Isaiah 64:1-9

Resources

1. Paul D. Hanson, both The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Fortress Press) and his commentary on Isaiah 40-66 in the Interpretation series (John Knox Press). He comments on 63:7-64:11 on pp. 79-100 in the first and pp. 235-241 in the second. Hanson's thesis in The Dawn... is interesting to Girardians. He theorizes that the writings of third Isaiah come out of a community of Levitical priests who were in leadership in Palestine during the exile but then were deposed by the Zadokite priesthood upon their return from exile. While Second Isaiah's are tightly organized writings, perhaps by the same person, and full of hope for the people of Israel during the latter years of the exile, the writings of Third Isaiah reflect a growing sacrificial crisis: conflict within the community, a growing apocalyptic perspective, and a critical stance toward the institutions of the Sacred. If Hanson is right about the community, then these writings reflect the view of the victims during a sacrificial crisis -- which explains why they are so widely used to support the Christian perspective.

Reflections and Questions

1. The passage raises questions about God's seeming absence from God's people. Where are you, Lord? When are you coming? Come now! A good text for the First Sunday in Advent.

The question for mimetic theory, though, might be: Is God really absent, or does God appear so because we are looking for the wrong God? Mimetic theory helps us to appreciate how deep-seated is our idolatry as an anthropological reality. Looking for God in the wrong places, from the wrong perspectives, is built into hominization itself to the point that we need to become new creatures. Hominization must begin again from the point of the cross and resurrection of Christ. Or, in Pauline language, the advent of a Second Adam into this world must begin hominization again for all of us who are formed according to the First Adam.

If we are looking for the God of the Sacred who will come with sufficient might to violently liberate us from our enemies and exact revenge, then, yes, that God is absent. But if we are looking for the God of victims, then that God has been with us all the time; one simply has to look in the right place.

Hanson (commentary, pp. 237-38) cites Elie Wiesel's Night. A child hangs from an SS gallows and the question goes up, "Where is God?" Wiesel writes: "And I heard a voice within me answer him: 'Where is He? Here He is ... He is hanging here on this gallows.'" (Night, Bantam Books, 1982, pp. 61-62.) I used this passage in 1996 to explore this matter of God's absence/presence, in a sermon entitled "Knowing Where to Look for God."

2. There is also the element of blaming God for the dilemma: God has hardened his peoples' hearts. Which God is it that hardens peoples' hearts? Isn't it the God of the Sacred who constantly is pulling us into the sphere of the Sacred and putting a veil over our eyes? Again, it makes a difference which God we are addressing: the God of our own making, i.e., the God of the Sacred, or the true God.

Mark 13:24-37

Resources

1. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp. 35-40. (Hamerton-Kelly's commentary on Mark, written from the perspective of Girardian "mimetic theory" will be a constant over the next year.) H-K begins his commentary on Mark's gospel at chapter 11, the confrontation with the institutions of the Sacred centered around the Temple in Jerusalem. Ch. 13 brings Jesus' teachings regarding these institutions to a climax as he predicts their collapse. It is a mixture of general apocalyptic language about judgment day with more specific references to the fall of Jerusalem and the Jewish-Roman War. H-K lays this out nicely. Most notable, I think, is his closing paragraph (p. 40):

It is remarkable that among all the apocalyptic imagery of this discourse there is not one claim, that the tribulations to befall humanity in the messianic apocalyptic history and the ultimate eschaton are expressions of the vengeance of God. Rather, the suffering is to be caused by wars, frauds, charlatans, natural catastrophes, misunderstandings and persecutions. These are the sadly predictable human failings that cause human misery without any divine intervention. In fact, the one clear reference to divine intervention has God shortening the tribulation for the sake of his elect. There is, therefore, a significant omission of the divine vengeance from a traditional apocalyptically styled passage, and that confirms our thesis that the generative energy of the Gospel is the opposite of the Sacred. Even though traditional imagery is used, the traditional content has been modified so as to remove the idea of the divine wrath and vengeance. The wrath is the suffering we inflict on ourselves and each other within the order of the GMSM. [Note: H-K's "GMSM" is an acronym he uses for: Generative Mimetic Scapegoating Mechanism.]

Structurally, he notes that there are only two 'sermons' of substantial length in Mark: ch. 4 & 13. And each features a keyword: "Listen!" in ch. 4 and "Watch!" in ch. 13. This comes from Mark's prominent usage of the quote from Isaiah 6 regarding people who have ears but cannot hear and eyes but cannot see. Disciples are called to hear in the opening chapters, to listen to the preaching and teaching of Good News, climaxed by the healing of a deaf person in ch. 7. Ch. 8 begins the move toward the cross in which disciples are called to watch and see. The famous section in 8-10 that contains three passion predictions is flanked by two healings of blind men. The sermon in ch. 13 brings this to a climax under the keyword "Watch!" In the next chapter, the narrative will find Jesus specifically asking his disciples to watch with him in the Garden of Gethsemane -- and, of course, they fall asleep. But the linking of this call-word is significant: in watching for the traditional signs of Judgment Day (ch. 13) the disciples only need to watch the signs of the next several days (chs. 14-16). What they are about to witness will be the revealing of the Son of Man.

3. René Girard. In the first book in which Girard wrote about the Judeo-Christian scriptures, Things Hidden, he immediately took up the Christian theme of Apocalypse, represented in a text such as Mark 13. Most notable are Girard's segments on Apocalypse in Things Hidden. There is a section entitled "Apocalypse and Parable" (pp. 185-190; excerpt) and "Science and Apocalypse" (pp. 253-262), the latter segment preceded by a lead-in to discussing Apocalypse called "The Sacrificial Reading and History" (pp. 249-253). I highly recommend reading these. For more on Girard and a Girardian perspective on Christian Apocalypse see the opening comments for St. Michael and All Angels Day.

4. Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, has a section entitled "Apocalypse" at the outset of his book, pp. 14-16. It has to do with the very title of his book:

The word "apocalypse" means "unveiling." What, then, is veiled, the unveiling of which can have apocalyptic consequences? The answer is: violence. Veiled violence is violence whose religious or historical justifications still provide it with an aura of respectability and give it a moral and religious monopoly over any "unofficial" violence whose claim to "official" status it preempts. Unveiled violence is apocalyptic violence precisely because, once shorn of its religious and historical justifications, it cannot sufficiently distinguish itself from the counter-violence it opposes. Without benefit of religious and cultural privilege, violence simply does what unveiled violence always does: it incites more violence. In such situations, the scope of violence grows while the ability of its perpetrators to reclaim that religious and moral privilege diminishes. The reciprocities of violence and counter-violence threaten to spin completely out of control.

6. Raymund Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation; Mark 13 is cited on pages 62, 90, and 186. On pages 62-62, for example, Schwager gives a nice summary of a Girardian perspective on Christian apocalyptic:

Besides the judgment sayings and the pronouncements of woe, the problematic of violence is found especially in the so-called apocalyptic texts. Since J. Weiss and A. Schweitzer, many have seen in them impressive evidence that Jesus was trapped in very time-bound and unrealistic ideas. Thus they thought it necessary to demythologize his sayings in this vein from the higher standpoint of modern knowledge and to reinterpret them. But are the apocalyptic texts in fact so mythological? They speak of a shaking of the forces of heaven and a coming of the Son of Man on the clouds (Mark 13:24-27 and parallels). Apart from these brief but ultimately austere words, there are only descriptions of things that happen on this earth. There is talk of leading astray and poverty, of wars, rebellions, and famine, of strife in families and above all of persecutions (Mark 13:3-20 and parallels). ⁽¹⁾

Does the content of this part of the apocalyptic texts, which, compared with the description of the (cosmic) end-events, is much more comprehensive and also clearly distinguished from those in the Gospels, ⁽²⁾ not largely coincide with what has continually happened in the history of Israel? Do the apocalyptic texts contain in essentials anything different from a description of those forces which -- in contrast to the new community in the kingdom of God -- actually dominate history? If it has often been thought that the apocalyptic speeches would betray a mythological worldview, one can also turn this suspicion around and ask those who judge in this way whether they are not continuing to hold on to marginal elements and losing sight of the crucial utterances. Does not the way in which apocalyptic texts have been treated over the last decades, which have been full of war and other forms of violence, betray something of that exegesis which Jesus criticized in the saying about the tombs of the prophets?

Even if post-Easter influences are to be assumed in the description of the end-time, what emerges is absolutely no justification for ascribing everything to the theology of the early community. The essential elements fit coherently into the situation of rejection and the judgment sayings of Jesus. They make clear the important opposition between the laws of the world (see Matt. 20:25) and of God's kingdom, and they highlight, in agreement with the prophetic proclamation, the situation of judgment upon the world. Without this very realistic view of history, the call to decision and the message of judgment risk being too quickly spiritualized and thus finally dissipated.

From the viewpoint of the message proclaimed by Jesus, the behavior of his own disciples took on a particular significance, since the kingdom of God had found its first realization in their gathering. Consequently, whether this beginning was genuine must be seen in them; whether it proved itself even in the face of great resistance showed that the coming God of Jesus had completely won their hearts and wills. But at the critical moment this proof was not forthcoming and in fact the opposite occurred. According to Mark, Jesus ended the great judgment speeches with the challenge "Watch!" (Mark 13:37), and shortly afterward the Gospel reports how the disciples were the very opposite of wakeful and instead they slept, while their master prayed alone to God in his anxiety and his need (Mark 14:32-42). The threefold warning of Jesus and the threefold sleeping of the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane depict graphically how the disciples failed fundamentally in their task. Even if the narration of Jesus' struggle with death is shaped by later linguistic formulation, it should nevertheless give a clear picture of how the disciples, even before the arrest of their master, failed at the decisive moment.

I am attracted to Wright's approach as complimetary to mimetic theory. The weakness in Wright's book about Jesus, in my opinion, is an inadequate understanding of the Satan -- which is precisely a strong point of mimetic theory, witness Girard's own book I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Read Jesus and the Victory of God and I See Satan Fall Like Lightning together and I think one has a compelling picture of the Historical Jesus.

Reflections and Questions

1. "for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn...." It is often pointed out (e.g., in Alison's "Contemplation..." above) that this line references the events which are about to take place: Jesus hands himself over at the Last Supper in the evening; he is handed over by Judas at midnight, by Peter at cockcrow, and to the Romans in the morning.

2. Gil Bailie has found the reference to the cock crowing to be especially meaningful for disciples. It is our call to penitence. It is also the work of the Paraclete, progressively in the world, to make it increasingly difficult to carry out sacred violence without the cock crowing on us, producing a "moral hangover" in the morning.

The chief illustration of this for Bailie is Shakespeare's Hamlet, one that underscores the metaphor of the cock crowing. Shakespeare understood what kept Hamlet from being able to make his revenge on Claudius, the king, even if Hamlet didn't understand himself. Hamlet's best chance to kill the king is in Act III, scene 3 -- except he is kneeling and praying in the chapel for repentance! Hamlet again talks himself out of it:

Now might I do it pat, now 'a is praying!
And now I’ll do 't. And so 'a goes to heaven;
And so am I reveng'd? That would be scann'd.
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven. (III, 3, 76-81)

But Shakespeare's biggest clue comes right in the beginning. The ghost of Hamlet's slain father is appearing during the night to call for vengeance on Claudius his slayer. But it disappears -- when? When the cock crows. Marcellus' speech provides a perfect Advent theme:

It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad.... (I, 1, 173-177)

3. In 1999 it was timely to confront Y2K fears. The First Sunday of Advent is generally the highpoint of apocalyptic texts in the lectionary. Even though Y2K passed without incidence, it raised two kinds of fear that are ongoing.

One is a specific one created by the computer-related scare of failing microchips all over the planet. This actually fits the Girardian mode of apocalyptic since it would be a human-made one, brought on by our own short-sightedness and myopic focus on profits to the exclusion of safely anticipating this possible crisis. When Girard wrote Things Hidden (1978), the threat of nuclear war comprised the human-made threat of apocalyptic violence. This nuclear threat, quieted with the end of the Cold War, is now being revived in connection with terrorism. Or continuing to be aggressors against Muslim nations may be what Osama bin Laden wanted in the first place: a gradual escalation into World War III between Western and Muslim nations.

The other kind of Y2K fears were of the usual millennialist type: fears that a vengeful God will finally bring about the Day of the Lord. These fears might be tied in with the first type. And these are the kind that a Girardian understanding of the Gospel can help to allay. Alison's essay above uses Mark 13 to brilliantly address such fears.

Notes from Schwager quote:

1. "The definitive point of view is that the Gospels do not ascribe to God the apocalyptic violence predicted by them" (Girard [1983], 192).

2. See Conzelmann (1959b), 215.