A Advent 4 OL
BFC 2016
Matthew 5:1-11
December 18,
2016
I apologize in advance for another sermon
based on my Biblical geekiness. But it
is what it is. And on we go.
One of the ways we interpret Bible is through
a kind of study known as form criticism.
Form criticism uses the type of literary genre to discern meaning. For example, we would read and interpret a
love letter from our one and only much differently than we might read a book
report written by a brother or sister.
The writer’s intent is different.
The emotional investment is different.
So how we discern the meaning of each is different based on reading it
as a love letter or a book report.
In the Bible, Paul’s letters are easy. We interpret the meaning of letters not by
focusing on the salutation or the closing but by interpreting the salutation
and the closing by their relationship to the body of the letter. If someone writes me a letter sharing
compliment after compliment in the salutation but then does everything but call
me a scumbag in the body, I know the person indeed thinks of me as a
scumbag. It happens.
I share all of that because for a long time
Biblical scholars did not have a literary category for canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Their literary type or form was referred to
as just . . . “gospel.” Recently, however, some scholars have started
to say: the gospels belong to no
literary form. The gospels are, compared
to the Jewish Bible before them, crude and lacking in literary artistry. They do not compare with anything written.[1]
The conclusion is that the gospels are not a
literary form but a type of speech performance.
Remembering that over 95% of the Roman world did not read or write, we
are now invited to imagine the gospels being recited from memory, all in one
sitting, by a performer who would help an audience develop their own memory and
imagination through proverbs and parables, appeals to familiar structures
rooted deep within Jewish tradition. Now
turns of phrase from the gospels like, “For those who have ears, let them hear”
make perfect sense within the context of the spoken word. I also now understand how the gospels may
have been transmitted as “good news” to poor and marginal communities
throughout the Roman Empire. Longing for
some word over and against the crushing weight of Rome, Jewish peasants may
have heard for the first time that God not only stood with them but was their
advocate once again.
Here
we are in the liturgical season where a speaker rises in our community to tell
the impossible story of how an immigrant or refugee story somehow navigates the
underground railroad to escape with their lives. As Jewish peasants identified with the Holy
Family, they must have been at rapt attention wondering if one of their own
would finally pull one over on King Herod just by surviving. Will they make it? How do they?
Ah yes, through their own obscurity, being non-descript peasants like us
who could have hidden and blended. Ah
yes, through dreams just like the other Biblical Joseph survived through the
dreams God had given him.
We might also imagine those same peasants
being told the story of crucifixion as they had seen done to so many of their
Jewish neighbors, friends, and family members.
How the resurrection story not only told the story of Jesus but also
told them a story of hope for their communities. How they hung onto the hope
that even in the midst of so much poverty and death, God might be raising them
up as God raised Jesus. “Rise up,” the
storyteller would be telling them, “for God is with you!”
Those two stories, of Jesus’ birth and
resurrection, kept the listeners at the edge of their seats, but they also
provided a bracket for the actual content of how Jesus taught people to move
and breath in community, how God was moving and breathing in their
communities. Unfortunately, too much of
Christianity spends all of its time with those rich stories intended to keep
the listener glued to their seats for the teaching found within the gospels. Violent Christianity has focused on the angel
choruses and victorious resurrection to make Jesus the ultimate winner absent
of the class conflict, disease and death, persecution and injustice. Instead, Violent Christianity is unwilling to
hear what would certainly have been good news for rural Jewish peasants living
under the Roman Empire in the First Century.
“Rise up,” Jesus would have been saying to people who had to experience
that real life, “for God is with you!”
That is why I chose the gospel text I did for
today. Constructed in a form reminiscent
of the covenant God made with Moses and the Children of Israel, the Sermon on
the Mount is one of those iconic texts that is central to the teaching of
Jesus. The birth story is intended to
hook you. The Sermon on the Mount is
intended to inform you. The Sermon on
the Mount, particularly the Beatitudes within the Sermon on the Mount, are
intended to inform the listener about the character of God. Violent Christianity tells us that we are to
be victorious winners at life so that people of numbers, wealth, and power show
themselves to be the true Christians.
This is inconceivable to the God of the Beatitudes—those Beatitudes
describing a God who will not forget, who honors[2]
the poor, the mourning, those who hunger
and thirst for the redemption of an unjust system.[3]
That first Beatitude, in Matthew, the poor in
spirit, in Luke, the poor, does not just describe someone who is down on their
luck. The word used means “destitute”,
someone who is “shamefully poor.” The
person described was someone who had lost many or all of family and social
ties. This person was often a wanderer, therefore a foreigner for others, unable
to rely on, for any length of time, the resources of a group to which this
person could contribute very little or nothing at all—the oppressed, the
miserable, the humiliated. Mourners
would have been people who lost family or kin in a world that largely depended
on wider social connections as a safety net.
Finally, using the words “hunger and thirst” would have resonated with a
people who daily experienced drought and famine in the land[4] Again,
can we imagine how this might have sounded to Jewish peasants who were constantly
living on the edge of poverty, mourning death due to the violence and disease
all around them, who may not have imagined to this day that God would want
something different for them? “Rise
up! Hunger and thirst for a new day!” The birth story of Jesus is to hook us into
this deeper teaching.
As Christians living in the 21st
Century, our task is to engage the Biblical text, critique it, decide what is
life-giving in it and what might need to be left behind. As the ancient Jewish people did, we are to
update the Beatitudes so that they retain their challenge and comfort.
Lesbian feminist theologian, Episcopal teacher
and priest, Carter Heyward, wrote some Christmas Beatitudes for this year that,
I believe, expand and enhance the originals.
She uses the more traditional translation “blessed” and writes:
Blessed are those who are kind,
especially when it’s hard
Blessed are those angry for
justice in situations of unfairness and oppression,
Blessed are the compassionate
in times of hatred,
Blessed are those who speak
honestly when pummeled by lies — and who seek truth when confronted by fake
news,
Blessed are those who keep
their courage in the face of belligerent bullies,
Blessed are women who stand up
to abusive men — and men who stand with, not on, women,
Blessed are the queer who do
not walk straight and narrow paths,
Blessed are black lives — and
white lives who know that black lives matter,
Blessed are the earth and
animals among those indifferent to their well-being,
Blessed are non-violent
resisters whose enemies hope you will pick up guns,
Blessed are you when people
shake their heads because you refuse to accept authoritarian rulers as
“normal,”
Blessed are you peacemakers who
refuse cheap grace,
You are daughters and sons of
the Sacred,
brothers and sisters of Jesus,
friends of the Spirit,
Salaam. Shalom. Peace.[5]
These are the values of
a Christianity that remembers a Jesus who lives in between rich stories of birth
and resurrection. These values are not
about numbers, wealth, or power. Rather,
these values are about a God who stands with us and advocates on behalf of us
most especially when we do not abide by the narrative of Violent
Christianity. These values are not about
a romantic, sentimental love. These values invite us to rise up with a dirt-underneath-our-fingernails
kind of love, the kind of love that is steadfast and struggles, the love that
is persistent and remains to build community when the rulers of the day think
they have extinguished our hope because all that is left is rubble.
If we are not to take these Christmas Beatitudes from
Carter Heyward, we, as people of faith are called to engage our Scripture and tradition
to make meaning with ones of our own. We
are to counter the prevailing wisdom that God is with the bean counters, the
wealthy, and the powerful with a message faithful to that ancient gospel. As we do so, we recognize that it is not God
who institutes the status quo. Oh no.
And when we realize that the status quo is not divinely ordained, we are freed
to rise up.
“Rise up in confrontational non-violence to say that
violence shall no longer define our faith or our nation!”
“Rise up with vulnerable communities to say that our and
their lives shall not be ignored and forgotten!’
“Rise up to protect the earth and all of its creatures so
that profit and prisons are not valued over people and planet!”
“Rise up in anger against injustice, in compassion
against hatred, in courage against bullies, in truth against
misinformation!”
Rise up! For
contrary to what the wider cultural narrative may tell you, God is with
you. Rise up. God advocates on behalf of you.
God is with you.
God advocates on behalf of you.
Repeat that. Let it sink into
your skin. Let it become part of your
bloodstream. Rise up. The work begins with a love that is like the
dirt underneath our fingernails. During
this holy season, if we do not believe it, angels, shepherds, and Magi arrive
to hook us into the story all over again.
The gospel is not found with Caesar or Herod. We affirm today, that gospel is being
performed one more time. Here. In this telling. Now. Rise
up. Amen.
[1] Richard A. Horsley, “Oral
and Written Aspects of the Gospel of Mark as Scripture,” Oral Tradition 25/1 (2010) 93-114.
http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/25i/08_25.1.pdf.
[2] The choice to use “honor”
is in keeping with the recognition that the honor/shame code defined life in
the ancient Mediterranean world. This
online article relates that reasoning: K.
C. Hanson, “How Honorable! How
Shameful! A Cultural Analysis of
Matthew’s Makarisms and Reproaches,” May 9, 2002, http://www.kchanson.com/ARTICLES/mak.html.
[3] Righteousness, is
about the active intervention into social affairs to rehabilitate
society. Righteousness is also about having an
inner integrity that is expressed through outer action. Interrupting the
status quo and working toward transformation are hard. Nobody likes to
enter into that much conflict. Righteousness says that if interruption,
transformation, and conflict need to happen to rehabilitate society, then bring
it on. No hurdles are too high, no stumbling blocks are too many which
will keep us off the path. If one says, “I value this!” but then
blinks and gives up when things get tough, that person betrays themselves as
something less than a righteous dude or dudette.
[4] Jerome H. Neyrey, S.J.,
“The Cultural Edge of Jesus’ Beatitudes,” http://www3.nd.edu/~jneyrey1/loss.html.
[5] Carter Heyward, “Christmas
Beatitudes,” Radical Discipleship,
December 10, 2016. https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2016/12/10/christmas-beatitudes-2016/.
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