Faith, Works, Law, Who
Cares? Proper 4
Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19; Deuteronomy
11:18-21, 26-28; Psalm 46;
Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28, (29-31);
Matthew 7:21-29
Now at last we launch the Year A Bible study of Paul’s letter to the
Romans, and the Gospel of Matthew. The Church’s one foundation
having been established, and the mission defined, the eternal jihad
between faith and works, grace and the law, justice and judgment is
joined. The time has come to once again review the four questions for the apocalypse,
which frame these discussions:
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 commitment to the great work
of justice-compassion?
4) What is deliverance? Salvation from hell, or liberation from
injustice?
As these essays have developed beginning with Year C, a slight
modification to the third question has emerged: What is
faith? Literal belief, or trust and commitment to the great work
of justice-compassion? The post-modern meaning of faith is
usually belief, regardless of the circumstances. The more basic
meaning is trust – either in a person’s (or God’s) word, or actions, or
in a process set in motion by a god, a prophet, or a leader. The
Apostle Paul’s letters make little or no sense to post-modern minds
unless the distinction between faith as literal belief and faith as
trust is clear. Further, as literal belief becomes less viable in
the third millennium of the Common Era, Christian “faith” is
increasingly confronted with John
Shelby Spong’s challenge to change or die. The
continuing series of these essays will take the position that to the
extent that Christian “faith” continues to mean “literal belief,” the
21st Century is a “post-Christian” era.
A second theme that continues to determine these interpretations of the
lectionary readings is the meaning of justice. Civilization
defines justice as retribution – payback; an eye for an eye. But
the deeper meaning of justice is distribution: the rain falls on the
good, the bad, and the ugly without partiality. Civilization does
not use that definition except in cases where there is clearly
injustice if partiality enters the picture. The classic example
is that in the United States, if you are rich, white, and male your
chances of serving jail time for possessing cocaine is an order of
magnitude less than if you are poor, black, and female, charged with
possessing marijuana. Occasionally there is a reversal of this
pattern, as when an over-zealous North Carolina prosecutor trumped
up a case of gang rape of a black stripper against a championship team
of white LaCrosse players. In either case, distributive justice
is at work – although in a negative sense. The positive
understanding of distributive justice is contained in the term
justice-compassion. To be 100 percent clear, these essays use the
compound, distributive
justice-compassion, which holds sway in the Covenant
relationship of the Realm or Kingdom of God. Justice as
retribution/pay-back holds sway in the normal march of civilization
into Empire. See especially
the work of Jesus Seminar scholars John
Dominic Crossan and Marcus J. Borg for a thorough
discussion of these concepts.
So, into the fray:
We begin with Paul’s argument about justification by faith, not by
works. Since Martin Luther, this has meant that our actions are
rationalized (we are right to do them) because of unquestioning belief
in the literal, physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
“Works” that the law requires do not count. Only actions that
derive from belief will save us. The alternative reading from
Deuteronomy could not be more blunt in its agreement: “See, I am
setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you
obey the commandments of the Lord your God . . . . and the curse, if
you do not obey . . . .” Matthew’s Jesus presents the distinct
possibility that acting in his name does not necessarily mean automatic
acceptance into heaven. Indeed, Matthew’s Jesus insists that to use
Jesus’s name without paying attention to Jesus’s words subverts the
law, just like a corrupt or foolish builder who builds his house on the
sand. The cautionary tale of Noah and the flood leaves no room
for misunderstanding. The “wicked” will be finally judged and
destroyed.
Throw in a sentence or two about how “the Law” means “Jewish law,”
which has been replaced by the love of Jesus, reflected in the
compassion God showed humanity after the flood, and this sermon should
take about 6 minutes. Plenty of time to deal with First Sunday
Communion, without going past the noon hour.
Problems:(1) Perhaps
most important is the antisemitism
that can creep in whenever the gospel writers or the apostle
Paul engage in polemics about “the law.” (2) Do Paul’s
obfuscations about whether faith (as belief) overthrows or upholds “the
law” have any relevance to Christians today? (3) If God’s justice
is distributive, and the world belongs to God, what’s with the
collective punishment meted out to the entire creation who were not
among the chosen few allowed into Noah’s Ark? (4) Is this yet
another instance where the Old Testament is supplanted by the New
Testament?
The story of Noah and the Flood, Matthew’s Gospel, and Paul’s Letters
all have in common the purpose of defining for a people the nature of
their God, and how to live in harmony with God’s insistence on
justice. For Matthew (and the historical Jesus), this meant
keeping the movement within the boundaries of Mosaic law. For
Matthew (not the historical Jesus) justice took the form of apocalyptic
judgment. The story of Noah certainly lends itself to apocalyptic
interpretation. But actually, it contains a thread of redemptive
hope that runs throughout the Old Testament. In story after story
a “righteous remnant” reconstructs, regenerates, and reestablishes the
world of distributive justice-compassion after God has acted to root
out (or drown out or burn out) the inevitable consequences of human
civilization – i.e., injustice.
Noah and his family are the remnant in Genesis. In Exodus, the
righteous remnant of the original tribes of Israel who have remained
faithful to God’s distributive justice-compassion are delivered from
Egyptian captivity and returned to the promised land. In the
Babylonian exile stories, the prophet Jeremiah encourages the remnant
left behind in Jerusalem to trust in the promise that the remnant
carried off by the enemy will return to rebuild the temple within 50
years. The Servant Songs of Isaiah encourage those exiles.
In the New Testament, 30 years before the fall of Jerusalem and the
great diaspora of the Jews from the Holy Land, the Apostle Paul began
to define a Christian movement within Judaism that included non-Jewish
people, who were beginning to separate from the tradition. The
gospel writers’ purpose was to encourage the remnants of those who
followed Jesus’s way to remain faithful to his teachings, and to build
faith communities, some within Judaism, and some without.
In the 21st Century, Christians are debating the relevance of a belief
system that depends on a premodern cosmology that clearly holds no
scientific truth, and barely works as metaphor. Paul’s 1st
Century arguments about who was a legitimate Jew (circumcised) and who
was not, and whether one needed to be a circumcised Jew in order to
join the Christians is meaningless except in the context of
Judeo-Christian history. But who or what is a Christian today is
the heart of the question, and Paul’s argument about faith versus works
(which is the whole point of his letter to the Romans) is worth looking
at seriously.
If Paul’s use of the word “faith” means “trust” in the basic truth of
Jesus’s life and teachings (which may be called simply “trust in
Jesus”) then perhaps what Paul was saying in the 1st Century might be
understood as follows: But now, in addition to God’s law about living
with distributive justice-compassion, and the prophets who preached
about God’s insistence on distributive justice-compassion, we recognize
the distributive justice-compassion of God for all people, because of
our trust in the basic truth of Jesus’s life and teachings.
Paul is absolutely not saying that Jesus replaces God or the law or the
prophets. Jesus instead fulfills, or actualizes, or brings into
focus the law and the prophets, and if we follow his way, we also
participate in the fulfillment of the same law. And what is that
law? It is the law of distributive justice-compassion, which
applies to everyone, Jew or Gentile, whether one “believes” the
resurrection story literally or not.