IN MEMORIAM: DANIEL PATTE

The world of Biblical Studies will always identify Daniel Patte with Structural Exegesis, Scripture Criticism, and SEMEIA. Those of us who had the privilege of working with him know that he was a brilliant scholar, a prolific author, a highly-skilled editor, and an excellent professor. And he especially loved the books of Matthew and Romans. 

But Daniel was more than a teacher, a mentor, and a friend to me (and a lot of other students at Vanderbilt and elsewhere), he was also my PhD adviser. I served as his TA (for his NT Themes classes), his RA (when he was General Editor of SEMEIA), and webmaster (for the Religious Studies Department which he chaired).

Our family spent a lot of time at Daniel and Aline's home. The first meal we ever had when we arrived in Nashville was at the Pattes. Our last meal, five years later, as well. 

The couple were "parents" to me and Grace, and "grandparents" to our sons, Lukas and Ian. Time spent with them were precious moments. Lukas's first experience with a vintage rotary dial telephone was at the Pattes. We have baby pictures of Ian being carried by "Lolo" Daniel. (Ian, a few years ago, got to read his Lolo's book on Matthew and Structural Criticism.)

Three of my best students at UTS are structural exegetes. Daniel would be proud of them. 

Daniel was one of the only two people (the other being Grace) who believed, decades ago, that "Reading the Bible inside a Jeepney" will work as a hermeneutical method. 

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Rest in peace, my dear friend. You were God's gift to so many people. Thank you for believing in me. I will see you in the morning!

#danielpatte

THE LITTLE BITCH WHO TAUGHT JESUS A LESSON

 

Sunday's lection from Mark has a Syro-Phoenician (a Canaanite in Matthew) who comes to Jesus for help. Her little daughter was sick. She begged Jesus for healing. She was initially ignored. She was even treated like a dog (the Greek could be translated "little bitch"). Yet she persevered. And she persisted. And because she persevered, because she persisted, she got what she came for: her child was healed.

Robert Warrior, whose “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians” turned Hebrew Bible scholarship on its ear, notes that in the narrative, the “little bitch” does not become a follower of Jesus. She seeks him out because he has something she needs. She receives what she came for and walks away never to be mentioned again. She changes Jesus. Maybe she went back to her people and fought against the colonizing Romans in her own way with her own gods. The importance of her story is not whether she followed Jesus but that, without her, Jesus would have remained a narrow-minded bigot who viewed Indigenous People as dogs.

The little bitch who taught Jesus a lesson was alone in the text. But in front of the text, she is not. She is Filipina. She is Palestinian. She is Mexican. She is IP. She is Legion. She is transgressing borders. She is reclaiming what is hers. And she is fighting for her children’s lives and resisting empire her own way with her own gods.

And she continues to teach us.

**Prof. Daniel Patte, who passed away last September 2, urged me do the chapter on the "Little Bitch" in the 2003 book, The Gospel of Matthew: A Contextual Introduction for Group Study, we co-wrote with Justin Ukpong and Monya Stubbs.

*art, "The Canaanite Woman asks for healing for her daughter" by Bazzi Rahib, Ilyas Basim Khuri (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

HANDWASHING

 

Medical science linked the connections among handwashing, community health, and hygiene in the 19th century by observing discrepancies in mortality rates between two hospital wards. Of course, handwashing has always been part of diverse peoples' minimum community health protocols. Who among us remember our childhood when our elders repeatedly told us to wash our hands before meals, after using the toilet, when we come home from work?

The ritual described in Sunday's lection requires using a cup to wash each hand three times. It is a ritual that is founded on God's commandment--being each other's keepers-- that has become something else by Jesus's time: a sign of division.

When handwashing becomes nothing more than a sign that defines who are insiders and who are outsiders, who are pure and who are impure, who are clean and who are defiled, then we have a problem. Jesus calls it hypocrisy.

It is especially hypocritical and heartless, given that the people in Jesus's time who had access to clean water to begin with were also the ones who defined who was unclean, denied honor to the defiled, shut their doors to outsiders, and never lifted a finger to help them be clean.

Handwashing is a concrete expression of being each other's keepers. Every time we wash our hands, we protect not only ourselves but everyone around us.

But let us never forget that handwashing requires water. There are 2.2 billion people on earth who have no access to water. And children, mostly girls worldwide, spend 200 million hours each day collecting water.

*photograph from Medium's Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases.

DO YOU ALSO WISH TO GO AWAY?

Sunday's Johannine lection resonates with a theme that permeates the Gospels: discipleship. It reminds those of us who call ourselves Christian that following Jesus of Nazareth has never been--and will never be--a picnic nor a walk in the park. The cost of discipleship is very high.

The cross that Jesus talks about does not refer to the challenge of being married to your spouse, nor the responsibility of taking care of elderly relatives, nor the burden of pastoring a metropolitan church, nor to any of the other metaphorical "crosses" we have come up with.

The cost of discipleship is very high. It's completing the tower. It's winning the battle. We don't go build without finishing. We don't wage war in order to lose.

Thus, upon realizing the difficulties involved in following Jesus, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. Prompting Jesus to ask the Twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?"

Many among us want to go to heaven, but are afraid to die. Many among us want to be resurrected, but are afraid to be crucified. Many among us want to see a new day, but are afraid of the night. We cannot have one without the other.

My friends, we cannot trully follow Jesus unless we are ready to carry our cross. Salt melts away. Light burns out. A grain of wheat dies... When Jesus calls us, he bids us, "come and die."



*art, "The Cost of Discipleship," from maplecreekchurchcom.

FLESH AND BLOOD

The Four Gospels begin their narratives in four different ways. Mark begins with an adult Jesus who is baptized by John in the Jordan. Matthew has a birth narrative that features Magi who spent about two years searching for the child. Luke's has shepherds who visit Jesus as a baby. John's origin story begins in "The Beginning." The Word became Flesh and lived among us. God has stopped watching from a distance.

Stories of Gods taking on human form abound in many of the world's mythologies. Many of the heroes of ancient peoples were demigods or super humans. For the Gospel of John, when the Word became Flesh and Blood, the Word was totally and fully Flesh and Blood. In other words, God was not Superman disguised as Clark Kent--God was Clark Kent.

For the Gospel of John, God Incarnate gets tired and thirsty; eats and drinks with family and friends; experiences love and loss, and cries, like all of us. God Incarnate takes the side of the poor, feeds the multitudes, experiences betrayal, and suffers torture and crucifixion by empire. Like many among us.

And then God dies. Like all of us will. Like all of us who are Flesh and Blood.

My Friends, to believe in the incarnation is to embody justice, accompaniment, solidarity, and life-giving, like Jesus did. The incarnation always requires warm bodies, flesh and blood: yours and mine.


*art: Christ Child, also known as In the Beginning or the Millennium Sculpture, is an outdoor sculpture by Michael "Mike" Chapman, located under the portico of St Martins-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square in London, United Kingdom.

WE ARE THE ANSWER TO OUR PRAYERS

There is a virus that has killed more people than any pandemic. It is hunger. And the "vaccine" has always been available. It is food. Historians tell us that up to half of the population during Jesus’s time was slowly starving to death. This deadly virus has only ever affected the poor. The rich are immune to it.

The story of the Feeding of the 5000 reminded us that one poor and hungry child's offering of five barley loaves and two fish brought about the miracle that fed the multitudes.

This Sunday's lection reminds us not to focus on the manna, nor on the bread and fish, but on the source of the offering: The poor child; God; and Jesus who says, "I Am the Bread of Life."

My friends, it is time we realize that, like the child with five barley loaves and two fish, like Jesus, we are the answer to many of the world's pleas. And the gifts we can offer today, right now, are more life-giving than the ones we plan to give tomorrow.

We often forget that we play the primary role in the realization of our dreams, that we are the change that we desperately need, that we are the answer to many of our prayers, and that the tomorrow we always look forward to is already here, since today is the tomorrow we prayed for yesterday!

*image from Christ Episcopal Church at Eagle Lake. 

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

Sunday’s lection from John is about eating Jesus’s flesh and drinking his blood. This passage has been interpreted in so many different ways throughout the centuries. It serves as a basis for the Roman Catholic church’s theology of transubstantiation. Others call this John’s version of the Last Supper or Eucharistic ritual found in the latter part of the Synoptic Gospels. Others locate this as a part of the “I Am” discourses of the Johannine Jesus.

The Gospel of John declares: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God became human. In the fullness of time, God decided to become one of us. Oftentimes we say that the Gospel of John is the most spiritual of the gospels. It is, since spirit (which is ruach in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek, and anima in Latin) actually means breath. “Hininga."

Simply put, spirit is oxygen for people and carbon dioxide for plants. Spirit, in other words, is matter. Thus, the Gospel of John abounds with powerful metaphors which are material, physical, and earthy: water; bread and fish; shepherds, sheep, and lambs; tears and death; wombs, births, and rebirths. Now, we are commanded to eat the Word made flesh and drink his blood. And we will live.

There are people whose daily lives revolve around coffee. There are those who cannot function well without rice. Then, there are those who share an intimate relationship with pan de sal and Reno liver spread, with mami and siopao, with San Miguel Beer and adobo peanuts. Finally, there are those who are addicted to Jesus.

Loving, craving, eating Jesus on a daily basis, like manna, is dangerous. It is life-changing, transformative, and very, very risky! It requires giving up one’s life for another.

It means eventually becoming what you eat, being like Jesus—love in the flesh, food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, clothing for the naked, a friend to the stranger and the sick, freedom to the captives, salt of the earth, light in the darkness, bread for the world.

To offer one’s “flesh and blood” is to offer the whole self. Jesus did. This is the path to abundant life for all. Self-giving. Offering “flesh and blood” so that others may live. Jesus said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And he did. And we are invited to do the same.

Sisters and brothers, people say, you are what you eat. For those of us who call ourselves friends of Jesus, I pray we really are!

*art, "The Last Supper," painting from Cathedral of Sancti Spiritus, Cuba (from vanderbilt divinity library archives).