A Priestly Kingdom: Year A, Proper 6

Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7; Exodus 19:2-8a; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; Psalm 100; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:23

Most ministers are skipping Romans and concentrating on the readings from Matthew’s Gospel. The Gospel is much easier to expound upon, and little intellect is required to understand Church dogma. But if Christianity is to have any viable relevance to life in the 3rd millennium, hard work is called for in comprehending, updating where possible, and reclaiming both the Apostle Paul’s and the gospel writers’ interpretations of who Jesus was, and what his life and death means – to the 1st Century as well as the 21st.

The Elves have paired the stories of Sarah’s pregnancy with Isaac, and the charge by God to the people in exodus from Egypt, with Matthew’s barely veiled hostility toward the Jewish tradition. Even though Sarah treated the promise of a son as a joke, the readings skip to assure us that Isaac was indeed born, and Abraham’s covenant with God was confirmed by circumcision of the infant after eight days. In Exodus, God tells Moses to promise the people that, “if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured people. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” But it is Matthew’s opinion (a millennium or two later) that the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” are in desperate need of a shepherd. Matthew’s Jesus sends out the disciples, telling them to rely on the hospitality of the people for their sustenance rather than demanding payment for healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, even raising the dead. But there is a catch. Those who do not welcome the disciples or do not listen to them are to be abandoned to a final judgment. Worse, Matthew’s Jesus expects that the [Jewish] councils and synagogues, governors and kings will universally hate both the messengers and the message.

The anti-Jewish message is clear, and it must be countered with scholarship. Matthew was a Jew, and he was likely the liturgical leader of a synagogue that had chosen to follow Jesus’s Way. Matthew was writing – as all the gospel writers were – well after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans. That he constructed his gospel as a liturgical replacement for Torah may be an indication of the bitterness of the disagreement between Jews facing the loss of their religion in diaspora, and fledgling Christians who wished nevertheless to be part of a synagogue. As Funk, et al. remind us, “The sayings in [these readings] reflect a knowledge of events that took place long after Jesus’s death: Matthew is really depicting the situation as he knew it in his own time. . . . Persecution will cause the emissaries to flee from one city to another. But they will not have gone through all the cities of ‘Israel’ before the end comes with the appearance of the son of Adam (. . . an apocalyptic figure). All this is far removed from [the historical] Jesus’s perspective.” The Five Gospels, p. 170.

My late father used to joke that the one thing Christians love more than Jesus himself is persecution. As soon as anyone objects to public prayer in schools or city/county council meetings, or whenever Christmas displays or representations of the 10 Commandments are barred from court house lawns and walls, the pious tie themselves to the stake, and beg for gasoline and matches. There is nothing more satisfying than to be hauled off to jail for disturbing the peace or disrupting a meeting, shouting the Lord’s Prayer in defiance of godless liberalism. But Paul was not talking about easy piety when he wrote that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” The reading is the continuation of Paul’s argument that Jesus died for the benefit of all people on the Planet, not just those who believe that Jesus rose bodily and magically from the grave. Jesus died in the attempt to reconcile humanity with God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion. When we live in Covenant with that realm, we participate with an incarnate Christ in making distributive justice possible in our personal, political, and social lives.

In that context, the charge from God to the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai becomes the source for transforming the theology of Empire (piety, war, victory, peace) to Covenant, non-violence, and distributive justice-compassion. The instructions for how to do that can be reclaimed from Matthew’s Jesus.

“Go and announce: ‘Heaven’s imperial rule is closing in.’ . . . Don’t get gold or silver or copper coins for spending money, don’t take a knapsack for the road, or two shirts, or sandals, or a staff. . . .” Trust in God’s “imperial rule” sounds naive to sophisticated, third millennium, post-modern realists. But trust in the process of distributive justice-compassion to the radical extent demanded by the Covenant is just as dangerous in the 21st Century as it was in the 1st. In the 1st Century, outlaws, rough roads, Roman legions, wild animals, and extreme weather conditions would have added a high premium to the courage already required to tell the story of Jesus in a hostile world. 21st Century exiles face hostility ranging from professional media to political and religious fundamentalists, and ordinary folk, caught up in normal, conventional attitudes toward “justice,” “peace,” and integrity. Normal civil society seems intent upon deliberate misinterpretation of the motives of anyone insisting on eliminating the death penalty; providing universal, single-payer, government-subsidized health care; developing and promoting renewable sources of energy; controlling the availability of weapons of mass destruction; and negotiating with “terrorists” and other “enemies.”

“Look,” Matthew’s Jesus says, “I’m sending you out like sheep to a pack of wolves.”

Indeed, we respond.

“Therefore, you must be as sly as a snake and as simple as a dove.”

Countering the normalcy of civilization means knowing the facts, framing the question, and presenting the argument so that the opposition is empowered to join the program. Tricky, but do-able.

“And you will be hauled up before governors and even kings . . . so you can make your case to them and to the nations. And when they lock you up, don’t worry about how you should speak or what you should say. It will occur to you at that moment what to say. . . .”

This is sailing a bit too close to the wind. Suppose I just vote, or buy organic, or – I’ll march, but I really can’t volunteer to get arrested in front of the White House. My [husband, wife, boss, children] won’t let me.

“ . . . You will be universally hated because of me. But those who hold out to the end will be saved.”

Jesus never says it’s going to be easy. He just gives us the choice: What is faith? Literal belief, or commitment to the great work of justice-compassion? What is deliverance? Salvation from hell, or liberation from injustice? When we choose liberation, we sign on to God’s original Covenant as full partners in the struggle. We become a holy people, a priesthood, guides into the kingdom, and mediators of the sacred.

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