Dylan's lectionary blog

Second Sunday in Lent, Year A

Genesis 12:1-8 - link to NRSV text
Romans 4:1-5(6-12)13-17 - link to NRSV text
John 3:1-17 - link to NRSV text

There wasn't a whole lot of social mobility in the ancient world. A lot of that was because a person's honor was the family honor. If you're born the child of someone important, you're important. If you're born the child of an outcast, you're an outcast. Your birth pretty much set your destiny, since what's possible for you was a function of who your family was.

There were some ways, though, in which you could become affiliated with a higher-status family; the best chances for social mobility (not that there were many such chances) came from these. If you were able to become enslaved to an important family, you would be considered part of the slaveowner's household; while you might be among the lower-ranking members of the household, the importance of the household might make you outrank the highest members of less important families. The closest analogy I can think of in our culture is this: who do you think would get the better table at a posh Hollywood restaurant -- the personal assistant to a studio boss, or the vacationing rector of a small, rural parish? A man enslaved to the emperor is, as a member of the imperial household, an important person, and once freed, this person is important as the emperor's freedman. The connection is permanent.

There were other ways too of joining a family. Adoption happened sometimes, even between adults. And then there were things like circumcision. Interestingly enough, there were cultures other than Jewish ones that practiced circumcision in the ancient world, and when a man from one of these other cultures (and hence who was already circumcised) converted to Judaism, the rule was that a cut would have to be made specifically so that blood was shed. Circumcision in these cases functions a little like the making of "blood brothers" among children; by the shedding of blood in the way that Abraham shed his own blood when he was circumcised, a man who was not literally a blood descendent of Abraham becomes nevertheless a son of Abraham, a child of God, part of the people of Israel. Now THAT's mobility – becoming part of God's chosen people.

In many ways, saying that anyone could join God's people by establishing a blood tie to Abraham, who was called out of Ur by God, was pretty radical. But Jesus offered something even more radical than that.

Jesus offered people the chance to become family – not the fraught, dysfunctional version of family that many of us are familiar with, but family that loves as God loves, family in which each person gives of herself or himself with abandon and never loses out, because each other member is giving in the same way – without blood shared or further blood shed. The Gospel According to Mark gets this across when Jesus, leaving his mother and brothers by blood waiting outside, says, "whoever hears the word of God and does it is my sister and my brother and my mother" (Mark 3:31-34).  The Gospel According to John gets that across in this Sunday's gospel, by saying that absolutely anyone can be born from above, from the Spirit (interestingly enough, the expression "born again" doesn't appear here!), becoming sister and brother and mother to the one who has been "lifted up," and now occupies the highest place.

The blood that Jesus shed plays a very important role in this gospel, though not in the gruesome way described by some, but because it was the last blood that would ever need to be shed for us to become one human family, children of one God, loving one another as our elder brother Jesus loved and loves us. That's why in Paul's thought, to insist on circumcision is to deny the Good News of the Cross. To all division, to all denial of our connection to and obligation to care for one another, to all striving to get in God's good grace or to keep others out, Jesus says as he says of all bloodshed: IT IS FINISHED. All that is needed for new life, new hope, a new world, has been accomplished, for God so loved the world that God gave us Jesus, sent to save the world from all that divides and dehumanizes.

Thanks be to God!

Second Sunday in Lent, Year A

Genesis 12:1-8 - link to NRSV text
Romans 4:1-5(6-12)13-17 - link to NRSV text
John 3:1-17 - link to NRSV text

There wasn't a whole lot of social mobility in the ancient world. A lot of that was because a person's honor was the family honor. If you're born the child of someone important, you're important. If you're born the child of an outcast, you're an outcast. Your birth pretty much set your destiny, since what's possible for you was a function of who your family was.

There were some ways, though, in which you could become affiliated with a higher-status family; the best chances for social mobility (not that there were many such chances) came from these. If you were able to become enslaved to an important family, you would be considered part of the slaveowner's household; while you might be among the lower-ranking members of the household, the importance of the household might make you outrank the highest members of less important families. The closest analogy I can think of in our culture is this: who do you think would get the better table at a posh Hollywood restaurant -- the personal assistant to a studio boss, or the vacationing rector of a small, rural parish? A man enslaved to the emperor is, as a member of the imperial household, an important person, and once freed, this person is important as the emperor's freedman. The connection is permanent.

There were other ways too of joining a family. Adoption happened sometimes, even between adults. And then there were things like circumcision. Interestingly enough, there were cultures other than Jewish ones that practiced circumcision in the ancient world, and when a man from one of these other cultures (and hence who was already circumcised) converted to Judaism, the rule was that a cut would have to be made specifically so that blood was shed. Circumcision in these cases functions a little like the making of "blood brothers" among children; by the shedding of blood in the way that Abraham shed his own blood when he was circumcised, a man who was not literally a blood descendent of Abraham becomes nevertheless a son of Abraham, a child of God, part of the people of Israel. Now THAT's mobility – becoming part of God's chosen people.

In many ways, saying that anyone could join God's people by establishing a blood tie to Abraham, who was called out of Ur by God, was pretty radical. But Jesus offered something even more radical than that.

Jesus offered people the chance to become family – not the fraught, dysfunctional version of family that many of us are familiar with, but family that loves as God loves, family in which each person gives of herself or himself with abandon and never loses out, because each other member is giving in the same way – without blood shared or further blood shed. The Gospel According to Mark gets this across when Jesus, leaving his mother and brothers by blood waiting outside, says, "whoever hears the word of God and does it is my sister and my brother and my mother" (Mark 3:31-34).  The Gospel According to John gets that across in this Sunday's gospel, by saying that absolutely anyone can be born from above, from the Spirit (interestingly enough, the expression "born again" doesn't appear here!), becoming sister and brother and mother to the one who has been "lifted up," and now occupies the highest place.

The blood that Jesus shed plays a very important role in this gospel, though not in the gruesome way described by some, but because it was the last blood that would ever need to be shed for us to become one human family, children of one God, loving one another as our elder brother Jesus loved and loves us. That's why in Paul's thought, to insist on circumcision is to deny the Good News of the Cross. To all division, to all denial of our connection to and obligation to care for one another, to all striving to get in God's good grace or to keep others out, Jesus says as he says of all bloodshed: IT IS FINISHED. All that is needed for new life, new hope, a new world, has been accomplished, for God so loved the world that God gave us Jesus, sent to save the world from all that divides and dehumanizes.

Thanks be to God!

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Second Sunday in Lent, Year A

Genesis 12:1-8 - link to NRSV text
Romans 4:1-5(6-12)13-17 - link to NRSV text
John 3:1-17 - link to NRSV text

There wasn't a whole lot of social mobility in the ancient world. A lot of that was because a person's honor was the family honor. If you're born the child of someone important, you're important. If you're born the child of an outcast, you're an outcast. Your birth pretty much set your destiny, since what's possible for you was a function of who your family was.

There were some ways, though, in which you could become affiliated with a higher-status family; the best chances for social mobility (not that there were many such chances) came from these. If you were able to become enslaved to an important family, you would be considered part of the slaveowner's household; while you might be among the lower-ranking members of the household, the importance of the household might make you outrank the highest members of less important families. The closest analogy I can think of in our culture is this: who do you think would get the better table at a posh Hollywood restaurant -- the personal assistant to a studio boss, or the vacationing rector of a small, rural parish? A man enslaved to the emperor is, as a member of the imperial household, an important person, and once freed, this person is important as the emperor's freedman. The connection is permanent.

There were other ways too of joining a family. Adoption happened sometimes, even between adults. And then there were things like circumcision. Interestingly enough, there were cultures other than Jewish ones that practiced circumcision in the ancient world, and when a man from one of these other cultures (and hence who was already circumcised) converted to Judaism, the rule was that a cut would have to be made specifically so that blood was shed. Circumcision in these cases functions a little like the making of "blood brothers" among children; by the shedding of blood in the way that Abraham shed his own blood when he was circumcised, a man who was not literally a blood descendent of Abraham becomes nevertheless a son of Abraham, a child of God, part of the people of Israel. Now THAT's mobility – becoming part of God's chosen people.

In many ways, saying that anyone could join God's people by establishing a blood tie to Abraham, who was called out of Ur by God, was pretty radical. But Jesus offered something even more radical than that.

Jesus offered people the chance to become family – not the fraught, dysfunctional version of family that many of us are familiar with, but family that loves as God loves, family in which each person gives of herself or himself with abandon and never loses out, because each other member is giving in the same way – without blood shared or further blood shed. The Gospel According to Mark gets this across when Jesus, leaving his mother and brothers by blood waiting outside, says, "whoever hears the word of God and does it is my sister and my brother and my mother" (Mark 3:31-34).  The Gospel According to John gets that across in this Sunday's gospel, by saying that absolutely anyone can be born from above, from the Spirit (interestingly enough, the expression "born again" doesn't appear here!), becoming sister and brother and mother to the one who has been "lifted up," and now occupies the highest place.

The blood that Jesus shed plays a very important role in this gospel, though not in the gruesome way described by some, but because it was the last blood that would ever need to be shed for us to become one human family, children of one God, loving one another as our elder brother Jesus loved and loves us. That's why in Paul's thought, to insist on circumcision is to deny the Good News of the Cross. To all division, to all denial of our connection to and obligation to care for one another, to all striving to get in God's good grace or to keep others out, Jesus says as he says of all bloodshed: IT IS FINISHED. All that is needed for new life, new hope, a new world, has been accomplished, for God so loved the world that God gave us Jesus, sent to save the world from all that divides and dehumanizes.

Thanks be to God!

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