SALVATION: 7th Sunday of Eastertide (Ascension Sunday)

Part 6 of Eastertide

Luke 24:44-53; John 17:1-11; Acts 1:1-14
Ephesians 1:15-23; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11;
Psalm 47; Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35; Psalm 93

Ascension Sunday: The day for prayers for unity on the part of followers, and glorification by God for Jesus, as he takes off for Antares, promising to return in the same way he left on a day pre-determined by God, but not to be known by humanity. The roll is called among the remaining followers, who are reminded that everything written about Jesus in the Jewish scriptures and psalms must be fulfilled, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in Jesus’s name to all nations, beginning with Jerusalem. John’s Jesus claims his own glorification, while Luke’s Jesus confers “power from on high” upon the followers. Pseudo-Paul declares Christ the head of the church, which is his body, and the preacher using Peter’s name reminds the rest of us that our job is to be glad for our own oppression, and to watch out for Satan, who “prowls around looking for someone to devour. . .”

Having defended the legitimacy – if not the message – of the writers of Luke/Acts, John, and even the 1st Letter of “Peter” for seven weeks, enough is enough. Even though these writings undoubtedly served the purpose of providing a new “Genesis” for the new diversion from Judaism, there is no more reason to take any of it as relevant to the 21st Century than it is to believe the original 6th Century BCE creation story that kept the remnant of Judaism alive in Babylon. Repentance and salvation are the recurring themes of Luke/Acts, but “Repentance” as turning away from wrong or unwise action seems to be in short supply in the 21st Century.

The Planet continues its slide into the black hole of food and energy shortages, brought on by 1) a collective unwillingness to be concerned about anyone or anything beyond immediate and personal gratification; 2) an unjustified war of revenge perpetrated by a right-wing zealot determined to bring about the “end-times” that will precipitate the aforementioned return from Antares by the “risen Lord” and the immediate conversion of all those “sinners” still holding out in Jerusalem; 3) environmental conditions that may or may not be part of the natural course of global weather patterns, but which certainly appear to be directly related to human mis-use. The wealth of nations is flowing more and more into and through the deep pockets of the rich, who speculate on commodities futures, food futures, housing futures, as poverty rises steadily upwards through the economic strata, devastating the lower, middle, and upper-middle classes world-wide. Two percent of the population of the United States controls 95% of the wealth.

Even though the Elves divide 2nd Samuel Chapters 11 and 12 between Years B and C, the saga of the Great King David and his affair with Bathsheba is the story for today.

This time of the year is Beltane, in the old Northern European/Celtic/Pagan tradition. It is the end of winter, and the beginning of summer, just as its opposite six months later (Samhain/Halloween) is the end of summer and the beginning of winter. Spring is the time when kings go forth to war. In the saga of the great king David, the springtime surge in military action allowed David the opportunity to also engage in the worst excesses of imperial power. He seduced the wife of his loyal commander, Uriah the Hittite, then arranged for Uriah to be killed in battle. Nathan the prophet then tells King David a story about a rich man with many flocks and herds who slaughtered the poor man’s beloved lamb, which was all he owned. David is outraged at this gross injustice, and says that the man who would do such a thing deserves to die. Nathan says, “You are the man.”

This parable of telling truth to power has been applied to many situations of injustice for thousands of years. It is an archetypal tale of the mindlessness of imperial power, and the traps that participants in imperial systems can easily find themselves in. But in today’s climate in the United States, where injustice runs rampant among the poor and disenfranchised, where an unjust war continues, perpetrated and supported by lies that have long been uncovered and even refuted, prophetic voices that are raised in parable and protest are denounced and repudiated. When the story is told over and over again, instead of recognizing their complicity with unjust systems, the supporters of the empire scream “Bigotry! Racism!” From the Supreme Court to the bastions of journalistic righteousness, the guardians of democracy and liberation, freedom of speech, thought, and association, have sold out to the imperial theology:

Piety: “Faith” as “belief” in premodern cosmology; “faith” as “belief” in a resuscitated corpse; “faith” as the certainty that one religion (or political system) is the only true and legitimate one; “faith” as following the drumbeat of political expediency into

War. Ostensibly the war in Iraq is a war of liberation, but in actuality it is a war like all wars, of acquisition. It is a war that only affects the poor and disenfranchised, who have no other means of acquiring education, employment, and meaning for limited lives. It is a war that brings wealth to the suppliers of war materiel, but leaves the veterans of that war bereft of medical care, shelter, and the means of survival. War is not only military war. It is the war against those who would work for distributive justice-compassion: who would not just bail out the billion-dollar financial institutions, but would provide the greatest good to the greatest number with universal single-payer health care, affordable housing, relevant education, job-training, in short, equal justice for all. In these wars, there can be no

Victory. Instead there is only the prospect of continuing war, as “enemy” populations are devastated, and rise up again in desperate violence.

Peace – like Victory, is promised but never comes. There can be no peace where free thought and speech are prohibited through intimidation and deliberate misinterpretation. There can be no peace when peace depends on the politically correct and expedient answers to lies that have been told in order to justify war – whether foreign or domestic.

This imperial theology is a corporate sin that seems to be so much a part of the body of post-modern civilization that it cannot be treated or removed except by radical redemption.

The final choice from the Four Questions for the Apocalypse in this Easter series is the meaning of deliverance: salvation from hell? or liberation from injustice? And what are the radical acts that will ultimately redeem us – meaning buy us back – from the powers and principalities of Empire and restore us to God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion? To choose liberation is to turn away from reactionary retribution. To choose liberation is to radically abandon self-interest and love enemies. Loving enemies means interacting, negotiating, listening, accommodating to the extent possible without losing integrity. To choose liberation is to speak truth to power no matter where it is. To choose liberation is to acknowledge our complicity with injustice, which is nearly impossible to avoid.

The struggle is to learn to let go of the fear that keeps us trapped in the particular human hells of war, famine, disease and death; to trust in the kingdom that is available whenever we enter the silence outside of the theology of Empire: Piety, War, Victory, which brings only an uneasy, ephemeral peace.

Why is “the church” still standing around looking skyward?

Revelation: 6th Sunday of Eastertide

Part 5 of Eastertide 2008

Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:8-20; 1st Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

Eastertide should mark the beginning of the year for Christianity instead of Advent/ Christmastide. The fact that worldly time prevailed is evidence of the extent to which the Way followed by the early Christians eventually accommodated political realities. The series of readings for the Sundays marking the Easter Season in Year A (beginning with Easter Sunday) suggests a progression for Christian spiritual development: Doubt, Recognition, Community, Faith (Not Belief), Revelation, and Salvation. The theme for this 6th Sunday is the revelation of the true God.

All of the New Testament readings for this series reflect the vital organizational work of the early Christian movement. Especially after the destruction of the Temple, defining a new religion separate from Judaism became increasingly important as Jewish tradition shifted from Temple to synagogue, and began to include Pagan (gentile) converts. All of the New Testament writings are part of that process. The synoptic gospels are targeted to specific communities, and are focused on midrashic reconstructions of the life and teachings of the pre-Easter Jesus. The gospel of John and the book of Acts were also written for specific communities, and are concerned with post-Easter themes. John especially presents a mystical, theological interpretation of who Jesus was. Some scholars argue that the Luke/Acts reports on the activities of the followers after Jesus’s death – most specifically, the Apostles Peter and Paul – are fiction. Whether made up from whole cloth or not, nothing in the Book of Acts can be considered history remembered.

Claiming one “true God” among the Pagan pantheon was a political necessity if the movement was going to survive on its own. The story about the altar to the unknown God has traditionally been understood as an indication of the universality of the Christian religion. Sunday school children are taught that the “Pagans” Paul was preaching to believed in a pantheon of idols made of stone and wood, and in order to be sure they covered all the religious bases, they had this altar to any god they might have missed. Paul is credited with being especially astute in creatively seizing the opportunity to claim the “unknown god” as the Judeo-Christian God, whose son Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead to save sinners from hell. Paul then launches into standard lecture number 1 about how “God” does not live in a house made with hands (See Stephen’s outrageous [to the Jews] speech of last week), and is not made of gold, silver, or stone, “. . . the art and imagination of mortals.” Finally, Paul gets around to talking about Jesus as the one who will judge the entire world on a day that God has already determined. The people are urged to “repent” from believing in false gods before it is too late.

The writer of Luke/Acts does not give us any numbers, but does say by the end of Chapter 17 (not included in the readings) that while some scoffed at the idea of the resurrection, “some” joined with Paul – including a couple of named persons: Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris (Acts 17:34). Unfortunately we don’t hear anything more about them in the Bible, but legend has provided an interesting story: Dionysius the Areopagite was a prominent Athenian who converted to Christianity through the preaching of Paul on Mars Hill, the open-air supreme court of Athens (Areopagus in Greek). In a stunning conflation of several centuries of time, the legend says he later was appointed the first Christian Bishop of Athens, and then at the request of Paul, was sent to Gaul, where he suffered martyrdom by fire in Paris. His feast day is October 9th in the west and October 3rd in the east. Damaris, who also accepted Paul's teaching, apparently was an educated woman. Any woman who is named has to have been an important person. Inquiring minds might wonder what her relationship was to Dionysius, but given that the name is the Greek form of the name of the God of Wine (Bacchus) the entire point is easily muddled.

Meanwhile, John’s gospel continues with Jesus’s final discourse to his disciples on the eve of his death. The portion chosen for the 6th Sunday in Eastertide is the promise of the Holy Spirit, who will come if the followers of Jesus remain faithful to him. The Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, will be in anyone who loves Jesus and keeps his commandments, and Jesus will reveal himself to them. These words – like many others attributed to Jesus by the writer of this Gospel – have been used for 2,000 years to discredit, disinherit, and destroy political opponents, inconvenient alternative ideas, entire civilizations.

Yet these words have also been the foundation for speaking truth to power whenever that power has legitimized injustice in whatever form it appears. “I will not leave you orphaned,” John’s Jesus promises, “ . . . because I live, you also will live. . . . I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." This is incarnational language, and it means that the spirit of distributive justice comes through covenant with the realm/kingdom of God. This language empowers the work of justice-compassion, which has little if anything to do with the kind of docile piety dished out by the writer of 1st Peter – who is absolutely not to be confused with the original apostle. 1st Peter 3:13-22 could be construed as a call for non-violent resistance to injustice, but only if taken out of the context of the rest of the letter, which is concerned more with obeying the authorities and rejecting “licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry” (1st Peter 4:3).

Nevertheless, the theme remains: Revelation of the true God and/or the Christ to all. But 21st Century post-modern minds cannot accept Jesus’s Way as the only legitimate one.

If there is any reclaiming that makes sense, it is the words that the writer of Luke/Acts puts in Paul’s mouth: “The God who made the world and everything in it . . . does not live in shrines made by human hands . . . so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us.” We are tactile beings. We prefer the certainties of what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. A non-theistic, non-corporeal, thought-form is hardly comforting in the middle of the night when the medics are on their way. But isn’t that precisely what John’s Jesus is pointing to? In the portion left out by the Elves, Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives” (John 14:27).

Those who live their lives as Jesus did (“they who have my commandments and keep them”) are those who will experience revelation. But for post-modern Christians it is a continuing revelation, not one set in stone for all time. 21st Century Christians are confronted with choices about the nature of God – violent or non-violent – and whether Jesus’s message is inclusive or exclusive. 21st Century Christians must choose whether faith means literal belief, or commitment to the great work of justice-compassion; and whether deliverance means salvation from hell in the afterlife or liberation from injustice in this life.

Indeed, it is not only Christians who are confronted with these choices in these current times. The choices that people make regarding these questions, whether political leaders or common folk, are reflected in the results that are produced. Whether a Christian candidate for President of the United States, or a member of a religious sect that wishes to restore a lost legacy, for anyone who is unable or unwilling to separate ego from the role life has assigned, violent exclusiveness and literal belief threaten the economic and political security of the entire Planet.

But those who live in covenant with the kenotic God of distributive justice-compassion are already keeping those commandments John’s Jesus is talking about. The Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, which John’s Jesus promises, lives in anyone who chooses to participate in that great work. The Psalmist may yet have the last word: “For you, O God, have tested us; . . . we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.”

We shall see.

Faith, Not Belief: 5th Sunday of Eastertide

Part 4 of Eastertide 2008


1st Peter 2:2-10; Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; John 14:1-14


Most Sunday morning Christians will likely hear the story of the martyred Stephen’s enraptured vision of Jesus waiting to receive his spirit, and how – like Jesus – St. Stephen prayed that this sin not he held against his persecutors. They will associate that story with Jesus’s final discourse in the Gospel of John, in which he at last reveals to his disciples who he really is – i.e., the Son of God, who has gone ahead to prepare a place for us. The message is clear: Faith as belief saves us from death. The continuing sermon from the writer of 1st Peter assures the faithful that they are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people . . . called . . . out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

But when the entire story of St. Stephen is read, especially the speech he reportedly made (ignored by The Elves), which enraged “the Jews” to such an extent that stoning was the only logical response, we find what amounts to a spiritual assault on the Jewish religion.
Acts is not history remembered. Nevertheless, it has traditionally been treated as though it were. The problem is that the story of Stephen’s arrest claims that the members of the synagogue of the Freedmen “secretly instigated some men to say, ‘We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.’ . . . [and] They set up false witnesses. . . .” However, careful reading reveals that there was no need for false witnesses to prove their point.
For hundreds of words, the writer of Luke-Acts puts into the mouth of the character Stephen his version of the story of the Hebrew people from Abraham through Joseph and Moses. Time after time the writer (novelist?) changes the details so that the Hebrew people are portrayed as unwilling to follow God’s law and as routinely killing the prophets. “[T]his, despite the fact that in the Old Testament . . . there is hardly a single prophet that the Jews can demonstrably be said to have killed, not even Moses. But where accusations go, history is no arbiter of truth.” James the Brother of Jesus, Robert Eisenman (Penguin Books 1998) p. 442.

In Acts 7:17-19, Stephen says that the Egyptian king “forced our ancestors to abandon their infants so that they would die.” Actually, according to Exodus 1:15-21, the king of Egypt ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill all the Hebrew boy babies as soon as they were born, but the midwives “feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them.” As a consequence, “God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong.” Further, Stephen claims that Moses was abandoned by his mother (Acts 7:19). Every Christian Sunday School child knows that Moses’ mother was afraid that he would be murdered by the Egyptians, so when he got too big to be hidden, she built him a little boat out of reeds covered with mud, and set it afloat. His sister kept a close watch. By the grace of God, he was found by one of Pharoah’s daughters, who adopted him, thereby allowing him to become the leader and liberator of the Exodus story – one of the most powerful of the foundational sacred stories of world spirituality. See Exodus 2:2-10. The writer of Luke-Acts does his best to discredit the Jewish people, claiming that they rejected Moses, and have no authority over the Temple because “the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands.” With this comment, he indicts Solomon – second only to King David in greatness –who had built the house of God, and by implication David himself, who suggested the idea in the first place.

By the time Stephen gets to his climax (which the Elves have also conveniently neglected to include in the readings), it is hard to imagine not picking up the nearest rock and joining the melee. “You stiff-necked people,” he roars, “uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. . . . you are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.” The members of the synagogue of the Freedmen had been treated to a diatribe full of insult and false interpretation of sacred story. This was not some kind of unprovoked assault; St. Stephen the Martyr had it coming.

These readings from Acts, John, and 1st Peter must not be taken out of the context of the late 1st and early-to-mid 2nd Century, C.E. The Temple – where the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus lived, had been destroyed; the Holy City Jerusalem had been sacked; the people of Judea, whether of the Jewish or other spiritual systems, were scattered. The Jewish religion was busy reorganizing itself into synagogues in diaspora rather than focusing on Temple worship. The Christian variation of Judaism was very busy defining itself as not Jewish, based on sketchy memory and unreliable oral tradition about what Jesus actually said and did, interpreted 20 or so years after the death of Jesus by Paul, in the midst of political battles over authenticity. What eventually emerged from this cauldron may or may not be useful to post-modern, 21st Century Christianity.

What is definitely not useful is romanticized piety about persecution, or political accommodation with injustice. Stephen is the poster child for the former; 1st Peter’s letter for the latter. That writer’s metaphor about “living stones” to be “built into a spiritual house” is at least bad taste, if not outrageous, when paired with the highly suspect myth of the stoning of Stephen.

The reading from John Chapter 14 is one of the most beloved of the entire canon. “Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe in me. In my Father’s house are many dwelling places . . .” These words have been solace for the living and the dying for two thousand years, especially when combined with the “faith” demonstrated by Stephen the Martyr. Jesus is God, and all who believe that he rose from the dead will go to heaven. In addition, one of the most magical phrases in Christendom is found in verses 13 and 14: “I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” The spell often seems to work: Parking places materialize; cars stuck in snowbanks are freed; miraculous cures happen against all medical odds. But it is a capricious God that saves some but not others, blesses some but not others, answers some prayers, but not all. So many believers are left wondering where God is, why God does not answer prayer, even prayer in Jesus’s name. But the laws of physics cannot be disregarded or overturned. Believers who want miracles that circumvent the physical laws of the Universe will find this interpretation disappointing and frightening.

So shall we throw out the entire set of readings? To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, by no means. Jesus’s last teaching to his disciples is not about Jesus’s physical return in an apocalyptic parousia. Instead, John’s Jesus empowers his disciples to continue the work in his name. Jesus says he is going ahead into death to prepare a place for his followers. If they believe him, and trust his words, they will have the same powers he did in this present life. The place that is prepared, to which Jesus said he was going, is not a physical heaven above a triple-decker Universe. Instead, it is a mystery, into which Jesus asks that we have the courage to follow him. Those powers that are ours if we trust his word are neither magical, nor metaphorical. Instead, these powers are those of the profound balance of the natural world. The lilies of the field are clothed; the birds of the air are fed. Followers of Jesus’s Way, who trust the vision that Jesus taught, live in Covenant with creation, not in opposition to it. When we live in alignment with God’s incredible kingdom, we experience inclusive, distributive, justice-compassion, and find peace, regardless of the circumstances. Thus, in partnership with Jesus’s spirit, the Holy Spirit of God/dess, followers of Jesus’s way have the courage and the strength to continue the ongoing great work of justice-compassion here and now.

Community: 4th Sunday in Eastertide

Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10

Oh the Mountain sheep are sweeter

But the Valley sheep are fatter.

Therefore we deemed it meeter

To carry off the latter.

Part 3 of Eastertide 2008

This week we have sheep and shepherds: Our favorite image of Jesus and his disciples in the 1st Century, and the church and its bishops ever after, presiding over their “flocks” with their ceremonial shepherd’s crooks. First we have the 23rd Psalm, read at times of personal or community crisis. Then we find in 1st Peter, reference to Isaiah 53 and the words used by G.F. Handel in one of the choruses from the Easter portion of the Messiah. (At least one choir director of my experience thought the musical emphasis produced on the English phrasing to be particularly amusing: “All WEE like sheep . . . have gone astray.”) Finally, we have John 10:1-10, in which the sheep/shepherd metaphor is explored, ending with John’s Jesus declaring that “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

Emphasizing the comfort of the sheep/shepherd motif is certainly far less confrontational than considering the possibility that some 1st Century Christian communities actually practiced communism and increased their numbers thereby. Nevertheless, this 4th Sunday of Easter mandates a look at the nature of community and leadership.

The shepherd metaphor is not particularly flattering, nor encouraging to 21st Century hopes for global democracy. The people are sheep, who listen only to the known voices of their leaders. The people will not listen to anyone who comes in over the fence instead of through the gate. They will run away from that one, but will follow the true shepherd. Then John’s Jesus tries to explain what he means and says he is the gate. Presumably God is the gate-keeper who opens the gate so that Jesus the Shepherd can call the names of each one in his flock, and they will hear and follow.

Because of the infamous cherry-picking by the Elves that put together the Lectionary for this Sunday, half of John’s argument about the nature of the good shepherd is left out (John 10:11-18). In that section, the pivotal phrase, “lay down his/my life for the sheep” is repeated four times. Jesus claims the power to lay down his life and to take it up again as “received from the Father.” By the end of the discourse, Jesus the good shepherd is seen to be in partnership with God the gatekeeper, even on behalf of “other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” Here the metaphor breaks down. Unlike those other strangers, from whose voices the sheep will run, Jesus can jump the fence. “[T]hey will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” The question arises, just who are the thieves and bandits here?

It is absolutely essential that these passages not be read as anti-Jewish. They are certainly anti-something. Whether the creator of John’s gospel was writing from within a Jewish context or from a non-Jewish pagan or Greek context is under current investigation by biblical scholars. For the purpose of this discussion, which it was doesn’t matter. John was probably railing against “thieves and bandits” in rival fledgling Christian communities who were siphoning off members using various interpretations of a developing Christianity. Perhaps John was referring to the likes of the leaders of 1st Peter’s community. The sheep may run away from the thieves and bandits who jump the fence, but they cannot escape if the thieves grab them and carry them off.

The secret for a successful community that relies on commonality such as described in Acts lies in the certainty and trust that individual members have in the kind of realm described in Psalm 23. Even though the majority of 21st Century, largely urban Christians have no clue what sheep are like, the 23rd Psalm attributed to the Great King David resonates with other pastoral imagery of God’s peaceable kingdom of distributive justice-compassion. Such trust allows the individual to walk through the valley of the shadow of death itself because evil is held in check by one’s own integrity, partnership with the Creator, and trust that distributive justice can and does work.

With mutual trust, there is no need for authority. Or, as Paul puts it in 1st Corinthians 15:56, “the power of sin is the law.” Extrapolating 1st Century Paul to the 21st Century is always a tricky exercise. Paul may have been talking about Jewish law that insists on physical signs to prove membership in a community; he may have been talking about Roman law, which solidifies retributive imperial power. But the relevance that remains in Paul’s suggestion is that law expressed as power-over others prevents individuals from full participation in establishing just systems in a community, or participating with God in restoring distributive justice-compassion on earth, as in God’s realm.

Interpreting Isaiah’s servant song (Isaiah 53) as ransom or substitutionary atonement theories, as 1st Peter does, has been accepted theology for nearly 2,000 years. But being a servant-leader does not mean piously and passively accepting abuse from the powers and principalities that impact the wider society, as 1st Peter implies. Without the second half of John’s parable of the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, Jesus’s leadership falls far short of his dramatic demonstration of kenotic service found in Chapter 13. Jesus’s leadership model is the servant-leader who transforms societies because the servant-leader empowers others. 1st Peter’s theology amounts to heresy because leadership vested in the authority of human institutions acting with power-over others can never lead to distributive justice.

The Elves also conveniently skip 1st Peter 2:18, which advises slaves to “accept the authority of your masters with all deference,” whether they are kind or “harsh.” This is unacceptable on several levels whether in a 1st or a 21st Century context. Slavery is outlawed world-wide in the 21st Century, although of course it is practiced in all kinds of ways, ranging from sub-standard wages to human trafficking. Shall Christian communities indeed decline to work to eliminate this injustice? Following the slavery example, pious 1st Peter implies that if we allow injustice to not only exist, but to proliferate, “if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.”

1st Peter repudiates Isaiah’s suffering servant, negates the meaning of Jesus’s own death, and cheapens the courage of self-less martyrs to justice in all times and circumstances. Being an empowered partner in a community dedicated to the great work of distributive justice-compassion is not a passive role, subject to blindly following the leader. Kenotic servant leadership arises from and creates kenotic communities that bring about God’s Realm of distributive justice-compassion through radical abandonment of self-interest. But such radical abandonment is far from passive, and cannot happen without profound trust in the presence of justice and life. Participation then means active non-violent resistance to the normalcy of unjust human institutional systems. But beware of mixing the metaphor, as John risked doing with his parable, and the Elves have done with the choice of readings for this week. It is far more difficult to follow the true shepherd through the gate than it is to be kidnaped over the fence.

RECOGNITION: 3rd Sunday in Eastertide

Acts 2:14a, 36-41; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35; Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19

Part 2 of Eastertide 2008

These Year A Eastertide readings cover all the traditional Christian faith bases: deliverance from death, salvation from sin through baptism, deliverance from sin by blood ransom, and recognition of the risen Christ in the breaking of bread. For post-modern exiles, who want to commit to the work but reject the traditional fall-redemption theology as preached by the writers of Peter’s First Letter and Luke-Acts, the time might be better spent looking at how the early followers of Jesus’s Way recovered from a devastating set back, and what happened to Jesus’s original ideas. Also appropriate may be to consider whether and how the foundational rituals of baptism and communion might be reclaimed so that they can continue to define a 21st Century church that is faithful to the original – that is, to a Way for living life in the spirit that is not obscured by Greco-Roman philosophical overlays from the 1st and 2nd Century (and earlier); or the political accommodations of the 4th Century and later; or the guilt-ridden, often blood-soaked, theories of substitutionary atonement and original sin.

The reading from the First Letter of Peter reinforces the apostle Peter’s suggestion for gaining salvation from sin. Most Christians have no idea that the community described in Acts was founded in Jerusalem shortly after Jesus’s death, but the community described in the First Letter of Peter likely was founded 50 or more years later. Most 21st Century folks in the pews on Sunday morning are not going to make a distinction between the two Peters unless their ministers make it a point to do so. Once the point is made, the genie is out of the jug. Luke-Acts was not created until around the same time as the First Letter of Peter, if not even later, and perhaps well into the 2nd Century. Given that timeline, it is debatable whether the theology of salvation through baptism or the theology of blood ransom through Jesus’s death was actually suggested by Jesus, or by Simon Peter. The argument is whether or not Jesus accepted John the Baptist’s apocalyptic call for repentance. I have chosen the side that argues “no.”

Unfortunately, the reading from Acts picks up where we left off last week, repeating the end of Peter’s sermon, once more reminding “the Jews” to whom he was preaching that “this Jesus whom you crucified” was God’s Messiah, sent by God to restore God’s justice. This Peter then revisits John the Baptist’s legacy, and insists that the only way for “the Jews” to save themselves from “this corrupt generation” was to repent and be baptized in the name of that same murdered Messiah. The writer of Luke-Acts reports that “about three thousand persons were added” to the community that day. Assuming (which historically, we cannot) that this happened 50 days after the death of Jesus (Pentecost), his original message of radically inclusive love and liberation from injustice apparently never made it out of the tomb.

All is not lost, however.

Of all the appearance stories in the Gospel accounts, Luke’s story about Cleopas and his companion (his unnamed wife?) who meet the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus may be the favorite. The Elves recommend it to be read every year, when the main Easter service includes a Eucharist on Easter day. In Year A, the story is also included in the readings for this Third Sunday of Easter. In Luke’s story (and it is only Luke’s story), the Greek idea about fate being determined by God is put into Jesus’s words: “Wasn’t the Anointed one destined to undergo these things and enter into his glory?” Luke says, “Then, starting with Moses and all the prophets [Jesus] interpreted for them every passage of scripture that referred to himself” as a proof. But Cleopas and his traveling companion are still so “slow-witted” – as Luke puts it – that they do not recognize the risen Jesus until he shares bread with them.

If anything in these readings can be reclaimed for post-modern minds, it is this story. Theologies of fall-redemption, ransom, and substitutionary atonement no longer work, nor does proof-texting about Old Testament prophecies coming true hundreds of years later. What works is what Jesus did for the travelers on the road to Emmaus: Hands-on, present moment action that reminded them what they were supposed to be doing. Review of tradition and history is very useful. Revisiting the prophetic voices of the Old Testament such as Amos, Jeremiah, and Isaiah can help post-modern 21st Century Christians recall that the veil between the worlds of God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion and the normalcy of human desire for retributive systems is breached whenever anyone acts in partnership with God to restore the balance.

The metaphor is the shared meal. Of course Luke’s story is meant to be a miracle story about a mystical appearance by the risen Lord, who is only recognized when he breaks bread and passes it to the travelers. They remember that the last time he did that for them was the Passover meal, which – like others Jesus shared – was forever transformed. Jesus is reported in all the gospels getting into trouble because he ate and drank with “sinners” – usually defined as tax collectors and other collaborators with the Roman occupiers – but his table was inclusive of all who were trapped in a system from which there was no escape. With his institution of the “Last Supper,” the old covenant secured by Moses was replaced by the new covenant, sealed with the blood of the Messiah.

21st Century exiles from any of the religions of the Book, but especially exiles from Christianity, no longer resonate with the metaphor of blood sacrifice that reconciles the relationship between God and humanity. The idea that Jesus’s death is a sacrifice required by God as substitution for the death of sinners, or that Jesus’s blood is somehow a ransom paid to liberate sinners from hell makes no sense in a post-enlightenment, non-theistic age. Instead, the communion meal offers post-modern, liberal Christianity a commemoration of both liberation from ancient political oppression and deliverance from injustice for all time. The shared meal is not a guilt-induced volunteer stint at the local soup kitchen (although whether inspired by guilt or not, the soup kitchens can use the help). The meal shared and recognized on the road to Emmaus starts with radical fairness: redistribution of access to power and wealth so that poverty and the conditions that cause poverty are eliminated; negotiation from the standpoint of a radical abandonment of self-interest to reverse hundreds of years of revenge and retribution among families, neighborhoods, governments, and nations.

Finally, in a post-modern, 21st Century, where a non-theistic, kenotic God is present wherever life and justice are present, we can still join the psalmist who praises the God who delivers us from injustice and death. “For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I kept my faith. . . .’”

Reincarnation: 2nd Sunday in Eastertide

Introduction

For the season of Easter in Year A, the Elves have us studying First Peter, John, and Acts for six weeks. After the death of Jesus, the first question to be asked was, what happened to his followers? Once the idea of Jesus’s resurrection began to be known, the question became how did the new story fit into Jewish community and religious life? Within a few years, what became known as the Way of Jesus proclaimed by Jesus’s original followers began to develop its own communities, some still within the Jewish tradition, and others among gentiles and pagans.

21st Century scholarship is beginning to come to a consensus that Acts was created in the early 2nd century – perhaps as late as 150 C.E. Because whoever wrote Acts also wrote Luke, the impact of that timing on the interpretation of the content of Luke’s gospel is also being considered and debated by the Jesus Seminar scholars as they work to reconstruct the earliest Christian communities, from Galilee to Rome. Regardless of the timing, however, the point is that Acts is not history remembered. Like the gospels and the various letters included in the New Testament, Acts was created in response to a need for standardizing an emerging Christianity that was moving farther and farther away from Jewish religion and from Jesus’s original message.

Given that history and purpose, is there any point in pursuing the Bible study laid out for us between now and Pentecost other than to underscore traditional Christian belief and dogma? The time has come once again to revisit the Four Questions of the Apocalypse, which are the underlying questions of this Commentary, and provide a framework for reclaiming Jesus’s message for a post-modern, post-Christian, 21st Century:

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?

While keeping those questions in mind, the next six Sundays may be seen as an unfolding commitment to the work begun by Jesus for a developing Christianity, whether in the 1st or the 21st Century. The journey begins with Doubt, and progresses to a dawning Recognition, formation of Community, committed Faith, continuing Revelation, and Salvation.

The theme for this week is, Even though you haven’t physically seen the risen Christ, faith (belief) in his resurrection will save you.

Reincarnation: 2nd Sunday in Eastertide

Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

The lead editorial in The Washington Post for Sunday March 28, 2008, is titled “Easter – A Movable Feast.” It captures the miss-perception of most of the non-Christian world that “The Easter story speaks to everyone about the universal fear of death” and that “[t]o believing Christians, the resurrection is literal. For others, it may be the hope that they will live on in their families, their friends and their society, and in the things they have done. . . . [Easter] has moved well along on the path to toleration and understanding, although, as always with such things, there are many miles to go.”

Like the famous Doubting Thomas in the suggested reading from John’s Gospel, the Post editorial writer can’t see beyond the dichotomy set up between literalists demanding physical evidence and the depressing conclusion that eternal life is only available to famous people. The rest of us – who may have no children or grandchildren, or can’t get a publisher to pay attention to our work – are doomed. Jesus’s inclusive and anti-imperial message of distributive justice-compassion is then further eviscerated, and we are left with gutless liberal tolerance and vague attempts at “understanding” – ourselves? others? The writer does not say.

Only one fact about Jesus’s death and resurrection can be documented from the 1st Century, and treated as factual, literal truth in the 21st Century: Jesus died at the hands of the Roman Empire. The rest of the stories are attempts to reconcile that death with what Jesus taught about living in the Kingdom of God’s distributive justice-compassion. But the readings for this 2nd Sunday in Eastertide tell us nothing about that. Instead, they are theological arguments that reinforce conventional piety.

The writer of the First Letter of Peter points believers to heaven and the salvation of their souls. The people in this particular late 1st Century Christian community are reminded that because of Jesus’s resurrection, they have “new birth into a living hope” that they will inherit eternal life when they die because their souls have been saved. They were very likely under some pressure to conform to the society around them. The letter acknowledges that they may have to suffer “various trials,” but their faith (belief) in the promise of heaven gives them the strength to resist. What do they resist? To take a sneak peek ahead – and into a section not included by the Elves in this six-week series – they are not resisting the injustice of empire. Quite the opposite: “For the Lord’s sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right. . . . As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil. Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” 1st Peter 2:13-17.

Jesus never said to dishonor the Emperor. But he did remind people that the Emperor owns only the coin on which his likeness appears. The subversive meaning of Jesus’s answer about whether to pay taxes to the Emperor is lost to the letter writer, and to be fair, has remained a point of debate since the day it was uttered. See Mark 12:13-17; Matthew 22:15-22; Luke 20:19-26; Thomas 100:1-4: “Give the emperor what belongs to the emperor, give God what belongs to God . . . .” Anyone familiar with Jewish theology would know that the Earth, and all that is in it, belongs to God. But to “accept the authority of every human institution” means collaboration with the forces of injustice. Surely Jesus did not advise the poor to pay exorbitant taxes so that kings can go off to wage preemptive wars; surely he did not suggest that unskilled workers who clean corporate offices should be denied a living wage; surely he did not suggest that people should forfeit their homes to leveraged, multi-national, corporate debt. Nor would Jesus suggest, as the writer of First Peter would, that those suffering under oppressive systems should passively hope for a better deal in the next life. Jesus makes the point clear with his advice about how to respond when the oppressor insults you, or demands your coat or your services as porter. In case his listeners missed the point, he provides a personal physical illustration during the last week of his life with his parody of an emperor’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his subsequent demonstration against Temple corruption. The crucifixion, of course, is the terrifying result his later interpreters are confronted with. Perhaps that is why they reduced the Way from radical, costly discipleship to conformity with powers and principalities.

The writer of Luke-Acts has the Apostle Peter (not the writer of 1st Peter) address the Jews in Jerusalem and Judea, accusing them along with God himself of being accessories to Jesus’s execution: “[Whom], according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.” Those “outside the law” (meaning outside Jewish law) are of course the Romans. With just this portion of Peter’s Pentecost speech, even though God apparently planned the whole thing – which may excuse “the Jews”– the seeds of intolerant and exclusive anti-Semitism have been sown, along with the concept of a manipulative, interventionist God, who acts alone. Peter goes on to use Psalm 16 to argue that King David foresaw Jesus as the Messiah, and therefore, “God has made him both Lord and Messiah,” and in case we didn’t get it the first time, Peter reminds his Jewish audience that he is talking about “this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Because these writings were created 40 to 150 years after Jesus’s death, and no sooner than 20 years after the death of Paul, they cannot be read as definitive theology for 21st Century Christians. Too much of what is known about Jesus’s actual teachings has been recovered during the last Century; too much careful Biblical scholarship has been accepted. The only phrase from the entire set of readings for this Sunday that has meaning for 21st Century Christians is Acts 2:24b: “. . . it was impossible for [Jesus] to be held in [death’s] power.”

Why? What did Jesus say and do that death cannot destroy?

Jesus’ message went beyond resisting the normal injustices that come with human civilization, and certainly far beyond the easy admonition from First Peter (3:11) to “turn away from evil and do good.” Jesus’ message transformed Saul of Tarsus – whose job may have been to witness the stoning of Stephen on behalf of conventional Jewish piety – into Paul, who declares that nothing can separate anyone from the justice-compassion of God, seen in Jesus who became the Christ. Jesus rises from beyond death to remind us that God is not violent, and justice is not about revenge. God’s distributive justice-compassion is not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, which is the normal course of justice in human civilization. God’s distributive justice is radical fairness. When Jesus says, “love your enemies,” he confronts us with an impossibility. In the words of Jesus Seminar founder Robert Funk, “those who love their enemies have no enemies.” Loving our enemies flies in the face of every military action taken on the part of government anytime, anywhere. Loving our enemies means bringing non-violent justice-compassion to every social and political situation that arises. Loving our enemies puts our lives and liberty at stake.

Whenever we take on that radical abandonment of self-interest – whenever we resist the forces of injustice in the workplace, in government, in our relationships with family, friends, neighbors, Jesus is reincarnated – rises again – in us. It is faith – trust – in that ongoing, ever-renewing resurrection that will save us, not from individual, physical death, but from the injustice that keeps us from recognizing our participation in the Kingdom.

What Does It All Mean? Easter 2008

Acts 10:34-43; Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24;
Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18; Matthew 28:1-10

Peter’s Sermon in Caesarea (Acts 10:34-43); Psalm 118; and the story of Mary Magdalene being first on the scene (John 20:1-18) are always offered as traditional readings for Easter Sunday morning. These are the pillars of Christian faith: Peter’s sermon tells the story of Jesus in about 200 words, much as the story of the Hebrew people is told and retold at Passover and throughout the Jewish liturgical year. Psalm 118 becomes a song of vindication for Jesus as Lord instead of a song of praise at being able to once more enter the Temple in a condition of reconciliation with God. “[T]he stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone,” appropriated from the original meaning, refers to the risen Christ as the foundation of the church. Finally, our favorite Mary, the forgiven sinner, walks in the garden alone and encounters the personal savior.

Easter Sunday is easy. The scent of forced-bloom lilies in the sanctuary is overwhelming; the local symphony orchestra’s entire brass section has a paying gig – even the trombonists have been dispersed throughout the City. The choir turns its stoles to the gold side and screams Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. People show up who haven’t been seen since Christmas Eve. The plate collection is the most lucrative of the year. The thunderstorms of Good Friday and Saturday are over and done, and the sun is shining. The Easter ham is slow-cooking in the oven, and the kids are stuffed with multi-colored Easter “peeps” and chocolate bunnies.

Who needs a sermon?

– Everyone who slides over the uncomfortable story about “resurrection” and talks about spring: New life from death – as though Jesus were planted like winter wheat and appeared along with the crocus and the daffodils to prove that nobody really dies, that “love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.” These are perfectly usable and valid metaphors for the cycles of birth, life, death, rebirth – the archetype of the dying rising god, who brings renewal, fertility, hope. But if that is all Jesus’s resurrection means, he is no different from the Celtic gods like Herne, or Lugh, or the Greek goddesses Persephone and Demeter.

Peter’s sermon in Acts is no help. He reiterates the story, but already Jesus’s Way has been watered down to forgiveness of petty personal sins. But then, Peter never did quite get what Jesus was all about, and very nearly joined Judas in opting for collaboration with the normalcy of Roman rule. The Colossians passage is just as bad: We are piously advised to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is.” Authentic Paul’s commitment to distributive justice-compassion has been eliminated by the usurper writer, along with Paul’s passion about life transformed by participation with the risen Christ in God’s kingdom, not the Emperor’s. The Elves have eliminated this part (Matthew 28:11-15), but after the women have left to tell the men that Jesus will meet them in Galilee, Matthew suggests the distinct possibility of a hoax. The tomb guards have run in a panic to the chief priests. Once the priests met with the elders, it was clear that a cover-up was necessary. The guards were paid “a large sum of money” to forget about angels and earthquakes, and to claim a “Passover Plot” perpetrated by Jesus’s followers, “still told among the Jews to this day.” To claim that Jesus’s disciples stole his body and made up a story about a resuscitated corpse is no worse than dumbing down the message.

Throughout these meditations on the Revised Common Lectionary has run a thread called “Piety vs. Covenant,” or the theology of Empire (piety, war, victory, peace) versus the theology of Covenant (non-violence, distributive justice-compassion, peace). The only opportunity offered in the Year A Easter readings to claim something different from the imperial paradigm that still prevails in 21st Century conventional Christianity is the Old Testament prophet of the Covenant, Jeremiah. So long as the people honor God’s mandate for distributive justice-compassion, God will provide protection and prosperity. In the reading picked for this Easter Sunday, Jeremiah assures the “remnant” of the people left in Jerusalem that as a result of keeping the Covenant, they will be reunited with those returning from exile in Babylon.

What does it mean to keep the Covenant in a post-modern, post-Enlightenment, pluralistic, global, 21st Century? Clearly the Way to keeping the Covenant is not to look “up” to God.

In Mark’s original version of Easter morning, the women who found the tomb empty were so terrified they simply ran away without telling anyone. But the story could not have ended there, or I would not be writing this meditation, and nearly 2,000 years of Christian history would never have transpired. Somebody added a codicil in which the women did as the young man sitting in the tomb suggested, and they “briefly” told “those around Peter” what they had seen. In Matthew and Luke, angels explain what has happened. By the time John creates his version, there is only one witness – Mary Magdalene – who carries the story to the rest of the scattered followers. Regardless of how it is told, the story is the same: Jesus is not here. He is risen. That is a terrifying realization. If Jesus is not here, what happens to the message? What happens to distributive justice-compassion? What happens to those who had the courage to oppose the Empire? The visitors who find the tomb empty are confronted with a choice: If God’s realm of justice-compassion is to be restored – as the Biblical record presents the argument – it will either be by the direct intervention of God alone (apocalyptic eschatology), or by the collaborative action of God in partnership with humanity (participatory eschatology).

For 21st Century Christians, with Jesus seriously dead, and contemporary cosmology rendering theistic, personalized gods beyond belief, the only way to renew the Covenant is a participatory eschatology, through equal partnership with a kenotic God “whose gracious presence as free gift (Paul’s charis) is the beating heart of the universe and does not need to threaten, to intervene, to punish, or to control A God whose presence is justice and life and whose absence is injustice and death." John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul (Harper SanFrancisco 2004, p. 291.

Despite all the temptations that the Empire offers, the renewing of the Covenant is up to us. On Planet Earth, we can only look “out” (not “up”) to find other planets and galaxies, and perhaps to discover something about the nature of the universe, the character of the spirit/creator we call “God,” and the conditions in which humanity finds itself; but then we can only look “in” to ourselves to create the response that will result in the partnership.

He had stood his ground honorably to the very end; he had kept his word. The moment he cried out “Eli Eli” and fainted, Temptation had captured him for a split second and led him astray. The joys, marriages and children were lies; the decrepit, degraded old men who shouted coward, deserter, traitor at him were lies. All – all were illusions sent by the Devil. His disciples were alive and thriving. They had gone over sea and land and were proclaiming the Good News. Everything had turned out as it should, glory be to God!

He uttered a triumphant cry: “It is accomplished!”

And it was as though he had said: “Everything has begun.”

Nikos Kazantzaki, The Last Temptation of Christ ( Simon and Shuster, New York, 1960), p. 496.