To take something—this is a marvel: first, a creature must perceive it, then desire it, then move for it, and only then, take it. Our awe at seeing how animals take what they need is rooted in this most basic narrative of our own nature. It is our own story.
Only Tamar is a true agent in this great drama. Judah merely acts on his fears and desires, like any creature. Only Tamar intends the future of all Judah—and she is a Canaanite.
Will Christianity pass away? Will some other religion or philosophy take its place? You hear such questions from time to time . . . A scripture says that “nothing will be impossible with God.” On the question whether God will keep God’s savings in the church forever, we might better err on the side of caution.
Was there really a Judas? Or was the character “Judas” a creation of the first Christians who told these stories–a way for them to utter an ineradicable curse upon all their brothers who would not see Messiah in their master Jesus? I do not know the answer to that question. All of us know, however, that through every generation from the first, the church beat words into weapons to torment Jews and kill them as Judases. How unblessed are those who see others as enemies and thus preserve their righteousness.
Protestants say of sacraments that there are not the Catholic seven, but rather only two, because 500 years ago, Luther and Calvin found only two commandments on Jesus’ to-do list: baptize, and celebrate a supper “remembering me.” Yet they dismissed from their short list a third command: “You also ought to wash one another’s feet, for I have set you an example, that you do even as I have done unto you.” . . . This is a sacrament of subversion–and John’s gospel tells of no other . . .
In the wake of the Gulf oil spill last spring and summer; in the mental aftershock of not knowing the fallout from the nuclear reactors now burning in Japan, how strange to hear the Lord’s command to the human, male and female: “Fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea . . . and over every living thing that moves . . . ”
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