Sixth Sunday After Epiphany 🍉 🍎 🍌 ❤️

 

Scriptures here.

Not a sermon today: more a set of exegetical observations. Typed on my phone, so abrupt and incomplete and probably riddled with typos. This is  mostly here  because these are some of my favorite scripture passages.

Maybe that has to do with the sixth Sunday of Epiphany. It’s a rare year that has this many Sundays in Epiphany. Five is usually the maximum; the last Sunday of the season, the one before Ash Wednesday, is Transfiguration Sunday. It’s usually, by count, the sixth Sunday between Epiphany and Lent, sometimes even the fifth. But Easter is a moveable feast, the original such, the founder of all the feasts. For if Christ was not raised from the dead, then our faith is in vain. For Paul, it all started there: on Easter Sunday. And because the date of Easter moves, the start of Lent moves, and the length of Epiphany varies. Epiphany is anchored on one end by Christmas, but the other depends entirely on the calculation of where Easter falls on the calendar. This year it runs long enough, the tide ebbs enough, that some of my favorite scriptures are revealed.

Revealed is the keyword here. That’s what the season of Epiphany is all about. The revelation is all. It’s revelation that God is talking about through Jeremiah. Of course the point is that those who don’t follow the covenant with Abraham (those subject to it, mind) suffer the consequences. And you know they haven’t followed the covenant by their fruits, the consequences of their actions. But Gid says something curious, moving from statement to example, proposition to proof, God transitions with the statement that the human heart is so devious even God can’t understand it, can only test it and know what is in it by it’s fruits.

Which is perhaps why Paul is here with his discussion of first fruits of those who have died. But the fruits Paul is talking about are the results of the revelation made by the Easter resurrection. The revelation of God’s salvific actions. God tests the heart, judging it by its actions. Paul explains God’s actions. 

So what explains the Beatitudes in Luke?

I have to ask your indulgence here. I’m on my phone. I can’t easily search my archives quote from them. “Beatitude” is a word we get from the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the scriptures. Consider that after allthese centuries it might have misled us. An alternate translation of Luke here is that “makarioi” is better rendered in English as “Congratulations!” You see “blessed” is too religious a word. We don’t use it in any other context, and we don’t make it performative. The blessing is never now, it’s later. Or it’s some action of a priest which is important to the recipient, unless it isn’t. But it’s a small thing, never a definitive one; except, again, in the context of religion. And we can easily set that aside.

Luke’s language here is not something to be set aside, or even to be anticipated. It’s not a blessing meant to say “Aren’t you special?” It’s an active statement, a performative one. “Makarioi hoi ptochoi” Jesus proclaims, and I don’t think even the rhyme is accidental. Luke wants this to be memorable as well as shocking. He wants you to get it right between the eyes and keep it there. “Makarioi” is “congratulations,” but “ptochoi” is not “poor.” It’s “destitute,” “bereft,” homeless and hopeless and with less than nothing. It’s looking up to see the bottom of the barrel. Congratulations to those.

You see the problem now. And the statement is not “You will” but, “you are.” Performative. The blessing is made as it is announced. The order of the world is inverted by the words. Those at the bottom are blessed. Because they are at the bottom? Yes. But not for their poverty, their unchosen destitution. No; they are blessed because God is there with them.

And as the ptochoi are blessed, the rich are damned. Yes, damned. We know that word is performative. We know how to take that word, and we know it isn’t reserved for the sweet bye and bye. We know it applies right now. So as the destitute are blessed, the rich are damned. The reversals are complete, and absolute. And what is the revelation?

That there is a test, and your actions are the score, not your intent, not what you think is in your heart. Paul is all confidence, but God says what matters is what you do. Paul is confident in what he does and what he thinks. But would Paul be shocked by Jesus’ blessings and curses? Probably not. Paul assumes a change of heart Jesus is still trying to provoke. But there is a consistent thread here, from Jeremiah to Paul to Jesus: the mishpat, the justice not of humans, but of God. The mishap of God is in the resurrection, but it’s also in the congratulations to the poor, the damnation of the rich. We are meant to take that all to heart. We are meant to understand the way things are, the people we value, and the ones we don’t, are not absolute in their values. That, in fact, we’ve got it upside down. And perhaps, even worse, the fruits of our actions, of our hearts, are going to reveal us. Who we really are, not who we want people to think we are. And that our standards are not only not absolute, they are completely upside down.

What a revelation of God’s mishpat that would be; will be; already is.