Week 5 Discussion

Readings Reviewed... 1. 2. Katie Cannon, “The Wounds of Jesus: Justification of Goodness in the Face of Manifold Evil, 2. Reading with the Grain of Scripture by Richard Hays "Reading Scripture in Light of the Resurrection,” pp. 47-69 3. Renita Weems, Listening for God, 68-82. (www(dot)barnesandnoble(dot)com) E-Book The theme for this week is reading backwards. This phrase was a favorite of Richard Hays. He meant it literally sometimes, "Now that you have read all the way to the end of the Gospel of Matthew, the conclusion is inviting you to read back from the beginning to see the hints of resurrection all along the way." He also meant it as a way to study "figural readings of Scripture" and to read for eschatological hope (see p. 65). As you can see from the beginning, Hays' main conversation partners were past Bible scholars from liberal mainline and non-religious traditions about the resurrection, but he thinks all the way to what it means for anyone to be reading Scripture in light of the resurrection. In her essay on "The Wounds of Evil" sermon in Jonah's Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston, Katie Cannon presents a different way of reading backwards from fiction novel portrayals of Black preachers to the teachings of the Black community, their "sacred rhetoric" in Black preaching, and interpretation of the Bible concerning the reality of evil and "God's redeeming love" (p.177). Maybe instead of saying "reading backwards", I should have said "reading or hearing Scripture from the pew." Maybe reading backwards isn't the best expression of the theme, but there are directions and comings and goings and insides and outsides happening throughout these pieces. I was avoiding as best I could any theme expressing a hierarchy of up or down, lesser or greater, etc. And I like them because they get to the heart of some very critical theological questions. Questions that have been and continue to be so big, that knowing they are our Christian questions and pondering them regularly makes us Christian--Cannon even says distinctly African American Christians. "Can God make a rock so big God can't pick it up?" "How can anyone be raised from the dead?" "How is evil allowed in the world, especially between Christians?" For discussion board this week, write 400-500 words in response to these questions: 1. Both of these authors had significant sections to their essays that changed the subject matter and topic abruptly this week. Did you follow Hays' discussion of scholarship arguments about "what really happened in the resurrection" and how it related to close readings of Scripture and hermeneutic principles for reading? Did you follow Cannon's discussion of the retrieval of Black religious culture and Black sacred rhetoric from Black women's fiction writing, and the turn to analyze the very same writing for patriarchal patterns in the sermon? 2. If the answer is no, what part of the argument made you feel stuck and what should Hays or Cannon have elaborated on more from the rest of the essay? If the answer is yes, how did each section of the essay seem relevant to other sections?