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(in this post, I diverge from my usual scriptural reflections to reflect on a recent action with others from Pasadena Mennonite Church)

A Reflection on the Action of September 28, 2006

I got out of jail a little after 10:00 in the morning. I hardly slept during the night. From the time they brought us to Parker Center at 8:45 p.m. until around 4:00 a.m., they had us moving from room to room and waiting as they took our fingerprints, took our pictures, took our belts, shoelaces and I.D.’s. I started out the night in tight plastic handcuffs for over three hours; my hands are still a little numb as I write this reflection.

Six of us from our church participated, with several hundred other people, in civil disobedience on behalf of hotel workers. The workers, low wage and mostly immigrants, have been trying to form a union in eleven hotels in the L.A. area but have encountered stiff opposition from management. Three other members of our church also tried to join us in this action but were kept from doing so by the organizers of the action due to logistical difficulties. The act that lead to our arrest was sitting down in the middle of the road, blocking traffic in front of one of the hotels. Strangely enough, these sorts of actions have proven effective in achieving justice for workers.

Our sacrifice for the workers involved taking time off from our work and losing a night’s sleep, but the actual risk was fairly low. The organizers of the action talked with police before hand and worked out some significant details in order to avoid undue harsh treatment or prolonged detention. We pretty much knew that we would be released in the morning.

Still, the fact that nine people from our church, which has an average Sunday morning attendance of around 120 adults, committed themselves to civil disobedience gives me hope that we are moving in the direction of being willing to pay the price for justice and peace that the nations have been willing to pay for injustice and war. Whether violent or nonviolent, all participants in struggle try to minimize their risk. As has been said before and quoted many times since, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing, and civil disobedience, even when it involves some coordination with the police, is something.

The barrier to courageous action that looms largest in the human psyche, keeping us from speaking out against or standing in the way of injustice and oppression, is fear. I’ve known white American citizens with no criminal records who have admitted that they are too afraid to march in the streets or stand on a corner holding a sign even for a cause in which they fully believe. That being the case, I suspect that being arrested, even in a low risk situation, presents a fairly formidable obstacle of fear for many, if not most, people. So, when people begin to hurdle this obstacle, willingly spending a night in jail, I take this movement as evidence that we are breaking free of the spiritual prison in which we have been living. I take this movement as evidence that we are being transformed into the likeness of One who suffered for his brothers and sisters, that we are being transformed into the children of God who give hope to the world.

“For the whole creation waits in eager expectation for the revealing of the children of God.” (Romans 8:19)

Putting our bodies on the line is not new for our church. We have a history of engaging in civil disobedience as well as more dangerous human shield actions (in Iraq, Palestine and South Dakota). Some of our church members have had longer detentions, and in one case a harrowing experience, in jail. But not only did this latest action involve the largest group from our church to commit to civil disobedience at one time, it is also the first time in over three years that we have sent people to engage in these sorts of actions.

Our church practices the Reign of God in many different ways, from worship to mutual aid to community life to service to public peace witness and advocacy. The one part of our discipleship, however, that we most easily neglect, even find reasons to forgo, is the discipline of taking bodily risks for God’s Reign of peace and justice. I don’t want to imply that such a discipline is the highest form of discipleship, but it is the one that Jesus describes when he sums up what he expects of his followers: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24, also Matt 10:38, Mk 8:34, Lk 14:27). Cross-bearing for Jesus was not merely a metaphor. Jesus really did carry his cross to his execution, and he called his church to be willing, at some level, to do the same.

Now, I want to make clear that I don’t believe that every individual in our context must engage in activities that are dangerous in order to be a true follower of Christ. But I do believe that Christ’s call to us to bear the cross means that we, as a community, need to actively encourage and nurture those who might have that calling, and that’s not something that we do with any consistency.

With this calling so clearly laid out in scripture, I can only surmise that we, as a community, tend to neglect it because we are afraid. Perhaps if we confess this fear to each other and to God, then we might be able to lift it up in prayer and receive help and healing. Perhaps we might even dare to lift up our fear to God in worship, and God might give us comfort and a Spirit of courage.

One of the most powerful times of worship that I have ever experienced occurred during one of the most frightening and dangerous missions that I have ever undertaken: I was in the old city of Hebron in the West Bank with a Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation. We were gathered in the CPT apartment for worship when fighting broke out between the Palestinian resistance and the Israeli occupying forces. Although after more than a week in the occupied territories we were beginning to get used to these almost nightly battles, the machine gun fire and bombs seemed louder and fiercer on this particular night. As we worshiped, we heard the thunder of bombs growing louder all around us. Our response came suddenly and, it seemed, most naturally: we stood up and sang even louder. The louder the bombs, the louder we sang, as if in holy defiance against the forces of war. It was as if we had all decided together, in that moment, that no matter what might happen to us, we were going to sing songs of praise to our God. We lifted our fear to God and were no longer afraid of the bombs.

I can’t say that I’ve never been afraid of anything since then, but that experience taught me that fear is not invincible; it taught me that I can lift my fear to God. Fear itself is natural, and is a sign that we are aware of our circumstances. None of us should be ashamed of being afraid. The question for us is whether we will let fear keep us from hearing Christ’s call or whether we will, as a community, lift our fear to God and begin to take the risks necessary to be a truly prophetic church.

John 1:1-4

The prologue of the Gospel of John reasserts the word theology of Genesis 1 and the prophets.

Ask any Jew of the first or second century to finish the sentence, “In the Beginning . . .” and they would say, “. . .God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).  The first verses of the Gospel of John are meant to remind the reader of the creation account of Genesis 1.  John says, “In the beginning was the Word.”  Genesis 1 records that God created the world through word: “And God said, ‘let there be . . .’”  John’s prologue describes how the Word, being God, created the world.

Genesis 1 was placed at the very beginning of the Hebrew Bible during or after the exile in Babylon.  The Jews learned through the failure of the Judean monarchy and their subsequent exile that the way of the world -  the way of kings, armies, domination and violence – is not God’s way.  In the exile, they began to draw on more ancient stories in their past and developed a different way, a different theology: a nonviolent, prophetic theology of the word.

Finding themselves in the midst of the Babylonian empire, the Jews recognized there the theology of domination and violence that had led them astray.  The Babylonian state found it’s spiritual grounding and impetus in a story of domination and violence.  The central myth of the society told of a war between the gods by which the world was created.  Specifically, the leader of the winning faction, a male god named Marduke, created the world by tearing apart the body of a female god, named Tiamat.  The winning gods then created humans to be a slave labor force for them.

This story mythologically buttressed the political establishment of Babylon.  Marduke and his warrior gods represented the emperor and the ruling class who came to power through violence and domination.  The human beings, the mere mortals, of the story represented the common people, whose labor the ruling class exploited.

The Jews recognized this mythology as the partaking of the same spirituality that had led them astray, so they articulated a different version of how the world was created.  They told the story of a God who created through word, not through violence.  In their story, God created humans as the pinnacle of creation, in the divine likeness, and to have dominion, not to be dominated.  Their story reflected the theology and spirituality of the word.

This theology emerged from the Hebrew prophetic tradition.  The prophets spoke the Word of Yahweh.  They had warned the Israelites not to follow the ways of the nations, the ways of the world.  The word they spoke revealed sin, tore down kingdoms and recreated the world to be a place of justice and freedom, like the world of Genesis 1.

The prophets were not always recognized in their own time as true prophets speaking the Word of God, but the Jews, through their experience in exile, began to affirm their prophetic voice and claim it as their own in the midst of a hostile empire.  The Jews began to understand themselves as a prophetic people, a people of the word, not a people of empire and violence led by a series of autocratic kings.

The Gospel of John draws on this Jewish tradition to begin telling the story of Jesus.  Jesus is not a worldly king with an army.  Jesus is the Word of God, a force more powerful, a force that will shine a light and reveal the sins of the world, a word that will recreate the world and give life to all people.  Jesus is the consummate Hebrew prophet; he not only speaks the Word, he is the Word.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.