Get with the Program: Year A Proper 8

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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