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Second Sunday in Epiphany: The Priesthood of All
Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-11; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42
This week we abandon Matthew’s midrash to consider John’s declaration that Jesus is “ the lamb of God that does away with the sins of the world.” We also get started on 1st Corinthians, which is the orthodox template for church organization from Paul, but we don’t get past the first chapter. This Second Sunday in the season of Epiphany is the prologue to a fore-shortened liturgical year because in 2008, there are only three Sundays before we get to the Transfiguration and Ash Wednesday. This Year A concentrates on orthodox mysticism and belief in the early church by studying the gospel of John throughout Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. We will therefore miss Matthew 5, 6, and most of 7. We do not get back to Matthew until the Season after Pentecost, when we take up chapter 7 and continue in “ordinary time,” in May.
Perhaps it is good to have a long dose of orthodox mysticism. It gives believers a break from all that guilt about distributive justice-compassion ...
The subject matter is the establishment of the early church. In John’s version of the Jesus story, the brothers Simon and Andrew are disciples of John the Baptist. When Jesus comes to be baptized, and John declares that Jesus is the lamb of God that does away with the sins of the world, Andrew takes note, and tells his brother Simon that Jesus is the Messiah, and they had better leave the Baptist and join him. Jesus declares Simon to be “the rock.” Psalm 40 is a hymn of thanksgiving to God, who “drew me up . . . out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock . . .” It is only in Matthew 16:18 that Jesus is made to say “upon this Rock I will build my church.” The Elves don’t mention that at this time, but we all know it already anyway. The second servant song from Isaiah can be read to confirm the establishment of the church as “the light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Paul’s greeting to the Church in Corinth reminds us that God is faithful, and we are called by God into fellowship with his Son.
What are post-Christian exiles supposed to do with this?
Perhaps treat it as how not to start an institution, because institutions, like civilizations, inevitably fall into the trap entitled Piety, War (violence), Victory, Peace. Institutions, like civilizations, are prone to act in their own self-interest. John Dominic Crossan is careful to point out that this is not an indictment of human nature. In other words, our self-governing organizations do not fall into the imperial pattern because humans are basically evil or selfish. Instead, when individuals band together for collective security – whether economic, intellectual, spiritual, or physical – the rules devised for peaceful prosperous community slide easily into control, hierarchy, consequences for divergence, retribution, sin, and salvation.
What the Elves that concocted the three-year span of the Revised Common Lectionary seem to be setting up is a confrontation between those who – like Jesus – experience a seamless relationship between humanity and the rest of creation (Covenant) and those who insist that God and God’s kingdom are inaccessible except through an intermediary: Jesus and his representatives – the priest, the bishop, the pope. Starting with Epiphany, Jesus is revealed as the Messiah by Kings, then by John the Baptist, then revealed to Simon by his brother Andrew. Apparently even the great Peter can’t recognize the Lord on his own – perhaps confirming his inability at a later time to recognize the Lord while waiting in Pilate’s courtyard.
Hierarchy, a vertical relationship, most commonly seen in imperial systems that lead inevitably to inequality and injustice, is implied as the norm in these readings. The opening to Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians is used to bolster that normalcy of power-over others in the early Christian community. But contemporary scholarship is suggesting that was not Paul’s intention. Paul was arguing for horizontal equality of relationships in the Christian community, and Covenant with God’s kingdom of justice-compassion as taught and modeled by the life of Jesus. Paul insists on a kenotic community that, while diverse, uses its many talents for the common good – a radical abandonment of self-interest that results in covenant, non-violence, distributive justice, and peace.
Nor is the reading from the second servant song in Isaiah to be interpreted as the Church triumphant. God tells the servant (the nation of Israel) that Israel is given as the light to the nations – the example of how to live in God’s justice – so that God’s salvation (liberation from injustice) may reach to the end of the earth. This is Covenant, not imperial theology, and it is counter to the demand for apostolic succession being cultivated by the writer of John’s Gospel, and implied as settled orthodoxy. Jesus’s great Sermon on the Mount, preaching Covenant, non-violence, distributive justice, and peace, is left out of the readings selected from Matthew’s Gospel, and Paul’s passionate argument for kenotic community is ignored because the Roman church won the fight over how the timing of the celebration of Easter is calculated.
The Covenant is universal. The servant says that while s/he realizes the original purpose may have been to reconcile the people of Israel with their God, that is not enough. Certainly it is true today that “saving” one particular nation or way of life is not enough. The Planet is in the midst of one of the greatest extinctions of life forms since the beginning of Earth’s existence. The loss of diversity means the loss of flexibility in evolution that creates niches for survival among all the beings in the Universe.
If the unique contribution that humanity has to make is consciousness, then we cannot remain unconscious – unaware – of the impact of the human life form on the others. God says, “It is too light a thing [not enough] that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel . . .” The very survival of the planetary biosphere and the thousands of ecosystems that live within it appears to be at stake. The time for intermediaries is past. There is still mystery and wonder to be enjoyed, explored, explained, and experienced, but we no longer need priests or shamans to tell us what to do in order to be in covenant relationship with that mystery. All we have to do, says Jesus, in the portions of Matthew we are not supposed to read this year, is open our eyes, and look, and listen.