The
scriptures referred to are Isaiah 58:1-12, 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, and
Matthew 5:13-20.
I was reading an interesting theory about the relationship of magic to religion. Both are responses to things we can't control—health, weather, love, etc. In magic one tries to take control of such things through rituals, incantations, and magical items. Religion, this article asserted, was about acceptance of those things we can't control and trying instead to be in harmony with them. There is a lot of truth in that. But it is incomplete.
Early religions were indistinguishable from magic. In fertility religions, ritual sex in the temple or at festivals was supposed to encourage the gods to make the earth fertile. You could bring a clay replica of the part of your body that is afflicted to the temple of Asclepius to remind the god of what you wanted cured. And even in modern religion, elements of magic persist. Say this special prayer, wear this religious item, copy and repost this meme on Facebook, and God will grant your wish. In fact, Rodney Stark, the sociologist of religion, says that the reason the church opposed witches was in part because they were competition. If you wanted a healthy pregnancy or a good crop you should go to the priest, not the wise woman. Magical wards against demons and even curses pronounced upon people have been found scratched into the stone walls of medieval churches. The average person really didn't see the difference between magic and religion. One of the reasons why in the Ten Commandments God forbids the misuse of his name is precisely so that it will not be used in magical incantations, the way the names of angels and demons were invoked. God is not a genie and you can't get him to do things by simply performing rituals.
That's his beef in our passage from Isaiah. The people of Israel are wondering why their holy fasts are not effective in making God hear them. And God tells them straight out. Fasting and bowing and lying in sackcloth and ashes do nothing to make God hear you if you don't hear him first. Fasting should indicate that your spiritual needs are so important that you are willing to forgo your physical needs for a while. Yet the people were just going through the motions. God says, “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.” If you want to send a message by radio you need to be on the same frequency as the person who is to receive the message. And you want to minimize any interference that will block or drown out the signal. The people's hearts weren't tuned into the love they should have for their neighbor. how did they expect the God who created their neighbors in his image as well to hear them, especially over the interference of violence and oppression?
This is especially ironic because what the people want are “righteous judgments.” Yet they neglect God's “ordinances.” Now in Hebrew the word for ordinances and judgments is the same. Why should God give them justice when they deny justice to others? If you act unjustly how can you be surprised when you suffer injustice in return? If you punch someone, why are you astonished when they punch back? You can't ask God to only restore justice to yourself or your class or your people and ignore the injustice you do to others, any more than it makes sense to ask your doctor to cure your lung cancer so you can continue to smoke. God wants to cure the whole body but how can he do it if you don't cooperate?
And in case these people don't get what he is talking about, he goes into detail. “Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” The yoke was a common metaphor for social oppression. Then God moves from metaphors to concrete examples. “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not hide yourself from your own kin?” Take care of the needs of poor—the hungry, the homeless, and even your own relatives. Who doesn't take care of their own family? Let's give it a more modern name: neglect. Do we know of people who neglect their family members? Yes. As a former home health nurse, I don't know what's sadder: the patients I took care of who had no family or the ones I took care whose family never helped or visited. Sure, some of the patients were difficult. And being sick or in distress can make you more difficult. But we are expected to take care of those we love even when they are less than pleasant. Or else every baby would be abandoned the first time it wouldn't stop crying or when it filled its diaper with the most noxious substance known to man. Love isn't "not having to say you're sorry;" love is not giving up on someone when it would be so easy to.
There is another problem, one we seldom see. When they do studies, most psychologists and social scientists use the people they have easy access to: university students and city folk. In North America and Europe, they have an acronym for this. The societies these people come from are W.E.I.R.D. That stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. And that colors their findings. So today more studies are striving to include people from societies that cannot be described that way. But because we have grown up in a W.E.I.R.D. society, we tend to see everything through that lens. And that includes the Bible.
Specifically, in the West we put more emphasis on the individual and so we tend to think that in the Bible God is mostly talking to individuals and that the commands he gives are primarily the responsibility of individuals. But the opposite is true. God is generally talking to entire countries, whole societies and complete cultures, and expecting them to carry out his commandments. God is not just telling you or you or you or you to act justly; he is telling all of us to act justly together. He doesn't want random spots where one individual is trying to do justice. He wants us to be a just society, a just nation.
And if that happens, “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn.” A just society is a beacon in this world of injustice and oppression. In the same vein Jesus says in our gospel passage, “You are the light of the world.” In the Greek the “you” is plural. Jesus is not speaking to “you” the individual, but to all his disciples. If he were southern he would say “Y'all are the light of the world.” And this is backed up by the next thing he says: “A city on a hill cannot be hid.” A city, a community of people, not one person. Even at night a city cannot be hid because it becomes a huge cluster of lights. Ever land at an airport at night? Even if it is a familiar city, the patterns created by the lights are fascinating and beautiful. Traffic becomes an elaborate dance of white headlights and red taillights, moving and stopping, turning and weaving. Now in Jesus' day, though they had no street lamps or cars, they also had no light pollution. So if you were unfortunate enough to be caught still traveling by nightfall, the small clusters of candlelight and oil lamps glimpsed from windows, or the torches on the city wall where the night watch kept lookout, would stand out in the inky darkness and whisper “Here is rest and safety.”
That is what Jesus calls us to do. And he is not merely talking about personal piety being our light. He says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” [emphasis mine] It is our good works that will catch people's eyes and reveal God's glory. Last week, because we celebrated the presentation of our Lord at the temple, we missed the traditional reading for the 4th Sunday in Epiphany, which is the Beatitudes. They immediately precede today's reading. In Matthew 5:6, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” We tend to think that Jesus is only talking about personal righteousness, but the Greek word also means “justice.” It means the quality of treating people with equity. It is also used elsewhere of Jesus judging people impartially upon his return. So it's about being a person who acts justly, not self-righteously. In the Beatitudes it is bracketed by “Blessed are the meek [or humble]” and “Blessed are the merciful.” Jesus is talking about how we relate to others.
Both Isaiah and Jesus are saying that our light, our reflected glory from God, is our just actions in a just society. And the reason the disadvantaged, the despised and the destitute are singled out is because they are the ones who need justice and mercy. The powerful do not need to worry about justice. They have lawyers and lobbyists and friends in high places. The powerless need people to protect their rights.
I am always nonplussed by billionaires who act as if a single change in the way they do business will turn them into paupers. That would never happen. Not even bankruptcy leaves the rich penniless. Money is power and power buys protection. To put it in terms anyone can understand, Superman doesn't need protection from the giant robots stomping around the city. Nor does Lex Luthor, the rich supercriminal genius. (In fact, he probably built the robots.) It's the non-superpowered people who need protection. A just and good person uses whatever powers or assets God has given them to help others. There's nothing heroic about simply looking out for yourself.
Jesus calls us to be heroes. He calls us to help the hungry and thirsty and threadbare and foreign and sick and imprisoned. And—plot twist—it turns out they are Jesus' siblings and what we do or do not do to them, we do or do not do to him. (Matthew 25: 31-46) He calls us to love even our enemies. (Matthew 5:43-48) It turns out they were also created in God's image. And Jesus died to save them as well as us. In fact Paul says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) While we were still enemies of God, Jesus died for us. So we can reach out and try to be peacemakers with our enemies.
This requires having the mind of Christ as Paul says in our new Testament passage. When Peter turned from saying that Jesus was the Messiah to telling Christ he was wrong to say he would be killed, Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are not setting your mind on God's interests, but on man's.” (Mark 8:33) It is human to care primarily about your own self-interests. God cares about everyone's concerns and especially those who have been denied the power to take care of them for themselves. And as Christians we should know this because we have the Holy Spirit within us and the Spirit of God knows the mind of the God who is love.
Jesus says, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Remember the Greek word for “righteousness” also means “justice.” Unless you are more just than those who oppose Christ, you will not be the kind of person who fits in the kingdom of God. You must, as Paul put it, “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) The kingdom consists of those who have the same mindset as Jesus (Philippians 2:5) so that whenever 2 or 3 are gathered in his name, there in the midst of them is Christ. (Matthew 18:20) Again this is something it takes more than one person to achieve. After all, how could one person fully reflect the glorious love of Jesus? It takes all of us with our unique gifts to function as the body of Christ on earth.
Ask yourself this: Could there be discrimination in the kingdom of God against anyone for things outside their control: what they look like, where they were born, or how they were born? No. That would not be fair; that would not be just. But those things exist now everywhere in every country. So to spread the kingdom we must change them. But first we must be changed. As Fr. Stephen Olds said at our clergy retreat, only a baby with a soiled diaper really wants to be changed. But we must be, and for the pretty much the same reason. And the change must start with our minds. Then, if it is sincere, it will inevitably change what we do and how we do it. It won't happen by magic, by merely saying words or playing with rituals, but by asking our loving heavenly Father to change us and guide us. And that why I said, the idea of religion being about accepting what we can't change was not quite complete. Yes, we accept that we cannot change God and the things only he controls. But we can let his son, Jesus Christ, change us and through us change society and the world.
It won't be done in a flash or with the wave of a hand as magic is supposed to work. It will require the taking up of our cross daily (Luke 9:23) and the renewal of our inner person day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16) It is a process and it is hard work, like repairing a breach or restoring streets till they are livable for all. It will require our obeying God or, as Fr. Olds puts it, fully cooperating with God. But the end result will be wonderful. Paul says, “...no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him...” Or as it says in 1 John, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) That is, the image of God, in which we were created and which has been marred by the damage of our sin, will be seen perfectly restored in Jesus who is the very image of God. (Colossians 1:15) And when we see ourselves in his face, we will know that we are at last who we were meant to be: beloved children of God.
I was reading an interesting theory about the relationship of magic to religion. Both are responses to things we can't control—health, weather, love, etc. In magic one tries to take control of such things through rituals, incantations, and magical items. Religion, this article asserted, was about acceptance of those things we can't control and trying instead to be in harmony with them. There is a lot of truth in that. But it is incomplete.
Early religions were indistinguishable from magic. In fertility religions, ritual sex in the temple or at festivals was supposed to encourage the gods to make the earth fertile. You could bring a clay replica of the part of your body that is afflicted to the temple of Asclepius to remind the god of what you wanted cured. And even in modern religion, elements of magic persist. Say this special prayer, wear this religious item, copy and repost this meme on Facebook, and God will grant your wish. In fact, Rodney Stark, the sociologist of religion, says that the reason the church opposed witches was in part because they were competition. If you wanted a healthy pregnancy or a good crop you should go to the priest, not the wise woman. Magical wards against demons and even curses pronounced upon people have been found scratched into the stone walls of medieval churches. The average person really didn't see the difference between magic and religion. One of the reasons why in the Ten Commandments God forbids the misuse of his name is precisely so that it will not be used in magical incantations, the way the names of angels and demons were invoked. God is not a genie and you can't get him to do things by simply performing rituals.
That's his beef in our passage from Isaiah. The people of Israel are wondering why their holy fasts are not effective in making God hear them. And God tells them straight out. Fasting and bowing and lying in sackcloth and ashes do nothing to make God hear you if you don't hear him first. Fasting should indicate that your spiritual needs are so important that you are willing to forgo your physical needs for a while. Yet the people were just going through the motions. God says, “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.” If you want to send a message by radio you need to be on the same frequency as the person who is to receive the message. And you want to minimize any interference that will block or drown out the signal. The people's hearts weren't tuned into the love they should have for their neighbor. how did they expect the God who created their neighbors in his image as well to hear them, especially over the interference of violence and oppression?
This is especially ironic because what the people want are “righteous judgments.” Yet they neglect God's “ordinances.” Now in Hebrew the word for ordinances and judgments is the same. Why should God give them justice when they deny justice to others? If you act unjustly how can you be surprised when you suffer injustice in return? If you punch someone, why are you astonished when they punch back? You can't ask God to only restore justice to yourself or your class or your people and ignore the injustice you do to others, any more than it makes sense to ask your doctor to cure your lung cancer so you can continue to smoke. God wants to cure the whole body but how can he do it if you don't cooperate?
And in case these people don't get what he is talking about, he goes into detail. “Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” The yoke was a common metaphor for social oppression. Then God moves from metaphors to concrete examples. “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not hide yourself from your own kin?” Take care of the needs of poor—the hungry, the homeless, and even your own relatives. Who doesn't take care of their own family? Let's give it a more modern name: neglect. Do we know of people who neglect their family members? Yes. As a former home health nurse, I don't know what's sadder: the patients I took care of who had no family or the ones I took care whose family never helped or visited. Sure, some of the patients were difficult. And being sick or in distress can make you more difficult. But we are expected to take care of those we love even when they are less than pleasant. Or else every baby would be abandoned the first time it wouldn't stop crying or when it filled its diaper with the most noxious substance known to man. Love isn't "not having to say you're sorry;" love is not giving up on someone when it would be so easy to.
There is another problem, one we seldom see. When they do studies, most psychologists and social scientists use the people they have easy access to: university students and city folk. In North America and Europe, they have an acronym for this. The societies these people come from are W.E.I.R.D. That stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. And that colors their findings. So today more studies are striving to include people from societies that cannot be described that way. But because we have grown up in a W.E.I.R.D. society, we tend to see everything through that lens. And that includes the Bible.
Specifically, in the West we put more emphasis on the individual and so we tend to think that in the Bible God is mostly talking to individuals and that the commands he gives are primarily the responsibility of individuals. But the opposite is true. God is generally talking to entire countries, whole societies and complete cultures, and expecting them to carry out his commandments. God is not just telling you or you or you or you to act justly; he is telling all of us to act justly together. He doesn't want random spots where one individual is trying to do justice. He wants us to be a just society, a just nation.
And if that happens, “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn.” A just society is a beacon in this world of injustice and oppression. In the same vein Jesus says in our gospel passage, “You are the light of the world.” In the Greek the “you” is plural. Jesus is not speaking to “you” the individual, but to all his disciples. If he were southern he would say “Y'all are the light of the world.” And this is backed up by the next thing he says: “A city on a hill cannot be hid.” A city, a community of people, not one person. Even at night a city cannot be hid because it becomes a huge cluster of lights. Ever land at an airport at night? Even if it is a familiar city, the patterns created by the lights are fascinating and beautiful. Traffic becomes an elaborate dance of white headlights and red taillights, moving and stopping, turning and weaving. Now in Jesus' day, though they had no street lamps or cars, they also had no light pollution. So if you were unfortunate enough to be caught still traveling by nightfall, the small clusters of candlelight and oil lamps glimpsed from windows, or the torches on the city wall where the night watch kept lookout, would stand out in the inky darkness and whisper “Here is rest and safety.”
That is what Jesus calls us to do. And he is not merely talking about personal piety being our light. He says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” [emphasis mine] It is our good works that will catch people's eyes and reveal God's glory. Last week, because we celebrated the presentation of our Lord at the temple, we missed the traditional reading for the 4th Sunday in Epiphany, which is the Beatitudes. They immediately precede today's reading. In Matthew 5:6, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” We tend to think that Jesus is only talking about personal righteousness, but the Greek word also means “justice.” It means the quality of treating people with equity. It is also used elsewhere of Jesus judging people impartially upon his return. So it's about being a person who acts justly, not self-righteously. In the Beatitudes it is bracketed by “Blessed are the meek [or humble]” and “Blessed are the merciful.” Jesus is talking about how we relate to others.
Both Isaiah and Jesus are saying that our light, our reflected glory from God, is our just actions in a just society. And the reason the disadvantaged, the despised and the destitute are singled out is because they are the ones who need justice and mercy. The powerful do not need to worry about justice. They have lawyers and lobbyists and friends in high places. The powerless need people to protect their rights.
I am always nonplussed by billionaires who act as if a single change in the way they do business will turn them into paupers. That would never happen. Not even bankruptcy leaves the rich penniless. Money is power and power buys protection. To put it in terms anyone can understand, Superman doesn't need protection from the giant robots stomping around the city. Nor does Lex Luthor, the rich supercriminal genius. (In fact, he probably built the robots.) It's the non-superpowered people who need protection. A just and good person uses whatever powers or assets God has given them to help others. There's nothing heroic about simply looking out for yourself.
Jesus calls us to be heroes. He calls us to help the hungry and thirsty and threadbare and foreign and sick and imprisoned. And—plot twist—it turns out they are Jesus' siblings and what we do or do not do to them, we do or do not do to him. (Matthew 25: 31-46) He calls us to love even our enemies. (Matthew 5:43-48) It turns out they were also created in God's image. And Jesus died to save them as well as us. In fact Paul says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) While we were still enemies of God, Jesus died for us. So we can reach out and try to be peacemakers with our enemies.
This requires having the mind of Christ as Paul says in our new Testament passage. When Peter turned from saying that Jesus was the Messiah to telling Christ he was wrong to say he would be killed, Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are not setting your mind on God's interests, but on man's.” (Mark 8:33) It is human to care primarily about your own self-interests. God cares about everyone's concerns and especially those who have been denied the power to take care of them for themselves. And as Christians we should know this because we have the Holy Spirit within us and the Spirit of God knows the mind of the God who is love.
Jesus says, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Remember the Greek word for “righteousness” also means “justice.” Unless you are more just than those who oppose Christ, you will not be the kind of person who fits in the kingdom of God. You must, as Paul put it, “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) The kingdom consists of those who have the same mindset as Jesus (Philippians 2:5) so that whenever 2 or 3 are gathered in his name, there in the midst of them is Christ. (Matthew 18:20) Again this is something it takes more than one person to achieve. After all, how could one person fully reflect the glorious love of Jesus? It takes all of us with our unique gifts to function as the body of Christ on earth.
Ask yourself this: Could there be discrimination in the kingdom of God against anyone for things outside their control: what they look like, where they were born, or how they were born? No. That would not be fair; that would not be just. But those things exist now everywhere in every country. So to spread the kingdom we must change them. But first we must be changed. As Fr. Stephen Olds said at our clergy retreat, only a baby with a soiled diaper really wants to be changed. But we must be, and for the pretty much the same reason. And the change must start with our minds. Then, if it is sincere, it will inevitably change what we do and how we do it. It won't happen by magic, by merely saying words or playing with rituals, but by asking our loving heavenly Father to change us and guide us. And that why I said, the idea of religion being about accepting what we can't change was not quite complete. Yes, we accept that we cannot change God and the things only he controls. But we can let his son, Jesus Christ, change us and through us change society and the world.
It won't be done in a flash or with the wave of a hand as magic is supposed to work. It will require the taking up of our cross daily (Luke 9:23) and the renewal of our inner person day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16) It is a process and it is hard work, like repairing a breach or restoring streets till they are livable for all. It will require our obeying God or, as Fr. Olds puts it, fully cooperating with God. But the end result will be wonderful. Paul says, “...no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him...” Or as it says in 1 John, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) That is, the image of God, in which we were created and which has been marred by the damage of our sin, will be seen perfectly restored in Jesus who is the very image of God. (Colossians 1:15) And when we see ourselves in his face, we will know that we are at last who we were meant to be: beloved children of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment