Reincarnation: 2nd Sunday in Eastertide

Introduction

For the season of Easter in Year A, the Elves have us studying First Peter, John, and Acts for six weeks. After the death of Jesus, the first question to be asked was, what happened to his followers? Once the idea of Jesus’s resurrection began to be known, the question became how did the new story fit into Jewish community and religious life? Within a few years, what became known as the Way of Jesus proclaimed by Jesus’s original followers began to develop its own communities, some still within the Jewish tradition, and others among gentiles and pagans.

21st Century scholarship is beginning to come to a consensus that Acts was created in the early 2nd century – perhaps as late as 150 C.E. Because whoever wrote Acts also wrote Luke, the impact of that timing on the interpretation of the content of Luke’s gospel is also being considered and debated by the Jesus Seminar scholars as they work to reconstruct the earliest Christian communities, from Galilee to Rome. Regardless of the timing, however, the point is that Acts is not history remembered. Like the gospels and the various letters included in the New Testament, Acts was created in response to a need for standardizing an emerging Christianity that was moving farther and farther away from Jewish religion and from Jesus’s original message.

Given that history and purpose, is there any point in pursuing the Bible study laid out for us between now and Pentecost other than to underscore traditional Christian belief and dogma? The time has come once again to revisit the Four Questions of the Apocalypse, which are the underlying questions of this Commentary, and provide a framework for reclaiming Jesus’s message for a post-modern, post-Christian, 21st Century:

1) What is the nature of God? Violent or non-violent?
2) What is the nature of Jesus’ message? Inclusive or exclusive?
3) What is faith? Literal belief, or commitment to the great work of justice-compassion?
4) What is deliverance? Salvation from hell, or liberation from injustice?

While keeping those questions in mind, the next six Sundays may be seen as an unfolding commitment to the work begun by Jesus for a developing Christianity, whether in the 1st or the 21st Century. The journey begins with Doubt, and progresses to a dawning Recognition, formation of Community, committed Faith, continuing Revelation, and Salvation.

The theme for this week is, Even though you haven’t physically seen the risen Christ, faith (belief) in his resurrection will save you.

Reincarnation: 2nd Sunday in Eastertide

Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

The lead editorial in The Washington Post for Sunday March 28, 2008, is titled “Easter – A Movable Feast.” It captures the miss-perception of most of the non-Christian world that “The Easter story speaks to everyone about the universal fear of death” and that “[t]o believing Christians, the resurrection is literal. For others, it may be the hope that they will live on in their families, their friends and their society, and in the things they have done. . . . [Easter] has moved well along on the path to toleration and understanding, although, as always with such things, there are many miles to go.”

Like the famous Doubting Thomas in the suggested reading from John’s Gospel, the Post editorial writer can’t see beyond the dichotomy set up between literalists demanding physical evidence and the depressing conclusion that eternal life is only available to famous people. The rest of us – who may have no children or grandchildren, or can’t get a publisher to pay attention to our work – are doomed. Jesus’s inclusive and anti-imperial message of distributive justice-compassion is then further eviscerated, and we are left with gutless liberal tolerance and vague attempts at “understanding” – ourselves? others? The writer does not say.

Only one fact about Jesus’s death and resurrection can be documented from the 1st Century, and treated as factual, literal truth in the 21st Century: Jesus died at the hands of the Roman Empire. The rest of the stories are attempts to reconcile that death with what Jesus taught about living in the Kingdom of God’s distributive justice-compassion. But the readings for this 2nd Sunday in Eastertide tell us nothing about that. Instead, they are theological arguments that reinforce conventional piety.

The writer of the First Letter of Peter points believers to heaven and the salvation of their souls. The people in this particular late 1st Century Christian community are reminded that because of Jesus’s resurrection, they have “new birth into a living hope” that they will inherit eternal life when they die because their souls have been saved. They were very likely under some pressure to conform to the society around them. The letter acknowledges that they may have to suffer “various trials,” but their faith (belief) in the promise of heaven gives them the strength to resist. What do they resist? To take a sneak peek ahead – and into a section not included by the Elves in this six-week series – they are not resisting the injustice of empire. Quite the opposite: “For the Lord’s sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right. . . . As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil. Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” 1st Peter 2:13-17.

Jesus never said to dishonor the Emperor. But he did remind people that the Emperor owns only the coin on which his likeness appears. The subversive meaning of Jesus’s answer about whether to pay taxes to the Emperor is lost to the letter writer, and to be fair, has remained a point of debate since the day it was uttered. See Mark 12:13-17; Matthew 22:15-22; Luke 20:19-26; Thomas 100:1-4: “Give the emperor what belongs to the emperor, give God what belongs to God . . . .” Anyone familiar with Jewish theology would know that the Earth, and all that is in it, belongs to God. But to “accept the authority of every human institution” means collaboration with the forces of injustice. Surely Jesus did not advise the poor to pay exorbitant taxes so that kings can go off to wage preemptive wars; surely he did not suggest that unskilled workers who clean corporate offices should be denied a living wage; surely he did not suggest that people should forfeit their homes to leveraged, multi-national, corporate debt. Nor would Jesus suggest, as the writer of First Peter would, that those suffering under oppressive systems should passively hope for a better deal in the next life. Jesus makes the point clear with his advice about how to respond when the oppressor insults you, or demands your coat or your services as porter. In case his listeners missed the point, he provides a personal physical illustration during the last week of his life with his parody of an emperor’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his subsequent demonstration against Temple corruption. The crucifixion, of course, is the terrifying result his later interpreters are confronted with. Perhaps that is why they reduced the Way from radical, costly discipleship to conformity with powers and principalities.

The writer of Luke-Acts has the Apostle Peter (not the writer of 1st Peter) address the Jews in Jerusalem and Judea, accusing them along with God himself of being accessories to Jesus’s execution: “[Whom], according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.” Those “outside the law” (meaning outside Jewish law) are of course the Romans. With just this portion of Peter’s Pentecost speech, even though God apparently planned the whole thing – which may excuse “the Jews”– the seeds of intolerant and exclusive anti-Semitism have been sown, along with the concept of a manipulative, interventionist God, who acts alone. Peter goes on to use Psalm 16 to argue that King David foresaw Jesus as the Messiah, and therefore, “God has made him both Lord and Messiah,” and in case we didn’t get it the first time, Peter reminds his Jewish audience that he is talking about “this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Because these writings were created 40 to 150 years after Jesus’s death, and no sooner than 20 years after the death of Paul, they cannot be read as definitive theology for 21st Century Christians. Too much of what is known about Jesus’s actual teachings has been recovered during the last Century; too much careful Biblical scholarship has been accepted. The only phrase from the entire set of readings for this Sunday that has meaning for 21st Century Christians is Acts 2:24b: “. . . it was impossible for [Jesus] to be held in [death’s] power.”

Why? What did Jesus say and do that death cannot destroy?

Jesus’ message went beyond resisting the normal injustices that come with human civilization, and certainly far beyond the easy admonition from First Peter (3:11) to “turn away from evil and do good.” Jesus’ message transformed Saul of Tarsus – whose job may have been to witness the stoning of Stephen on behalf of conventional Jewish piety – into Paul, who declares that nothing can separate anyone from the justice-compassion of God, seen in Jesus who became the Christ. Jesus rises from beyond death to remind us that God is not violent, and justice is not about revenge. God’s distributive justice-compassion is not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, which is the normal course of justice in human civilization. God’s distributive justice is radical fairness. When Jesus says, “love your enemies,” he confronts us with an impossibility. In the words of Jesus Seminar founder Robert Funk, “those who love their enemies have no enemies.” Loving our enemies flies in the face of every military action taken on the part of government anytime, anywhere. Loving our enemies means bringing non-violent justice-compassion to every social and political situation that arises. Loving our enemies puts our lives and liberty at stake.

Whenever we take on that radical abandonment of self-interest – whenever we resist the forces of injustice in the workplace, in government, in our relationships with family, friends, neighbors, Jesus is reincarnated – rises again – in us. It is faith – trust – in that ongoing, ever-renewing resurrection that will save us, not from individual, physical death, but from the injustice that keeps us from recognizing our participation in the Kingdom.