INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
Year C - Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
JEREMIAH 17:5-10. It is likely that in these few verses we have a separate prophecy and wisdom proverb. In verse 5-8, Jeremiah may be condemning the alliance King Zedekiah made with the Egyptians which brought on the fatal invasion by the Babylonians (589-586 BC). Note the strong similarity of this passage with Psalm 1 whose author may well have taken his inspiration from here. Vss. 9-10 is a proverb which could stand alone having no relation to what precedes or follows it.
PSALM 1. More an introduction the Book of Psalms, this psalm portrays the kind of person who uses the whole collection as a spiritual handbook. It may well have been written especially for this purpose when a pious editor had copied by hand and edited all the psalms that follow it.
1 CORINTHIANS 15:12-20. Here Paul begins his remarkable proclamation of what the resurrection of Jesus means for all faithful Christians. Undoubtedly he was responding to a serious conflict within the Corinthian community about this basic element of the faith. Since New Testament times, the whole passage has brought much comfort to those confronting their own death or the death of loved ones. It needs to be studied intensively by those who doubt that there is life beyond death.
LUKE 6:17-26. Comparing Luke's version of the Beatitudes, and the Sermon on the Plain which they introduce, with those found in Matthew 5, can provide an interesting study. A common source lies behind them, but each author uses them for his own purposes. Luke's includes only four and adds several Woes which have no parallel in Matthew.
A MORE COMPLETE AMALYSIS.
JEREMIAH 17:5-10. An analysis of this whole chapter will show a gathering together of several prophetic oracles having no main theme. It is likely that in these few verses we have a separate prophecy in the form of a psalm and wisdom proverb. The psalm in vss. 5-8 may have as its historical background Jeremiah's condemnation the alliance King Zedekiah made with the Egyptians which brought about the fatal invasion by the Babylonians (589-586 BC).
The story of Zedekiah is indeed a sad one. He was the last king of Judah and a puppet of the Babylonians at that. A younger son of Josiah, he had been placed on the throne by Nebuchadrezzar, replacing his uncle, Jehoiakim. He dared to exert his independence by negotiating an alliance with the Egyptians. That brought on the full fury of his Babylonian overlords which ended in the siege and fall of Jerusalem (2 Kings 25:1-21; Jer. 39:1-10; 52:1-30). Zedekiah's sons were slain before his eyes and he himself was then blinded and taken away in fetters to Babylon.
Note the strong similarity of this passage with Psalm 1 whose author may well have taken his inspiration from here. The issue at stake for Jeremiah was, of course, whether Zedekiah would trust in his human alliances or in Israel's God. Chapters 32-43 also give some of the background events which engulfed the nation and resulted in the Babylonian exile, the imprisonment of Jeremiah and his abduction to Egypt.
Vs. 9 is a proverb which could stand alone having no relation to what precedes or follows it. Scholars debate whether it is from Jeremiah himself or from a later Wisdom writer. Another scholar has suggested that vs. 10 is God's response to the proverb and together vss. 9-10 introduce the lament in vss.14-18. As such, they are true to Jeremiah's predicament as a prophet dedicated to his divinely appointed, but totally ignored, mission to his nation in calamitous times.
PSALM 1. More an introduction to the Book of Psalms, this psalm portrays the kind of person who uses the whole collection as a spiritual handbook. It may well have been written especially for this purpose after a pious editor had copied by hand and edited all the psalms that follow it.
The religious environment encapsulated here is that of the time when the influence of Ezra was manifest in the nation being regarded as a religious community, "the congregation of the righteous" in vs. 5. Best guesses by most scholars place it in the Greek period toward the end of the 3rd century BC.
The two sections of the psalm contrast the character and destiny of the righteous (vss. 1-3) and the wicked (vss. 4-6). For the former, blessings and rewards abound; but for the latter, they are judged and disappear. Vivid metaphors in vs. 3, "trees planted by streams of water," and vs. 4, "chaff that the wind drives away," come straight out of Israel's rural environment. Flowing streams are treasured rarities and the wind is used to winnow grain at harvest time. The moral of the prose-poem is contained in vs. 6: the destiny of both the righteous and the wicked is under constant scrutiny by God.
1 CORINTHIANS 15:12-20. Here Paul begins his remarkable proclamation of what the resurrection of Jesus means for him as he proclaimed it, not only in Corinth, but on all on his missionary journeys. Several important points need to be made in discussing the passage:
1) The resurrection of Jesus came about due to God's action on the dead body of Jesus. Contrary to the KJV and other English versions, the Greek verb *‚geiro* (= to raise) is used in the perfect tense six times in nine verses. It is an active verb, not passive. Paul did not believe that Jesus "rose" from the dead, but that God "had raised" him. As one expositor put it, "Nothing depends on the nature of man (sic); all depends on the nature of God." (*The Interpreter's Bible,* vol. 10, p. 233)
2) For Paul, this was the heart of the gospel. If the resurrection did not happen, then all else fails: the apostolic preaching, Jesus' divine messiahship, the forgiveness of sin and a new life, the promise of God's final victory over human sin and death. In short, the dead are dead, Jesus Christ included - "dust to dust, ashes to ashes;" hoping for something more, perhaps; but without any assurance whatsoever.
3) Paul was responding to yet another serious conflict within the Corinthian community about this basic element of the faith. A faction did exist which denied the resurrection (vs. 12). We can only speculate who they were. Some Jews and some Gentiles had serious doubts about life beyond death, let alone resurrection of the dead. Having been a Pharisee prior to his conversion, Paul undoubtedly did believe in resurrection. This may explain some of the vigour with which Paul counters the disbelief he encountered in Corinth. Was Paul making a special point for the benefit
of Jews in the last sentence of this passage?
4) Paul's triumphant cry in v. 20, "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died," comes out of the depths of his Jewish heritage. He used the word *apark‚* which technically meant the beginning of a sacrifice, referring to the ancient Festival of Weeks when the first fruits of the annual barley harvest were offered as a sacrifice. But by Paul's time and especially among the Hellenistic Jews of the Diaspora, this festival was also known by its Greek name, Pentecost. For the apostolic church, that was the occasion for the gift of the Spirit.
On that day, the full meaning and power of Jesus' resurrection as an absolutely unprecedented spiritual event became clear to the gathered community of disciples and their mission to proclaim the good news of Christ's resurrection began.
5) Since New Testament times, the whole passage has brought much comfort to those confronting their own death or the death of loved ones. It needs to be studied intensively by those who doubt that there is life beyond death.
On the other hand, there are many today who find it quite impossible to hold to any view of the physical resurrection of Jesus. In recent years, a lively debate was carried on the Internet between retired Bishop John Selby Spong and several other scholars (*Search for Jesus: A Provocative Look at Who He Was and What He Did*). Spong has written strongly worded arguments contradicting the traditional doctrine of a bodily resurrection. Naturally this has caused strong reaction from a number of others, more conservative voices.
Spong claims that the traditional view - especially its "legendary aspects are no longer viewed as literally true in the academic world of biblical scholarship." He further argues that we cannot make sense out of the meaning of Easter if we have to defend a literal interpretation of the event. He bases this claim on the passage of time between the Easter event itself and the writing of the three major descriptions of it in the first, third and fourth Gospels. "They are not original to the story and therefore should not be thought of as either literally true or as descriptively accurate," Spong believes.
He goes onto asset that that there was "something powerful and life-changing about the Easter experience that the earliest Christians could not deny. Whatever Easter was originally, it appears to have broken open the human sense of being bound by finitude and death. It seems to have captured people inside a sense of transcendence that was not bound by time. It removed the barriers impeding human consciousness, and it emerged in the startling realization that a life-changing power was connected in an intimate way with Jesus. That is the reality that cries out to be explored."
Those who experienced whatever did happen were unable to "describe something ultimately beyond the limits of their humanity, but which had, they believed, embraced their humanity." They came to realize that life was more powerful than death, that love was more powerful than hatred, and that being was more powerful than non-being." The secret to understanding this discovery is to examine the effects that occurred in the lives of those who claimed this experience.
"Something happened that caused Jewish disciples, taught their whole lives that God was wholly other and that this God could never be captured in finite words or symbols, to claim that Jesus was part of what they believed God to be. From that moment on, the way these people thought of either God or human life would never be the same.
"That Easter experience caused people to say that Jesus must now be seen as part of who or what God is. God had, in effect, left the sky and was now found in the self-giving love of Jesus, in whom a new depth to human life was also revealed. That was a profound revolution in human thinking. From that moment on, they were convinced God could be encountered in human form as life, love, and being. So they said that Jesus had entered the fullness of life and love whose source is God, and that Jesus had touched the ground of being whose depth is God.
"That was the experience that caused them to say, 'Jesus lives.' That is what created Christianity. It was not apparitions, empty tombs, or resuscitated bodies. It was rather an ecstatic, eye-opening, mind-expanding experience--a pivotal moment when the cloud of unknowing parted and human beings were invited to see, to enter, and to participate in the ultimate reality of life."
Spong's radical re-interpretation of the resurrection of Jesus may or may not be helpful to those who are struggling with their own faith. He would claim that his view is closer to what Paul actually believed, but expressed differently in highly metaphorical language that defines a spiritual rather than a physical resurrection. Whatever position one chooses, one can find lots of spiritual company.
LUKE 6:17-26. Comparing Luke's version of the Beatitudes, and the so-called ‘Sermon on the Plain’ which they introduce, with those found in Matthew 5 can provide an interesting study. A common source, known to scholars as the "Q document," lies behind them; but each author uses them for his own purposes. Luke's includes only four Beatitudes and adds several ‘Woes’ which have no parallel in Matthew. Note too that this sermon was supposedly delivered not to the disciples alone, but to a very mixed audience of Jews and Gentiles, presumably drawn from different economic and social classes of Judean, Galilean and Syrian society (vs. 17).
The late Professor George Caird said this about Luke's sermon: "(It) is a description of the life in the new Israel, which is also life in the kingdom of God. In its fullness the kingdom belongs to the End, when God's purposes are complete, and so throughout the Beatitudes there runs a contrast between the conditions of the present and the conditions of the future. But the good news which Jesus proclaimed was that the kingdom was already breaking in upon the present, so that men could here and now begin to enter into the ultimate blessedness. Thus the Beatitudes were not merely a promise but an invitation." (*The Pelican New Testament Commentaries: St. Luke*
Penguin Books, 1963.)
Caird, generally a more conservative exegete, also doubts that the ‘Woes’ came from Jesus himself, but may have been added as an "inverted form of the Beatitudes ... by the early church by way of commentary."
The recent work of the Jesus Scholars group, *The Complete Gospels,* (edited by Robert J. Miller, Polebridge Press, 1992), gives a different slant to both the Beatitudes and the Woes. The word "Blessed" (Greek = *makarios*) becomes "Congratulations," because it "better expresses the performative language of the Beatitudes, which grant the recipient recognition of good fortune." Similarly, "Woe to you ... " becomes "Damn you ....", giving a more forceful if colloquial meaning to what is essentially a total condemnation of those who seek riches, pleasures and public prestige for their own sake. This change brings the sense of prophetic judgment more effectively to our modern ear.
Such a contrast, however, has to be seen in the light of the "already-not yet" setting of the passage. The subsequent segment of the ‘Sermon on the Plain’ has much to say about how Christians are to deal with earthly possessions and economic circumstances. Reinhold Niebuhr in his prime as a 20th century prophet of social justice felt that during the tragic period of the 1920s and 1930s, and even into the post-World War II era in the 1950s, the dominant preachers of the USA ignored Jesus' re-iteration of this prophetic theme.
This is good package for preaching in the greed-obsessed time in which we are now living. But the preacher who would be prophetic must also be aware of the price to be paid for such boldness.
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