Abstract
All in the Family
It appears that one mark of the decline of Western Civilization is the deterioration of the ability to argue. I realize that sounds ridiculous on its face, because it seems all everyone—politicians, pundits, religious leaders, and in-laws—is doing is argue. But they are not. Jeremiah was arguing, big time, and with God no less. Jesus was arguing with the leader of the synagogue about healing the woman we biblical scholars refer to by her technical name, the ‘bent-over woman’, on the Sabbath. Isaiah was arguing with returned exiles over much the same thing, what it means to ‘trample the Sabbath’. Those were arguments, arguments worth having. What we do is squabble, talking, often shouting, right past each other, not responding, no give-and-take, just a lot of yelling. Oh for the days when we argued about the interpretation of scripture the way Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Jesus did. We, alas, are more like the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, as secure in our interpretation as we are insistent on its application to the lives of others.
Turn back to the Old Testament. The Jeremiah reading is generally referred to as a call narrative. God calls, the prophet declines the invitation, and God says sorry, it doesn’t work like that. God wins the argument every time, be it with Jeremiah or Jonah, Amos or Isaiah. No one in scripture wants to be a prophet, unlike today when are surrounded by self-proclaimed prophets of every stripe. In fact, one of the best ways to discern whether someone is a prophet is to find out if they volunteered. No one wants to be a prophet, and certainly not Jeremiah. Which makes you wonder about the people in Times Square and Hyde Park Corner.
In our bibles just before the reading from Jeremiah 1 is the Book of Isaiah, whose own call narrative in the sixth chapter includes the sort of job description that explains why no one wants to be a prophet. Isaiah 55 is much later in the life of the people of Judah, after the exile and likely after the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. There is a new normal, and with it a familiar disobedience from which the people must be called. Isaiah reminds them what it looks like to keep covenant with God. It is a simple argument in the if/then form: if you do this, God will do that. If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday…. If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; … if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the
Which brings us to Jesus, to a story familiar in form in all the gospels, a healing narrative with a controversy narrative blended in, and the conflict also a familiar one—is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Here we need to take a deep breath and a step back if we are to rightly understand what is going on. Begin with the obvious though often forgotten fact that everyone in the narrative is a Jew. It is not that the leader of the synagogue, and perhaps the bent-over woman, are Jews and Jesus is a Christian. To think of this as an argument between Judaism and Christianity is to be anachronistic by at least two generations. Everyone in the narrative is a Jew, and the argument is about the interpretation of what it means to keep the Sabbath holy, an argument that goes on to this day within Judaism and in many corners of Christianity. Keep in mind that the Judaism of Jesus’ day had room for multiple factions just as we have today. Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism do not agree on the interpretation and application of the fourth commandment in all its details, nor, it appears, did Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, priests and lay people, those who lived in sight of the temple and those who might visit it once in their lifetimes. Jesus’ argument is another version of if/then: if you water your ox or donkey on the Sabbath, then I should heal this woman on the Sabbath. It is always right to do good on the Sabbath. End of story.
End of story, but not the end of the argument. The argument over what it means to be faithful continues to this day. If we would rightly and truly argue we might learn something. If we yell at each other, if we demonize those with whom we disagree, casting them out of the ranks of the faithful and treating them as minions of the Devil, no one learns anything. Hebrews is a good case in point. It is not my favorite letter, in fact give or take a few verses about the ‘cloud of witnesses’ it is among my least favorite letters, just this side of the Letter of Jude. Why? Because it is overtly and persistently supersessionist. No matter what aspect of Judaism is in view, sacrifice, priesthood, temple, Moses and Abel in today’s reading, you name it and Jesus is better. Judaism is trashed to make Jesus look good. But that is unnecessary, because Jesus looks good all by himself. The temptation for me as a preacher is to simply ignore the Letter to the Hebrews and hope no one will notice, a kind of passive-aggressive homiletical cowardice. Instead I need to engage and argue for my view that Hebrews offers an almost comic caricature of Second Temple Judaism that would have been unrecognizable to Jesus or any Jew of his day. That sort of caricature is sadly all-too common in our day, as is the demonization of Jews and Judaism. The Holocaust did not come out of nowhere, and we must never forget. Even when we argue against the policies of the state of Israel, and argue for a better life for Palestinians, we must never forget.
The seminary where I teach in Tennessee holds a summer camp each year for high school students called ‘Summa’. It is a unique opportunity for fifty teenagers, nominated by their priest, to come to Sewanee and argue. It has been called a theological debate camp, students studying scripture, theology, ethics, and rhetoric, then debating a proposition that brings the issues of our day into contact with the Christian faith. And because it is modeled on academic debate the students must argue for and against the proposition, one debate they are in favor of gun control, the next debate they are against it. That is how one learns the ins and outs of the proposition, not by shouts and invectives. These teenagers, like their prophetic forbearers, have much to teach us. We can respectfully disagree while affirming one another’s faith; we can speak the truth in love, pointing out a better way without insisting that any other way is the very road to hell. Only then might it be said we are ‘repairers of the breach’.