Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12); Psalm
112:1-9 (10); I Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16); Matthew 5:13 -20.
God seeks authentic devotion
and life, from God’s Spirit as well as
from God’s Law.
Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12).
The
prophetic text speaks of a people who appear
to know the Lord and delight in God’s instruction (verses 1-2). They have fasted, they have performed rituals
of contriteness, but in their view God has not responded as God should!
Perhaps the
deficiency is on God’s side rather than their own?
The
divine reply indicts them for hypocrisy – “you serve your own interest on
your fast day” (verse 3, NRSV).
On their
holy days they pursue quarrels. That is,
they pursue court cases that can be processed only when all the clans are
gathered at a religious assembly, mixing greed and party conflict with days of
devotion and divine service.
God
contrasts such deceitful conduct with a true service of the Lord:
Is not this
the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the
oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to
share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see
the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own
kin? (verses 6-7)
So, after
three generations of Babylonian exile, when the religious assemblies in backwater
Judah
A truer
expression of the divine image would be compassion for the downtrodden
and abandoned.
Psalm 112:1-9 (10).
The psalm
reading is one of two little alphabetic acrostic poems spun out by the devotion
of the teachers and students of a Jerusalem
The ten
verses of this poem, after the opening Hallelujah, contain one line for each of
the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Mostly, the poem is a devotional arrangement of twenty-two clichés
memorized in school exercises.
The thought
achieved in this arrangement of the letters is a contrast between the
righteous person (the ṣaddîq, verses
4b and 6b) and the guilty (traditionally “the wicked,” the rāshā‘, verse
10). (NRSV, for gender reasons, uses
plurals in place of the Hebrew singulars throughout.)
The
righteous one will prosper: be a hero (gibbôr, verse 2a) and have wealth – and
therefore be in a position to help others through lending (without interest)
and enforcing justice (verse 5). Such a
person will have longevity, be reliable, be well remembered, and “will look in
triumph on their foes” (verse 8b).
Our reading
focuses almost exclusively on this character and destiny of the righteous one. We
could almost omit the succinct statement about the opposite number, the guilty
(or “wicked”) described in verse 10.
The fate of
the guilty is there to complete the contrast between the true and the
inauthentic among the religious folks.
I Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16).
This reading
has two parts:
Verses
1-5 reviews how Paul conducted his preaching when he first came to
evangelize the Corinthians.
“I did not
come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you
except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
(This refers back to the “Logos of the Cross” which he has just recited
in 1:18 -31.) “My speech and my proclamation were not with
plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of
power.” (Emphasis added.) This is a transition to another of Paul’s
“topics,” another speech Paul needed to give, in various settings and at
various lengths, in his preaching and teaching.
Verses
6-16 are a version of the topos of Charismatic Wisdom, that
is of wisdom given only by the Spirit.
Paul came
without flowery speech of worldly wisdom, but now he wants to insist that there
IS also a “mature” teaching about the gospel.
“Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of
this age…” (verse 6). The true wisdom of
God is hidden, except from those to whom the Spirit of God reveals it.
This topos
also begins and ends with quotations from scripture. Verse 9 is Paul’s variation on Isaiah 64:4,
and the concluding verse 16 is a variation on Isaiah 40:13. Both quotations refer to “what no eye has
seen …” and to “the mind of the Lord,” which no human knows.
In this
Topic Paul insists that the divine spirit reveals to God’s chosen ones the
mysteries of creation, election, and the present work of salvation.
Now we have
received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that
we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not
taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things
to those who are spiritual” (verses 12-13, NRSV).
This is an
audacious claim for the charismatic revelations that came to the early
followers of the Jesus movement! (This
topic is pursued at length in chapters 12-14.)
But in this passage, it is clear that Paul was sure they had unqualified
inside knowledge about God’s own mysterious being and the course of salvation
that was unfolding among the Corinthian believers.
And they had
this knowledge because the Spirit had spoken such things to them. This charismatic knowledge was not
subject to criticism by ordinary human reason.
Only God could judge the charismatic revelation:
Those who are
unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness
to them… Those who are spiritual discern
all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny. (2:14-15.)
The “mature”
teaching of the believers was accessible only as a gift of the Spirit, which
the Corinthians had to grow up to – to finish their diet of milk before they
went on the solid food (3:1-3).
The Spirit
finally distinguishes between the authentic gospel and its fancy, if not
deceptive, imitations.
Matthew 5:13-20.
The Gospel
reading is the passage in which Jesus insists more strenuously than anywhere
else that he stands in unbreakable continuity
with the Law of Moses. The only
contrast is that Jesus’ righteousness goes even further than that of the
custodians of the Law.
The whole
passage begins with two famous contrasts about the presence of good in the
world:
·
Salt enhances food, unless it is
diluted and has lost its savor.
·
A lamp is useless in a hidden
place; it is to be out in the open and held up high, so “it gives light to all
in the house” (verse 15, NRSV).
The
implications of these two sayings is that Jesus followers have to be
conspicuous, they have to get up and out, on the move. They have to speak up, make a public
appearance, taking whatever consequences may follow (see 5:11 ).
The Law.
The rest of
our reading is Jesus’ affirmation of the endurance of the Judean Law. “This is perhaps the most difficult
passage to be found anywhere in the Gospel” (Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew,
1993, p. 46). The difficulty is that, in
the long run, the Judean Law cannot be binding on Jesus’ followers.
There are
three statements, each apparently very emphatic – yet each with an ambiguous
loop-hole.
Do not think
that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish
but to fulfill (verse 17, NRSV).
The
loop-hole here is, What does it mean to “fulfill” the law?
I tell you,
until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota, not one stroke of a letter,
will pass from the law until all is accomplished (verse 18).
The
loop-hole here is what does “until all is accomplished” mean?
Whoever
annuls [NRSV margin] one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others
to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does
them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven (verse
19).
The
loop-hole here is how one can be least or greatest in the kingdom of
heaven.
If the
apparent meaning of these sayings had been strictly adhered to by subsequent
Christians, it could only have produced a Christian pharisaism in competition
with the Rabbinic kind – which would have guaranteed that Christianity would
never have conquered the Roman empire .
Nevertheless,
the rhetorical effect of this very Judean-oriented passage insists that Jesus followers
do not reject the Law. And the last
verse of the passage (verse 20) goes even further: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of
the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
What a heavy
challenge, aiming the new faith toward a religious elitism that would have guaranteed
its remaining a Judean sect.
Somewhere
between this extreme statement on one end and the “great commission” (“teaching
the nations to obey everything that I have commanded you,” Matthew
28:20) on the other end, a new Christian reading of the Torah came into
being.
The many
contrasts that Jesus presented to the disciples began with the sharp one
between the righteousness of the Law and the righteousness of the Messiah (the
Christ).
The
Christians resolved this tension by living it out in their everyday lives!
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