Recent experiments seem to confirm that the behavior of muons–extremely short-lived subatomic particles related to electrons–does not conform to the expectations of standard physics.  The title of an article in the journal Nature describes one reaction to this find: “Is the standard model broken? Physicists cheer major muon result.”  Indeed, the physicists at Fermilab tweeted, “We’re thrilled to announce that the first results from Fermilab’s Muon g-2 experiment strengthen evidence of new physics!”

This reaction may seem surprising.  After all, the Standard Model has for decades been the foundation of modern physics; scientists have spent their careers teaching, and experimentally validating, its claims about reality.  Why should they celebrate the possible refutation (subject to experimental verification!) of their lives’ work?  The answer is in that Fermilab tweet: these scientists are excited by the prospect of “new physics”–discovering something previously unknown about the way that the world works.

I remember eagerly following the news as the very first high-resolution images of Saturn and its rings came back from Voyager 1 in 1980. One planetary astronomer in particular laughed out loud as he told an interviewer, “We were wrong!  Everything we thought we knew about Saturn and its rings was wrong!”  He was not sad to be wrong at all–nor was he resistant!  He did not claim that the Voyager images must be false, or faked, or misleading.  In fact, he was jubilant at the new science those images revealed–and are still revealing.

I thought of that excitement this past week, as I was chasing down a question from my former student and ministry colleague Kerry Dowdy.  She had shared with me a newsletter celebrating National Unicorn Day (I had not known that there was such a thing!), and asked me what I thought.

The newsletter read in part:

Unicorns Are Mentioned in the Bible   The King James Version of the Old Testament contains nine references to unicorns, thanks to a mistranslation of the Hebrew word re’em.  The original word was likely the Assyrian rimu (auroch), an extinct species of wild ox. 

The relevant passages are Numbers 23:22; 24:8; Deuteronomy 33:17; Job 39:9-10; Psalm 22:21; 29:6; 92:10; and Isaiah 34:7.  You can readily confirm the KJV reading “unicorn” with any KJV concordance, or by searching the KJV on Bible Gateway.  The Hebrew, as the newsletter observes, is re’em (רְאֵם). In each of these nine references, as you can also confirm by checking the link above, most modern translations, including the CEB and the NRSV, read “wild bull” or “wild ox.”  The translation “unicorn” is apparently due to the Greek Septuagint’s rendering monokeros (μονοκερος; that is, “one horn”).  The Latin Vulgate accordingly reads rinoceros (“rhinoceros”) in Numbers 23:22; 24:8; Deuteronomy 33:17, and Job 39:9-10, and unicornis in Isaiah 34:7; Psalm 22:21 (22:22 in Hebrew); 29:6 (28:6 in Greek and Latin texts), and 92:10 (92:11 in Hebrew; 91:11 in Greek and Latin).  I honestly am not at all sure why King James’ translators in 1611 decided to use “unicorn” for all nine, but there we are.

Most Hebrew lexicons, as the newsletter also observes, render re’em as wild bull or ox.  Some suggest that it may refer to the now-extinct (since 1627) aurochs (Bos primigenius), a massive wild bull that was the ancestor of our modern cattle.  Perhaps the Greek translators called the aurochs “one horn”  because Assyrian and Babylonian art typically depicted it in profile (as on the Ishtar Gate).

So, why did this delightful unicorn hunt, through ancient texts and images, remind me of the muon experiment?  In the course of my online searching, I found this page in Kenneth Ham’s Answers in Genesis.  The headline says it all: “To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demean God’s Word, which is true in every detail.”  To be sure, that page covers much of the same ground that I cover above–although it also suggests a variety of extinct one-horned beasts for the biblical re’em.

But the approach of Answers in Genesis is diametrically opposed to the open attitude of discovery exemplified by the physicists responding to the Fermilab muon experiments, or the astronomers responding to the first images of Saturn’s rings.  The assumption of this article, from its beginning, is that unicorns have to be real because they are in the Bible: that is, that what we hold to be true from our interpretation of Scripture must be correct, whatever the evidence says.  This approach condemns the reader to a stagnant faith, unable to accept the possibility that our reading (or in this case, our translation) may be wrong–and accordingly, unable to learn anything authentically new.  By contrast, Hebrews 4:12 says of Scripture,

God’s word is living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point that it separates the soul from the spirit and the joints from the marrow. It’s able to judge the heart’s thoughts and intentions.

Certainly, this is the way that Jesus reads Scripture in Matthew 5:21-48: not as a dead, static word, but as living!  Six times in this passage, Jesus says, “You have heard it said,” quotes a passage from the Scriptures, and then declares, “but I say.”  Jesus places his own words on a par with Scripture—and not just any Scripture, but the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, still central to Jewish faith and identity) and even the words of the Ten Commandments!

In part, this is what it means to speak of Jesus coming to fulfill the law and the prophets: he is himself the Word of God, made flesh (John 1:14).  But Christian readers should not be too quick to conclude that Jesus sets the Torah aside: after all, Jesus said, “I say to you very seriously that as long as heaven and earth exist, neither the smallest letter nor even the smallest stroke of a pen will be erased from the Law until everything there becomes a reality” (Matthew 5:18).  Jesus’ reading of Scripture is faithful to the tradition, not contemptuous of it.  However, Jesus reads these texts for what they mean, within the whole body of Scripture—not merely for what they say.

For example: the Ten Commandments say, “Do not kill” (see Exodus 20:13).  But that does not mean that any act of violence short of murder is fine.  Jesus knows that violence begins in the heart, in the attitude that demeans and dehumanizes the other.

Words of contempt issuing from such a heart not only lead all too readily to acts of violence, they are themselves already acts of violence.  Rather than narrowing the text to the letter of the law, Jesus’ reading broadens and deepens the text, seeking its spirit.

So too, though the commandment says only, “Do not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14) this surely does not mean that anything short of adultery is okay!  Adultery too begins in the heart, with the lustful attitude that reduces the other to an object for my own gratification.

Like violence, then, adultery begins by denying the humanity of the other—by refusing empathy.  By reading the Bible this way, not narrowing and restricting the texts but broadening and deepening them, Jesus reads like the rabbis before and after him.

On the other hand, the Torah permits divorce.  Deuteronomy 24:1-4 states that if a man finds “something inappropriate about her” (Deut 24:1 NRSV; the Hebrew is ‘erwah dabar, that is “a shameful thing”), he may divorce his wife.  The rabbis debate what “something inappropriate” means.  For example, Rabbi Shammai concludes that ‘erwah dabar means adultery, while Rabbi Hillel says, “If she burns the meat in the pan, you may divorce her.”  Still, all the rabbis accept the legitimacy of divorce.

But Jesus thinks differently.  In first-century Palestine, women could not own property.  Divorced women could then be left homeless and hungry, unable to care for themselves or for their children.  Jesus recognizes that what is permissible is not necessarily good—let alone God’s best.  He therefore rejects divorce, except (like his near-contemporary Rabbi Shammai) when the relationship is already broken by unfaithfulness.

What does this mean for our own time?  Does Jesus’ rejection of divorce and remarriage hold for us today?  My own denomination, the United Methodist Church, recognizes divorce, and permits clergy to perform marriages for divorced persons.  Is this wrong? I have many dear friends and members of my family who are divorced and have remarried; some are pastors themselves.  Should I tell them that their marriages are invalid, or their children are illegitimate?

I don’t think so. Why should we read the Gospels narrowly and legalistically, when Jesus did not read his Bible in that way?  If we want to read as Jesus read, we must look for how best to live out Jesus’ affirmation of faithfulness and commitment in marriage in our own context, rather than applying to his own words a legalism that Jesus rejects.

Jesus approaches each specific text of the Bible in the light of the highest ideals upheld in the whole of Scripture, seeking God’s intention and desire.  Unlike Answers in Genesis, Jesus does not take the Bible literally.  He takes the Bible seriously—and so must we.  I suggest, friends, that we approach Scripture like those physicists responding to the unexpected results of Fermilab’s muon experiments: not assuming that we already know what the answers must be, but ready to learn, from the text and from the Holy Spirit, something new.

In the early church, when believers met one another in this holy season, they would greet one another with a hearty and enthusiastic Christe anesti–“Christ is risen!”–to which the only possible response is Allthos anesti–“He is risen indeed!”

This poem by one of my favorite poets, e.e. cummings,  catches for me the exuberant joy of this Easter day:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

May this Easter find you overwhelmed with joy “for most this amazing” gift of life, from “most this amazing” God!  Brothers, sisters, friends, Christ is risen!

The alternate Old Testament reading for Holy Saturday is Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24:

This odd passage–beginning in despair (“He drove me away, forced me to walk in darkness, not light”), yet ending in hope (“The Lord is my portion! Therefore, I’ll wait for him”)–is perfectly appropriate for this odd, in-between day in the church calendar, bridging the sorrow of Good Friday and the rejoicing of Easter Sunday.

Early Christians wondered what Jesus was doing on this day between death and resurrection. 1 Peter 3:18-20 declares,

Christ himself suffered on account of sins, once for all, the righteous one on behalf of the unrighteous. He did this in order to bring you into the presence of God. Christ was put to death as a human, but made alive by the Spirit. And it was by the Spirit that he went to preach to the spirits in prison. In the past, these spirits were disobedient—when God patiently waited during the time of Noah. Noah built an ark in which a few (that is, eight) lives were rescued through water.

The idea that after his death Jesus proclaimed the Gospel to souls in the underworld (see also 1 Peter 4:6) led in turn to the tradition of the harrowing of Hell: the notion that the risen Christ triumphantly descended to the underworld to deliver into heaven the righteous who had died before his coming.

By around the eighth century, this confession was incorporated into the Apostles Creed; most Christians today recite the phrase “He descended into hell” or “He descended to the dead” as part of the Creed (although many United Methodists stick with the older form). Whatever we may think of this confession, it recognizes that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection transform all space and time, bringing salvation not only to those of us who live on this side of Easter, but to all the generations who lived before.

Pope Francis has said of Holy Saturday:

The day of God’s silence–invites us not only to solidarity with all who are abandoned and alone, but also to trust in that faithful love which turns death into life.

We, of course, know this in-between place well: this Holy Saturday zone of ambiguity and unresolved tension. Many of us feel trapped in just such a place of uncertainty. May Christ’s victorious life bring possibility even into these shadow lands, and give us hope that we will be delivered into his marvelous light.

AFTERWORD:

The Revised Common Lectionary Prayers include this prayer for Holy Saturday:

Christ our God,
your love is poured out in death for our sakes.
Hold us in your embrace
as we wait for Easter’s dawn.
Comfort us with the promise that no power on earth, not even death itself,
can separate us from your love;
and strengthen us to wait
until you are revealed to us
in all your risen glory. Amen

FOREWORD:  I am reposting this blog from 2018, on the meaning of the shout, “Hosanna!”  Have a blessed Holy Week, and a joyfilled, triumphant Easter!

In “The Princess Bride,” one of my favorite films, a continuing shtick involves Wallace Shawn’s character, Vazzini, who uses the word  “Inconceivable!” over and over again.  Eventually, this prompts Vazzini’s henchman, Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin), to say, “You keep using that word.  I do not think that it means what you think it means.”

Sometimes, we use words without thinking what they mean, just because they seem to fit a context: think of how astonished we are when we say, “How are you?,” and someone actually starts to tell us!  We didn’t mean, really, “Tell me how you are.”  All we meant was, “I see you there, I recognize and acknowledge you, and now I am off to do something  else.”

Or consider the word “Hosanna.”   Hosanna is a church word, like “amen” and “Alleluia”—in fact, I would bet that you have never used or heard that word outside of a church.  Hosanna pops up in hymns, particularly the Palm Sunday standards, and in prayers–particularly in the Great Thanksgiving, every time we celebrate communion:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
      heaven and earth are full of your glory.
     Hosanna in the highest.
     Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
     Hosanna in the highest.

In the gospel lesson for Palm Sunday this year, the shout seems to be taken up spontaneously by the crowd as a parade takes shape, and word spreads that the one on the donkey is David’s descendant, who has come to Jerusalem to claim a throne. They use Hosanna as a festival shout–the way we might cheer at a ball game:

Those in front of him and those following were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessings on the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mark 11:9-10).

But unlike “Yahoo!” or “Hurray!” in English, “Hosanna” is a real word in Hebrew.  It comes from Psalm 118—part of the Hallel (Pss 113—118). These psalms are sung in Jewish festivals, particularly at Pesach, or Passover: the feast that brought these crowds on pilgrimage from across the Roman world to Jerusalem.  The first two psalms in the Hallel are sung before the Passover meal, and the last four are sung after.

Just as around Christmastime, “Jingle Bells” is everywhere–in our ears and in the air!–the Hallel would have been in the air, for any Jewish community, surrounding Pesach.  Little wonder the words of the Hallel come so readily to the lips of the crowd.

To be more specific, “Hosanna” comes from Psalm 118:25, which in Hebrew reads

‘ana’ YHWH hoshi’ah na’

‘ana’ YHWH hatslikhah na’.  

Though the Hallel would have been learned, and sung, in Hebrew, most ordinary Judeans didn’t actually speak Hebrew: in Jesus’ day, the everyday language of Palestinian Jews would have been Aramaic.  So, while the crowds know the words to the song, they don’t necessarily know what they mean. So, while they shout “Hosannah!” as though it meant “Hurray!,” what it really means is “Save us, please!”  The CEB translates this verse,

Lord, please save us!
    Lord, please let us succeed!

Whether the crowd knows it or not, then, they are calling to Jesus for help.

Do they need help? Indeed, they do!  In Jesus’ time, Judea was under the heel of Roman military occupation.  Taxes were high, prices were high, and popular unrest was high—which is probably why the crowds were spoiling for a fight, just waiting for someone to lead them.  This ferment would explode into disastrous revolts against Rome that will result, first, in the destruction of the temple, and then, in the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem itself for generations.

But that is not why Jesus has come to Jerusalem.  We know the story that unfolds in this next week very well.  Jesus has come, not to claim a throne, but to take a stand against the religious and political establishments that will result in his execution.  He has come to suffer, and to die.

From the first, Christians have confessed that somehow, all of our suffering and death is caught up in Jesus’ suffering and death.  Jesus will die for us—communicating at once the depth of human sin and depravity, and the extent of God’s love for us.

It is well, then, that we should shout “Hosanna,” friends–“Save us, please!”  For Jesus has come to save, not just those ignorant crowds at the gate, who were crying for help but didn’t know it, but you, and me, and all of us, for all of time.

Friend, whatever your need is this day, in this Holy Week, whatever your sorrow, whatever your pain, you are not alone!  Christ has come to be with you right where you are, in the center of your darkness– to bring you home.  We can join the Palm Sunday crowds, and call, not in ignorance but in earnest, “Hosanna”–“Save  us, Lord!”—knowing that Christ will answer.

FOREWORD:  This week, in keeping with my duties, obligations, and privileges as the World’s Biggest Leprechaun, I am reposting this blog entry in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.  Beannachtai Na Feile Padraig Oraibh, friends–May the blessing of St. Patrick’s Day be upon you!

Wednesday March 17, is the feast of Saint Pádraig–better known as Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.  The saint was likely born in the late fourth century; according to Saint Fiacc’s “Hymn of Saint Patrick,” he was the son of a Briton named Calpurnius.  Patrick was just sixteen when he was kidnapped from the family estate, along with many others, by Irish raiders.  He would be a slave in Ireland for six years.

Once he was free, Patrick studied for the priesthood under Saint Germanus of Auxerre, in the southern part of Gaul.  Saint Germanus took his pupil to Britain to save that country from Pelagianism: together they travelled through Britain convincing people to turn to God from heresy, and throwing out false priests (some say that this is the source of the legend that Patrick drove the “snakes” out of Ireland!).

Despite his experience of hardship and abuse as a slave, Patrick longed to return to Ireland.  He told his teacher that he had often heard the voice of the Irish children calling to him, “Come, Holy Patrick, and make us saved.” But Patrick had to wait until he was sixty years old before Pope Celestine at last consecrated him as Bishop to Ireland.  At the moment of Patrick’s consecration, legend says, the Pope also heard the voices of the Irish children!

That year, Easter coincided with the “feast of Tara,” or Beltane–still celebrated today by kindling bonfires. No fire was supposed to be lit that night until the Druid’s fire had been kindled.  But Saint Patrick lit the Easter fire first.  Laoghaire, high king of Ireland, warned that if that fire were not stamped out, it would never afterward be extinguished in Erin.

King Laoghaire invited the Bishop and his companions to his castle at Tara the next day–after posting soldiers along the road, to assassinate them!  But, according to The Tripartite Life, on his way from Slane to Tara that Easter Sunday, Patrick was reciting his Breastplate prayer (a masterpiece of Celtic spirituality, which has, not at all surprisingly, been set to music many, many times; the links in this blog will take you to a few of these).  As the saint prayed,

A cloak of darkness went over them so that not a man of them appeared. Howbeit, the enemy who were waiting to ambush them, saw eight deer going past them…. That was Saint Patrick with his eight…

Therefore, “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” is also called the “Deer’s Cry.”

As the legend of the Deer’s Cry demonstrates, Celtic spirituality is linked closely to nature.  St. Patrick’s teaching embraced God’s presence manifest in God’s creation.  Even the tradition that Patrick used the shamrock to teach the Trinity connects God’s revelation to the natural world.  This is particularly evident, however, in the Breastplate prayer:

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven:

Light of sun,

Radiance of moon,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of wind,

Depth of sea,

Stability of earth,

Firmness of rock.

Patrick embraces a joyful spirituality of nature, wherein a simple herb expresses the mystery of God’s nature, the vibrancy and constancy of wind and water and stone and tree witness to God’s presence and power, and the line between the human world and the animal world, between people and deer, can blur and vanish.  This St. Patrick’s Day, may we too seek God first, and so find fulfillment for ourselves and for God’s world.

Oh, and–Erin go bragh!

AFTERWORD

Here is the complete traditional text of the “Breastplate of St. Patrick.”

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through the belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness

Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism,

Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,

Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,

Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today

Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,

In obedience of angels,

In the service of archangels,

In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,

In prayers of patriarchs,

In predictions of prophets,

In preaching of apostles,

In faith of confessors,

In innocence of holy virgins,

In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven:

Light of sun,

Radiance of moon,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of wind,

Depth of sea,

Stability of earth,

Firmness of rock.

I arise today

Through God’s strength to pilot me:

God’s might to uphold me,

God’s wisdom to guide me,

God’s eye to look before me,

God’s ear to hear me,

God’s word to speak for me,

God’s hand to guard me,

God’s way to lie before me,

God’s shield to protect me,

God’s host to save me

From snares of devils,

From temptations of vices,

From everyone who shall wish me ill,

Afar and anear,

Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,

Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,

Against incantations of false prophets,

Against black laws of pagandom

Against false laws of heretics,

Against craft of idolatry,

Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,

Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.

Christ to shield me today

Against poison, against burning,

Against drowning, against wounding,

So that there may come to me abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness,

Of the Creator of Creation.

Sunday’s Gospel features John 3:16–perhaps the most memorized and quoted passage in Scripture.  I learned it myself in the King James:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 3:16 has embedded itself so deeply in our culture that it can be held aloft at sporting events, posted on billboards and bumperstickers, worn on tee-shirts, and even flaunted in tattoos!  Perhaps more than any other passage, it is the cornerstone of Evangelical Christian faith: if you believe in Jesus, then you will be saved.

But what does it mean to “believe in” Jesus?  In the Greek, the verb used in this verse is pisteuo, the verbal correspondent to the noun pistos, “faith”–so it would be better rendered as “have faith.”  According to nineteenth-century Bible scholar Joseph Henry Thayer, pisteuo expresses “the conviction and trust to which a man is impelled by a certain inner and higher prerogative and law of his soul.”  Having faith in Jesus means committing myself to Jesus; it means trusting that, in Jesus, God’s love for the world–and for me–is made manifest. However, most English translators follow the KJV here in translating the verb as “believe.”

We may wonder what difference this makes: after all, aren’t “belief” and “faith” the same thing?  But I am persuaded that they are not–and indeed, that confusing “belief” with “faith” has done considerable harm in American Christianity. “Belief” is intellectual assent to a concept: “I  believe it is going to be a sunny day.”  We use “belief” in that everyday sort of way when we lack the evidence for certitude, and are fairly, but not absolutely, sure of what is going to happen–after all, the sun is shining now, but it may yet cloud up and rain!

But as used in many Christian circles, “belief” instead conveys an absolute certainly, despite the lack of evidence, or even in the face of conflicting evidence.  Indeed, believing without evidence, or against the evidence, is seen as evidence of a strong faith.  Forgetting that Jesus himself did not condemn Thomas’ desire for evidence, such Christians find sanction in John 20:29: “Do you believe because you see me? Happy are those who don’t see and yet believe.”

Church historian Diana Butler Bass observes a similar misunderstanding in the Christian creeds.  The Latin verb credo, from which we get our word “creed,” doesn’t mean“I believe,” but rather, she notes, “I set my heart upon.” The difference is “a shift from information about to experience of”–that is, from belief to faith!  Indeed, in her revolutionary book Christianity After Religion,  Bass writes:

A great modern heresy of the Church is the heresy of believing. Christianity was never intended to be a system or structure of belief in the modern sense; it originated as a disposition of the heart.

Confusing faith with belief has made many Christians suspicious of other sources of knowledge–and of science in particular.  So, regarding the vaccines now available for combatting the COVID-19 pandemic, only 54% of white Evangelicals say that they will probably get the vaccination, while 45% say they will not: the worst record among any religious group surveyed.  John Fea, a U.S. historian at Messiah University, was unsurprised:

“There’s a long history of anti-science within American evangelicalism,” Fea said. “It goes back to the Scopes trial and evolution in the 1920s,” in which evangelicals debated Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Also disturbing is the susceptibility of such Christians to conspiracy theories–which one is also required to accept “on faith.”  In a recent survey conducted by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center, one statement to which participants were asked to respond was, “Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites”–a bizarre idea that is a central claim of QAnon.  Among those who regarded that statement as mostly or completely true, 27% were white Evangelicals.  Ed Stetzer, an evangelical pastor and executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, sadly observes

“People of faith believe there is a divine plan — that there are forces of good and forces of evil at work in the world.  QAnon is a train that runs on the tracks that religion has already put in place.”

Perhaps the best way to derail that train is to uncouple “faith” and “belief.”

The best way into an authentic biblical understanding of faith is through the prophet Habakkuk, who speaks out of the doubt, fear and anxiety prompted by the rise of Babylonian imperial power in sixth century Judah.   Habakkuk 2:4–one of the primary texts Paul cites for his doctrine of justification by grace through faith (see Rom 1:17 and Gal 3:11)–expresses how the righteous are to live in such perilous times:

Look at the proud!
    Their spirit is not right in them,
    but the righteous live by their faith (Hab 2:4, NRSV)

The Hebrew word ‘emunah (rendered “faith” in the NRSV) typically has to do with steadfastness, trustworthiness, and reliability.  Habakkuk contrasts the righteous one (Hebrew tsaddiq) and the one who is not righteous, but is instead “puffed up” and proud.  The righteous “live by their [changed in the NRSV for reasons of inclusivity; the Hebrew reads “his”] faith” (Hebrew be’emunato yikhyeh). If “his” refers, as seems simplest, to the righteous one, then “his faith” refers to the steadfastness, trustworthiness, and reliability of the righteous: in a word, to their commitment. The Jewish Publication Society’s English translation of the Hebrew reads, “the righteous man is rewarded with life for his fidelity.”

Unlike the wicked, who are concerned only for themselves, the righteous live lives of commitment and devotion to God and to God’s torah (that is, God’s instruction, or law).   Habakkuk 2:5 and the woes that follow in 2:6-20 serve by contrast to describe the selfish, arrogant lifestyle of the wicked, and so to legitimate God’s judgment upon them.  This verse is not about what the righteous believe about God, but about their commitment to God.

Our oldest references to the book of Habakkuk come from the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls–indeed, from one of the first scrolls found, in what is now called Cave 1.  It is a Bible study (in Aramaic, a pesher) called 1QpHab, interpreting Habakkuk as a prophecy concerning the Essene community at Qumran.   The portion dealing with our passage from Habakkuk (1QpHab 8:1-3) says that Hab 2:4 “concerns all in the house of Judah who observe the torah, who God has removed from the house of judgment on account of their hard labor and their faithfulness to the Teacher of Righteousness.”  This early Jewish community understood our passage to be about faith, not belief.

The Septuagint (the Jewish Scriptures in Greek translation) of Hab 2:4 has pisteos mou “my [God’s] faith,” rather than “his faith.”  This may reflect a common scribal error (the third person and first person pronominal endings are often confused), but it is also possible that the translators are interpreting the text here, refocusing the verse upon God’s faithfulness.  Still, the Greek captures the point we have been making: in contrast to the self-righteous, who are self-centered and proud, the truly righteous are characterized by their devotion to God.

Paul cites Hab 2:4 twice, in Galatians 3:11 and in Romans 1:17.   In Galatians, Paul argues that God’s promise to Abraham is not restricted to Abraham’s physical descendants, but rather applies to all, Jew and Gentile alike, who like Abraham believe God’s word (Gal 3:6-14). In that connection, Paul asserts, “But since no one is made righteous by the Law as far as God is concerned, it is clear that the righteous one will live on the basis of faith” (Gal 3:11).

Similarly, Paul cites our passage from Habakkuk in Romans 1:17 as part of his larger argument for the commonality of Jew and Gentile before God: first in condemnation, and then in salvation through Christ (see Rom 2:9-29; 3:21-26). Paul declares, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation to all who have faith in God, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16). To demonstrate this truth, Paul cites Hab 2:4b: “God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith, as it is written, The righteous person will live by faith” (Rom 1:17). Paul’s point, in both Galatians and Romans, is the inclusion of the Gentiles, not (as is sometimes claimed) the exclusion of the Jews (see Rom 11:13-26) or the rejection of the law (see Gal 3:19-29).

Intriguingly, Paul’s citations of Hab 2:4b do not follow either the Hebrew (“his faith”) or the Greek (“my faith”) text!  James Dunn sees Paul as charting a middle course between them, embracing both (James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1—8 Word Bible Commentary 38A [Dallas: Word, 1988], 45).  Referring back to Rom 1:17, where God’s righteousness is revealed “from faithfulness to faith,” Dunn sees the Habakkuk citation as referring to faith in both senses:

He who is maintained within or has been brought into the relationship with God which brings about salvation, by the outreach of God’s faithfulness to his own faith, shall experience the fullness of life which God intended for humankind as he lives in the dependence of faith on the continuing faithfulness of God (Dunn 1988, 48).

Like Dunn, Richard Hays proposes that Paul’s citation is purposefully ambiguous, but in a different sense. As Paul uses it in Gal 3:11, the phrase from Hab 2:4 means:

• The Messiah [i.e., the Righteous One] will live by (his own) faith(fullness).
• The righteous person will live as a result of the Messiah’s faith(fullness).
• The righteous person will live by (his own) faith in the Messiah (Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11, Second Ed [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002], 140).

The second option is of greatest interest for Hayes, who argues that “for Paul the obedience and faithfulness of Jesus Christ are of central soteriological significance. . . Jesus’ faith is not merely exemplary, as in nineteenth-century liberal theology, but vicariously efficacious” (Hays 2002, 210). In any case, Paul’s citation of Habakkuk intends all three: “Paul’s thought is rendered wholly intelligible only if all three of these interpretations are held together and affirmed as correct” (Hays 2002, 140).

In the deepest sense, what Paul affirms in his use of Hab 2:4b is not unlike what the authoritative compendium of rabbinic teaching, the Talmud, affirms about this same verse.  In b. Makkot 23b-24a,  Rabbi Simlai teaches that though there are 613 commandments in Torah, they are condensed into eleven by David (Ps 15), into six by Isaiah (Isa 33:15-16), into three by Micah (Mic 6:8); into two in Isaiah 56:1, and into one in Amos 5:4 (“The LORD proclaims to the house of Israel: Seek me and live”) and in Habakkuk 2:4–“the righteous live by their faith”!  In the claim that all of the commandments in Torah find their heart in our passage and in Amos 5:4, Rabbi Simlai, like Paul, affirms that a dynamic, committed relationship with the God must come first and remain foremost in our lives.  Salvation does not come through, like the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, “believing six impossible things before breakfast.”  It comes through faith: through commitment to God and trust in God’s love for us, demonstrated and made accessible in Jesus Christ.

How many commandments are there?  That’s an easy one–ten, right?  This Sunday’s Hebrew Bible reading is Exodus 20:1-17, the Ten Commandments.  The Hebrew Bible refers to this passage three times (Exod 34:28; Deut 4:13; 10:4) as ‘asheret haddebarim: that is, “the ten words.”

Growing up, I learned the Ten Commandments as they are presented (from the KJV of the Exodus passage) and numbered here, in this photograph of the old commandment boards from the original Anglican Church (built 1752-3) of Trinity-on-the-Green, New Haven, CT (photographed by John Wallace).

But, as it turns out, not all faith traditions count to ten in the same way!  Depending on how–and where–we count, we may come up with a different numbering of the ten (or eleven!) commandments.

In Judaism, the first “commandment” really doesn’t seem to be a commandment at all.  This stained-glass window from the Plymouth Synagogue (built in 1762, it is the oldest synagogue in England; indeed in the English-speaking world) shows that the first commandment begins ‘Anoki Yhwh: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod 20:2; Deut 5:6).  That makes the second commandment the one that, as a young United Methodist, I learned to call the first: “You must have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:3; Deut 5:7)–in Hebrew, Lo’ yihyeh-leka ‘elohim ‘akherim ‘al-penay.

Recall, though, that the Hebrew expression for this passage, ‘asheret haddebarim, actually means not “the Ten Commandments,” but  “the ten words.” Similarly, “Decalogue,” a title often used for this text, means literally “ten words.”  In the first of these “words,” God introduces Godself, by name, as Israel’s deliverer.  In Hebrew, God’s name is YHWH.  Pious Jews, out of respect for the Name (see Exod 20:7; Deut 5:11), do not attempt to pronounce it, but simply say “Adonai,” or “My Lord;” most English translations accordingly render YHWH as LORD in all capital letters.  In Judaism, God’s self-identification becomes very appropriately the first “word,” on which all of the words that follow depend.

Another difficulty with numbering and listing the Ten Commandments is that they are recorded twice in our Bibles: not only in Exodus 20:1-17, but also in Deuteronomy 5:1-21.   Indeed, one reason that the fifth book in our Bibles is called “Deuteronomy” (“second law” in Greek) is that this second account of the commandments is found there.

While the two versions of the Decalogue are over broad swaths identical, there are differences.  For example, the priestly Decalogue in Exodus 20 says that we are to “Remember [Hebrew zakor] the Sabbath day and treat it as holy. . . .  Because the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day” (Exod 20:8-11; see the priestly account of creation in Gen 1:1–2:4a).  But the Deuteronomic version reads, “Keep [Hebrew shamor] the Sabbath day and treat it as holy . . . Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, but the Lord your God brought you out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. That’s why the Lord your God commands you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut 5:12-15).

Which version of the Ten Commandments we are reading makes a particular difference in the meaning, and possibly in the numbering, of the last commandment.  In the priestly Decalogue,  Exodus 20:17 (which many of us learned as the tenth commandment) states,

Do not desire and try to take your neighbor’s house. Do not desire and try to take your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox, donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.  

Here, your (explicitly male) neighbor’s house–that is, all that he owns–is placed first, followed by a list of its contents.  His wife, like his slaves, his domestic animals, and everything else included in his house “belongs to your neighbor,” and his ownership is to be respected: the same verb (khamad) is used both times in this verse (the NRSV, like the KJV, simply has “covet”).  Other texts–most notably, the priestly account of creation to which the Sabbath command alludes (Gen 1:27)–challenge this idea, but in the priestly Decalogue, women are property.

However, Deuteronomy 5:21 reads:

Do not desire and try to take your neighbor’s wife.

Do not crave your neighbor’s house, field, male or female servant, ox, donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.

The change in the order here, the break in the middle of the verse, and the different verbs used with regard to the neighbor’s wife (Hebrew khamad) and the neighbor’s property (Hebrew ‘awah) are all accurately rendered features of the Hebrew text.  The perspective is still masculine.  But Deuteronomy puts the neighbor’s wife first, and makes a clear distinction between her and the neighbor’s house.  Women are not property, here!

Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches, following the version of the Decalogue in Deuteronomy 5, appropriately regard coveting a neighbor’s wife and coveting a neighbor’s property as two different commandments: the ninth and the tenth, respectively.  They avoid having eleven commandments by, with Jewish tradition, reading the prohibition of idols (Exod 20:4-6; Deut 5:8-10, which I learned to count as the second commandment) as part of the command to have no other gods (commandment number one in my Sunday School class–but, remember, the second of the ten words in the synagogue).

The differences in the ways that we count to ten are more than ecclesiastical curiosities.  They remind us of how much our traditions have to learn from one another, and lead us deeper into reflection on this most numbingly familiar of biblical passages–reminding us that the Bible never loses its capacity to surprise and challenge us.

FOREWORD:  I am re-sharing this post from 2016, lightly edited, for this Ash Wednesday.  The issue it poses has become, if anything, even more urgent today.  The recent second impeachment trial for Mr. Trump involved horrific video and witness statements concerning the insurrectionist mob assault on our nation’s capitol January 6.  To our sorrow and shame, as the white cross in the center of this image reminds us, that mob contained no small number of white Christian nationalists, people who are persuaded that the church, and the nation, belong by rights to them and those like them.  May this Ash Wednesday remind us that it is Christ’s church, and that we enter it–all of us–humbly and in sincere repentance, at Jesus’ generous invitation.

When friend and colleague in United Methodist ministry Tom Barnicott shared this picture from Analytical Grammar on Facebook, I first laughed uproariously (what can I say–I love a good pun!), then shared it myself (with the added caption, “‘Tain’t Paul’s, neither”), and then thought, “Huh! Whose church is this?”–that is a profoundly important question.

The Christian season of Lent, during which we are called to repent of our sins and to seek God’s will for our lives, begins with Ash Wednesday, February 17.  I can think of no better way to enter into this Lenten discipline than to reflect on whose church it is, after all, and what that means for our lives and outreach.

Likely, many readers will think immediately of Jesus’ words to Peter at Caesarea Philippi, following Peter’s acclamation, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Then Jesus replied, “Happy are you, Simon son of Jonah, because no human has shown this to you. Rather my Father who is in heaven has shown you. I tell you that you are Peter.  And I’ll build my church on this rock. The gates of the underworld won’t be able to stand against it.  I’ll give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Anything you fasten on earth will be fastened in heaven. Anything you loosen on earth will be loosened in heaven” (Matt 16:16-19).

Traditional Roman Catholic interpretation of this passage finds here the establishment of Peter, the first Pope and vicar of Christ, as the foundation–the Rock–upon whom the church is established.  This passage, by the way, puns on the name “Peter” (Greek Petros), a nickname given to Simon bar Jonah by Jesus (see Mark 3:16; John 1:42).  Petros means “rock;” as does the Aramaic name Cephas (used for Peter in John 1:42 and consistently by Paul; see 1 Corinthians 1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5; Galatians 1:18; 2:9, 11, 14).  It is as though Jesus called his friend “Rocky”!

This passage is also the source of the association of Peter with the keys to the kingdom, seen in the El Greco painting above, and in the crossed keys of the papal seal (here, the official seal of Pope Francis):

In the Greek of Matthew 16:19, the second-person pronouns (“you”) are singular, which could support the understanding that the keys were given to Peter. But other aspects of this passage call that into question.  First of all, while Petros is, of course, masculine, the noun translated “rock” in that very same verse is feminine: not petros, a rock or stone, but petra, a crag or outcropping (in the parable of the sower in Luke 8:6, 13, this is the word used for bedrock with only a very thin covering of soil).  In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of Jewish Scripture) of Isaiah 8:14, petra is used for Mount Zion–a passage quoted in Romans 9:33 and in 1 Peter 2:8 with reference to Jesus as the Messiah:

God will become a sanctuary—
    but he will be a stone to trip over and a rock to stumble on for the two houses of Israel;
    a trap and a snare for those living in Jerusalem.

In short, it appears that the Rock on which the church is founded may not be Peter after all, but rather Peter’s confession of Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Certainly, the text is very clear on whose church this is: Jesus declares, “I’ll build my church on this rock.”  The church belongs to Christ.

In Matthew’s gospel, the “kingdom of heaven” is not a reference to the afterlife (as in the myriad jokes about Saint Peter standing at the pearly gates).  Instead, the very Jewish Matthew, reluctant to refer to the Divine too directly, consistently uses this expression where Mark and Luke have “the kingdom of God“–the inbreaking of God’s reign into our world which Jesus both announced and inaugurated (compare Matt 4:17 with Mark 1:15). The kingdom is God’s–but we who claim to know and love the Lord can either give people access to what God is doing, or stand in their way.  The keys are ours–but that is less a promise or an honor than a caution.

Sadly, when we think that the church is ours, we may also think that having the keys gives us the authority to admit or exclude whomever we like.  On James Dobson’s radio program “Family Talk,” evangelist Franklin Graham said,

We have allowed the Enemy to come into our churches. I was talking to some Christians and they were talking about how they invited these gay children to come into their home and to come into the church and that they were wanting to influence them. And I thought to myself, they’re not going to influence those kids; those kids are going to influence those parent’s children. 

What happens is we think we can fight by smiling and being real nice and loving. We have to understand who the Enemy is and what he wants to do. He wants to devour our homes. He wants to devour this nation and we have to be so careful who we let our kids hang out with. We have to be so careful who we let into the churches. You have immoral people who get into the churches and it begins to effect the others in the church and it is dangerous.

Rev. Graham’s pronouns are significant: “our churches,” “our homes”–as though the church of Jesus Christ were our personal preserve, our private club, into which we need admit only those who think like us, and from which we can exclude anyone who makes us uncomfortable. This view of the church is not only mistaken, it is idolatrous: the church is Christ’s, not ours.  Indeed, as Christian blogger Benjamin Corey writes, the call for the exclusion of gay children, from Rev. Graham and others,

is precisely why 40% of homeless children in the United States are LGBTQ. It’s also why 68% of them report their homelessness is due to family rejection because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, often by religious parents.

Mr. Corey is right: “these are dangerous, dangerous ideas– ideas the people of Jesus must resist and rebuke.”

My dear friend and colleague Andrew Purves, the Jean and Nancy Davis Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, puts this better than anyone I know:

Seeing ministry as “our” ministry or “my” ministry is the root problem that ails us. Ministry, rightly understood is our sharing in the continuing and ongoing ministry of Jesus in the world. . . . The heart of the matter is this: To participate in Jesus’ ministry requires our being willing to crucify any understanding of ministry as ours so that we may more fully experience the resurrection hope and power of Jesus’ ministry in and through our lives.

After all, brothers and sisters, it ain’t Peter’s church–or Paul’s, or yours, or mine.  It is the church of Jesus Christ.  God help us to claim and live this truth, in every congregation of Christ’s Church.

This Sunday is Valentine’s Day.  In popular culture, the historical and religious connection with St. Valentine that gives the day its name was stretched past the breaking point long ago.  We know Valentine’s Day as a day for lovers, and a celebration of romantic love.  Its symbol is the heart, whether mailed as a valentine, given in candy form, texted as <3, or expressed as an emoji:

Since the Middle Ages, the heart has been the symbol of romantic love in the West, and regarded as the seat of the emotions and of sentiment.  We commonly contrast thinking and feeling as matters of the head and the heart, respectively.

Today, of course, we are well aware of the difference between the symbol and the reality.  We know that our hearts are actually powerful muscular pumps in our chests, which circulate life-giving, oxygen-bearing blood through our veins and arteries to every part of our bodies.  If our heart ever stops beating, and does not start again, we die.

When our Bibles mention the heart, we are likely to think about one of these two concepts.  The problem is, neither one was known to the Old or the New Testament authors, who did not connect the heart with emotions and did not understand the circulatory system!  To understand what they would have meant by the heart requires us to set our preconceptions aside, and see with new (or more accurately, with ancient!) eyes.

A good way into understanding the heart in Scripture is Jesus’s teaching on the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34; and Luke 10:25-28). In all three passages, Jesus’ teaching comes in a conversation with an expert on Jewish law, although the accounts differ on small points:  in Matthew, the expert seeks to test Jesus; in Mark, his question is sincere; in Luke, it is Jesus who questions the expert!  In all three, however, the answer is the same: no single commandment is the greatest.  The meaning and message of Scripture hang not on one, but on two essential teachings: love for God, and love for neighbor.

Jesus’ “first commandment” comes from the Shema’, which Mark’s version quotes in its entirety, and which still today is the heart of Jewish life and faith.  The name comes from its first word in Hebrew: Shema’ Yisrael ‘Adonai ‘Elohenu ‘Adonai ‘echad. The traditional translation (see the KJV) of this verse, reflected in the Septuagint and in the Greek of Mark’s gospel, is: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” A better rendering, though, is the one found in the Jewish Publication Society’s translation, and in the NRSV: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”  While the traditional translation is an affirmation of the doctrine of monotheism (there is only one God), the better reading understands the Shema’ as a pledge of allegiance, a declaration of commitment: our God is the LORD, and only the LORD!

Deuteronomy 6:5, which immediately follows, describes the totality of that commitment: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength.”  While some interpretations of this commandment find here three different ways of loving God, that does not seem to be its intent.  The heart (lebab in Hebrew) is the center of the will: connected, not with feeling, but with deciding and doing.   Loving God with all your heart, then, means choosing, as the opening verse of the Shema’ declares, to commit yourself solely and absolutely to God: to love God as much as you can.

The remainder of the verse restates and underlines this absolute commitment. Hebrew nephesh should not be translated as “soul.”  Rather than some separate, immaterial part of me, nephesh refers, as the CEB translation “being” indicates, to the whole of me.   To love God with all one’s nephesh is to love God entirely, with all that I am.  The last word, typically translated “strength” or “might,” is me’od in Hebrew–not a noun, actually, but an adverb, meaning “much” or “very.”  We are to love God with all our muchness–again, as much as we are possibly capable of loving!

In the Greek of the New Testament, however, and in the minds of early Christians influenced by Greek thought, this command does become a threefold (or more) depiction of loving God, with every aspect of one’s being.  The KJV of Mark 12:30 reads,”And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.”  The Greek psyche can refer (unlike Hebrew nephesh) to an immaterial, spiritual part of the person: hence, the soul.  The Greek word dianoia refers to thoughts and intentions, and is commonly translated as “mind.”  One’s “might” (Greek hischus) could be regarded as relating to one’s physical, material self.

First in the list, though, is the heart: Greek kardia.  In Greek as in Hebrew, the heart is the center of the self–the choosing, deciding aspect of the person.  Loving God with all one’s kardia is, on the right-hand side of the Bible, no more about feeling or sentiment than loving God with all one’s lebab on the left-hand side!  In each case, love is a decision: an act of the will.  Curiously, the association of love with the heart, in both the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament, plainly demonstrates that love is not regarded here as an emotion.  Love has to do, not with feeling or sentiment, but with the will.  Love is a choice.

Jesus’ second “great commandment” makes this crystal clear.  Leviticus 19:18 says, “you must love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.”  We could perhaps ask, as the lawyer does in Luke 10:29, “And who is my neighbor?” Indeed, some interpreters have proposed that this was an in-house commandment: “your neighbor” means “your fellow Israelite.” But Leviticus 19:33-34 demonstrates that this is far too narrow a reading. There, love is commanded toward “the alien who resides with you” (the Hebrew term is ger, meaning a non-Israelite living in the land without the comfort and protection of a clan) in the same language used in 19:18 for the neighbor: “you shall love the alien as yourself.” In fact this passage says, the ger “shall be to you as a citizen among you.”  All quibbling aside, we already know this, as the lawyer in Luke’s account certainly would have known it.  The real question, as Jesus’ famous story of the Good Samaritan demonstrates, is how can we demonstrate love–not just to those like us, and those we like, but to all our neighbors?

Actually, the fact that Scripture commands love for God and neighbor should already have made this clear.  Feelings cannot be commanded–they simply are.  Love for the neighbor doesn’t mean fond feeling: I may not even like my neighbor (at least, at first)!  Love means willing and acting for my neighbors’ good, in order to bring about for them what I would wish for myself.  Likewise, love for the LORD is not a sentimental valentine to God.  Loving God is the decision to commit myself–my entire being–deliberately into God’s hands, and to live with the consequences.  Making that choice, we discover that the deepest consequence of loving God is knowing that God loves us–that indeed, God loved us first!

This Sunday’s epistle, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, is one of my favorite passages from Paul’s letters.  That may strike you as odd: why should I be so enamored of this weird passage, on such an obscure matter?  But friends, I am persuaded that Paul’s treatment of the question of whether or not Christians may eat food offered to idols  has a significance far beyond its narrow cultural and historical context.  Bear with me for awhile.

To us, of course, this question is irrelevant.  Whether or not we should eat food offered to idols isn’t even on our radar screen!  But we know from our New Testament that this issue divided the early church.  In Acts 15, the Apostolic Council–called to consider whether Gentiles could be part of the body of Christ–turned, in part, on this divisive issue.  James, leader of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem (and likely, the brother of Jesus and the source of the Christian wisdom recorded in our book of James) spoke for the Council:

I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood (Acts 15:19-20, NRSV).

Gentiles would not need to become Jews in order to be followers of Christ.  However, all believers, Jew and Gentile alike, had to follow some rules.  They had to abide by a bare minimum of  kosher law (no eating blood, or meat with the blood still in it: that is, from animals killed by strangling).  They had to forswear the sexual perversions that James believed (with some justification!) were rife in the Greco-Roman world.  But at the top of the list, they had to abstain “from things polluted by idols”–that is, no eating food that had been offered as a sacrifice.  The John of Revelation too held that those who ate food sacrificed to idols separated themselves from the church of Jesus Christ (Rev 2:14, 20).

We may think that, even in the ancient world, this surely could not have been that big a deal: how hard would it have been to avoid eating food offered to an idol?  As it turns out, it could be very difficult indeed!  Temples, and their priesthoods, supported themselves largely through sacrifices.  A select portion of the worshipper’s offering would be burned on an altar for the god.  But the remainder became the property of the temple, and of the priestess or priest.  They could sell it to vendors, to be resold on the open market to consumers.  So, unless you were very careful about where you obtained your meat, you might not know whether it had first been offered to a god or goddess.

If you took avoiding such food seriously, you would also be very careful about with whom you socialized.  You couldn’t eat with nonbelievers–or even with other believers who weren’t as scrupulous as you were.  Indeed, as the texts from Revelation cited above showed, you might even deny that those less careful Christians were Christians at all.

Avoiding meat offered to idols could have economic implications as well.  Practitioners of skilled trades were organized into guilds, which could be dedicated to a patron god or goddess–like the silversmiths of Ephesus, dedicated to Artemis (Acts 19:23-41; the Romans called this goddess Diana).  Guild gatherings would have involved meals, likely including food offered to their divine patron.  To avoid eating such food, Christians (for example, Christian silversmiths in Ephesus) would have to surrender their guild membership–but if they did that, they would likely find employment difficult or impossible.  Abstaining from food offered to idols could mean losing their livelihood.

However, as Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Christians shows, some believers thought differently.  They reasoned that, since there was only one true God, idols were merely statues, and food sacrificed to them was no different than any other kind of food (see 1 Cor 8:1-6).  Paul, who steadfastly refused to reduce faith to rule-following, certainly agreed with their theology:

There is one God the Father.
        All things come from him, and we belong to him.
And there is one Lord Jesus Christ.
        All things exist through him, and we live through him (1 Cor 8:6).

But Paul refused to settle the matter legalistically, either way–because Paul understood that the food itself was not the real issue.  What really mattered was sensitivity to one another in the body of Christ.  If the faith of “weaker” Christians is threatened when they see other believers eating food sacrificed to idols, then the “stronger” Christians need to abstain (1 Cor 8:7-13).

This does not mean, by the way, that Paul simply surrendered to the rule-followers!  In Galatians 2:11-14, when Peter refuses to eat with Paul’s Gentile converts for fear of James’ “circumcision faction” (Gal 2:12, NRSV), Paul is caustically scornful:

But when I saw that they weren’t acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas [Peter’s name in Aramaic] in front of everyone, “If you, though you’re a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you require the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Gal 2:14).

Paul sums up his advice on food sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 10:23-33.   Buy your meat wherever is convenient, and eat it without fear.  Accept invitations from unbelievers–after all, how will you ever have the opportunity to witness for Christ if you only associate with like-minded Christians?  Thank God for whatever they offer you, and eat it gratefully–unless they make an issue of it, by telling you that the food you are eating comes from an idol sacrifice.  But even then, notice, the issue is not the food or where it comes from, but the conscience of the person who has offered this food to you, who may think that, by knowingly eating food offered to an idol, you are condoning their idolatry.

So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, you should do it all for God’s glory. Don’t offend either Jews or Greeks, or God’s church. This is the same thing that I do. I please everyone in everything I do. I don’t look out for my own advantage, but I look out for many people so that they can be saved (1 Cor 10:31-33).

For Paul, people, and their salvation, matter more than ideology, or even than right theology.

Paul’s resolution of this thorny problem reminds me of another favorite passage, from the left-hand side of the Bible (2 Chronicles 30:15-22).   King Hezekiah had invited refugees from the northern kingdom of Israel, who had escaped the fall of their kingdom to Assyria (722 BCE), to come to Jerusalem for Passover.  Sadly, Hezekiah’s invitation was rejected by many in the north, who laughed at and scorned his messengers (2 Chr 30:10).  Perhaps Jesus was thinking of this passage when he told his parable of the wedding feast (Matt 22:1-14; compare Lk 14:15-20), where the messengers are also scorned and ill-treated.

However, as in Jesus’ parable, the failure of those invited to respond does not stop the feast!  Some northerners, from the tribes of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun, do humble themselves  (an important theme in Chronicles; see  2 Chr 7:14) and come south to Jerusalem for the feast.  In Judah, meanwhile, the response is overwhelming: “God’s power was at work in Judah, unifying them to do what the king and his officials had ordered by the Lord’s command” (2 Chr 30:12).  The Hebrew of this verse says that God gave them leb ‘ekhad–that is, “one heart” (see 1 Chr 12:38, where those who come to make David king are likewise said to be of “one heart”).  In the end, “a huge crowd” gathers in Jerusalem for the feast (2 Chr 30:13).  Jerusalem and the temple are cleansed, and the priests and Levites stand ready to serve (2 Chr 30:15), conducting themselves “according to the law of Moses the man of God” (2 Chr 30:16, NRSV).

It is fortunate that the priests and Levites are ready, for a great number of those attending are ritually unclean, and so cannot kill their own sacrifices; the Levites must do this for them (2 Chr 30:17; for the killing of the sacrifice by Levites, see also Ezr 6:20; Ezek 44:11).  Nothing is said of the reasons for their defilement; however, since many of those said to be defiled come from the north (2 Chr 30:18), they may have had different ideas about what constitutes ritual purity, or about the requirements for the observance of Passover.  From the Chronicler’s perspective, however, this means that they “hadn’t eaten the Passover meal in the prescribed way” (2 Chr 30:18)–that is, they were in violation of God’s law in Scripture (see 2 Chr 30:5).

But rather than barring these rule-breakers from his Passover, Hezekiah prays for them:

May the good LORD forgive everyone who has decided to seek the true God, the LORD, the God of their ancestors, even though they aren’t ceremonially clean by sanctuary standards (2 Chr 30:18-19).

The LORD hears the king’s prayer, and the community is healed (2 Chr 30:20; compare 2 Chr 7:14).

Hezekiah’s prayer, and the LORD’s favorable response, strike a blow against legalism.  Clearly, it is more important to set one’s heart to seek God than it is to be in a state of scrupulous ritual purity.  Similarly, the prophet Micah declares:

He has told you, human one, what is good and
        what the Lord requires from you:
            to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God (Mic 6:8).

In his teaching, Jesus as well placed “the more important matters of the Law: justice, peace, and faith” above laws of ritual purity (Matt 23:23).  So, for Jesus, meeting human need by healing on the sabbath was more important than strict adherence to the regulations of the rabbis (so, for example, Mk 3:1-6).

Today, the church is divided by other questions and controversies.  Yet, we still are tempted to appeal to legalism, whether in our reading of Scripture or in our application of community standards–which, far from resolving our conflicts, only heightens our division.  We need to remember that Scripture itself rejects this narrow, rigid standard.  How much better, like Paul and King Hezekiah, to put people before ideology: to trust in God’s grace, and remember that devotion to the Lord, and loving those whom God loves, is our first and highest calling.

AFTERWORD:

The image of Roman sacrificial religion above comes from Wikipedia:  User:MatthiasKabel.  It is a bas-relief from the Arch of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, now in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, depicting “Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180 AD) and members of the Imperial family offer[ing] sacrifice in gratitude for success against Germanic tribes. In the backgrounds stands the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitolium (this is the only extant portrayal of this [R]oman temple).”