Repent for the Kingdom I: Choosing Justice

Genesis 2:15-17; Genesis 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4 :1-11

The five weeks of Lent in Year A explore the concepts of sin, salvation, and justification in Paul’s letter to the Romans (and a diversion into pseudo-Paul’s Ephesians), and the long theological discourses that John’s Jesus engages in.  Tradition defines “sin” in terms of conventional morality – especially sexual morality – and petty trespass.  “Justification” usually means “rationalization” as in, “Anyone would be justified in demanding the death penalty in these circumstances”; or “abortion can never be justified under any circumstances.”  Even though the root of the word is “justice,” and the true meaning is “to be made just,” the usual understanding is less about reconciling transformation and more about coercion and retribution.  Likewise “repentance,” as pointed out in the Ash Wednesday meditation, has come to mean “feel sorry about” – i.e., cheap guilt to accompany petty trespass – rather than “turning around and away.”  Real crime, such as murder, earns its own conventional retribution, so doesn’t enter the discussion.  Murderers and other so-called “capital” criminals may indeed “repent” of their crimes, but “justification” for them is impossible on the earthly side of death – or so we have been taught for the past 2,000 years.  

For the first Sunday in Lent, according to the orthodox interpretation of the first reading from Genesis, the evil snake seduces the naive woman who in turn traps the all-too-willing man into disobeying God.  In the last reading, the One who is to save humanity from the consequences of that original sin is made a similar offer and declines.  In between is the Apostle Paul in one of his more inscrutable arguments.  But if we let go of tradition and listen to scholarship, these readings take on a very different meaning that can provide leadership into a true and lasting repentance for this season of Lent and beyond.  These stories are not about sex, nor are they about conventional morality and petty trespass.  They are about human consciousness, and the choice each person has to make about whether or not to participate in God’s ongoing program of distributive justice-compassion.  

Non-human inhabitants of the natural world don’t spend their time agonizing over “the problem of evil.”  So far as humans know, the rabbit does not have a last regret as her neck is broken by the fox’s jaws.  Justice in God’s Realm is profoundly distributive.  To eat and be eaten is the Eucharistic law of the universe.  But thanks to the Trickster in God’s garden, humanity was given the ability to make value judgments about whether the rabbit “deserved” to die, and whether the fox’s action is “violent.”  While what the snake told Eve is true on the surface (“if you eat of the fruit of tree of knowledge of good and evil you will not die”), in pure Trickster reversal, that knowledge brings the kind of death that separates us from God’s realm, where the lion and the lamb lie down together in trust that the Universe provides for equal life in balance – the radical fairness of distributive justice.

So into the fray of Paul’s tortured language (Romans 15-16): “But the free gift is not like the trespass.  For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.  And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin.  For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification”  (emphasis mine).  The free gift (charis) is the grace of God.  One human (Adam/Eve) chose to live outside the distributive justice of God’s realm (sin/trespass), thereby bringing injustice to humanity because of the human demand for retribution (payback) instead of the fair distribution of sustainable life.  But God’s distributive justice-compassion (righteousness) is freely available in God’s realm – the natural world where there is no “good-evil” dichotomy because all inhabitants of the Universe (God’s realm – the natural world) live in a fair balance that sustains life for all.  That is the free gift of grace – distributive justice-compassion – returned to humanity by Jesus, if humanity chooses to accept and use it.

Where modern and traditional theology loses its way is in the misunderstanding of death.  Jesus did not come so that people would no longer die, or so that people might die now but be brought back to life later when Jesus comes back again to finish what he failed to do the first time.  Death is a fact of life – even (or especially) in God’s realm.  Every being in the Universe, from eucharyotes to sabertoothed tigers to dwarf stars and planets has a life cycle that continues so long as there is a sustaining niche for it.  As soon as the niche evolves away from sustainability, the life form dies – whether it is animal, vegetable, mineral, or gas.  However, the good news from the scientific point of view (and surprisingly from the Apostle Paul’s ecstatic mystical insight) is that matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed.  That continuing, eternal transformation is something that humanity participates in, whether individuals choose to believe it or not.  That is God’s free gift of eternal life.

But what Jesus was talking about was not the natural order of the evolution of the Universe.  Jesus was talking about how humanity can replicate the distributive justice-compassion found in God’s realm.  Back to Romans 5:17-19: “If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.  Therefore, just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.  For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”  Now Paul shifts to free gift as righteousness – as being made just (justification).  If humanity is to replicate God’s distributive justice it can only be in this life here and now, as radical fairness – consciously choosing radical abandonment of self-interest (love) – as Jesus taught by the example of his own death at the hands of Roman imperialism.  Jesus taught that radical abandonment of self-interest as the way to live in the kingdom of God in this life.  Whether Jesus or anyone lives in the kingdom of God in another life before or after this one is irrelevant.  The non-human inhabitants of God’s realm do not have the need or the ability to choose radical abandonment of self-interest.  Only humans on Planet Earth (so far as we know) have that ability and – more of the Trickster’s irony – the need if humanity is to continue for much longer as a conscious life form.  The free gift of distributive justice is there, all we have to do is accept it and live it.

Matthew’s story of the temptation of Jesus now begins to take on a metaphor that has meaning in a post-modern, post-Christian world.  When the Devil (the same Trickster as appeared to Adam/Eve, the first humans) appears to the One whom Christians consider to be sent as the reconciler between God’s realm and humanity, the Trickster offers all the ego-enhancing, self-serving powers and principalities of Empire, with its glittering theology: piety, war, victory, and – here comes the tricky part– uneasy, ephemeral, peace: i.e., retributive justice, which is injustice, that brought about Jesus’s undeserved, unfair, unjust death.  Matthew’s Jesus says, “Get out of here, Satan!  Remember, it is written, “You are to pay homage to the Lord our God, and you are to revere him alone.”  Jesus chooses God’s realm, which is justice and life here and now.  He is  able to do it because of his extraordinary trust in God’s free gift.

We have the free gift (charis) of grace that brings justice and eternal life because we are part of God’s realm, whether we know it, believe it, or not.  Jesus’s choice provides us with the way to begin the process – the program – of conscious participation.