Faith, Works, Law, Who Cares? Proper 4

Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19; Deuteronomy 11:18-21, 26-28; Psalm 46; Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28, (29-31); Matthew 7:21-29

Now at last we launch the Year A Bible study of Paul’s letter to the Romans, and the Gospel of Matthew. The Church’s one foundation having been established, and the mission defined, the eternal jihad between faith and works, grace and the law, justice and judgment is joined. The time has come to once again review the four questions for the apocalypse, which frame these discussions:

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?

As these essays have developed beginning with Year C, a slight modification to the third question has emerged: What is faith? Literal belief, or trust and commitment to the great work of justice-compassion? The post-modern meaning of faith is usually belief, regardless of the circumstances. The more basic meaning is trust – either in a person’s (or God’s) word, or actions, or in a process set in motion by a god, a prophet, or a leader. The Apostle Paul’s letters make little or no sense to post-modern minds unless the distinction between faith as literal belief and faith as trust is clear. Further, as literal belief becomes less viable in the third millennium of the Common Era, Christian “faith” is increasingly confronted with John Shelby Spong’s challenge to change or die. The continuing series of these essays will take the position that to the extent that Christian “faith” continues to mean “literal belief,” the 21st Century is a “post-Christian” era.

A second theme that continues to determine these interpretations of the lectionary readings is the meaning of justice. Civilization defines justice as retribution – payback; an eye for an eye. But the deeper meaning of justice is distribution: the rain falls on the good, the bad, and the ugly without partiality. Civilization does not use that definition except in cases where there is clearly injustice if partiality enters the picture. The classic example is that in the United States, if you are rich, white, and male your chances of serving jail time for possessing cocaine is an order of magnitude less than if you are poor, black, and female, charged with possessing marijuana. Occasionally there is a reversal of this pattern, as when an over-zealous North Carolina prosecutor trumped up a case of gang rape of a black stripper against a championship team of white LaCrosse players. In either case, distributive justice is at work – although in a negative sense. The positive understanding of distributive justice is contained in the term justice-compassion. To be 100 percent clear, these essays use the compound, distributive justice-compassion, which holds sway in the Covenant relationship of the Realm or Kingdom of God. Justice as retribution/pay-back holds sway in the normal march of civilization into Empire. See especially the work of Jesus Seminar scholars John Dominic Crossan and Marcus J. Borg for a thorough discussion of these concepts.

So, into the fray:

We begin with Paul’s argument about justification by faith, not by works. Since Martin Luther, this has meant that our actions are rationalized (we are right to do them) because of unquestioning belief in the literal, physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead. “Works” that the law requires do not count. Only actions that derive from belief will save us. The alternative reading from Deuteronomy could not be more blunt in its agreement: “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God . . . . and the curse, if you do not obey . . . .” Matthew’s Jesus presents the distinct possibility that acting in his name does not necessarily mean automatic acceptance into heaven. Indeed, Matthew’s Jesus insists that to use Jesus’s name without paying attention to Jesus’s words subverts the law, just like a corrupt or foolish builder who builds his house on the sand. The cautionary tale of Noah and the flood leaves no room for misunderstanding. The “wicked” will be finally judged and destroyed.

Throw in a sentence or two about how “the Law” means “Jewish law,” which has been replaced by the love of Jesus, reflected in the compassion God showed humanity after the flood, and this sermon should take about 6 minutes. Plenty of time to deal with First Sunday Communion, without going past the noon hour.

Problems:(1) Perhaps most important is the antisemitism that can creep in whenever the gospel writers or the apostle Paul engage in polemics about “the law.” (2) Do Paul’s obfuscations about whether faith (as belief) overthrows or upholds “the law” have any relevance to Christians today? (3) If God’s justice is distributive, and the world belongs to God, what’s with the collective punishment meted out to the entire creation who were not among the chosen few allowed into Noah’s Ark? (4) Is this yet another instance where the Old Testament is supplanted by the New Testament?

The story of Noah and the Flood, Matthew’s Gospel, and Paul’s Letters all have in common the purpose of defining for a people the nature of their God, and how to live in harmony with God’s insistence on justice. For Matthew (and the historical Jesus), this meant keeping the movement within the boundaries of Mosaic law. For Matthew (not the historical Jesus) justice took the form of apocalyptic judgment. The story of Noah certainly lends itself to apocalyptic interpretation. But actually, it contains a thread of redemptive hope that runs throughout the Old Testament. In story after story a “righteous remnant” reconstructs, regenerates, and reestablishes the world of distributive justice-compassion after God has acted to root out (or drown out or burn out) the inevitable consequences of human civilization – i.e., injustice. Noah and his family are the remnant in Genesis. In Exodus, the righteous remnant of the original tribes of Israel who have remained faithful to God’s distributive justice-compassion are delivered from Egyptian captivity and returned to the promised land. In the Babylonian exile stories, the prophet Jeremiah encourages the remnant left behind in Jerusalem to trust in the promise that the remnant carried off by the enemy will return to rebuild the temple within 50 years. The Servant Songs of Isaiah encourage those exiles.

In the New Testament, 30 years before the fall of Jerusalem and the great diaspora of the Jews from the Holy Land, the Apostle Paul began to define a Christian movement within Judaism that included non-Jewish people, who were beginning to separate from the tradition. The gospel writers’ purpose was to encourage the remnants of those who followed Jesus’s way to remain faithful to his teachings, and to build faith communities, some within Judaism, and some without.

In the 21st Century, Christians are debating the relevance of a belief system that depends on a premodern cosmology that clearly holds no scientific truth, and barely works as metaphor. Paul’s 1st Century arguments about who was a legitimate Jew (circumcised) and who was not, and whether one needed to be a circumcised Jew in order to join the Christians is meaningless except in the context of Judeo-Christian history. But who or what is a Christian today is the heart of the question, and Paul’s argument about faith versus works (which is the whole point of his letter to the Romans) is worth looking at seriously.

If Paul’s use of the word “faith” means “trust” in the basic truth of Jesus’s life and teachings (which may be called simply “trust in Jesus”) then perhaps what Paul was saying in the 1st Century might be understood as follows: But now, in addition to God’s law about living with distributive justice-compassion, and the prophets who preached about God’s insistence on distributive justice-compassion, we recognize the distributive justice-compassion of God for all people, because of our trust in the basic truth of Jesus’s life and teachings.

Paul is absolutely not saying that Jesus replaces God or the law or the prophets. Jesus instead fulfills, or actualizes, or brings into focus the law and the prophets, and if we follow his way, we also participate in the fulfillment of the same law. And what is that law? It is the law of distributive justice-compassion, which applies to everyone, Jew or Gentile, whether one “believes” the resurrection story literally or not.

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