Ben Jammin' Zilla

Pondering this connection in the #DailyOffice Lectionary (Sat in Easter Week, BCP p.959) between Moses carrying Joseph's bones (!) out of Egypt in Exodus 13, and Christ's confrontation with the Sadducees about the resurrection in Mark 12. And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him; for Joseph had solemnly sworn the people of Israel, saying, God will visit you." (Ex 13:19)  He is God not of the dead, but of the living. (Mk 12:27) A shared detail in both stories is Moses. What does Moses mean for Israel? The Sadducees invoke Moses' name (Mk 12:19). So does Christ (v.26), who invokes the triad of Joseph's ancestors as well. Both want Moses to speak for them. But what is Moses doing? In carrying the bones, Moses carries death. But he also carries legacy. The bones are both death and the promise of life, for Joseph's oath is: God will visit you. And certainly this is what God has done in the Exodus! So Christ's rebuttal, read with this ancien...

Martyr is based on the Greek word for "witness." It came about because of how Christians who died were seen as witnesses to the saving death of Jesus Christ – that somehow a martyr's death and Christ's death were united, not two deaths but one death that announces the victory of God. Like Christ himself, the seeming wastefulness of a martyr's death becomes a sign of a greater reality and faithfulness to greater principles. Bonhoeffer witnesses to the Lord in this way. This pastor, an intellectual prodigy, could have led a comfortable life away from Germany, but chose to resist the Nazi's Babylonian captivity of the German church. And perhaps he felt like his life was wasted – Charles Marsh notes in his 2015 biography that Bonhoeffer probably died slowly and painfully from hanging. The coincidence that this year Bonhoeffer's death date falls on Maundy Thursday, the day of Christ's own arrest at the hands of a different but no less ruthless empire, reso...