May 13, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Acts 13:44-52 We are now turning to the Gentiles
or Leviticus 19: 1-2,9-18 The social gospel in Torah
Psalm 145 Exaltabo te, Deu
s
Revelation 19:1,4-9 The marri
age of the Lamb
John 13:31-35 A new commandment, that you love one another
At little St. Andrew's-on-the-Alley, where for thirty years I was vicar on Chicago's wild west side, there was once a round window over the front door, not anything remotely like the great rose windows of Gothic cathedrals, but with a diameter of nearly two feet, more like a little nosegay window. It had only a little pane of frosted and leaded glass in it. It was the architect's brave little lagniappe in the brick. A seminarian friend, who pottered in making stained glass at Nashotah House while a student there, offered to make an upstart rose window for that space, and so he did and for several years we enjoyed the tinted light it cast on the narthex floor. Its design was the X of Saint Andrew's Cross, with a fish and a loaf rampant. Early one morning I came to celebrate eucharist and found the window had been robbed away and we were left with what we soon learned to call The Burglar Hole. It provided easy access into the building for the items that both vestries and vandals are fond of: silverware, brassware, bells and brazen censers. Joe Dixon, a member of the Bishop's committee, a Mason and a man of parts, soon cobbled together the novelty of a wooden replacement, about the size of a barrel top, and painted with the image of a Fish, and a Bible verse. The Fish had a nice little smile, and it might have been a catfish, for Joe used to love to catch them. Perhaps its smile was meant to further illustrate the Bible verse, "Love ye one another", which Joe had painted in a semi-circle around the Fish. Now if fish are going to smile, there's a good reason for it--the invitation that Jesus extends to his disciples at the Last Supper, and to us at the eucharistic meal, is "Love ye one another." The word FISH in Greek is IXTHUS, anagram for Jesus Christ of God the Son, Saviour, (thus ichthyology comes close to being theology about the FISH!) We are invited to have this IXTHUS for our mystic meal.
Judas missed that part of the Last Supper where Jesus said the little phrase that Joe painted on his plywood window. Judas by then had "gone to his own place." The rabbi knew what had happened, for he declared that GLORY was coming closer now, that GLORY which is the shining prsence of the eternal God, the beauty and strength of the truly Human One whom we now know is Jesus, that SHEKINAH was now moving closer to him. And so Jesus declares, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you." By this everyone will know that you have been in my classroom, and have been my students--the ones who have learned from me, if you have love for one another.
Jesus calls this a New Commandment. He knows he have short memories, that perhaps ten is too many for us to remember. I have only once or twice in all the years of my ministry sprung the surprise at Sunday service: "All right now, close your books and the first one who can recite the decalogue, raise your hand." (We used to read the Ten aloud in Lent, in the penitential office, so we did have a chance to learn them.) Not many A+ pupils those days. If Jesus had said, "By this shall everyone know that you are my disciples, that you memorize the Decalogue", we'd have a smaller class than we have today. If we remember that the Ten Words were expanded in the Torah, in all the books of Moses, in the Book of Leviticus, which we heard from today but which we hear very little of the rest of the year, and in libraries full of learned commentary accumulated over centuries, well we would have few if any disciples for Jesus at all today.
The first lesson is all legislation, all prescriptive law: You shall be Holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy. What does "holy" mean? It means, basically, "different." You shall be SET APART from other people, because YHWH your God is set apart from other gods. The differences are given in great and endless detail, in applications to farming, for instance. You have no exclusive right to your crops--when you reap, you shall leave some for the poor to glean and gather, the poor of the earth who have no harvest. Now we have changed that law, to permit us to store the surplus in silos, to manipulate the price, or even to burn it up to keep the prices up on the world market. Or kill the cattle if there's too much milk to make a killing in milk. But you shall be different. Because YHWH is not the God of profit, or of capital, or of the market, but of the poor. You shall not strip the vineyard--you shall leave something for the friends of Cesar Chavez, who helped you pick your profit. A decent wage for the migrant worker of harvests, is part of the commandment "You shall not steal." You shall not by fraud divert the wages of the ones who made your fortune with their labor. You shall not deal falsely, nor lie, nor use the name of religion to sanctify your stealth, you shall not profane the very Name.
You shall not! you shall not! you shall not! There is a relentless application in the book of Leviticus of the Holiness of God--the differentness of God's people. To every imaginable social and political and economic situation Torah speaks in a living voice today. You shall not oppress or rob your neighbors in the human community, you shall look out for the crippled (no euphemisms here about 'physically challenged'!) , no cursing of the deaf, no taking advantage of the disabilities or the diversities of others. No stumbling blocks before the blind, no new buildings not handicap-accessed, no partiality to the great and famous in the courts, no slandering, no handicapping the difference of your neighbors, be it for race, religion, sexuality, national origin, or other variation in the human family. The only legitimate "difference" allowed is that you are not to be like any oppressors: you are to be different. Justice is the difference.
So how is it that Jesus comes along after all this excellent legislation, and says "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." There's nothing new about that--the books of Moses are all based on that, the love of neighbor. Jesus adds to that commandment one ingredient that makes it NEW. All the laws about gleaning, and lending money, and paying fair wags, and respecting other folks' lives and families and property--all expect fairness, decency, equity, justice. No one had to do more than the fair share, no one had to do for others any more than the Law expected him or her to do for himself. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But a mole hill beside Jesus' New Commandment--that you LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
Jesus added something forever that evening to illustrate what the Love of God must mean amongst his disciples. He added the Cross. Jesus added his Body to his teaching, he added himself to his syllabus. By this will everyone know you are distinctly my own disciples--by this kind of commitment, this kind of loving. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down life itself for one's friends.
E. M. Forster said that he hoped that if he were ever put into a position where he had to choose between betraying his country or betraying a friend, that he would have the courage not to betray his friend. Peter failed in that choice, remember, but lived to repent and be restored to that Friend. Jesus himself set that standard of commitment for himself and for us, whom he calls to be his friends in making peace in the world. And throughout human history, and as apostles who face down the official authorities of government--the friends of Jesus have done this as he himself did. Jean Daniélou wrote in "The Lord of History":
"In a pagan world, the Gospel wears the appearance of a crime against oganized society. It is significant that Christ himself was summoned before a court of justice, it was in court that he found occasion to declare himself and his programme officially, before properly constituted authority. . . the same situation has been repeated all over the world, Christians being everywhere liable to arrest in the name of the law for the crime of Gospel. . . . The right of preaching the Gospel is absolute, inalienable; whenever it is challenged by any political system, Christians are obliged to vindicate it, even at the cost of their lives. . . martyrdom is simply the limiting case of this situation." (pp288-289, The Lord of History, first published 1958.)
Instead of having to remember all the Bible verses in the book of Leviticus, which tell us all how to love our neighbors as ourselves, Jesus says, look at me here on this Cross. Now is the Son of Humanity glorified, and in him the God of Love is glorified. Can you see how Love is done? Can you see what the Father says? The wood of the Cross and the wood of Joe Dixon's window have the same short note: "by this will everyone know that you are my disciples, that you love one another."
What will the world see today when it looks at Jesus' disciples, compared to the followers of other faith systems, or the lost ones with no faith in God, or the followers of Mammon, the Dollar Diety? Will Campbell, in "Brother to the Dragonfly" tells a parable: "'You know, Peacher Will, that church of yours and Mr. Jesus is like an Easter chicken my little Karen got one time. Man, it was a pretty thing. Dyed a deep purple. Bought it at a grocery store. . . but pretty soon that baby chick strarted feathering out. You know, sprouting little pin feathers, wings and tail and all that. And you know what? The new feathers weren't purple. No sirree Bob, that damn chicken wasn't really purple at all. That damn chicken was a Rhode Island Red, and when all them little red feathers started growing out from under that purple, it was one hell of a sight. All of a sudden Karen couldn't stand that chicken any more. Well, we took that half-purple and half-red thing out to her Grandma's house and threw it out in the chicken yard with all the other chickens. It was still different, you understand, that little chicken. And the other chickens knew it was diffrent too. It didn't bother any of the others. Wouldn't fight back or anything. Just stayed by itself. Really suffered too. But little by little, day by day, that chicken came around. Pretty soon, even before all the purple grew off of it while it was still just a little bit different, that damn thing was behaving just like the rest of them chickens. Man, it would fight back, peck the hell out of ones littler than it was, knock them down to catch a bug if it got to it in time. Yes sirree, Bob, the chicken world turned that Easter chicken round. Now you can't tell one chicken from another. They are all just alike. The Easter chicken is just one more chicken. There in't a darn thing different about it.' " I knew he wanted to argue and I didn't want to disappoint him. 'Well, the Easter chicken is still useful. It lays eggs, doesn't it?' It was just what he wanted me to say. 'Yea, preacher Will,it lays eggs. But they all lay eggs. Who needs an Easter chicken for that? And the Rotary Club serves coffee. And the 4-H club says prayers. The Red Cross takes our offerings for hurricane victims. Mental health does counselling and the Boy Scouts have youth programs.'"
So what's new and different about us, once our Easter feathers fade? The vision of John in the second reading, of the throne room of God and the marriage of the Lamb, says that the Bride of the Lamb had on some special clothes--not purple feathers like Will Campbell's Easter chicken, but it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure. And the fine linen, John said after a closer look, was the work of justice, the deeds of righteousiness, of the disciples, the saints. The bloody shirt and necktie of Martin Luther King Jr., from the Lorraine hotel, and all those other blood stained robes of the saints--have been washed, bright and pure, and the Bride is still working on her trousseau. It's different. Emily Dickinson saw the difference:
Do people moulder equally,
They bury, in the Grave?
I do believe a Species
As positively liveAs I, who testify it
Deny that I am dead
And fill my Lungs, for Witness
from Tanks, above my Head--I say to you, said Jesus -
That there be standing here
A Sort, that shall not taste of Death --
If Jesus was sincere --I need no further Argue -
That Statement of the Lord
Is not a controvertible --
He told me, Death was dead.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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