Hardly the Last Word

Revised Common Lectionary Page for 24 January 2010

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Luke 4:14-21

This week’s readings are a lovely array of meta-Scriptures: a Gospel reading about Jesus reading the Scriptures, a Pauline passage about living together as God’s people, a Psalm about reading the Scriptures, and an Old Testament passage about… reading the Scriptures together.  The Bible’s texts are odd that way: I can’t think of very many places in which Plato asks to be read or bits of Homer where the attention shifts away from the fields of Troy and into the poem’s audience.  But the Bible’s books are strange in all sorts of ways, so I shouldn’t be too surprised.

When I used to assign a paper that asked students to compare Plato’s Republic to some other pre-Enlightenment text, 1 Corinthians 12 always served nicely as a comparison text: in both cases, the writers assert strongly that the body (Plato’s city, you’ll remember, was analogous to a human person, a literary image which I think Paul picks up and modifies significantly when he calls the Church the Body of Christ) must acknowledge and embrace the goodness of all of its parts, not only those traditionally designated “higher,” if the body is to be healthy, and both assign a certain organizing principle to the whole as distinct from the parts.  Paul calls for cooperation from the tongues-speakers and interpreters, for deference from the strong-of-conscience and for patience on the parts of the prophets.  Likewise Plato calls for self-discipline on the parts of the wealthy, for courage from the warriors, and for wisdom from the rulers.  But both hold that there is a formal, organizing principle that ought to bind their particular communities together.  For Plato, the difficult-to-translate dikaiosyne (justice, morality, and righteousness are three candidates), while for Paul the equally sticky agape (love, charity) binds all, and Paul’s famous teaching on agape follows directly on the heels of the part on people’s various gifts.

I have to note that before Paul came along and probably before Plato wrote Republic, the book of Nehemiah offers another alternative to the two good suggestions of Plato and Paul, namely joy.  Like Plato’s dikaiosyne and Paul’s agape, Nehemiah’s chadyath stands in contrast to what might otherwise have been and calls for a sort of resistance to what’s going on at the moment.  For Plato, the untrained whims of the masses have the reins of Athens, and for Paul, the community is going about its business in a spirit of self-promotion.  In both of those cases, the P-dudes call for something higher, something that will serve as an object of desire for those who look upon its goodness.  Nehemiah likewise comes into a situation in which the people, upon hearing the text of the Torah read and interpreted, weep.  Whether because they realize that they’ve lost the distinctiveness that Moses’ teachings would otherwise have conferred upon them or because, hearing the story of the Exodus, they realize they’re still under the thumb of Persia, they cast their faces down, and Ezra and Nehemiah and the Levites point towards a higher way, that of rejoicing.

I’ll confess at the outset that I’ve not spent enough time with Nehemiah: I’m aware of the basic historical setting, but beyond that, the particulars of the narrative I couldn’t summon in a pinch.  But this moment strikes me as something that echoes in other places: to celebrate the victory of YHWH, to proclaim even in the face of a world that denies that reality, is the heart of bearing witness to the salvation that God brings.  Paul calls for such proclamation over and over, and the great oracles of Isaiah 40-55 call it forth.  Even Jacob, who goes out of his way to steal the birthright to lands that do not yet belong to the sons of Abraham, deceives in a spirit of proclamation.  (Are there ethical problems there?  Yes.  But that’s not this week’s text, is it?)  Like Paul’s call to love as a sign of God’s victory over sin, so Nehemiah calls for joy as a sign of God’s victory over despair.  May all of us be people of visible joy.

by ngilmour