Texts: Neh 8:1-10; Ps 19; 1 Cor 12:12-31; Lk 4:14-21
These four passages embrace a tension always faced by the people of God. The OT passages emphasize particularity tending toward exclusivism, while the NT passages seek to move toward inclusivism, stressing diversity without destroying unity. Nehemiah and Psalm 19 reflect the postexile self-consciousness building of God's chosen people based on the centrality of Torah for Israel's faith and life.
The Ezra-Nehemiah corpus reflects the way the relatively small number of those who returned from Babylonian exile to the Judean region surmounted a series of crises. They sincerely believed their survival as the people of God faced the threat of extinction through assimilation. Ezra tells the story of rebuilding first the altar and then the sanctuary to resume worship in Jerusalem. The returnees spurned offers of cooperation from people of the land who had not experienced exile, but who said they wanted to share in rebuilding the temple. Rebuffed, they resorted to obstruction. This early adversarial relationship grew between the 'returnees' and the 'remainees' resulting in the Samaritan schism and the enmity which persisted through NT times until the present, stressing exclusivity in locus and rite.
Nehemiah continues the story of exclusivism with rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem, not merely for protection against military attack, but to shut out gentile traders who tempted the Jews to neglect observation of the sabbath. Neh 8-9 tells of a great community-wide renewal of the people's commitment to obey the LORD's torah/instruction. The gathering took place on the first day of the seventh month (Tishri), the feast of trumpets, which later became the Rosh Hashana, or New Year. Tradition calls Ezra (designated scribe and priest) the 'second Moses'. (One legend says God inspired him to reproduce verbatim the Pentateuch after enemies had destroyed all copies of the scrolls.)
The account stresses the respect with which the congregation treated the book and its reading: they stood when it was opened; whether they remained standing for the reading is not clear, but we know that RC and Episc and perhaps some Prot congregations stand for Gospel readings. Torah should be understood as instruction in the broader sense, not solely the legal portions, but that the account tells of the weeping of the people may indicate a penitent response to some of the laws and threatened judgments. Commentators generally assume that Ezra read from the Torah in Hebrew, while the Levites gave a running translation or commentary in Aramaic: they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. Rabbis saw this as the origin of the targums, earliest translations of the OT.
Not included in today's pericope, the account goes on to describe how, based on what they had heard read out of the law, the Jews divorced and sent away their foreign wives and their mixed blood children.
Question: how do we strike a proper balance between preservation of the tradition in which we exist, avoid exclusivism or imperialism, and appropriately promote diversity?
Mays deals with this and ps 1 and 119 in his essay 'The Place of the Torah-Psalms in the Psalter' (JBL 106/1, 3/97, p 3-12). Far from being 'oddballs' out of character with the rest of the psalter, they are, he says, specifically designed and placed so as to subsume the whole of the psalter under the rubric of Torah in its broadest (i.e. not specifically legalistic) aspect. Ps 1 speaks of meditating on the Torah, and Ps 19 of 'the meditations of my heart'. Brueggemann (Theology of the OT, p 591f) writes: "There is no doubt that the Torah 'meditated' upon has an ethical component. But it seems most plausible that what righteous Israel did was to settle its meditation, receptively and imaginatively, on all that is given in the torah tradition, which includes but is much more than commandment. And in Ps 19.7-10, this material, certainly focused on the ethical, is found to be generative, constitutive, transformative in its power in Israel. Indeed, the Torah 'revives the soul' (Ps 19.7), the same restorative work assigned to Yahweh in Ps 23.2. Thus we may believe that in pondering the Torah, Jews are revivified in their peculiar identity. They receive back their true selves in their true community, in covenant with their true God."
We often use the final petition as a prayer before preaching: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditatins of [our] heart[s] be acceptable to you, O LORD, [our] strength and [our] redeemer." The word translated 'be acceptable' [ratson] is a technical term used in Lev concerning which sorts and qualities of sacrifice are acceptable to YHWH. The 'acceptable' year of the LORD in Is 61.2 is also [ratson]. Ps 19 reflects the experience of a person and community who have experienced the destruction of the temple and hence the (temporary) cessation of the sacrificial ceremonies. Yet the psalmist knows well that what counts with God is the attitude of heart, not blood sacrifice. Thus Ps 19 had prepared Jews Christians for the final end of temple and animal sacrifice in 70 CE.
The Psalm also encourages us to note the complementarity of the knowledge of God through nature and through the moral law. One can most likely cite examples of the inadequacy of some who look for deity only in nature but have serious moral lapses, and strict moralists who take a wasteful, domineering attitude toward nature.
Following the general introduction to the question of spiritual gifts/persons of last week with its emphasis on the great variety of gifts all coming from one divine source and initiative, today's pericope focuses on the individuals' exercise of the particular gifts for the good of all.
Paul addresses two mistaken types of response to the phenomenon of differences in gifts: 1] One who thinks one's own gift disqualifies one from full membership in the body--I'm a foot, not a hand; or I'm an ear, not an eye, so I don't belong. To me, foot/hand and ear/eye all seem so important it's difficult to judge between superior and inferior, but I get the feeling Paul is alluding to people who think their gifts are not so flashy or so important as others' gifts, so by comparison they might as well not be in the body at all. 2] The opposite, one who considers one's own gift so very important, one can get along perfectly well without some of the others. Paul insists that each and all are important, and each and all belong together.
I struggle a bit to interpret and seek an application for 23-24a: '...those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this.' I wonder whether it might apply to minorities within a congregation. We majority anglos, despite our best efforts, succumb to the temptation to think minorities (blacks, hispanics, orientals, disabled, etc) as a drag. Should we anglos find ourselves a minority in a congregation largely made up of folks different from us, we might experience a degree of discrimination or prejudice because we didn't fit the majority mold. My conclusion would be that precisely those who are most different from the majority deserve the greater recognition.
In any case, Paul encourages believers toward inclusiveness and diversity. My personal take on this means full acceptance of glbt sisters and brothers. We need a greater degree of ability to discern spirits and gifts. In my view, too many people who would exclude glbts do so on stereotype and hearsay without actually knowing any of them. I'm convinced that for most people who conventionally exclude glbts the experience of personal acquaintance with some of these very gifted, active, effective brothers and sisters in the faith will make a big difference.
Consider Jesus' visit to Nazareth synagogue in Luke's total theological and narrative context. Jesus responded to JoBap not by standing with him to condemn the sinners but in solidarity with them by accepting baptism, and hearing God welcome him as 'my son.' Luke traces Jesus' genealogy as son of God all the way back through 'Adam of God,' a family tree to which every human belongs. Jesus resisted the temptation to claim special privilege as son of God, which would have separated him from solidarity with God's other children.
Now, without disciples as yet, Jesus filled with the Spirit goes on a teaching tour in the Galilee synagogues, receiving a favorable response (4.14-15). Note the difference from Mark's basic narrative in which Jesus calls disciples, takes them to synagogue in Capernaum, casts out an evil spirit, heals many, and then starts his evangelistic tour of Galilee synagogues (1.16-39).
Although Luke knows the Nazareth incident comes much later after this broader circuit, [cf 16.23] he moves it up front to set the theme of Jesus' ministry to the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed, to proclaim 'the year of the LORD's favor' i.e. Jubilee (so Watts [Word] on Is 61.2; Caird [Penguin] on Lk 4.19). Ellis [New Century] calls attention to the fact that Jesus stops reading Isaiah before the mention of 'vengeance.' In Jeremias' "Jesus' Promise to the Nations," this omission immediately raises negative feelings in the audience.
In asserting that in him the scripture is fulfilled, Jesus accepts the voice from heaven and the Spirit's coming on him as divine commission to proclaim the coming of God's kingdom then and there. Traditionally people have spiritualized 'captives, blind, oppressed' and stressed the importance of individual response in faith so as to 'get saved.' However, one should by no means ignore the implications for concerted action to address material aspects of human existence. In the OT, the Jubilee was first and foremost an economic act to cancel debts. Though the actual Jubilee of every 50 years may never have been carried out, it expressed a divine ideal for human life in community which at least in partial manner was addressed by the less comprehensive year of release for a debtor in the seventh year (Ex 212-6; Dt 15.12-18). To press the spiritual to the neglect of the material is to distort the prophetic message of the OT and Jesus' own understanding of his mission.
(Comments to Arch at arch.taylor@ecunet.org.)