Rather than focus on the Genesis lectionary reading, which focused on the powerful story of Jesus' temptations through the lens of "original sin" and Paul's Jesus-As-The-New-Adam Bass suggested we read this as the Jesus-the-New-Moses narrative that Matthew intended. Jesus is coming out from the wilderness to inhabit the good land...to live beautifully w/the Law and to practice sabbath and Jubilee.
There are good reasons to follow the Matthew's Jesus-the-New-Moses over Paul's Jesus-As-The-New-Adam when addressing Jesus' temptations. For one, all the scripture Jesus quotes to the tempter are from Moses' Deuteronomy speech after his people have wandered in the wilderness for forty years which parallels Jesus' forty day fast in the wilderness where he, like the Israelite's, must rely on God's plans and provision.
This also focuses our attention on when the temptations take place. The tempter comes as Jesus is completing the fast. The Israelites, rather than celebrating may be facing their toughest spiritual temptations on the verge of entering into the Promised Land.
Like the Israelites before him, Jesus' ministry begins in the wilderness, a state of the soul where the are no familiar bearings to guide him. This experience is not about a commitment to piety but to learn how to be a participant in bringing about God's reign. Jesus is committed to waiting for the word of God and to do God's will without completely knowing how that will be made manifest.
This is a good description of the Lent journey for me so far. Commitment more than discipline, learning how to be a participant.
I promised another story from Bass on Saturday. This one is around Grateful, the next book in what she now sees as a trilogy. In Sunday School many of us learned the story of Zacchaeus coming down from the tree. What she said about story of Zacchaeus transformed a children's story to a powerful encounter between Jesus and an unjust system of quid pro quo.
She started with the "wee little man" who climbed a tree to see Jesus. Perhaps we think about the length someone could take to catch a vision of God. But researching Grateful convinced her that gratitude was at the center of an important political tension in the Roman world regarding debts and obligation. Zacchaeus was a tax collector involved in the Roman patronage system. He thought of gratitude in the context of a political structure of benefactors and beneficiaries that he could manipulate for his own benefit. Then Jesus called him down from that tree and invited him to a table. “Stop climbing, Zacchaeus. Come and sit.”
Whereas Rome practiced gratitude as a hierarchy of political and economic obligation, of debt and duty, Jesus envisioned gratitude as hospitality of mutuality and relationship, of gift and response. Jesus opened the door for Zacchaeus to “come down” from his old life, to stop participating in a corrupt system of gratitude that oppressed his own people.
In a moment, Jesus turned his world upside down: Who was the guest and who was the host? The Roman structure of gratitude collapsed when assigned roles disappeared and the conventional gifts of hospitality could not be repaid. Instead, Jesus imagined a place where oppressed and oppressor leave their “stations” and meet as friends, where forgiveness is practiced and gratitude expresses itself not in debt payment but in passing on generous gifts to others.
At the end of the story, Jesus explains that he did this because “the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Jesus came to deliver those ensnared in the punishment and privilege of gratitude and to set them free from quid pro quo patronage. In its place, he established a table of hospitality where all are guests and no one owes anything to anyone else. Around this table, gifts pass without regard to payback or debt. Everyone sits. Everyone eats. And, recognizing that everything is a gift, all are grateful. Tree or table? Climbing to get ahead or reclining with friends? Choose. What you choose results in either slavery or abundance.
To me the wilderness equated to getting out of the tree, unplugging from an old life. This feels deeply personal for Lent this year. I feel I am in the process of climbing down from a tree, a life, a role I have played for many years in my professional life as I climbed and navigated a corporate ladder.
I have a feeling this Lent will be a long, strange trip where God's identity for me and my own identity will be dramatically different from what they were before this trip
No comments:
Post a Comment