gregoryjenks

Author: Gregory C. Jenks

  • Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost (10 November 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Haggai 1:15b-2:9 & Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21 (or Psalm 98)
    • 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
    • Luke 20:27-38

    Introduction: The Sadducees

    This story raises a number of interesting questions, as it is one of very NT passages that even mention the Sadducees. In its present location in the story of Jesus’ final days, the story functions as an illustration of the rising tension between Jesus and the Jerusalem authorities.

    If it could be established that it preserves some memory of Jesus’ own teachings on the resurrection, this story would be, as John P. Meier says, “a unique and precious relic that allows us to appreciate more fully Jesus’ own views on what the future coming of the kingdom would mean” (A Marginal Jew, III:443). Few scholars are willing to go that far, but the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar were so divided over the authenticity of this story that the outcome was a compromise Gray vote.

    In the notes this week we focus on the protagonists of Jesus in this story: the Sadducees.

    The NT and the Sadducees

    When the three variants of this single story are excluded (Mark 12:18-27 = Matthew 22:23-33 = Luke 20:27-40), we find very few references to the Sadducees:

    Matthew adds them to the Pharisees as stock elements in his description of John the Baptist (Matt 3:7 – “But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming …”) and again in chapter 16 where they appear as little more than decoration to the story:

    • Matthew 16:1 – The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test Jesus they …
    • Matthew 16:6 – … of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
    • Matthew 16:11 – Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees!
    • Matthew 16:12 – … and Sadducees.

    Mark only mentions the Sadducees in this story of the dispute about the resurrection, and makes no connection between these influential members of the Jerusalem hierarchy and the arrest, trial and death of Jesus.
    John does not mention the Sadducees at all.
    Luke has no other reference to the Sadducees in his Gospel, but in the Acts of the Apostles does refer to them as one element among the Jerusalem authorities:

    • Acts 4:1 – the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them, …
    • Acts 5:17 – him (that is, the sect of the Sadducees), being filled with …
    • Acts 23:6 – When Paul noticed that some were Sadducees and others were …
    • Acts 23:7 – … and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided.
    • Acts 23:8 – (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, or angel, …

    None of the NT epistles mention the Sadducees, not even Paul who might be expected to have known several personally and who Acts describes as having been commissioned by the (Sadducee) High Priest to harrass the early Christians.

    Flavius Josephus

    Josephus describes the Sadducees in his writings that are more or less contemporary with Matthew:

    Life

    And when I was about sixteen years old, I had a mind to make trim of the several sects that were among us. These sects are three: — The first is that of the Pharisees, the second that Sadducees, and the third that of the Essenes, as we have frequently told you; for I thought that by this means I might choose the best, if I were once acquainted with them all; so I contented myself with hard fare, and underwent great difficulties, and went through them all. Nor did I content myself with these trials only; but when I was informed that one, whose name was Banus, lived in the desert, and used no other clothing than grew upon trees, and had no other food than what grew of its own accord, and bathed himself in cold water frequently, both by night and by day, in order to preserve his chastity, I imitated him in those things, and continued with him three years. (3) So when I had accomplished my desires, I returned back to the city, being now nineteen years old, and began to conduct myself according to the rules of the sect of the Pharisees, which is of kin to the sect of the Stoics, as the Greeks call them. (Life 2)

    Wars of the Jews

    2. For there are three philosophical sects among the Jews. The followers of the first of which are the Pharisees; of the second, the Sadducees; and the third sect, which pretends to a severer discipline, are called Essenes. (Wars of the Jews II.8.2)

    But the Sadducees are those that compose the second order, and take away fate entirely, and suppose that God is not concerned in our doing or not doing what is evil; and they say, that to act what is good, or what is evil, is at men’s own choice, and that the one or the other belongs so to every one, that they may act as they please. They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades. Moreover, the Pharisees are friendly to one another, and are for the exercise of concord, and regard for the public; but the behavior of the Sadducees one towards another is in some degree wild, and their conversation with those that are of their own party is as barbarous as if they were strangers to them. And this is what I had to say concerning the philosophic sects among the Jews. (Wars of the Jews II.8.14)

    Antiquities of the Jews

    9. At this time there were three sects among the Jews, who had different opinions concerning human actions; the one was called the sect of the Pharisees, another the sect of the Sadducees, and the other the sect of the Essenes. Now for the Pharisees, (11) they say that some actions, but not all, are the work of fate, and some of them are in our own power, and that they are liable to fate, but are not caused by fate. But the sect of the Essenes affirm, that fate governs all things, and that nothing befalls men but what is according to its determination. And for the Sadducees, they take away fate, and say there is no such thing, and that the events of human affairs are not at its disposal; but they suppose that all our actions are in our own power, so that we are ourselves the causes of what is good, and receive what is evil from our own folly. However, I have given a more exact account of these opinions in the second book of the Jewish War. (Antiquities of the Jews XIII.15.9)

    6. Now there was one Jonathan, a very great friend of Hyrcanus’s, but of the sect of the Sadducees, whose notions are quite contrary to those of the Pharisees. He told Hyrcanus that Eleazar had cast such a reproach upon him, according to the common sentiments of all the Pharisees, and that this would be made manifest if he would but ask them the question, What punishment they thought this man deserved? for that he might depend upon it, that the reproach was not laid on him with their approbation, if they were for punishing him as his crime deserved. So the Pharisees made answer, that he deserved stripes and bonds, but that it did not seem right to punish reproaches with death. And indeed the Pharisees, even upon other occasions, are not apt to be severe in punishments. At this gentle sentence, Hyrcanus was very angry, and thought that this man reproached him by their approbation. It was this Jonathan who chiefly irritated him, and influenced him so far, that he made him leave the party of the Pharisees, and abolish the decrees they had imposed on the people, and to punish those that observed them. From this source arose that hatred which he and his sons met with from the multitude: but of these matters we shall speak hereafter. What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. And concerning these things it is that great disputes and differences have arisen among them, while the Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich, and have not the populace obsequious to them, but the Pharisees have the multitude on their side. But about these two sects, and that of the Essenes, I have treated accurately in the second book of Jewish affairs. (Antiquities of the Jews XIII.10.6)

    4. But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this: That souls die with the bodies; nor do they regard the observation of any thing besides what the law enjoins them; for they think it an instance of virtue to dispute with those teachers of philosophy whom they frequent: but this doctrine is received but by a few, yet by those still of the greatest dignity. But they are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them. (Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.1.4)

    1. AND now Caesar, upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as procurator. But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus. Now the report goes that this eldest Ananus proved a most fortunate man; for he had five sons who had all performed the office of a high priest to God, and who had himself enjoyed that dignity a long time formerly, which had never happened to any other of our high priests. But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, (23) who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed; when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king [Agrippa], desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a sanhedrim without his consent. (24) Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest. (Antiquities of the Jews XX.9.1)

    The Historian and the Sadducees

    Like the quest for the historical Jesus, the historian’s quest to recover what the 1C Sadducees may actually have been like is complex. Our sources are limited and mostly composed by groups that were hostile to the Sadducees — the NT Gospels, Josephus and the early rabbinic texts.

    John P. Meier devotes 22 pages of his third volume (Companions and Competitors) to a review of the Sadducees. He concludes with this cautious statement:

    Are we to imagine that for some 200 years, the Sadducees as a group engaged in mass hypocrisy, focusing their religious concerns on a temple whose prayers and sacrifices, conducted often by Sadducean priests, contradicted what the Sadducees really believed and openly professed as their teaching?

    While such a damning portrait … is not unheard of in modern scholarship (they are often made the convenient “bad guys” or “heavies” of ancient Jewish history), it hardly seems supported by the evidence. I think it more reasonable to suppose that just as Josephus exaggerated a major tendency of Essene theology, turning the Essenes into fatalists for the sake of his neat pattern of Jewish philosophical schools, so too he exaggerated a major tendency of the pragmatic Sadducees, whose obligation to run the temple and govern Judean Jews during direct Roman rule naturally made them concentrate on human initiative, actions, and obligations …

    This, I think, is all we can say about the Sadducees. Even more than in the case of the Pharisees, our discussion of the Sadducees has had to reply on indirect arguments, reading between the lines, and hypotheses — only to produce a very fragmentary picture. We must resign ourselves to the fact that, short of the discovery of new documents from the ancient Mediterranean world, the Sadducees will remain for us very shadowy figures. (p. 410f)

    Jesus and the afterlife

    For a more detailed discussion of this week’s Gospel, and also the wider traditions about Jesus and afterlife, see Gregory C. Jenks, “Jesus and the afterlife: Glimpses of Jewish traditions in the teachings of Jesus.” in Heaven, Hell, and Afterlife; Eternity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ed. J. Harold Ellens. 3 Vols. Vol 1, 147-168. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2013.
    The items from the Jesus Database that are especially relevant to this topic are listed below.

    Crossan’s data begins with the item number followed by a numerical symbol. A plus (+) or minus (-) sign indicates his judgment on whether the complex derives from the historical Jesus or from the later Jesus tradition. As Crossan himself notes, “the plus sign does not, of course, refer to all sources and units in a given complex but means that, despite any later changes and developments, the core of the complex derives from Jesus himself.” One complex—130 Dead Man Raised—is marked with ± to indicate that it “represents a dramatic historicization of something which took place over a much longer period” rather than a single event.

    Items listed by literary type

    Parables

    Aphorisms

    Chreiai

    • Man with Money – 253 The Rich Man: (1a) Mark 10:17–22 = Matt 19:16–22= Luke 18:18–23, (1b) GNaz.16a.
    • Hundredfold Reward – 200 Hundredfold Reward: (1) Mark 10:28–30 = Matt 19:27, 29 = Luke 18:28–30, (2) ApJas 4:1a.
    • On the Resurrection – 262 On the Resurrection: (1) Mark 12:18–27 = Matt 22:23–33 = Luke 20:27–40.
    • Patriarchs and Gentiles – 166 Patriarchs and Gentiles: (1) 2Q: Luke 13:28–29 = Matt 8:11–12.
    • Rich Man and Lazarus – 471 Rich Man and Lazarus: (1) Luke 16:19–31.
    • Penitent Thief – 005 Crucifixion of Jesus: (1) 1 Cor 15:3b; (2a) GPet 4:10–5:16,18–20; 6:22; (2b) Mark 15:22–38 = Matt 27:33–51a = Luke 23:32–46; (2c) John 19:17b–25a, 28–36; (3) Barn 7:3-5; (4a) 1 Clem 16:3–4 (=Isa 53:1–12); (4b) 1 Clem 16:15–16 (=Psalm 22:6–8); (5a) Ign. Mag. 11; (5b) Ign. Trall. 9:1b; (5c) Ign. Smyrn. 1:2.
    • Eat and Drink Anew – 016 Supper and Eucharist: (1a) 1 Cor 10:14–22; (1b) 1 Cor 11:23–25; (2) Mark 14:22–25 = Matt 26:26–29 = Luke 22:15–19a [19b–20]; (3) Did 9:1–4; (4) John 6:51b–58.

    Discourses

    Raising the Dead

    Items listed by attestation and date

    Stratum One (30-60 CE)

    • Penitent Thief – 005 Crucifixion of Jesus: (1) 1 Cor 15:3b; (2a) GPet 4:10–5:16,18–20; 6:22; (2b) Mark 15:22–38 = Matt 27:33–51a = Luke 23:32–46; (2c) John 19:17b–25a, 28–36; (3) Barn 7:3-5; (4a) 1 Clem 16:3–4 (=Isa 53:1–12); (4b) 1 Clem 16:15–16 (=Psalm 22:6–8); (5a) Ign. Mag. 11; (5b) Ign. Trall. 9:1b; (5c) Ign. Smyrn. 1:2.
    • When and Where – 008 When and Where: (1a) Thom 3:1 & P. Oxy654 3:1; (1b) Thom 51; (1c) Thom 113; (2) 2Q: Luke 17:23 = Matt 24:26; (3) Mark 13:21–23 = Matt 24:23–25; (4?) DialSav 16; (5) 1Q?: Luke 17:20–21.
    • Eat and Drink Anew – 016 Supper and Eucharist: (1a) 1 Cor 10:14–22; (1b) 1 Cor 11:23–25; (2) Mark 14:22–25 = Matt 26:26–29 = Luke 22:15–19a [19b–20]; (3) Did 9:1–4; (4) John 6:51b–58.
    • The Fishnet – 071 The Fishnet: (1) Thom 8:1; (2) Matt 13:47–48.
    • The Rich Farmer – 094 The Rich Farmer: (1) Thom 63:1; (2) 1Q?: Luke 12:16–21.
    • Treasure in Heaven – 099 Treasure in Heaven: (1) Thom 76:2; (2) 1Q: Luke 12:33 = Matt 6:19–20.
    • Lazarus – 130 Dead Man Raised: (1) John 11:1–57; (2a) Secret Mark 1v20–2r11a; (2b) Mark 14:51–52.
    • Whom to Fear – 158 Whom to Fear: (1a) 1Q: Luke 12:4–5 = Matt 10:28, (1b) 2 Clem 5:4b.
    • Patriarchs and Gentiles – 166 Patriarchs and Gentiles: (1) 2Q: Luke 13:28–29 = Matt 8:11–12.

    Stratum Two (60–80 CE)

    Stratum Three (80–120 CE)

    Stratum Four (120–150 CE)

    (No items relating to heaven, hell, or the afterlife are from the final stratum.)

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

    Music Suggestions

    • All People that on Earth do Dwell – TiS 59
    • Alleluia. Give thanks to the risen Lord – TiS 390
    • Halle halle – TiS 720
    • Amazing Grace – TiS 129
    • Where the wide sky rolls down – TiS 188

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.

  • Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost (3 November 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 & Psalm 119:137-144
    • 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
    • Luke 19:1-10

    First Reading: Habakkuk

    The first reading this week strikes a prophetic tone that fits well with the eschatological themes that will dominate the next few Sundays as the liturgical year draws to a close.

    It seems that this prophetic message was shaped by the crisis in Jerusalem during the decade or two prior to the destruction of the city by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE. Out of the darkness of that difficult time this prophet wonders “how long” it will be before the end comes:

    O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?
    Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?
    Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble?
    Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.
    So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.
    The wicked surround the righteous– therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

    The answer that Habakkuk received continues to reverberate across the centuries thanks to the way Paul used one line from this prophet:

    Then the LORD answered me and said:
    Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.
    For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie.
    If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.
    Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them,
    but the righteous live by their faith.

    The first part of that message is directly relevant to issues about the delay in Christ’s parousia that lie at the heart of 2 Thessalonians, but the final line in that excerpt was to be taken up by Paul of Tarsus as a key theological principle: those who are just live by their faith/trust. For Paul that becomes not so much the key to “when will it all end,” as the key to how to live within the blessing here and now. In the process he exploits an ambiguity in the Hebrew text which can be rendered, “the just by-their-faith-will-live” or even (as in Paul) “those who are justified-by-faith will live.”

    In Paul’s lexicon of faith, Jesus is both “the Just One, the Righteous One” and also the one whose unwavering trust in God brought blessings to all humanity just as Abraham’s unwavering trust brought blessing to his physical progeny.

     

     

    Second Reading: 2 Thessalonians

    Having completed a series of readings from the Pastoral Epistles, the RCL will conclude the year with a short series from 2 Thessalonians:

    • Proper 31C – 2Thess 1:1-4, 11-12
    • Proper 32C – 2Thess 2:1-5, 13-17
    • Proper 33C – 2Thess 3:6-13

    Quite unintentionally, this letter indicates just how important the legacy of Paul was in some Christian circles towards the end of the first century. As a self-conscious forgery that seeks to pass itself off as a genuine letter from Paul even while condemning other spurious letters circulating in his name, 2 Thessalonians reveals the importance of Paul’s authority even some decades after his death.

    Bart Ehrman comments on the question of forgeries in the ancient world:

    The frequent occurence of forgery in this period does not suggest a basic tolerance of the practice. In actuality, it was widely and strongly condemned, sometimes even within documents that are themselves patently forged. This latter ploy serves, of course, to throw the scent off one’s own deceit. One of its striking occurrences is in the orthodox Apostolic Constitutions, a book of ecclesiastical instructions, ostensibly written in the name of Jesus’ apostles, which warns its readers to avoid books falsely written in the name of Jesus’ apostles (VI, 16). One cannot help thinking of 2 Thessalonians, which cautions against letters falsely penned in Paul’s name (2:1-2); many New Testament scholars believe that 2 Thessalonians is itself non-Pauline.” [The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 23]

    For further resources on 2 Thessalonians, see Peter Kirby’s Early Christian Writings page.

    Gospel: Jesus and Zaccheus

    This week’s Gospel is the last of the units to be taken from the long narrative section that is unique to Luke, and it comes near the end of that extended reflection on discipleship.

    Several units that occur between last week’s story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14) and this week’s lection have been skipped by the lectionary editors:

    • Jesus Blesses the Children (18:15–17 = Mark 10:13-16 & Matt 19:13-15)
    • The Rich Young Man (18:18–30 = Mark 10:17-31 & Matt 19:16-30)
    • The Third Prediction of the Passion (18:31–34 = Mark 10:32-34 & Matt 20:17-19)
    • Healing of Bartimaeus (18:35–43 = Mark 10:46-52 & Matt 20:29-34)

    After the Zacchaeus story (another item with no parallel in the other Gospels) Luke has the Parable of the Pounds (19:11-27), which is also unique to his Gospel. His narrative then rejoins the Markan order with the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.

    When dealing with a story that is known only from a single source there is always the possibility that we have an example of the author’s literary creativity rather than the chance survival of earlier material taken over from pre-existing tradition. While it is always possible that an authentic saying has survived in just a single witness, the probability of an item with single attestation being authentic is lower than an item that enjoys multiple independent attestation.

    This is a significant issue when reading Luke-Acts since so much of the tradition found there is not attested in any other source, for example:

    • Of the 522 items in John Dominic Crossan’s inventory of historical Jesus materials 342 items have single attestation
    • Luke uses 262 of the 522 items: 143 of these come from the 342 with single attestation, and 49 of them occur only in Luke. (The remaining 94 items with single attestation also occur in related texts such as Mark or Matthew, but the duplicate attestation is not independent.) These 143 items, and especially the subset of 49 unique to Luke, give us a window into the distinctive emphases of the Jesus movement known to Luke. It may be worth reflecting what our understanding of Christianity would be if we had only the material unique to Luke?

    The items unique to Luke include such classics as:

    • Conception of John the Baptist
    • Birth of John the Baptist
    • Jesus (in the Temple) at Twelve
    • The Good Samaritan
    • Martha and Mary
    • The Lost Coin
    • The Prodigal Son
    • The Unjust Steward
    • Rich Man and Lazarus
    • The Unjust Judge
    • Pharisee and the Publican
    • Salvation for Zacchaeus
    • Ascension of Jesus

    For further detailed information about the special Lucan material and its use in the lectionary, see:

    The Jesus Seminar developed a set of rules of evidence as it went about its task of reviewing all the extant Jesus materials. One of the subsets comprised the “Rules of Attestation” [A1—A4] and this outlines the issues when considering varying degrees of attestation:

    A1. Sayings or parables that are attested in two or more independent sources are likely to be old.
    A2. Sayings or parables that are attested in two different contexts probably circulated independently at an earlier time.
    A3. The same or similar content attested in two or more different forms has a life of its own and therefore may stem from old tradition.
    A4. Unwritten tradition that was captured by the written gospels relatively late may preserve very old memories.

    (These rules of evidence are outlined with examples and brief commentary in Robert W. Funk & Mahlon H. Smith, The Gospel of Mark, Red Letter Edition. Polebridge, 1991. Pages 29-52.)

     

    In this case, there seems to be general agreement that the story of Jesus converting Zacchaeus is a Lukan creation rather than being an older tradition that he took over and adapted. Most commentators see it as a remake of the story of Jesus calling Levi. For example, the conclusion of the Jesus Seminar is expressed as follows in The Acts of Jesus:

     

    Luke has constructed this scene to counterbalance the story of the rich ruler who has just rejected Jesus’ advice that he give his wealth to the poor (18:22). Although the ruler had observed the commandments his whole life, he apparently could not be saved without that final act of obedience (18:26). Zacchaeus is presented as Luke’s model for gaining the salvation the rich ruler failed to attain. (page 335)

    Taking our lead from that comment, we might note the way that the stories in 18:18-30 (The Rich Man) and 19:1-10 (Salvation for Zacchaeus) relate to the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 1:9-14. The observant and respectable believer fails to find salvation, while the humble and repentant tax farmer enjoys God’s favor in both cases. As a footnote, it is interesting that we know of a wealthy (and presumably respectable) tax collector at Jericho with the name Zacchaeus, as well as another from Caesarea with the name John. [E. Schurer, History of the Jewish People. (rev.ed. Vermes & Millar) I.374-76]

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

     

    Music Suggestions

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.

  • Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost (27 October 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Joel 2:23-32 & Psalm 65
    • 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
    • Luke 18:9-14

     

    Joel: Dreaming of a better time

    The short prophetic book of Joel (a name meaning, “Yahweh is my God”) makes a rare appearance in the Sunday lectionary cycle this weekend. Apart from being used every year in the Ash Wednesday liturgy, Joel is only listed this one time in the Revised Common Lectionary. In some US denominational lectionaries, Joel is also listed for Thanksgiving Sunday, Year B. The Episcopal lectionary also lists Joel for Easter 6C. Interestingly, in each of these cases it is Joel chapter 2 from which the reading comes. Other potions of Joel are never heard in the Sunday liturgies.

    Almost certainly, the texts from Joel will be heard out of context. Like the passage chosen for this week, we are offered little more than a prophetic sound bite, and it is almost impossible to hear those words with any sense of their original context and significance. As it happens, even reading the entire book would not help us much as the date and circumstances of the book’s composition are obscure.

    The first part of the book (1:1-2:27 in English versions; chs 1 & 2 in the Hebrew) is concerned with recovery from a devastating locust plague. The plague is seen as punishment sent by God, but hope is offered for survival and recovery. This section of the book is impossible to date, and could fit with any period in the history of ancient Israel after the building of the Jerusalem temple. The second part of the book (2:28-3:21 in English; chs 3 & 4 in Hebrew) is comprised of two apocalyptic hymns that promise divine punishment on the surrounding nations as Yahweh the divine warrior fights on Israel’s behalf. Apart from the final verses of ch 2, these hymns are never read in the Sunday liturgies.

    The portion of Joel that does get drawn upon for Christian liturgies is chapter 2 with its mixture of repentance and renewal.

    The classic text from this passage is:

    Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
    your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    your old men shall dream dreams,
    and your young men shall see visions.
    Even on the male and female slaves, in those days,
    I will pour out my spirit. (Joel 2:28-29)

    With our naturalistic worldview, it is not fashionable to interpret natural disasters as divine punishments for national sins. Our secular societies also lack a theological framework within which to speak of God blessing or punishing a modern nation. Despite this, we are not reticent in asking God to bless our nation or save our sovereign; and in times of drought political and religious leaders call for prayers – and even repentance. As I prepare these words in October 2013 a major fire emergency is happening in Australia, with fears of a massive fire front several hundred kilometers wide.

    Hopefully no-one will claim these fires as divine punishment. They are simply part of the cycle of life-death-life in the forests of this ancient land. Indeed, such fires — catastrophic to many creatures (including humans) living in the forest or close to their edges — are essential for the propagation of some tree species. The forests depend on these fires that cause such devastation to us.

    Yet we might also wonder just when extreme weather events become the predicted results of climate change, and when we might discern a prophetic message in the cycle of nature about consumerism and industrialisation. We do not need to interpret these disasters as the gods inflicting punishment on recalcitrant nations in order to notice that collective and personal decisions (including our failure to make decisions) have inevitable consequences that affect not only humans, but also our fragile planet and all her life forms. Maybe we can pray that our old men (and especially our political “elders”) will indeed dream dreams of a better world, a more just society, and an economy that does not simply plunder the planet. While God may not punish us, Gaia certainly will.

    Joel speaks of a collective wisdom that will emerge when God pours out his spirit on everyone – male and female, old and young, and even the slaves. May that time come. Soon!

    Second Reading: Pseudo Paul and the Parchments

    The NT reading this week concludes a series from 2 Timothy, one of the three “Pastoral Epistles” attributed to Paul but almost certainly coming from second or third generation Paulinists who are addressing a different set of issues than those that Paul dealt with in the 50s and early 60s of the First Century.

    For links to online resources, and information about offline materials, see Peter Kirby’s Early Christian Writings web site, which dates the Pastorals between 100 & 150 CE.

    This week’s passage omits six verses that have been important in shaping the Christian imagination of Paul and his companions:

    Do your best to come to me soon, for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful in my ministry. I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will pay him back for his deeds. You also must beware of him, for he strongly opposed our message. (2Tim 4:9-15 NRSV)

    Interestingly, the mention of “the parchments” may be one of our few early Christian references to written materials underlying the extant NT texts.

    While scrolls were regarded as a more prestigious form of publication, and the codex would soon emerge as the pre-eminent format for Christian texts, parchment and papyrus notebooks were also used. We have no extant examples before late 2C or early 3C, but they are mentioned by Quintilian c. 90 CE.

    The exact process by which early Christian texts developed remains unclear, but some non-Christians authors used the codex format already in late 1C and it was also beginning to be used for more substantial documents. The Roman poet Martial recommended parchment codices for travellers, and pocket editions of Homer, Virgil, Cicero, Livy, Ovid, etc were readily available. It seems that such convenient formats were popular with travellers and this may suggest why Christians adopted it so readily.

    Scrolls were probably the original format for the Gospels & Acts, but parchment notebooks were likely to have been better suited for itinerant Christian leaders—just as this Christian text from around the turn of the century indicates: “above all … (bring) the parchments!”

    The Vindolanda texts (Northumberland) discovered in the UK include large numbers of “thin slivers of smooth wood” which seemingly served as ancient version of the loose-leaf binder. These texts date to c. 100 CE and represent a further stage in the development of the codex.

    Gospel: Rethinking the Pharisees

    At the heart of this parable (which is preserved only in Luke) is a contrast between two familiar stereotypes: the Pharisee and the tax collector.

    As we saw in the notes for Proper 24C, the tax collectors were dubious characters in the view of 1C authors:

    … tax collectors are connected in Greco-Roman literature with those who trafficked in prostitution and slavery, particularly to brothel keepers and pimps, those responsible for supplying women and slaves for banquets (Kathleen Corley, Women and the Historical Jesus, 85)

    Assuming then, for our purposes, that the publican served as a symbol for non-observant Jews who were in engaged in corrupt and immoral conduct; what are we to make of the Pharisee in this little story?

    The cameo essay in The Acts of Jesus (pages 240-241), may serve as a starting point for discussion groups wishing to explore the history and character of the Pharisees and the historicity of their representation in the NT gospels.

    Our information about the Pharisees comes from just three sources:

    • the 1C Jewish writer, Josephus
    • early Christian texts such as the Gospels
    • rabbinic literature

    Each of these sources has its own strengths and weaknesses.

    (For an extract from John P. Meier on the limitations of rabbinic texts as sources for historical reconstruction in the NT times, click here.)

    The cameo essay in The Acts of Jesus traces the material relating to the Pharisees found in the Sayings Gospel Q, in the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of John. John P. Meier includes the treatment of the Pharisees in Matthew and Luke in his extended discussion of the Pharisees in A Marginal Jew: III. Companions and Competitors (pp. 289-340).

    The underlying theme of all recent studies on the Pharisees is the need to distinguish the historical Pharisees of the 1C from the negative stereotypes found in Christian writings from the NT Gospels down to recent Sunday School curricula. Not only was Paul himself both a Pharisee and a devotee of Jesus Christ, but at least some of the Pharisees who were contemporaries of Jesus seem to have been supportive of his mission.

    John Meier introduces a short review of 20C portraits of the ancient Pharisees with the following paragraph:

    The dirty little secret of NT studies is that no one really knows who the Pharisees were — although many thought they did before a wave of more critical studies hit the academic beach in the 1970s. As Joseph Sievers bluntly remarks, “we know considerably less about the Pharisees than an earlier generation ‘knew.’” The history of 20th-century research is strewn with many portraits of the Pharisees, most of which are discarded today. (p. 311)

    It is essential to distinguish between research into (the beliefs, history and practices of) the Pharisees, and the question of Jesus’ relationship with the Pharisees in the period 25-30 CE.

    If we take the former first, we can outline the likely history and emphases of the Pharisees as follows. What follows is a précis of Meier’s “thumbnail sketch” of their history and beliefs.

    The origins of the Pharisees lie around 150 BCE, during the early Hasmonean period. They were one of several religious and political responses to the crisis caused by the aggressive Hellenization of Jewish life in the time of Antiochus IV. The Pharisees’ response to this crisis was centered around a renewed commitment to the study of the Torah and the careful observance of customary requirements in certain areas of life, such as tithing, purity laws, the sabbath, marriage and divorce, and temple ritual. Essential to this Jewish renewal movement was a growing body of oral tradition that elaborated and expanded the requirements of the Torah. Underlying this passion for faithful living was the vision of Israel as a covenant community whose future blessing/punishment was contingent on observance of the Torah. Unlike other Jewish sects, the Pharisees had a missionary zeal and actively sought to spread their interpretation of Judaism among the people at large. When opportunity allowed them to do so, they were quite willing to use the power of the state to impose their practices on the general population. The Pharisees had little opportunity for political power under the despotic rule of Herod the Great and the Roman prefects of Judea, but gained renewed influence at the beginning of the Jewish War in 66 CE. After the Romans suppressed the Jewish uprising, the Pharisees coalesced with other devout and studious Jews at Yavneh to form the beginnings of the rabbinic movement. They then faded from history although their spiritual heirs, the rabbis, began to exert control over Palestinian Judaism. (Compare Meier, A Marginal Jew, III,330)

    The question of Jesus’ historical relationship to the Pharisees is rather more vexed. There is broad NT support for the tradition that Jesus engaged in dialogue and debate with Pharisees, even if every individual report of those interactions is subject to historical questions. Meier notes that “every single Gospel source” reflects this tradition:

    • Sayings Gospel Q: the woes in Luke 11:39-44
    • Mark: dispute stories such as 2:16,18,24 & 3:6; etc
    • Matthew: see 5:20; 21:24; 23:2; etc
    • Luke: 7:36-50; 11:37-38; 13:31; 15:2; etc
    • John: 3:1; 7:32,45,47f; 9:13,15f,40; 11:46f,57; 12:19,42

    While there is no reason to doubt that Jesus had common interests as well as significant differences with the Pharisees, we also have to allow for the fact that all these Christian texts are shaped by the struggle between “Christian Jews” and “Pharisaic Jews” in the decades after Easter, and especially after 70 CE. It remains an open question just how much of the NT portrait of Jesus engaged in dispute with the Pharisees reflects events prior to 30 CE or the tensions after 70 CE.

    A complicating factor in all this is the way that the stereotype of the Pharisee (and the adjective, “Pharisaic”) has played out in Christian history. This can be seen in the way that Jewish faith has been represented in Christian polemic as legalistic and hypocritical, in contrast to the heartfelt and authentic faith of Christians. In addition, the invective directed against “the Pharisees” and/or “the Jews” in NT texts such as Matthew and John has been taken as license for anti-Semitism within western Christianity. Dialogues which originated in the internal disputes of Christian Jews and Pharisaic Jews during the second half of the 1C become “texts of terror” (to recycle a phrase from Phyllis Trible) in the rhetoric of Gentile Christians.

    Given all these complexities, we have to move with care when interpreting texts that attack the Pharisees or, as in this week’s story, use them as stereotypes of misdirected piety.

    With that in mind, it is helpful to note that the rabbinic tradition itself offers parallels to the underlying spiritual dynamic in this week’s Gospel:

    R. Nahunya b. Haqaneh when he came out of the Bet Midrash used to say: “I give thanks before Thee, O Lord my God and God of my fathers, that Thou hast placed my portion with those who sit in the House of Study and not with those who sit at street corners, for I and they rise early, I to words of Torah, but they to vain matters; I and they labor, but I labor and receive a reward, whereas they labor and receive no reward; I and they hasten, I to the life of the world-to-come, but they to the pit of destruction.” [B. Ber. 28b]

    It was a favorite saying of the Rabbis of Yavneh: “I am a creature of God and my neighbor is also his creature; my work is in the city and his is in the field; I rise early to my work and he rises early to his. As he cannot excel in my work, I cannot excel in his work. But perhaps you say, I do great things and he does small things. We have learned that it matters not whether a man does much or little, if only he directs his heart to Heaven.” [B. Ber. 17a]

    In addition to these direct parallels, Samuel Lachs (Rabbinic Commentary, 324) notes the following saying attributed to the Hillel to Elder:

    Do not separate yourself from the community;
    trust not in yourself until the day of your death,
    judge not your fellowman until you have come into his place. [M. Avot 2.4]

    John Meier offers this summary of the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees:

    It is hardly a wonder, then, that Jesus would have interacted more with them than with any other Jewish movement or party. Both Jesus and the Pharisees shared a consuming desire to bring all Israel, not just an esoteric sect or a privileged elite, to the complete doing of God’s will as laid out in the Law and the prophets. No doubt Jesus and the Pharisees would have agreed on many basic points: God’s free election of Israel, his gift of the Law, the need to respond wholeheartedly to the Law’s demands in one’s everyday life, God’s faithful guidance of Israel through history to a future consummation involving the restoration of Israel, a final judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and perhaps some sort of eschatological or messianic figure as God’s agent in the end time. At the same time, disagreements were inevitable, (1) granted the peculiar mix of present-yet-future eschatology that implicitly put Jesus himself at the center of the eschatological drama that he proclaimed, (2) granted the eschatological significance he attributed to some of his “miracles,” (3) granted some of his unusual teaching on halaka that flowed from his eschatological message: e.g., (a) the total prohibition of divorce; (b) celibacy as one possible way of serving the kingdom; (c) the rejection of voluntary fasting; and (d) the neglect of various familial obligations and purity rules … (p. 338)

    It seems, then, that Jesus (and most certainly his followers after Easter) shared with the Pharisees a passion for the renewal of Israel as a community that expressed and promoted the imperial rule of God in human affairs, but that they differed profoundly over the way to achieve that. Where the Pharisees looked to the Torah and the oral traditions of the Elders, the Christian community looked to Jesus and the community gathered around his open table. On the one hand, Christians elevated Christ over Caesar. On the other hand, they located the ultimate epiphany in the person of Jesus rather than the teachings of the Torah.
    Where Jesus may well have promoted the archetypal sinner (publican) over the archetypal believer (Pharisee) as a symbol of humanity open to God’s justice, the temptation to think like the self-righteous believer remains a real and present danger to his followers.

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

     

    Music Suggestions

    • Gather Your People – GA530
    • Alleluia, the gospel is among us (Bruxvoort-Colligan)
    • You Are Near – GA451
    • Here I Am, Lord – GA496

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.

  • Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (20 October 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Jeremiah 31:27-34 & Psalm 119:97-104
    • 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
    • Luke 18:1-8

    First Reading: A new covenant

    The first reading offers one of the classic prophetic texts from the Hebrew Bible, and the source for the familiar phrase “new covenant” (or, “new testament”).

    During the last couple of decades of the 7C BCE and the first decade or so of the 6C BCE, Jeremiah found himself exploring the boundaries and contours of his relationship with God. He seems to have begun as an avid supporter of the deuteronomistic reform agenda in the kingdom of Judah. That movement is named “deuteronomic” or “deuteronomistic” by scholars of ancient Israel and Judah because its key ideas seem to have been encapsulated in the book of Deuteronomy. Indeed, it is possible that the mysterious document “found” during the “repairs” to the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem was an early form of the central chapters of Deuteronomy.

    These religious reformers developed an early form of prosperity theology. The well-being of the nation could be assured if it observed the laws of Moses with great care. In this theology, blessings were promised by God to those who obeyed the “statutes and ordinances”—and severe curses were to fall on those who did not. Such a theology could cut both ways. Success was a visible demonstration of God’s favour, while calamity was a sure sign that the person had sinned and was under divine wrath. The friends who arrive to comfort Job in his predicament are almost caricatures for this kind of orthodoxy.

    After initially investing his personal and national hopes in the simplistic algorithm of the Deuteronomists, Jeremiah eventually came to a different view. He realised that the covenant required radical obedience from the nation, and that calamity would almost certainly befall the city if it failed to keep the covenant. The old covenant, once the most sacred concept in Jeremiah’s religion, came to be seen by him as a symbol of failure and judgment.

    However, Jeremiah did not abandon the idea of covenant. Rather, he looked for a new and different kind of covenant. In this new convenant, there would be no need of religious experts and teachers of Torah, because each person would have the divine Torah inscribed on their hearts.

    There is also a radical idea of personal and individual responsibility emerging in this passage. Without losing his profound sense of solidarity with the whole community, Jeremiah asserts that people will now be blessed (or judged) on the basis of their own faithfulness to God’s demands.

    Second Reading: The sacred tradition

    The second letter to Timothy is not counted among the genuine letters of Paul, and the passage chosen for this week illustrates why this document is correctly assigned to a much later stage in the development of early Christianity.

    The recipient, Timothy, is described as having grown up in a religiously observant family—presumably Jewish, although by late in the first century it could have been a Christian family. Sacred tradition plays a major part in the way that faith is understood, and right at the centre of the faith are the inspired writings—the Scriptures:

    … from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

    The phrase “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful …” is perhaps not the best rendering of the Greek (pasa graphe theopneustos kai ophelimos … ), which might be more accurately translated as:

    “every God-breathed writing is also useful for …”

    In any case, it soon becomes apparent that the author is is not so much seeking to define the Bible nor to describe Timothy’s upbringing. Rather, we are in the midst of a tirade against opponents whose views, were they to prevail, would—at least in the imagination of the writer—ruin the faith and the lives of anyone who came under their influence.

    You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them! For among them are those who make their way into households and captivate silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires, who are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these people, of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith, also oppose the truth. But they will not make much progress, because, as in the case of those two men, their folly will become plain to everyone.” (2Tim 3:1-9 NRSV)

    Similarly, the words that follow the compliments about Timothy’s upbringing and his sound grasp of the tradition, urge him to resist false teaching:

    In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.” (2Tim 4:1-5 NRSV)

    These words reflect the tensions within Christianity in the final decades of the 1C and the opening decades of the 2C. The descriptions of the opponents draw on traditional Jewish descriptions of moral and religious decay “in the last days,” but they also reflect the growing estrangement between what came to known as the “catholic” and the “gnostic” expressions of Christianity. The Pastoral Epistles prescribe a good dose of patriarchal authority as the cure for these problems, and for the best part of the next 2,000 years that was to be the recipe adopted by the church.

    Gospel: The unjust judge

    This story presents commentators and worshippers alike with a dilemma. Like the Shrewd Manager, this is a story about someone who is not doing the right thing. While the story has mostly been domesticated, so that the persistent woman is a metaphor for perseverance in prayer, the underlying assumptions challenge and confront us.

    As a story with only single attestation (there are no parallel versions in other Christian texts), this episode is suspect in some eyes. On the other hand, there seems to be a general consensus that this parable may indeed derive from Jesus.
    The Jesus Seminar identified the core parable (vv. 2-5) as possibly coming from Jesus:

    It exhibits the kind of unconventional features that are characteristic of the parables Jesus told: the judge grants the widow’s request not because her case has merit or because he is impartial and just in his judgments. He decides in her favor to be rid of her. He wants to avoid being harassed, perhaps to avoid having his honor or reputation beaten black-and-blue (such is the implication of the Greek term used here) by her continual coming to demand vindication. (Five Gospels, 368)

    The Seminar understood v. 1 to be an introduction created by Luke to provide a framework for the parable, while vv. 6-8 reflect other Lucan interests of prayer and parousia.

    In a similar vein, Gerd Lüdemann affirms the historicity of the core story in vss 2-5:

    These verses, the original stratum of the parable, certainly go back to Jesus. That is supported by (a) the criterion of growth, for here with vv. 2-5, calculated backwards, we are at the third stage, and (b) the offensive character of what is narrated. Normally a judge should pronounce judgment on a legal basis. But here he is godless and pronounces judgment only because he is forced to. (Jesus, 375)

    Bill Loader notes the “playfully shocking” character of this story:

    The parable is not unlike that story Jesus told about the rogue in 16:1-8. Here, too, we may be dealing with a story that was going the rounds at the time and which Jesus picked up and used. The woman was likely to be such a nuisance that the judge relented and dealt with her case. Good on her! In 18:6 Jesus turns the attention of the listener to the unjust judge and proceeds in 18:7 to make a statement about God. If this kind of judge was willing to respond to this poor widow, can’t you believe that God will respond to us? The point is not that God is also corrupt, but that God is likely to respond. The parable is playfully shocking in the way it is prepared to liken God to the judge. This enhances its effect.

    Eduard Schweizer suggests a historical process as the tradition gave different meanings to the story at various stages:

    The earliest form of the parable culminated in “how much more.” It inculcated the certainty that God hears the prayers of the oppressed “widow,” i.e., the community, which prays for the coming of the kingdom. The parable would be entirely altered if the appellant were a wealthy property owner with all kinds of connections, who could bring a variety of pressures to bear in order to receive vindication. The parable thus also tells the community that its prayers reflect its relationship with God. It cannot, need not, coerce. It can take comfort in the knowledge that it is entirely dependent on God and learn to pray even in times when prayer seems totally meaningless. God in freedom will give the community the kingdom, when and wherever the time comes. This confidence springs from the fact that it is Jesus who tells the parable (or that the community traces it back to him), for in Christ the kingdom is already coming to those who can really hear the parable.
    Later it became important that the kingdom come soon (vss. 7b, 8b). The admonitory question in vs. 8b was also added. Finally, Luke takes a sober look at the community of his own day and recognizes that prayer plays too small a part in its life; he, therefore, puts more emphasis on the summons to pray (vs. 1). In the context of 17:22-37, he is probably thinking of prayer for the coming of the Son of Man. (Good News according to Luke, 280)

    John Drury offers an interesting and very different assessment. Drury looks at the story of the corrupt judge from the perspective that the long narrative section between Luke 9:51 and 18:14 (“one of the great riddles of gospel study”) is a Christian Deuteronomy — “a handbook on the Christian life in the historical setting of s journey to Jerusalem, just as Deuteronomy is a guide for the devout Jew set in the historical perspective of the journey into the promised land with Jerusalem, the place where God will cause his name to dwell, as its centre.”

    Next Deuteronomy insists upon the judge’s duty to condemn the guilty and to acquit the innocent, setting Luke to his more sophisticated parable about the godless judge who did justice out of self-interest. We have seen him mixing the blacks and whites of Deuteronomy into grey before. The parable is an obvious pair with the friend at midnight (Lk 11:5-13), having the same construction — the grudging giving of men as a shadow of God’s generosity.(Tradition and Design in Luke’s Gospel, 140)

    There is something very attractive about Drury’s understanding of Luke as a self-conscious historical narrative designed to instruct the reader in the dynamics of faithful living. Whether or not we accept his historical assessment of this saying, that seems like an interpretation of Luke-Acts worth retaining.

    Still most interpreters put considerable weight on the fact that Luke himself understood this parable as a model of prayerful perseverance. John P. Meier notes this intention by Luke when discussing the relationship between this parable and the short eschatological discourse that precedes it in Luke 17:

    With regard to the eschatological discourse in 17:20-37, some may wish to include the parable of the widow and the judge in 18:1-8 as the concluding section of the discourse (so Feuillet, “La double venue,” 5, 25-28). Notice how the reference to the Son of Man in 18:8 forms an inclusion with the mention of him at the beginning of the main section of the discourse in 17:22 + 24. However, the separate introduction at 18:1, indicating that Luke understands the parable mainly as an exhortation to persevering prayer, weakens the possible connection of the parable with the preceding discourse. (A Marginal Jew, II: page 477, note 107)

    This interest in exhorting the faithful to persevere in prayer, confident that God will never treat them like a powerful patron who finds the demands of his clients burdensome, is also seen in the rabbinic tradition.

    Samuel Lachs notes the following parallel:

    She will wear me out Gr. hupopiaze me, lit., “she will give me a black eye.” One suggestion to explain this difficult expression is that it is a translation of tashechir panai, “she will blacken my face,” meaning she will embarrass me. (Rabbinic Commentary on the NT, 323)

    Bill Loader is one contemporary reader of this ancient story who seems able to find a seam of gold running through this troublesome tale. In his “First Thoughts” commentary for this week, written in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Bill observed:

    … it is missing the mark if we treat the passage as a general teaching about intercessory prayer. It is primarily about the yearning for change. It was very appropriate that the story told of a poor widow. She represents a behaviour, but she also represents the poverty and vulnerability which is the point of the parable’s message. The story has been shaped in the cruelty of exploitation and the arbitrary abuse of power. It belongs in the world which Jesus is addressing. Jesus is reading the signs in the wounds of the people. The contours of their devastation shape the structures of his thought, because this is where he belongs and these are the people whose cries he hears. Take some heart, even from the behaviour of a corrupt judge who has no respect for anyone! This is digging deep, scraping the bottom of the barrel in pastoral care. The alternative for many is despair, if malnutrition has not already dulled the senses to other possibilities. We know such corrupt figures exist. Does God? Does a God exist who cares? The paralysis of hope can occur at many levels. For many it plummeted with the towers of the World Trade Centre. Faith then retreats into survival mode or fences itself within petty concerns, loses its political and social edge in a sweet jellied peace of mind, or surrenders to the demagogues and demigods of hate. People do not need to avoid pain. It is our role to be there with them in it and not to collude with the alternatives. It means being in touch with the struggles, with the poverty, with all that makes people cry out in our world. It also means living with the affirmation of a God who cares, even though, unlike the promise of 18:8, the solution does not come speedily. In that sense we are to be building supportive communities where people can sustain the crying day and night and not lose heart, where we do not tune out, but live in hope and with a sense of trust that does not make us feel we have to carry the whole world on our shoulders. For facing the pain of the world is, indeed, a crushing experience which most of us cannot bear and which, without support and acceptance of our own limitations, we will inevitably either deny or ourselves become part of the hopelessness. Finding a glint of God in the grey of corruption is a way of affirming we do not have to be God; we are not alone; faith and hope are possible.

    That seems like a good note on which to conclude this week’s materials.

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

     

    Music Suggestions

    • Lord, your almighty Word – AHB 61
    • God has spoken by his prophets – AHB 92
    • Take up your cross – AHB 496
    • Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go – AHB 480

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.

  • Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost (13 October 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 & Psalm 66:1-12
    • 2 Timothy 2:8-15
    • Luke 17:11-19

    First Reading: Letter to the exiles

    This week the lectionary designers take us back to the scroll of Jeremiah. We are now in that period between the capture of Jerusalem and the forced flight of the prophet to Egypt. Jeremiah 29 is our first example of a letter to a Jewish diaspora community:

    Build houses and live in them;
    plant gardens and eat what they produce.
    Take wives and have sons and daughters;
    take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage,
    that they may bear sons and daughters;
    multiply there, and do not decrease.
    But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile,
    and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jer 29:5-7)

    This is a most interesting example of theology on the run (as much prophecy must be), and it invites the recipients to imagine a future beyond their past—and certainly beyond their present realities.

    The exiles to whom this letter is addressed are advised to put down their roots and become part of the place where they now find themselves. Indeed, they are to seek the welfare of the city (empire) which has destroyed their past and seemingly foreclosed on their future. Their best efforts are not to be directed to restoring the past, but rather to making a future for themselves in the strange new land where it seems impossible even to sing the “LORD’s song.”

    For generations of Jews since Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, diaspora has been the fundamental reality. Even in modern times, and not withstanding the creation of Israel as a distinctively Jewish national state in 1948, the majority of Jewish people live in the Diaspora. Christians in the secular west are increasingly finding themselves exiles, living as disapora among the citizens of the global village. Beyond the borders of surviving outposts of Christendom we find the “believers in exile” for whom John Shelby Spong prepares his widely-acclaimed books.

    When people of faith live in sustained cognitive and social disconnect from the prevailing cultural norms of the society in which they are embedded there can be a temptation to revert to sectarian dynamics. Raise the draw bridge! Draw the wagons in a circle! Reinforce the boundaries! Preserve the tradition, and reject the intruders!

    Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles suggests “a more excellent way.” It is indeed the way of love (cf. 1 Corinthians 13). It keeps no count of wrong, and seeks what is best for the other. It is a choice to live in ways that reflect deep generosity, and to eschew the primitive instinct to fear the stranger.

    Love is always patient and kind; love is never jealous; love is not boastful or conceited, it is never rude and never seeks its own advantage, it does not take offence or store up grievances. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but finds its joy in the truth. It is always ready to make allowances, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes. (1 Cor 13:4–7 NJB)

    Second Reading: Formulae for faithful living

    At the heart of this week’s second reading is the following set of carefully crafted lines:

    The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
    if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us;
    if we are faithless, he remains faithful– for he cannot deny himself. (2Tim 2:11-13)

    These lines seem to preserve an ancient Christian poetic fragment. In any case, they seem to invite us inside the faith structures of the author and his recipients. These are words that belong to a collection of “reliable words” (literally, “the saying is sure”). This is one of 5 examples of this formula, and all of them are found in the Pastoral Letters:

    • 1 Tim 1:15
    • 1 Tim 3:1
    • 1 Tim 4:9
    • 2 Tim 2:11–13
    • Titus 3:8

    What is it about the dynamics of Christianity at the time when the Pastorals were composed that generated such a formula for faithful living and right believing? It seems that orthodoxy has come to be an important virtue in its own right, and this almost seems to require its shadow—the murky world of deviant ideas that refuse to conform to the prescriptions of the theological thought police. In time these free souls will be tagged as “heretics,” but at this stage they are more dangerous; not as external competitors, but as alternative (internal) ways of imagining holy living.

    How ironic then that the section climaxes with an appeal to avoid arguing over words:

    Remind them of this,
    and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words,
    which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.

    Gospel: Jesus and the lepers

    In the NT Gospels we have two stories about Jesus healing people suffering from some kind of feared skin disease, commonly called leprosy (but more likely Hansen’s Disease). In Mark 1:40-45 (and its parallels in Matthew 8 and Luke 5) we have a report of a single person being healed by Jesus. In Luke 17 we have another story, not preserved in either Mark or Matthew, about Jesus healing a group of ten persons.

    As it happens, a fragmentary Christian text (the so-called Egerton Gospel, or Papyrus Egerton 2) with a mere 87 lines of text surviving on three pieces of papyrus provides a possible additional witness to the history of this tradition. This is the second oldest surviving Christian document, being dated on paleographical grounds to the first half of the second century. Only the John Rylands fragment (P52) with its precious snippet of John’s Gospel is likely to be older than this document.

    Helmut Koester and John Dominic Crossan have argued that GEger is not dependent on the NT Gospels. If so, then it would provide independent attestation for at least a few of the stories now known to us from the NT Gospels. It may also give us some insight into the way that the miracle tradition developed between the time of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels.

    The introduction to GEger in The Complete Gospels outlines the issues:

    On the one hand, some scholars have maintained that Egerton’s unknown author composed by borrowing from the canonical gospels. This solution has not proved satisfactory for several reasons: The Egerton Gospel’s parallels to the synoptic gospels lack editorial language peculiar to the synoptic authors, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They also lack features that are common to the synoptic gospels, a difficult fact to explain if those gospels were Egerton’s source.

    The Egerton Gospel does have very close parallels to John, but because Egerton’s versions of these parallels show less development than John’s, Egerton may preserve earlier forms of the tradition.

    On the other hand, suggestions that the Egerton Gospel served as a souce for the authors of Mark and/or John also lack conclusive evidence. The most likely explanation for the Egerton Gospel’s similarities and differences from the canonical gospels is that Egerton’s author made independent use of traditional sayings and stories of Jesus that were also used by the other gospel writers.
    The full texts of the surviving stories of Jesus healing lepers are as follows:

    (1) GEger 2b [35-47]

    Just then a leper comes up to him and says, “Teacher, Jesus, in wandering around with lepers and eating with them in the inn, I became a leper myself. If you want to, I’ll be made clean.” The master said to him, “Okay-you’re clean!” And at once his leprosy vanished from him. Jesus says to him, “Go and have the priests examine <your skin>. Then offer your cleansing what Moses commanded-and no more sinning.” [ . . . ] [Complete Gospels]

    (2) Synoptic Gospels

    (2a) Mark 1:40-45

    A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
    =Matt 8:1-4
    When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him; and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
    =Luke 5:12-16
    Once, when he was in one of the cities, there was a man covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” Then Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I do choose. Be made clean.” Immediately the leprosy left him. And he ordered him to tell no one. “Go,” he said, “and show yourself to the priest, and, as Moses commanded, make an offering for your cleansing, for a testimony to them.” But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray.

    (2b) Luke 17:11-19
    On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

    John Dominic Crossan

    Crossan [Historical Jesus, 322] notes the significance of the unusual formulation of the request for a healing: “if you will/I will …”

    It seems to underline a striking ambiguity between “declared clean” and “made (healed) clean.” This sets Jesus’ power and authority on a par with, or even above that of the Temple itself. It is not just a simple request for and granting of a cure. Jesus can, if he wants, both cure and declare cured.

    Although the story of Jesus healing a leper seems to affirm the authority and power of Jesus to heal and declare clean, there is also the detail that has Jesus instructing the healed leper(s) to go and seek certification from the traditional priestly authorities.

    Jesus, accordingly, is carefully obedient to the purity regulations on leprosy, as in Deuteronomy 24:8-9. Those two points [Jesus as authoritative healer and Jesus seeking certification of the healing by the priest] must derive from the common source available to the Egerton Gospel as well as to Mark, but they seem in flat contradiction with one another. How is that to be explained?

    Crossan then outlines a four-step process as the tradition develooped from an original story (that did not include the referral to the priests) came under two very different influences:

    The common source version had already reversed and rectified the image of Jesus as an alternative to or negation of Mosaic purity regulations by that terminally appended injunction to legal fidelity. The twin texts now available to us move that common source in opposite directions. The Egerton Gospel continues and intensifies the vision of Jesus as law-observant teacher. The leper’s opening autobiographical admission shows him as one either ignorant of or disobedient to legal purity regulations. And Jesus’ final admonition, “sin no more,” a phrase found also in John 5:14 and 8:11, indicate that Jesus does not agree with such “sinning.” Mark, on the other hand, continues and intensifies the thrust of the original story over and against that of the common source. He has the leper deeply reverential to Jesus, has Jesus actually touch the leper, and qualifies the fulfillment of the purity regulations with the confrontational challenge “as a witness (against) them,” namely, the priests. Do it, in other words, to show them who I am and what I can do. For Mark, then, Jesus is precisely not a law-observant Jew.

    Leprosy and the purity code

    The book of Leviticus devotes two chapters to the diagnosis and control of such skin diseases: see chs 13-14. The aim was not to cure the disease, but to control its possible dissemination within the community:

    Leviticus 13:2-17
    When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling or an eruption or a spot, and it turns into a leprous disease on the skin of his body, he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons the priests. 3The priest shall examine the disease on the skin of his body, and if it is a leprous disease; after the priest has examined him he shall pronounce him ceremonially unclean. … 17the priest shall examine him, and if the disease has turned white, the priest shall pronounce the diseased person clean. He is clean.

    Deuteronomy 24:8-9
    Guard against an outbreak of a leprous skin disease by being very careful; you shall carefully observe whatever the levitical priests instruct you, just as I have commanded them. 9Remember what the LORD your God did to Miriam on your journey out of Egypt.

    See also Numbers 12:1-15 (Miriam’s leprosy)

    The victim of such a public health policy was the person with the skin disease, as they were excluded from the community and banned from any contact with their family. Interestingly, in this miracle story the leper does not ask to be healed, but to be made clean!

    Jesus, and the compassionate holiness of God

    The fact that Jesus was remembered as “healing lepers” is significant for our knowledge of his historical focus on the poor and the marginalized.

    Marcus Borg cites the healing of a leper as an example of Jesus’ radical view of holiness as a contagious and transforming power, rather than as a static condition requiring protection from pollution:

    In the healing of the leper in Mark 1:40-45, Mark reports that Jesus “stretched out his hand and touched him and said, ‘Be clean.’” Leprosy excluded one from human community because it rendered one unclean and everything touched by a leper became unclean. For Jesus to touch a leper ought to have involved defilement, just as in touching a corpse. Yet the narrative reverses this: it was not Jesus who was made unclean by touching the leper. Rather, the leper was made clean. The viewpoint of the Jesus movement in Palestine is clear: holiness was understood to overpower uncleanness rather than the converse. (Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus,1998:147f)

    As the story goes, the “leper” seems already to know about Jesus’ reputation for compassion, since the man approaches Jesus and kneels down to implore his intervention. In return, Jesus touches the leper. Another barrier falls.

    Jesus, Francis and the lepers

    Franciscan communities around the world celebrate the feast day of St Francis of Assisi (October 4), and Proper 28C sometimes coincides with those observances.

    One of the turning points in the journey of St Francis seems to have been an encounter with a leper; just as much an outcast in 12C (Christian) Italy as in 1C Palestine.

    There is also a suggestion that Francis himself may have contracted tuberculoid leprosy, and that this may be the explanation for the stigmata (or signs of Christ’s Passion) that appeared on his body:

    Jesus Database

    • 110 A Leper Cured – (1) Eger. Gos. 2b [35-47]; (2a) Mark 1:40-45 = Matt 8:1-4 = Luke 5:12-16; (2b) Luke 17:11-19

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

    Music Suggestions

    • God of Day and God of Darkness – GA541
    • Ubi Caritas – GA324
    • Lord of Creation – GA423
    • Now thank we all our God – GA425

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.

  • Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (6 October 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Lamentations 1:1-6 & Lam 3:19-26 (or Psalm 137)
    • 2 Timothy 1:1-14
    • Luke 17:5-10

    First Reading: Lamenting the fall of Zion

    This week’s passage from Lamentations interrupts a series of readings from Jeremiah. The scroll of Lamentations seems to take us directly into the pain and confusion when the armies of Babylon, under the command of Nebuchadnezzar, captured Jerusalem and destroyed its temple. These poetic laments are traditionally attributed to Jeremiah, but their authorship is unknown. They are mostly formal pieces, written to fit with a strict alphabetical acrostic pattern. This classic device of the idle literate is also seen in texts such as Proverbs 31:10–31 (The Good Wife) and Psalm 119. Whatever else we know from the use of an acrostic, we can be sure that these laments were not composed in haste and anguish, but in the leisure of a sage’s study—perhaps sometime during the exilic period when there seemed little likelihood of a return to Zion?

    These poems have survived as part of the Bible because of their use in the liturgies of 9th Ab that commemorate the capture of Jerusalem. As one of the five festival scrolls (the Megiloth), Lamentations has served as a classic text for “believers in exile.” In time the 9th Ab came to be associated in Jewish worship with the disasters that befell Jerusalem in 70 CE and again in 135 CE, as well as other occasions of collective suffering that have marked their history.

    Second Reading: Invoking the legacy of Paul

    This week we begin a series of four Sundays when the second reading comes from 2 Timothy.

    First and Second Timothy, together with Titus, comprise a distinctive set of writings among the NT letters of Paul, usually described as the “Pastoral Episltes.” Unlike most of the other letters attributed to Paul, these three are addressed to individuals. Timothy and Titus each appear as associates of Paul in his authentic letters, but now they are being offered advice on how to conduct themselves and how to order the lives of the Christian communities where they serve. Key themes in these letters include the danger of false teachings, the need for careful selection of those men (sic) chosen to serve as deacons and bishops, and the importance of correct behavior by various classes of people. The world of thought in these letters is similar to what we find in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch and in Luke-Acts. All three sets of writings presumably come from a similar time early in the second century.

    The creation of false Pauline texts did not stop with these NT writings. Apocryphal texts attributed to Paul include the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Acts of Andrew and Paul, the Greek Acts of Peter and Paul, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Epistles of Paul and Seneca, the Martyrdom of Paul, the Passions of Peter and Paul, and the Vision of Paul. There were also additional letters by Paul: to the Alexandrians, to the Laodiceans, and a third letter to the Corinthians!

    This week’s selection from 2 Timothy invokes the character of Paul, already long-dead but now portrayed as writing to his junior associate from prison while calmly contemplating his own death. This imaginary Paul is being deployed to assist in the struggle with opponents of the emerging centrist tradition in early second century Christianity. The actual recipients of this letter from Paul are engaged in a struggle on two fronts.

    • On the one side there were those who shared to some extent the anti-Jewish agenda of Marcion. These over-eager enthusiasts for a Paulinist perspective in early Christianity believed that all ties with the Jewish traditions needed to be cut. The Jewish Scriptures were to be rejected, and an expurgated collection of Pauline letters (now missing any traditionalist Jewish elements) was promoted as the basis for Christianity. In the social dynamics of that time and place, with several Jewish uprisings in between the major Jewish-Roman Wars of 66-73 and 132-135, a desire to put some distance between Christians and Jews in the public mind is perhaps understandable. However, Marcion’s prescription was seen as too radical, and his claims to be safeguarding the legacy of Paul needed to be addressed. The Pastoral Letters, and especially 2 Timothy, were composed to counter the co-opting of Paul’s authority for this anti-Jewish agenda.
    • On the other hand there were others within Christianity at the time who were pushing the boundaries in directions that the centrists considered gnostic. The schismatics whose rupture with the Johannine community triggered the Letters of John, come to mind as Christians prepared to discount (and even deny) the humanity of Jesus in their enthusiasm for a more speculative spirituality. Such groups continued to value texts such as the Gospel of John. Indeed, the first commentary on any NT book is a commentary on the Gospel of John by Heracleon, a Gnostic Christian, around 170 CE. The developing traditions now found in the Gospel of Thomas, seem also to reflect a tendency to abandon history in favor of myth. This constituted another threat to the centrist Christians who were eager to enlist Paul the Apostle in their cause.

    We shall see these themes in some of the readings over the next few weeks. In this week’s portion we see Paul affirming the continuity of his faith, and the faith of Timothy, with Paul’s ancestors and Timothy’s mother (Eunice), as well as his maternal grandmother (Lois). Unless already alerted to the wider agenda, such a passing reference might go unnoticed. But when read in context we begin to pick up the point. Note especially the significant affirmation of Timothy’s Jewish upbringing and the positive value of the Jewish Scriptures in 2 Timothy 3:

    But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed,
    knowing from whom you learned it,
    and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings
    that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. (2Timothy 3:14–15 NRSV)

    Gospel: Luke 17:5-10

    Faith’s Power

    The saying in Luke 17:5-6 seems to be a Lukan variant of a more widely-attested saying of Jesus about the power of faith to achieve what seems impossible, and should not be confused with the well-known parable at 035 The Mustard Seed:

    (1) The earliest witness to this saying comes from 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul seems to be using it against those spiritual enthusiasts who claimed to be possessed (as individuals) of just such an amazing faith and yet, so Paul implies, lacked the underlying Christian charism of love:

    1 Corinthians 13:2b
    If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

    (2) The version attested by the Sayings Gospel Q has been reconstructed as follows:

    If you have faith like a mustard seed, you might say to this mulberry tree:
    Be uprooted and planted in the sea! And it would obey you.

    (3) The Gospel of Thomas has two versions of this saying:

    Thomas 48
    Jesus said, “If two make peace with each other in a single house,
    they will say to the mountain, ‘Move from here!’ and it will move.”

    Thomas 106
    Jesus said, “When you make the two into one, you will become children of Adam,
    2and when you say, ‘Mountain, move from here!’ it will move.”

    (4) The Gospel of Mark uses this saying in the context of Jesus cursing the fig tree, itself a symbol of the destruction that would befall Jerusalem and its awesome Temple structures. The important thing here is that there must not be even the slightest hint of doubt in the believer’s faith:

    Mark 11:22-23
    Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God.
    Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’
    and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass,
    it will be done for you.

    = Matt 21:21
    Jesus answered them, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt,
    not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree,
    but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’
    it will be done.

    (5) Finally, Matthew and Luke each develop the saying so that the emphasis falls on the point that even “little” (mustard seed sized) faith is effective:

    Matt 17:20
    He said to them, “Because of your little faith.
    For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain,
    ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move;
    and nothing will be impossible for you.”

    = Luke 17:5-6
    The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
    The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,
    you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’
    and it would obey you.

    In these various instances of this widespread aphorism we can see the persistence of an underlying structure. The conclusion is always the same: subject to some condition being fulfilled, the impossible becomes achievable. But the description of what that prior condition changes from one example to the next: is it individual faith (free of any shadow of doubt), faith no matter how miniscule/fragile, common/shared faith (rather than individual charisma), or unity and harmony within the community (or the individual)?

    The Servant’s Duty

    The other part of this week’s Gospel takes us into a social setting that is quite foreign to most Western readers. The story assumes not only the acceptance of slavery, but an honor/shame social system in which honor is presumed to lie with the powerful while the subservient have no inherent dignity. This mindset now stands in stark contrast to the values expressed in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR], which asserts the dignity and worth of each and every human person.

    These are the liberal values of contemporary secular Western societies, although they are often attacked by both Western Neo-Conservatives as well as by Two-Thirds World leaders who resent Western cultural and political domination. They are not biblical values, even if many people see them as vaguely Christian in character. They have more to do with the spirit of the Enlightenment than with traditional religious views of humanity and society.

    There is a partial parallel to the story in the version of 046 The Tenants given in the Shepherd of Hermas, a Christian text thought to have been written in Rome around 100 CE. In this version, one of the servant’s has a “proper” sense of his duty as a slave and is commended for this by the master–even being made a joint heir with the master’s own son:

    He deliberated to himself saying: ‘I have completed the lord’s command. Now I will dig up this vineyard, and it will look better when it is dug; without weeds it will give better fruit, since the weeds will not be choking it.’ So he dug up the vineyard and pulled out all the weeds that were in it. That vineyard improved and was thriving without weeds choking it. 5After a while, the owner of the slave and the vineyard returned and went to the vineyard. Seeing the vineyard nicely enclosed and even dug and weeded, and the vines thriving, he was extremely happy about what the slave did. 6Calling his loved son whom he held as heir, and his friends whom he held as advisors, he told them what he had commanded the slave and what he found achieved. These congratulated the slave according to the testimony given by the owner. 7He said to them: ‘I promised freedom to this slave if he kept the commandment I gave him. He kept my commandment and added good work to the vineyard, and so has pleased me greatly. In return for this work he has done, I want to make him joint heir with my son, for he appreciates the good and did not neglect it, but completed it.’ [Hermeneia]

    Both the Gospel of Luke and the Shepherd of Hermas reflect the social conservatism of Christianity in the early decades of the second century. It is from this same period that we get the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy, and Titus) with their household codes that exhort Christians to reflect proper respect to those above them in the social order: wives to husbands, children to fathers, slaves to masters, etc.

    The radical vision of Jesus (“give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but give God what belongs to God”) soon gave way to the collective instinct that traditional values should not be challenged. Christians were told to pray for the emperor and to show respect to those in authority.

    The ancient tension between Gospel values and cultural norms may be again exposed in contemporary calls for “family values” and faith-based engagement in party politics. Are Gospel values to be found in historical expressions of human society, or in a prophetic critique of any and every human institution that claims ultimate value?

    Current conflict over human sexuality, and especially same-sex relationships, points to deep-seated cultural values that are in tension with the liberal secular values enshrined in artefacts such as the UDHR. Conservatives opposed to homosexuality appeal to the Bible as if it provided timeless truths free of the cultural conditioning of its authors and original audiences. To their chagrin, progressives also appeal to the counter-cultural instinct of the faith tradition that birthed the Bible in the first place.

    The Bible does not serve either side well in such disputes. It is a flawed text insofar as it assumes and promotes such things as slavery, demon possession, ethnic cleansing, racial superiority, a three-tiered universe, and the subordination of women. Such realities should be an embarrassment to traditionalists and progressives alike. The Bible does not fit neatly with our cultural assumptions, as this week’s Gospel reminds us. The immense spiritual value of the Bible may lie more in its capacity to empower our human quest than its ability to (re)solve our immediate challenges.

    Jesus Database

    • 035 The Mustard Seed – (1) Gos. Thom. 20:1-2; (2) 1or2?Q: Luke 13:18-19 = Matt 13:31-32 ; (3) Mark 4:30-32 = Matt 13:31-3.
    • 055 Caesar and God – (1) Gos. Thom. 100; (2) Eger. Gos. 3a [50-57a]; (3) Mark 12:13-17 = Matt 22:15-22 = Luke 20:20-26.
    • 173 Faiths Power – (1) 1Q or ?2Q: Luke 17:5-6 = Matt 17:20
    • 383 The Servants Duty – (1) Luke 17:7-10; (2) Her. Sim. 5.2,4-7

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

     

    Music Suggestions

    See David MacGregor’s Together to Celebrate site for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre.