Living the Word

Sojourners Magazine, Nov 2005 by Roth, Robert

Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary, Cycle A & B

BIBLE STUDY

A People's Identity

We rise or fall together. God can use us as a faith-filled worldwide community to end starvation, bring wholeness, and staff the turning points of history. For those of us from faith traditions emphasizing solo salvation, these can seem like novel ideas. But they are at the theological heart of many of this month's passages. The readings lead us to consider our corporate identity-both who we are now and who God calls us to become.

Repeatedly, we hear the one who speaks as the voice of many guiding a chapter in the Bible. Psalm 78:1 says, "Give ear, O my people, to my teaching." In Psalm 123, the psalmist lifts up "my eyes." but later speaks of "our eyes," even "our soul" (italics added). Deborah judges Israel, a people, in Judges 4. In Ezekiel 34, the Lord judges between one group of "sheep" and another. In Matthew, Jesus delineates between the "sheep" and the "goats" in the gospel's declaration of a final judgment.

Repeating who we are as a community of faith is a necessary redundancy if we have been raised, even spiritually and ethically, as nigged individualists. By the third week's readings. Jesus makes clear the basis on which a people are judged: Whenever you feet! the hungry or give water to the thirsty-or ignore the desperate state of the poor, he says, "you did it to me."

The final week offers the reassurance that God continues to reform and create that people anew for just such a calling, even as a potter forms clay. In a beautiful way, form meets function with the many sculpted as one.

NOVEMBER 6

A Kairos Community

Joshua 24:1-3.14-25; Psalm 78:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

Mary T. Washington of Chicago stepped bravely beyond race and gender boundaries in 1943, becoming the first black female certified public accountant in the United States. Washington, 99 years old when she died in late July, first opened an accounting practice for African-American clients in her basement while working on her college degree.

Washington lived and led in a world not yet here, creating what her business partner later called an "underground railroad" for aspiring black CPAs. Was she ahead of her time, or simply living in God's time for her and her people?

Joshua 24 celebrates one of those pivotal moments in biblical history when a people step beyond the clironos of what is supposed to happen according to human clocks and calendars and into the kairos fullness of time when an extraordinary Cod-given possibility changes everything. Though Joshua assembled dissimilar tribes at Shechem, they committed themselves as one people to reject the "other gods" of their ancestors and enter into a future-oriented covenant with God and one another.

Shechem was an ancient sacred place where Joshua was called to lead Israel into living in a world yet to come. Even as the psalmist calls the people to "give ear" as one (Psalm 78:1), Paul, too, challenges the church at Thessalonica to see beyond the expected to the point in time where generations living and dead share a boundless hope.

Jesus' parable of the bridesmaids teaches the church in all times to live with heart and mind in the reign of God-which is coming but already here. We are to remain spiritually and ethically awake because we "know neither the day nor the hour" when Christ comes again, bringing the fullness of the kingdom. Mary Washington kept "oil in her lamp," and, sure enough, the future became the present.

NOVEMBER 13

A Commonwealth of Accountability

Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

As the United States renders foreign suspects to countries that practice torture, and as we house domestic prisoners with HIV/ AIDS in sometimes barbaric conditions within for-profit prisons, should I be worried that "the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5:2)? As my government justifies bombing Iraq and Afghanistan so that, in part, women might have more rights, yet cozies up with a Saudi Arabian regime that denies women basic rights and freedoms at every turn, should I fret that Jesus describes Cod as a master who will send a people irresponsible with their privilege "into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 25:30)?

This week's passages are not for the fainthearted. We hear in the Hebrew Bible how "Israel did evil" and in the New Testament epistle how "sudden destruction will come" while the morally sleepy-eyed daydream of "peace and security." For Israel, Deborah came judging, but as the Israelites cried to God for help, she came to their rescue. Paul offers the early church the "breastplate of faith and love" while establishing their common interest in mutual accountability. "Therefore," he writes, "encourage one another and build up each other" (1 Thessalonians 5:11).

At face value and out of context, the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 might read like a preamble to a getrich prosperity theology. Encountering a gospel with a bias toward compassion and justice, the reader needs to see beyond the parable to where the Chosen One comes in glory and judges people based on their treatment of "the least of these." Think of those with HIV/AIDS in prisons lacking adequate healthcare.