Sermon for the people of God at St. Mark Hope and Peace, preached 2018-08-26
Sermon text: Judges 11:29-40
Secondary text: Luke 23:26-31
[Note: my Hebrew is non-existent, so I apologize in advance for any errors. I rely on Interlinear Scripture Analyzer 3 for my textual work, and I am sure it is imperfect (and know that it doesn't account for textual variations.)]
This August, we've deviated from the assigned readings in the lectionary to visit some texts that are less familiar, to answer puzzling questions and to hear stories that we otherwise don't hear.
This text was suggested by Beccah -- but I chose it from several options, so I have no one to blame but myself.
The book of Judges is set chronologically between Joshua and 1 Samuel. Joshua tells us about the Hebrew people conquering the land of Canaan after their forty-year sojourn in the wilderness, and 1 Samuel will tell us about the last of the judges -- Samuel -- and the first of the kings -- Saul.
So Judges is set at a time when there was no king in Israel, and several times in the book -- although not in our story -- the narrator repeats that there was no king in Israel and "everyone did what was right in their own eyes" (Judges 17:6)
So if we're asking "why is this story in the Bible? Why did the writer of Judges choose to tell it?" one of the answers is, the book of Judges is pro-monarchist propaganda about how terrible life is without a king.
If you read Samuel -- or especially Kings -- you'll discover that's life's not too great with a king either, and in fact God strongly discourages the people from asking for a king -- reminding them that GOD is king, and they shouldn't need anyone else to tell them what to do.
If they have a king, God says through Samuel, he'll take all your stuff, your livestock and your produce and your slaves and your children. (1 Samuel 8:10-17)
A king will take your children.
....
So, Jephthah.
My love for maps is not like Pr. Donna's love for maps -- but then, whose is? -- so I can give only a basic sketch of the geography of this story.
It takes place East of the Jordan River -- what's called the transjordan -- which was the less populous side of the Jordan, and had an uneasy relationship with the rest of Israel. If you're like me and can picture two places on a map of the Holy Land -- Galilee is up north somewhere and Jerusalem is down south somewhere -- both those places are on the western side of the Jordan.
The region east of the Jordan and northish is called Gilead, and south of Gilead in the time our story is set is the kingdom of Ammon. (If you're way better than geography than I am, it might help to know that today, the region that was Gilead is now in Syria, and the region that was Ammon is now in the country of Jordan. More or less.)
So: our story takes place east of the Jordan. North is Gilead (which is part of Israel) and south is Ammon (which is not part of Israel).
And somewhere near Gilead, probably even further east, is Tob, which is where Jephthah spent his young adulthood.
Jephthah is the illegitimate son of a man named, confusingly, Gilead. Gilead also had legitimate sons, who drove Jephthah out of his father's land and into the land of Tob. We don't know where Tob was, or anything else about it, so I'm going to guess it was not anyplace particularly special. And Jephthah out in the middle of nowhere gathers bunch of worthless friends around him (11:3). The New Revised Standard Version [NRSV] translation is "outlaws," but the Hebrew means something like "worthless" -- literally "empty" [ריקים]. They're empty, like a dry well [c.f., Genesis 37:24] or a starving person [c.f. Isaiah 29:8]. Jephthah's friends are empty-headed and empty-hearted, which may begin to explain some things about Jephthah.
Eventually the kingdom of Ammon, which remember is the southern neighbor of Jephthah's Gileadite family, declares war on Israel, and Jephthah's relations remember that Jephthah is a strong military leader and come to Tob to beg him to come back and fight for them.
Jephthah is predictably miffed and reminds them that they're the ones who drove him away, so they sweeten the pot and promise him that he can be the head of Gilead if he leads them against Ammon.
To give credit where credit is due, Jephthah first tries diplomacy, which makes him unique among judges -- he tries, in many sentences, to convince Ammon that they have no business fighting Israel -- and the sons of Ammon ignore Jephthah's message.
And that's where our reading picks up.
The very first thing that happens to Jephthah in the passage in front of us is, he's touched by the Spirit of God.
And the very second thing that happens to Jephthah in the passage in front of us is, he's touched by a spirit of horrible shortsighted stupidity and makes a vow.
Commentators disagree about whether Jephthah was expecting to be greeted by a human or by an animal, but either way you've got to think he would have at least considered the possibility that he'll be greeted by a human.
And also, he's already been touched by the Spirit of God. He shouldn't have to make a bargain, because he's already got God's presence; God is already on his side. He concludes his long petition to Ammon by saying, "It is not I who have sinned against you, but you are the one who does me wrong by making war on me. Let the Lord, who is judge, decide today for the Israelites or for the Ammonites." (11:27)
So one, Jephthah knows his cause his just and two Jephthah believes God will judge in his favor and three the Spirit of the Lord has come upon him.
So again, there is no reason for him to make this empty-headed, empty-hearted vow.
Some of you know that rather than the NRSV, which is what we use here at church, I have the New American Bible for personal use, and you might remember -- if you've heard me read from it -- that the translators make the interesting choice to translate the Hebrew that's usually translated "burnt offering" as "holocaust."
That's linguistically correct -- "holocaust" is Greek for "burnt offering" -- but certainly a bold choice, since it will startle readers every time they come across it.
Sometimes that startlement is totally appropriate, of course, as in the text in front of us.
So the NAB translates verse 31, "whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites shall belong to the Lord. I shall offer him up as a holocaust."
I'm already screaming "NO!" at Jephthah when he makes that vow, and the use of the word holocaust deepens the horror of the moment.
God delivers the Ammonites into Jephthah's hands, and then God vanishes from the story.
Jephthah's daughter greets her father with timbrels and dancing -- or tambourines and choruses -- or flutes and the entire musical ensemble -- in any event, it's a musical celebration of victory. It's the same way that the prophet Miriam celebrated God's triumph at the Red Sea (Exodus 15:20), when she led dancing women and sang, "Sing to the Lord, who has triumphed gloriously. Horse and rider God has thrown into the sea!"
Like the prophet Miriam, Jephthah's daughter greets her people's victory over their foes with joyful music.
And here Jephthah makes his second empty-headed, empty-hearted choice.
Instead of saying nothing -- instead of saying nothing and being forsworn and letting his daughter live -- he tears his clothes and tells her she has done strong a terrible wrong because this situation is definitely her fault, and he's not the one who opened his mouth -- the Hebrew says "opened his mouth wide," [פציתי] or, in other words, he opened his big mouth, and he opens it again and tells his daughter what he's done...
and here things get interesting. Still tragic, but interesting.
Because while the headings in my Bible -- both NRSV and NAB -- call this story "Jephthah's vow," the way I think of this story -- and the story Beccah named when listing off difficult texts -- is Jephthah's DAUGHTER.
Jephthah's daughter, who is, like Miriam, a maker of music and a worshiper of God, who attributes to God her father's victory over the Ammonites and who tells him to honor his empty-headed, empty-hearted vow.
Where we stand in relation to this story depends on how much power we have -- and of course, we all have varying degrees of power depending on the situation.
In situations where we have the power to make life or death decisions for other people I hope we can all agree: it's wrong to sacrifice your children. For good measure, don't sacrifice other people's children either. Don't sacrifice children to the gods of fear and greed and political expediency. Don't sacrifice immigrant children to xenophobic ideology, don't sacrifice schoolchildren to the second amendment.
That's today's bold message from the pulpit: child sacrifice is still wrong.
Let's leave Jephthah there, empty-headed and empty-hearted, and follow his daughter and her beloved friends into the mountains to bewail her virginity.
First we should note what virginity means here -- or rather, what it symbolizes. Because literally it means virginity, it means that Jephthah's daughter has never had sex with a man -- but what that means for her. She's never had sex, and she's never going to. She's not married, and she's never going to be. She doesn't have children, and she never will. She is young, and she will never be old.
A question we might have of the text at this point is, why does Jephthah's daughter make the choice she makes? She obviously doesn't want to die, or she wouldn't be preparing for death with lamentation.
We might say, she doesn't have any choice, really. If we say she "chooses" to be sacrificed, we're really blaming the victim. In a system where a daughter is her father's property until he trades her to her husband, does she really have a choice? If we focus on her agency, are we really trying to take the blame off Jephthah ?
Obviously, that's not what I want to do.
So let's try to get inside her head.
She is suddenly in a perilous situation where, one way or another, her life is forfeit.
We can imagine some other options for her -- but none of them are good.
She could run away... but where would she go? She'd be a single, unprotected woman. Her father was a pariah in his own family, so she probably doesn't have relatives she can run to, and she certainly can't run to her father's empty-headed, empty-hearted friends. Her own friends are women, like her, and don't have the structural power to protect her.
She could beg and plead for her life, of course. But she doesn't. Maybe she knows that would be fruitless and wants to maintain her dignity. Maybe she's afraid that if her father breaks his vow, *his* life will be forfeit. Maybe she can't even imagine that possibility. Sometimes we don't see choices, and when you've lived your whole life in a system where you've got to obey it's hard to turn, on a moment's notice, and defy him.
In any event, she doesn't make that choice.
But she does make a choice.
She makes the choice to say, if I'm going to die I'm going to do it on my terms. She tells her father, yes, do this thing, since you opened your big mouth and made this vow.
And she says, let me go with my beloved friends and bewail my virginity.
Lament and solidarity are the tools of those without structural power.
At it's very most basic lament means saying "this SUCKS," which is also the heart of the prophetic message.
It SUCKS that the widows and orphans are oppressed. It SUCKS that our leaders are hypocritical. It SUCKS that some people starve while others gorge themselves. It SUCKS to be an unmarried, childless woman at the mercy of your father, and it sucks to be sacrificed because of your father's empty-headed, empty-hearted promise.
Sometimes all you can do is say IT SUCKS.
We noticed that Jephthah's daughter went to greet her father with tambourines and dancing, like the prophet Miriam.
And Jephthah's daughter is also a prophet in that she shows us, with her words and her body, the ways in which her world sucks.
And her beloved friends come with her, because solidarity is the tool of the powerless. Her friends don't have the resources or the structural power to save her life. But they do have their voices, their bodies, their tears, and they go with her to the mountains to mourn with her.
And memory is the tool of those without structural power.
The story ends by telling us that this became an annual ritual, that for four days each year the daughters of Jerusalem would go out to mourn Jephthah's daughter.
Lament. Solidarity. Memory.
The pain of the powerless is ignored by those with power.
So those without power and their beloved friends lament. They bewail. Weeping and wailing is loud. It is, like the music of the tambourine, wordless sound that makes itself known when there aren't words. Where the tambourines express ecstatic joy, wailing expresses ecstatic grief, grief that is painful, and painful to watch.
I could name any number of tragedies and map this pattern:
The public grieving of mothers who have lost sons to police brutality
The public grieving of parents who have lost children to gun violence
The public grieving of gay men who lost lovers to AIDS
The public grieving of the transgender community that has lost beloved friends to transphobia
The public grieving of the women of Jerusalem when they lose Jesus to capital punishment
and the public grieving that Jesus foresees will happen when the Temple is destroyed in 70 CE
Those who are hurt most profoundly gather with their beloved friends in homes, in churches, in public parks and at busy intersections.
(and the definition of "beloved friends" expands to include all those who grieve in solidarity with those who are hurt most profoundly, as Jesus expands our definition of "neighbor." We are called to treat as beloved friends everyone whose life has been devastated by tragedy.)
And then, forever after, there is remembering.
Annual vigils, memorial quilts. The Holocaust museum.
Good Friday.
As long as we live in a world where empty-hearted, empty-headed people make decisions that hurt the vulnerable -- children, immigrants, widows and orphans, homeless teenagers, addicts and recovering addicts, the elderly, those who are incarcerated and those who have been released from prison, people with disabilities and with chronic illness, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer people, women --
people who, like Jephthah's daughter, have dangerous, violent families
and people who, like Jephthah, have unloving, ostracizing families --
as long as powerful people hurt vulnerable people, when no other options are available to us, we still gather in solidarity to make public lament. And we still remember, year after year.
And when we gather as beloved friends to lament and to remember, our lamenting and our remembering says: "LOOK AT THIS" and "SAY HER NAME" and "WE STAND WITH HER" and "THIS SUCKS."
We say "NEVER FORGET" and we say"NEVER AGAIN."
Amen.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Sunday, June 10, 2018
[sermon] sometimes a family is...
Sermon for the people of St. Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church preached 2018-06-10
Preaching text: Mark 3:19b-35
Family values are not Kingdom values.
For us as progressive Christians, “family values” is kind of low-hanging fruit. It’s really easy to poke holes in the family values of those folks who most frequently claim them. It turns out that the families that they care about are uniform in appearance and structure. They value families that have one mother, one father, and some children. Families that look different are in fact valueless, are not protected.
So, it would be really easy for me to talk about say, the racist “war on drugs” and the mass incarceration of black men that tears apart families. Or the situation at our southern border where children are being ripped away from their parents. These actions don’t strengthen families – they destroy them.
But like I said, that’s low hanging fruit.
When we talk about family values we have to talk in layers, as Jesus does. Figuring out a coherent ethic of family requires us to look not just at this passage, but at multiple passages where Jesus talks about family. Because this passage gives us only one side of Jesus’ stance on family.
but then we look at passages where Jesus Jesus casts out a demon from a Canaanite girl at her mother’s behest (Matthew 15:21-28//Mark 7:24-30), when Jesus raises a widow’s son from the dead (Luke 7:11-17), when Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead (Matthew 9:18-26//Mark 2:21-43//Luke 8:40-56). Or when Jesus commends to his beloved disciple his mother Mary, “Woman, here is your son,” and says to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” (John 19:26-27) And it’s clear from these passages that Jesus has a strong sense of the importance of family.
The reason that family values are not Christian values is that the structure and nature of family, the meaning of family, is entirely culturally dependent.
It’s not going to be possible for us to just wholesale import something called family values from scripture because we’re talking about a society that’s different from ours, where family functions differently from ours.
So what do we mean when we say family values.
And yeah, there are people who mean no divorce, no same gender marriage, no women working outside the home, strict gender roles, father knows best. People who claim the importance of family who are actually sanctioning abuse. Family values can also be used to minimize the role of the state in say educating children about sex, or evolution, or, say, history.
So that’s not what we mean when we say family values. But we do as progressives talk about the importance of family – so what might WE mean by that?
We mean the importance of children. We know instinctively it’s wrong to separate parents from children because it’s especially harmful to children, who usually thrive better in the care of those people who’ve been caring for them for their whole lives. And we mean the things that are valuable to our children – making neighborhoods that our safe for our children, providing education for our children.
We talk about “our children” as if we collectively as a society have a stake in how our children do and the world we leave for our children – which we do.
We might also think about what the LGBTQ movement has done for the protection of our families. The ability to marry legally, and the host of rights that comes with that, including the ability to have legal custody of our children, to be with our partners at their deathbeds, to inherit from our partners, to make medical decisions in proxy for our partners. To protect our partners from deportation. I’ve said the word “partners” about sixteen times now, because the LGBTQ movement decided, strategically, to focus on certain kinds of families, families with two adults unrelated by blood bound together by love and attraction to create a family where they might among other things raise children.
Notice how when we dig a little bit the progressive version of family values also looks like it’s protecting families that are shaped in a particular way, that look a certain way, that have a certain number of people.
There’s a running joke on the internet that celebrates diverse relationships with the phrase: “sometimes a family is....” A quick search turns up, “sometimes a family is nine unrelated superheroes and an adopted teenage boy,” “Sometimes a family is 1500 moms living on an island with their daughter made of clay,” and “sometimes a family is four nerds who change into animals.”
We don’t have to go to the internet to fill in the blank, though –
sometimes a family is be two sisters and a brother keeping house (like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus) (John 11, John 12:1-3, Luke 10:38-42)
Sometimes a family is a king and his one thousand favorite women (King Solomon) (2 Kings 11:1-3)
Sometimes a family is a widow and her daughter-in-law (Ruth and Naomi) (Ruth)
All those examples are families that are connected by bonds of blood or marriage. (Those are, by the way, just the PG examples)
Of course also sometimes a family is – the church – is the punchline and where you knew I was going because you read the gospel text and know that Jesus said whoever does the will of the one who sent me is my sibling, my mother.
Sometimes a family is God and all of God’s children.
Let’s look at some of the images in the Gospel text in front of us:
Sometimes a family is a strong man who can guard his household right up until he gets tied up by bandits. Which is both a lesson for housebreakers and also for householders – maybe “don’t let the strong man get tied up,” or maybe “don’t rely on one strong man to protect your house, because if he gets bound, the whole system is shot.”
Sometimes a family is an army of demons, and the lesson for Satan’s family is, stick together, because you have no chance if you’re separate.
Sometimes a family is Jesus’ folks coming to chastise him – to try to restrain him, thinking he’s the strong man in some new, terrifying, possibly satanic family, and if they can just tie him up, that will be the end of that.
But Jesus is protected by the crowds of people surrounding him.
And sometimes, a family can be a crowd.
Jesus says, “My family is made up of those who do the will of God.” But Jesus also says, “Y’all are my family, sitting here.” This isn’t directed at the twelve disciples, but at a crowd of people so thick they make it impossible to eat. This is the crowd sitting around him, maybe even still including the scribes – whom Jesus calls to himself in verse 23 to chastise.
This is not a carefully selected family made up of the people Jesus likes best, but a group made up of all those people who happen to be around him in that moment.
We need to think about family in layers.
It’s the nature of humans to have packs, to protect those whom we love, to love some more than others. I could try to argue otherwise or argue that that’s unChristian, and maybe it is, but it’s also human nature. In John’s Gospel a Mystery Disciple is referred to over and over as The Disciple Jesus Loved. For the important moments of Jesus’ ministry Jesus drags Peter, James, and John with him – to the mountaintop where he’s Transfigured [Matthew 17:1-8//Mark 9:2-8//Luke 9:28-36], to the hilltop where he sweats blood [Matthew 26:37//Mark 14:33 – and I suppose it could be because they’re the most holy, obedient, righteous people he could find in all of Judea but we’re talking Simon “Surely I’ll Never Betray you Lord” Peter [Matthew 26:33,35//Mark 14:29, 31//Luke 22:31//John 13:37] and James “shall we rain down fire on the Samaritans?” [Luke 9:54] and John “can I sit at your right hand?” [Matthew 20:20-28] sons of Zebedee, so whatever Jesus loved about them I don’t think it was their saintly demeanor.
So yeah. We love people. We love people who are annoying and infuriating and with whom we have nothing in common, and we call that love family, and so did Jesus.
And if we’re lucky, we find people with whom we have everything in common, and we form families with them. And so did Jesus.
But at its problematic worst those kinds of family are exclusionary, and insular, and leave those without families uncared for.
Think about Jesus raising the widow’s son – for a widow, having a son was not just about hanging out with someone she loved, but a necessity for her protection and livelihood. It’s the same reason Jesus, hanging on the cross, found someone to care for his own mother like she was family.
Over and over in scripture God demands that we care for widows and orphans – vulnerable people without family to protect them.
I started by saying that family values aren’t kingdom values. The Kingdom of God is the world we’re working toward, and while I can’t name exactly what it will look like I know it can’t look like this world, where some people have families to care for them and others don’t, where some people are lucky enough to marry or be born into families that can provide them with the kind of care and support they need, and others are lucky enough to find kindred spirits with whom to form families that aren’t legally sanctioned… and some people are just alone.
So when we work towards the Kingdom of God, we have to radically expand our understanding of who’s worthy of our love.
Family looks out for each other, protects each other.
So who will look out for widows and orphans?
Who will look out for children when their parents are deported or incarcerated?
Who will look out for queer children whose parents throw them out?
Who will look out for our queer elders, whose families have been lost to AIDS?
Who will look out for homeless people, wandering alone?
Who will look out for prisoners and former prisoners, for drug addicts, for people whose families have turned their back on them?
Who will look out for those who can’t look out for themselves – for people with incapacitating disabilities, for people with severe mental illness?
And who will look out for people who can support themselves okay in material ways but are desperately lonely?
Who will look out for the crowd?
It is our responsibility as Christians to care for the vulnerable like our own family, and it is our gift as Christians to be part of the crowd around Jesus, those whom Jesus names as his own siblings, his own mother – his own family.
Preaching text: Mark 3:19b-35
Family values are not Kingdom values.
For us as progressive Christians, “family values” is kind of low-hanging fruit. It’s really easy to poke holes in the family values of those folks who most frequently claim them. It turns out that the families that they care about are uniform in appearance and structure. They value families that have one mother, one father, and some children. Families that look different are in fact valueless, are not protected.
So, it would be really easy for me to talk about say, the racist “war on drugs” and the mass incarceration of black men that tears apart families. Or the situation at our southern border where children are being ripped away from their parents. These actions don’t strengthen families – they destroy them.
But like I said, that’s low hanging fruit.
When we talk about family values we have to talk in layers, as Jesus does. Figuring out a coherent ethic of family requires us to look not just at this passage, but at multiple passages where Jesus talks about family. Because this passage gives us only one side of Jesus’ stance on family.
but then we look at passages where Jesus Jesus casts out a demon from a Canaanite girl at her mother’s behest (Matthew 15:21-28//Mark 7:24-30), when Jesus raises a widow’s son from the dead (Luke 7:11-17), when Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead (Matthew 9:18-26//Mark 2:21-43//Luke 8:40-56). Or when Jesus commends to his beloved disciple his mother Mary, “Woman, here is your son,” and says to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” (John 19:26-27) And it’s clear from these passages that Jesus has a strong sense of the importance of family.
The reason that family values are not Christian values is that the structure and nature of family, the meaning of family, is entirely culturally dependent.
It’s not going to be possible for us to just wholesale import something called family values from scripture because we’re talking about a society that’s different from ours, where family functions differently from ours.
So what do we mean when we say family values.
And yeah, there are people who mean no divorce, no same gender marriage, no women working outside the home, strict gender roles, father knows best. People who claim the importance of family who are actually sanctioning abuse. Family values can also be used to minimize the role of the state in say educating children about sex, or evolution, or, say, history.
So that’s not what we mean when we say family values. But we do as progressives talk about the importance of family – so what might WE mean by that?
We mean the importance of children. We know instinctively it’s wrong to separate parents from children because it’s especially harmful to children, who usually thrive better in the care of those people who’ve been caring for them for their whole lives. And we mean the things that are valuable to our children – making neighborhoods that our safe for our children, providing education for our children.
We talk about “our children” as if we collectively as a society have a stake in how our children do and the world we leave for our children – which we do.
We might also think about what the LGBTQ movement has done for the protection of our families. The ability to marry legally, and the host of rights that comes with that, including the ability to have legal custody of our children, to be with our partners at their deathbeds, to inherit from our partners, to make medical decisions in proxy for our partners. To protect our partners from deportation. I’ve said the word “partners” about sixteen times now, because the LGBTQ movement decided, strategically, to focus on certain kinds of families, families with two adults unrelated by blood bound together by love and attraction to create a family where they might among other things raise children.
Notice how when we dig a little bit the progressive version of family values also looks like it’s protecting families that are shaped in a particular way, that look a certain way, that have a certain number of people.
There’s a running joke on the internet that celebrates diverse relationships with the phrase: “sometimes a family is....” A quick search turns up, “sometimes a family is nine unrelated superheroes and an adopted teenage boy,” “Sometimes a family is 1500 moms living on an island with their daughter made of clay,” and “sometimes a family is four nerds who change into animals.”
We don’t have to go to the internet to fill in the blank, though –
sometimes a family is be two sisters and a brother keeping house (like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus) (John 11, John 12:1-3, Luke 10:38-42)
Sometimes a family is a king and his one thousand favorite women (King Solomon) (2 Kings 11:1-3)
Sometimes a family is a widow and her daughter-in-law (Ruth and Naomi) (Ruth)
All those examples are families that are connected by bonds of blood or marriage. (Those are, by the way, just the PG examples)
Of course also sometimes a family is – the church – is the punchline and where you knew I was going because you read the gospel text and know that Jesus said whoever does the will of the one who sent me is my sibling, my mother.
Sometimes a family is God and all of God’s children.
Let’s look at some of the images in the Gospel text in front of us:
Sometimes a family is a strong man who can guard his household right up until he gets tied up by bandits. Which is both a lesson for housebreakers and also for householders – maybe “don’t let the strong man get tied up,” or maybe “don’t rely on one strong man to protect your house, because if he gets bound, the whole system is shot.”
Sometimes a family is an army of demons, and the lesson for Satan’s family is, stick together, because you have no chance if you’re separate.
Sometimes a family is Jesus’ folks coming to chastise him – to try to restrain him, thinking he’s the strong man in some new, terrifying, possibly satanic family, and if they can just tie him up, that will be the end of that.
But Jesus is protected by the crowds of people surrounding him.
And sometimes, a family can be a crowd.
Jesus says, “My family is made up of those who do the will of God.” But Jesus also says, “Y’all are my family, sitting here.” This isn’t directed at the twelve disciples, but at a crowd of people so thick they make it impossible to eat. This is the crowd sitting around him, maybe even still including the scribes – whom Jesus calls to himself in verse 23 to chastise.
This is not a carefully selected family made up of the people Jesus likes best, but a group made up of all those people who happen to be around him in that moment.
We need to think about family in layers.
It’s the nature of humans to have packs, to protect those whom we love, to love some more than others. I could try to argue otherwise or argue that that’s unChristian, and maybe it is, but it’s also human nature. In John’s Gospel a Mystery Disciple is referred to over and over as The Disciple Jesus Loved. For the important moments of Jesus’ ministry Jesus drags Peter, James, and John with him – to the mountaintop where he’s Transfigured [Matthew 17:1-8//Mark 9:2-8//Luke 9:28-36], to the hilltop where he sweats blood [Matthew 26:37//Mark 14:33 – and I suppose it could be because they’re the most holy, obedient, righteous people he could find in all of Judea but we’re talking Simon “Surely I’ll Never Betray you Lord” Peter [Matthew 26:33,35//Mark 14:29, 31//Luke 22:31//John 13:37] and James “shall we rain down fire on the Samaritans?” [Luke 9:54] and John “can I sit at your right hand?” [Matthew 20:20-28] sons of Zebedee, so whatever Jesus loved about them I don’t think it was their saintly demeanor.
So yeah. We love people. We love people who are annoying and infuriating and with whom we have nothing in common, and we call that love family, and so did Jesus.
And if we’re lucky, we find people with whom we have everything in common, and we form families with them. And so did Jesus.
But at its problematic worst those kinds of family are exclusionary, and insular, and leave those without families uncared for.
Think about Jesus raising the widow’s son – for a widow, having a son was not just about hanging out with someone she loved, but a necessity for her protection and livelihood. It’s the same reason Jesus, hanging on the cross, found someone to care for his own mother like she was family.
Over and over in scripture God demands that we care for widows and orphans – vulnerable people without family to protect them.
I started by saying that family values aren’t kingdom values. The Kingdom of God is the world we’re working toward, and while I can’t name exactly what it will look like I know it can’t look like this world, where some people have families to care for them and others don’t, where some people are lucky enough to marry or be born into families that can provide them with the kind of care and support they need, and others are lucky enough to find kindred spirits with whom to form families that aren’t legally sanctioned… and some people are just alone.
So when we work towards the Kingdom of God, we have to radically expand our understanding of who’s worthy of our love.
Family looks out for each other, protects each other.
So who will look out for widows and orphans?
Who will look out for children when their parents are deported or incarcerated?
Who will look out for queer children whose parents throw them out?
Who will look out for our queer elders, whose families have been lost to AIDS?
Who will look out for homeless people, wandering alone?
Who will look out for prisoners and former prisoners, for drug addicts, for people whose families have turned their back on them?
Who will look out for those who can’t look out for themselves – for people with incapacitating disabilities, for people with severe mental illness?
And who will look out for people who can support themselves okay in material ways but are desperately lonely?
Who will look out for the crowd?
It is our responsibility as Christians to care for the vulnerable like our own family, and it is our gift as Christians to be part of the crowd around Jesus, those whom Jesus names as his own siblings, his own mother – his own family.
Sunday, March 11, 2018
[sermon] Jesus is a disappointing snake god (but an okay savior)
Sermon for the people of God at St. Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church, preached Sunday, 2018-03-11. Lent 4B.
Preaching text: John 3:14-21
See also:
Numbers 21:4-9 and 2 Kings 18:1-4 for the full saga of the bronze serpent.
+
John 3:14
Or, here’s something you don’t see on billboards or bumper stickers or posters at sporting events.
“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
This is a weird, unsettling story, and we tend to skim past it in our eagerness to get to John 3:16 and 17, to “God so loved the world” and “God came into the world not to condemn the world but to save it.”
The weird story with the bronze snake lifted up,
(the weird story with God’s own child hung on a cross)
that story we tell less enthusiastically.
That story is less comforting.
Of course there are actually several stories here, acting as commentary on each other, and part of what feels so confusing about being here is that we’re thrown into the middle of several stories.
story one
One dark night, a Jewish leader named Nicodemus slipped away and found the place in Jerusalem where Jesus was staying, and Nicodemus asked Jesus some questions to which Jesus gave typically cryptic, confusing Jesus-like answers. Nicodemus asked, “How can a person be born of the Spirit?” and our Gospel text for this morning is part of Jesus’ answer.
story two
Once upon a time, when Israel had already been wandering in the desert for a long time, everyone was tired and cranky and hungry. The food was boring and terrible, water was scarce, and everyone was bored and whiny and thoroughly sick of everyone, especially God and God’s buddy Moses who had brought them on this trip.
They kicked the back of God’s seat one too many times and God turned around and said “THAT’S IT” and set poisonous snakes on them.
Then the people talked to Moses and Moses talked to God, the same conversation they’d had over and over again, “Look, everyone is really sorry about kicking your seat and calling your manna gross and forgetting that you rescued us from Israel, please please please forgive us and get rid of these snakes.”
And Moses, in his role as magician, the one with the magic staff that could turn into a snake (Exodus 7:8ff) and part the sea (Exodus 14:21-22) and get water from a rock (Exodus 17:1-7), makes a magical snake out of bronze, mounts it on a magical pole, and heals people of their snakebites.
Many, many years later, when King Hezekiah is ruling in Judah, he clears out all the idols and temples to idols he can find – uproots sacred trees and breaks sacred poles, and smashes Moses’ bronze serpent to smithereens. (2 Kings 18:4)
story three
The idea that the image of a snake could cure the bite of an actual snake is the “hair of the dog that bit you” theory – which is actually kind of how vaccines work, right, injecting a less-deadly version of an illness into the body to protect it from the heavy duty version.
It’s not a bronze bull or a silver dove curing snake bites – it’s a snake. But it’s a snake that’s not really a snake (because it’s made of bronze) and it’s also not really the snake that’s doing the healing at all – that’s God.
+
There are more stories being told, of course, but let’s take these three for now – the story of Nicodemus conversing with Jesus, the story of Moses’ bronze snake, and the story that a fake snake can cure a real snakebite –
and think about how Jesus is like a bronze snake.
How can an image of a snake cure a snakebite? and Why would anyone believe that it could?
and
How is the monstrous evil of Jesus’ crucifixion a triumph over evil?
As Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?”
There are many answers to these questions – but, like Jesus’ answers to all questions, they might be more roundabout and cryptic than we would prefer.
How can these things be?
Jesus hangs on a cross for the same reason that the bronze serpent is lifted up – to cure humanity of an evil we’ve inflicted on ourselves.
Jesus hangs on a cross for the same reason Moses didn’t elevate a bull or a duck or a goat – because the problem was snakes.
When the problem is humans, the cure is also human –
the snake that Moses made isn’t a real snake, made of flesh and blood and bones and scales and venom – but Jesus is a real human, made of human flesh and blood and bones – and venom.
+
We’re going to take a detour for a moment but I promise we’re coming back to Jesus’ venom.
story four
A couple of weeks ago we learned that many women were accusing Sherman Alexie, a notable Native American (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) author, of sexual harassment. I mention Alexie because this was a Big Deal in our household, but this is, obviously, a story that’s been playing out again and again as people – mostly women – come forward with stories of powerful people – mostly men – abusing their power.
When I read about Alexie I texted Joanie (my housemate, sitting in the front pew) to say, “So, bad news about one of your faves.”
And ze replied:
oh no
oh no
oh no
Later ze said, “I guess the lesson is just not to have any heroes because everyone will ultimately disappoint you – obvious exception for Jesus.”
And I said, “Well, darn, now you’ve spoiled the ending of my sermon.”
+
I’ve been thinking about Joanie’s disappointment in the context of this passage, thinking about what it means to lift someone (or something) up.
We elevate things to make them visible. Those billboards with John 3:16, Moses’ snake – this pulpit. So people will see them and take note and get the benefits – the healing power of Moses’ snake, the good news of God’s love for the world.
When we lift things up it’s easy to see their rough outline – their larger than life quality – and harder to see the nuances, the fine points.
Reading John 3:16 on a billboard going 70 on I-70 is different than sitting down and reading it in your own Bible, together with all the other verses that make up Jesus’ answer to Nicodemus, which is part of the longer story that John is telling about Jesus, which is itself part of the Bible in all its difficulty and complexity.
Looking up at a bronze snake, you can see only that it’s a snake, not the imperfections in the bronze and the nicks in the sculpture, not the reminders that it’s just an object and not a god.
And God lifted up, out of this world, elevated and looking down –
that God is different from the God who came down.
When God became flesh, God took on human blood and bones and skin, human flesh and human venom –
I wanted to be able to stand here and tell you that Jesus will never disappoint you but I can’t.
In lots of ways and for lots of reasons. Jesus was forever a disappointment – to parents who expected an obedient son and got a kid who ran off in the middle of the most crowded city in the country at the most crowded time of year. (Luke 2:41-50)
To everyone who was expecting a Messiah who could cure their illness with a glance and maybe drive off Roman occupiers with lasers from his eyes.
To Nicodemus, who came to Jesus after dark to ask some questions and got a longwinded not entirely relevant answer and also a passive-aggressive dig about people who do things at night, people who do evil and hate the light (like honestly Jesus some of us are just night owls, okay?)
And besides all these pious reasons – Jesus was disappointing to people who wanted the wrong things – Jesus is disappointing because Jesus is human. To be human is to be limited – unable to be everywhere you’re needed, not having enough energy to do all the good you want to – and then there’s that human venom, too, the impatience and pettiness and even selfishness that led Jesus to snap at the disciples (too many instances to cite) and curse an innocent fruit-bearing shrub (Matthew 21:18//Mark 11:12-14) and tell a Syro-Phoenician woman that his ministry wasn’t for her (Matthew 15:21-28//Mark 7:24-30).
We’d like to think, of course, that Jesus would never disappoint us, that we aren’t like those foolish disciples, that we aren’t like those bloodthirsty zealots who wanted an armed messiah – but that’s an arrogant assumption, or at the very least naive. If we’re never disappointed by Jesus, we don’t really know Jesus all that well. We’re still looking at him from a distance, up there and out of reach.
But (you might be thinking) the Son of Man must be lifted up.
And that’s true.
And Jesus’ elevation on the cross, Jesus hanging on the tree, was the biggest disappointment of all to his followers.
Jesus being hung on a cross is a kind of being lifted up, but not the kind that’s meant to bring honor to the lifted one. The cross is a place of shame. It’s a place where people are hung as an example – not an example to be emulated, but an example to be spurned. Not, “Go and do likewise,” but “Don’t do like they did or you’ll get what they got.”
And into this place of shame, God came.
God saw that the venom of humanity – our violence, our greed, our selfishness – was poisoning us – and God’s love for us was so great that God took on our humanity – our vulnerable flesh and our venomous feelings –
and told us, poisoned by evil, to lift our eyes to the cross, where a still greater evil had hung our Lord
because ultimately, ultimately, Jesus didn’t disappoint. Rebellious preteen Jesus became obedient even unto death, and took the lead role in God’s perplexing drama.
Perplexing, because we still don’t understand how this can be, how the cross works. But while how might be unclear, but the why never is.
Because God so loved the world that God gave God’s only son to hang high on a cross for the world to see, and, in seeing, be saved.
Preaching text: John 3:14-21
See also:
Numbers 21:4-9 and 2 Kings 18:1-4 for the full saga of the bronze serpent.
+
John 3:14
Or, here’s something you don’t see on billboards or bumper stickers or posters at sporting events.
“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
This is a weird, unsettling story, and we tend to skim past it in our eagerness to get to John 3:16 and 17, to “God so loved the world” and “God came into the world not to condemn the world but to save it.”
The weird story with the bronze snake lifted up,
(the weird story with God’s own child hung on a cross)
that story we tell less enthusiastically.
That story is less comforting.
Of course there are actually several stories here, acting as commentary on each other, and part of what feels so confusing about being here is that we’re thrown into the middle of several stories.
story one
One dark night, a Jewish leader named Nicodemus slipped away and found the place in Jerusalem where Jesus was staying, and Nicodemus asked Jesus some questions to which Jesus gave typically cryptic, confusing Jesus-like answers. Nicodemus asked, “How can a person be born of the Spirit?” and our Gospel text for this morning is part of Jesus’ answer.
story two
Once upon a time, when Israel had already been wandering in the desert for a long time, everyone was tired and cranky and hungry. The food was boring and terrible, water was scarce, and everyone was bored and whiny and thoroughly sick of everyone, especially God and God’s buddy Moses who had brought them on this trip.
They kicked the back of God’s seat one too many times and God turned around and said “THAT’S IT” and set poisonous snakes on them.
Then the people talked to Moses and Moses talked to God, the same conversation they’d had over and over again, “Look, everyone is really sorry about kicking your seat and calling your manna gross and forgetting that you rescued us from Israel, please please please forgive us and get rid of these snakes.”
And Moses, in his role as magician, the one with the magic staff that could turn into a snake (Exodus 7:8ff) and part the sea (Exodus 14:21-22) and get water from a rock (Exodus 17:1-7), makes a magical snake out of bronze, mounts it on a magical pole, and heals people of their snakebites.
Many, many years later, when King Hezekiah is ruling in Judah, he clears out all the idols and temples to idols he can find – uproots sacred trees and breaks sacred poles, and smashes Moses’ bronze serpent to smithereens. (2 Kings 18:4)
story three
The idea that the image of a snake could cure the bite of an actual snake is the “hair of the dog that bit you” theory – which is actually kind of how vaccines work, right, injecting a less-deadly version of an illness into the body to protect it from the heavy duty version.
It’s not a bronze bull or a silver dove curing snake bites – it’s a snake. But it’s a snake that’s not really a snake (because it’s made of bronze) and it’s also not really the snake that’s doing the healing at all – that’s God.
+
There are more stories being told, of course, but let’s take these three for now – the story of Nicodemus conversing with Jesus, the story of Moses’ bronze snake, and the story that a fake snake can cure a real snakebite –
and think about how Jesus is like a bronze snake.
How can an image of a snake cure a snakebite? and Why would anyone believe that it could?
and
How is the monstrous evil of Jesus’ crucifixion a triumph over evil?
As Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?”
There are many answers to these questions – but, like Jesus’ answers to all questions, they might be more roundabout and cryptic than we would prefer.
How can these things be?
Jesus hangs on a cross for the same reason that the bronze serpent is lifted up – to cure humanity of an evil we’ve inflicted on ourselves.
Jesus hangs on a cross for the same reason Moses didn’t elevate a bull or a duck or a goat – because the problem was snakes.
When the problem is humans, the cure is also human –
the snake that Moses made isn’t a real snake, made of flesh and blood and bones and scales and venom – but Jesus is a real human, made of human flesh and blood and bones – and venom.
+
We’re going to take a detour for a moment but I promise we’re coming back to Jesus’ venom.
story four
A couple of weeks ago we learned that many women were accusing Sherman Alexie, a notable Native American (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) author, of sexual harassment. I mention Alexie because this was a Big Deal in our household, but this is, obviously, a story that’s been playing out again and again as people – mostly women – come forward with stories of powerful people – mostly men – abusing their power.
When I read about Alexie I texted Joanie (my housemate, sitting in the front pew) to say, “So, bad news about one of your faves.”
And ze replied:
oh no
oh no
oh no
Later ze said, “I guess the lesson is just not to have any heroes because everyone will ultimately disappoint you – obvious exception for Jesus.”
And I said, “Well, darn, now you’ve spoiled the ending of my sermon.”
+
I’ve been thinking about Joanie’s disappointment in the context of this passage, thinking about what it means to lift someone (or something) up.
We elevate things to make them visible. Those billboards with John 3:16, Moses’ snake – this pulpit. So people will see them and take note and get the benefits – the healing power of Moses’ snake, the good news of God’s love for the world.
When we lift things up it’s easy to see their rough outline – their larger than life quality – and harder to see the nuances, the fine points.
Reading John 3:16 on a billboard going 70 on I-70 is different than sitting down and reading it in your own Bible, together with all the other verses that make up Jesus’ answer to Nicodemus, which is part of the longer story that John is telling about Jesus, which is itself part of the Bible in all its difficulty and complexity.
Looking up at a bronze snake, you can see only that it’s a snake, not the imperfections in the bronze and the nicks in the sculpture, not the reminders that it’s just an object and not a god.
And God lifted up, out of this world, elevated and looking down –
that God is different from the God who came down.
When God became flesh, God took on human blood and bones and skin, human flesh and human venom –
I wanted to be able to stand here and tell you that Jesus will never disappoint you but I can’t.
In lots of ways and for lots of reasons. Jesus was forever a disappointment – to parents who expected an obedient son and got a kid who ran off in the middle of the most crowded city in the country at the most crowded time of year. (Luke 2:41-50)
To everyone who was expecting a Messiah who could cure their illness with a glance and maybe drive off Roman occupiers with lasers from his eyes.
To Nicodemus, who came to Jesus after dark to ask some questions and got a longwinded not entirely relevant answer and also a passive-aggressive dig about people who do things at night, people who do evil and hate the light (like honestly Jesus some of us are just night owls, okay?)
And besides all these pious reasons – Jesus was disappointing to people who wanted the wrong things – Jesus is disappointing because Jesus is human. To be human is to be limited – unable to be everywhere you’re needed, not having enough energy to do all the good you want to – and then there’s that human venom, too, the impatience and pettiness and even selfishness that led Jesus to snap at the disciples (too many instances to cite) and curse an innocent fruit-bearing shrub (Matthew 21:18//Mark 11:12-14) and tell a Syro-Phoenician woman that his ministry wasn’t for her (Matthew 15:21-28//Mark 7:24-30).
We’d like to think, of course, that Jesus would never disappoint us, that we aren’t like those foolish disciples, that we aren’t like those bloodthirsty zealots who wanted an armed messiah – but that’s an arrogant assumption, or at the very least naive. If we’re never disappointed by Jesus, we don’t really know Jesus all that well. We’re still looking at him from a distance, up there and out of reach.
But (you might be thinking) the Son of Man must be lifted up.
And that’s true.
And Jesus’ elevation on the cross, Jesus hanging on the tree, was the biggest disappointment of all to his followers.
Jesus being hung on a cross is a kind of being lifted up, but not the kind that’s meant to bring honor to the lifted one. The cross is a place of shame. It’s a place where people are hung as an example – not an example to be emulated, but an example to be spurned. Not, “Go and do likewise,” but “Don’t do like they did or you’ll get what they got.”
And into this place of shame, God came.
God saw that the venom of humanity – our violence, our greed, our selfishness – was poisoning us – and God’s love for us was so great that God took on our humanity – our vulnerable flesh and our venomous feelings –
and told us, poisoned by evil, to lift our eyes to the cross, where a still greater evil had hung our Lord
because ultimately, ultimately, Jesus didn’t disappoint. Rebellious preteen Jesus became obedient even unto death, and took the lead role in God’s perplexing drama.
Perplexing, because we still don’t understand how this can be, how the cross works. But while how might be unclear, but the why never is.
Because God so loved the world that God gave God’s only son to hang high on a cross for the world to see, and, in seeing, be saved.
Sunday, March 4, 2018
[sermon] Jesus' Seminar on Non-Violence
Sermon for the people of God at St. Mark Hope and Peace preached, 2018-03-04, Lent IIIB
Preaching text: John 2: 13-21
There is a lot going on in this passage. Much of it makes little sense to us, not being first century Jews, and not having direct access to the practices, sacrifices, and pieties of first century Jews.
Unlike us, Jesus was an observant Jew from a family of observant Jews,. We learn from Luke that Jesus’ family went to Jerusalem every year for the Passover [Luke 2:41], and Jesus appears to continue this tradition into his adulthood.
Jesus has come to the Temple before. But this time is different – this time Jesus notices what’s happening in the outer courts in a way that he hasn’t before.
He notices people selling animals to be sacrificed, sheep and cattle for wealthier people, doves for the poor.
He notices money changers, who are exchanging pilgrims’ money into the coinage necessary to pay the annual temple tax – which, bizarrely, is the Tyrian shekel.
It was important that the temple tax be paid with silver, and Tyre – a Northern city just outside of Jewish territory – had an independent mint that made coins that were 90-95% pure silver, the purest silver around.
Unfortunately, the Tyrian coins were engraved with an image of Melkart, the city-god of Tyre, which, since we’ve just had a refresher on the ten commandments, is obviously in violation of them – it’s a graven image, and it’s an image of a God other than the One God of Israel.
When we approach the world as peacemakers, we are called to observe the world attentively, looking for gaps in justice, places where the grace of God is needed. When Jesus comes to the Temple, he finds these places easily.
I should tell you there is some debate about what exactly upsets Jesus about this scene. I suspect that there are some details we have lost – there may have been dishonesty or corruption, since those are common where there is commerce. Perhaps people we being overcharged for sacrificial animals. Certainly the use of pagan currency to pay a tax for God’s house is offensive.
The text tells us that Jesus accuses the dove-sellers of “making my Father’s house a marketplace,” and the disciples see in Jesus a person consumed with zeal for God’s house.
They are quoting Psalm 69. It is zeal for your house that has consumed me, the Psalmist writes. The insults of those who insult YOU have fallen on ME. [Psalm 69:9]
The use of currency with a pagan God’s image is certainly an insult to God, and Jesus takes that insult personally. He is deeply angered at the misuse of God’s house, overcome by the distance of the marketplace-Temple of his day from the house of prayer for all peoples envisioned by Isaiah.
This is not what the house of God is supposed to look like.
Jesus’ zeal for God’s house is a vision of what the Temple should look like – a place where all can offer prayers and sacrifice, rich and poor alike, where no one makes a profit off other people’s piety, and a place where only God is God – not money, not the marketplace and not Melkart.
Jesus sees the house of God in a world where Israel is free from her Roman yoke, where no Roman coins of any kind are used in Jerusalem, where it’s possible to give one’s offering with pure silver, unadulterated by copper, unmarred by images of idols.
And struck by the contrast between that imagined world and the real world, consumed with zeal, Jesus searches around him and uses what he finds – fraying ropes binding sacrificial animals in place, dirty reeds that were animal bedding or straw that was their food – to create a “whip of cords.”
Jesus makes a whip and then uses the whip to make one of the most important tools of non-violent protest: a spectacle.
Jesus is an active agent – he makes a whip and drives out animals, he pours out coins and overturns tables.
It’s messy and chaotic, goes against custom and law and authority. It gets people upset and paints a picture of the upside down world promised in the Magnificat, where the poor are fed and the rich go hungry. [Luke 2:46-55] Jesus literally upsets the tables to symbolically upset the status quo and paint a vivid picture of God’s transformation of the world. The marketplace world and its marketplace values will have to go if there is to be room for God in God’s house.
So to recap, Jesus’ seminar in nonviolence has so far covered these steps:
First, look at the world with attention, and notice the specifics of what’s happening around you.
Second, compare that world with God’s vision of the world as it should be
Third, look around again and find the tools that are handy to
Fourth, Create a ruckus
That ruckus should be created with purpose, of course, designed to symbolize or signify the new order we imagine.
For us, the question might be, “What will this look like on the evening news?”
What are the optics?
What will people see?
A whip, the chaos of animals milling about, coins poured out.
Candlelight vigil, arms linked in solidarity. Rainbow flag, rainbow facepaint. People sitting in the road, blocking traffic.
Water cannons, pepper spray, dogs attacking protesters. A bloody execution.
Wait, what?
Part of the strategy of nonviolence is to turn violence on itself. Nonviolence anticipates retaliation and welcomes it. We know that authorities will escalate unreasonably, will demonstrate the irrationality and wickedness that are at the core of oppressive power structures.
In his letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. writes, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” And again, “The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
Direct action is a dramatization that creates a crisis – as, for instance, a rabbi driving out animals and overturning tables, disrupting business as usual so that folks are forced to confront the flaws in the sacrificial infrastructure and cannot help but notice the person at the center of this chaos.
Matthew (21:12-13), Mark (11:15-19), and Luke (19:45-48) tell us this protest in the Temple came at the end of Jesus’ life, that it was the immediate cause of the crucifixion.
Jesus will scold the soldiers who arrest him in the Garden, reminding them of how he preached openly in the Temple (Matthew 26:55//Mark 14 48-49//Luke 52-53). We could mention also this open demonstration, designed to attract attention. Nonviolence takes place in the light of day, in the middle of the city, in the place that has (unfortunately) become a marketplace, filled with people.
Attracting the attention of the authorities isn’t safe. But it’s not supposed to be safe.
Back in John’s story, “the Jews” – religious authorities, presumably – question Jesus about the whole temple/marketplace/tables/doves thing – asking, confusingly, for a “sign,” as if Jesus protest itself wasn’t a clear sign, like they want “The Temple Is Not Marketplace!” painted on posterboard for this to be a legitimate protest. Like they want him to produce written permission from the high priest to cause a disturbance, or, like the religious leaders whom Dr. King is writing to, they’re wondering why Jesus doesn’t try to negotiate first, why he’s resorted to “unwise and untimely” direction action.
And typically, Jesus doesn’t exactly answer their question, saying, “Destroy this temple, an in three days I will raise it up.”
Like everything in John’s Gospel, this saying has layers of meaning. There’s the literal temple, still standing in Jesus’ time but forever destroyed by the time John is writing. And there is, as the narrative tells us, the temple of Jesus’ body, and the promise that Jesus will be killed, and that in three days Jesus will be raised again.
Even in John’s Gospel, then, when several years separate this event from the crucifixion, the logic is the same. Jesus does this sign – this act of civil disobedience – and signals the incoming of God’s kingdom. Throughout his ministry, Jesus gives signs – in his healing, in his teaching, in his table fellowship and in his body – of the change that’s coming.
Jesus is here d̳a̳r̳i̳n̳g̳ the authorities to kill him. “I’d like to see you try.”
And eventually they do try, and they succeed, except:
Jesus’ violent death provides an opening for an even more spectacular sign, an even clearer image of the new world that God is ushering in.
In the new world, peace is triumphant over violence, the temple is torn down and built up, the rich starve and the hungry eat, marketplaces become houses of prayer, and greed and hatred don’t have the final word,
Jesus’ ruckus in the temple, tables turned and money poured out, animals running amok, is a spectacular image of the upside-down logic of God’s kingdom, the kingdom promised through the prophets, the Kingdom testified to by Jesus’ mother when she sang the Magnificat.
And we are called to do likewise. To take that magnificent, Magnificat image, of God scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts just as Jesus scatters coins on the Temple floor, and to look around at the world we live in, and compare them.
When we see places where they don’t line up, where the world we have doesn’t match the world God wants for us, we’re to use the tools and images available to us to create a picture of the world flipped on its head, the marketplace brought down and the Temple lifted up – a picture so compelling that it turns heads and turns hearts, just as God is turning the world upside down.
The hymn of the day – which for the record I did not pick out – is #723, Canticle of the Turning.
++
Works consulted:
Keys to Jerusalem: Collected Essays by Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, on Google Books
Alexis-Baker, Andy. "Violence, Nonviolence and the Temple Incident in John 2:13-15." Biblical Interpretation, vol. 20, no. 1-2, 2012, pp. 73-96. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1163/156851511X595549.
and of course:
Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Preaching text: John 2: 13-21
There is a lot going on in this passage. Much of it makes little sense to us, not being first century Jews, and not having direct access to the practices, sacrifices, and pieties of first century Jews.
Unlike us, Jesus was an observant Jew from a family of observant Jews,. We learn from Luke that Jesus’ family went to Jerusalem every year for the Passover [Luke 2:41], and Jesus appears to continue this tradition into his adulthood.
Jesus has come to the Temple before. But this time is different – this time Jesus notices what’s happening in the outer courts in a way that he hasn’t before.
He notices people selling animals to be sacrificed, sheep and cattle for wealthier people, doves for the poor.
He notices money changers, who are exchanging pilgrims’ money into the coinage necessary to pay the annual temple tax – which, bizarrely, is the Tyrian shekel.
It was important that the temple tax be paid with silver, and Tyre – a Northern city just outside of Jewish territory – had an independent mint that made coins that were 90-95% pure silver, the purest silver around.
Unfortunately, the Tyrian coins were engraved with an image of Melkart, the city-god of Tyre, which, since we’ve just had a refresher on the ten commandments, is obviously in violation of them – it’s a graven image, and it’s an image of a God other than the One God of Israel.
When we approach the world as peacemakers, we are called to observe the world attentively, looking for gaps in justice, places where the grace of God is needed. When Jesus comes to the Temple, he finds these places easily.
I should tell you there is some debate about what exactly upsets Jesus about this scene. I suspect that there are some details we have lost – there may have been dishonesty or corruption, since those are common where there is commerce. Perhaps people we being overcharged for sacrificial animals. Certainly the use of pagan currency to pay a tax for God’s house is offensive.
The text tells us that Jesus accuses the dove-sellers of “making my Father’s house a marketplace,” and the disciples see in Jesus a person consumed with zeal for God’s house.
They are quoting Psalm 69. It is zeal for your house that has consumed me, the Psalmist writes. The insults of those who insult YOU have fallen on ME. [Psalm 69:9]
The use of currency with a pagan God’s image is certainly an insult to God, and Jesus takes that insult personally. He is deeply angered at the misuse of God’s house, overcome by the distance of the marketplace-Temple of his day from the house of prayer for all peoples envisioned by Isaiah.
This is not what the house of God is supposed to look like.
Jesus’ zeal for God’s house is a vision of what the Temple should look like – a place where all can offer prayers and sacrifice, rich and poor alike, where no one makes a profit off other people’s piety, and a place where only God is God – not money, not the marketplace and not Melkart.
Jesus sees the house of God in a world where Israel is free from her Roman yoke, where no Roman coins of any kind are used in Jerusalem, where it’s possible to give one’s offering with pure silver, unadulterated by copper, unmarred by images of idols.
And struck by the contrast between that imagined world and the real world, consumed with zeal, Jesus searches around him and uses what he finds – fraying ropes binding sacrificial animals in place, dirty reeds that were animal bedding or straw that was their food – to create a “whip of cords.”
Jesus makes a whip and then uses the whip to make one of the most important tools of non-violent protest: a spectacle.
Jesus is an active agent – he makes a whip and drives out animals, he pours out coins and overturns tables.
It’s messy and chaotic, goes against custom and law and authority. It gets people upset and paints a picture of the upside down world promised in the Magnificat, where the poor are fed and the rich go hungry. [Luke 2:46-55] Jesus literally upsets the tables to symbolically upset the status quo and paint a vivid picture of God’s transformation of the world. The marketplace world and its marketplace values will have to go if there is to be room for God in God’s house.
So to recap, Jesus’ seminar in nonviolence has so far covered these steps:
First, look at the world with attention, and notice the specifics of what’s happening around you.
Second, compare that world with God’s vision of the world as it should be
Third, look around again and find the tools that are handy to
Fourth, Create a ruckus
That ruckus should be created with purpose, of course, designed to symbolize or signify the new order we imagine.
For us, the question might be, “What will this look like on the evening news?”
What are the optics?
What will people see?
A whip, the chaos of animals milling about, coins poured out.
Candlelight vigil, arms linked in solidarity. Rainbow flag, rainbow facepaint. People sitting in the road, blocking traffic.
Water cannons, pepper spray, dogs attacking protesters. A bloody execution.
Wait, what?
Part of the strategy of nonviolence is to turn violence on itself. Nonviolence anticipates retaliation and welcomes it. We know that authorities will escalate unreasonably, will demonstrate the irrationality and wickedness that are at the core of oppressive power structures.
In his letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. writes, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” And again, “The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
Direct action is a dramatization that creates a crisis – as, for instance, a rabbi driving out animals and overturning tables, disrupting business as usual so that folks are forced to confront the flaws in the sacrificial infrastructure and cannot help but notice the person at the center of this chaos.
Matthew (21:12-13), Mark (11:15-19), and Luke (19:45-48) tell us this protest in the Temple came at the end of Jesus’ life, that it was the immediate cause of the crucifixion.
Jesus will scold the soldiers who arrest him in the Garden, reminding them of how he preached openly in the Temple (Matthew 26:55//Mark 14 48-49//Luke 52-53). We could mention also this open demonstration, designed to attract attention. Nonviolence takes place in the light of day, in the middle of the city, in the place that has (unfortunately) become a marketplace, filled with people.
Attracting the attention of the authorities isn’t safe. But it’s not supposed to be safe.
Back in John’s story, “the Jews” – religious authorities, presumably – question Jesus about the whole temple/marketplace/tables/doves thing – asking, confusingly, for a “sign,” as if Jesus protest itself wasn’t a clear sign, like they want “The Temple Is Not Marketplace!” painted on posterboard for this to be a legitimate protest. Like they want him to produce written permission from the high priest to cause a disturbance, or, like the religious leaders whom Dr. King is writing to, they’re wondering why Jesus doesn’t try to negotiate first, why he’s resorted to “unwise and untimely” direction action.
And typically, Jesus doesn’t exactly answer their question, saying, “Destroy this temple, an in three days I will raise it up.”
Like everything in John’s Gospel, this saying has layers of meaning. There’s the literal temple, still standing in Jesus’ time but forever destroyed by the time John is writing. And there is, as the narrative tells us, the temple of Jesus’ body, and the promise that Jesus will be killed, and that in three days Jesus will be raised again.
Even in John’s Gospel, then, when several years separate this event from the crucifixion, the logic is the same. Jesus does this sign – this act of civil disobedience – and signals the incoming of God’s kingdom. Throughout his ministry, Jesus gives signs – in his healing, in his teaching, in his table fellowship and in his body – of the change that’s coming.
Jesus is here d̳a̳r̳i̳n̳g̳ the authorities to kill him. “I’d like to see you try.”
And eventually they do try, and they succeed, except:
Jesus’ violent death provides an opening for an even more spectacular sign, an even clearer image of the new world that God is ushering in.
In the new world, peace is triumphant over violence, the temple is torn down and built up, the rich starve and the hungry eat, marketplaces become houses of prayer, and greed and hatred don’t have the final word,
Jesus’ ruckus in the temple, tables turned and money poured out, animals running amok, is a spectacular image of the upside-down logic of God’s kingdom, the kingdom promised through the prophets, the Kingdom testified to by Jesus’ mother when she sang the Magnificat.
And we are called to do likewise. To take that magnificent, Magnificat image, of God scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts just as Jesus scatters coins on the Temple floor, and to look around at the world we live in, and compare them.
When we see places where they don’t line up, where the world we have doesn’t match the world God wants for us, we’re to use the tools and images available to us to create a picture of the world flipped on its head, the marketplace brought down and the Temple lifted up – a picture so compelling that it turns heads and turns hearts, just as God is turning the world upside down.
The hymn of the day – which for the record I did not pick out – is #723, Canticle of the Turning.
++
Works consulted:
Keys to Jerusalem: Collected Essays by Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, on Google Books
Alexis-Baker, Andy. "Violence, Nonviolence and the Temple Incident in John 2:13-15." Biblical Interpretation, vol. 20, no. 1-2, 2012, pp. 73-96. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1163/156851511X595549.
and of course:
Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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