WWJD: Year A, Proper 15

Genesis 45:1-15; Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Psalm 133; Psalm 67; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: 10-28

Matthew’s Jesus may have actually said that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person; rather it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person.” The version in the Gospel of Thomas (Thomas 14:5) puts the saying in the context of Jesus’s itinerant ministry: “When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you . . .” Matthew’s context has Jesus preaching to a crowd that includes those pesky Pharisees. Later, Peter (among the more dim-witted in the entourage, according to Matthew) insists that Jesus explain the “riddle.” The explanation has for two millennia obscured the real point, which is not about sexual immorality, evil intentions, and blasphemies, as pious Matthew would have us believe.

The real point is that living in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion obviates the need for any rules about what is or is not “kosher” or politically correct. The Apostle Paul is saying much the same thing behind all the polemics and despite the cutting and pasting by the Elves.

If we concentrate on Romans 11:29-32, with the story of Joseph’s reconciliation with his dastardly brothers firmly in mind, then the message for today is a very pious one: Just as we all are “disobedient” to God’s rules (regarding the Ten Commandments, abortion, same-sex marriage, “sexual sin,” gun ownership), but have now received God’s forgiveness (by believing that Jesus died in our place and was bodily resurrected), so “they” (by implication, “the Jews”) have also been disobedient and have also been forgiven (therefore, supporting the government of Israel regardless of the circumstances is “God’s Will”). Then comes the kicker: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” Here is the monster God (graphically illustrated by Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ), who deliberately causes people to fall into evil so that “he” can then save us and cause us to love “him.” Such an interpretation is nothing more than a justification for abuse at every level of human experience – the exact opposite of distributive justice-compassion, and light-years from what the Apostle Paul was trying to say. The Elves strive mightily to avoid the anti-semitism that can arise from an uninformed and literal reading of Paul’s argument. But by not providing the context and allowing the full depth and breadth of Paul’s polemic to be worked through, we are hard-pressed to arrive at any other conclusion.

Look at what Paul says in Romans 11:11-12: “So I ask, have they (the Jews) stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumbling, salvation has come to the Gentiles . . . Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean?” And later in verse 15: “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead!” Emphasis mine.

Then, assuming we still won’t get his point, Paul uses the metaphor of some branches that were broken from a healthy olive tree, and a wild shoot grafted into their place. Again, the argument takes some careful reading. Paul does say, “For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you . . . Note [God’s] severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.”

What is God’s kindness? It is distributive justice-compassion, usually misunderstood as “mercy.” “Mercy” as imperial theology uses the term most often means feeling sorry for a criminal, and converting the sentence from the death penalty to life in prison without parole. God’s kindness under Covenant, on the other hand, means distributive justice-compassion: taking into consideration the entire context, then acting with radical abandonment of self-interest to ensure fairness. When Paul talks about “full inclusion” and “acceptance” of the Jews, he means what he has said throughout this letter to the Romans, that nothing can separate us from the love of God as evidenced and experienced in the life and teachings of Jesus, whom Christians call the Christ. God has no litmus test for inclusion in the Kingdom except to do our best to live in distributive justice-compassion. No one is left out: neither slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor gentile; and when we fail – because of a “thorn in the flesh” or any other shortcoming, we are saved by God’s grace. Belief in a resuscitated corpse has nothing to do with it.

Nevertheless, don’t get too smug about your salvation. God has always been very clear about the preference extended in God’s realm to those who live in distributive justice-compassion. There are consequences for those who do not, generally having to do with becoming trapped in imperial forms of retributive justice, and theologies of piety, war, victory, peace – not to mention environmental holocaust.

Look what Joseph did, when his brothers came looking for food-aid in a time of drought and famine in their own land. Joseph – now part of Pharaoh’s imperial rule – could have enslaved them on the spot, or sent them away to starve and die. Instead, remembering that he was part of God’s Covenant with his great-grandfather Abraham, his grandfather Isaac, and his father Jacob, he took them in. In the grand scheme of the Bible, of course, we Christians can make the next leap and claim that because of Joseph’s justice-compassion, the Hebrew people did become enslaved, which allowed the great liberator Moses to appear on the scene, and ultimately, of course, Jesus, whom Christians call the Messiah. We can also “take in” the Jews by conversion – forceful or otherwise – as the dogma that underlies Christian Zionism assumes.

But the point is not supersessionary arrogance. The point is the continuing development of human consciousness toward distributive justice-compassion. The story is about the continuing inevitable normalcy of civilization toward the theology of Empire (piety, war, victory), and the ongoing struggle to remain true to the Covenant: non-violence, distributive justice-compassion, peace.

In today’s U.S. society, the aphorism Jesus might use to illustrate his reversal of imperial piety might be, “A victim is only a victim when personal power is unclaimed.”

Joseph certainly did not remain a victim of his brother’s injustice. He took advantage whenever he could of the personal talents and power he had, and eventually won a place for himself that allowed him to rescue his entire family. Most extraordinary of all, he completely reconciled with his brothers – just like Esau did with Jacob (the Elves left that part out of the lectionary). There is a pattern here, if we are willing to see it. Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount is about the empowerment of the poor and disenfranchised, victims of imperial power, which turns out not to be “power” at all. Once a victim is empowered, that person ceases to be a victim. Jesus himself did not die a helpless victim. Jesus died in active, non-violent resistance to injustice.

The U.S. medical system (I refuse to call it “health care”) is front and center for many of us and certainly for me, as my mother lies dying in a poorly-managed nursing facility, whose policies and procedures are borderline at best, and legally suspicious at worst. We are caught in a web of imperial piety, consisting of social norms, “Christian” beliefs, legal definitions, and of course, the consequences of market forces allowed to run amok by political expediency. To file a complaint with the State is to risk retaliation on the part of the providers, even though such retaliation is against the law. We have neither the money, nor enough evidence to pursue a malpractice lawsuit, but we are not interested in revenge; we are interested in accountability.

That same pious imperial web ensnared Jim Adkisson, who invaded the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on a Sunday morning in July. He was not able to break out of his victim role. Instead he attacked the most convenient representative of “liberal” ideas, which he blamed for his inability to find and keep a job, support his family, and ultimately fulfill his perceived obligations as a man in U.S. society. He remains in jail, charged with one count of murder so far, under $1 million bond.

How can we reverse imperial power today? Or, in the pious slogan of the late 1990s, What Would Jesus Do? First of all, what Jesus did, what Mr. Adkisson was unable to do, and what we must do, is drive a stake through the heart of our all-too-human desire for retribution. The State will exact its revenge, and the UUA will continue its stand for liberal values -- but not so far as to radically abandon its own self-interest and work for reconciliation with either Mr. Adkisson or his family. Perhaps it is too much to ask. After all, in a market-driven society, who has time to empower the powerless?

Secondly, we must reverse the insidious lie that takes literally the Pauline admonition that “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ.” We must not be “content” with injustice. Nor must we be “content” with the easy hegemony that declares that anyone who does not believe that Jesus died for our sins is not a part of the kingdom of God. As Jesus said, it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. What defiles us is the tacit agreement with imperial injustice, and its accompanying theology.

Isaiah still has the last word: “Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right . . . And the foreigners . . . all who . . . hold fast my covenant – these I will bring to my holy mountain. . . . for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

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