Discomforting Words
Commentary
Note: This installment was originally published in 2013.
Today's scriptures carry warnings that Christians of the 21st century really need to listen to. It is never easy to listen to a prophet; they say such troubling things. They provoke dis-ease in the darkest places of our souls. They make the comfortable tremble like the volcanoes Jeremiah talks about. This week, the words of Jesus, which some think ought to always be comforting, are intended to be unsettling, to set the world on its head. Like the Pharisees, we are too often found where we are the most comfortable -- with our crowd, those who are like us, who fear the same things we fear. We send our money to those poor who, in our opinion, deserve our help. We take up the causes that are held up to us by the media or our leaders, those causes that make us feel good. So why does God send prophets to point out that we are like children who don't understand?
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
This reading from Jeremiah, in the tradition of major biblical prophecy, is set in verse, with individual prophecies introduced and separated into stanzas by prose pieces. He begins with a paragraph of prose that warns the people of Israel that destruction is about to come upon them. The metaphor he uses is "a scorching wind."
The people of Israel were all too familiar with the sirocco, the wind that sweeps in from the southern desert each year, marking the end of the growing season. If the wheat had not been cut by the time of the sirocco it could mark a season of hunger. However, if the wheat was harvested and on the winnowing floor the sirocco helped to blow off the chaff as the winnowers tossed the wheat in the air, leaving the wheat kernels to fall back to the baskets and then be ground into flour.
But Jeremiah says that the scorching wind in this case is not just for winnowing the nation as one would winnow wheat. This is going to be a destructive wind, straight from God. Ancient Hebrew had an interesting idiom for anger, especially the anger of God, which literally reads as "fire from the nostrils." It's about equivalent to the English phrase "she was breathing fire," meaning she was extremely angry. So the scorching wind in this prophecy is not just the sirocco but that fiery breath from the nostrils of God.
In this paragraph Jeremiah also tells the people where the punishment is coming from -- the barren heights -- that is to say, from Assyria. We need to remember that Jeremiah, although his work follows Isaiah in the Bible, wrote before Isaiah (whose prophecy foretold the Exile in Babylon). Jeremiah is warning them that they have been making foolish choices as a nation and that those choices are going to destroy the Northern Kingdom.
This prose introduction is followed by a stanza of poetic prophecy. Hebrew poetry does not rely on the repetition of sounds or rhythms as our poetry does. Rather, Hebrew poetry relies on the repetition of meaning. And as with poetry in any language, Hebrew poetry depends on metaphor and word play to carry the content. This can make poetry difficult for many people to appreciate, even with commentary, but a few words of explanation can help. With all of this in mind, let us look at verse 22, the first stanza, which can be divided this way (using the NIV):
My people are fools;
they do not know me.
They are senseless children;
they have no understanding.
They are skilled in doing evil;
they know not how to do good.
We have here three statements that tell us how God feels when we go astray. First, we are called "fools" -- which does not mean "foolish" as we use that word today; it means a person who does not believe in God. So the first two lines are a couplet, in which the thought in the first line is repeated in the second in different words.
The second couplet says that those who go astray are like children who don't have the good sense to keep themselves out of trouble. Like modern children playing with real guns who have no understanding of the possible consequences of aiming the gun and pulling the trigger, disaster can result due to their lack of understanding. They will have to live their lives with the guilt of having injured or killed a friend or family member.
The third couplet ties together and summarizes the first two: Those who do not listen to God wind up doing evil even when they think they are not. Like angry teens or careless children, they are a danger to themselves and others. They don't know how to do good things. And sadder still, God is not talking about other people; God is talking to us.
Jeremiah is talking about the consequences of a political situation Israel was facing. Egypt and Assyria (modern-day Syria and Lebanon) were battling for world domination. Since Israel was directly between Assyria and Egypt, they thought that they could play a major role in that conflict, and they took the side of Egypt. How could they have thought that their tiny nation could play the power game with nations that had ten times the people, more technological power, and more natural resources at their command?
But again today, the Middle East is aflame with Egyptians being gunned down in the street and Syria apparently using chemical as well as conventional weapons, as rich and poor fight over whose version of Islam ought to rule their homeland. As the entire region threatens to descend into war, there are calls for the U.S. to intervene, even though it is not at all clear how America's interests align with any of the possible outcomes to the turmoil.
The next section of the prophecy, verses 23-26, reports a vision Jeremiah had. Again, there are couplets that play off of each other. The 23rd verse is a pairing of devastation, first of the earth, which was "formless and empty," over and against the heavens whose "light was gone." This reflects an ancient belief that what happens here on earth is reflected in the heavens and vice versa. On another level, when smoke is rising over a city that has been utterly destroyed, the stars are in fact obscured. And those who survive such devastation often say it was as though the world was coming to an end.
Verse 24 doesn't translate as an obvious couplet, because it takes many more words in English than in Hebrew to describe the mountains' quaking over against the following line about the hills swaying. Again, these are typical metaphors about the end of the world, reflecting the fact that this area was seismically active.
Verse 25 is another instance of juxtaposition: there are no people, also not a bird in the sky. Likewise, verse 26 couples together the farms being turned into desert and the destruction of all the towns as the anger of God is visited upon the foolish (non-God revering) nation. All of this the prophet has seen in his vision.
The prophecy ends with a direct word from God, again in verse:
The whole land will be ruined,
though I will not destroy it completely.
This is a hopeful note, believe it or not. But it's rather like the comment made by a scientist on a recent program on the effects of pollution on the earth: "It is not that we are going to destroy the earth. The earth has survived much worse, and is still here. What we are doing is, however, going to make it impossible for us to survive."
God's words conclude with this pair of couplets:
Therefore the earth will mourn
and the heavens above grow dark,
because I have spoken and will not relent,
I have decided and will not turn back. (v. 28)
Once having decided that the nation has strayed far too far away from its relationship with God, the LORD will dress the earth and sky as though in mourning. God "will not relent," and again "will not turn back."
Of course, we do not believe this. God loves us -- Jesus told us so! God will surely not carry through with so much destruction! But when Assyria swept into Israel they did indeed destroy the cities, and carried the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom away as prisoners. The Israelites never returned to the land, and their disappearance has fueled all kinds of speculation down through the ages. (See, for example, The Book of Mormon.)
1 Timothy 1:12-17
This is one of the most beautiful passages in all of scripture. Many hymns have taken its images and even its very words. It is comforting, illuminating the free grace of God through Jesus. It glorifies Jesus as the Christ (Messiah) and the very embodiment of "the only God." It underlines the free flow of the grace of God.
It also shows us that a close relationship with God is possible, regardless of how far into sin we might sink. The author accomplishes this when he confesses his former sins and stresses the mercy he has received from Christ Jesus. Then he adds that all sinners are saved, because Christ came into the world for that very purpose. The qualities of the Christ -- mercy, grace, patience, love, and faith -- all are poured out on our behalf, so that we might also abound in these qualities. No wonder the passage ends in such an eloquent and thorough speech of praise!
Does it matter who wrote this passage? Well, it depends on what emphasis we put on authorship as a guide to acceptance of what the author has to say. In former times, the pastoral letters to Timothy were, without question, attributed to Paul. However, for the past century or more, the majority of scholars have leaned in the direction of some other person being the actual author. The reasons for this consist of the language, which is more like the Greek of the end of the first-century CE than that in Paul's time; the themes found in the letters, which are more like the conventional polemics of the time -- common treatises on household rules; and the absolutism of the overall approach of the work, which reflects a major shift in Christian belief, preaching, and church structure that occurred after the first-century CE.
The list of sins the author confesses to sounds like Paul, though, don't they? Well, not really. While Paul did persecute early Christians (according to Luke in the seventh and eighth chapters of Acts) and was standing by when Stephen was stoned to death for blasphemy (he was preaching that Jesus was the Son of God). But Paul was, to the best of our knowledge, never a blasphemer himself. Luke does say that Paul "approved of their killing [Stephen]" and goes on to say that he "was ravaging the church by entering house after house," which probably involved violence (Acts 8:1, 3). But similarity of sins does not define for us who the author is.
This listing of the author's past sins does serve an important purpose, however. It outlines a sense of the character of the author before he met the Christ, so we can appreciate the change that has been brought about by the mercy of God. It also lets the hearers know that they are not being preached to by someone who has no idea what it is to feel like a sinner. In fact, he makes a point of saying that his redemption serves as "an example to those who would come to believe in [Jesus] for eternal life."
This could apply to us pastors as well. Nothing is more off-putting than to be preached at by someone who has no idea what it is to fall short of who we want to be. A pastor who can tell a congregation that "you have no idea who I used to be. Let me tell you how Christ changed my life," has far more power to witness to the effects of a walk with Christ than a person who preaches from a stance of perfection.
The praise that the author pours out is to both Christ Jesus and to "the only God," in whose name Jesus came. But he also combines Adonai (Lord) with "Christ Jesus," which reflects a sense of the later doctrine of the Trinity (which was not the canonical theology of the church until the fourth century CE). This close identification of Jesus with God is of course based on the idea that Jesus came as the Son of God, to show us what God's love is like. The rest of the outpouring of praise demonstrates another quality that brings us closer to God: gratitude.
The approach of witnessing to the transformative power of God requires this quality. Without gratitude for our salvation, for the ultimate sacrifice on the part of Jesus, we can never realize the peace that this author has. And that gratitude, in turn, leads to exultant praise on our part, joining the choirs of angels in exultation.
Luke 15:1-10
Our gospel passage this week is a small part of a reading that begins at the first verse of chapter 14 and continues through chapter 16. Jesus has been invited to the home of "a leader of the Pharisees" to eat a meal on the Sabbath. Included in the company at the table were experts in Jewish Law, a group that had affinity with the Pharisees, a party of Jews who were very concerned not only to keep the law themselves, but to keep others from breaking even the smallest part of the law.
When we think about the passage from Jeremiah for this week, we can understand why the Pharisees were so concerned with this. The ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom (Israel) had been conquered, and despite the political overtones of Jeremiah, the Pharisees concentrated on the decline of the nation into unbelief, as though this was the only reason for the fall of Israel.
This was just one major loss. Judea itself had been conquered first by the Greeks, who had invaded the Jerusalem Temple and slaughtered a pig and sacrificed it on the high altar, thus desecrating the temple. Young Jewish men had been encouraged to cut off their beards, crop their hair, and dress in the Greek manner, which many did. The Greeks had also built a gymnasium in the city, where Greek and Jewish boys had competed with each other naked, as was common among the Greeks. All of this was a horror to the older Jewish people and led to the revolt of the Maccabees.
At the time of Jesus, of course, Rome had conquered Judea and all of the surrounding area, and they also had tried to Romanize the Jews. The Jews had rioted when the eagle standard of Rome was posted within the temple grounds. As a compromise, the Romans set up these standards outside the gates of the temple, which every Jew had to pass as they entered the temple courts.
In addition to such insults, the Romans had recruited tax collectors from among the Jews themselves to collect taxes for Rome. These tax collectors were commissioned to collect a certain amount in taxes, but they were not paid for their work by the Romans. Instead, they were allowed to add a fee to the taxes they collected as their own recompense. The result was that tax collectors in Judea were even more hated than the IRS is today in America. They were widely considered to be traitors for doing the job, and dishonest for tacking on an extra percentage for their own pay.
So the Pharisees saw themselves as a bastion of protection against the encroachments of the Gentiles who were pressing in on every side, especially those within the community of Judaism who were either working for the Romans or who had taken on the manners of the Romans.
Luke has chosen the occasion of Jesus being invited to the home of this leader of the Pharisees as the focus of a series of teachings around the topic of hospitality and the extension of hospitality to the poor and the outcast. This is more obvious in chapter 14, where Jesus specifically says that when one gives a banquet such as this, one ought not to invite those who can and will reciprocate, but should invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind, who cannot reciprocate, to partake of the meal (Luke 14:12-14) instead of throwing their scraps to the beggars waiting at their gates (Luke 16:19-31).
Chapter 15 begins with the statement that the "tax collectors and sinners" were coming near to listen to him. This caused the Pharisees to grumble against Jesus, muttering that he eats with riff-raff. In doing so, they prove that they do not understand the divine view of humankind that Jesus is holding up. This sets the scene for these two stories about how God rejoices over recovering even one sinner.
Application
The two stories are paired images -- one is about a shepherd who has lost a sheep; the other is about a woman who has lost a coin. Luke tends to do this when he is recording stories that Jesus tells. Of all of the gospel writers, Luke tends to include stories about women and the day-to-day work of women the most. And several times he pairs a story out of the life of men with a story out of the life of women.
The first story has an odd saying in verse 4: "Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost...?" No shepherd would leave a flock of sheep alone in the wilderness, especially where there are wild animals which see sheep as dinner (see John 10:12). At the very least, the shepherd would enclose the sheep in some way first so another one doesn't wander off. This is especially important because sheep will follow their shepherd (see John 10:4). If the shepherd is going after a lost sheep, he will be moving quickly so as to find it before it is killed, either by accident or wild animal. The smaller or younger animals in the flock would not be able to keep up, further scattering the herd.
We cannot assume that Jesus was unfamiliar with the ways of sheep. He has walked the country from every direction, talking to peasants and shepherds among others. So this is no mistake. What is Jesus up to?
Bruce J. Malina, in his book Windows on the World of Jesus, talks a great deal about the importance of in-groups and out-groups in Mediterranean Jewish society and the teachings of Jesus. If what he says impacts the story here, the "sheep" can be left alone because they have each other. Real sheep do tend to clump together in the field when they are afraid, and where the ram goes, so goes the flock. The sheep who wanders away from the flock is putting itself in danger by isolating itself from the flock. The flock, in its turn, will not seek out the lost sheep (excepting a ewe, which may leave the safety of the flock to retrieve her wandering lamb).
In this story, Jesus is of course talking about the people at the dinner table. They have their own in-group, a group of educated, law-abiding men of standing in the community. They go to dinner in each other's homes, and each man takes his turn as host. Each of the men at this table knows who he is because he is part of this in-group. He also knows who he is not -- he is not an outcast, a "sinner." He pays no attention to those who are not part of this group. Any jostling for status in this group goes on all the time, not just at this dinner table, and with no particular loss of face if you lose out this time -- there will be another dinner and another chance to sit at the head of the table. It is being part of the group that is the most important thing.
What Jesus is trying to do is to break open that in-group and invite in those whom God loves. To do this, to include those who are out-group people, would tilt their world. The very thought is inconceivable. Not only would those outsiders never be able to reciprocate, but it would make them real to the host in ways that are bound to make him and all the other guests most uncomfortable.
But Jesus says this is exactly what God does. No human being is on a par with God. To be invited into the kingdom of God is not something we can just expect. We might earn such an invitation by some extraordinary act (for example, Jesus is in most senses of the word an out-group person who has been invited to this dinner because he has made himself famous), but we cannot assume that as our reward. So any invitation from God to his table is a gift, and not one we might reciprocate.
Jesus' hearers know, however, that merely by being Jewish, which means keeping God's Law and living as members of this in-group, they are part of the kingdom of God. Outcasts are outcast for a reason -- they break the law, they live outside God's favor by their way of life. So they are beyond deserving attention.
This brings us to the second "found" story: the woman who has lost a coin. Here again, the coin is a symbol of belonging. It is probably a coin from her dowry, which married women of the time wore as part of a woven headdress. These coins, each worth ten days' wages, were a guarantee of sorts against immediate poverty. They do not belong to her husband, as does everything else she has, but to her. She wears them every day, to keep them safe, and as a sign that her husband takes good care of her. But something has happened. She put her hand to her head at some point and discovered her loss. Jesus says she gets out a lamp and lights it, burning precious oil to illuminate the (probably dirt) floor, and proceeds to sweep every inch of it, watching for a glint of silver in the dirt she is stirring up with the broom. After several minutes of frantic work, her fear is relieved. There is the coin!
In both of these stories, the bottom line is an invitation: "Come, rejoice with me! The thing (person) I had lost is found!" Every lost person is a terrible loss to God, Jesus says. And everyone who turns again to reinstate themselves in God's in-group is a source of rejoicing in heaven. We are invited to rejoice with God!
Unfortunately, we still haven't risen to the level that Jesus has called us to. Martin Luther King Jr., said fifty years ago that "11:00 on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week." We hesitate to bring in the broken people of the world. We mourn the loss of church membership mostly when we go to pay the bills. We have education wings on too many of our churches that stand empty six days a week when there are working mothers who could use a loving, well-run, inexpensive day care facility. We fear opening our facilities to other Christian cultures for fear they will not share our values, or they will not "respect the building" as we do. Are we still sitting around a table with others of our in-group, fearing the changing neighborhood outside our doors? If so, we really need to listen to Jeremiah's warning, don't we?
The good news (gospel) is good news mostly to the outsiders, those whose in-group consists of those who have nothing, hope for nothing, and die when they get ill. Members of the middle class in America fear nothing so much as losing our status. When the economy is bad, we fear the loss of job, house, and valuables -- those things that keep us in our group. If we lose all that, we are sure that we will lose our friends, who will despise us for the loss of our things. We are most afraid of becoming one of those that God cares for the most.
Today's scriptures carry warnings that Christians of the 21st century really need to listen to. It is never easy to listen to a prophet; they say such troubling things. They provoke dis-ease in the darkest places of our souls. They make the comfortable tremble like the volcanoes Jeremiah talks about. This week, the words of Jesus, which some think ought to always be comforting, are intended to be unsettling, to set the world on its head. Like the Pharisees, we are too often found where we are the most comfortable -- with our crowd, those who are like us, who fear the same things we fear. We send our money to those poor who, in our opinion, deserve our help. We take up the causes that are held up to us by the media or our leaders, those causes that make us feel good. So why does God send prophets to point out that we are like children who don't understand?
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
This reading from Jeremiah, in the tradition of major biblical prophecy, is set in verse, with individual prophecies introduced and separated into stanzas by prose pieces. He begins with a paragraph of prose that warns the people of Israel that destruction is about to come upon them. The metaphor he uses is "a scorching wind."
The people of Israel were all too familiar with the sirocco, the wind that sweeps in from the southern desert each year, marking the end of the growing season. If the wheat had not been cut by the time of the sirocco it could mark a season of hunger. However, if the wheat was harvested and on the winnowing floor the sirocco helped to blow off the chaff as the winnowers tossed the wheat in the air, leaving the wheat kernels to fall back to the baskets and then be ground into flour.
But Jeremiah says that the scorching wind in this case is not just for winnowing the nation as one would winnow wheat. This is going to be a destructive wind, straight from God. Ancient Hebrew had an interesting idiom for anger, especially the anger of God, which literally reads as "fire from the nostrils." It's about equivalent to the English phrase "she was breathing fire," meaning she was extremely angry. So the scorching wind in this prophecy is not just the sirocco but that fiery breath from the nostrils of God.
In this paragraph Jeremiah also tells the people where the punishment is coming from -- the barren heights -- that is to say, from Assyria. We need to remember that Jeremiah, although his work follows Isaiah in the Bible, wrote before Isaiah (whose prophecy foretold the Exile in Babylon). Jeremiah is warning them that they have been making foolish choices as a nation and that those choices are going to destroy the Northern Kingdom.
This prose introduction is followed by a stanza of poetic prophecy. Hebrew poetry does not rely on the repetition of sounds or rhythms as our poetry does. Rather, Hebrew poetry relies on the repetition of meaning. And as with poetry in any language, Hebrew poetry depends on metaphor and word play to carry the content. This can make poetry difficult for many people to appreciate, even with commentary, but a few words of explanation can help. With all of this in mind, let us look at verse 22, the first stanza, which can be divided this way (using the NIV):
My people are fools;
they do not know me.
They are senseless children;
they have no understanding.
They are skilled in doing evil;
they know not how to do good.
We have here three statements that tell us how God feels when we go astray. First, we are called "fools" -- which does not mean "foolish" as we use that word today; it means a person who does not believe in God. So the first two lines are a couplet, in which the thought in the first line is repeated in the second in different words.
The second couplet says that those who go astray are like children who don't have the good sense to keep themselves out of trouble. Like modern children playing with real guns who have no understanding of the possible consequences of aiming the gun and pulling the trigger, disaster can result due to their lack of understanding. They will have to live their lives with the guilt of having injured or killed a friend or family member.
The third couplet ties together and summarizes the first two: Those who do not listen to God wind up doing evil even when they think they are not. Like angry teens or careless children, they are a danger to themselves and others. They don't know how to do good things. And sadder still, God is not talking about other people; God is talking to us.
Jeremiah is talking about the consequences of a political situation Israel was facing. Egypt and Assyria (modern-day Syria and Lebanon) were battling for world domination. Since Israel was directly between Assyria and Egypt, they thought that they could play a major role in that conflict, and they took the side of Egypt. How could they have thought that their tiny nation could play the power game with nations that had ten times the people, more technological power, and more natural resources at their command?
But again today, the Middle East is aflame with Egyptians being gunned down in the street and Syria apparently using chemical as well as conventional weapons, as rich and poor fight over whose version of Islam ought to rule their homeland. As the entire region threatens to descend into war, there are calls for the U.S. to intervene, even though it is not at all clear how America's interests align with any of the possible outcomes to the turmoil.
The next section of the prophecy, verses 23-26, reports a vision Jeremiah had. Again, there are couplets that play off of each other. The 23rd verse is a pairing of devastation, first of the earth, which was "formless and empty," over and against the heavens whose "light was gone." This reflects an ancient belief that what happens here on earth is reflected in the heavens and vice versa. On another level, when smoke is rising over a city that has been utterly destroyed, the stars are in fact obscured. And those who survive such devastation often say it was as though the world was coming to an end.
Verse 24 doesn't translate as an obvious couplet, because it takes many more words in English than in Hebrew to describe the mountains' quaking over against the following line about the hills swaying. Again, these are typical metaphors about the end of the world, reflecting the fact that this area was seismically active.
Verse 25 is another instance of juxtaposition: there are no people, also not a bird in the sky. Likewise, verse 26 couples together the farms being turned into desert and the destruction of all the towns as the anger of God is visited upon the foolish (non-God revering) nation. All of this the prophet has seen in his vision.
The prophecy ends with a direct word from God, again in verse:
The whole land will be ruined,
though I will not destroy it completely.
This is a hopeful note, believe it or not. But it's rather like the comment made by a scientist on a recent program on the effects of pollution on the earth: "It is not that we are going to destroy the earth. The earth has survived much worse, and is still here. What we are doing is, however, going to make it impossible for us to survive."
God's words conclude with this pair of couplets:
Therefore the earth will mourn
and the heavens above grow dark,
because I have spoken and will not relent,
I have decided and will not turn back. (v. 28)
Once having decided that the nation has strayed far too far away from its relationship with God, the LORD will dress the earth and sky as though in mourning. God "will not relent," and again "will not turn back."
Of course, we do not believe this. God loves us -- Jesus told us so! God will surely not carry through with so much destruction! But when Assyria swept into Israel they did indeed destroy the cities, and carried the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom away as prisoners. The Israelites never returned to the land, and their disappearance has fueled all kinds of speculation down through the ages. (See, for example, The Book of Mormon.)
1 Timothy 1:12-17
This is one of the most beautiful passages in all of scripture. Many hymns have taken its images and even its very words. It is comforting, illuminating the free grace of God through Jesus. It glorifies Jesus as the Christ (Messiah) and the very embodiment of "the only God." It underlines the free flow of the grace of God.
It also shows us that a close relationship with God is possible, regardless of how far into sin we might sink. The author accomplishes this when he confesses his former sins and stresses the mercy he has received from Christ Jesus. Then he adds that all sinners are saved, because Christ came into the world for that very purpose. The qualities of the Christ -- mercy, grace, patience, love, and faith -- all are poured out on our behalf, so that we might also abound in these qualities. No wonder the passage ends in such an eloquent and thorough speech of praise!
Does it matter who wrote this passage? Well, it depends on what emphasis we put on authorship as a guide to acceptance of what the author has to say. In former times, the pastoral letters to Timothy were, without question, attributed to Paul. However, for the past century or more, the majority of scholars have leaned in the direction of some other person being the actual author. The reasons for this consist of the language, which is more like the Greek of the end of the first-century CE than that in Paul's time; the themes found in the letters, which are more like the conventional polemics of the time -- common treatises on household rules; and the absolutism of the overall approach of the work, which reflects a major shift in Christian belief, preaching, and church structure that occurred after the first-century CE.
The list of sins the author confesses to sounds like Paul, though, don't they? Well, not really. While Paul did persecute early Christians (according to Luke in the seventh and eighth chapters of Acts) and was standing by when Stephen was stoned to death for blasphemy (he was preaching that Jesus was the Son of God). But Paul was, to the best of our knowledge, never a blasphemer himself. Luke does say that Paul "approved of their killing [Stephen]" and goes on to say that he "was ravaging the church by entering house after house," which probably involved violence (Acts 8:1, 3). But similarity of sins does not define for us who the author is.
This listing of the author's past sins does serve an important purpose, however. It outlines a sense of the character of the author before he met the Christ, so we can appreciate the change that has been brought about by the mercy of God. It also lets the hearers know that they are not being preached to by someone who has no idea what it is to feel like a sinner. In fact, he makes a point of saying that his redemption serves as "an example to those who would come to believe in [Jesus] for eternal life."
This could apply to us pastors as well. Nothing is more off-putting than to be preached at by someone who has no idea what it is to fall short of who we want to be. A pastor who can tell a congregation that "you have no idea who I used to be. Let me tell you how Christ changed my life," has far more power to witness to the effects of a walk with Christ than a person who preaches from a stance of perfection.
The praise that the author pours out is to both Christ Jesus and to "the only God," in whose name Jesus came. But he also combines Adonai (Lord) with "Christ Jesus," which reflects a sense of the later doctrine of the Trinity (which was not the canonical theology of the church until the fourth century CE). This close identification of Jesus with God is of course based on the idea that Jesus came as the Son of God, to show us what God's love is like. The rest of the outpouring of praise demonstrates another quality that brings us closer to God: gratitude.
The approach of witnessing to the transformative power of God requires this quality. Without gratitude for our salvation, for the ultimate sacrifice on the part of Jesus, we can never realize the peace that this author has. And that gratitude, in turn, leads to exultant praise on our part, joining the choirs of angels in exultation.
Luke 15:1-10
Our gospel passage this week is a small part of a reading that begins at the first verse of chapter 14 and continues through chapter 16. Jesus has been invited to the home of "a leader of the Pharisees" to eat a meal on the Sabbath. Included in the company at the table were experts in Jewish Law, a group that had affinity with the Pharisees, a party of Jews who were very concerned not only to keep the law themselves, but to keep others from breaking even the smallest part of the law.
When we think about the passage from Jeremiah for this week, we can understand why the Pharisees were so concerned with this. The ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom (Israel) had been conquered, and despite the political overtones of Jeremiah, the Pharisees concentrated on the decline of the nation into unbelief, as though this was the only reason for the fall of Israel.
This was just one major loss. Judea itself had been conquered first by the Greeks, who had invaded the Jerusalem Temple and slaughtered a pig and sacrificed it on the high altar, thus desecrating the temple. Young Jewish men had been encouraged to cut off their beards, crop their hair, and dress in the Greek manner, which many did. The Greeks had also built a gymnasium in the city, where Greek and Jewish boys had competed with each other naked, as was common among the Greeks. All of this was a horror to the older Jewish people and led to the revolt of the Maccabees.
At the time of Jesus, of course, Rome had conquered Judea and all of the surrounding area, and they also had tried to Romanize the Jews. The Jews had rioted when the eagle standard of Rome was posted within the temple grounds. As a compromise, the Romans set up these standards outside the gates of the temple, which every Jew had to pass as they entered the temple courts.
In addition to such insults, the Romans had recruited tax collectors from among the Jews themselves to collect taxes for Rome. These tax collectors were commissioned to collect a certain amount in taxes, but they were not paid for their work by the Romans. Instead, they were allowed to add a fee to the taxes they collected as their own recompense. The result was that tax collectors in Judea were even more hated than the IRS is today in America. They were widely considered to be traitors for doing the job, and dishonest for tacking on an extra percentage for their own pay.
So the Pharisees saw themselves as a bastion of protection against the encroachments of the Gentiles who were pressing in on every side, especially those within the community of Judaism who were either working for the Romans or who had taken on the manners of the Romans.
Luke has chosen the occasion of Jesus being invited to the home of this leader of the Pharisees as the focus of a series of teachings around the topic of hospitality and the extension of hospitality to the poor and the outcast. This is more obvious in chapter 14, where Jesus specifically says that when one gives a banquet such as this, one ought not to invite those who can and will reciprocate, but should invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind, who cannot reciprocate, to partake of the meal (Luke 14:12-14) instead of throwing their scraps to the beggars waiting at their gates (Luke 16:19-31).
Chapter 15 begins with the statement that the "tax collectors and sinners" were coming near to listen to him. This caused the Pharisees to grumble against Jesus, muttering that he eats with riff-raff. In doing so, they prove that they do not understand the divine view of humankind that Jesus is holding up. This sets the scene for these two stories about how God rejoices over recovering even one sinner.
Application
The two stories are paired images -- one is about a shepherd who has lost a sheep; the other is about a woman who has lost a coin. Luke tends to do this when he is recording stories that Jesus tells. Of all of the gospel writers, Luke tends to include stories about women and the day-to-day work of women the most. And several times he pairs a story out of the life of men with a story out of the life of women.
The first story has an odd saying in verse 4: "Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost...?" No shepherd would leave a flock of sheep alone in the wilderness, especially where there are wild animals which see sheep as dinner (see John 10:12). At the very least, the shepherd would enclose the sheep in some way first so another one doesn't wander off. This is especially important because sheep will follow their shepherd (see John 10:4). If the shepherd is going after a lost sheep, he will be moving quickly so as to find it before it is killed, either by accident or wild animal. The smaller or younger animals in the flock would not be able to keep up, further scattering the herd.
We cannot assume that Jesus was unfamiliar with the ways of sheep. He has walked the country from every direction, talking to peasants and shepherds among others. So this is no mistake. What is Jesus up to?
Bruce J. Malina, in his book Windows on the World of Jesus, talks a great deal about the importance of in-groups and out-groups in Mediterranean Jewish society and the teachings of Jesus. If what he says impacts the story here, the "sheep" can be left alone because they have each other. Real sheep do tend to clump together in the field when they are afraid, and where the ram goes, so goes the flock. The sheep who wanders away from the flock is putting itself in danger by isolating itself from the flock. The flock, in its turn, will not seek out the lost sheep (excepting a ewe, which may leave the safety of the flock to retrieve her wandering lamb).
In this story, Jesus is of course talking about the people at the dinner table. They have their own in-group, a group of educated, law-abiding men of standing in the community. They go to dinner in each other's homes, and each man takes his turn as host. Each of the men at this table knows who he is because he is part of this in-group. He also knows who he is not -- he is not an outcast, a "sinner." He pays no attention to those who are not part of this group. Any jostling for status in this group goes on all the time, not just at this dinner table, and with no particular loss of face if you lose out this time -- there will be another dinner and another chance to sit at the head of the table. It is being part of the group that is the most important thing.
What Jesus is trying to do is to break open that in-group and invite in those whom God loves. To do this, to include those who are out-group people, would tilt their world. The very thought is inconceivable. Not only would those outsiders never be able to reciprocate, but it would make them real to the host in ways that are bound to make him and all the other guests most uncomfortable.
But Jesus says this is exactly what God does. No human being is on a par with God. To be invited into the kingdom of God is not something we can just expect. We might earn such an invitation by some extraordinary act (for example, Jesus is in most senses of the word an out-group person who has been invited to this dinner because he has made himself famous), but we cannot assume that as our reward. So any invitation from God to his table is a gift, and not one we might reciprocate.
Jesus' hearers know, however, that merely by being Jewish, which means keeping God's Law and living as members of this in-group, they are part of the kingdom of God. Outcasts are outcast for a reason -- they break the law, they live outside God's favor by their way of life. So they are beyond deserving attention.
This brings us to the second "found" story: the woman who has lost a coin. Here again, the coin is a symbol of belonging. It is probably a coin from her dowry, which married women of the time wore as part of a woven headdress. These coins, each worth ten days' wages, were a guarantee of sorts against immediate poverty. They do not belong to her husband, as does everything else she has, but to her. She wears them every day, to keep them safe, and as a sign that her husband takes good care of her. But something has happened. She put her hand to her head at some point and discovered her loss. Jesus says she gets out a lamp and lights it, burning precious oil to illuminate the (probably dirt) floor, and proceeds to sweep every inch of it, watching for a glint of silver in the dirt she is stirring up with the broom. After several minutes of frantic work, her fear is relieved. There is the coin!
In both of these stories, the bottom line is an invitation: "Come, rejoice with me! The thing (person) I had lost is found!" Every lost person is a terrible loss to God, Jesus says. And everyone who turns again to reinstate themselves in God's in-group is a source of rejoicing in heaven. We are invited to rejoice with God!
Unfortunately, we still haven't risen to the level that Jesus has called us to. Martin Luther King Jr., said fifty years ago that "11:00 on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week." We hesitate to bring in the broken people of the world. We mourn the loss of church membership mostly when we go to pay the bills. We have education wings on too many of our churches that stand empty six days a week when there are working mothers who could use a loving, well-run, inexpensive day care facility. We fear opening our facilities to other Christian cultures for fear they will not share our values, or they will not "respect the building" as we do. Are we still sitting around a table with others of our in-group, fearing the changing neighborhood outside our doors? If so, we really need to listen to Jeremiah's warning, don't we?
The good news (gospel) is good news mostly to the outsiders, those whose in-group consists of those who have nothing, hope for nothing, and die when they get ill. Members of the middle class in America fear nothing so much as losing our status. When the economy is bad, we fear the loss of job, house, and valuables -- those things that keep us in our group. If we lose all that, we are sure that we will lose our friends, who will despise us for the loss of our things. We are most afraid of becoming one of those that God cares for the most.
