I’d say that it was an unusually difficult week, but every week seems to be one of those weeks recently, a week when the country is divided over some public statement or public action, a week when the meme wars rage, the comments section is on fire, and that brother-in-law puts something on Facebook that makes your blood boil. We are as flammable as the California hills, anything can spark the inferno.
This week it was Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who chose to sit during the national anthem, protesting the racism that is so evident in our politics and in our policing, so obvious if you look at the data. His action was meant to provoke, was meant to push, because what good is a protest if no one notices? And people noticed, sort of like that provocative someone we claim to follow, always challenging false gods, false values. And questioning what passes for patriotism is patriotic, is Christian, for many of us, many who love this country, have come to see how the flag and other motifs of patriotism have been co-opted, false idols for the cult of Americanism.
Don’t you dare question the United States! What an insult to the soldiers who died! Never mind that the same people who claim that the US can do no wrong, the military can do no wrong, the police can do no wrong, also believe that God is punishing the US, sending one hurricane after another,destruction, pastors tell us, because we tolerate abominations, with people flaunting their sin in public, parades and signs. Never mind that Kaepernick, the Rev. William Barber, and countless others are exercising the very freedoms those veterans were defending, many men and women of color, many coming home to a heroes welcome, only to be abandoned when the horror of war catches up with their minds, their spirits, their bodies..
And speaking of people flaunting their sin, of the potential for divine destruction, I fear that Blue Hill is in serious jeopardy, that a storm may strike right here on this peninsula, may smite us if I am allowed to use biblical language, for while I generally take a live-and-let-live approach to things, there are some things you simply cannot ignore.
People are violating God’s word in our community, and right out in the open! You can see them out in public, see signs advertising this depravity. For scripture is clear, there in the Torah that Yahweh gave to Moses, in the Book of Leviticus: “And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you.†Yet we have people right here on this peninsula that catch and consume the dreaded lobster.
Absurd? Of course. And we can look at the Acts of the Apostles and see that rule changed, see Peter and the sheet of food lowered from the heavens, God’s instruction to eat what is unclean and know that we are no longer required to keep kosher, even though it was Jesus himself who said “I have not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it.†And it is not just laws regarding food that change, not just Gentile Christianity that provokes change, for understood in context, the Bible is a story of evolving belief, of adaptation, of creativity and construction.
It is history and myth, poetry and law, self help book and private letters. It contains both the dreams of madmen and the propaganda of monarchs.
As the popular meme reminds us, be careful what you wish for, for when some speak of enforcing “Biblical Marriage,†they seem to forget that “Biblical Marriage†included one or more wives, concubines, your rape victims, slaves and prisoners, not to mention your brother’s widow if he happened to die and she was still childless. We are appropriately outraged when a rich white male is given a lenient sentence for sexual assault so as not to overly disrupt his bright future, but if we are to use the Bible as a guide, he could simply pay her father and take her as a wife.
No one would support this, not the most diehard Evangelical. The most fundamentalist preacher still has a pick-and-choose scripture, and you can see in its tea leaves exactly what you hope to see in its tea leaves.
Today’s reading, obscure and neglected, is believed to be one of those texts attributed to Paul that really is by Paul. For centuries it was used to justify slavery, for Paul is sending the slave Onesimus back to his owner. In fact, in another text, Paul advises people to stay just as they are when they convert. If they are unmarried, they are to remain unmarried. If they are a slave, they should remain a slave. To those in later centuries who would enslave others through violence, Paul is authorizing slavery.
But Paul, understood in his context, believed two things: that the second coming of Christ was about to happen at any moment, and that Roman justice was actually just. For a man obsessed with the Cross, you do have to wonder if he noticed the whole “innocent man executed by the state†thing that was going on. Two thousand years later and we are still waiting for the trumpets and angels, and if we are to believe the legend, Paul’s faith in Roman justice was badly misplaced, for Nero had his head cut off sometime between 64 and 68 CE.
We would find it absurd, idiotic if someone was to take to the national stage and advocate slavery. Can you imagine a candidate justifying slavery by noting that in Genesis, Ham, attempting to help his drunken father Noah, saw him naked, and so was turned black, his descendants forever to be slaves? For that is one interpretation of what it says in scripture, was a biblically-based argument for racism. Yet people make equally absurd claims every day, citing Torah and Paul to justify their hatred.
Scripture is hard. It was written, re-written, edited and authorized over the course of more than a thousand years. It is the story of one nation, a civil war and division, conquest and exile. We can’t agree on what the supposed Founding Fathers intended two centuries ago, and scripture covers four times as many years. Then there are those who decided what was in and what was out, for what is in the Bible was decided as much by the sword as by the Spirit.
It is incredibly easy to see in scripture what you want to see in scripture, especially if you pull particular verses out of context. It is easy to turn, to feel in control of the boat, when there is no current. But with a living faith, a living God, you find yourself swept up, in control only to the extent that you work with the current, no longer picking and choosing in order to construct a God who loves who you love and hates who you hate.
The Bible is the story of a people discovering a God and a creation that will not fit into their easy categories, that does not tell them what they want to hear, but that discomforts and challenges, stretching us to be more loving, more generous, more alive, challenging us to be more. This is an untamed God, a surge of the divine, but to feel that power, we must fully enter the stream. Yet we dabble around the edges, surrendering scripture to the pick-and-choose crowd.
This book is a powerful thing and we need to embrace it, study it, understand it, bring it into conversation with our world today. We can critique Paul’s embrace of a social status quo that included slavery, but also see the ways that Paul is challenging slavery, is saying two things at the same time, for he sends Onesimus back “no longer as a slave but more than a slave—that is, as a dearly loved brother.â€
Those who wanted a God that condoned the brutality of slavery could find that God in scripture, and those who want a God that hates the LGBT community can find that God in scripture, but those who love scripture will find movement and life, a wild and untamed God who does not care about flags or borders or lobster, who cares about life, who is life.
In our discomfort with the abuse of scripture, the idolatry of scripture, we have surrendered it to the loudest and the angriest. This is our story, a dynamic theological trajectory, and we have every right to claim it, to bathe in its waters, for it speaks of just wages, welcome for the immigrant, care and justice and love and grace.
Some might use it to justify slavery, to oppress women, to hammer those who love differently or who express their gender differently, but we can use it as a sword to cut away at those chains. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly. Forgive that you might be forgiven. In Paul’s words, neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, but all are one in Christ.
We can no longer afford to surrender the Bible to those who worship false gods. We can no longer afford to surrender the word God and the name of Jesus to those who hate and divide.
A living God, a living word, discomforting, challenging, one that leaves room for those who sit through a nationalist anthem and those who eat lobster. This is the Word of God, a living Word, the Word in Christ. Thanks be to God.