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. . . .’”

Proper 28: Apocalypse Now?

Isaiah 65:17-25; Isaiah 12; Malachi 4:1-2a; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

In an agricultural world, the season of early winter is one of uncertainty about the future, especially if the second harvest was not good, or if the rains are late or missing – as they are in the Southeastern U.S. this year. The Governor of the State of Georgia has arranged for “church and spiritual leaders” to gather in the State capitol building to pray for rain. Needless to say, this has caught the attention of the separation of church and state watchdogs, and caused a collective eye-roll among those whose search for the meaning of “God” does not include the interventionist grandfather almighty. Nevertheless, it is fascinating how in a sophisticated, urbane, society that generally denies the existence of the natural world unless it is raining – and then complains – this particular season of early Winter has brought drought, rampant staph infection among the general population, soaring oil prices, a collapsed housing market, a stock market in a permanent state of ricochet, an economy teetering on the brink of a long slide into recession, and prayer in the State house.

Apocalypse now?

The readings for Proper 28 are all about apocalyptic judgment, and retribution. The answers to the four questions:

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 trust in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion?
4) What is deliverance? Salvation from hell, or liberation from injustice?

are violence, exclusion, literal belief, and salvation from hell. These are the answers for full-scale red alert: survival mode. These are always the answers when humans succumb to fear.

The reading from Luke is a portion of Luke’s wholesale re-telling of Mark’s “little apocalypse” in Mark 13. Biblical non-literalists know that Luke’s gospel was written 20-30 years after Mark’s gospel, and that Mark’s gospel was written in the historical context of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 66-70 C.E. No way is any of this a memory of Jesus’s words or actions. The retributive mood is nearly impossible to avoid. “Nation will rise up against nation and empire against empire;” Luke’s Jesus proclaims. “There will be major earthquakes and famines and plagues all over the place; there will be dreadful events and impressive portents from heaven”; not to mention persecutions, mass arrests, and betrayal by family and friends. But, Jesus promises, “Yet not a single hair on your head will be harmed. By your perseverance you will secure your lives” The Five Gospels, p. 382.

The cherry-picked prophet Malachi backs Jesus up: “The day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble . . . but for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. . . . and you shall tread down the wicked . . . on the day when I act, says the Lord.”

The writer of 2 Thessalonians, following up from last week’s diatribe about the “one destined for destruction,” is very clear who the wicked are: “[K]eep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us . . . have nothing to do with them. . .” The 20th and 21st Century hostile prejudice toward the poor finds its justification here: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat . . . [they must] earn their own living.” Perversely, in 21st Century America, so-called “illegal immigrants,” who are more than willing to work, are equally vilified. The still small voice of Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom is drowned out in hysterical fear. Isaiah’s – and Jesus’s – astounding realm of distributive justice-compassion is nowhere to be found.

Malachi’s coming messenger of justice – Elijah – has been conflated with John the Baptist and Jesus, according to Christian tradition, and the advent of the Christ is the first of the culminating events of history promised by the prophet. But Malachi is railing against corruption in the newly reconstructed temple in Jerusalem in the 6th Century B.C.E. There are consequences for corruption, for abandoning the integrity and purity of the law. In Chapter 3:1-5, in words used by G.F. Handel in the Messiah, Malachi says he is sending his messenger who will restore the covenant between God and the people. “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire . . . and he will purify the descendants of Levi, and refine them . . . until they present offerings . . . in righteousness. . . I will be swift to bear witness against . . . those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of Hosts.”

This is not revenge or retribution. The prophet is saying that the price to be paid for injustice is high. The revenge exacted for Al Qaeda’s attack on New York City in 2001 has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with the action on September 11, 2001, including U.S. armed forces personnel, victims of subway bombings in London and Madrid, and “2.5 percent of the population of Iraq. A matching percentage of the US population of 300 million would be 7.5 million—nearly the entire population of New York City.” Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth documents the consequences of ecological crimes against divinity such as the destruction of rainforests and the contamination of breeding grounds for birds, salmon, and shellfish, as well as the disappearance of diverse species of life. “Species are currently going extinct at a faster rate than at any time in the past with the exception of cataclysmic encounters with extraterrestrial objects. A good proxy for the rate of extinction is the rate of growth in energy used by the human population. In other words, extinction rates are increasing in step with the product of population growth times the growth in affluence.”

Trust in the Covenant means the conviction in the face of death itself that God’s distributive justice-compassion will break through. Authentic Paul tells us it has broken through in the person of Jesus. But those who choose violence, exclusion, literal belief, and salvation from hell as the foundation myths for life look with glee to the coming apocalypse, and refuse to participate in actions to restore economic, social, racial, political, or environmental justice. The world is coming to an end, and the rapture is not far behind. Bomb Iran and bring it on. Who has time to care about “global warming”? Listen to the piety of 2 Thessalonians. Pay attention to the violent war prophesied (meaning “foretold”) by Luke’s Jesus. Wait for the coming victory, says cherry-picked Malachi, “the day that comes shall burn [the evildoers and] leave them neither root nor branch.”

What fundamentalists of all varieties forget is that – as folk tales from all cultures tell us – there is always a way to change the prophecy, remove the curse, and avoid the apocalypse, whether the story is about a hero saving an enchanted maiden, or lifting a judgment against the land. In the postscript to Malachi, God says, “Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.” There is always a choice to be made that will change the prophesied fate. Usually the choice involves giving up an idea about who the cursed one is by embracing the shadow – kissing the frog or marrying the hag – taking the perceived evil in, and incorporating and transforming it into wholeness.

Jesus’s way of lifting the curse is to radically abandon self-interest, and to trust in the realm of distributive justice-compassion even though death is the result. That is the true meaning of the archetype of the Willing Sacrifice. When that choice is made, the blind see, the lame walk, the one who is lost is found, “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox . . . they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.”