Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

Reading the passion narrative as a rejection of the way of domination,

 for the restoration of community and the healing of creation.

Towards the end of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates' long letter on racism to his son, the author encourages the young man to continue the struggle of his people. “Struggle for your ancestors. . for wisdom. . . for the warmth of the Mecca [a reference to Coates' experience of African American community at Howard University] . . . for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name,” he writes. “But do not struggle for the Dreamers,”  meaning the white community with its pervasive assumptions of privilege and domination. “Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved,” he allows his son, having disavowed any religious convictions of his own. “But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015, p. 151) In their Dream, he has explained, the white community are “Buck Rogers, Prince Paragon, an entire race of Skywalkers”, “an empire of humans and, like all empires of humans, . . built on the destruction of the body”  (Coates, p.143) Furthermore, Coates observes.  the Dreamers' technological progress has freed them “to plunder not just the bodies of humans but the body of the Earth itself.” Indeed, in Coates' view, the crisis of American racism and the crisis of the earth are in reality one : The Dream “is the same habit that endangers the planet, the same habit that sees our bodies stowed away in prisons and ghettos” (Coates, p. 151).

Coates' dismissal of religion aside, his comments illuminate the  cultural context within which we do our preaching. The “habit” of domination that Coates perceptively identifies here is the common ground of the dual crisis we face today, a world in conflict about racial and religious difference and of a dying habitat that endangers all creation, humankind and other kind.  We will develop this view  in our commentary on the lectionary readings for Passion Sunday and Maundy Thursday. Focusing on Coates' theme of domination, we will ask, “does the narrative of Jesus' death speak with sufficient clarity and power to awaken Christians to the reality of the human and environmental crises of our time -- or not? What does our observance of this season offer by way of hope that the church, as body of Christ, might now be moved to actively participate in addressing simultaneously both racial injustice and the restoration of God's creation?

The texts for the Lenten season have in fact spoken powerfully to the situation Coates describes as the white context of his son's struggle. In the narrative of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, Jesus refuses domination over both creation and the nations of the earth. And in the Gospel for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Jesus' body is anointed for death at the hands of the Roman empire. Between these bookends, Jesus encounters the domination of his people by King Herod: he laments the brutality and destruction his people suffer, but encourages them to hope for new life with the parable of a fig tree rescued by its patient farmer; he teaches them in parables about a shepherd who refuses to accept the loss of a single sheep from his herd, a woman who resists the loss of the smallest coin, a father who welcomes home a lost son and refuses to accept the resentment and alienation of the elder brother. With these images drawn from life on the farm, the life of the poor in the city, and from life in a troubled family, Jesus resists the view that there is no hope for his way of peace.  Applied to our situation, can we believe that a God imaged in this way would accept the loss of whole species from creation, or the waste of wealth meant to sustain in life all the globe's people?

The reading for the Processional Gospel for Palm Sunday tells of Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem.  He is welcomed as “king,” but as Luke Timothy Johnson observes, the evangelist takes care to make clear that this kingship is not about domination of enemies, neither his nor Israel's. “This emphasis on Jesus as king in Luke's version must be understood in light of the kingship parable of 19:11-27,” Johnson insists, but not as that parable is commonly interpreted. It is about “the successful establishment of a kingdom” but not an apocalyptic prophecy of the end time. It is rather Luke's “authorial commentary on the narrative,” and refers to “events unfolding in Luke's own story”:

This king is accordingly pictured as the responsible governor of a future people, the agent of the “constitutive blessing”,' in Terry Fretheim's words, who will bring about “the reclamation of the entire creation in view of sin and its deleterious effects upon life.”   Jesus' lament over Jerusalem at 19:41 signals that his “arrival is the visitation of God that offers peace; the rejection of the Prophet will lead to destruction,” yes, but not by forces led by him. Thus Luke has no “waving of branches found in all the other Gospels,” which “might be perceived as the nationalistic implications of Jesus' kingship,” which is “not simply that of the Jewish nation” but “the rule of God over the people of God” (Johnson, p. 297, 298, 301).

The passion narrative proper develops these themes of the parable, significantly beginning with the passover meal celebrated by Jesus and his followers. In his account of the meal, Luke is first concerned to establish the character of Jesus' community.  As Johnson points out, he “stresses the special relationship between Jesus and his followers,” ignoring almost entirely Judas' presence. “Jesus' blessing and sharing of the cup” signifies “in a truly complex fashion, the role of the disciples after Jesus' death.  They are to “divide among themselves”; at one level, this is an implicit bestowal of authority and fellowship, for such was the status of those who drank from the same cup as the king.”  But this shared company's authority is not about domination. “At another level, sharing equally in the cup signifies as well a sharing in the suffering of the Messiah, for as we shortly learn, this is the cup of suffering in which his blood is being poured out for them.  This destiny, as well that of the apostles, will be fulfilled in the narrative of Acts, when they “suffer for the name of the Messiah (5:41).”

Jesus' words over the cup thus establish a powerful connection to the symbolism of the Passover celebration.  As Johnson writes,

So also with the thickly layered symbolism of the bread: the actions reveal the true meaning not only of this meal, but of both the feedings Jesus has provided earlier and those to come, following the resurrection.  “Jesus is the servant who gives his life for others.  And as the bread must be broken to be shared, so is his body to be broken in death so that the life-giving spirit might be given to them.”  But “when they in turn 'do this as a remembrance of him' in their 'breaking bread' together (Acts 2:46; 20:7), he will be present not as a fond memory but as a powerful and commanding presence (24:44)” (Johnson, pp. 342).,

The Passover meal shared with Jesus' disciples is accordingly to be understood as the anticipatory visualization and celebration of the restoration of the people of God which will be completed with the death and resurrection of Jesus. The sacrifice of the scapegoat which the Sanhedrin counts on to save themselves from Roman punishment is transformed to become the cornerstone of a rebirth of God's people on a new and vastly larger scale. As Norman Wirzba puts it,

In this perspective, we begin to see the nature of the response we might make to Coates' perspective. Not domination but self-sacrificial love is at the heart of Jesus way. Furthermore, that love is identical to the love of the Creator. “The movement of sacrifice that characterizes God's life also characterizes created life.  Creation is an immense altar upon which the incomprehensible, self-offering love of God is daily made manifest.” (Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith:  A Theology of Eating. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 125). And we cannot fail to observe that the use of bread and wine as the sacramental means of that cosmic presence will for all time bind both the celebration of this meal and the ministry of Jesus' followers to the earth from which those elements are locally harvested.

So the way of domination is countered by the subversion of the very means by which it is to be effected. When Luke finally mentions the “hand of the betrayer at the table” it is because “this is how the sacrifice of the prophet will be accomplished”: 

As Jesus will emphasize in his “farewell discourse” while they are still at table, the authority shared by him is not about domination. That is the way of the Gentiles, he observes, but it is not his way, nor is it to be that of his followers (Johnson, p. 344).  The authority they are given, as Johnson summarizes it, “is to be carried out as a practical service to others.  Their wrangling over status (philoneikia, 22:24) is entirely inappropriate.  They are neither to dominate nor to regard themselves as benefactors  (22:26)  Like their teacher, they are to serve humbly those they teach” (Johnson, p. 349). And in the action that follows the meal, Luke is equally insistent that Jesus will tolerate no violence: when a disciple strikes a slave of the high priest and cuts off his ear, Jesus not only forbids further such acts, but heals the wound with his touch. This gesture, which only Luke mentions, as Johnson points out, not only shows “the continuation of the ministry of healing that has accompanied Jesus' proclamation of the good news from the beginning,” but also exemplifies “the attitudes of forgiveness and compassion toward those 'who hate him' that he had enjoined on his followers” (Johnson, p. 353).

Is Jesus’ resistance to domination truly a viable way to follow in the actual give and take of human life?  The events following on the meal demonstrate both its strength and its cost. To recall Coates' words to his son, it will be a “struggle.” In his denial of Jesus, Peter submits to the intimidation of the crowd when he is identified as a Galilean, recalling for us the social dualism presupposed in the report of Pilate's brutal action against Galileans. But an exchange of glances between Peter and Jesus will set Peter on the way to repentance (Johnson. p). So also, the report of Jesus' questioning by Pilate and Herod makes note of Jesus' Galilean origins (Luke 23:5k) as a factor in the development of friendship between Pilate and Herod (Johnson, pp. 357-358, 364, 366). Since Jesus' “stirring up the people” allows Pilate to act against him, because ”anyone encouraging such revolt could be executed simply as a warning to others,” the Galilean connection is significant: “If this is not a local commotion at the feast, but a deliberate program of propagandizing, Pilate must take it more seriously into account” (Johnson, p. 365). But Jesus’ careful answers to Herod and Pilate give them no grounds to punish Jesus beyond the mocking and flogging he has already received.  The Sanhedrin’s attempt to draw Jesus into the orbit of officially sanctioned violence thus fails on account of Jesus’ own reticence to claim his kingship in the face of its inevitable exploitation by his opponents. As Johnson points out, their charges “are plainly deceptive.  The title of Messiah, which Jesus refused to acknowledge unequivocally before the Sanhedrin (22:67), is not only reported as his own claim but is cast in its politically most dangerous form:  Messiah, a king (23:2).”  The murderous Herod and Pilate are “astonishingly reluctant to murder Jesus when they have the legal opportunity to do so!” They are forced finally to draw on the psychology of the gathered mob to force Pilate's acquiescence. (Johnson, p. 368-69).

 All this is in full accord with Luke's view, widely shared in the early church, that Jesus is to be understood as the suffering servant of Isaiah 50, our first reading for the Sunday, and Isaiah 53:  He is innocent of all charges brought against him; he is the “suffering righteous one, whose death is not one of punishment for is own crimes but one of sacrifice for others;” and the violence which is carried out against him is of a piece with the suffering of the people that will take place when their leaders eventually bring down upon them all the wrath of Rome (Johnson 374-75).

The full vindication of Jesus' refusal of the way of domination awaits the good news of Easter, of course, and the active implementation of practices of resistance, the post-resurrection re-gathering of his community. The exploration of the cosmic significance of this death will await the later writings of the community such as our second reading from Philippians 2.  But Luke's narrative offers along the way meaningful, if spare, witness to the full creation's interest in relation to these events:  Jesus' promise of paradise to the criminal beside him invokes the image of the “garden of joy and pleasure, mentioned elsewhere i the New Testament only twice (2 Corinthians 12:4 and Revelations 2:7), the garden prepared by God for the first humans (Genesis 2:8), the most noteworthy feature of which was the 'tree of life' (Genesis 2:9). As Jesus cries out, commending his spirit to God, the sun's light fails and the curtain of the temple is torn in two, perhaps to “symbolize the end of the division separating Jew and Gentile, giving all equal access to God” (Johnson, p.378).  A pious Jew named Joseph sees to it that Jesus' body is buried in a newly dug tomb; his reverence for that body will be shared by the Galilean women who come to anoint it with oils and so become first witnesses to the resurrection (Johnson, p. 380).  The power of the Empire has had its day, but in the resurrection that very body becomes a sacred center for the restoration of the creation. There is much here for a congregation of the faithful on Easter morning as they gather around the table to receive “the body of Christ, given for you.”