Biblical
Words
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For some people prophets have
words of doom; others are urged to keep their priorities straight.
Our second reading
from the prophet Amos is part of a series of brief visions he received
from the Lord. There are five visions
altogether:
7:1-3, the locust
plague;
7:4-6, the fire
storm;
7:7-9, the plumb
line;
8:1-3, summer fruit;
and
9:1, destruction of
the temple.
(Last week’s
reading included the third of these.)
There was a
definite strategy in the first three visions, all of which threatened disaster
for poor, small Jacob. When God showed
the prophet an explicit disaster, like a locust plague or the outbreak of great
fire, the prophet jumped in and begged God to relent. “O Lord, forgive, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” (7:2 and 5, NRSV ). For the third vision, however, God changed
tactics and showed the prophet something that wasn’t a disaster already in
progress. It was only an ominous sign of
some kind.
In that third vision
God shows the prophet a plumb line, the device for determining when
crooked walls have to be torn down. Then
God said, “Amos, what do you see?” Now
the prophet has to answer the question – instead of immediately pleading for
Jacob. When he reports what he sees, it
is God’s turn to speak, and God then explains the judgment on Israel
that the plumb line represents.
God has
circumvented the prophet’s determination to intercede for poor little Jacob!
That was the
divine strategy with the plumb line, and it is the strategy here in this
Sunday’s reading with the vision of the basket of summer fruit (verses 1-3). As the translators’ footnotes in NRSV
explain, there is a wordplay. You see a
basket of summer fruit, a qaitz?
That sounds like a qetz – an End.
For you Amos there is a message in this, for “the end has come upon my peopleIsrael ;
I will never again pass them by [= exclude them from disaster].” The rest of the divine judgment elaborates on
the dead bodies lying in the streets, and concludes with an awesome command for
silence, in Hebrew hās! The total
silence of complete desolation and emptiness.
For you Amos there is a message in this, for “the end has come upon my people
And why is Israel
coming to its End? The reasons are given
in verses 4-6, once again selling the poor for silver, trampling the needy, and
in general ruining the poor. The
culmination of punishment will be the elimination of any hope for divine
relief. There will be a famine of
the words of the Lord; there will be no divine guidance that might reverse the
disasters (verses 11-12). Israel
is doomed.
We have the book
of Amos, not because Israel
survived the judgment, but because Judah
did.
After the northern
kingdom was destroyed by Assyria , Judah Judah ’s
place in history. In this new vision
Judah would continue to be the holy city God had chosen and would continue to
have a king descended from David the great anointed king, but it would also
adhere firmly to the lessons of Yahweh’s exclusiveness learned from the
prophets and the disastrous history of the northern kingdom.
This deliberate
adoption of northern traditions about Yahweh’s work in history was the
beginning of the prophetic books as part of a larger complex of God’s
Word. These were prophesies that had
been fulfilled; their messages had been verified by God’s own actions. Israel
had died because it was unfaithful to Yahweh – and Yahweh’s justice.
Perhaps Judah
still had a chance!
Psalm 52.
The Psalm reading is
probably one of the least familiar of the psalms. It doesn’t fit the usual categories for the
psalms: hymn, lament, thanksgiving,
etc. It is more like a reproach speech
from a prophet, like Isaiah’s pronouncement against Shebna, the mayor of Jerusalem
(Isaiah 22:15 -25).
The heading of the
psalm, added later, relates it to an incident in the time of David and Saul
when Doeg the Edomite was a competitor and betrayer of David, an outlaw
at the time (I Samuel 21:1-8; 22:6-19).
In Judah ’s
re-colonized (“post-Exilic”) period, the Judeans greatly resented the Edomites,
who had taken advantage of Judah ’s
defeat and depopulation. A prominent Edomite
warrior (gibbor, the term translated “mighty one” in verse 1 of our
psalm) was viewed as a tyrant epitomizing evil conduct. In the psalm, the righteous ones will view
with awe the punishment and destruction of this bully, who trusts in his
wealth, his power to buy his way to whatever he wants.
In contrast to
this Edomite gangland boss, the speaker compares himself to the evergreen,
long-lived olive tree in the precincts of the Temple . Tyrants come and go; the strength of the Lord
endures.
Apart from the
question of authorship – whether Paul wrote Colossians (see last week’s
discussion) – modern scholars have occupied themselves mainly with two topics
in this epistle: (1) the “Christ hymn”
in 1:15-20, which is so unique in its presentation of the “Cosmic Christ,” and
(2) the “heresy” or false teaching going on at Colossae. These two topics are presented in the
Lectionary Epistle readings for this Sunday and the next.
On both these
topics, I have gradually concluded that modern scholarship has seriously misplaced
its emphasis. (“The Christ hymn is the
bulwark of the Letter,” J. Paul Sampley, HarperCollins Study Bible, 1st
ed., p. 2211.)
In past
discussions of Colossians 1, I gave Andrew Lincoln’s reconstruction of the
Christ hymn in 1:15 -20 in some detail,
along with his interpretation of its background in Judean wisdom
tradition. Part of the argument that
Paul is here quoting a preexisting hymn to divine wisdom is that it stands out
in the letter; it does NOT fit its context.
The theory is that Paul quoted it here because he needs it later in his
argument that Christ is supreme over the other powers of the universe.
On one point I
think the scholars are right: the “hymn”
is an intrusion! The letter reads better
if you OMIT the “hymn”!
The prayer-report
of 1:9-14, just before the Christ hymn, has concluded by citing God’s work to
include the believers in the “kingdom of [God’s] beloved Son,” saving them from
the dark doom hanging over the rest of the world (1:13). Verse 21 (immediately after the “Christ
hymn”) continues to describe this saving action, “…you…he has now reconciled…so
as to present you holy and blameless…before him.” The letter is addressed to those who know they
have already been included in the elect group of Jesus people.
The only
significant challenge faced by this community of faith is to keep on
keeping on. You are in Jesus’ kingdom,
“provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith,
without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard” (1:23 ).
The writer is
addressing a community that has been around for some time. They are being tempted (as we will hear next
week) to accept some fads advocated by local religious hobbyists. But they have previously bet their lives on
the apocalyptic message that Jesus was God’s Son, now exalted to heaven, who
will soon return to judge the world.
They have been assured of being on the right side of that judgment! What is required of them now is to hold that
faith and continue to live the marvelous new life it requires.
That’s what verses
21-23 are about. The “Cosmic Christ” of
the Christ hymn (verses 15-20) has no particular bearing on that core
message. The Christ hymn, with its much
vaster perspective, is relevant to religious issues that arose in the second
generation of the Jesus assemblies – perhaps especially in the Phrygian region
of the Lycus valley (where the ancient Greek Great Mother had her home!).
The main message
of Colossians 1 is to Keep the Faith!
You already have what is decisive.
When people want to talk about the universe and its many “elemental
spirits,” we also have a lore about the absolute supremacy of Christ, but the
real challenge is to keep what we have and live a rigorous life acceptable to
God (which is the subject of the final Lectionary reading from this
letter).
(I have ignored
here the fact that Colossians 1:9-23 is one of the most convoluted and
stream-of-consciousness passages in the entire New Testament, just as bad as
Ephesians 1:3-14. In most current
editions of the Greek text, verses 9-20 are one sentence! For intelligibility, the NRSV breaks it into
seven sentences.)
Luke 10:38-42.
Compared to some previous readings, the Gospel text is remarkably straightforward – though not
necessarily easier to live with.
As Jesus’
“journey” (9:51-19:44) continues, he is hosted by a householder named Martha. (The story is told mainly from her viewpoint.)
Martha has a sister Mary who becomes
absorbed in Jesus’ teaching and “sits at his feet” (a phrase used of disciples,
see Luke 8:35
Jesus’ response
seems to commiserate with Martha’s many worries and management tasks (verse
41), but as usual he recasts things by radically altering the priorities. Too many distractions are not good; “there is
need of only one thing” (verse 42, NRSV ;
there are several variant readings in this verse.) And he adds, somewhat cruelly it seems to us,
that Mary (rather than Martha) has chosen that one thing (verse 42).
We seem to have a
classic conflict between the doers and the dreamers! We are tempted to work at this text until we
can get a more comfortable result, something other than Jesus siding
unequivocally with the dreamers.
But the background
of apocalyptic urgency (“only one thing”) that informs Jesus’
requirements of those who would follow him (9:57 -62)
seems to shape the response to Martha also.
The imminence of a whole new order for the world upsets routine agendas
for ordinary household duties!
We want to say,
“The world must also be managed on a day-to-day basis! Give us more Marthas!” Then there could be more hosting of
traveling sages, and the members of the devotional seminar could have something
to eat at their break times. And so it
goes.
To us advocates of the Marthas of the world, the Reign of God seems too far off to allow its visiting representatives to seriously disrupt our management agendas.
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