(~) Bibical Words: March 19, 2006

Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22.

Biblical reflections on the 3rd Sunday in Lent, March 19, 2006, from Jay Wilcoxen, Ph.D.

Preparation for the Lord’s Passion includes hearing God’s covenant Commandments and revisiting God’s Temple.

Exodus 20:1-17. The Torah reading takes us to the supreme covenant of Jewish faith, the covenant between God and Israel made at Sinai. Included here is the heart of the Sinai covenant, “the Ten Commandments.” Only God’s direct statement of the Commandments is given; the context is left for another reading. Addressing such a vast subject, we make only the following observations.

* The Ten Commandments are addressed to each person individually. Every one of the “you” and “your” pronouns in the Hebrew and the Greek are singular. God says, “I brought you personally out of Egypt…” The ten requirements are the individual responsibility of every person who ever stands within the Sinai Covenant.

* The wording of each requirement is not in the form of ordinary commands. The imperative form is not used. It does not say, “Do not murder”; it says “You will not murder.” The statements are in the indicative mode (indicated in Hebrew by the type of negative used with the verb). Grammarians long ago identified a special “solemn” type of usage to account for these “commandments,” but they read normally as statements of fact, not strictly commands. You were brought out of slavery; you will not have other gods… The ethos of the Ten Commandments is that of an elect people: (Being who we are,) we do not murder, we do not steal, etc. The conduct of elect people can simply be stated; it does not need exhortation. (The two positive commands, Keep the Sabbath [verse 8] and Honor parents [verse 12], are also not in the imperative mode. They use what grammarians call the infinitive absolute, a kind of verbal noun, giving something like, “[There will be] keeping of the Sabbath…”)

* In some earlier form, the Decalogue probably consisted of ten simple statements. With the passage of time and shifts in emphasis, certain requirements needed reinforcement and elaboration. The requirements so elaborated are the second, you will make no idol, three verses long (verses 4-6); the fourth, you will keep the Sabbath, four verses long (verses 8-11); and the tenth, you will not covet your neighbor’s house, one longish verse (17). Brief motive clauses — reasons for observing the rule — also expand the requirements concerning the use of God’s name (verse 7) and honoring the parents (verse 12). In later centuries, the two requirements with the fullest elaboration, avoiding Idolatry and Sabbath observance, became the most critical public touchstones for keeping faith with the God of Israel. For them Jews often suffered persecution and even death.

Psalm 19. The Psalm reading includes at its center a strong praise of God’s torah, the content of the Sinai covenant.

The whole psalm begins with a marvelous praise of God manifested on the visible heavenly vault. The sights of the heavens are acclaimed as speech of praise. Special delight is taken in the sun, who runs his daily course, observing all on the earth. Old Babylonian tradition, centuries before Israelite times, associated the sun god with the giving of law for the people. This psalm makes a similar transition from the sun, from whom nothing is hid, to an elaborate praise of the torah of the Lord. The middle section of the psalm (verses 7-10) uses six synonyms for law or torah, each of which is praised in terms of its life-enhancing qualities, a remarkable hymn to torah-devotion.

But the psalm moves on to a third section (verses 11-14), in which a deeper mystery of personal existence is acknowledged. Keeping the law is good, but who can fathom the real depths of the self, its “errors,” its “hidden faults”? The conclusion leads the psalmist to a fervent prayer that God will deliver the speaker from such deep powers, so that one may be blameless and innocent. May the speaker’s words and meditations be acceptable in God’s sight!

This single psalm has an astonishing sweep: from God’s glory sung in the heavens, through the richness and life of God’s law, to the human depths where transcendent powers threaten. It is a blessing to receive the law, yet a threat to fall guilty under it!

1 Corinthians 1:18-25. The Epistle reading is concerned with God’s wisdom rather than the covenantal law directly, but it carries the dilemma of human inadequacy before God’s requirement, before God’s Command, to its final extreme. Because of the utterly incurable failure of humans before God’s requirement, God, in God’s own wisdom, has provided an astonishing means of deliverance and acceptance.

Paul insists that human wisdom is not only inadequate, it is wrong-headed; it is utterly misdirected. What looks like wisdom to humans is foolishness, at least when it is a matter of salvation from sin. God’s true wisdom, brought to humans in the crucifixion of Jesus, looks like a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Greeks. The real meaning of Jesus’ Passion is simply not sensible, not reasonable, not intelligible to folks of any education. Thus Paul finds that he must only preach Christ, and him crucified (see 2:1-2).

John 2:13-22. For several weeks in Lent and during Holy Week, the Gospel readings are taken from the Gospel according to John. This Sunday’s reading presents an episode that in the other gospels occurs in the last week of Jesus’ activity in Jerusalem, the cleansing of the temple.

A more distant aspect of the Sinai covenant than the Ten Commandments was that at Sinai God had provided for the special sanctuary that would enshrine God’s presence among the covenant people. In the wilderness that sanctuary was the Tabernacle (described in Exodus 25-31); in the settled land it was the Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 6-8; 2 Chronicles 2-7). How was God’s sanctuary doing, since Sinai?

Not well at all, according to the account in John’s Gospel. John’s account of the action, with Jesus making a whip, overturning the money tables, and chasing out the bird dealers, is more graphic than this episode in the other Gospels. There is emphasis on Jesus’ prophetic zeal, the messenger of God’s will driven to violence by the scandalous conditions in the holy house. The prophetic reformer is breaking forth at the center of the religious establishment!

Reform, however, the passage recognizes, will not effect a lasting solution. “Zeal for your house will consume me,” the disciples later remembered from one of the psalms (Psalm 69:9, quoted here in verse 17, NRSV). The remembered quote does not refer to the reforming work, but to the death the reformer’s work brought on him. Caring for God’s true presence among people will cost Jesus his life. (Psalm 69 is a companion piece to Psalm 22, both passion psalms.)

The passage extends the ramifications of Jesus’ role in God’s salvation by giving his response to his official challengers: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (verse 19). A post-resurrection perspective is made explicit. It is Jesus’ body that will rise on the third day.

The body of Jesus will become the true temple by which God is present. To this temple may come those who continue to need the release from sin the temple used to provide. For this Gospel, the requirements of God have been simplified to this: to believe in Jesus and let the Spirit lead each responsible individual into new life. It will prove to be a spontaneous and charismatic life, filled with statements of fact rather than imperatives.