The Reversed Standard Version

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies….

 …Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:22-23, 26, ESV).

Word study used to be — perhaps still is in some circles — a popular method of lay Bible study. Selected words might be big concepts like grace, faith, sin. I have never, however, encountered a word study on the words ‘groan’, ‘groans’, or ‘groaning’. I suspect it would not turn up much more than these few verses. Yet I think such a study might actually be a fruitful one.

The ESV is not a Bible translation I normally use, not least because of its non-inclusive language (‘sons’? what’s wrong with ‘heirs’?). However I’ve picked it here because it uses the same word ‘groan’ to describe both the creation’s groaning as the Spirit’s groaning a couple of verses later, while my preferred NRSV uses ‘sighs’ for the Spirit’s prayer — and as far as I can tell from my interlinear New Testament (I’m no Greek scholar) the Greek word is the same in both instances.

Now we know, from John 3:3 onwards, that the New Testament’s primary image for salvation/redemption is that of childbirth: God gives new birth to us by the Spirit. This is one of many reasons why I think it is unhelpful to use only male pronouns for God — in spite of all our scientific advances, men do not yet give birth (and what a fuss they might make if they did…). There is also a strong tradition of seeing the Holy Spirit as female, which makes perfect sense if the Spirit is the one who gives us spiritual birth.

I also know, both from my own limited experience and from an addiction to watching Call the Midwife, that childbirth is accompanied by a great deal of groaning. Jesus himself noted the fact in John 16:21: ‘When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world’. And in this passage from Romans, Paul brings together three different instances of groaning: the creation groans, we followers of Jesus groan, and the Spirit him/herself groans, as all three labour together to give birth to a new reality, a new creation, the Kingdom of God. I find this a tremendous picture of what is going on in the process of redemption: something new and better is being birthed, and inevitably, as in all births, there are labour pains, and moments of extreme weakness when we feel we just can’t manage another push (I begged for forceps in the end, and got them).

Of course the metaphor is a little mixed here, as Paul also uses the image, his other favourite, of adoption. But under Roman law an adopted heir had exactly the same status as one who was an heir by birth. Perhaps he has in mind here the inclusion in the Kingdom of the Gentiles, who were not born to be God’s people in the sense that the Jews were, but who had been grafted in and were now as much a part of the vine, God’s family, as the Jews.

Two observations occur to me from this exploration. Firstly, how much more riches we gain from Scripture when we approach it with the experience of women in mind. It took me decades as a Christian to notice that Jesus’s portrayal of salvation was all about birth, and that he was thus putting women’s experience centre stage. How much do we miss by only having Scripture interpreted by men who can only relate it to their limited perspective on the world?

Secondly, while not all groaning heralds birth, we can be pretty sure that where something new is being born, there will be groaning. If we suffer pain in our journey with God, it thus does not have to mean that we have strayed from God’s planned path for us or have unconfessed sin in our lives. It is just as likely, perhaps more likely, to mean that we are spiritually giving birth to something new — or more accurately, that something new is being birthed in us by the Spirit. When we are groaning, then, we can be reassured that the Spirit of Jesus is groaning with us, as he groaned when on the Cross he gave birth, in blood and sweat, to the beginnings of a new creation.

Then the LORD God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’ — therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:22-24)

I’ve always found this a problematic story. Indeed I find the whole story of what has come to be known as ‘the Fall’ problematic. Why would God want to keep humankind in ignorance? Surely more knowledge can only be a good thing? I have solved this in my own mind by thinking (and by writing a poem stating) that the serpent, who is if we see him as Satan is ‘the father of lies’, is lying to Eve when he tempts her. He offers her the opportunity to ‘be like God’ – but we know already from chapter 1:26 that she and Adam are made in God’s image, as like God as it is possible for a limited human being to be. So is the serpent trading on the time-honoured female tendency to think of ourselves as lesser, as needing something extra to be fully human? Essentially he is telling her she is not yet like God – which lie she falls for, and ironically becomes less Godlike in the outcome.

I don’t of course think of this as a historical story, though I have been roundly castigated over the years by those who do. I find the theory of evolution offers me a much bigger God, one who is prepared to let creation find its own way of development, yet always with a loving eye on its path preventing it from self-destruction, and leading it by however winding a way to its fulfilment. The destination is fixed, I would say, but the route is variable. But for the sake of argument let’s treat this myth in its own terms. What does the ‘tree of good and evil’ mean? Humankind has been made, in God’s opinion, ‘very good’, and without this crown of creation, nature is merely ‘good’. Human beings already know what is good, and what their role in caring for and managing creation is to be. Why would they also want to know evil? What could possibly be gained? Perhaps only God is actually great enough, and pure enough, to contemplate evil and not be corrupted or destroyed by it. Perhaps God’s plan was originally to introduce humankind to the ambivalence of reality once they were mature enough to cope with it – but they jumped the gun, and lost the childhood purity and goodwill we were all born with. For I don’t believe the insidious and defeatist doctrine of ‘original sin’ and indeed the Bible offers little evidence for this doctrine, nor for the schema of Creation/Fall/Redemption/Consummation which I was taught but which actually fits the biblical record only very loosely. The Hebrew Bible says very little about the idea of ‘the Fall’ after the first three chapters, and neither, actually, does Jesus. I believe we learn sin and selfishness as we grow in human society, not that we are born infused with them. Only celibate monks could think up the idea that a baby’s cries are evidence for its sinfulness – every mother knows that crying is the baby’s only form of communcation, and that a baby who didn’t cry for food or love would very soon be dead.

So to our passage for this post. For decades I could only see it as God fearing ‘his’ power would be threatened if these now compromised but knowledgeable humans could become immortal by eating from the tree of life. That is a rather small and negative view of God as an insecure tyrant! (and there is no actual evidence for this view in the passage). Only very recently did I have a different insight, born of the recurrent depression I have been struggling with lately. What would it be like, in this present world of loss, bereavement, disappointment, misunderstanding and conflict, to live for ever? Some seem to think it desirable, and have themselves cryogenically preserved after death in the hope of a future cure for whatever they died of. I personally think of it as a horrific nightmare. To go on for ever, getting presumably older and older and losing more and more capacity, or even if not that, enduring more and more challenges and deprivations and boredom and repetition? I can’t think of anything worse. In fact, at the moment, if it weren’t for some writing projects I want to finish and the need to sort my papers, and the desire to see my son settled in a steady job and with a nice young woman, I would be rather happy to die. I don’t mean I intend to do anything about it, and I’m sure I will soon stop feeling like this, but right now a good long unconscious rest of a few centuries before the Resurrection would be quite welcome.

What, then, if God’s expulsion of the ur-couple from the Garden of Eden, and barring their re-entrance, is not a defensive action but an act of mercy? What if their subsequent mortality is not a curse but a blessing? After all, as I often say when someone dies at an appropriate age (not, like my long-dead brother, at 27), ‘the old ones have to go to make room for the new ones’. If no one ever died, how would we welcome more babies? The Kingdom of God, the new heavens and new earth, are of course a different matter – there, there is room for all.

So now I think of ‘lest [they]… live forever’ as not a punishment or a limitation imposed by a fearful God, but a mercy by a God who knows that to live forever in this now spoiled world (probably not by the consumption of a forbidden fruit, powerful image though that be) would not be a gift but a poisoned chalice. No one who really thought about it would want to live for ever in this cauldron of greed and violence, whatever its compensating beauties and joys. And now I find this ancient myth even more profound, and ‘true’ in a far more than literal way, than I did before.

As to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘no idol in the world really exists,’ and that ‘there is no God but one.’ Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth – as in fact there are many gods and many lords – yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. ‘Food will not bring us close to God.’ We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall (1 Corinthians 8:4-13).

Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. So do not let your good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The one who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and has human approval. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for you to make others fall by what you eat; it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble. The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God. Blessed are those who have no reason to condemn themselves because of what they approve. But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because they do not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves (Romans 14:13-15:1).

These two parallel passages from Paul’s epistles have become known as the ‘weaker brethren’ argument. Put simply, they argue that Christians, unlike practising Jews, are free to eat whatever they want, even if it is sold in the marketplace where all the food has been dedicated to false gods. However, since not every Christian knows this yet, those whose conscience still baulks at eating something ‘unclean’, may be upset and offended by seeing their fellow Christians do so. If that is the case, the Christians who do know this, should refrain from eating ‘unclean’ food in front of their ‘weaker’ brothers and sisters.

Behind all decisions about food rules (as in the minimal requirements the Council of Jerusalem made for Gentile believers – Acts 15:19-21), is the idea that ‘food = fellowship’, a very Jewish, and indeed generally Middle Eastern, idea. In an inhospitable land with much desert, and among nomadic peoples, hospitality is a prime obligation, and what we serve up should not offend the feelings of those we host. But equally, if someone hosts us, we should not insult their hospitality by being picky about what we will eat: ‘If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience‘ (1 Corinthians 10:27). Only if we are specifically told by another guest that the food has been offered to idols, says Paul, and that this offends the other guest, should we abstain. In other words, act for the moral and emotional welfare of the other person: ‘Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God’ (v.32)

I am mostly vegetarian (though my son’s food preferences have eaten away at this commitment over the last 20+ years). Some years ago we were in the US, ‘Mennoniting our way’, and were taken to eat with an Amish family who host tourists for extra income and to make their way of life better understood. I saw immediately that the main dish on offer was a meat loaf. I could have just eaten the vegetables and explained. But I didn’t want to give offence or trouble, so I ate the meat loaf. I still think I did the right thing.

There are two things I particularly notice in this teaching. One is that those who need to conform to rules about behaviour, who need to know ‘the Christian way’ to do everything in their lives, are described as weaker. It is those who feel free to, in the words of St. Augustine, ‘love God and do as you like’ who are the stronger. How have we, historically, entirely reversed this order in the church? We regard those who keep all the ‘Christian rules’ as strong Christians, while those who take a more relaxed attitude are somehow weaker. The Bible says the exact opposite! I once heard a sermon that divided people, and Christians in particular, into ‘the let-ters’ and ‘the ought-ers’. And it is very clear here in Paul’s epistles that the ‘let-ters’ are those who have deeper knowledge of the Christian way. They live by the Spirit, not by the book – for unlike our fellow monotheists, the Jews and the Muslims, we are not in fact people of the book, but people of the Spirit.

The second thing is that those with a ‘weaker’ conscience, more afraid of moral harm, are to be deferred to and cared for, but by no means allowed to dominate the debate. ‘For why’, adds Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:29-30, ‘should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else’s conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced because of that for which I give thanks?’. In other words, if the ‘weaker brethren’ insist that everyone should bow to their ethical sensitivities, they are hardly the weaker brethren any more, but have become the stronger. And this potentially cripples the whole people of God. ‘For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery‘ (Galatians 5:1).

Food offered to idols is hardly an issue for today’s church. But I am sure you can, without my help, immediately think of a number of other equivalent issues today, where some consider a certain practice, place or person ‘unclean’, and you do not. I think these passages say to us, stand firm in your freedom in Christ. But make sure you are not treading on someone else’s toes by doing so.

If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them (Matthew 18:15-20)

My Mennonite community, and other Anabaptist traditions, historically practised ‘the ban’, shunning any member who offended and refused to listen to correction. As in other denominations with an emphasis on church discipline (the Exclusive Brethren, for instance), a shunned member would be barred from communion, possibly from worship, and might not even be allowed to eat with their own family. The ban has not always been practised well or for good reasons — it can be judgmental, can arise out of an abuse of power, and I doubt it regularly leads to the shunned member returning to the fold. However in historic perspective, it was at least a non-violent alternative to the established churches’ ‘discipline’ of burning or beheading errant believers! (I gather Protestants generally beheaded, while Catholics burned).

This passage is often regarded by scholars as an insertion into Matthew’s Gospel by the later church which was seeking to preserve order in its ranks. Whether or not it is an authentic teaching of Jesus, my feeling is that it has been highly misinterpreted, by a failure to relate it to Jesus’ actual practice. The passage itself says nothing about banning or shunning: instead it instructs the church to regard an unrepentant sinner ‘as a Gentile and a tax collector’. How did Jesus treat Gentiles and tax collectors (the latter being essentially collaborators with the occupying Roman state)? Well he certainly didn’t shun them. In fact he ate with them, witnessed to them, healed them and generally sought to recruit them to his Kingdom. In other words, I see this passage as essentially saying ‘If one of your number is not behaving in a Christian way, then they are clearly not really a Christian, and your task is to evangelize them, not to avoid them.

However this is not the main focus I want to emphasise here. Rather, I want to point out a way in which this teaching has been not only misinterpreted, but actually misread. We all read the Bible selectively, noticing what we want to notice or what we have been schooled to notice — for instance, in Ephesians 5:21ff, men have generally been very happy to read the part addressed to their wives (and it is very impolite to read a letter addressed to someone else!) and not so keen to read the section addressed to them, even though the latter is eight verses compared to the mere three addressed to wives.

And in today’s passage, it seems these instructions have mostly been read missing out two vital words at the beginning: ‘If another member of the church sins against you‘ (my italics). We do not have licence to go round pointing out the sins, or what we perceive to be the sins, of our fellow Christians. Indeed, we are instructed quite clearly, earlier in the same Gospel ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged’ (Matthew 7:1). Rather, this procedure outlined in Matthew 18 is specifically designed for dealing with someone you feel to have sinned against you. Not against God, not against the congregation or its rules, but against you yourself. How have we extended it into a right to point out the failings of all and sundry, never mind their impact on ourselves? It is not our job as Christians to police the lives of others, even if they are our fellow Christians.

What is Jesus’ primary teaching on dealing with someone who has sinned against you? Well we don’t have to look far for it. It is reiterated in the very next few verses, from 21-34, first in Jesus’ command to Peter to forgive 77 times, and then in the parable of the unforgiving servant (or slave). So Matthew 18 cannot be a process for exacting justice; rather, it is guidance for winning back to the Christian community someone who has alienated themselves from it by harming a member of it — a member who should, before this process even begins, already have forgiven them. Forgiveness is, after all, not a way of disregarding the offence, but a way of managing to continue one’s relationship with the offender — and it some cases, perhaps all, this will necessitate helping the offender understand the impact of their offence.

Forget shunning, then, and forget thinking you are the moral thought police; rather, this is a teaching about restoring the relationship between a sinner and God, and between yourself and the sinner. And that designation of ‘sinner’ will probably apply to all of us at times, however faithful we consider ourselves to be.

 ‘You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power’ (Acts 2:22-24)

‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses (Acts 3:13-15).

‘You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it‘ (Acts 7:51-53)

‘My brothers, you descendants of Abraham’s family, and others who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent. Because the residents of Jerusalem and their leaders did not recognize him or understand the words of the prophets that are read every sabbath, they fulfilled those words by condemning him. Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead; and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus’ (Acts 13:26-33)

I’m still working my way through the book of Acts, and I notice as I go that it contains a number of sermons. The extracts above are from some of them: two by Peter, one by Stephen, one by Paul. And the thing that strikes me about all these sermons is how little they mention the Cross. True, they all relate the fact that Jesus was killed, at the instigation of his own people. Which reminds me of what I call the saddest verse in the whole of the Bible, John 1:11:

‘He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.’

As a Jesus follower of Jewish origin, I find this incredibly poignant (though I need to point out that there is no justification, either in John’s prologue or in any of the sermons in Acts, for the historic persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers’).

Yet while all these sermons allude to the crucifixion, not one of them has any sort of developed theology of the Atonement. They don’t even mention that Jesus died ‘for our sins’, though they do go on to declare that repenting and following him gains us forgiveness. You may argue that at the historic point in the life of the church that Acts recounts, Paul had not written his many letters, especially Romans, exploring the implications of the Cross. But that argument doesn’t really hold water; we know that Paul’s letters mostly pre-date the Gospels and Acts, and though Luke is relating events prior to Paul’s teaching, this cannot really be a verbatim account of Peter’s, Stephen’s and Paul’s sermons, but an interpretation based on witness memory — so Luke could easily have added to them some exposition of the Atonement. But he doesn’t. Why doesn’t he? Could it be because it wasn’t there? that the earliest preaching of the apostles and their associates actually didn’t emphasise Jesus’ death at all, except as evidence of rejection by his own people?

Instead, these sermons seem to have a quite different version of what the ‘good news’ is — and it is the Resurrection. Look at that last sentence of the Acts 13 extract: ‘..we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors he has fulfilled for us… by raising Jesus’. For the preachers and evangelists of Acts, it is not the Cross of Jesus that is the good news, but his resurrection, which demonstrates both that he is truly the Son of God, and that the love and righteousness he taught and showed cannot be defeated by death.

In certain church traditions, when we say ‘the gospel’ what we actually mean is a particular formulation of what was happening through Jesus’ death, and how it changed the relationship between God and humankind. When I have heard ‘the gospel’ preached with this emphasis, often the Resurrection becomes little more than a divine ‘I told you so’; or at best, a harbinger of our own resurrection to some disembodied heaven far away from earth.

But that formulation of the gospel is prominent in these early Christian sermons only by its absence. Have we got it all wrong? Is the good news in fact less about ‘Jesus died for our sins’ (though that emphasis is certainly there, and significant, in the teachings of Paul), and more about ‘God’s love as embodied in Jesus is so great that it cannot be destroyed by death’? Or even, from my perspective as an Anabaptist, ‘the non-violence of Jesus’ death is stronger than the violence of the powers-that-be’?

I don’t deny that the death of Jesus is in some way, which we can only define by a number of different images (and Paul himself uses a wide range of them, not just drawn from the law courts), salvific. But what these sermons from Acts suggest is that it is not Jesus’ death alone that is salvific, but the whole package of his ‘life-death-resurrection’. In fact, almost all of these sermons also dwell on the life of Jesus as a demonstration of his messiahship. He didn’t just come to die for us, he came to live for us, to fulfil in his life the true goodness, the just and compassionate human life, that we are all called to live by his Spirit.

I have a Christian jewellery idea — don’t laugh. We wear crosses round our necks, even as earrings, which has always struck me as an odd thing to do — would we wear a tiny gallows or electric chair as jewellery? But my idea is for a pendant made of two overlapping circles, one solid, the other just a ring with a hollow centre. This is to represent the stone rolled away from the empty tomb. That seems to me far more appropriate for Christians to wear as adornment or indeed as witness: because the good news is not just the Cross, it is the Resurrection too — in fact, as these sermons suggest, it may be mainly the Resurrection.