This week begins the lectionary year A. That cycle begins with Advent, the 4 weeks before Christmas, the anticipation of the coming of Christ. This year, we will view that from the gospel of Matthew. Most of the TV specials and Christmas pageants you are likely to see will draw from Luke as well as Matthew, combining parts of each to build the narrative. It makes for a better and more familiar story. But try reading either Luke or Matthew's first few chapters all the way through and see what you recognize or what you notice is missing.
Matthew 24:36-44
We're not at the birth story yet in the lectionary. This gospel passage looks a lot like the end of the last lectionary year, giving us Matthew's view of the second coming, including the famous statement of a thief in the night that I recently contrasted to Thessalonians. We'll get to the baby Jesus, but they want us to look here first. I like that they start here. It is likely that the birth narratives were not conceived until after the stories of his life and death. So little is known of his life, it seems unlikely that details would be known of his birth and then chroniclers just ignored him for 29 years.As Dominic Crossan puts it, Jesus had his short ministry, then died suddenly and violently. The next thing the community would have done would be to go looking in their traditions to explain this, and lo and behold, they found prophecies of a messiah. Richard Carrier and other historians have different theories; that Paul and others were already drawing on those traditions, those prophecies, and creating spiritual versions of a messiah, then those stories were changed into stories of actual people. That's the very short version of multiple books and speeches.
Frontline did an excellent introduction to these ideas in a four part series, From Jesus to Christ.
What of the words for this week themselves? Is this a more peaceful apocalypse? One that includes everyone and forgives the sinners, as we see in many gospel stories? I don't see it. I see it invoking Noah, a story that ended with the promise of the rainbow that symbolized God never doing that again. It divides the ones who will be taken from the ones who will be left. The "keep awake" line would be a horrible verse to teach a child. I find no comfort in these words.
For all the good the Christian communities were doing in the 1st and 2nd centuries, this to me is the reason for their failure. I'm sure not all of them accepted this idea of an apocalypse, but enough of them did. For enough of them, the motivation was wrong. Their reason for being good was not sustainable. This left the door open for a return to the gods of retributive justice of the past and gave each generation a god that was easy to dismiss because their rath never materialized. In the 4th century, the power structures that were built on giving aid to neighbors were co-opted by a theology with strict rules and was combined with a military to enforce them. Councils followed, texts were redacted, until we have the Christianity we have.
If you want more about that history, I recommend Charles Freeman's "A.D. 381".
Romans 13:11-14
The Book of Romans has some great stuff. Sometimes it sounds like Ecclesiates or Sirach. Other times it sounds like Deutoronomy. I think the overall message of Romans is one of love, despite these occasional turns into rules. The 3 verses preceding these are ones I often turn to as important verses showing the shift in theology going on at this time. They end with, "Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law."But this lection is about salvation, and how to get it. We get a few words about just what is righteous, then we're told to "put on the Lord". I'm sure that means "be like Jesus", as the Easy To Read Bible says. Of course, which Jesus, we can't be sure, and if He is also the OT God, that really complicates things.
The Book of Romans contains an oft used verse about homosexuals in the first chapter, then in chapter 14, we hear the words Pope Francis used when asked about gays, "Who are you to judge someone else's servant?"I don't know for sure if it is my personal bias or not, but I hear a stronger message of forgiveness and caring in these chapters than I do for specific things that you shouldn't do. The examples given are there to support the general sense, and to guide you in learning to think for yourself.
I'm not bringing up these seeming contradictions just to pile on with the thousands of other places you could find that list contradictions. In this case, the problem may be translation. The last half of the first chapter of Romans, where those verses on homosexuality can be found, may be a rhetorical device, an argument against gentiles presented in a third person voice ("they"), and then responded to with "you" in chapter 2, "you who pass judgment... are condeming yourself". You can research scholars such as Calvin Porter, James Miller, Mark D. Smith or Roy Bowen Ward if you are really into that.
These and other scholars note the similarity of the language to that of Jewish missionary literature of that time. Something that Paul refuted. So here, he presents it first, so we know just who he is speaking to for the rest of the book. If you lived in that time, you would have recognized that. Living today, and only reading the Bible does not provide that context. In any time, you can look to a speaker's concluding remarks as a restatement of a theme. In Chapter 14, verse 13, Paul says, "Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister."
So, I'm going with that. We should at least agree that there is a lack of clarity here on what is being said about people's choices.
Isaiah 2:1-5
The end of the Book of Isaiah appeared at the end of the last lectionary year, just a couple weeks ago. Now we are back at the beginning. As I alluded to then, it was probably different authors at those two points in the one book. The Book of Isaiah spans a few hundred years, so that isn’t a stretch of the textual scholarship. At the beginning, it could be the Isaiah, son of Amoz, that is claimed in the text. No question, it was and is an important book. One that was familiar to Jews and early Christians. It is also a shift into this idea of “salvation”.God is no longer a local war god, or one who provides justice through punishment, instead it emphasizes holiness. These shifts can take a lot of time, and the old ways can return or branch off into sects. Sorting that out is beyond my scope, but we can see the theme in this week’s lection. What we see is visions of buildings on hills and swords into plowshares. I think about churches all across Europe and America. The big ones usually are in prominent locations, occupying good real estate. But that is supposed to be a symbol. If you have the high ground physically, you have a responsibility to demonstrate the metaphoric moral high ground. Sometimes I see that, but more often I wonder which is more important, the beautiful building, or what it is supposed to represent.
