A
Epiphany 4 BFC 2017
Matthew
5:1-15; Micah 6:1-8
January
29, 2017
As Rev. Archer stated in the
introduction to the readings for today, we have before us two of the more
defining Scripture verses within our tradition.
Micah 6:1-8 reminds us that the full sum of a faithful life is to do
justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. These values contrast with a Violent
Christianity that is enamored with power over,
wealth, and numbers. Indeed, within that
Violent Christianity is a mandate to influence culture, as Jesus said, by being
a city set on a hill, salt, and light.[1] More than influence, what the Seven Mountain
mandate is all about is capturing power over seven areas: Arts & Entertainment, Business,
Education, Family, Government, Media, and Religion. The strict teaching of the Seven Mountain
mandate espoused by Violent Christianity says that Christ, in his resurrection
instruction tells his small group of disciples, to “Go and make disciples of
all nations” as a way of telling them to go out and “influence” each one of
these spheres. In so doing, it is
believed, in capturing each one of these spheres, Christians will hasten the
second coming of Christ to the earth.
Once a peripheral teaching in Violent
Christianity, the Seven Mountain mandate has become a functional explanation
for the teaching and mission of the form of cultural Christianity that
supported the candidacy of Donald Trump and now supports and encourages the
policies of President Trump. It invokes
the name of Jesus without any focus on the content of Jesus’s mission and
ministry.[2]
I believe that is why it is imperative
we know the heart of our tradition, how it is defined and what it truly
teaches. I preached on the Beatitudes
the last Sunday of Advent late last year so that we remembered the content of
the Christ-child. For what I hear being
taught, day after day, is a Christian teaching meant to be an alternative to
the teaching of Jesus. And that
alternative teaching has become a baseline for evaluating Christian
communities, Christian pastors, and all of us as Christians. Rather than doing justice, loving kindness,
and walking humbly with God it is about whether we have overflowing offering
plates, a plethora of people in the pews, and a power over the wider culture
narrative.
After
Jesus was dead and resurrected, people in the early church pointed to him and
said, “This was the Light of the World.”
But as I have said many times, when Jesus was alive, he pointed to the
rag-tag community around him and said, “You, you are the Light of the
World.” At the end of the Gospel reading
today, Jesus once again references the fisherfolk, ne’er do-wells, tax
collectors, and prostitutes around him and says, “When you live out the
teaching of the Beatitudes, you, you are lamp put on a table to give light to
the whole house. You, you are a city
built on a hill so that all might see.
You, you are the salt of the earth.”
Jesus is using community metaphors to tell us who we shall be for one
another.
When Jesus
appeared up on a mountain teaching how people should live in the milieu of the
Roman Empire, Jewish people would have known this as a reference to Moses who stood
on the mountain and asked the Children of Israel to covenant with God. Moses asked the Children of Israel to
covenant with God, distinct from who they were as slaves in the Egyptian
Empire, to live lives that would keep them free people. The author of Matthew has Jesus reenacting
this ritual, a ritual we play out in our political arena all the time.
Through
the inauguration of a president, a State of the Union address, or a 4th
of July parade, we, as Americans, do political rituals that represent our
covenant with our country. Whether it is
the president telling our story and calling our country to rise to the
occasion, or a parade in which all stand to salute our veterans, or the elected
leader ending their speech with, “God bless the United States of America,” or
an evening that ends in a brilliant display of fireworks to the tune of “Stars
and Stripes Forever,” we have certain rituals that remind us who we are, who we
are in relation to our country, and who we are in relation to one another. Those acts are a part of, in effect,
“re-covenanting” rituals that stir our hearts and seal our commitment.
Joshua,
the successor to Moses, enacts a similar religious/ political ritual. Joshua calls the people together at
Schechem. Joshua then tells the story of
God by telling the story of the people, starting with Abraham and Sarah, going
on to Moses and Miriam and the Exodus, and finally telling the people the
goodness they have received from God in the promised land.
In this
religious and political ceremony, Joshua challenges his people to rise to the
occasion. They have choices to act
before them. The people may choose to
return to the idols and priorities of Egypt Egypt
This is a
re-covenanting ceremony—a way of choosing God’s blessing or choosing God’s curse
for your future. Much like Moses
ascended the mountain to learn the way to live in covenant and descended to
find the people chasing after the worthless things of Egypt—untold wealth,
military power, and an insider religious cult—the scene in Joshua also asks the
people whom they shall serve. Like our
national political/religious covenanting ceremonies, Joshua’s re-covenanting
ceremony is a way of saying who we will be, who we will be in relationship with
God, and who we will be in relationship with each other.
As we look
back at that re-covenanting ceremony with Moses or Joshua, the choice seems
easy. If we read the Bible and come to
church to hear this little pastor boy preach, best bet is we want to believe we
would choose for the Living God. We want
to believe we would choose the values of God over the worthless things of Egypt
One other
time, Jesus, or better put, the Resurrected Christ, ascends a mountain to
teach. In Matthew’s account of Christ’s
resurrection, the disciples meet Christ at that same Galilean mountain where
Jesus taught them. There, the
Resurrected Christ tells them “Go and make disciples of all nations” teaching
them not to influence the seven spheres but helps them to remember who they
are, who they will be in relationship to God, and who they will be in
relationship to one another. In contrast to what the Seven Mountain mandate
says this Scripture is all about, it is clear from all of the context clues
that Jesus is saying to his small band of followers, “Go teach the Beatitudes.” One more time, the Resurrected Christ
re-covenants with the disciples as Jesus did, as Joshua did, as Moses did.
So these
Beatitudes, the central core of Jesus’s teaching. What are they all about? What did they mean in First Century Rome?
The most
pervasive political, social, and religious system of Jesus’ time was an honor
and shame code which taught appropriate behavior and boundaries, provided
patterns of how to relate with one another.[3] That religious, political, and social system,
the honor and shame code, is the context for almost every interaction between
centurion and slave, peasant and tax collector, paralytic and synagogue leader
in the ancient Mediterranean world.
In the
ancient Mediterranean world, honor is defined as social status and the wider
community’s affirmation and approval of that social status.[4] Within that system, shame is a positive value
as well. Shame keeps people in their
place so they don’t embarrass themselves or their bloodline. The honor and shame code enforces the idea that
everyone needs to be sensitive to where they stand on the honor scale. Understanding and being sensitive to shame,
people are able to behave and act in a way that respects the whole religious,
political, and social structure.[5] In his teaching, Jesus seemingly ignores and
upends this code for human conduct.
This sets
the stage for the Beatitudes. The
Beatitudes are one of those Scripture verses we have heard so often and printed
on so many bookmarks, plaques, and wall hangings that we sometimes fail to hear
their bald-faced radicalness, or study them to hear them anew. For years we have heard the blessings: blessed are you poor in spirit, you hungry,
you weeping.
As I
shared in December, the literal translation is something like, “How honorable
are you destitute and beggars, for yours is the Empire of God. How honorable are you who have fallen out of
the competition for morsels of bread, for you will be filled. How honorable are you who weep from the loss
of kin, family, and all support systems, for you will laugh.”[6]
In the
Beatitudes, Jesus discards the political, religious, and social boundaries of
his time and brings a reversal to them.
People who do not pay attention to the necessary boundaries of honor and
shame, well, in a word, they are shameless.[7] They are people who have forgotten their
place or seem to be intentionally crossing into a place where they do not
belong.
In the
Beatitudes, the disciples are the ones who have become destitute and beggars,
lost their subsistence food supply, left their kin and family to follow
Christ. Christ is shameless—crossing
boundaries into a place where he does not belong. In this system, the fool is the one who takes
the shameless person seriously.[8] So those who take Christ seriously are fools
for Christ—they are his disciples. The
disciples believe there is a basis for real life together beyond the honor and
shame code.
The scary
part about deciding to live shameless, foolish lives is that the code is always
there. Life gets messy and indefinite as
we look for new ways of being and new rules of behavior that do not have to do
with power, wealth, insider status, patronage, or honor.
Biblical
scholar, Sarah Dylan Breuer, has written the Beatitudes, according to the honor
and shame code she hears in 21st Century North American
society. I believe these Beatitudes
reflect not only our culture but the Seven Mountain Mandate. Breuer writes:
We
salute the rich, for they are our major donors.
We
salute the achievers, for we hope we’ll become what we envy.
We
salute the winners, for we hope they’ll reward our loyalty.
We
salute the strong, for nobody can tell them what to do.
We
scorn the poor, for they remind us of our failure to share.
We
scorn the hungry, for we fear they will disrupt our lunch to beg.
We
scorn those who weep, for they remind us of vulnerabilities we try to deny or
hide.
We
scorn those the world scorns, for this demonstrates that we, unlike they, are
insiders.[9]
Now I really don’t feel like I
salute the rich nor scorn the poor, but within me, within me, I know I feel a
sense of shame, at the very least a sense of discomfort, being around the poor
or hungry. And as a pastor, I know I am
beholden to systems and structures that can funnel money the church’s way. So, as a person, I am convicted by these
Beatitudes, believing myself neither shameless nor a fool, and finally, lacking
the faith to follow Jesus in a way that leaves me without resource or
family. I feel myself pulled by the
Seven Mountain mandate. If the cost of
discipleship requires that I have to give up the status, power, and wealth I
have acquired to follow Jesus, will I ever be ready to worship and serve the
Living God?
But
this is who the disciples were right?
Always trying, never getting it right.
And yet, the Resurrected Christ returns them to the Galilean mountain so
that they might remember who they are, who they are in relation to God, and who
they are to be in relationship to one another.
Grace. Grace abounds to keep
trying.
Jesus
was about building communities, village by village, that had been ravaged by
economic debt, military conquest, and community conflict and bickering.[10] If people in these communities were going to
survive, perhaps even thrive at times, he was going to have to help them
remember an old ethic based on cooperation, mutual care, generous lending to
one another, tending to the symptoms created by poverty (such as sickness and
deformity), and a broadening of what it meant to be family. He appealed to that ancient tradition found
within his faith stories and cemented through covenant renewal and
relationships.
These
Scripture verses are a radical call for us to renew a covenant with God that is
based on a power with the
economically poor and mourning, a hunger and thirst for justice, a willingness
to risk our lives to build peace and a turning away from the worthless idols of
Egypt that promised wealth, power over, and insider status. Is there a basis for real life beyond our
culture’s honor and shame code—where we make fun of the poor and denigrate every
dollar they get, justify every penny given to extend military empire, label
American interests as the economics of the most wealthy, and persecute everyone
who does not look like us or worship like us in as the insider religion? “This day,” Joshua says, “choose. Choose between the worthless idols of Egypt,
their messed up priorities, and a life that hungers and thirsts for justice,
loves kindness, and walks humbly with God.”
Are we willing to sign and seal in covenant with God a way beyond our
modern honor and shame code?
Following
the Beatitudes in our Scripture verse today, Jesus tells people from the mount
that those people, who act in such a way, who seek to have that hunger and
thirst sated, who build in such a way that warfare and violence are abated,
these people are the salt of the earth, the city set on a hill for all to see,
the lamp that gives light to the whole house.
Biblical scholar, Bruce J. Malina, writes about the context for salt and
light in the 1st Century.
The “earth” is an
outdoor oven found near the home. The
earthen oven used dung as fuel. The dung heap was salted, and salt plates were
used as a catalyst to make the dung burn. Salt loses its saltiness when the
exhausted plates no longer serve to facilitate burning.
([A] peasant's)
one-room house . . . is envisioned in the parable here, since all who enter can
see the light stand. The normal way to put out an oil lamp was to put it under
a bushel basket so as not to fill the house with smoke and fumes before
retiring.[11]
Using Malina’s scholarship, what
Jesus is trying to say is that those who hunger and thirst for justice and
build the peace are the salt of the earth, the catalyst to get things cooking
in their communities. Those who practice
a hunger and thirst for justice and build the peace are the lamp on the
lampstand, they are to set an example.
These are community metaphors. We
are to give hope. We are not to get fame
or glory for ourselves but so that others in their community will see God’s
goodness.[12]
In
community, we are the people who give life that special zing, shed light so
that others can see clearly.
Hunger. Thirst. Build.
Remember who you are, who you are in relationship to God, and who you
are in relationship to one another.
And I know
who you are. I do. You are the salt of the earth, O people, and
the choice is before you. Today. Choose.
Let’s get things cooking. Amen.
[3] Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993).
[4] “Loss of Wealth, Loss of
Family, and Loss of Honor: A Cultural
Interpretation of the Original Four Makarisms,” In Modelling Early Christianity:
Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its Context, 139-158. P.F. Esler, ed. London
Routledge, 1995.
[5] Malina, The New Testament, p. 51.
[6] See K.C. Hanson, How Honorable! How Shameful!
A Cultural Analysis of Matthew’s Makarisms and Reproaches (Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 2002).
[7] Malina, New Testament, p. 34.
[8] Ibid.
[9]
http://home.earthlink.net/~ntscholar/lectionary-archives/2004_02_01_lectionary-archive#107638865623597776
[10] Richard A Horsley, Covenant Economics: A Biblical Vision of Justice for All (Louisville , KY : Westminster ,
John Knox Press, 2009), pp. 106-110.
[11] Bruce J. Malina, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic
Gospels (Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 2002), pp. 41-42.
[12]Rev. David Ewart’s great blog
www.holytextures.com, really deserves credit for these formulations, http://www.holytextures.com/2011/01/matthew-5-13-20-year-a-epiphany-5-february-4-february-10-sermon.html.
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