P&F Lectionary Commentary: Ordinary Time 2006

Lectionary Commentary

I Samuel 15:34 – 16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-17
Mark 4:26-34

The theme that for me connects these passages is that of the contrast between the human perspective and God’s. The passage in I Samuel resembles many other biblical passages in showing how God often selects the least, in this and other cases, the youngest, to play the crucial role. Here Samuel chooses Jesse’s youngest son, the one whom the father least expected, to be the successor of Saul. We find this easy to accept because the traditional primacy of the oldest son plays little role in our thinking today. But the idea was once startling.

At the end of Psalm 20, the contrast is between the normal human view that victory will be given to those who are best equipped militarily and the conviction of believers that God will give the victory to those who are faithful. The former assumption still shapes the judgments of worldly people, even of those who use pious language. As a people, we Americans, like our leaders, seem to have more confidence in “shock and awe” caused by overwhelming military might than in moral authority. Thus far the evidence in Iraq, as in Vietnam before it, is that the Psalmist is right. But history is, to say the least, ambiguous, and the evidence I cite has thus far had little effect on our nation’s thinking.

The most extreme formulation in these texts is that of Paul. In verse 17 he tells us that if anyone is in Christ, “everything has become new.” For Paul himself, no doubt, this expressed personal experience. His vision on the road to Damascus fundamentally changed the way he saw his world. What before then he saw as profoundly destructive and evil, the proclamation of Jesus as the Christ, after that became his own life mission. He read his scriptures with new eyes, profoundly changing the way he understood their true meaning. His expectation of the future was transformed.

Many of those to whom he wrote could no doubt also identify. Life in the communities he established around the eastern Mediterranean, including the community in Corinth, was not always harmonious and free of problems, but those who participated in them knew that they were profoundly different from anything they had known before. They broke fundamentally with the value system of the Roman Empire and struggled to live within that empire in an entirely new way.

But now, nearly two thousand years later, in a culture that was once Christendom, it is hard for us to identify. Do I, as one who is “in Christ,” so deeply differ from my neighbor who may have gone to Sunday School in her youth but gave up on Christianity while in college? We all know that the difference may be slight and may well be to her advantage. Some of those who rejected Christianity live in ways that are more “Christian” than many of us who affirm traditional Christian doctrines and take part in the life of a congregation.

Even many of those who have joined the church as adults, including those who did so in evangelistic meetings, are likely to have difficulty saying that “everything has become new.” They may be able to identify a few changes in their lives. But much seems the same.

There are exceptions. Some have been converted to Christianity at a point in their lives when they were slaves to addiction or caught up in criminal gangs. They may understand what is meant by saying that “everything has become new.” This is extremely important, but it is a different experience from that of Paul and those who responded to his message.

Paul was a deeply committed and profoundly moral man before his conversion. Many of his converts were serious seekers. Some were Gentile hangers-on in Jewish synagogues. The conversion they experienced was not from addiction to drugs or participation in crime. It was from one way of understanding God’s character and purposes to another. It was from one way of understanding history to another. How could that change be so profound, so all determinative?

Rather than pursue the details of the experience of Paul’s converts, I want to consider whether there is a comparable contrast today between the basic understanding of reality among Christians and those outside the sphere of Christian influence. The initial difficulty is that there is such variety outside the Christian sphere. The difference between Christians and Hindus is very different from the difference between Christians and Muslims, and both are very different from the difference between Christians and secularists. I am going to restrict myself to the latter distinction, focusing on those post-Christian secularists in whom the Christian influence is most faded. We are living in a culture in which this kind of secularism has become widely influential.

Participants in that secular world would describe their difference in terms of their freedom from the exclusivism, legalism, and superstition that characterizes Christians. I fear that, sociologically speaking, they have much evidence for this contrast. But Paul was not describing exclusivism, legalism, and superstition as that which made all things new. On the contrary, becoming free from all that would come much closer to characterizing the newness of which he spoke.

Some of us do follow Paul’s doctrine of freedom from the law and breaking the barriers between groups. Does that put us on the side of the secularists? If not, how do we understand the difference between the Christian and the truly secular that is fully independent of the influence of Christianity?. I suggest that the most useful passage for us in Paul’s account here is in verses 15 and 16: “those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who died and was raised for them. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.”

What is the “human point of view” that has ended? It is one that many religious traditions undertake to overcome. It is one that has been transcended by many secular humanists in the West. But as the influence of Christianity and other religious traditions fades in the West, the human point of view reappears. It is one in which each of us views others in terms of the distinction of “us” and “them.” “They” are of value to us if they help us. If they act contrary to our interests, they are enemies. If they make no difference to us, then they are of no importance one way or another. The human point of view provides no perspective in terms of which “they” have in themselves an importance for “us” that is independent of how they are related to us. Their being calls nothing forth from us of itself. “They” have no inherent claim on our consideration.

I have indicated that many traditions have worked against the human point of view. Christianity is far from alone. My current interest is not in analyzing their relative success except in one case. Over the past few centuries it has become clear that the more fully the Western secular world frees itself from the vestiges of Christian influence, the more it adopts “the human point of view.” Indeed, the view it often expresses is more extreme than the one I have outlined. Because of the close association of secularism with individualism, the “we” in my formulation becomes “I.” To be rational from this point of view is to make choices entirely in terms of the extent to which they will achieve individually desired ends. The time span in which costs and benefits are considered shrinks. Others have no claim upon us. Even our future selves have less and less claim on our present selves.

The victory of this way of thinking is clearest, perhaps, in economics, but it is gaining ground throughout the university. Partly because of its success in the academic disciplines and the world of high culture, and partly because of the fading influence of religious traditions in the popular culture as well, it has become actualized in many individual lives. The widespread dominance of consumerism gives it form.

This individualistic understanding of “self” and “others” has penetrated the churches as well. People shop for the church that will provide the most benefits at the least cost. But the conversion of which Paul speaks is from that human way of thinking and being to another, one in which people no longer live for themselves. Further, this is not an escape from self by giving one’s devotion to a group or a nation. For the Christian, it means that we live for the one who died for all. Accordingly, we regard no one from a human point of view, evaluating their threats and potential benefits to ourselves. We regard every person as being of such value that Christ died for her or him.

The difference between seeing all things in Christ and the human point of view is as important and as fundamental today as it was in Paul’s day. Sadly, many Christians feel themselves encouraged by their churches to divide the world into us and them. Would that it could be clear that to be a part of a Christian community was always a way of participating in this profound transformation from the human point of view to being “in Christ!”

In conclusion we turn to the Marcan passage. The heart of Jesus’ message, according to all three Synoptic Gospels was the proclamation of the basileia theou. This was in sharp contrast with the Roman basileia, which crucified Jesus as a threat. The threat was real, but as the Marcan parables in today’s lexicon make clear, it was not a military or political one. People have a role to play in planting seeds, but they do not plan or control their growth. Not only is God’s basileia fundamentally different in its values from the Roman one, it also comes into being from the bottom up, not by external imposition. Perhaps it comes into being as more and more people adopt the heart of Jewish teaching, which was also lifted up by Jesus, that we should love the universal God with all our being and our neighbors as ourselves. God’s basileia was in inherent conflict with the empire, the basileia, of Rome. Today it is inherent conflict with the American reach toward global basileia.

We live in a time when the difference between being in Christ and living in and from the dominant values of society has become clearer and clearer. However, we must acknowledge with deep sadness, that the statements of some church leaders obscure that difference, and the silence of the churches on crucial issues does not help. The church has been silent as the dominant teaching of the university turned against our central convictions. It has been silent as the popular religion of consumerism took over our media. It has been silent as many Americans in our churches have confused the cross with the flag. It is time to recover a biblical understanding of the differences.

John B. Cobb, Jr., is professor emeritus of the Claremont School of Theology. He is a co-founder of the Center for Process Studies and author of many books, including The Process Perspective, Christ in a Pluralistic Age, and Becoming a Thinking Christian. These titles are available from the Process & Fatih bookstore.

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