Bible – Page 13 – About Things That Matter

Pope Francis, Summon a Council: It’s Our Tradition!

Readings for 6th Sunday after Easter: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29; Ps. 57: 2-3, 5, 6, 8; Rev. 21: 10-14; 22-23; Jn. 14: 23-29. http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/050513.cfm

Last year was the 50th anniversary of the convocation of the Second Vatican Council. The Catholic Church is still reeling from that earth-shaking event. Conservatives often consider it a huge mistake. They want to return to the Latin Mass, to women’s head-coverings in church, to weekly confessions and communion placed by the priest on the communicant’s outstretched tongue.

Liberals too are disappointed by Vatican II. It didn’t nearly go far enough, they say. It should have eliminated priestly celibacy and the all-male clergy. The church should have divested itself of the Vatican Bank, sold its art treasures and given the proceeds to the poor. The Council’s teaching on collegiality should have decentralized church bureaucracy and made lay-leadership more prominent. The prohibition of contraception should have been changed.

Into which of those camps do you fall? As a church member, do you consider yourself conservative or liberal? Today’s liturgy of the word provokes the question. It reveals a church which at its very beginning surrendered itself to extreme liberalism – or should I say to the “radicalism” of Jesus’ Spirit?

Think about those terms for a minute in the light of today’s readings. Think about what “conservative” and “liberal” mean for us as individuals and community members in our faith tradition. Think of the Holy Spirit as “radical” – something believers are rooted in.

According to every great tradition (Christian or otherwise), the spiritual life – human life itself – is about change, about transformation. Change is the point. We are called to grow. Growth involves transformation. At the biological level, we’re told that all of our cells change every seven years. That means that at my stage in life, I’ve already gone through more than ten bodies! If I tried to keep my body from changing, I would die.

At the personal, psychic and intellectual levels we’re called to change as well. As St. Paul puts it, when we were children, it was appropriate to think, speak and act as children (I Cor. 13:11). But as adults, we’re called to something more. If we don’t change, we can never become who we’re meant to be.

Even institutions must change to survive. That’s true in the realm of politics, economics, and religion. Jesus’ followers found no exemption from this rule of life – of evolution; as community members they had to change or die. In other words, at the end of the day, strategies of conservatism are doomed for Christians as well as for everyone else.

It’s easy to sympathize with conservatives however. I spent much of my life in that category. As such, my concern was simply to preserve what is essential. I saw liberals as being too free with the unchangeable. Like other conservatives I accused them of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Nonetheless, in today’s liturgy of the word, we get an idea of how difficult it is to determine which is which –baby or bath water. That is, in our readings, we are faced an example of a key conflict between religious conservatives and liberals within the first century infant church. Paul, Barnabas, Silas and Barsabas lead the liberal wing. Peter and Jesus’ brother, James are the leaders of the conservatives.

Paul and his friends come from the gentile world. Their concern is to make Jesus both understandable and acceptable to non-Jews. For their audience, circumcision and dietary restrictions (like not eating pork) represent great obstacles to accepting Jesus’ “Way.”

On the other hand, Peter and Jesus’ brother, James, are Jews through and through. They remember the importance of full observance of the law within the Jewish tradition. They recalled for instance that during the second century Seleucid persecution of the Jews under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, many Jews gave their lives rather than eat forbidden foods. Faced with Paul and his colleagues, the conservative faction wondered: were those lives sacrificed in vain? And besides, circumcision was the identifying mark of Jewish manhood. What good follower of the biblical God set that all-important commandment aside?

The issue is so serious that it provoked a meeting of church leaders – what scholars call the “Council of Jerusalem.” Like Vatican II (1962-’65) it called together church leadership to discuss burning issues of the day and to make changes that responded effectively to what Gaudium et Spes called the “signs of the times.”

Today’s gospel reading implies that leaders could come together with confidence because of Jesus’ promise that his Holy Spirit would continue teaching the church even after he is gone. The Spirit would remind the church of what Jesus himself taught – and more besides.

According to today’s readings, it was the “more besides” that the Jerusalem conservatives were resisting. They didn’t deny, of course, that Jesus himself was a religious liberal. (It was Jesus’ liberalism that angered the Scribes and high priests.) Jesus frequently placed love and compassion above God’s most important commandment, the Sabbath law; he associated with the “unclean;” he even befriended and worked miracles for gentiles. Jesus was never bound by the letter of the law as were his conservative opponents.

At the same time however, Jesus was Jewish to the end. He had no intention of founding a new religion. He was a Jewish reformer. No one could deny that. Jesus didn’t revoke the Law. He simply gave it an enlightened, more humane, more liberal interpretation. He himself had been circumcised!

It was with these understandings that the Council of Jerusalem convened. And according to Luke, the author of Acts, it was a battle royal. Luke says the meeting (like Vatican II) was filled with “dissension and debate.”

What we find in today’s first reading is the final decree of the Council of Jerusalem. Concerning circumcision, it says “never mind.” As for dietary restrictions, fagedaboutit. The Council was concerned with not placing unbearable burdens on converts. In other words, it couldn’t have been more liberal. It could not have been less conservative.

The Council of Jerusalem is reputed to have happened no more than 30 years after the death of Jesus. But by the time John of Patmos writes his book of Revelation at the end of the first century, look where his church had come. His vision of the “New Jerusalem” which we read about in today’s second reading doesn’t even have a temple. Jerusalem without a temple?! The city is founded not on the 12 patriarchs of Israel, but on the 12 apostles. How liberal is that!?

I suppose what I’m saying is that Christians shouldn’t be afraid of change. It’s our tradition – right from the beginning. In fact, in today’s gospel, John has Jesus say specifically that we should not be agitated or fearful. Rather, our hearts should be filled with peace because of our reliance on the Holy Spirit. John’s Jesus teaches that the Spirit’s presence guarantees the community is moving in the right direction, even when the Spirit’s teachings shock and scandalize – as long as it’s moving towards Jesus’ compassion, love, and ease of burden. The guarantee remains even when the Spirit’s guidance seems to dilute what many consider essential – like circumcision, dietary laws and the Jerusalem Temple.

What “essentials” is the church being called to set aside today? Priestly celibacy? An all-male priesthood? Prohibition of contraception? Are any of these really essential?

The question is as unnerving for the church as it is for us as individuals. But the answer is always the same: “Don’t be afraid or agitated; the Holy Spirit guides.”

Think about it: at the personal level, after ten changes of body and innumerable psychic growth spurts and changes of mind, what remains that allows me to identify with that child they tell me I was in my baby pictures? The bath water has been thrown out virtually every day. But somehow I’m able to say “I” remain. Who is that “I?”

Once again, today’s gospel leads us to believe that the answer is the indwelling Holy Spirit herself who continually leads us into the new and unforeseen – but without that “fear or agitation.” That unifying, enlightened Spirit is the same in me as She is in you.

The bottom line: today’s readings teach that there is no future in timid conservatism. Instead we are called to extreme liberalism. And that liberalism actually translates to Jesus-like radicalism (or going to the root of things). The Holy Spirit is that root.

And so we can pray with confidence: “Holy Spirit, in the present crisis of your church, inspire Francis I to call us together once again. Convene a Council. Surprise us. Shock us one more time. Wake us up! Move us towards compassion, love and ease of burden as you did the Jerusalem Council. We believe that under your guidance, we can never go wrong!

Drones, the Marathon Bombing And Today’s Liturgy of the Word (Sunday Homily)

I got into trouble with a lot of people over the last week or ten days. It all goes back to the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15th. The very next morning I found myself writing a blog entry that drew fire from friends who go back with me nearly sixty years, and even from my family members. I had written that the Marathon Bombing paled in comparison with the havoc and destruction the United States’ drone policy creates in the world virtually every day.

For instance, last week in the Senate hearing on that policy, a young Yemeni activist, Farea Al-Muslimi, gave testimony about the destruction in his village brought about by a drone attack that had occurred a few weeks earlier. [Do yourself a favor and see the video of his testimony (above); it went viral last week.] Women and children were killed by the drone apparently intended to eliminate a single person who might easily have been apprehended by local police. Instead, the missile launching killed indiscriminately. In the resulting carnage, the young man said, you couldn’t distinguish the bodies of women and children from their animals which had also been killed in the raid. The human victims had to be buried with their animals as though there were no difference between them.

According to the young activist, drones hovering over villages like his own, ready to release their deadly cargo are a form of terrorism. They have for Yemenis become the new face of the United States, and have caused great anger and hatred towards our country. Drones are what Yemenis now think of when they hear “America.” They represent a highly effective recruiting tool for what Americans understand as “terrorists.”

This means that in the activist’s own village, the drones accomplished in an instant what the propaganda of Islamic jihadists had been unable to do after years of effort.

It was this sort of testimony that I had in mind when I wrote the morning after the Marathon bombing. I was also inspired by the kind of faith-consciousness communicated by the readings in this morning’s liturgy of the word. Those readings call us to embrace an awareness of the unity of the entire human race. All are our sisters and brothers, the readings emphasize; Yeminis are as important to God as we are. Put otherwise, all four readings call us beyond the nationalism that makes us so sensitive to violence directed towards our own people, while ignoring or down-playing much greater terror our country directs towards those we consider “foreign” or “other.”

In fact, today’s liturgy of the word might well be considered a hymn of praise to the God of Love who cherishes everyone and everything equally. The first reading from the Acts of the Apostles highlights the expansion of the understanding of God’s Chosen People. Paul and Barnabas extend the concept from the Jews to non-Jews – i.e. to gentiles. God’s people are found not merely in Israel, but in strange sounding places like Lystra, Pisidia, Pamphylia, Perga, Attalia, and Antioch.

The author of the Book of Revelation concurs with Paul’s interpretation. In his utopian vision of the “end of time,” John of Patmos hears a loud voice proclaiming, “God’s dwelling is with the human race.” Did you hear that? God’s People are found not just in Israel (or in “America”), but are co-extensive with the entire human race. People of all nations constitute God’s Chosen, John says. In other words, God considers everyone God’s beloved simply in virtue of their being human.

However, John “loud voice” also suggests that God is especially partial to the poor and oppressed. God wishes that tearful people stop crying. God’s kingdom is an entirely new dispensation without premature death, mourning, wailing, or pain. The suggestion here is an understanding of God’s chosen people as those within the human race who suffer the most. (As a nation, Americans, it seems, are not in that category.)

Does this mean that in our assessment of world events, the suffering should be given greater attention than the well-off?

Moreover, God’s love extends beyond humans to all of physical creation. The responsorial psalm describes God as generous, merciful, slow to anger, exceedingly kind, and good to all. That “all” includes everything God has made. In the psalmist’s words, God is “compassionate to all his works.”

Finally, today’s brief gospel reading suggests that the vocation of Christians is to mirror God’s universal love specifically as reflected in Yeshua ben Joseph – who accepted his own death at the hands of the violent rather than defend himself or take the lives of others .

Yeshua’s followers, John the evangelist suggests, must be willing to love in the same way Jesus loved. We must be ready to give our lives for “the least of our brothers and sisters” – to die ourselves before taking the lives of poor Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghanis, Iraqis, Somalis . . . . (That’s what the words of the gospel seem to propose!)

But there’s a warning with all this talk of God’s universal love. Nationalism is strong. Criticizing it evokes energetic resistance. This is the thrust of Paul’s words in today’s first reading when he says that “It is necessary to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.” Evidently some within the emerging Christian community wanted to stick with the old narrow notion of “God’s People” limiting it to a single nation. They thought of the community of Yeshua as a reformed wing of Judaism. As the reading from Acts tells us, they resisted Paul’s more expansive reinterpretation, sometimes violently.

Something similar can happen today when the suffering of “those others” are equated or even prioritized over the suffering of our compatriots.

Nonetheless, today’s readings remind us that in God’s eyes there are no “others.” If they are human, if they are part of God’s creation, they are God’s children every bit as important as “Americans.” Their suffering (especially when it originates from our hands) should be prioritized over our own.

That’s where I was coming from last week.

Saving Jesus from Paul and John (Sunday Homily)

Readings for the 4th Sunday after Easter: Acts 13:14; Ps. 100: 1-2, 3-5; Rev. 7:9, 14B-17; Jn. 10: 27-30. http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/042113.cfm

As I’ve been reporting here, a group of about 25 people met weekly during Lent for an intensely rewarding study of “The Historical Jesus.” The group included members of our local Catholic church in Berea, Kentucky along with an equal number from our Ecumenical Table in nearby Richmond. In the aftermath of that experience, I find it impossible to read selections like those in today’s liturgy of the word without making connections with our little seminar.

For instance, today’s readings remind me that would-be followers of Jesus might more accurately call ourselves “Paulists” rather than “Christians.” That observation is sparked by the tension between Paul and “the Jews” in this morning’s selection from Acts. The tension reminds us that our belief system has been shaped more by Paul of Tarsus than by Jesus of Nazareth who was himself a Jew. The same holds true for the gospel selection from John the Evangelist with its emphasis on Jesus’ divinity (“I and the Father are one”). As a result of the influence of Paul and John, our faith tends to be other-worldly and de-politicized. Our Jesus tends to be one-dimensionally divine rather than the enlightened very human rabbi who graced the Palestinian landscape 2000 years ago. Let me explain.

To begin with it’s important to point out that we know more about Paul than we do about the historical Jesus. And we know more about the historical Jesus than did the rabbi from Tarsus. The reasons why are simple. On the one hand, most of the Christian Testament is written by or heavily influenced by Paul. The New Testament, then, is more Pauline than Christian.

On the other, Paul never met the historical Jesus and shows almost no knowledge of Jesus’ words and deeds in his epistles. Meanwhile, scholarship based on manuscript discoveries at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945 and at the Dead Sea in 1947 (the famous Dead Sea Scrolls) has yielded unprecedented knowledge of the historical Jesus. That means we know more about the rabbi from Nazareth than did Paul.

Think about the Pauline nature of the faith we’ve inherited. There are 27 books in the “New Testament.” Thirteen of those 27 are letters written by Paul. Then there’s the “Acts of the Apostles” which really is a travelogue about the mission and adventures of Paul written by Paul’s companion, Luke the evangelist. Luke also wrote his own Gospel, which, of course, was heavily influenced by his mentor. Finally, as the earliest entries in the New Testament, Paul’s epistles (written from about 50 to 64 CE) evidently exercised great influence on the other evangelists Mark, Matthew and John who wrote much later.

That means that nearly half of the New Testament (13 of 27 entries) is comprised of letters attributed to Paul. Fifty-five percent (15 of 27 entries) was written by Paul or Luke. And more than 66% (18 of 27 entries) was arguably more influenced by Paul than by Jesus.

I say “more influenced by Paul than by Jesus” because what we have in Paul’s letters, the Acts of the Apostles and in the gospels themselves are proclamations about Jesus rather than the proclamation of Jesus. Remember, Jesus’ proclamation was about the Kingdom of God, “Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.” In contrast, the New Testament’s proclamations about Jesus are “Jesus is Lord.”

The differences between these two “gospels” are enormous and they are, as I indicated, illustrated in today’s readings on this fourth Sunday after Easter. Today’s selection from John’s Gospel (written about 70 years after the crucifixion of the Enlightened Yeshua) has Jesus discoursing about himself. He speaks of himself as a “shepherd” leading his sheep and about offering them “eternal life.” He concludes by claiming to be God’s Son equal to the Father. “I and the Father are one,” he says. (The historical Jesus could never have made such statements without being stoned by his fiercely monotheistic Jewish audience.)

However, Jesus’ discourse as reported in John’s gospel is completely coherent with the gospel of Paul. Paul, I repeat, never met the historical Jesus. In fact, as we all know, before his famous conversion on the road to Damascus, he was a persecutor of Christians. He pursued them on behalf of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court, which worked hand-in-glove with the Romans.

The Romans were hunting down Christians for the same reason they arrested and executed Jesus – because he was perceived as the Jewish Messiah whose overriding responsibility was the overthrow the Roman occupation of Palestine. With good reason, the Romans considered Jesus’ followers to be subversives.

In other words, the Romans, their Sanhedrin collaborators, and their point-man, Saulous (Paul’s name before his conversion) were cooperating in a counter-revolutionary program that targeted Jesus’ nationalistic followers.
Those followers had actually lived with Jesus. They were Jews primarily – members of a Jerusalem community gathered around Jesus’ brother, James, the apostles, and Jesus’ “inner circle” of followers including many women and numbering perhaps 120 people or more. Together they constituted a group of reformed Jews. Many of them had been eye-witnesses of Jesus’ deeds and followers of his teachings.

Those teachings centralized a new understanding of “the Law” which Yeshuaists called “the Way.” It emphasized love and forgiveness over fear, punishment and a purity code that divided people into “clean” and “unclean.” It emphasized justice for the poor and oppressed and freedom from foreign domination. The Jerusalem community of The Way recognized Jesus as the True Prophet predicted in their scriptures – a wonder-working Messiah and liberator who would usher in an era reminiscent of the Exodus from Egypt under the great rebel Moses. This Jewish messiah was human (the Son of Man) not a divine Son of God.

Paul, as I said, had never met the Son of Man. His writings show neither knowledge of Jesus’ deeds nor of specific teachings which were so important to the Jewish Yeshuaist community. Instead, Paul preached a kind of mythological Jesus who was entirely recognizable to the gentile audiences which interested him. Paul’s Jesus was born, crucified, risen and ascended to heaven. Evidently, Paul considered nothing between Jesus’ birth and death worth reporting.

For Paul’s gentile audience, any wonder-working “messiah” had to be a divine incarnation like the gods Romans and Egyptians worshipped — Mithra, Isis, Osiris, the Great Mother God. These “dying and rising gods” descended from heaven, lived for a while on earth, died, and then rose from the dead. Typically, they offered “eternal life” beyond the grave to believers who ate sacred meals together sharing the gods’ body and blood in the form of bread and wine. These are the terms Paul used to explain Jesus to his gentile audiences.

As reformed Jews, the Jerusalem community along with most unreformed (non-Yeshuaist) Jews had trouble with such explanations which offended their strictly monotheistic beliefs. How could Jesus be uniquely “one with the Father?” That sounded like two Gods and was entirely offensive and unacceptable.

Moreover, Paul’s version of the gospel seemed to remove the Kingdom of God to an other-worldly heaven. It left the Romans in charge of Palestine ruled by a god (the Roman emperor) who was a rival of Yahweh, who, for good Jews, alone was God and who alone was the legitimate ruler of the Palestinian homeland. Such a gospel along with Paul’s background of cooperation with the Romans made all Jews (Yeshuaist and orthodox) deeply suspect of Paul. They remained adamant in their hope of the “Second Coming” of Jesus who would finally defeat the Romans and introduce God’s Reign to replace Caesar’s.

We pick up the tension between Paul’s message aimed at gentiles and the anti-imperial faith of Jews (including Yeshuaists) in today’s readings. In the selection from Acts, Paul proclaims his version of Jesus. And “the Jews” respond as expected. To them Paul’s (and John’s) understanding of Jesus as God’s only Son, his understanding of salvation as “eternal life” rather than messianic liberation from foreign domination was completely blasphemous. So Paul and Barnabas end up “shaking the dust” of Antioch’s streets from their feet against “the Jews.”

Eventually, Paul’s gospel (with the deeply engrained seeds of anti-Semitism) ends up triumphing completely. This is because the base of the Jerusalem Yeshuaist community (the inner circle referenced earlier) was completely destroyed during the Jewish war with Rome (64-73). In the absence of strong Yeshuaist leadership, the way was thus opened for the triumph of a divine Jesus proclaiming himself (rather than God’s Kingdom) and offering an other-worldly “eternal life” rather than a new revolutionary social order characterized by love, forgiveness, justice, and room for everyone.

That other-worldly “Christianity” was finally canonized by Constantine in the fourth century (325 at Nicaea). Afterwards, in his zeal for uniformity of belief, the emperor and his church accomplices ordered the destruction of documents reflecting anything other than the Pauline and Johannine understandings of Jesus. The rest is history. The historical Jesus was lost. We’ve been worshipping a Roman Mithra instead of a prophetic Enlightened Jewish Jesus ever since.

Luckily disobedient monks ignored Constantine’s order to destroy manuscripts reflecting understandings of Jesus other than Paul’s. That happened at the Dead Sea and at Nag Hammadi.

Thank God for their crime! At this late date it has directed our focus away from the Gospel about Jesus to the Gospel of Jesus. It calls us to work not for an after-life heaven, but for God’s Kingdom in the here and now.

Meet Declan Coyle, a Real Liberation Theologian (Sunday Homily)

My Easter homily two weeks ago evoked a wonderful response from one of my former priest-colleagues from the Society of St. Columban – the missionary community of priests I belonged to before I left in 1976. The colleague is Declan Coyle (pictured above).

Declan, it turns out, is a wonderful and witty writer. In a future blog I’ll share his moving piece on his son, Alexander who has Mowat Wilson Syndrome. It’s a truly inspiring essay on the meaning of living in the present moment.

When I asked for permission to share his Easter thoughts, here’s how Declan responded.

Of course Mike you can share it with you audience.

I soldiered (how easily the old militaristic verb crops up, “Who has a blade for a splendid cause … our horses are red to the hocks with the blood of the heathen”) with the Columbans for 27 years from seminary to moving on to marry Annette, an Australian in 1990.

I studied Liberation Theology in St Paul’s Ottawa after ordination, and then I asked the Superior General for five years in a slum in Latin America or Asia. After nine years of post-high school academic study I felt I was not fit to teach in Boston. But I knew that if I got some years in a slum where the slum dwellers who had survived and graduated from the University of Life taught me some life lessons, and I got these in my blood and my guts and my bones and my being, then I could teach Liberation Theology with passion and enthusiasm.

I got five years in the Philippines and six in Taiwan.

I got married to Annette, my wife in 1990. We have three children, Genevieve (19), Fionn (16) and little Alexander who is eight. He is a very special child. He has Mowat Wilson Syndrome. It was only discovered in 1997 and he was the first child in Ireland to be diagnosed with it. I’ll attach a reflection I wrote recently about him. He’s the epitome of the idea that he’s not a human being having the odd spiritual experience, he’s a spiritual being having a human experience.

The last 90 days I was in the Philippines I buried 65 children under two years old … all who died from hunger or hunger related diseases. In the slums we lived Jesus’ Synagogue Speech and Matthew 25 and life to the full and joy overflowing.

From where I’ve lived my so called Christian life, you’ve got your hand on the heart and the soul of the gospel and what the carpenter poet of Galilee was all about. I’m still baffled as to why John Paul II didn’t jump on a plane and go out and finish that Mass that stopped when Romero was shot. Would that not have been a symbolic gesture to lift the hearts of the poor and baffle Reagan?

Every blessing in your great work. You are real good news for the poor. You are real liberation for those oppressed by the historical accretions of the empire and real new sight for those of us who have been blind to the real meaning of the gospels for our world today. You remind me of the great prophet Micah whose words you live: To act justly, to love tenderly with kindness and to walk humbly with your God.

All the lovely things of the Holy Spirit on this Easter Week.

Declan

And now Declan Coyle’s Easter Reflection:

Years ago here at home our eldest two children Genevieve and Fionn were playing hide and seek all over the house. All I could hear all day was, “ready or not, here I come!”

That evening Genevieve asked me how did Jesus rise from the dead. I told her that on Easter Sunday morning the soldiers were outside the tomb, cooking their Easter eggs in a pot on the fire. Then suddenly from the tomb came this thunderous voice, “Ready or not here I come!” Then the rock rolled away and out came Jesus.

The two soldiers fainted with the fright.

The following week, the teacher asked the children to explain how the resurrection happened. Genevieve told her how. The teacher was not impressed.

I asked Genevieve which story she preferred. She said yours Daddy. In one fell swoop, she turned me into the fifth evangelist – a storyteller with a myth, a story, a lie that tells the truth. She understood hermeneutics.

In our recent discussions I told her that if ever she is tempted to go literal, she’ll lose the meaning. Always go symbolic. If you go literal, then you’re wondering at Christmas was Jesus born in a stable, or a cave or was it a kindergarten for the Essenes?

Literal is a dead end. But when you go symbolic you realize that the Christmas story simply means that great power comes in humble packages.

Keep up the great work Mike.

And send your material to Pope Francis.

Happy Easter. Declan

Doubting Thomas: Our Twin (Jesus’ Twin!) in Denial (Sunday Homily)

Readings for 1st Sunday after Easter: Acts 5:12-16; Ps. 118: 2-4, 13-15, 22-24; Rev. 1: 9-11A, 12-13, 17-19; Jn. 20: 19-31. http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/040713.cfm

The picture painted in today’s gospel story should be familiar to all of us. I say that not only because we have heard it again and again, but because it’s our story. It’s about a man in denial, the original doubting Thomas. Thomas’ nickname was “the twin.”

Whatever that meant originally, Thomas is undoubtedly our fraternal double in that he depicts our condition as would-be followers of Yeshua. Like Thomas we live in practical denial concerning the reality of Yeshua’s resurrection – about the possibility of a radically transformed life. Recall our twin’s story. Pray that it can be ours as well.

The disciples are there in the Upper Room where they had so recently broken bread with Yeshua the night before he died. And they are all afraid. John says they are afraid of “the Jews.” However it seems they fear death more than anything else. They dread it because they are convinced that death spells the end of everything they hold dear – their ego-selves, families, friends, culture, and their small pleasures. Besides that, they are afraid of the pain that will accompany arrest – the isolation cells, the beatings, torture, the unending pain, and the final blow that will bring it all to a close. Surely they were questioning their stupidity in following that failed radical from Galilee.

So they lock the doors, huddle together and turn in on themselves.

Nevertheless, the very fears of the disciples and recent experience make them rehearse the events of their past few days. They recall the details: how Yeshua so bravely faced up to death and refused to divulge their names even after undergoing “the third degree” – beatings followed by the dreaded thorn crown, and finally by crucifixion. All the while, he remained silent refusing to name the names his Roman interrogators were looking for. He died protecting his friends. Yeshua was brave and loyal.

His students are overwhelmingly grateful for such a Teacher. . . .

Then suddenly, the tortured one materializes there in their midst. Locks and fears were powerless to keep him out. They all see him. They speak with him. He addresses their fears directly. “Peace be with you,” he repeats three times. Yeshua eats with them just as he had the previous week. Suddenly his friends realize that death was not the end for the Teacher. He makes them understand that it is not the end for them either – nor for anyone else who risks life and limb for the kingdom of God. No doubt everyone present is overwhelmed with relief and intense joy.

“Too bad Thomas is missing this,” they must have said to one another.

Later on, Thomas arrives – our fraternal double in unfaith. His absence remains unexplained. Something had evidently called him away when the others evoked Jesus’ presence by their prayer, recollections, and sharing of bread and wine. Like us he hasn’t met the risen Lord.

“Jesus is alive,” they tell the Twin. “He’s alive in the realm of God. He took us all with him to that space for just a moment, and it was wonderful. Too bad you missed it, Thomas. None of the rules of this world apply where Yeshua took us. It was just like it was before he died. Don’t you remember? Yeshua brought us to a realm full of life and joy. Fear no longer seems as reasonable as it once did. He was here with us!”

However, Thomas remains unmoved. Like so many of us, he’s is a literalist, a downer. He’s an empiricist looking for the certainty of physical proof. Thomas is also a fatalist; he evidently believes that what you see is what you get. And for him there has been no indication that life can be any different from what his senses have always told him. Life is tragic. Death is stronger than life; it ends everything. And that means that Yeshua is gone forever. Who could be so naïve as to deny that?

Our twin in unfaith protests, “In the absence of physical proof to the contrary, I simply cannot bring myself to share your faith that another life is possible. And make no mistake: Yeshua’s enemies haven’t yet completed their bloody work. They’re after us too.”

Can’t you see Thomas glancing nervously behind him? “Are you sure those doors are locked?”

Then lightning strikes again. Yeshua suddenly materializes a second time in the same place. Locks and bolts, fear and terror – death itself – again prove powerless before him.

Yeshua is smiling. “Thomas, I missed you,” he says. “Look at my wounds. It’s me!”

Thomas’ face is bright red. Everyone’s looking at him. “My God, it is you,” he blurts out. “I’m so sorry I doubted.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Yeshua assures. “You’re only human, and I know what that’s like, believe me. I too knew overwhelming doubt. Faith is hard. On death row, my senses told me that my Abba had abandoned me too. I almost gave up hope. It’s like I’m your twin.

“But then I decided to surrender. And I’m happy I did. My heart goes out to you, Thomas. My heart goes out to all doubters. I’ve been there.

“However, it’s those who can commit themselves to God’s promised future in the absence of physical proof that truly amaze and delight me. Imagine trusting life’s goodness and an unseen future with room for everyone when all the evidence tells you you’re wrong! Imagine trusting my word that much, when I almost caved in myself? That’s what I really admire!

“My prayer for you, Thomas, and for everyone else is that you’ll someday experience the joy that kind of faith brings.

Working for God’s Kingdom – for fullness of life for everyone – even in the face of contrary evidence – that’s what faith is all about. May it be yours.”

May it be ours!

Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?

Did Jesus really rise from the dead? Or is belief in his physical resurrection childish and equivalent to belief in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus?

I suppose the answer to those questions depends on what you mean by “really.” Let’s look at what our tradition tells us.

Following Jesus’ death, his disciples gave up hope and went back to fishing and their other pre-Jesus pursuits. Then, according to the synoptic tradition, some women in the community reported an experience that came to be called Jesus’ “resurrection” (Mt. 28:1-10; Mk. 16: 1-8; Lk. 24:1-11). That is, the rabbi from Nazareth was somehow experienced as alive and as more intensely present among them than he was before his crucifixion.

That women were the first witnesses to the resurrection seems certain. According to Jewish law, female testimony was without value. It therefore seems unlikely that Jesus’ followers, anxious to convince others of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, would have concocted a story dependent on women as primary witnesses. Ironically then, the story’s “incredible” origin itself lends credence to the authenticity of early belief in Jesus return to life in some way.

But what was the exact nature of the resurrection? Did it involve a resuscitated corpse? Or was it something more spiritual, psychic, metaphorical or visionary?

In Paul (the only 1st person report we have – written around 50 C.E.) the experience of resurrection is clearly visionary. Paul sees a light and hears a voice, but for him there is no embodiment of the risen Jesus. When Paul reports his experience (I Cor. 15: 3-8) he equates his vision with the resurrection manifestations to others claiming to have encountered the risen Christ. Paul writes “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” In fact, even though Paul never met the historical Jesus, he claims that he too is an “apostle” specifically because he shared the same resurrection experience as the companions of Jesus who were known by that name. This implies that the other resurrection appearances might also be accurately described as visionary rather than physical.

The earliest Gospel account of a “resurrection” is found in Mark, Ch. 16. There a “young man” (not an angel) announces Jesus’ resurrection to a group of women (!) who had come to Jesus’ tomb to anoint him (16: 5-8). But there is no encounter with the risen Jesus. In fact, Mark’s account actually ends without any narrations of resurrection appearances at all. (According to virtually all scholarly analysis, the “appearances” found in chapter 16 were added by a later editor.) In Mark’s original ending, the women are told by the young man to go back to Jerusalem and tell Peter and the others. But they fail to do so, because of their great fear (16: 8). This means that in Mark there are not only no resurrection appearances, but the resurrection itself goes unproclaimed. This makes one wonder: was Mark unacquainted with the appearance stories? Or did he simply not think them important enough to include?

Resurrection appearances finally make their own appearance in Matthew (writing about 80) and in Luke (about 85) with increasing detail. Always however there is some initial difficulty in recognizing Jesus. For instance Matthew 28: 11-20 says, “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshipped him; but some doubted.” So the disciples saw Jesus, but not everyone was sure they did. In Luke 24: 13-53, two disciples walk seven miles with the risen Jesus without recognizing him until the three break bread together.

Even in John’s gospel (published about 90) Mary Magdalene (the woman with the most intimate relationship to Jesus) thinks she’s talking to a gardener when the risen Jesus appears to her (20: 11-18). In the same gospel, the apostle Thomas does not recognize the risen Jesus until he touches the wounds on Jesus’ body (Jn. 26-29). When Jesus appears to disciples at the Sea of Tiberius, they at first think he is a fishing kibitzer giving them instructions about where to find the most fish (Jn. 21: 4-8).

All of this raises questions about the nature of the “resurrection.” It doesn’t seem to have been resuscitation of a corpse. What then was it? Was it the community coming to realize the truth of Jesus’ words, “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me” (Mt. 25:45) or “Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst” (Mt. 18:20)? Do the resurrection stories reveal a Lord’s Supper phenomenon where Jesus’ early followers experienced his intense presence “in the breaking of the bread” (Lk. 24:30-32)?

Some would say that this “more spiritual” interpretation of the resurrection threatens to destroy faith.
However, doesn’t such perception of threat reveal a quasi-magical understanding of faith? Does it risk limiting faith to belief in a God who operates outside the laws of nature and performs extraordinary physical feats that amaze and mystify? Doesn’t it reduce the significance of resurrection belief to simply another “proof” of Jesus’ divinity?

But faith doesn’t seem to be principally about amazement, mystification and proof analogous to the scientific. It is about meaning.

And regardless of whether one believes in resurrection as resuscitation of a corpse or as a metaphor about the spiritual presence of God in communities serving the poor, the question must be answered, “What does resurrection mean?”

Surely it meant that Jesus’ original followers experienced a powerful continuity in their relationship Jesus even after his shameful execution. Their realm of experience had expanded. Both Jesus and his followers had entered broadened dimensions of time and space. They had crossed the threshold of another world where life was fuller and where physical and practical laws governing bodies and limiting spirits no longer applied. In other words, the resurrection was not originally about belief or dogma. It was about a realm of experience that had at the very least opened in the context of sharing bread – in an experience of worship and prayer.

Resurrection meant that another world is possible — in the here and now! Yes, that other world was entered through baptism. But baptism meant participation in a community (another realm) where all things were held in common, and where the laws of market and “normal” society did not apply (Acts 2:44-45).

In order to talk about that realm, Jesus’ followers told exciting stories of encounters with a revivified being who possessed a spiritual body, that was difficult to recognize, needed food and drink, suddenly appeared in their midst, and which just as quickly disappeared. This body could sometimes be touched (Jn. 20:27); at others touching was forbidden (Jn. 20:17).

Resurrection and Easter represent an invitation offered each of us to enter the realm opened by the risen Lord however we understand the word “risen.” We enter that realm through a deepened life of prayer, worship, community and sharing.

I for one feel a need to think together about practical responses to an Easter invitation understood in this way.

Christianity is the Enemy of Humankind (Reflections on the Historical Jesus)

Last night I concluded a Lenten series of classes on the historical Jesus. As always, the course had its ups and downs. But it was faithfully attended by about 25 soul mates who, like me, remain fascinated by and somehow in love with Jesus of Nazareth.

At last evening’s final meeting, one of the participants – a fierce unflinching seeker of truth, asked the question in the back of everyone’s mind. “So what?” she asked. “If, as we have learned here, Jesus has been distorted beyond recognition by the early church (and especially by Paul and Constantine) why should we believe any of it?”

What a good question! It has forced me to pull together (for myself!) what I have learned from this latest round of studies of the historical Jesus. Let me express them in as clear an unvarnished a way as possible both positively and critically.

First of all, my positive learnings . . . . The study forced me to face the fact that the historical Jesus, un-obscured by later developments is the touchstone for authentic Christian faith. That is, the Jesus of history (vs. the Jesus of later doctrines) trumps all other conceptualizations in terms of being normative for Christian faith. The teachings of the historical Jesus were extremely simple: God is love. God is bread. Salvation consists in sharing food – bread and wine. A world with room for everyone (the Kingdom of God) is entirely possible. Empire is the anti-thesis of love and sharing. It uses religion to enslave. It finds Jesus message of liberation abhorrent. Empire is the enemy.

Second of all, my critical learnings . . . . If anything the Christian Testament makes it extremely difficult to locate the normative historical Jesus. In fact, the canonical gospels often contradict the basic revelations of Jesus. When this happens, those contradictions have to be faced, learned from, and set aside as merely illustrative of the way history and religion are routinely distorted by the rich and powerful. It is evidence of what people either used to believe before Jesus’ revelation, or what they came to believe when the faith of Jesus subsequently interacted with and was domesticated by other cultures and times.

More particularly, examination of the gospels makes it abundantly clear that following the destruction of Jerusalem in the Jewish-Roman War (66-73), the Jesus of history increasingly receded from Christian perception. In his place a Jesus of faith came to prominence. The two are at odds with each other. The Jesus of history strove to liberate the poor. The Jesus of faith became the servant of empire and the rich who run it.

The Jesus of history was a mystic, prophet, teacher, healer, and movement founder. He was intent on reforming Judaism whose leaders had sold Judaism’s soul to the Roman Empire transforming it into a religion of laws, rituals and obedience to the powerful. This Jesus called himself the “Son of Man,” not the “Son of God.” He was perceived by the poor as a “messiah” who would deliver his people from Roman domination. He proclaimed a new social order which he referred to as the “Kingdom of God.” There Rome’s domination model of social organization would be replaced by a sharing model. In God’s kingdom everything would be reversed: the rich would be poor; the poor would be rich; the first would be last; the last would be first; prostitutes and “the unclean” would enter the new order before priests, the rich and the famous.

And although he shied away from accepting the conventional messianic identity associated with “The War” (against the Romans), Jesus’ program of “Good News for the poor” along with his healings and exorcisms confirmed that identification in the eyes of the marginalized and oppressed. It did the same for the Romans and their collaborators to such an extent that they ended up executing him as an insurgent.

The memory of this Jesus of history was preserved and celebrated by the Jerusalem community called “The Way” before its eradication in the horrendous Roman-Jewish War of 66 to 73CE. In obedience to Jesus, they adopted a communal life where food, drink, and material possessions were shared and held in common. Following Jesus’ death, some were even hoping for his “second coming” in their own lifetimes to complete the task of empire-destruction his execution had prevented him from fulfilling.

This prophetic Jesus was replaced by the Jesus of faith who emerged in the post-war world after the Jerusalem church and its leadership had been slaughtered by Rome. At this point, “The Way” (Jesus’ version of reformed Judaism) was replaced by “Christianity.” This religious movement was non-Jewish. It derived from the teaching of Paul of Tarsus (in Turkey) who never met the historical Jesus, and who thought of him in terms of God’s unique and only Son. Paul was a thoroughly Romanized Jewish rabbi intent on acquainting non-Jews with the Jesus he experienced in the visionary psychic experience recorded as his conversion on the Damascus Road.

By ignoring the Jesus of history, Paul’s experience and subsequent preaching laid the foundation for an understanding that centralized a Jesus understood as God’s only Son – a divine being who would have been (and was!) completely unacceptable to the fiercely monotheistic Jews. At the same time, this domesticated Jesus was not threatening to Rome. In fact, he was completely familiar to Romans resembling the “dying and rising gods” of Roman-Greco culture who offered “eternal life” beyond the grave rather than an anti-imperial Kingdom of God in the here and now. In other words, the Jesus of history was co-opted beyond recognition by the Roman Empire.

So what’s the take-away from the study of the historical Jesus? I think the following extremely important lessons:

1. History is unreliable. It has been distorted and manipulated by the powerful to suit their own needs. (If taken seriously, this in itself is an invaluable lesson.)

2. Hard work is required to find historical truth – not just about Jesus but about what happened yesterday!

3. Empire is the enemy. It is a system of robbery whereby the rich and powerful steal resources from the poor they oppress. It is entirely contrary to the will of God (the Principle of Life). It represents a “preferential option” for the rich and powerful. It is absolutely ruthless in its eternal war against the world’s poor and in falsifying history for its own benefit.

4. Those who resist empire can expect to be tortured and assassinated. Nonetheless, from time to time courageous and insightful prophets arise from the non-rich and non-powerful with Good News for the poor. Their very simple message: fullness of life is to be found not in empire, but among the poor and simple of the world (God’s people). Salvation, these prophets teach, consists in sharing the simple realities of bread and wine. In effect: God is Bread.

5. Among the west’s best known prophets of Jesus’ God are Moses, Jesus himself, Gandhi, Bartolommeo de las Casas, Karl Marx, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Dorothy Day, and the nameless martyrs (so many of them women!) inspired over the last fifty years by liberation theology.

6. Most people are in denial about these simple facts. They are powerfully assisted in their denial by politicians, scholars, priests, and the media who make the teachings of the prophets extremely complicated. They have transformed the prophets’ message about sharing bread and fullness of life in the here and now into “religion” and a promise of life after death. As such, religion is the enemy of humankind. Christianity is the enemy!

7. Those who accept these learnings should leave institutionalized “religion,” band together, internalize the teachings of the historical Jesus and change the world!

Reading the Passion Narrative again for the First Time: The Origins of Submission to Authority and Anti-Semitism

Readings for Palm Sunday: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032413.cfm

Since the beginning of Lent, I’ve been teaching a seminar on the historical Jesus. About twenty-five of us have come together each week to get closer to the Jesus who taught and served the poor in Palestine two millennia ago.

In that context, it’s nearly impossible for me not to read this Sunday’s Passion Narrative from Luke without applying what we’ve been learning at our group’s Wednesday night meetings. Doing so provides a fresh set of ears for understanding a familiar story as if hearing it for the first time. The result can in turn cause us to re-vision and re-conceptualize our lives as Jesus’ followers living under the sway of U.S. Empire.

As part of our seminar’s study, we’ve been watching excerpts the PBS video series “From Jesus to Christ.” It has helped us see that Jesus and his audiences were first and foremost Jews whose lives were shaped more than anything else by the Roman occupation of their homeland. As such, they weren’t waiting for a Roman-Greco “messiah” who, like the Sun God Mithra, would die and lead them to heaven. They were awaiting a Davidic messiah who would liberate them from the Romans.

Roman rule was especially odious for Jews. After all, they believed they had been given the land of Palestine by their God, Yahweh, whom Jews regarded as their land’s rightful sovereign. And yet, at the time of Jesus, Roman occupiers claimed that their emperor was god. In other words, the Palestine of Jesus’ day was blasphemously controlled by a foreign god. That was intolerable for Jews in general and for Jesus of Nazareth in particular.

So on this Palm Sunday, what do you think was on the minds of the crowds who Luke tells us lined the streets of Jerusalem to acclaim Jesus the Nazarene? Were they shouting “Hosanna! Hosanna!” (Save us! Save us!) because they thought Jesus was about to die and by his sacrificial death open the gates of heaven closed since Adam’s sin by a petulant God? Of course not. They were shouting for Jesus to save them from the Romans. They looked to him to play a key role in the Great Rebellion everyone knew about to take place against the hated Roman occupiers.

And what do you suppose was on Jesus’ mind? He was probably intending to take part in the rebellion just mentioned. It had been plotted by the Jews’ Zealot insurgency. Jesus words at the “Last Supper” show his anticipation that the events planned for Jerusalem might cause God’s Kingdom to dawn that very weekend.

At least Jesus’ Passover words show that something big was brewing for him – something on a par with the liberation from Egypt that had occurred more than 1000 years earlier. So over bread and wine he speaks of a “new covenant” to replace the old one the rebel Moses had mediated from Yahweh. After spending three years preaching about it, God’s Reign seemed so immediate to Jesus that he evidently thought it might dawn even before their next meal. He says “I will not drink wine with you again before the kingdom comes.”

So Jesus issues new and mysterious tactical orders. The advocate of simple living says “Whereas once I sent you out without money or a change of clothes, I’m telling you now to fill your wallet and pack a suitcase.” The non-violent one tells his friends to arm themselves. The courageous teacher of “the Twelve” warns darkly about intrigue, betrayal and denial by members of his innermost circle. Anticipation of all that causes such stress that Jesus eventually sweats blood over it.

Clearly Jesus had his differences with the Zealots. They were nationalists; he was inter-nationalist who was open to gentiles. The Zealots were violent; Jesus was not. And yet the Zealots and Jesus came together on their abhorrence of Roman presence in the Holy Land. They found common ground on the issues of debt forgiveness, non-payment of taxes to the occupiers, and of land reform. Within Jesus’ inner circle there was at least one Zealot (Simon). Indications might also implicate Peter, Judas, James, and John. And Jesus’ friends were armed when he is arrested. Whoever cut off the right ear of the high priest’s servant was used to wielding a sword – perhaps as a “sicarius” (the violent wing of the Zealots who specialized in knifing Roman soldiers).

But we’re getting ahead of our story. . . Following his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, Jesus soon found himself and his disciples inside the temple participating in what we’d call a “direct action” protest. They were demonstrating against the collaborative role the temple and its priesthood were fulfilling on behalf of the Romans.

As collaborators, the temple priests were serving a foreign god within the temple precincts. For Jesus that delegitimized the entire system. So, as John Dominic Crossan puts it, Jesus’ direct action was not so much a “cleansing” of the temple as the symbolic destruction of an institution that had completely lost its way.
It was this demonstration that represented the immediate cause of Jesus’ arrest and execution described so poignantly in today’s long gospel reading.

Following the temple demonstration, Jesus and his disciples became “wanted” men (Lk. 19:47). At first Jesus’ popularity affords him protection from the authorities (19:47-48). The people constantly surround him eager to hear Jesus’ words denouncing their treasonous “leaders” (20:9-19), about the issue of Roman taxation (20:20-25), the destruction of the temple (21:1-6), the coming war (21:20-24) and the imminence of God’s Kingdom (21:29-33). By night Jesus and his friends repair to their Garden of Olives hideout (21:37).

Eventually however, Jesus has to go underground. On Passover eve he sends out Peter and John to arrange for a safe-house to celebrate the feast I described earlier. The two disciples are to locate the “upper room.” They do so by exchanging a set of secret signs and passwords with a local comrade.

Then comes Jesus’ arrest. Judas has betrayed Jesus to collect the reward on Jesus’ head – 30 pieces of silver. The arrest is followed by a series of “trials” before the Jewish Council (the Sanhedrin), before Pilate and Herod. Eventually, Jesus is brought back to Pilate. There he’s tortured, condemned and executed between two other insurgents.

The trials point up an interesting and important difference between the Jesus of history and the political project of the author of Luke’s Gospel. In the past, we’ve been told the real charge against Jesus was blasphemy; the Jewish authorities were offended because Jesus claimed to be God. However, under Roman law, the Jewish leaders lacked authority to execute criminals. So they were forced to trump up political charges and involve the Romans who alone had the power to inflict capital punishment.

Clearly, however, this was not the case. As we saw last week with the woman taken in adultery, the Jews had the authority to execute people for religious crimes such as adultery or (in Jesus’ case, blasphemy). If Jesus had committed blasphemy, they could have stoned him using the Jewish form of execution.

Instead, Luke presents Jesus as hauled off to Pilate. And completely out-of-character, and after the presentation of clear-cut evidence that the Nazarene rabbi was “stirring up the people,” and despite Jesus’ own admission to crimes against the state (claiming to be a rival king), Pilate insists three times that the carpenter is innocent of capital crime. Such tolerance of rebellion contradicts what we know of Pilate as described for example by the Jewish historian Josephus.

Contradicting all of this as well, Crossan insists that Pilate had standing orders to execute anyone associated with lower class rebellion during the extremely volatile Passover festivities. In other words, there would have been no drawn-out trial.

What’s going on here? Two things.

First of all, like everyone else, Luke knew that Jesus had been crucified by the Romans. That was an inconvenient truth for Luke’s audience who around the year 85 CE (when Luke was writing) was desperately trying to reconcile with the Roman Empire which lumped the emerging Christian community with the Jews whom the Romans despised.

Luke’s account represents an attempt to create distance between Christians and Jews. So he creates an account that exonerates Pilate (and the Romans) from guilt for Jesus’ execution. Simultaneously, he lays the burden of blame for Jesus’ execution at the doorstep of Jewish authorities.

In this way, Luke made overtures of friendship towards Rome. He wasn’t worried about the Jews, since by the year 70 the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem and its temple along with more than a million of its inhabitants. After 70 Jewish Christians no longer represented the important factor they once were. Their leadership had been decapitated with the destruction of Jerusalem.

Relatedly, Jesus’ crucifixion would have meant that Rome perceived him as a rebel against the Empire. Luke is anxious to make the case that such perception was false. Rome had nothing to fear from Christians.
As we have seen in today’s readings, that assurance itself was untrue. It domesticated the Jesus of history who shines through even in Luke’s account when it is viewed contextually. That’s the vision we’ve been attempting grasp in the Historical Jesus Seminar.

And so what?

Well, if you wonder why Christians have lost their edge . . . if you wonder why they so easily succumb to empires (Roman, Nazi, U.S.) you’ve got your answer. It all starts here – in the gospels themselves – with the great cover-up of the rebel Jesus.

And if you wonder where the West’s and Hitler’s anti-Semitism came from . . .

Jesus’ Message to Angry White Christians: Join the Party! (Sunday Homily)

Readings for 4th Sunday of Lent: Jos. 5:9A, 10-12; Ps. 34:2-7; 2 Cor. 5: 17-21; Lk. 15: 1-3, 11-32 http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031013-fourth-sunday-of-lent.cfm

There’s a lot of anger in our culture these days, isn’t there? And a lot of anger among Christians. . . . That was apparent in the last elections – and really in the politics of the last 35 years or so. Over that period, Catholic and Evangelical fundamentalists (especially men) have identified more and more closely with conservative politics. That’s because conservative politicians have presented themselves as upholding what they take to be Christian values.

In the name of those values, they and their constituents find themselves resentful of the social advancement of African Americans, women, gays, welfare recipients, and undocumented immigrants. Such groups are seen as threatening Christian values with their alleged disregard of white middle class values around families, sexuality, work, and legality.

This morning’s gospel “Parable of the Prodigal Son” addresses resentment of that kind. It is one of the most beautiful and well-known stories in World Literature. However, standard readings of the parable domesticate it. They turn the parable into an allegory and in so doing rob it of the cutting edge which makes it relevant to our age of Angry White Christians. Please think about that with me.

Standard readings of “The Prodigal Son” make it a thinly veiled allegory about God and us. God is the father in the story, non-judgmental, full of compassion, willing to overlook faults and sins. Meanwhile, each of us is the wayward son who temporarily wanders away from home only to return after realizing the emptiness of life without God. The older brother represents the few who have never wandered, but who are judgmental towards those who have.

Such reading never fails to touch our hearts and fill us with hope, since the story presents such a loving image of God so different from the threatening Judge of traditional Christian preaching. And besides, since most of us identify with the prodigal rather than with the older brother, we’re drawn to the image of a God who seems more loving towards the sinner than towards the saint.

Though beautiful and inspiring, such allegorical reading distorts Jesus’ message, because it makes us comfortable rather than shaking us up. At least that’s what modern scripture scholarship tells us. Those studies remind us that Jesus’ stories were parables not allegories. Allegories, of course, are general tales in which each character stands for something else.

Parables on the other hand are very particular rather than being general stories about the human condition. Unlike allegories, they’re not about human beings in general – everywoman and everyman. Instead, parables are addressed to particular people – to make them uncomfortable with their preconceptions and cause them to think more deeply about the central focus of Jesus’ teaching, the Kingdom of God. In the gospels, Jesus’ parables are usually aimed at his opponents who ask him questions with an eye to trapping or discrediting him. Jesus’ parables turn the tables on his opponents and call them to repentance.

That’s the case with the “Parable of the Prodigal Son.” It contrasts two very particular historical groups absolutely central to the teaching career of Jesus of Nazareth. On the one hand, there is Jesus’ inner circle, “tax collectors and sinners.” These including sex workers, lepers, beggars, poor peasants, fishermen, shepherds, day-laborers, insurgents, and non-Jews, all of whom were especially receptive to Jesus’ teaching. On the other there are the Pharisees and Scribes. They along with the rabbis and temple priesthood were responsible for safeguarding the purity of the Jewish religion. They were Jesus’ antagonists.

Today’s gospel tells us that the sinners were “coming near to Jesus and listening to him.” For their part the Pharisees and Scribes stood afar and were observing Jesus’ interaction with the unwashed and shaking their heads in disapproval. They were “grumbling,” the gospel says, and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” That’s a key point in the reading – Jesus was eating with the hungry, poor, and unclean.

The gospel goes on, “So he told them this parable” – the parable of the prodigal son. In other words, the parable was addressed to the Pharisees and Scribes. And the story not about God and humans in general. It’s simply about a father and two sons and the way things work in the Kingdom of God, which (to repeat) was consistently the focus of Jesus’ preaching.

According to Jesus, that New Order will be a Great Party to which everyone is invited. The party will go on and on. There will be laughter, singing and dancing and the wine will never run out. The “fatted calf” will be slaughtered and there will be an overabundance of food. What fun!

Jesus was anticipating that order by practicing table fellowship with sinners and outcasts. At the kingdom’s banquet, the sinners gathered around Jesus in this morning’s gospel will be the first to accept the invitation. And though the Scribes and Pharisees are invited as well, they freely choose to exclude themselves. Like the older brother, they are “angry and refuse to go in.”

What I’m saying is that the lesson of today’s gospel (read as a parable rather than an allegory) is: Join the Party! Anticipate the New Order of the Kingdom in the here and now. Follow Jesus’ example, sit down with the unwashed, poor and despised. After all, the kingdom of God belongs to them – and to anyone (even the priests, scribes, rabbis, Pharisees, and any of us) who can overcome our reluctance to descend to Jesus’ level and to that of the kind of people he counted as his special friends.

What can that possible mean for us today? First of all it means don’t allegorize Jesus’ parables. It’s easy to understand how parables were turned into allegories as time passed. After all, Christians found themselves distanced further and further from the historical circumstances of Jesus in Galilee. They were looking for meaning and forgot who the scribes and Pharisees were. They forgot how those religious leaders despised the Great Unwashed. As well, with growing emphasis on heaven, Christians gradually lost capacity to recall the here and now nature of God’s Kingdom as envisioned by Jesus. They eventually came to identify it completely with the afterlife.

Additionally, there is no denying the truth to be found in allegorizing a parable like the Prodigal Son. Even according to the historical Jesus, God is good, forgiving, compassionate and non-judgmental. We are wayward people indeed. And like a loving father, God does receive us back no matter how far afield we may have gone. Nonetheless such allegorizing distorts the message of the historical Jesus which, as always, centralizes the Kingdom of God, and not the general human condition.

However, if we keep Jesus’ original meaning in mind, we’ll more likely see “the Prodigal Son” as a call to change our attitudes towards the second and third class citizens of our culture. That’s a hard message for most middle-to-upper class white people to hear. Like the culture of the professionally religious of Jesus’ day, our own despises those with whom Jesus ate and drank. In fact, it teaches us to dislike people like Jesus himself. Our culture sees those in Jesus’ class as lazy, dishonest, and undeserving.

So rather than making us feel more comfortable, today’s gospel should have the same effect Jesus’ parables in general were intended to have. It should make us squirm just as Jesus’ original words must have embarrassed the scribes and Pharisees.

But Jesus’ parable shouldn’t just embarrass us. His words should be hopeful too. Like the father in the parable, he’s telling us, his self-righteous sons and daughters, “We’re having a party. Why don’t you join us? Come in and share what you have, adopt God’s political program which creates a world with room for everyone – even the undeserving.”

In other words, it’s not God who excludes us from the Kingdom’s feast. It’s our own prejudice and choice.

Jesus’ Case for Non-Violent Resistance to Rome (Sunday Homily)

Readings for 3rd Sunday of Lent: Ex. 3:1-8A, 13-15; Ps. 103: 1-4, 6-8, 11; I Cor. 10:1-6, 10-12; Lk. 13: 1-9 http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030313-third-sunday-lent.cfm

I’m currently teaching a little Lenten seminar on the historical Jesus. Its central emphasis explores the context of Jesus life and words. The idea is that understanding that context will help us better interpret the gospel readings we encounter in church each Sunday. Our goal is to get closer to the meaning intended by the Four Evangelists and beyond that by the historical Jesus who stands behind the evangelists’ interpretations of the carpenter from Nazareth.

We’ve discovered that one of the criteria for identifying the authentic words and deeds of Jesus is the unconventionality of Jesus’ teaching. By all the accounts we find in the gospels, Jesus regularly scandalized and angered his straight-laced listeners – especially the professional rabbis, priests and scribes. So anything in the gospels that smacks of the scandalous has a point in its favor regarding the authenticity that concerns our seminar. By the same token, expressions of conventional wisdom are doubtfully authentic for that very reason.

With this in mind, there are at least two ways of interpreting today’s gospel reading from Luke. The more or less standard reading boils down to conventional wisdom. It’s what we usually hear from the pulpit. The other interpretation is truer to Jesus’ context. The difference between the two interpretations illustrates what we’re about in the seminar I mentioned. Contrasting the understandings also uncovers a strong challenge otherwise concealed in this more contextualized reading.

Before we get to that, consider the standard interpretation of this text. Jesus is asked about “the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.” Evidently, Roman soldiers had surprised some Galilean insurgents while the rebels were engaged in worship. The soldiers had slaughtered the men then and there. Jesus asks “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way because they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?” Then he answers his own question, “By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”

Jesus continues his questioning. He asks,

“Or those eighteen people who were killed
when the tower at Siloam fell on them—
do you think they were more guilty
than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?
By no means!
But I tell you, if you do not repent,
you will all perish as they did!”

Here interpreters unfamiliar with the historical context in question usually understand Jesus as referring to a random accident that was well-known in his time. A tower had fallen by chance and killed some innocents. It raised the familiar question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

In both cases, Jesus’ answer seems to be: bad things happen to good people because the people aren’t really good. The insurgents were guilty and deserved what they got. The same is true about the apparently innocent bystanders killed by the tower’s freak accident. Even more, Jesus seems to be saying, everyone is guilty and needs to repent or all will perish in the same way. “Repentance” is usually understood as more faithful observance of the 10 Commandments – especially those having to do with sex.

There are obvious problems with this interpretation. To begin with, the “wisdom” attributed to Jesus is nothing if not “conventional.” That in itself distances the explanation from the decidedly unconventional historical Jesus. Secondly, the standard interpretation ignores the political nature of this passage. It places in the same category of “acts of God” the accidental collapse of a tower on the one hand and the murder of Jewish patriots on the other. This equivalency has Jesus more or less endorsing Pilate as the agent of God’s punishment for the sins of the Galileans in question. Such endorsement and lack of political nuance is hard to imagine coming from the mouth of a Galilean Jew of the 1st century.

An explanation more faithful to Jesus’ context takes the topic of today’s readings to be violence, counter-violence and the need for non-violent resistance. According to this reading, Jesus’ words are not taken as an abstract statement about bad things happening to good people. His pronouncement doesn’t equate Pilate’s murder of innocents with the accidental collapse of a building. Instead the two incidents are seen as mirror images of each other. Together they warn about the cycle of violence Jesus sees as destroying his people. This approach contextualizes Jesus’ words and takes seriously the political intent of the news item shared with Jesus at the very outset. Luke tells us,

“Some people told Jesus about the Galileans
whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.”

No doubt, this was not news to Jesus. Everyone in Galilee must have been talking about it. Some Galileans – people from Jesus’ own province – had been slaughtered by Roman soldiers while offering sacrifice. The opening words of today’s gospel were not meant to communicate news but to complain about the Roman occupiers. Those introducing the topic were looking for sympathy and agreement. Jesus does not disappoint.

Pilate, of course, would have claimed that his victims were insurgents against the Roman occupation; they were “guilty” as terrorists, he would have said. That was his official line. Jesus says, “Don’t believe it” – as if his audience were tempted to believe Roman lies. “Do you think they were guilty?” Jesus asks. “By no means,” he answers.

Here Jesus is agreeing with his Galilean compatriots. If the ones Pilate killed were terrorists, he says, so are all Galileans; we’re all guilty in Pilate’s eyes. None of us wants the Romans here, Jesus implies. After all, it wasn’t the Galileans who threw the first stone; it was Pilate and the Roman soldiers who did so by invading Israel’s sovereign territory.

But then Jesus suddenly takes another tack. He connects Pilate’s butchery with another headline of his day – an act of counter-violence taken by the “Zealot” forces Pilate was attempting to punish. (Zealots were the revolutionary force committed to ousting the Roman occupiers from Palestine.) Pilate’s action, Jesus suggests, started the cycle of violence that evoked a disaster at Siloam at a spot near the Fountain of Ezekias. Siloam was the location of a small arsenal, where the Romans kept their swords, shields, battering rams and other weapons.

According to Maria and Ignacio Lopez-Vigil, a group of Zealot insurgents had tried to dig a tunnel up to the tower with hopes of seizing the weapons and turning them against the Romans. But the tower’s foundation was already in a state of decay, and the tunnel caused the entire construction to suddenly collapse. The falling tower claimed the lives of several Galilean families who had built their houses near the arsenal.

Jesus point: Pilate is certainly a bloodthirsty man. None of us want him or his armies on our soil. However, those who return his violence with their own are bloodthirsty too. And if we don’t reform our ways we’ll all drown in a bloody deluge. Or as Jesus put it, “I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”

And time is running short, he adds with his parable about a fig tree. The bloody deluge has been building for at least three years. We have maybe another twelve months before the chickens of the deadly cycle of violence come home to roost. Without repentance, without replacing violent resistance to Roman butchery with non-violent tactics, we’ll all be cut down like a barren fig tree. (Later on, remember, Jesus himself demonstrates the kind of non-violent direct action he had in mind, with his “cleansing” of Jerusalem’s temple.)

Jesus’ prediction of bloodbath, of course, eventually comes true, but not as soon as he thought. The Romans would defeat the Zealot uprising in the year 70, and definitively squash all Jewish rebellion in 132. Jesus was right however about the extent of the slaughter. It was horrific resulting in the deaths of more than a million Jews. Such disaster is inevitable, Jesus teaches for all who “live by the sword.”

What does all of this say to us today? The message is quite relevant. It says first of all that we must be careful about domesticating Jesus and the gospel. The standard interpretation of this passage has the effect of making us comfortable with empire as somehow the instrument of God. It is not. Instead, empire represents the systematized oppression of the poor and defenseless by the rich and powerful. That was true of Rome; it’s true of U.S. empire today. We’re still killing insurgents in their churches and mosques.

Secondly, this passage calls us to non-violence and warns us about where the cycle of violence will inevitably lead. Sandy Hook provides a window into the world created by the worship of guns. Another window is provided by Afghanistan and Iraq, Vietnam, Hiroshima, the Cold War, and the general impoverishment of our country and world brought on by so-called “defense” spending. All of it has us drowning in a deluge of blood. And it promises to get worse and eventually destroy us all. How much time do we have before our chickens come home to roost – three years, one year. . .?

Christians represent about 30% of the world’s inhabitants. There are more than 2 billion of us. Imagine the world we’d create if we insisted on following the call to non-violence represented by Jesus’ words in this morning’s gospel!