Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 30, 2017, "Mustard and leaven--pervasive and persistent"

Proper A12 Ord 17 BFC 2017

Matthew 13:31-33

July 30, 2017

Just take a look at us
Aren't we ridiculous?
It's safe to say we've got no common sense, yeah
Just take a peek at us
The free song, the mini-bus
The geeks you like to throw into the fence, yeah

You know it really hurts someone loving
You know it really hurts, but we'll rise above it
You know it's gonna hurt
Woah ooh ooh oh, we know what we're worth
And you'll get what you deserve
When all the geeks inherit the Earth, yeah

Hey, aren't we absurd?
We're just a bunch a nerds
Is safe to say you're much cooler than them
So, take your punch at us
Go ahead and steal the lunch from us
We'll take the blow and play our part in the end, yeah

You know it really hurts someone loving
You know it really hurts, but you can't stop it
Right where it really hurts
Woah ooh ooh oh, we know what we're worth
And you'll get what you deserve
When all the geeks inherit the Earth, yeah

You toss your sticks and stones
And we'll just lick our wounds
Beware the underdog
Payback is coming soon

Don't blame the Universe when the commas reverse
Just look at yourself

            That’s a song by singer/songwriter Hailey Knox titled, “The Geeks.”  For a moment, it has us imagine the violence some of the people in grade school and high school experienced, the exclusion and the underdog status they lived in, “Just take a peek at us; The geeks you like to throw into the fence.”  But the song also has us imagine a future that is quite different, a future when the geeks inherit the earth.  “Payback is coming soon,” she relates.  We might imagine that with four-year or even Master’s degrees, good-paying jobs, perhaps white-collar jobs, and legal battles over intellectual property.  Knox even uses language from the Beatitudes (“When all the Geeks inherit the earth”) recognizing that the gospels have a parallel reversal.  We learn that God seeks out transformation.  The world is not as God wills it.  Some of us may have been the kingpins in grade school and high school, the popular kids, the head cheerleader, the football star, with the power to wear the letter jacket proudly and push people around.  We were gods then. 

          But maybe, Knox imagines, maybe this is not the end of the story.  Maybe there is more to write. 

And so it is with God.  We learn that the way we see things may not be the way God sees things.  The way we see ourselves, may not be the way God sees us.  God takes what is a teachable moment in our lives, takes all of our expectations, and turns them on their head.  We may see that play out as we move through grade school and high school into adulthood, but is that possible when we are the poor of the earth?  Is that upending of expectations something we even want to contemplate as the lone super power on the planet?  We might like Knox’s song because we can partially or wholly identify with those geeks, says the pastor with the pocket protector, but is our faith such that we want our expectations, our lives, the world upended?  And does our faith actively call us to see that upending of expectations?

          For the parables taught by Jesus were like that.  They took teachable moments and turned those moments on their head.  Expectations for where people stood in the world, how God saw folks, were used to create a suspended moment and then, through parable, Jesus would open a space where expectations might change, how God saw people might transform.

          Parables begin with things that are familiar, invite us in, make us believe we know the ending of the story.  Biblical scholar, John Dominic Crossan, then talks about a dark interval with parables—a place where reality is suspended for a moment while our whole brain, body, and community receives new information.[1]   Parables flip expectations and give us new perspectives.   But parables do so in a way such that our life cannot be the same as it was, for the reversal is usually done in a place where we are highly invested. 

          Each of these parables begins with a familiar image for the people of First Century Rome—empire.  Empire was the way people described the activity of the Romans in Galilee—how they violently and oppressively kept people in tow.  They dominated the landscape.   Rome had wiped out cities in Galilee[2], cities had been built in tribute to Roman Emperors in Galilee[3], and taxes were all about a trickle-up enterprise that overstuffed the wealthy and leveraged debt to destroy the life of the poor.  People knew the activity of Rome’s Empire.  Jesus was quite clearly invoking the term “empire” for its familiarity and coupling it with a term that immediately opened up a space for seeing empire differently—God.  Or in Matthew’s gospel, Heaven.[4]  Jesus used the Empire of Heaven to ask how heaven might do things differently than Caesar.  How would Heaven’s activity, Heaven’s Empire be any different in perspective?

In the particular Scripture passage from Matthew today, Jesus changes expectations, opens space through parable.  The Empire of Heaven is like a mustard seed or leaven.  As I shared last week, we have often heard these two elements as just how something small can take over and change the very essence of the host where it is planted.  The mustard seed planted becomes a bush that grows wild and takes over the garden, the field, or the land.  The leaven inserted causes the bread to rise and expand.  What we have not often heard is that these two elements, mustard seed and leaven, are considered unclean and make the field and bread unclean.  The Empire of Heaven is like something unclean which planted or inserted takes over and changes the very nature of things.  All of the field, all of the flour has certainly been transformed.

          So why would Jesus use images like a mustard shrub and leaven to talk about the Empire of Heaven?  The image of power and strength and protection within Mediterranean mythology was the cedar of Lebanon, according to the prophet Ezekiel, “with fair branches and forest shade, and of great height, its top among the clouds.  The waters nourished it, the deep made it grow tall, making its rivers flow around the place it was planted, sending forth its streams to all the trees of the field. So it towered high above all the trees of the field; its boughs grew large and its branches long, from abundant water in its shoots.  All the birds of the air made their nests in its boughs; under its branches all the animals of the field gave birth to their young; and in its shade all great nations lived.”[5]  Would this not be the image of power and strength and protection that would most closely rival the Empire of Heaven?  Is the character of Heaven, the activity of Heaven, like a weed that grows into a shrub or a tall and proud tree?

          Or is the character of Heaven, the activity of Heaven, like a woman who hides leaven in the loaf?  One of the things that is apparent from this parable is that Jesus was a brilliant storyteller.  For in one short sentence, Jesus provides a multitude of everyday images that would have created a dark interval by using familiar, everyday images and coupling them in strange and odd ways.  Jesus is not only creating dark intervals.  He is probably blowing the minds of people who hear him.

It begins with equating the character and activity of Heaven to a woman who is working in her household.  Women were the unclean, the religiously impure in Mediterranean societies.  Men were considered the pure.[6]  The Empire of Heaven is equated to a familiar, everyday thing that women do in the household. 

Leaven, in the ancient world, was a symbol for moral corruption.  How leaven came into being in the ancient world supports the idea that it was a corrupting influence.  Bernard Brandon Scott writes, “Leaven is made by taking a piece of bread and storing it in a damp, dark place until mold forms. The bread rots and decays, unlike modern yeast, which is domesticated.”  Leavened bread then invited images of the everyday unholy, rotten,  and profane.  Unleavened bread, on the other hand, invited images of the sacred and holy feast—particularly Passover.[7]

Finally, this woman is not kneading the leaven into the dough.  She is hiding it—using the Greek word (krypto).  This hiding has a more negative connotation than using the Greek word kneading (phyrao), or covering (kalypto).[8]  The hiding suggests that maybe the unclean leaven’s activity is Heaven’s activity.  One would have to be involved in the character and activity to even know what is happening. 

Three images brought together, a woman, leaven, and hiding.  All of those images conveying something about the activity and character of Heaven that would have been considered an insult if used for the activity and character of the Roman Empire.  But in the hands of Jesus, they become about re-imagining a world that invites us to see God as a Bakerwoman who is secretly, hiddenly, changing the whole character and substance of society.

          In societies like first century Rome, two tiers of people existed.  In the top tier were people like rulers, the ruling class, and some merchants.  The bottom of the second tier was occupied by people who were considered the unclean and the expendable.[9]  The disciples of Jesus were among those considered unclean and expendable.  First century Roman philosopher Cicero wrote:  “And the most shameful occupations are those which cater to our sensual pleasures:  ‘fish-sellers, butchers, cooks, poultry-raisers, and fisher[folk],’ . . . .”[10]

          So what would it mean among the unclean and expendable people who followed Jesus, farmers and fisherfolk, prostitutes and tax collectors, to hear that the Empire of Heaven is not like the powerful and proud cedar of Lebanon but like the mustard shrub or leavened bread?  Can we imagine the good news that broke forth in that teachable moment when how God sees us gets turned on its head?

          How often do we find ourselves aspiring for the powerful and proud cedar of Lebanon when actually, truly the God of Jesus meets us and makes a home in the places where we are unclean and broken, expendable and outcast?  We so often struggle to make our faith about what is respectable and what is moral when God, all along, has been trying to share with us a different perspective, a different way of seeing the world, a different way of seeing ourselves.

          God sees us with different eyes.  God sees us with different eyes.  In the places where you are wounded and harmed, bleeding and outcast, God wants you to know that you are precious, and cherished, and loved.  Because, because if you know you are golden to God in those places, the good news will be that this love and compassion intended for you cannot be contained.  This love and compassion will well up to overflowing and where there is wound and harm in the world, the bleeding and the outcast, we will be there to tend and heal.

          You are a weed sown in a field.  You are leaven mixed into bread.  It is not so much that God wants power from you, but wildness and freedom, to not be caught up in the culture and the schemes of the world.   God asks us not to be dominated or over one another, but pervasive and persistent in our work together.

          As Hailey Knox’s song might teach us, we need to remember that our perspective may not be God’s perspective.  Go.  In your uncleanness, grow wild and free.  Be pervasive and persistent.  Do not worry that our movement is not talked about in the halls of power or plastered on the tabloids.   The revolution will not be televised.  Or tweeted.  Learn in the ways that the world calls you unclean, that you are precious, cherished, and loved and that you are in keeping with the character and activity of Heaven.  In that teachable moment, turn the world on its head, so that all who are called unclean may hear the good news and begin to transform the suffering of the planet, not into a haven where people with pocket protectors are safe and powerful, but where the poor and oppressed, sick and dying, the outcast and excluded grow and flourish and change the nature of the garden.   May it be so.  And may we be faithful enough to follow and lead.  Amen.

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[1] John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval:  Towards a Theology of Story (Polebridge Press, 1988).

[2] Sepphoris (near Nazareth) and Emmaus (probably not around at the time of the Biblical story).

[3] Tiberias and Caesarea Maritima

[4] Although not afraid to use “God” throughout his gospel, the author of Matthew to refer to the Empire or Kingdom.  Scholars have long surmised that this is because the author of Matthew honored Jewish tradition and did not want to insult the author of Matthew’s audience.  But why use the name of God elsewhere?

[5] Ezekiel 31:3b-7

[6] Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1989), p. 326.

[7]Ibid, p. 325.

[8] Ibid, p. 326.

[9] William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech:  Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), pp. 58-59. 

[10] Cicero, On Duties 1.42.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, January 29, 2017, "You give life that special zing!"

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 4^th 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.  Or they may choose to worship the Living God, the one who liberated them from Egyptian slavery and gave them a good and broad land.  Joshua says, “Maybe you will worship those idols and priorities of Egypt.  I don’t know.  I won’t.  As for me and my house, this day we will worship and serve the Living God.”

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 21^st 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 1^st 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.

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[1] http://rayedwards.com/the-seven-mountains/. 

[2] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/topics/seven-mountains/

[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.  

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, December 18, 2016, "Rise up"

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 21^st 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. 

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[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/.