Liberal Christian Commentary

WWJD: Year A, Proper 15

2008-08-13T10:27:00.005-05:00

Genesis 45:1-15; Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Psalm 133; Psalm 67; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: 10-28

Matthew’s Jesus may have actually said that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person; rather it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person.” The version in the Gospel of Thomas (Thomas 14:5) puts the saying in the context of Jesus’s itinerant ministry: “When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you . . .” Matthew’s context has Jesus preaching to a crowd that includes those pesky Pharisees. Later, Peter (among the more dim-witted in the entourage, according to Matthew) insists that Jesus explain the “riddle.” The explanation has for two millennia obscured the real point, which is not about sexual immorality, evil intentions, and blasphemies, as pious Matthew would have us believe.

The real point is that living in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion obviates the need for any rules about what is or is not “kosher” or politically correct. The Apostle Paul is saying much the same thing behind all the polemics and despite the cutting and pasting by the Elves.

If we concentrate on Romans 11:29-32, with the story of Joseph’s reconciliation with his dastardly brothers firmly in mind, then the message for today is a very pious one: Just as we all are “disobedient” to God’s rules (regarding the Ten Commandments, abortion, same-sex marriage, “sexual sin,” gun ownership), but have now received God’s forgiveness (by believing that Jesus died in our place and was bodily resurrected), so “they” (by implication, “the Jews”) have also been disobedient and have also been forgiven (therefore, supporting the government of Israel regardless of the circumstances is “God’s Will”). Then comes the kicker: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” Here is the monster God (graphically illustrated by Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ), who deliberately causes people to fall into evil so that “he” can then save us and cause us to love “him.” Such an interpretation is nothing more than a justification for abuse at every level of human experience – the exact opposite of distributive justice-compassion, and light-years from what the Apostle Paul was trying to say. The Elves strive mightily to avoid the anti-semitism that can arise from an uninformed and literal reading of Paul’s argument. But by not providing the context and allowing the full depth and breadth of Paul’s polemic to be worked through, we are hard-pressed to arrive at any other conclusion.

Look at what Paul says in Romans 11:11-12: “So I ask, have they (the Jews) stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumbling, salvation has come to the Gentiles . . . Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean?” And later in verse 15: “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead!” Emphasis mine.

Then, assuming we still won’t get his point, Paul uses the metaphor of some branches that were broken from a healthy olive tree, and a wild shoot grafted into their place. Again, the argument takes some careful reading. Paul does say, “For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you . . . Note [God’s] severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.”

What is God’s kindness? It is distributive justice-compassion, usually misunderstood as “mercy.” “Mercy” as imperial theology uses the term most often means feeling sorry for a criminal, and converting the sentence from the death penalty to life in prison without parole. God’s kindness under Covenant, on the other hand, means distributive justice-compassion: taking into consideration the entire context, then acting with radical abandonment of self-interest to ensure fairness. When Paul talks about “full inclusion” and “acceptance” of the Jews, he means what he has said throughout this letter to the Romans, that nothing can separate us from the love of God as evidenced and experienced in the life and teachings of Jesus, whom Christians call the Christ. God has no litmus test for inclusion in the Kingdom except to do our best to live in distributive justice-compassion. No one is left out: neither slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor gentile; and when we fail – because of a “thorn in the flesh” or any other shortcoming, we are saved by God’s grace. Belief in a resuscitated corpse has nothing to do with it.

Nevertheless, don’t get too smug about your salvation. God has always been very clear about the preference extended in God’s realm to those who live in distributive justice-compassion. There are consequences for those who do not, generally having to do with becoming trapped in imperial forms of retributive justice, and theologies of piety, war, victory, peace – not to mention environmental holocaust.

Look what Joseph did, when his brothers came looking for food-aid in a time of drought and famine in their own land. Joseph – now part of Pharaoh’s imperial rule – could have enslaved them on the spot, or sent them away to starve and die. Instead, remembering that he was part of God’s Covenant with his great-grandfather Abraham, his grandfather Isaac, and his father Jacob, he took them in. In the grand scheme of the Bible, of course, we Christians can make the next leap and claim that because of Joseph’s justice-compassion, the Hebrew people did become enslaved, which allowed the great liberator Moses to appear on the scene, and ultimately, of course, Jesus, whom Christians call the Messiah. We can also “take in” the Jews by conversion – forceful or otherwise – as the dogma that underlies Christian Zionism assumes.

But the point is not supersessionary arrogance. The point is the continuing development of human consciousness toward distributive justice-compassion. The story is about the continuing inevitable normalcy of civilization toward the theology of Empire (piety, war, victory), and the ongoing struggle to remain true to the Covenant: non-violence, distributive justice-compassion, peace.

In today’s U.S. society, the aphorism Jesus might use to illustrate his reversal of imperial piety might be, “A victim is only a victim when personal power is unclaimed.”

Joseph certainly did not remain a victim of his brother’s injustice. He took advantage whenever he could of the personal talents and power he had, and eventually won a place for himself that allowed him to rescue his entire family. Most extraordinary of all, he completely reconciled with his brothers – just like Esau did with Jacob (the Elves left that part out of the lectionary). There is a pattern here, if we are willing to see it. Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount is about the empowerment of the poor and disenfranchised, victims of imperial power, which turns out not to be “power” at all. Once a victim is empowered, that person ceases to be a victim. Jesus himself did not die a helpless victim. Jesus died in active, non-violent resistance to injustice.

The U.S. medical system (I refuse to call it “health care”) is front and center for many of us and certainly for me, as my mother lies dying in a poorly-managed nursing facility, whose policies and procedures are borderline at best, and legally suspicious at worst. We are caught in a web of imperial piety, consisting of social norms, “Christian” beliefs, legal definitions, and of course, the consequences of market forces allowed to run amok by political expediency. To file a complaint with the State is to risk retaliation on the part of the providers, even though such retaliation is against the law. We have neither the money, nor enough evidence to pursue a malpractice lawsuit, but we are not interested in revenge; we are interested in accountability.

That same pious imperial web ensnared Jim Adkisson, who invaded the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on a Sunday morning in July. He was not able to break out of his victim role. Instead he attacked the most convenient representative of “liberal” ideas, which he blamed for his inability to find and keep a job, support his family, and ultimately fulfill his perceived obligations as a man in U.S. society. He remains in jail, charged with one count of murder so far, under $1 million bond.

How can we reverse imperial power today? Or, in the pious slogan of the late 1990s, What Would Jesus Do? First of all, what Jesus did, what Mr. Adkisson was unable to do, and what we must do, is drive a stake through the heart of our all-too-human desire for retribution. The State will exact its revenge, and the UUA will continue its stand for liberal values -- but not so far as to radically abandon its own self-interest and work for reconciliation with either Mr. Adkisson or his family. Perhaps it is too much to ask. After all, in a market-driven society, who has time to empower the powerless?

Secondly, we must reverse the insidious lie that takes literally the Pauline admonition that “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ.” We must not be “content” with injustice. Nor must we be “content” with the easy hegemony that declares that anyone who does not believe that Jesus died for our sins is not a part of the kingdom of God. As Jesus said, it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. What defiles us is the tacit agreement with imperial injustice, and its accompanying theology.

Isaiah still has the last word: “Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right . . . And the foreigners . . . all who . . . hold fast my covenant – these I will bring to my holy mountain. . . . for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

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The Sound of Silence: Year A Proper 14

2008-08-06T14:56:00.002-05:00

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; 1 Kings 19:9-13; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45b; Psalm 85:8-13; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

What new meaning can be wrung from the metaphor of Jesus walking on the water and pulling the unstable Peter to safety in the boat as the wind dies down? After 2,000 years, we have certainly heard and said it all – including the defiant retort from the underpaid, overworked middle manager (or Greek slave – pick your era): “Sorry, I only pass water, not walk on it!” We could reach for a clue in the fascinating factoid revealed in the notes in the Harper Collins Study Bible (p. 1885, note 14.27), that ancient Jewish mariners used to carry in their boats a magical club engraved with “I Am” to shake at the storm threatening their safety – sort of like the land-locked witch who throws a silver dagger into the earth in the path of the cyclone, thereby splitting and defeating it. There may be a scientific possibility that such action on the part of the witch could rearrange the electrical forces generated by a tornado out on the prairie, and so it could be construed as trust in the covenant with the natural forces of the universe – but all we would be doing is joining the biblical literalists, and the Elves who herd us willing or not along the supersessionist path.

Joseph’s brothers seem to be understandably tired of Joseph and his special coat (with “sleeves” or “many colors”). Any little brother who rubs in the fact that he is Daddy’s favorite by bragging about dreams of superiority is courting karmic consequences. But we blithely hit the highlights on the way to proving Jesus’s ancestry, and don’t worry about scaring our children with Sunday School tales of terror – not to mention justifying the worst examples of sibling rivalry.

Matthew’s Jesus is Moses, constantly withdrawing to mountain tops to commune with God, then leading the people through the Dead Sea waters. Jesus walking on the water evokes God who “tramples on the sea” (Job 9:8), and“[whose] way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen . . . .” Psalm 77:19. The hidden realm of God leads us to liberation through uncharted waters, leaving no trace but righteousness (justice-compassion), which creates the path for our steps.

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

Paul Simon, 1966

Our favorite prophet Elijah is hiding out in his cave listening to “the still small voice” of God, but we need to read the beloved passage from 1st Kings carefully. According to the notes in the Harper Collins Study Bible (p. 551), the translation of the Hebrew is just ambiguous enough to cast some doubt on whether Elijah (like Paul Simon) heard anything other than his own despair in the silence that followed the storm. God does speak to Elijah, after Elijah repeats his tale of woe: “. . . I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away.” God then tells Elijah to anoint a new king, AND to anoint a new prophet. “Thanks for your service, Elijah,” God seems to be saying. “I accept your resignation as soon as you have trained your replacement.”

Fools said I, you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

The silence of the collective Church in the 21st Century is deafening. Perhaps the silence rises and grows because the call from the liberal church for inclusive, distributive justice is drowned out by the fundamentalists’ exclusive, retributive message, which the media have assumed defines “Christianity.” Humans are normally able and all too eager to attach value to what attracts or repels. What is attractive is good; what is repellent is evil – except for those among us who have turned the logical experience on its head and insist that what is attractive is evil, and what is repellent is good. The torturers at Guantanamo Bay Prison come to mind, along with the entrepreneurs who set up the market-based disaster called the United States medical system, where neither “Health” nor “Care” are to be found – whether one has money and lawyers or not.

Some of the silence is due to seminary training, which neglects the reality of a need for a course in “Crucifixion 101.” Newly minted ministers may be grounded in post-modern theology, scholarship, and cosmology, but most are not equipped with the tools they need to lead parishioners out of the religious concepts of the 19th Century. As a result, instead of reclaiming Christianity for a new age, ministers in order to stay employed preach what the people are used to and want to hear.

Some signs are appearing that the current crop of young adult evangelicals may be ready and willing fora kind of accommodation with the left in terms of social and economic justice, if not a transformation. But conflict between the radical inclusiveness that liberals are convinced was taught by Jesus, and the dogmas surrounding homosexuality and the sanctity of life that conservative fundamentalists insist upon, still stand in the way. The fact that conservative Christianity has become identified with policies of the current United States government adds an additional layer of suspicion to liberals, who are accused and assumed to be unpatriotic with their opposition to war, their insistence on universal health care, radical response to climate change, prison and justice reform, etc.

No wonder old Elijah emerged from the silence in such a negative state that God had to act to replace him.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whispered in the sounds of silence.

If one reads Romans 10:5-15 thinking that “righteousness” means politically correct piety, Paul’s words are a call for crusade against everyone who does not sign up. “. . . [I]f you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him frm the dead, you will be saved.” What could be more clear? One’s life is justified (rationalized) by belief in the life and death and literal physical resurrection of Jesus. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” from Hell at the end of life. Hence the smug use of the aphorism, “there are no atheists in foxholes.”

Christian “faith” has become believing in magic: walking on water, calming storms, curing terminal illness, finding parking places, or extracting cars from snowbanks. While there are no magic wands or crystal balls, the cross has nevertheless conveyed magic power. We make the sign of the cross for protection or good luck. Crucifixes are especially useful for waving in front of vampires or other forces of evil. Pieces of the true cross (and its mojo) are still for sale by enterprising shopkeepers.

But pious interpretations are not what is going on here.

Paul asks, “how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed . . . of whom they have never heard?” So the call goes out for witnesses, missionaries, to bring the “good news.” These words just roll off the keyboard, as they have flowed from pens and from the extemporaneous artistry of countless preachers and theologians, most of whom have missed the point completely. The Apostle Paul’s mystic insights are incomprehensible to most people, who only want to eat, sleep, make and raise children, be happy, be healthy, and live forever.

Christian “faith” is not about anybody coming back from the dead, nor is it about avoiding death altogether. Christian “faith” is trust in the distributive justice-compassion that holds sway in the Universe, despite human social organization and understanding. Nothing distinguishes “Christian” from other faiths that have discovered the same truth except that Christian faith arises from the life and teachings of Jesus.

Chapter 10 of Paul’s letter to the Romans continues his polemic against the Jewish communities who disagreed with his conclusions about who Jesus was. It is incomprehensible to Paul that anyone who heard the story would either not believe it, or not realize its radical meaning. Paul would make the same argument today. The cherry-picking Elves do a great disservice to Paul’s theology by skipping around, perhaps hoping to avoid the anti-semitism that has plagued Christianity from the beginning. In the section skipped in proper 14 (Romans 10:16-21), Paul quotes Isaiah: “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me . . . All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” Does this mean those who refuse to believe in the literal story about Jesus? Or does this mean that – as Jesus preached – the realm of God is all around us, ready for anyone to open their eyes and look and listen, and step into that realm?

People can only know if they are told, Paul says. “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” “. . . Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” The word has gone out through all the lands, through the best scholarship, through voices recovered from the past in Qumran and Nag Hamadi, through the work of “biblical archeologists” excavating Jesus, and through the insights of cosmologists.
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The prophet Isaiah asks the same question Paul asks in his seminal letter to the fledgling Christian community in Rome (Isaiah 40:21-31): How can anyone not have heard? And once heard, how can anyone not get it?

Put Your Own On First: Year A, Proper 13

2008-08-01T14:13:00.002-05:00

Genesis 32:22-31; Isaiah 55:1-5; Psalm 17:1-7, 15; Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

The Elves may have cherry-picked Romans 9 in order to avoid anti-Jewish preaching. The portions not included certainly could be read by the literal or unwary as a diatribe against Judaism. Paul’s point of course is not anti-Jewish. He spells it out very clearly in those first five verses we are supposed to read: “They are Israelites,” he writes, “and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; . . . from them . . . comes the Messiah.” But he is disappointed that many Jews rejected the idea that Jesus is the Messiah. He argues that they relied on works mandated by law instead of faith in the ancient Covenant with God, which in Paul’s mind was renewed and manifested in the life and teachings of Jesus. Therefore, God has extended to Gentiles the opportunity to sign on to the Covenant. Jews, of course, then and now, would disagree that they failed to measure up to the promise of distributive justice-compassion.

Whether Paul’s polemics deserve attention or not, the whole series of readings for Proper 13 is about Covenant, starting with Isaiah 55. Just as God extended his Covenant with David to include the entire nation of Israel, so God now extends to all the world the opportunity to participate in the ongoing restoration of God’s Kingdom of distributive justice-compassion. The Feeding of the 5,000 is an illustration of the God that Jesus preaches in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25-30), and it is an illustration of the invitation to abundant life extended by the prophet Isaiah. “Listen carefully to me and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant . . . .”

The story of Jacob wrestling with God (or the angel of God) is also used in Proper 24, Year C – but there it is an alternative to Jeremiah, and is purported to be related to the gospel and epistle readings. In Year A, we skip the rest of the Jacob story, his reconciliation with Esau, and his establishment of settlement at Bethel (Jerusalem), so that we can go directly to the story of Joseph, and continue the lineage to the birth of Jesus. But the story of Jacob’s fight with God is set in the middle of Jacob’s dilemma about how to deal with the coming meeting between himself and his estranged brother Esau. After the fight Jacob is reborn-renamed as Israel (the one who strives with God) because he has striven with God (the angel) and humans (Laban) and prevailed. The next thing that happens is reconciliation with Esau – distributive justice.

The point is that Covenant – living in partnership with God in distributive justice-compassion – means life here now, not there then. In other words, reconcile with your brother and you will participate in the available abundance. When we fight with God about it, we always get hurt. In other words, if we resist dealing with the injustices in life – such as robbing our brother/sister of their birth right – we may well end up mentally and/or physically impaired. This is not “judgment.” These are the consequences of not acting from radical abandonment of self-interest.

To return to Paul’s argument, only the radical abandonment of self-interest counts. The law does not require such action. Only faith in God’s realm produces salvation, which is life lived in partnership with God in justice-compassion. Works prescribed by law support the systems of injustice because we are not personally invested in them. We have a personal investment in reconciliation with friends, family, enemies.

Radical abandonment of self-interest (i.e., “love”) is easiest to understand at the corporate level. Commercial, political, social “self-interests” are targets that attract money, media, and throngs of dedicated workers, whether for church mission fields, political action committees, marches, rallies, enthusiasm, and results. Political and social liberalism in the United States would be closer to death than it is without the willingness of people to abandon immediate gratification for the greater good.

But where the rubber hits the road, or perhaps where the Apostle Paul got it at the gut level (see Romans 7:21-25), is in the mundane realities of day-to-day intimate living with self, family, friends. Traditional teaching and understanding have it backwards. Sacrificial love is not about throwing yourself under the bus. Sacrificial love means letting go of guilt and ego involvement. It means taking a break, nourishing yourself, saying goodbye. The first instruction the flight attendant gives us when the oxygen mask comes down is to put your own mask on first, then help the one next to you.

In a crisis, when Death is sitting on the chair beside your Mother, we want God to intervene, to save, to prevent the inevitable course – whether it is dictated by the medical profession, the legal profession, or the Church itself. But look at what Paul says in the rest of his polemic in Romans 9:14-18: “[God] has mercy on whomever he chooses, and [God] hardens the heart of whomever he chooses.” In other words, in God’s realm, the rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Remember that the opposite to the Covenant – nonviolence, distributive justice-compassion, peace – is the theology of Empire: Piety, War (violence), Victory, and conditional peace. The theology of Empire requires victims: victims of war, and of domestic or public violence. Victims are the result of a justice system that is based on judgmental retribution and payback, not neutral fairness. Under Covenant, there can be neither victims nor enemies, because those who live by distributive justice-compassion know that true power lies in trusting God’s realm. Life under Covenant means the radical abandonment of self-interest. Those who love their enemies have no enemies.

When we are in alignment with that Covenant, intervention can be seen to be interference on the part of Empire, not the fulfillment of God’s distributive justice-compassion. Paul says later in Chapter 9:30-33: “Gentiles who did not strive for righteousness have attained it, that is righteousness through faith; but Israel, who did strive for the righteousness that is based on the law, did not succeed in fulfilling that law. Why not? Because they did not strive for it on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works.”

When we let go and trust in the Covenant, everything falls into place. Does that mean that justice is served, or that suffering ends, or that miracles overturn the physical realities of the Universe as we know it? Of course not. Death is part of life, and life is whatever happens to us. What “works” is the marvelous course that opens out before us as soon as we let go of any thought of making something happen that is not already in the offing.

On the evening of July 3, a hospital dumped my Mother into a “skilled nursing/rehab” facility, which I was unable at the 11th hour to avoid. On Friday July 4th, the biggest political patriotic holiday in the United States, I had to say goodbye to her and fly 1,000 miles back to my home. All I could tell her was, I had done my best, and would have to trust the people in the system to do their job, and the creative forces of distributive justice to hold sway. Like a kayack in rapids, she and I had to just ride the river. Any attempt to intervene with a paddle or by shifting our weight would have wrecked us on the rocks. That is part of what it means to radically abandon self-interest.

Am I going to sue the hospital and take on the whole catastrophe of the U.S. medical system? Call Fox News and start an investigation into nursing home malpractice? Not directly. Those kinds of actions are usually self-gratifying, ego-justifying, Empire-supporting manifestations of works based on law, without faith, and outside the Covenant. Does that mean we just turn our faces to the wall and die? Absolutely not. We are not victims. There is work to be done in the “right to die” movement, which the United Church of Christ has begun to seriously explore. There are hospital and nursing home chaplaincies in need of personnel grounded in Covenant; and in the interim, there are blogs to write.

Did – will – my Mother magically recover full strength and vibrant life? No. Not on this Planet. But, as Isaiah promises, according to God’s Covenant, she shall go out with joy, and be led forth in peace. . . . Those who live in Covenant with distributive justice-compassion are not victims, but victors. “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law,” sings Paul in 1st Corinthians. “But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

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Sex, Lies, and Standing Stones: Year A Proper 12

2008-07-17T14:06:00.003-05:00

Genesis 29:15-28; 1 Kings 3:5-12; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b; Psalm 128; Psalm 119:129-136; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

The Elves’ focus on the patriarchs and the ancestral stories leading to Jesus misses the best parts of the Abraham saga. But to be fair, the reconstruction by the biblical writers of these foundational myths only hits the highlights. For a midrash between the lines of Genesis chapters 29-35, see the now classic novel by Anita Diamant: The Red Tent.

If we confine ourselves to the Elves’ selection, Jacob is a hopelessly romantic naif. But if we read the whole story, Jacob begins to look more like the first practitioner of non-violent resistance. After 20-plus years, two wives, two concubines, and 8 or 10 children, he finally has had enough. He declares his intention to return to his own country. Rachel grabs the family icons. Jacob tells off evil uncle Laban for all his cheating shenanigans. Laban capitulates (after being intimidated off his search of Jacob’s tents by Rachel’s claim that “the way of women is upon me”). Together Jacob and Laban create a cairn of stones and a menhir to mark their agreement never to trespass on one another’s land again.

For those who want to cut to the chase without getting bogged down in all the sex, deception, and pagan magic between the portion of the story chosen for proper 12 and the portion chosen for proper 13, the Elves offer a snippet from 1st Kings. After the death of the great King David, Solomon asks for wisdom rather than wealth, and of course as we all know, he gets both. What a relief. No need for magic spells in order to assure that God’s promise will be fulfilled.

But Jacob, Leah, and Rachel have a more basic connection with the realm of God. They are people of the earth and practitioners of earth magic. When Leah’s son Reuben brings mandrakes from the field, Rachel pleads with Leah to let her have them so she can use them herself and end the infertility she has suffered from. Leah trades them for a night with Jacob, which of course produces yet another son. But apparently the mandrakes work for Rachel, because at last she has a son, and that son is Joseph – the first savior of the Hebrew people.

Jacob does his own magic in order to assure the safety of his flocks of sheep and goats. He agrees to prolong his stay with Laban if Laban will pay him with black, and speckled and spotted sheep and goats. Laban promptly removes all of those from his herds and sends them off three days distance. Jacob then retaliates. He carefully takes branches from sacred trees: poplar, almond, and plane, and carves the bark to make poles that are striped and spotted with white. He plants them in the ground beside the watering hole whenever Laban’s stronger flocks are there. When Laban’s weaker sheep and goats are at the watering hole, Jacob takes the poles away. He separates his own flocks from Laban’s. When Laban’s stronger sheep and goats see the striped poles, they produce black and white offspring. The storyteller is gleeful: “Thus [Jacob] grew exceedingly rich, and had large flocks, and male and female slaves, and camels and donkeys!”

Which is the greater wisdom? Solomon’s wisdom, which is based on the written law, or the wisdom of Jacob and his people, which is based on their relationship with the natural world in which they live? Solomon – in all his glory – is defined by his piety and his strict adherence to the law. Jacob relies on his covenant relationship with God. Solomon is also a King – subject to all the temptations of Empire and the normalcy of civilization, despite his great wisdom. Neither Jacob nor Laban is interested in creating an imperial alliance. Jacob’s honest cleverness has defeated Laban’s selfish deception. The stone pillar marks their territorial boundary, and neither one will cross it.

Contrasting the imperial wisdom of Solomon’s settled civilization with the tribal wisdom of a primordial people can only serve briefly as metaphor. The differences produced by the evolution of consciousness are too great. By the time Jesus walked the earth, the forces of Empire had become firmly established, and the struggle between the distributive justice-compassion of Covenant with God and the injustice inherent in human law had been documented and debated for thousands of years. Still, Jesus’s parables call all who have ears to hear back into the covenant relationship with the wisdom and the realm of God.

The version of the mustard seed metaphor in Thomas 20:1-4 is thought to be closer to the original as told by Jesus because it has no interpretation attached to it: “[Heaven’s imperial rule is] like a mustard seed. It’s the smallest of seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.” The tiny secret to the Kingdom of God is hidden in plain sight. God’s Realm is not the big imperial power. As the Jesus Seminar scholars put it, “God’s domain . . . was pervasive [like the mustard weed] but unrecognized, rather than noisy and arresting.”

The parable of the leavening in the flour describing the nature of God’s rule is thought to have come directly from Jesus because whether it occurs in Matthew Luke or Thomas, there are no modifications or explanations. When was the last time one little packet of yeast – even if it was Fleischman’s Rapid Rise – was enough to leaven 50 pounds of flour? But 1st Century people – rich or poor – did not get their leavening from little foil packets. Perhaps the“leaven” was a kind of sour dough starter. To use sour dough starter, you take a small amount and mix it in with the other ingredients and allow it to “leaven” the whole batch. The Jesus Seminar scholars point out that the leaven is “hidden,” not “mixed.” “Hiding” a bit of starter in 50 pounds of flour is an apt metaphor for the power of justice-compassion. Because it is not seen, acting with distributive justice-compassion – radically abandoning self-interest – as Jesus taught, at first seems ineffective and lost in the imperial injustice that holds sway among oppressed people. But eventually the movement grows until the whole population is involved, and liberation is won. As Victor Hugo said, “nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

As the man in charge of devious uncle Laban’s fields, Jacob could have done something similar to the one who found treasure. A farmer, in danger of losing his own land to the tax collector is forced to farm land adjacent to his own that belongs to the occupier. In the process of plowing the adjoining acreage, he discovers a buried treasure. He does not tell the land owner about the treasure. Instead, he covers it up, and sells his own land to buy that field. How is this kind of cheating representative of God’s imperial rule? It is a perfect example of subversion of empire in the name of the common man.

The pearl of great price is actually worthless to the one who sells everything to get it. In order to live in the normalcy of civilization, he would need to sell it. But nothing is needed for living in God’s Realm.

Jacob’s evil uncle Laban, like 21st century multi-national corporations, concedes defeat without admitting error, and invites a covenant with Jacob (Genesis 31:43-44). “May the Lord watch between you and me, when we are absent one from the other,” he says. It is not a blessing. It is an invocation of God’s judgment, should either one break the covenant represented by the cairn and the standing stone. But God’s realm is not about judgment, despite the threat from Matthew’s Jesus that “God’s messengers will go out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw the evil into the fiery furnace . . .” Matthew is stuck on fiery furnaces and payback, completely missing his own point.

God’s Kingdom is not about Solomon’s piety, war, victory. The way into the Realm of God is Covenant with God. Rachel did not need to steal the household gods from Laban. God’s part of the bargain with Jacob – marked with the cairn and the standing stone – is to be with him regardless of where he goes.

The Apostle Paul is talking about the same secret. If God is for us, who can be against us? Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Indeed, Paul says, nothing can separate us from God’s love. Nothing can keep us from God’s kingdom, realized in the life of Jesus, and in the lives of anyone who signs on to the Covenant.

BLOG ARCHIVE

Ladders, Circles, Covenant: Year A, Proper 11

2008-07-16T08:49:00.001-05:00

Genesis 28:10-19a; Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19; Isaiah 44:6-8; Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24; Psalm 86:11-17; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

We are climbing Jacob’s Ladder, soldiers of the cross.
We are dancing Sarah's Circle, sisters, brothers, all.
Every round goes higher, higher, soldiers of the cross
Here we seek and find our story, sisters, brothers, all.
Sinner do you love my Jesus? soldiers of the cross.
We will all do our own naming, sisters, brothers, all.
If you love him why not serve him? soldiers of the cross
Every round a generation, sisters, brothers, all.
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, soldiers of the cross
On and on the circle's moving, sisters, brothers, all

The Abraham saga continues, with Jacob’s dream. Christian dogma claims that Jacob’s dream is about divinity interacting with humanity. The patriarchs of ancient Israel were all 100% human, even though they may have dreamt of a great destiny. But Christianity trumps all that with the human/divine Jesus/God, who came to dwell among us. Cherry-picked Paul piously points orthodox theology into the apocalyptic future, “while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” Matthew’s Jesus rants that “The son of Adam will send his messengers and they will gather all the snares and the subverters of the Law out of his domain and throw them into the fiery furnace [where] people will weep and grind their teeth.”

Jewish legend says that Jacob’s pillar, which he set up to mark the spot of his prophetic dream, (Beth El) is the same spot where his father Isaac was prepared by Abraham for sacrifice; it is also the Temple Mount of present-day Jerusalem. Global political and religious layers of meaning surround this story. It should be treated with respect, and not with glib literalism by anyone, including descendants of the People of the Book.

Recent Christian youth and feminist leadership has replaced the militant sexism of “climbing Jacob’s ladder, soldiers of the cross” with “dancing Sarah’s circle, sisters, brothers all.” Somehow the original seems more honest. “Sinner do you love my Jesus? If you love him, why not serve him? Soldiers of the cross” can’t be mistaken for peaceful coexistence with Jews, Muslims, or any other non-Christian spirituality. “Dancing Sarah’s Circle” sounds inclusive, but Christian hegemony lurks in the background like a watermark on fine stationery: “Here is where we find our story; we will all do our own naming; every round a generation, sisters, brothers all.” The story of Sarah, Keturah, Rebekka, Rachel, Leah, Dinah, Bilhah, Zilpah, and all the other women, named and unnamed, who contributed to the founding mythos of the Jewish people and the Jewish religion is not a Christian story – except by “adoption.” That is certainly not where Paul was trying to take his Roman community.

The power in these readings is the power of covenant relationship. In Jacob’s dream, God’s voice confirms the promise made to his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac, that the land belongs to them and their descendants, and those descendants shall be as numerous as the grains of dust on the earth. God also promises that wherever Jacob and his descendants go, God is still their God. So God and God’s realm are not confined to a particular geographical location, but reside in the hearts of those who accept the Covenant. The Elves leave out Jacob’s part of the deal. For the first time, the patriarchs make a promise to God. Jacob promises to establish the pillar as “God’s house,” and to return to God one-tenth of everything God gives to him. Genesis 28:19b-22. As the editor of the Harper Collins Study Bible wryly comments, “Jacob’s faith is more markedly contractual than Abraham’s” (p. 43).

The portion of Paul’s letter plucked out of context for Proper 11 is also about Covenant. Whenever we join Jesus in the relationship with God that is so close as to be the same as a father, we are then children of God, and heirs of God. What do we inherit? Rather than one strip of real estate in the Middle East, the heirs of God, brothers and sisters of the Christ, inherit the Realm/Kingdom of God, where distributive justice rules. The caveat is that we “suffer” with Jesus. In other words, we participate with the spirit of Jesus in restoring/reclaiming God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion. “Suffering” is not about persecution and torture for believing that a corpse came back to life. “Suffering” is what happens when we attempt to live in radical abandonment of self-interest and fail. “Suffering” is what happens when by extraordinary commitment we succeed in achieving that radical abandonment of self-interest, and the systems of retribution inherent in empire intervene.

Paul rhapsodizes on: “. . . for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; . . . that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. . .” This is not about believers going to heaven in the next life. It is about partners actualizing the promise of God’s rule in this life. The “children of God” are not some superior race. They are whoever joins the program – Christian or non-Christian; people “of the book” or not. Has this happened yet? No. “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” The Elves cut him off here in mid-argument. The finale comes next week.

Meanwhile, Matthew’s Jesus proceeds to further complicate and rob the parable of the sower of its covenantal transforming power. He has apparently forgotten his own Sermon on the Mount and has sold out to fear. The parable of the sabotage of weeds introduces an enemy that comes in the night and sows weed seed in the field so that it is impossible to eradicate the weeds without also destroying the good crop. (Sort of like that hapless Canadian farmer who was sued by Monsanto.) In a variation on the 13th Century epithet, “slay them all, God will know his own,” this apocalyptic Jesus says, “Let them grow up together until the harvest, and . . . I’ll say to the harvesters, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to burn . . . .’” What happened to “love your enemies”? Matthew 5:44.

Matthew’s Christian community – which possibly had been thrown out of their synagogue, or had chosen to leave – was very likely under siege. Viewed with suspicion by their neighbors, confronted with the destruction of the Temple, under surveillance by the Roman authorities, who can blame them for finding it difficult to love their enemies? That 1st or 2nd Century community, and others in similar circumstances, was not much different from communities today. Certainly the governments and the people in the Middle East are still fighting the land battles described in all the foundational myths. Dictatorships and oligarchies from Asia to Africa to South America deny human rights to their citizens to the detriment of their nations’ economic well-being. Further, since September 11, 2001, American society has been under political, social, and economic threat – mostly self-inflicted.

We do not need to follow Matthew’s Jesus into paranoia and the fear-mongering that arises from it. As the apostle Paul says, the present problems are nothing, compared with the transformation that is coming. The Elves should have had us read on in Romans 8 to verses 26-30. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness,” Paul says. “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” What is that call and purpose? To be partners with Jesus in bringing God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion into human civilization. “For those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.” What God knows and does looks to us like prior action, the editor reminds us. Harper-Collins Study Bible, NRSV, p. 2127. So Paul is not talking about some “predestination” that we are powerless to modify, which fore-ordains some to be “chosen” for “salvation” and others “chosen” for damnation. We are adopted children of God, and because of that, we are conformed to the image of Jesus the Christ. “Those whom [God] predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

Wow. The crowd should be on its feet cheering. All we have to do is sign up. Those whom God/dess knew would be her own, s/hecalled. Those whom God/dess called and who responded were thereby made holy and just; and those who were made just, were celebrated as belonging to – even inheriting– the kingdom, without bargain or price.

The Circle is open but unbroken, and the traffic on Jacob’s ladder is an interchange.

BLOG ARCHIVE

Insiders/Outsiders: Year A, Proper 10

2008-07-09T13:27:00.002-05:00

Genesis 25:19-34; Isaiah 55:10-13; Psalm 119:105-112; Psalm 65:1-13; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

The most obvious theme for these readings is the traditional Christian dichotomy: Insiders who know the secrets and are “saved” versus outsiders who refuse to hear the truth and are condemned. Insiders/outsiders brings up the second question in the series of four questions that underlies these commentaries: What is the nature of Jesus’s message? Inclusive or exclusive? The answer to this question determines believers’ attitudes toward themselves, their families, communities, global relationships, and God’s Kingdom itself – the created Universe.

The parables attributed to Jesus that are most likely authentically his creations always have an element of improbability, or a joke, that points to overturning social convention – whether in the 1st Century or the 21st. The clue to the meaning of the Parable of the Sower is not found in Matthew’s pious pontificating in 13:18-23. Nor is it found in the part the Elves skipped (13:10-17), where Matthew’s Jesus whines about the political fact (still true today) that “to those who have, more will be given . . . and from those who don’t have, even what they do have will be taken away.” The clue lies in the outrageous yield the good earth provides: 30%, 60%, 100%. The meaning of the clue comes into focus in commentary by Laurel A. Dykstra, “Living the Word” (Sojourners magazine, July 2008, p. 49): “Commenting on Mark’s earlier version of this parable [Mark 4:3-8], theological animator Ched Myers says, ‘The symbolic harvest represents a dramatic shattering of the vassal relationship between peasant and landlord.’ Such a harvest would allow a peasant family to eat, pay rent, taxes, and debts, and even buy land, effectively turning the social order on its head.”

Matthew’s Jesus provides an obvious and pious explanation, that leaves us with the idea that only Christians can hear the message and understand it and profit from it. But, as the Jesus Seminar scholars insist, “This disposition is entirely alien to Jesus, but characteristic of some strands of the early Christian movement that were akin to gnosticism. The Gnostics claimed to be in possession of esoteric knowledge that was necessary for salvation.” The Five Gospels, p. 193. For too long, Christians have bought into that idea and have made Jesus’s message exclusive. The parable of the sower is not about “insiders and outsiders,” as tradition and Matthew’s Jesus tell us. It is about grace and justice.

Psalm 65 sings the joy of an abundant earth and a just God; Psalm 119 praises God’s law, which sets up human society to live and prosper in abundance, justice, and peace. Isaiah 55 contains the original blessing, empowering us to go out with joy because our God is just and the world belongs to God. Jesus would not have said otherwise. As the sower scatters his seed, it falls wherever it falls. But when we live in God’s realm, fairness and abundant life prevail.

Is the story of Esau and Jacob also about “insiders and outsiders” or is it about the liberation that comes from throwing over tradition? If we get outside the Christian gloss, we find that the story raises basic questions about good and evil, and choosing not only whether to participate in establishing justice-compassion, but how to do so. “Jacob and Esau are the prototypes for two types of souls, each with a distinct role to play in the fulfillment of the Divine purpose in creation. Maimonides calls these two spiritual types ‘the perfectly pious’ and ‘the one who conquers his inclinations’; Rabbi Schneur Zalman refers to them as the ‘Tzaddik’ and the ‘Beinoni.’ Humanity is divided into these two types, writes Rabbi Schneur Zalman in his Tanya, because ‘there are two kinds of gratification before G-d. The first is generated by the good achieved by the perfectly righteous. But G-d also delights in the conquest of evil which is still at its strongest and most powerful in the heart, through the efforts of the ordinary, unperfected individual.’” From Meaningful Life.com / Chassidic Masters

Paul’s argument tells us that the imperfect individual is the one who is awarded the free gift of grace, just because he or she joins the ongoing struggle for distributive justice-compassion, begun by Jesus during his life, and continued by his spirit after his death. Justice as retribution, payback, the normal course of civilization, lies well outside God’s realm. The struggle is not only whether to redeem the world from its exile, but how. Christians should define themselves as those who model their lives after one who taught that the way to redemption was the radical abandonment of self-interest. “Belief” in life after death has nothing to do with it. Paul’s point is that life in the spirit of the Christ is about radical inclusiveness. There are no“insiders and outsiders.” There is only the free gift, available to all who choose to participate. But this begs the question, what about those who do not choose to participate?

Would anyone consciously choose not to participate in distributive justice-compassion? Suppose the answer to that is a resounding “no.” Suppose that the reason for evil-doers among humans is not that “When anyone listens to the message . . . and does not understand it, the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in the heart . . . .” Matthew 13:19a. If our sense of justice was truly distributive, “evil” would be understood to be reversible. The Genghis Kahns, the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Saddam Huseins, would not be enemies to be destroyed, but fellow human lives to be redeemed into justice.

In the continuing foundation myth of Abraham his twin grandsons Jacob and Esau are archetypal. The privileged Esau, certain of his “birthright” as first-born of the two, demands food after an unsuccessful day of hunting. In the typical hyperbole of ego, he claims to be dying of hunger anyway, so who needs a “birth right”? Jacob is only too happy to oblige. Applied to 21st Century global conditions, Jacob is the multi-national corporation that controls seed, land, markets, and commodities futures. Esau is the politically disempowered and the disenfranchised. Whether the Esaus of the Planet today are facing certain death anyway, or are caught in ideological systems that threaten well-being, they either are afraid to, or can’t afford to consider the social, political, and environmental consequences of selling out. We can’t push this portion of this foundational myth too far. Nevertheless, whether we see the incident as a clash of agrarian versus hunter-gatherer cultures, or as an allegory of the history of the Hebrew people as they established themselves and became dominant in the ancient Middle East, or as a cautionary tale for children caught up in the battles of sibling rivalry, the story contains all the worst elements of human behavior: Greed, treachery, arrogance, self-righteousness.

Romans 8:1-11 must be read in that light. Paul, after all, was a trained expert in Torah. He knew the stories and the traditions. When he writes, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace” he is not talking about premarital (or extramarital) sex. Paul has been arguing for 8 chapters that participation with the risen Christ in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion brings life and peace. To refuse to participate is death and suffering. Why? Because God’s law (not Roman law – or human law) is just. This is not about “believing” that a dead corpse came back to life, although Paul could only describe his extraordinary insight in those terms. “But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” In other words, even though we are trapped in systems that perpetuate injustice and death – where there is no god – if we are participating with the ongoing program of restoring justice-compassion to the Planet, we live with the Spirit in that realm.

There is therefore no condemnation – not even for the killers of Jesus – for those who accept the challenge and participate in the great work of justice-compassion. This teaching means that not only is the death penalty in the United States inappropriate for those who rape children, it is inappropriate for anyone no matter what the crime. The punitive, retributive, system that controls how the United States deals with aberrant behavior is the opposite of “justice.” Everyone deserves the chance to turn his or her life around and sign onto the program.

The gift of grace is free. This is an extraordinary claim. The free gift of grace is the same outrageous promise as the seed flung at random by the sower that produces 30%, 60%, even 100% return.

The Burden is Lite: Year A: Proper 9

2008-07-05T11:50:00.002-05:00

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Zechariah 9:9-12; Psalm 45:10-17; Psalm 145:8-14; Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

After all the heavy-duty theological argument of the past three weeks, we are rewarded with romance. Abraham’s servant finds Rebecca as a bride for Isaac, and the two of them become one of the love stories of the ages. Psalm 45 is an Ode to a Royal Wedding; Psalm 145 is a Psalm of David, praising God; while the Song of Solomon celebrates Spring, fertility, and the pagan rite of Sacred Marriage. The only sour note is old Paul, grousing on about how his “member” is at war with his mind, “making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” What a curmudgeonly post-script to love, sex, and destiny! Those pious Elves probably think the Song of Solomon is an allegory of God’s Love for Israel, or Christ’s Love for the Church!

Meanwhile, Matthew’s Jesus complains that “this generation” reminds him of “children sitting in the marketplaces who call out to others: ‘We played the flute for you but you wouldn’t dance; we sang a dirge, but you wouldn’t mourn.’” He whines on: “Just remember, John appeared on the scene neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He is demented.’ The son of Adam came both eating and drinking, and they say, ‘There’s a glutton and a drunk, a crony of toll collectors and sinners!’” Too bad we’re studying Matthew’s Gospel instead of John. If it were John’s Jesus, he’d be attending the Wedding at Cana, and turning the water into wine instead of complaining about not making a difference.

Including a portion of Zechariah in Proper 9 seems another non-sequitur. Here we are, three months after Easter, revisiting the aria from Handel’s Easter portion of The Messiah: “Rejoice, daughter of Zion; behold your king comes triumphant and victorious, . . . humble and riding on a donkey.” However, a clue is found in the Revised Common Lectionary edition of 1992. There is an asterisk beside this reading in the second Index, indicating that the alternative readings refer to a pair of readings in which the Old Testament reading and the Gospel reading are related.

Looking at the cherry-picked portion of Matthew’s Gospel, verses 25-30, Jesus is saying, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me . . . for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Singers will find their minds going on in Handel’s Messiah to the Mezzo Aria, and the accompanying chorus. Going back to last week’s reading in Jeremiah, clearly the reference is to the yoke Jeremiah put on his own neck, and the false prophet Hananiah, who destroyed it. However, the traditional view tells us that Jesus redeems and actualizes the metaphor by declaring that unlike the yoke that Jeremiah took upon himself, the yoke that Jesus offers is easy.

Is this a stretch or what? Especially given the fact that the Elves cherry-picked last week’s Jeremiah to such an extent that the yoke is never mentioned in the prescribed reading. Nevertheless, look at Paul’s lament in Romans 7:24b-25: “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Piety is easy, and the burden is indeed lite. Surely the point of the recommended readings is not that sex outside of marriage (defined strictly as between a man and a woman of course) is a sin. Wedding parties rule! Have a church picnic in the park instead of a service in the sanctuary! Read love poetry, including ee cummings and the entire Song of Songs! Thank God/dess for The Supreme Court of California!

For the purposes of liberal commentary, however, I owe it to Paul to reclaim Romans 7.

John Shelby Spong has theorized that the Apostle Paul was gay. In Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (Harper SanFrancisco 1991, pp. 116-120), Spong lays out an argument that Paul’s homosexuality drove him to seek salvation in Jewish law. Seeing that the new Christianity was beginning to overthrow that law, Paul became a zealous prosecutor, trying to stamp out a movement that threatened to overturn the very law (Torah) that “only by the most herculean efforts was holding Paul just above the abyss . . . .” But then like a bolt from the sky, he realized God’s free gift of justice-compassion – grace – given to all those who participate with the risen Christ in establishing God’s realm in this life and this time. This grace brought forgiveness of even the sin of murdering Jesus himself. Spong writes, “The being of Paul, a being he did not understand, a being he could not control, a being that all of the wisdom of his world and all of his sacred tradition condemned as worthy only of death, that being of Paul met the grace of God in the person of Jesus the Christ” p. 122. If Paul could experience this liberation, then everyone could.

Did Paul stop being who he was – whether a homosexual person or not? I would suggest that he became even more truly who he really was. If participation with the risen Christ means the radical abandonment of one’s self-interest, the Grace that is the free gift of God then is radical acceptance of one’s own condition, and the conditions of others – or, as the Unitarian Universalists put it in their First Principle: “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” Reading from the beginning of Romans 7, instead of cherry-picking the most scandalous portion, Paul says, “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code, but in the new life of the Spirit” Romans 7:6. Further, to take a sneak peak at next week’s theme, “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Romans 8:1.

Whatever one might surmise about Paul’s sexuality, and the liberating interpretation Spong presents, it is important to return to the guiding principles of context, and the integrity of the story (getting it straight). Paul is continuing his impassioned debate regarding works, faith, grace, and the law. He uses every trick of the trade, including hyperbole, and finally in chapter 7 resorts to the time-honored use of sex as a way to get his readers to listen to the radicality of his proposition. He starts with an anology of marriage, reminding people that according to the law, a woman is only married to her husband so long as he is alive. “If her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.” If that doesn’t get their attention, nothing will. He is saying that participation in the kingdom as begun by the life and teachings of Jesus makes everyone who signs onto the program “dead to the law” that results in sin; or, in John Dominic Crossan’s words, the law that inevitably leads to injustice – the normalcy of civilization. Is the law itself sin? No, rants Paul. But if not for the law, we would not know sin. This argument gets very close to the idea that we as humans cannot know good unless we have evil to compare it with – a subject for a much wider debate. For now, suffice to say that these commentaries take the view that the nature of the known universe is good at best, neutral at worst. Humanity is the species that brought “evil” into the world because of our consciousness of consequences. Perhaps– for post-modern people – that is as close as we can come to Paul’s point.

Paul then in desperation confesses his own personal weakness. The law is spiritual, he says, but I am trapped in a physical body. Even thought the law mandates a particular behavior, and even though I may greatly desire to comply with that mandate, I cannot. This is the inner conflict – the personal jihad – the personal struggle to not only accept Jesus’s invitation to participate in God’s Kingdom of justice-compassion, but to commit to that program, and stick to it.

We shall see if Paul does discover in the end that the yoke is easy, and the burden is light.

Get with the Program: Year A Proper 8

2008-06-25T11:41:00.003-05:00

Genesis 22:1-14; Jeremiah 28:5-9; Psalm 13; Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42

“Paul, having mentioned sacrificial atonement by Christ, does not develop it further in any way, but speaks instead of participation in Christ, which . . . is the heart of his theology. And where sacrificial atonement got only one verse (3:5), participation gets a whole chapter (6:1-23).” John Dominic Crossan, In Search of Paul (Harper SanFrancisco 2004) p. 384.

The Elves, of course, divided the chapter into two parts, thereby robbing Paul of the integrity of his argument. In the first half, Paul says that if we have indeed died to sin, by committing to living the same way of life as taught by Jesus, we shall then live not according to our own self interest, nor according to the interests of empire (foreign or domestic), but according to the kenotic (self-abandoning) rule of God. The “end” or result is“eternal life.” The result of living according to the normal rules of civilization is death, says Paul: Not physical death, but spiritual death – the death of injustice, which also brings with it the death of god. But the free gift of eternal life (grace) here and now is extended to all who choose to participate with the risen Christ in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion.

The horrific story about Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God has nothing to do with the “Christian God” sacrificing “his son” in order to “save us” from “eternal hellfire and damnation” (atonement – substitutionary or otherwise). It does, however, have to do with that same “free gift” in Paul’s argument. The name “Isaac” means “God will provide.” In the bare bones of the story, God provides the proper sacrifice and spares Abraham the barbarism of murdering his son. The story is so obscured with Christian gloss that it is nearly impossible to avoid the Christian metaphor. But in its own context, the story does two things: It illustrates an awakening spiritual awareness on the part of humanity that human blood sacrifice is not necessary to become reconciled with one’s gods; and the legend provides a graphic, pre-Christian demonstration of the level of commitment required to keep the Covenant. The old ways of literal blood-sacrifice of the first-born child were overthrown by the Covenant established for the people between God and Abraham. The Covenant continues, says the Apostle Paul, whenever anyone signs on to the program begun by Jesus.

Cherry-picking Jeremiah robs Jeremiah’s witness to the will and wisdom of God of nearly all its power. All we hear from the Elves is that God’s prophets always foretell gloom and doom, and the false prophets claim peace. Jeremiah tells Hananiah that when the prophesied peace comes, “then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet.” The doctrinal assumption is that the Creation is “fallen” permanently into sin; therefore, any prophet has to be false who claims God’s peace instead of God’s “wrath” (“judgment”). A second assumption is that the reading simply reflects an ongoing rhetorical debate between false and true prophets, and we already know that Jeremiah is the good guy. Neither assumption honors the integrity of the story. Both lend themselves to pious self-righteousness.

In the encounter with Hananiah, Jeremiah has put an ox yoke on his own neck, demonstrating submission to the Yoke of Babylon “until the time of his own land comes.” Jeremiah tells the people, “if any nation will not serve this king, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, then I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, says the Lord . . . . You therefore must not listen to your prophets . . . who are saying [the opposite] to you. . . . But any nation that will bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will leave on its own land . . . to till it and live there.” Jeremiah 27:8-11.

When we know the context (see last week’s blog) we find that Jeremiah has had to resort to drama in order to get anyone to listen to him regarding the political fact that the Babylonians have won. But wait – doesn’t that make Jeremiah a collaborator with the very Empire these commentaries have been railing against for two cycles of the Revised Common Lectionary? Again, the answer lies in the context of the entire story of Jeremiah – who stayed with the remnant of Israelites in Jerusalem while the rest were exiled to Babylon. “[T]he trick is to discover trust in that covenant regardless of the circumstances. As a demonstration of his trust in the covenant with God, the prophet Jeremiah buys a field at Anathoth on the eve of the Babylonian conquest, when the people of Israel are facing certain exile and slavery. This is a defiant – even a subversive – act in the face of Empire. He honors the Mosaic law spelled out in Leviticus 25:25-28, that allows – perhaps obliges – a family member to “redeem” land that is in danger of being lost to debt. With the Babylonians at the gates of Jerusalem, Jeremiah agrees to buy the field. It is an act of trust that the people will return by the Jubilee Year, 50 years after the sale is arranged, and the land will then be restored to them.” Year C Commentary on Proper 21, The Field At Anatoth.

God’s plan is that the people make the best of a bad situation and live in safety in their own land. All they need to do is trust in God’s promise to preserve that land for its own great destiny. But Hananiah has aligned himself with the politicians who want to overthrow the Babylonian empire and establish their own – despite the reality of overwhelming imperial military forces. Worse, Hananiah has the audacity to physically break the ox yoke that Jeremiah has attached to his own neck, thereby symbolically defying God’s will. As Matthew’s Jesus says, “The one who accepts you accepts me, and the one who accepts me accepts the one who sent me.” The obverse – that the one who does not accept you does not accept me – means that if God’s prophet is defied, God [himself] is also defied. In the part we are not supposed to read this week, Jeremiah goes back to Hananiah and warns him that because he broke the wooden yoke, an even stronger yoke of iron is now attached to the necks of all the nations conquered by the Babylonians, and furthermore, Hananiah will be dead within the year. Sure enough, “In that same year, in the seventh month, the [false] prophet Hananiah died” (Jeremiah 28:10-17).

The editorial in the Christian Science Monitor of June 18, 2008, discusses the U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding Guantanamo detainees and habeas corpus. The Court divided 5 to 4 between the majority who held that “Liberty and security can be reconciled,” and the dissenting view that “lower courts will almost certainly release dangerous detainees and cause more Americans to be killed.” The Monitor concludes that “America’s identity rests on its ideals, such as due process. They help preserve a quality of life that may require a sacrifice of life” (emphasis mine). The editorial point concerns secular politics (and arguably imperial theology) not Covenant. Nevertheless, as Jeremiah demonstrated with his ox-yoke (and perhaps underlying and informing The Monitor’s view), the fact that Empire holds sway does not rule out distributive justice-compassion, which not only may require sacrifice. The readings for this Proper 8 assert that it does. Abraham was willing to give up any hope of realizing God’s heady promise that he would be the father of a great nation in order to remain obedient to that same God of justice-compassion. Jesus gave up his life because of that same obedience to the rule of distributive justice in God’s realm. The only time the prophet gets derailed is when she makes false promises of easy piety, war, victory, and peace. The trick is to distinguish between Covenant (non-violent, distributive justice-compassion), and the easy piety of empire. Anyone who thinks that participation with the risen Christ in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion is easy, is listening to false prophets. The defining factor is justice – so long as justice is distributive and grounded in compassion, all is well. As soon as justice becomes retributive, and rooted in violence, the difference between the false and true prophets becomes clear.

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The King’s Business: Year A Proper 7

2008-06-19T09:48:00.002-05:00

Genesis 21:8-21; Jeremiah 20:7-13; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17; Psalm 69:7-18; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39

A friend of mine quotes his Oberlin seminary Old Testament professor, Herbert Gordon May, regarding the meaning and interpretation of scripture: “context, context, context.” The readings for Proper 7 are all lifted wholesale out of context, and cobbled together like medieval motley. Even conventional dogmatic themes fail to form recognizable patterns in this “incongruous mixture” (as the Oxford Dictionary of American Language defines “motley”). Not to pursue this metaphor too far, but “playing the fool” by wearing motley implies astute criticism of the King’s business. The Elves have not only missed the point of the King’s business; they have failed to present any point at all. All bets are off this week. Pick a reading and preach on it.

Taken out of context, the reading from Genesis picks up at the end of the feud between Abraham’s wife Sarah and Abraham’s mistress, or second wife, or slave, or concubine – choose your epithet – Hagar. Ishmael was not really a bastard, but definitely not the fruit of the first womb. In order not to derail God’s plan for Isaac, Hagar and Ishmael are thrown out into the desert. What a rich soup of themes for the 21st Century: Patriarchy; women’s liberation; selfishness; stupidity; exploitation; breach of trust. But the story leaves us with too many questions: Did Ishmael really become the ancestor of Islam? Why did God intervene to save Hagar in the desert, but not in time to preserve family relationships in Abraham’s camp? What is the connection with the Egyptians? Why are we reading this text of terror?

In the alternative Old Testament reading, Jeremiah is caught between what God demands that he say, and the social and personal consequences of saying it. He blames God for enticing him into the prophetic life, then abandoning him to the persecution of his enemies. Nevertheless, by the end of the reading, Jeremiah has to rely on God’s promise of deliverance.

The portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans is plucked out of the midst of Paul’s argument about grace – the free gift from God that renders everyone just. The unwary may find themselves floundering in the waters that equate baptism with death and burial, and resurrection with a heavenly afterlife.

Finally, Matthew, the liturgist, strings together sayings of Jesus like a litany, designed to bolster the courage of believers under the constant barrage of criticism and persecution – much like Jeremiah. But Matthew ups the ante: “Whoever loves father or mother . . . son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” Judgment of unbelieving sinners is the name of Matthew’s cherry-picking game.

For my purposes here, Professor May’s “context, context, context” has two parts. The first is the political, social, and spiritual conditions that gave rise to the original writings.

If we look at the circumstances within which each of these readings was created, we find that they were all written within a context of alienation and exile. The Abrahamic saga is part of the foundational myth of the Jewish nation and religion. Defining who is legitimately part of the authentic Hebrew people was vitally important to both the remnant exiled to 6th Century B.C.E. Babylon, and those left behind in an alienated Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah was a living witness and interpreter of that time and place. Several hundred years later, the fledgling community of Christians in sacked Jerusalem faced the same kinds of issues: Who are we? Who was our spiritual leader and guide? What is our purpose? Who is part of our community, and who is not, and how do we decide?

The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans is a bit different. Written perhaps 10-15 years before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, Paul thoroughly debates the definition of who is a Christian and what it means to follow Jesus. But even though Paul has chosen his mission to the Pagan/non-Jewish Roman world, he too is a political and religious exile. What can be more inflammatory to the Empire and to established religious tradition than to claim that “no human being will be acquitted in God’s sight by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin”? What greater threat to an economic and political system based on patronage than a community where everything is shared in common, and no one possesses more than anyone else?

The second aspect of “context” is the internal integrity of the story or argument. John Dominic Crossan makes it clear that the first order of business in scriptural interpretation is to “know the story and get it right.” God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (HarperSanFrancisco 2007), pp. 128-131. I have pointed out before that it is vastly unfair – if not unconscionable – to cherry-pick Paul’s words from Romans (or anywhere else) in order to perpetuate an institutional theological misinterpretation. (See Repent for the Kingdom 5) It is equally unconscionable to mis-use portions of foundational myths to the same end. When those myths are further bastardized to perpetuate present-day global political empire, Paul’s assertion that “the strength of sin is the law” takes on particular and tragic importance.

The Abrahamic story winds its way through the first five books of the Christian Old Testament. To get the entire story straight, and explore its meaning for 21st Century political realities, is beyond the scope of this Commentary. Perhaps this is the best argument for not following the Revised Common Lectionary, and instead concentrating on entire threads over a series of Sunday mornings. An alternative is certainly extended Bible study for all levels of church members, from pre-school to senior adults. The problem of course is curriculum. The straight story needs to be told from the cradle onwards, and without the dogmatic gloss that the New Testament supersedes the Old.

The prophets are no less prone to misinterpretation out of context, but their truncated stories are more easily dealt with in one sermon. Jeremiah wants the people to return to the old ways of the Covenant, and he is apparently willing to compromise with the Babylonians in order to avoid national destruction. This gets him in trouble with those who want to establish Judah as a kingdom in its own right. Jeremiah’s dilemma is familiar to everyone confronted with the conundrums that accompany living in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion. He is compelled to speak truth to power, and we catch him at a weak moment – or would if the Elves allowed us to read on past the momentary relief Jeremiah finds in reminding himself that “[the Lord] has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.” But in the very next verse, “Cursed be the day on which I was born!” Jeremiah sobs. “Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying ‘A child is born to you, a son,’ . . . Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?”

What Jeremiah prays for is deliverance. What the Apostle Paul promises in Romans 6:1-11 is transformation. For Proper 7, that transformation happens in the act of baptism: We are then dead and buried to the old life, which was defined by adherence to the law, and we are raised just as the Christ was raised to “walk in newness of life.” The key words here are “death” and “life,” not “crucifixion” and “resurrection.” “Crucifixion” and “resurrection” are political terms, which Paul does not hesitate to use elsewhere. Jesus’s death is not just a death. It happened in the context of Roman injustice. Jesus’ resurrection is God’s action in the world, continuing to counter imperial injustice. But using the words “death” and “life” confronts Christians with the day-to-day reality of participation with God in that same continuing action.

Returning to the opening metaphor, this day-to-day participation is indeed the King’s business, which the Elves and the writer of Matthew miss. Once we know the political and spiritual context that Matthew was addressing, we cannot fault him for this; nevertheless, the aphorisms recorded by Matthew cannot be taken literally and applied uncritically to 21st Century issues. Two of the aphorisms were agreed by the Jesus Seminar scholars as authentically going back to the historical Jesus. These are: “After all, there is nothing veiled that won’t be unveiled, or hidden that won’t be made known”; and “What do sparrows cost? A penny apiece? Yet not one of them will fall to the earth without the consent of your Father. As for you, even the hairs on your head have all been counted. So don’t be so timid; you’re worth more than a flock of sparrows.” However, the original context for either of them has been long lost, and their position in Matthew’s litany seems arbitrary – whatever Jesus meant when he said them, they have been reduced to non-sequiturs, and their intent compromised.

Continuing the metaphor, and seriously playing the fool, the rest of the aphorisms listed by Matthew are clearly out of character with a Jesus who taught distributive justice-compassion. They are full of retributive judgment, and hints of violence against non-believers, and it is highly likely that Jesus never said any of them. They were essential to the survival of the early Christian community. But are they essential to a 21st Century Christianity?

I close with another quote from Crossan’s In Search of Paul, from the chapter in which he thoroughly discusses Paul’s theology, and specifically the letter to the Romans: “Christ’s ‘death’ always meant for Paul the terrible death of an unjust execution, the horrible death of a shameful crucifixion. It did not mean death as the normal end of life. His theology was not actually built on Christ’s death and resurrection as if Christ had died at home in Nazareth and rose there on the third day. That death meant injustice and violence. Here then, after two thousand years and especially as the twenty-first century’s terrorism replaces the twentieth century’s totalitarianism, we ask this question: Is it death or is it violence that is the last enemy of God? Or better, is it unjust and violent death that is the last enemy of God?” p. 389.

Here is the astute criticism the King’s Business demands.

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