June 19, 2005
Commentary by Helene Russell |
See also: [2008] |
Genesis 21:8-12 & Ps 86:1-10, 16-17
Romans 6:1b-11
Matthew 10:24-39
Genesis 21:8-12 & Ps 86:1-10, 16-17
In this story Yahweh keeps his promise to Abraham and even expands the original promise, not because Abraham has behaved in a stellar fashion, but in fact, because God is merciful and good. Even though Abraham has doubted God’s promise in not waiting for God’s timing with Sarah by impregnating his wife’s servant (who is younger and of child bearing years), God still loves Abraham and forgives him. God not only follows through with the promise to Abraham, God also expands the promise to ameliorate Abraham’s sticky situation. God takes care of both of Abraham’s sons. Ishmael is also Abraham’s son and God will fulfill the promise of many descendents for Abraham through him as well as through Isaac. God expands the promise into two different nations. Yahweh takes care of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert and remains with Ishmael even in a foreign land and guides him as he matures, making a nation out of his descendents.
This formative story reveals significant information about God about how the Hebrew tradition views itself and its relationship to its ancestors and the Arab nations. We learn that God is forgiving, flexible, creative, faithful, and accepting. God forgives Abraham’s doubt and sin. God remains faithful to Abraham and expands this faithfulness to Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael. God pays attention to Sarah’s anxiety and Hagar’s worries, and takes care of both of their concerns, even when these wishes are counter to each other. God is imaginative, concerned and able to find a creative solution to a problematic situation for the well-being of all concerned. God’s power, love, and influence extends to other lands and communities, such as the wilderness, Egypt , and the Arab nations. God is also the God of other peoples. God accepts and still uses humans with their weaknesses, foibles and sins. Even God’s chosen servant, who is the father of Israel and the paradigm of faith is not perfect. God loves and works through him anyway. And lastly, we also see that God pays attention to the needs and feelings of all sorts of people, such as Sarah and Hagar—women and a servant.
This story also tells us about the character of the Hebrew tradition. The fact that the Hebrew scriptures retain this story about how Abraham doubts God and sins, and turns out his first son in favor of Isaac, tells us that Israel accepts leaders and heroes that are not perfect. There is value given to the fact that people are not perfect. Perhaps Israel wants to keep the stories as historically accurate as possible, or as realistic as possible. In this vein, ordinary people are shown to be used by God. Secondly and most importantly, Israel ’s self-understanding is critical. They understand that they are not perfect, that they make mistakes and can learn from those mistakes. The tradition tells stories on itself, keeping itself in the practice of being critical of its own actions, beliefs, and values. This is one of the bases of the prophetic tradition, in which the actions of the current people of God are evaluated according to the values that the people of Israel have maintained in the past. This is not to suggest that Israel was at a golden time pristine and perfect, but rather to show that in the past, Israel has valued certain qualities and behaviors that we should still hold up as true. Secondly, since our ancestors have tried to live up to these standards and failed many times, we should not be discouraged by our failures, but rather, we should continue to strive toward the ideals given to us by God. After all, God continues to forgive us and give us more opportunities to live more fully as God wishes us to live.
A third nexus of information tells us about how Israel sees God and itself. The fact that the Hebrew tradition includes the story of how God takes care of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert and is with the boy as he grows, caring for him and protecting him and making his descendents into a great nation/s tells us that Israel understands the universal character of God. God loves other peoples besides us. God is with them and takes care of them as well. This self-understanding along with the self-critical stance keeps Israel from becoming absolute. Yahweh is the God of all, even our rivals and enemies. This thought is particularly intriguing for its implications for how we think about religious pluralism. Even in its early expression of the relationship between God and people, Israel recognizes that God can be positively related to persons of other religions. Dialogue with persons of other religions can start with this claim that God is a loving and alluring God for others as well as for us.
Another intriguing point is that not only do they have God with them, but also they are our cousins. Israel holds as part of its sacred history that the peoples that are their rivals and enemies are actually part of their family and part of the special covenant they have with God. The sense of being chosen, for Israel , is based upon God’s love for Abraham and his descendents. This story tells us that our enemies are part of this group and that God loves and cares for our enemies as well as for us.
The reading from the Psalms offers similar indications about the relationship between God and Israel , especially concerning those who are downtrodden. This passage focuses upon the feelings of comfort found in God’s compassion, forgiveness, and faithfulness. Yahweh is praised and glorified and all nations recognize God’s greatness. Note that Israel takes as her own Hagar’s story of God’s faithfulness and care for her and her child. The foreign servant girl who was cast out of Abraham’s family is not considered apart of Israel ’s sacred past, and her son, an ancestor and for some Christians, a foreshadowing of Jesus.
Romans 6:1b-11
In this passage, Paul addresses a particularly significant issue:
Why should we not continue to sin?
First let us recall that in the previous passage Paul has set forth his understanding of justification by faith. Both the covenant made by Abraham and his descendents and the one made through Jesus Christ with Christians (Jews and Gentiles) are based not upon human behavior or purity, but are founded upon God’s righteousness and our faith in God’s righteousness. After Paul has clearly demonstrated that God’s love is not conditional, he now turns to fortify the other side of this belief by answering a naturally occurring question. If salvation is not based upon human behavior or ethical righteousness, than why should Christians try to be ethically righteous? Why should Christians observe the law? Why not continue to sin?
This passage is Paul’s answer to these questions. His response is based on two intriguing assumptions about the connection between Jesus and his followers. First, baptism into the church creates an internal connection with Jesus that is not only deeply intimate, but radically efficacious. So that participation in baptism is also participating in Christ’s death and in his resurrection. This solidarity transfers certain benefits from Christ to believers. These benefits include dying to sin, looking forward in hope to being resurrected, and living free from sin through the power of Christ’s obedience and righteousness. Not only are we forgiven through grace, we are released from the power of sin to be able to live according to the way Christ lived, in love. The connection with Christ effects these changes through the power of solidarity and grace. Later we will see that this internal relatedness with Christ is also expanded to include connection with all the members of Christ’ body, the church, leading to the assertion that we are internally related to each other by solidarity with Jesus. Further this solidarity and the benefits are so radical that they provide the core and foundation of the Christian’s identity. This notion is consistent with Process Theology’s understanding of the depth and radicality of our connectedness with God and with each other. The difference is that for Process thought, this radical connectedness of all humanity and all reality is a metaphysical fact. Here in Paul’s letter to the Romans, the intimate relationality is created by God’ grace through baptism into Christ.
Paul’s second assumption is that freedom from sin entails freedom for righteousness. Paul believes that either one is bond to the power of sin, or slave to the power of Christ and Christ’ righteousness. This means that if one is forgiven and dead to sin, than one is alive to living Christ’s risen life here and now as a person who follows the way of love. Providing content to the relational concept of sin from a Suchocki’s process theology perspective leads to restating Paul to mean that we die to the acts and intentions that violate the well-being of creation, AND, we awaken to intentionally willing and acting toward the well-being of each and every part of creation.[1] As an interesting aside, then, with Suchocki’s terminology and definitions, living a life free from sin and free for righteousness resembles forgiveness. The conclusion is that forgiving others of their sins against us as Suchocki defines forgiveness is part of living righteously.
Matthew 10:24-39
In this passage in Matthew, Jesus continues his commission to the disciples by warning them that they will not escape the persecution and suffering that he has had to endure (or really in the narrative timeline, will have to endure). Since the disciples are not better than Jesus, their teacher, they may be treated even more brutally, and will have to take up their cross as well. Further, they may be rejected not only by the very people they seek to serve and save, but even by members of their own family. This rejection would be particularly painful for the worldview of the first and second century Middle Eastern culture. Jesus doesn’t promise salvation from suffering, in fact, almost guarantees that the disciples will suffer. But he does promise that he will remember those who continue his mission faithfully even unto death.
Jesus also warns the commissioned ones that his mission, which is now their mission, is not what is expected. Jesus says that he comes not to bring peace, but to set things on their head. The peace to which he is referring is most likely the Pax Romona, a peace based on military control and oppression. This peace seeks the status quo. It is not the Biblical peace of Shalom, the peace that accompanies the reign of heaven that Jesus and his followers proclaim. Jesus comes with the sword of revolution that resists the norms of convention. It is revolutionary in that is sets a man against his father and family members against each other. In fact Jesus’ advice to his disciples is full of unconventional wisdom. Fear not those who kill the body; those who find their life will lose it and those who lose it for Jesus will find it, and other claims seem strange and even absurd. What do these paradoxes tell us about God? That God is more mysterious, creative, complicated and unconventional than we can even begin to imagine.
This passage in Matthew assumes Luke’s claim that the followers of Jesus are made into intimates by their faith. The most powerful and important bonds of connection are not the natural bonds of blood and familial relations, but the bonds and bondage of faith. Such solidarity with Jesus and with God in heaven is the basis of human faith and trust in God. This story follows Paul’s arguments in Romans in which Christians are made intimates with Christ through baptism into his death and resurrection. Paul’s view of this solidarity with Jesus that grants us the benefits of Christ’s righteousness, here is shown to extend to solidarity among the disciples. The love and faith we have for Jesus must surpass the natural love for family and friends. This love and faith is what binds us to each other as disciples. The proclamation that God knows the very number of the hairs on the heads of the disciples indicates a radical intimacy that is akin to process theology’s understanding of internal relatedness. Further, there are implications for God’s love for the avian world. God cares for the sparrows, even though they are a dime a dozen. Yet their existence matters to God. The assertion that God cares deeply for both animal and human life is also consistent with process theology’s claim that all entities are known and valued by God.
[1]C.f. Marjorie Suchocki, The Fall to Violence.
Helene Tallon Russell is assistant professor of theology at The Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, IN. She specializes in process thought, feminist theology and theory, Kierkegaard, and systematic theology. She has published articles in Process Studies, Encounter, and World Faith's Encounter. She is an active member of All Saints Episcopal Church in Indianapolis. She lives with her Parrot Tangelo.
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