This long homily discusses the meaning of metanoia, the agendas of Jesus' hearers then and now, the gulf we often let separate the ministry of Jesus from his death and resurrection, the debates in Catholic and Protestant circles because of that, and how Jesus lived out—literally enacted—the things he exhorted in his ministry as he suffered his passion.
Like I said, it's long (20 min). But every time I tried to cut a piece and save it for another homily, the other pieces wouldn't fit together right. Also, this recording has a lot of oral mistakes; it was my fourth time through it and my third Mass in a row. I think my brain was tired and my mouth was dried out. See the text to alleviate confusions.
1st Sunday of Lent, Year B
Repent of Your Agenda
In 66 AD, about 35 years
after Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, there was a young Jewish aristocrat
named Josephus who was leading an army into Galilee.
Josephus had been sent
north to try to talk down some of the rebellious hotheads who were rushing
toward open war with Rome.
Josephus paints a
marvelous scene straight out of a Clint Eastwood western as he awaits the rebel
leader in an emptied marketplace, while both he and rebel leader want the other
guy to come and negotiate without their posses behind him.
Eventually he and the
rebel leader meet face to face in this market like it’s the OK corral.
I’m telling you a little
about Josephus today—and he’s very important for this homily—because:
1) He gives us the
greatest amount of information about the four kinds of people in Judea in
Jesus’ time.
2) His words to this
rebel leader have fascinating implications for how we read today’s gospel.
This homily has a lot in
it, so I’m going to divide it into three acts so as to help keep things
organized, but also so we can see what things stay the same even as times
change.
The three acts will be:
the ancient past, (the
biggest)
the recent past,
and the current day
Act One:
Ancient past
The gospel of Mark today
says:
“Repent and believe in
the gospel”
A Powerful line
An oft-repeated line
A line that priests could
chose to use on Ash Wednesday when applying ashes:
“Repent and believe in
the gospel.”
But what’s that mean,
really?
To try to understand what
Jesus might have meant in Palestine in the first century AD, we need to know
more about whom he was talking to, and what the words meant in their ears.
Here is where Josephus
comes in.
Josephus, in his other
books, tells the big story of the Jewish people and of their climatic war with
Rome that destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and scattered them around the
world.
He tells us “who is who”
in 1st c. Palestine and what they believe.
And his descriptions line
up with what we can slightly glimpse
in the gospels, especially for the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Before I go further, let
me clarify that these four groups, which ultimately contain four different
worldviews, are all Jewish.
They were faithful,
practicing Jews, Jews who read their Torah and their prophets and psalms, and
who all thought that those scriptures were telling them how they should be
living in a Judea that is run by pagan overlords.
For us, we take
separation of church and state as a given, and a generally good thing.
For them, the idea of
separating religion and politics was not merely dangerous, it was actually
impossible, because God had told them where they were to be in the world and
what they needed to do.
First the Sadducees.
These were the caste of
priests and Levites, centered around the temple and Jerusalem.
They held the power of
worship and sacrifice, but they, as the power in the capital, had (along with
Herod) become largely cooperators and partners with the Romans.
They were seen by the
other three groups as compromisers.
The Romans kept them in
power and the Sadducees made good money off it, and in turn they would defend
the Romans against the hotheads and religious fanatics.
This is why Caiaphas
would prefer one possible Messiah die on a cross rather than risk a riot that
could lead Rome to punish all of Jerusalem.
Sadducees = compromise
and submit to worldly power: “At least we get to keep the temple and some
freedom.”
Zealots
Zealots were not just
ready for a holy war, they wanted it as soon as possible.
Had not the prophets
promised that God would be with his people? That he would strike down the
pagans like he did through David as of old?
Whether they moved up to
the mountains or prepared themselves secretly in the towns, they said their
prayers, sharpened their swords, and made ready to fight God’s war against the
hordes of darkness and the pagan monsters of Daniel chapter 7.
Zealots = direct military
confrontation
Third, Essenes
Don’t get much play in
the New Testament, but that goes with their game plan.
Essenes were religious,
and even civil, separatists.
They saw the temple
system as corrupt, but really they saw the whole world as corrupt, so the fled
to a village of caves down by the Dead Sea.
They were puritans who
separated from all other groups and waited for the end of the world—which they
though was coming very soon—in self imposed exile.
They were basically
monastic, some even practiced celibacy, and they wrote and hid the texts we
call the Dead Sea scrolls
So we have
establishment-compromisers, zealot-crusaders, and otherworldly-escapists.
The fourth group was the
Pharisees, who were actually the least extreme group, who mostly were seen as
the synagogue keepers and the religion teachers, and faithful rank and file of
observant Jews.
But they did think that
Sabbath, Temple, and Torah were the pillars of a good Jewish life, and that
they were the things that kept Jews separate from godless pagans. So when Jesus
didn’t bow to those things—Sabbath, temple, and Torah—he could seem like a compromiser.
And politically, while
maybe more patient and busy with education, their worldview of reestablishing
the kingdom of Israel soon made them share kingdom-dreams with the zealots and
their holy war ideas.
One thing to notice: all
have a strong “us vs. them” sense.
So those are the four
groups to whom Jesus shows up and announces the kingdom.
“Repent and believe in
the gospel”
This might seem kind of
pointless.
Jesus is telling everyone
to repent right?
What difference does it
make?
We’re all sinners.
Yeah, repent. Believe.
All four groups just need
to repent of their personal sins.
But here is where we need
Josephus again.
The meaning of the word
“repent”—which is our translation of the Greek metanoia—is rather uncertain and highly debated.
St Jerome translated it
into Latin as “do penance”—a very ancient catholic idea.
Later, Martin Luther
would point out that “do penance” doesn’t cover the interior implications of metanoia, and translated it to mean “a
change deep in the human heart”.
Later some Protestant
writers will notice that “admit you’re a sinner” goes nicely with the “and
believe in the gospel” part and that it seems like an early form of an
evangelical Protestant confess-and-believe formula.
Those two oversimplifications
for metanoia—“do something outwardly”
and “think something inwardly” would survive for a long time and would pop up
again in Act Two.
But neither of those two
meanings do justice to what metanoia
meant according to other sources we have from the time which have Jewish
authors, writing in Greek, about Jewish things.
And they don’t explain
why Jesus’ message would seem so revolutionary or make him seem like such a
danger to those other four groups: compromise Sadducees, escapist Essenes,
war-hungry Zealots, and their allies the Pharisees.
Metanoia was used at the time to
mean “reconsider”, to rethink something.
It’s used to denote
“regret”, but not exclusively of regretting bad actions.
In referring to Pharaoh
and Herod, authors used it to mean they had done a good thing originally and
then had a metanoia—a regret—and now
want to do evil, like chase after the Israelites as they had been allowed to
leave Egypt.
So it can’t just mean a
moral change for the good, like Luther presented it.
In this context, it
meant:
Change your mind based on
new info.
Give up your old agenda
because you now know better.
Believe based on better
evidence.
Like a Garmin GPS:
Recalculate! Recalculate!
And that is exactly how
Josephus will use it.
He had been sent to this
dusty marketplace to persuade the revolutionaries to stop their headlong rush
to fight the Romans and to instead trust him and the other aristocrats in
Jerusalem to work out a peace.
What’s crazy is that,
Josephus, within 20 years of Mark’s gospel being written will use the exact
same words Jesus uses in today’s gospel.
He tell the brigand
leader: “Repent and believe in me”
(Philologist’s Note: Mark
quotes Jesus commanding people metanoeite
kai pisteute en tō euaggeliō, and Josephus convinces the rebels to (in the
infinitive) metanoēsein kai pistos emoi
genesesthai.)
It’s one thing if Jesus, whom
God the Father called his beloved at the Jordan, says “Repent and believe what
I’m announcing”…
But here’s Joe Bob
Flavius Josephus saying:
“repent and believe in
ME”
“rethink your plans and
trust in ME”
So repent/metanoia isn’t just “admit you’re a
sinner” or have a moral change”, as many treat it.
And “believe” is more
than just “follow a God”
Jesus in today’s gospel
was saying to all the groups of Israel: “Give up your own old agendas and
accept this new proclamation”
He calls them out:
Essenes, you can’t turn
your backs: we are the imaging-bearing stewards of Genesis 1&2, called to
be witnesses, the light to the world, a city set on a hill that cannot be
hidden
Sadducees, you cannot
walk hand-in-hand with pagan oppressors. You can’t turn a blind eye to
injustice. Your avarice and pride and surrender to pagansis what the bad kings
of Israel did.
Zealots, and your friends
the Pharisees, you are cruising toward destruction. Not only on a natural level
of Roman retribution—remember his warnings about fall of Jerusalem “Not a stone
will remain upon a stone… since you did not know what makes for peace”—but also
a correction to them on divine level: God doesn’t want this. No. Turn the other
cheek, go the second mile, surrender your tunic, you’re your enemies and pray
for those who persecute you, humble yourselves, forgive the tax collector, the adulterer,
the prodigal son.
Jesus is saying, I have a
new plan, and you need to repent: i.e. reconsider, change your agenda, recalculate
based on new information.
AND THEN HE DID IT!
We can almost
unintentionally separate Jesus proclaiming these things in the first three
quarters of the gospels from what he did and what he underwent when he was
arrested, beaten, humiliated, tortured, and killed.
Almost all Christians
have this tendency to separate his public teaching from his passion and death.
We think “Oh they just
hate Jesus and so they are going to kill him.”
Or: Jesus has to die on a
cross and that will magically save us, but unconnected to anything else.
But no. Jesus is living
out everything he has been telling people for the last three years.
The way of life he
preached in the Sermon on the Mount and in the parables, he is going now to live
out.
If you seize him in the
night, he won’t resist.
When the guards punch him
he turns the other cheek.
He willing walks the
first and the second mile to Calvary when they command him.
He lets them strip him of
the cloak and tunic.
He forgives his enemies
and prays for those who persecute him.
He will drink the cup and
be baptized with the baptism that he asked James and John if they could endure.
He becomes like the
mother hen, gathering her chicks under her wings to shield them from the
barnyard fire.
Jesus does not separate
his passion, death, and resurrection from his proclamation of the gospel and
the kingdom—he sees it as living out what he’s been trying to convince them to
do all along.
“I literally want you to
give up your kingdom-dreams, all four of them, and realize that I am giving you
the right way to bring about the kingdom. I’m going to tell you it, and then
I’m going to live it.”
That’s the metanoia he preached, and that’s the
proof that what he preached and how he died are of a whole.
Act Two: the more recent
past
Two splits in Christian
thinking advance from this.
First, what I just
mentioned: separation of the public ministry and teaching from his passion,
death, and resurrection.
If you think about it,
our creeds kind of added to this.
The job of the creeds was
to cover what was debated.
So, explaining that Jesus
is consubstantial to the Father or that he really died and rose were the big
deals.
And so you write
something concise but dense with meaning, like a creed.
It’s ok that they don’t
mention the public message if they are just used for clarifying dogma.
But once the creeds
became a main catechetical tool—once they became the way to teach converts and
children—you can see how a gap could emerge between “what really matters: his death and resurrection” and “eh, the stuff he
said before that”
A split develops between
the paschal mystery and the public ministry, between salvation theology and how
to live in the world
The second was kind of
left behind.
Look at the mysteries of
the rosary. For 800 years we followed the spare outline of the creeds: we have
the virgin birth and then we skip thirty years to his death and his
resurrection. It wasn’t until 2002 that John Paul II first said, “You know, we
could have some mysteries for the three years of his ministry.” And only then
did we have the Luminous Mysteries.
So you’ve got that going
on after Jesus’ own day as the Church tries to sort out its dogmas in the early
Christian centuries.
This will last for a
thousand years and be handed on from Catholics to Protestants.
I mentioned earlier that
Luther would see metanoia as a change
of heart, recognizing oneself as a sinner and repenting inwardly, and people
after him would say this is all you need: just confess and believe. What
matters is getting saved.
So that was the second
split.
For a while, there was an
attempt at integration between the “the message of the gospels—how do I live”
and “the gospel—ideas from St. Paul
on how do I get saved?” but those split apart in Protestantism over time.
You had one group saying:
we have to do things, we have to act to make the world a better place, Christ
called us to love our brothers and work for the kingdom, a social gospel.
But there was pushback
from another group saying “All that matters is getting saved, getting to
heaven, we need to focus on evangelizing and getting people to accept and
believe in Jesus,”
Kind of like the Essenes:
“This world is passing away. Forget about it and focus on heaven.”
So you have a split:
Social Do-gooders and Otherworldly just-believers — a split between mainstreamers
like Methodists on one hand and the fundamentalists and evangelicals on the
other.
This has been going on
for the last 200-300 years.
Catholics were doing
their own thing then, but I think in the last 50 years Catholics have had their
own version.
First: “If we’re going to
be Christians, we need to do, do, do.”
But then the pushback: “No
leave the political world aside, leave the social world to others, just go be
as holy as you can be, Convert others to the faith and get them holy too. Focus
on religious practice and getting to heaven.”
We too face a split
between theology and salvation on one hand and social critique and love your
neighbor as yourself on the other.
Act 3
Where are we right now?
The challenge of the split
remains:
Just focus on getting
holy.
Just focus on doing
things.
When we see this we should
look back to the Jews in Jesus’ time, going in their different directions:
avoid the world, compromise with world, fight the world.
Jesus: “That’s not the
plan God has.”
Repent—leave behind your
old agenda—and listen to this proclamation.
Calls us out because
we’re still doing an “us vs. them”
And he would not like
that we are separating out the ideas of “this is what the gospel tells us do
and how to live” and “just believe and worship”.
Think about it. We get
infected by the “us vs. them”.
And we get infected by
ideas of our own agendas.
We slide into modes of
fight, or escape, or compromise.
Social and economic
questions begin to split even our religious world of formerly unified Catholics.
We split into:
Republican / Democrat
Catholic / Protestant
Catholic school / public
school
Chasing after all our
things, following our own agendas… and Jesus is like:
“Stop it. Lay down your
agendas. Lay down those divisions.
Remember what I told you
to do: to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile, to forgive willingly, to
bear wrongs patiently”
That’s what he’s asking
us to do, and that means letting go of our own pride.
That means letting go our
factions and divides and the “us vs. them” that we naturally tend to.
I had a lot of time to think
about this a couple weeks ago when I was driving home for vacation. This homily
is probably so long because I had nine hours to ponder how much we do this and
how we imitate the divisions of first century Judaism.
The line that kept coming
back to mind as I thought on this was from the movie Braveheart. The Scots have beaten the English in their first battle
but they keep fighting among themselves. And William Wallace, the hero of the
story, says to them:
You're so concerned with
squabbling for the scraps from Longshank's table that you've missed your God
given right to something better.
It’s the reasonable
critique of the Jewish people at Jesus’ time—they had given up on their call to
something better and were squabbling over what to do about the Romans.
It critiques the split
within Protestantism : of going all in for the world or going all in against
the world.
And we’ve fallen into it
too.
We fight over the dumb
little things.
Instead of chasing
something bigger.
We need to realize that if
we really lived the gospel we wouldn’t need any of that.
Usually our debates are
because we don’t want to spend money, so we have to decide who gets it and who
doesn’t.
Or we don’t want to
devote time to things other than ourselves and our own interests, so we pull
away.
Or we hold a grudge over
something that happened 20 or 30 years ago.
It’s because we are proud
and avaricious and selfish that we have to be in an “us vs. them” mindset.
But if we heard the
gospel, if we lived the Sermon on the Mount, we wouldn’t have to do that.
We could actually work
together.
We could be built up into
the body of Christ.
We could be healing those
divisions.
We, right here in Wahoo
Nebraska, could be the light to world —but we would have to choose it.
But we would have to let
go of our squabbles.
That’s why we have to
hear the message anew.
It’s not just for Jews
2,000 years ago.
We need to recalculate.
We need to reconsider.
We need to change and let
go of our agendas,
and take on the gospel
instead,
Because that is what
Jesus is actually calling us to do when he says “repent and believe in the
gospel.”
Right on.
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