Introduction

Notes readers, welcome to chapter three of Entering the Passion! As usual, we’re kicking off the week with a podcast episode! Do you like this format? Share your feedback in today’s special Monday chat! Look for that in the Substack app.

Listen for two paid-subscriber opportunities coming soon! I’ll be reaching out to paid subscribers next week with a poll to find an opportunity for our first live stream event planned for the week of 3/27/23! Quarterly live streams are one of the perks to being a paid subscriber! Then look out for the week of April 6, the final week of the study, for a long-form video for paid subscribers, plus an opportunity for anyone to watch a live stream with adam delivering a message on Holy Thursday with a Christian community.

Consider upgrading to paid for these upcoming opportunities. Of course, regularly scheduled programming for the Lenten study will continue for everyone!

And now, today’s podcast and we’re in to chapter three! Happy reading!

Transcript 

00:00:02 

Divinity and empire. 

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They are all minted from the same mold. 

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Jesus seeks a different mint, a different mold. 

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Welcome to chapter three of entering the passion of Jesus by Professor Amy Jill. 

00:00:20 

Moving and welcome to notes from the diaspora, the podcast where I fumble my way through multimedia assets to try to figure out how to get you the best information to enrich and enlighten your study of the Jewish history of the Linton season. 

00:00:36 

I want to begin with a couple of housekeeping notes. 

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The first note that I’d like to begin with. 

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Is just to ask for your feedback and I’m going to do that in the form of a chat that I will upload immediately following this post, and so you may see that in your inbox you may see that in the sub stack app. 

00:00:54 

And again, thanks so much to those who are participating in the chat. 

00:00:58 

Really terrific insights are coming to the surface. 

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A lot of surprise about the temple being a tourist attraction. 

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That was one of the hot topics that came out in the chat for last week at any. 

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I would love to hear your feedback. 

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These little audio clips. 

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I suppose you know, I call them a podcast because that’s a familiar enough concept, I suppose. 

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But do you like these? 

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Do you like to get the audio recordings in your inbox? 

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Maybe you only prefer just the newsletter. 

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Just give me the the text and that’s good enough for me. 

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But if you like these audio recordings, I hope you’ll let me know in the chat as I post that to the sub stack app later. 

00:01:39 

OK, OK. 

00:01:40 

So a couple of opportunities upcoming that I just want to invite some folks to, I want to make you aware of these opportunities. 

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These are both going to be 4 paid subscribers and so the way things work right now is that I pretty much everybody who’s here is a paid subscriber for now because I I really tried my hardest. 

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To allow I think like 30 days of trial for people who subscribe. 

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And so you may be here as a free subscriber. 

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You may be here as a paid subscriber, but as we near the end of that kind of 1st, 30 day free trial push, I’m going to start to just delineate the content a little bit, not to create paywalls. 

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You know I like Open Access to information, but at the same time. 

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You know, this is an investment of time, money, you know, resources etc. 

00:02:28 

And so there are some benefits to being a paid subscriber on the notes from the diaspora sub stack. 

00:02:33 

And so the next upcoming paid subscriber opportunities will be over the next couple of months. 

00:02:39 

Here’s what they are and I’ll go chronologically in. 

00:02:43 

So for paid subscribers there is a quarterly live stream event opportunity and you can give me feedback. 

00:02:50 

So as I plan these quarterly live streaming events, I will circulate a doodle. 

00:02:56 

Poll among the paid subscribers and in the first one I’ll just ask for your feedback. 

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So we’ve got a few ways that we can do these. 

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Lives we can do. 

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YouTube lives. 

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We can do Facebook lives. 

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Maybe you’ll tell me that Instagram is a good place to do an Instagram. 

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If many different platforms provide live streaming services, I think YouTube is maybe the most accessible because you don’t have to have a bunch of. 

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Apps and stuff. 

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I think you can just click on a link and follow the YouTube live stream, but if you have a preference I hope you’ll give me that feedback when I circulate that doodle poll for paid subscribers. 

00:03:32 

And so the first opportunity to be on the lookout for for paid subscribers the week of March 27th, you will get an e-mail with a doodle poll and then some feedback on what live streaming platform would work best for you. And we’ll come together for, oh, about an hour or so of live stream discuss. 

00:03:50 

And so that will be the week of March 27th for paid subscribers. So if you are a paid subscriber, you will get that information. 

00:03:57 

If you currently are a free subscriber, you may want to consider upgrading to paid membership, which would give you access to that quarterly live stream on March 27th the week. 

00:04:09 

After that, is it the week after or two weeks after that time? 

00:04:13 

At any rate, I have been invited to give a message, a homily, a sermon in Judaism. 

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We call it a Davar Torah. 

00:04:21 

And so whatever reflection language makes sense to use from your. 

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I’ve been invited to provide a reflection or a message on Monday, Thursday or Holy Thursday, or the time of Jesus Last Supper. 

00:04:36 

Again, whatever term or language resonates with you and your tradition, I will be providing a reflection on April 6th. 

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That’s a Thursday. 

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I’ll be doing it in the evening and it will be at friedens United Church of Christ in Indianapolis IN. 

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Anna, where they do live stream services and so you can watch this on the live stream subscriber or not. 

00:04:59 

Anybody can watch that live stream, but what I thought I would do is release a video, a monthly video that’s one of the perks to being a paid subscriber. 

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A monthly video will come that same week where I will provide. 

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Behind the scenes info on the resources that I’m drawing from, how I’m sort of formulating the message that I want to. 

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Get across for that reflection or homily or devar Torah or whatever you want to call it. And so for paid subscribers that week, you will receive just a pre recorded, you know, maybe 45 minutes is what I’m thinking could stretch up to an hour of me just kind of a behind the scenes look at. Here’s how I’m preparing for this message. 

00:05:39 

Here it’s how I’m considering the audience. 

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Here are some of the resources that I’ll be using, et cetera. 

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So quarterly live stream and that monthly video for paid subscribers that’s coming up. 

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So if you’re a. 

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Free subscriber. 

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You may want to consider upgrading to paid. 

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I appreciate that for sure. 

00:05:55 

OK, let’s get into Chapter 3 because that’s that’s what we’re doing here is we’re getting us ready for chapter three of entering the passion of Jesus from Professor Amy Jill Levine. 

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And so I want to talk about risk to begin with. 

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And I want to personalize this or center my own experience just a little bit thinking about risk. 

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And Professor Levine, within the first couple of pages of Chapter 3, this is what sparked this personal reflection for me is Professor Levine tells an anecdote. 

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I love all of her anecdotes from her time. 

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I think the the perfume and Nard that an undergraduate student heard as lard and said thereby Jesus deemed all food clean. 

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That’s a great anecdote. 

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That was that in chapter one or Chapter 2. 

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At any rate, she returns to another kind of anecdote from her years of teaching. 

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In Chapter 3 and she talks about how her lessons could be taken out of context. 

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And so there is risk involved with teaching, certainly for me to center my experience each time that I hit send or hit publish on this sub stack newsletter, whether it’s an audio recording like this. 

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This, or if it’s, you know, just a post that I’ve written, there’s risk involved because I know that you dear subscribers are receiving this content and you’ve subscribed. 

00:07:14 

So I think you’re here for it, which is terrific and thank you. 

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But it is publicly accessible. 

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So you know, regardless of who you are or where you are in the world through a sub stack through a Google search. 

00:07:25 

However, you could stumble across this. 

00:07:28 

Material and you know I am. 

00:07:30 

I’m engaging with biblical communities with theology, with Jewish history and so many different people could have many different perspectives. 

00:07:39 

And so there’s risk involved. 

00:07:40 

And so I certainly feel an acute sense of that risk. 

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That’s one of the things that I think social media has done for us. 

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Positive or negative? 

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I think in the past your relationships were built around pretty consistent interactions and so you had a sense of longevity in a relationship. 

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You sort of knew what somebody was about over a series of encounters over time, but one of the things that social media has created is more of a transactional or episodic relationship. 

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And so if somebody sees one of my tick tocks, but they don’t know anything else about me, they could judge who I am, what I’m about. 

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Solely based on a 62nd. 

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TikTok, rather than some of you who are subscribers here, who I’ve known for years, if I say 60 seconds, that doesn’t sound right to you. 

00:08:30 

Well, you’ve got 30 years of interactions with Adam to help temper your reaction. 

00:08:37 

And so I get that point about risk and maybe you personally. 

00:08:42 

Risk about being involved in this study because I think one of the things that the academic study of the Bible can do is it it can challenge our confessional stances. 

00:08:53 

Now, I don’t think it needs to do that, and I’ve heard people say things like, oh, if your faith is so shaky that a single book could overturn it, then your faith. 

00:09:02 

I wasn’t that strong to begin with. 

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I don’t like those platitudes. 

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I don’t necessarily agree with that. 

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The way that that thought is encapsulated, but I do understand that this is a risk to be involved. 

00:09:15 

I did. Now I’m coming back to TikTok again. I didn’t intend to. This is unrehearsed, but I made a TikTok earlier about this stuff and somebody made a comment and said man I was crushed when I learned that some of the gospel accounts are not the first hand. 

00:09:28 

Words of Jesus. 

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That I was crushed when I learned that as an adult because nobody ever taught me that in church. 

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And so I understand that encountering an academic. 

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Critique of the Bible. 

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People for some folks, could undermine your confessional or devotional or your religious identity. 

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And so we’ve got a lot of risk involved. 

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And so I hope you feel a little bit. 

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Of the tension. 

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That’s created by that risk. 

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Because in the season of Lent, we are following Jesus toward his execution. 

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We’re following Jesus toward. 

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Jesus death. 

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And so there should be risk and there should be danger. 

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And there should be mystery. 

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All of those feelings should create within us a little uneasiness, a little tension, because it is through uneasiness and tension that we then grow and develop and mature. 

00:10:16 

And so I hope you’ll just pay special close attention to some of that risk. 

00:10:22 

Another theme that I hope you’ll pay some close attention to in chapter three are the stories that are interpreted through Professor Levines’s outlook, and so like the story of what historically has been called the story of the widows might, for example, and Professor Levine says I’m not sure we should. 

00:10:42 

All this the the story of the widows 2 pennies as a contemporary currency exchange may make it out to be, but those stories that Professor Levine helps to reinterpret for. 

00:10:54 

For us, I hope that that’s things that you will pay close attention to in Chapter 3 if you like that material and now you may think that I’m getting some sort of Commission from Professor Levine, which assuredly is not the case. 

00:11:07 

But I do love her writing. 

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Short stories. 

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Let’s see the the short stories of Jesus short stories by Jesus. 

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I forget exactly what the the title is. 

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That’s enough information to get you to it through a Google search I think, but short stories of Jesus is a book by Professor Levine where she does go into some discussion of. 

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The parables of Jesus and so if you like what she’s doing in Chapter 3, then you may want to check out that book. 

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It’s another good one, and as you’re already learning, Professor Levine, I think is very approachable and accessible. 

00:11:40 

And so at any rate, so pay attention to that. 

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And then the last thing that I’ll call out here to pay special close attention to in Chapter 3. 

00:11:47 

Now comes near the end of the chapter. 

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We’re on kind of a a long discussion about render unto Caesar. 

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What is Caesar? 

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There is that actually is the title of John Dominic Crossan’s most recent book by that one too. John Dominic Crossan is a great scholar. 

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That book is a little more academic, but I’ve really enjoyed engaging with it. 

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OK, at any rate, render on this Caesar. 

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So this idea of a separation. 

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Of church and state. 

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The idea of whether it is, you know just. 

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To pay taxes to a regime or administration that you know is acting unjustly, these raise important, salient, pertinent question. 

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And in fact, we are in a legislative season right now in America where it does. 

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Seem to be. 

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The case that Christian nationalism is deriving a legislative agenda. 

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And it is the case that trans communities that represent about 1% of the general population, they are being legislated that gender affirming care that we know saves lives. And we know decreases incidence of depression and decreases incidence of suicidality. 

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Regardless, we see how based on I think, a misguided Christian. 

00:13:04 

Ethic that legislative sessions are attempting to legislate those people and I just don’t think that’s right. 

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And so you can disagree, but pay a special attention to that near the end of Chapter 3. 

00:13:18 

Not that topic, but the topic of the church’s interaction with the state. OK, I will leave you with that. 

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I will post that chat so you can give me feedback if you like these audio things or not and then be on the lookout. 

00:13:31 

Paid subscribers for those opportunities the week of March 27th and then coming on April 6th. OK, happy reading.