“Generosity
over scarcity, brokenness in the face of denial, and hope in the
place of despair.”
Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year C by Dennis Ormseth
Reading
for Series C: 2012-2013
Third Sunday
after Pentecost
1 Kings 17:17–24
Psalm 30
Galatians 1:11-24
Luke 7:11-17
The continuity of this Sunday's gospel with the
reading for last Sunday serves to underscore the significance of the
affirmations regarding divine authority of Jesus and the healing of creation we
presented in last week's comment. To reiterate: The purpose of these stories of
healing and resuscitation is to manifest the presence of God in Jesus, a
presence which brings healing not only for the centurion's servant and the widow's
son, but to the community. “Here self-interest, care for others and
"faith" merge in an alliance that transcends barriers of culture and
power and promotes the common good of all parties." Jesus' resuscitation
of the widow of Nain's son amplifies the recognition of divine authority and
leads directly to the acclamation of Jesus as "great prophet" and the
glorification of God by all the people. And while the lessons and the psalm for
last Sunday provided a basis for developing the significance of these events
for the whole community of creation, this Sunday's lessons and psalm extend and
deepen their significance for addressing the current ecological crisis.
It is important to note that in these two
encounters, Jesus demonstrates divine power over death. The centurion's servant
was said to be "ill and close to death" (Luke 7:2). The widow's
"only son" was already dead and was being carried out on a bier. As
David Tiede observes, the raising of the widow's son is "one of three
Lukan stories of the resuscitation of a dead person (see also 8:40-42, 49-56,
Jairus' daughter; Acts 9;36-43, Tabitha)," which "indicate the
evangelist's conviction that these resuscitations are displays of the authority
and power of the kingdom [of God] over death itself (see 12:5)." Moreover,
comparison with our first lesson in this regard shows that Jesus' authority
over death is even greater than that of Elijah: he raises 'the dead by his word
alone," which 'outdoes Elijah's or Elisha's stretching themselves out on
the corpse" (David Tiede, Luke. Minneapolis:
Augsburg Publishing House, 1988; pp. 151-52). The God we encounter in Jesus is
the God who creates by speaking all things into being.
It is precisely this authority over death of the
Creator that explains the appointment of Psalm 30 for this Sunday's worship.
God's presence in Jesus is thereby acknowledged as the power by which the
psalmist is not only shielded from foes (v. 1) and healed (v. 2), but "restored
. . . to life from among those gone down to the Pit" (v. 3)." The
psalmist has cried out in deep anguish:
What profit is there in my death, if I go down to
the Pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me!
O Lord be
my helper" (vv. 9-10.)
The psalmist here represents homo laudans,
“the praising human" we discussed in our comment on the readings for the
Day of Pentecost, whose vocation according to Psalm 104 is the unceasing praise
of the Creator. Like Psalm 104, Psalm 30 significantly shades its praise of God
by recognition that "a dark cloud looms on the horizon." Accordingly,
his rescue can "turn mourning into dancing;" Yahweh has “taken off
[his] sackcloth and clothed [him] with joy, so that [his] soul may praise God
and not be silent."
Walter Brueggemann interprets the significance of
these verses in terms of their address to Yahweh
. . . in the life-denying fissure of
exile-death-impotence-chaos, to which Yahweh's partners seem inevitably to
come. This affirmation may be one of the distinctive surprises of Yahweh as
given in Israel's testimony. To the extent that the fissure is an outcome of
Yahweh's rejecting rage, or to the extent that it is a result of Yahweh's loss
of power in the face of the counterpower of death, we might expect that a loss
to nullity is irreversible. Thus,
"when you're dead, you're dead," "when you're in exile, you're
in exile."
But the "unsolicited
testimony "of Israel moves through and beyond this
. . . irreversibility in two stunning
affirmations. First, Yahweh is inclined
toward and attentive to those in the nullity.
Yahweh can be reached, summoned, and remobilized for the sake of
life. Beyond Yahweh's harsh sovereignty,
Yahweh has a soft underside to which appeal can be made. Israel (and we) are regularly astonished that
working in tension with Yahweh's self-regard is Yahweh's readiness to be
engaged with and exposed for the sake of the partner (Brueggemann, Theology
of the Old Testament. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1997; p. 557).
And secondly, "the
mobilization of Yahweh in the season of nullity characteristically requires an
act of initiative on the part of the abandoned partner." This is what the
voice of Psalm 30 is articulating. Breuggemann concludes:
Indeed, Israel's faith is
formed, generated, and articulated, precisely with reference to the fissure,
which turns out to be the true place of life for Yahweh's partner and the place
wherein Yahweh's true character is not only disclosed, but perhaps fully
formed. The reality of nullity causes a profound renegotiation of Yahweh's
sovereignty vis-a-vis Yahweh's pathos-filled fidelity.
Yahweh "is known in
Israel to be a God willing and able to enact a radical newness . . . for each
of Yahweh's partners, a newness that the partners cannot work for
themselves" (Brueggemann, p. 558).
[Lutheran hearers of the
second lesson this Sunday, we may note parenthetically, may recognize this
quality of radical newness in the Apostle Paul's clear disassociation with the
church in Jerusalem and his insistence that the gospel of Jesus Christ which
liberated him from his former life of opposition was not "from a human
source, nor was [he] taught it." Brueggemann heightens the significance of
this quality, furthermore, in noting that "because of this inexplicable,
unanticipated newness is the same for all [Israel's] partners, it is with good
reason that H. H. Schmid has concluded that creatio ex nihilo,
justification by faith, and resurrection of the dead are synonymous
phrases." These phrases, he insists, "are not isolated dogmatic
themes. They are, rather, ways in which Yahweh's characteristic propensities of
generosity are made visible in different contexts with different partners
(Brueggemann, p. 558).]
It is precisely with
respect to this affirmation of radical newness, according to Brueggeman, that
the biblical narrative contrasts sharply with the dominant metanarrative
available within contemporary culture for those concerned with addressing the
ecological crisis. "Insistence on the reality of brokenness,"
Brueggemann insightfully suggests, "flies in the face of the Enlightenment
practice of denial. Enlightenment rationality, in its popular, uncriticized
form, teaches that with enough reason and resources, brokenness can be
avoided." Within this narrative,
. . . there are no
genuinely broken people. When brokenness intrudes into such an assembly of
denial, as surely it must, it comes as failure, stupidity, incompetence, and
guilt. The church, so wrapped in the narrative of denial, tends to collude in
this. When denial is transposed into guilt—into personal failure—the system of
denial remains intact and uncriticized, in the way Job's friends defended
"the system."
The outcome for the isolated failure is
that there can be no healing, for there has not been enough candor to permit
it. In the end, such denial is not only a denial of certain specifics—it is the
rejection of the entire drama of brokenness and healing, the denial that there
is an incommensurate Power and Agent who comes in pathos into the brokenness,
and who by coming there makes the brokenness a place of possibility.
Like the psalmist who said
in his prosperity "I shall never be moved," (30:6), the foundational
assumptions of our society cannot be challenged. Alternatively, "the drama
of brokenness and restoration, which has Yahweh as its key agent, features
generosity, candor in brokenness, and resilient hope, the markings of a viable
life. The primary alternative now available to us features scarcity, denial,
and despair, surely the ingredients of nihilism." (Brueggemann, p. 562).
This analysis fits all too
well with the inability of American society and, increasingly, global industrial
society more generally to respond effectively to the multifaceted ecological
crisis we face. Denial occurs, in this analysis, on three levels. First and
fundamental, we refuse to entertain the possibility of a complete collapse of
our relationship with nature, in terms of the destruction of biodiversity and
global climate change and its damage to our agricultural systems. But secondly,
amongst those who see the dangers, remedies of technological innovation and
adaptation are usually considered sufficient to address the problem: strategies
and resources, it is assumed, can be developed to forestall major disaster. And
thirdly, the needed behavioral change is considered achievable on the basis of
corporate self-interest and individual guilt in relationship to that interest;
it seems important to assign fault to individuals who resist change, but our
corporate complicity in alienation from creation is generally ignored. Change
on a societal scale remains beyond our cultural and political reach. In this
situation, a Christian congregation at worship in the presence of its risen
Lord and placing itself under the authority and within the sacramentally
enacted dynamic of his death and resurrection, offers the world the alternative
that, in Brueggeman's apt summary, "like ancient Israel, affirms generosity
over scarcity, brokenness in the face of denial, and hope in the
place of despair" Brueggemann, p. 563)
For additional
care for creation reflections on the overall themes of the lectionary lessons
for the month by Trisha K Tull, Professor Emerita of Old Testament,
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and columnist for The Working Preacher, visit: http://www.workingpreacher.org/columnist_home.aspx?author_id=288
