Gaia Rising Home
Email Sea Raven
Last Week's Blog
Blog Archive
Proper 23: Exile from Covenant: Piety v. Covenant 5
Luke 17:11-19; 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c;
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-12; Psalm 111; 2 Timothy 2:8-15
The reading from 2 Timothy would seem to be the “optional” reading for this Sunday: “The saying is sure: If we have died with [Christ] we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself . . . Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him . . . rightly explaining the word of truth.” Emphasis mine. This is irredeemable gobbledegook. The Christ preached by the real Apostle Paul was an instrument of inclusive grace, not exclusive condemnation. The theology of Empire demands pious belief, and that’s what we get from this writer. If the Apostle Paul’s name had not been attached to it, perhaps it would be not be part of the canon.
The scriptures to focus on this week are 2 Kings, Jeremiah, and good old Luke.
According to the scholars who put together The Five Gospels, the stories about Jesus curing lepers in both Mark and Luke are not based on any experience of Jesus’s actual life or sayings. The story in Mark (1:40-45) illustrates Mark’s fascination with the secret messiah, who continually denies who he is, and even gets angry at people who recognize him – such as the leper who ignores his request and tells everyone, so that Jesus is forced to focus his ministry in the countryside. Luke tops Mark’s healing of one leper with the healing of ten – which would seem to bury Mark’s concern with secrecy. Then Luke really pours on the piety. Not only is the foreigner the one who shows gratitude and praises God’s power, but the foreigner is a Samaritan – a hated alien – who believes the Jesus story, in contrast to the ungrateful cynics in Jerusalem. Luke’s point – and the point of the repeated reading from Proper 9 (2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c) – is trust in the healing power of God/Christ. In both stories, it is the foreigner who acts on faith.
Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon dashes any hopes for the early return predicted by false prophets. Instead of accepting the imperial god of their captors, the exiles must learn that they are still bound to the covenant with their own god, who will act with justice-compassion.
There are two sides to the coin labeled “foreigner.” One is the captive, who is forcibly removed from the homeland, and the other is the conqueror, who invades. One is the stranger in a strange land, struggling to come to terms with spiritual, political, economic exile. The other is the host – willing or unwilling – of the immigrant or exile who has arrived.
Much of the Planet today is living in exile, either physical or spiritual, and in many cases both. The Planet is changing, ecologically, and economically. There is increasingly no escape from the alienation of climate transformation, food shortages, water contamination, pandemic disease, and violence. Resentment, fear, anger, and retribution are on the rise worldwide. So we turn to strong-armed power in military juntas, dictatorships, ideologies, mistrust of the unfamiliar, blame, and terror – all the false prophets raised up in Babylon, who distract us and seduce us into the theology of Empire. When we succumb to that seduction, we force covenant, non-violence, and justice-compassion – God – into exile. The God of distributive justice-compassion has been driven out almost everywhere, along with exiles from Christian and other faiths who are unwilling to comply with piety, war, and victory in order to grab an illusive peace.
The profound truth in the story in 2 Kings and confirmed by Luke is that the hated alien is the one who trusts in covenant, non-violent justice-compassion, and peace with the exiled God. What we don’t read in Proper 23 – just as we did not read it back in July for Proper 9 – is the betrayal of that trust on the part of Elisha’s servant Gehazi (2 Kings 5:19b-27). When Elisha declines to accept the gentile Naaman’s gifts in exchange for his miraculous healing, Gehazi is scandalized. “As the Lord lives, I will run after him and get something out of him,” he says. When he catches up with Naaman, he makes up a story about unexpected company that needs silver and clothing. Naaman not only complies with Elisha’s supposed request, he doubles the amount asked for. Shades of Jesus’s recommendation found in Matthew 5:40-41 that if the Roman occupier demands your shirt, give him your cloak, or if he demands you carry his bags one mile, go for two. The outsider Naaman is generous to a fault. The insider Gehazi is corrupted and therefore cursed by Elisha with the very same leprosy Naaman was cured of.
An “exile” is someone who has been forced to unwillingly leave home and country. Some would not consider political or economic immigrants, whether legal or illegal, as “exiles,” arguing that leaving because of adverse government policies or for a desire to improve economic status do not fit the description.
Paul Keim, in an essay on Living by the Word in The Christian Century (September 18, 2007 [link unavailable]) asks, “And what of those of us whose home is the immigrants’ foreign land? How might this metaphor reshape the moral imagination of us “captors” who offer (or benefit from) labor without dignity and opportunity without hope?”
More and more local and county governments in the United States are seriously considering denying public services such as education and health care to those who are thought to be “illegal” aliens because they are considered to be panhandlers and parasites, who take unfair advantage of opportunity while giving nothing in return – “nothing” meaning the supposed non-payment of local and national taxes. “Aliens,” the argument continues, illegal or legal, require their home language to be used by government and commercial services. This causes prices to rise for everything, as bi-lingual and cross-cultural teachers, receptionists, doctors, secretaries, and government and public service employees are increasingly necessary.
Even though Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control”; and Article 26 says that “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory,” the battle lines are becoming clear. Most recently, Frederick County, Maryland defeated by a very close 3 to 2 vote, a proposal to deny basic public services including education to people who are unable to provide proof of citizenship. The proposal is not going away. A Google search turned up no commentary from liberal Christian or other voices regarding the fact that this proposal will be introduced in the Maryland Assembly later this year. ‘‘’I haven’t changed my mind,’ [Commissioner Charles ]Jenkins said. ‘There was some compelling testimony. I’m not without a heart. But there is another side of the coin not heard last night from the people that want to protect our taxpayers. I think that’s lost.’”
The United States was instrumental in the formation of the language of the Declaration, which was adopted by the UN in 1948. But then the imperial legalistic hair-splitting began. Because it is a “Declaration,” the U.S. Congress decided it did not need to act to ratify it. Once the Declaration was signed by the member states, individual treaties were developed that addressed specific articles in the declaration – such as the death penalty, child welfare, and torture, among others. Needless to say, the United States has not ratified any of the individual treaties that sprang from the original Declaration.
Jeremiah’s letter from Jerusalem to the exiles in Babylon is clear that the alien in the alien land must settle in. Jeremiah advises them to “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Eventually, as Jeremiah promises with his redemption of the field at Anathoth, the people will be allowed to return. But some will die in exile; some will choose to remain even when given the chance to return, because they have taken their God – their commitment to covenant – with them.
God is not “out there,” or “back there,” but is found in living the covenant – trust in the covenant, stepping out in the determination to act in radical denial of self-interest. Only then can the alien be accepted as one with us. Only then can we return from exile with our God.