Readings for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time: Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19: 8,9, 10, 15; I Corinthians 12: 12-14, 27; Luke 1: 1-4, 4: 14-21
Last Tuesday Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde infuriated Donald Trump and JD Vance at Trump’s inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington. She did so by echoing in her sermon the Spirit of Yeshua of Nazareth whom this Sunday’s Gospel reading depicts as delivering his own inaugural address to his former neighbors in his hometown of Nazareth.
Bishop Budde’s words asked Mr. Trump “in the name of our God” to “have mercy” on LGBTQ people and immigrants targeted by his policies. Her words chimed with those of her Master who in his programmatic words proclaimed his work as directed towards outsiders – the poor, the blind, the imprisoned, oppressed, and indebted.
Evidently, Messrs. Trump and Vance prefer their version of God and a Jesus who puts America first. They seem to consider Americans (and Zionists) as somehow “chosen” by a God who joins them in despising those with non-binary sexual orientations. Instead of welcoming strangers (as Bishop Budde put it in tune with oft-repeated biblical injunctions) their God would build walls and evict them from our midst.
Ironically, the Trump/Vance position is not far from that articulated by Ezra, Israel’s 6th century BCE priest and scribe who invented the concept of a genocidal Israel as God’s chosen one. (You can read a summary of Ezra’s words immediately below.)
So, predictably, Mr. Trump and his followers (like Yeshua’s contemporaries rejecting him) wasted no time in vilifying Bishop Budde.
Instead, she deserves our admiration and imitation as a woman of vast integrity and courage. Let me show you what I mean.
Today’s Readings
Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10
Following the Jews’ return from the Babylonian exile (586-538), the Jewish priest and scribe, Ezra rewrote the Hebrew’s largely oral traditions that eventually became their Bible. He unified those narratives about mysterious beings called “Elohim.” These were human or perhaps extraterrestrial “Powerful Ones,” some good-willed, some malevolent, who had never been universally considered divine. In Hebrew oral tradition, they had variously been called by names such as “Elohim,” “El,” “El Shaddai,” “Ruach,” Baal, and Yahweh. Ezra unified and rewrote those traditions as if all of them were about Israel’s now “divine” Powerful One (Yahweh). The tales included divinely authorized genocides of Palestinians (identified in biblical texts as Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, Geshurites, Maacaathites, and Philistines). All of them had lived in the “Holy Land” long before the arrival of the ex-slave invaders from Egypt who ruthlessly decimated their numbers in the name of their Powerful One. In Nehemiah chapter 8, Ezra is depicted as spending half a day reading his conflated narrative [now called “The Law” (Torah)] to Israel’s “men, women, and those children old enough to understand.” The new narrative brings everyone to tears as a nationalistic and exclusive consciousness dawns that Yahweh-God had chosen them as his special people.
Psalm 19: 8,9, 10, 15
Despite the genocides, the people praised Yahweh’s words as simple, perfect, refreshing, trustworthy, wise, illuminating, pure, eternal, true, and completely just. They identified Ezra’s words as Spirit and Life.
I Corinthians 12: 12-14, 27
Yeshua, however, never called his Heavenly Father “Yahweh.” Instead, he (and his principal prophet Paul) understood God as a Divine Parent, the Creator of all things, the “One in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Yeshua (and Paul) rejected the idea of “Special People” in favor of all humanity as comprising One Human Body. For both men, no part of that Body (even the least presentable) was better or more important than any other. For Paul and Yeshua, Jews and non-Jews were the same. So were slaves and free persons. In fact, for Yeshua’s followers, those the world considers less honorable should be treated “with greater propriety.”
Luke 1: 1-4, 4: 14-21
In the first sermon of his public life, Yeshua addressed his former neighbors. He was asked to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah (a contemporary of Ezra) who dissented from genocides and mistreatment of captives. Here’s what Yeshua read:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.“
Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them,
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
When his neighbors heard his words, they wanted to kill him. Who did he think he was?! Everyone knows God favors the rich, not the poor. Just look at the Great Ones’ gaudy lifestyles and possessions. And those people in prison deserved to be there. Once freed, they’d threaten us all. And besides, the blind were sightless because of some sin they or their parents had committed. They deserved their lot in life. As for “the oppressed . . . There are no “victims.” Everyone knows that. Victimology is a hoax. Who did this Yeshua think he was?! Let’s kill him.
Conclusion
Yes, Yeshua, like Bishop Budde confronted his contemporaries to champion the One in whom we live and move and have our being.” For Yeshua that Divine One considers all humankind a single indivisible body. For him this meant incorporating those his world wanted to amputate as outsiders, invaders, criminals, and as official enemies like Samaritans, tax collectors, street walkers, the poor, imprisoned, the sightless, oppressed and indebted.
In Yeshua’s spirit, Bishop Budde urges incorporation of immigrants, LGBT outcasts, and official enemies such as the Palestinians, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Somalis, Sudanese, Libyans, etc. etc. None of them is our enemy. All of them, she says with Yeshua and Paul, are closer to us than our brothers and sisters. They are parts of our own bodies. None can be amputated.
Such universalism, such wakefulness always infuriates those who would divide and rule over us. It angers as well ordinary people (like Yeshua’s neighbors) who have been brainwashed into accepting prevailing nationalistic understandings of the Bible’s often genocidal “God.”
Today’s readings call us to wake up! Bishop Budde’s got it right. Trump and Vance are heretics.
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