First Reading
Genesis 12:1–9 (track one)
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD. And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb. (ESV)
Hosea 5:15-6:6 (track two)
I will return again to my place,
until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face,
and in their distress earnestly seek me.
“Come, let us return to the LORD;
for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth.”
What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes early away.
Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
I have slain them by the words of my mouth,
and my judgment goes forth as the light.
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. (ESV)
Second Reading
Romans 4:13–25
For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. (ESV)
Gospel Text
Matthew 9:9–13, 18-26
As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.
And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (ESV)
(omitted verses)
Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.” (ESV)
While he was saying these things to them, behold, a ruler came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus rose and followed him, with his disciples. And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. And when Jesus came to the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose. And the report of this went through all that district. (ESV)
Comments and Questions for Discussion
Genesis Reading and Romans reading (Track one)
I’m going to these two readings as a group, here, because they’re so closely related to one another. Abraham’s call and the faith of Abraham are the subject of both readings. But more importantly, what Paul thought about Abraham’s faith is important and fundamental to a lot of biblical theology.
In an earlier Divergence (see Lent 2, Year A) we had some very similar lessons. In fact they overlapped a bit. And I discussed the way that rabbinic thought framed the call of Abraham from his homeland of Ur, and how that would have been the well from which Paul would have drawn in his own thinking about the Father of Judaism.
This week I’d like to focus more on the faith of which Paul speaks, both the faith of Abraham and the faith of the ones to whom Paul is writing.
It would be interesting to contrast Paul’s writings about Abraham’s faith in Galatians with what he wrote here in Romans. One article I found did a magnificent job of comparing the two, and the way that Paul’s polemic shaped Galatians in a way that Abraham’s faith seems to skip the Jews altogether and provide a link only to the followers of Jesus, whereas in Romans, Abraham’s faith is spoken of in such a way that it is much more inclusive of the Jews. Worth a look if you care to, but it’s not what I want to write about this week.
No, what I want to write about may well be more boring, and more confusing, but it’s something that really needs to be said, probably better than I will, again and again and again, because it is fundamental to what Paul means when he says, “faith (in) Jesus Christ.” And that then shapes what we understand when we read of “faith” in Romans 4.
Paul’s argument about the relationship of faith and righteousness (versus law and righteousness) begins back in chapter 3, and this is where we begin to shape our understanding of what Paul means by “faith.” This is also where we begin to deal with how the genitive case of a noun can work in Greek. (I warned you it would be boring. But it’s not, if you’ll give it a chance.)
And we really need to deal with the genitive case here because Paul doesn’t (in chapter 3) say anything about “faith in Jesus Christ.” He keeps saying “faith of Jesus Christ.” If Paul meant to speak of a faith that was in, that is directed toward, Jesus, then the name Jesus Christ would likely have been in the dative case, what I learned to call the “indirect object” of a sentence in seventh grade English. But “Jesus Christ” is in the genitive case, every time in chapter 3, so we read that as what I learned to call “possessive” in seventh grade English. “Of.”
Even in English, the genitive case (of) can mean more than just possessive, and this is true in Greek as well. (Think of a pound of potatoes, for instance.) When we’re translating this Greek noun case, remember, there’s no “of” in the sentence, just the case of the noun. And how we read this particular genitive depends on whether we read it as the “objective” or “subjective” genitive. (I know, I hate this part, too.)
In the objective genitive, “Jesus Christ” is the object of the verbal noun, “faith.” Rather like that indirect “object” I described above.
In the subjective genitive, “Jesus Christ” is the subject of the verbal noun, like the subject of a sentence, the primary actor. Here Jesus Christ is primary, not the object of faith, but the “faither,” or to make it more like an English verb, the “believer.”
When Paul makes reference to the “faith (of) Jesus Christ,” we have traditionally always translated that as “faith in Jesus Christ.”
So when we translate Romans 3:21-22 we get:
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. (ESV)
But if we translate the genitive as the subjective genitive we get:
Romans 3:21–22
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through the faith (or more likely, the faithfulness) of Jesus Christ for all who believe.(ESV)
This may seem a tiny thing, but in fact it’s monumental, because if we read this (as I think Paul meant it) as the subjective genitive, then it is not what we believe that makes us righteous, it is the faith(fulness) of Jesus, what HE DID, that makes us righteous. Stop for a minute and think of how many times you’ve heard a Christian say, “Is your faith in Jesus Christ? Do you know where you’re going when you die?” Then of course we’re invited to say the “sinner’s prayer,” and declare our faith in Jesus and confess our sin, so that we can have access to Heaven or something like that.
Paul isn’t paralleling Abraham’s faith with our faith. He is setting Abraham alongside Jesus, the faith of each producing a promise for the ones who come out of that promise (ek tou nomou, ek pisteos). “That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the one out of the law (ek tou nomou) but also to the one out of the faith of (ek pisteos, that same genitive!) Abraham…” Descendents proceed from faithfulness for Paul. We proceed from Abraham’s faithfulness, and also from that of Jesus. This isn’t about our faith. Paul speaks of the faith of the followers of Jesus from time to time. It isn’t as though he ignores us. But when he speaks of faith that makes us righteous, that justifies us, he is talking about the faith and faithfulness of Jesus, as Abraham’s prefigured.
I realize that this challenges some assumptions concerning Paul’s theology (and therefore Christian theology) that is fundamental to a lot of belief. But this makes sense on a lot of levels. Thing is, I can’t ask you to buy into something this nutty unless I’ve done a lot more homework than I can fit into one Divergence. So I’ve started on a separate paper that I’ll publish on The Vicar’s Keep once I’ve done a whole lot more of this homework. Mean time, I ask that you consider what I’ve suggested and please, please, if you see holes in it, put them in the comments. That’ll help me figure out if this holds water.
Hosea Reading (track two)
The text chosen for this week for Track Two is one from which the listener in church is likely to be captured by the last verse, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” This may be the most famous phrase from all of the book of Hosea, and it is likely to blot out all the preceding verses when it is read on Sunday morning.
For those of you choosing Track Two this week, I ask you to be careful about what you preach on this text, should you care to do so. What I learned as I studied this text and what others have written about it in the last five decades or so, is that it is not as clear an “either-or” rejection of cultic sacrifice in favor of ethics/morals (mercy) as I have always thought it to be.
Because we so often hear this passage cited in isolation from the rest of the chapter, not to mention the rest of the book of the prophet Hosea, it is all too easy to fall into the error of assuming that Hosea rejected cultic sacrifice in favor of “mercy.” While a few scholars in recent years have suggested that it is a mistake not to take it for its “plain meaning,” there are too many others who argue for something else to ignore them.
Some suggest that Hosea’s objection to “sacrifice” is only to ritually despoiled sacrifice. This can for some commenters mean sacrifice that is not linked to ethical behavior. For others it might mean sacrifice that is ritually meaningless, because it is contaminated by sacrifice other deities, perhaps Ba’al.
What became clear to me as I read this week is that Hosea’s view of the cult, of ritual sacrifice, cannot be read as wholly negative in the context of the entire book. Especially given the prophet’s vision of a renewed and reinvigorated cult in chapter 14, (Take with you words and return to the LORD; say to him, “Take away all iniquity; accept what is good, and we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips.”), we cannot suggest that Hosea’s God rejects sacrifice altogether. (This translation is debated, but there is a definite link between “lips” and “bulls” that suggest sacrificial bulls are a part of a renewed cult.)
No. Hosea rejects current expressions of cultic behavior. It seems likely to me, having reviewed (No, I didn’t read them in full!) several articles, that Hosea’s measure of the validity of sacrifice is found in ethical practice (mercy). But the prophet does not reject sacrifice completely. As we study or prepare to preach on this text this week, I beg you to be more nuanced than in approaching this reading than I have been for nearly 40 years.
Gospel Text
I find this arrangement of texts from Matthew 9 to be very confusing. It seems to me that the omitted verses go better with the opening verses than do the two stories of the daughter and the woman with the flow of blood. Similarly, the omitted verses make a better introduction to the two stories than does the call of Matthew. By omitting the intervening verses our lectionary choosers have made it seem as though there is a stronger link between Jesus’ ministry to “sinners” (those who are sick) and the healings that follow than there is.
Matthew clearly intended that the story of the call of Matthew and the healings of the girl and the woman be linked, but they are linked by the very words that are omitted. The temporal markers in the text make them all closely related. “Then” begins the questioning from the disciples of John – in the very next moment. And even as he was “saying these things” the man arrives whose daughter is dying. We have two different controversies, but they are linked by the teaching of the new cloth patch and the new wine. That is how these two readings are linked. If you’re preaching or teaching on the Gospel for this Sunday, I would ask that you include the omitted verses. We in the churches that use the lectionary are permitted to expand on the lessons set out for us, just not cut them short. These are really worth adding on.
Jesus’ fellowshipping with sinners is new cloth that can’t be applied to the religion of the Pharisees. If He were to try, it would only make a greater rent. Jesus’ healing of two women, both with issues concerning blood and the issues of uncleanness that blood involves (one has non-stop menstruation, the other has just reached the age of menstruation) is new wine that will burst the Pharisees’ wineskin if He were to attempt to make it fit within.
Either story, the call or the healings, make a good study/sermon on their own, but they don’t speak to one another until we include the verses that were left out and recognize how it is that Matthew wanted us to relate them to one another.
For a more easily printable version of this Divergence, please CLICK HERE.