P&F Lectionary Commentary: Ash Wed 02/25/2004

Lectionary Commentary

Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 51
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matt 6:1-6; 16-21

This is a text about fasting, an appropriate subject for Ash Wednesday. Fasting was usually performed to publicly indicate repentance and to ask for restoration from God. This is also the intention of Christian Ash Wednesday.

The historical context of Isaiah 58, like the whole of so-called Third Isaiah (Isa 56-66) is the rebuilding of Judah under Persian auspices after 538, the conquest and release of the captives held in Babylon. Even though these constituted only a minuscule portion of Judean population, it was they who assumed responsibility for rebuilding the social structures that had been destroyed by the Babylonians along with the temple in 586. From Zechariah 8 we learn that days of fasting were a regular fixture of life in Persian Yehud, the name of the province or portion thereof which comprised pre-Babylonian Judah. Of course, historical context is not the most important factor in reading a text for us today. It is important to know that Third Isaiah is supportive of the Babylonian exiles’ project of rebuilding Judah as Yehud under Persian authorities.

Now, the text itself. It is always important in a prophetic text to ask who the presumed speaker is and who the addressees. Verse one is a call of YHWH, the God of Israel, to his prophet to speak to the people on his behalf. (Note: I use the masculine for the God of Israel, not because God is male but because YHWH is so represented in the Hebrew Bible. In preaching and reading today the appropriate modifications should be introduced.) Vv 2-3 continue YHWH’s address to the prophet explaining the issue he is to address. This is to be, so to speak, his sermon topic, the contradiction between the religiosity of the people and their readiness to practice injustice.

Vv 3-12 are a direct address by YHWH to the people of Judah/Yehud. It begins with a contrived direct quote from the addressee in 3a, complaining that in spite of earnest contrition expressed in fasting God does not acknowledge their petitions, followed by an answer from God explaining what is the problem, the combination of fasting with oppression of “your workers.” If the needs of the poor were taken care of, things would be different. If you received the homeless in your home, Your light would shine like the dawn and your justice (tsidqeka, perhaps your “vindicator,” as per NRSV) would go before you. When you called, I YHWH would respond, “Here I am” (v 9). Then your ancient ruins would be rebuilt (v 12), and you (the Golah) would be recognized as the repairer of the breach and the restorer of the streets to live in (v 12).

This is a message that resonates in our time. According to all surveys, the U.S. is much more “religious” than any other developed, wealthy nation. Church attendance is way above that of European nations. But the U.S. is also the leader in shaping a market-driven economy that has very little regard for the hungry and the homeless. Those same people who come to church on Ash Wednesday and who will perhaps seek a sign of contrition for this year’s Lenten season are the one’s who live in suburbs far from the poor and who support stricter policing and larger prisons which incarcerate far and away more poor people than any others. Is it possible to deny that our religion is a cover to make us feel better for living in enclaves, which cannot be reached by those who live outside the borders of the U.S. or who live on the streets in our cities?

In the mid-nineteenth century Karl Marx said that the real religion of Europe was Capital, invested goods that seem by some magic to be able to multiply themselves by virtue of their own power. Our culture today judges success in terms of the material goods one has. If one does not have capital to invest, in order to be someone must at least have a job that enables him or her to shop for the goods of this world and to have food, a roof, health supports and education for one’s family. Those who lack the basics of life are excluded from a full life and must scrounge to survive and die young. Capital demands these human sacrifices to thrive. The economy must be well even though millions of poor people are sick and dieing. In spite of the apparent religiosity of our cities, Capital is truly the God whom we serve.

Could the prophet’s message be true today? If we received the homeless into our houses, fed the hungry and clothed the naked would our justice lead the way and the glory of God bring up the rear-guard? But this would require a major restructuring of our lives and our societies. It would mean altering the way food is produced in our world so that subsistence farming could again become sufficient for the needs of families the way it was before capitalist agriculture invaded the market with foods mass produced in artificial conditions of fertilizing. It would mean altering the way our living areas are planned so that housing of all types were again side by side as they were traditionally in every part of the world and public transportation reduced dependence on automobiles to get to the store. It would mean restoring neighborhood stores that did not produce fortunes but made food, hardware and clothes easily accessible to those without cars.

This Lent of 2004 might become a time of reflecting on the abyss that separates us, one from the “other.” It was an artificially created abyss between Aryans and Jews that led to the Shoah or Holocaust in Central Europe. The current artificially produced abyss between those who can participate in the market and those who are excluded has already begun another Holocaust that is producing millions of undernourished children whose eyes and brains are stunted and who are exposed to killer diseases like AIDS without access to the drugs that might cure them. This Lent should be a time of repentance for our willing cooperation in this massive killing by our complacent participation in the worship of Capital. We must not believe that a few Lenten “fasts” will relieve us of our guilt.

And as Christians we have to believe that “another world is possible,” to use the motto of the World Social Forum held each year in January. Lent leads up to Holy Week, which passes through death to be raised on Easter. If God could raise Jesus from the dead and so revert the judicial decision of Pilate, the death inflicted by Capital need not be the last word. Nor is it true in the notorious statement by Margaret Thatcher that “there is no alternative.” Isaiah’s call is not small thing. It is a call for social transformation on a major scale. If we refuse, we must not be surprised when God ceases to listen to our pleas.

Psalm 51
Of the 150 psalms in the book of that name 43 are individual psalms of supplication or lament, making this the largest group of all the psalms. This psalm assigned for Ash Wednesday is a psalm of supplication or lament.

The psalms of lament usually have three dramatic personae: the psalmist, who petitions, God, to whom the petition is directed, and the enemy, ev, or adversaries, tsarai, or evildoers, aven, or unjust ones, resha`im who torment the psalmist. The great majority have these three “persons” are present. This being so, the possibilities for the “person” responsible for the disaster whose resolution the petition seeks are quite simply three: God, the psalmist himself (usually the maleness of the psalmist is clear and, when not, can be presumed), or the enemy, in ascending order of importance. In other words, the great majority of these psalms blame the enemy or evildoer for the calamities suffered by the petitioner. Only one comes out clearly putting the whole blame on God (Psalm 88) though God’s responsibility is implied in a few others. And only a handful put most of the blame on the psalmist himself (Psalms 38, 39, 51, and 139), although he is a secondary cause implied in others. Most put the blame on the enemy.

When God is to blame, the petitioner must convince God to change his ways. When the enemy is to blame, God must be asked as a just judge to intervene on behalf of an innocent man who is being tormented by unjust enemies. But our psalm is among the four where the psalmist accepts blame for his calamity. In these cases forgiveness and/or purification must be requested from a merciful God. Two psalms, 51 and 139, put the emphasis on purification rather than forgiveness. This is a petition to remove the stain caused by the psalmist’s sin. In Leviticus it is the altar and the tabernacle that are stained by sin. In these two psalms it is the sinner himself. Apparently, in Leviticus the sinner incurs guilt by his sin, and his guilt is cured by restitution, confession and forgiveness. Not only does sin make the sinner guilty, it also soils the altar and, hence, affects the whole community. When this happens the sinner must sacrifice an animal whose blood is smeared or sprinkled on the altar, the tabernacle veils and its utensils to purify them for it is not the sinner but the utensils that can be cleansed by these procedures.

In Psalm 139 God is asked to kill the bloodthirsty enemy as well as to purify the sinner. Psalm 51 is unusual in that the enemy is nowhere mentioned, except as rebels, pesha`im, who will be taught God’s ways by the restored psalmist. The issue is strictly between God and the sinner. It is important to begin by realizing that this is most unusual in the prayers of the book of Psalms. It is not, however, strictly a private prayer for the psalmist is part of his people. This is clear from the ending (vv 18-19 in most English editions) where God is asked to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (and implicitly the Temple, also). Then the normal means of purification can be restored when sacrifices will again be possible. In spite of the spin put on the psalm at a later time by an editor who set it in the life of David when the prophet Nathan confronted him with his adultery with Bathsheba, the psalm itself presupposes the situation in Babylonian exile or immediately thereafter before the temple was rebuilt. The unusual characteristics of this psalm are probably due to the unusual circumstances it reflects when there was no temple.

Vv 1-5—again following the numbering of NRSV and most Protestant versions—deal with a sin from conception itself in his mother’s womb. The petition is, as we would expect in a psalm that puts the blame on the psalmist, for mercy. A just judge would have to condemn the guilty psalmist. Hope must rely on God’s mercy, which is frequently affirmed in the Torah. The mercy will be shown when the psalmist is washed of his iniquity by God and purified (the verb is from the root THR, from whence comes tahor, pure as in pure foods) from his sin.

Verse 5 states that the psalmist’s sin is with him since he first had life, before he could even be aware of it, from conception. This probably does not mean some sort of originary stain of the human race, but rather the impurity borne by the people who have no access to the means of purification, the temple sacrifices.

Vv 6-9 deal mostly with the objective stains of sin. These God can purify “with hyssop,” that is, by sprinkling as would be done with the blood of the sacrifice in normal times. Christians today are mostly unfamiliar with this objective side of purification, which presumes an acceptance of the standards recognized by one’s society for what constitutes cleanliness and dirtiness in God’s house.

Vv 10-12 deal with the subjective aspects of cleansing. With a clean heart then he will be able to present himself before God and enjoy God’s presence. For the last three hundred years in which modern thinking has dominated Western Christians, they are quite comfortable with this experience-oriented spirituality. But in the psalm the experience is only the second aspect after objective purification.

Vv 13-17 are in some tension with the concluding verses, 18-19. The idea that sacrifices were unimportant to God is developed in Psalm 49, but is otherwise unusual in the Psalms though known in the prophet Hosea (Hos 6:6), which is quoted in Matthew 9:13. Isaiah (1:2-17) affirms that neither sacrifices nor praise are acceptable to God who desires justice and compassion for the poor. Isaiah’s is not the psalm’s idea, either. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a heart broken and crushed (nidekkeh, nif`al" [passive], v 17).

What can a psalm such as this one mean to us Christians on Ash Wednesday 2004? My suggestion is that we are all stained by the murderous consequences of the consumer lifestyle which we enjoy. Most of the readers of these reflections were born into homes where good food and health care, vaccinations and all, were available from birth—and even before birth in the prenatal care our mothers received. But the monopoly of these goods which our society collectively has means that millions of children will die of malnutrition or the lack of clean water leading to infections, all of which are due to the lack of access of the mothers to the goods which the market denies to those who do not have money. The same global market that assured us food, vaccinations and clean water denies them to most children born in Africa—and to some children born in Los Angeles or the farms of the valleys whence come our vegetables and fruit.

We are also stained by our participation in the imperial wars which the U.S. military forces carry out against any people that refuses submission, lately Afghanistan and Iraq. Our taxes and the investments of our savings accounts fund the industrial/military complex that makes these adventures possible. And, in some cases, our sons and daughters share bodily in these ventures. In any case, it seems to me that we are stained and are unable to be cleansed by the usual means of ordinary times.

The final petition to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem might mean in our context to help us construct a world like the one before Europe conquered the New World with the devastating results for its population which can no longer be reversed. The global market that reaches to every corner of the world today began when Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro and their accomplices (the “conquistadores”) started shipping tons of stolen silver and gold across the ocean to feed the incipient thirst for money. If this destructive totalizing market was made by human hands and minds it can be unmade by the same means, if we collectively put our hands and minds to the job.

It would be a beginning for Christians if during Lent of 2004 we started chipping away at the global market by drinking only fair-trade coffee. A few coffee pickers would then get a living wage. And if along with this we also began to work on the immense task of restitution to the Africans whose ancestors we kidnapped to force them to build the wealth we enjoy today, the natives whose lands our ancestors stole with fraudulent treaties and who are still forced to live on reservations.

And let us ask God to give us the joy of Her presence even now as we begin to walk the long road towards purification of God’s world.

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Paul’s correspondence with the various house churches that made up the “church of God in Corinth” (2 Cor 1:1) is gathered in two letters in our Bibles. These two were made up as such early in the Second Century out of portions of many letters which some unknown editor gathered. As they stand, they are far too long to be real letters and they show fracture lines where they were put together.

There was a serious challenge to Paul’s authority in Corinth, where “super-apostles” (hyperlian apostoloi, 2 Cor 11:5) who were eloquent preachers and who claimed to have more authority as Hebrews and companions of Jesus questioned Paul’s apostolic work there. The bitter letter found in part in 2 Cor 10-13 was written in the heat of this polemic. Our Scripture for today comes from a later letter when the heat has subsided but not been entirely forgotten. Titus had come to Paul in Macedonia and informed him that things were much better in Corinth (2 Cor 7:5-8).

Feeling vindicated, Paul still shows some touchiness in the listing of his trials in 6:4-10. Paul’s adversaries had claimed the right to travel well and be housed well, in the name of the triumphant message from God they bore. For Paul the cross of Christ was so essential that this was everything (1 Cor 2:2), and the proof of a witness to the Gospel of God were his or her sufferings and trials. If God raised Jesus from the dead and raises his followers from death, there is no victory, no justice, but God’s victory and God’s justice. To claim that one has since knowing Christ some innate claim to that victory and that justice is not to understand what Paul dares to call “my Gospel” when pushed (Gal 1:8), rightly the Gospel of God (Rom 1:3; 2 Cor 11:3) or Gospel of Christ (1 Cor 9:12; 2 Cor 2:12).

Our text begins with a striking but enigmatic affirmation, “we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled with God. For our sake he (God) made him (Christ) to be sin, so that we might become the justice of God.” What can this mean? Paul develops the theme in Romans, announcing it in Rom 1:16-17. Here it is that the Gospel is all about the justice of God (dykaiosyne theou) and how we are to become just ourselves. In the full development in Romans it becomes clear that neither the law of Sinai nor the famous Roman law are capable of making us just. This justice of God can only be accomplished through the faith of Jesus (dikaiosune de theou dia pisteos Iesou Christou, Rom 3:22), “the justice of God through the faith of Jesus Christ”) awakening faith in us (ek pisteos eis pistin) “from faith to faith” in Rom 1:17).

To get back to 2 Cor 5:20b-21, what does it mean that the Jesus “who knew not sin was made sin”? This is a reference to the cross. In Roman legal practice crucifixion was the greatest punishment (suplicius maximus) reserved for subversives who were not citizens. Most of those crucified were rebellious slaves, but in some cases like those of Barabbas and Jesus they were subversives who challenged the peace and tranquility of the reign. Most likely this is the reference to being made sin here (and not some mythical being charged with the sins of the world, as Anselm and other later theologians would have it).

But the key is the final phrase: The cross of Jesus and Jesus’ faith were so that we might become the justice of God. This explains why Paul thinks his trials, listed shortly afterward, are basic. His faith, like that of Jesus, enables him to face these tribulations in the faith that he was being transformed into a just person incarnating the justice of God.

The question for us is how can we become just in a world organized on radically unjust principles. Paul would answer, by taking upon ourselves the plagues of the world with the confidence—faith of Jesus Christ. From the faith of Jesus to our faith we are enabled to be just with the full-bodied justice of God (Rom 1:17). It is going to take many trials to birth a different world from this world dominated by a totalizing capitalist market. These trials are both the dismantling of our excessive consumption so that the resources of the globe are not used up for our comfort and accepting the blistering criticisms to which we will be subjected as “treasonous,” and disloyal to the government and people of the United States.

If we start with something simple like consuming fair-trade coffee (see the reflection on Psalm 51) we can then move on to more far-reaching measures, always with the solidarity of the peoples of the world who already resent the grandiose lifestyle of our people. May God grant us courage to achieve this justice of God!

Matt 6:1-6; 16-21
These two collections of sayings, Matt 6:1-6 and Matt 6:16-21, serve as a frame for the Lord’s Prayer. As a literary technique, a frame means that the center of attention is the center, in this case the Lord’s instruction on prayer. The frame gives secondary instructions intended to be helps in prayer, the central piece of this instruction. Our reading for Ash Wednesday gives only the frame and not the central piece, the model for prayer. But we cannot ignore the prayer at whose service the frame has been put by Matthew.

Note that Luke has no such frame for the prayer which comes in Lk 11:1-4. The prayer begins in Luke a chapter on prayer, a chapter that includes some parables not present in Matthew. Luke is concerned to urge on the disciples the practice of prayer, as in the parable of the Importunate Friend which follows immediately. Both Luke and Matthew reveal a tendency to put together a string of loose materials around a common theme.

Matthew’s concern is that prayer be between the believer and God and not for show, as also deeds of mercy such as almsgiving. Aside from the prayer itself, which is common to both gospels, most of the secondary material is unique to each. The only common piece, hence derived from the hypothetical source Q, is the instruction to the disciples to gather treasure in heaven and not on earth (Mt 6:19-21//Lk 12:33-34). Q is divided between blocks of instruction and blocks of judgment, and this saying comes in a block of instruction for the disciples of Jesus. And in fact Matthew retains this context by placing it within the enormous collection of instructions for the disciples that is the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew is concerned that alms, fasting and prayer be private matters between the believer and her or his God. By placing this on Ash Wednesday that is also the intention of our lectionary for the practice of Lenten devotions. They are not to be showy but to be conducted for the discipline of the believer and for the communion with her or his God.

One must say that this is a peculiarly Christian concern. Muslims pray in the streets or wherever the call to prayer finds them. The Jewish community feels that all the acts of holiness are communal designed to keep the channels open between G-d and the people of G-d. Private prayer has little place in this communal faith. Christians, however, are urged by Matthew’s Jesus to practice prayer, fasting, and obedience to the law in the interiority of mind and soul. One must recognize that both the Jewish and the Christian approaches to prayer are valid, and the Muslim one, also.

Our practice of piety as Christians should focus on the privacy of communion between believer and God. In our busy lives this is a difficult thing to do. From the time we rise until the time we lie down we have demands on our time. Lent must be taken as an occasion to give ourselves time to be with ourselves and God. Only a person who is at peace with himself or herself can honestly devote time to the concerns of the poor which are present in prayer as taught by Jesus and practiced by the saints through the ages.

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