual approach than even the NIV Application Commentary did. It is absolutely not bogged down in the tweed scholar-speak of pale Bible scholars who never see the light of day.

I was given the opportunity to review the newly published Matthew commentary in the Resonate Series. The Matthew commentary was written by Matt Woodley, author of The Folly of Prayer (my review). Woodley does a great job of commenting on the text, which I think is what a commentary should actually do. With all of the etymological and scholarly jargon removed and a format that moves section-by-section and not verse-by-verse or word-by-word, the Resonate Series offers the reader an actual interpretation of the text in contextualized terms. This means that the commenter, in this case Woodley, is showing how the text can actually be applied to daily life and spiritual practice.

Woodley does a great job of this. In what other commentary passage on Matthew 17 would you have a parable by Kierkegaard and a story about the highs and lows of a worship experience while in Mexico? By offering this type of relatable context, Woodley is able to flesh out the deeper meaning of the story and how it applies to the reader and the Christian community, as he does in his description of the tension he experienced in Mexico:

The noise and squalor of downtown Cabo didn’t match the lyrics of “What a Wonderful World.” Instead I heard a clanging song of drunkennes, pain and lust.
But as the church of Jesus Christ we will train our ears and our eyes to hear and see both songs: songs of Christ’s glory and songs of the world’s brokenness. (180)

All this in a discussion of the Transfiguration.

While at first glance someone might say that this is actually not what a commentary is supposed to be. A modern commentary is supposed to narrow the reader’s focus on the text so that an explicit truth can be presented in a proposition. This is not, however, like many of the ancient commentaries or Reformation commentaries of the church were written. There is a big difference between Augustine’s commentary on Genesis in Confessions, Matthew Arnold’s commentary on Genesis and the Bible Knowledge Commentary’s word-by-word delineation of Genesis. At some point between Arnold and the BKC Protestant scholars lost their way. So, it is refreshing to see a commentary series that goes back to the roots of the Christian and Protestant traditions of commentary writing to offer up a text that with human words tries to express the depth and mystery of the divine Word.

Book Information

The Gospel of Matthew: God with Us
Matt Woodley
InterVarsity Press
$12.16 (Amazon)

The Effects of PhD Applications on Blogging

…is that blogging starts drying up.

Sorry folks, but the application process is taking up a huge chunk of the time I don’t spend at my job or at church or at events.  I don’t have as much free time right now. 

And it’s stressful. It’s a big project.  Each school has different expectations and different ways of doing things that need to be interpreted.

Last Advent was a really rich spiritual time for me and now this year it’s the polar opposite.  I can’t focus on the season of expectation when I have so much expected of me right now.  Personal statements…esssays…writing samples…letters of recommendation….it’s all tedious and time consuming.

So forgive me, next week I might be able to write more.

Compassion Concerning Healthcare

I went to the doctor yesterday for a routine phsyical.  I was in the office for about 45 minutes and overheard two conversations between very stressed out, uninsured individuals trying to walk the desperate line between finances and health.

The first lady was very concerned and hovering over the office manager when I came in.  She had had a routine physical and an EKG but was uninsured, so she was setting up an installment plan to pay for the two services.  Two routine services.

The second lady called in and spoke with one of the doctors, very upset that her prescription had run out.  The doctor said that they had strung out the daily prescription for as long as possible, and that since it had been a year to the date since her last visit she would have to come in and see the doctor.  The scenario playing out was that the woman was taking a daily medication for some ailment, but she couldn’t come in and incur the cost of all the additional services that would come along with a simple doctor visit (EKG, blood work, etc.).

My heart really went out to these people.  It must be such a state of helplessness.  I was wondering what I could do, and I thought support health care reform, but that is just kind of business as usual and simply pathetic.  We cannot continue to try to legislate Christian action through secular politics.

So what can a Christian do?

What does your church say about healthcare?

Just curious here:

Does your church talk about health care in the pews? from the pulpit? in the fellowship hall with coffee in hand?

If yes, what are people saying?

If no, do you want them to talk about it? or is the silence golden?

As for me, other than some grumblings I’ve overheard about the government always screwing things up, not much of anything has been said about health care (at least when I’m in the room!) around The Plant.

Where Liberty Truly Lies: Not in Democrats or Republicans

This week the story of Liberty’s
denial of certain rights to the college’s Young Democrats group spread across
the blogosphere after a Terry McAuliffe, a Virignia Democrat running for
governor of that state, entered the foray. Many other politicians, pundits, and
bloggers jumped at the divisive issue as well. 
Liberty’s
response and actions were bad news.  The
school has a Young Republicans group after all, and stifling political
conversation at a place of learning goes against the ethos of an education in
the first place (though their action is not illegal or unconstitutional, as
this is a private school).  If Liberty is willing
admitting here that their purpose is not to mold and shape young men and women
of Christ who can think, live, and act for themselves the school is
useless.  It is a big deal that they have
treated a school club in this matter by blatantly refusing to have any type of
debate at the school by showing privilege to the Republican group (the former
chairman of Liberty’s Republican group was interviewed by one source and
basically said: "Letting
a club like that exist goes against what the school is founded on").

While Liberty’s
formal response to the Democratic group was wrong, they have been wrong in the
first place: they had a Republican group on campus.  As a private Christian school the celebration
of party politics on campus goes against the heart of the kingdom message: we
are the kingdom
of God, a nation without
borders, a peculiar people. 

We are citizens of another world.  We can be interested in American politics,
debate it even, but the Christian is called to pragmatism in these issues and
should definitely never declare allegiance to a party.  You already pledge allegiance, and you have
pledged it (hopefully) to God and certainly not to country or flag.  We need to take a long loving look at the God
that is "above politics."

In our baptism we pledge allegiance to the lamb of God, the
one who sits at the right hand of God and is the king of the coming kingdom,
active and present today—more active and more present tomorrow.  We should be political, fighting for justice,
standing up for what the Church believes in, but we should not do it through
political parties.  The government of
this country is God-ordained, no matter which party is in office.  The sword is wielded by our nation, for good
or for ill, and those who live by the sword must die by the sword.  Our kingdom, the one us baptized citizens are
now a part of, does not live by the sword. 
Instead we serve a King who:

plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
Bans war from pole to pole,
breaks all the weapons across his knee.

We live as the kingdom of Creation, not the kingdom of the
Fall.  Every war is a branch from the
seed of Cain.  We are children of the new
Adam, first fruits of peace, justice, and the New Earth and heavens. 

Liberty
is just one example out of thousands in this country.  I don’t blame them really.  The precedent was set long before they chose
to become linked to worldly politics and neglect their calling as citizens of
the kingdom.  But this precedent must
cease.  We must eradicate it.  We must tell our fellow kingdom men and women
to rise up and pledge allegiance not to Republicans, Democrats, or the Flag but
instead to the King of Kings.—–

Additional Liberty articles:

Info on Liberty’s Democratic club inaccurate

College Democrats Weigh Liberty Offer

Democracy at Liberty

For more intrigue into the conflation of politics into Christianity see Greg Boyd’s review of The American Patriot’s Bible (part 1 and part 2) along with the publisher’s response.

A Prayer for American Politics

From Tim Keel’s blog, who got it from J.R. Briggs’ blog: Broken Stained Glass…

Forgive us O Lord: A Prayer for American Politics

Forgive us O Lord, for being divisive rather than working to build unity.

Forgive us O Lord, for striving to be right more than striving to be kind.

Forgive us O Lord, when we desire to be understood more than to understand.

Forgive us O Lord, for placing our hope in a person, a system, a government — rather than in you alone.

Forgive us O Lord, for complaining about politics rather than thanking you for our freedom.

Forgive us O Lord, when we use our mouths — and our email forwards — to tear down "the other."

Forgive us O Lord, for spending more time and energy thinking about the Empire than the kingdom.

Forgive us O Lord for speaking poorly and wishing ill will on another candidate.

Forgive us O Lord, when we are known more for following a party than for following the Risen Christ.

Forgive us O Lord, for claiming that God is only on "our side."

Forgive us O Lord, for claiming and proclaiming that one political
party completely and accurately represents the politics of Jesus.

Forgive us O Lord, when we forget that the heart of the king is in your hands.

Forgive us O Lord, for being more excited to speak to others about our candidate than about our Savior.

Forgive us O Lord, when we think this prayer is for someone else we know and not for ourselves.

Give us grace to treat others with dignity and respect, even in the midst of our differences.

Give us wisdom — not just with what we say and do, but how we say
them and do them — so that we may not represent our political party,
but that we may represent the one who has given us True Life.

Amen.

For more thoughts on prayerfully being a part of the Kingdom and not the Empire read (and pray!) Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw’s "Jesus For President" Litany.