🦁 Epiphany 1-5

Readings: Psalm 69:1-5, 30-36; Genesis 17:1-13; Romans 4:1-12

Reflection

  Good morning and welcome to the first Monday after Epiphany. This is Brother Logan Isaac broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. Our readings for this morning are Psalm 69, Genesis 17, and Romans 4. And yesterday was the first Sunday in Epiphany, which is also the baptism of the Lord. Kind of a big deal. anD on the eighth day usually is when circumcision occurs and that would have been earlier, but the readings for this morning emphasize this circumcision.

First in Genesis 17 where it originates and then again in Romans 4 where Paul or Saul kind of explains how circumcision was not what did it for Abraham, it's not what made him. Nice or good or holy or favored or anything. That he was favored first, then he was commanded to be circumcised. So circumcision is a sign or a seal of something that has already occurred.

And so Saul is saying here, look, Jews are great and Abraham is great, but you don't have to be of an Abrahamic faith in order to, to be saved. And he's, you know, he's known as the, Apostle to the Gentiles in Greek it's ethnos, the apostle to the people but specifically ethnos, this Greek word, will later be used, or the, it's meaning would be absorbed by the Latin word ethnos.

Pagani or Pagan. He is the Apostle to the Pagans and he is speaking as a Hebrew of Hebrews. And so he is the Apostle to anyone who is outside this thing that the Israelites called you know, God, you know, being the people of God. Judaism came a little later, but anyway. And so what Saul is doing. As he is breaking open the, he break imagination in the runup to the destruction of the temple.

And if, I mean, it's my opinion that Saul is actually a prophet. He's building things up in anticipation of something he may not fully understand. I think God is using Saul to prepare the Hebraic faith for everybody. And Saul certainly feels that very strongly that, you know, the Messiah, the, you know, the, the work of God in the flesh comes through Israel, but it comes through Israel for the whole world.

And one of the kind of sticking points for a lot of non Jews was they didn't want to cut their foreskin off. And there's this whole debate in the Council of Jerusalem, whether or not, you know, what to What was it that had to be done or adhered to in order to be a part of this movement that Saul is modeling off of Jesus life?

I've become increasingly convinced in the last year or so that, you know, Christianity as we know it is really a Pauline. Not invention, but construction. And that isn't to say he's departing from Christ. I think he's putting up scaffolding around Christ in order for, you know, highbrow types to you know, kind of adopt it.

Because the Hellenists, the, the, the Greek kind of influence had already occurred. I mean, the Clearly, there were many more manuscripts of the Hebrew scriptures in Greek than they were in Hebrew with the Septuagint. The Maccabees, you know overthrew this Greek empire, the Seleucids, kind of sub empire, I suppose.

And much of the early, much of the kind of precursors to Jesus Ministry on earth is this battle between the, the Greek Hellenic influence and the ancient Hebrew imagination, which produced the Hebrew scriptures and then immediately got, or not immediately, but became formalized and canonized in Greek.

And so I think that it's important what Paul is doing is Trying to assert a robust monotheism based on the, the Hebrew scriptures, understanding of the only God of the universe and every other God being, you know, some lesser spiritual being. And it's about circumcision. We're reading about this now because we're in kind of the liturgical.

moment in which Jesus is a young child when they would get circumcised, when the, the, The sages visited him. It wouldn't have been within the first week, but it would have been within the first couple of years certainly two years because that's the age that Herod sets for the Massacre of the Innocents, which itself is a mirror of What was going on in Egypt to set off the plagues?

And so it's good news for everybody because the the God of the universe who you know, you'd think would be You know the the the center of interest for anybody who wants to like do important shit in the world That in fact that God actually has most to do and hears most clearly from those who are suffering and those who are Not necessarily so highbrow and In I think that's how I it helps me understand the Dichotomy but The unified dichotomy of Saul and Jesus.

Jesus didn't write anything. He didn't really care to approach the Romans or the rest of the, you know, known quote unquote civilized world. SaUl did. Jesus is the bedrock of our, of the faith that we call Christianity. But Saul is definitely its architect, I suppose. And so Saul here is trying and, and Jesus never says, you know, don't be circumcised.

You know, don't preserve the dietary restrictions. This is something that was left to his followers in their attempt to make sense of what's going on. emerging from this, you know, the Hebrew faith, the Hebrew traditions, but breaking very much into the pagan world, making believers of pagans and folding them into the I don't know, civilized imagination.

But it's not necessarily civilized if you think of Jesus. It's like, you're pulling everybody down to the lowest common denominator. And I think that is what Jesus celebrates. He was of lowly birth. He was a bastard child. He was, he died young. And Saul, who lives a nice long life Hebrew of Hebrews, you know, at the center of the source of these traditions.

And yet he himself is also compelled to kind of take a look at what Jesus is doing and say, you know, this is, this is not just about Israel. It, it is, it is about Israel, but it's about how Israel is saving the world through its God and through its Messiah, who does God's work here on earth. And so if you've ever felt like an outsider.

Christianity is the faith of the outsider, of the pagans, of of the, the rednecks and hillbillies, of the, the rural, uneducated, uncivilized, poor Jesus stood there with them and saw made a very good case explaining why it is, and it isn't, I mean it isn't just about circumcision, but this is an easy metaphor to unpack for Saul to show why there is no outsider, there is no really inside either.

And the, those who consider themselves insiders are being misled. They will be the last to enter the kingdom because they've missed the point. They've missed the point that God works regardless of boundaries, expectations, you know and part of that is The people expect to be on the top will find themselves on the bottom.

Those who have found themselves on the bottom can expect to be on the top. This great reversal was there it's, you know, circumcision. I think is what Saul is saying is that circumcision isn't, don't get caught up on acts and deeds. You know, there's nothing you can do to earn it. It's already been given to you from the foundation of the world.

And he does a very. He does a very important work and I think a lot of his work gets lost in translation and gets taken to places either that they shouldn't have been or that Saul you know, being fully human could have done a better job protecting against. But don't feel like an outsider.

There is no such thing in the Christian imagination.