Is.35:1-10 Ps. 146: 4-9
James 5:7-10 Matt. 11:2-11
Lectionary Link
The Bible is literature and as such it must be appraised as such. Literature is writing art, one of the language products that has developed because of human beings are language users. Written language is a technology of memory; it has allowed ancient language events to be remembered and then repeated in successive communities for many years. For many people, for so long, the Bible was the dominant public language event and it is written in so many different discursive styles because the writers were trying to represent in language the modes of being human before God.
The Bible had to be for many the omni-competent language event onto which many people could project the oracle words of God. The Bible as artistic literature is written in accessible story forms and it was meant to be read by the literate for the mostly illiterate public for whom it was to be an oracle of God's words. One of the main units of language which helps the memory retain information is the "story." The Bible includes many stories, written, brought to language to teach communities and to inculcate communal identities.
Biblical stories contain features of literature that are repeated because the goal is to promote recommended behaviors for the people for whom the teachings are devised.
Two stories modes are the use of the utopian and the ideal person. A hero is one who does great things to build the best of all possible worlds. Eden, utopia, paradise, and heaven are language forms to promote best of all possible worlds. Prophets, wisdom sages, and messiahs are the ideal persons, the heroes who are to exemplify ideal people who are doing the work of building better worlds. The Bible stories contrast the worst world of sin, death, and hell with the best worlds of love, everlasting life, and heaven. The Bible stories contrast the worst people of hatred, idolatry, and cruelty with the very best people of love, kindness, and healing.
We live by and through the stories which have come to code our lives with the social identities which we have taken on.
What kind of stories might be told to people who were conquered and carried in exile to distant lands to serve the captors? You might tell dream stories of returning to one's homeland just as the Isaian writer wrote about in the 35th chapter. Even if the return is not imminent, it still has the truth of the comfort of hope. Discourse of of hope is true to the need of comfort even if not a certain impending empirical reality.
What kind of poetry would you write about the one, about whom none greater could be conceived? Like the Psalmist of Psalm 146, you would expound upon one who was kind to the the weak and vulnerable. Why would you expound upon the greatest as being anything less than loving and kind?
And what if you lived in religious minority communities that were suffering and without the freedom to live openly your values because of an oppressing cult of the Caesar? You might envision the end of oppression where a greater One comes to bring the very conditions of what a truly great one would do for love and justice among people. The writer of James used the metaphor of a farmer waiting patiently for the time of harvest while enduring the hardships of preparation for the same.
And what if one is like John the Baptist, thrown in prison tempted to be in despair about the value and effectiveness of one's preaching and message. "I thought that I was preparing for the messianic; is that going to be defeated? Will my mission be completed by the surpassing and succeeding one?" Jesus told the messengers to go and tell John that the values of the Isaian messiah were being accomplished, good news for the poor, and the prisoners, and health to the afflicted, and sight for the blind.
What we need to appreciate about a story is the sense of final closure it gives in terms of human comfort. Why do people like hero and action adventure in the cinema? In less than two hours the hero can with great endurance and effort, defeat evil and bring a dilemma to some final resolution. And even though the process of life means that across the vast earth human dilemma is on-going and never ceasing, we can get a sense of some final closure in the moment of resolution in the story of the hero. Such stories give us the sense that justice can be actual in our lives, and it is a moment of comfort for us in faith, and the worthwhileness of believing in goodness and justice.
How do stories of the heroic messiah and the better worlds of the future function for us? Rather than thinking of heaven or utopia or of some utopian ideal hero or messiah in the singular freeze frame final mode which stories fool us to believe; we should understand these stories as providing inspiration for the process of the ideal and the messianic. For us it means that in our churchly practice, we are to live the values of love and justice. And it means in our personal lives we are to live and manifest the messianic values of realized love and justice. Such conditions and actions are not some final freeze frame stop the world attainment but inspiration for surfing the passage of time by being in the process of becoming more heavenly in our communal living and becoming more messianic or Christly in our life actions. May God continue to lead us on the heavenly and the messianic path today. Amen.
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