Reflection by Frances Flatman on next Sunday's Readings :-
Today’s Readings really gain so much when we understand their original context. Certainly, they carry instruction for us too, which is the purpose of our reading the Bible today; but having an appreciation of their original context gives us perspective, and can develop an empathy with the past which is so important lest we think these are diktats set in stone for eternity.
Our Reading from Amos (6:1.4-7) comes from the mid eight century BCE and the threat of Assyrian invasion of Samaria, the Northern kingdom and the Southern Judah. As I have said before, Prophets were akin to modern commentators on current situations, people astute enough to ‘read’ the times, and frequently at odds with the political rulers of their day. Jesus once remarked on Israel’s capacity to reject and even kill its prophets, precisely because they recognised the corruption and abuse of the citizens by the elite. Great prophets were always (like Jesus) men on the fringe, those who did not bolster the status quo, and whose challenge to its leaders frequently put them in peril of their lives. Indeed, we can feel Amos’ rage as he castigates the great in Samaria, that powerful and wealthy city. Archaeological finds show a society much richer than that of Jerusalem, with beautiful works in iron and bronze, and carved ivories the envy of modern craftsmen. Amos sarcastically writes of an elite ‘Ensconced so snugly in Zion and to those who feel so safe on the mountain of Samaria. Lying on ivory beds and sprawling on their divans….but about the ruin of Joseph they do not care at all….they will be the first to be exiled.’ As his prophecy very rapidly became a reality for the northern kingdom, we can appreciate the shock and awe of his words, only a palace coup in Assyria saved the south. In ancient times such world-shattering events were seen as the work of God himself rather than political happenchance or natural phenomena, but behind all that is an expectation of what true leadership should be about.
I suspect that the Timothy Letters (1 Tim 6:11-16) are written to the Early Church some time after the death of Paul, for they speak to a much more established organization than we are familiar with in Pauline documents. The point the writer makes however is clear, as he reflects on the duties and behaviour of those now in charge of a Christian community, very likely in Ephesus of which Timothy became its Bishop. Our author, like Amos, is all too aware of the dangers inherent in leadership, be that in the Church, in civic life or in ruling elites, where those at the top all too frequently lose contact with the ordinary people and become exploiters of those placed under their care. Greco-Roman society was always a prey to such abusive behaviour and indeed, it was taken for granted and clearly our author can see it beginning in the church in Ephesus. As the city was an Imperial capital in the East, we can easily imagine this copycat behaviour taking place. Ephesus was in the first century a thriving and very powerful port city, with its fully developed forum and many temples to the gods, and its military and high civic administration as the seat of the governor of the province. As counterbalance to this threat, the author recites a well-known ‘Creed’ reminding them all of whose they are and of his immortal power, an authority utterly different from worldly power ‘whom no man is able to see.’
We are making our way steadily to Jerusalem with Jesus, and his Passion looms ever more insistently. (Luke 16:19-31). Our passage follows directly on from last week’s Gospel, and this time is directed once more to the Pharisees, those law-righteous men who have dogged his steps right from his early ministry in Galilee, and as Mark makes so vividly clear in his Gospel were determined on his death from that point. Galilee and its people were despised by the Jerusalem elite and formed no part of its power base. Jesus and his motley crew of disciples were outsiders, marked out by their accent, their weird Aramaic and their difference. Yet Luke’s Jesus launches yet another attack on the Pharisees, this one following on the three times when Jesus dined with prominent Pharisees and never failed to ‘cut them down to size’. Previous confrontations had challenged them over issues such as ritual washing before meals; who the ‘righteous’ could mix with, and their abhorrence of ‘sinners’, Sabbath observance which he ‘broke’ by healing, and his challenge to elitism in his comments on the concern for precedence at banquets. By now it is obvious that Jesus is bent on a head on clash with Pharisees and their entire interpretation of the scriptures.
Jesus tells a story of immense contrasts, that of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar reduced to abject poverty; the former surrounded by luxury and everything of the finest, and Lazarus whose companions and carers were the feral dogs who scavenged the area. Apparently, the saliva of dogs had some cleansing properties, but the contrast could hardly be greater. Both die. Lazarus goes to Abraham, founder of Judaism in paradise. The rich man, who in life had it all is sent to hell. Everyone hearing this, pagan Theophilus and elite Jews alike, would have been hit by this very subversive story; and yet Jesus, citing Abraham makes clear that he too knows his Torah and the requirement that the wealthy care for the needy. Just as the divide between the rich man in hell, and Lazarus with Abraham is stark, threatening and enormous, so too we see is that between Jesus’ interpretation of Judaism and that of the Pharisees who are marked out as maintainers of the status quo, criticisers of the poor – all of whom were labelled as ‘sinners’ since they could never hope to fulfil the demands of the law as practised by the Pharisees which required ritual washing, purity which forbade their contact with animals and animal products and the dead, and whose worship clearly fell far below their exacting standards.
This parable is not in reality a story about a rich man and a beggar, for behind it there is the much more important understanding in which Jesus explores a true following of Moses and the prophets. Moses, who led his people on the Exodus from Egypt during which time they learned, through trial and error to place their trust in God and the prophets, who we have observed with Amos, consistently criticised the abuses of the powerful and brought God’s wrath upon the people. All the time, all these people had before their eyes the message of the Exodus and the words of their great prophets guiding them to the truth and their relationship with God; and it is horribly clear that in this confrontation, which is continued throughout his walk to Jerusalem, the divide between Jesus and the Pharisees has become irrevocable. Learning to understand Jesus within the world in which he lived as a full human being enables us to understand him better; and within that experience we get to understand the meaning of the incarnation, what it is for God to become human for us; and in doing so we discover the extent of the divine self-surrender to the world he brought into being and redeems. Only thus can we learn how to follow him.
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