Eco-Justice
Commentary on the Common Lectionary for the Sundays after Epiphany, 2017
By
Dennis Ormseth
Fifth
Sunday after the Epiphany, February 5
Psalm 112:1-9 [10]
Isaiah
58:1-9a [9b-12]
1
Corinthians 2:1-12 [13-16]
Matthew
5:13-20
As
the reading of the Sermon on the Mount continues for another eight verses this
Sunday, we extend our exploration from last week's comment, to see whether
Jesus' teaching provides further support for an “Earth- honoring faith” (See
that comment for a statement of what such faith requires, following Larry
Rasmussen's description in his book by that title). Although this Sunday's
readings do not offer us an “Earth-honoring” metaphor comparable to last
Sunday's first reading, the prophet Micah's “trial before the mountains,” there
are nonetheless strong echoes here of themes we found significant for such a
faith.
In
the first reading, for instance, the prophet Isaiah similarly announces
Jahweh's rejection of the pretense of the wealthy who come seeking God's
presence, while they do nothing about removing the “bonds of injustice” and the
“yoke” of oppression, poverty, and homelessness they place on the those below
them. The text thus again rejects the
master and slave ethic, which, as Rasmussen suggests, in the industrial age has
been extended from social and economic relationships to “other-than-human
nature” in a “paradigm of domination that renders nature essentially a slave to
humanity, its steward and master” (Larry L. Rasmussen, Earth-honoring
Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 100).
Those who choose to break with this pattern of domination and the false
worship to which it is coupled, will be, in the prophet's image, “light” that
“shall break forth like the dawn” (cf. the Psalm, 112:4); they will share in a restoration
of both body and habitat (The Lord will . .satisfy your needs in parched places
and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a
spring of water, whose waters never fail.”
58:8, 11). Their relationship with Yahweh will be fully restored, and as
they “take delight in the Lord,” Yahweh will
make them “ride upon the heights of the earth.”
Thus in the end, here, too, with their abandonment of their rebellion
over against God, the mountains receive them on behalf of the Earth. Their city
restored, the people will be “called the repairer of the breach, the restorer
of streets to live in” (58:12).
Restoration of the people's relationship to Yahweh is accompanied by
restoration of the relationship with the creation in which they live.
The
second reading, in turn, brings back the theme of the power of God. Paul disavows human wisdom and power in favor
of “a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that [the Corinthian
congregation's] faith might rest, not on human wisdom, but on the power of God”
(1 Corinthians 2:4-5). He speaks “God's
wisdom, secret and hidden,” he writes, which 'none of the rulers of this age
understood . ., for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” The wisdom and power of the crucified Christ,
revealed by the Spirit, is accordingly
contrasted to the wisdom and power wielded by the politically and socially
powerful in pursuit of their imperial interests. With respect to our concern
for care of creation, this contrast relates to perhaps the greatest imbalance
of power in the modern world, that involving control over the development and
flow of energy in the global fossil fuel industry, access to which, along a
long chain of investor and consumer connections, is a major source of conflict
and oppression in the world, much to the destruction of habitat for both humans
and other-than-humans. The development
of climate science over the past century has brought about a revelatory
disclosure of these great power imbalances and their destructive impacts on the
communities of creation.
So
how do the sayings of the Sermon on the Mount relate to this situation? From last Sunday's beatitudes, this is
how: blessed are the poor in spirit, who
despair over their powerlessness to liberate the earth they love, no less
themselves, from the domination of the fossil fuel industry; they know
themselves enmeshed and even enslaved to it by virtue of their inescapable
participation in the global economy. The power of God's presence restores them.
Blessed are those who mourn, and thus do not hide or deny their grief over such
terrible losses to habitat and species. God shares their pain. And blessed
indeed are the meek, who do what they can in their own place, to secure space for
their neighbors, both human and other-than-human, that is free from all such diminishment
of their shared well-being. Theirs is the future of the earth.
Turning
to this Sunday's teaching, in so doing, the followers of this way will be regarded
as “salt of the earth.” As Warren Carter
points out, the image of salt has considerable polyvalence in scripture: “Sir
39:26 identifies ‘salt’ as one of ‘the basic necessities of human life.’ It seasons food in Job 6:6. In Lev 2:13 and Ezek 43:24 salt and sacrifice
are linked. Elisha uses salt to purify
drinking water (2 Kgs 2:19-23). In Ezra
4:14 sharing salt seems to suggest loyalty (so also ‘salt of the covenant’ in
Lev 2:13 and Num 18:19.)” As “salt of
the earth,” Carter suggests, “the community of disciples, not the ruling elite
or the synagogue, is to live this flavoring, purifying, sacrificial way of life
committed to the world’s well- being and loyal to God’s purposes (Matthew
and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and
Religious Reading, p. 137). Building on the image's polyvalence, Robert
Smith suggests that it is precisely “the people who hear his words and follow
him” that are “‘salt of the earth,’ and that means salt for the earth” (New
Proclamation Series A, 1998-1999, p. 148.
Emphasis added). This is the
second time the Earth is mentioned in the Sermon, the first being the reference
to Earth as that which the “meek” will inherit (5:5). “Salt for the earth” can
then in turn be understood as pointing to those who are loyal to the earth and help
to sustain its life in all its rich diversity and beauty. The Earth, Carter emphasizes, is where the
“disciples live, in the midst of the poor in spirit, the mourning, the
powerless, and the hungry and thirsty, dominated and exploited by the ruling elite
(5:3-6).” It is where the community
embodies God’s empire as opposed to human empire, in mercy, purity,
peacemaking and persecution, as it lives out its alternative existence (5:7-12;
Matthew and the Margins, p. 138).
And as we've seen in our second reading, restoration of this
“saltiness”, this “Earth-loyal” faith happens by drawing on the wisdom and
power of God, as disclosed by the Spirit in the cross and resurrection of
Jesus.
Just so, according to
the Sermon's teaching, with this Earth-loyal, Earth-honoring faith, the
followers of Jesus “are the light of the world” (5:14). For the second time, Jesus unexpectedly
applies to the disciples an image that we have seen Matthew and the other
evangelists use primarily for Jesus himself.
They are to continue the task first given to Israel, as our first
reading reminds us (“light shall break forth like the dawn”; Isaiah 58:8, cf. Isaiah
42:6), and then assumed by Jesus as “light shining in the darkness.” The point
of these two images of salt and light is clear:
as Robert Smith writes, “Through Jesus, God is laying healing hands on
the world to make it ‘all right’ and to summon us to live lives of ‘all
rightness” (Smith, p. 150). Those who follow Jesus up the mountain are called
to manifest, for all to see, the life that leads to the fulfillment of all
righteousness for all creation. With
this as his goal, the teaching of Jesus does indeed fully conform to the nature
and purpose of the law and the prophet, as he claims in the closing verses of
our reading (5:17-18): gracious gift of
God, fundamentally personal and inter-relational in character, meeting the
needs of all creation, not a matter of abstract rules but rather grounded in
the narrative of Israel's experience with God that itself provides both guidance
and encouragement for such action (For a description of these several aspects
of Torah, see Terry E. Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament. Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 2005, pp. 148 – 150).
It is also shown, importantly we might add,
to be highly consonant with the contemporary ecological understanding of life, which
is likewise fundamentally inter-relational in character and meeting “the
‘creational need” of nature.
