Gaia Rising Home
Email Sea Raven
Last Week's Blog
Blog Archive
Subversion: Change the Paradigm IV
Third Sunday in Lent
Is. 55:1-9; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Cor. 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
The readings for this third Sunday in Lent illustrate the eternal human spiritual tension between a violent and a non-violent God: God’s justice as distributive compassion versus God’s justice as divine retribution.
Isaiah 55 is a hymn to pastoral, non-violent, justice-compassion as the final Great Feast, when God at last establishes God’s Kingdom: “. . . so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth: it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” And why not go on and finish the hymn: “For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace . . . instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”
By contrast, Luke’s Jesus is clearly the son of a violent god: “[U]nless you repent, you will all perish . . .,” he says – twice. Apparently Jesus’ God is inclined to give Luke’s hearers one more chance before cutting them down, but that hardly translates into compassion.
The usual interpretation of the cherry-picked portion of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is also a warning of the consequences of “desiring” evil. “God was not pleased with most of [the Israelites], and they were struck down in the wilderness. . . . So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.” The litany of sins is fairly short, but comprehensive: idolatry, sexual immorality, trying God’s (Christ’s) patience, and complaining. In the traditional reading, Paul does have faith that whatever the test is that God sends, he will “provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” Hope for salvation is the orthodox emphasis, not distributive justice and grace.
The cobblers of today’s readings want us to think of “living water,” from Isaiah’s invitation to “Come to the waters,” to the magic well (Numbers 21:17), which Paul – in an apparent echo of John’s gospel– calls Christ. But Paul’s use of the story reinforces the imminent establishment of God’s Kingdom of justice-compassion rather than retribution for non-belief in Jesus.
In his quick review of the story of God’s delivery of the Israelites, Paul says, “all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” These are metaphors derived from Jesus’ teachings and the very earliest ideas of the emerging Jewish Christian community. The fact that Paul refers to that rock as “Christ” seems at first glance to reflect the theology found in the Gospel of John, or to the metaphor Matthew’s Jesus uses to describe Peter, upon which “rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). But Paul is writing to the Corinthians 50 to 100 years before Matthew and John’s gospels were written and circulated. The spiritual rock that followed the Israelites in their journey through the wilderness seems instead to refer to a legend about the Israelites sojourn in the desert, in which a rock-shaped, movable well followed them, providing water, grass for their flocks, and healing herbs. “About the size of an oven or beehive, it rolled along after the wanderers through hills and valleys and, when they camped, . . . gave everyone a drink at the door of his tent” (A Note on First Corinthians 10, E. Earle Ellis, Aurora College, Illinois, 1957; JSTOR: Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 76, No. 1; http://links.jstor.org). Even though the people sinned against God, God gave them this magic rock, which saved them and allowed them to reach the promised land. In the same way, Christ saves those who participate in God’s justice-compassion, allowing them to live in God’s Kingdom – coming within Paul’s lifetime, and evidenced by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
“The power of the sword” of Psalm 63 is the evil that Paul is preaching against: the idolatry of the imperial theology of piety, war, victory. In the Roman world, sacrifices were political statements about the deification of Cesar and payback for favors, not rituals that would reconcile the people to God’s justice-compassion. Because Paul believed that Jesus’ death and resurrection were the sign of God’s direct action in reclaiming the world for God’s Kingdom, and that process would be completed within his life-time, it would be foolish for people to throw in their lot with the earthly Cesar and participate in the pagan sacrifices.
For reasons known only to the Elves, the rest of 1st Corinthians 10 is never read as part of the Common Lectionary. But look at what Paul is saying in versus 14-22. Paul points out that in the ritual communal meal shared in the community of Christ, the cup shared represents the sacrificial blood of Christ; the broken bread is sharing the risen, transformed body of Christ; “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” This is mystical language that totally overthrows the civil religious practice of the Roman Empire. And in case his hearers still don’t get it, Paul says, “I imply that what pagans [Romans] sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God . . . You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons,” or you will “provoke the Lord to jealousy,” and break the commandments of God.
Paul’s words were subversion in the First Century. Are they also subversion in the 21st Century? Not if the sacrament of communion is seen as the commemoration of Jesus dying in payment (retribution) for the “fall” of humanity.
Perhaps the key is the phrase, “For why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else’s conscience?” (1st Cor. 10:29) If we live our lives not out of violent retribution, but by participating in God’s justice-compassion, we may indeed end up subverting the law of the land: Not deploying with our unit to Iraq; refusing jury duty; donating money to organizations who rescue illegal aliens crossing the border into Texas. But it is the everyday refusal to participate in the prevailing retributive mind-set that will eventually change the paradigm. Speak compassion into the middle of a collective desire for revenge whether it is among family members, neighbors, church committees, or the corporation you work for, and remember Psalm 63, which parallels Paul’s faith in God’s deliverance for one who lives in the power of God’s steadfast love: “My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast. . . but those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth; they shall be given over to the power of the sword.” That’s not revenge or retribution. It’s the consequence of collusion with Empire.