Archive for August, 2006

The Transfiguration: An Apocalypse of the Cross

Saturday, August 5th, 2006
Mark 9:2-13

The Transfiguration passage ends with an odd saying by Jesus about Elijah:

” . . . Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things . . . but I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him.” (vs. 12-13)

Now, everyone agrees that the Elijah to whom Jesus refers is John the Baptist (see Matthew 11:14 and Luke 1:17), but where is it written that Elijah would be killed, and how can his execution be reconciled with “coming first to restore all things? Malachi 4:5 states that “he will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents,” and Sirach 48:10 adds that he will “restore the tribes of Jacob.” John’s ministry of baptism for repentance seems to fulfill these texts in the sense that he embarked on a ministry of restoration, but that ministry was cut short by his arrest and execution, an event not foretold in any prophetic text. So what is Jesus talking about when he says, “and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him”?

Right after saying that “Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things,” Jesus talks about his own suffering before he goes on to say that Elijah already came and was killed by the authorities. In talking about his own suffering, he refers to himself as the “Son of Man,” a messianic figure out of the book of Daniel (chapter 7) who is given dominion over the nations. The book of Daniel does not say that the Son of Man will suffer, but the text does say that the Son of Man is a collective image for the saints of God (7:18), the Jews, and elsewhere in the book, the Jews are said to suffer greatly before they, in the end, experience a resurrection . So by referring to himself as the Son of Man, he is using an image that represents the people of God who must suffer. He identifies himself as a messianic figure who embodies the whole community of God’s people, leading them through death and resurrection.

In trying to explain about Elijah/John, Jesus seems to parallel Elijah’s fate with his own. Elijah did come to restore all things, but his victory is not the sort of victory that was expected. Rather, like Jesus, Elijah/John only found victory through suffering and death, the way of the cross. The prophets say that the Holy One and the Holy people of God must suffer and die before they are victorious in resurrection (e.g. Isaiah 53, Daniel 8 -12). Elijah can only participate in this victory, can only restore all things, by participating in the death and resurrection required of all of God’s people. So in that sense, it is written of him also.

And that is the point of this whole transfiguration text: the way of the cross is the only way to victory. There are three apocalyptic moments in the Gospel of Mark: at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end; Jesus’ baptism, his transfiguration and his crucifixion. At the beginning, when Jesus is baptized, the heavens open up, the Spirit descends like a dove onto Jesus, and a voice proclaims, “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased” (1:9-11). In the middle of the Gospel, Jesus goes up on a mountain and is transfigured, appearing with ultra white robes. Moses and Elijah appear with him, a cloud envelopes them, and a voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him” (9:2-7). At the end of the Gospel, Jesus is on the cross, darkness comes over the land for three hours, and a Roman centurion proclaims, “Truly, this man was the Son of God” (15:33-39). At the beginning, the middle, and the end of the Gospel, Jesus is proclaimed to be the Son of God. The first two times, the proclamation comes from heaven, the final time, from a Roman centurion. Scholars call these events “apocalyptic” not only because of the heavenly signs that are involved, but also because the term “apocalypse” means “a revealing.” These events reveal something very important about Jesus. They reveal that he is the Son of God. They also reveal the way of the cross. The apocalyptic sequence leads to the crucifixion.

While the last apocalyptic event, the crucifixion, fully reveals the way of the cross, the first two foreshadow this revelation. The first apocalyptic moment occurs at the baptism of Jesus. The early church understood baptism as a symbolic participation in Christ’s death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-5). The second apocalyptic event, the transfiguration, comes right on the heels of Jesus telling his disciples that he will be crucified and inviting them to follow him in this way. Then during the actual transfiguration Jesus appears in ultra white robes, the attire of martyrs (Rev. 6:11; 7:9, 13).

The apocalypse, the major revelation, of the Gospel is that Jesus, the Son of God, leads us to victory through the cross. There is no other way. That is why the disciples are forbidden to talk about the transfiguration (v. 9), just as they were previously forbidden to tell anyone that Jesus is the Messiah (8:30). If people find out that he is the Messiah too early, especially if they hear about the transfiguration, they will begin to think that the victory is already at hand without the cross. (Peter’s desire to build tabernacles on the mountaintop may be evidence of that sort of thinking since the feast of tabernacles celebrated the Israelites’ victorious exodus from slavery in Egypt.) On the mountaintop, the voice from heaven exhorts the disciples to “listen” to Jesus. Jesus has just been teaching them about the way of the cross. That teaching is the one they are to listen to.

The great apocalypse of the Gospel comes at the crucifixion. That is when the “Son of Man comes on the clouds with glory” (8:38, 13:26, 14:62). The transfiguration foreshadows this event when Jesus, dressed in the white robes of martyrs, is enveloped in a cloud.

The cross is the great apocalyptic moment, the revealing of the Son of God, the shaking of the powers. A Roman Centurion, whose political allegiance demands that he venerate Caesar as the “Son of God,” proclaims that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus displaces Caesar through the cross, through the very instrument by which Caesar executes his enemies. Jesus displaces Caesar through lips of Caesar’s own loyal servant. Darkness covers the land for three hours, an allusion to the three days of darkness over the land of Egypt just prior to the Exodus, a symbolic judgment on the empire. And then the curtain of the temple rips in two, a symbol of victory over the temple establishment, a puppet government of Rome. The Son of God has been revealed and the powers have been shaken from their heavenly places, falling from the sky, (13:24-25) because of the advent of “the Son of Man on the clouds with great power and glory” (13:26).

The early church understood the cross as the way of victory, that Jesus leads the people of God to victory over the powers through the cross. Paul exclaims in Colossians 2:15 that Jesus “having disarmed the powers and authorities, made a public spectacle of them in the cross!” The transfiguration gives us a symbolic preview of this victory, but the symbolism can only be understood in the light of the cross. Without that perspective, the transfiguration is easily misunderstood.

The Church has a long history of following Peter rather than Jesus. We don’t understand the signs that Jesus gives us, so we build our tabernacles too quickly and avoid the way of the cross. But Jesus exhorts us to take up our crosses and follow after him in resistance to the powers and authorities that blaspheme the name of God and grind the face of the poor. We must not declare victory and live easily while the powers wage war against God’s poor ones. We must continue to struggle in the prophetic witness of the cross against systems of injustice and war-making. There is no other way. We must continue to fight the good fight until the stars fall from the sky and we, wearing the white robes of the martyrs, shine with the brightness of the sun and like the stars forever and ever (Daniel12:3, Matthew 13:43).

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A Virgin Birth Under Occupation

Saturday, August 5th, 2006

Matthew 1:18-25

“Whereas the providence which divinely ordered our lives created with zeal and munificence the most perfect good for our lives by producing Augustus and filling him with virtue for the benefaction of mankind, sending us and those after us a savior who put an end to war and established all things; and whereas Caesar when he appeared exceeded the hopes of all who had anticipated good news (gospel, euangelion), not only by surpassing the benefactors born before him, but not even leaving those to come any hope of surpassing him; and whereas the birthday of the god marked for the world the beginning of good news (gospel, euangelion) through his coming . . .”

I often read the above quote to groups, leaving out the name of Caesar Augustus, and then I ask them whom they think this passage is about. So far everyone has thought it was about Jesus. The quote, however, derives from the assembly of the province of Asia around 9 B.C.E. In the ancient world, rulers were often considered divine or semi-divine, children of the gods. This designation, in a mythological way, distinguished the super-elite class from the common people, the mere mortals. Specifically, during the time of Jesus, the practice of emperor worship began with Caesar Augustus and was especially strong in the Greek-speaking, eastern half of the Roman Empire where Jesus lived. The Jews were, of course, defiantly resistant to it, but the practice was being implemented all around them, even in the Gentile parts of Galilee. The imperial propaganda spread the gospel of Caesar as the Son of God, the Savior of the World, the one who takes away the sins of the people, the King of Kings, the one who brings peace to the whole earth, both human and divine, and even born of a virgin.

At the beginning of the Gospel story, Matthew gives Jesus the titles of an Israelite king. In 1:18-25, Matthew now tells us that Jesus is born of a virgin and will become a savior who will take away the sins of the people, i.e. he will be like a gentile emperor. Matthew tells us through this virgin birth story that this Israelite king, not Caesar, is ruler of the world and the savior of the people. This peasant child from a poor family living under Roman occupation is the true King of Kings. God’s Son is born at the bottom and on the margins of the empire, not at the top and in the center. Everything is being turned upside down and inside out.

Matthew sets Jesus in the tradition of Israelite resistance to foreign empires, as an Israelite king over against Caesar. Matthew quotes a passage from Isaiah, saying that Jesus’ birth fulfills this text. The text comes from a story in Isaiah that tells of the invasion of Israel by a foreign empire. The birth of a child named Immanuel is a sign that Judah will not be completely overrun; Jerusalem will survive because “God is with us” (Immanuel).[1] The text then eventually goes on to tell of a messianic age when Israel will be free and peace and justice will reign in the earth. Jesus, Matthew says, is like this like this child, as a sign of God’s presence with the people, and he will initiate the messianic age where oppression and war will end.


[1] Isaiah 8:10

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The Genealogy of Jesus

Saturday, August 5th, 2006

Matthew 1:1-17

The narrative begins by giving Jesus the titles of an Israelite king: Messiah, Son of David. It establishes him as a true son of Israel, a “son of Abraham.” The genealogy then goes on to further underscore his Israelite heritage. It places him right at the center trajectory of Israel’s story: He descends from Israel’s greatest king.

This genealogy, however, tells a very particular version of the Israelite story. The particulars of this story proceed from the interruptions in the normal pattern of the genealogy. The normal pattern states, “so-and-so was the father of so-and-so who was the father of so-and-so who was . . .” The normal pattern progresses in an uninterrupted line of fathers. Every time another element interrupts the genealogy, the reader should take special notice; at these points, Matthew is trying to tell us something important, something that he feels significantly shapes the history of Israel, especially in terms of the direction that Jesus is taking that history.

The five major interruptions in the normal pattern of the genealogy result from the mention of women. The normal pattern traces an exclusively male lineage, as was the custom in the highly patriarchal society of the first century Mediterranean world. The in-breaking of five women itself signals something fundamentally different in the trajectory of the Israel’s history. Matthew tells the story, not merely by highlighting the powerful male figures, but rather by giving special notice to minor female figures, to the exceptions to the rule. A contemporary equivalent would be a review of American history that lists all the presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush with the insertion at various places of women such as Harriet Tubman, Mother Jones, and Monica Lewinsky. Women who represent exceptions to the rule; i.e. women who challenged the rules, or who exposed the shortcomings of the rulers, or both.

In Matthew’s genealogy, Tamar leads the invasion of women into the patriarchal narrative. By including her, Matthew recalls for the reader a story in which Tamar scandalously impersonates a prostitute in order to bring about justice for herself, and in the process exposes the sin of her father-in-law, Judah. Not only are we reminded of a story in which a woman cleverly asserts herself, but we are reminded also of Judah’s sin. Judah was the father of the tribe of Judah, the one from whom Jews/Judeans draw their name. Matthew’s reference to a story that reveals Judah’s sin says something very important about Matthew’s reading of Israelite history. Matthew locates the righteousness of Israel not in the father of the tribe, but in a woman who impersonates a prostitute; she is the one who brings about justice.

Soon after Tamar, Rahab charges into the story line. Tamar impersonated a prostitute, but Rahab actually was a prostitute, as well as a gentile. She represents the outcasts of society. Matthew here prepares the reader for the kind of people that Jesus will locate himself among, sinners and outcasts, the people from whom the Kingdom of God will emerge.

Right on Rahab’s heels comes Ruth, another gentile, and possibly another seducer. She came from Moab, an enemy of Israel. Her inclusion represents the enemy that Jesus calls his followers to love. She also represents the widow, the alien and the poor whom the laws of Torah command society to provide for because of their vulnerability. Ruth’s story itself tells of a woman, who through her assertiveness, caused these laws to work.

Next in the succession of women is one who is unnamed, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. She is the one through whom David fathered Solomon. In referring to Bathsheeba, not by name but by telling us that she was Uriah’s wife, Matthew highlights the sin of King David. Matthew reminds the reader that Bathsheeba was someone else’s wife, that David had Uriah killed because of his lust for her. Her inclusion in the genealogy strikes a major blow at what must have been the dominant version of Israel’s story, one which longed for the glory days of the empire of David and Solomon. Matthew began the narrative by telling us that Jesus is a “Son of David,” but now he reminds us that David was an adulterer, a liar, and a murderer. The central patriarch of the narrative has been cut down. (The reader should also note that the Davidic line of kings failed, ending in the “deportation to Babylon,” and event that Matthew clearly highlights.)

Culminating the succession of women is one who, in another gospel, sings that God brings down the powerful from their thrones. Mary, a young peasant woman who gets pregnant before her wedding, gives birth to the Messiah. Mary not only interrupts the normal pattern of the genealogy, she breaks it. Up until now, even with the previous interruptions, the normal pattern of “so-and-so was the father of so-and-so . . .” maintained. This time, however, Matthew writes “ . . .Mary, from whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.” Matthew does not say that Joseph is the father of Jesus. The male line is broken in the final sequence to give birth to a new king who is at once Davidic and non-Davidic.

Five women interrupt and finally break the patriarchal pattern of the Israelite lineage of Jesus. They remind us of the sins of the fathers; they remind us of the laws of Torah that command society to provide for the marginalized and the poor of the community; they remind us of assertive women who made those laws work; they remind us that salvation comes from the marginalized and the powerless who become our heroes; they remind us that there is no such thing as a pure ethnicity, that there is ultimately no strict “us” and “them,” that we are our enemies and they are us, one humanity.

Jesus is born, not from the human Davidic line, but through the Holy Spirit from a spiritual lineage of women: seducers, prostitutes, victims, heroes, gentiles, poor and outcast. That’s where our salvation comes from. That’s where, for Matthew, the Kingdom of God emerges. The kingdom of God emerges from Israel through its marginalized and poor.

Matthew tells us that from Abraham to Jesus are three sets of fourteen generations, in other words, six sets of seven generations. The implication we are left with is that Jesus begins the last seven, the final epoch. He begins the seventh set of seven generations, an allusion to the jubilee year, the seventh Sabbath year. Jesus inaugurates the jubilee generation, an era in which everything will be reconstituted, redistributed and turned upside down. Matthew prepares us for this radical remaking of the world by giving us a genealogy in which five women, one for each of the books of Torah, radically transform the Israelite story.

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From the Desert to the Sea

Saturday, August 5th, 2006

Matthew 14:22-33

In this passage Jesus and the disciples leave the desert and go on the sea. The desert was the margins of society, a place of emptiness and danger, but also a place where God forms the people into a new nation, a new kingdom. Yet, this new kingdom of God is to be hidden among the kingdoms of this world (remember the parables of the weeds among wheat and of the catch of fish in chapter 13). So after creating the city of God out in the desert for a miraculous, symbolic moment, Jesus sends his disciples over to “the other side” (v.22). They must go back into the world, among the kingdoms of this world, specifically back into the domain of the Roman Empire.

To get there they have to cross over the sea. The sea is a place of Chaos and peril. In the psalms, it is the place of Leviathan, the chaos monster. In Revelation 13, the beast rises out of the sea. The beast in that passage is a symbol of the Roman Empire (see any good commentary on Revelation). The sea represents a lawless place of rebellion against God, a place from which emerges the blasphemous Roman Empire, whose ruler, the emperor, claims to be the Son of God.

The disciples go out first, in a boat, while Jesus goes up onto the mountain to pray, much like Moses did when God was forming Israel into a nation in the desert. The disciples’ boat gets battered by the waves. The word “battered” is used extensively in 2 and 4 Macabees to describe torture under Antiochus Epiphanes, so this verb may be conjuring up the image of imperial oppression.

Then Jesus comes walking towards them on the sea, through the waves and the wind. He comes walking over the lawless chaos, and speaks encouragement to them so that they are not afraid. The encouragement enables one of the disciples, who in Matthew seems to be some sort of leader or representative of the disciple community, to also walk on the sea. When this disciple, Peter, begins to doubt and sink, it is Jesus’ outstretched arm that saves him, just as God’s outstretched arm saved the Israelites from the Egyptian empire (Deut. 4:34, 5:15,7:19, 9:29, 11:2-3, 26:8).

After Jesus gets into the boat, the storm ends. Jesus has again calmed the raging sea. He is master over the sea, as emperors claim to be. Jesus triumphs over the violence of the empire, and the disciples proclaim that he, not Caesar, is the Son of God, “for even the winds and the sea obey him.”


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Feeding Thousands with Bread and Fish

Saturday, August 5th, 2006

Matthew 14:13-21

Jesus feeds thousands with only five loaves and two fish. To us that seems like an extraordinary miracle. To first century Galileans, such an act would have been pregnant with meaning, a sign of a coming kingdom.

Jesus has just withdrawn into the desert after hearing of the death of John the Baptist. The forces of the empire have executed the last of the great prophets. Is Jesus escaping to avoid a similar fate? Is he going away for solace and contemplation? Which ever it is, he is more hidden away than before, but the people come looking for him as for hidden treasure (see last week’s reflection). And when they find Jesus, he gives them a foretaste of the treasure of Heaven. Just as in the parable of the sower Jesus gave them an image of an abundant harvest, here he gives them a concrete experience of that abundance: everyone gets enough to eat.

To us 5,000 men plus women and children seems like a fairly big crowd. In the ancient world that number would have been the size of a city. Not a town or a village, but a large city. By providing food for all these people, Jesus creates, for a symbolic moment, an economically viable city in the middle of the desert.

Again for us, with modern technology and little compunction about rerouting water over hundreds of miles from one place to another, a city in the desert doesn’t seem like anything special. But in the ancient world the desert was a barren place, a desolate and lonely place, a dangerous place with wild animals and bandits. In the literary world of the Bible, it also becomes a place of God’s paradoxical salvation. Israel was born in the desert. It’s the place where the Israelites escaped to from the Pharoah, and there God gave them the law and formed them into a nation. Prophets continued to go there for safety (1Kings 19:4,15) and used it as a base for their ministry. It was the place where John the Baptist preached. The desert was the margins of the society, a place of emptiness and danger, but from this marginal and dangerous place came the word of God.

So here in this passage, Jesus has escaped from Herod into the desert in the same way that the Israelites escaped from Pharaoh. Just as God provided manna and quail for the Israelites in the desert, Jesus provides bread and fish for the people. He has gone to the desert, where John preached his message, so as to show that John’s ministry goes on. And here in the desert he establishes, for a miraculous symbolic moment, a new city. Perhaps God is forming them into a nation again, into a new kingdom.

His disciples had urged him to send the people back to the towns for their sustenance, back to the economy supplied by the empire, but Jesus teaches them to trust in God for abundant provision. In the empire’s economy there is scarcity, not everyone has enough to eat. In God’s economy, there is abundance for all, and it all starts with the sharing of a few pieces of bread and a couple of fish. Jesus gives them a foretaste of the City of God.

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Five Parables about the Hidden Treasure of the Kingdom of Heaven

Saturday, August 5th, 2006

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Earlier in the gospel, Jesus urges his hearers to store up treasures not on earth but in Heaven (6:19-21). For followers of Christ, then, treasure is hidden in Heaven. In the parables of this week’s lectionary reading, treasure is also hidden, in the form of a small mustard seed, yeast hidden in dough, a treasure hidden in a field, a precious pearl that must be sought out, and the community of believers hidden among the all the people of the world. Our treasure is hidden in Heaven. That is to say that it is the Word of God sown in the hearts of people, for that is where heaven seems to be here on earth (“Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven . . . for where your treasure is, your heart will be also”).

At the beginning of this sermon in Matthew 13, Jesus says that the Word of God is like seed sown in the hearts of people, and although the Word does not take root in some people, in others it produces a supernatural, abundant harvest (a 30 to 100 fold crop was not possible naturally). This harvest metaphor uses end times prophetic imagery of an abundant crop that would have been familiar to Jesus’ first century Jewish audience. The word of God, then, is a hidden treasure, hidden in the hearts of people, coming to complete realization only in the fullness of time.

This harvest metaphor is also an image of economic justice: a bountiful harvest for the peasant hearers of Jesus would mean that everyone gets enough to eat, that the peasant farmer can buy his way out of debt, and that poverty will cease. Such is the treasure that is hidden in our hearts, a hope for justice, a hope for an end to the misery of poverty, a hope that life can be lived abundantly and fully by all God’s children.

The text tells us that God sows this treasure in our hearts, but also that we must be able to receive it, we must have ears to hear God’s Word. In fact, it may even be necessary to seek it out, like a merchant searches for a precious pearl. Furthermore the text suggests that it may require of us all that we have. This treasure of Heaven is a demanding and hidden treasure.

The hiddeness and demanding nature of Heaven’s treasure holds particular relevance for those of us who occupy a place of privilege in our world. We are caught between the powers and authorities of this world, who grind the face of the poor, and our own privilege that shields and protects us from the realities experienced by the majority of the world’s population. The powers and authorities seduce us with us with material pleasures and soulless entertainment, securing our complicity. To the degree that we choose not to be complicit, we quickly realize that we jeopardize some of the benefits and protection of the system. Hearing the Word of God for us constitutes risky and dangerous business. Letting the Word of God take root in our hearts ruins us for any easy-going participation in the dominant economy and culture. Many of us, therefore, give up the treasure of Heaven for the treasures of this world. “Yet what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their soul?” (Matt16:26)

Jesus’ sermon in Matthew 13, therefore, a sermon about hope for economic justice is also a sermon about our own spiritual salvation. Will we hear the Word of God and let it take root in us, or will we reject it? Will we seek out the treasure of Heaven, risking all that we have, or will we invest instead in the treasures of this world? The salvation of our souls hangs in the balance. There is no option for a personal, “spiritual only” salvation that is unconnected to the salvation of the rest of the world. We are all in this thing together, we humans created in God’s image, and our salvation depends on whether we join God’s campaign of liberation for the whole world. Our salvation depends on whether we join with each other, especially the least among us, in God’s Reign of justice and peace.

God sows in our hearts the treasure of Heaven, if we are ready to receive it. This treasure will come to fruition in the fullness of time. Until then we maintain this treasure in jars of clay. We are tempted to give in, we are threatened so that we might give up. But this hope leads us onward to that great day when the meek will inherit the earth and the ram’s horn of jubilee will sound to release the oppressed and declare justice and abundant life for all God’s children.

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