From Hardin's "A Primer on Hermeneutics (11)"
“Revelation is a gain to language.” - Karl Barth
There are two points I would like to make today.
First is that cross is central to this hermeneutic, it is not simply an add-on or a meaningless event. The Passion Narrative is “the ancient way trodden by the wicked” (Job 22:15), the path of the scapegoat that leads to a death ritual. Jesus saw a framework in the Bible, a framework of death that his contemporaries could not see. This is in his saying “Therefore, upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been poured out on the earth, from the blood of that righteous man Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the temple and the altar” (Mat 23:1 CEB). For Jesus, the Bible is bookended with murder most foul!
Jesus also understood that this was the inevitable path he would have to take, following the crowds attempts to make him king (John 6:15). Following this ‘botched’ miracle, Jesus retreats to Caesarea Philippi and queries them about their understanding of him. It is at this point when they have misunderstood him as a Warrior Messiah that he begins to teach them about the Suffering True Human. The cross is not just the end of Jesus story but can be found in his awareness of what a position he had been put in by the crowds and his disciples own misunderstanding of him and his mission.
The entire narrative of Jesus from birth to adulthood is shrouded in the cross. This is why it is so important to see the death of Jesus from the only perspective that could have come from outside of us: nonviolent reaction or forgiveness. This was the solution we kept seeking as a species in our machineries of death. It cannot be found there. There only the cycle of violence prevails, either in hiding victims or where victims seek retaliation. Forgiveness, erasing the ledger, could never have been conceived inside the maleficent womb of sacred violence.
BUT…
But it could be manifested there, right at the heart of the mechanism. Forgiveness, erasing the ledger, starting over, could be manifested if there was someone willing to take that mantle upon him or herself. So it is, that we see Jesus, “for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising it shame.”
The revelation manifested right in the very heart, the very center, of sacred violence, was a monkey wrench, thrown in the machine, a divine sabot. The revelation of The Forgiving Victim, at the very heart of sacred violence, is a divine virus that slowly “like yeast in dough”, eroding away the veil that hides our satanic accusatory persecution of others. The Forgiving Victim, the One who brings Shalom is the ultimate Deconstructor of Worlds. It is not Vishnu who is the Destroyer of Worlds but Jesus! Jesus exposes and thus destroys the illusion of thinking structured in sacred violence.
BUT…
But God does not stop there. God creates a new world, a new reality, a World of Shalom. This world is the world to come, this Shalom World, is The Reality of God. God is a Shalom God. God is a Peacemaker. This word, like the word of the cross, creates the very reality it utters. It creates an ‘eschatological’ space, a Shalom space. It is this world we are invited to inhabit. It is the place of ‘the lamb upon the throne.’ Not a bloody vindictive lamb, but a lamb of Shalom.
Most people think hermeneutics is about rules of interpretation or weird word studies. Or that you need to be a scholar to understand the Bible. Neither is correct. If you learn to dwell in the eschatological Shalom Reality that is The Kingdom of God (through discipleship and spirituality) and if you learn to read all texts through the ‘perspective of The Forgiving Victim’, then you will that the Bible has a lot to teach us or if you prefer, reveal to us.
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