“Shut up and Get
out!” 4th Sunday in Epiphany
Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1
Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28
The Elves further solidify
Christian dogma with this continuing series of “epiphanies” –
“revelations” of the god Jesus.
God tells Moses that a prophet like Moses will be raised up from the
midst of the people, and the people will be held accountable for
obeying the prophet’s words. Christians are to understand that
Jesus, of course, is that prophet, and believers are held accountable
for the strength of their belief. Sure enough, the Psalm declares
God’s Covenant established forever because God sent “redemption” – the
Savior Christ – to the people. But these references to the
foundation myth of Judaism in both the passage from Deuteronomy and
Psalm 111 do not point to Jesus as the sole fulfillment of God’s
Covenant with the people. There were and are many prophets whose
job it has been to inspire, beg, and bully the people into complying
with God’s rules for living in distributive justice-compassion.
As the Psalm says, through it all, God has kept God’s part of the
bargain. The rain continues to fall on the just and the unjust –
global warming notwithstanding. The people, however, continue to
opt out. We prefer to fight over who owns the land and its
resources – never mind Psalm 24.
The Elves in Year B have focused on Chapters 6 through 9 of Paul’s
first known letter to the community in Corinth, blithely choosing
particular passages to bolster or confirm what is thought to be
“traditional” Christian belief. Paul’s declaration to the
community in Corinth that it is a “sin against Christ” to cause someone
with a weak faith to be “destroyed” because of a silly argument over
who eats meat looks like pious over-kill to tolerant, 21st Century
mainline Christians. Paul’s point and the significance of Jesus’s
life and teachings for both 1st and 21st Century Christians have been
compromised.
John Dominic Crossan (and
other Biblical scholars) propose that Paul wrote to the Christian
community in Corinth at least five times, visited at least twice, and
sent emissaries on one or two additional occasions. It seems the
Corinthians were (or had) major problems with Paul’s version of
Christianity. The problems were not about relative “weakness” or
“strength” of particular members’ belief in the factuality of Paul’s
story, nor compliance with Jewish dietary laws or rites of passage such
as circumcision. The problems were perhaps two-fold: First,
to understand the radicality of Jesus’s message as kenosis
– the radical abandonment of self-interest at every level, and in every
circumstance of life – personal, social, familial, political,
global. Second (at least) was to understand Jesus’s definition of
the realm of God as radical fairness – distributive justice-compassion,
not retributive payback and mutual exchange of favors.
In his discussion of Paul’s letters and trips to Corinth (In Search of Paul,
Chapter 6) Crossan asks, “How, indeed, could one live personal or
communal kenosis without the empowerment of a kenotic Christ and a
kenotic God?” p. 334. When we speak of kenotic God and kenotic Christ, Crossan and I are
using mystic language and metaphor. The kenotic God is present wherever
there is justice and life, and is absent wherever there is injustice
and death. Such metaphor flies in the face of theistic concepts
of a personal, omnipresent, omniscient Being outside of ourselves and
superior to the natural world. The old theological meaning of kenosis is the willingness of
divinity to empty itself of divinity and take on the humanity of
Jesus. The new meaning is the willingness of humanity to let go
of civilization’s definition of what is necessary for abundant
life. Crossan continues that from the point of view of
civilization’s definition, “Paul’s vision is quite simply inhuman,
impossible, idiotic, and absurd.” That Roman society (wherever
Paul traveled) found the message to be difficult if not impossible is
no more surprising than that 21st Century, post-modern, post-Christian
society finds the message to be difficult if not impossible to
understand and to live. “But what is at stake is very
clear. A kenotic community
begets equality, a patronal community begets inequality; kenosis begets
cooperation; patronage begets competition” (p. 334). The kenotic Christ is embodied in
Christian community.
At this point in Chapter 8, Paul is arguing with those Corinthians in
the Christian community who still thought that their ritual animal
sacrifices to the gods held power. Paul is finally acknowledging
that if people are convinced that their well-being depends upon
participating in the sacrificial rites, who are Christians to
object? “Food will not bring us close to God,” Paul says.
But his point is that the kenotic Christian
community, knows that there is no longer any need to participate in
ritual sacrifices whose purpose was to reconcile relationships among
the strata of Roman patronage society, from the Gods to the Emperor, to
the aristocracy, to the shop keepers, to the servants, and the slaves.
Jesus’s death eliminated the need for any of that. Before God, in
the fellowship of Jesus (the body of Christ) there is no male nor
female, no slave or free, but all are one, and share equally on a level
playing field. So, Paul is telling the Corinthians, if your
friend still insists on participating in the sacrifices, for the love
of Jesus, don’t you go along with it. Perhaps she is beginning to
waver in her commitment to the normalcy of Roman customs. Even
though you know that eating meat sacrificed to idols is meaningless,
the moment you do so – perhaps as a favor to her, or to prove how
ineffective the sacrifice is – you support the legitimacy of the
inequality, oppression, slavery, and ignorance that perpetuates Roman
imperial theology: piety, war, victory.
This is not pious posturing about vegetarianism, or leading naive or
morally weak people into sin. Paul is saying that to participate
in Christian community means not participating in unjust systems.
For 21st Century people who still want to make the attempt to be
followers, not worshipers of Jesus, that means operating outside the
usual parameters. It might mean refusing to pay income
taxes. It might mean getting arrested in the attempts to close
the so-called “School of the Americas” in
Fort Benning, Georgia. It might mean performing marriages for
GLBT partners in defiance of church and state
laws. It might mean putting your body in the way of injustice in
any number of circumstances from quitting your job at the grocery store
where Unions are prohibited, to running for the local school board
enmeshed in creationism, to divorcing your spouse in order to protect
your children. It might mean allowing someone on life
support to die. It might mean allowing a convicted murderer to
live.
Mark’s gospel puts the crowning touch on the Elves’ sequence.
Finally, a mere 21 verses into his story, the impatient writer can
relate the first miracle – which is casting out a “demon.” Not a
healing, not a teaching, an exorcism. Unlike the Jewish religious
experts, Jesus had the authority to exorcise an “unclean spirit.”
The operative word for the Elves and for us is “authority.” After
2,000 years of mis-appropriation, debate, schism, heresies, crusades,
holocausts, claims, and repudiations, Jesus’s life and teachings
continue to speak with authority. In “Driven by the Holy Spirit.
Interview by John Malkin.” Sojourners
Magazine, February 2009 (Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 45), Jesuit John Dear tells the story
of testifying in defense of Philip Berrigan at Berrigan’s Plowshares
trial in 1994:
We were facing 20 years in prison for two federal charges —
destruction of government property and conspiracy to commit a felony
crime. Each carries 10 years. . . .[T]he prosecutor . . . started
shouting at me after I testified about Phil: “Who drove you that
day to the Seymour Johnson Air Force base?” I refused to name
anybody, saying, “I take responsibility for my own actions.” The judge
started yelling; he ordered the jury out and said, “If you don’t answer
this, you will get two more years in prison because of contempt of
court. I’m ordering that in a minute unless you answer.” I
said, “Okay. I’ll answer.” They were all shocked. They
bring back the jury, and the prosecutor yells at me, “Tell us under
oath who drove the car.” I said, “Well, thank you for pushing me
to the truth of our action. The truth is that we were driven to
the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base by the Holy Spirit.” The judge
started yelling and hammering his gavel, and the prosecutor was
yelling. He orders me out, strikes the testimony from the record,
and dismisses the court for the day. It was a great moment.
It was like the Acts of the Apostles. I have never recovered
since.
Perhaps unfortunately, Jesus as exorcist no longer helps to sell the
tough message : twenty-two years in prison for refusing to support what
amounts to eating meat sacrificed to idols. The people were
amazed, and asked themselves, “What is this? A new teaching –
with authority!”
Jesus needed no special prayers or magic words to get the victim to
stop participating in his own oppression. The Holy Spirit did
it. “Shut up and get out!” is all he had to say.
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