Lectionary Commentaries for November 5, 2023
All Saints Day
from WorkingPreacher.org
Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 5:1-12
Osvaldo Vena
First Reading
Commentary on Revelation 7:9-17
Anna M. V. Bowden
Sandwiched between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals, John sees a great multitude of people waving palms, offering praise to God, and wearing robes made white in the blood of the Lamb. Those gathered are too numerous to count, made up of people from every nation, tribe, and language.
The crowd John sees cries out that salvation belongs to God. In the opening letters to the book of Revelation (Revelation 2-3), one of John’s biggest complaints about the seven churches is that they are not directing their worship to the right person. Rome, too, promised salvation. But John sets things straight. Salvation does not come from Rome. Salvation comes from God.
Like the elder who addresses John, you might wonder, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?”
Many have set the innumerable crowd John sees in verse 9 in contrast with the numbered crowd he hears in verse 4. I offer here a word of caution. Readings that contrast the two risk engendering supersessionism. Replacement theology does not fit well within John’s message to the seven churches. It is good for us to appeal to the inclusivity and diversity represented in verse 9, but there is no need to set these descriptors in contrast with Israel.
In reply, John turns the question back on the elder before the elder answers his own question: “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (verse 14).” But what does it mean to be washed in the blood of the lamb? While popular hymns often suggest a substitutionary transaction—Jesus’ blood washes away our sins and thereby cleanses our soul—a closer look at Revelation 7:9-17 offers a different reading.
Lamb, used more than two dozen times, is John’s predominant title for Jesus in the book of Revelation. While the Lamb is presented in a variety of ways, two repeated images have led interpreters to read the Lamb as a sacrifice: four times John depicts Jesus as a slaughtered lamb (5:6, 9, 12; 13:8) and three times as a bloodied lamb (5:9, 7:14, 12:11). Interpreters often hear in these repeated images of a slaughtered and bloodied lamb a reference to the Passover story and to the blood of the paschal lamb spread on the doorposts of the Hebrews in Egypt (Exodus 12:1-13). Given the lack of sacrificial language in Revelation, this reading is not convincing. John has something else up his sleeve.
John’s use of the verb slaughter (sphazō) better illustrates its meaning in Revelation. Aside from the references to the Lamb, the verb appears four more times (6:4, 6:9, 13:3, 18:24). In each occurrence, it points to the violence of Rome.
For example, slaughter, outside of its description of the lamb, occurs in the opening of the second and fifth seals. The first and second seal recall the violence of Rome’s military conquests (6:1-4). The third and fourth seals emphasize the economic injustices of Roman rule and the death that accompanies food shortages and famine as a result of war (6:5-8). The fifth seal images victims of imperial violence under an altar pleading for God to intervene and end their suffering. The final two seals announce Rome’s impending judgment (6:12-17, 8:1-5). Rome will be held accountable. Taken together, the opening of the seven seals evokes Rome’s modus operandi. Rome slaughters. The slaughtered lamb is a reminder.
Blood, a term used nineteen times in Revelation, also points to the violence of Rome. John repeatedly lays the blood of the faithful saints, prophets, witnesses, and servants at the feet of empire (6:10, 16:6, 17:6, 18:24, 19:2). The victims under the altar cry out to God, “How long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood?” (6:10). Rome’s hands are covered in the blood of God’s faithful. By repeatedly coming back to the image of blood shed at the hands of the Romans, John rhetorically paints Rome as bloodthirsty and sadistic. The bloodied lamb is yet another reminder.
In short, John does not want his audience to forget how Jesus died. Jesus died a violent death at the hands of Rome. Post-resurrection, the Lamb’s wounds are still visible. They remind us that we must not forget or look away from the wounds of those who have suffered imperial violence.
The white robes recall John’s description of those under the altar in the opening of the fifth seal. In response to their testimony, John notes “they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer” (5:11). This image suggests that the heavenly altar is a place where the souls of God’s faithful can bring their cries for justice. The altar is a place where victims of violence can air their grievances against Rome and other systems of oppression. It is a place where the voices of the suffering are heard.
The image of the souls bearing witness to the violence of Rome at the foot of the heavenly altar begs the question, “what does it mean to be a witness to violence today?” It forces readers to ask who is bearing witness to and bearing the scars of empire in our own context. I hear in this question the testimonies to violence on the streets of US cities as protestors cry out “No Justice! No Peace!” I see the posters of teenagers picketing state legislatures for trans rights. I hear the cries of parents calling for stricter gun control on the heels of another school shooting.
To be washed in the blood of Jesus means to join the Lamb and God’s faithful in testimony to the violence of the world. This All Saints Sunday may we be willing to identify the victims of violence and testify to the systems of oppression in our own imperial context.
Psalm
Commentary on Psalm 34:1-10, 22
LarsOlov Eriksson
Psalm 34 belongs to the so-called wisdom psalms in the Psalter, or maybe it is better to say that it contains several motifs which are connected to the wisdom literature in the Old Testament, since the genre of the psalm is disputed in the scholarly literature.1
Gunkel himself gave up and characterized its form “mixed Gattung.”
One typical characteristic of the psalm is that it is not directed to the Lord. Instead the psalmist addresses his children (verse 11), that is, his disciples. Furthermore, the psalm is an acrostic, and it also shows other traits which indicate that the poet has done a good job when it comes to the poetry of the piece.
The reason the psalm is chosen for All Saints Day is probably verse 9, where the “holy ones” of the Lord are mentioned. The holy ones are those who fear the Lord. And fear of the Lord is as close to a synonym to faith one can come in the Old Testament.
The delimitation of the psalm in the lectionary is somewhat arbitrary, since the central verse of the entire psalm is left out. Verse 11 is from the point of view of both structure and content the focal line of the psalm. Here the message is spelled out and the aim of the psalmist is stated: “I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”
Going through the lines of the psalm there is much repetition and the Lord is mentioned in almost every stanza. So even if the Lord is never talked to, he is very much present in the psalm. Together with repetition, contrast is also typical of the style of the psalm.
The structure of the poem is not evident. Each line stands in a way by itself, but the three first verses can be seen as a testimony of the psalmist in which he tells about his praising of the Lord and urges his disciples to do the same together with him.
The second part of the psalm, verses 4–10, tells about the experience of the how God has acted with his faithful. But in between the testimonies are exhortations to look to the Lord (verse 5), to taste and see the Lord’s goodness (verse 8), and to fear the Lord (verse 9). The final stanza is a summary (verse 22), in which the psalmist closes his teaching by repeating what he has already said.
Verse 10 mentions the “young lions,” an expression much discussed. Goldingay suggests the translation “apostates” referring to the root’s meaning in later Hebrew.12 In the Septuagint the Hebrew word is translated “the rich,” which is evidently an interpretation. The simplest is perhaps to see the expression young lions as a metaphor for the wicked, for those who stand in opposition to the pious or God-fearing.
In the history of interpretation, the line “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (verse 8) has received special attention. The mention of tasting was from the fourth century on interpreted literally by the Christian fathers, and the psalm was therefore used in connection with Holy Communion. But from the very beginning—in the New Testament and in the earliest fathers—tasting was seen as a metaphorical way of talking about having a relationship with Jesus Christ. In other words: tasting the Lord’s goodness was seen as the same as believing in Jesus, since the Lord for the authors of the New Testament of course is Jesus. See for example 1 Peter 2:3.
The wisdom tradition in the Old Testament is never afraid of generalizations. In this lies both a temptation and a possibility. The temptation of course is to paint life in black and white; the possibility is to see that everything in fact is not grey. So the challenge is to use the wisdom teaching with a great amount of—wisdom!
In the psalm there are three main actors: the psalmist who prays and teaches, the Lord who acts and is worthy of praise, and the others who are either righteous or evildoers. In preaching the psalm it is possible to use these three groups as examples, and that would come close to doing what the psalmist actually does in the psalm.
In the last group mentioned in the previous paragraph, we find the ideal followers of the Lord, “his holy ones” (verse 9). Relating the psalm to All Saints Day, the holy ones simply are the ones who fear the Lord (i.e., those who trust the Lord and obey him). They are described in several different ways, each contributing to make the picture of them appealing, since the aim of the psalmist is to make the readers of the psalm want to belong among the Lord’s holy ones. They are characterized as seeking the Lord (verse 10), taking refuge in the Lord (verses 8 and 22), and being his servants (verse 22). All well known descriptions in the Old Testament of right ways to relate to God.
There is one trait of the holy ones that might stand out a little, the fact that their faces “are radiant” (in the Masoretic text the first line of verse 6 contains a statement, not an exhortation: “Those who look to him will shine/be radiant”). This shining of the face—or the eyes—is as true a sign of holiness today as it ever was in Old Testament times.
If the whole psalm is taken into consideration, the picture of the holy ones is broadened. Because in the latter part of the psalm, the afflictions of the righteous are mentioned (verse 19), and that also is part of the conditions of a holy life. Needless to say, holiness in the New Testament is of course being “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:2).
Notes
- Commentary first published on this site on Nov. 2, 2014.
- John Goldingay, Psalms Volume 1: Psalms 1–41 (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 2006), 476.
Second Reading
Commentary on 1 John 3:1-3
Richard Ascough
Although there are links between these three verses and the previous section, it is unclear where to put the break in the logic of the writer’s thinking. The two verses preceding this new chapter speak of Christ’s appearance and the believer being in a filial relationship with God:
And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. (1 John 2:28-29)
Yet the opening invocation to “behold” in 3:1 suggests a new trajectory. The text itself focuses on these two key ideas: that those who believe in Christ have experienced a change in their status so that they are called God’s children and that the appearance of Christ will bring about another change insofar as believers will now experience him in a new way. Thus, the experience of God is both present and future.
How the love of the Father is manifest is left unclear. Often “love” is imagined by readers as a feeling, so this passage can be interpreted by believers, perhaps most intensely among mystics, as having intense or at least warm, comforting internal sensations of connection with God. Such love provides security, or what modern psychology might call “secure attachment” to a parental figure. But love (agape) was also very practical, expressed through a sense of connection and belonging to others in community, something that resonates through the latter part of 1 John (3:11-18; 4:7-21). It may be the sense of belonging together in a group that the auditors of the letter are experiencing as the practical manifestation of the “lavish love” given by the Father (verse 1). Yet there is hope in a future in which even this security will be surpassed when one has the full experience of God through Christ revealed.
No matter how lavish this love is, the believer’s experience of God is in the present and thus it is still incomplete. The letter writer looks to an even richer future in a threefold sequence of events around the coming of Christ (verse 2):
- he will appear
- we shall see him as he is
- we shall be like him
Thus, the believer’s relationship with God is both in the present and for eternity, with the latter beginning with the return of the risen Christ to earth, the parousia in Johannine language (although only used in 2:28 in 1 John).
God’s loving adoption of the believer comes at a cost: “because of this, the world does not recognize us” (verse 2). The cause behind this nonrecognition is not directly apparent; is it believers’ status as “children” or is it the love that they are now experiencing, or perhaps both? The “world”—that is, outsiders—do not recognize the connections the believers have with God and with one another, perhaps through willful blindness or jealousy. This is linked to broader themes in 1 John, where the writer has just finished warning his readers about the presence of antichrist(s) who seceded from the community (2:18-19). In fact, much of the first two chapters of the letter focus on those who either continue to sin or have left the community, the writer’s distaste for those who will continue in the latter part of the letter. Note the plural here; there is not a singular evil figure of “the Antichrist” (as later tradition will develop it) so much as a spirit of “antichrist” that the writer sees infusing any and all opponents of Christ and this community (see also 1 John 2:18, 22; 2 John 7).
Christian theology has generally not gone the way of seeing believers obtaining divine status equal with Jesus, despite the writer’s claim here that “we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is” (verse 2). In fact, the writer avoids the Greek word hyios (“son”) for the believer, instead referring to each as teknon (“child”); it is still a familial metaphor but stops short of the language used in the Johannine writings for designating Jesus’ direct relationship to God. The implication is that of entering into the household of God, one that is not only in a loving relationship but has all the implications of coming under the protection of the father of the household (the paterfamilias). In this way, the rejection by those outside the community will matter less since connection is found with those within (see also 2:7-11; 3:11-18).
Overall, in the face of a breakaway faction that has threatened both the foundations and the structures of the community, the writer opens the second half of his letter with strong encouragement for those who have remained faithful to the group. In his eyes, this demonstrates their faithfulness to God. He assures them that God loves them dearly and has adopted them as children, holding out hope that eventually they will become like Christ at least insofar as being pure before God. He imagines here a state in which sin no longer counts against a believer, a topic that is explicated in the next section of the letter (3:4-10; see also 1:7-9).
Galilee was outside the mainstream of Israelite life. It was neither a religious nor an intellectual center, with no real political power. Galilee was, however, in contact with world trade and culture and because of that it became a very cosmopolitan region. Peoples from different ethnic backgrounds inhabited the area, making it very diverse in terms of culture and religion. For that very reason Galileans were suspected of not being Jewish enough. Their mixedness (mestizaje) made them unclean and so they were rejected by Pharisees and the Jerusalem priests.
Out of this context of marginality comes Jesus, who in Matthew is depicted as the Jewish Messiah. In chapter 5 he goes up a mountain like Moses, and delivers the Sermon on the Mountain which starts with the famous Beatitudes. Matthew seems to have added some more to the Lukan list of four (Luke 6:17-26), which is probably more original. He has also spiritualized them a little (poor in spirit, hunger and thirst for righteousness, et cetera). The four original beatitudes may have been: Blessed are you who are poor, blessed are you who are hungry now, blessed are you who weep now, blessed are you when people hate you … exclude you … revile you … and defame you.
“Blessed” is honorific language. It can be translated as “How honorable,” “How full of honor,” “How honor bringing,” et cetera. “Contrary to the dominant social values, these “blessed are …” statements ascribe honor to those unable to defend their positions or those who refuse to take advantage of or trespass on the position of another. Obviously then the honor granted comes from God, not from the usual social sources.”¹
Who deserves this honor?
The poor (in spirit). For Matthew they were not the economically poor but those unable to maintain their inherited honor standing in society because of misfortune or the injustice of others. A rich widow without a son was still a “poor widow” regardless of how wealthy she was. Social misfortune, not economic misfortune was that which made a person poor. Of course, economic misfortune or economic oppression would make a person poor also.
To be labeled poor was to be unable to defend what was yours, to fall below the status at which one was born. (By the same token today, to call people “illegal” is to make them fall below the status at which they were born because no person is ever born “illegally.”)
The poor are those who are not given honor, hence socially weak, while the rich are the greedy, the shamelessly strong. Within the same context belong those persecuted unjustly and those reviled falsely. If persecution here means being driven out of their families, then it is no wonder that they are also hungry and mourning. They have lost their supporting system and are forced to beg for food. They are unable to maintain their inherited honor and have fallen in disgrace and shame. But, despite all that, they are granted the highest honor: the kingdom of heaven.
Merciful, pure in heart, and peacemakers have to do with moral qualities a person is to acquire.
Jesus, the marginal and migrant Messiah, can bless others not because he has possessions that he can dispense (we know Jesus was poor) or honor that he can grant (we know he was without honor in that society), but because he is acutely aware of God’s presence which he mediates, as a broker, to others. Going against the official theology of Israel, the great tradition emanating from Jerusalem, Jesus, as spokesperson for the little tradition of Galilee, blesses those who were despised by the society of the time. He turns the values of his time on their head by announcing that God blesses the unblessed. “… Jesus revalues what has been disvalued; he honors what has been shamed.”³ Jesus changes the way the honor game is played and redefines the source of honor. Acknowledgment of honor comes from God, he says, not from neighbors.4
The implication of Jesus blessing the poor, the marginalized, is not that they should be happy in their deprivation, for even though they may be poor materially they surely are rich spiritually! No. It is more an indictment on the society of the time for having forgotten its responsibility toward the neighbor. It is a warning to God’s people. It is a call to accountability, for if God blesses the ones that you curse, there is something fundamentally wrong with your theology. In the last analysis, Jesus is questioning the way God was being understood by the religious and political leaders of Israel at the time.
Rocks come from mountains.
Sitting on a mountain, Jesus, a Galilean Jew, declares the marginal of his society as blessed and deserving of God’s kingdom. He describes them as peacemakers, merciful, meek and, because of that, persecuted. Two thousand years later some of his compatriots have to take rocks from the very same mountains to defend the peace they have been striving for. Their rocks are met with bullets from the Israeli army. Then, out of desperation, the rocks turn into human bombs.
Under the hot desert sun, a line of “illegal” immigrants is making its way towards the border between Mexico and the USA. There are adults and children in the group. They carry a few possessions, mostly water for the journey. Suddenly a helicopter hovers over them and they all run for cover. In desperation one of the men picks up a rock and throws it at the helicopter. Then he finds a place under a bush and hides. Soon after that a border patrol van pulls over and takes them into custody. Later that day they are all deported back to Mexico.
For further reflection
Where would Jesus sit today if he had to deliver again the Sermon on the Mountain? On Wall Street? Washington D.C.? Calcutta? Buenos Aires? Gaza City? Darfur? Tijuana? On one of the many churches erected in his name? And who would be the ones he declares “blessed,” “honored?” If we can answer these questions, then perhaps we can answer the question that has puzzled the church for two millennia: what is the purpose of the church? What are we here for? What does it mean to inherit the kingdom of God? What is the kingdom of God? What is our understanding of God?
Notes: