Who knew? I mean,
really? When in Rome, do as the Romans
do, right? Rome is this hodgepodge of
many peoples and many gods competing for space and loyalty. We fight
each other over the small squares Rome allots to us. As a Jew, this was the long history of our
faith. Our people had seen a great line
of emperors and empires compete for our loyalties—from Pharaoh in Egypt, to
Nebuchadnezzer in Babylon, to the Greek Antiochus Epiphanes, to now Caesar in
Rome—all claiming absolute loyalty, all claiming eternal rule, all claiming to
be an equal to God. As a Jew, I was
well-schooled and studied on this. There
is no god but the Living God of our ancestors, right?
Rome has its creed.
“I thank God that I am a Roman and not a barbarian (meaning everybody
else, right?), I thank God that I am born free and not a slave. I thank God that I am a man and not a woman.”[1] Presumably, Rome, as the incarnation of violence
and war, saw us all as the uncivilized, unwashed hordes. I, even I, claimed my Roman citizenship when
it helped me get along in the world. If
we were so lucky as to escape the poverty found everywhere, we would thank God
that they were not the poor and long-suffering.
Again, within Rome is this
mish-mash of all these kinds of different, conquered peoples and loyalties
where people other than Jews carry with them some of their ancestral superstition. I’m sorry, each one with their own faith. This is the way of the world. As a Jew, I had seen it as my job to hold the
line against all other superstitions, contenders . . . I mean faiths. The Greeks had their Father Zeus—Epicureans and
Stoic, their philosophies, the cult of Isis and Mithras, the Persian sun god, all
with a different version. Rome liked to play us off against each
other. Divide and conquer. Divide to
conquer, right?
Rome knew that if it could keep
us fighting one another, we would never turn our attention to them instead--resisting
and revolting against Rome. Greeks would
kill a number of Jews at one circus. We
would rise up and kill many more Greeks at the next circus. Back and forth. Thus it went.
We all moved to position ourselves as “legitimate” under the thumb of Rome. Just as they liked it. Just as they planned it.
You can imagine then, to have what it felt like a loyalty
challenge within your own faith. How
this cult begin to catch fire, how alarming this was to me. As a good Jew, already feeling pressed by
rival sup . . .faiths, how we, as Jews, were
trying to make our way in the world when a superstition or cult within your own
faith tries to claim space already taken.
I was furious. Jews already had so much to contend without. But to fight those battles within?
A peasant leader, crucified, like so many other Jews
before and after him, threatens to divide us even more, undercut the rank we
hold in the pecking order, and dilute the Jewish cause. That the Jewish faith
might show itself greater than any other rival, I actively sought out these
followers of The Way--in their meeting places.
I beat them, oversaw their killings, and would arrest them to take them
back to Jerusalem to have them tried.
But then . . . this.
I had what I can only describe as a vision, a revelation, a new call
from God and this crucified Jesus. He
didn’t provide answers. He didn’t tell
me his way was the better way. He asked
me about the suffering of a people and why I would persecute him? What kind of faith is this that begins with
questions and does not readily supply answers?
And in that moment, I woke up to something. I recognized that my loyalties and faith were
supposed to be . . . different. Was
being a Jew about conquering? About
needing to prove ourselves over all rivals?
In my persecuting of these
people, how was I any different from Rome?
In fact, I was doing Caesar’s bidding by dividing people up, quashing
differences, and seeking out a monolithic faith that had always been so big and
wide and vast. Then it was that
something else occurred to me. As Jews
we have always claimed that God is bigger than just us. Yeah, yeah, we may be the manifestation of
the Living God in the world, but within my people’s Scriptures are these dreams
of all peoples flowing to the throne of the Almighty. For Jews, this was to be our dream, the Day
of the Living God, that others not be our competition but know and find a
common path.
As this Jesus not only appeared to me on the road to Damascus but through the Jewish teaching he extended to his initiation rites. And, in a moment in time, I remembered who I was called to be as a Jew. This Jewish group begins their initiation rites by saying, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female."[2]
It was about remembering our common identity, our common way as Children of God--it was about our solidarity.[3] I am a Roman citizen. I think I identified more as that than as a Jew.
Whenever I extended the
rivalry to another faith and another people, I was just Rome’s citizen, Rome’s
tool of violence and judgment against others.
I was not a righteous Jew. I was
a righteous Roman, dividing and conquering others, extending hate to oppressed
and colonized people. This is what this
Jesus knew that made me a more righteous Jew:
destroying one another, persecuting one another, vying for supremacy and
lordship over one another—this is not God’s Way.. Oh, we may kill and maim and destroy in the
name of the Living God. But how is this
not Cain killing Abel all over again?
Is killing and maiming and destroying others in your God’s
name the way you show your faith’s superiority over others? Are you great because you are a citizen of
your country and others are not? Free? A
man? If so, I say you have no
faith. I say your faith is too delicate
and too fragile. “If you want to do
violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the
balm.”[4] It really depends on what you are looking
for. And what I was looking for before
this vision, well, I think I was looking to justify myself. And the vision I had on the road to Damascus
opened me up to the possibility that I was already justified. And so was everyone else. And what the Living God called me to do, more
than anything, was to help Gentile as well as Jewish ears hear that they had
been justified too—that these divisions created were fictional, made up to keep
us at one another, tearing one another apart.
Who has an interest in keeping you at one another? Do you have the freedom to say you will no
longer do it, practice it, prepare for the harm? Why are you any different in God’s eyes than
the Greek, the Athenian, the Stoic? It
was and is the dream of all of Israel that all peoples might flow to God’s
throne. Not as conquered and beaten
peoples but as people who know God’s glory and flow willingly to that
throne. Who are we, then, to prevent
that?
I am no longer Saul, the unrighteous Jew who sought to
prove my faith through acts of violence to show God as the punisher of all who
are not like me. I am Paul who seeks to
bring Greek and Jew to table with one another, who recognizes that ways we
create hierarchies to show our superiority based on ethnicity, social class,
and gender are no more in Christ Jesus. I
believe this makes me more thoroughly Jewish, more thoroughly faithful.
Maybe we are all a mix of
that unfaithfulness and faithfulness. I
ask myself, “What hierarchies have you created, Paul, to show your
unrighteousness?” And then again, “What
tables have you fashioned, Paul, so that all peoples might flow to the throne
of God?”
Be a righteous Jew, or
Greek, or Athenian, or Stoic, or whatever it is you are so that this proving
our faiths over one another might come to an end. And we might all walk the road to Damascus as
a touchstone of joy, our eyes opened.
Violence and war by faith—that is the superstition. May we all be initiated into the faith that
is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. That is true faith. Amen.
[1] Stephen J. Patterson, “Interview with Stephen J.
Patterson,” Westar Institute, https://www.westarinstitute.org/blog/scholar-feature-stephen-patterson/?fbclid=IwAR2ICaUr9a28GHo61oLxJsEt_Xc02Ycx6vNcV3cY2GVmyL5NuXg6O0zqU2A;
Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten
Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle
Against Bigotry, Slavery, & Sexism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
[2] Galatians 3:26-28.
Patterson notes that the early creed probably did not include “in Christ
Jesus.”
[3] Patterson, “The Forgotten Creed.”
[4] Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood:
How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her
Head, and Calling Her Husband 'Master’ (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012) , p. 296
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