Proper 16 A

It is interesting to consider the messianic language observed in the post 9/11 George Bush presidency in relation to Constantine, whom Eusebius called the thirteenth apostle and the one in whom the Logos expressed a new divine initiative. The messianic status assumed by Constantine was a pre-Christian messianism, uninformed by the crucifixion’s interpretation of that story and, indeed, embracing a vision Jesus himself rejected. Constantine’s motive in calling the ecumenical councils was to maintain imperial unity rather than the critical pursuit of truth. The distortions of Christianity brought by Constantine have in many ways been reborn with new vigour in the conflicts and aspirations of recent Western history.

In the Matthew story for this Sunday (Matthew 16.13-20), Peter confesses his understanding of Jesus as the Messiah. Some were saying the life of Jesus was interpreting the life of John the Baptist or that of Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets in this contemporary moment. Peter says Jesus’ life interprets the story of the Messiah, or that he “is” the Messiah. Unlike Mark’s Jesus, Matthew’s Jesus does not immediately explain the Messiah’s necessary suffering, to which Peter famously objects. In Matthew, Jesus congratulates Peter on his inspiration, puns on his name to call him the rock on which he will build his church, and promises him that what he says will go. The addition is part of Matthew’s characteristic emphasis on the life of a church that embodies the presence of Christ (Emanuel) in its common life and acts as God’s presence in the world.

Matthew’s vision of the church does not merge the divine agenda with the agenda of the world, or the state, as under Constantine. While Jesus affirms Peter’s ministry in the world in the deepest possible sense, as a partnership with the transcendent God, what Peter has yet to understand is how such being-in-the-world is a matter of embracing the suffering of the world, identifying with the godforsaken and the abandoned in a way that shapes life in opposition to imperial Rome and the principles of the pax Romana.

What Jesus will say here about the Messiah is not so much something new, spoken against a Jewish understanding. Jesus interprets the faith of the people of exodus and exile ad the compassionate God who lived with his people through these experiences. The life of Jesus interprets his people’s Messiah story in one particular legitimate way that nevertheless sharpens oppsition to alternative interpretations—that Constantine would make, for instance, or George Bush or ancient Near Eastern religious culture in general, interpretations made from different social locations. This is the conflict of interpretation that will catch Peter as the story unfolds here.

What Peter must learn is what our reading from Romans teaches (Romans 12.1-8): to those who may be tempted by a faith that seeks accommodation and self-preservation in the world, a triumphalistic faith that is politically uncritical and therefore merely “spiritual”, to these Paul says the kind of spiritual worship he wants is one in which we put our bodies on the line. Being in the world is not accommodation to the world but transforming the world. Our “bodies” belong not just to God (and therefore to the future to which God calls us) but to the believing (and acting) community: we are “members together” (Romans 12.5). We are not our own. It is this kind of vision that animated Jesus on the cross and allowed the cross, a symbol of abandonment and death, to interpret the joyful solidarity of the kingdom. The cross, in a new understanding, becomes the new life of the resurrection. This is the new messianic vision, there at the very beginning in the OT heritage of transformation and liberation into new futures, but always new and unexpected. It is because of this necessary and painful engagement with the real world and the powers of history that we speak of the resurrection in terms of history, not because of the factuality of the appearance stories.

Connections to the Exodus 1.8 – 2.10 story ae obvious. The Hebrew midwives, unwilling to live subservient to the state, become midwives to a new future for their people. Bringing this story into our general theme, I am reminded of Matthew’s emphasis on engagement with an actual world as (often subversive and certainly suffering) agents of transformation. As “members together” the body of Christ shares in a messianic calling to transform our world to God’s future vision. Christ ‘r’ us. This is what is so scary for Peter. The messianic vision interpreted by the life of Jesus is not just about Jesus. It is about the Christian way of life. It is the pattern of our discipleship.

Proper 15 A

Isaiah 56.1-8, Matthew 15.21-28

Isaiah 56 marks the beginning of what has become known as Third Isaiah, which is characterised by the kind of inclusivist vision we have here in the embrace of the eunuch and the foreigner. This embrace effectively counters the exclusions announced in Deuteronomy 23.1-8. Just as pointedly, the pairing of eunuch and foreigner raises questions about the nature of the Abrahamic promise of children and land that has so fundamentally defined the Judean identity.

One of the things I find utterly delightful about our sacred scriptures is this habit of undermining or at least re-interpreting their own tradition. Here in Isaiah 56 we have an earlier instance of the attitude Jesus expressed when he said, “You have heard it said, but I say….” What Third Isaiah is saying is further intensified when we see it against the background of Ezra and Nehemiah laying down strict boundaries for who is in and who is out. This, along with the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26) and the idea of a Promised Land, constituted the inheritance of exile, a time when Israel not only preserved but in large part created and codified its identity in hostile surroundings.

The inclusive vision of Isaiah 56 is an alternative response to exile that goes back to more fundamental roots, to a faith that is based on justice rather than inheritance and the maintenance of identity and ritual purity over and against what is “other”. The chapter begins with the appeal to maintain justice, and one of the ways of doing this is to keep the Sabbath, which according to Deuteronomy is a way of maintaining justice rooted in the experience of exodus. Sabbath rest is Sabbath freedom, release from oppression and drudgery, a redefinition of the human being who is no longer seen as a beast of burden. Such freedom is inherently a universal principle limited neither to ethnic identity nor to place, and, indeed, a gift specifically given to the stranger as a way of remembering a people’s estrangement in Egypt.

Sadly, what seems to me the more fundamental vision of my faith tends to be the minority position. The land question, for instance, is still in control of the Ezras and the Nehemiahs. In the Sojourner’s ‘Daily Digest’ I receive via email I read today that "In exchange for West Bank land that Israel would keep, Olmert proposed a 5.5 percent land swap giving the Palestinians a desert territory adjacent to the Gaza Strip. ... The land to be annexed to Israel would include the large settlement blocs, and the border would be similar to the present route of the separation fence." How long can such injustice prevail? Good old Bob Dylan used to say the answer to that is so obvious it is blowing in the wind and defining an imminent future. So much for 1960s counterculture prophecy. The dispossession of the "other" is even worse now than it was then, as bad now as it was when Israel first returned from exile to insist on (re)claiming land rights.

The gospel lesson raises the perennial question. What does it take to listen to the voice of the Canaanite woman? To the eunuch? To the asylum seeker or the homosexual? According to the story in Matthew even Jesus (read ‘Christianity’) wears the traditional blinders. Even Jesus can forget that his tradition is inherently inclusive, as, indeed, it proved so infectiously to be after his death. The Ezras and the Nehemiahs have made of the so-called “Great Commission” at the end of this Gospel a mandate for proselytising, for building an imperial Church. It seems to me if we are going to teach what Jesus taught and do what Jesus did we will be sent by these words to liberate and affirm people, Sabbath-style, maintaining justice. Such a vision may always be against the grain. It always seems to be, anyway, even within our own tradition. But that doesn’t make it any less the gospel imperative, one that Jesus carried all the way to the cross. And in today's time of tension and disagreement within religious communities, the Church needs to be doing its creative best to carry this imperative forward in an articulate, public and forceful manner.