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HOMILY GRITS 27C, November 11, 2001
- Subject: HOMILY GRITS 27C, November 11, 2001
- From: Grant Mauricio Gallup <gallup@tmx.com.ni>
- Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 12:38:48 -0500
H O M I L Y G R I T S
Twenty Third Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 27C)
November 11, 2001
Book of Common Prayer lectionary:
Job 19:23-27a Then, in [or: without] my flesh I shall see God
Psalm 17 - Exaudi, Domine- Hear, O Lord
2 Thessalonians 2:13-3:5 God chose you as the first fruits of liberation
Luke 20:27 (28-33) 34-38 In the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be?
or "For to him all of them are alive".
Revised Common Lectionary (Trial Use:)
Haggai 1:15b-2:9 Who is left that saw this house in its former glory?
Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21 Exaltabo te, Deus - I will exalt you O God
or Psalm 98 Cantate Domino - Sing to the Lord a new song
or Job 19:23-27a - see above
Psalm 17:1-9 - see above
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 as above
Luke 20:27-38 as above
These last months of the year always bid us think beyond our years, and
beyond life itself. November's All Hallows bids us call up the dead to
memory. The death and destruction in our lives and the lives of our
beloved now bid us also think beyond their lives and ours. Do we believe in
"life after death?" For whom? For ourselves alone? For those who die for
Allah, or Yahweh, or Jesus only? For our pets? Is it only human life
that is worth saving into the beyond? In our patio at Casa Ave Maria there
is a little tombstone over the grave of Lazara, the loving streetdog who
came to live with us one day some years ago, a refugee from abuse,
starvation, and the mange. She lived with us and loved us for years,
with the help of neighbors' dogs gave us three litters of healthy pups,
and then a stroke crippled her and she lingered for weeks before she died
peacefully and we buried her in the patio garden. One of her pups is now
the grown up Mary, who keeps night watch near her tomb. In the Dogdom of
Heaven whose bitch shall she be?
The gospel reading today makes it clear that fundamentalists have been
around a long time. Today, Jesus deals with the Jerry Falwells and Pat
Robertsons of his time, who thump the Bible at him about life after death.
They always begin their arguments with "The Bible says", as if the Bible
were the Voice of God, the Master's Voice, when it is not any such thing.
It is the symphony of many human voices, whom the people of God have
recognized as having heard God speak to them. But for fundies, the Bible
is a tape recording of dictated discourse by Yahweh Hisself. With fundies,
it is always Hisself, never Herself. God is always He to fundies, 'though
if they looked carefully they would see that in the Scriptures of all
religions God is sometimes She, sometimes It, and sometimes They.
The fundies of Jesus' time had a very small Bible. They were the
Saducees, their name coming from the name of Zadok, one of the high priests
of King David's time. "Zadokites" elided into "Saducees"after a while,
and they had only the first five books in their Bible: the Torah--Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They also believed (as
fundies believe today) that Moses himself wrote all of these books,
including the story of his own death, in Deuteronomy. Now the Pharisees
were more liberal, and they had added to their canon other books, like the
Psalms, and Daniel, where they found a teaching not found in the first five
books of the Bible. They found the first inklings of the idea of the
Resurrection of the Body.
We Christian believers, like the Pharisees, profess belief in the
Resurrection of the Body--indeed, our religion is founded upon it, for we
see in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ a "first fruits", as St. Paul says,
of a great harvest which shall include all the people of God. But because
it was not in their Bibles, the Zaducees didn't believe it. Like
fundamentalists today, they liked to show up at meetings where more liberal
(and usually less Biblically literate) preachers and teachers were
speaking, and they'd give them a heckle with their Bible thumping, just as
fundamentalists show up at meetings where they know they can give
Biblically illiterate churchfolks a drubbing. So they knew that Jesus,
one of the more popular preachers, shared the modernist belief of the
Phariseees in the Resurrection of the dead, and they showed up at one of
his lectures to thump their Bibles and get a rise out of him. They thought
to give him a drubbing.
"Doctor," they said, "the Bible says". (That's what "teacher" means--it
means "doctor" in Latin.) So they said, "Doctor Jesus?" and they said,
"Moses wrote". That's their way of saying, "The Bible says" And they
quote the provision that the Law of Moses made, that in case a man died
before his wife had any children by him, she should then be married to his
next brother, and if a child is born it should be named for the deceased
brother, so that he would officially have offspring to continue his line.
A kind of genetic title transfer. This was the Saducee's version of
ongoing life, of 'immortality'. A male had 'immortality' through his
sons--they were his name, living on in history. So it was essential that a
male have his name carried on, even if his brother had to do it by taking
his wife after his death and giving him proxy kids by her.
(Now our holy founder Henry Tudor did just that, when his brother Arthur
died, for he took his young widow Catherine of Aragon to be his wife.
Henry was being a good Bible fundamentalist when he got hitched six times
in all, trying to have a male heir according to the Bible. In the Kingdom
of heaven, whose spouse shall he be?)
The Saducees got ready for the Argument-- (chuckling and slapping each
other's hands)--for they had a wonderful story that they trotted out to
ridicule those who believed in Resurrection. They said, "Doctor Jesus,
the Bible says all this about a man taking his deceased brother's wife.
Now supposing there are seven brothers in all, and the wife isn't able to
give a son to any of them.
All of them die after marrying her in turn and trying to have kids, and now
the question we have (chuckle, chuckle) is this: In this so-called
Resurrection (which you say you believe in), whose wife shall she be?
Notice that the question is posed so that the woman is always WIFE. The
question is never "in the Resurrection, which husband shall she have? " For
it is only the males in the story who are the subjects of history, and the
female is always an object--"the wife." The agenda of human life is
offspring for a male
husband and father. The question in the story is posed by males, and it is
posed to develop the way in which the patriarchy is maintained: dominant
males, their names passed on to children, and children have significance
only by having the father's name and memory bestowed upon them, even if
through a relative. It does not occur to the Saducees that the universe
might be made some other way, that beyond their concern for the male
domination of the human family, there might very well be another way of
looking at things.
Jesus abruptly shifts the discussion to this "other way". He declares
that it is only in This time, This place, This age, that heterosexual
marriage has such dominance in human affairs. The patriarchal notion of
what marriage is for, and the power it is to have over humanity now, is a
limited arrangement. The idea that the woman can be shunted about for
ever like an empty freight car looking for the burden of patriarchal
luggage to carry, Jesus says, is coming to an End.
In the coming Age, those who are accounted worthy to attain to a
Resurrected World will not be involved in--given or taken--in marriages,
because the whole point of marriage in our Age is the certification of male
offspring, and that won't be necessary "since they cannot die any more."
It was the fear of death that made men want their names to be written on
their male offspring so that they could be thought to be "alive" through
them, through the survival of the family name. But (says Jesus) when
there's no more death there's no more need for such a ploy. Such a
patriarchal institution as you have made marriage to be will disappear, for
those of the coming Age are children of Resurrection, and not heirs of a
defunct patriarchy.
They are, he declares, "equal to angels"--that is, their lives given and
organized
for praise and service, and therefore children of God, who cannot die. As
God herself/hisself doesn't need a spouse, so the divine Name is given to
God's children without the patriarchal registry. The Commonwealth just
might very well be after all "an eternal cocktail party at which all the
guests are twenty one years old", as W. H. Auden fantasized. The Saducees
go to Jesus as they go to the Bible: as if it were a code of canon law, a
Robert's Rules of Order, and they go to Jesus as if he were a
not-quite-dry-behind-the-ears young canonist whom they are going to trip up
with their courtroom pyrotechnics, like one of O.J. Simpson's slick
lawyers. Jesus drily comments that you folks don't know how to do your
hermeneutic. You begin with the assumption that the Coming Age is a
continuation of the present one, but you might have gone with a woman's
point of view and read it another way.
But then you would have had to question your premises. The Age that is
coming is alas, profoundly different from the one you live in, where you
have made all the rules. Those rules are coming to an End. Your way of
answering questions is awry because your way of asking questions is wrong
headed. Don't assume that God's rule in history is like your rules at the
Old Boys Club.
But Furthermore. But Furthermore, Jesus goes on: Even your little
fundamentalist Bible, stripped of poetry and song and prophecy and wisdom,
and a disappeared Apocrypha, even it has a vision that is wider than your
squint. Look again, he says, "at the passage about the Bush." (Not the
Junior Bush, whose feeble flame is flickering). Look at the passage about
the Burning Bush, the one Moses found burning but never consumed, in the
desert at Mount Horeb. The Bible didn't have chapters and verses then, you
see, so Jesus couldn't cite it as Exodus Three Verse Six. The chapters and
verses were added by of all people an Irish Anglican bishop named Ussher,
in the 17th century. "Go look at the passage about the Bush." In that
verse of the Bible, the voice of God (much revered by Saducees) speaks to
Moses and says, "Take off your shoes for the place where you stand is holy
ground.
I am the God of your fathers (that must have pleased the patriarchal
Saducees!)--I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob." And now Jesus
reminds them that God is the God of the living, not a dead Dad. So why
would God be called the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob if those folks
were in fact dead? Therefore, they must be alive even now. And if they
are alive, they are alive to God. Indeed, everyone who has ever lived is
still alive to God, now and at all times.
Some of the canonists and theologians there had to admit it, and agreed,
"Well
put, Doctor." St. Luke adds: "Because they didn't dare ask him any more
questions." One egg on your face is quite enough for one argument.
Which is why they didn't stay to hear him say in the rest of his speech,
officially unrecorded to this day, "And furthermore, I am the God of Sarah,
and Hagar, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah and a lot more."
Our own misconceptions about Resurrection need to be questioned with such
a short sharp shock. The Saducees have bequeathed to us the idea that
individual resurrection is all that is valuable, with our private concerns
being
Queued for "SAVE" in the Personal Computer of the Personal Diety. Our
format, our outline, our "Page Up" and our "Attachments" all preserved for
later PRINT OUT. Jesus shifts the vision to a New Community, "equal to
angels", organized apart from consumerism and its artificed appetites. For
what is the "bread of angels" but an eternal eucharist of ecstasy, and
what apart from musical instruments will angels ever need? Indeed, Jesus
asks, "Is gender necessary?" "What do angelic genitals look like?" Take a
peek. Gore Vidal, commenting in 1992 on the election campaign, wrote that
"After all, the reproductive system that God devised for both men and women
is ridiculous enough as it is--certainly any competent plumber could have
done a better job; yet to pretend that the Great Baron Frankenstein in the
Sky's sexual handiwork is evil (as in original sin) is truly evil; and that
is where the present conflict. . . is taking place." (The Last Empire, page
243.) Jesus bids us get out of the
hetero marriage mode when thinking of eternity, indeed even out of the
gender mode, into something more imaginative. Wow.
Job, in his agony, withering away to death without family, friends, home,
or even at the last a skin of his own, cries out "I know that my Redeemer
lives and at last will stand upon earth and after my skin has been
destroyed, yet from my flesh or apart from it I shall see God, whom I shall
see for myself. These eyes will gaze on God and not find God aloof. Mine
own eyes, and not someone else's."
The teaching of Muhammad (blessed be he!) of physical resurrection was as
ridiculed as was the Pharisee's own teaching of it, just as the early
Church's declaration of Jesus' resurrection was "foolishness to the
Greeks." But some faith in a "shadowlands" existence after death
persisted in early Hebrew and early Arab belief, and most primitive
religion made some provisions for their beloved dead. The apostolic
traditions of Islam condemned such practices as leaving a saddled camel
tethered at the grave, to die there and be raised to ride again. Or a
Cadillac made over into a custom fitted coffin, as is part of the
religion of California celebrities. Resurrecton of the Body, and the
Ascension of Jesus, as Messiah, into heaven, are central tenets of
Muhammad's teaching, but Jesus' death by the disgrace of crucifixion is
denied. The Prophet's (blessed be he!) notion of heaven is a garden
watered by rivers, abundant with trees and flowers, where Muslims may drink
the Chardonnay and Merlot they have been denied on earth, and unlike our
wines, there will be no after effects.
Handsome youths bring all the bubbly you want, and "dark eyed houris wait
on your every pleasure," as Alfred Guillaume wrote in "Islam."(Penguin
Books, 1954). This is not a religion of rarified airy spirits flying over
graveyards, nor is it far removed from our own hopes for a Restored
Community with sit-down dinners, the banquets promised by Rabbi Yeshua of
Nazareth.
Redemption means, ultimately, Rescue. Rescue of that in each of us which
is worth rescuing, which is worth Saving. Our integral, loved, creaturely
selves, without the baggage of our own Age, or our own ages. Even our own
societal arrangement, or gender dominances, our own religions, our own
politics. As John Lennon wrote, Imagine. This is Job's hope, in his
agony, and it is the hope of Jesus, on the cross and in his Resurrection,
that there is a better Way coming for the organization of human life in the
Commonwealth of God, a truer way to fulfill all our aspirations than we
have yet found, or even imagined.
One of the earliest Sufis in Islam was Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya (d.801), a woman
from Basra, who wrote: "O God, If I worship you in fear of Hell, burn me in
it; and if I worship you in hope of Paradise, exclude me from it; but if I
worship You for Your own being, do not withhold from me Your everlasting
beauty." *
Thomas Aquinas or Dante couldn't have put it better. Another Sufi mystic,
Jelalludin Rumi, in the 13th century, thought of the world as itself a
tavern,
where wines were available to satisfy all tastes and all desires, but one.
. He writes,
"Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home." **
Paul, or his disciple, wrote to Thessalonica to urge that the people of God
there stand firm in the "received traditions", whether oral or written
ones. The fundamentalist attachment to "what the Bible says" needs to be
opened up and supplemented and adumbrated and enlightened by the
handing-on, the
"traditio" of teaching, that Jesus and the saints and prophets and poets
may strengthen and establish our understanding, our work, our preaching and
teaching. Both Jesus and Muhammad were unlettered, and therefore not
Episcopalians--and Jesus didn't dictate a Qu'ran , not even in the Bible,
nor did he write anything at all except in dust at the feet of a poor woman
whose accusers could then find no Bible verse nor stone to strike her with.
And it is Jesus who is for us the Utterance of God, and not the RSV or the
KJV or the Playtex Living Bible. WE are coming to see that our God intends
the Rescue of the whole of the human community, indeed the whole of
Creation in a Resurrection of Peace, of Shalom, of Salaam. "In the
passage about the Bush", Jesus points to the bush, fiery, living with
illumination, yet never consumed, never destroyed. It is a parable for
him of what Muslims call the Ummah, the universal Community of God's
people, ordered and enlivened by a God who is a God of Life and not of
Death, the God from whom we come, to whom we go, the God to whom all life
lives, and like the angels, lives for praise and service. This God brought
us here, and will have to take us home.
_________________________________________________________
*"Islam for Beginners"by N.I. Matar, NY and London: Writers & Readers,
1992, p.115.
**"The Essential Rumi", trans. by Coleman Barks. Harper1995, p. 2.
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 2nd series now on-line: http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits