Spring 2015 insights by Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Honoring Professor John Alsup

Insights The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary

SPring 2015

Donelson • Karrer • Reid • Bald Baker • Pospichal • Heinzl • Bowden • Kessie 1

Insights

The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary Spring 2015

Volume 130

Number 2

Editor: David White Editorial Board: Gregory Cuéllar, Blair Monie, and Randal Whittington The Faculty of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary Whitney S. Bodman Gregory L. Cuéllar Lewis R. Donelson William N. A. Greenway Paul K. Hooker David H. Jensen David W. Johnson Timothy D. Lincoln Jennifer L. Lord

Blair Monie Suzie Park Cynthia L. Rigby Kristin Emery Saldine Asante Todd Theodore J. Wardlaw David Franklin White Melissa Wiginton

Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary

is published two times each year by Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 100 East 27th Street, Austin, TX 78705-5797. e-mail: crigby@austinseminary.edu Web site: austinseminary.edu Entered as non-profit class bulk mail at Austin, Texas, under Permit No. 2473. POSTMASTER: Address service requested. Send to Insights, 100 East 27th Street, Austin, TX 78705-5797. Printing runs are limited. When available, additional copies may be obtained for $3 per copy. Permission to copy articles from Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary for educational purposes may be given by the editor upon receipt of a written request. Some previous issues of Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary, are available on microfilm through University Microfilms International, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 (16 mm microfilm, 105 mm microfiche, and article copies are available). Insights is indexed in Religion Index One: Periodicals, Index to Book Reviews in Religion, Religion Indexes: RIO/RIT/IBRR 1975- on CD-ROM, and the ATLA Religion Database on CD-ROM, published by the American Theological Library Association, 300 S. Wacker Dr., Suite 2100, Chicago, IL 60606-6701; telephone: 312-454-5100; e-mail: atla@atla. com; web site: www.atla.com; ISSN 1056-0548.

COVER: “The Paralytic of Capharnaum” 6th century Byzantine mosaic, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy / Bridgeman Images; used with permission.

Contents

3 Introduction

Theodore J. Wardlaw

Honoring Professor John Alsup 4

Messiah to the Mother

by Lewis Donelson

John Alsup’s Work with Leonhard Goppelt and Jürgen Roloff

by Martin Karrer

Stick to Poetry: It Suits You by Stephen Breck Reid

by Hans Bald

A Good Friend and More: A Personal Appreciation Reminiscences A Tribute to Theological Teaching by Arch Baker

Taking the Better Trouble by Amy Pospichal

Pay Attention by Dieter Heinzl

It’s Greek to Me by Anna Bowden

Calling to the Shy Soul by Linda Kessie

Honoring Professor John Alsup

Dr. John Alsup The First Presbyterian Church, Shreveport, D. Thomason Professor of New Tetament Studies, 1975–2014 The cover of this issue of Insights is inspired by two of the great loves of John Alsup’s life. One is his love of the New Testament—the center of his scholarship and faith. Secondly, John’s life is marked by a commitment to those who mediate grace, like the men in Mark 2 who carry their friend to a rooftop and burrow through tile into the presence of Christ. Such bringing serves as an analogy to John’s general commitments—the practices of the household of faith, the craft of teaching, and those majestic equine creatures so central in his life—all of which convey grace. John’s love involves rigor and respect for the complexity of texts and creatures, because he sees in them a glimpse of what is true and sacred. John loves the Bible, especially the Greek New Testament, whose otherness is teased out by careful engagement with languages, historical study, and playful imagination. John’s students find themselves carried to the text by his whimsy and wisdom, until they are borne into the presence of the holy, there to be raised to new insight. John is known for the queue of students waiting outside his office to chat about Greek exegesis or Sunrise Beach Federated Church—or horses. John is not content to merely instruct students; rather he appreciates and understands and dreams with them about God’s future. John’s love of horses is legendary and profound. Faculty colleagues know that there is rarely a biblical or spiritual insight that John cannot express through a tender anecdote about one or another horse he has loved. John’s affection for horses is not merely pragmatic or amusing; but sacramental in that they bear witness to a perfect Beauty and Goodness in God. In one of John’s more whimsical moments he has suggested that instead of four men, the Greek text allows an alternate reading in which the paralytic was conveyed to Jesus by a horse (named “Four”)! Thank you, John, for helping us to perceive the grace borne in ordinary things—and that nothing is merely ordinary in the household of God. —The Editor 2

Introduction

t is a great honor for a professor when, at the end of his or her career, colleagues marshal their energy and enthusiasm to produce a Festschrift. The word “festschrift” is a German word that describes a publication of essays in honor of a respected academician by that person’s closest colleagues, and often former students. This issue of Insights is a festschrift in honor of The Reverend Dr. John Alsup, The First Presbyterian Church, Shreveport, D. Thomason Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies. John served ably on our faculty for almost forty years, and retired just last year. These essays lift up John’s major academic emphases and contributions, recall personal testimonies, and dig deeply into texts that were particularly dear to John. In this sense, these essays are both scholarly and affectionately biographical. Professor Lewis R. Donelson—for years John’s colleague in the field of New Testament—writes a stunning piece on Mark 7:24-30. Donelson explores the sort of Messiah Jesus was willing to be—one who simply abandons the assumptive messianic narrative by being instead what looks like (at first glance) a less remarkable “Messiah of the household.” From the perspective, of course, of the Syrophoenician woman with a sick daughter—and perhaps from our own perspectives, too—this sort of Messiah is hardly unremarkable at all. Professor Martin Karrer offers a most helpful description of the renowned Leonhard Goppelt, John’s doctorfather in Munich, and of John’s good friend Jürgen Roloff. Professor Stephen Breck Reid, for twelve years an Old Testament colleague of John’s here at the Seminary, explores the poetic texture of Psalm 131 and offers observations about the role preachers play as “minor poets.” Professor Hans Bald, a fellow student with John at Munich, expresses grateful personal insights about his long-time friend. Other tributes are given by such alums as Arch Baker, Amy Pospichal, Anna Bowden, Dieter Henzl, and Linda Kessie. All of these contributors pay such homage to a gifted scholar, a fervent lover of the Church of Jesus Christ, a gentle man at home in the lap of God’s creation, a pastor and teacher and mentor—our John Alsup. Theodore J. Wardlaw President, Austin Seminary

Honoring Professor John Alsup

Messiah to the Mother Lewis R. Donelson

ohn Alsup has spent a good portion of his academic life wandering among the Greek sentences of the Gospel of Mark. He has taught exegesis classes on Mark many, many times. There is an endless, well almost endless, list of students who love the gospel of Mark because John Alsup showed them what an amazing text it is. John knows every word, every phrase, every syntactical turn, and every textual variant in this gospel. I am certain that I have nothing to teach him about this text or even anything to say about it that he has not already thought. Nonetheless, perhaps in a moment of hubris but more in a moment of celebration of John Alsup as a stunning reader and teacher of Mark, I am going to read it here, or a part of it, thinking of him as I do. My reading begins with Jesus’s famous insult of the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7:24-30.1 Jesus is, apparently, hiding in the region of Tyre. Failing to escape notice, a woman, whom the text names as “a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin,” begs Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter. This unnamed woman arrives, in some sense, with several names, with several narratives, attached to her. She is not simply a person, present in the story as herself. She is, first of all, a Gentile. There are only a handful of encounters between Jesus and Gentiles in the Gospels and they are all encumbered by the deep tensions and resentments between Jews and Gentiles of the first century. The woman, however, says nothing about her Gentile ethnicity. Instead, she offers a different narrative. She is a mother. In fact, she is more than a mother; she is a mother whose daughter has an unclean spirit, a demon (cf. vv. 25 and 26). Women and children in gospel narratives typically bring a peculiar challenge to

Lewis Donelson is The Ruth A. Campbell Professor of New Testament at Austin Seminary. Educated at Duke University, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, and The University of Chicago, Professor Donelson is the author of five books including From Hebrews to Revelation: A Theological Introduction (Westminster John Knox Press). He is the editor of the academic journal Horizons in Biblical Theology and leads travel seminars to Turkey and Greece. 4

Donelson Jesus.2 The vulnerability and the echoes of family affections of women and children in public space give Jesus the opportunity to display his mercy, his kindness. They introduce into gospel stories the compassionate dimensions of humanity. This is not a story of males displaying and contesting their public power and status, this is about females and children who evoke a different part of human life, a part where people love each other and display tenderness and kindness. There is perhaps no one in the ancient world who would represent human need and vulnerability, the terrors and sufferings of love, more than a mother with a possessed daughter. She names herself, not as a Gentile, but as a mother in need. Together, this mother along with her daughter—who never appears—bring the deep affections and vulnerability of the family into the public space of this story. For all their social weakness, their claim is powerful. For readers who have watched Jesus thus far in Mark heal Jewish people even in the midst of controversy and opposition, Jesus’s response diverges in a radical way. Not only does he not respond with a willingness to heal or even with a tone of compassion, he responds with an insult. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair (καλός) to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs (κυνάρια)” (7:27 NRSV). While there have been numerous suggestions for why Jesus says this and why the insult is phrased as it is, the most common reading is that Jesus is responding out of his own understanding of his calling as the Messiah. Nowhere in Mark is there an explicit detailing of the messianic narrative that is driving the Jesus story. In fact, this is more true than not for all the gospels. They all address in different ways the question of what kind of messiah Jesus is and what might be the particular messianic promises being fulfilled in his ministry. But none of them gives a full narrative of Jesus's messianic obligations and fulfillments unless it be that the gospels themselves form that narrative. Jesus assumes a rather classic messianic sequence in his response: “Let the children be fed first.” We can imagine the messianic vision that is enforcing this comment. The Messiah is sent to Israel. The promises that the Messiah fulfills are first of all those promises for the blessing of children of the covenant. While many of the traditional messianic biblical texts do not speak of a blessing to the Gentiles, Jesus seems to assume the possibility of a secondary blessing to them. In this messianic narrative, Israel is to be restored first. The character of that restoration is not detailed but it certainly includes healing. The naming of the twelve suggests a gathering of the twelve tribes. Beyond that it is hard to say much. In any case, the blessings to the nations, the Gentiles, whatever those blessings might be, derive from this restored Israel. Read this way, the NRSV translation of καλός as “fair” is a bit misleading.3 The Greek word καλός does not really have connotations of fairness or justice. The word means “beautiful,” or sometimes “noble” or “good.” But it also is used to refer to the “right time,” to something being “in season.” Jesus is saying to this Gentile woman that it is not her time, that her need must submit to the sequences of his messianic story. In doing this, Jesus declares that he is not free to act as he might wish. He is encumbered by and obligated to a certain messianic sequence. He, like the woman, 5

Honoring Professor c John Alsup does not enter the scene simply as a person. He enters as the Messiah. Furthermore, he enters with a particular understanding of what it means to be the Messiah. This understanding will be contested in the subsequent verses and, by the end of the gospel, will seem to disappear almost entirely. The appeal of this Gentile woman with a possessed daughter can be read as the beginning of the demise of this vision of Jesus's messianic calling. It is not surprising that the specifics of Jesus's calling as Messiah should be contested. It was never clear precisely who the Messiah might be and what he might do. Hebrew Scripture does not contain a canonical set of messianic texts which together form the singular promised narrative of the Messiah. Instead, there is a wide-ranging set of texts that have been read messianically. These texts contain multiple images, narratives, visions, and sequences for a possible messianic figure. The complexity of this textual messianic world intensifies in the post-canonical Jewish literature. The often asserted notion that Jews in the first century were expecting a Messiah who was a descendent of David and who would expel the Romans in a great military triumph is simply not true. There may have been a few Jews who expected such. There were probably more who dreamed of freedom from Rome. However, most Jews seem to have had few expectations or active thoughts about the Messiah. Those who did had different visions. This diversity of messianic visions is reflected in the stories of Jesus. The gospels do not question the appropriateness of the title Messiah for Jesus. In all four, he is affirmed as the Messiah, ὁ χριστός. But each gospel explores in a distinctive way what it means to name Jesus thus. The story of all messiahs is a corporate story. One cannot be a messiah without a following. A messiah is not simply imposed from on high; a messiah is recognized and received by at least some people for at least a little while or the person has no claim to the title. Furthermore, a messiah should fulfill at least some of the traditional messianic prophecies. No messiah can fulfill them all because they do not fit into one narrative. It is difficult, for instance, to be the son of David and to not be the son of David. Of course, in Jesus's complicated birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, he comes close. Every messianic story emerges from an interplay of messianic promises, the character and duration of the given messiah’s following, his own personal character and preferences, and the peculiarities of the historical events. A messiahship typically emerges and changes as the story progresses. Such an account fits nicely with how the gospels tell the story of Jesus. As this story in Mark unfolds, a conflict is created between Jesus’s compassion for people in need and his understanding of himself as the Messiah. The need of the woman and her daughter challenges the exclusive focus of the Messiah on the people of Israel. Jesus begins by stating the problem. In so doing, he invokes the ethnic hostilities embedded in both the culture of the first century and certain messianic narratives. Not only can he not turn aside for a Gentile, he compares the Gentiles to dogs under the table. The reference is probably not simply to the underthe-table status of dogs but to the uncleanness of dogs.5 Jewish sense of Gentile uncleanness and thus exclusion is hereby enforced. The woman is not a child of the 6

Donelson house where Messianic blessings occur. She is at best an unclean animal hovering under the table. With this sentence Jesus shuts the door to his blessings. He names the rules and prejudices of exclusion. The woman’s daughter will not be healed. The woman wants entry into the messianic house. She stands before a closed door, or better, she stands before an open door where the master of the house stands before her forbidding her entry. She does what all outsiders do who want entry. Jacques Derrida notes that the outsider, the foreigner, “has to ask for hospitality in a language which by definition is not his (sic) own, the one imposed on him by the master of the house.”6 Furthermore, the master of the house does not speak simply on his own behalf but on behalf of the public law. He should articulate the norms of the culture. He should name the rules of the household, the permitted passages of the threshold. Thus, the initial violence is to insist that the foreigner speak not only in the language of the master but in the language of the court, the political. Jesus speaks not only the claims of the messianic narrative whereby the Messiah comes exclusively or primarily or first to Israel. Jesus also speaks the public norms. He speaks on behalf of his culture. The woman who names herself as mother, he names as foreigner, as unclean, as unto a dog. He gives both the initial speech of the Messiah and the initial speech of the owner of a Jewish house in firstcentury Palestine. The house of which he is the owner is not the unspecified house mentioned in 7:24, whose owner never appears. Jesus’s house is the messianic house where blessings are bestowed and healings effected for possessed daughters. As foreigner, as outsider, as the dog, the woman is not without rights. Jesus does not explicitly invoke the hospitality norms of either the ancient Mediterranean world or Hebrew scripture. Nevertheless, those norms are present. The woman cannot be named or narrated into non-existence. In fact, in the very act of speaking to her Jesus acknowledges her claim. He gives the woman space in which to speak. The woman appeals not to an open door and its rules of passage but to a place beyond the door, within the house. Jesus has already placed her inside. The dogs are under the table; they have already transgressed the threshold; they are properly within reach of the table. In a brilliant move, she claims that place. She names herself as the dog. It is likely that gender permissions and prohibitions are at play in this exchange. Gender norms in a public encounter of this kind are admittedly difficult to reconstruct.7 Furthermore, gospel narratives that include women or even focus upon women do not explicitly address issues of gender roles. It is not clear when a female character in a gospel story might be transgressing or succumbing to gender constraints. We might read the fact that this character is not simply a Gentile but a female as intensifying her outsider status. She is not simply foreigner confronting the ethnic exclusions of a messianic narrative; she is a woman confronting the public status and privileges of an adult male.8 Perhaps being a woman she should not directly contradict the assertion of a man in public. She can only modify or perhaps supplement the man. Thus, as both female and foreigner, she does not deny Jesus’s insult. Instead, she deconstructs his sentence.9 She places herself within it and 7

Honoring Professor John Alsup demonstrates that the sentence speaks against itself. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” (7:28 NRSV).10 Within the frame of this story, the reason for her accepting the insult, for enduring this public shaming, is because she is a mother. As a mother she will submit to the offensiveness of Jesus’s narrative against the Gentiles. She makes her case, claiming to Jesus that in his attempt to exclude her he actually admitted her. To write exclusions on our doors or in our laws, to speak them in our sentences, is to include the excluded within our narratives. A gate memorializes, even idealizes, those it wants to lock out. The excluded in some ways become more powerful than the included because the excluded define the true character of the household. The Gentile mother enters the house because she is both Gentile and mother. As mother, she calls to Jesus’s humanity. As a Gentile, her exclusion includes her. Perhaps the most interesting moment in this story is not narrated at all. The story will move quickly to Jesus’s response in which he appears to change his mind. But, in some ways, the key to this story is what happened between the riposte of the woman and Jesus’s public granting of her request. What did Jesus think inbetween the two sentences? What happened to Jesus in this unnarrated moment? Did he change his mind about what kind of messiah he was going to be? He does, at any rate, admit the power of her response. He tells her that the demon left her daughter “on account of that statement (λόγος)” (my translation). This is a striking comment since Jesus typically refers to “faith” as that which occasions a healing. We are left with the question of what happened. What did the woman say that made Jesus change his mind? What did she say that he did not already know? By far the most common suggestion at this point is that Jesus knew what he was going to do from the beginning.11 It is suggested that his comment about Gentiles and dogs and the implied exclusiveness of his messianic calling was made to show the absurdity of such a position. Or, it is suggested that his absurd comment was made to provide an opportunity for the woman to learn. But the story is not told that way. Jesus does not appear to be manipulating the woman. To the contrary, it appears that the woman’s comment causes Jesus to change his mind. One suggestion is that Jesus and the woman are modeling proper wisdom discourse in which both sides speak and listen and learn.12 This seems closer to the mark, although I think the content of the debate is more determinative than the form. Jesus names the issue. What kind of messiah is he going to be? Will he be the Son of David who fulfills God’s many promises to Israel, restoring her to her former glory and bringing perfect peace and justice to the land? Jesus's sentence here suggests such a vision. Jesus implies that his Messiahship has a political and social horizon. The political and social expectations attached to almost every account of the Jewish Messiah create a problem for all messiahs in Jewish history. The Messiah belongs to the perfections of God’s final victory. This victory is not simply the providing of eternal salvation to people, one by one. This victory involves the redemption of human history and the establishment of justice and peace on earth. If such a duty is assigned to every messiah, this means that every messiah must fail. 8

Donelson The only alternative to failure is to change the messianic narrative. This is what Jesus does in Mark. Jesus tells the woman that the demon has left her daughter. She returns home and finds “the child lying on the bed and the demon gone” (7:30). The space of messianic victory and blessings is hereby re-ordered. The realm of God manifested in the arrival of the Messiah will not occur in political space, in the halls of the emperor or even the high priest. The powers of Rome and Jerusalem will not be reconfigured, at least not yet. The realm of the Messiah Jesus is within the affections of families and friends. The blessings of this messiah belong not to the halls of justice but to the mother who loves her daughter. Jesus has made a decision. He will not follow the prescribed order of political restoration. That order is now undone. The Gentile mother is blessed before Israel is restored. Jesus turns away from one messianic calling to another and becomes the Messiah to the mother and to the possessed daughter, whether they be Jewish or not. This eschewing of the political horizons of the messianic promises may explain why the title “Son of David” is mostly ignored in Mark. A blind man calls Jesus “Son of David” in Mark 9:47, 48. But the title seems mostly honorific and without political echoes. The crowd in the triumphal entry declares, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David” (11:10, NRSV). The political expectations expressed here will prove to be unfounded in the subsequent narrative. The crowd will in short time abandon this messiah who is not, in fact, reestablishing the kingdom of David. Furthermore, in 12:35-37 Jesus argues that the Messiah cannot be the son of David. Nevertheless, Jesus in Mark does not completely abandon the political dimensions of the Messiah. The difficulty of the traditional political messiah is that such a messiah can never arrive. In the imagery of Derrida and Levinas, this messiah exists only on the threshold.13 Once a messiah enters the house, “he” must submit to the orders of the house. He must enter the compromises of human history; he must takes sides. He must, in short, become not the Messiah but just another political figure. But a messiah who never arrives at all, who exists beyond the horizon, who remains unseen and other, is not a real messiah but a wandering word, a lost image. Thus, the space of the Messiah is the threshold. The Messiah exists only in the moment of arrival. Prior to the arrival, the Messiah is only a name. After the arrival, the Messiah is no longer the Messiah. If Jesus in Mark changes the location of the messianic threshold by moving the threshold from the gates of Jerusalem to the bed of a Gentile daughter, Jesus also changes the timing of the arrival. The messianic hesitation on the threshold is extended. The arrival of the Messiah, a messiah with the full messianic blessings, must wait for final manifestation of the Son of Humanity.14 The most detailed account of this combination of delay and expectation is the apocalyptic account in Mark 13. The traditional Messiah is both affirmed and transformed in this account. A delay alone does not preserve the Davidic Messiah perfectly. Historical terrors announced in 13:3-13 drift into cosmic terrors in 13:14ff. The imagery of false messiahs gives way not to the real Messiah but to the Son of Humanity. The 9

Honoring Professor John Alsup messianic victory no longer belongs to the Messiah. Instead, “They will see the Son of Humanity coming in the clouds with great power and glory” (Mt 24:30). Then this Son of Humanity will accomplish the traditional messianic task of gathering the elect “from the four winds.” To understand Jesus, the image and narratives of the Son of Humanity work better than the image and narratives of the Messiah. While Jesus in Mark (and in all the gospels) seems nervous about the title Messiah, he consistently narrates himself in terms of the Son of Humanity. The pattern above, wherein language about the Messiah gives way to language about the Son of Humanity, is common in Mark. Jesus responds to Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah (ὁ χριστός), not by redefining the Messiah but by announcing the betrayal and suffering of the Son of Humanity (8:31-38). Even when Jesus finally accepts the title Messiah when questioned by the High Priest, he does not tell them who the Messiah is. Rather, he responds to the question “Are you the Messiah [ὁ χριστός], the son of the Blessed One?” with “I am, and ‘you will see the Son of Humanity seated at the right hand of the Power’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven’” (14:61-62). Even Jesus’s brief reference to David violating purity norms by eating the bread of the presence in 2:25-26 concludes with Jesus announcing that “the Son of Humanity is Lord even of the Sabbath” (2:28). Without pursuing the enormously complex discussions about the origin and function of the Son of Humanity sayings in the gospels, we can conclude at least that Jesus in Mark diverts discussions of the Messiah to discussions of the Son of Humanity.15 This shift does a variety of things, two of which we note here. First, the many puzzles and controversies surrounding the Messiah are avoided, at least to some extent. The narrative of the Son of Humanity takes center stage. This image, as powerful and pervasive as it is, brings less controversy with it. Second, the political dimensions of messianic arrival, which are frustrated and suppressed in the Markan narrative, are preserved in the final narrative of the Son of Humanity. It is not Jesus the Messiah who returns but Jesus the Son of Humanity, who arrives with all the authority detailed in Daniel 7:13-14. Jesus as Messiah abandons the political horizons of the traditional Messiah for the intimacies of personal affection. Yet Jesus himself, not as Messiah but as Son of Humanity, does not abandon the political. Instead, political victories are postponed, and not just postponed for a while but until the very end. As Messiah, Jesus chooses the mother. When the Syrophoenician woman returns to her house and to the bed of her once-possessed daughter, she takes the destiny of the messianic narrative with her. She entered the story as an aside, an improper intervention into the Messiah’s confrontation with Jerusalem. When she goes home, Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem becomes the aside, a diversion from his true destiny. When the woman responds to Jesus’s insult, she addresses him as κύριε. The NRSV, apparently thinking that her address is a term of public respect and not a confession, translates κύριε as “sir.” But this translation cannot be maintained as the story progresses. While the address in its moment of speaking may signify the woman’s inferior status to Jesus, in fact she creates in the naming an attachment 10

Donelson between Jesus and her. In calling Jesus κύριε, the woman claims him. She names him as her “Lord.” Jesus hears the name and seems to realize that he is indeed her Lord whether she be Gentile or not. He cannot refuse any mother in need. In that moment Jesus becomes the Messiah of the household, of mothers and daughters (and of both Gentiles and Jews). He becomes the Messiah whose destiny in Jerusalem is stunningly non-messianic. The political has to wait. First, Jesus needs to heal the daughter of this mother. v NOTES 1.The puzzling character of this story has produced an unusually large corpus of litera-

ture. Rather than trying to sort that here I will refer primarily to Pablo Alonso, The Woman Who Changed Jesus: Crossing Boundaries in Mk 7,24-30 (Biblical Tools and Studies 11; Leuven: Peeters, 2011). Alonso’s book contains an extensive bibliography and discussion of the various debates and readings of this passage. 2. For a good beginning to the growing literature on women and Jesus see the wonderful collections of essays by Amy-Jill Levine, ed. A Feminist Companion to Mark (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001). Two articles focus on this passage: Sharon H. Ringe, “A Gentile Woman’s Story, Revisited: Rereading Mark 7.24-31,” pp. 79-100, and Ranjini Wickramaratne Rebera, “The Syrophoenician Woman: A South Asian Feminist Perspective,” pp. 101-110. 3. The NIV and the old RSV translate it as “right.” I must nod to John Alsup here. He was and is a master at noting the linguistic range of Greek words and the limitations in traditional translations. 4. It is not possible in the space of this article to cite in any adequate way either the extensive literature on the Messiah or even the messianic texts themselves. For a good introduction to the complexity and disputed character of the Jewish Messiah, see the collection of essays in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010). Michael F. Bird, Are You the One Who is to Come? The Historical Jesus and the Messianic Question (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009) provides a competent survey. For later developments in Judaism see Harris Lenowitz, The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 5. Various attempts to soften the insult by pointing to the use of the diminutive form κυνάρια or to the occasional positive comment about dogs in the ancient world are not convincing. We might remember instead the dogs (κύνες) licking the oozing sores of Lazarus (Lk 16:21) or Jesus’s command not to give the holy thing (τὸ ἅγιον) to dogs (Mt 7:6). See Alonso, 175-79. 6. Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle invites Jacques Derrida to Respond (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press), 15. 7. Common assertions that a female cannot speak to an unfamiliar male in public should be ignored. There is little evidence for such cultural restrictions and lots of evidence of the contrary. For instance, the gospel stories of women show no concern for any such restriction. Furthermore, the setting is not quite the public market; they are in a house. 8. See Ringe and Rebera cited above. 9. I am using the term “deconstruct” in its technical sense. 10. The Greek is the vocative κύριε, which is normally translated “Lord.” See below. 11. See Alonso, 210-221. 12. Christopher E. Alt, “The Dynamic of Humility and Wisdom: The Syrophoenician

Honoring Professor John Alsup

Woman and Jesus in Mark 7:24-31a,” Lumen et Vita 2 (2012), 1-13. 13. For an examination of Derrida’s, and to some extent Levinas’, reading of the Messiah see John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1997). 14. The Greek word ἄνθρωπος in the phrase ὁ υἱός τοῦ ἀνθρώπου means “person” not “man.” 15. On the Son of Man discussion see Larry W. Hurtado and Paul L. Owen, eds, ‘Who is this son of man?’: The Latest Scholarship on a Puzzling Expression of the Historical Jesus (The Library of New Testament Studies; London: Bloomsbury, T & T Clark, 2012).

John Alsup’s Work with Leonhard Goppelt and Jürgen Roloff Martin Karrer Translated by Garrick V. Allen

John Alsup’s theological work was strongly influenced by his education in Germany. He undertook his PhD work in Munich, working under one of the most well-known German New Testament scholars, Leonhard Goppelt (1911-1973), in collaboration with Jürgen Roloff (1930-2004), another distinguished scholar. Roloff and Alsup remained friends the rest of their lives. After finishing his theological studies in Germany, Alsup returned to teach in America.

he Evangelical Theology Faculty of the University of Munich was first established in 1966-1967. By this time, the Bavarian capital city had already been the center of Catholic theological research for a hundred years; now the theological tradition of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität had an additional outlet for theological research. The Bavarian state created New Testament positions, taken up by Ferdinand Hahn—known for his research in New Testament theology—and Leonhard Goppelt, who spoke with a new voice in Jesus research. Already in an earlier book, Typos (1939, reprint 1990), Goppelt challenged Rudolf Bultmann, who had already been minted as the premier German Jesus scholar by the domestic and international academies. Now, Goppelt began work on a New Testament theology and a commentary on 1 Peter. John Alsup, who had studied in Stockton and Princeton, heard of this new faculty that seemed to offer an alternative to prevailing critical attitudes. Alsup finished his doctoral work in 1966, became a research assistant in 1968, and held a post as an instructor at the New Testament institute from 1969-

Martin Karrer worked with Jürgen Roloff in Erlangen (1978-1990) and

is professor of New Testament in Wuppertal. He is on the editorial board of Horizons in Biblical Theology, an international journal owned by Austin Seminary and published by E. J. Brill of Amsterdam. He is an editor of Septuaginta Deutsch, a German translation of the Greek Old Testament and is currently working on a major critical edition of the Greek text of Revelation.

Honoring Professor John Alsup 1975. He worked primarily as an assistant to Leonhard Goppelt. However, he never forgot his American homeland, never narrowing his life to academic research alone. He cared greatly for the vivid, cosmopolitan Munich, even working as an interpreter during the 1972 summer Olympics. At the same time, he enjoyed the rich theological ideas in Munich during a time of change in the discipline. In agreement with Goppelt, Alsup challenged Bultmann, who understood Jesus’s earthly state as a temporary condition, not as a reality of New Testament theology, and who concentrated particularly on the writings of Paul and John.

any of Alsup’s interests developed through the influence of Leonhard Goppelt. Goppelt highlights in his earlier work the correlation between the New Testament authors and the history of God’s interaction with people and Israel in terms of typology: The new action of God in Christ corresponds, or is in keeping with, the first actions of God, creating a new eschatology. This new reality overtakes the first acts of God and contains the salvation of men by pointing out this contrast (e.g. in Adam-Christ typology). Alsup picked up Goppelt’s point on typology, bringing it into an American context, analyzing at a later time whether the analogy works in non-Judeo-Christian works (“Toward a Pronouncement Story Typology in Plutarch’s Moralia,” ABL Seminar Papers, Missoula, Montana, 1978, pp. 1-10; “Typology” in: Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1992, vol. VI., pp. 682-685). Jürgen Roloff was also Goppelt’s assistant alongside Alsup. Both developed their interests in Goppelt’s work in their dissertations, focusing especially on the perceived overemphasis of the Bultmann School in the academy. Roloff worked on the question of kerygma and the earthly Jesus, while Alsup explored the early Easter traditions. Alsup’s dissertation was completed in 1972 and appeared in 1975 under the title Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition: A History-of-Tradition Analysis (Wipf & Stock, 2007). The topic was difficult and controversial, but many researchers continued to explore tradition-historical question in the following decades. Nevertheless, the large scale of Alsup’s project and other research emphases in the field limited the effect of the study, although his research impulses remained important. These impulses are preserved in subsequent contributions, especially “John Dominic Crossan, ‘Empty Tomb and Absent Lord,’ a Critical Response,” SBL Seminar Papers, Missoula, Montana, 1976, pp. 263-267 and “John Jansen’s ‘The Resurrection of Jesus Christ in New Testament Theology,’ A Review and Response (‘The Ascension of Christ’),” Austin Seminary Bulletin, Faculty Edition, (Doctor Ecclesaie; Essays in honor of John Fredrick Jansen), vol. 98, no. 9, pp. 14-21, 1983. Alsup also remained interested in the question of theophany and genre, an interest illustrated in “Theophany in the New Testament,” IDBS, Nashville, Tennessee, 1976, pp. 898-900. Alsup supported the work of Goppelt on 1 Peter (Bultmann was not interested). Goppelt concerned himself not only with the tradition of the late first century, 14

Karrer which this epistle seizes upon, but also, above all, with the ethics of 1 Peter. Goppelt approaches the ethics of 1 Peter notwithstanding the great distance between the first century and modern social ethics. Through Goppelt, Alsup became acquainted with an ethic that was critical of society, but which, at the same time, sought the betterment of society. Such an ethic was radical during the social upheaval of 1967-68. In line with this interest, Alsup began to explore ethical and eschatological questions in reference to New Testament authors. His article “Eschatology and Ethics in Paul,” Austin Seminary Bulletin, Faculty Edition, November 1978 (vol. 94, no. 4, pp. 40-52) exemplifies this trend. Finally, he translated Goppelt’s commentary on 1 Peter (published in German in 1978), opening the translation with an important introduction for American readers (L. Goppelt, A Commentary on I Peter, translated and augmented by Dr. Alsup. Göttingen, Eerdmans 1993). Goppelt had, through interaction with Ferdinand Hahn, a great interest in ecumenical dialogue between Lutherans, Reformed Protestants, and Catholics. Nineteen fifty-seven saw an understanding between the Lutheran, reformed, and united churches over the issue of celebrating communion (Arnoldshain Theses). These theses were controversial, to say the least, but similar language was picked up again by the Leuenberg Accord in 1973. The acceptance and criticism of these agreements only strengthened the ecumenical dialogue in Europe. Realizing this, Alsup wrote his first article upon returning to the States on this topic (“The Lord’s Supper and the Theses of Arnoldshain: A Postwar European Dialogue,” Austin Seminary Bulletin, Faculty Edition, vol. 91, no. 7, April 1976, pp. 30-43).

III

eonhard Goppelt died young in 1973. However, Alsup’s friendship with Jürgen Roloff, which began in Munich, continued. Roloff became one of the most wellknown New Testament scholars in Germany in the second half of the 20th century. He spent the majority of his time in Erlangen, where Alsup would often visit. It is here that I first become acquainted with Alsup, as I undertook my PhD work and wrote my Habilitationsschrift in Erlangen. Roloff was a very opinionated person and full of suggestions. As a result Roloff and Alsup developed a fruitful working relationship. After Goppelt’s death, Roloff edited his New Testament theology (3 vols., 1978). They understood Jesus not as conditional to New Testament theology, but as its center. This work was a tipping point in European research. For his part, Alsup worked in a similar direction, publishing his own New Testament theology in 19811982 (L. Goppelt, Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols., Eerdmans: Grand Rapids). Roloff also published a commentary of the book of Revelation in 1984 (Die Offenbarung des Johannes, ZBK.NT 18), suggesting that the theological value of Revelation was underplayed in most recent research. For his part, Alsup was—and is—also very interested in the Apocalypse. He worked closely with Roloff during the composition of his commentary and eventually provided an English translation, along with his own comments (Jürgen Roloff, Commentary on Revelation, ed. John Alsup, trans. Alsup and Dr. James S. Currie, Fortress Press 1993). This was a 15

Honoring Professor John Alsup great service to a friend, and Roloff was thankful to him for the rest of his life. The Apocalypse also brought me into contact with Alsup. When I began writing my own commentary on Revelation, and realized that Revelation contained many serious text-critical problems, Alsup invited me in 2007 to Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary to give a lecture. In this work, I laid the foundation for my later research on the text of the Apocalypse. In this way, John Alsup contributed to the beginning of the work for the Edition Critica Maior of Revelation that is now being constructed in Wuppertal, Germany. During their years together in Munich, both Alsup and Roloff were both interested also in ecclesiology, exchanging views on the topic. In an article in Roloff’s Festschrift, Alsup gave a paper on the meaning and function of house churches (“Discovering the Church as Oikos,” in: Kirche und Volk Gottes. Festschrift honoring Jürgen Roloff, Neukirchen 2000). I also met Alsup at this Festschrift gathering and learned a great deal from him. I am very happy to hear that he is thinking about working on a book entitled “The Church as Household.” Those who work for churches know the importance of Bible translation. Alsup has also worked on this topic. He dedicated the article, “Translation as Interpretation and Communication,” Insights (1993): 15-23 to the theoretical question of translation and reviewed the New English Bible in the Austin Seminary Bulletin (vol. 96. 1981; 21-30). I would very much like to exchange ideas with Alsup on the history of vernacular English Bibles. The last time that I met with John Alsup, he hosted me on his farm, which he loves, and spoke about the Apocalypse. Now, I hope to see him again and to speak with him on other issues that interest him. His work has influenced my own and pointed me in certain directions. I thank him for this, and hope to continue learning from him. v

Coming in the Fall 2015 issue:

Professors Paul Hooker and Melissa Wiginton on The Spirituality of Lifelong Learning

Stick to Poetry, It Suits You Stephen Breck Reid

One of my first visits to Austin Seminary included a trip to the ranch. John and I rode through nearby fields and talked exegetical method and biblical theology. This article reflects the commitment to exegetical method as the core of biblical theology even in the public square. More specifically, this article points to a method attentive to language that does not flatten but enchants public life, including its wicked problems.

Reading domestic word painting from the Psalms of Ascent

“I

n a postmodern society, in which people are more aware of the failures than the compromises of modernity, anxiety rules.”1 Congregations balk before wicked problems. The journal Insights has touched on “wicked problems” such as mass incarceration, polarity in the American culture and church, and one of the most insidious of wicked problems, the golden handcuffs of militant consumerism. Golden handcuffs are financial incentives to keep valued employees from escaping to another company or vocation. They are the opposite of golden parachutes. In the case of militant consumption, golden handcuffs keep a person or community attached to a particular lifestyle.2 All too often, today’s believers live in a world full of “wicked” problems,” only to hear church speech based in therapeutic or socialscientific language systems rather than the poetic reading of Scripture. What is a wicked problem? First, wicked problems are not about wicked people. “The wicked” as portrayed in the Psalter, especially the laments, are in some sense the villains. Steven Croft argues that the wicked are those who are oblivious to the suffering of the psalmist. Ironically, the poetic narrative cannot find resolution in the overthrow of the evil troll. If we understand wicked people in that way then wicked problems have wicked people. But if we construe it that way then we might

Stephen Breck Reid is professor of Christian Scripture at George W.

Truett Theological Seminary/Baylor University and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He served on the faculties of Pacific School of Religion (1981-1990), Austin Seminary (1990-2002), and as academic dean and professor of Old Testament at Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond, Indiana. (2003-2008).

Honoring Professor John Alsup find that we are among the wicked. The category of “wicked problems” was coined by C. West Churchman (19132004), an American philosopher and systems scientist professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at UC Berkeley in 1967. Wicked problems are contrasted to tame, solvable problems in mathematics, chess, or puzzles. Wicked problems are complex, interconnected social and environmental problems. Wicked problems require an imagination that breaks the typical disciplinary boundaries.3 This article will argue that clergy and theologians have a place at the transdisciplinary table as biblical interpreters of wicked problems. The concept of wicked problems eschews the concept of a solitary villain. Yet, the concept acknowledges wicked individuals and complicity with evil. Problems like genocide4 and sex trafficking5 resist simple solutions and social-scientific and therapeutic theological language. Jeff Conklin brings the idea of “dialogue mapping” to the wicked problems of sustainability and social planning. The mapping dialogue requires a place at the table for the theologian. What should be the role of the theologian at the table? I argue that the theologian holds the position of minor poet.

The Bible and the minor poet

alter Brueggemann observes, “It is increasingly clear that what the text ‘means’ for us is not simply a matter of exegesis.”6 The prophets were not simply rational observers. “The poet/prophet is a voice that shatters settled reality and evokes new possibility in the listening assembly.”7 Brueggemann borrows a line from Walt Whitman on the “cruciality” of poetry: “Finally shall come the poet worthy of that name.”8 The poet is absolutely necessary if history is able to resist a wicked status quo, if it is to move toward its fulfillment. In this view, congregations play an important role in evoking new and more faithful possibilities. M. Craig Barnes examines the question, Who is the pastor? He answers: The pastor is the parish poet. He cites Brueggemann’s description of the “prophets as national poets” as a biblical mandate for such a construal of the pastoral office. However, Barnes wants to account for the difference between the biblical poets and the contemporary parish poets. He finds T.S. Eliot’s distinction between major and minor poets helpful here. Major poetry expresses universal and timeless qualities while “minor poets have the more modest goal of inculcating that truth to a particular people in particular places.”9 It may be helpful to think of major poets as innovative poets and minor poets as derivative poets. “Poets are devoted more to truth than to reality; they are not unaware of reality, but they never accept it at face value … This is why poets care about the text, what is said or done, but only in order to reveal subtext, which reveals what it means,” says Barnes.10 As a minor poet, the pastor has the calling first to honor the work of the major poets of the Bible. Only then can the Word of God be found for the unique people the pastor serves ... What pastors are always searching for is kerygma.”11 The place of the pastor at the transdisciplinary table is therefore as minor poetic interpreter of the Bible. 18

Reid

The poet’s eye and domestic word paintings

ow the question is, What genre from the Bible provides resources for reflecting on wicked problems? I argue that “domestic word paintings” provide icons for the contemplation of wicked problems. A homiletical method that distills a text into a principle abdicates the poetic texture for a social-theorist principle. Thick description replaces the drive to essentialize a biblical text. We will walk through a thick description of the domestic word poems. Then we will ask how we would translate this into contemporary poetry. We will ask what sort of wicked problems might be better viewed from the poetic perspective of this or that domestic word poem. The “domestic word painting” invites visual exegesis. Robin Jensen uses this phrase to capture how visual art can interpret biblical texts.12 The domestic word paintings are the other side of visual exegesis; that is to say, they are the linguistic expression of a visual reality. “The most familiar form of visual exegesis is book illustration, where text and artwork are put side by side.”13 Jensen describes the movement from idea to art or text. If we look at the visual art of, let’s say, Psalm 131, we recognize that there was a narrative moment that provoked the writer to draw a word picture. Subsequently visual artists move from text as the “home base” of the emerging visual art. The multivalent nature of both the text and the visual art helps open up the horizon of meaning necessary for the contemplation of wicked problems. Images are critical to the study of theology. This observation seems quite reasonable when we realize that “language itself is essentially the formation of mental pictures.”14 “Perhaps we should say that the word and the image are like siblings— siblings who share their essence or origin, and who are so connected that separation would impair them both.”15 In Psalm 131—and in domestic word paintings— we have the intersection of word and image. “[T]he written word, too, constantly exercises our imagination so that it is not only the artist but in fact every reader who is invited to visualize in the mind’s eye the colourful images and pictures so skillfully created by biblical writers.”16 In other words visibility has a literary value. As readers we often encounter visibility as a metaphor which points to the unknown by means of what is familiar and concrete. “Metaphor, with its capacity to conceal and hide as well as reveal and disclose, enables the biblical authors to let us ‘see’ what we read … [I]t is only through the medium of metaphor that we can begin to understand and articulate the nuances and subtleties of visibility in the Bible.” The metaphors in the Bible often arise from material artifacts such as the “wings of Yahweh” in prophetic literature. The aniconic elements of Hebrew law do not negate visuality, but sought to avoid the confusion between “the power of images for the power of God.”17 Erhard Gerstenberger proposed that many psalms originate not in the centralized cultic settings but in domestic religious practice. The work of Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt confirms that family and household religion provide the best context for understanding the domestic word paintings. The household with the family life cycle dominated the theological reflections. Food played a central role. 19

Honoring Professor John Alsup Further, women seem to have been more active in the family and household religion than in the centralized cult. The domestic word paintings are found in the Psalms of Ascent in Book V, which likely means the collection was pulled together in the late Persian period. Erich Zenger dates the material to 400 B.C.E. The superscriptions in songs of ascent reflect a semantic polyvalence. Each element of the superscription, song, and ascent can have multiple meanings. The Jewish historian and apologist Josephus said that the fifteen psalms parallel the fifteen steps within the Temple leading up to the court of the women. Nonetheless, the meaning of pilgrimage seems to be part of the interpretive framework of the collection. The songs of ascent fuse family elements and Zion. J. Clinton McCann argues that family imagery is important in the Psalter (Pss. 122:4, 8; 127:3-5; 128:3-4, 6 131:2; 132:12). All of these occurrences come from the songs of ascent and all but one are among what we are calling the domestic word paintings.18 The valences to Zion are strong in Psalm 122 (1-3, 6, 9), but less so with other references in other songs of ascent (125:1-2; 126:1; 128:5; 129:5; 132:5, 7-8, 13-14; 133:3; 134). Nonetheless, there is still a mild valence with the domestic word paintings. Psalm 131 My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. 2 But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content. 3 Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore. The method brought to bear on this text is a close reading of the Hebrew text with special attention to the use of poetic and visual devices. According to Zenger, the second shortest psalms of the Psalter has been labeled as a “woman’s psalm.” This is no mystery if cultic language is drawn from domestic life.19 Phyllis Bird and Carol Meyers have demonstrated the vital role that women played in domestic religious practices: “[Elizabeth Ann Remington] Willet proposed the main function of this domestic cult to have been the protection of women and their children from mortal threats in their work and sleep.”20 Susan Ackerman makes the point that far from the depiction of domestic religion as “heterodox,” the women’s activities “were directed at the very survival of the entire family itself.”21 When we consider the role of family and household religion, the use of maternal metaphors makes sense. The psalm begins with the superscription including the phrase “to David” followed by the vocative address “O LORD.” This psalm presents a single metaphor— the image of a child and its mother. The passage begins with three negatives. The first two negatives take the im20

Reid ages of heart and eyes that function as a metonym for the self. These are connected to verbs of height or position which the NRSV renders “proud and haughty.” The Hebrew verb form connotes a quasi-stative quality more than an active verb texture. The writer seems to convey “a practice from the past that continues into the present.”22 The proper alignment of attitude expressed by the body parts is not a discrete act so much as a state of being, and therefore ongoing, not episodic. The heart and the eyes are “as synecdoche (pars pro toto) for the actions performed by people through these organs.”23 In other words, each of these body elements refers to the entire self. The third negative accompanies the Hebrew term halak, often rendered “to walk.” The term can also indicate position or disposition in wisdom poems such as Psalm 1 and here in Psalm 131; hence the NRSV translation “not concern myself.” The poet once again uses the negative with regards to the objects of agency; they are described as not too great or magnificent. The word pair “great and marvelous” occurs here but also twice in Job (5:9; 9:10). The word pair “calmed and quieted” is meant to provide a resonance. The term “my soul,” like the metonyms of heart and eyes, is meant to be a reference to the person. We will want to remember that the soul represents the human being as hungry for life.24 In Hebrew poetry the poetic line typically contains two or three sections called cola. A typical line of Hebrew poetry is a bicola or tricola. The bicola will have two equal parts of a line, each with the same number of beats. The first and second bicola of this line are connected through the repetition of the noun “my soul.” Once again the Pilgrim Psalter poets use simile. This time the weaned child is the metaphor. The Hebrew verb shwh “conformed” rendered in the NRSV as “calmed.” Each of the three negatives conveys the self-effacing quality of the poet. One finds the use of simile in earlier songs of ascent. The same device is used here. The simile sets up the key metaphor. John Goldingay says “the image of a weaned child with its mother is odd.”25 There are two ways to think about the child. “It involves less imagination to reckon that gamul here refers not to the actual weaning of a child but to its having come off the breast as the end of a feeding (cf. Rashi).”26 Another way to read this is as a child that is no longer breast-feeding age. Weaning generally took place at age three (cf. Gen. 21:8; 1 Sam. 20-23; 2 Macc. 7:27). “Whether the psalm presumes that the mother has the child at her breast or is carrying it on her hip or shoulder cannot be determined from the text.”27 The verb concerns itself with the satisfaction. The child is beyond encountering the mother as simply a source for food. Let us tarry here to look at the nature of the child depicted here. A breast-fed infant is feeding, full or asleep. The mother’s breast is a utilitarian reality. But this child has a relationship beyond utility. The weaned child can mean an infant who is satisfied, fed. The term can also refer to the child who is no longer breast feeding. In both meanings, the infant gets beyond the mother as food to still hold the mother as a source of comfort. Does Job fear God for nothing? (Job 1:9). The psalmist here describes a relationship beyond I–It (the pair “I-It” is typically contrasted with “I-Thou” to characterize relationships with God or others as objectifying vs. personalizing. Jewish theologian Martin Buber popularized 21

Honoring Professor John Alsup these pairs as useful concepts in his 1923 book I and Thou). The final section is the exhortation to Israel to hope in YHWH. Goldingay points out that this has a quasieschatological texture to it.28 The wicked problem of militant consumerism, with its attending golden handcuffs, confronts Christians from North America and Europe every day. While there may be therapeutic or public-policy responses that prove effective, a minor poet might help the mapping dialogue on this wicked problem. The word picture “golden handcuffs” characterizes an important dimension of consumerism, one that the Bible and theology are distinctly suited to name. The minor poet, in the face of wicked problems, returns to the poem. The method of the minor poet is the recitation and close reading of the poem. This method does not provide a road map out of the wicked problem. Instead it provides a vision and horizon beyond it. For that reason, the minor poet at the transdisciplinary table reflecting on the wicked problem should stick to poetry, for it suits our training and calling. Pastors would do well to cultivate such skills and perspectives. v NOTES 1. M. Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life (Wm Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2009), 64. 2. A term coined by W.H. Bellinger Jr. 3. Valerie A. Brown, John A. Harris, and Jacqueline Y. Russell, Tackling Wicked Problems: Transdisciplinary Imagination (London: Routlege, 2010). 4. Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (Basic Books: New York, 2002). 5. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Vintage: New York, 2009). 6. Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), ix. 7. Ibid., 4. 8. Walt Whitman, “Passage to India” 6:101-105 Leaves of Grass (New York: Mentor Books New American Library, 1954), 324. 9. Barnes, 24. 10. Ibid., 19. 11. Ibid., 75. 12. Robin M. Jensen, The Substance of Things Seen: Art, Faith, and the Christian Community (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 29. 13. Ibid., 31. 14. Ibid., 48. 15. Martin O’Kane, Painting the Text: The Artist as Biblical Interpreter (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007). 1. 16. Ibid., 7. 17. J. Clinton McCann, “Book of Psalms,” The New Interpreter’s Bible IV (Nashville: Continued on page 27

A Good Friend and More: A Personal Appreciation Hans Bald

If I had to characterize John Alsup in one or two sentences, I could not do it better than in the words of his colleague in Austin Seminary’s Biblical Department, Lewis Donelson: “He is more than a teacher, more than a colleague. He is a good friend.” And a good friend, and much more, he has been to me for almost fifty years.

Stages of a friendship

ur relationship goes back as far as 1966. John had just come to Hamburg, Germany with his wife, Carole, and their little boy, Dan(ny), to write his doctoral dissertation under Prof. Leonhard Goppelt who would later become my doctorfather as well. In 1968 the two of us followed L. Goppelt to Munich, where John and I got to live in the same dorm. Carole and Dan had gone back to the United States. That was when our friendship actually started to grow. In Munich I immediately discovered one striking quality of John’s: his charm paired with a considerable persistence, by which he would win over the people he met. Even though students weren’t permitted to keep a dog in the dorm (impossible!), John could convince the housekeeper that his basset hound, Leo, had to stay with him by all means. And so it happened. Leo would lie quietly in his basket on the floor in front of John´s room all day long—probably the first and only dog officially allowed in a German student dorm. In Munich John soon made contacts with the Protestant Chapel in the 7th Army’s Perlacher Forest community and moved there with his family soon after their return from the states. John was rather an exception in this context with his true interest in the German language and the real life of the German people.

Hans Bald, who earned his Dr theol from the University of Munich, has been teaching Christian education at the University of Erlangen and New Testament exegesis at the University of Bamberg for nearly thirty years. He is an ordained minister of the Lutheran Church in Bavaria. Among his works are the German translation of the renowned commentary on the Gospel of John by C.K. Barrett as well as of several articles by John Alsup. 23

Honoring Professor John Alsup Only a small minority of the military personnel or their dependents had sufficient knowledge of the German language. Many if not most of them were not interested too much in really getting to know their German neighbors and to take more than a perfunctory look at them. Not so John. He found this approach deplorable. If one gets involved with someone else his perspective almost automatically will change. He or she probably has to give up or at least to question beloved convictions, beliefs, and prejudices. This was the case with John and also with me. His view on Germany and my view of the United States have been greatly influenced and shaped by the dialogue we started then and have been leading ever since, for almost fifty years now. And we both think this is a wonderful thing. In the fall of 1969 I went to the United States on a World Council of Churches scholarship—not least inspired by my relationship with John—to study at Vanderbilt for a year. I arrived in Nashville linguistically and culturally rather well prepared because in the months before my departure I had had the chance to get a firsthand impression of the American way of life by regularly visiting the Alsup family in the American community in Munich. When I came back to Germany I had the great privilege of continuing our friendship which allowed me to deepen the manifold impressions and insights I had gained during this special year in America. For some years, from 1970 onwards, John and I were colleagues at the University of Munich, both as assistants in the department of New Testament studies. We shared many interests, also, in the field of theology. We both loved Greek and enjoyed the challenge of teaching New Testament exegesis to the students. John, who had studied with Bruce Metzger at Princeton, was an expert in textual criticism. Not only here did I benefit a lot from his expertise. After John had received his doctoral degree he and his family returned to the United States. Ever since, we have been preserving our friendship by means of letters, phone calls, and (unfortunately only occasional) personal visits—and also, in the past few years, by the means of modern mass communication.

More than a friend

hrough the encounter with John one can learn what the essence of friendship is, regardless of background and descent. “A friend is someone,” a wise man said, “who loves you even though he knows you.” John and I have grown very close over those fifty years. And we love each other even though we know each other, but of course still more because we thoroughly know each other as well as only longtime friends do. What do I value most in my friend John? A lot of things come to my mind. But I cannot mention everything, and some things are only between him and myself. First of all he is absolutely dependable as almost no other man I know. He has a deep and humble faith in God; he loves all of creation, humans and animals. We are bound together by similar convictions, values, interests, by the same view of the world. But we can accept and tolerate divergences in opinion amicably and patiently. With regard to politics I am more liberal—sometimes too liberal for John. True friendship can bear and tolerate this. 24

Bald A man has only a handful of real (not Twitter or Facebook) friends. A friend is more than an acquaintance (or a follower), and a man has probably many good acquaintances but only a few friends. And if you have found a true friend you may be grateful. He makes your life richer. This holds true for my friend John. A true friend is more than a relative by blood. As Scripture says: “Some friends play at friendships but a true friend sticks closer than one nearest kin ” Prov 18, 24 (NRSV, brother ESV). Neither John nor I have a brother by blood. So we became “Herzensbrüder,” brothers by heart. For this I am grateful and I am sure John feels the same.

What I as a Christian and theologian have learned from John

n the statements published on the occasion of John´s retirement we find one thought voiced very often: impressive has been and still is his blending of academic work and service in the church (to which also the seminary community belongs.) In the words of one colleague: John Alsup “has modeled the ideal of the pastor–scholar.” Model and ideal: both terms are equally important. The Model: The exegete as pastor (The practice). Both of us are theologians and academic teachers and at the same time we work and live as members of our respective churches. And here, too, we share common convictions. Very often there is a hiatus between the work of a professor of theology and the work of a pastor. This is not true for John Alsup. He has advocated this ideal of the combination of scholarly work and practical service in the church not only in theory but also by his own existence. This I find admirable and exemplary. As a pastor of the Sunrise Beach Federated Church he has never shied away from long drives. He has been preaching, taking care of the sick, burying the dead … like any other pastor. In most cases a professor of New Testament at a seminary or university sees his responsibility exclusively in research and in conveying the ways and results of his discipline to his students. With respect to education and training in the theory and practice of preaching, other academic specialists are in charge. Occasionally a non-practical theologian may preach, but it is rather uncommon that he takes on the responsibility of being the pastor of a certain congregation. In a German academic context it would be likewise exceptional if a student’s practical attempt to preach was directly accompanied by a professor of biblical studies instead of a professor of homiletics or preaching. John teaches the unity of the spiritual and scholarly dimension and he lives his life accordingly. This is the model he has developed and implemented over the years. And this is a model I find very promising not only in the American context. The Ideal: About the necessity of exegesis for the contemporary address (The Theory). The ideal that he has been living by, he has also developed as a theoretical concept. John is convinced that an exegesis led and controlled by a consequent methodological approach is indispensable for the proclamation of the gospel either in preaching or in Christian education. He is convinced that without thorough exegesis the danger may arise that arbitrariness will gain ground, that not the text but one’s current sensibilities will determine the understanding of the gospel’s mes25

Honoring Professor John Alsup sage. Exegesis is not an unnecessary detour or even an obstacle on the way to the “contemporary address.” There may certainly be another danger as well: the danger of remaining stuck in the past and not reaching the present situation of the audience. The preacher in the pulpit is standing there as a preacher, not as an exegete. A sermon is not an academic lecture in the lecture hall. Exegesis is not an end in itself but it has to serve a purpose. It is however a helpful critical counterpart to preaching. Of course a word of Scripture may speak to me in an unmediated way and hit me directly. But the preacher has to proclaim the word of God, not his own and therefore the careful, responsible struggling with the text is necessary, which brings forth the message contained in the text. We shall hope for the spirit, of course, pray for it, open ourselves up to it. But we do not have it at our disposal. It “blows where it chooses” (John 3, 8). The spirit cannot become a method. The German revivalist preacher Claus Harms once told this little anecdote: “One Saturday evening I still had not prepared my sermon for the morning, but I did not have time (nor did I really feel in the mood to do so). So I recalled Romans 8, 26 ‘[T]he spirit intercedes for us’ (ESV). And I said to myself: ‘The spirit will speak in my stead.’ Sunday morning in the pulpit the spirit indeed spoke to me. What he said was: ‘Claus, you have been lazy.’” We shall be loyal and faithful stewards (oikonomoi) in the house (oikos) of the Lord. This means diligent work, and it means for us to do what is helpful and conducive for “die Sache” (the cause) of the Lord. Then we may hope for God´s spirit to speak through our voices. As I see it, John’s “Historical–Homiletical Work Method” is an ideal model in this respect, even though it may appear to some to be outdated, antique, “from yesterday.” Once he has carefully analyzed the biblical text, the preacher is in a position to “cross the hermeneutical bridge” and get “over an interpretive bridge to the present,” i.e. “to the experience of faith and life in our world.” To sum it up in John’s own words: “How does exegesis become responsible contemporary address? This area of concern is not exclusively the struggle of the exegete but it is also the struggle of the exegete. That is to say, the exegete is compelled by the subject matter of the texts themselves to stay involved in the matter of theological relevance and proclamation and not to leave such to someone else. To put it another way, all theologians and preachers are in this methodology to be exegetes, listeners to the text and one another together.” Theology and church should listen to this voice. It is in some respect “trendwidrig” (against the trend), but it is indispensable. It must not become just the “hobby” of only a few chosen, but the obligation of every theological student and preacher to strive for understanding what the text means in its historical setting before trying to translate what the text means for us today. This remains an essential task of theological education for the good of theology, the church and, first of all, the gospel. Finally only this remains to be said: My special wish for my dear friends, for John and for Carole—without whose unfailing loving support John could not have 26

Bald been what he is: Ad multos annos. This I hope for them (and myself) “from the bottom of my heart,” to use one of the beautiful phrases I have learned from John. v NOTES 1. Windows Summer/Fall 2014. Vol. 123, Nr. 3, p. 21 2. (APTS News Archive) Press Release (posted 06/25/2014): “Austin Seminary Professor John Alsup retires” (accessed Jan 21. 2015.) Pres. T. Wardlaw acknowledges John Alsup as “the epitome of scholar/pastor,” Windows, Summer/Fall 2014. Vol. 123, Nr. 3, p. 21 3. John Alsup, A Summary of the Historical-Homiletical Work Method, http://jealsup. tripod.com/summary.html [= Step VI], accessed Jan 21, 2015.

Stick to Poetry Continued from page 22 Abingdon Press, 1997), 1214. 18. Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 3: A Commentary on Psalms 101-150 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 446f. 19. Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt, Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 10. 20. Rainer and Schmitt, 10. See also Susan Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah HSM 46 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) and “Household religion, Family Religion, and Women’s Religion in Ancient Israel,” in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, ed. J. Bodel and S.M. Olyan (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 148. 21. John Goldingay, Psalms: Volume 3 Psalms 90-150 (Baker: Grand Rapids, 2008), 535. 22. Hossfeld, 449. 23. Ibid., 450. 24. Goldingay, 537. 25. Ibid. 26. Hossfeld, 451. 27. Goldingay, 538.

Honoring Professor John Alsup

A Tribute to Theological Teaching Arch Baker

n each person’s lifetime there are perhaps two, at most three, encounters with persons who profoundly shape and motivate everything from that time forward. My encounter with Professor John Alsup in the summer ”Greek Camp” of 1986, and subsequently as a teaching assistant, office aide, and preaching intern, was to prove just such an encounter. Classroom content was only part of what Professor Alsup taught. The opportunity to see firsthand Dr. Alsup’s work as pastor and colleague, and most significantly his self-sacrificing dedication to his students, was formative for my own life and ministry after seminary. This costly form of teaching was especially evident in Dr. Alsup’s work with students who were struggling with time, academics, family responsibilities, and other demands of life. Now, almost three decades later, it is clear to me that what John Alsup was about teaching was much more than Greek proficiency, exegetical methodology, or scriptural interpretation. My perspective from the present distance in time is that John Alsup made available through his own study and style a valuable model for ministry in any context. Both inside and outside of the classroom, John Alsup has taught me two things that have shaped and guided not only my ministry, but also several other aspects of my life. Those two things are the necessity and the value of intentional discipline over time, and critical integration of the work of others into my own thinking and understanding. The first of these two things has only partly to do with methodology. It has much more to do with intentionally stilling the noisy, hermeneutical voice within for the sake of genuinely listening to what scripture is trying to say. As a discipline applied to pastoral ministry, I confess that this has been perhaps the most challenging of the two for me, given the hurdles of time, family, congregational care, etc. that must also be surmounted. Without doubt, however, the most valuable teaching Dr. Alsup has given to

Arch C. Baker (MDiv’88, MA’95) received two degrees from Austin Seminary, earning the Pile Morgan Fellowship and working with Professor Alsup. He studied under Dr. Jürgen Roloff at the University of Erlangen, in Germany. He has served churches in Oklahoma and Georgia, where he currently lives and serves as interim pastor for Heritage Presbyterian Church in Acworth. 28

Reminiscences me has been an introduction to the exercise of dealing with the teaching, writing, and interpretation of others and integrating them substantively with my own perceptions, questions, and angle of vision. I find that this exercise of critical integration transcends the boundaries of exegesis and hermeneutics to become a valuable tool of analysis and understanding in multiple areas of interest and activity. Dr. Alsup’s lessons in critical integration make it clear that one need not simply accept even the most revered of authors or publications as authoritative, per se. To be able to state how and why one finds the interpretation of another to be convincing is to inch one’s own self forward; to be able to state how and why an alternate, or variant, understanding is possible opens the door to inching everyone else’s understanding forward. For anyone who dares to look beyond the topical content of a class or seminar, John Alsup’s teaching legacy has made possible discovery and understanding with a depth and substance that are not otherwise accessible. For a reading knowledge of Greek, and for exegetical method, I thank Austin Seminary. For the disciplines of ministry, study, and preaching, and for the ability to wade into a vast swampland of literature and scholarship and emerge with a substantive core to inform my own, original work I am, and will always remain, humbly grateful to Professor John Alsup. v

Honoring Professor John Alsup

Taking the Better Trouble Amy Pospichal

n the final day of “Summer Greek Camp,” an intensive five-days/week summer course, I turned in my “Final Self-Expression” (read: “Final Exam”). Handing the paper to Professor Alsup, I whispered, “I’m interested in being a Teaching Assistant.” He paused, and looked thoughtful. Then he set an appointment to meet with me. Before long, I learned that a major concern was that his Teaching Assistants be interested in the application of biblical studies to the ministry, rather than seeking a stepping stone to academia. He wasn’t trying to be difficult. Trouble must be taken, the kind of trouble that fits God’s purpose. Sometimes we have to make trouble or take trouble, when it’s the right course of action. Mark 2:9 says something about this very thing. When Jesus overhears the Scribes questioning his pronouncement of forgiveness to the paralytic, he asks, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’?” (NRSV) It’s a key question. We English speakers can often leap past the question, excitedly rushing to the end, seeking the big “Tada!” The big “Tada” is the place we’d rather hang out, when Jesus saves the day and “wins” the controversy. But hang around Jesus’s question a little while, you may find more questions than answers. Breathing a word of forgiveness might look easier than a miracle healing. But we all know how difficult it is to forgive a person who has hurt us! It’s easier said than done. The Greek in Mark 2:9 speaks to this difficulty. “Easier” is the translation in the NRSV. But it’s not fussy enough. We all like things “easier”—for me, “easier” implies lying on a beach in Jamaica. But this is not what Jesus is talking about. The Greek says so much more. Behind the translation “easier” is “eukopoteron,” a word consisting of a root (“kopos” meaning “trouble” or “difficulty”) a prefix (eu meaning “good” or “well”) and a suffix (“teron” meaning “to

Continued on page 33

Amy Pospichal (MDiv’07), is a teaching elder serving the Presbyterian Church in Tucumcari, New Mexico, where she chairs the Search Committee for Transitional Shepherd for the Presbytery of Sierra Blanca. Amy received the Alsup-Frierson Fellowship for Biblical Studies at Austin Seminary. She is a member of Columbia Theological Seminary’s Thompson Scholars Program. 30

Reminiscences

“It’s All Greek” Anna Bowden

t’s all Greek to me” must be the least original thing anyone has ever said about the New Testament language. Whether uttered under the breath by a student struggling with Paul or by an onlooker who knows no other response, the phrase is often spoken in jest, implying a lack of understanding or even a disregard for the language itself. For many, the popular phrase, “It’s all Greek to me,” is like a shrug of the shoulder or a roll of the eyes. However, these naysayers do not appreciate Greek in the same way that John Alsup does. For John, Greek is more than nuance and detail; it is more than white boards and conjugation charts. All things really are Greek to John. For John, didache (teaching) is Greek. Whereas the American education system has become about information consumption (i.e., how much do you know and how quickly can you learn it), for John teaching Greek is relational. John seeks to facilitate a way for students not just to learn a language, but to encounter the language face to face. Not to just know it cognitively, but to welcome it into their lives. Not to memorize it, but to journey through its pages. For John, koinonia (community) is Greek. Just as John seeks to build a relationship between text and student, he also seeks to build student–teacher and student–student relationships. For example, not only does he make himself available to the students for questions and concerns about the classroom, but he also makes it his responsibility to learn details of the students’ lives and to invite them to his home for a hayride and a meal. John facilitates community by calling his summer Greek class “Greek Camp.” Quizzes and tests (or “self expressions,” as John likes to call them) are balanced with mnemonic songs and help from cherished classroom companions, such as The Dough Boy and Faust. Throughout the six weeks John builds not only competency in Greek, but also an environment for the development of life-long friendships.

Continued on page 33

Anna Bowden (MDiv’12), graduated from Austin Presbyterian Theologi-

cal Seminary with a Master of Divinity, winning the Alsup-Frierson Fellowship, and from Brite Divinity School in 2013 with a Master of Theology in Hebrew Bible. She is currently working on a PhD in New Testament at Brite Divinity School and teaches in an adjunct capacity at Austin Seminary.

Honoring Professor John Alsup

Pay Attention Dieter Heinzl

itting on the porch with John one day after a hard day’s work of hauling and stacking hay in ungodly hot weather, we got to talking. Of course, we talked about the New Testament, aorist participles, and Greek verbs. In a conversation with John, this was par-for-the-course. I cannot recall which participle or which verb, but I do remember this particular evening because of a story John told, which shaped me both as a person and as a pastor. One evening, John remembered, he was out by the corrals brushing one of the horses. “Working around a large animal you have to pay attention,“ he said. “You never know when they might move or get spooked. Getting kicked by a horse is no fun.” While he rubbed down the horse, however, he noticed how the farm dogs and cats had assembled around him. They were all looking in one direction and did not seem to notice nor care about him or the horse at all. When John turned in the same direction to see what occupied them, he looked into one of the most glorious sunsets he had ever been privileged to witness. John had been like Martha, banging around pots and pans in the kitchen, so to speak, while the animals were like Mary, sitting at their creator’s feet. I mention this story because I learned from John how critical it is to “pay attention.” To pay attention to the biblical text(s), to the people entrusted to me for their soul care, to the land, its creatures, and its preservation, and to God. And I learned about the hermeneutic which anchors his life: Living as a steward of God’s household. There are many other things John taught me like, “In exegesis, there is no such thing as objectivity, only disciplined subjectivity.” I take that to mean, “Don’t take yourself too seriously, but always take Scripture seriously, as best you can.” He taught me about Janis Joplin’s start-up venue Threadgills, “selective grazing,” and that one-ton pick-up trucks are really humidors on wheels. I learned about Texas football and how to smuggle liquid refreshments into the stadium in containers

Dieter Heinzl (MDiv’98) is associate pastor for faith formation at Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church in St. Louis and an adjunct professsor at Eden Seminary. A native of Germany, Heinzl earned masters degrees from the University of Houston and Austin Seminary, where he was awarded the Pile Morgan Fellowship, and the PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. 32

Reminiscences otherwise used for anointing oil. I paid careful attention to how to disassemble a kitchen island when a coral snake hides in one of its drawers. And I learned that it’s not a matter of if things break down, but only when. I am glad that I now serve a church in a large city and do not have to mess with fire ants, wolf spiders, and rattlesnakes anymore. But I do miss the days working side by side with John—on the farm, in the classroom, and in the sanctuary. I miss the rhythm of the land coupled with the biblical text(s) which is too often obscured by my pseudo-busy life. And I give thanks to God for the man, instructor, mentor, and friend who welcomed me into his household because I, too, am a child of God. v

Trouble Continued from page 30

a greater degree”). The suffix is comparative “-er” in “easier.” So, perhaps Jesus is asking not what is easier on us. He asks what is the better course of action. (By the way, this paralytic has, with the help of four people, taken a great deal of trouble to get to Jesus, having been lowered through the roof!) Jesus doesn’t need to answer his own question. He demonstrates that he can do both—forgive sins and heal. But here’s the rub. We assume the paralytic was suffering from a physical ailment. But we know nothing about what caused his paralysis. Jesus begins not with treating the symptom, but the potential cause, a need for forgiveness. This pericope looks a lot like many church offices on a Friday afternoon. We’re busy getting the worship bulletin done, along with many other preparations. And our rush to the weekend gets interrupted by a person at the door, seeking something, money or food, or just someone to listen. At such a crossroads, what is the “better kind of trouble?” Jesus knows, but do we? v

Greek Continued from page 31

For John, a doro (a gift) is Greek. John is a generous soul, contributing financially to the Alsup-Frierson Fellowship for Excellence in Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics (of which I have been a grateful recipient). His greatest gift, though, has been Greek itself. Out of his classroom and out of the relationships he has built, a countless many preachers, teachers, and scholars have already carried his lessons out into pulpits, publications, and classrooms of their own. As I recall the love for Greek I gained while studying with John, I recognize that it is that love that has carried me into further study, and it will be that love that I hope to impart to my students one day. I know there are others who have said and will say the same, but for my part, John’s gift is a gift that never stops giving. I am grateful to have been given the chance to see Greek through the eyes of John Alsup and upon further reflection I can truly proclaim, it really is all Greek to John Alsup, and that is a very good thing. v 33

Honoring Professor John Alsup

Calling to the Shy Soul Linda Kessie

observed it the first time I went out to John Alsup’s ranch, the Circle A. It was the 4th of July, and Dr. Alsup had invited the Elementary New Testament Greek class and our families to his home for a watermelon picnic. We all brought food to share under the beautiful trees at the ranch where John and Carole live and where they breed American Quarter horses, and where they raise an assortment of dogs and cats and a donkey named Platero. A wood sign hangs on a wall inside John and Carole’s home—a saying attributed to Sir Winston S. Churchill: ‘There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.” John offered all, children and adults alike, a ride on Bolm’s Last Lady (Lady for short), his beautiful Tennessee Walker. As he explained to us, Lady didn’t much like to be rubbed or stroked or petted, but if you would offer her a halter, she would accept it, and under halter Lady would do whatever you asked of her. John led Lady down the lane and back as all the children and several of the adults accepted a ride on her. After many rides were given, about half-way down the lane Lady stopped. She just stopped walking. It seemed that she was done with giving rides. John stepped closer to her, leaned toward her, and then gently and almost imperceptibly pulled the lead rope to his left, across his body. Lady turned her head toward him and then stepped toward him. He led her a few paces to the left, and then straightened out her course and they continued down the lane. That was it. Not a poke or a slap or a tug, not a sharp jerking on the lead rope; just a gentle nudge, asking the horse to turn toward him, and then back onto the path. This slight movement seemed to convince Lady of the goodness of his re-

Linda Kessie

(MDiv’00) is pastor at First United Methodist Church, Aransas Pass, Texas. She and her husband, JP, are the happy owners of Commander’s Spittin’ Image (Spit), a registered American Quarter Horse bred and born on John and Carole Alsup’s Circle A Ranch.

Kessie quest. That’s when I first realized that John Alsup was skilled at a secret language capable of convincing a horse to be excellent. Sometime after that Greek class picnic, my husband, JP, and I went back to the ranch. This time we were part of a group of classmates who were helping to haul bales of hay from the fields and stack them in the barn. It was then I learned the story of Scarlet. Scarlet was a mare who was blind in one eye. She had been running in a remuda and had run into a tree branch, which got imbedded in her eye. The branch had to be pulled out of that eye, and the experience so traumatized her that she would allow no one to touch her. John heard that because of this, the owner was planning to destroy her, so John brought her home to his ranch. When Scarlet arrived at the Circle A, she ran to the farthest corner of the field and would not even turn toward the house, barn, or other horses. She did not eat or drink for days. Fearing she would die of dehydration, John took a new water trough which had as little human scent on it as he could possibly manage. He put it in the corral, filled it with fresh water, and opened the gate, tying it open. Then he waited and watched from a distance for the scent of the fresh water to attract the by-now seriously dehydrated horse. Scarlet finally succumbed to the scent of water and came to drink. While she was drinking, John slowly and quietly crawled around the outside of the corral fence to the gate and swung it shut, locking her into the corral with no escape. Then began John’s patient education of Scarlet. A little bit each day John spent time near that corral and Scarlet came to recognize his scent as that of the one who provided fresh water and oats and hay. No loud noises, no sudden movements, no rough voice came from this man—just water, oats, hay, and a calm presence. Over time, John taught Scarlet that there was nothing to fear from him. Gradually she began to trust. She came to accept him moving around inside the corral with her, then his coming close to her. John calmly taught and encouraged her. Step by step he patiently trained her. By the time I met Scarlet he could touch her and halter her. And even I could touch her and scratch her back. At the time of that picnic I already had a love of horses. After that picnic I spent a lot of time hanging around the Circle A and absorbing all that John Alsup would teach me about horses. I learned many things. I learned that John Alsup has a lifetime love of horses. I learned that John is a gentleman—with a gentle hand with his horses, as with all of the animals in his oikos. A horse is a big animal—perhaps 1,000 pounds in weight, sometimes more. They are bigger than I am and they can do what they want, so it is best to establish a relationship with a horse, to ask a horse to yield to my lead rope. Invitation brings a better response than force. John taught me Durwood’s philosophy of horse training: “If you have the horse’s respect, then that horse will give you the response for which you are asking.” The first step in seeking a horse’s respect is to invite the horse into a relationship with you. I learned that one needs to communicate with a horse when seeking his respect. Dr. Alsup taught me the language of moving ears and eyes, of swishing 35

Honoring Professor John Alsup tails and head positioning. He offered the horses the respect of learning their language, which led the horses to respect him, and then to respond by learning what he was asking them to do. He offered respect and gentleness; they responded in kind. Moreover, John Alsup knows that equine training, biblical exegesis, and spiritual formation all require a gentle touch. Parker Palmer, reminds us that, “Despite its toughness, the soul is … shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense underbrush, especially when other people are around. If we want to see a wild animal, we know that the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods yelling for it to come out. But if we will walk quietly into the woods, sit patiently at the base of a tree, breathe with the earth, and fade into our surroundings, the wild creature we seek might put in an appearance. We may see it only briefly and only out of the corner of an eye—but the sight is a gift we will always treasure as an end in itself.” Human souls, like horses, are powerful things, but as wise teachers know, they come with aching and sometimes bleeding wounds that require artful care. Wise teachers know that the soul is a timid creature that requires a gentle call in order to come out of hiding to show its glory and drink from unfamiliar waters. Biblical languages and texts cannot finally be hammered home, but they lie as flowing streams before thirsty pilgrims, inviting them to drink. It’s like that when John teaches seminary students. John respectfully attends to students in all their blessed oddity and giftedness. Gentle nudges. Lightly re-directing students back toward learning. Patient, calm, encouraging. Systematic step-by-step presenting of knowledge. Listening to and reading responses. Conversations in the margins of papers. Encouraging students to “tickle that Pillsbury dough-boy” once again, to be inquisitive with the text, to tease out the meaning of the words in our seeking to understand The Word. Such grace bids the shy soul to peek out of hiding, to explore the world of texts—and maybe to find their own glory. As John’s students know, the new Kingdom is birthed of Jesus’s self-giving love, in which God showed respect to creatures by learning the language of incarnation, by calling to us in love, and enjoining us to likewise love others. The church, the seminary, the world need teachers whose whole lives are a parable of this gentle call, who know its ways—its moving ears and eyes, swishing tails, and the shake of its head; and who can teach students its grace. For me, and for so many others, John Alsup has borne witness to the grace found in God, biblical texts, human souls, and the most majestic of creatures, horses. Thank you, John. v

AUSTIN PRESBYTERIAN

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Theodore J. Wardlaw, President

Board of Trustees Thomas L. Are Jr., Chair James Allison Karen C. Anderson Whit Bodman Janice Bryant (MDiv’01, DMin’11) Claudia D. Carroll Elizabeth Christian Joseph J. Clifford James B. Crawley Katherine Cummings (MDiv’05) Consuelo Donahue (MDiv’96) Jackson Farrow Jr. G. Archer Frierson Richard D. Gillham Walter Harris Jr. John Hartman Ann Herlin (MDiv’01) Rhashell Hunter

Roy M. Kim James H. Lee (MDiv’00) Lyndon L. Olson Jr. B. W. Payne David Peeples Jeffrey Kyle Richard Lana Russell James C. Shaw Lita Simpson Anne Vickery Stevenson Karl Brian Travis John L. Van Osdall Sallie Sampsell Watson (MDiv’87) Carlton Wilde Jr. Elizabeth Currie Williams Hugh H. Williamson III

Trustees Emeriti Stephen A. Matthews, John McCoy, Max Sherman, Louis H. Zbinden Jr.

Spring 2015

austinseminary.edu

100 East 27th Street Austin, TX 78705-5711

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

AUSTIN PRESBYTERIAN SEMINARY

PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGI C AL

AUSTIN Permit No. 2473

Austin, Texas

PAID

U.S. Postage

Non-Profit Org.