Monday Morning in the Preacher’s Study
First thoughts about next Sunday’s sermon
(4thSunday after Pentecost, June 16,
2013)
John W.B. Hill
The second reading for this Sunday takes us to the very heart of the
Gospel according to Paul, the good news revealed to him on the road to
Damascus. “I have been crucified with
Christ; it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”
What provoked this passionate self-disclosure was the memory of his
dispute with Simon Peter over table-fellowship with Gentiles (the preceding
four verses). For Paul, this was an
issue of ‘justification.’
Some of the most critical questions about Paul’s gospel hang on the
translation of passages like this. “We
know that a person is justified not by works of the law, but through faith in
Jesus Christ.” Or is it ‘through the
faith of Jesus Christ’ (NRSV footnote)?
And J. Louis Martyn argues that ‘rectified’ would be a better
translation than ‘justified’, and ‘Torah observance’ would be better than
‘works of the law.’
Yet beneath all these questions lies one reality we all know well: our
‘old self’ (the “I” that Paul refers to) which is self-serving and
self-justifying through our appeal to accepted social conventions. In Paul’s case, Torah observance was the
accepted social convention he used to ‘justify’ his old way of being, including
his violence against disciples of a crucified messiah (who was therefore a
‘cursed’ pretender – Gal. 3:13). In the king’s
case (the first reading), ‘royal privilege’ was the accepted social convention
he used to justify theft and murder.
Ahab’s case (the semicontinuous reading) is particularly interesting: he
‘justified’ his generous proposal to Naboth on the grounds of a clever new
value system that converted everything into monetary terms (does that sound
familiar?), and he ‘justified’ the elimination of his enemy by resort to the
blasphemy law (after all, had not Naboth virtually cursed the king by defying
him, and hence implicitly cursed the god whom the king represented?) That’s the nature of our ‘old self’ with its
self-justifying instincts. Elijah’s role
as a prophet is to recognize and name the abuses of power which society simply
takes for granted.
But the crucified and risen Prophet not only exposes the deceitfulness
of this kind of selfhood; he obviates my need for this kind of ‘justification’,
offering me forgiveness instead, and he summons me to accept his way of being
as my own new selfhood.
The gospel reading mirrors Paul’s contrast between the old selfhood and
the new. In the eyes of religious people
like Simon and his guests, that woman of the city is a sinner beyond
forgiveness (condemning her is another form of self-justification). In the eyes of Jesus, she is a person who
loves greatly because she has been greatly forgiven (Jesus refuses to define
himself over against us sinners). And
Jesus is more than a prophet, for he also offers himself as mediator between
these two visions. He does not criticize
Simon for judging the woman; he simply tells a parable, gently opening Simon’s
eyes to a possibility Simon has never imagined.
Then he points Simon to this spectacle of love born of forgiveness, who
stands weeping beside the table.
Our natural instinct for self-justification only serves to sharpen our
conflicts: privileged versus poor, Jew versus Gentile, religious versus
sinner. The Gospel of the crucified and
risen One opens our eyes to such self-delusion and empowers us to become what
Torah always intended to preserve but could never create: a new way of being,
without envy or resentment, a being-in-love.
John Hill is a member of the Council of APLM. He will
be featured as a workshop presenter at APLM’s conference in Chicago, June
27-29, “Stirring the Waters: Reclaiming the Missional, Subversive Character of
Baptism.”
To register online: http://www.rsvpbook.com/event.php?456526
For more information or mail-in registration: http://www.associatedparishes.org
The picture “The Woman Who Anointed Jesus’ Feet” is by
Glenda Skinner-Noble. For more information about the artist or to purchase
prints:
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