Harvest – Year A Proper 20

Exodus 16:2-15; Jonah 3:10-4:11; Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Psalm 145:1-8; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16

This year (2008) the Autumnal Equinox falls on the third Sunday in September – proper 20 in Year A. A full harvest moon happened on the previous Monday. The second harvest of the year is underway in the Northern Hemisphere. On the U.S. East Coast, the effects of three hurricanes in as many weeks – two in the Gulf and one that scurried up the Eastern seaboard, left the air heavy with tropical humidity, and the summer prolonged. Pumpkins and hay bales are beginning to predominate local farm markets. The last of the sweet corn, heirloom variety tomatoes, burgundy beans, zucchini, eggplant, and peaches are soon to be overtaken by the squashes, apples, sweet potatoes, and other root vegetables. Earth’s bounty is there for the picking, canning, pickling, freezing.

Matthew’s parable of the workers in the vineyard is a harvest story. As usual, Matthew’s pious comment at the end has nothing to do with the point. According to the Jesus Seminar commentary in The Five Gospels, the parable is not about the reversal of fortune for the greedy or the self-righteous (“the last will be first and the first last”) but about frustrated expectations. Conventional fairness in the imperial marketplace certainly does get turned upside down, whether from the point of view of the rich proprietor, or the poor workers hired throughout the day. But Jesus is talking about more than frustrated expectations. Jesus is illustrating how In God’s realm the reward is bestowed whenever the program is joined. That is the nature of God’s Covenant.

“Covenant” is the defining word for all these readings, including the “alternative” portion of the story of Jonah, and the workers in the vineyard. In the Exodus story, the Covenant is clear, as God makes sure the people have the food they need for the day. Covenant is not so clear to Jonah, who is clueless from beginning to end. How can you throw a tantrum over a bush that is here today and gone tomorrow, God asks, when there are 120,000 people whose ignorance keeps them in bondage? Never mind the non-sequitur about the animals in sackcloth (Jonah 3:8) – perhaps they were in solidarity with the people who realized they needed to sign onto God’s Covenant in order to save themselves. The part Jonah failed to realize is that God’s Covenant is extended to everyone who turns to God’s way of distributive justice. No questions asked, no retribution for past sins required.

Read superficially, this feels suspiciously like “cheap grace.” Certainly that is what Jonah thought. If God is going to settle for cheap grace, Jonah would prefer to be dead, thank you very much. The deadbeats hanging around the well all day, pinching the women, get the same wages as the pious ones who worked from dawn. The proprietor looks like a typical CEO, cheating his workers with bait-and-switch promises of a days’ pay for a days’ work without defining the length of the day or the rate. How fair or just is that? It’s just like the old miscreant on his deathbed who confesses Jesus as Lord, and the angels waft him to heaven.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote the book on Grace, says: “The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. . . . Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth . . . An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. . . .” The key in Matthew’s parable is the timing. God’s reward is paid as soon as the worker agrees to the bargain. And what is the bargain? To be first? To be last? Far from a position in line, the bargain – the Covenant – is in Bonhoeffer’s words, true (costly) grace: “the Incarnation of God.” When Paul says in Philippians 1:21, “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain,” he is talking about incarnation – taking on the life and the purpose and the work that Jesus did. In Paul’s experience, to die doing that work is deliverance. Bonhoeffer’s “costly grace” is the radical abandonment of self-interest so that the great work of distributive justice-compassion can continue, and God’s Kingdom can come. The promised reward is deliverance from injustice – whether we live or die.

The Elves have conveniently abandoned the remainder of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Suddenly we switch to Philippians for the time leading up to Advent and Year B. Romans 15:4-13 was cherry-picked for Advent in Year A. Romans 16:25-27 is used peripherally on the fourth Sunday in Advent, Year B (stay tuned).

But despite the Elves’ mysterious work, Paul’s point still stands, whether it is by polemic in Romans, or by pastoral in Philippians. Like Matthew’s parable and Jonah’s tale, this is not easy piety, nor is it a children’s story to be tossed off on a Sunday morning. Paul is writing from prison, where the conditions were primitive and horrific: so bad, that it is possible they made his friend Epaphroditus ill to the point of threatening his life. We don’t know what Paul did that landed him in jail, but we can safely bet the rent that he wasn’t preaching about salvation from hell in the next life, which poses no threat to Empire. Paul got into trouble for the same reason Jesus did. Preaching deliverance from injustice in this life calls into question everything that Empire does.

Radical abandonment of self-interest brings justice and life – the presence of God. The joke – which Jonah resented, Jesus knew, and Paul realized – is that the Covenant includes everybody and anybody who is willing to sign on. Jonah only went to Ninevah after his journey into death in the belly of the fish. But Jonah didn’t die – he held onto his pious convention like a three-year-old. He would rather hold his breath until he turns blue than acknowledge that God cares more about saving 120,000 sinners from injustice than one recalcitrant, self-righteous prophet.

Being willing to sign onto the Covenant and actually sticking to the agreement are not the same, however, as Moses found to his chagrin, and the Elves conveniently decline to include in the reading (Exodus 16:16-30). God might deliver us from the shadow of death, but as soon as times get dicey, we complain. God gives us manna from heaven – the perfect food – and the only requirement is that we trust it will be there. But we do not trust, we hoard – and find that what we have hoarded has rotted overnight. Not only that, God provides enough so that over the Sabbath – the holy day of rest – we do not need to go out and gather food. But we do not trust that what was provided will be enough, and we go out on the Sabbath to get more, and find none.

21st Century life is largely divorced from the natural rhythms of the seasons and of the spirit of the land itself. Inhabitants of the civilized world have a long history of setting ourselves apart from and above that world. As a result, farmers – who should know better – over-fertilize, over-graze, over-plant, play the markets, and rely on chemical short-cuts for seeds, pest control, water supply. Commodities such as silver, gold, copper, coal, and oil are all exploited to the detriment of the Planet. “Mountaintop removal” – also known as “strip mining” – destroys in a day what took the Planet hundreds of millennia to create. “Surface mining” leaves slag piles in the middle of farmland and suburban areas. All of these activities are directly responsible for the decline in potable water and breathable air, and contribute to climate change world-wide that results in devastating storms, floods, droughts, fires, and mass extinctions of diverse life forms.

Ninevah’s animals in sackcloth might be telling us that the “Incarnation of God” is not confined to humanity. In this time of harvest, Bonhoeffer’s “costly grace” means the radical abandonment of self-interest toward all forms of life, including the non-human and (to us) non-sentient inhabitants of Earth: "Costly grace" means sustainable action; eco-justice.

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WWJD: Year A, Proper 15

Genesis 45:1-15; Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Psalm 133; Psalm 67; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: 10-28

Matthew’s Jesus may have actually said that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person; rather it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person.” The version in the Gospel of Thomas (Thomas 14:5) puts the saying in the context of Jesus’s itinerant ministry: “When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you . . .” Matthew’s context has Jesus preaching to a crowd that includes those pesky Pharisees. Later, Peter (among the more dim-witted in the entourage, according to Matthew) insists that Jesus explain the “riddle.” The explanation has for two millennia obscured the real point, which is not about sexual immorality, evil intentions, and blasphemies, as pious Matthew would have us believe.

The real point is that living in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion obviates the need for any rules about what is or is not “kosher” or politically correct. The Apostle Paul is saying much the same thing behind all the polemics and despite the cutting and pasting by the Elves.

If we concentrate on Romans 11:29-32, with the story of Joseph’s reconciliation with his dastardly brothers firmly in mind, then the message for today is a very pious one: Just as we all are “disobedient” to God’s rules (regarding the Ten Commandments, abortion, same-sex marriage, “sexual sin,” gun ownership), but have now received God’s forgiveness (by believing that Jesus died in our place and was bodily resurrected), so “they” (by implication, “the Jews”) have also been disobedient and have also been forgiven (therefore, supporting the government of Israel regardless of the circumstances is “God’s Will”). Then comes the kicker: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” Here is the monster God (graphically illustrated by Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ), who deliberately causes people to fall into evil so that “he” can then save us and cause us to love “him.” Such an interpretation is nothing more than a justification for abuse at every level of human experience – the exact opposite of distributive justice-compassion, and light-years from what the Apostle Paul was trying to say. The Elves strive mightily to avoid the anti-semitism that can arise from an uninformed and literal reading of Paul’s argument. But by not providing the context and allowing the full depth and breadth of Paul’s polemic to be worked through, we are hard-pressed to arrive at any other conclusion.

Look at what Paul says in Romans 11:11-12: “So I ask, have they (the Jews) stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumbling, salvation has come to the Gentiles . . . Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean?” And later in verse 15: “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead!” Emphasis mine.

Then, assuming we still won’t get his point, Paul uses the metaphor of some branches that were broken from a healthy olive tree, and a wild shoot grafted into their place. Again, the argument takes some careful reading. Paul does say, “For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you . . . Note [God’s] severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.”

What is God’s kindness? It is distributive justice-compassion, usually misunderstood as “mercy.” “Mercy” as imperial theology uses the term most often means feeling sorry for a criminal, and converting the sentence from the death penalty to life in prison without parole. God’s kindness under Covenant, on the other hand, means distributive justice-compassion: taking into consideration the entire context, then acting with radical abandonment of self-interest to ensure fairness. When Paul talks about “full inclusion” and “acceptance” of the Jews, he means what he has said throughout this letter to the Romans, that nothing can separate us from the love of God as evidenced and experienced in the life and teachings of Jesus, whom Christians call the Christ. God has no litmus test for inclusion in the Kingdom except to do our best to live in distributive justice-compassion. No one is left out: neither slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor gentile; and when we fail – because of a “thorn in the flesh” or any other shortcoming, we are saved by God’s grace. Belief in a resuscitated corpse has nothing to do with it.

Nevertheless, don’t get too smug about your salvation. God has always been very clear about the preference extended in God’s realm to those who live in distributive justice-compassion. There are consequences for those who do not, generally having to do with becoming trapped in imperial forms of retributive justice, and theologies of piety, war, victory, peace – not to mention environmental holocaust.

Look what Joseph did, when his brothers came looking for food-aid in a time of drought and famine in their own land. Joseph – now part of Pharaoh’s imperial rule – could have enslaved them on the spot, or sent them away to starve and die. Instead, remembering that he was part of God’s Covenant with his great-grandfather Abraham, his grandfather Isaac, and his father Jacob, he took them in. In the grand scheme of the Bible, of course, we Christians can make the next leap and claim that because of Joseph’s justice-compassion, the Hebrew people did become enslaved, which allowed the great liberator Moses to appear on the scene, and ultimately, of course, Jesus, whom Christians call the Messiah. We can also “take in” the Jews by conversion – forceful or otherwise – as the dogma that underlies Christian Zionism assumes.

But the point is not supersessionary arrogance. The point is the continuing development of human consciousness toward distributive justice-compassion. The story is about the continuing inevitable normalcy of civilization toward the theology of Empire (piety, war, victory), and the ongoing struggle to remain true to the Covenant: non-violence, distributive justice-compassion, peace.

In today’s U.S. society, the aphorism Jesus might use to illustrate his reversal of imperial piety might be, “A victim is only a victim when personal power is unclaimed.”

Joseph certainly did not remain a victim of his brother’s injustice. He took advantage whenever he could of the personal talents and power he had, and eventually won a place for himself that allowed him to rescue his entire family. Most extraordinary of all, he completely reconciled with his brothers – just like Esau did with Jacob (the Elves left that part out of the lectionary). There is a pattern here, if we are willing to see it. Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount is about the empowerment of the poor and disenfranchised, victims of imperial power, which turns out not to be “power” at all. Once a victim is empowered, that person ceases to be a victim. Jesus himself did not die a helpless victim. Jesus died in active, non-violent resistance to injustice.

The U.S. medical system (I refuse to call it “health care”) is front and center for many of us and certainly for me, as my mother lies dying in a poorly-managed nursing facility, whose policies and procedures are borderline at best, and legally suspicious at worst. We are caught in a web of imperial piety, consisting of social norms, “Christian” beliefs, legal definitions, and of course, the consequences of market forces allowed to run amok by political expediency. To file a complaint with the State is to risk retaliation on the part of the providers, even though such retaliation is against the law. We have neither the money, nor enough evidence to pursue a malpractice lawsuit, but we are not interested in revenge; we are interested in accountability.

That same pious imperial web ensnared Jim Adkisson, who invaded the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on a Sunday morning in July. He was not able to break out of his victim role. Instead he attacked the most convenient representative of “liberal” ideas, which he blamed for his inability to find and keep a job, support his family, and ultimately fulfill his perceived obligations as a man in U.S. society. He remains in jail, charged with one count of murder so far, under $1 million bond.

How can we reverse imperial power today? Or, in the pious slogan of the late 1990s, What Would Jesus Do? First of all, what Jesus did, what Mr. Adkisson was unable to do, and what we must do, is drive a stake through the heart of our all-too-human desire for retribution. The State will exact its revenge, and the UUA will continue its stand for liberal values -- but not so far as to radically abandon its own self-interest and work for reconciliation with either Mr. Adkisson or his family. Perhaps it is too much to ask. After all, in a market-driven society, who has time to empower the powerless?

Secondly, we must reverse the insidious lie that takes literally the Pauline admonition that “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ.” We must not be “content” with injustice. Nor must we be “content” with the easy hegemony that declares that anyone who does not believe that Jesus died for our sins is not a part of the kingdom of God. As Jesus said, it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. What defiles us is the tacit agreement with imperial injustice, and its accompanying theology.

Isaiah still has the last word: “Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right . . . And the foreigners . . . all who . . . hold fast my covenant – these I will bring to my holy mountain. . . . for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

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Put Your Own On First: Year A, Proper 13

Genesis 32:22-31; Isaiah 55:1-5; Psalm 17:1-7, 15; Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

The Elves may have cherry-picked Romans 9 in order to avoid anti-Jewish preaching. The portions not included certainly could be read by the literal or unwary as a diatribe against Judaism. Paul’s point of course is not anti-Jewish. He spells it out very clearly in those first five verses we are supposed to read: “They are Israelites,” he writes, “and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; . . . from them . . . comes the Messiah.” But he is disappointed that many Jews rejected the idea that Jesus is the Messiah. He argues that they relied on works mandated by law instead of faith in the ancient Covenant with God, which in Paul’s mind was renewed and manifested in the life and teachings of Jesus. Therefore, God has extended to Gentiles the opportunity to sign on to the Covenant. Jews, of course, then and now, would disagree that they failed to measure up to the promise of distributive justice-compassion.

Whether Paul’s polemics deserve attention or not, the whole series of readings for Proper 13 is about Covenant, starting with Isaiah 55. Just as God extended his Covenant with David to include the entire nation of Israel, so God now extends to all the world the opportunity to participate in the ongoing restoration of God’s Kingdom of distributive justice-compassion. The Feeding of the 5,000 is an illustration of the God that Jesus preaches in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25-30), and it is an illustration of the invitation to abundant life extended by the prophet Isaiah. “Listen carefully to me and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant . . . .”

The story of Jacob wrestling with God (or the angel of God) is also used in Proper 24, Year C – but there it is an alternative to Jeremiah, and is purported to be related to the gospel and epistle readings. In Year A, we skip the rest of the Jacob story, his reconciliation with Esau, and his establishment of settlement at Bethel (Jerusalem), so that we can go directly to the story of Joseph, and continue the lineage to the birth of Jesus. But the story of Jacob’s fight with God is set in the middle of Jacob’s dilemma about how to deal with the coming meeting between himself and his estranged brother Esau. After the fight Jacob is reborn-renamed as Israel (the one who strives with God) because he has striven with God (the angel) and humans (Laban) and prevailed. The next thing that happens is reconciliation with Esau – distributive justice.

The point is that Covenant – living in partnership with God in distributive justice-compassion – means life here now, not there then. In other words, reconcile with your brother and you will participate in the available abundance. When we fight with God about it, we always get hurt. In other words, if we resist dealing with the injustices in life – such as robbing our brother/sister of their birth right – we may well end up mentally and/or physically impaired. This is not “judgment.” These are the consequences of not acting from radical abandonment of self-interest.

To return to Paul’s argument, only the radical abandonment of self-interest counts. The law does not require such action. Only faith in God’s realm produces salvation, which is life lived in partnership with God in justice-compassion. Works prescribed by law support the systems of injustice because we are not personally invested in them. We have a personal investment in reconciliation with friends, family, enemies.

Radical abandonment of self-interest (i.e., “love”) is easiest to understand at the corporate level. Commercial, political, social “self-interests” are targets that attract money, media, and throngs of dedicated workers, whether for church mission fields, political action committees, marches, rallies, enthusiasm, and results. Political and social liberalism in the United States would be closer to death than it is without the willingness of people to abandon immediate gratification for the greater good.

But where the rubber hits the road, or perhaps where the Apostle Paul got it at the gut level (see Romans 7:21-25), is in the mundane realities of day-to-day intimate living with self, family, friends. Traditional teaching and understanding have it backwards. Sacrificial love is not about throwing yourself under the bus. Sacrificial love means letting go of guilt and ego involvement. It means taking a break, nourishing yourself, saying goodbye. The first instruction the flight attendant gives us when the oxygen mask comes down is to put your own mask on first, then help the one next to you.

In a crisis, when Death is sitting on the chair beside your Mother, we want God to intervene, to save, to prevent the inevitable course – whether it is dictated by the medical profession, the legal profession, or the Church itself. But look at what Paul says in the rest of his polemic in Romans 9:14-18: “[God] has mercy on whomever he chooses, and [God] hardens the heart of whomever he chooses.” In other words, in God’s realm, the rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Remember that the opposite to the Covenant – nonviolence, distributive justice-compassion, peace – is the theology of Empire: Piety, War (violence), Victory, and conditional peace. The theology of Empire requires victims: victims of war, and of domestic or public violence. Victims are the result of a justice system that is based on judgmental retribution and payback, not neutral fairness. Under Covenant, there can be neither victims nor enemies, because those who live by distributive justice-compassion know that true power lies in trusting God’s realm. Life under Covenant means the radical abandonment of self-interest. Those who love their enemies have no enemies.

When we are in alignment with that Covenant, intervention can be seen to be interference on the part of Empire, not the fulfillment of God’s distributive justice-compassion. Paul says later in Chapter 9:30-33: “Gentiles who did not strive for righteousness have attained it, that is righteousness through faith; but Israel, who did strive for the righteousness that is based on the law, did not succeed in fulfilling that law. Why not? Because they did not strive for it on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works.”

When we let go and trust in the Covenant, everything falls into place. Does that mean that justice is served, or that suffering ends, or that miracles overturn the physical realities of the Universe as we know it? Of course not. Death is part of life, and life is whatever happens to us. What “works” is the marvelous course that opens out before us as soon as we let go of any thought of making something happen that is not already in the offing.

On the evening of July 3, a hospital dumped my Mother into a “skilled nursing/rehab” facility, which I was unable at the 11th hour to avoid. On Friday July 4th, the biggest political patriotic holiday in the United States, I had to say goodbye to her and fly 1,000 miles back to my home. All I could tell her was, I had done my best, and would have to trust the people in the system to do their job, and the creative forces of distributive justice to hold sway. Like a kayack in rapids, she and I had to just ride the river. Any attempt to intervene with a paddle or by shifting our weight would have wrecked us on the rocks. That is part of what it means to radically abandon self-interest.

Am I going to sue the hospital and take on the whole catastrophe of the U.S. medical system? Call Fox News and start an investigation into nursing home malpractice? Not directly. Those kinds of actions are usually self-gratifying, ego-justifying, Empire-supporting manifestations of works based on law, without faith, and outside the Covenant. Does that mean we just turn our faces to the wall and die? Absolutely not. We are not victims. There is work to be done in the “right to die” movement, which the United Church of Christ has begun to seriously explore. There are hospital and nursing home chaplaincies in need of personnel grounded in Covenant; and in the interim, there are blogs to write.

Did – will – my Mother magically recover full strength and vibrant life? No. Not on this Planet. But, as Isaiah promises, according to God’s Covenant, she shall go out with joy, and be led forth in peace. . . . Those who live in Covenant with distributive justice-compassion are not victims, but victors. “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law,” sings Paul in 1st Corinthians. “But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

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Ladders, Circles, Covenant: Year A, Proper 11

Genesis 28:10-19a; Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19; Isaiah 44:6-8; Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24; Psalm 86:11-17; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

We are climbing Jacob’s Ladder, soldiers of the cross.
We are dancing Sarah's Circle, sisters, brothers, all.
Every round goes higher, higher, soldiers of the cross
Here we seek and find our story, sisters, brothers, all.
Sinner do you love my Jesus? soldiers of the cross.
We will all do our own naming, sisters, brothers, all.
If you love him why not serve him? soldiers of the cross
Every round a generation, sisters, brothers, all.
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, soldiers of the cross
On and on the circle's moving, sisters, brothers, all

The Abraham saga continues, with Jacob’s dream. Christian dogma claims that Jacob’s dream is about divinity interacting with humanity. The patriarchs of ancient Israel were all 100% human, even though they may have dreamt of a great destiny. But Christianity trumps all that with the human/divine Jesus/God, who came to dwell among us. Cherry-picked Paul piously points orthodox theology into the apocalyptic future, “while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” Matthew’s Jesus rants that “The son of Adam will send his messengers and they will gather all the snares and the subverters of the Law out of his domain and throw them into the fiery furnace [where] people will weep and grind their teeth.”

Jewish legend says that Jacob’s pillar, which he set up to mark the spot of his prophetic dream, (Beth El) is the same spot where his father Isaac was prepared by Abraham for sacrifice; it is also the Temple Mount of present-day Jerusalem. Global political and religious layers of meaning surround this story. It should be treated with respect, and not with glib literalism by anyone, including descendants of the People of the Book.

Recent Christian youth and feminist leadership has replaced the militant sexism of “climbing Jacob’s ladder, soldiers of the cross” with “dancing Sarah’s circle, sisters, brothers all.” Somehow the original seems more honest. “Sinner do you love my Jesus? If you love him, why not serve him? Soldiers of the cross” can’t be mistaken for peaceful coexistence with Jews, Muslims, or any other non-Christian spirituality. “Dancing Sarah’s Circle” sounds inclusive, but Christian hegemony lurks in the background like a watermark on fine stationery: “Here is where we find our story; we will all do our own naming; every round a generation, sisters, brothers all.” The story of Sarah, Keturah, Rebekka, Rachel, Leah, Dinah, Bilhah, Zilpah, and all the other women, named and unnamed, who contributed to the founding mythos of the Jewish people and the Jewish religion is not a Christian story – except by “adoption.” That is certainly not where Paul was trying to take his Roman community.

The power in these readings is the power of covenant relationship. In Jacob’s dream, God’s voice confirms the promise made to his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac, that the land belongs to them and their descendants, and those descendants shall be as numerous as the grains of dust on the earth. God also promises that wherever Jacob and his descendants go, God is still their God. So God and God’s realm are not confined to a particular geographical location, but reside in the hearts of those who accept the Covenant. The Elves leave out Jacob’s part of the deal. For the first time, the patriarchs make a promise to God. Jacob promises to establish the pillar as “God’s house,” and to return to God one-tenth of everything God gives to him. Genesis 28:19b-22. As the editor of the Harper Collins Study Bible wryly comments, “Jacob’s faith is more markedly contractual than Abraham’s” (p. 43).

The portion of Paul’s letter plucked out of context for Proper 11 is also about Covenant. Whenever we join Jesus in the relationship with God that is so close as to be the same as a father, we are then children of God, and heirs of God. What do we inherit? Rather than one strip of real estate in the Middle East, the heirs of God, brothers and sisters of the Christ, inherit the Realm/Kingdom of God, where distributive justice rules. The caveat is that we “suffer” with Jesus. In other words, we participate with the spirit of Jesus in restoring/reclaiming God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion. “Suffering” is not about persecution and torture for believing that a corpse came back to life. “Suffering” is what happens when we attempt to live in radical abandonment of self-interest and fail. “Suffering” is what happens when by extraordinary commitment we succeed in achieving that radical abandonment of self-interest, and the systems of retribution inherent in empire intervene.

Paul rhapsodizes on: “. . . for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; . . . that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. . .” This is not about believers going to heaven in the next life. It is about partners actualizing the promise of God’s rule in this life. The “children of God” are not some superior race. They are whoever joins the program – Christian or non-Christian; people “of the book” or not. Has this happened yet? No. “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” The Elves cut him off here in mid-argument. The finale comes next week.

Meanwhile, Matthew’s Jesus proceeds to further complicate and rob the parable of the sower of its covenantal transforming power. He has apparently forgotten his own Sermon on the Mount and has sold out to fear. The parable of the sabotage of weeds introduces an enemy that comes in the night and sows weed seed in the field so that it is impossible to eradicate the weeds without also destroying the good crop. (Sort of like that hapless Canadian farmer who was sued by Monsanto.) In a variation on the 13th Century epithet, “slay them all, God will know his own,” this apocalyptic Jesus says, “Let them grow up together until the harvest, and . . . I’ll say to the harvesters, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to burn . . . .’” What happened to “love your enemies”? Matthew 5:44.

Matthew’s Christian community – which possibly had been thrown out of their synagogue, or had chosen to leave – was very likely under siege. Viewed with suspicion by their neighbors, confronted with the destruction of the Temple, under surveillance by the Roman authorities, who can blame them for finding it difficult to love their enemies? That 1st or 2nd Century community, and others in similar circumstances, was not much different from communities today. Certainly the governments and the people in the Middle East are still fighting the land battles described in all the foundational myths. Dictatorships and oligarchies from Asia to Africa to South America deny human rights to their citizens to the detriment of their nations’ economic well-being. Further, since September 11, 2001, American society has been under political, social, and economic threat – mostly self-inflicted.

We do not need to follow Matthew’s Jesus into paranoia and the fear-mongering that arises from it. As the apostle Paul says, the present problems are nothing, compared with the transformation that is coming. The Elves should have had us read on in Romans 8 to verses 26-30. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness,” Paul says. “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” What is that call and purpose? To be partners with Jesus in bringing God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion into human civilization. “For those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.” What God knows and does looks to us like prior action, the editor reminds us. Harper-Collins Study Bible, NRSV, p. 2127. So Paul is not talking about some “predestination” that we are powerless to modify, which fore-ordains some to be “chosen” for “salvation” and others “chosen” for damnation. We are adopted children of God, and because of that, we are conformed to the image of Jesus the Christ. “Those whom [God] predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

Wow. The crowd should be on its feet cheering. All we have to do is sign up. Those whom God/dess knew would be her own, s/hecalled. Those whom God/dess called and who responded were thereby made holy and just; and those who were made just, were celebrated as belonging to – even inheriting– the kingdom, without bargain or price.

The Circle is open but unbroken, and the traffic on Jacob’s ladder is an interchange.

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Get with the Program: Year A Proper 8

Genesis 22:1-14; Jeremiah 28:5-9; Psalm 13; Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42

“Paul, having mentioned sacrificial atonement by Christ, does not develop it further in any way, but speaks instead of participation in Christ, which . . . is the heart of his theology. And where sacrificial atonement got only one verse (3:5), participation gets a whole chapter (6:1-23).” John Dominic Crossan, In Search of Paul (Harper SanFrancisco 2004) p. 384.

The Elves, of course, divided the chapter into two parts, thereby robbing Paul of the integrity of his argument. In the first half, Paul says that if we have indeed died to sin, by committing to living the same way of life as taught by Jesus, we shall then live not according to our own self interest, nor according to the interests of empire (foreign or domestic), but according to the kenotic (self-abandoning) rule of God. The “end” or result is“eternal life.” The result of living according to the normal rules of civilization is death, says Paul: Not physical death, but spiritual death – the death of injustice, which also brings with it the death of god. But the free gift of eternal life (grace) here and now is extended to all who choose to participate with the risen Christ in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion.

The horrific story about Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God has nothing to do with the “Christian God” sacrificing “his son” in order to “save us” from “eternal hellfire and damnation” (atonement – substitutionary or otherwise). It does, however, have to do with that same “free gift” in Paul’s argument. The name “Isaac” means “God will provide.” In the bare bones of the story, God provides the proper sacrifice and spares Abraham the barbarism of murdering his son. The story is so obscured with Christian gloss that it is nearly impossible to avoid the Christian metaphor. But in its own context, the story does two things: It illustrates an awakening spiritual awareness on the part of humanity that human blood sacrifice is not necessary to become reconciled with one’s gods; and the legend provides a graphic, pre-Christian demonstration of the level of commitment required to keep the Covenant. The old ways of literal blood-sacrifice of the first-born child were overthrown by the Covenant established for the people between God and Abraham. The Covenant continues, says the Apostle Paul, whenever anyone signs on to the program begun by Jesus.

Cherry-picking Jeremiah robs Jeremiah’s witness to the will and wisdom of God of nearly all its power. All we hear from the Elves is that God’s prophets always foretell gloom and doom, and the false prophets claim peace. Jeremiah tells Hananiah that when the prophesied peace comes, “then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet.” The doctrinal assumption is that the Creation is “fallen” permanently into sin; therefore, any prophet has to be false who claims God’s peace instead of God’s “wrath” (“judgment”). A second assumption is that the reading simply reflects an ongoing rhetorical debate between false and true prophets, and we already know that Jeremiah is the good guy. Neither assumption honors the integrity of the story. Both lend themselves to pious self-righteousness.

In the encounter with Hananiah, Jeremiah has put an ox yoke on his own neck, demonstrating submission to the Yoke of Babylon “until the time of his own land comes.” Jeremiah tells the people, “if any nation will not serve this king, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, then I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, says the Lord . . . . You therefore must not listen to your prophets . . . who are saying [the opposite] to you. . . . But any nation that will bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will leave on its own land . . . to till it and live there.” Jeremiah 27:8-11.

When we know the context (see last week’s blog) we find that Jeremiah has had to resort to drama in order to get anyone to listen to him regarding the political fact that the Babylonians have won. But wait – doesn’t that make Jeremiah a collaborator with the very Empire these commentaries have been railing against for two cycles of the Revised Common Lectionary? Again, the answer lies in the context of the entire story of Jeremiah – who stayed with the remnant of Israelites in Jerusalem while the rest were exiled to Babylon. “[T]he trick is to discover trust in that covenant regardless of the circumstances. As a demonstration of his trust in the covenant with God, the prophet Jeremiah buys a field at Anathoth on the eve of the Babylonian conquest, when the people of Israel are facing certain exile and slavery. This is a defiant – even a subversive – act in the face of Empire. He honors the Mosaic law spelled out in Leviticus 25:25-28, that allows – perhaps obliges – a family member to “redeem” land that is in danger of being lost to debt. With the Babylonians at the gates of Jerusalem, Jeremiah agrees to buy the field. It is an act of trust that the people will return by the Jubilee Year, 50 years after the sale is arranged, and the land will then be restored to them.” Year C Commentary on Proper 21, The Field At Anatoth.

God’s plan is that the people make the best of a bad situation and live in safety in their own land. All they need to do is trust in God’s promise to preserve that land for its own great destiny. But Hananiah has aligned himself with the politicians who want to overthrow the Babylonian empire and establish their own – despite the reality of overwhelming imperial military forces. Worse, Hananiah has the audacity to physically break the ox yoke that Jeremiah has attached to his own neck, thereby symbolically defying God’s will. As Matthew’s Jesus says, “The one who accepts you accepts me, and the one who accepts me accepts the one who sent me.” The obverse – that the one who does not accept you does not accept me – means that if God’s prophet is defied, God [himself] is also defied. In the part we are not supposed to read this week, Jeremiah goes back to Hananiah and warns him that because he broke the wooden yoke, an even stronger yoke of iron is now attached to the necks of all the nations conquered by the Babylonians, and furthermore, Hananiah will be dead within the year. Sure enough, “In that same year, in the seventh month, the [false] prophet Hananiah died” (Jeremiah 28:10-17).

The editorial in the Christian Science Monitor of June 18, 2008, discusses the U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding Guantanamo detainees and habeas corpus. The Court divided 5 to 4 between the majority who held that “Liberty and security can be reconciled,” and the dissenting view that “lower courts will almost certainly release dangerous detainees and cause more Americans to be killed.” The Monitor concludes that “America’s identity rests on its ideals, such as due process. They help preserve a quality of life that may require a sacrifice of life” (emphasis mine). The editorial point concerns secular politics (and arguably imperial theology) not Covenant. Nevertheless, as Jeremiah demonstrated with his ox-yoke (and perhaps underlying and informing The Monitor’s view), the fact that Empire holds sway does not rule out distributive justice-compassion, which not only may require sacrifice. The readings for this Proper 8 assert that it does. Abraham was willing to give up any hope of realizing God’s heady promise that he would be the father of a great nation in order to remain obedient to that same God of justice-compassion. Jesus gave up his life because of that same obedience to the rule of distributive justice in God’s realm. The only time the prophet gets derailed is when she makes false promises of easy piety, war, victory, and peace. The trick is to distinguish between Covenant (non-violent, distributive justice-compassion), and the easy piety of empire. Anyone who thinks that participation with the risen Christ in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion is easy, is listening to false prophets. The defining factor is justice – so long as justice is distributive and grounded in compassion, all is well. As soon as justice becomes retributive, and rooted in violence, the difference between the false and true prophets becomes clear.

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The King’s Business: Year A Proper 7

Genesis 21:8-21; Jeremiah 20:7-13; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17; Psalm 69:7-18; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39

A friend of mine quotes his Oberlin seminary Old Testament professor, Herbert Gordon May, regarding the meaning and interpretation of scripture: “context, context, context.” The readings for Proper 7 are all lifted wholesale out of context, and cobbled together like medieval motley. Even conventional dogmatic themes fail to form recognizable patterns in this “incongruous mixture” (as the Oxford Dictionary of American Language defines “motley”). Not to pursue this metaphor too far, but “playing the fool” by wearing motley implies astute criticism of the King’s business. The Elves have not only missed the point of the King’s business; they have failed to present any point at all. All bets are off this week. Pick a reading and preach on it.

Taken out of context, the reading from Genesis picks up at the end of the feud between Abraham’s wife Sarah and Abraham’s mistress, or second wife, or slave, or concubine – choose your epithet – Hagar. Ishmael was not really a bastard, but definitely not the fruit of the first womb. In order not to derail God’s plan for Isaac, Hagar and Ishmael are thrown out into the desert. What a rich soup of themes for the 21st Century: Patriarchy; women’s liberation; selfishness; stupidity; exploitation; breach of trust. But the story leaves us with too many questions: Did Ishmael really become the ancestor of Islam? Why did God intervene to save Hagar in the desert, but not in time to preserve family relationships in Abraham’s camp? What is the connection with the Egyptians? Why are we reading this text of terror?

In the alternative Old Testament reading, Jeremiah is caught between what God demands that he say, and the social and personal consequences of saying it. He blames God for enticing him into the prophetic life, then abandoning him to the persecution of his enemies. Nevertheless, by the end of the reading, Jeremiah has to rely on God’s promise of deliverance.

The portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans is plucked out of the midst of Paul’s argument about grace – the free gift from God that renders everyone just. The unwary may find themselves floundering in the waters that equate baptism with death and burial, and resurrection with a heavenly afterlife.

Finally, Matthew, the liturgist, strings together sayings of Jesus like a litany, designed to bolster the courage of believers under the constant barrage of criticism and persecution – much like Jeremiah. But Matthew ups the ante: “Whoever loves father or mother . . . son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” Judgment of unbelieving sinners is the name of Matthew’s cherry-picking game.

For my purposes here, Professor May’s “context, context, context” has two parts. The first is the political, social, and spiritual conditions that gave rise to the original writings.

If we look at the circumstances within which each of these readings was created, we find that they were all written within a context of alienation and exile. The Abrahamic saga is part of the foundational myth of the Jewish nation and religion. Defining who is legitimately part of the authentic Hebrew people was vitally important to both the remnant exiled to 6th Century B.C.E. Babylon, and those left behind in an alienated Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah was a living witness and interpreter of that time and place. Several hundred years later, the fledgling community of Christians in sacked Jerusalem faced the same kinds of issues: Who are we? Who was our spiritual leader and guide? What is our purpose? Who is part of our community, and who is not, and how do we decide?

The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans is a bit different. Written perhaps 10-15 years before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, Paul thoroughly debates the definition of who is a Christian and what it means to follow Jesus. But even though Paul has chosen his mission to the Pagan/non-Jewish Roman world, he too is a political and religious exile. What can be more inflammatory to the Empire and to established religious tradition than to claim that “no human being will be acquitted in God’s sight by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin”? What greater threat to an economic and political system based on patronage than a community where everything is shared in common, and no one possesses more than anyone else?

The second aspect of “context” is the internal integrity of the story or argument. John Dominic Crossan makes it clear that the first order of business in scriptural interpretation is to “know the story and get it right.” God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (HarperSanFrancisco 2007), pp. 128-131. I have pointed out before that it is vastly unfair – if not unconscionable – to cherry-pick Paul’s words from Romans (or anywhere else) in order to perpetuate an institutional theological misinterpretation. (See Repent for the Kingdom 5) It is equally unconscionable to mis-use portions of foundational myths to the same end. When those myths are further bastardized to perpetuate present-day global political empire, Paul’s assertion that “the strength of sin is the law” takes on particular and tragic importance.

The Abrahamic story winds its way through the first five books of the Christian Old Testament. To get the entire story straight, and explore its meaning for 21st Century political realities, is beyond the scope of this Commentary. Perhaps this is the best argument for not following the Revised Common Lectionary, and instead concentrating on entire threads over a series of Sunday mornings. An alternative is certainly extended Bible study for all levels of church members, from pre-school to senior adults. The problem of course is curriculum. The straight story needs to be told from the cradle onwards, and without the dogmatic gloss that the New Testament supersedes the Old.

The prophets are no less prone to misinterpretation out of context, but their truncated stories are more easily dealt with in one sermon. Jeremiah wants the people to return to the old ways of the Covenant, and he is apparently willing to compromise with the Babylonians in order to avoid national destruction. This gets him in trouble with those who want to establish Judah as a kingdom in its own right. Jeremiah’s dilemma is familiar to everyone confronted with the conundrums that accompany living in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion. He is compelled to speak truth to power, and we catch him at a weak moment – or would if the Elves allowed us to read on past the momentary relief Jeremiah finds in reminding himself that “[the Lord] has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.” But in the very next verse, “Cursed be the day on which I was born!” Jeremiah sobs. “Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying ‘A child is born to you, a son,’ . . . Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?”

What Jeremiah prays for is deliverance. What the Apostle Paul promises in Romans 6:1-11 is transformation. For Proper 7, that transformation happens in the act of baptism: We are then dead and buried to the old life, which was defined by adherence to the law, and we are raised just as the Christ was raised to “walk in newness of life.” The key words here are “death” and “life,” not “crucifixion” and “resurrection.” “Crucifixion” and “resurrection” are political terms, which Paul does not hesitate to use elsewhere. Jesus’s death is not just a death. It happened in the context of Roman injustice. Jesus’ resurrection is God’s action in the world, continuing to counter imperial injustice. But using the words “death” and “life” confronts Christians with the day-to-day reality of participation with God in that same continuing action.

Returning to the opening metaphor, this day-to-day participation is indeed the King’s business, which the Elves and the writer of Matthew miss. Once we know the political and spiritual context that Matthew was addressing, we cannot fault him for this; nevertheless, the aphorisms recorded by Matthew cannot be taken literally and applied uncritically to 21st Century issues. Two of the aphorisms were agreed by the Jesus Seminar scholars as authentically going back to the historical Jesus. These are: “After all, there is nothing veiled that won’t be unveiled, or hidden that won’t be made known”; and “What do sparrows cost? A penny apiece? Yet not one of them will fall to the earth without the consent of your Father. As for you, even the hairs on your head have all been counted. So don’t be so timid; you’re worth more than a flock of sparrows.” However, the original context for either of them has been long lost, and their position in Matthew’s litany seems arbitrary – whatever Jesus meant when he said them, they have been reduced to non-sequiturs, and their intent compromised.

Continuing the metaphor, and seriously playing the fool, the rest of the aphorisms listed by Matthew are clearly out of character with a Jesus who taught distributive justice-compassion. They are full of retributive judgment, and hints of violence against non-believers, and it is highly likely that Jesus never said any of them. They were essential to the survival of the early Christian community. But are they essential to a 21st Century Christianity?

I close with another quote from Crossan’s In Search of Paul, from the chapter in which he thoroughly discusses Paul’s theology, and specifically the letter to the Romans: “Christ’s ‘death’ always meant for Paul the terrible death of an unjust execution, the horrible death of a shameful crucifixion. It did not mean death as the normal end of life. His theology was not actually built on Christ’s death and resurrection as if Christ had died at home in Nazareth and rose there on the third day. That death meant injustice and violence. Here then, after two thousand years and especially as the twenty-first century’s terrorism replaces the twentieth century’s totalitarianism, we ask this question: Is it death or is it violence that is the last enemy of God? Or better, is it unjust and violent death that is the last enemy of God?” p. 389.

Here is the astute criticism the King’s Business demands.

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A Priestly Kingdom: Year A, Proper 6

Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7; Exodus 19:2-8a; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; Psalm 100; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:23

Most ministers are skipping Romans and concentrating on the readings from Matthew’s Gospel. The Gospel is much easier to expound upon, and little intellect is required to understand Church dogma. But if Christianity is to have any viable relevance to life in the 3rd millennium, hard work is called for in comprehending, updating where possible, and reclaiming both the Apostle Paul’s and the gospel writers’ interpretations of who Jesus was, and what his life and death means – to the 1st Century as well as the 21st.

The Elves have paired the stories of Sarah’s pregnancy with Isaac, and the charge by God to the people in exodus from Egypt, with Matthew’s barely veiled hostility toward the Jewish tradition. Even though Sarah treated the promise of a son as a joke, the readings skip to assure us that Isaac was indeed born, and Abraham’s covenant with God was confirmed by circumcision of the infant after eight days. In Exodus, God tells Moses to promise the people that, “if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured people. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” But it is Matthew’s opinion (a millennium or two later) that the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” are in desperate need of a shepherd. Matthew’s Jesus sends out the disciples, telling them to rely on the hospitality of the people for their sustenance rather than demanding payment for healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, even raising the dead. But there is a catch. Those who do not welcome the disciples or do not listen to them are to be abandoned to a final judgment. Worse, Matthew’s Jesus expects that the [Jewish] councils and synagogues, governors and kings will universally hate both the messengers and the message.

The anti-Jewish message is clear, and it must be countered with scholarship. Matthew was a Jew, and he was likely the liturgical leader of a synagogue that had chosen to follow Jesus’s Way. Matthew was writing – as all the gospel writers were – well after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans. That he constructed his gospel as a liturgical replacement for Torah may be an indication of the bitterness of the disagreement between Jews facing the loss of their religion in diaspora, and fledgling Christians who wished nevertheless to be part of a synagogue. As Funk, et al. remind us, “The sayings in [these readings] reflect a knowledge of events that took place long after Jesus’s death: Matthew is really depicting the situation as he knew it in his own time. . . . Persecution will cause the emissaries to flee from one city to another. But they will not have gone through all the cities of ‘Israel’ before the end comes with the appearance of the son of Adam (. . . an apocalyptic figure). All this is far removed from [the historical] Jesus’s perspective.” The Five Gospels, p. 170.

My late father used to joke that the one thing Christians love more than Jesus himself is persecution. As soon as anyone objects to public prayer in schools or city/county council meetings, or whenever Christmas displays or representations of the 10 Commandments are barred from court house lawns and walls, the pious tie themselves to the stake, and beg for gasoline and matches. There is nothing more satisfying than to be hauled off to jail for disturbing the peace or disrupting a meeting, shouting the Lord’s Prayer in defiance of godless liberalism. But Paul was not talking about easy piety when he wrote that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” The reading is the continuation of Paul’s argument that Jesus died for the benefit of all people on the Planet, not just those who believe that Jesus rose bodily and magically from the grave. Jesus died in the attempt to reconcile humanity with God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion. When we live in Covenant with that realm, we participate with an incarnate Christ in making distributive justice possible in our personal, political, and social lives.

In that context, the charge from God to the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai becomes the source for transforming the theology of Empire (piety, war, victory, peace) to Covenant, non-violence, and distributive justice-compassion. The instructions for how to do that can be reclaimed from Matthew’s Jesus.

“Go and announce: ‘Heaven’s imperial rule is closing in.’ . . . Don’t get gold or silver or copper coins for spending money, don’t take a knapsack for the road, or two shirts, or sandals, or a staff. . . .” Trust in God’s “imperial rule” sounds naive to sophisticated, third millennium, post-modern realists. But trust in the process of distributive justice-compassion to the radical extent demanded by the Covenant is just as dangerous in the 21st Century as it was in the 1st. In the 1st Century, outlaws, rough roads, Roman legions, wild animals, and extreme weather conditions would have added a high premium to the courage already required to tell the story of Jesus in a hostile world. 21st Century exiles face hostility ranging from professional media to political and religious fundamentalists, and ordinary folk, caught up in normal, conventional attitudes toward “justice,” “peace,” and integrity. Normal civil society seems intent upon deliberate misinterpretation of the motives of anyone insisting on eliminating the death penalty; providing universal, single-payer, government-subsidized health care; developing and promoting renewable sources of energy; controlling the availability of weapons of mass destruction; and negotiating with “terrorists” and other “enemies.”

“Look,” Matthew’s Jesus says, “I’m sending you out like sheep to a pack of wolves.”

Indeed, we respond.

“Therefore, you must be as sly as a snake and as simple as a dove.”

Countering the normalcy of civilization means knowing the facts, framing the question, and presenting the argument so that the opposition is empowered to join the program. Tricky, but do-able.

“And you will be hauled up before governors and even kings . . . so you can make your case to them and to the nations. And when they lock you up, don’t worry about how you should speak or what you should say. It will occur to you at that moment what to say. . . .”

This is sailing a bit too close to the wind. Suppose I just vote, or buy organic, or – I’ll march, but I really can’t volunteer to get arrested in front of the White House. My [husband, wife, boss, children] won’t let me.

“ . . . You will be universally hated because of me. But those who hold out to the end will be saved.”

Jesus never says it’s going to be easy. He just gives us the choice: What is faith? Literal belief, or commitment to the great work of justice-compassion? What is deliverance? Salvation from hell, or liberation from injustice? When we choose liberation, we sign on to God’s original Covenant as full partners in the struggle. We become a holy people, a priesthood, guides into the kingdom, and mediators of the sacred.

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