Prayer
Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume my enemy is a savage just because he is my enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks I am a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of me because he feels that I are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed I were capable of loving him he would no longer be my enemy. Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume my enemy is a savage just because he is my enemy.
Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume that my enemy is an enemy of God just because he is my enemy. Perhaps he is my enemy precisely because he can find nothing in me that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears me because he can find nothing in me of God's love and God's kindness and God's patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men. Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume that my enemy is an enemy of God just because he is my enemy.
Lord, help me not to be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps my own coldness and avarice, my mediocrity and materialism, my sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith. Lord, help me not to be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God. Amen
Prayer adapted from Thomas Merton, from New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1961).
Luke 6:27-38
"Jesus? life is the best exposition of his teaching: self giving love even in utmost adversity generates life for oneself and for others. It is participation in God?s life."
"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary: Epiphany 7,"William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia, 2001.
"The word used here for love, agape in Greek, does NOT mean romantic love, liking, or even friendship. What it does mean is whole-hearted, unreserved, unconditional desire for the well-being of the other. Expecting nothing in return."
Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, Luke 6:27-38, David Ewart, 2013.
"Jensen (Preaching Luke's Gospel) offers this possible conclusion to a sermon on this text: Jesus' word for us today is: "I call you to live your lives out of an alternative vision of reality. I call you to live your lives as lives that reverse the values of this culture. I call you to love your enemy; turn the other cheek; give your possessions to those in need and judge not the lives of others. Be merciful even as I am merciful. I have come to nourish your entire life with my mercy. I have come to empower you with mercy in order that you may, indeed, live a new kind of life in this world." [p. 82]"
Exegetical Notes by Brian Stoffregen at CrossMarks Christian Resources.
Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, Luke 6:27-38, David Ewart, 2013.
"Jensen (Preaching Luke's Gospel) offers this possible conclusion to a sermon on this text: Jesus' word for us today is: "I call you to live your lives out of an alternative vision of reality. I call you to live your lives as lives that reverse the values of this culture. I call you to love your enemy; turn the other cheek; give your possessions to those in need and judge not the lives of others. Be merciful even as I am merciful. I have come to nourish your entire life with my mercy. I have come to empower you with mercy in order that you may, indeed, live a new kind of life in this world." [p. 82]"
Exegetical Notes by Brian Stoffregen at CrossMarks Christian Resources.
If you hate the enemies of the Church instead of loving them, you too will run the risk of becoming an enemy of the Church, and of Christ; for he said: Love your enemies, and he also said: He that is not with me is against me. Therefore if you do not side with Christ by loving those that he loves, you are against him.
But Christ loves all people. Christ died for all people. And Christ said there was no greater love than that a man should lay down his life for his friend.
Thomas Merton, from New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1961).
Oremus Online NRSV Text
We have just read the sermon on the mount, the admonitions that followed, the calling of the disciples to be about the work of bringing justice to the world by serving the poor, hungry, sorrow filled, and those who are hated.
It is as if he turns to the crowd now, and makes a larger pronouncement. He suggests that justice will not be brought about in the world's terms. In other words, justice will not be brought by a revolution of the poor who violently overthrow those in authority and in power. This is not a worldly tale of a new kingdom stomping out a worldly one and then taking its place in the seats of power. (The disciples will talk about this often.) No. This is a wholly other kind of revolution.
It is one where violence is met by peace. He calls people to bless and pray for those who hate, despise, or persecute. He invites people to give their shirt and their coat to those who ask or take from them.
He reminds them that even the sinners are merciful to those whom they like. So, the Gospel is going to be different. It is about loving those who are enemies, forgiving those who persecute us and cause us harm, and caring for those who do us evil.
This is not a "doing good" or "being good" word from Jesus as an economic exchange. It is not about being nice so others will in turn be nice to you.
Walter Wink in his book Engaging the Powers does an excellent job of pulling apart the social context of this passage. He explains that turning the other cheek requires a second blow with a soiled hand. There is a particular shame code at work here and by so doing the person who strikes the second blow is revealed as having defiled the other. Likewise, to give away all your clothing is to be naked. It was forbidden to do this and Jesus is revealing that it is an unjust demand that bring's shame upon the person who takes your clothing. Wink and others talk a bit more about Matthew's version as Jesus is specific about the cheek and adds an invitation to walk an extra mile. This by the way requires just payment for inscription and puts the soldier who requires it in the debtor's seat. Much is written about these non violent invitations to resist. Furthermore, there is a good bit of debate as to Jesus' intended audience and outcome. Is this about communal/village life? Or, is this revolutionary engagement with the powers and authorities. It may indeed be both.
We need though to remember. This is not a bold new code being ascribed by Jesus to those who follow God or who follow him. No, in fact he is inviting the people to remember the conditions prescribed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. (See Leviticus 18-20) These are attitudes and requirements of love and mercy and forgiveness that reveal God's Holy people to be God's people. This is part of what differentiates them from others they will come to meet in the promised land. In fact the call to care for a stranger or sojourner in their land is an opportunity to reveal how different God's people are. See Leviticus 19 or Proverbs 25:21-22 to understand that God's people are a particular kind of people who are known for their hospitality, their kindness, and care - even to their enemies. What Jesus does is to continue God's teachings and to call people back into covenant with God.
Moreover, Jesus expands this beyond the communal life of first century religious life. Here is where I think it gets interesting. Jesus not only calls the religious to follow these prescriptions but to do so with those who are different, who do not believe, who have many gods, who are unclean, and who are outside of the religious theological sphere that breathes a rarified air of insulation. Jesus is inviting the whole of the world to be reshaped by this invitation. God's people, in Jesus' imagination, are all of the people...not just the faithful religious who can trace their ancestry back.
Furthermore, this is a key Gospel paradox and no mere peaceful protest, or communal ethic. Think for a moment with me. Jesus will in his punishment, trial, way of the cross, and death upon the cross live out all of these invitations. In so doing, then the cross adheres to itself, with Jesus firmly planted upon it, the sin and shame of the world. He is stricken, his clothes are taken, he is required to walk, he persecuted. And, in the end he gathers in the shame by saying, "Father forgive them." Upon the cross the shame of the world and society (which operates contrary to God's garden imaginary where love of enemies is standard) is taken up with Jesus on the cross, and buried down in the grave with Jesus.
To believe that this is merely a code of ethics or a way of following Jesus is to miss the deep theology that is essential in this secular age - God is acting here. God will do these things in the person of Jesus. And, God acts through us when we do these things.
We have just read the sermon on the mount, the admonitions that followed, the calling of the disciples to be about the work of bringing justice to the world by serving the poor, hungry, sorrow filled, and those who are hated.
It is as if he turns to the crowd now, and makes a larger pronouncement. He suggests that justice will not be brought about in the world's terms. In other words, justice will not be brought by a revolution of the poor who violently overthrow those in authority and in power. This is not a worldly tale of a new kingdom stomping out a worldly one and then taking its place in the seats of power. (The disciples will talk about this often.) No. This is a wholly other kind of revolution.
It is one where violence is met by peace. He calls people to bless and pray for those who hate, despise, or persecute. He invites people to give their shirt and their coat to those who ask or take from them.
He reminds them that even the sinners are merciful to those whom they like. So, the Gospel is going to be different. It is about loving those who are enemies, forgiving those who persecute us and cause us harm, and caring for those who do us evil.
This is not a "doing good" or "being good" word from Jesus as an economic exchange. It is not about being nice so others will in turn be nice to you.
Walter Wink in his book Engaging the Powers does an excellent job of pulling apart the social context of this passage. He explains that turning the other cheek requires a second blow with a soiled hand. There is a particular shame code at work here and by so doing the person who strikes the second blow is revealed as having defiled the other. Likewise, to give away all your clothing is to be naked. It was forbidden to do this and Jesus is revealing that it is an unjust demand that bring's shame upon the person who takes your clothing. Wink and others talk a bit more about Matthew's version as Jesus is specific about the cheek and adds an invitation to walk an extra mile. This by the way requires just payment for inscription and puts the soldier who requires it in the debtor's seat. Much is written about these non violent invitations to resist. Furthermore, there is a good bit of debate as to Jesus' intended audience and outcome. Is this about communal/village life? Or, is this revolutionary engagement with the powers and authorities. It may indeed be both.
We need though to remember. This is not a bold new code being ascribed by Jesus to those who follow God or who follow him. No, in fact he is inviting the people to remember the conditions prescribed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. (See Leviticus 18-20) These are attitudes and requirements of love and mercy and forgiveness that reveal God's Holy people to be God's people. This is part of what differentiates them from others they will come to meet in the promised land. In fact the call to care for a stranger or sojourner in their land is an opportunity to reveal how different God's people are. See Leviticus 19 or Proverbs 25:21-22 to understand that God's people are a particular kind of people who are known for their hospitality, their kindness, and care - even to their enemies. What Jesus does is to continue God's teachings and to call people back into covenant with God.
Moreover, Jesus expands this beyond the communal life of first century religious life. Here is where I think it gets interesting. Jesus not only calls the religious to follow these prescriptions but to do so with those who are different, who do not believe, who have many gods, who are unclean, and who are outside of the religious theological sphere that breathes a rarified air of insulation. Jesus is inviting the whole of the world to be reshaped by this invitation. God's people, in Jesus' imagination, are all of the people...not just the faithful religious who can trace their ancestry back.
Furthermore, this is a key Gospel paradox and no mere peaceful protest, or communal ethic. Think for a moment with me. Jesus will in his punishment, trial, way of the cross, and death upon the cross live out all of these invitations. In so doing, then the cross adheres to itself, with Jesus firmly planted upon it, the sin and shame of the world. He is stricken, his clothes are taken, he is required to walk, he persecuted. And, in the end he gathers in the shame by saying, "Father forgive them." Upon the cross the shame of the world and society (which operates contrary to God's garden imaginary where love of enemies is standard) is taken up with Jesus on the cross, and buried down in the grave with Jesus.
To believe that this is merely a code of ethics or a way of following Jesus is to miss the deep theology that is essential in this secular age - God is acting here. God will do these things in the person of Jesus. And, God acts through us when we do these things.
1 Corinthians 15:35-40
"First Thoughts on Passages on Year C Epistle Passages in the Lectionary: Epiphany 6," William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
"There is a vast gap between a proclamation and an experience. This difference is not notable for the one doing the proclaiming, but is for the one being proclaimed to."
Kairos CoMotion Lectionary Discussion, 1 Corinthians 15:12-22, Wesley White. "A place of conversation regarding Progressive Christianity."
We continue reading from Paul's letter to the Corinthians. In our passage today we have some deep theology. Paul says, "Christ has been raised from the dead ... so all will be made alive in Christ" (15:20-23) when he comes again. Paul explores this theme with a series of analogies from nature (15:36-38):
- seeds need to die in order to have life;
- they change their state following burial:
- plants have different bodies from seeds;
- God chooses the body of a plant;
- seeds look alike but are changed into a variety of plants.
This of course does not meet the basic understanding of horticulture today. But, nevertheless Paul is trying to make a point.
Paul then concludes with this analysis: "Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another."(39-40)
In Stanley Hauerwas' booke Sanctify Them in the Truth, he introduces us to the work of Dale Martin. Martin has a great book work a read: The Corinthian Body, (Yale Press, 1995). Martin's contribution to the understanding of Paul is that he reminds us that the Corinthians and Paul had a very different understanding of the body. Today we have a kind of dualist understanding (Cartisian in nature). Descartes helped us moderns separate the soul from the body. That would not be Paul's understanding.
For Paul and the Corinthians the soul and body were mixed up and porous. This has a particular meaning in our context of Paul's discussion in this chapter about the resurrection. Paul understood, and was trying to explain to his readers, that Christ's resurrection means that Christians will be resurrected. Baptism, for Paul, has inextricably connected the body of the Christian with the body of Christ. What is at stake is not simply the pollution of the body...but about hierarchy.
Remember, in Corinth there is a whole issue about eating together and the hierarchical norms of the society in which the Corinthian Christians are living. Christ undoes this hierarchy. And, for Paul, to attempt to add a hierarchy into the body of Christ and its relationship with all other Christians is particularly dangerous. (Martin, Corinthian, 131.)
So, we must be careful here as Paul begins to speak about the body as a seed. We cannot read, or transfer, what Paul is doing here into a sphere of metaphor. There is a very real and physical connection of bodies within Christian community....and between the baptized and the Christ. All worldly, secular, and societal hierarchies are destroyed by Paul in his argument about the body. Martin helps us understand that Paul's writing seeks to undermine the class aesthetics of Corinth.
To introduce class hierarchy into the body is not a mere aesthetic invasion for Paul. Instead it is an actual illness. It pollutes the body of Christ. Paul is speaking in Corinthians as if the body is being invaded by a disease. Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that we must get physical when we read Paul. He believed that much was at stake here.
Hauerwas in his sermon "On Not Holding On or Witnessing the Resurrection" writes:
....like the disciples, we would like to think that resurrection does not mean our world has been turned upside down. We would like to celebrate Jesus' "resurrection" and go on living within the presupposition and habits that sustain our lives. That is why we are tempted to try to "explain" the resurrection. Our explanations are the way we...try to "hold on" to Jesus.
He then reminds us that the resurrection cannot be explained. He writes, "That Jesus is the one raised form the dead does not require explanation. Rather Jesus raised requires witnesses." (Hauerwas, Sanctify, 274.)
This all seems a bit important as we lean into Paul's discussion of seeds. Why? Because Paul is NOT saying resurrection is like a seed...or, resurrection and seeds have a lot in common. Paul is actually saying we cannot understand the resurrection...bodies are different. God raises Jesus and in so doing raises us. Paul offers a witness here. He is really saying...Jesus died. God raised Jesus. You will die. God will raise you because you are baptized in Jesus. Seeds and stuff work in a lot of different ways. The resurrection of the body works because God raised Jesus.
Moreover, because all of this is within the framework of the eucharistic meal...when we eat and drink together we are doing so with the resurrected Lord. And, at this table the baptized eat and drink together and all manner of hierarchy and worlds are broken down. This is a peaceable table and the social forms don't have a place here. In fact, to do so, means that we pollute the whole body of the faithful.
Paul then concludes with this analysis: "Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another."(39-40)
In Stanley Hauerwas' booke Sanctify Them in the Truth, he introduces us to the work of Dale Martin. Martin has a great book work a read: The Corinthian Body, (Yale Press, 1995). Martin's contribution to the understanding of Paul is that he reminds us that the Corinthians and Paul had a very different understanding of the body. Today we have a kind of dualist understanding (Cartisian in nature). Descartes helped us moderns separate the soul from the body. That would not be Paul's understanding.
For Paul and the Corinthians the soul and body were mixed up and porous. This has a particular meaning in our context of Paul's discussion in this chapter about the resurrection. Paul understood, and was trying to explain to his readers, that Christ's resurrection means that Christians will be resurrected. Baptism, for Paul, has inextricably connected the body of the Christian with the body of Christ. What is at stake is not simply the pollution of the body...but about hierarchy.
Remember, in Corinth there is a whole issue about eating together and the hierarchical norms of the society in which the Corinthian Christians are living. Christ undoes this hierarchy. And, for Paul, to attempt to add a hierarchy into the body of Christ and its relationship with all other Christians is particularly dangerous. (Martin, Corinthian, 131.)
So, we must be careful here as Paul begins to speak about the body as a seed. We cannot read, or transfer, what Paul is doing here into a sphere of metaphor. There is a very real and physical connection of bodies within Christian community....and between the baptized and the Christ. All worldly, secular, and societal hierarchies are destroyed by Paul in his argument about the body. Martin helps us understand that Paul's writing seeks to undermine the class aesthetics of Corinth.
To introduce class hierarchy into the body is not a mere aesthetic invasion for Paul. Instead it is an actual illness. It pollutes the body of Christ. Paul is speaking in Corinthians as if the body is being invaded by a disease. Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that we must get physical when we read Paul. He believed that much was at stake here.
Hauerwas in his sermon "On Not Holding On or Witnessing the Resurrection" writes:
....like the disciples, we would like to think that resurrection does not mean our world has been turned upside down. We would like to celebrate Jesus' "resurrection" and go on living within the presupposition and habits that sustain our lives. That is why we are tempted to try to "explain" the resurrection. Our explanations are the way we...try to "hold on" to Jesus.
He then reminds us that the resurrection cannot be explained. He writes, "That Jesus is the one raised form the dead does not require explanation. Rather Jesus raised requires witnesses." (Hauerwas, Sanctify, 274.)
This all seems a bit important as we lean into Paul's discussion of seeds. Why? Because Paul is NOT saying resurrection is like a seed...or, resurrection and seeds have a lot in common. Paul is actually saying we cannot understand the resurrection...bodies are different. God raises Jesus and in so doing raises us. Paul offers a witness here. He is really saying...Jesus died. God raised Jesus. You will die. God will raise you because you are baptized in Jesus. Seeds and stuff work in a lot of different ways. The resurrection of the body works because God raised Jesus.
Moreover, because all of this is within the framework of the eucharistic meal...when we eat and drink together we are doing so with the resurrected Lord. And, at this table the baptized eat and drink together and all manner of hierarchy and worlds are broken down. This is a peaceable table and the social forms don't have a place here. In fact, to do so, means that we pollute the whole body of the faithful.
Genesis 45:1-15
It is one of the great questions we naturally ask each time we read the story of Joseph. Why did he not, at some time during their twenty-two year separation, send word to his father that he was alive?
Vayigash - 5779 , Genesis 45:1-15, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. "Does My Father Love Me?"
The episode is moving in itself, but it also resolves one of the central questions of the book of Genesis – sibling rivalry: Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. Can brothers live peaceably with one another? This question is fundamental to the biblical drama of redemption, for if brothers cannot live together, how can nations? And if nations cannot live together, how can the human world survive?
It is one of the great questions we naturally ask each time we read the story of Joseph. Why did he not, at some time during their twenty-two year separation, send word to his father that he was alive?
Vayigash - 5779 , Genesis 45:1-15, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. "Does My Father Love Me?"
The episode is moving in itself, but it also resolves one of the central questions of the book of Genesis – sibling rivalry: Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. Can brothers live peaceably with one another? This question is fundamental to the biblical drama of redemption, for if brothers cannot live together, how can nations? And if nations cannot live together, how can the human world survive?
Vayechi - 5779, Genesis 45:5, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. "The Future of the Past"
Now, hopefully you remember the story of Joseph and the technicolor dream coat. Here in our passage today is the great reunion of brothers.
In our Christian tradition, as with our faith ancestors – the people of Israel, words have more than meaning - words have power.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote when reflecting on our passage from Genesis,
“Judaism is a religion of holy words, and one of the themes of Genesis as a whole is the power of speech to create, mislead, harm or heal. From Cain and Abel to Joseph and his brothers [remember the story from the beginning? The brothers “They hated him Joseph and could not speak peaceably to him”] Sacks continues, “we are shown how, when words fail, violence begins.”[i]Words have power to create, mislead, harm or heal.
The words of the brothers have harmed Joseph and his relationship with his father. The words of the brothers have harmed their own relationship with their father. The words that Joseph speaks to himself harm his relationship with his father.
There are many things that have happened between all parties involved in this sordid brotherly competition for a father’s love. This sibling rivalry between the brothers and Joseph has a lineage that raises its ugly head in the relationship between Jacob and Esau all of which perpetuate the relationship of Cain and Abel.
So it is that the book of Genesis ends as it began – in sibling rivalry.
A notorious highway robber turned celebrated third-century sage, Rabbi Resh Lakish, suggests there are two concepts of the past at work here. The first is what happened – the history, the events, and in the case of Joseph and his brothers…the violence. This would be the throwing Joseph in the pit, the selling of him into slavery, the lying to Jacob about his death. That is something we cannot change suggests Lakish.
The second concept of the past is significance, the meaning, of what happened. That is something we can change.[ii]
Here we might see in our passage the forgiveness of Joseph towards his brothers.
It is on this second concept that the power of words makes a transformative difference.
Joseph has just heard that his father is alive and that he loves Joseph and mourns his loss… something that Joseph did not think was true. These words are the words that turn Joseph’s heart. And, he then reveals himself.
It is out of Joseph’s mouth that we hear how God has changed the violence of his brother’s actions into a means of their family’s salvation.
He then encourages them to let go of their guilt, to claim their deliverance, to hear his forgiveness, and to come and be reconciled and live with him in Egypt in the land of Goshen. Joseph’s words have power, and they transform the actions of the past. Just as God’s Word has power to heal and mend, forgive and give mercy…so too Joseph’s words.
Our modern societal narrative, not unlike Greek and Roman myths, encourage brothers and sisters to consume one another. They make no improvement upon Cain and Abel but instead reward the victor for his violent sacrifice of the other.
Instead, our scripture reveals that human words do in fact, as God’s, have the power to mend and restore. Joseph’s final words at the end of Genesis redeem all that has transpired.
The narrative of God’s work in the life of Joseph and his brothers, in reversing the legacy sibling rivalry, reveals nothing less than the power of the living word present from the time of creation.
In Joseph’s actions we see the one who loves his enemies, the one who loves those who hate, who blesses the ones who curses, who gives abundantly of his own to those who took everything from him. He does not condemn but instead forgives. He does not judge and exclude but instead uplifts and restores into community and relationship that which was broken.
We see then that Jesus’ own invitation to love our enemies is nothing less than the continued work of restoration of God’s garden social imaginary (God’s kingdom); which from the foundation of the world wore the scar of brother against brother, and sister against sister.
Moreover, that as Rabbi Lakish says, what we see in the end of Genesis is not merely the power of words but the power of the living God’s words and actions in those of Joseph, his brothers, and his father – Jacob. Here Lakish suggests, we see the history of events transformed into the story of God and God’s people.
The scripture here then is not merely a story about brothers, nor a history of a people, nor a moral example of how to live in community. Instead it is all these things and more.
It reveals the very nature of God, not by (as George Lindbeck suggests) creating an epistemological tale about God’s nature but by showing God’s interaction with the characters of God’s narrative.[iii]
If we see this story as merely a story about a people, or an Old Testament pericope to be examined in context, we miss the fact that it is an essential part of reveling the very nature of God’s reconciling action… A reconciling action which seeks the restoration of what was lost in a field when one brother killed another out of jealousy, desire, perceived slight and shame…
Here in Jacob’s love for Joseph and the brothers, Joseph for Benjamin, and the brothers for each other…we see the revelation of God who wishes us to know of his love…and his invitation to embrace the power of words to create, mend, and heal.
With this in mind we receive Jesus’ invitation to be a different kind of person not as moral imperative but as an invitation to participate in God’s very story. To allow God’s being to be the power in the words and actions of our own lives. In Luke’s Gospel chapter 6, we are literally being invited to take our part as characters in God’s narrative unfolding.
And, to speak and act as Joseph did – with love, forgiveness, mercy, and generosity upon our lips.
This too is at the core of community, and God’s social imaginary, that in the face of scarcity (as in the lean years of Egypt) we like Joseph discover our need for another. And that in receiving the other we in turn participate in the very nature of the “gratuitus God”. (Something John Milbank points out in his reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans.) We are not a moral community who just happen to be Christian. No. We are more.[iv]
The power of the living word working in the story of Joseph transforms his dependence upon the state power he has earned and places him firmly rooted in confidence of God’s love – specifically familial and brotherly love – in this case.
The living word has power to mend and heal and create. It has power to reconcile. It has power to change history and to create new meaning. The living word has power, even in our time to overcome the sibling rivalry promulgated by powers, authorities, and political allegiances. The living word in our time has power to change the history of the past and present, and to create a wholly different future.
[i] Rabvbi
Sacks http://rabbisacks.org/father-love-vayigash-5779/
[ii]
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Sacks http://rabbisacks.org/father-love-vayigash-5779/
[iii]
George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 121.
[iv]
John Milbank, The Word Made Strange, 231.
Excerpt from my new book in January 2020: Citizen
Jesus expresses his alternative narrative in works of
healing and through engagement with the community and its leaders. He also
creates a new community with different types of citizens. As if to live into
what theologian and priest Sam Wells called “The Nazareth Manifesto,” Jesus cast
a vision for this community. Jesus did not merely say nice things about the
poor and feed them, he lived as a poor itinerant preacher dependent upon the
hospitality of those who saw him as a homeless stranger.[i]
The new community was imagined as one that was to be present in the lives of
people. The Gospel was not simply an idea to be preached, but a life to be
lived in and amongst people. The manifesto of Jesus offered a vision of life
lived with the hungry, with the imprisoned, and with the lost and least. Christ
as the incarnate one of God is himself living out this manifesto even as he
offers it as kind of new Sinai revelation. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount articulates
such a vision (Luke 6; Matt. 5). Jesus’ teaching from the mount is a rehearsal
of God’s visit with God’s people in the wilderness.
Also...
Rabbi Sacks in the Ebor Lectures, delivered in
2011, reminds us that these ten words are a principled foundation for healthy
society. He writes that there is a difference between a social and political
contract and a covenant. The ten commandments are covenant words, not social
and political contract words. Contracts outline the boundaries of “advantage”
while these words establish a relationship of loyalty and precedence. The contract
becomes a higher authority to which I am bound to settle any future disputes.
The covenant rests upon the relationship of a higher authority that transforms
all other relationships in my life. The nation state and its citizens are
governed by a social contract. The covenant established in the ten commandments
orients people to each other and to God at a deeper level than that.[ii]
The Christian citizen is a member of a higher society
than their nation state. The commandments remind us that we are not mere
Americans. We cannot simply be patriots. We are citizens of a higher kingdom. We
relate to God in such a way that we are marked and the way we live in our
particular society is transformed. I can be a dual citizen as long as I
remember and return often to the character of my relationship rooted in God.
We are to be virtuous citizens of God’s kingdom not
only on Sundays, not only within the walls of our homes; but also in the
political and social spaces of our community. Global and national society only
works if we have character enough to care for one another across the boundaries
of states or beyond the scope of our individual rights. I may have the legal right
to leave you out in the cold, but as a person in a covenant with God, I have a
different responsibility. Society is judged by a people who live according to a
higher rule, who live differently within its midst.
God, at Mount Sinai, with neighboring tribal powers
and monarchial principalities all around, created a wilderness society that forms
and reforms as it makes its way in the world. However, the creation of that
first new wilderness society got off to a rocky start. After the revelation of
the commandments in Exodus, God invited Moses back up the mountain. (Exodus
32:14) Moses was delayed in coming back down because he got lost with God for a
while. He was gone for a very long time. In fact, some translations imply it
was an excruciatingly long time. In the absence of leadership and their conduit
to God, they made an idol. God got upset at their idolatry. Moses got angry and
smashed the tablets with the Ten Commandments. Aaron offered a lame excuse and
blamed the people, scapegoating them for his failure of judgment. I have always
assumed that this story is about totems for idol worship, maybe because I was
so affected by the Cecil B. DeMille movie The Ten Commandments. I
assumed that the Israelites chose another god - the golden calf. After all,
Aaron does say, “Here is your god!”
The eleventh-century Rabbi Abraham Ben Meir Ibn Ezra
anticipated my confusion. He taught that the idol was not made to take God’s
place, but Moses’. The idol was to be the means by which people could commune
with God, in the absence of a leader. What we know is that everyone has access
to God with or without a leader. Sometimes we get into trouble because we think
very highly of ourselves. But in the case of the Israelites, their idolatry
sprung from feeling very small in the shadow of Sinai.[iii]
Rabbi Sacks puts it eloquently, “Every Jew is an equal citizen of the republic
of faith because every Jew has access to its constitutional document, the
Torah.[iv]
In this moment, the golden calf moment, the people did not understand that God
was personally in relationship with them. God brought them out of Egypt in
order that they might be free and continue to be a blessed people and a
blessing to the world around them. God did not need any go-betweens, not Moses
and not golden calves. They were to be this kind of society together.
The story of the golden calf is about the human tendency
to believe that human-made items can mediate our fear, anxiety, sense of lost-ness,
despair, and hopelessness by settling our disputes and bring about right
judgments. We hope golden calves will bring about right government and care for
the poor and needy. Humans put their trust in just about every kind of
political golden calf you can think of. The golden calf is a way of ditching
our responsibility. We create institutions and governments to be our
go-betweens. This moves our responsibility to the golden calf organization(s)
and removes our responsibility for the outcomes. This is how we are able to say
the government did this or that – as if we are not our government.
The laws and politics of America and of any nation are
a golden calf. Humanity’s understanding of truth by means of reason, our best
attempts to create just law, political parties, presidents, and even nations
come and go. There will always be golden calves to believe in and put our trust
in. The Christian citizen is called to a different kind of relational politics
that suggest very different outcomes. While we are obligated to obey the laws
of our society, Christian citizenship is really the only means to a different
sort of world. Reliance on golden calves will not be enough.
Golden calf organizations always function by means of
a social contract,[v]
which serve as the foundation for a network of formal and informal laws,
statutes, constitutions, and treaties. These forms of social contracts help to
protect, build commerce, enable travel, and order life when large groups of
people live together. Most people talk about the need for social virtues in
each of these types of contracted nation-states in order to bring about the
very best societies possible.[vi]
When we discuss Christian citizenship within the sphere of the nation, we are
speaking primarily about a different posture
towards the social contractual relationships of the wider community. I want to
be clear here. Our Christian belief and practice should have a real impact on
how we conduct ourselves as Americans. Our covenanted relationship as Christian
citizens impacts our contractual relationship(s) with the state and the
informal relationships with our fellow citizens and neighbors.
The difference between Christian and nonchristian ways
of being American ought to come down to compassion. Compassion is a fundamental
virtue, rooted throughout the scripture
and especially in the Old Testament as hesed.[vii]
As Christian citizens in a covenant relationship with God, we receive
compassion from God, and we are to have compassion and live compassionate lives
with kin, strangers, and neighbors alike. This is not a contract. For the
Christian citizen compassion is a
governing virtue of life lived by citizens in God’s reign.[viii]
All relationships are read through a cruciform lens. The passion of Christ is
compassion incarnated and enacted for all people.
Our work of covenanted compassion is entangled with
another word with this other word emunah
or faithfulness. For the Christian citizen the work of governing is about
living out a commitment to relationships with others. Our faithfulness or emunah propels compassion forward, and
gives all of our public relations a quality of familial faithfulness. Familial faithfulness is the second
governing virtue of Christian citizenship. Rabbi Sacks describes it as an
“internalized sense of identity, kinship, loyalty, obligation, responsibility,
and reciprocity.”[ix]
The sole purpose of government is to make us into a society that works. The
Christian citizen has a greater vocation. The Christian citizen understands
this tradition of familial faithfulness as a unity and relational obligation
between kin, neighbor, and stranger. It has a universal quality to it. The
Christian citizen is drawn into compassionate relationships outside of the
natural and even governed boundaries because the compassion of Christ unites
all people family, friends, neighbors and strangers into one faithful familial
relationship.
We as Christians are baptized into the reign of God, and
we are made citizens by Christ’s work. Christ is really doing what God has been
doing all along, making us God’s people. We are unified by a God who desires
relationship with us, and we are people who believe God makes a covenant with
us. The scripture is filled with these covenants. All of them are really of one
kind in which God invites us to be a community of blessing to the world rooted
in both hesed and emunah – in both compassion and
faithfulness.
To fully grasp the meaning of the commandments given
to Moses in order to actualize God’s garden social imaginary we must hold
together the active words of compassion and faithfulness as we engage the other
ten words. As we speak about Christian citizenship in the reign of God, we are
speaking about covenant, compassion, and faithfulness to our kin, the neighbor,
and the stranger.
[i] The Rev. Sam Wells is the first
person I know of who used the term “Nazareth Manifesto” in his essay by the
same name. Wells offers that Jesus did not simply offer a word of release for
the captives and food for the poor, Jesus seeks to be with the people in their
hunger and imprisonment. Sam Wells, “Nazareth Manifesto,” Vagt Lecture: The
Nazareth Manifesto, April 27, 2008, https://web.duke.edu/kenanethics/NazarethManifesto_SamWells.pdf.
[ii] Sacks wrote, “A contract is about
advantage, a covenant is about loyalty… A contract is about interests, a
covenant is about identity, about belonging to something bigger than me. From a
contract, I gain, but from a covenant, I am transformed. I am no longer the
person I once was, but am part of something larger than I once was. Thus, a
social contract creates a State, but a covenant creates society." Jonathan
Sacks, "Biblical Insights into the Good Society (Ebor Lecture 2011),"
Rabbi Sacks, October 02, 2013, accessed July 29, 2018, http://rabbisacks.org/biblical-insights-into-the-good-society-ebor-lecture-2012/.
[iii] I
discovered this interpretation in an article by Rabbi Josh Gerstein, who also
quoted Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik, one of the great twentieth-century Jewish
thinkers, who wrote:
They felt that they themselves did not have access to
the Almighty. Only somebody of great charisma and ability could have access to
him. The people sinned because they were perplexed. Moses has been gone for a
long time. . . . They did not understand that, while Moses was the greatest of
all prophets and the greatest of all men, every Jew has access to God. . . .
Sometimes it is a sense of one’s greatness that causes sin; sometimes it is a
sense of one’s smallness. It
is possible that the story of the golden calf actually is a reference to a
dispute between the later northern and southern kingdoms. See 1 Kings 12:28–30.
More than revealing that Israel has one God, the story might reveal that Israel
has one place of worship and one kingdom vs a divided one. The theology here is
good even if it is a historic controversy in narrative form. See Josh Gerstein,
“Revisiting the Sin of the Golden Calf,” Algemeiner.com, March 16, 2017, https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/03/16/revisiting-the-sin-of-the-golden-calf/.
See also Joseph B. Soltoveitchik’s Vision and Leadership (Brooklyn, NY:
KTAV Publishing House, 2012) 131.
[v] Drawing on the work of Rabbi
Jonathan Sacks in his book The Politics of Hope, we understand that
there are always two ideas floating around when we speak about citizenship in
the wider community (town, city, nation, globally).
[viii]
Daniel Elazar, a leading
political scientist and specialist in the study of federalism, political
culture, and the Jewish political tradition, writes that such a life “expresses
the idea that people can freely create communities and polities, peoples and
publics, and civil society itself through such morally grounded and sustained
compacts (whether religious or otherwise in impetus), establishing thereby
enduring partnerships.” Daniel Judah. Elazar, People and Polity: The
Organizational Dynamics of World Jewry (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press,
1989), 19.
[ix] Sacks, Hope, 63-64.
