Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 12 Year 1)
Today’s assigned reading:
2 Samuel 1:17-27, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 25:31-46
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12: 9, 21
Ideas about Good and Evil change, of course. What is considered good by a Rabbi in Nero’s Rome will be rather different compared to what is considered good by us today. In fact, what is considered good by one person today will be rather different from what is considered good by another. The phrase “overcome evil with good” could be read by one party to mean “Liberate Iraq with military might” and by another to mean “practice non-violence always.” Both of those readings are common within the Church - in fact, both of those readings may be common in that group of Christians with whom you gather today.
I think Paul leans to the side of non-violence, myself, with his lines about offering hospitality to strangers and to enemies. And Jesus, himself, tells a whole parable on “the Judgement” without ever saying anything about “theological” good and evil, or about theological positions. Interestingly, the traditional read of that parable is that you can’t get to the right action (of feeding the hungry, clothing the natked, etc) without having the right theology.
Some of these ideas showed up in a conversation we had once in the pages of my blog. You can see the ideas expressed fully in the article, Who are “The Least” of Christ’s Brethren, which is part of the March 2005 edition of “The Lion” (that’s a PDF file.)
Here’s a couple of lead paragraphs to give you an idea:
A scholar names Sherman Gray, in a fascinating dissertation, surveyed nearly two millennia of exegesis of this passage and found that the majority of exegetes over the centuries (ancient, medieval and modern) have tended towards the “particularist” reading - that “the least” refers specifically to persecuted Christians, particularly Christian missionaries working amongst both hostile Jews and Gentiles. While there are notable examples of “universalist” interpretations in the patristic era, Gray shows that, for the most part, it was the more specific interpretation which dominated Christian exegesis of this passage, from antiquity, through the Middle ages, practically down to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Further more, it is Gray’s provocative thesis that the “universalist” interpretation only really began to gain momentum in the twentieth century, particularly in the “decades most closely associated with the two World Wars and the phenomenon of the Second Vatican Council.” Recently, amongst biblical scholars there has been a radical shift back to a more particularist reading, a reaction against a merely “ethical” or “social justice” oriented so common amongst Christians of the last century…
While I acknowledge that some great number - perhaps even the vast majority - of my Christian ancestors heard this parable to refer to persecuted Christians, particularly Christian missionaries and I can follow from that assumption that therefore you have to have correct doctrine before you can have correct action… I can’t not stop having the sense that such is a twisting of the clear meaning of the story. Yes, the story may be in code. And yes, Matthew, in reporting the story, may have had persecution in mind. But if this scripture passage records a story that Our Lord actually told, he wasn’t talking about Persecuted Christians in code because there were none.
The problem with this reading is that it leads quickly to the assumption that we have to know orthodox Christianity before we can practice correct morality at all. This despite that the Church Fathers and Mothers were clear that many pagans were, really, Christians - such as Plato and Socrates. In this era of very public debate with non-believers, this often comes up in one way or another - that one can’t be moral unless one believes in God, or even is a Christian. I remember a form of this debate in 1982 at my evangelical college - in Western Civ 101 with Douglas Carlsen. My contribution then was “If a Buddhist says ‘it’s raining’ will you not take an umbrella?” Non-Christians can be very right-acting people. They can tell the truth. They can show love. That seems to be the point. Right-acting is more important than all the right-doctrine in the world - unless you have a vested interest in lifting up “right doctrine.”
Certainly there were persecuted Christians when Paul was writing - and he doesn’t seem to limit his reading at all: hospitality to strangers and enemies. The greek word is “philoxenia” meaning “love of strangers”. Hospitality or love, of course, precludes any conception of violence. I think the multifarious readings pulled form such passages shows the ability of the Gospel to speak in many cultural contexts. I don’t need to say “you’re wrong” to those who read it differently, but I do need to keep going forward with my universalist reading, which I’m bad at living. Even though I think the final judgement will ask “did you love as I loved?” My painful answer is still “no.”
I’ll close with an example of Christian love I’ve used often - even when I was an ultra-pious Orthdoox person. I wrote it into a podcast I did in Lent of 2006 as part of a project for a theological training programme and it was reposted again in Lent of this year. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Lent is preceded by the Sunday of the Last Judgement when this parable is read at Liturgy. This is from my meditation posted for that Sunday.
I’m going to close today with another Episcopal example. As my friend Ana used to say, “Sometimes the pagans are better Christians than the Christians.” She may have been referring to an Episcopal parish well known to me and to readers of my blog: the parish as a whole doubts the virgin birth and has serious trouble with the Resurrection. They don’t even say the Nicene Creed on Sundays because not everyone is comfortable with the concepts. But every week a committee of the parish has organised for all the local restaurants and grocery stores to donate food to a food bank an d every week hundreds of people come to the parish and find, around the altar table, a cornucopia of free food. No one is asked for ID cards or proof-of-income, no one is even questioned about coming in last week. they don’t do this “to help” as Fr Schmemann worries. Help is not the reason. They say, at ever service, “all that we give, we give in response to what God has given us.” The food given out is an extension of the Eucharist. Everyone receives freely because the parish believes that Christ has given to us freely - but don’t ask them what because they mightn’t know.All of these people will get into the Kingdom before me.