This Sunday's lectionary readings were from Proper 25 of the Year A Revised Common Lectionary. They included a brief reading from Leviticus, intended (as the Old Testament readings usually are) to support the Gospel reading. The reading was discontinuous: Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18. I'd like to consider the whole, and then the envelope.
The LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. You shall each revere your mother and father, and you shall keep my sabbaths: I am the LORD your God. Do not turn to idols or make cast images for yourselves: I am the LORD your God.
When you offer a sacrifice of well-being to the LORD, offer it in such a way that it is acceptable on your behalf. It shall be eaten on the same day you offer it, or on the next day; and anything left over until the third day shall be consumed in fire. If it is eaten at all on the third day, it is an abomination; it will not be acceptable. All who eat it shall be subject to punishment, because they have profaned what is holy to the LORD; and any such person shall be cut off from the people.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.
You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the LORD.
You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.
You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD.
You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:1–18 NRSV)
In the first place, I'd like to characterize the reading. This is, it seems to me, a freer rendering of the ten commandments, with more by way of illustration.
But it seems to me that this is a surprisingly important passage, especially for being in a book that is so seldom read. I'll start by picking a view things out.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:9–10 NRSV)
Here we have, of course, the scriptural warrant for the tradition of not gleaning the field, which was so important in the story of Ruth. But I think this is reflected in the social criticism of the OWS movement: the sin of Wall Street isn't that they're rich, it's that they take everything, when the law obligates them to leave enough for the poor and the alien.
You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. (Leviticus 19:13 NRSV)
Here, we have the scriptural warrant for the tradition that a laborer should be paid before sundown, which figured in the Matthew 22 reading from a couple of weeks ago, and the subject of the preceding post.
I thought the following passage was especially relevant to our present, troubled times:
You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor (Leviticus 19:15 NRSV)
I believe this can be read as a criticism of central tendencies of the Democratic and Republican Parties respectively. Is there perhaps wisdom enough in this passage to pull us through? I wonder.
Finally, I'd like to note a strong parallel between the reading as it appeared in the lectionary, and Jesus's words from the Gospel. First, Leviticus:
The LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.
You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:1–2, 15-18 NRSV)
Next, Matthew:
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:34–40 NRSV)
Note how Jesus's epitome of the law parallels the beginning, and even more explicitly, the end of Leviticus reading. This lead me to ask the question: was it an idiom of oriental thought to refer to an entirety obliquely by mentioning it's beginning and the end? It took a couple of hours for the answer to occur to me, in the writings of John of Patmos:
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. (Revelation 1:8 NRSV)
And so, I invite a more diligent, more prayerful contemplation of Leviticus 19:1-18, for upon them hang all the law and the prophets.
Peace
10 comments:
I especially like that we shouldn't put a stumbling block in front of the blind. I was just going to do that! All my fun is shot!
I don't know what the rich did wrong. I don't think you can blame all the rich as a class. After all, Warren Buffett is rich, and gates is rich. What did they do wrong? they provide jobs for thousands and thousands of people.
It's the poor who are useless, because they aren't contributing. They've lost a sense of shame. the people who appear on Jerry Springer are to blame.
Kirby,
I don't know what the rich did wrong. I don't think you can blame all the rich as a class. After all, Warren Buffett is rich, and gates is rich. What did they do wrong? they provide jobs for thousands and thousands of people.
I think it is a mistake to blame a class. I have argued against a particular kind of behavior, but I don't consider it to be universal. There are rich folks who understand that they have a productive role to play in society, and who embrace that role. I have no argument with them. But there are other rich folks who don't have this understanding, and I'm offering strong criticism of them.
It's the poor who are useless, because they aren't contributing.
You're arguing against a very large, very disparate group. Indeed, you want to make an argument that merit is a major contributor to social mobility, and you want to illustrate it by examples of poor but worthy individuals who have worked their way to prosperity. Don't you understand that you're undercutting your own argument here? For such individuals, their poverty cannot be taken as a judgment on their merit, as you are doing here, but instead as the initial condition that they've risen above.
Again, this is an extraordinarily unnuanced view of the world. There are folks that are poor who have worked their whole lives, who have contributed to society, former soldiers, former foundry workers, former assembly-line workers, who are now poor because some greed rich thief decided stole the value of their pensions, or because some greedy, incompetent manager decided that it was more important to pump up their bonus by underfunding the employee pension plan, and so increasing their quarterly profit.
Get it through your head, Kirby. It's a mistake to judge a person based on their economic standing. You're rendering unjust judgment after unjust judgment.
They've lost a sense of shame. the people who appear on Jerry Springer are to blame.
The people who appear on Jerry Springer represent an infinitesimal, and highly unrepresentative, sample of the poor. It is telling that you don't know this.
I don't think there are even poor people in America. No one starves. Starving people are genuinely poor, and they appear throughout the NT. They are constantly getting together and then they remember that they have no food. Jesus bails them out.
Today the problem is never an absence of food. Unless it's a Karen Carpenter type.
I'm not sure what poverty means. There is poverty of decency. Or poverty of imagination. Or a person with no humor. That's a kind of poverty.
There are extremely wealthy people who are like PAris Hilton. I don't think she has quality of life, or understands it, and is probably just miserable. That's probably a kind of poverty.
It's not clear to me who's poor, or why.
If we're talking starvation we have to talk about communist countries. North Korea still has famines as does Zimbabwe. But all democratic countries (except possibly India) have licked the problem of food distribution.
Communist societies can't distribute food because there is no reason to do it. Votes don't matter and there is no wealth or other motive to be gotten from the distribution. So, people do still starve in communist areas.
In capitalist areas, food is not a difficulty. But of course man does not live by bread alone, and there are people who starve for love, or starve for friendship, or starve for a true understanding of the world. I don't know what to say about these people. They often have plenty of money.
You are correct in pointing out the ideas of social-justice implied by Leviticus (and..Bible as a whole). The points on not defrauding people, lying or ..ripping them off (even the poor) seem especially profound--not that Bloombergville or Wall Street seem too preoccupied with upholding those maxims. Of course along with the ethical maxims (also to be noted in other early religious texts--ie, the Vedas have similar themes along with hymns to Vishnu, etc--) you also get death to the adulterers..and shellfish eaters.
Anyway say grazi a Dios--or is it Alex I-- for the ptolemaic greeks who put together the LXX and the interesting semitic myths which comprise the Old T. :]
stu, i like your comparison of wall street to a farmer who leaves nothing left for others to glean
Assuming you don't mind a bit more dissent I would say Stu's reading of the parable, while plausible, is not entirely accurate. In a sense Stu suggests the parable is about the charity/caritas of the landowner, who does his duty and helps out the poor workers, as say a wealthy and benevolent executive might--Bill Gates' charity fund,etc. To me, that is not JC's message, taking the Gospels as a whole. Gates will be judged along with ...starving illegal immigrants--on a macro view, mere wealth and power does not justify...any human ( Locke would most likely say the same..and also remind us that the New Test. does not justify the so-called Divine right of Kings, as Stu seems to suggest). In brief, the New Testament expresses something like a communitarian view-- not quite socialist perhaps, but there are socialist elements, arguably--the critique of usury, the rich man and eye of a needle, comments in James, etc.
Actually that probably belongs on the previous comment. Sry. Still sort of applies.
J,
Actually that probably belongs on the previous comment.
No problem.
I agree that Jesus had a strong focus on social justice. I'm not as confident as you are that this implies leveling.
I'd say that, more to the point, Jesus asks us to be "all in," i.e., to use all of the resources we have to benefit the greater community. Let me suggest here two other parables, which illustrate this via complementary extremes. The first is the parable of the Widow's mite (e.g., Luke 21:1-3), the second is the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16-21). The later I think is particularly interesting, because the guilt of the "fool" doesn't reside in his wealth per se, as much as it does in his fantasy of a life of subsequent ease, which is to say, his belief that he can provide for his welfare without any consideration of the welfare of the society in which he lives.
It seems to me that the point here can't be boiled down to simply "rich bad/poor good," but rather, "participants in society, good/leaches bad." I think Jesus chose to illustrate his points (i.e., of poor but faithful vs. rich but foolish) because this maximized the contrast and tension in an audience that was accustomed to viewing poor as bad, and rich as good. In effect, he's saying that God doesn't judge men as man does (i.e., by wealth and possible self-interest), but instead based on faithfulness/commitment.
So I think that a naive "modern resolution" of these parables that reduces them to poor good/rich bad, as you're doing, deeply misses the point. You're back to judging by human terms, you've just flipped the associations relative to Jesus's audience.
""And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."" in Matt. right.
Is that naive too, Stu? Im not claiming the New Test. is socialist per se but there are themes that most would call "leftist", as the above quote shows, however obvious.
J,
Im not claiming the New Test. is socialist per se but there are themes that most would call "leftist"
I can't imagine why you think I'm disagreeing on this point. Clearly, social justice was a big issue in the OT, and a big issue in Jesus's ministry.
The question that divides us isn't whether Jesus was arguing for an equitable society, it is whether or not wealth per se is bad. Note that in the parable you cite, Jesus does not say that it is impossible, just difficult. FWIW, I believe in this case "the eye of the needle" refers to a protected city gate rather than to a sewing implement. I think there is a huge temptation to try to "get enough" so that we can "check out." The rich already have enough, so the temptation to "check out" is much more present for them than for people who have to work to eat.
Contra Kirby, I do not see the Kingdom of God as being present only in heaven, even though that may be where it is from. The Kingdom of God is ever before us, and to enter it, we need only serve others selflessly. It is not always easy for the rich to see service as part of the social contract that is binding on them, but it is.
Post a Comment