Patterns are like garden tomatoes. They are like curry, like garlic

One of my favorite shows ever is Netflix's documentary series Chef's Table. I love watching shows about people who love something and tell you why. But the cinematography, the settings, the personalities, the food, and the deep humanity of cooking finds in this show a new high. Yes, it can get repetitive. There is a common direction between farm and consumption. But there is one thing that gets me every time, and that is the loving attention of each chef to ingredients. Perhaps it is salt or pork or almonds--featured chefs have gone through a process of understanding and valuing each ingredient. I love that. I'm fascinated by what happens when human beings give over their deepest attention. I love ἡσυχίᾳ.

So, I was thinking about this today in relationship to theology. In the discipline of theology, there is a lot to know. There is a reason why the old universities saved theology for last. That's what it requires. Theologians have to be historians, literature professors, quasi-scientists, philosophers, psychologists, ethicists, Biblical scholars, linguists, economists, political scientists, researchers, teachers, writers (and sometimes public speakers), and keep up with their fellow theologians all at the same time. Theology needs it all, and there is never enough. It is necessary to dive down many times and to stay down as long as possible. In theology, the Baptists finally get their wish and the submerged must be saturated through-and-through. It is necessary--along with the comorbid guilt and frustration. Nevertheless, there is a time to put it aside. That is what I am feeling.

What I want to do is follow those chefs back into the ingredients. I want to pluck a blueberry from a bush or pull a carrot from my own earth. And I have been noodling around with Christopher Alexander's pattern language ideas, his and others, because I think this is the way to do this. That is the way to pull the ingredients up out of the crazy kitchen of tradition and argument and give each one my deepest attention. I want to get to know them, be schooled by them, let them pull me into the conversation they are having, into the tradition, and not the other way round. I do not want to use them; I want to spend time with them, to love them. It is part of the working out of the transition from the practice of theology as a profession in the academy to the practice of theology as craft. It is part of ad fontes.

For a while, I have been struggling to understand how to build a pattern language. I've not been sure exactly what constitutes a pattern. Is a pattern the solution to a problem or is a pattern a theme or idea? Are the themes and ideas that make up a discipline in reality solutions to problems that come up in the practice of that discipline (in which case they trace how that discipline is practiced)? I have not been sure. And this hesitancy around what is and is not a pattern has slowed me down. But I am starting to overcome the either/or and say the ideas of a discipline are also its solutions to underlying problems. Patterns are like tomatoes, curry, and garlic, and they are solutions to necessary problems (Acts 10:13).

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Epilogue: It occurs to me this evening that I still act as beholden to the academy when there is no reason to be. I do not need its permission. There is no need to beg a tenure committee. There is no need to hock my wares, desperate in a frayed suit at the yearly AAR paid for by money scraped from months of the family food budget. There is a discipline to well-formed scholarship that should be obeyed. Discipline is important, yes. So, giving a respectful nod, I feel free now to follow my muse (cf. Purgatorio I.1-84).

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"Emmanuel Mounier describes the notion of environment poetically. The environment is not everything that surrounds us. It is only that which may become our experience and possesses the power of incarnation.

“Precisely that winding road transforming proximity into incarnation turns the whole human environment, from bodily fluids and blood to the starry heavens above our heads, into the living body of our life. Anything that has not been experienced this way has not yet become a human environment.”

"So things, stars, people must become my body in order to exist for me.

The same holds for poetry."

~ Anna Kamienska from In that Great River: A Notebook

Further work on the Widow's Mite

Work continues on the pericope of the widow's mite. I did an initial analysis of that pericope in Mark 12:41-44 last September. The exegetical work was pretty thorough, but it raised more questions than provided answers. The Bible typically does this. But, in this case, there is a straightforward reason. The event of the widow's mite does not stand on its own. It is final case evidence in a series of prosecutions Jesus makes of the Jewish ruling classes in 11:1-13:37. These begin during Jesus's time in Jerusalem right after the triumphal entry. The king is, if you will, seeing how things are. He cross-examines the people he has left in charge. And this cross-examination ends at the widow's mite. After that, the king delivers his judgment, as the following pericope is Mark's mini-apocalypse, in which every stone of the temple complex will be cast down, and the cursing of the fig tree.

The outline of this section of the Gospel looks like this. And I note some chiastic elements: The triumphal entry and subsequent temple cleansing over against the tribulation and the entry of the polluting abomination into the temple. The fig tree is cursed over against its appearance as an object lesson after Jesus's apocalyptic sermon. And even the bewilderment of Herod and all Jerusalem at the triumphant entry over against Jesus's statement that no one will know the day or the hour of his coming, linking the first and second advents of Jesus to Jerusalem. These chiastic sections bookend the challenge-response material that make up the king's cross-examination. He is come to his vineyard and is interrogating the wicked tenants.

A few more words about the challenge-response section of the Jerusalem section of Mark's Gospel: That Jesus responds to the chief priests and the temple hierarchy with a parable does not bode well. Parables are judgment speech meant to sift the hearer, obscuring or revealing as one has ears to hear. One would expect the most senior religious class to not require parabolic sifting. And yet, Jesus does so. The sifting begins. Each response Jesus provides is made on the challenger's home turf: Caesar's coin, the Torah, exegesis of the Psalms. Each response exposes the true nature the challenger is attempting to hide underneath a pious facade. That the scribes get a double retort on two different bases--exegetical and ethical--is surprising, and I cannot yet explain it. Perhaps, because the interlocutors begin at the top of the class pyramid and end at the bottom, Jesus expects more from the scribes. I do not know. Also, I included the widow's mite as part of Jesus's denunciation of the scribes (see also Exodus 22.22-24).

• A The triumphal entry, 11:1-11
• B The cursing of the fig tree, 11:12-14
• C Jesus cleanses the temple, 11:15-19
• D The lesson from the withered fig tree, 11:20-26

• CHALLENGE: Temple hierarchy questions Jesus’ authority, 11:27-33
• RESPONSE: The parable of the wicked tenants, 12:1-12
• CHALLENGE: Pharisees and Herodians question Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar, 12:13-16
• RESPONSE: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, 12:17
• CHALLENGE: Sadducees question Jesus about the resurrection, 12:18-23
• RESPONSE: Jesus backs the resurrection, 12:24-27
• CHALLENGE: Scribes question Jesus about the greatest commandment, 12:28-34
• EXEGETICAL RESPONSE: Jesus asks how the messiah can be David’s son, 12:35-37
• ETHICAL RESPONSE: Jesus denounces the scribes, 12:38-44 (widow's mite, vv. 41-44)

• D1 The destruction of the temple and signs before the end, 13:1-8
• C1 Tribulation foretold, 13:9-13
• The abomination of desolation, 13:14-23
• The coming of the Son of Man, 13:24-27
• B1 The lesson from the fig tree about the end time, 13:28-31
• A1 No one knows the day and hour, 13:32-37

This working outline gives context to my original work with the widow's mite. One can easily see that it fits in to a larger argument going on in the Gospel. A meaningful investigation of Jesus's pronouncement "this poor widow gave more" (12:44) must take this argument into account. As I said above, the widow sits at the bottom of this great descent through the religious classes of Jerusalem. Her act of selfless giving and Jesus's opinion of it become the linchpin of the king's sitting pronouncement. What began at the gate ends at the court of the women. The last become first when the Kingdom comes in power. And one cannot forget that the king's role is to take up the case of the orphan and the widow (see Ps 94).

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Thoughts on the Structure of 12:28-44

The section in question begins in 12.28 ( Καὶ προσελθὼν εἷς τῶν γραμματέων; and one of the scribes came near). The previous section was about the Sadducees. Thus, the entrance of a scribe makes this a new section. The confrontation with the scribes continues until v 44, the end of the pericope commonly called the widow's mite. We confirm it does because directly after, Jesus and the disciples leave Jerusalem entirely. So, then: how to divide up this loaf of sixteen verses? Here is the way they are structured as a four-part schema:

12.28 -- as we saw above -- Καὶ προσελθὼν εἷς τῶν γραμματέων; and one of the scribes came near [what is the greatest commandment?]

12.35 -- Καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ; and Jesus answered [how is the Messiah David's son?]

12.38 -- Καὶ ἐν τῇ διδαχῇ αὐτοῦ; and as he taught [Jesus calls down the scribes for being prideful and for eating widow's homes]

12.41 -- Καὶ καθίσας κατέναντι τοῦ γαζοφυλακίου; he sat down opposite the treasury [Jesus calls attention to just such a widow]

Each of our parts here begins with the conjunction. Mark gives us no other overt clue how to juxtapose them. But at least we know, right? At least we are now making the hard calls.

I see the fourth part--the widow's mite--connected as an object lesson to Jesus's condemnation of the scribes in the third part. So, at the very least, I see three parts, not four. The fourth και section supports the third. But, at the same time, you could argue that there is a progression of speaking. In the first, a scribe opens the debate. In the second and third, Jesus is speaking. And, in the fourth, Jesus sits down. I guess this is kind of where I am going. Not to three parts, but to two. The scribe's opener and Jesus's retort, first verbally and then in court's evidence of the suffering of the righteous widow.

Actually, no. I see that fourth part with the widow as the culmination of an entire series of condemnations moving from political, to priestly, and finally to the scribal/teaching class. It all begins with the triumphal entry (the first mention of the temple, btw, in 11.15) & the cleansing of the temple, and ends with Jesus sitting down and condemning the whole thing on the basis of the evidence of the abused poor. In the very next pericope, Jesus says the temple is going to be cast down, which is the real cleansing of the temple. (A search on "temple" in Mark yields interesting results: eleven results clustered in chapters eleven through fifteen.)