26 March 2024
R/OB remind us how Matthew jumps from the birth of Jesus to some indeterminate time later when the Magi show up. The idea of the shepherds and Parthian wise men showing up all together makes for good Christmas pageants, but is a critical failure in historical accuracy. Joseph and Mary stayed in Bethlehem at least a year, with Joseph working locally while the baby was born, and then got old enough to travel. And then they didn't go home to Nazareth, but off to Egypt.
Again, non-western people have an entirely different concept of when it's a good time to do something. Hiring a carpenter in Indonesia turned into a month-long wait, followed by a year of housing a man and his apprentice in the carport while they meticulously worked directly from harvested logs to make kitchen cabinets for the missionary and whatever other projects everyone in town wanted built, since there were no carpenters in that area.
God is not checking His watch as He counts down to His Son's return to earth. We lose track of the basic truth that "the Day of the Lord" is not on a schedule somewhere. It's a generic term referring to whenever God moves in His power, and we can find a chain of such days throughout the Bible. It's the very essence of the meaning of kairos.
Jesus consistently warned His disciples about their crazy obsession with knowing the day and hour (chronos). He told that parable about the king calling people to his banquet. Aside from the honor/shame aspect that we tend to ignore (they had already agreed to come), this was not the kind of timing common in western thinking. They didn't have weather forecasts, so it had to wait for a nice day. They didn't have refrigeration and catering, so things had to come together well. The day was not scheduled; people had been warned the day was near. This was their lord, so they wait on his good pleasure. He sends messengers that call them to the banquet with just enough time to get there from wherever they lived. When the calf is killed, it gets cooked that day.
The authors refer to science fiction and some wacky notions about time from other points of view. We think of events in sequence, the previous setting things up for what comes later. But so far as we can tell, God views all of human history as a single thing, and can insert His touch whenever He likes. We could never know if He went back in time to change something, unless He wanted us to know. Further, there are testimonies indicating that He did rearrange history while leaving someone aware of the shift. Ever hear of the Mandela Effect? Our assumptions simply don't fit the biblical narrative. It also doesn't fit most non-western cultures.
We even publish Bibles edited into chronological order because of our obsession. We need to be aware that these efforts are not simply mistaken, but may easily fail because we assume the text was written with our brand of time awareness. The Bible is written such that, some narratives are sequential (when it matters), but some are thematic, because that matters more.
Thus, we are obsessed with harmonizing the Gospels and it really bothers us when two or more accounts seem to place certain events in a different sequence. They didn't; they just told the story based on which events meant the most to them. No, I won't suggest it's a waste of time trying to harmonize certain events, but that we need to be aware of the flaws in our assumptions.
The authors cite the example of Mark 5. Catch these points: (1) both the hemorrhaging woman and the sick girl are called "daughter"; (2) the woman suffered bleeding for as long as the girl had lived; (3) both Jairus and the woman fall to the ground. If all we see is the chronological convergence of the two events, we miss what Mark is trying to say.
The Book of Proverbs says you should both learn to keep your mouth shut and also must speak up -- wisdom means knowing which moment calls for which response. The Book of Ecclesiastes talks about seasons as kairos, different times calling for different actions. You and I are trapped inside time; God is not.
I'm going to summarize the chapter questions. When is the time for harvest? Contrast western virtues about time observation with how the Bible is quite relaxed. Keep in mind that Luke was more interested in getting kairos right than chronos. Sequence matters only when it matters, which is not always. Luke connects Jesus' comments about being wary of religious leaders who devour widows' houses, with talking about the widow's mite for the embellishment of the Temple, and then how the Temple would be destroyed. Is the sequence significant in that case?
Addendum: We cannot avoid seeking a chronological order of things. This is simply how we understand things. But we need to be aware that we are the only society with this issue. No other civilization struggled with it, only the West. When we examine the Scriptures, we need to keep this in mind.
This document is public domain; spread the message.