INTRODUCTIONTO THE SCRIPTURE

INTRODUCTIONTO THE SCRIPTURE

Year A - PROPER 18

EXODUS 12:1-14. EXODUS 12:1‑14. In some respects this is the most important passage in the Book of Exodus. It gives details about the celebration of the Passover meal, one of the main festivals of the Jewish tradition. The description we have here, however, comes from the Priestly document dating from the post‑exilic period, not from the time of Moses several hundred years earlier. Accordingly it is considerably coloured by the form of the celebration in the immediate post‑exilic period (after 539 BCE).

PSALM 149. The strains of fervent nationalism ring through this psalm, one of five so‑called "hallelujah psalms" ending the Psalter. No one can accurately determine its origins or early uses, other than as part of this final doxological collection.

EZEKIEL 33:7-11. [Alternate] The prophet Ezekiel had been summoned to be a sentinel to warn the Israelites in exile in Babylon of the life and death issue of repenting and once again being obedient to their ancient covenant with God. He must be faithful to this mission on pain of death himself.

PSALM 119:33-40. [Alternate] In this fifth strophe of the acrostic psalm based on the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, each new couplet begins with the Hebrew letter HE, (pronounced “hay”) fifth in the sequence. Just being obedient to all God’s covenant law is its own reward for the true Israelite.

ROMANS 13:8-14. This brief excerpt continues the theme of personal moral conduct

expected of Christians which had been interrupted by what appears to be an aside about accepting the established imperial government of Rome (13:1‑7). Yet the two segments are closely connected by obligations: taxes and respect in the one instance; love in the other.

MATTHEW 18:15-20. How do Christians settle their conflicts? Was this really a concern of Jesus? Did he really have a fractious set of followers who engaged in no‑holes‑barred confrontations that bordered on physical combat? Or was this little excerpt put into Matthew's Gospel because Matthew needed to say something to the members of his own faith community who from time to time engaged in open conflict?

The passage has become the principle on which congregational disputes are intended to be settled within The United Church of Canada.

A MORE COMPLETE ANLAYSIS

EXODUS 12:1‑14. In some respects this is the most important passage in the Book of Exodus. It gives details about the celebration of the Passover meal, one of the main festivals of the Jewish tradition. The description we have here, however, comes from the Priestly document and dates from the post‑exilic period, not from the time of Moses several hundred years earlier. Accordingly it is considerably coloured by the form of the celebration in the immediate post‑exilic period (after 539 BCE).

The standard formula for a cultic observance in style of the P‑document opens the passage (vs. 1). Moses and Aaron receive a revelation of Yahweh's will on the way the festival is to be celebrated. The designation of the spring as the time of the festival is significant. Until the time of the exile (6th century BCE), the beginning of the year occurred in the autumn, as it does now in the Jewish calendar. Only during and after the exile did the Israelites conform to the Babylonian custom of marking the turn of the year in springtime. In all probability, however, in earliest times the Passover festival originally occurred in spring. Before the Exodus it may have been associated with the shepherding culture of patriarchal times. Exodus 5:1 describes a pre‑exodus festival which had an important place in Israelite culture.

A second feature of the narrative identifies it as a creation of the exilic period. The ceremony takes places only in the home as a family feast and has no association with the temple. Although a later interpretation regarded vs. 6 as a gathering for the priestly slaughter of the paschal lamb, the festival was never fully transformed into a temple ritual and so could be celebrated after the temple was lost. By NT times, however, it had become a pilgrim festival, especially for the Jewish Diaspora. The ritual slaughter of the Passover lamb on the specified date, the 14th of the month then called Nisan, became for Christians the central event associated with the crucifixion of Jesus. This almost certainly had something to do with the early church's interpretation of Isaiah 53 as a messianic prophecy.

These instructions for the festival associate it directly with hasty preparations for the Exodus (vss. 10‑11) as the phrase "the passover of the Lord" indicates. The Hebrew word *pesach* literally means *passing over* or *sparing*. The origin of that word may have been related to a primitive dance in which the participants skipped or limped at certain intervals. That is precisely what Yahweh did in sparing the first‑born Israelites while slaughtering Egyptian children (vs. 12). The sprinkling of the festive victim's blood on the doorpost may also have had a pre‑exilic animist origin in a custom of slaughtering the animal in the dooryard of the family home, then sprinkling its blood to ward off evil spirits.

However the various elements of the festival may have originated, the family ritual associated with its celebration has lasted for thousands of years. It became the memorial of the historical event which shaped the self‑consciousness of Israel as God's chosen people. Thus, it has become not merely a religious rite, mandated by scripture and still practiced by most Jewish families, but a symbol of Jewish identity even more precious after the Holocaust of the 20th century.

PSALM 149. The strains of fervent nationalism ring through this psalm, one of five so‑called "hallelujah psalms" ending the Psalter. No one can accurately determine its origins or early uses, other than as part of this final doxological collection. Whatever the victory it appears to celebrate (vs. 4), its Hebrew vocabulary points to a late post‑exilic date. Some scholars have speculated that it may even date from the Maccabean period (ca. 150 BCE) since it contains phrases found in the Old testament Apochrypal Books of 1 And 2 Maccabees and Judith.

Other scholars have proposed that the song is essentially eschatological, pointing to a day of divine victory when all Yahweh's promises to Israel of deliverance and justice will be fulfilled and all nations which have oppressed the Chosen People will be judged. This does not preclude the possibility that some unknown historical event lies behind it.

Whatever its source, it has been part of Christian hymnody since the mid‑16th century when a metrical version appeared in the Book of Common Prayer and it subsequent editions. A slightly altered 1912 rendition of that hymn has been set to Sir Hubert Parry's magnificent tune *Laudate Dominum* and is now found at #872 in *Voices United* published in 1995 by The United Church of Canada. That version certainly lifts up the eschatological emphasis of the divine purpose to overcome evil, bring justice to the humble and inaugurate God's dominion over all nations to the praise of God's glory.

EZEKIEL 33:7-11. [Alternate] The prophet Ezekiel had been summoned to be a sentinel to warn the Israelites in exile in Babylon of the life and death issue of repenting and once again being obedient to their ancient covenant with God. He must be faithful to this mission on pain of death himself.

The passage is only an excerpt from one of the most important sections of the Book of Ezekiel. The first part of the chapter (33:1-9) deals with the prophet’s responsibility as a watchman. This leads to a more generalized statement on the responsibility of the individual and the fairness of Yahweh’s ways (vss. 10-20). Heretofore in Israel, moral responsibility had been of a tribal nature. This had been extended to the national state. The stories of the patriarchs and the history of the monarchy showed this characteristic. When the tribal leader or monarch transgressed or prospered (cf. Jacob, Joseph, David, Ahab) so did the tribe or nation. By being challenged to be personally accountable for announcing the word of Yahweh, the prophet is accountable for the judgment of the wicked who did not turn from their evil ways. (cf. 3:16-20) This principle of individual accountability becomes the new standard for the judgment of all people.

For us who live in a modern democratic state, the principle of individual moral responsibility has wide currency in law and is imbedded in our culture. Not so in some cultures where tribal customs govern human behaviour. Recently, novelist Salmon Rushdie commented on a troubling case of honour-and-shame injustice which had been reversed when a woman who had been gang raped appealed to the Pakistan Supreme Court. Five men of one tribe had raped this woman from another tribe because she had been seen accompanying a man from their tribe. They were acquitted by a lower court, but the acquittal was overturned when the woman appealed her case rather than follow the customary practice of committing suicide.

Rushdie points out that what seems so disgraceful to us is tragically common in those tribal cultures where women are completely powerless. In India too, tribal custom supported by ultra-conservative theological teaching dictates that a woman must leave her husband if she has been raped by another man, even if the rapist was her father-in-law. Women so ostracized from her marriage and family has little recourse but to take her own life.

This does not prove the superiority of our system. Rather, we need to search diligently for every opportunity to extend to all cultures the principle of individual responsibility as the only way to determine how justice can serve our advancing global culture.

This brief segment of the long mediation on Torah uses several synonyms for the law: statutes, commandments, testimonies, precepts. All of these correspond to what the great prophets regarded as “the word of the Lord.” Throughout the psalm the poet’s favourite words were “precept” and “ways.” These words also appeared quite prominently in the Penteteuch narratives, of which the crowning event was the giving of the Covenant Law at Sinai.

A long poem with such artificial structure and repetitive tone may sound like a monotonous drone to our ears. To the psalmist, the law is nothing less than the truth from God, the rule of life and the ground of hope.

ROMANS 13:8‑14. This brief excerpt continues the theme of personal moral conduct expected of Christians which had been interrupted by what appears to be an aside about accepting the established imperial government of Rome (13:1‑7). Yet the two segments are closely connected by obligations: taxes and respect in the one instance; love in the other.

Does Paul have only fellow Christians in mind in exhorting the Romans to fulfilling the law of love or does he include the wider community too? It would seem to be another case of both/and rather than either/or. Indeed, his summary of the Mosaic law comes straight from the oral tradition which during the next two or three decades gave shape to the synoptic gospels recording Jesus' teaching. (See Mark 12:28‑34, Matt. 22:34‑40 and Luke 10:25‑28.) It is notable how Paul may have received this tradition. In Galatians 1:18‑19, Paul wrote that his first contact with the apostles had been a meeting with Peter and James, the Lord's brother. In Galatians 4:14, written much earlier in his ministry, he made an identical summary of the law. James 2:8 records the same tradition.

Paul then turned his attention to another oral tradition also found in the gospels, the anticipated eschatological crisis at end of time. William Barclay wrote that "like so many great men, Paul was haunted by the shortness of time.... But there always was more to Paul's thought than simply shortness of time. It was the crisis of the world's history which he expected, the Second Coming of Christ." (*Daily Study Bible: The Letter to the Romans*. Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1957.) Thus Paul's thought incorporated both the concept of chronological time (Greek = *chronos*) and decisive opportunity oriented to the fulfilment of God's purpose (Greek = *chairos*).

Like all New Testament authors, Paul again drew on the remembered tradition of Jesus' own teachings, but also fully accepted the much longer tradition of Jewish eschatological thought. Conflict with invisible, supernatural powers formed an important aspect of Paul's eschatology. As we see in vss. 11‑14, this had significant implications for the life of Christians in the world. Strong metaphors expressed what he meant: light and darkness, on the one hand, and putting on a new set of garments, on the other (in vs. 12 "armour" and in vs. 14 spiritual clothing in contrast to those of "the flesh."). Specific, common issues of human conduct made his metaphors relevant to real, everyday life (vs. 13). Paul knew all too well how easy it was for the ordinary person to escape into wanton living as a means of avoiding what he saw as the imminent crisis.

Despite our supposedly enlightened skepticism about eschatological crises and anxious pre‑millennial prophecies, Paul insights still have relevance for us as we turn toward the future, as unknown to us as it was to him. Could it not be that the fulfilment of God's purpose is, as Paul said, that all humanity shall "put on Christ the Lord Jesus Christ?

MATTHEW 18:15‑20. How do Christians settle their conflicts? Was this really a concern of Jesus? Did he really have a fractious set of followers who engaged in no‑holes‑barred confrontations that bordered on physical combat? Or was this little pericope put into Matthew's Gospel because Matthew needed to say something to the members of his own faith community who from time to time engaged in open conflict?

Compare this with what Paul said in Romans 12:16 and 13:9‑10. Consider, too, the next little pericope in vss. 21‑22. What a pity that the two are separated by the lectionary. Surely they go together. A professor of homiletics once told his class a midrash story about what lay behind this incident. Peter was actually complaining to Jesus about his kid brother, Andrew, taking his boat out on Galilee without his permission.

It is most unlikely that Jesus spoke of "the church" as quoted in vs. 16. The church did not exist before Pentecost and was not a recognizable institution for many decades after that. In Matthew's time toward the end of the 1st century CE, it was struggling to survive in scattered communities separate from the synagogues out of which it had grown. By the ninth decade the Pharisees had successfully banned Jewish Christians from participating in the synagogue for breaking the sacred laws of the covenant. Could this quarrel have carried over in to the church now consisting of both Jews and perhaps a majority of Gentiles?

On the other hand, Peter did exercise the kind of discipline set forth here (Acts 5:1‑11). Paul, the great founder of mixed congregations in Gentile cities, also wrote of the principle of excommunication (vss. 17‑18 cf. 1 Cor. 5:3‑5, 9‑13; 2 Cor. 13:1‑3). It is likely that the condemnation of the transgressor in vs. 17 came from the later church, as Jesus' own attitude to similar people was quite different. The church through the ages, nonetheless, has latched on to the power of excommunication as its prime means of keeping its members in line. Today, that power is virtually ineffective in disciplining recalcitrant members. When such church fights occur, people usually just go away mad. Conflicts still divide the church, but the only people now banished from exercising their formal functions are clergy who transgress. The passage has become the principle on which congregational disputes are intended to be settled within The United Church of Canada. Sadly, it does notalways work out this way.

The core of the passage, however, is in vss. 19‑20. It is likely that this tradition can be traced to Jesus himself. In fact, it may have come originally from an earlier Jewish saying which found its way into the Mishnah as a commentary on Ps. 1:1. That saying defined the "seat of the scornful" as two Jews together without the words of Torah between them, whereas having the Torah between them, they had the *Shekinah* of Yahweh's presence. This ending to the reading is the better by far as a preaching text.

‑30‑