Readings (Track 2)

Two Sundays ago we heard the Great Commandment (love of God and neighbor) and the parable of the Good Samaritan (love of the neighbor). Last Sunday, Jesus in Martha’s home: love of God expressed in the continual listening to Jesus. Today, Luke’s presentation of the Lord’s Prayer: what our prayers should look like if that dual love is the mandate.

Last time we were together with these readings I focused on the Lord’s Prayer. This time, just a couple words on that first word, “Father.” In Jesus’ mind and teaching it has everything to do with God’s love and generosity (“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give…”) and nothing to do with the conduct that’s rendered the word ‘father’ toxic in the experience of too many women. There’s no easy solution to that, even as we focus on Jesus’ use of the word and—when necessary—mentally substitute in ‘Mother.’ Meanwhile, Luke is reminding us that the story doesn’t start with the love mandate, but with the generous Father’s love. Our love is the fitting response to that love.

Over in our Epistle, that line from last week’s reading is still ringing in my head: “and through [Jesus] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.” How does Paul think God is doing that?

It sounds unbelievable. Jesus as victor/healer in relation to all that ails our world? This is one of the reasons Abraham and Sarah pop up so frequently in the New Testament. Well past the childbearing window, the Lord says “I will make of you a great nation” and they hang in for decades until they’re changing diapers. “Sounds unbelievable” is familiar territory for us people of faith.

Jesus as healer/victor: how does societal healing, or, more broadly, societal change happen?

That’s the key question for organizations like World Vision, the relief & development agency where I worked for a couple decades. How, for example, to introduce a promising agricultural innovation? What you usually need is a few farmers willing to try it. If it works, it sells itself. The neighbors have been watching (probably expecting it to fail), now they want it too.

This is the strategy behind God’s calling Abraham/Israel. Here’s Isaiah:

“Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.… they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks…” (Isa. 2:3-4)

And it remains the strategy with the renewal of the Israel project in Jesus’ followers. Here’s Paul in Ephesians: “and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (3:9-10). This is why the New Testament gives little attention to evangelism and a great deal of attention to the quality of life in the emerging congregations.

Quality of life. Last week Paul spoke of thrones, dominions, rulers and powers. He’s not only speaking of civil authorities, but also of the customs, institutions, mental frameworks, that pretend to rule his hearer’s lives. Adjust the vocabulary a little and it all sounds very familiar: how many dimensions of our lives get ruled by “that’s just the way things are!” Take the economy. No one controls it. It has its priests (the economists). Sometimes it’s healthy. Sometimes it’s sick. Sometimes it demands sacrifices. Paul: the congregation is the place where the defeat of these powers is visible, where Jesus molds our corporate life (remember Mary, listening).

That’s hardly easy. As in most agricultural test plots, we’re not dealing with virgin land, but with land that’s long been badly treated. So Jesus’ life-giving death and resurrection needs to play out again and again in Jesus’ followers. This is, I think, part of what Paul was talking about in last week’s reading: “in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body.”

The New Testament scholar Gerhard Lohfink writes: “Sin does not just vanish in the air, even when it is forgiven, because sin does not end with the sinner. It has consequences. It always has a social dimension. Every sin embeds itself in human community, corrupts a part of the world, and creates a damaged environment. So the consequences of sin have to be worked off, and human beings cannot do so of themselves any more than they can absolve themselves. Genuine ‘working off’ of guilt is only possible on a basis that God himself must create. And God has created such a base in his people, and in Jesus he has renewed and perfected it.

Lohfink continues, quoting from Dag Hammarskjöld’s diary: “Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who “forgives” you—out of love—takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice. The price you must pay for your own liberation through another’s sacrifice is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences to yourself.[1]

In the Eucharistic Prayer we hear Jesus’ words “This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” It’s easy to assume that Jesus is talking only about God forgiving us. But remember how tightly Jesus links being forgiven and forgiving (the Lord’s Prayer in today’s Gospel)! Jesus is almost certainly talking about both. Jesus is shedding his blood to create a forgiven community that forgives.

(Forgiveness, remember, is not saying “it doesn’t matter.” It’s about extending to each other the same forgiveness we need from God.)

And notice what happens when a culture of forgiveness takes root among us. The mandate is love, but we’re not very good at love. We make mistakes. Forgiveness becomes important pretty quickly. And it’s not simply remedial. Our national culture burns a lot of energy to maintain the illusion of being right. I’m right. I was right. I will be right. But if there’s real forgiveness, that’s unnecessary. All that energy is available for listening to Jesus (Mary), attending to, responding to the neighbor (the Samaritan). If I always have to be right the love mandate is a heavy lift. If loving is something we’re learning how to do together, forgiving each other, with the freedom even to laugh at ourselves, then not so much.. 

Jesus as the victor/healer. God’s happy to use that freed up energy to show that the powers don’t get the last word, that “that’s just the way it is” doesn’t get the last word. That’s a long-term project. In the 4^th Century, Basil in Caesarea established the first hospital with inpatient facilities, professional medical staff, and free care for the poor.[2] In the Middle Ages, starting in the monasteries, water and wind power took the place of forced human labor. The Greeks had had the technology to do this, but why bother when slaves are plentiful? The monks, reading Moses on creation (humanity in God’s image) and Paul (neither slave nor free in Christ) were motivated to use that technology, and it soon spread past the monasteries. In recent centuries Genesis’ declaration that all humanity bears God’s image began to be heard in new ways, and voting rights slowly expanded. So today pretty much all governments claim legitimacy based on the people’s continued consent—however flimsy that claim. Quite breathtaking, really, what Jesus has accomplished through the Church.

Our story, of course, is not one of unbroken progress. God values our freedom, so things can go forward, backward, or sideways. We now have—God help us—for-profit hospitals. So Abraham and Sarah remain crucial as pioneers in trust. And speaking of Abraham, in God’s generosity loss doesn’t get the last word. The rabbis noticed that poor ram caught in the thicket that Abraham sacrificed instead of Isaac; Rabbi Hanina ben Dossa said this: “Nothing of this sacrifice was lost. The ashes were dispersed in the Temple’s sanctuary; the sinews David used as cords for his harp; the skin was claimed by the prophet Elijah to clothe himself; as for the two horns, the smaller one called the people together at the foot of Mount Sinai and the larger one will resound one day, announcing the coming of the Messiah.”[3] Loss doesn’t get the last word.

Our Colossians reading started with “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him.” Continue: there’s a world out there badly needing healing, badly needing transformation. What might Jesus be seeking to do through us now?

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[1] Jesus of Nazareth pp 255-256.

[2] Cf. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lostinaoneacrewood/2020/01/03/basiliad-basil-of-caesarea-social-justice-worlds-first-hospital/.

[3] Wiesel Messengers of God 101.