So then Paul gives a catalog of some of the ways that we may be transformed. First he says if you are conformed you will be miserly and selfish and greedy, wanting to get more.
But if you are transformed, says he, you are invited to generous generosity, even generosity to people who do not deserve it, generosity in terms of charitable acts, generosity in terms of public policy, about education, about housing, about healthcare.
Second, he says that if you are conformed you will want to build fences to keep everybody out that is not exactly like us because all strangers are threats. But if you are transformed, says Paul, show hospitality to the stranger. And so the Jesus movement is all about reaching out to the strangers and welcoming people who do not belong to our tribe or our national group or our race or our gender.
And third, Paul says if you are conformed you will keep score and take vengeance you will respond to every insult, every slight, every offense, to make sure you get even and get payback. But Paul ends this great chapter in Romans 12 by saying that the People of Jesus never take vengeance because vengeance belongs to God and so what you should do is give your enemy food and thereby heap coals of fire on his head.
So Romans 12 is a catalog that includes these three aspects of transformation, there is enough for all of us to be working at. And if you do that, what becomes clear is it doesn't have anything to do with being liberal or being conservative, it has to do with conformity to Pharaoh, which liberals and conservatives can do, it has to do with generosity, hospitality, not taking vengeance, which transforms people, liberals and conservatives can do.
25:31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.25:32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,25:33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.25:34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;25:35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,25:36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'25:37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?25:38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?25:39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?'25:40 And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'25:41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;25:42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,25:43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'25:44 Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?'25:45 Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.'25:46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Yes, I've been down this road once or twice before. But there's a lot here, and attention to it is always rewarded.
On the surface, this is a grim tale: sheep are separated from goats; sheep are blessed, goats are damned. It could be this is where the traditions of Satan as goat-footed or even goat-headed began, if only because of v. 41: 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels..." That's where Gehenna becomes the fires of hell and where Satan gets his angels demons. Milton worked with traditions, but this is where those traditions started. From just that much an entire elaboration sprang: names of demons, hierarchies of them, how the chief demons were fallen angels, why Satan's palace in hell is "Pandemonium" (a word I grew up hearing applied to children who were being too loud and rambunctious. Little did I know Milton meant it as the name "House of All Demons." Then again, my mother would have agreed with that label, too, when she described what my brother and I were up to.). Relatedly, Dante's version of hell, which we all know has at least nine levels and lots of metaphorical torments (the other version of hell; not a lake of fire, but torments linked to our personalities, our fundamental flaw that damned us individually), includes all nature of sins (mostly committed by his personal or political enemies), but none include being inhospitable. Indeed, Dante's hell is a place of discrimination and a kind of reverse hierarchy: the more serious the sin, the deeper into the circles one goes. Slighter sins are punished more slightly, though they are punished all. But I don't recall Dante finding any soul condemned to hell for not welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and the prisoner.
Kind of like the year of Jubilee, which was proclaimed in Leviticus but never really observed, we Christians have latched onto these verses to build an entire mythology of torture and punishment; but we've never tried to seriously apply them. The threshold here is shockingly low. Intent means nothing, action means everything. Did the goats mean to ignore "the least of these," and so ignore God? Well, maybe, but is that a sin? Most of Dante's sins are sins of commission; the sins or omission are generally treated as less serious, less venal. This would be in keeping with Church teachings of his time. Dante's hell is intriguing in part for the metaphorically appropriate tortures for the sins, and then for the grim pleasure Dante takes in placing famous names in various circles in his descent to the three great traitors in the triple-headed jaws of Satan (and how Satan escapes that frozen lake to torment and tempt humans is not part of Dante's schema. In Dante's inferno, the damned are there entirely of their own agency. In that, at least, he is in keeping with this parable.). But damned for not offering a cup of water to a thirsty stranger? Even Dante would find that too harsh.
I don't know of any vision of hell which has such a high standard, in fact. The problem with hell in "The Good Place" was that no one could escape, because no one could behave ethically enough to avoid bad consequences arising from their attempts at ethical behavior. But the problem there was with the system of ethics, and with a peculiarly narrow and legalistic view of ethics. The problem presented in this parable is much simpler: do, or don't do. There is no try. Which is as either/or as it gets. And we're back to Paul and the letter to Rome, but in a different chapter: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (7:24, KJV)
We've got to be very clear on this, because like the sacrament that never was (John 13), or the Jubilee that was never proclaimed, Christians have never taken this obligation to hospitality as seriously as Jesus did in Matthew. Why? Because it's too easy to do, and so too easy to ignore. We've imagined torments for all manner of sins, actions which certainly demand damnation for eternity, but we imagine the people doing them as deserving of such punishment. Of course we never imagine ourselves deserving of being cursed for all time, but that's another reason we set the bar so high: "they" act that way; "we" don't. We might deserve charity and forbearance, even hospitality; but they don't, unless they earn it. Surely they earn their damnation, too, with their actions, and with their intentions. Our hearts are pure, and even if our actions produce evil, you must consider what we intended, and weigh that in the balance. Isn't that justice? Isn't that why the symbol is a blindfolded woman (sophia, wisdom, is always female, even among the patriarchal Hebrews) holding balance scales?
"Lord, when did we see you?" Were we blindfolded? Even so, surely our intent speaks for us, balances the scales, lets us escape the consequences of our all too minor deeds. Surely we get a pass. I mean, we didn't know! Surely that counts for something in our favor!
"Lord, when did we see you?"
Doesn't matter, in this parable. The sheep didn't know, anymore than the goats did. Both ask the same astonished question; both get the same answer. It's only actions that matter, but such tiny actions! Giving clothes to a naked person; showing kindness to a stranger; visiting the sick or the imprisoned. That's all that creates the line between the blessed and the damned. Small wonder we created a complex system of sins and forgiveness and punishments. We want damnation to go to the deserving. We want to be able to distinguish, and to justify, eternal torture.
The Protestants looked at this and saw the problem: too many excuses, too many escape hatches. Martin Luther condemned indulgences, but mostly because the practice was a corrupting one (Chaucer died 83 years before Luther was born, but the poet had already written about this problem, making it clear it was a commonly understood one. Chaucer didn't have to do much to explain, in other words.). The Reformed theologians connected it to all things Roman Catholic, and as such to be expunged in order to "reform" the church. But their solution was to damn everyone, and leave them in that state of damnation perhaps through all eternity. Calvin reasoned some were saved, but couldn't know who they were, lest they behave unrighteously (a permanent "Get out of jail free" card removes all the terrors of jail). But the focus remained on punishment and how to avoid it; and how it was just, so long as it applied to others. While Jesus here, in Matthew's gospel, wasn't talking about punishment at all.
Which is, indeed, good news.
Because one way to misread this parable is as a prophecy, a prediction of the future. When Jesus comes back, he'll separate the sheep from the goats, and then the damnations begin! Only later did we decide souls were immortal and so had to start the punishment as soon as they were separated from the body. Even Donne in the 17th century still wrote of "one short sleep past, we wake eternally." He describes a general resurrection, a continuation of life after death, but one that starts after the sleep of death (and after which death shall be no more, so he clearly meant a resurrection at the end of human time and the beginning of heaven's time). Is, then, Jesus saying "This is what will happen, and precisely in this way"? No; not likely.
But is the judgment inevitable? That's become another stalwart of Christianity: that Jesus will come back, and then you'll be sorry! Then you're gonna get it, boy! Again: human; far too human.
I mean, sure; it could happen that way. Who am I to say? But it isn't congruous with the gospel witness, or the vision of Isaiah's holy mountain, or the Exodus story Brueggemann ties to Romans 12; or even to what Paul says, in plain language. This parable is about what Paul is about: not the sweet hereafter, the soon to arrive bye and bye, the final trump. This parable, and Paul, are all about the here and now. After all, what's the point of hoping for eternity while ignore life while you live it? Who among us, really, can do that? More to the point: why would we want to?
Paul, and Jesus, point to the same thing: thinking of others rather than just yourself. I could put it more harshly, demanding you put others before yourself. That's sound; but it isn't essential. We aren't all called to be saints or, failing that, to face damnation, abandoning hope. Look at how Brueggemann paraphrases Paul again, focusing only on the positive for a moment:
But if you are transformed, says he, you are invited to generous generosity, even generosity to people who do not deserve it, generosity in terms of charitable acts, generosity in terms of public policy, about education, about housing, about healthcare.
But if you are transformed, says Paul, show hospitality to the stranger. And so the Jesus movement is all about reaching out to the strangers and welcoming people who do not belong to our tribe or our national group or our race or our gender.
But Paul ends this great chapter in Romans 12 by saying that the People of Jesus never take vengeance because vengeance belongs to God and so what you should do is give your enemy food and thereby heap coals of fire on his head.
Brueggemann still speaks in generalities: we can "welcome" people to our national group by not being xenophobic racists. That is nice; that is appropriate; but is that truly "transformed"? Is that what Jesus says in Matthew 25? "You thought people should be nice to strangers, you thought people should clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, give food to hungry people through food banks and organized charities and maybe some government programs"? Remember, the parable doesn't allow the excuse of "I didn't mean to!" "Lord, when did we see you?" is a cry of surprise for the blessed, and a plea of despair for the damned. And as a question of justice, it's a very fair one. What kind of absolute liability is this? What kind of justice?
This parable is not an ethical system, or even directive, a la "The Good Place." It's not a threat, a dire prediction of what happens if we don't get this simple thing right. It is giving us what we sometimes, and seemingly alway, need: a bright line example of what is required, and how simple and small it is. It is presented with the harshest of consequences so we'll actually pay attention to the lesson. But in our human perversity, in our insistence on our free will, we focussed on the frightening aspects of the ease with which the damned damn themselves, and then we turned away from it altogether. We took the lesson as one of torment, because in truth the lesson of transformation is even harder to take. Rather than take it, we left it alone. In the words of Leonard Bernstein's "Mass": "we turned it into a sword." You can't show much hospitality with a sword; but you can convince yourself you're keeping the terrors away with one.
So let's go back to the parable, and look at it positively rather than negatively. If it is too easy to fall into damnation, it is just as easy to avoid it. Simple acts of kindness are enough. After all, what does the Lord require of you? Turns out it's just kindness to a stranger; simple acts of decency to others; thinking about them, not just always about yourself. Look at the examples: it doesn't require a change of heart, a transformation into a saint, a commitment to "good deeds" and a life of charitable offerings. If you want to do those things, may God bless you! May you find fulfilmment in the way of Dorothy Day or Thomas Merton; but you can be Flannery O'Connor or Walker Percy, too. You can be the perfectly ordinary Knight of Faith (who is more ordinary than Johannes de silentio imagined, more commonplace, more bourgeois). You don't have to do very much at all. What does the Lord require of you? Be kind to a stranger. Feed a hungry person; give a coat to a naked one. Don't leave the sick alone for fear of their sickness; don't leave the prisoner alone, because they are still human. "They" are just like you; and how do you want to be treated? That's all the Lord requires of you. Do that, and you do it for God. Maybe you need to think of it that way; maybe you need to think God needs you, and that will "transform" you so that you will do these things for strangers. Maybe you need the threat of damnation to do it; or maybe that part of the story is just to tell you how important, how fundamental, how serious these simple things are. What does the Lord require of you? A simple thing; a small thing; the most important thing: kindness to others. Hospitality. That much; that little.
Is it transformative, to see God in the least person; to see God in the sick, the naked, the hungry, the prisoner? Perhaps the question is: how could it not be? As Brueggemann says:
And if you do that, what becomes clear is it doesn't have anything to do with being liberal or being conservative,...it has to do with generosity, hospitality, not taking vengeance, which transforms people....
The transformation starts when you simply do it; and why you do it is even irrelevant. Doing it is transformative, is perhaps all the transformation you need. The first step becomes the practice becomes the custom becomes the norm. Actions, as they say, speak louder than words.
I was thinking of these same words related to a parallel course. A friend told her story at my morning AA meeting, she told of her old life and how she had changed, comparing the two and how these changes were a result of AA and her spiritual awaking. She has sunk low, drug dens, stealing from friends and family, abandoning her children. She was a preacher's kid and her path had her return to the church. She is now a beloved member of many communities, AA, her church, her family.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a teacher I had a student who talked of her dad as a reformed alcoholic. It's an uncommon but interesting way to put it. I think of it as re-formed, formed again, but a better word is transformed. You're not starting over but taking who you are and making it different. (I have even gone so far as to extend the line, reformed - transformed - transfigured. Having watched people that were completely ravaged by their addictions become caring and productive human beings looks to be better than many miracles of the bible. The transformation is beyond what I can see as any human action. When I hear the former heroin addict, gang member with 40+ years of sobriety talk about the most important thing is that we love one another, I can't see anything but the action of god. This is all probably heretical, but given I am now between churches with the move there isn't anyone to tell I am wrong and I would ignore them anyway if there was anyone.)
Most of us, myself included, came in thinking that stopping drinking was the end, but it really was only the beginning, the transformation over the rest of your life is the real event. Without it there won't be long term sobriety and a return to being a member of society in good standing.
Since the meeting was online I pulled up one of my favorite passages as others shared. "We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society." Useful in this context is of service. Service in terms of the meetings are the small acts, making coffee, being a greeter so everyone gets a hello, offering a ride, reading out loud. It can even be as simple as just attending, so that there is someone to listen to the person that is suffering. The kind word, the gentle hand. Nothing dramatic. You might even chair a meeting for a few months, but then turn it over to the next person and take your place as a regular member. By working the steps these same actions work a transformation in everyday life, with family, friends and coworkers. The AA literature is realistic, these transformations are imperfect (we are definitely a group of the imperfect), there are reversals, there are failures. But the goal is progress, not perfection.
My other favorite quote is "The idea that we can be possessively loving of a few, can ignore the many, and can continue to fear or hate anybody, has to be abandoned, if only a little at a time." This has always struck me as a good description of myself and I suspect most of us. What I hear in the bible is this call to abandon, and to evidence this abandonment by action. I appreciate what has been posted here, that it's these small but accumulative acts of hospitality that transform us.
Part II
ReplyDeleteThere is an old joke in AA that we don't need to wait for hell because we were living it daily when we were in the throws of our addictions. We had already dug our graves and stepped into it. When I hear the parable of the sheep and goats, it's not one about the hereafter, but the here and now. That's the driver, that to fail to make even a modest transformation will eventually deliver us back to the living nightmare.
I thought about putting this comment on the Thought Criminal's most recent Brueggeman post, but my reflections flowed from both his post and your commentary. It leaves it buried in an old post, but I mostly write as an excuse to organize my own thoughts. A thanks to both of you for the posts and the conversation. Peace be with you both.
This is why I write: for comments like this. Not to hear the sound of my own voice or to preen over my clever words or my "insight," but, as Kierkegaard (I now realize) taught me long ago: to provoke.
ReplyDeleteI took provocation, for the longest time, as poking the bear. Provoking people to think as I thought, to correct their thinking, to see as I see and do as I do and know as I know. Took me a long, long time to unlearn that.
Now I hope to provoke something that will, as they said in my seminary, teach me. It was the standard for an "A" there; that you taught the professor something. I got that comment, that I had taught my professor something, on exactly one paper in my four years there. I'll never forget that, not out of pride, but for the kindness of it. I didn't take it as a compliment, but as an honest appreciation, a response from person to person.
The best part of this silly blog is not my compulsive need to write and imagine I'm being heard (who wants to talk into an empty room?), but to provoke comments like this, comments that teach me something. I happened once or twice from the pulpit, incidents I'll never forget where people responded to my sermon or my liturgy in ways unexpected and enlightening and, from them, heartfelt. Every once in a while, like this, I realize I am still preaching here. Not as a stentorious exercise, but as a public conversation. The preaching, I found, was only right when that happened.
It is, for me, the only reason to preach.
A long-winded thank-you note, I know. But heartfelt, nonetheless.