AUGUST 26TH, TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b
Ephesians 5:21-32
John 6:60-69 For many of us, our faith has consisted in very few choices. Brought up Catholic, we’ve simply stayed in that configuration of beliefs our whole life. We’ve never experienced a compelling reason to change anything. Yet the authors of today’s Joshua and John readings presume there are times when we’re forced to choose between at least two alternative ways of living that faith. The author of Joshua presents his readers with the basic choice of the Hebrew Scriptures: do we follow “pagan gods,” or imitate Joshua and his family, opting to make Yahweh our personal God, and relinquish allegiance to any other gods or goddesses? We who grew up after the sixth century BCE have only one God to worry about. But those, like Joshua, who lived before Deutero-Isaiah’s ministry had hundreds of divine beings from which to choose. For them, biblical faith was much more complicated than just being a “believer” or an atheist. John’s Christian community is also faced with a choice. The late Raymond Brown’s The Community of the Beloved Disciple meticulously outlines the alternatives. They spring from the distinction between “low and high Christology.” The former looks at the biblical Jesus from his human characteristics, the latter, his divine. If one decides to preach on Jesus’ humanity, one normally goes to Mark, Matthew and Luke; low Christology evangelists. Those who preach on his divinity usually turn to John; a high Christology proponent. John’s chapter 6 clearly paints a divine, high Christology picture of Jesus. One with God, he offers an everlasting food and drink that guarantees eternal life. His message actually is “Spirit and life.” No wonder some “old time” Christians found all this new stuff hard to accept. They simply could “no longer accompany” that kind of Jesus. Looking at our biblical writings historically, we frequently find ourselves in the middle of an evolving faith, a constantly moving experience. We not only must know what was said, but when, or in what order it was said. Lots of decisions were involved in forming the Scriptures we have today. The historical Jesus, for instance, decided at one point to reject this life only theology of most of his theological predecessors and accept the novel eternal life theology of his fellow Pharisees. The Sadducees he encountered during his ministry refused to make that jump. They argued that believing in a heaven simply created too many complications, exemplified by multiple marriages. That’s where our Ephesians pericope comes in. Whether we like it or not, it forces us to make a decision. Do we follow this Pauline disciple’s marriage theology, or go beyond it? We’ve already done this with Paul’s theology on slavery. (“Slaves be obedient to your masters.”) No one today would tolerate slavery just because of the Apostle’s limited reflection on the subject. In the same way, should modern women be “subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord” just because the author of Ephesians said to do so 2,000 years ago? We could employ other biblical quotes to challenge that statement. E.g. our Genesis 1 author contends both men and women are made in the image and likeness of Yahweh; a theology in which there appears to be no marital subordination. As I mentioned above, Sadducees wanted to live a “simple” life. That’s one of the reasons they rejected belief in an afterlife. Do some Christians reject marital equality today just because they also long to live a simple life? Choices can bring complications. Yet in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures we surface a God who has given us free will. Perhaps the more we use that will, the more we actually become like the God we’re trying to imitate, a very complicated being.
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