How to Be Free

On By Jennifer Mugrage1 Comment

I just read John 18:1 – 19:16. It’s really pathetic, in these chapters, to watch Pilate try to avoid crucifying Jesus but still placate the Jewish officials.

He says to Jesus, “Don’t you realize that I have the power either to free you or to crucify you?” (John 19:10), but in fact, Pilate doesn’t have any power at all.

The book Who Moved the Stone? makes a strong case, from hints in the text and other historical evidence, that Pilate had received an emergency visit from someone, perhaps the High Priest himself, the night before. The priests had just arrested Jesus, and the meeting went something like this: “We have this criminal whom we really need condemned. If we bring him to you tomorrow morning, before Passover, will you just quickly condemn him for us so we can get that out of the way? In exchange, of course, for our ongoing support.”

Pilate had agreed to this reasonable request. But the next morning, things started to go off. Pilate’s wife, who perhaps was there for the 11 p.m. meeting, had a nightmare about Jesus which she took as prophetic, and sent her husband a note saying, “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man.” (Matt. 27:19) Also, the Jews hadn’t brought any clear charge against Jesus for which Pilate could execute him.

Pilate tried to get rid of the problem by sending Jesus to Herod (Luke 23:5 – 12), but to his dismay, the problem came right back to him. He then tried to placate the council by having Jesus flogged. He kept arguing with them, saying, “I find him not guilty.” They were shocked and dismayed that he was going back on his word of the night before (John 18:29 – 31). They started threatening that if Pilate did not condemn Jesus to death, they would turn him in as being in rebellion against Caesar (John 19:12). Things had not been going great politically for Pilate. If there were a riot, or if he were accused of being anti-Caesar, it would be the end for him. Best case scenario, he would lose his job, but more probably he would lose his life.

In short, Pilate could not avoid crucifying Jesus without losing everything. He was trapped.

Jesus, of course, was trapped too, but the difference was that He had walked into the trap. More accurately, Jesus was not trapped. He could have summoned twelve legions of angels (Matt. 26:53) at any moment to vindicate and free Him. He was going to His death freely. He was not trapped by His own fears and desires. Pilate, on the other hand, was trapped by his own fears and desires. His options were extremely limited because he was not willing to lose everything.

Consider, then these two men, as they stand in the palace looking at each other. One is a governor, wearing the robe of a governor, standing in his own palace, making what should be a routine decision about what to do with a prisoner.  “Don’t you realize that I have the power?” he says, but in fact this man has no power or agency in this situation. This man is terrified.

The other has been up all night. He has been interrogated at least three times. He has already been beaten once by the high priest’s guards, again by Herod’s guards, and he has just been flogged by Pilate’s guards. His back is flayed. His nose may be broken. When he speaks, he cannot manage very long sentences. “My kingdom is not of this world,” he says. “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” This is the man who is actually in charge of the situation. Despite appearances, this man is truly free.

In Luke 9:23 – 24, Jesus said, “If anyone wants to be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” This sounds like a hard saying – and it is—but what Jesus was giving us here was the secret of how to be free. If Pilate had been willing to lose everything, he would have had more options. Jesus was willing to lose everything, which allowed him to do exactly what, on a deeper level, he wanted to do, which was to work the Father’s plan.

It’s Official

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

There has been much debate about what is the Best Meal in the Universe, but I am here to settle it, now, today.

It’s fish and chips.

Jesus almost served this meal when He fed the 5,000. That was fish and bread — fish and a starch. It was close. But as potatoes had not yet been brought over from the New World, the meal eaten by the 5,000 did not yet reach the height of perfection.

Similarly, in other parts of the world you might eat fish with other starches: rice, pounded taro, breadfruit. Even corn (see Shrimp and Grits). These meals are close, so close. But after many millennia of the development of human cuisines, the word is finally in on the perfect meal.

And it’s fish and chips.

If you need a vegetable (you know, so as not to get bound up), please feel free to add coleslaw. Also, malt vinegar is definitely part of the meal.

Fish and chips.

You’re welcome.

Side-Eye Quote of the Week

On By Jennifer Mugrage1 Comment

Jamie thought for a moment. “Couldn’t we all say that about ourselves? As nations, too? ‘We shouldn’t have done what we did.’ Isn’t that what we all now feel about our past?”

“You mean Britain shouldn’t have done what it did? Or America? Or Spain?”

“Yes,” said Jamie. “But not just them. Not just the obvious targets. Pretty much everybody. Russia. Turkey. China. The past is pretty shameful once you start to look at it more closely.”

The Sweet Remnants of Summer, by Alexander McCall Smith, p. 8

Farm Shoes

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments

So, this week I bought these farm shoes. I know that some people call them “wellies,” but I don’t know what they’re called around here. Just “rubber boots” maybe.

I need them not because I am a real farmer in any way, but because Spring has sprung (sort of … we are also still getting snow), and even if a person only has 3 chickens, their run is still surrounded by mud. With these boots, I feel that I have leveled up in some small way.

As a person who romanticizes the past, the boots naturally got me thinking about what people did for mud shoes (in Europe, say) before they had access to rubber. The answer, of course, was clogs or wooden shoes. You can see them on French peasants in Millet’s paintings sometimes.

“The Gleaners,” by Millet. You can’t really tell what the shoes are made of, but you can see that they’re sort of in the clog family.

But I’m Dutch (actually, Frisian) by ancestry, and we have our own iconic version of the wooden shoe. I don’t know about other peasant clogs, but Dutch wooden shoes have to fit rather large and be worn with several layers of socks. They float, which is important in Holland.

Here is me in a partially authentic “Dutch costume” that my mom made, displaying the klompen. (That’s what the wooden shoes are called, for obvious reasons.) She did not make the klompen. We got those at De Klomp Wooden Shoe factory in Holland, Michigan, which is still in operation to this day. There, you can buy everything from tiny souvenir klompen to ones that fit you to huge painted klompen to put on your porch. You can watch the shoes being carved and hollowed out. You can have your name woodburned onto a pair if you wish. The whole place smells really good, like fresh wood shavings and woodburning smoke.

Here is someone I know (also of Frisian blood), modeling the klompen and the milk maid buckets. I know the blurring, and the basket in the foreground, make it look like this picture was taken in a studio, but it was actually snapped outdoors. The roses are real and those are real, fake Dutch farmer accoutrements.

If you, Reader, work outdoors (whether it’s farming or forestry or plein-air paintings), what do you prefer for spring mud shoes?

I’m a D— Fine Latin Teacher!

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

This is from an old Doonesbury comic by Gary Trudeau. My dad used to be a big Trudeau fan and had a large collection of his books. I devoured them as a kid, which I didn’t realize was giving me a very leftie view of modern American history. But it’s funny little human moments like the one above that make Trudeau (at least his older work) so appealing.

Interestingly, “Herbert” looks a bit like one of my Linguistics professors in college, except for the cigarette.

And now … I actually am a Latin teacher. And d— fine one.

I’d be snapped up in a minute.

What Is A Tell?

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments

A tell is, essentially, a man-made hill that consists of layers upon layers of ancient ruins.

I first heard about tells in a Biblical Archaeology context. The Levant is filled with tells. Often, the original city was built on a high spot to begin with. Then, as successive generations of the city were destroyed and rebuilt, the tell got higher and higher. In the Levant, you often find a current city still thriving on top of the tell. So there is a modern city on top of a medieval city on top of a Greco-Roman city top of an Israelite city on top of a Canaanite city on top of a city from the time of Sumer. If you dig down carefully through these tells, you will find mosaics, pots, coins, garbage, all kinds of good stuff. Tells are different from grave mounds because they don’t usually contain grave goods carefully selected, but rather the debris of everyday life, and often the ash layers of past battles.

Well, it turns out, the Levant ain’t the only place that gots tells! I am currently reading The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, by Marija Gimbutas, published in 1991. As you can tell (haha!) from the title, Gimbutas has her own spin on the history of Old Europe, about which I will no doubt post later. But today, I am just here to talk about tells. There are many tells in Thessaly, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, western Ukraine and southern Hungary (as we call them today) which show that in the 6,000 to 4,000s B.C., the Balkans were a happenin’ place. They revealed tidy planned cities, sometimes of a few thousand people, with hearths, idols, loom weights, and “exquisite” pots. (I love it when archeologists call something like a pot “exquisite.” It means they are really excited about it.)

I have previously posted about the Vinca Signs, which came from this culture area and may have been an alphabet, though Gimbutas looks like she’s gearing up to treat them as primarily religious symbols. The settlements in this area are all fairly uniform, especially in their earlier stages, which says to me that people spread out quickly, probably from the Levant via Turkey and Macedonia. The climate at the time was rainier than now, which made farming easier. The sea levels were probably also lower, which might have facilitated travel.

Take a look at the photo at the top of this post. It comes from page 13 of Gimbutas’ book. The upper image is labeled “Argisa tell, west of Larisa, Thessaly.” The lower one: “Profile of Sesklo tell, c. 12 m of cultural deposits, with Early Neolithic (Early Ceramic) at the base and classical Sesklo on the top, c. 65th – 57th cents. B.C.”

Twelve meters of cultural deposits! Imagine the riches.

At the time this book was published, a few tells in the Balkan area had been excavated (Sesklo by Gimbutas herself), but most had not. I expect that is still true today. There have been some “hills” in Bosnia that turned out to be pyramids and to have tunnels inside, but really, even archeologists like Gimbutas who realize that Old Europe was much more advanced than previously thought are just getting started. I doubt that everything will be excavated, or the ancient story fully told, in this life. But if you have any interest in such things at all, it’s amazing to think of all the wealth of all those tells sitting there with their meters and meters of secrets.

Exquisite.