This is the second in a series of posts looking at Scripture each Sunday, as a means of exploring what it means to me.
The Episcopal Church uses the Revised Common Lectionary, and the Bible in the NRSV translation. This was the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18 (whatever that means). So, this Sunday in Scripture …
Old Testament: Jeremiah 18:1-11
Some fairly iconic bits this week. First off, we get the “potter and clay” metaphor where Jeremiah passes on how God told him to go by a potter’s house, and he saw a spoiled pot the potter had been making on the wheel turned into a new one. A lot of good (and bad) poems, sermons, and hymns have come from that one.
The metaphor extends into God basically threatening Israel (and, by extension, as used by modern evangelicals, any nation). If God says He’s gonna wipe out a nation, if they repent He might change His mind. Similarly, even if God says a particular nation is His favorite, if they screw up then He might change His mind and zap ’em.
The use of this passage in literature and speeches of the Religious Right over the past year has increased significantly. America has been a favored nation (prosperity = spiritual favor, natch), but if we keep sinning and doing bad stuff (Gays! Muslims! Abortion! Socialism! Dogs & Cats, Living in Sin! Mass Hysteria!) then God can (or has, or will) withdraw his favor we’ll become like (gasp) Europe.
God doing the old neighborhood shakedown scheme (“Nice nation you got here. Be a shame if somethin’ were t’happen to it”) isn’t terribly attractive. It’s a command and control, wrathful deity, the kind that would drown the world or nuke Sodom & Gomorrah.
On the other hand, the Christian story is supposedly about God’s grace triumphing over the Law. Jeremiah’s God is all about the Law — do all these things and don’t do all these other things, commit certain acts and refrain from other acts. Step over the line and you’re hosed. Jesus (and, to a large degree, Paul) set that aside. Nobody can avoid breaking the Law, so if that’s the only route to righteousness, we’re all hosed. Jesus (and Paul) make it clear that the path is through being open to God’s spirit of love, recognizing it, and acting based on that — being kind and generous and giving to each other — loving God and our neighbor. That’s simultaneously simpler and more complicated.
If Jeremiah’s God is still valid, one has to wonder, though, what it means for a nation to “turn from its evil”? If the Law is no longer that of the Deuteronomy or Leviticus, but the “greatest commandments” of Jesus (to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves), then the righteousness off a nation is not measured in legalistic sins (church attendance, adultery, gay marriage, eating shellfish), but in the degree that our nation exercises that kind of love — feeding the poor, clothing the naked, taking care of the widow and orphan sheltering the homeless, showing mercy to prisoners, etc.
It sounds very much like a social gospel in that case — and if God is in fact in charge of a nation’s prosperity or failure, then those sound like the criteria I’d expect Him to use. In which case, we here in the US have some ‘splain’ to do.
Epistle: Philemon 1-21
Unlike so many other of Paul’s epistles, this one is considered authentic. It’s also incredibly short — only 25 verses, of which this reading covers most (including about a quarter the reading being made up of Paul’s greeting to Philemon, who was a leader among the Colossian church).
The first thing to note here is a somewhat revolutionary concept of slavery. The letter is basically being sent from Paul to (re)introduce Onesimus, a slave who (scholars interpret) escaped from Philemon’s household. Paul basically says, “Hey, this guy was a slave when he escaped from you, but returning he’s now a fellow brother in Christ — so act that way.” It’s a metaphor for humanity redeemed from sin, but it’s also a very particular human challenge — the idea that loving one one another (in this case, as fellow Christians) trumps social and legal barriers.
(The question has been raised whether this letter dictates an end to slavery or a recognition of it, and was used by people on both side of the slavery debate. To me, it’s as much a reflection that, in how we treat one another, the legal status between us shouldn’t matter. It’s trumped by our love for one another. I’d argue, though, that if the slave/master relationship interferes, as a practical matter, with that brotherhood, then it must give way to it. It’s another case where the Law matters less than — and in fact must be replaced by –Love.)
The second thing to note is that Paul doesn’t command Philemon about it. There’s no Law being laid down here. “Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.” Indeed, Paul says he’d have rather (since he was in prison) kept Onesimus by his own side, “but I preferred that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced.”
Aside from learning once again that Paul has the Jewish Grandmother thing down (“Don’t you worry about me, I’ll just sit here in prison, a slave to Christ …”), it’s worth reflecting again that we are not called, as Christians, to be “good” (and do “good deeds”) by adherence to the Law, or rules, or commands, or social conventions — but are called to voluntarily act “on the basis of love.”
Gospel: Luke 14:25-33
This is is a tough reading in a lot of ways. The beginning passage is the most quoted — “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”
A commandment to “hate” doesn’t fit well with Jesus as the love guru. To me, though, this is not about hating as much as it is about prioritization, or even about the route through which we come to love.
For Jesus, in this passage, it seems that the only way to really follow God is to put God first — above family, above life. To do less is to treat God (read, morality, your personal code of conduct for what is right) as a job, or a hobby — something you do in compartmentalized slots of time, or when the mood seizes you, or when it’s convenient. Your moral code has to minimally encompass — and thus be greater than — your affections in your day to day life.
Now, on one level, that sounds pretty awful. It’s how you get religious nuts being “cruel to be kind,” whipping their kids and treating their wives like chattel and killing unbelievers who catch their eye — perhaps with sorrow, perhaps with self-righteous glee. Religious fanatics choose their morality over everything else, and it’s a horrible thing.
But can it be any other way? If your moral code of what’s right and wrong can be trumped by what’s convenient, what’s okay with your family, what your wife or your mom or your kids want — then it’s not much of a moral code. And if they are the folks doing something wrong, you need some basis on which to challenge them that is higher than those human relationships.
Going further, if your morality has as its highest value what will keep you alive, that’s understandable, but it makes for a very flexible moral code. Someone once said that someone who doesn’t have anything worth dying for doesn’t have anything worth living for. I think that’s right.
I’ll go further though (looking back at that “religious fanatic” note above) that in a sense this reading is about moral modality — how do you treat and live out your moral beliefs. The nature of those beliefs is something else altogether. If you are going to choose to follow a code that may put you at odds with your family relations, or even your instinct to survive, you should choose one that is worth the time and effort. Better yet, it should encompass all those relationships with caring and love.
But that’s for another Sunday.