Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29

Exegetical Notes

1. The "seventy elders of Israel" who are gathered by Moses in Numbers 11:24 have already made an appearance in Exodus 24:9 -- "Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up" -- the very important passage in which the covenant is ratified with dramatic blood sacrifices.

2. "had a strong craving" in verse 4. The translation does not convey the doubling up of a verb/noun of the same root in the Hebrew, awa. The original text, in other words, doubles the same word in its noun and verb forms. In English it would be something like "they desired a desire." The LXX translation does follow the Hebrew by doubling one of our favorite Girardian verb/noun word forms in the Greek with epethymasan epithymian (see the comments on James 4:2 last week). awa is another word for desire in the Hebrew; the typical word for "covet" is hamad. Interestingly, both of these words appear in the Deuteronomic version of the last commandmant (Deut. 5:21). This same doubling technique of awa (and epithymia) is used in Psalm 106:14: "But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness, and put God to the test in the desert" -- apparently referring back to this Numb. 11:4 passage. (For more on epithymia see Proper 18A.)

Reflections

1. This story is sometimes cited as another example, in addition to Luke's quote of Joel 2, of OT precedent for the pouring out of the Spirit on Pentecost (Acts 2). For more on this expanded sense of "prophet" from a Girardian -- and, I think, Lukan -- perspective, see Pentecost B.

2. I assume this lesson was chosen to go along with the first part of the Gospel lesson against exclusivism in using the power of Jesus' name. But it goes just as well with the Second Lesson.

James 5:13-20

Reflections

1. For the last segment in a serial reading, one would never know its selection is independent. It seems to have been chosen to go with the theme of the other two lessons, giving many examples of how we are called to be ministers to one another. It would be a good day to preach on the theme of "priesthood of all believers."

Mark 9:38-50

Exegetical Notes

1. Mark does not use the noun form skandalon (which otherwise appears 15 times in the NT) but uses the verb form skandalizo (29 total occurrences in the NT; 14 in Matthew; 2 in Luke) in the following 8 places: Mk. 4:17; Mk. 6:3; Mk. 9:42; Mk. 9:43; Mk. 9:45; Mk. 9:47; Mk. 14:27; Mk. 14:29. Our text for the day carries the highest concentration of Mark's usage of skandalizo. The other three uses are as follows: (NRS Mark 4:17) "But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away." This is Jesus' description of the rocky soil in the Parable of the Sower, which in Mark's gospel is epitomized by the disciples, especially Peter. This parabolic description essentially is fulfilled by the disciples' own "falling away" during the passion, which Jesus predicts using the same term: (NRS Mark 14:27-29) And Jesus said to them, "You will all become deserters; for it is written, 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." Peter said to him, "Even though all become deserters, I will not." Mark's other use of skandalizo outside of today's passage comes in 6:3: "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.

2. Some commentators say that the word group of skandal originally referred to a "trap" -- more specifically, a trap's tripping mechanism. skandalethron was the stick on which the bait was placed, that when touched, tripped the trap. This would go well with Girard's notion of skandalon as both positive and negative. A trap is alluring before it snags its prey.

3. The word behind "hell" is largely "Gehenna." In Violence Unveiled, Gil Bailie notes that this is the Greek term translating the Hebrew for the valley of "ben-hinnom," the place where idol worshiping Israelites had engaged in child sacrifice. In fact, his section on "The Fires of Hell" (which follows immediately after his excellent sections on "Satan" and "Scandal") focuses on the parallel to this passage in Matthew 18.

4. Salt was used on the sacrificial fires.

Resources

1. See the page "Girard and the New Testament Use of skandalon"; and the references on skandalon in the notes from two weeks ago (Proper 19B).

2. The central reference, once again, is the final chapter "Beyond Scandal" in Book III on "Interdividual Psychology" in Girard's Things Hidden. And the last section of this chapter is entitled "The Skandalon" (pp. 416-431). Girard quotes the Matthean version of our Markan text after having said the following:

Children are particularly vulnerable to mimetic interference. The child's confident act of imitation always runs the risk of coming up against the desires of adults, in which case his models will be transformed into fascinating obstacles. As a consequence, to the extent that in his naivete he is exposed to impressions from the adult world, the child is more easily and lastingly scandalized. The adult who scandalizes the child runs the risk of imprisoning him forever within the increasingly narrow circle of the model and the mimetic obstacle, the process of mutual destruction we have so often described. This process is directly opposed to the process of opening up, of welcoming others, which is lifegiving: . . . (Girard then quotes Matthew 18:5-9) (p. 417)

Mimetic theory explains the so-called Oedipus complex more adequately in at least two ways. First, it more generally explains the phenomena of rivalry without relating it always to rivalry experienced in childhood with one's parents, while still recognizing the latter's importance since parents are generally one's first models. Second, it doesn't embrace scandal. In other words, it doesn't make the scandalous, rivalrous relationship between parent and child an essential part of our human nature as does the Oedipus Complex. Christian theology hypothesizes a state of original sin in which we perpetually have fallen into such rivalries and grow up in scandal, but mimetic theory shows how that is not an inherent part of human nature, because it is conceivably possible that someone, taking the right model for desiring (i.e., Christ) could desire without rivalry. Existentially, that has not been the case, until Jesus was able to grow up in relationship to his heavenly father without falling into the rivalry, the skandalon. And the promise of his Holy Spirit carries the promise of a sanctifying grace by which we might begin to fall back out of the rivalries that have been forged in our lives. "In Christ there is a new creation...."

3. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pages 108-109:

“For Whoever Is Not against Us Is for Us” (9:40)

 The Gospel safeguards its nonsacral nature by the device of confession, which it effects by portraying the new community as still infected with the Sacred even at this moment of greatest insight. The circle of the disciples, recently agitated by the struggle for prestige, is silent but not convinced by the example of the child. Soon they are excluding again. John the disciple puts this gesture of inclusion in question by objecting to the unlicenced exorcist (9:38-41). The Gospel narrates this here to show the frailty of the new community even at the moments of greatest insight, and thus to undermine its claims to perfection and so help prevent its own deformation into scapegoating violence. Like the receivers of the word in the parable of the sower (4:1-9), many do not or cannot receive the simple message of the child. Jesus’ reply, “He who is not against us is for us” (9:40), expresses remarkable tolerance: All are to be included unless they take steps to exclude themselves. This is the “church” rather than the “sect” ethic, and it is a convincing rejection of sacred exclusionism.

 How to Avoid Scandals

 The extended warning against scandals (9:42-48) seems on the surface to be a stunningly sacrificial text. It commands one to cut off and throw away a hand, foot, or eye that causes one scandal, to expel the wrongdoer in sacrificial style. Cutting (apokopto, 9:43 et passim) is the essential sacrificial act, and the skill of the sacrificial butcher is most evident in dismembering. Sacrifice is prescribed as the cure for scandal.

A metaphorical rather than a literal sacrifice is being prescribed. The deconstruction of sacrifice has proceeded so far that the Gospel can use it as an image to convey the moral injunction to resist envy decisively. Scandal, as we have seen, is to love the thing one hates and hate the thing one loves. Scandal is envy, a desire to be like the other that is so intense that it would destroy the other if it cannot be like him, and also if it can. The injunctions to sever offending limbs are hyperboles expressing the urgency of the need to avoid the envy that comes from what one does (hand), where one goes (foot), and what one sees (eye), envy exemplified in the behavior of the disciples just narrated, in their wrangle about who is the greatest, and their attempt to keep the privilege of being Jesus’ agents for themselves.

The sayings that close this section confirm the sacrificial metaphor. “For everything will be salted with fire” (9:49) is an allusion to the customs of salting the cereal sacrifice and offering salt with every sacrifice (Lev 2:13). The injunction, “Have salt in yourselves, and live in peace with one another” (9:50), applies this metaphor in a moral exhortation to behave so as to achieve the peace that the sacrifice achieved. We have, therefore, a good example of how the language of sacrifice can remain the same while its meaning has been transformed from the ritual to the moral domain. The efficacy of this metaphor depends on the knowledge that mimetic violence was traditionally controlled by sacrifice, a knowledge that Mark seems to have had either consciously or, more likely, subliminally.

In the pericope of the child at the center of the circle of disciples [see last week's excerpt], the sacrificial structure of the poetics remains constant, in the sense that the circle is the sacred center. The nature and direction of flow of the energy within the structure is, however, different. In the same way, the structure of scandal is constant but the content and direction are different. One deconstructs scandal by recognizing its temptation and resists it by resisting envy. Sacrifice has become a metaphor for moral action. This expresses the insight that although there can be no alteration of the mimetic structure of human relations in this world, there can nevertheless be a new mode of mediation, through the divine rather than through the rival. Triangular desire can be delivered from scandal while remaining triangular.

1. Jesus speaks of cutting off your hand or foot before letting them pull you into the hell fires of our violence. In the end, he will instead let himself be cut-off from everyone and from life itself, even quoting Psalm 22 in the Markan Passion story: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me." He trusted, of course, that his being cut-off would stop short of being ultimately cut-off from God.

An imagery that is similar, but in a countering way, is that of John 15:5-6:

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”

2. In addition to the "priesthood of all believers" theme mentioned above, the second part of this lection provides the opportunity to have the Girardian anthropology shed some light on these "hard sayings" about skandalon. It's a sermon for which I've even taken the opportunity to explicitly talk about Girard's theory as shedding further light on the Gospel. I've taken Jesus' words as humorous ("dark humor," obviously) hyperboles that he used to get his point across, so I've used some of my favorite comic strips to illustrate. See sermon entitled "Mimetic Desire: The Stumbling Block."