[Tony Z]

I’m seeing these stories in a different way. Before, I would have more likely dismissed the Luke story of the woman healed who had been bent over for 18 years as Luke’s attempt to impress the reader with an account of Jesus’s miracle working. But they way James explicates it, the point of the story is not to establish Jesus as an authority to look up to, or to look down on, but as a figure who unveils the logic of how the crowd scapegoats or casts out outsiders (this unveiling is going on in the Zacchaeus story, too). I suppose my previous dismissal treated Luke’s Jesus the way the synagogue leaders in Luke’s own story tried to treat him! I can see now that the story is meant to set the reader free, like Luke’s Jesus does the woman healed. I hadn’t paid so much attention to the reactivity of the crowd to Jesus before, which is an essential part of each of the stories.

[Tony Z]

The broken link for the image to the altarpiece is in this section: https://www.forgivingvictim.com/module-3/3-3-undergoing-atonement-ancient-hebrews-contemplating-atonement/

[Tony Z]

Currently, the link for the image to the altarpiece is broken: https://www.forgivingvictim.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Isenheim-Altarpiece-Grunewald-Mus%C3%A9e-d%E2%80%99Unterlinden-Colmar.jpg

[Tony Z]

“Do you wish that Luke had included everything that Jesus told the disciples on the Emmaus road? What stories from the Old Testament would you like Jesus to explain?” I’m not sure I wish Luke would have included everything — on the one hand, it feels like it would fill in a gap in the story, but on the other hand, it would compromise the dramatic precision of the story Luke is telling. But if I had to choose, I’d like to hear about the story of Abraham and Isaac…

This idea of being re-narrated into being does seem to me to resonate with the theme/themes in the story of the reversal of the position of outsider/insider, guest/host, argument/agreement. What’s resonating especially is the idea of the outsider being in the world, but not of it, and the insiders (Cleopas/N) discovering themselves in agreement, mediated by the outsider. The point of the story, or part of the point, seems to be trying to reveal to the reader that she/he is also in the world but not of it.

I think it is interesting and important that James brings in the idea of the foreigner here. And there’s some tension for me: as a white, American male, where I live, I’m very much privileged, and not an outsider, or foreigner, at least in those respects. I’m thinking though, that the outsider status James is trying to bring out here is not at the level of the “social other”, which would include race, nationality, and gender, but the Other of that other, so to speak.

And finally, about the theme of resurrection…to be honest, it’s difficult if not impossible for me to take the idea of resurrection literally, but I think I can relate to the meaning in the story I think James is trying to explain. It’s especially enlightening to hear him discuss how ghosts in stories are vengeful, contrasted with the lack of vengeance in the appearance of Jesus to Cleopas/N. That makes a lot of sense in the context of Girard’s account of rivalry in mimetic theory.

Thanks for replying to previous posts, by the way 🙂

[Tony Z]

I think the course is subtitled “Listening for the Unheard Voice” to put forward the idea that it’s not that God hasn’t been speaking, it’s that God has been speaking to us all along, but we haven’t yet heard.

[Tony Z]

“James talks about Christianity having been thought of as grasping onto a theory about what God has done for us and then acting according to a moral code. Is that what Christianity has been like for you? How or how not?”

I think that is what Christianity has been like for me, in the sense of having a picture of God as a moralistic judge, and reacting against that.

“What is your relationship to the Bible? Do you think of it as an act of communication from God? If so, what do you think God is communicating to us in our particular time and place?”

I seldom read the Bible, but a small, perhaps increasing part of me is intrigued. I understand the Christian view that it is a communication from God. What I think of in that context is the question of interpretation — how humans interpret the text. However we interpret it, I do agree that it is a striking text.

“James says that habits are what make excellence possible.
What beneficial practices have you been inducted into?
Who inducted you or how did you acquire your “stable dispositions”?
What impact might an act of communication from God have on your life?”

I like to think I have an open mind, and I’m sure I’ve inherited such a trait from my parents. What impact might an act of communication from God have on my life? I don’t know!

[Tony Z]

I haven’t watched or read any of the materials yet, but the site asks me to join the forum “by sharing the ways in which God is communicating with you today”. I feel like I have to admit that’s language I’m uncomfortable with. I suppose my discomfort stems from the question whether, if someone takes it that God is communicating with them, how to know if it’s God or not? So I’m looking forward to see if the course will give me some context to think this through further.

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