gregoryjenks

Category: Lectionary

Links to lectionary notes from the Jesus Database site.

  • 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.

  • Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (29 September 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 & Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16
    • 1 Timothy 6:6-19
    • Luke 16:19-31

    Introduction: Riches and Reversal

    This week’s Gospel works with popular themes in the religious tradition: the fate of rich and poor, and hopes of an eventual reversal in ther fortunes in the next life.

    The details of the story are sometimes drawn into service when people speculate on the “geography of eternity”—the existence and form of heaven and hell. This makes little more sense than using the story of Good Samaritan to prepare a map of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, or the parable of the Sower to reconstruct ancient farming methods. Such details are not the point of the story, and may not do anything more than reflect popular conceptions among Jesus’ listeners.

    Interfaith parallels

    There are many parallels in world literature to this kind of tale that contrasts the fates of a rich man and a poor person in the next life.

    Rabbinic sources

    Samuel T. Lachs [Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament, 312ff] cites the following Jewish parallels as of special interest:

    Two godly men lived in Ashkelon. They ate together, drank together, and studied the Law together. One of them died and kindness was not shown to him [i.e., nobody attended his funeral]. The son of Ma’yan, a tax collector, died and the whole city stopped work to show him kindness. The [surviving] pious man began to complain; he said, “Alas that no [evil] comes upon the haters of Israel [i.e., the wicked in Israel].” In a dream he saw a vision, and one said to him, “Do not despise the children of your Lord. The one had committed one sin and departed this life in it, and the other had performed one good deed and departed in it. What sin had the one committed? Far be it that he had ever committed a sin. But once he put on the tephilim for the head before the tephilim for the hand. And what good deed had the other performed? Far be it that he had ever done a deed. But once he had arranged a meal for the bouleutai [municipal councillors] of the city and they did not come. And he said, “Let the poor eat that it not be wasted.” Others say, He once went through the market-place, and he dropped a loaf, and a poor man picked it up, and he said nothing so as not to make him blush or shame. After some days the pious man saw in a dream his companion walking in the Garden under trees and by wells of water; and he saw the tax-collector, and his tongue sought to drink at the brink of a river; he tried to reach the water but he could not. [TJ Sanh. 6.9,23c]

    Consider two wicked men who associated with one another in this world. One of them repented of his evil deeds before his death, while the other did not, with the result that the formers stands in the company of the righteous,while his fellow stands in the company of the wicked. And beholding him he says, “Woe is me … is there then favor shown here? We both of us committed robberies, we both of us committed murders together, yet he stands in the company of the righteous and I in the company of the wicked!” And they reply to him and say, “You fool! You were despicable after your death and lay for three days, and did not they drag you to your grave with ropes? … And your associate understood and repented of his evil ways, and you, you also had the opportunity of repenting and you did not take it.” He thereupon says to them, “Permit me to go and repent!” And they answer him and say, “You fool! Do you know that this world is the Sabbath, and the world whence you have come is like the eve of the Sabbath? If a man does not prepare his meal on the eve of the Sabbath, what shall he eat on the Sabbath?” [TJ Hag. 2.2, 77d]

    Muslim sources

    Tarif Khalidi [The Muslim Jesus] provides the following traditions relevant to this cluster.

    [125] They asked Jesus, “Show us an act by which we may enter paradise.” Jesus said, “Do not speak at all.” They said, “We cannot do this.” Jesus replied, “Then speak only good.” [late Ninth Century CE]

    [144] In the time of Jesus, there was a man nick¬named Mal’un (Damned) because of his avarice. One day a man who was going on a military campaign came to him and said, Mal’un, if you give me some weapons to help me wage war, you will be saved from hell-fire.” But Mal’un shunned him and gave him nothing. As the man turned away, Mal’un regretted his decision and called him back to give him his sword. When the man returned home he was met by Jesus, accompanied by a devout man who had worshiped God for seventy years. “Where did you get this sword from?” Jesus asked. The man replied, Mal’un gave it to me,” and Jesus was pleased with his charity. The next time Jesus and the devout man passed by, Mal’un, who was sitting at his door step, said to himself, “I will go and look upon Jesus’ face and the face of the devout man.” When he did so, the devout man said, “I will flee from this Mal’un before he burns me with his fire.”
    Then God inspired Jesus to say, “Tell this sinful servant of mine, ‘I have forgiven you because of your charity with the sword and your love for Jesus, and tell the devout man that you will be his companion in heaven.” The devout man replied, “As God is my witness! I do not want heaven with him and I do not want a companion like him.” God Almighty inspired Jesus to reply, “You are not content with my decree and you have denigrated my servant. Thus, I will see you damned in hell. I have exchanged your places, and have given your station in heaven to my servant and his station in hell to you.” [Tenth Century CE]

    Gospel: Lazarus and the Rich Man

    Kenneth E. Bailey

    Drawing on his many years of living and teaching in Beirut, Kenneth Baily offers some fascinating insights into the Gospel traditions as he draws on a combination of ancient Arabic commentaries and contemporary Middle Eastern peasant perspectives.

    In “The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man” (Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies and the Gospels. ch. 30. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), Bailey offers a fresh reading of this week’s Gospel passage. He assigns it to the category of “pearly gate story” that continues to be popular in modern Middle Eastern societies, but which have more to do with humorous reflection on “the ambiguities of public life in the Midle East” than providing a detailed outline of the speaker’s view of the afterlife.

    For those without easy access to his book, this essay is also available online.

    For this week’s lectionary notes, it may suffice to highlight three of the points Bailey offers in relation to the rich man, to Lazarus and to the friendly dogs:

    • Bailey notes that the first scene features a self-indulgent rich man, who feasted sumptuously every single day of the week (and thus ignores the Sabbath requirements for his servants to rest from their labours). This man is decked out in the most expensive purple robes and enjoys underwear made from the finest linen. Conspicuous consumption par excellence.
    • Lazarus is the only character in any of Jesus’ parables who is named. And his name means, “the one whom God helps.” Watch this space, for blessed are the poor!
    • Then there are the dogs. Presumably there as savage guard dogs to patrol the rich man’s estate (it boasted both door and gates), the dogs befriend Lazarus while their master ignores his plight as his pampered guests arrive each day to share his banquets. Bailey observes:

    The rich man will do nothing for Lazarus, but these wild guard dogs, who attack all strangers, know that Lazarus is their friend and do what they can—they lick his sores. Lazarus lay each day in the heat and flies of the village street. The dogs gathered to help him.

    Bailey then cites the comments of Ibn al-Tayyib, a medieval cleric, biblical scholar and medical doctor from eleventh century Baghdad:

    I understand the licking of Lazarus’s sores gave him relief and eased his pain. This reminds us that the silent, unspeaking animals felt compassion for him and they helped him and cared for him more than the humans. He was naked without medical attention other than what he received from the dogs.

    Jesus Seminar

    The Jesus Seminar [The Five Gospels, 361] was divided on the authenticity of this story. While the votes were evenly split between Red/Pink and Gray/Black, the weighting system used by the Seminar resulted in a definite Gray outcome.

    Factors identified as weighing against the authenticity include:

    • the motif of reversal of the fortunes of the poor and the rich in the next world is widely-attested in the ancient Near East;
    • characters in Jesus’ parables do not usually have personal names;
    • an interest in the fate of the poor is a key Lucan theme.

    On the other hand, there are some aspects of this story that do fit with Jesus as storyteller:

    • the focus is on the extreme indifference of the wealthy man, not his wealth as such;
    • there is no judgment scene;
    • the reversal of their fates is similar to the reversals seen in 419 The Vineyard Laborers and 095 The Feast.

    While half the Fellows were inclined to retain the core story within the historical Jesus database, there was near unanimity on the post-Easter origins of the conclusion in verses 27-31.

    John Dominic Crossan

    John Dominic Crossan [In Parables, 65f] considers this parables as one of several “Reversal Parables” — 447 The Good Samaritan, 474 Pharisee and Publican, 459 Place at Table (Wedding Guest), 460 Inviting the Outcasts (The Proper Guests), and 095 The Feast, and 465 The Prodigal Son. He begins the discussion of this saying with a reference to the literary unity of 16:1-31:

    Whatever may be the redactional activity of Luke himself in all this it is clear that the positioning of 16:19-31 within this larger literary complex places the emphasis on the proper use of worldly goods and on the failure of the rich man to do so. But if 16:19-31 is isolated from this context furnished by the tradition and the focus is placed on its own internal content, what could such a story have meant for the historical Jesus?

    Crossan dismisses the concluding section in 16:27-31 as originating with the early Church rather than with Jesus himself. He identifies four specific reasons for this view:

    First, there is the theme of disbelief before the resurrected one in 16:31, “neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead,” and in 24:11,25,41, “and they did not believe them … ‘O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe’ … And while they still disbelieved.” Second, there is the double mention of Moses and the prophets in 16:29,31 and 24:27,44. Third, the resurrected one is mentioned in 16:31, “one should rise from the dead,” and in 24:46, “on the third day rise from the dead.” Finally, the use of “they will repent” in 16:30 will reappear in Acts 2:38; 3:19; 8:22; 17:30; and 26:20 in kerygmatic contexts. Methodologically, Luke 16:27-31 cannot be taken as part of the original parable of Jesus. Most likely it is pre-Lukan and is a post-resurrectional application of the parable. It allegorically alludes to the Jewish refusal to accept either Moses or the prophets as witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus, or even to accept the risen Jesus himself. When one reads 16:31, “He said to them, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead,’” in its present context one thinks of Jesus and not the rich man.

    Having separated the polemical conclusion from core parable, Crossan places the original saying in the context of ancient wisdom:

    What is striking, especially against this background, is Jesus’ omission of any moral preparation for the reversal or any ethical judgment on the earthly status of the participants. In a situation where riches were often construed as God’s approval, and sickness often understood as God’s curse or punishment, it cannot be immediately presumed that 16:19-26, as told here, would automatically beget moral judgment for Lazarus and against the rich man. It seems best, then, to take 16:19-26 as an actual parable of Jesus. Its literal point was a strikingly amoral description of situational reversal between the rich man and Lazarus. Its metaphorical point was the reversaal of expectation and situation, of value and judgment, which is the concomitant of the Kingdom’s advent. As the judgments which have to be made on the clerics as against the Samaritan are forcibly reversed, so also those which be expected concerning the sick beggar and rich man are turned upside down. Jesus was not interested in moral admonition on the dangers of riches–the folktale had already done this quite admirably–but in the reversal of human situation in which the Kingdom’s disruptive advent could be metaphorically portrayed and linguistically made present.

    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.

  • Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (22 September 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 & Psalm 79:1-9
    • I Timothy 2:1-7
    • Luke 16:1-13

    Gospel: The Shrewd Manager

    All commentators confirm what the typical Bible reader senses: this is a parable that challenges our normal way of looking at life, and of hearing Jesus. We do not anticipate hearing Jesus commend a corrupt manager, and we find it all but impossible to separate the Kingdom message of Jesus from the immorality of the characters.

    Of course, this is not the only parable to challenge our skills as active listeners.

    As we saw when discussing the Good Samaritan, the morality of the characters is not usually the focus of a parable. This is more easily recognised in parables that involve no moral agents, but is more difficult to keep in mind when the key characters seem to be enagged in immoral conduct as part of the storyteller’s art:

    When Jesus gave the Sower parable, for example, his first hearers and his modern readers would probably all agree on one thing: Jesus was not interested in agrarian reform in eastern Galilee. Whatever he might have meant one is immediately certain that agriculture is not the point of the story. But when Jesus tells parables whose content is not some morally neutral activity such as sowing or harvesting but involves a morally significant action, it may or may not be at all so clear if he is giving examples (act/do not act like this) or telling parables. It will be argued in this chapter that the parables of reversal have been turned in almost all cases into examples precisely because of this ambiguity. It will also be clear that Luke is especially fond of this type of transformed parable. (John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus p. 55)

    To that insight from Crossan we might add the observation that what strikes us as immoral or unacceptable behaviour will be largely determined by our own social location. Wealthy internet-connected property-owning westerners will see the failure of trust implicit in this story more keenly than a poverty-stricken landless farmer in many parts of the Third World. The horror of finding our pension plan has been obliterated by the self-serving actions of a trusted advisor is only a nightmare for those with wealth to entrust to the care of another. What is it about a corrupt trust fund manager that speaks to us of God’s empire?

    John Dominic Crossan [In Parables, 106-108] discusses this saying as one of four “action parables” that reverse the expected development of the story line. In this case, rather than being punished for his crooked bookkeeping, the manager is commended even (and especially) by his master.

    He begins by noting the care with which Luke places this saying in a wider context within Luke 16:1-13:

    There is already a scholarly consensus that a variety of applications have been added to this parable in the succeeding verse (sic) in Luke 16:1-13. The classical statement of this is in C.H. Dodd: “We can almost see here notes for three separate sermons on the parable as text.” But this consensus breaks down completely when one discusses where the original parable ended and the additions began.

    Crossan later highlights the significance of 16:2 “within the literary economy of the story.”

    Whatever is happening in 16:5-7 there was already a problem between master and servant as early as 16:2 (“wasting his goods”). When 16:2 and 16:5-7 are read together within the literary tension of the story, one has the picture of laziness organizing itself under crisis. The steward has not obtained sufficient return for the master and is therefore being removed 916:2). In such a situation he may as well get some terminal benefits from the master’s losses and so ingratiates hismelf with the debtors (16:5-7). When he is later out of a job they will, hopefully, feel grateful to him for his help and maybe even responsible for his firing (16:3-4). He has created a sort of Robin Hood image out of his inefficiency.

    After outling a three-part structure of this “carefully formed mini-drama,” Crossan concludes:

    The cleverness of the steward consisted not only in solving his problem but in solving it by means of the very reason (low profits) that had created it in the first place. In the light of this the parable ends quite adequately at 16:7. The rest, including 16:8a, is commentary.

    Bernard Brandon Scott [Re-Imagine the World: An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus, 85-95] discusses this saying in some detail. He begins by alerting us to two common misconceptions that distort many interpretations of the parable:

    This is one of the strangest and most difficult of Jesus’ parables. Two customary assumptions undermine most attempts to interpret the parable.

    • The master is God.
    • The economics system is capitalism.

    As Scott points out, those who identify the master with God then face the embarrassment of the master’s commendation of the manager for his immoral conduct. This approach results in interpretive contortions to excuse God from condoning dishonesty and to find (impose?) some other meaning on the parable. Similarly, if the underlying economic system is assumed to be capitalism we again miss the central thrust of the parable, as we are distracted by our natural empathy for the master/capitalist who has been defrauded by his corrupt employee. The actions of the master and manager need to be read within the context of an ancient honor/shame society. Scott observes:

    The manager’s situation is precarious. He is not simply out of work, as in a capitalist system. He can’t just go to look for work somewhere else. He is homeless and without resources. He will soon be in a life or death situation, for he has no way to earn a living. …

    The manager envisions as his options two of the most disgraceful things in the ancient world. “To dig ditches” is too contemporary a reference. “To dig” in the Greek probably refers to digging in the mines which is slave work and nearly always a death sentence.

    The quotation from Sirach [40:28-30, below] makes clear that begging is also a condemnation to death. Someone who is reduced to begging is without resources. Without the patronage of his master, the manager is in real danger. …

    Digging and begging are images of his desperation.

    My child, do not lead the life of a beggar;
    it is better to die than to beg.
    When one looks to the table of another,
    one’s way of life cannot be considered a life.
    One loses self-respect with another person’s food,
    but one who is intelligent and well instructed guards against that.
    In the mouth of the shameless begging is sweet,
    but it kindles a fire inside him. [Sirach 40:28-30]

    In his desperation the manager contrives to create a social space that will sustain him as the interacting lines of honor and shame enmesh around his crisis. He extends generous discounts to his master’s major debtors, and puts them in debt to him as a result. Scott continues:

    Just what does the manager do to gain the good will of his master’s debtors? Apparently he eliminates the profit or usurious interest. When the word gets back to the master of what has happened he has two options.

    • The master can repudiate his ex-manager’s action. But this would involve severe loss of face on the master’s part. When those whose debts have been so generously reduced begin to praise the master, it’s unlikely he will risk owning up to what happened.
    • He can accept his ex-manager’s action.

    What then? How is the tension — created by this shrewd move on the manager’s part — to be relieved? Scott sugegsts one way of reading the intentional tension left as the story concludes. It begins by noting that the accusation against the manager is, from the beginning, a slanderous misrepresentation. The Greek word diaballein in 16:2 has the sense “accuse” in the sense of “falsely accuse, slander, lie about.” The great Accuser in the Greek Bible is the Devil, diabolos. Our word diabolic comes from the same root. So the manager has been innocent all along, but sees no way to prove his innocence other than by demonstrating what a shrewd operator he really is (and always has been). Scott then questions whether the manager is to be dismissed after all?

    The master had originally dismissed the manager because he had [allegedly] squandered the master’s property. Now he commends him for acting shrewdly — the way a manager is supposed to act. If the master cannot repudiate the reductions in debt instituted by the manager without loss of face, do we have to imagine that the master let his dismissal stand or could he have taken the manager back?

    In the social world of 1C Palestine, where debt burdens reduced people to poverty and consigned many to slavery as a consequence, the master would not have been the object of public sympathy as Jesus’ listeners first heard this tale. As Scott points out, both the master and the shrewd manager have been dishonest. The master has been making a huge profit at the expense of his fellows, while the manager has been willing to fiddle the books to gain himself new friends.

    In this parable the manager gets even with the master by appropriating the master’s profit, which itself is morally suspect — for as we have seen no characters in this parable are innocent. When the master commends the manager for his shrewdness, he also reminds us that the manager is unjust or dishonest. We are reminded that the moral holiday is not really a holiday. Wrong has been done, lots of wrong on all sides.

    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 the earth, proclaim the Lord – AHB 100
    • Alleluia, the gospel is among us (Bruxvoort-Colligan)
    • Jesus the Lord said I am the bread – AHB 185
    • Lord of the dance – AHB 183

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

  • Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (15 September 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 & Psalm 14
    • 1 Timothy 1:12-17
    • Luke 15:1-10

     

    Introduction

    Our notes this week focus on the Gospel reading.

    In the opinion of a great many contemporary Jesus scholars, the traditions found in this week’s Gospel take us very close to the core of Jesus’ own practice (what Crossan calls “open commensality”) and its underlying vision of God’s domain as the place where the broken ones and the little people come into their own (or, more correctly, God’s own). The presence of a + sign next to the inventory number for each item reflects Crossan’s positive assessment of their historicity.

    It is instructive to read these stories through the lens of the Beatitudes. The principles stated so baldly in the Beatitudes are here captured in the practice and teaching of Jesus.

    Gospel: God has a table …

    Eating with Sinners (Luke 15:1-2)

    Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

    John Dominic Crossan (Historical Jesus, 262) dismisses this accusation as a rhetorical flourish by the opponents of Jesus, rather than as a character appraisal of his companions:

    “I no more take [this charge] at face value than I do the charges against John [the Baptist].”

    Kathleen Corley reminds us that allegations such as those found here represent “the caricature of polemic and not social description” (Women and the Historical Jesus, 2002:85). She continues:

    … the connection between these two terms and their use as slander against Jesus’ or his followers’ table practice is apt, as 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. And it was common for demeaning portraits of individuals to include insults levied against their table practice and dining companions. To malign Verres, for example, Cicero pictures his degenerate behavior at banquets with lewd women.

    The point of this familiar slander against Jesus is not simply his lack of discrimination when choosing table companions, but to suggest significant moral failure on his part as someone keeping company with sex workers and corrupt petty officials. While the historian can read the slander in reverse and use it as evidence that Jesus included women and other social outcasts among his followers, the slander is more a marker of social conflict between Jesus and his opponents rather than an index of his personal values and conduct.

    Crossan (Historical Jesus, 261) asks: “What acts of Jesus begot the charges of gluttony, drunkenness, and keeping very bad company?” In offering a response to his own question, Crossan writes:

    In the first as in the twentieth century, a person might create a feast for society’s outcasts. The could easily be understood even or especially in the honor and shame ideology of Mediterranean society as a benefaction and one of extremely high visibility. No doubt if one did it persistently and exclusively there might be some very negative social repercussions. But, in itself, to invite the outcasts for a special meal is a less socially radical act than to invite everyone found on the streets. It is that “anyone” that negates the very social function of table, namely, to establish a social ranking by what one eats, how one eats, and with whom one eats. It is the random and open commensality of the parable’s meal that is its most startling element. One could, in such a situation, have classes, sexes, ranks and grades all mixed up together. The social challenge of such egalitarian commensality is the radical threat of the parable’s vision. It is only a story, of course, but it is one that focuses its egalitarian challenge on society’s mesocosmic mirror, the table as the place where bodies meet to eat. And the almost predictable counteraccusation to such open commensality is immediate: Jesus is a glutton, a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. He makes, in other words, no appropriate distinctions and discriminations. He has no honor. He has no shame.

    In an unrelated discussion later in his book, Crossan writes further about commensality (shared table) as something that was (and is?) absolutely basic to Christian community. Two excerpts will give something of the flavor of his discussion:

    Here, I think, is the heart of the original Jesus movement, a shared egalitarianism of spiritual and material resources. I emphasize this as strongly as possible, and I insist that its materiality and spirituality, its facticity and symbolism cannot be separated. The mission we are talking about is not, like Paul’s, a dramatic thrust along major trade routes to urban centers hundreds of miles apart. Yet it concerns the longest journey in the Greco-Roman world, maybe in any world, the step across the threshold of a peasant stranger’s home. (p. 341)

    I cannot emphasize this too strongly: commensality is not almsgiving; almsgiving is not commensality. Generous almsgiving may even be conscience’s last great refuge against the terror of open commensality. (p. 341)

     

    The Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3-7)

    This familiar parable survives in three versions:

    THOMAS 107
    Jesus said, The (Father’s) imperial rule is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest, went astray. He left the ninety-nine and looked for the one until he found it. After he had toiled, he said to the sheep, “I love you more than the ninety-nine.” [Complete Gospels]

    LUKE 15:4-7
    “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

    MATTHEW 18:12-14
    What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.

    It is interesting to note that the version in Thomas has a rather more predictable ending. Certainly, from the sheep’s perspective it is greatly to be preferred over Luke’s version where the happy farmer calls his friends and neighbors over for a celebration where (presumably) the recently-rescued sheep is the main item on the menu.

    Underlying this parable is a radical vision of God as wastefully generous in her dealings with humankind. This parable, like the Lost Coin that follows in Luke 15, celebrates an interpretation of life as something very different from the “repent-or-burn” ideology of the religious right. Here is a superb example of the abundance mentality at work. Forget the ninety-nine safe sheep! Seek the solitary stray and enjoy it in the company of your friends and neighbors.

    There is—says Jesus—something of God’s domain in this slippery little story.

    The Lost Coin (Luke 15:8-10)

    Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

    This story—deriving more from the domestic sphere of life—seems to make a similar point to the previous story of the lost sheep; and perhaps also to the following story of the prodigal son.

    The element of hyperbole is once more present in this story.

    While silver coins are “small change” in our world, they were serious money in the time of Jesus. Not only so, but none of the Jewish rulers who issued coins during the 150 or so years from John Hyrcanus to Herod and his sons minted silver coins. Every local Jewish coin was bronze, and most them were the prutah—worth about 1% of a silver denarius. Some silver coins were issued from local mints, such as Tyre, under special licence from Rome. Gold coins were even more rare, and only ever minted in Rome. For the woman in this story to have 10 silver coins would have struck Jesus’ audience as most remarkable. In any event, they would have appreciated the diligence with which she went about searching for the lost coin. It was worth 100 prutot!

    God is more willing to forgive than we are ready to imagine.

    As with the once-lost but now-found sheep, so the recovered silver coin is presumably consumed in the celebrations with the friends and neighbors.

    Is this collective celebration perhaps essential to the story? Are we perhaps more often like the grumpy elder brother in the Prodigal Son? With our “Four Spiritual laws” and our airtight theories of the Atonement, have we overlooked the extravagant generosity of the Mother who is simply happy to welcome all her chicks back into the warm security of her wings?

    While those of us who are religious (whether right or of some other disposition) may complain like the proverbial elder sibling, God rushes out to embrace the dissolute who may be more desperate than repentant. Who cares how the sheep was separated from the flock? Who cares how the coin got to be where it was eventually found? Who cares what the prodigal has done with his premature inheritance?

    Let the heavens rejoice! Another sinner has turned back to God.

    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

    Traditional:

    • O worship the king, all-glorious above – AHB 67
    • Spirit of mercy, truth and love – AHB 316
    • When I Survey the wondrous cross – AHB 258
    • Amazing grace – AHB 56

    Contemporary

    • Blest Are They – AOV 1-055, GA 477
    • Seek ye First – AHB 745
    • Companions on the Journey – AOV 1-188
    • You Are Near – AOV 1-112, GA 451

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

  • Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (8 September 2013)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Jeremiah 18:1-11 & Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
    • Philemon 1-21
    • Luke 14:25-33

    First reading: The potter and the clay

    The reading from Jeremiah 18 continues the lectionary selections from this influential OT book, and serves up a vivid metaphor of humanity as clay in the hands of a potter/god:

    So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him. Then the word of the LORD came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. (Jer 18:3–6 NRSV)

    In the ancient world pottery was as common as plastic containers in our own kitchen cupboards, or used envelopes next to the phone prior to the email revolution. In one respect, Jeremiah is engaging in a very routine action as he visits the potter. To hear the “word of the LORD” requires him to pay attention to the everyday and the routine. “Those with eyes …,” Jesus might observe?

    On the other hand, the significance of the ordinary and everyday become quite non-routine and unconventional, when Jeremiah hears what the “word of the LORD” is for him at the potter’s shop:

    At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the LORD: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings. (Jer 18:7–11 NRSV)

    This passage represents a significant shift in ancient ideas about the covenant relationship between a community and its god(s).

    Here we find Jeremiah disclosing the “fine print” of the covenant. Rather than being an unconditional deal that locks Israel into exclusive worship of Yahweh in return for perpetual preferential treatment over other nations, the covenant compassion of Yahweh is as likely to result in the heathens being forgiven and the chosen ones being punished. These are grounds, indeed, for the prophet to appeal to the “people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem” to review their own conduct. Being chosen is no longer sufficient for exclusive “most favored nation” status. Instead, it all turns on whether the nation chooses evil or turns from evil.

    This idea was to find a distinctive expression in the story of Jonah. In that story – and to the serious discomfort of the prophet – the people of Nineveh turn from evil and are spared by Yahweh. It is a strange tale to include in the Jewish and Christian Bibles, but it is there precisely because it is such a prophetic text.

    Second reading: Philemon

    Paul’s letter to Philemon is one of the shortest texts in the New Testament, yet even so the lectionary is not able to assign the complete work for reading in church this week. Surely it is a good thing to read entire books when the opportunity to do so arises, and to discover afresh their character as occasional correspondence. Rather than carefully composed timeless documents, these are everyday acts of communication about real life issues in the lives of ordinary people. Like the potters shop, early Christian letters are routine and conventional aspects of daily life. Yet these letters can deliver a radical re-reading of life, and that is exactly what we see happening in this brief personal note from Paul to a wealthy Christian named, Philemon.

    In this scrap of a letter, Paul invites Philemon into a new and more generous space as a disciple of Jesus.

    The conventional response to a runaway slave, as Onesimus seems to have been, was to punish the offender in any way that master chose. Paul seeks not just the reinstatement of Onesimus without punishment, but his recognition by Philemon as a fellow-believer and a brother in Christ.

    Paul had no canon law or ecclesiastical constitutions on his side as he overturned the unbroken tradition of many thousands of years in Mediterranean communities. He simply appealed for Philemon to recognise the new status that all three of them shared, and to “do the right thing.” Most likely Paul had no idea how this would all work out, or what a revolution in the human spirit he was starting. It certainly took his readers many hundreds of years to work out the fine print of this part of the new covenant traditions, and in some respects we still do not get it.

    Scriptures are like that. They seem to affirm the tradition, but they also subvert, challenge and reform the tradition. It can be controversial, and often is. But then it was in Paul’s day as well.

    Gospel: The Cost of Discipleship

    This week’s Gospel comprises materials known from various “locations” within the early Jesus tradition. We have some items that are unique to Luke, others that seem to come from the Common Sayings Tradition found in the Sayings Gospel Q and Thomas, as well as another that has even wider attestation.

    This set of material dealing with the cost of discipleship fits well within the larger unit (Luke 9:51-19:28) in which Luke uses the motif of Jesus’ journey towards Jerusalem as both the symbol and the occasion for an exploration of what it means to be a disciple.

    Hating One’s Family

    In ancient Mediterranean societies the family was the fundamental and all-pervasive social reality. For Jesus to promote “hatred” of one’s own family still strikes us as odd, but nowhere near as forcefully as it would have struck his contemporaries. Perhaps a modern equivalent would be for Jesus to demand hatred of our own mothers. In our culture, “Mother” is one of the last remaining icons. We might gain some sense of the counter-cultural stance adopted by Jesus if we imagine a Christian renewal movement that called on its adherents to reject their mothers.

    The extended quotation from John Dominic Crossan in The Historical Jesus (1991:299-301) that we used three weeks ago, may be worth revisiting at this point:

    The family imagined [in Q] has five members: father, mother, son, daughter, and son’s wife, all living together in the one household. “Note,” as Bruce Malina advises, “that there is no mention of son-in-law, since it was the new wife who moved into her husband’s house, not the husband into the wife’s family” (1981:101). I emphasize immediately that this is not simply saying that families will be split over Jesus, with some believing and some disbelieving. The division imagined cuts between the generations, the two parents against the three children, and vice versa. But it does not tell us which group is on Jesus’ side. We cannot presume that parents are against Jesus and children for him, or vice versa. Indeed, the point is not belief or disbelief at all. It is, just as in Micah 7:6, the normalcy of familial hierarchy that is under attack. The strife is not between believers and non-believers but quite simply, and as it says, between the generations and in both directions. Jesus will tear the hierarchical or patriarchal family in two along the axis of domination and subordination. Second, and even more significant, is that the division imagined cuts across sex and gender. That point is underlined by the version in Gospel of Thomas 16, which, despite having “five in a house: three will be against two, and two against three” gives only one example, and that the dominant male one: “the father against the son and the son against the father.’ That obscures the saying’s point: the split is between generations but across the genders. There can be women just as much as men on the side of Jesus, or on the other side for that matter. I return to that point below in considering Jesus’ missionaries, but even now it is already apparent: what happens to women if the patriarchal family is split asunder?
    A similar point is made with 089 Hating Ones Family [1/2], although the protagonist of the saying is given in masculine gender. The opposition is with one’s “father and mother … brothers and sisters” in Gospel of Thomas 55:1-2, “father and mother” in Gospel of Thomas 101, “father or mother … son or daughter” in Q/Matthew 10:37, and “father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters” in Q/Luke 14:26. In other words, whatever number of generations are mentioned, both genders are always in question. I incline, therefore, to read 089 Hating Ones Family [1/2] in the light of 074 Peace or Sword [1/2] as referring, despite its male format, to both genders. Jesus, on the other hand, refuses to get involved in 097 The Disputed Inheritance [1/2], in which sons disagree over the father’s inheritance. He is not that kind of divider.
    Finally, there is 015 Against Divorce [1/4], an especially well-attested saying of Jesus. The formulation of the divorce law in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is strictly anthropocentric: “when a man takes … marries …writes … puts … sends …” It concerns how a husband divorces a wife and says nothing whatsoever about how a wife divorces a husband. It does not have to do so because the law does not allow it. Unlike, say, Greek, Roman, or Egyptian law at the time of Jesus, Jewish law did not allow the wife to initiate divorce proceedings. Adultery, furthermore, was also androcentric. It was always a crime against male honor and male rights. Seen against such a cultural situation, the texts in 015 Against Divorce [1/4] are strikingly anomalous. That is not because both 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 and Mark 10:10-12, but not its parallel Matthew 19:9, have adapted Jesus’ saying to a wider Greco-Roman ambiance — they therefore forbid divorce either by husband of wife or by wife of husband — it is because the saying of Jesus situates itself directly in the androcentric tradition of Jewish Palestine but says,

    (1) Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery,
    and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.
    (Sayings Gospel Q: 1[or 2?]Q: Luke 16:18 = Matthew 5:31-32)

    (2) Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. (Mark 10:11)

    (3) If he put his wife away and marry another he also commits adultery himself.
    (Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 4.1:6b)

    John Kloppenborg has seen most clearly the implications of the term ‘adultery” against the Mediterranean background of an anodrocentric or even phallocentric honor and shame ideology. “By saying that the male who disembeds his wife and remarries commits adultery against her … Jesus implies that honor is not (only?) androcentric — I use the term descriptively rather than pejoratively — but (also or equally) gynecentric. Honor is still understood as a pseudo-commodity but it belongs as much to a woman as it does to a man. Hence a man can ‘steal’ his own wife’s honor by divorcing her and remarrying … In Palestine of Jesus’ day, which did not permit women to initiate a divorce, the dignity of women was not … easily guarded. It is for this reason that Jesus uses the dramatic term ‘adultery’ in so surprising a way. He thus brought sharply into focus the wife’s honor. It is as much to be protected and respected as the husband’s honor and the woman is as vulnerable to damage as the male” (1990:195). The opposition here is not just to divorce. To forbid divorce one has only to say that divorce is never legal. That is exactly what happens in the much less radical 252 Moses and Divorce [2/1]. The attack is actually against “androcentric honor whose debilitating effects went far beyond the situation of divorce. It was also the basis for the dehumanization of women, children and non-dominant males” (1990:196). When 074 Peace or Sword [1/2] is read in conjunction with 015 Against Divorce [1/4], Jesus sets parents against children, and wife against husband, sets, in other words, the Kingdom against the Mediterranean. But not just against the Mediterranean alone.

     

    Carrying One’s Cross

    The cross has long been the definitive symbol of Christianity and its founder. As early as the 50s of the first century, Paul (writing in 1 Corinthians) could simply use “the cross” as a recognised symbol of a much larger set of ideas and beliefs:

    For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

    ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
    and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

    Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

    To many NT scholars the post-Easter development of this motif eliminates the possibility of this saying originating with Jesus. The Jesus Seminar, for example, rejected the saying from the database of authentic Jesus sayings on the grounds that its post-Easter understanding of the cross as the defining symbol for Jesus could not be fitted with his historical situation prior to Easter.

    On the other hand, John Dominic Crossan — who was co-chair of the Jesus Seminar — affirms the historicity of this tradition:

    The complex 044 Carrying Ones Cross [1/3] could be dismissed almost immediately as a retrojection of Jesus’ death back onto his own prophetic lips. This would be especially persuasive if it were found only in Mark 8:34, but it is found in both Gospel of Thomas 55:2b and the Sayings Gospel Q at Luke 14:27 = Matthew 10:38, neither of which show any great interest in the historical crucifixion of Jesus. On the other hand there is the following text:

    If you want to be crucified, just wait.
    The cross will come.
    If it seems reasonable to comply, and the circumstances are right,
    then it’s to be carried through, and your integrity maintained.
    (Epictetus, Discourses 2.2.20; Oldfather, 1.228-231).

    There is, therefore, no need to take Jesus’ saying as either retrojected or projected prophecy. Jesus “was discussing,” as Leif Vaage put it about Epictetus, “the (possible) consequences of following a certain philosophy … The cost of adopting a particular way of life is … graphically imagined … The fate portrayed … certainly seems a conceivable outcome of the kind of social challenge and outrageous behavior” (1989:173) seen so often throughout this chapter.*

    [* The Vaage reference is to “Q1 and the Historical Jesus: Some Peculiar Sayings (7:33-34; 9:57-58,59-60; 14:26-27)” Forum 5/2, 1989, 159-76.]

     

    Tower Builder and Warrior King

    These two parables are without parallel in either the Jesus tradition or the rabbinic tradition.

    As an aside, it worth noting that the Tower Builder is perhaps the only parable of Jesus that reflects his traditional involvement in the building crafts of his time. For someone typically understood to have been a “carpenter’s son,” Jesus shows little interest in the family craft when shaping his wisdom that otherwise draws so deeply on his observations of everyday scenes. We hear of farmers, fishers, housewives, tenants, crooked judges, etc. But rarely of buildings, of furniture, or of those who make them.

    Maybe we have built too grand an edifice on the single occurence of tekton (carpenter) in Mark 6:3 (=Matt 13:53)?

    Whether or not Jesus was actually a construction worker or a timber craftsman, these two parables pick up from the wider wisdom tradition insights about prudential consideration of major projects:

    By wisdom a house is built,
    and by understanding it is established;
    by knowledge the rooms are filled
    with all precious and pleasant riches.
    Wise warriors are mightier than strong ones,
    and those who have knowledge than those who have strength;
    for by wise guidance you can wage your war,
    and in abundance of counsellors there is victory.
    Wisdom is too high for fools;
    in the gate they do not open their mouths.
    [Proverbs 24:3-7]

    Gerd Lüdemann [Jesus 2000:361f] is typically more sceptical than many other NT scholars concerning the historicity of the Jesus traditions, but he is inclined to hold his judgment in the case of these two parables:

    In my view there is more to be said for the authenticity than for the inauthenticity of these verses. Here the speaker is a wise man who, as in Thomas 98, observes the harsh reality and foresees the difficulty of carrying out a challenging plan. Unfortunately the context of these parables is unclear, so it does not become evident what kind of self-examination is called for.

     

    Renouncing All

    Verse 33 is found in no other Christian text, although it is consistent with a number of other sayings attributed to Jesus:

    Presumably this saying has been created by Luke to provide a suitable conclusion to the series of sayings that he has gathered from various sources.

    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

    Traditional List

    • O God our help in ages past – AHB 46
    • Praise the Lord with joyful cry – AHB 108
    • Take my life and let it be – AHB 520
    • Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go – AHB 480

    Contemporary List

    • Give thanks to the risen Lord – AOV 1,015
    • The Lord is my shepherd – AOV 1,126

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