HOUSE NEWS: Let the new semester begin! Galileo of Gainesville benefit this Thursday!

Click here to see an entire list of what is happening this week at the Gainesville Catholic Worker.

We’re excited to start a new semester at the GCW! This opening week kicks off with a very special event that we hope many of you will be able to attend. Read on for more info and for a list of some of the highlights for this week…

GALILEO OF GAINESVILLE BENEFIT ON THURSDAY EVENING: This play, created by volunteers and members of the homeless community over the past few years under the direction of the extraordinary Dan Kahn, will have a run this month at the Acrosstown Repertory Theater, 619 South Main Street. Opening night is Friday BUT COME ON THURSDAY, JAN. 12, for the dress rehearsal which is will be a special benefit fundraiser for the Gainesville Catholic Worker House and the HOME Van. Thursday is a sliding scale benefit, so just pay what you can! The play will start at 8pm with doors opening at 7:30pm. We hope you can join us for this show. If not, the play will be performed for the next three weekends at the ART, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm. Here’s some more about the play from the ART website: “A modern-day drama centering around an astronomy professor, cosmology, spirituality, and homelessness. This is an original script written by a Gainesville resident, and we are very excited to be able to bring it to our stage! Inspiration comes hard and squirrely into the mind of an astronomy professor. As his accustomed structures crumble, other things are rising…and shining. From classroom to living room to parkland to dreamscape, and from the heights of academia to the grime of street-living, our hero’s journey must include all voices, all visions, to give sense to his expanding sensibilities.”

COMMIT TO A REGULAR VOLUNTEER GIG WITH US THIS SEMESTER: Having a handful of regular, consistent volunteers who can be here week-in and week-out is such a big plus for us! If you are looking for a regular volunteer gig, we would love if you made it at the GCW this semester! Regular spots at the cafe, Breakfast Brigade, Coffee Shop, Art for All, community gardens, and farmer’s market gleaning and food preparation are all available! Every day of the week (except Sunday), we can accommodate you! Take a look at the regular schedule for this Spring 2012 semester at the bottom of the About Us page, and let us know if you’re interested in making a regular commitment! We would be so grateful!

FIRST CAFE IS WEDNESDAY: We need volunteers for this week’s cafe! Prep starts at 9:30am (we especially need a regular weekly volunteer to help set-up the dining room between 10-11am!), serving between 11:45am and 3pm, and clean-up between 2:30-4pm. Let us know by email if you can help!

SCRIPTURE STUDY AT HOLY FAITH ON SATURDAY: If you’re looking to unpack the story at the center of the Christian tradition, join Johnny on Saturday at Holy Faith Catholic Church, 747 NW 43rd Street. Johnny will be leading a presentation and study on “Scripture and Our Morality.” Here’s the description of the presentation: “Love and do what you want.” Really? Is it as simple as St. Augustine suggests in his sermon on 1 John?We’ll explore together six scriptural passages from the upcoming Spring “Why Catholic?” session, uncovering the insights the Bible holds for us on morality, freedom, discipleship, and love.

Looking forward to seeing everyone this week! Welcome back!

SCRIPTURE STUDY: Mark 1:29-39 – Irrelevant widows, to be sick and poor, and when religion goes rogue

In this middle section of Mark’s first chapter, we’re seeing early scenes from the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. There are three distinct, short passages contained in these eleven verses, which continue the 24 hour period which began in verse 21 and sort of represents “a day in the life of Jesus.”

In verse 29, as the passage opens, Jesus is moving from the synagogue–a public, sacred space and the domain of the scribes, elders, et al–to a more private, intimate space–the house of Simon and Andrew. The shift in scene takes Jesus from a place of tension and conflict (in the passage just prior, Jesus was confronted by demons and the people openly privileged Jesus’ teaching over the teaching of their professional religious leaders) to a more relaxed, comfortable setting.

Upon entering the home, Jesus is told that Simon’s mother-in-law in sick. This verse has a few clues for us to consider. One, Jesus has not demonstrated his power to heal up to this point in Mark’s gospel (the earlier passage is an exorcism, distinct from healing), so to assume that Simon or Andrew bring up her sickness as a request for Jesus to heal her seems a little bit of a stretch. One person this week suggested that maybe the assertion that the mother-in-law is sick with a fever functions more as a warning to Jesus, i.e. Jesus should steer clear of her.

The second consideration is the status of Simon’s mother-in-law. Since she’s living with Simon and her daughter’s family, we can assume that she has no husband to care for her. As a widow then, she fits into that specifically Jewish list of those who are consistently the most marginalized and vulnerable in society–the widow, the orphan and the stranger/foreigner/immigrant.

So when Jesus touches her in verse 31–even though he has been warned to stay away, and even though she is a widow, i.e. a person of no account–it seems to be less about any miraculous healing and more about Jesus’ preferential option to see those who are typically rendered invisible, touch those who are typically deemed untouchable, take account of those who are typically considered of no account. Even the muted nature of the miracle–she’s in bed with a fever, not blind or lame–asks us to look elsewhere for deeper significance in the action. The passage asks us to consider how much sickness is intertwined with the feelings of being discarded, ignored, or uncared for by others, as much as it is about the actual physical discomfort. Jesus has not allowed the people’s astonishment or amazement toward him [verses 21-28] to inflate his own sense of self-importance that he would dismiss the sickness and loneliness of this silent widow.

Finally, we should also note that the Greek word interpreted here to say that the widow then “waited on” Jesus and his disciples is the same Greek word used later in Mark that is specific to the “service” that is associated with discipleship (see 15:41). The work of seeing to another’s need is recognized as an authentic exercise of discipleship, not devalued as “unimportant” work to be done by those of lesser status.

The next passage opens by noting that the Sabbath has ended (“after sunset”) and that a large number of people were being brought by their friends, families and others to the door of the hosue where Jesus was staying. The people being brought before Jesus are identified as “ill or possessed by demons.” So what does this identification mean?

Historically, these stories are circulating probably around the time leading up to the Roman-Jewish war of 66-70 AD. It is a time of increasing political and economic instability, helping to lay the foundation for the short-lived success of Jewish zealots and others who are able to temporarily drive the Romans out. In times of political and economic distress, the ranks of the poor swell with those who once were able to get by losing what little they had and those who had next to nothing to begin with reaching an even more severe level of destitution and desperation. For the increasing number of poor, to be sick meant much more than to be physically disabled. There are also emotional, psychological and spiritual dimensions to poverty, similar to what we saw with Simon’s mother-in-law. But we also know that illness holds more devastating consequences for the impoverished than for people of means and status.

First, the poor are more likely to get sick and to stay sick. This is directly related to their access to healthcare, their ability to pay for medicines, their lack of access to those things which lead to good health (healthy foods, clean living conditions, networks of social support) and the likelihood of lifestyles or jobs (lack of a home, hard or dirty manual labor) which expose them to greater risk of sickness.

But sickness has social and cultural, and certainly in Jesus’ time, religious dimensions as well. To be sick was to be in a “socially devalued state.” Sickness was a symptom of sinfulness, of ritual impurity, and it meant being excluded from worship, from one’s social networks, and in extreme cases, from one’s community or town. Besides suffering from an inability to access or pay for cures for the physical symptoms of an illness, the sick also could only return to worship and their various social units upon making atonement for their ritual impurity or sinfulness–which meant also having the economic means to satisfy the prescriptions of the sacrificial system which was administered by the priesthood or their proxies. The business of sickness (and at that time, ritual impurity) was big business, as it is now. And such a system put undue and sometimes impossible strain on the poor.

In summary then, those who are coming to Jesus in verse 32 are most likely overwhelmingly the poor and destititute sick, those whose physical condition have marginalized them socially, politically, economically, religiously and culturally as well. The ways to physical healing and social health have all been closed to them. They do not have recourse to the systems built and maintained by people of status, means, and power. What Jesus then represents to them is so much more than the simple curing of their physical symptoms. Yes, we can acknowledge a physical dimension to these stories of Jesus’ healing; but so much more than that is taking place. The act of healing includes the possibility of restoration to the community, the reopening of relationships, a chance at a new life, the ability to work and to worship, and the reclaiming of dignity. There is a social dimension to these acts of healings that we miss entirely if we narrowly attune our eyes to the “miracle” of a blind man seeing, or a deaf woman hearing.

Our passage transitions again in verse 35, with Jesus again withdrawing from a very public scene (masses of people at the door of the house where he is staying) to a private one, a deserted or “lonely” place where he goes to commune with God. His disciples “pursue” him or “hunt” for him in verse 36, telling him that everyone is looking for him in verse 37. Jesus’ reply to them is interesting. In verse 38, he does not answer that he will go back with them, but rather that they will “go on to nearby villages.” And for those of us who have maybe gotten too hung up already in the gospel on Jesus’ miracles of healing, Mark notes succinctly that Jesus’ purpose is “to preach,” an assertion which throws us back to the verses 14-15 where Jesus states unequivocally the message of that preaching: the good news of God, that the kingdom of God (as opposed to all the partial and fallen kingdoms of this world) is at hand. All of Jesus’ word and actions are aimed at this good news: that the poor will hear good news, that the imprisoned will be released, that the oppressed will be liberated, the blind will see, and the Jubilee will commence (return of lands, forgiveness of debts, etc.)

The passage ends on an ominous note. Referring back to verses 21-28, Mark now makes clear what was murky. The religious institutions of Jesus’ time have become possessed, no longer serving God or the needs of the people, but rather serving a corrupt and demonic power (greed? wealth? power? the market? nation? empire?) So Jesus embarks on a campaign, preaching and driving out the demons which have taken up residence in these places of worship and education and in the people who run them. His campaign is from synagogue to synagogue, liberating each of them, throughout all of Galilee.

Next week, we’ll look at the last passage from this opening chapter in Mark, 1:40-45.

SCRIPTURE: Hope takes the initiative

It has been a few weeks since we finished our scripture study on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel, but I find myself running across passages from other things that I am reading and studying that keep sending me back, with new eyes, to some of those passages. My daily prayer includes short reflections from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian who was martyred by the Nazis in 1945, just days before the concentration camp was liberated. Anyone who spends any significant time with me knows how much I think Bonhoeffer’s life and witness under Nazi totalitarianism has to say to those of us today in the United States who are trying to practice authentic discipleship to Jesus.

The reading from a few days ago, in part, said this: “A faith that really keeps to what is invisible and lives by it, acting as if it were already here, hopes at the same time for the time of fulfillment, of seeing and possessing. We hope for it as confidently as the hungry child to whom his father has promised bread can wait a while because he believes. Yet eventually the child wants to get the bread… A faith that does not hope is sick (my emphasis). It is like a hungry child who does not want to eat or a tired person who does not want to sleep.”

The section of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount which intersects these words of Bonhoeffer’s is chapter 7, verses 7-11. It is a simple passage that we most often interpret as being about prayer and the persistence of prayer. Indeed the bold heading in my bible just before the passage reads, “The Answer to Prayers,” directing us to read the following lines in that context. But I think that it is only about prayer incidentally, that in fact it goes to something deeper than prayer, but something that authentic prayer is rooted in, namely, hope. The passage is about hope and how hope invites us to take the initiative.

Up to this point in the Sermon, much of what Jesus has asked of those gathered can be understood as an ethic that went beyond the conventional religious, personal and social responsibilities of the time. He has expressed an ethic that is incredibly counter-cultural, and in some ways counter-intuitive, especially for the vast majority of his audience who find themselves struggling to survive in a religious, economic and political reality which is oppressive–sapping their strength, destroying their spirit, robbing them of hope. The reality in which Jesus’s followers live is not a reality which rewards those who ask, seek, or knock. Asking, seeking and knocking are sure ways to get a punch to the gut or a kick in the head. What an oppressed people have learned to do is to keep their heads down, their mouths shut, and to go about their business.

But this new order of reality to which Jesus is calling his followers is not a reality that will simply assert itself without the action or risk or initiative of those listening to his words. It is a reality that is utterly dependent on the dialectic between God and God’s people. Those who have been taught not to ask must learn to ask. Those who have been taught not to seek must learn to seek. Those who have been taught not to knock at that door must summon the courage to knock. A disempowered people will not bother to knock, or seek, or ask. Experience long ago taught them that there is no response to their asking, nothing which their seeking will find, and no friendly welcome at that door. Those who oppress rely on the fact that those they oppress will one day interiorize that oppression and do the work of the oppressor for them. And therein lies the death of hope. The hope that is essential for change has been beaten out of them.

As Bonhoeffer put it so poignantly above, “A faith without hope is sick.” And Jesus must surely understand that this people, to whom he is entrusting the practice of the kingdom of God which at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, needs to have rekindled in them the fire of hope. Verse 7 states: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” This is not a statement of fact. It is, rather, a promise, a promise that goes against every available piece of evidence in the lives of those to whom Jesus speaks. Jesus has been speaking long to this people, and I imagine that he sees in their eyes a spark of hope, yearning to be fanned into full flame, but all too experienced and disappointed by the way things are in the “real world.”

And so as the Sermon winds down, Jesus reaches out to his listeners, inviting them to shake off their paralysis, their despondency, and all that this bitter existence has taught them. This is a new moment. And it is a moment that needs their initiative, their word, their longing–their hope. No longer slaves, no longer sheep, no longer objects, Jesus invites them to see themselves as agents in their own salvation, and the salvation of the world. He invites them to experience that faith which is no longer sick, a faith invigorated by hope, a hope which inspires and motivates and transforms. In the asking and seeking and knocking, they become the very agents of change which the kingdom of God needs. And they are promised that their asking, seeking and knocking will no longer be in vain; that this God is unlike the powers-that-be of this world which have proven to be unresponsive to their cries and their yearnings and their hopes.  And while change may not be immediate, these people can walk away from the Sermon knowing that they are empowered to play a part here, to take the initiative; and that they, like the hungry child, can wait a little while longer because they know their father is bringing the bread and the time of fulfillment is near.

SCRIPTURE: When we pray as Jesus taught us, do we know what we are asking for?

Matthew 6:9-15

For most Christians, it is the most familiar passage of scripture, the one part that nearly all of us have memorized – Matthew 6:9-15, commonly called “The Lord’s Prayer,” the “Our Father,” or “The Prayer that Jesus Taught Us.” Despite our familiarity, despite the fact that this prayer is said in Churches every Sunday, despite the fact that it is prayer in small groups, prayer meetings, in the morning when we rise and at night as we lay down to go to sleep – despite all this, I would hazard to guess that the vast majority don’t realize what we are really saying. Taking this prayer apart line by line, paying close attention to Jesus’ words here, reveals just how deep this revolution is that Jesus is stirring up.

We start at the very beginning, “Our Father.” The first emphasis is on the “our,” the plural possessive. The first word in the prayer reveals first of all the communal nature of the prayer, that we come to God as a people, in a group, with others. This is no individual, between “me” and God prayer. Jesus’ “our” places us alongside everyone else in our relationship to God, making our faith about “us,” not about “me.”

And the title Jesus chooses here for God is literally “Abba,” closer in many ways to “Dad” or “Daddy” then “Father.” What it denotes is a level of intimacy and closeness to God, but it is an intimacy that is still rooted in authority—the relationship is child to parent, not sister to sister or brother or brother. Such a relationship implies God’s claim on us, and our accountability to God, albeit a God who is intimately involved in and aware of his/her responsibility to us as well.

Moreover, perhaps the most important thing about the emphasis on “Our Father” is not the relationship it defines between us and God, but rather the relationship it defines between us and other people, between me and all of these other human beings I come into contact with everyday. Approaching God as “Our Father” implies that all of us, every human being, that we are brothers and sister to one another, family; and therefore, each human being also has a claim on us and we a claim on them. Despite the forces of society and culture and creed that endeavor to separate and divide us, we are, under this Parent God, brothers and sisters to one another, responsible for each other, a reconstituted family. This is especially true for those of us who claim discipleship to Jesus, membership in the Church, but also to all people everywhere, by virtue of God’s “parenting” of them too. The implications that such an insight—that we are truly brothers and sisters, one family—in terms of our lifestyles, our political participation, our economic decision-making, and more are astounding. If we are truly brothers and sisters, then imagine how much we must change in how we see those whom our country is killing in wars or those who are in economic distress because of our nation’s policies? The implications of being “one family under God” are far-reaching and incredibly critical of the status quo.

In verse 10, we read: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” In many ways, the notion of “kingdom” is anachronistic in our world. The time of nations ruled by monarchies is pretty much over. So we need to get behind the reality of what the word kingdom is all about. Kingdom refers to a political reality in the world; a kingdom is a people or place over which another has authority or reign. In praying this prayer, after acknowledging God’s intimacy to us as “Father” and our relationship to one another as family, we then acknowledge our hope and longing for God’s authority over this world, this reality here and now, as God rules in that other reality we call “heaven.” But if we are calling for God’s rule here on earth now, then we are also tacitly acknowledging the illegitimacy of any other “kingdom” or rule on earth. At the very least, we are implying that the kingdoms of this world (the authorities, the political system, the governments) are NOT equivalent to God’s kingdom and that we long for them to be replaced by God’s kingdom. Again, the implications for us and for our way of being in the world—not just as individuals or as the church but as states and nations—are revolutionary. Our prayer pledges us to God’s kingdom, not whatever nation we live in or have citizenship in. We are saying, in fact, that we are citizens of the kingdom of God FIRST, not of the United States, or England, or Brazil, or China—that our first loyalty is to God’s kingdom, indeed to God, not to our political leaders or systems or nation. And most poignantly, we are praying that God’s will be done—not the will of our country or elected officials, not our national interest or self-interest be done. Praying that God’s will be done implies that we already are aware how little of God’s will is done, and so we must pray for it, invite it, yearn for it and be about the business of making it happen here, now, for the benefit of our entire, reconstituted family, the human family.

Then we pray that God gives us “our daily bread.” This verse conjures up for us the story of the Exodus, of the Israelites recently freed from Egypt finding the manna in the wilderness. We remember the prescriptions about the manna: Take only what you and your family need for TODAY. And those who took more than they needed for one day found it turned wormy and rotten. This is again a radical understanding of what type of security we ask God for. We do not pray for perceived needs or needs that we may have a week from now or a year from now or for that time after we retire in 20, 30, 40 years. Our security is in our God who takes care of us for today. And if we take only what we need for today, we find, like the early Israelites wandering in the desert, that there is ENOUGH for everybody; No one is hungry, no one dies of starvation, everyone gets what they need when each of us only take what we need for today. This is a radically contrary ethic, one that believes there is enough as long as some of us don’t take too much; and that the reason we find that there isn’t enough is because some in our world are taking more than they could ever need. In essence, when we take more than we need for today, we are stealing from others and contributing to a system where some have way too much and others die because they cannot even get what they need for today. Praying for daily bread is an indictment of an entire system predicated on manufacturing “needs” and encouraging us to get as much as we can as quick as we can before someone else takes it from us. An ethic based on God’s provision of daily bread where there is enough for everyone would be a drastic change in the way our society works now.

This section, which is at the center and the heart of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (both thematically and structurally), ends with two reminders about forgiveness—first in verse 12 and then again in 14 and 15. Jesus seems to be telling us just how central forgiveness should be to humanity. This emphasis on forgiveness should give us pause, especially because Jesus intimates that our own forgiveness is dependent on our willingness to practice forgiveness toward others. This is no simple “please forgive me God” and we find ourselves forgiven. It is, in fact, a quid pro quo: God will forgive us ONLY if we forgive others. And again the reality of what we are praying should strike us to the heart. Whether as individuals or churches or communities or nations, we can only be assured that our own mistakes are forgiven if we forgive the mistakes of another. It is an ethic of reconciliation based on reciprocity, rooted in the basic reality that our relationships to other human beings are reflective of our relationship to God.

So when we pray this prayer, do we really have any understanding of what it is that we are praying? And if we do, do our lives give testimony to what it is that we are really praying here? If the millions of Christians who prayed the “Our Father” every day really did understand and believe this prayer, our world and our relationship would look radically different I think.

-John

SCRIPTURE: Almsgiving as a Social Corrective

Matthew 6:1-4 

The sixth chapter of Matthew’s gospel opens with Jesus addressing what have become the three hallmarks of Lenten observance in the Roman Catholic and other Christian traditions: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Interestingly, the first of these that Jesus addresses is almsgiving.  

The first thing that strikes me about the passage is the assumption Jesus makes that performing “righteous deeds” is part of one’s life of faith. There is no “If you are going to perform righteous deeds, then. . .” Jesus asserts simply that any disciple of his WILL perform righteous deeds; it was part and parcel of sincere Judaism during Jesus’ day and it can be assumed that for those who follow Jesus today, righteous deeds are a regular practice of sincere discipleship. 

But it begs a further question: In the Judaism of Jesus’ time, who was almsgiving aimed at? The Hebrew Scriptures suggest that almsgiving was a practice focused on a particular class of people usually referred to as “the widow, the orphan and the stranger,” three archetypes of people within ancient Hebrew society which would find themselves in an incredibly vulnerable position. Widows, orphans and strangers (i.e. foreigners within Israel) were particularly vulnerable to financial and physical threat because they had no one to speak for them, or to defend them. They were outside the stabilizing and protective circle of “family” or “tribe” or later, “nation/state.” So it is important for us to recall the context for almsgiving during Jesus’ time, and to ask ourselves whether our “righteous deeds” today are performed for the uplift of those who are most vulnerable among us and least protected by our circle of family, community, society or nation.  

Those words—“alms” and “almsgiving”—are not words we use much anymore. Many would substitute today the word “charity.” But the first verse employs a Greek word—Dikaiosynē—which translates to “righteousness/righteous deeds” or “justice/just works” which connotes that what happens in this practice is not simply “charity” in the way we have come to understand the word today. Rather, there is also a note of “justice,” of redressing the wrongs that play themselves out in our political, economic and religious systems. Acts of charity today are often done with an implicit quid pro quo—sure we do something nice, but we also get something back for it. Sometimes it is a tax break; others it is the admiration or acknowledgement of friends and community. But in Jesus’ sermon, the “rightness” of the act is sufficient in and of itself as far as things go here on earth; any reward here too easily leads to a corruption of the goodness of the act apparently.  

The thrust of the passage – that doing good in order to be praised or rewarded for it— is a warning to those who are listening to Jesus. It is a “false pride” that ensnares us when we receive adulation for our good work. Such adulation and the false pride it engenders takes away from the importance of “doing justice” in and of itself. The issue is that we have directly or indirectly benefited at the expense of others in our society who go without enough food, or care, or love, or security; and our “almsgiving” is not to be praised, but rather the simple practice of healing our societal brokenness, correcting inequities among us, redressing wrongs. This isn’t something to be praised; it is simply something that good people—including those who would follow Jesus—should do. 

The final point in this opening passage of this section is that Jesus also puts on the listener the responsibility for performing such acts. The act of doing justice, giving alms is not left to one’s church or one’s government or some other institution. It is a personal responsibility of each and every person who walks this way with Jesus. It cannot be passed on to another level but must be practiced oneself. Such practice, if it becomes second nature to us, fulfills the meaning of verse three: “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” Our practice is rooted in our integrity, it becomes natural to us, without thought eventually, simply part of who we are and what we do.

– John  

SCRIPTURE STUDY: Moral Jujitsu – A Strategy for Winning

Matthew 5:33-42 In these passages from Matthew, Jesus continues to speak of the “higher righteousness,” alluded to in 5:20, which is the crux of the new/old teaching he proclaims.

The fourth passage in this series begins with verse 33. It is an interesting passage that not only teaches, but is a demonstration of the teaching itself. The language of oaths and vows may not resonate with us now the way it did for Jesus’ original listeners; nevertheless, the focus of the passage may be even more poignant for us now. 

 We start with the question: Why does one take an oath? What makes an oath necessary? The answer, of course, is that one’s word is somehow lacking integrity, that there is some doubt as to whether you will do what you say you will do. So to give it more oomph – to emphasize one’s integrity and trustworthiness to another who is doubtful – we “swear” on a variety of things—our mother’s grave, “the Holy Bible”, to God, etc. But the greater issue here is the assumption that a person’s word is no longer good enough, and that integrity is in short supply. Today, it is an accepted fact that we live in a culture of lies, misrepresentations, deception and dishonesty—in everything from politics to marketing to our personal relationships. We have become a culture that lacks integrity and, because of that – when something is really important – we have to rely on various oaths, vows and other expressions to impress on others that yes, we really mean what we say . . .at least this time. 

 Jesus discerns this lack of integrity in his own time.  In a culture of duplicity, Jesus proposes simplicity: “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No’” (verse 37). No oath or vow can substitute for our consistent, faithful practice of integrity. Jesus’ own directness of speech in this passage demonstrates just such integrity: there is no hedging, no obscuring, no duplicity. The message on integrity takes on the characteristics of integrity—Jesus is simple, straightforward and direct. 

 The next passage is one that many of us at the scripture study last Tuesday confessed to having wrestled with regularly. Many have come away from this passage (5:38-42) believing that Jesus seems to be encouraging his followers to be doormats, to suffer evil without any resistance. But scripture scholars with good social and historical analysis of the Palestine of Jesus’ time have done incredible work with this passage over the past twenty years. The passage starts out by quoting what was a common understanding of justice in Jesus’ time and, indeed, still holds sway with the vast majority of humanity today: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth (v. 38). We understand such a mentality today as being primarily about punishment, about seeking “justice” for the perpetrator. For some of us, it even offends our more “developed” sensibilities about a justice that has vengeance at its core. But for the early Israelites, such a law (lex talionis) was actually instituted for its limiting effect. An eye for an eye was instituted to limit revenge, to keep violence from escalating, and to actually break the cycle of vengeance that such actions often invited. Such cycles and escalations rooted primarily in revenge could quickly get out of hand and cease to be about any sort of justice at all. An eye for an eye functioned to limit that tendency. 

What Jesus proposes instead of an eye for an eye unsettles some of us though. Is Jesus promoting passivity to evil when he tells us to turn the other cheek? Is Jesus telling us to unquestioningly accept suffering with no thought for our safety or dignity? A quick lesson in the honor-shame culture of Jesus’ time is helpful in understanding what it is that Jesus actually counsels.

 The culture of Jesus’ time, not unlike Middle Eastern cultures today, was built on the axis of honor-shame. One’s honor was considered of the utmost importance – and not incurring shame was essential. Note then the language of the last part of v. 39: “When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to them as well.” To strike someone on the right cheek implies that you would strike them with the back of you right hand. Such an act was familiar to Jesus’ audience. Those subservient to you—slaves to masters, wives to husbands, children to fathers, peasants to soldiers, and so on—could be put in their place with a well-placed backhand to the cheek. Additionally, to strike one in this way did not go against Jewish law. So what happens when we “turn the other cheek?” The act, far from being a sign of willingness to accept evil treatment, is actually an assertion of dignity by the oppressed party that put the oppressor in a difficult and shameful position. For the oppressor to strike his inferior on the left cheek, the oppressor is forced to strike with his open hand. To strike with one’s open hand, as opposed to backhand someone, is to acknowledge that the one you are striking is equal to you. Furthermore, to strike with an open hand is prohibited in Jewish law, so turning the other cheek and inviting your opponent to strike you with their open hand is to put the opponent in the unenviable position of acknowledging your equality to them, and then having to either back down in front of others and incur the shame associated with that OR break the law and incur the penalties and shame in that action. So what we have here is not Jesus inviting us to a beat-down by our opponents. Rather what we have is Jesus inviting us to a strategy for confronting and resisting an opponent who is in a position of power over us. It is actually a strategy for winning.

 The same application follows in the next two examples. In v. 40, the issue of giving one’s cloak to one to whom you are indebted who has taken your tunic is directly related again to Jewish law. Jewish law states that the one item that a good Jew could not deny to another Jew, regardless of how in debt the other was to him, was his cloak. A cloak functioned in a variety of capacities for the poorest of the poor: clothing, shelter from the elements, and economic opportunity (beggars used to spread out their cloaks in front of them at the gates to the city, asking for alms to be placed in them). A cloak must therefore be returned before sunset to one’s rightful owner. To offer someone your cloak when they are taking your tunic again puts them in an awkward and untenable position regarding Jewish law and the potential for incurring shame in front of one’s peers and others.  

In v. 41, Jesus is referencing the common practice of Roman soldiers to press into service civilian help in carrying their various military items. Any Roman soldier could require of any peasant the performance of this task—but the law stated that it could be for only one mile. So to offer to go two miles again turns the table on the opponent, forcing them into a position of breaking the law should they accept. 

 Great activists like Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi understood Jesus’ words here as a strategy for winning in a situation when the vast amount of power was on the side of one’s opponent. To fight with weapons would be a strategy sure to fail since the opponent has all the power – and better weapons. But in the face of such overwhelming odds, Jesus invites us to think creatively and nonviolently. What he offers us is a strategy for winning—both in terms of asserting our dignity but also in appealing to the best sensibilities of our opponent and especially to the many who may not have chosen sides but are watching closely the interaction between us and our opponents. Calling attention to the deep injustice of our situation through creative resistance, as Jesus suggests, is to win the battle for the hearts and minds of all those watching from the sidelines. What we have here is Jesus inviting us to moral jujitsu—using our opponent’s energy against him to make our point and win the encounter.

-John

SCRIPTURE STUDY: In the Circle with All the Other Killers and Adulterers

Matthew 5:17-48, part one 

“Inside-outside” is a game we all play. It seems to be taught to us from the beginning of life. Some folks are inside the circle (good); others are outside the circle (bad). This past week we started looking at a passage in the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus seeks to obliterate those circles we draw, boundaries between ourselves and our friends and the dreaded “others” who are somehow not like us. 

This section of Matthew, 5:17-48 is made up of 6 antitheses introduced with the common, “You have heard…But I say to you…” The antitheses are responses to (more or less) Torah-based pronouncements on killing, adultery, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and attitudes and behaviors toward one’s enemies. [Note: When Jesus states, “You have heard…” the following predicate is not necessarily a quote from Jewish law, but it probably was what passed for conventional wisdom and practice at the time.] 

The section begins with a short passage (17-20) which situates the antitheses that are to follow. Lest anyone get the idea that Jesus is proposing a radically new teaching, he makes the case that what he is about to address is consistent with the best of the Mosaic and prophetic tradition in Judaism. The “Do not think…” that opens verse 17 points to what is probably a common reaction his teaching has already raised among his disciples and others: that his teachings are a challenge to or even a repudiation of the Torah. But while his teachings may question the what is passing as legitimate interpretation of Torah and certainly the authority of the teachers and interpreters of Torah in his day (Pharisees, scribes, others), his teachings should not be understood as inconsistent with or counter to the highest expressions of justice and morality already revealed in the tradition.  

Another concern Jesus seems to have is that the misunderstanding of his teachings will lead not to a more rigorous practice and higher level of integrity among those who hear him, but rather some might be thinking his teaching allows for greater relaxation in matters of justice and morality. His acknowledgement of the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees (v. 20) points to a more challenging discipline and a greater integrity to be the rule for his disciples. Making these things clear, Jesus turns to several examples of this “higher righteousness” in the following passages.  

In verse 21, Jesus begins with the injunction against killing (Ex 20:13 and elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures). The truth of the matter is that the injunction against killing really only encompasses a very small number of us. Few of us will actually kill another human being (at least directly, but that is for another time…) during our lives. The injunction thus draws a small circle, encircling and setting apart a small group for whom the rest of us suppose the injunction is intended. But Jesus decides to draw the circle larger. He pushes the boundary out, including inside the circle all those who experience anger toward another, who ridicule others with taunts like “Raqa” (imbecile or “blockhead”) or “fool”. He connects that impulse—the impulse toward an anger directed at other humans, an anger that “dehumanizes” another human being through ridicule or disdain—with the most extreme of actions which flow from that impulse, namely, killing.  

Killing happens because we have learned to dehumanize the other—to no longer see the other as human. This happens all the time in war. To get a soldier to kill, the soldier must devalue the enemy’s humanity, to see them as less than human. But killing is only the most extreme expression of the impulse. Jesus pushes that circle out until we are all inside of it, cognizant that each day all of us move along this same spectrum of dehumanization (of which killing is at the far end) in our actions and behaviors. And so the injunction against killing becomes not an indictment of a few who are somehow set apart from the rest of us, but rather an indictment of all of us and a warning to take seriously our own attitude and actions in our daily interactions. 

The interesting second part of this passage is the prescription of reconciliation as an antidote to the anger that leads to dehumanization and severs our relationships to other human beings. In verses 23-24, Jesus recognizes that we all will fall into the very type of anger he cautions us about, so he offers a practice to heal the rift that dehumanizing anger causes: the practice of reconciliation. But the rub here is that he connects right worship with right relationship, and asserts then the converse: there is no true worship where there is division caused by anger within the worshipping community. As the prophets before him said again and again, the neglect of mercy, justice and reconciliation individually and communally nullifies our worship of God. You cannot love God and hate your neighbor. Those who dehumanize their opponents, worship falsely.  

The same widening of the circle of indictment takes place in the next two passages (verses 27-30, 31-32) as well, this time regarding the injunctions against adultery and the process of divorce (tied together by their common reference to adultery). Again, the adulterers among us may be relatively small in number compared to the number of us that have looked on others as simply objects for us to use to satisfy our desires. The lust referred to here has the same end as the anger referred to above: dehumanization. Objectification of another human being is dehumanization; their value is reduced to how they can be used. If adultery is the result at the far end of the spectrum, the motivation for adultery—to see others for their value to us and not their value in and of themselves—broadens the circle until we all find ourselves within its boundaries. The injunction takes on new life and is directed at all of us, not simply those few who commit only the most extreme act of what lies in all of our hearts. 

Additionally, adultery, especially in Jesus’ time but in our own as well, cannot be simply understood in the sense of “unchastity” but also incorporates an element of justice, or right relationship, as well. Adultery in Jesus’ time placed women in particular in a state of jeopardy—one simply thinks of the situation of the woman caught in adultery in John’s gospel, surrounded by a crowd intent on stoning her. A patriarchal society run by and for men elevated a man’s value and denigrated a woman’s value. And so women often bear, unfairly, the greater punishment or consequences of adultery. The indictment of the interior process of dehumanization over the act of adultery itself leaves all of us, like the crowd in John’s story, examining our own precarious sense of being “sinless” rather than focusing on the sin of another. 

Perhaps most importantly, in examining the first three of these antitheses, we notice that Jesus’ widening of the circle changes the focus of our attention as well. If the injunction is simply aimed at killers and adulterers, then our eyes focus outward on and toward the others encompassed by those injunctions. But Jesus’ turns our eyes away from others and squarely back on ourselves. While we were intent on the sins of others, Jesus erased and moved the line so that we suddenly find ourselves in the circle too. Now we ask why it is that we are here in the circle too. We stop considering others sinfulness and we start considering our own. Such consideration is perhaps the first steps to learning how to live more fully this higher righteousness that Jesus called us to back in verse 20.

-John

UPDATE: Being Salt, College Students Take Over the Roundtable, Youth Group Takes Over the Cafe, New Living Local Blog

Hi Folks,  

Busy week at the House, please check out the schedule HERE, and join us if you can. Highlights include an invigorating scripture study, Lenten Morning Prayer, a Roundtable featuring some of our most active college students, and a Cafe run by high school youth group members. 

Also, we started a spin-off “blog” for any of you who mght be interested in learning along with us to live more locally here in Gainesville: What We Need is Here: Learning to Be Local.  As many of you know, a primary goal of the GCW has been to support local farms and businesses with what we do at the house.  We’ve learned some things and have a lot more to learn in how to live more deeply here in Gainesville, using and appreciating the resources available to us and being more conscientious about how our decisions affect others.  We would love to hear your insights and ideas as well, so jump in and add a comment.   

And we are still waiting to get the new listserv set up.  Hopefully you’ll get an email soon asking if you want to remain on it.   Have a good week.  Hope to see you!  

Gainesville Catholic Worker
218 NW 2nd Avenue
Gainesville, Florida 32601
352.271.6941
www.gainesvillecw.org 

SCRIPTURE STUDY: Worthless Witness – Christianity Without Contrast

There is a short—but incredibly rich—passage which immediately follows the Beatitudes in Matthew’s gospel. Matthew 5:13-16 holds several familiar sayings of Jesus, using the metaphors of salt, light and a city set on a mountain. The essence of the passage, which really sets up the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, is that following Jesus is about offering a contrast to the dominant culture or society in which we live. It is the assertion that Jesus’ followers—the Church—are to be a “contrast” society. 

The Beatitudes already are leading us in that direction, but it is in Matthew 5:13-16 that this becomes really straightforward. What is most striking about the Beatitudes is how they go against conventional wisdom and basic religious assumptions, both of Jesus’ time and of our own. Now Jesus directs his words to those closest to him, using the second person “you” for emphasis: “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to thrown out and trampled underfoot.” 

What is salt? What does salt do? Salt adds flavor; its primary property relates to taste. That which is bland can be spiced up with a little salt. We add salt to give flavor to something. In essence, we use salt because it provides a contrast; it adds flavor. The implication for those who follow Jesus is that we are here on earth to provide a contrast to the world in which we live. And if we, as those who call themselves Christians, don’t provide that contrast? Then Jesus states clearly that we are no good to his mission, we are useless to him. Individually and communally, if our witness and way of life in the world fails to offer a contrast to the ways things are in the larger society, then what does our Christianity matter? The Church’s purpose here is to provide a contrast to the larger culture; if it does not, that it has no value at all.  

If we think about this for a second we know that it is deeply, profoundly true. We live in a culture that celebrates rugged individualism, an individualism that states “me first,” “I’m number one,” “it’s all about taking care of me and mine.” But the gospels tell us over and over again that we are to care for others, even at a sacrifice to ourselves, that the common good and especially the rights of the most vulnerable (the widow, the stranger, and the orphan) are to be preeminent in our society. The gospel tells us that we are to love our enemies, but our society says bomb our enemies. Our society encourages us to worship and long for power, status, and privilege – and to find our security in money; the gospels tell us to seek to be the least ones, the ones who serve, the ones who find their security in God and each other, in relationships. The Church is supposed to be that society of people who are living these things out—in contrast to the larger society that surrounds us. 

Two other things stand out in this passage. We need to remember that this passage comes on the heels of Jesus’ promise to his disciples that they will be persecuted, that they will stand in the line of those prophets who took to task the kings of Israel and Judah and suffered for it. So when Jesus says, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden,” the disciples must have had mixed feelings. Any thoughts that they had about hanging low, trying to do their thing under the radar have just been addressed. Jesus first tells them they’re salt, now they’re light (another metaphor for contrast) and finally that they are a city of a mountain, nice and high where everyone can see them. Through the values of the Beatitudes and the promise of persecution, he has assured them that if they follow him, they will find that they will not “fit in” in this world. But not only will they not “fit in”—they also are being told that they must “stand out.” Their contrast is not just for themselves; it is for the world. So essentially he tells them: “You won’t fit in, and you’re going to have to stand out.” Any hopes of quietly following Jesus and muting or avoiding the persecution part have just gone out the window. The Church will be that city on the mountain, exposed for all to see, for both good and bad. Verses 15 and 16 echo too that the Church’s witness is not for itself, but for others, for all.  

This idea of the Church as a contrast society seems to me to be at the heart of the crisis we find with our Church today. We longer look or act differently. We are just like our neighbors. There is little about being a Christian that seems to separate us out today from the society around us. There is little to no contrast between the Church and the larger culture in which we live. This is certainly not how it was for the early Church, and we find that it certainly is not how it is for those segments of the Church throughout history which have taken Jesus most seriously, and therefore conflicted with the societies in which they found themselves: from anti-slavery abolitionists in the 1700s and 1800s, to the black churches of the civil rights movements; from St. Francis and his movement which eschewed the trappings of power and wealth which gripped the church of his day to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church in Germany which resisted Hitler’s rule; to the churches of Latin America that speak out for the poor and suffer martyrdom to the U.S. churches today shielding and protecting undocumented workers.  

But for the the majority of Christians in our nation today, the contrast is simply not there.  

As the great philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote in the 1800s, critiquing the Church of his time for the very same thing: “There was a time when one could almost be afraid to call oneself a disciple of Christ, because it meant so much. Now one can do it with complete ease, because it means nothing at all.”

-John

SCRIPTURE STUDY: The Beatitudes, part II

Lost to us, who encounter these passages 2000 years after they were first spoken, is the incredibly subversive nature of what Jesus is espousing in the Beatitudes. Jesus’ society, like ours today, took certain things for granted. People consider themselves “blessed” if they have wealth, status, and power. How often have we heard, or said ourselves, “God has really blessed me,” in some reference to our good fortune, good luck, good health, success, etc? And by extension, those who have experienced misfortune, tragedy, hardship, and suffering, many of us privately pass judgment on—thinking that perhaps it is their fault, or they deserve it, or they’re just not good enough, smart enough, strong enough to make it. We even go so far as to chalk it up to God’s punishment or karmic justice. In Jesus’ time, we know that those who were broken, physically deformed, mentally unstable, and sick or those who suffered loss and tragedy were literally considered to be cursed, as in the story of Job. It is a vicious circle and blatant attempt to justify by God the success of a few at the expense of the many. Those who succeed must be blessed by God; and those who don’t…well you can put two and two together. 

Think, for a minute, just how twisted Jesus’ words are: The meek or the lowly ones didn’t inherit land; those who hunger and thirst after righteousness experience disappointment, not satisfaction; those who mourned dead fathers and sons, the loss of their ancestral lands and other manifestations of the oppression of the Roman occupation of Judea and Galilee did not find comfort, no matter where they looked, including to their own corrupt religious and political leaders; what did it matter to have a “clean heart” to the leper whose physical “uncleanness” marked him as a sinner and put him outside of the bonds of community; and to extol an ethic of mercy when justice, better understood as vengeance, was foremost in people’s hearts toward those who had wronged them? 

The Beatitudes undermine the dominant cultural and even religious values of Jesus’ time and our own. They subvert our warped theologies that serve to justify economic, political and religious systems that elevate some of us while placing the blame for other’s lack of success on their sinfulness, their moral weakness, their laziness, or their obviously inherent unworthiness.  

In verse 7 of the Beatitudes, Jesus promises that those who show mercy will be shown mercy. It is an ethic of reciprocity that Jesus will come to again and again in the Sermon on the Mount (most pointedly in the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors;” and the Golden Rule). The practice of mercy is not nearly as common as we might think. Mercy involves entering into a situation, a relationship really with someone, going past the rules and the easy, stock answers which protect us from taking responsibility for the harsh pain such decisions cause. We are more concerned about what is fair, what is just even, rather than showing mercy. And yet, the second part of verse 6 implies that we all shall need mercy someday, and that those who practice mercy, will be shown mercy when their time comes. 

As we have already alluded to above, Jesus asserting that those with a “clean heart” will see God subverts every law and disposition which judges people based on outer appearances. Jesus lived in a society of purity codes, where someone’s purity or cleanness was based on physical manifestations of sinfulness—sickness, rashes, deformities, disabilities. This brings up a good question for us, one which we wrestled with on several occasions during our two week study of the Beatitudes—namely, who is Jesus talking to? Who is the audience for the Beatitudes? Is it aimed at the poor and broken and downtrodden? Thedisciples? Those curious folks somewhat invested in the status quo but still intrigued by Jesus enough to come out to hear him speak? The Pharisees? And so on. And maybe the ears Jesus speaks to change from Beatitude to Beatitude… Anyway, in the case of verse 8, imagine being one of the lepers, lunatics, paralytics, diseased ones who have not the standing or money to be made clean again through the proper channels (priests of the Temple system reserved the right to name someone clean or unclean and the ability to make payment to the priest thru sacrificial offerings often played a part in the transaction). Imagine being told that it is the interior, what is inside of a person, that determines whether one may see God? How liberating for the leper! And how threatening to the priest whose livelihood is based on the people’s willingness to cede control to him! 

Someone at the study also pointed out the connection between the Beatitude in verse 3 and verse 10. Both the poor in spirit and those persecuted for the sake of righteousness are promised the same thing: the kingdom of heaven. And the tense is different than the verses between these two—no “they will be satisfied,” et al; but rather “theirs IS the kingdom of heaven.” Right now, right here. And in trying to define that fuzzy term “poor in spirit,” we have a little insight into who those might be—perhaps they are also the ones who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for the sake of justice? A friend of mine, a longtime priest in Mexico, once told me that persecution is the sign of the true church; the church that is really being faithful to Christ and the proclamation of the kingdom of God is bound to be persecuted by the powers invested in the status quo, the way things are. 

In the final Beatitude, verses 11-12, Jesus changes the object of the Beatitude from the third person to the second person, aiming what he now says directly at the disciples, those who followed him up the mountain and whom he began to teach. The Beatitude states, “Blessed are you WHEN they insult you and persecute you…” No “ifs,” but a resounding “when.” The implication is not to be missed: If you follow this Jesus, if you choose to align yourself with him, “they” will insult you, persecute, slander you, etc. “They” is defined by the next statement: “Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Jesus places those who will follow him in the line of the prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Micah. And the “they” who persecuted those prophets were the political and religious powers of their time. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures, the prophet is set up against either the king or the priest, as well as the systems they represent. This is to be the task of Jesus’ disciples, of the church. To stand with those who are named “blessed” in the Beatitudes, to prophetically speak the truth of Jesus to those in power, and to suffer the persecution that flows from such actions.

-John