Luke 11:9-13
“So I tell you, ask – it’ll be given to you; seek – you’ll find; knock – it’ll be opened for you. Rest assured: everyone who asks receives; everyone who seeks finds; and for the one who knocks it is opened.”
This series of aphorisms is among the best known and – along with the Beattitudes – most basic of Christian affirmations. It comes at the end of Luke’s series on prayer. However, as we have seen, this particular selection of sayings and the interpretation was purely Luke’s. Scholars theorize that rather than being a promise of God’s answer to persistent prayer, Jesus’s directive to ask, seek, and knock was an assurance that those who take up the same kind of itinerant life Jesus led can expect hospitality wherever they look for it, or ask for it. Even a knock on the door at midnight would not be ignored.
Luke’s point was that God will provide whatever is asked, will reveal whatever is sought, and will open the way to whomever knocks on God’s door. He has Jesus expand on this by comparing God’s answer to prayer with giving good gifts to one’s own children. But Luke’s Jesus here abandons the prayer for daily provision of bread, which he started with. Instead of food, “the heavenly Father will give holy spirit to those who ask him.” Later, in the Gospel of John, the emphasis shifted from God to Jesus. John’s Jesus says “whatever you ask in my name will be granted to you” (John 14:13-14; 15:7, 16; 16:23). Ultimately, the saying morphed into the icon from Revelation 3:20, in which the Christ declares to the Church in Laodicea: “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.”
The 1st Century transformation in the meaning of Jesus’s words is like the viral transmutation of political speech in the 21st Century news cycle. In less than a week in May 2010, the meaning of the reported words of a candidate for the United States Senate evolved from idealistic, libertarian theory to racist bigotry. In less than 100 years from Jesus’s death, the expectation of hospitable acceptance for wandering wisdom teachers became justification for holy war.
Jesus’s original words to ask, seek, knock, and trust in the custom of hospitality have become a magic spell. The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted in 2007 by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, found that 60% pray daily, although the content of the prayers was not broken down. While no one has done a survey of the percentage of people in the general population who routinely pray for parking spaces and find them, the efficacy of intercessory prayer has been studied frequently. Unfortunately, the results are inclusive at best. One study that looked at complications arising after coronary surgery for patients receiving intercessory prayer versus patients who were not prayed for found a slight advantage in terms of fewer complications for those who did NOT receive intercessory prayer.
With such murky findings, the fact that belief in the magic power of prayer persists must be attributed to the mysterious way human consciousness has developed. Perhaps we are hard-wired for hope in hopeless situations. Or perhaps something else is going on.
Jesus was not originally talking about the answer to prayer, as Luke and the tradition like to think. Jesus was invoking the ancient rule of hospitality for itinerant travelers. Scholars are fairly certain that Jesus depended on that rule for his and his disciples’ support as they traveled from village to village throughout the region of Galilee. He had an expectation, based on complete trust in God’s imperial rule, that he would find a hospitable response. However, his followers did modify their own expectations in the interest of practicality. As all three synoptic writers report, if the disciples Jesus sent out did not find a welcome, the solution was to “shake the dust from your feet” (Mark 6:11; Matthew 10:14; Luke 9:5). Matthew’s Jesus adds, “I swear to you, the land of Sodom and Gomorrah will be better off at the judgment than that city [which does not welcome you].” Sodom and Gomorrah, you may recall, was the Old Testament poster child for the total breakdown of hospitality.
Jesus himself seems to have experienced a level of trust in God’s realm that most humans find difficult or impossible except in rare instances. If we take the words attributed to him in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount as his own, Jesus was able to live within the same kind of seamless realm experienced by the birds and the lilies of the field (Matthew 6:26). In that realm, there is no boundary between creator and creation, God and humanity, or between the worlds of life and death, spirit and flesh. For most of us, this experience manifests as a quality of life where everything works without effort. It’s a string of lucky circumstances; serendipity; everything falls into place. Miraculous healing can happen there. I call it “being in the zone.”
The difficulty of describing that kind of experience – in any language – is clearly illustrated by what has happened to Jesus’s original teachings over time. It is not a matter of simply saying the name of Jesus, or petitioning God to intervene and change the physical laws of the universe, even in company with two or three others. The key, prosaic as it may be, seems to be the willingness to ride the horse in the direction it is going. In other words, to ask, seek, and knock with the expectation of receiving, finding, and opening the way means to align oneself with the way things are. In Buddhist terms, surrender. That does not mean giving up. It means total acceptance of whatever is happening now, with no concern about what any particular outcome may be. While clear intent about the desired result may important, the key is not to care.
The idea of “not caring” drives most of us crazy. How can we “not care” about our mother dying, or our friend with terminal cancer, or physical pain of any kind, or about torture victims, or the poor, or any of the other kinds of suffering produced by disaster, whether from natural or human causes? Those are the tough questions. Entire books have been written about the answers. Tough or not, the key to the end of suffering, the power that drives healing, is to accept what is, right now. That means a radical indifference to the nature of the ultimate resolution. Mother may die; the cancer may win; the pain may only be alleviated with heavy doses of morphine; the torture may not end; poverty may continue to condemn the rich; disasters – of natural or human cause – may happen.
Jesus calls us into that radical indifference through trust. It is a latter-day itinerancy, in which we let go of conventional ideas, unnecessary possessions, market demands, and even life itself. We cannot answer that call so long as we see ourselves as the victim of our life circumstances, trapped in the normalcy of economic and political systems, or determined by the lottery of our biological heredity. Nor can we answer that call if we resist or resent what happens to us, or if we ignore the realities of the world in which we live. Tradition tells us that Jesus himself fell out of the zone at the horrifying end of his life.
Even so, the message of Christianity is that even death on a cross does not negate the truth of living in the zone – the realm of God – where we ask, seek, knock and find whatever we need for abundant life. But you can’t just point your magic wand and scream “Aguamenti!” Before the water comes from the rock, or the door opens to your knock, you have to trust the process.
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Thursday, May 27, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Hospitality 2010
Luke 11:5-8
The NRSV follows Luke’s apparent intention and puts under the heading of “The Lord’s Prayer” Luke’s anecdote of the friend at midnight along with the “Ask, seek, knock” and “Good gifts” aphorisms. Conventionally, these passages have been considered to be a treatise on prayer. If you pray as Jesus did, God will provide, just as you would if your next-door neighbor came to you to borrow a cup of sugar at some inconvenient time. You might resent the timing, but you would nevertheless provide the sugar out of pious duty. If you pray as Jesus did, God will answer, just as you would if your own child asked for an egg. You would not substitute a scorpion.
But suppose this series of sayings was not a related sequence at all? Taken as an independent quotation, out of Luke’s context, we can readily see that the “friend at midnight” was not about how God answers prayer; it was about hospitality. The 21st Century world has largely forgotten that “hospitality” was a matter of life and death to 1st Century people. Welcoming the stranger into your tribal enclave for a night, or until the stand storm ended was a matter of honor on both sides. The host asked no questions about whether the stranger was an innocent traveler or a fugitive from law. The guest did not rob or otherwise violate the sanctity of the host. This code assured some degree of safety for everyone in a dangerous world.
In addition, 1st Century Palestine was an “honor/shame” culture. In Luke’s story, the host taken by surprise by unexpected guests may have run the risk of “shame” for not being able to properly care for them, but far more likely is the “shame” the sleepy neighbor would have experienced if he had not responded. He and his family would have been socially ostracized. The Jesus Seminar scholars point out that the original Greek that Luke used in the last sentence of the story can be translated either as “you will get up and give the other whatever is needed because you’d be ashamed not to;” or “because the other is not ashamed to ask.” (The Five Gospels, p. 327-328). The surprised neighbor is not ashamed to ask for help in supplying hospitality to the unexpected guests.
We cannot know why Luke did what he did with this snippet of oral tradition. It seems to fit better with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Luke interprets the parable in terms of the law that says “love your neighbor as yourself.” A discussion about the unexpected need to help a neighbor seems to be a further illustration of the reliance of neighbors upon one another. The Good Samaritan unexpectedly extends hospitality beyond what a reluctant neighbor might be shamed into offering.
Citizens of these United States pride ourselves on the fact that we can rely on our neighbors for help in time of need. In fact, we are so proud of that fact that 20% of us think the government should have nothing to do with providing disaster relief , health care, education, or social security. But as the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast learned after Hurricane Katrina, relying on our neighbors is nothing more than a romantic notion. The hurricane happened in 2005. Assistance in recovery was not forthcoming from the federal government. Five years later, volunteer efforts on the part of corporations and non-profits have not been able to complete the task.
But what best illustrates the 21st Century failure to live up to Jesus’s 1st Century expectation of hospitality in Luke 11:5-9 is our treatment of immigrants – specifically, people who risk their lives to cross the Mexico-U.S. border. Our friends on the Christian Right insist that we are a Christian nation, yet we offer travelers nothing and lock our doors against them. We refuse to allow them food, clothing, shelter, education, and medical care. Even when the worst of humanitarian violations force the disintegration of “undocumented” immigrant families, we are unashamed.
The Elves who put together the Revised Common Lectionary do not get to Luke’s series on prayer until late July this year (Proper 12, Year C). The tradition has followed Luke’s lead and ignored the more likely (and troublesome) subject of hospitality. The accompanying Old Testament RCL readings are Hosea 1:2-10 and Genesis 18:20-32. The prophet Hosea is condemning the land and people of Israel for forsaking God. The story in Genesis is the preamble to the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Both readings support the idea of God’s judgment and God’s answer to persistent prayer. When God threatens to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham convinces God to spare the cities for the sake of 10 righteous men. What is never read if the Revised Common Lectionary is followed is Genesis 19:1-29. But it is the full story of what happened to Lot in Sodom that goes to the heart of Jesus’s teaching about the friend at midnight.
The two angels sent by God to search out 10 righteous men arrive in Sodom in the evening. Lot sees them, and greets them with respect, and invites them into his house to wash their feet and spend the night. The angels decline, saying they will be fine spending the night in the village square. But Lot insists. They come into his house, and Lot prepares a feast. But then, before they retire for the night, the men of the city surround Lot’s house and demand that he throw the guests out so that the men can “know them.” The intent of the village men is clear. When Lot reminds them that the visitors have “come under the shelter of my roof” and offers them his daughters instead, the men of the village are outraged. But they are not outraged because of the offer of the daughters. That is a historical-cultural artifact that turns the story into a feminist “text of terror,” and can easily distract 21st century minds from the point. The men of Sodom are outraged because “this fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge!” In other words, the immigrant has the nerve to shame the citizens for their failure to offer safe haven to the strangers. (If this were an academic paper, the next comment would be in a footnote: One has to wonder how the story of the destruction of Sodom became so well known, given that the Elves have skipped it altogether for purposes of Sunday morning preaching at least as long as the Common Lectionary has been in use. Surely such a story of violence and unexplained custom is hardly suitable for children's Sunday School lessons.)
The ancient rule of hospitality was broken at the risk not only of shame, but of one’s own future security. In a world dependent upon the most primitive of communications, once the word was out that your tribal lands or your household did not honor the rule, you could find yourself denied assistance or shelter. The angels warn Lot that because of this sin – this failure of the men of Sodom to follow the most basic rule for human survival – God is going to destroy the city. Lot had better leave with the angels and bring along sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone else that belongs to him.
Post-modern minds have drifted away from hospitality as an expression of distributive justice-compassion, where the stranger is given shelter – even feasted and entertained – for a night, with no questions asked. The post-modern form of the failure to honor the rule of hospitality plays out on a daily basis along the United States/Mexico border. It can also be clearly seen in the wall the Israelis constructed along the West Bank of the Jordan.
The ancient rule of hospitality still stands. God’s judgment – or the consequences for acting unjustly – does not apply only to people perceived as enemies. Throughout the Bible, God is just as likely to favor the enemy and condemn God’s own people because God cares only about justice-compassion. See, e.g., The Healing of Naaman, 2 Kings 5. We rightly reject the idea that God’s judgment for violating hospitality or ignoring God’s demand for justice takes the form of volcanos, hurricanes, or plagues. But we are mistaken if we think there is no judgment. God’s judgment in a post-modern world is expressed in political and environmental consequences. Politically, we now have the so-called Arizona “papers” law, which requires that Hispanics in Arizona now must carry proof of U.S. citizenship at all times or run the risk of arrest and deportation. Some may think that is no problem for citizens with blue eyes and blond hair. The implications of such naivety for human rights should be clear.
Environmentally, adding insult to injury in the Gulf of Mexico, now comes the mother of all oil leaks whose magnitude defies description. Again, government assistance is nowhere to be found; corporations are pointing fingers at one another; and class-action trial lawyers are on the prowl as BP offers pre-emptive $5,000 settlements to devastated families and businesses. Apparently all we can muster for our neighbors are internet campaigns to collect used pantyhose and dog hair.
BLOG ARCHIVE
GAIA RISING WEBSITE
The NRSV follows Luke’s apparent intention and puts under the heading of “The Lord’s Prayer” Luke’s anecdote of the friend at midnight along with the “Ask, seek, knock” and “Good gifts” aphorisms. Conventionally, these passages have been considered to be a treatise on prayer. If you pray as Jesus did, God will provide, just as you would if your next-door neighbor came to you to borrow a cup of sugar at some inconvenient time. You might resent the timing, but you would nevertheless provide the sugar out of pious duty. If you pray as Jesus did, God will answer, just as you would if your own child asked for an egg. You would not substitute a scorpion.
But suppose this series of sayings was not a related sequence at all? Taken as an independent quotation, out of Luke’s context, we can readily see that the “friend at midnight” was not about how God answers prayer; it was about hospitality. The 21st Century world has largely forgotten that “hospitality” was a matter of life and death to 1st Century people. Welcoming the stranger into your tribal enclave for a night, or until the stand storm ended was a matter of honor on both sides. The host asked no questions about whether the stranger was an innocent traveler or a fugitive from law. The guest did not rob or otherwise violate the sanctity of the host. This code assured some degree of safety for everyone in a dangerous world.
In addition, 1st Century Palestine was an “honor/shame” culture. In Luke’s story, the host taken by surprise by unexpected guests may have run the risk of “shame” for not being able to properly care for them, but far more likely is the “shame” the sleepy neighbor would have experienced if he had not responded. He and his family would have been socially ostracized. The Jesus Seminar scholars point out that the original Greek that Luke used in the last sentence of the story can be translated either as “you will get up and give the other whatever is needed because you’d be ashamed not to;” or “because the other is not ashamed to ask.” (The Five Gospels, p. 327-328). The surprised neighbor is not ashamed to ask for help in supplying hospitality to the unexpected guests.
We cannot know why Luke did what he did with this snippet of oral tradition. It seems to fit better with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Luke interprets the parable in terms of the law that says “love your neighbor as yourself.” A discussion about the unexpected need to help a neighbor seems to be a further illustration of the reliance of neighbors upon one another. The Good Samaritan unexpectedly extends hospitality beyond what a reluctant neighbor might be shamed into offering.
Citizens of these United States pride ourselves on the fact that we can rely on our neighbors for help in time of need. In fact, we are so proud of that fact that 20% of us think the government should have nothing to do with providing disaster relief , health care, education, or social security. But as the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast learned after Hurricane Katrina, relying on our neighbors is nothing more than a romantic notion. The hurricane happened in 2005. Assistance in recovery was not forthcoming from the federal government. Five years later, volunteer efforts on the part of corporations and non-profits have not been able to complete the task.
But what best illustrates the 21st Century failure to live up to Jesus’s 1st Century expectation of hospitality in Luke 11:5-9 is our treatment of immigrants – specifically, people who risk their lives to cross the Mexico-U.S. border. Our friends on the Christian Right insist that we are a Christian nation, yet we offer travelers nothing and lock our doors against them. We refuse to allow them food, clothing, shelter, education, and medical care. Even when the worst of humanitarian violations force the disintegration of “undocumented” immigrant families, we are unashamed.
The Elves who put together the Revised Common Lectionary do not get to Luke’s series on prayer until late July this year (Proper 12, Year C). The tradition has followed Luke’s lead and ignored the more likely (and troublesome) subject of hospitality. The accompanying Old Testament RCL readings are Hosea 1:2-10 and Genesis 18:20-32. The prophet Hosea is condemning the land and people of Israel for forsaking God. The story in Genesis is the preamble to the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Both readings support the idea of God’s judgment and God’s answer to persistent prayer. When God threatens to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham convinces God to spare the cities for the sake of 10 righteous men. What is never read if the Revised Common Lectionary is followed is Genesis 19:1-29. But it is the full story of what happened to Lot in Sodom that goes to the heart of Jesus’s teaching about the friend at midnight.
The two angels sent by God to search out 10 righteous men arrive in Sodom in the evening. Lot sees them, and greets them with respect, and invites them into his house to wash their feet and spend the night. The angels decline, saying they will be fine spending the night in the village square. But Lot insists. They come into his house, and Lot prepares a feast. But then, before they retire for the night, the men of the city surround Lot’s house and demand that he throw the guests out so that the men can “know them.” The intent of the village men is clear. When Lot reminds them that the visitors have “come under the shelter of my roof” and offers them his daughters instead, the men of the village are outraged. But they are not outraged because of the offer of the daughters. That is a historical-cultural artifact that turns the story into a feminist “text of terror,” and can easily distract 21st century minds from the point. The men of Sodom are outraged because “this fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge!” In other words, the immigrant has the nerve to shame the citizens for their failure to offer safe haven to the strangers. (If this were an academic paper, the next comment would be in a footnote: One has to wonder how the story of the destruction of Sodom became so well known, given that the Elves have skipped it altogether for purposes of Sunday morning preaching at least as long as the Common Lectionary has been in use. Surely such a story of violence and unexplained custom is hardly suitable for children's Sunday School lessons.)
The ancient rule of hospitality was broken at the risk not only of shame, but of one’s own future security. In a world dependent upon the most primitive of communications, once the word was out that your tribal lands or your household did not honor the rule, you could find yourself denied assistance or shelter. The angels warn Lot that because of this sin – this failure of the men of Sodom to follow the most basic rule for human survival – God is going to destroy the city. Lot had better leave with the angels and bring along sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone else that belongs to him.
Post-modern minds have drifted away from hospitality as an expression of distributive justice-compassion, where the stranger is given shelter – even feasted and entertained – for a night, with no questions asked. The post-modern form of the failure to honor the rule of hospitality plays out on a daily basis along the United States/Mexico border. It can also be clearly seen in the wall the Israelis constructed along the West Bank of the Jordan.
The ancient rule of hospitality still stands. God’s judgment – or the consequences for acting unjustly – does not apply only to people perceived as enemies. Throughout the Bible, God is just as likely to favor the enemy and condemn God’s own people because God cares only about justice-compassion. See, e.g., The Healing of Naaman, 2 Kings 5. We rightly reject the idea that God’s judgment for violating hospitality or ignoring God’s demand for justice takes the form of volcanos, hurricanes, or plagues. But we are mistaken if we think there is no judgment. God’s judgment in a post-modern world is expressed in political and environmental consequences. Politically, we now have the so-called Arizona “papers” law, which requires that Hispanics in Arizona now must carry proof of U.S. citizenship at all times or run the risk of arrest and deportation. Some may think that is no problem for citizens with blue eyes and blond hair. The implications of such naivety for human rights should be clear.
Environmentally, adding insult to injury in the Gulf of Mexico, now comes the mother of all oil leaks whose magnitude defies description. Again, government assistance is nowhere to be found; corporations are pointing fingers at one another; and class-action trial lawyers are on the prowl as BP offers pre-emptive $5,000 settlements to devastated families and businesses. Apparently all we can muster for our neighbors are internet campaigns to collect used pantyhose and dog hair.
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GAIA RISING WEBSITE
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Bread and Debt
Luke 11:1-4
The version of “the Lord’s prayer” in Luke is the one that is included in the Revised Common Lectionary. Matthew’s version is skipped. Perhaps it is skipped because Matthew’s version is closest to the “Our Father” that is prayed in nearly all Christian denominations. The Elves include Luke’s version in a series of readings for Proper 12 of Year C that appear to relate to how God answers prayer (Luke 11:5-13). As we shall see over the next two weeks, Luke’s parable about “the friend at midnight,” the “ask, seek, knock” aphorism, and the “bread/stone fish/snake” dichotomies have little if anything to do with Jesus’s original prayers about bread, debt, and adversity.
The NRSV translation of Luke’s form is:
The Jesus Seminar Scholars suggest that when verses from both Matthew and Luke are combined, the prayer that probably appeared in Q was:
What has been known as “the Lord’s prayer” for nearly two millennia was probably never prayed by Jesus in any form that appears, whether in Q, Matthew or Luke. Instead, the prayer consists of a collection of individual prayer fragments that may have been public prayers, or prayer-like aphorisms that Jesus said, on the order of “God forbid!” or “God only knows!” or “God’ll get you for that!” The intent was to nudge listeners into changing their attitudes, joining the Way, and ushering in the realm of God. In a 1998 essay published in The Fourth R, Jesus Seminar Fellow Hal Taussig discussed Jesus’s prayer in detail (“Behind and Before the Lord’s Prayer,” May-June 1998). One of Taussig’s more provocative statements is, “[T]hese prayers . . . were wise-cracking prayers which pushed those who said them to re-examine themselves.” I would also suggest that Jesus’s prayers were the opposite of petitions (desperate or trivial) to an interventionist god, and far removed from the pious mantra used to open 21st century church committee meetings or finish off the Sunday pastoral prayer.
The first phrase, “Daddy, your name be revered,” sounds shocking to 21st Century notions of holy propriety; for 1st Century Jews who were prohibited from speaking the name of God, it must have bordered on blasphemy. Next comes the request to “Impose your imperial rule.” That means God’s imperial rule, not Cesar’s. The next two phrases were seriously modified by Luke. First, Luke’s version asks for God to provide bread each day. The Q version – closer to what Jesus probably would have said – asks only for the bread needed for the day: today; now. But the kicker in the Q version is eliminated by Luke. The Q people prayed, “forgive our debts to the extent we forgive those in debt to us.” Luke says, “forgive us our sins because [for] we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” Luke’s pious community is off the hook. Finally, the last prayer fragment whines: “And please don’t subject us to test after test.”
To address deity as “Abba” – “Daddy” – presumes a partnership, not a hierarchical order of power. To then ask for forgiveness of debt to the extent that the one praying forgives debt owed presumes active participation, not passive acceptance of whatever “God’s will” might turn out to be. In other words, Jesus’s prayers are an illustration of the Covenant relationship demonstrated in the stories of the Jewish people throughout the Old Testament.
In the most recent edition of The Fourth R (Vol 23, No. 5, May-June 2010), Jack A. Hill explores the relationship of contemporary American culture with what he calls “the Divine Domain.” He lays out three aspects of a “culture of fear” in the United States: 1) fear of personal non-existence; 2) fear of diversity; and 3) fear of transformative innovation. He speaks of “evolutionary amnesia,” which is the root for a prevailing fear of death, and cuts us off from a realization of our commonality and profound relationship with the natural world. He relates two stories of people who survived shipwreck in the open sea because dolphins came to their rescue. He says, “we have forgotten what it feels like to greet the morning breeze as a friend, to be kept safe in the womb of the ocean, to be warmly regarded by the birds . . . .” These are experiences of what might be called “enchantment.” For a few years before the turn of the 21st Century, there was some discussion of the need for “re-enchantment” of corporate life. Perhaps even a reclaiming of the root meaning of the word “religion”: the realignment of human spirit with the divine realms, i.e., a return to Covenant. We must assume that is the kind of relationship Jesus had with God’s realm – God’s world. This relationship is reflected in his prayers.
This is not misty-eyed, romantic, “spirituality.” Jesus’s prayer suggests a non-violent alternative to oppression under the Roman empire. If one lives in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion, then there is no reason to be worried about having bread for the day. Forgiving debt means declining to participate in the normal economic systems. Finally, God does not need to test people who are already participating in the Kingdom. Mark’s story about Jesus and the Devil comes to mind (Mark 1:12-13).
Eckhart Tolle is a popular, contemporary “spiritual teacher.” He has written two books that are categorized by Amazon.com under “Health, Body, and Mind.” They combine a variety of western “Zen” or “Buddhism” and generalized Christian traditionalism. But the basic message both in The Power of Now and A New Earth is the quest for what Tich Nat Han calls mindfulness, and what these commentaries would call “Covenant,” and what Jack A. Hill described above as “Divine Domain.” Tolle writes:
This experience leaves no room or role for an interventionist “god” who is outside of ourselves and the world in which we live. The relationship is more intimate than even a concept like “Daddy” can reach. “Mama” may come closer. A petition for food or debt relief or forgiveness becomes meaningless in such a context, where there is no boundary between me and the divine. If there is no boundary, then there is no greater or lesser transformational power than my own. But while this hidden harmony, this sacred space, is a place to gather strength, it is not a place where I can hide. To live in that divine domain (as Hill describes it) requires mindful action. The struggle is always to find our way into that divine domain, or as Jesus put it, to find the treasure that is hidden in the field, or mixed like leaven into the flour. The joke is that we are already there – all we have to do is open our eyes and look and listen.
Jesus’s prayer makes that clear: God’s sacred space is holy, and that holy realm rules. We have what we need for now – indeed there is no other time than now. And there is no debt, so long as we do not hold debt ourselves. Finally, there is no demand for perfection, no trial, no test, unless – to stretch Tolle’s metaphor – we fail to see the forest because of the trees.
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The version of “the Lord’s prayer” in Luke is the one that is included in the Revised Common Lectionary. Matthew’s version is skipped. Perhaps it is skipped because Matthew’s version is closest to the “Our Father” that is prayed in nearly all Christian denominations. The Elves include Luke’s version in a series of readings for Proper 12 of Year C that appear to relate to how God answers prayer (Luke 11:5-13). As we shall see over the next two weeks, Luke’s parable about “the friend at midnight,” the “ask, seek, knock” aphorism, and the “bread/stone fish/snake” dichotomies have little if anything to do with Jesus’s original prayers about bread, debt, and adversity.
The NRSV translation of Luke’s form is:
Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.
The Jesus Seminar Scholars suggest that when verses from both Matthew and Luke are combined, the prayer that probably appeared in Q was:
Abba [Daddy], your name be revered. Impose your imperial rule. Provide us with the bread we need for the day; Forgive our debts to the extent we have forgiven those in debt to us. And please don’t subject us to test after test. The Five Gospels, p. 327.
What has been known as “the Lord’s prayer” for nearly two millennia was probably never prayed by Jesus in any form that appears, whether in Q, Matthew or Luke. Instead, the prayer consists of a collection of individual prayer fragments that may have been public prayers, or prayer-like aphorisms that Jesus said, on the order of “God forbid!” or “God only knows!” or “God’ll get you for that!” The intent was to nudge listeners into changing their attitudes, joining the Way, and ushering in the realm of God. In a 1998 essay published in The Fourth R, Jesus Seminar Fellow Hal Taussig discussed Jesus’s prayer in detail (“Behind and Before the Lord’s Prayer,” May-June 1998). One of Taussig’s more provocative statements is, “[T]hese prayers . . . were wise-cracking prayers which pushed those who said them to re-examine themselves.” I would also suggest that Jesus’s prayers were the opposite of petitions (desperate or trivial) to an interventionist god, and far removed from the pious mantra used to open 21st century church committee meetings or finish off the Sunday pastoral prayer.
The first phrase, “Daddy, your name be revered,” sounds shocking to 21st Century notions of holy propriety; for 1st Century Jews who were prohibited from speaking the name of God, it must have bordered on blasphemy. Next comes the request to “Impose your imperial rule.” That means God’s imperial rule, not Cesar’s. The next two phrases were seriously modified by Luke. First, Luke’s version asks for God to provide bread each day. The Q version – closer to what Jesus probably would have said – asks only for the bread needed for the day: today; now. But the kicker in the Q version is eliminated by Luke. The Q people prayed, “forgive our debts to the extent we forgive those in debt to us.” Luke says, “forgive us our sins because [for] we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” Luke’s pious community is off the hook. Finally, the last prayer fragment whines: “And please don’t subject us to test after test.”
To address deity as “Abba” – “Daddy” – presumes a partnership, not a hierarchical order of power. To then ask for forgiveness of debt to the extent that the one praying forgives debt owed presumes active participation, not passive acceptance of whatever “God’s will” might turn out to be. In other words, Jesus’s prayers are an illustration of the Covenant relationship demonstrated in the stories of the Jewish people throughout the Old Testament.
In the most recent edition of The Fourth R (Vol 23, No. 5, May-June 2010), Jack A. Hill explores the relationship of contemporary American culture with what he calls “the Divine Domain.” He lays out three aspects of a “culture of fear” in the United States: 1) fear of personal non-existence; 2) fear of diversity; and 3) fear of transformative innovation. He speaks of “evolutionary amnesia,” which is the root for a prevailing fear of death, and cuts us off from a realization of our commonality and profound relationship with the natural world. He relates two stories of people who survived shipwreck in the open sea because dolphins came to their rescue. He says, “we have forgotten what it feels like to greet the morning breeze as a friend, to be kept safe in the womb of the ocean, to be warmly regarded by the birds . . . .” These are experiences of what might be called “enchantment.” For a few years before the turn of the 21st Century, there was some discussion of the need for “re-enchantment” of corporate life. Perhaps even a reclaiming of the root meaning of the word “religion”: the realignment of human spirit with the divine realms, i.e., a return to Covenant. We must assume that is the kind of relationship Jesus had with God’s realm – God’s world. This relationship is reflected in his prayers.
This is not misty-eyed, romantic, “spirituality.” Jesus’s prayer suggests a non-violent alternative to oppression under the Roman empire. If one lives in God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion, then there is no reason to be worried about having bread for the day. Forgiving debt means declining to participate in the normal economic systems. Finally, God does not need to test people who are already participating in the Kingdom. Mark’s story about Jesus and the Devil comes to mind (Mark 1:12-13).
Eckhart Tolle is a popular, contemporary “spiritual teacher.” He has written two books that are categorized by Amazon.com under “Health, Body, and Mind.” They combine a variety of western “Zen” or “Buddhism” and generalized Christian traditionalism. But the basic message both in The Power of Now and A New Earth is the quest for what Tich Nat Han calls mindfulness, and what these commentaries would call “Covenant,” and what Jack A. Hill described above as “Divine Domain.” Tolle writes:
The mind is more comfortable in a landscaped park because it has been planned through thought: it has not grown organically. There is an order here that the mind can understand. In the forest, there is an incomprehensible order that to the mind looks like chaos. It is beyond the mental categories of good and bad. You cannot understand it through thought, but you can sense it when you let go of thought, become still and alert, and don’t try to understand or explain. Only then can you be aware of the sacredness of the forest. As soon as you sense the hidden harmony, that sacredness, you realize you are not separate from it, and when you realize that, you become a conscious participant in it. In this way, nature can help you become realigned with the wholeness of life. A New Earth (Penguin, 2006) p. 196.
This experience leaves no room or role for an interventionist “god” who is outside of ourselves and the world in which we live. The relationship is more intimate than even a concept like “Daddy” can reach. “Mama” may come closer. A petition for food or debt relief or forgiveness becomes meaningless in such a context, where there is no boundary between me and the divine. If there is no boundary, then there is no greater or lesser transformational power than my own. But while this hidden harmony, this sacred space, is a place to gather strength, it is not a place where I can hide. To live in that divine domain (as Hill describes it) requires mindful action. The struggle is always to find our way into that divine domain, or as Jesus put it, to find the treasure that is hidden in the field, or mixed like leaven into the flour. The joke is that we are already there – all we have to do is open our eyes and look and listen.
Jesus’s prayer makes that clear: God’s sacred space is holy, and that holy realm rules. We have what we need for now – indeed there is no other time than now. And there is no debt, so long as we do not hold debt ourselves. Finally, there is no demand for perfection, no trial, no test, unless – to stretch Tolle’s metaphor – we fail to see the forest because of the trees.
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Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Mary, Martha, and Zen
Luke 10:38-42; Amos 8:1-12; Genesis 18:1-10; Psalm 52; Psalm 15; Colossians 1:15-28
As with last week’s commentary on the parable of the good Samaritan, the Revised Common Lectionary does not get to Luke’s story of Mary and Martha until mid-July of this current Year C. However, the RCL does follow Luke’s sequence. It may be that Luke’s back-to-back scenes illustrate the grounding laws of Judaism: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength” (Deuteronomy 6 :4-5) and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). The parable of the Samaritan – according to Luke – is about loving your neighbor; the vignette with Mary and Martha – again according to Luke – is about loving God.
Because Luke made up the story of Mary and Martha out of whole cloth, we can do with it whatever we wish. Jesus never had this encounter, never hinted that women disciples are better (or worse) than women supporters or servants of his ministry. We might wonder, briefly, if Luke created this story in order to address an issue in his community. As John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg are fond of reminding us, prohibitions on or sermons about particular behaviors never arise unless there is a problem. For example, posting a sign on the church door saying that nudity is not acceptable would only be necessary if someone had walked in naked. Perhaps a debate had developed in Luke’s community about the proper role of women as disciples vs. caretakers. It is impossible to know. But in any event, this story is not about women’s liberation from patriarchy. It is not about the proper role for women in 21st Century church and society. It’s about choosing to follow Jesus’ Way into God’s Kingdom.
The Common Lectionary readings that accompany Luke’s story offer metaphors of fruitfulness and spiritual maturity. The prophet Amos talks about the basket of summer fruit that will become famine because the people turn away from God’s great work of justice-compassion. Sarah and Abraham– in their spiritual maturity and trust in God’s word – will bear the fruit of a son, and be the ancestors of many nations. Psalm 52 warns that evil doers will not succeed; Psalm 15 says that those who will dwell on God’s holy hill will be “those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right.” The only piece that is a clanging gong in the ensemble is the Colossians rant about “Christ” being “the head of the body the church,” and the theology of substitutionary atonement, which the real Paul had no time for. Perhaps it’s a way out for orthodox preachers who don’t want to consider unconventional interpretations of Luke’s Mary/Martha drama. Contrary to much contemporary preaching, the story is not about sibling rivalry and woman’s real place in the home.
In the 14th Century, Meister Eckhart may have had the same accompanying scriptures in mind. In 1980, Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox published a collection of Eckhart’s sermons titled “Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality in New Translation.” In commentaries on each of 37 sermons, Fox spells out the Catholic mystic justification for his theology of Creation Spirituality. Two sermons are on the subject of Mary and Martha, using the metaphor of fruitfulness as a sign of spiritual maturity. Meister Eckhart’s Sermon 20 talks about how Martha represents the mature person – the “wife” who bears fruit, who serves the master. Mary is the “virgin,” the young sycophant, enamored of the guru, naive, and trapped in ego-involvement. Mary Magdalene’s aria, “I don’t know how to love him,” from Jesus Christ Superstar comes to mind. But “wife” and “virgin” are metaphors for Eckhart, and gender is irrelevant to this discussion. In Sermon 34, Eckhart continues with the metaphor of a spiritually mature person (Martha) living in depth with God, not – as is Mary – enamored with the idea of being a disciple. For Eckhart, contemplation is not better than action, nor are ideas more valuable than work.
Eckhart writes, “I call it obedience when the will is sufficient for what our insight commands” (Sermon 34p. 485). Mary cannot yet imagine what action her devotion to Jesus’s teaching might demand. But Martha has already integrated the desire to follow Jesus’s teachings with the work required to do so. Eckhart imagines that Martha’s complaint that Mary isn’t helping is really a bit of gentle ribbing to get Mary to let go and let be – to get out of her mind and into the fruitfulness of service. Mary’s “better part” is that she is learning to live in God’s kingdom and to join in the ongoing work of distributive justice-compassion, but is not there yet. Fox suggests that this Mary is the Magdalene, who only later . . . learned how to . . . do works of compassion. . . .”
To be spiritually mature is to participate in the great work of distributive justice-compassion, in order to bring about the transformation of human society from greed to sharing, from violent retribution and payback to the non-violent, radical abandonment of self-interest. Fox writes, “Eckhart believes that contemplation is not better than, nor in the mature person even different from, work. . . . Compassion and the works born of compassion are themselves acts of contemplation. This is the fulness of spiritual maturity: to be in the world, active in the world, and yet not hindered by these actions from being always in God.” Fox commentary on Sermon 34, p. 489.
Fox says that our work is an enchantment. That means, we live, breathe, move and have our being in that ocean of compassion that is God. We are possessed by and obsessed with that spirit. At the same time, the Zen of following Jesus’ Way and doing the great work of God’s Kingdom of Justice Compassion means letting go and letting be. Let go of the mind chatter about being a disciple, activist, whatever, and just do it.
Progressing from naivety to maturity is not a linear journey, but a continuum of experience. Luke’s story is a snapshot of a moment in time, not an allegory about women’s role in the early church.
BLOG ARCHIVE
Gaia Rising Website
As with last week’s commentary on the parable of the good Samaritan, the Revised Common Lectionary does not get to Luke’s story of Mary and Martha until mid-July of this current Year C. However, the RCL does follow Luke’s sequence. It may be that Luke’s back-to-back scenes illustrate the grounding laws of Judaism: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength” (Deuteronomy 6 :4-5) and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). The parable of the Samaritan – according to Luke – is about loving your neighbor; the vignette with Mary and Martha – again according to Luke – is about loving God.
Because Luke made up the story of Mary and Martha out of whole cloth, we can do with it whatever we wish. Jesus never had this encounter, never hinted that women disciples are better (or worse) than women supporters or servants of his ministry. We might wonder, briefly, if Luke created this story in order to address an issue in his community. As John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg are fond of reminding us, prohibitions on or sermons about particular behaviors never arise unless there is a problem. For example, posting a sign on the church door saying that nudity is not acceptable would only be necessary if someone had walked in naked. Perhaps a debate had developed in Luke’s community about the proper role of women as disciples vs. caretakers. It is impossible to know. But in any event, this story is not about women’s liberation from patriarchy. It is not about the proper role for women in 21st Century church and society. It’s about choosing to follow Jesus’ Way into God’s Kingdom.
The Common Lectionary readings that accompany Luke’s story offer metaphors of fruitfulness and spiritual maturity. The prophet Amos talks about the basket of summer fruit that will become famine because the people turn away from God’s great work of justice-compassion. Sarah and Abraham– in their spiritual maturity and trust in God’s word – will bear the fruit of a son, and be the ancestors of many nations. Psalm 52 warns that evil doers will not succeed; Psalm 15 says that those who will dwell on God’s holy hill will be “those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right.” The only piece that is a clanging gong in the ensemble is the Colossians rant about “Christ” being “the head of the body the church,” and the theology of substitutionary atonement, which the real Paul had no time for. Perhaps it’s a way out for orthodox preachers who don’t want to consider unconventional interpretations of Luke’s Mary/Martha drama. Contrary to much contemporary preaching, the story is not about sibling rivalry and woman’s real place in the home.
In the 14th Century, Meister Eckhart may have had the same accompanying scriptures in mind. In 1980, Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox published a collection of Eckhart’s sermons titled “Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality in New Translation.” In commentaries on each of 37 sermons, Fox spells out the Catholic mystic justification for his theology of Creation Spirituality. Two sermons are on the subject of Mary and Martha, using the metaphor of fruitfulness as a sign of spiritual maturity. Meister Eckhart’s Sermon 20 talks about how Martha represents the mature person – the “wife” who bears fruit, who serves the master. Mary is the “virgin,” the young sycophant, enamored of the guru, naive, and trapped in ego-involvement. Mary Magdalene’s aria, “I don’t know how to love him,” from Jesus Christ Superstar comes to mind. But “wife” and “virgin” are metaphors for Eckhart, and gender is irrelevant to this discussion. In Sermon 34, Eckhart continues with the metaphor of a spiritually mature person (Martha) living in depth with God, not – as is Mary – enamored with the idea of being a disciple. For Eckhart, contemplation is not better than action, nor are ideas more valuable than work.
Eckhart writes, “I call it obedience when the will is sufficient for what our insight commands” (Sermon 34p. 485). Mary cannot yet imagine what action her devotion to Jesus’s teaching might demand. But Martha has already integrated the desire to follow Jesus’s teachings with the work required to do so. Eckhart imagines that Martha’s complaint that Mary isn’t helping is really a bit of gentle ribbing to get Mary to let go and let be – to get out of her mind and into the fruitfulness of service. Mary’s “better part” is that she is learning to live in God’s kingdom and to join in the ongoing work of distributive justice-compassion, but is not there yet. Fox suggests that this Mary is the Magdalene, who only later . . . learned how to . . . do works of compassion. . . .”
To be spiritually mature is to participate in the great work of distributive justice-compassion, in order to bring about the transformation of human society from greed to sharing, from violent retribution and payback to the non-violent, radical abandonment of self-interest. Fox writes, “Eckhart believes that contemplation is not better than, nor in the mature person even different from, work. . . . Compassion and the works born of compassion are themselves acts of contemplation. This is the fulness of spiritual maturity: to be in the world, active in the world, and yet not hindered by these actions from being always in God.” Fox commentary on Sermon 34, p. 489.
Fox says that our work is an enchantment. That means, we live, breathe, move and have our being in that ocean of compassion that is God. We are possessed by and obsessed with that spirit. At the same time, the Zen of following Jesus’ Way and doing the great work of God’s Kingdom of Justice Compassion means letting go and letting be. Let go of the mind chatter about being a disciple, activist, whatever, and just do it.
Progressing from naivety to maturity is not a linear journey, but a continuum of experience. Luke’s story is a snapshot of a moment in time, not an allegory about women’s role in the early church.
BLOG ARCHIVE
Gaia Rising Website
Friday, April 30, 2010
Samaritans in the Ditch
Luke 10:25-37
The Revised Common Lectionary will not get to Luke’s retelling of Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan until mid-summer. But this blog is discussing Luke/Acts in the sequence in which it was written. By unfortunate yet serendipitous chance, the Parable of the Good Samaritan is especially timely.
The story of the good Samaritan is probably one of the most loved and misunderstood parables that Jesus told. Nearly all of us identify with the Samaritan who stops to help a man who had been robbed and left for dead by the side of the road. There are probably hundreds of homeless shelters, feeding programs, and free clinics world-wide with the name “Samaritan” in them, but they miss the original point of the parable. See The Five Gospels, (Harper SanFrancisco, 1993) p. 324. For a couple thousand years, probably starting with Luke’s community, people who heard this story heard it as changing the idea of a neighbor from one who receives love (the man in the ditch) to one who gives love (the Samaritan).
Luke throws the parable off point when he uses the story to answer a legal expert who tries to test Jesus by asking, “what do I have to do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers with his own question: “How do you read what is written in the Law?” The lawyer quotes the founding rule of Jewish covenantal life: “You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your energy, and with all your mind; and [you are to love] your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus tells him he’s right. “Do this, and you will have life.” But the lawyer isn’t satisfied. He wants Jesus to tell him who his neighbor is. So Jesus tells the parable about the Samaritan. At the end of the story, Luke’s Jesus asks the lawyer, “Which of these three, in your opinion, acted like a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The lawyer answers, “the one who showed him compassion.” Jesus says, “Then go and do the same yourself.”
Luke was writing for Roman citizens – Gentiles, who accepted the Jewish God but not Jewish customs. If Luke’s readers were also among the educated and rich, the story would have been perfect for challenging the conscience without challenging Roman authority. Gentile readers, with no real idea about what Jewish custom or history was, would have been glad to blame the priest and the Levite for passing by callously on the other side because of “purity laws.” Like 21st Century Christians, who have heard the story since childhood, Luke’s 1st Century community would have had no idea what it would have meant to the Jewish man in the ditch to be saved by an enemy Samaritan. But Jesus’ original audience would have immediately seen the improbability of an enemy Samaritan helping a Jew. In 21st Century terms, receiving such assistance would be like accepting donations from Hammas to the fund for 9/11 victims. In Jesus’s original parable, roles are reversed, expectations exploded, and the playing field has been radically leveled.
Jesus’ contemporaries may have heard him tell the story at a banquet. After the main course has been cleared and the wine and fruit brought out, the political discussions begin, interspersed with jokes and aphorisms about the occupying Romans, godless Greek pagans, Arab traders, and local riff-raff such as the tax collectors, dishonest merchants, and of course, those dirty, shifty-eyed Samaritans, who live in the hills and probably worship the old Canaanite gods and goddesses in contravention of God’s law.
Into the raucous profanity Jesus tosses this gem: “Have you heard the one about the man who was going from Jerusalem to Jericho who fell into the hands of robbers? They stripped him and beat him up and left him for dead.”
“So what else is new?” the listeners gripe. “The Romans refuse to secure the road. We’re all at the mercy of bandits and murderers!”
“Well it just so happens,” Jesus goes on, “That a priest was going down that road. When he saw the man, he went out of his way to avoid him. In the same way, a Levite came to the place, took one look at him, and crossed the road to avoid him.”
“Probably thought he was dead. Unclean. Can’t touch him. It’s the law.”
“But this Samaritan who was traveling that way came to where he was and –”
“Hah! Picked what was left of his pockets, right?”
“– was moved to pity at the sight of him.”
Jesus has everyone’s full attention at this point, and escalates the preposterousness of the scene with every following phrase: “He went up to him and bandaged his wounds–”
[“huh?”]
“–poured olive oil and wine on them. Then he hoisted him up on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and looked after him.”
“Get out!”
“The next day, he took out two silver coins, which he gave to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Look after him, and on my way back, I’ll reimburse you for any extra expense you have had.”
The entire room falls out laughing.
It would be fun to remain a fly on the wall at this point and listen to the discussion among the listeners, who identified with the victim in the ditch, not with the people passing by. The question was not to whom am I a neighbor, but from whom can I expect help?
The following chilling, contemporary example reflects the parable from both points of view. First, a homeless man (Hugo Tale-Yax) came to the assistance of a woman being attacked. Assistance came to her from a very unexpected quarter of the human terrain. The rescuer was then stabbed by the woman’s attacker. Both the woman and the attacker fled in different directions. The homeless man lay in a pool of blood on the pavement for an hour and-a-half, while people passed by, looked at him, took cell phone photos of him, and turned him over to see if he was dead. No one came to his assistance. By the time somebody got around to calling 911, he was dead at the scene.
Taking the traditional reading of the parable, how much longer can we pass by on the other side? Taking the more disturbing meaning, what happens to us when we are tossed into the margins? From whom can we expect help? Apparently our fellow human beings are no more likely to come to our aid than are the institutions we thought we had created to help us. Law enforcement, FEMA, the U.S. Congress – all fail us. Even our 21st century equivalents of the priest and the Levite in Jesus’s parable – our institutional churches – look the other way when confronted with inhumane workplace conditions, unfair immigration laws, and war disguised as “preemptive strikes” against “enemies,” whom we are supposed to love.
Perhaps it has been more convenient for Christians to understand this parable as requiring selflessness on our part. We are to be as compassionate as the Samaritan, and therefore worthy of “salvation” from Hell in the next life. When the rich and socially-connected take care of charity cases, the need for expensive government safety nets is much less. And when the “less fortunate” are convinced that it is their duty as well to care for their own, even better.
Oppressed people often side with their oppressors as a matter of survival. The man in the ditch had to accept help from his enemy or die. On that very personal level, it is easy to see that refusing assistance would have been stupid But the stupidity is not so obvious when the choice for those in the ditch is to work for Walmart for minimum wage versus working overtime for unsafe mine operators while taking home upwards of $70,000 a year. Accusations of collaborating with injustice are easy to make. After all, we might be thinking, that "contemporary" incident mentioned above was nothing more than a criminal street fight.
But something else more radical than any of these scenarios is going on in this parable. The playing field has been leveled. The despised Samaritan is saving the equally despised victim of Roman oppression. In the contemporary example, the whole altercation happened in Queens, New York, among people of questionable reputation at 5:30 a.m. on a Sunday.
Deeper yet, in the parable, both parties have surrendered to the reality of their individual humanity, and have acted from that common ground. The Samaritan has treated his enemy as a friend; the Jew has experienced his enemy as a savior.
Do we no longer recognize humanity in 21st Century America? How long must we lie in the ditch?
BLOG ARCHIVE
Gaia Rising Website
The Revised Common Lectionary will not get to Luke’s retelling of Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan until mid-summer. But this blog is discussing Luke/Acts in the sequence in which it was written. By unfortunate yet serendipitous chance, the Parable of the Good Samaritan is especially timely.
The story of the good Samaritan is probably one of the most loved and misunderstood parables that Jesus told. Nearly all of us identify with the Samaritan who stops to help a man who had been robbed and left for dead by the side of the road. There are probably hundreds of homeless shelters, feeding programs, and free clinics world-wide with the name “Samaritan” in them, but they miss the original point of the parable. See The Five Gospels, (Harper SanFrancisco, 1993) p. 324. For a couple thousand years, probably starting with Luke’s community, people who heard this story heard it as changing the idea of a neighbor from one who receives love (the man in the ditch) to one who gives love (the Samaritan).
Luke throws the parable off point when he uses the story to answer a legal expert who tries to test Jesus by asking, “what do I have to do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers with his own question: “How do you read what is written in the Law?” The lawyer quotes the founding rule of Jewish covenantal life: “You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your energy, and with all your mind; and [you are to love] your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus tells him he’s right. “Do this, and you will have life.” But the lawyer isn’t satisfied. He wants Jesus to tell him who his neighbor is. So Jesus tells the parable about the Samaritan. At the end of the story, Luke’s Jesus asks the lawyer, “Which of these three, in your opinion, acted like a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The lawyer answers, “the one who showed him compassion.” Jesus says, “Then go and do the same yourself.”
Luke was writing for Roman citizens – Gentiles, who accepted the Jewish God but not Jewish customs. If Luke’s readers were also among the educated and rich, the story would have been perfect for challenging the conscience without challenging Roman authority. Gentile readers, with no real idea about what Jewish custom or history was, would have been glad to blame the priest and the Levite for passing by callously on the other side because of “purity laws.” Like 21st Century Christians, who have heard the story since childhood, Luke’s 1st Century community would have had no idea what it would have meant to the Jewish man in the ditch to be saved by an enemy Samaritan. But Jesus’ original audience would have immediately seen the improbability of an enemy Samaritan helping a Jew. In 21st Century terms, receiving such assistance would be like accepting donations from Hammas to the fund for 9/11 victims. In Jesus’s original parable, roles are reversed, expectations exploded, and the playing field has been radically leveled.
Jesus’ contemporaries may have heard him tell the story at a banquet. After the main course has been cleared and the wine and fruit brought out, the political discussions begin, interspersed with jokes and aphorisms about the occupying Romans, godless Greek pagans, Arab traders, and local riff-raff such as the tax collectors, dishonest merchants, and of course, those dirty, shifty-eyed Samaritans, who live in the hills and probably worship the old Canaanite gods and goddesses in contravention of God’s law.
Into the raucous profanity Jesus tosses this gem: “Have you heard the one about the man who was going from Jerusalem to Jericho who fell into the hands of robbers? They stripped him and beat him up and left him for dead.”
“So what else is new?” the listeners gripe. “The Romans refuse to secure the road. We’re all at the mercy of bandits and murderers!”
“Well it just so happens,” Jesus goes on, “That a priest was going down that road. When he saw the man, he went out of his way to avoid him. In the same way, a Levite came to the place, took one look at him, and crossed the road to avoid him.”
“Probably thought he was dead. Unclean. Can’t touch him. It’s the law.”
“But this Samaritan who was traveling that way came to where he was and –”
“Hah! Picked what was left of his pockets, right?”
“– was moved to pity at the sight of him.”
Jesus has everyone’s full attention at this point, and escalates the preposterousness of the scene with every following phrase: “He went up to him and bandaged his wounds–”
[“huh?”]
“–poured olive oil and wine on them. Then he hoisted him up on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and looked after him.”
“Get out!”
“The next day, he took out two silver coins, which he gave to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Look after him, and on my way back, I’ll reimburse you for any extra expense you have had.”
The entire room falls out laughing.
It would be fun to remain a fly on the wall at this point and listen to the discussion among the listeners, who identified with the victim in the ditch, not with the people passing by. The question was not to whom am I a neighbor, but from whom can I expect help?
The following chilling, contemporary example reflects the parable from both points of view. First, a homeless man (Hugo Tale-Yax) came to the assistance of a woman being attacked. Assistance came to her from a very unexpected quarter of the human terrain. The rescuer was then stabbed by the woman’s attacker. Both the woman and the attacker fled in different directions. The homeless man lay in a pool of blood on the pavement for an hour and-a-half, while people passed by, looked at him, took cell phone photos of him, and turned him over to see if he was dead. No one came to his assistance. By the time somebody got around to calling 911, he was dead at the scene.
Taking the traditional reading of the parable, how much longer can we pass by on the other side? Taking the more disturbing meaning, what happens to us when we are tossed into the margins? From whom can we expect help? Apparently our fellow human beings are no more likely to come to our aid than are the institutions we thought we had created to help us. Law enforcement, FEMA, the U.S. Congress – all fail us. Even our 21st century equivalents of the priest and the Levite in Jesus’s parable – our institutional churches – look the other way when confronted with inhumane workplace conditions, unfair immigration laws, and war disguised as “preemptive strikes” against “enemies,” whom we are supposed to love.
Perhaps it has been more convenient for Christians to understand this parable as requiring selflessness on our part. We are to be as compassionate as the Samaritan, and therefore worthy of “salvation” from Hell in the next life. When the rich and socially-connected take care of charity cases, the need for expensive government safety nets is much less. And when the “less fortunate” are convinced that it is their duty as well to care for their own, even better.
Oppressed people often side with their oppressors as a matter of survival. The man in the ditch had to accept help from his enemy or die. On that very personal level, it is easy to see that refusing assistance would have been stupid But the stupidity is not so obvious when the choice for those in the ditch is to work for Walmart for minimum wage versus working overtime for unsafe mine operators while taking home upwards of $70,000 a year. Accusations of collaborating with injustice are easy to make. After all, we might be thinking, that "contemporary" incident mentioned above was nothing more than a criminal street fight.
But something else more radical than any of these scenarios is going on in this parable. The playing field has been leveled. The despised Samaritan is saving the equally despised victim of Roman oppression. In the contemporary example, the whole altercation happened in Queens, New York, among people of questionable reputation at 5:30 a.m. on a Sunday.
Deeper yet, in the parable, both parties have surrendered to the reality of their individual humanity, and have acted from that common ground. The Samaritan has treated his enemy as a friend; the Jew has experienced his enemy as a savior.
Do we no longer recognize humanity in 21st Century America? How long must we lie in the ditch?
BLOG ARCHIVE
Gaia Rising Website
Friday, April 23, 2010
Call For Progressive Christian Evangelism
Luke 10:1-24
Luke’s Jesus sends out 72 disciples to teach and heal. He provides instructions for the road; he also rails against cities that don’t accept his teachings – despite the fact that elsewhere he has said to love your enemies. When the disciples come back exulting that “Lord, even the demons submit to us when we invoke your name!” Jesus says (as though he had magically seen the evidence) “I watched Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” He says that the truth about him has been hidden from the wise and intelligent, but revealed to the “untutored.” Everything has been turned over to him, but no one knows who Jesus is unless he wishes to reveal himself. “Many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and didn’t see it, and to hear what you hear, and didn’t hear it.”
Luke likes to contrast insiders with outsiders. Jesus’s teachings are secrets to be passed on only to those privileged few in the inner circle to whom Jesus chooses to reveal them. The Jesus Seminar Scholars have suggested that Luke was making Jesus’s message safe for Roman society. However, that does not mean “safe” as in “safe from persecution.” There was little to no persecution of Jews or Christians during the time when Luke was probably creating his two-part epic. “Safe for Roman society” more likely means, watered down (or coded) so it would not present too great a challenge for non-Jewish newcomers to the Way, or offend the imperial theology. If followers of Jesus’s Way proclaimed Jesus as Lord, and not the Emperor, they would be guilty of disloyalty if not treason. But that was a matter of law, not a policy of deliberate persecution on the part of the Roman government.
These passages are easily read as a call to conservative evangelicals to step out in faith and proclaim Jesus as savior from death, hell and sin. Satan, as conservatives like to say, is roaring around like a hungry lion, looking for sinners to snatch and consume. But belief in Jesus can defeat the powers of evil today, just like they did in Jesus’s time.
The idea of “progressive” or “liberal Christian evangelism” may seem at first to be an oxymoron. But consider the state of Biblical literacy in the 21st Century. Most people have little to no knowledge of what the New or the Old Testament actually says. Indeed, outside of Christian churches few consider the Bible to be relevant to any discussion about the tough issues such as human rights for women (i.e., the right to choose what happens to our bodies); climate change; corporate malfeasance; poverty; or war. As for church-going Christians (whether liberal or fundamentalist) most turn out to be “untutored” in the Bible beyond the few short verses required to be memorized in Sunday School. Among these, of course is “Jesus wept.” The writer of Luke’s gospel was trying to make a point that the “wise and intelligent” were less able to recognize the Kingdom of God all around them. The “untutored” were children, the poor, and the less privileged, whose only hope was the Kingdom of God. Given the state of Biblical literacy in the church today, the truth about Jesus is still hidden from “the wise and intelligent.”
The possibility that Jesus’s message was one of radical fairness, and that following Jesus means creating and living in a world based on non-violent covenant instead of desperate selfishness, has certainly been hidden from view since before Luke decided to tell the story. It’s time to give the presidents and prime ministers of today the chance to see and hear the alternatives to imperial, retributive, business-as-usual. It’s time to offer viable alternatives to the feel-good, prosperity-based, exclusive, self-righteousness that passes for evangelism on the right. As liberal pundit Keith Olbermann has suggested, it’s time for some non-violent democratic action.
Taking Luke’s version of Jesus’s marching orders as a model, what would liberal or progressive Christian evangelism look like?
To start with, there are two sets of instructions for the road in Luke. The first set is in 9:1-6, and applies to the 12 members of Jesus’s inner circle. The second set is for the advance team that Luke’s Jesus sends out in pairs ahead of him to the villages he intends to visit. Unlike the 12, the72 are not supposed to wear sandals; not to greet anyone on the road; they are to extend the peace greeting to each house; and eat and drink whatever is provided. But really, all this shows is that as Christ communities formed and re-formed in the earliest days, ideas evolved. One of the ideas that did not survive on a large scale is that followers of the Way were (must be?) itinerant travelers, trusting the culture of hospitality, and the providence of God’s realm.
If 21st Century liberals are to reclaim Jesus’s teachings as a way of life, we may want to take a page from Paul’s mission to the Gentiles outside of Jerusalem. Paul’s original intent was not to form a new separate church, but to transform Judaism from within. But the controversy over whether new Gentile converts to the Way were required to follow Jewish laws (specifically circumcision) led to a rift between Paul and the Jerusalem faction. Paul’s increasingly universal interpretation of the meaning of Jesus’s death and resurrection resulted in the eventual separation of Judaism from Christianity. If an analogy may be made between this historical series of events and current Christian debates, then Paul’s letter to the Galatians is particularly relevant. (As an aside, note that Luke’s version of the encounter between Peter and Paul in Jerusalem differs significantly from what Paul writes. Compare Acts 15 with Galatians 2.)
Instead of demanding belief in a story about a resuscitated corpse that somehow is still walking the city streets today, scaring people into proper behavior, progressive Christians can witness to what scholars are telling us was Jesus’s original message. Instead of hellfire and damnation (such as Luke’s Jesus lets loose in 10:13-15) the good news from liberals is that the realm of God – where distributive justice-compassion rules – is here now (See Luke 10:9). Don’t worry about stepping on scorpions or handling snakes or subduing demons. The writer of Luke’s gospel may not have meant that to be taken literally, even at the end of the 1st Century. Once people start living from non-violent distributive justice-compassion, demonic evil begins to retreat.
Today, the controversy is between those who would insist that belief in the story of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is necessary for salvation in the next life versus the reclamation of Jesus’s original message, which says nothing about the dead, except that the dead should be left to bury their own (Luke 9:62). According to Jesus (in all four Gospels) the realm of God is here and now. This version of Christianity means living in radical abandonment of self-interest in the service of distributive justice-compassion in this life. Signing onto this way of life is a choice that anyone can make, without declaring belief or non-belief in anyone coming back from the dead. Much like Jewish law in Paul’s arguments, the metaphors of incarnation and resurrection – powerful as they are for those who understand them – are irrelevant. What matters is the result. Do we have a world where distributive justice-compassion holds sway? Or do we have a world where greed, retribution, and getting even are the norm? Liberal, progressive Christian evangelism is nothing less than changing the paradigm.
BLOG ARCHIVE
Gaia Rising! Website
Luke’s Jesus sends out 72 disciples to teach and heal. He provides instructions for the road; he also rails against cities that don’t accept his teachings – despite the fact that elsewhere he has said to love your enemies. When the disciples come back exulting that “Lord, even the demons submit to us when we invoke your name!” Jesus says (as though he had magically seen the evidence) “I watched Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” He says that the truth about him has been hidden from the wise and intelligent, but revealed to the “untutored.” Everything has been turned over to him, but no one knows who Jesus is unless he wishes to reveal himself. “Many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and didn’t see it, and to hear what you hear, and didn’t hear it.”
Luke likes to contrast insiders with outsiders. Jesus’s teachings are secrets to be passed on only to those privileged few in the inner circle to whom Jesus chooses to reveal them. The Jesus Seminar Scholars have suggested that Luke was making Jesus’s message safe for Roman society. However, that does not mean “safe” as in “safe from persecution.” There was little to no persecution of Jews or Christians during the time when Luke was probably creating his two-part epic. “Safe for Roman society” more likely means, watered down (or coded) so it would not present too great a challenge for non-Jewish newcomers to the Way, or offend the imperial theology. If followers of Jesus’s Way proclaimed Jesus as Lord, and not the Emperor, they would be guilty of disloyalty if not treason. But that was a matter of law, not a policy of deliberate persecution on the part of the Roman government.
These passages are easily read as a call to conservative evangelicals to step out in faith and proclaim Jesus as savior from death, hell and sin. Satan, as conservatives like to say, is roaring around like a hungry lion, looking for sinners to snatch and consume. But belief in Jesus can defeat the powers of evil today, just like they did in Jesus’s time.
The idea of “progressive” or “liberal Christian evangelism” may seem at first to be an oxymoron. But consider the state of Biblical literacy in the 21st Century. Most people have little to no knowledge of what the New or the Old Testament actually says. Indeed, outside of Christian churches few consider the Bible to be relevant to any discussion about the tough issues such as human rights for women (i.e., the right to choose what happens to our bodies); climate change; corporate malfeasance; poverty; or war. As for church-going Christians (whether liberal or fundamentalist) most turn out to be “untutored” in the Bible beyond the few short verses required to be memorized in Sunday School. Among these, of course is “Jesus wept.” The writer of Luke’s gospel was trying to make a point that the “wise and intelligent” were less able to recognize the Kingdom of God all around them. The “untutored” were children, the poor, and the less privileged, whose only hope was the Kingdom of God. Given the state of Biblical literacy in the church today, the truth about Jesus is still hidden from “the wise and intelligent.”
The possibility that Jesus’s message was one of radical fairness, and that following Jesus means creating and living in a world based on non-violent covenant instead of desperate selfishness, has certainly been hidden from view since before Luke decided to tell the story. It’s time to give the presidents and prime ministers of today the chance to see and hear the alternatives to imperial, retributive, business-as-usual. It’s time to offer viable alternatives to the feel-good, prosperity-based, exclusive, self-righteousness that passes for evangelism on the right. As liberal pundit Keith Olbermann has suggested, it’s time for some non-violent democratic action.
Taking Luke’s version of Jesus’s marching orders as a model, what would liberal or progressive Christian evangelism look like?
To start with, there are two sets of instructions for the road in Luke. The first set is in 9:1-6, and applies to the 12 members of Jesus’s inner circle. The second set is for the advance team that Luke’s Jesus sends out in pairs ahead of him to the villages he intends to visit. Unlike the 12, the72 are not supposed to wear sandals; not to greet anyone on the road; they are to extend the peace greeting to each house; and eat and drink whatever is provided. But really, all this shows is that as Christ communities formed and re-formed in the earliest days, ideas evolved. One of the ideas that did not survive on a large scale is that followers of the Way were (must be?) itinerant travelers, trusting the culture of hospitality, and the providence of God’s realm.
If 21st Century liberals are to reclaim Jesus’s teachings as a way of life, we may want to take a page from Paul’s mission to the Gentiles outside of Jerusalem. Paul’s original intent was not to form a new separate church, but to transform Judaism from within. But the controversy over whether new Gentile converts to the Way were required to follow Jewish laws (specifically circumcision) led to a rift between Paul and the Jerusalem faction. Paul’s increasingly universal interpretation of the meaning of Jesus’s death and resurrection resulted in the eventual separation of Judaism from Christianity. If an analogy may be made between this historical series of events and current Christian debates, then Paul’s letter to the Galatians is particularly relevant. (As an aside, note that Luke’s version of the encounter between Peter and Paul in Jerusalem differs significantly from what Paul writes. Compare Acts 15 with Galatians 2.)
Instead of demanding belief in a story about a resuscitated corpse that somehow is still walking the city streets today, scaring people into proper behavior, progressive Christians can witness to what scholars are telling us was Jesus’s original message. Instead of hellfire and damnation (such as Luke’s Jesus lets loose in 10:13-15) the good news from liberals is that the realm of God – where distributive justice-compassion rules – is here now (See Luke 10:9). Don’t worry about stepping on scorpions or handling snakes or subduing demons. The writer of Luke’s gospel may not have meant that to be taken literally, even at the end of the 1st Century. Once people start living from non-violent distributive justice-compassion, demonic evil begins to retreat.
Today, the controversy is between those who would insist that belief in the story of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is necessary for salvation in the next life versus the reclamation of Jesus’s original message, which says nothing about the dead, except that the dead should be left to bury their own (Luke 9:62). According to Jesus (in all four Gospels) the realm of God is here and now. This version of Christianity means living in radical abandonment of self-interest in the service of distributive justice-compassion in this life. Signing onto this way of life is a choice that anyone can make, without declaring belief or non-belief in anyone coming back from the dead. Much like Jewish law in Paul’s arguments, the metaphors of incarnation and resurrection – powerful as they are for those who understand them – are irrelevant. What matters is the result. Do we have a world where distributive justice-compassion holds sway? Or do we have a world where greed, retribution, and getting even are the norm? Liberal, progressive Christian evangelism is nothing less than changing the paradigm.
BLOG ARCHIVE
Gaia Rising! Website
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Miners, Massey, and Montcoal
The Choice for Progressives II: Jesus – Magician or Liberator?
Luke 9:7-62
The first part of this section of Luke’s Gospel deals with Luke’s version of the Feeding of the 5,000. These particular verses from Luke are never read in any of the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary. Mark’s original story of the Feeding of the 5,000 is also never read; the developers of the RCL prefer Matthew’s version. But neither Matthew nor Luke (and certainly not John – whose version is substituted for Mark’s in Year B) lay out the sequence like Mark does (see: Losing the Way Parts I-III and Bread of Life Parts I-IV).
Mark’s story (6:34-8:21) is an extended parable about the fair distribution of food, interspersed with hints from an increasingly exasperated Jesus about who he is and what he is trying to do. While the idea that this was a demonstration of radical sharing is there in Luke’s short vignette, Luke’s emphasis is on Jesus as the Anointed one, “the son of Adam [who] is destined to suffer a great deal, be rejected by the elders and ranking priests and scholars, and be killed and, on the third day, be raised.” The Transfiguration scene is of course read on the last Sunday of Epiphany and the second Sunday of Lent in Year C. Luke does not include Jesus walking on the water, or the discussion about food purity laws that Mark presents and Matthew copies into his gospel. Instead, Luke concentrates on what Jesus’s followers will, should, and must do after Jesus’s death.
What is Luke suggesting?
1. Deny yourselves, take up your cross EVERY DAY and follow me.
2. Lose your life FOR MY SAKE and find it
3. Whoever is ashamed of ME AND MY MESSAGE the Son of Adam will be ashamed of in return
4. Anyone who looks back from the plow is not qualified for God’s imperial rule.
None of these phrases is considered to be traceable to the historical Jesus. Instead, they are aphorisms for the community for which Luke was writing, 50 to 75 years after Jesus’s death. The Jesus Seminar scholars suggest that these admonitions are softened, or “domesticated.” They do not reflect Jesus’s original radical abandonment of self-interest in the service of distributive justice-compassion. Instead, the Scholars argue, Luke has turned the cross into an “everyday,” ordinary piety. The sayings encourage belief about Jesus himself, not participation in the way of life that he taught. The idea that “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (NRSV) reflects the story of Lot’s wife, who looked back at Sodom and Gomorrah and turned into a pillar of salt. Once you have accepted the Kingdom of God, Luke seems to be saying, you can’t have second thoughts. To follow the agricultural metaphor (which the JS Scholars do not pursue in their notes) anyone who looks back at the row he’s been plowing will veer off and the row will not be straight. Christian piety abounds.
The JS scholars argue that Luke made Christianity safe for Roman society, and Luke may well have succeeded in describing the message so that only insiders would realize what it meant. But I would suggest that Luke’s list can be read as radically as anything Jesus may have actually taught. Let’s consider Luke’s sequence in 9:7-62 in the light of the April 5, 2010 Massey Energy Company mining disaster in Montcoal, West Virginia.
Interestingly, the story begins with Herod, the oppressor and representative of imperial Rome, who wonders who this Jesus is. “He was curious to see him,” Luke reports. Then Luke briefly sketches the legend of the feeding of the 5,000. We might think this has only to do with food. But what Mark (and Luke) emphasize is the necessity for the followers of Jesus to trust the way of life in the realm of God and share what they have. This sharing does not begin and end with food, nor – applied to the 21st century – does this sharing end with comfort or charity provided to the survivors of preventable accidents. This sharing is in stark contrast to the greed represented by the deliberate decision to enjoy profit and productivity at the expense of the health and safety of workers. The disciples missed the point in all the gospel accounts. It’s not about magic and miracle. It’s about transforming the world from greed to giving.
Next, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah (God’s anointed one). Jesus warns his followers that the anointed one will suffer, be rejected by the elders and ranking priests and scholars, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Here the consequences of kenosis the radical abandonment of self-interest, and the intention to create a share-world instead of a greed-world are clear: rejection by the authorities and death. Vindication or resurrection are a hope, not a certainty. Luke’s Jesus says, “Those who want to come after me should deny themselves, pick up their cross every day, and follow me.”
This does not mean follow Jesus like sheep into the mines to be sacrificed to the god of greed and international commerce, in the vain hope that a miracle will bring us out safely. Nor does it mean that once dead, we will live again in some heavenly realm beyond Antares. It means somehow finding the courage to blow the whistle on the safety violations; to refuse to work in illegal conditions; to organize collective bargaining associations in the face of company rules prohibiting unions. These are the crosses mineworkers are asked to bear. The consequences can be dire: losing jobs through firing or because the mine is at last shut down; falling into poverty; and death. Death can come at the hands of corporate collaborators, or friends who – like Judas – see no other way to survive than to sell out. If the mines can be shut down because of safety violations, the temptation is high for inspectors to ignore unsafe conditions, and for miners themselves to decline to complain.
Luke’s Jesus asks, “what good does it do a person to acquire the whole world and lose or forfeit oneself?” The writer of Mark’s Gospel adds a correlative: “Or what would a person give in exchange for life?” These are disturbing and dangerous questions to ask, especially if those questions are asked about the victims who died, and put to their surviving families. The point is not to blame the victims. The point is that the people West Virginia coal country (and throughout Appalachia) have no choice about where and how they earn a living. If they are to have the level of wealth that middle class white collar or unionized blue collar workers have elsewhere, then they have to work in the mines.
However, in the context of 21st Century corporate malfeasance, these are very valid questions with which to confront the boss. What would the corporation give in exchange for the lives of the mine workers? $70,000 a year, including required overtime pay? $4.2 million in corporate penalties and fines in one year, which amount to one hour of profit? Luke’s Jesus suggests a judgment against those who are “ashamed of me and my message.” Jesus’s message is, “deny yourself, pick up your cross every day, and follow me.” In 21st Century words, Jesus demands the radical abandonment of self-interest in the service of distributive justice-compassion here and now. Otherwise, “when the Son of Adam comes again to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, he will in turn be ashamed of that person.” Again, in 21st Century language, the judgment is not some time in the future when the world ends. The judgment is now in the consequences that result in death.
About a week after delivering these sayings, Luke says, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the mountain to pray. Jesus is transfigured to a being of dazzling white light. Moses and Elijah – the greatest of prophets up to that point in Jewish spiritual history – appear to walk beside him. Then a cloud moves in, and God says, “This is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him!” But the disciples apparently don’t listen. The following day a man brings his son to Jesus because the disciples are unable to exorcise the evil spirit that is possessing the child. Jesus has had enough. “You distrustful and perverted lot,” he yells, “How long must I associate with you and put up with you?” And he heals the boy himself. Luke follows this with another warning from Jesus about his impending death, but the disciples not only don’t understand. “They always dreaded to ask him about this remark.” Worse, Luke chooses this point to talk about the argument that broke out among them about who is the greatest.
Who is listening today? Corporations that are now considered to be people by the U.S. Supreme Court are certainly not listening. They are too busy determining who will be the greatest, the richest, the most politically powerful. The workers are not listening either, but at ths point cannot be blamed for choosing what appears to be the only path. They are oppressed and victimized by corporations that win awards for stated policies regarding safety, but whose daily behavior nullifies what’s on paper. Neither the political parties on the right who claim Jesus as their Lord, nor the political parties on the left who claim justice and equity for all, are listening.
Nor is the Church, the purported “body of Christ,” listening.
Jesus said, “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the son of Adam has nowhere to rest his head.” Scholars argue that this may have actually been a call to the earliest of Jesus’s followers to live a life of itinerancy. But the literal meaning of those words is evident today: The Son of Adam is nowhere to be found in the economics of mining nor in other economic systems on the planet. Further, if the government of the State of West Virginia continues its policy that assures that mining trumps everything, then the foxes and the birds will soon join Jesus in the homeless population.
Jesus also said, “Leave it to the dead to bury their own dead; but you go out and announce God’s imperial rule.” These are shocking words. Luke tries to soften and explain them when he has Jesus say, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is qualified for God’s imperial rule.” We cannot know the context that produced Jesus’s original words, handed down by oral tradition, and captured in this sequence by the writer of Luke’s gospel. But in terms of justice-compassion, and applied specifically to the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, Luke’s qualifier is just as radical as Jesus’s seemingly heartless demand.
So far, what the coal companies have done is assure that regulations and changes are only brought about with the blood of the people in the mines. Let those who are dead to the possibility of justice-compassion bury the dead. For those who would assure the future health, safety, and justice for the mining industry, don’t look back. The workers must organize and stand together for fair wages and working conditions; the regulators must ignore threats from corporations and close down unsafe operations; state legislators must stop worrying about being elected, and start passing laws that assure federal regulations will be enforced; and the rest of the people in West Virginia must demand world-class education, retraining, health care, sustainable, meaningful work, and affordable housing for everyone. Higher taxes and lower profits are far less expensive than 29 lives.
Luke’s sequence begins with Herod, the oppressor and representative of imperial Rome, who wondered who this Jesus was, and wanted to meet him. Perhaps, as the story of the Upper Big Branch Mine continues to unfold, the supporters of business as usual in West Virginia will have that chance.
BLOG ARCHIVE
Luke 9:7-62
The first part of this section of Luke’s Gospel deals with Luke’s version of the Feeding of the 5,000. These particular verses from Luke are never read in any of the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary. Mark’s original story of the Feeding of the 5,000 is also never read; the developers of the RCL prefer Matthew’s version. But neither Matthew nor Luke (and certainly not John – whose version is substituted for Mark’s in Year B) lay out the sequence like Mark does (see: Losing the Way Parts I-III and Bread of Life Parts I-IV).
Mark’s story (6:34-8:21) is an extended parable about the fair distribution of food, interspersed with hints from an increasingly exasperated Jesus about who he is and what he is trying to do. While the idea that this was a demonstration of radical sharing is there in Luke’s short vignette, Luke’s emphasis is on Jesus as the Anointed one, “the son of Adam [who] is destined to suffer a great deal, be rejected by the elders and ranking priests and scholars, and be killed and, on the third day, be raised.” The Transfiguration scene is of course read on the last Sunday of Epiphany and the second Sunday of Lent in Year C. Luke does not include Jesus walking on the water, or the discussion about food purity laws that Mark presents and Matthew copies into his gospel. Instead, Luke concentrates on what Jesus’s followers will, should, and must do after Jesus’s death.
What is Luke suggesting?
1. Deny yourselves, take up your cross EVERY DAY and follow me.
2. Lose your life FOR MY SAKE and find it
3. Whoever is ashamed of ME AND MY MESSAGE the Son of Adam will be ashamed of in return
4. Anyone who looks back from the plow is not qualified for God’s imperial rule.
None of these phrases is considered to be traceable to the historical Jesus. Instead, they are aphorisms for the community for which Luke was writing, 50 to 75 years after Jesus’s death. The Jesus Seminar scholars suggest that these admonitions are softened, or “domesticated.” They do not reflect Jesus’s original radical abandonment of self-interest in the service of distributive justice-compassion. Instead, the Scholars argue, Luke has turned the cross into an “everyday,” ordinary piety. The sayings encourage belief about Jesus himself, not participation in the way of life that he taught. The idea that “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (NRSV) reflects the story of Lot’s wife, who looked back at Sodom and Gomorrah and turned into a pillar of salt. Once you have accepted the Kingdom of God, Luke seems to be saying, you can’t have second thoughts. To follow the agricultural metaphor (which the JS Scholars do not pursue in their notes) anyone who looks back at the row he’s been plowing will veer off and the row will not be straight. Christian piety abounds.
The JS scholars argue that Luke made Christianity safe for Roman society, and Luke may well have succeeded in describing the message so that only insiders would realize what it meant. But I would suggest that Luke’s list can be read as radically as anything Jesus may have actually taught. Let’s consider Luke’s sequence in 9:7-62 in the light of the April 5, 2010 Massey Energy Company mining disaster in Montcoal, West Virginia.
Interestingly, the story begins with Herod, the oppressor and representative of imperial Rome, who wonders who this Jesus is. “He was curious to see him,” Luke reports. Then Luke briefly sketches the legend of the feeding of the 5,000. We might think this has only to do with food. But what Mark (and Luke) emphasize is the necessity for the followers of Jesus to trust the way of life in the realm of God and share what they have. This sharing does not begin and end with food, nor – applied to the 21st century – does this sharing end with comfort or charity provided to the survivors of preventable accidents. This sharing is in stark contrast to the greed represented by the deliberate decision to enjoy profit and productivity at the expense of the health and safety of workers. The disciples missed the point in all the gospel accounts. It’s not about magic and miracle. It’s about transforming the world from greed to giving.
Next, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah (God’s anointed one). Jesus warns his followers that the anointed one will suffer, be rejected by the elders and ranking priests and scholars, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Here the consequences of kenosis the radical abandonment of self-interest, and the intention to create a share-world instead of a greed-world are clear: rejection by the authorities and death. Vindication or resurrection are a hope, not a certainty. Luke’s Jesus says, “Those who want to come after me should deny themselves, pick up their cross every day, and follow me.”
This does not mean follow Jesus like sheep into the mines to be sacrificed to the god of greed and international commerce, in the vain hope that a miracle will bring us out safely. Nor does it mean that once dead, we will live again in some heavenly realm beyond Antares. It means somehow finding the courage to blow the whistle on the safety violations; to refuse to work in illegal conditions; to organize collective bargaining associations in the face of company rules prohibiting unions. These are the crosses mineworkers are asked to bear. The consequences can be dire: losing jobs through firing or because the mine is at last shut down; falling into poverty; and death. Death can come at the hands of corporate collaborators, or friends who – like Judas – see no other way to survive than to sell out. If the mines can be shut down because of safety violations, the temptation is high for inspectors to ignore unsafe conditions, and for miners themselves to decline to complain.
Luke’s Jesus asks, “what good does it do a person to acquire the whole world and lose or forfeit oneself?” The writer of Mark’s Gospel adds a correlative: “Or what would a person give in exchange for life?” These are disturbing and dangerous questions to ask, especially if those questions are asked about the victims who died, and put to their surviving families. The point is not to blame the victims. The point is that the people West Virginia coal country (and throughout Appalachia) have no choice about where and how they earn a living. If they are to have the level of wealth that middle class white collar or unionized blue collar workers have elsewhere, then they have to work in the mines.
However, in the context of 21st Century corporate malfeasance, these are very valid questions with which to confront the boss. What would the corporation give in exchange for the lives of the mine workers? $70,000 a year, including required overtime pay? $4.2 million in corporate penalties and fines in one year, which amount to one hour of profit? Luke’s Jesus suggests a judgment against those who are “ashamed of me and my message.” Jesus’s message is, “deny yourself, pick up your cross every day, and follow me.” In 21st Century words, Jesus demands the radical abandonment of self-interest in the service of distributive justice-compassion here and now. Otherwise, “when the Son of Adam comes again to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, he will in turn be ashamed of that person.” Again, in 21st Century language, the judgment is not some time in the future when the world ends. The judgment is now in the consequences that result in death.
About a week after delivering these sayings, Luke says, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the mountain to pray. Jesus is transfigured to a being of dazzling white light. Moses and Elijah – the greatest of prophets up to that point in Jewish spiritual history – appear to walk beside him. Then a cloud moves in, and God says, “This is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him!” But the disciples apparently don’t listen. The following day a man brings his son to Jesus because the disciples are unable to exorcise the evil spirit that is possessing the child. Jesus has had enough. “You distrustful and perverted lot,” he yells, “How long must I associate with you and put up with you?” And he heals the boy himself. Luke follows this with another warning from Jesus about his impending death, but the disciples not only don’t understand. “They always dreaded to ask him about this remark.” Worse, Luke chooses this point to talk about the argument that broke out among them about who is the greatest.
Who is listening today? Corporations that are now considered to be people by the U.S. Supreme Court are certainly not listening. They are too busy determining who will be the greatest, the richest, the most politically powerful. The workers are not listening either, but at ths point cannot be blamed for choosing what appears to be the only path. They are oppressed and victimized by corporations that win awards for stated policies regarding safety, but whose daily behavior nullifies what’s on paper. Neither the political parties on the right who claim Jesus as their Lord, nor the political parties on the left who claim justice and equity for all, are listening.
Nor is the Church, the purported “body of Christ,” listening.
Jesus said, “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the son of Adam has nowhere to rest his head.” Scholars argue that this may have actually been a call to the earliest of Jesus’s followers to live a life of itinerancy. But the literal meaning of those words is evident today: The Son of Adam is nowhere to be found in the economics of mining nor in other economic systems on the planet. Further, if the government of the State of West Virginia continues its policy that assures that mining trumps everything, then the foxes and the birds will soon join Jesus in the homeless population.
Jesus also said, “Leave it to the dead to bury their own dead; but you go out and announce God’s imperial rule.” These are shocking words. Luke tries to soften and explain them when he has Jesus say, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is qualified for God’s imperial rule.” We cannot know the context that produced Jesus’s original words, handed down by oral tradition, and captured in this sequence by the writer of Luke’s gospel. But in terms of justice-compassion, and applied specifically to the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, Luke’s qualifier is just as radical as Jesus’s seemingly heartless demand.
So far, what the coal companies have done is assure that regulations and changes are only brought about with the blood of the people in the mines. Let those who are dead to the possibility of justice-compassion bury the dead. For those who would assure the future health, safety, and justice for the mining industry, don’t look back. The workers must organize and stand together for fair wages and working conditions; the regulators must ignore threats from corporations and close down unsafe operations; state legislators must stop worrying about being elected, and start passing laws that assure federal regulations will be enforced; and the rest of the people in West Virginia must demand world-class education, retraining, health care, sustainable, meaningful work, and affordable housing for everyone. Higher taxes and lower profits are far less expensive than 29 lives.
Luke’s sequence begins with Herod, the oppressor and representative of imperial Rome, who wondered who this Jesus was, and wanted to meet him. Perhaps, as the story of the Upper Big Branch Mine continues to unfold, the supporters of business as usual in West Virginia will have that chance.
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