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Pentecost 23 - Proper 27-C Nov 7 2004
H O M I L Y G
R I T S
Twenty Third
Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 27C)
November 7, 2004
©Copyright 2004 by Grant M. Gallup
Book of Common Prayer lectionary:
Job 19:23-27a Then, in [or: without] my flesh I shall see God
Psalm 17 - Exaudi, Domine- Hear, O Lord
2 Thessalonians 2:13-3:5 God chose you as the first fruits of
liberation
Luke 20:27 (28-33) 34-38 In the resurrection, whose wife will the
woman be?
or "For to him all of them are alive".
All night long on November 2nd, I heard our dog barking Woof Wood
Woof but my brain's instant translator heard it as "Votes for Bush!"
And thought to myself, "What does she know?" But I woke to see
"Horror! Bush almost elected!" in the headlines of the Nuevo Diario.
I went to read morning prayer in the patio, and knew then that I
should turn to De Profundis for the Psalm. "Out of the depths have I
called to you, O Lord." Now, in the bright sunlight of a day in
exile, I have decided to swear off my addiction to the news of
current events, and to become the old Gringo hermit of the barrio. I
said to the TV "You won't have me to kick around anymore." A month
of mourning seems right on time.
The first days of November seem to have become here one single
celebration of All Saints and All the Faithful Departed. Vendors
with their carts of flowers shove the days together as they crowd
about the churches and cemeteries. The theological break between the
two days is unclear, and at the Reformation radical protestants
dropped both observances, because of the history of abuse that sold
masses for the dead, and trafficked in relics of the hanks of hair
and chips of bone of all the saints. Since the Anglo Catholic
movement began in 1830 or so, Anglicans, Lutherans, and others have
restored some semblance of sainthood to their celebrations, and at
least nodded in the direction of memorials for the "faithful
departed" and even for flowers--a form of prayer--and song--a form of
celebration, for their beloved dead. In Nicaragua, it's one week
long floral festival for the Day of the Dead. These last months of
the year always bid us think beyond our years, and beyond life
itself. November's All Hallows bids us call up the dead to memory.
The death and destruction in our lives and the lives of our beloved
now bid us also think beyond their lives and ours. Do we believe in
"life after death?" For whom? For ourselves alone? Only for the
thousand plus of us who were killed in Iraq, or also for the hundred
thousand Iraqis whom they went to kill? For those who die for
Allah, or Yahweh, or Jesus only? For our pets? Is it only human
life that is worth saving into the beyond?
In our patio at Casa Ave Maria there is a little tombstone over the
grave of Lazara, the loving street dog who came to live with us one
day some years ago, a refugee from abuse, starvation, and the
mange. She lived with us and loved us for years, with the help of
neighbors' dogs gave us three litters of healthy pups, and then a
stroke crippled her and she lingered for weeks before she died,
lovingly bathed with our tears and whispers, until she slept away
peacefully and we buried her in the patio garden. One of her pups is
now the grown up Mary, who keeps night watch near her tomb. In the
Dogdom of Heaven whose pet shall she be?
With mobilized fundamentalism, George W. Bush has been finally
elected the Führer of the Free market World. We should all take pause
to remember that Adolf Hitler was legally elected to office in 1933.
I used to have a campaign button from 1932 that read "Adolf Hitler:
Gegen Hunger und Kalt." "Adolf Hitler, Against Hunger and Cold." A
great motivator then as now. The motivating genius of the Bush
Putsch has been homophobia--the hypocritical appeal to disenfranchise
Lesbian and Gay people by law. The Bush Putsch rode to power on that
backside of that frottage with fundamentalism. The gospel reading
today makes it clear that fundamentalists have been around a long
time. Today, Jesus deals with the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons
of his time, who thump the Bible at him about life after death. They
always begin their arguments with "The Bible says", as if the Bible
were the Voice of God, the Master's Voice, when it is not any such
thing. It is the symphony of many human voices, whom the people of
God have recognized as having heard God speak to them. But for
fundies, the Bible is a tape recording of dictated discourse by
Yahweh Hisself. With fundies, it is always Hisself, never Herself.
God is always He to fundies, 'though if they looked carefully they
would see that in the Scriptures of all religions God is sometimes
She, sometimes It, and sometimes They.
The fundies of Jesus' time had a very small Bible. They were the
Saducees, their name coming from the name of Zadok, one of the high
priests of King David's time. "Zadokites" elided into
"Saducees"after a while, and they had only the first five books in
their Bible: the Torah--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy. They also believed (as fundies believe today) that
Moses himself wrote all of these books, including the story of his
own death, in Deuteronomy. Now the Pharisees were more liberal, and
they had added to their canon other books, like the Psalms, and
Daniel, where they found a teaching not found in the first five books
of the Bible. They found the first inklings of the idea of the
Resurrection of the Body.
We Christian believers, like the Pharisees, profess belief in the
Resurrection of the Body--indeed, our religion is founded upon it,
for we see in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ a "first fruits", as
St. Paul says, of a great harvest which shall include all the people
of God. But because it was not in their Bibles, the Zaducees didn't
believe it. Like fundamentalists today, they liked to show up at
meetings where more liberal (and usually less Biblically literate)
preachers and teachers were speaking, and they'd give them a heckle
with their Bible thumping, just as fundamentalists show up at
meetings where they know they can give Biblically illiterate
churchfolks a drubbing. And it's okay for them to refer to the
Scriptures as "the Bobble." So they knew that Jesus, one of the more
popular preachers, shared the modernist belief of the Phariseees in
the Resurrection of the dead, and they showed up at one of his
lectures to thump their Bibles and get a rise out of him. They
thought to give him a drubbing.
"Doctor," they said, "the Bible says". (That's what "teacher"
means--it means "doctor" in Latin.) So they said, "Doctor Jesus?"
and they said, "Moses wrote". That's their way of saying, "The Bible
says" And they quote the provision that the Law of Moses made, that
in case a man died before his wife had any children by him, she
should then be married to his next brother, and if a child is born it
should be named for the deceased brother, so that he would officially
have offspring to continue his line. A kind of genetic title
transfer. A guarantee of the patriarchy. This was the Saducee's
version of ongoing life, of 'immortality'. A male had 'immortality'
through his sons--they were his name, living on in history. So it
was essential that a male have his name carried on, even if his
brother had to do it by taking his wife after his death and giving
him proxy kids by her.
(Now our holy founder Henry Tudor did just that, when his brother
Arthur died, for he took his young widow Catherine of Aragon to be
his wife. Henry was being a good Bible fundamentalist when he got
hitched six times in all, trying to have a male heir according to
the Bible. In the Kingdom of heaven, whose spouse shall he be?)
Fundamentalism demanded his flirtations.
The Saducees got ready for the Argument-- (chuckling and slapping
each other's hands)--for they had a wonderful story that they trotted
out to ridicule those who believed in Resurrection. They said,
"Doctor Jesus, the Bible says all this about a man taking his
deceased brother's wife. Now supposing there are seven brothers in
all, and the wife isn't able to give a son to any of them. All of
them die after marrying her in turn and trying to have kids, and now
the question we have (chuckle, chuckle) is this: In this so-called
Resurrection (which you say you believe in), whose wife shall she
be?
Notice that the question is posed so that the woman is always WIFE.
The question is never "in the Resurrection, which husband shall she
have? " For it is only the males in the story who are the subjects of
history, and the female is always an object--"the wife." The agenda
of human life is offspring for a male husband and father. The
question in the story is posed by males, and it is posed to develop
the way in which the patriarchy is maintained: dominant males, their
names passed on to children, and children have significance only by
having the father's name and memory bestowed upon them, even if
through a relative. It does not occur to the Saducees that the
universe might be made some other way, that beyond their concern for
the male domination of the human family, there might very well be
another way of looking at things.
Jesus abruptly shifts the discussion to this "other way". He
declares that it is only in This time, This place, This age, that
heterosexual marriage has such dominance in human affairs. The
patriarchal notion of what marriage is for, and the power it is to
have over humanity now, is a limited arrangement. The idea that
the woman can be shunted about for ever like an empty freight car
looking for the burden of patriarchal luggage to carry, Jesus says,
is coming to an End. In the coming Age, those who are accounted
worthy to attain to a Resurrected World will not be involved
in--given or taken--in marriages, because the whole point of marriage
in our Age is the certification of male offspring, and that won't be
necessary "since they cannot die any more." It was the fear of death
that made men want their names to be written on their male offspring
so that they could be thought to be "alive" through them, through the
survival of the family name. But (says Jesus) when there's no more
death there's no more need for such a ploy. Such a patriarchal
institution as you have made marriage to be will disappear, for those
of the coming Age are children of Resurrection, and not heirs of a
defunct patriarchy.
They are, he declares, "equal to angels"--that is, their lives given
and organized for praise and service, and therefore children of God,
who cannot die. As God herself/hisself doesn't need a spouse, so the
divine Name is given to God's children without the patriarchal
registry. The Commonwealth just might very well be after all "an
eternal cocktail party at which all the guests are twenty one years
old", as W. H. Auden fantasized. The Saducees go to Jesus as they go
to the Bible: as if it were a code of canon law, a Robert's Rules
of Order, and they go to Jesus as if he were a
not-quite-dry-behind-the-ears young canonist whom they are going to
trip up with their courtroom pyrotechnics, like one of O.J. Simpson's
slick lawyers. Jesus dryly comments that you folks don't know how
to do your hermeneutic. You begin with the assumption that the
Coming Age is a continuation of the present one, but you might have
gone with a woman's point of view and read it another way. You
haven't even heard of marriage as between two people of the same
gender who love each other like the angels of the coming age.
But then you would have had to question your premises. The Age that
is coming is alas, profoundly different from the one you live in,
where you have made all the rules. Those rules are coming to an
End. Your laws to ban Gay marriage are dead in the water of Baptism
that made us all One in Christ. Your way of answering questions is
awry because your way of asking questions is wrong headed. Don't
assume that God's rule in history is like your rules at the Old Boys
Club.
But Furthermore. But Furthermore, Jesus goes on: Even your little
fundamentalist Bible, stripped of poetry and song and prophecy and
wisdom, devoid of metaphor and mystery, gap-toothed and empty of its
Apocrypha, even it has a vision that is wider than your squint. Look
again, he says, "at the passage about the Bush." (Not the Junior
Bush, whose feeble flame is flickering as fundamentalists try to blow
it back to bright). Look at the passage about the Burning Bush, the
one Moses found burning but never consumed, in the desert at Mount
Horeb. The Bible didn't have chapters and verses then, you see, so
Jesus couldn't cite it as Exodus Three Verse Six. The chapters and
verses were added by of all people an Irish Anglican bishop named
Ussher, in the 17th century. "Go look at the passage about the
Bush." In that verse of the Bible, the voice of God (much revered
by Saducees) speaks to Moses and says, "Take off your shoes for the
place where you stand is holy ground.
I am the God of your fathers (that must have pleased the patriarchal
Saducees!)--I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob." And now
Jesus reminds them that God is the God of the living, not a dead
Dad. So why would God be called the God of Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob if those folks were in fact dead? Therefore, they must be
alive even now. And if they are alive, they are alive to God, along
with their wives and children. . Indeed, everyone who has ever
lived is still alive to God, now and at all times.
Some of the canonists and theologians there had to admit it, and
agreed, "Well
put, Doctor." St. Luke adds: "Because they didn't dare ask him any
more questions." One egg on your face is quite enough for one
argument. Which is why they didn't stay to hear him say in the rest
of his speech, officially unrecorded to this day, "And furthermore, I
am the God of Sarah, and Hagar, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah and a lot
more."
Our own misconceptions about Resurrection need to be questioned
with such a short sharp shock. The Saducees have bequeathed to us
the idea that individual resurrection is all that is valuable, with
our private concerns being
Queued for "SAVE" in the Personal Computer of the Personal Diety.
Our format, our outline, our "Page Up" and our "Attachments" all
preserved for later PRINT OUT. Jesus shifts the vision to a New
Community, "equal to angels", organized apart from consumerism and
its artificed appetites. For what is the "bread of angels" but an
eternal eucharist of ecstasy, and what apart from musical
instruments will angels ever need? Indeed, Jesus asks, "Is gender
necessary?" "What do angelic genitals look like?" Take a peek.
Gore Vidal, commenting in 1992 on the election campaign, wrote that
"After all, the reproductive system that God devised for both men and
women is ridiculous enough as it is--certainly any competent plumber
could have done a better job; yet to pretend that the Great Baron
Frankenstein in the Sky's sexual handiwork is evil (as in original
sin) is truly evil; and that is where the present conflict. . . is
taking place." (The Last Empire, page 243.) Jesus bids us get out of
the hetero marriage mode when thinking of eternity, indeed even out
of the gender mode, into something more imaginative. Wow. That's
what our U.S. elections were really about, and why the U.S. is such
a sad and stupid land.
Job, in his agony, withering away to death without family, friends,
home, or even at the last a skin of his own, cries out "I know that
my Redeemer lives and at last will stand upon earth and after my skin
has been destroyed, yet from my flesh or apart from it I shall see
God, whom I shall see for myself. These eyes will gaze on God and
not find God aloof. Mine own eyes, and not someone else's."
The teaching of Muhammad (blessed be he!) of physical resurrection
was as ridiculed as was the Pharisee's own teaching of it, just as
the early Church's declaration of Jesus' resurrection was
"foolishness to the Greeks." But some faith in a "shadowlands"
existence after death persisted in early Hebrew and early Arab
belief, and most primitive religion made some provisions for their
beloved dead. The apostolic traditions of Islam condemned such
practices as leaving a saddled camel tethered at the grave, to die
there and be raised to ride again. Or a Cadillac made over into a
custom fitted coffin, as is part of the
religion of California celebrities. Resurrecton of the Body, and
the Ascension of Jesus, as Messiah, into heaven, are central tenets
of Muhammad's teaching, but Jesus' death by the disgrace of
crucifixion is denied. The Prophet's (blessed be he!) notion of
heaven is a garden watered by rivers, abundant with trees and
flowers, where Muslims may drink the Chardonnay and Merlot they have
been denied on earth, and unlike our wines, there will be no after
effects. Handsome youths bring all the bubbly you want, and "dark
eyed houris wait on your every pleasure," as Alfred Guillaume wrote
in "Islam."(Penguin Books, 1954). This is not a religion of rarified
airy spirits flying over graveyards, nor is it far removed from our
own hopes for a Restored Community with sit-down dinners, the
banquets promised by Rabbi Yeshua of Nazareth.
Redemption means, ultimately, Rescue. Rescue of that in each of us
which is worth rescuing, which is worth Saving. Our integral, loved,
creaturely selves, without the baggage of our own Age, or our own
ages. Even our own societal arrangement, or gender dominances, our
own religions, our own politics. As John Lennon wrote, Imagine.
This is Job's hope, in his agony, and it is the hope of Jesus, on the
cross and in his Resurrection, that there is a better Way coming for
the organization of human life in the Commonwealth of God, a truer
way to fulfill all our aspirations than we have yet found, or even
imagined.
One of the earliest Sufis in Islam was Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya (d.801), a
woman from Basra, who wrote: "O God, If I worship you in fear of
Hell, burn me in it; and if I worship you in hope of Paradise,
exclude me from it; but if I worship You for Your own being, do not
withhold from me Your everlasting beauty." *
Thomas Aquinas or Dante couldn't have put it better. Another Sufi
mystic,
Jelalludin Rumi, in the 13th century, thought of the world as itself
a tavern,
where wines were available to satisfy all tastes and all desires, but
one. . He writes,
"Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that
way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home." **
Paul, or his disciple, wrote to Thessalonica to urge that the people
of God there stand firm in the "received traditions", whether oral or
written ones. The fundamentalist attachment to "what the Bible says"
needs to be opened up and supplemented and adumbrated and enlightened
by the handing-on, the "traditio" of teaching, that Jesus and the
saints and prophets and poets may strengthen and establish our
understanding, our work, our preaching and teaching. Both Jesus and
Muhammad were unlettered, and therefore not Episcopalians--and Jesus
didn't dictate a Qu'ran , not even in the Bible, nor did he write
anything at all except in dust at the feet of a poor woman whose
accusers could then find no Bible verse nor stone to strike her with.
And it is Jesus who is for us the Utterance of God, and not the RSV
or the KJV or the Playtex Living Bible. We are coming to see that
our God intends the Rescue of the whole of the human community,
indeed the whole of Creation in a Resurrection of Peace, of Shalom,
of Salaam. "In the passage about the Bush", Jesus points to the
bush, fiery, living with illumination, yet never consumed, never
destroyed. It is a parable for him of what Muslims call the Ummah,
the universal Community of God's people, ordered and enlivened by a
God who is a God of Life and not of Death, the God from whom we
come, to whom we go, the God to whom all life lives, and like the
angels, lives for praise and service. This God brought us here, and
will have to take us home.
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 4th series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits
_________________________________________________________
*"Islam for Beginners"by N.I. Matar, NY and London: Writers &
Readers, 1992,
**"The Essential Rumi", trans. by Coleman Barks. Harper1995
Warm thanks to those of you who have already sent or brought a cheque
in response to my appeal for financial help for our Escuelita, our
little cultural school next door to the Casa, where we offer free
classes in English, computers, piano, guitar, folk and modern dance,
and now--as soon as we can find a teacher and a salary -in painting
and drawing. Our teachers are Nicaraguan young people who are our
stars appearing, our sparks among the stubble. Please send a token
of your solidarity with us in Managua. Grant Gallup at Box P.O. Box
RP-10, Managuaa, Nicaragua. And come visit us when you can--we have
a clean, safe place for you, pure water, and excellent comida. And
you'll make friends with the heirs of the Kingdom of heaven.