Series: Lectionary Notes
tl;dr: This week includes some big texts and themes about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, law, righteousness, and faith.
Last year I did some posts of notes about lectionary texts as part of a discussion group. That group has come back, so these posts have as well.
This week includes some heavy hitters including the call of Abraham, perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible from John 3:16, the transfiguration, and some big language about faith and law and righteousness and how Judaism and this new Christian movement relate to each other.
Genesis 12:1-4a
This is a short text, but the thing I notice this time is the parallel structure, which is a poetic structure common in Hebrew:
- Go to the land I will show you.
- You will be blessed so that you will be a blessing.
- I will bless those who bless you, and through you all will be blessed.
- Abram went.
The two themes here, that faith drives you to action and that the whole world will be blessed, will continue into most of the other texts.
Psalm 121
This is the odd one out for me this week. I'm a little conflicted on whether I even like the theological messaging of it. On my first read, some parts stood out to me that make it sound more like God will keep you from ever experiencing suffering. That, to me, is a major contradiction for the core of Christianity. We say that God in Jesus suffered with us, not waved a magic wand to take the suffering away.
One of the lines on the second reading did make me a little more sympathetic to it, though: "he will not let your foot be moved." That does imply to me that there are things that are trying to move you, and that thing isn't taken away. Instead, God will strengthen you in it.
That's really about it in this text for me. I didn't really see it tying into the major themes of the others.
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
Romans now gets into the heavier theological words, at least in how it has often been interpreted. I am going to back up a bit to question some of those typical interpretations.
This letter is to a group of people at the absolute heart of the Empire. The audience would have been a lot of slaves and women, as we know was true for a lot of the early Christian communities. They were mostly not people with much cultural power, although there most likely were a few that were able to host in their houses. They would have been steeped in the propaganda of Rome, about how Rome brings peace to the world through its superior power over and against other nations.
Those other nations include Judea, the home of the Jews in this community, who probably know better that the "peace" which Rome promises is really not a good thing for them. We know that the early community in Rome was a mix of diaspora Jews and Gentiles, and as we see elsewhere including other Pauline letters and Acts and even some extra-biblical texts like Justin Martyr, the first big question for the early Christians were what they were supposed to do in relation to their Jewish roots and Jewish law. With that in mind, I think this text is doing some interesting threading a needle.
It echoes the text of the call of Abraham in that it is clear that God worked through Judaism first. The Gentiles in the crowd probably didn't like that. Judea was a provincial nothing far from the heart of the Empire and they probably had some sense that even if they were slaves, they had all their lives hearing the propaganda that being closer to the heart of Rome made them better than people from places like Judea.
It might have been similarly uncomfortable to the Judeans. They knew their history and how they were God's chosen people. When a minority inside a dominant culture, they had to work hard to hold on to their religious and cultural distinctions, especially for the day-to-day things like what they would eat. Now they're in this community with a bunch of people who will eat things they won't eat and aren't circumcising their children and all the rest. Paul, who they deeply respect as a leader in a movement, is now sending them a letter telling them that those distinctions aren't bad, but they aren't the point in and of themselves either. God is including those who don't keep those distinctions.
In other words, Paul is attacking the ways that both parts of this community would be tempted to think that they are better than the other. It's rejecting the Roman concept that superiority is based in the Empire and moving outward from there by saying that God started with this little conquered nation of Israel, and also rejecting that this makes Judeans better because God always planned to expand the blessing from there.
A lot of modern Protestantism would read this as some deep theological statements about the nature of grace. I don't think those are entirely wrong, but I do think there's risk of losing a lot of that context. The main thing Paul was dealing with in a lot of his letters, including this one, was how to build communities that were inclusive of Jews and Gentiles. The easy way to do that is to discard any substance, to say that anything goes. Paul doesn't do that. He maintains a distinctly Jewish vision of God for the world but invites all people into faith in that vision of God.
John 3:1-17
One of the verses in here is perhaps the most famous line in Christian Scripture. That one verse, 3:16, is a vague but pleasant sentiment on its own. In the full context provided here, I think we get some similar themes as the Romans text.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee. This was one particular sect within Judaism. It's the sect that survived the upcoming wars against Rome and is the closest to Judaism today, with a lot of emphasis on creative interpretation and teachers passing on the tradition all over the world. There were other movements more focused on the Temple (Sadducees) or isolating to preserve holiness (Essenes) or national independence (Zealots). If Jesus could be put into any of these groups, it was definitely the Pharisees. I say this as a reminder that this John 3 text was an internal conversation between two leaders of the same movement.
Nicodemus starts with flattery, that what Jesus is doing is obviously from God. Jesus answers by saying that nobody can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. I can see two options here:
- What I've heard a lot over the years is that Jesus is radically changing the subject, rebuking the attempt at flattery in order to make a big theological point about how what Nicodemus was doing was not good enough already.
- What might make more sense as a conversation between two Pharisees or at least one Pharisee and one Pharisee-adjacent teacher. Maybe instead of rebuking him, Jesus is saying "it's great that you recognize this and it is a good sign that you have true faith, not just following the rules." I don't think it's as immediately confrontational as sometimes presented.
What it is, though, is subversive. Jesus returns the compliment, but he does it in a way that questions some Jewish exceptionalism where one of the most important things was to be born of the lineage of Abraham. Jesus compliments his faith, but then asserts that this faith comes from being born from above, not from Abraham.
Nicodemus first tries to play along with the analogy, asking how you can be born a second time. If he's already a child of Abraham, how can he also be born of the Spirit?
Jesus pushes it farther. He doesn't entirely dismiss the Abrahamic lineage, but he redirects to the real point being born of the spirit. The wind blows where it will and this is true of everyone (which may imply not just Jews) born of the Spirit.
That's when Nicodemus seems to be genuinely confused, asking how this can be. I think that's because he's caught on to the idea that Jesus is saying the Spirit of God is not restricted to only those of the right ancestry.
Jesus replies by giving an extremely Jewish, even an extremely Pharisaical, way of reading Jewish Scripture. It is some creative reinterpretation, but at a couple of points he is clear that he is grounding it in the Jewish story. He then concludes that God loves the whole world, not just those born of Abraham, and they all can be born from above or believe in him or have faith (same idea, different language). Then to drive it home a bit more, the even bigger punchline than the famous 3:16 is verse 17: God is saving the whole world, not condemning it.
In other words, I think the main thrust of this text is the same as the Romans one, calling Jews and Gentiles alike into one faith.
Matthew 17:1-9
I'm a little confused that this is included this week when we just had the Transfiguration right before Lent. It's also a second Gospel reading, which is unusual.
It does thematically fit the other texts in one major way: that the Jesus movement is the next big stage in what God is doing through Israel. He is there alongside Moses and Elijah. He's not replacing Moses and Elijah.
This is where I end my notes on an important point I only hinted at from the other texts: if you read these texts in a way that concludes that Judaism is inherently legalistic or that Christians are inherently better because we are all about faith instead, you are both factually incorrect you've missed the point. Every religion - every social movement - has the push and pull of those who want to more creatively get back to the heart of it and adapt to new circumstances while others want to stick to what they believe worked in the past. That's not a Jewish thing. That's a human thing. More to the point here, I do not believe that these texts are about some intellectual abstract faith that replaces some hyper legalistic religion. I do think it is about pulling out the heart of the Jewish tradition, a God who promises to bless the whole world through Israel, and following through on that promise by creating communities where all are invited into this faith.
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