Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Old Glory – Ross Hyman
Preached at Wellington United Church of Christ
Transfiguration Sunday, February 18, 2007
Exodus 34:29-35, Psalm 130 (instead of Psalm 99)
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-36

Paul probably never dreamed that his letters would attain the status of scripture and would be read through as thick an interpretive veil as Paul thought that his opponents applied to the Torah. Indeed to this very day, whenever Paul is read a veil lies over our minds.

In the past several decades, Christian and Jewish theologians have explored the interpretive veil applied to Paul’s writings which produces the view that the law is a crushing burden designed only to stomp out our self-righteousness so that we will turn to Christ’s grace for forgiveness.

These theologians assert that this interpretation can only thrive when people have veiled themselves to the abundance of God’s forgiveness within Judaism, as evidenced by Psalm 130 for example. Jewish writing from the period presents views essentially identical to that of Paul, that the covenantal law is a gift, not a burden; We follow it out of faithfulness and because it is the way to express our love for God and neighbor, with no illusion that our salvation or justification exists anywhere else but in God’s redeeming grace. Paul’s opponents are presumably gentiles or Jews on the periphery of Jewry, who would have thought of Jewish laws like pagan rituals, so that they would have associated a promise of magical saving effect working through them, instead of viewing them Jewishly, as expressions of faithfulness.

But there are still disturbing things in Paul’s letters, even when looked at through the veil of the new perspective. In today’s lectionary text Paul appears to cast dispersions on Moses himself. The fading or setting aside of the Glory appears to apply to the entire Torah. It appears that Paul’s attack is aimed at mainstream Jewry, not the periphery, and is focused on its very origins. It appears that anti-Semitic Christian writers, at least in some cases, were quoting Paul without distortion. If the new perspective is correct, then Paul did not really mean these things as they sound. The perspective tells us what Paul hopefully means but it doesn’t explain how he could be so sloppy and brazen in how he tried to say it.

It might appear to an onlooker than a flag burner sees nothing redeemable in the symbolism of the American flag. The flag means domination through violence, genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of Africans, military coups in Central and South America, and endless war. It might appear to us that, to the flag burner, these aspects were inherent to the flag from the moment of its inception, born in a war between two aristocratic classes. To the flag burner, it appears that the American flag, like the confederate flag or the Nazi flag is unredeemable.

But flag desecration alienates lots of people who don’t support U.S. policies, past and present, but who see the flag as a symbol of our allegiance to the ideal republic of liberty and justice for all and our allegiance to the idea of working to make the U.S. more like this ideal. We know that the flag burner believes in liberty and justice for all as well. We know that the flag burner derives these notions from the same sources that led to the composition of the Pledge of Allegiance. And if the flag burner were young we would assume that they had just not yet learned to use these symbols in an effective way. But if a mature person was to burn the flag, we have reason to wonder about them a little.

There is no need to find an excuse for everything that Paul wrote. For one thing, nobody is obliged to think that everything that Paul wrote was very thoughtful. Paul was a person like you or me and we are not very thoughtful a lot of the time either. Rabbinic traditions says that Moses was the most humble man who ever lived, and had the presence of mind to veil himself when not teaching the Torah so that people would not associate the pleasure of the radiance with anything else he said. Paul might have been bolder than Moses but he wasn’t wiser. There are more thoughtful ways to say that gentiles do not need to partake in circumcision or dietary laws, or festivals to be considered full members of the covenant community, if that is indeed what Paul had meant here.

We are also under no obligation to find an excuse for everything that Paul wrote if we can find evidence from other Christian writings close to the time of Paul that finds Paul disturbing for the same reasons we do. Perhaps, despite all of Paul’s other good points, he was a hotheaded flag burner, who alienated Jews, even messianic Jews, because the thoughtless way he said things made them feel that when push came to shove, when the crunch really came, they weren’t sure whose side he would be on.

I believe that such disparagement of Paul exists in several places in Luke-Acts and that Luke’s most serious criticism of Paul is in Acts 22:24-29, where Paul, in Jerusalem, has just been rescued from an angry mob by the Roman tribune.

The tribune directed that Paul be brought into the barracks, and ordered him to be examined by flogging, to find out the reason for this outcry against him. But when they had tied him up with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, ‘Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who is uncondemned?’ When the centurion heard that, he went to the tribune and said to him, ‘What are you about to do? This man is a Roman citizen.’ The tribune came and asked Paul, ‘Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ The tribune answered, ‘It cost me a large sum of money to get my citizenship.’ Paul said, ‘But I was born a citizen.’ Immediately those who were about to examine him drew back from him; and the tribune also was afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him.”

Paul proclaims, for his salvation, a privilege bestowed on him by the domination system that persecutes the Jews. By doing so he answers the tribune’s question about why there is an outcry against him. Perhaps the only thing that Luke could have done to bring his point home more strongly would have been to have a cock crow after the third time Paul asserted his Roman citizenship.

Luke’s criticism of Paul is also visible in Luke’s account of the transfiguration. As if to directly counter Paul’s claim that the glory of Moses is dimmed, Luke writes of Moses and Elijah that “Suddenly they appeared in glory,” a detail not found in Mark’s or Matthew’s account.

So how did it happen, that if for the most part Paul’s writings are supportive of Jewish positions, and even where they are not, there are significant other voices including pro-Jewish gentile voices in early Christianity that were critical of Paul’s hyperbole, and perhaps even questioning of his basic loyalties, how is it that the church became so anti-Jewish? How is it then that within a few hundred years the Church would have thrown off its Jewishness like burdensome chains and proclaimed that it was a Roman citizen?

This I can’t answer but I do want to point out a correlation between hostility towards Judaism, the embrace of the domination system, and hostility towards nonviolence in Christianity.

There are several parables of Jesus, in particular, those that feature a King or a Lord, in which the traditional interpretation is anti-Semitic and supportive of the domination system, while and alternative interpretation is both pro-Jewish and non-violent.

Consider Matthew’s wedding banquet story. (Matt 22 2-13)
A king gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Several refuse to go. Others kill the king’s slaves. The king, enraged, sent his troops, slaughtered the murderers, and burned their city. Then he invites other guests and when the king came in to see them, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” The man was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

In an explanation, read through the veil of the domination system, The King is Jesus. The people who reject Jesus and don’t want to go to his wonderful banquet are killed. Guess who they are? And other apostates who don’t adhere to proper Christian practice should expect to be thrown into the outer darkness as well. This explanation is more or less what I find in most commentaries even the liberal ones.

Now, reading the same parable through the veil of the suffering servant, the King is the domination system. He sends out his tax collectors but the people refuse to pay. The King sends out his thugs and some of the people violently kill them. The King’s response is collective punishment. He destroys the entire city and kills everybody living there regardless if they were part of the insurrection or not. This was well within the experience of Jesus’ Jewish audience. They knew that if you rebel violently against the Roman occupation then overwhelming violence will be the response. Jesus teaches an alternative way of resisting. If you want to resist the king and the domination system, do so defiantly, but also nonviolently, and publicly to decrease the likelihood that people who are not participating in the action will be punished. Sometimes a visual effect, in silence, is more powerful than words. You should not expect any glory from this or any success that you can discern for yourself. In fact you should only participate in such an action if you are prepared to experience the most severe punishment. But it is only through these kinds of actions that the domination system can be effectively resisted and redeemed.

The commentaries might not understand the parable this way but some of the Pharisees did. It is upon hearing this parable that they confronted Jesus about paying taxes to the Caesar.

It is my hope that one day, the same kind of mainstream theological effort that tore off the anti-Semitic veil that had obstructed the reading of Paul for centuries will be applied to Jesus’ parables so that all will be able to see that the Kings and Lords in these parables are representatives of the domination system, and that those who resist them violently are Jews, and that those who resist them nonviolently are Jews too.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Portion 17 Yitro Exodus 18:1-20:23

18:4 This is consistent with 4:20 which refers to more than one son. It could be the second son’s circumcision that is referred to in 4:25. The second son’s name refers to God protecting Moses from capital punishment for murdering the Egyptian, a miraculous protection, without which, he would have been sentenced to death by Pharaoh when he returned to Egypt. Perhaps this section is placed here to remind us that Moses violated one of the Ten Commandments and to reinforce that capital punishment transgresses the boundaries between heaven and earth.

18:14 Jethro realizes that Moses’ power is harmful to the people, no matter how benevolently Moses wields it.

18:18 Jethro also realizes that Moses’ power is also harmful to Moses. Unchecked power is corrosive to the soul.

18:20 Jethro’s first proposal is his most radical. He advises Moses to instruct the people in the laws and teachings so that they can make decisions for themselves. Jethro is foreshadowing 19:6 “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Under this proposal, the people could have chosen their own judges.

18:21-22 Jethro’s second proposal preserves and even enhances Moses’ power by giving him the sole authority to appoint judges.

18:24-26 Moses adopts Jethro’s second proposal but not the first.

19:3a How are we to understand this given the biblical and rabbinic understanding of the boundary between heaven and earth that we are forever tempted to transgress? “According to Rabbi Yose (2nd century C.E.): The Shechina never descended and Moses never ascended on high. “The heavens are the heavens of God, while the earth has been given to human beings” (Ps. 115:16). [That is, the biblical account is to be taken figuratively rather than literally. “Moses went up” is to be understood as “Moses was raised high,” that is, he was exalted by God above other people.]” –Plaut, from the Talmud.

19:3b The Rabbinic tradition identifies “house of Jacob” with women and “children of Israel” with men. Women are mentioned first because they have a far greater understanding of the real boundary between heaven and earth and the falseness of man-made boundaries, as in 19:15 for example.

19:6 Priests do not go to war and they are not assigned a territory of their own.

19:15 We transgress the boundary between heaven and earth by moving it so that we (and people of our gender or our nationality or what have you) are on one side while less desirable people are on the other. Moses interprets God’s words through the man-made boundary between women and men.

19:12, 19:21-25 God repeatedly warns Moses that the boundary between heaven and earth puts all of the people on one side and only God on the other. All of the people includes those calling themselves priests or anyone else tempted to assign themselves godlike status.

20:1 Plaut writes that in no other religious tradition does God speak to all of the people at once. I recently heard this claim repeated by David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism. Verifiable counterexamples will receive, while supplies last, a postcard featuring a picture of Hubert Humphrey wearing a hard hat. The Torah is ambiguous as to whether God spoke to all the people or just to Moses.

20:2 The holy nation must never forget that Egyptian blood was spilt so that we may live. This obliges us to a life of service to others. God is the warrior. We are to be peaceful. Exodus 14:14.

20:3 The holy nation must not to rely on idols such as the invisible hand or military might or future technological innovation or national borders for salvation.

20:4 The only acceptable image of God is all humanity, male and female, living and working together in harmony. Genesis 1:26-31

20:7 The holy nation must not claim divine right, or God’s will, or natural law, to justify its inequities.

20:8-11 The holy nation must provide sufficient time for rest and contemplation for its people.

20:12 The holy nation must provide abundant time, resources, and institutions for mother and fathers to care for their children. The holy nation must insure that its elders have the means to live a dignified life.

20:13 The holy nation leaves vengeance for God and remembers that Moses was guilty of murder. The holy nation honors its covenantal obligations with God and the people (see Ezekiel chapter 23 for a societal meaning of adultery.) The holy nation does not exploit the poor to benefit the rich. The holy nation does not lie to the people.

20:14 In the holy nation, inequities of wealth and opportunity are minimized.

20:16-19 Out of fear, the people respect the boundary between God and people. The hard part is not creating our own false boundaries between peoples.

20:20 Alongside the real boundary between heaven and earth we should not construct a false boundary dividing people based on wealth.

20:21 The altar is not an image of God. It is a reminder that all people are equally on the earth side of the boundary. No precious metals or other materials that people use to divide themselves from other people have any place on God’s altar.

20:22 “Why would the sword (i.e. an iron tool) profane the stones of the altar? The altar was made to lengthen human life and the sword to shorten it. Hence it would be wrong to lift up that which is designed to curtail human life against that which is designed to prolong it.”- Plaut, from the Mishna.

20:23 Awareness of our nakedness is our shrewdness, our desire to dominate, to transgress the boundary, and be like Gods. The altar is not raised to remind us that we are dust of the ground and to dust we shall return

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Portion 16 Be-Shallah Exodus 13:17-17:16

13:17 An E tradition. YHWH will lead the Israelites into an ambush at the sea of Reeds in 14:1-4.

13:18 How willing we are to place weapons into the hands of the Israelites. Plaut mentions Rashi’s alternative explanation that the word the NJPS translates as “armed” means “one-fifth,” four fifths having died during the plague of darkness. This is consistent with the interpretation of that plague in which some of the people voluntarily choose to identify themselves with the oppressed as Israelites and some not, regardless of biological ancestry. Plaut mentions several traditions where only 1/50 or 1/500 went out. Plaut also suggests that since the word translated as “armed” is related to the words for five and fifty that it refers to “troops of five” or “troops of fifty.” In this case the implication could be the very opposite of that given in the NJPS. The Israelites leave Egypt as a non-violent army, disciplined in marching formation, but with God as their only warrior.

14:1-4 Despite the E tradition of God avoiding war in 13:17, YHWH leads the Israelites backwards into an ambush so that they will see war. Is there a midrash that explains this change of plans? Could there be two traditions that have been combined, one as in Psalm 105 where there are plagues but no Sea of Reeds, and one as in Psalm 106 where there is the destruction of the Egyptian army at the Sea of Reeds but no plagues? The idea that God is The Warrior, the only legitimate purveyor of violence, is so difficult for us to accept that we must be taught it over and over again in different ways.

14:8 Is some of the stiffness of Pharaoh’s heart due to Israelis upraised hands (NJPS “defiantly” which Plaut suggests we should read as “with upraised fists” as in many student and black power posters of 60’s)? Would a more reconciliatory attitude have avoided the violence to come?

14:11 An understandable complaint since YHWH in 14:2 intentionally maneuvered Israel into this vulnerable position.

14:13-14 See final comment for 14:1-4 above.

14:20 God prevents both sides from fighting each other.

15:1a Given the Song of Deborah in the Haftara for this portion, I wonder if at one point the Song at the Sea was attributed to Miriam.

15:1b Horses and chariots were the weapons of mass destruction of that time.

15:3 YHWH is the [only] warrior. For a human to use violence is to transcend the boundaries between heaven and earth.

15:11 In the Babylonian creation myth the god Marduk creates humanity out of the blood of the dead god he conquered. Likewise, Israel’s creation occurred as a consequence of the death of the Egyptians. In the Babylonian myth, violence is an essential part of humanity. But in the Torah, humanity is not created to be violent and Israel is created out of violence as a result of Israel’s failure to reconcile with the Egyptians. Israel is henceforth called to redeem itself by living justly and mercifully.

15:14-16 An insertion? 15:13 and 15:17 seem to refer to Mount Sinai, while 15:14-16 transpose this to Canaan. Perhaps Philistia, Edom, Moab, and Canaan are to be interpreted as those idolatrous aspects of ourselves that find salvation only in domination and weapons of war. We must conquer these aspects of ourselves if we are to let God reign supreme in our lives as a people.

15:20-21 The women dance but the men do not. That aspect of male self-identity as “warrior” has been defeated too. Men have not yet learned that this is a victory and still deny that it has happened. Perhaps male circumcision is a reminder of this too.

15:26 First indication that the manna episode is about Egypt. God tests the Israelites not to be like Pharaoh and Joseph, who stole food from the people and sold it back to them in exchange for their freedom.

16:3 Second indication that the manna episode is to teach the Israelites to be different than Pharaoh in Egypt.

16:20 They are to take only what they need.

16:27 They are to respect the Sabbath.

17:8 Does this verse unambiguously imply that Amalek was the instigator or does it leave room for ambiguity as to who started the fight?

17:9 The preparations between Moses and Joshua could be interpreted to imply that Israel acted first. In Deuteronomy 25:17-19, Moses says, 40 years later, and to a new generation, that Amalek was the unambiguous instigator and Israel was blameless. Also, in the exodus account, Moses uses the rod of God without permission in an attempt to claim God’s support for this war. He neglects to mention this in his retelling. Likewise, my daughter’s 2nd grade history textbook has many things to say about how awful the British were without giving any accounts of non-violent alternatives available to the colonists, such as how Canada achieved independence. Perhaps the Torah is telling us to be mindful of the way history demonizes our past enemies to justify our past actions.

17:13 How could Joshua have fought with the sword if the Israelites left Egypt unarmed? Plaut says that tradition places chapter 17 later in the book when Israel was already at Sinai-Horeb (note that 16:34 mentions the Pact). Perhaps the Israelites constructed swords out of plowshares when they made the golden calf. What does tradition say is the reason for recounting the Amalek episode before Sinai?

17:14 God reminds Moses and Joshua that YHWH is the only warrior.

17:15 There are a few indications that there is an association between the stories of Shechem and Amalek. Moses constructs an alter, just as Jacob did in Genesis 35:1-7 after Simeon and Levi led Jacob’s family to kill the people of Shechem. In Chronicles 4:42-43 the Simeonites “destroyed the last surviving Amelikites, and they live there to this day.”

17:16 We are to occupy our hands with worship to God, through nonviolent acts of justice and mercy, not with the sword. After their murder of the people of Shechem, Jacob ordered his family to get rid of its foreign gods, to purify themselves, and to change their clothing. Jacob understood that relying on violence for salvation was idolatry. Whenever we use violence to conquer a foe, war and violence are gloried and strengthened as idols. This is what Israel’s war with Amalek represents and it is what YHWH is constantly at war with. God’s way of vengeance for murder is to send the perpetrator into the wilderness. This is what happened to Cain when he killed Abel and to Moses when he killed the Egyptian. Perhaps Israel’s war with Amalek is why God sends the Israelites into the wilderness for forty years.