The Choice is ours: 4
Questions for the Apocalypse – Proper 29, Year B
2 Samuel 23:1-7; Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14;
Psalm 132:1-18; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37
Christian orthodoxy is so convinced of the violent destruction of
sinners that Christians read back into the last words of David found in
2 Samuel the violent eschatology of the Revelation and the last
judgment. But David’s “last words,” may well be a very ancient
royal declaration of the nature of the Covenant between Yahweh and
Israel. Verses 6 and 7 are not about the consuming fires of
medieval imaginings of hell. The “godless” are those who do not
keep the Covenant, and when their injustice is confronted by the king,
who is God’s representative, they are destroyed. It is a
metaphor. They are consumed on the spot by the consequences of
their injustice, a fire of their own setting, into which – like thorns
– they are thrown.
For the past three years, these Commentaries have suggested that in
order for Christianity to change and survive (as called for by Bishop John Shelby Spong) those
who would claim Christianity as their grounding theology must consider
the answers to four questions. The 21st Century – much like the
First Century – finds human social structures embroiled in political,
social, spiritual, and theological issues. Unlike the First
Century, 21st Century humanity is also confronted with the distinct
possibility of a holocaust that is not confined to individuals, tribes,
or nations, but threatens the existence of planetary life as humanity
has known it for 100,000 years. These questions challenge
Christianity to respond to third millennium realities, and address what
might be seen as apocalyptic times for humanity on Planet Earth.
1) What is the nature of God? Violent or non-violent?
2) What is the nature of Jesus’ message? Inclusive or exclusive?
3) What is faith? Literal belief, or trust and commitment to the
great work of distributive justice-compassion?
4) What is deliverance? Salvation from hell, or liberation from
injustice?
Two choices arise from the answers to these four questions.
The first choice is to live our lives based on violence, exclusiveness,
literal belief, and a cosmology that places the greatest value in
another life after death. This choice is no longer sustainable,
if it ever was. What is more existentially disturbing is that
such a spirituality offers no hope for justice and life on Planet
Earth. Such a spirituality denies the creative heart of the
Universe itself. A religion based on such a spirituality denies
the profound truth behind the metaphor of the resurrection of the
Christ.
In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus does not engage Pilate in a discussion of the
nature of his kingdom. Pilate questions him: “You are the king of
the Judeans?” Jesus answers, “If you say so,” and that is the end of
the exchange (Mark 15:1-2). By the time John wrote his
interpretation, perhaps as long as 60 years after Mark wrote his,
Christianity had begun to settle on a tradition that removed Jesus and
the Kingdom of God from day-to-day transformational living to an
other-worldly, heavenly place. “My kingdom is not from this
world,” John’s Jesus says (NRSV). Alternatively – and revealingly
– the Five Gospels translates
the scene as follows:
Pilate (incredulous):
“You are the King of the Judeans?”
Jesus: “Is this
what you think? Or what other people have told you about me?”
Pilate: “Am I a
Judean? It’s your own people and the ranking priests who have
turned you over to me. What have you done?”
Jesus: “Mine is not a
secular government. If my government were secular my companions
would fight to keep me from being turned over to the Judeans. But
as it is, my government does not belong to the secular domain.”
Pilate: “So you
are a king?”
Jesus: “You’re the one
who says I’m a king.”
To proclaim the Sunday that ends the Christian liturgical year “Christ
the King” Sunday would seem to align the church with Pilate, not with
Jesus. And is that not what the church has done almost from the
beginning? Deals have been made; compromises have been reached;
collaboration and accommodation with secular Empire has been the rule.
The second choice that arises from the Four Questions for the
Apocalypse is to live our lives based on non-violence, inclusiveness,
trust, and liberation. Then the context for personal, social, and
political life is participation in the ongoing work (struggle) for
distributive justice-compassion. This is what these commentaries
have called “Covenant.” For 3rd Millennium, post-modern exiles
from Christian orthodoxy that Covenant is with a non-theistic, kenotic god, a force which – in John
Dominic Crossan’s words – is the beating heart of the
Universe, whose presence is justice and life, and whose absence is
injustice and death.
One of the keys to living in the 3rd Millennium of this common era is
to live the metaphor without taking it literally. The point of
Mark’s Gospel is not that a corpse got up from its tomb and met the
disciples in Galilee. Mark’s insight was that Jesus
was the embodiment of the non-violent antithesis of the imperial Son of
David. Mark’s “little apocalypse” is not about some literal or
factual “Day of the Lord,” that will come with violence at an unknown
time to destroy the world. For Mark, Jesus was the
personification of the nonviolent Son of Adam from the prophetic legend
of Daniel who would bring the realm of God to earth. Mark’s point
is that Jesus was it. The Kingdom arrived with him and was taken with him into God’s realm, to be
held in safety until the time comes for him to return.
When Mark wrote his gospel, the temple had been destroyed by the
Romans. The Jewish people were scattered, living in communities
far from occupied Jerusalem, hanging onto their religious traditions in
dispersed synagogues. Jewish-Christians, influenced perhaps by
the theology and Christology developed by the apostle Paul, expected
that Jesus – like the Son of Adam – would return soon – within their
lifetimes. But 30 to 50 years after Jesus’s death, there was
still no sign. Mark’s Gospel may well have been a great
encouragement to followers of Jesus’s Way who were close to giving
up. “I swear to you,” Mark’s Jesus says in 13:30-37, “this generation
certainly won’t pass into oblivion before all these things take
place. The earth will pass into oblivion and so will the sky, but
my words will never be obliterated. As for the exact day or
minute, no one knows, not even heaven’s messengers, nor even the son,
no one, except the Father. Be on guard! Stay alert!
For you never know what time it is. It’s like a person who takes
a trip and puts slaves in charge, each with a task, and enjoins the
doorkeeper to be alert. Therefore, stay alert! For you
never know when the landlord returns, maybe at dusk, or at midnight, or
when the rooster crows, or maybe early n the morning. He may
return suddenly and find you asleep. What I’m telling you I say
to everyone: Stay alert!”
The signs of the end of the injustice of Empire are clearly spelled out
by Mark. Already there had been persecutions, wars, occupations,
all the violence of Cesar’s imperial rule. But that does not
matter, Mark’s Jesus is saying. Be like the slaves left in charge
when the master is gone. Everyone has a job to do. Do it,
and watch for the master’s return. The master’s return – the
eschaton – is the end of imperial violence, not the beginning.
Among biblical scholars, there is disagreement about whether Jesus
himself believed a violent apocalyptic interpretation of the prophesy
found in Daniel. Whether he did or not, he certainly came to his
own personal violent eschaton at the hands of Empire. The choice
for 21st Century Christians is the same as Jesus faced: whether and how
to counter Empire with Covenant. The Kingdom is still waiting.
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