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Proper 19: Piety vs. Covenant
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 14; Psalm 51:1-10;
1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
Western Christian tradition claims that the New Testament is the actualization, or the culmination of the Old Testament: The new covenant with Jesus Christ replaces the old one of Moses. This would seem to be borne out by the readings, which juxtapose the prophets or the books of Moses with the letters of Paul to the newly established churches in the diaspora. But the letters to Timothy, which are recommended reading for the next 7 weeks, and 2 Thessalonians and Colossians, which will finish out Year C, are all either definitely pseudo-Paul, or under enough suspicion by scholars that including them in that category is a reasonable position to take. Along with Luke – which is nearly all about justifying normal social behavior in the Roman world – these readings fall far short of any kind of actualization or fulfillment of the radicality of God’s relationship with God’s people, whether expressed through the story (Exodus, Deuteronomy), or the strenuous objections of the prophets to any acceptance of the laws, customs, gods, or morality of the surrounding or conquering civilizations.
In short, the remainder of Year C contrasts Covenant with the God of distributive justice, and the compliant Piety of the comfortable citizens of the Empire.
The early Christian movement – especially Luke – was most interested in repentance and conversion. “Repentance” in this context might mean turning away from petty sin and giving alms to the poor, or doing good works, or acting fairly in business matters. However, “repentance” also can mean conversion from either traditional Judaism or paganism to the new Christian way. In the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, Luke is maintaining that no soul is insignificant; that God will not stop until the lost one – the pagan or the traditional Jew – is found. By the time Luke was writing his version of the story of Jesus, Greek concepts about the nature of the soul and the afterlife were very much in vogue among the shop keepers and participants in the more economically secure strata of Mediterranean society. Jesus’s original message – as interpreted by authentic Paul – of the immediacy of the kingdom of God and the invitation to participate in that kingdom here and now had already been forgotten.
Even though Jesus probably would have told a story in which a shepherd against all wisdom leaves 99 sheep unprotected on a hillside while he goes in search of the one who is lost, the context of that story is impossible to know, and the meaning has been swallowed up in the piety of the early Christian movement. Jesus was interested in distributive justice and the kind of God that loves and seeks out those who are lost to unjust systems, not saving souls for some kind of afterlife.
A more fitting Old Testament reading to accompany Luke’s point might be Genesis 18:16-33, where Abraham negotiates the salvation of the city of Sodom for the sake of 10 righteous (just) men. But that’s not what the Elves who concocted the order of readings suggest. The Old Testament readings have nothing in common with the story in Luke, nor with First Timothy.
In the reading from First Timothy, the writer (not Paul) is confirming Luke’s favorite theme of repentance and conversion. “I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief . . . Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners . . . [and] for that very reason I received mercy so that . . . Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.” Jesus is the Shepherd who saves the one who repents.
Psalm 51 is a prayer for cleansing and pardon, so Psalm 51, plus Luke, plus First Timothy are the readings most pertinent to the survival of the early Christian community, caught up in the Roman social system described by John Dominic Crossan as “piety, war, victory, peace.” In order for Empire to achieve peace, the people must conform to official piety, they must support wars that conquer new territories, so that military victory can then bring peace (Pax Romana) to the known world. First Century piety was defined by family values, the economic system of patronage, and public religion, which deified Cesar. So long as the Christians concentrated on ministry to the poor and the condition of the afterlife of the soul, the Empire couldn’t care less about the teachings of Jesus. So long as the Jewish/Christian God was one of many lesser gods in the Roman pantheon, the God-Emperor Cesar would ignore it. Luke’s Jesus is not going to overthrow the Roman social order.
But what about those “alternative” readings from Jeremiah and Exodus? The creators of the Common Lectionary allow for the minister or priest or spiritual leader to choose which of the readings is most pertinent to the needs of the community. For those who subscribe to the traditional teachings of the Western church, Jeremiah, the Psalms, and the story of the golden calf from Exodus are all cautionary readings about the jealousy of the Hebrew God, who will destroy all those who do not believe in him. Under that interpretation, the loving, forgiving, saving God (Christ) of the New Testament clearly actualizes the tribal, unforgiving war god of the Old Testament. Or, if the spiritual leader of the traditional faith community is concerned with “sin” – in the form of “idolatry” such as gambling, pornography, or materialism; or the decline of “family values” – in the form of same-sex marriage, abortion, or birth control, then Jeremiah’s condemnation is right-on: “They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good” and his warning is right on: “For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation; . . . for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.”
The cherry-picking of Jeremiah and Exodus misses the point. In these readings, God is angry that the people either have already or may soon choose to follow the ways of the other tribal gods that surround them. The problem is not that they are not gods. In pre-modern times, multiple gods were normal. The problem is that those other gods do not stand for distributive justice-compassion. True, the early Israelites’ God brought justice-compassion to his own people, and destruction to outsiders. But justice is the operative word, and the people of Israel and Israel’s God were delighted when their enemies realized that.
And so it is today. With any social “sin” that is held up for repentance by the preachers of the traditional Christian religion, the underlying condition is injustice. We in the 21st Century (as in the 1st Century) can choose covenant with God’s Kingdom of Justice-compassion as illustrated in the words and deeds of Jesus, or compliance with the easy piety of Empire, which allows us to bash gays, oppress women, persecute immigrants, and bomb Iran.