Jesus: Magician or Liberator?– The Choice for Progressive Christians

Luke 8:19-9:6; cf Mark 4:35-5:42

The writer of Luke/Acts had a very different agenda from the writer of the gospel of Mark.  Mark’s Gospel is a progression – a journey – from Galilee to Jerusalem.  Mark was the first to pull together the sayings and stories about Jesus and create a narrative that took listeners from confusion to clarity, from misunderstanding to revelation.  Mark’s Gospel announces the arrival of God’s rule based on radical fairness and inclusion of poor and marginalized people.  For Mark, God’s rule is in direct opposition to Roman law and order.  Luke’s job, in contrast, was to make the new Christian Way acceptable to his Roman patron, Theophilius.  (See The Five Gospels, p. 294.)  He takes Mark’s stories and mixes them up so that Mark’s logic is lost.  The emphasis changes from social and political justice to magic and miracle.

As we continue with Luke’s gospel, the next section begins with Jesus’s mother and brothers coming to see him.  They can’t get to him because of “the crowd,” and he seems to dismiss them: “My mother and my brothers are those who listen to God’s message and do it,” he says.  The question is, what is the message, and what are we to do?  For Luke, the answer seems to come at the end of this series of exorcisms and healings.  “He called the 12 together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to heal diseases.”  The work seems to be to bring “good news and healing everywhere” (9:1-6).  After this, Luke shifts to relating the parables; there is one more exorcism, and one more healing.  Luke seems most concerned with convincing people that Jesus was the messiah, and with the importance of Christian piety.

Luke’s version of Mark’s story about Jesus “rebuking the wind and the waves” so that a “great squall” dies away is most often considered to be another miracle story.  “Who can this fellow be?” the terrified disciples ask each other, “that even the wind and the sea obey him?”  In Mark’s sequence, the story follows the parables of the Sower and the Mustard Seed. The irony in Mark’s story is that Jesus’s clueless followers still don’t get what Jesus is trying to teach them.  Mark’s Jesus could not be more clear: “Why are you so cowardly?” he asks – perhaps with some irritation.  “You still don’t trust, do you?”

But watch out.  Christians traditionally have added or assumed that Jesus is implying the disciples don’t trust him.  But that’s not what he says.  Look at the way Mark originally set the scene (Mark 4:35).  In contrast to Luke, who says “One day Jesus and his disciples happened to get into a boat . . .” Mark’s Jesus is teaching beside the sea, or Lake Galilee.  “Later in the day, when evening had come, he says to them, ‘Let’s go across to the other side.’” Any fisherman worth his salt should have known that even though the Lake was subject to sudden storms, in the evening, there is often (if not always) a calm as the sun sets.  How many recreational sailors on the Chesapeake Bay (or any large body of water) have had to either use their onboard engines, or be towed back to Annapolis once the sun approaches the horizon and the wind dies?  So Jesus falls asleep on some cushions in the stern of the boat, and a sudden squall materializes.  Why should those supposedly seasoned sailors panic?  Surely that squall would have died out as quickly as it came up?  In Mark’s view, Jesus’s followers not only do not understand what Jesus was trying to teach them.  They don’t even trust their own experience of God’s natural world.

The 5th Chapter of Mark contains three stories of deliverance.  The first, which we read in Year C from the Gospel of Luke, is the story of the “man of the city”  possessed by a demon named “Legion.”  When the demons ask Jesus not to send them back to “the abyss,” he sends them into a herd of swine instead.  Now, swine are unclean animals.  So the swineherds must be outcast people – perhaps they are gentiles, even Roman servants.  So when the man says his name is “Legion,” is he saying his life has been taken over by Roman oppressors?  The people of the surrounding country are frightened by Jesus’ action in healing/delivering/liberating the man from the oppression of the Roman demons by releasing them into the pigs, which are then destroyed because they run down the bank into the lake and are drowned.  The people ask Jesus to leave, and he does.  When the liberated man asks to go with him, however, Jesus tells him to go home and let people know “how much God has done for you.”  But instead of proclaiming how much the Hebrew God had done for him, the man claims instead how much Jesus had done for him.

Perhaps if the man had claimed the Hebrew God instead of the man Jesus, the Romans would not have paid so much attention to Jesus as a threat to Roman authority.  Beyond that, however, is the possibility that when Jesus sends the man home, back to his gentile village, he is sending his message of distributive justice-compassion into the heart of Roman-occupied society.

Mark follows the demoniac with two healings, and Luke makes no changes.  The first is the raising from the dead of the daughter of a “synagogue official.”  That story is interrupted by the second story about a woman in a seemingly permanent state of uncleanness because of a “flow of blood” that has lasted 12 years.  After she is healed by surreptitiously touching Jesus’s robe, Jesus goes on to tell the supposedly dead child of a possible collaborator with Rome to get up.  The possibilities for metaphors about 1st Century resistance to unclean Roman rule fairly leap off Mark’s pages.  These are not miracle stories about medical cures, demon possession, and the mis-use of livestock.  They are parables about subverting political and spiritual oppression; they show how trust in God’s reality transforms one’s oppressed life under imperial (Roman) occupation into freedom and justice.  In Luke’s context, these are illustrations of healing and miracle working, which Jesus’s real “mother and brothers” are supposed to be doing

For 21st Century Christianity, the question is, which interpretation makes the most sense?  Magic and miracle, or liberation from injustice?  Scholars and commentators are often accused of reading 21st Century world views back into 1st Century writings.  That is a fair enough criticism; however, two points need to be made.  First, the sayings and stories about Jesus have been re-interpreted from the point of view of whatever century any particular scholar or preacher happened to be in since the day after Jesus’s death.  Second, – and most important – even if the historical Jesus was really about magic and miracle (and contemporary scholarship is divided about that), 21st Century, post-modern, reason-based, would-be followers of Jesus cannot accept that interpretation without suspension of disbelief at a level that threatens our integrity.

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To Have and Have Not

Text:  Luke 8:4-18

Luke’s version of the parable of the sower and the lamp under a jar have a very different setting from the original in Mark.  In Mark, the parables are in a cluster.  The cluster begins with the Sower and the interpretation, but then goes further with an illustration about seed and harvest, concluding with the parable of the mustard seed.

Luke seems to be concerned with secret knowledge, revealed only to the disciples closest to Jesus.  In fact, Luke’s Jesus goes so far as to say that he tells parables specifically to confuse people and exclude them from the kingdom: “. . . the rest get only parables, so that they may look but not see, listen but not understand.”  Luke’s Jesus reflects Isaiah 6:9-10.  The Prophet has just accepted his call, and God tells him to tell the people “Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.  Make the mind of the people dull . . . so that they may not . . . turn and be healed.”  God’s judgment is going to descend on the people until “the land is utterly desolate.”

Like all cherry-picking to make a point, Luke’s cherry-picking of Isaiah was probably done for a specific social-political reason that applied to the time and place and circumstances of Luke’s community.  The cherry-picking by the inventors of the Revised Common Lectionary may also have a purpose.  The reference to Isaiah 6:9-10 – which appears in all three synoptic Gospels– is never read throughout the three-year lectionary cycle.  Perhaps this is a good thing.  The phrase when considered alone flies in the face of everything Jesus stood for – especially in Luke’s hands.

There is some hope, however, that the light will eventually shine.  The prophet Isaiah is warning that God’s wrath (justifiable action) will be exacted on the people until there is nothing left but a stump, from which new life may sprout.  Luke’s Jesus says, “No one lights a lamp and covers it with a pot or puts it under a bed; rather one puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in can see the light.  After all, there is nothing hidden that won’t be brought to light, nor secreted away that won’t be made known and exposed.”  The disciples are to take the secrets of God’s kingdom to others.  The seed will fall on rocky, thorny, dry, or fertile soil.

That being the case, Luke’s Jesus seems to be saying, pay attention to how you are listening to the message.  Are you receptive (fertile); rocky (rejecting); thorny (resisting); or dry (uninterested)?  Because . . . but here the non-sequitur called “to have and have not” throws us off the track.  The Jesus Seminar scholars suggest that “Luke presumably wants the reader to know that those who grasp at the initial stages of faith will be given more to understand as they mature” (The Five Gospels  p. 307).

But in Luke’s story of the woman with the alabaster jar (see blog.02.28.10), which comes  right before the parable of the sower, Jesus’ point is that “the one who is forgiven little shows little love.” The placement was probably not an accident.  When the woman appears at the symposium and disrupts the exclusive gathering, Luke’s Jesus stops the host from throwing her out.  He says, “her sins, many as they are, have been forgiven, as this outpouring of her love shows.”  At the end of the vignette with the parable of the sower, he offers a corollary:  “in fact, to those who have more will be given, and from those who don’t have, even what they seem to have will be taken away.”

        “It is impossible to know what the original circumstances were when Jesus first told the parables; it is highly unlikely he associated those parables with his observations about the hidden lamp and to have and have not.  But taken in sequence, each of Mark’s parables about the sowers and the seeds builds on the one before it.  The aphorisms in the midst of these parables serve as hints to their meaning for Mark’s oppressed, exiled community.  Mark seems to be using them to explain that Jesus was the Son of Man, as prophesied in Daniel, come to usher in the Kingdom of God, and usher out the Empire of Rome.  All will be made clear, Mark says, and nothing will look like what we expect.  It will be a non-violent shift in paradigm, not a violent revolution.  The Kingdom of God – or God’s Rule – goes on all around us, whether we notice it or not, whether we participate in it or not.  But the consequences of not participating are clear: “to those who have, more will be given, and from those who don’t have, even what they do have will be taken away.”  If we follow the same unjust standards that the Empire follows, the same will be done to us “and then some!” Blog.06.14.09.

The commentary in The Five Gospels (p. 306) suggests that Jesus’s parables are “an invitation to join in, but to do so as continuing “outsiders” (which is what the Apostle Paul also seems to be saying as he interprets Jesus’s life and teachings).  “To be included in the great feast, it is an advantage to be uninvited, so to speak, for it is only the uninvited who finally get into the banquet hall.”

Traditionally, the story of the woman with the alabaster jar is about a penitent whore.  The parable of the sower is about faith, or belief, in the story that Jesus died to save people from personal sin.  In Luke’s mind, personal sin includes wealth and pleasure that prevent people from becoming “mature,” so that they can receive the secret to producing good fruit.  But these interpretations let wealthy, comfortable, liberal folk off the hook.  Luke’s point is piety, not the power humanity has to transform the quality of life on Planet Earth.

Last week’s blog suggested that Haiti was the prefect example of the pariah who crashes the party (liberated itself from slavery in 1804), only to be saddled with crushing debt as reparation for the enslaved people stealing themselves from the French.  To the extent the rest of the world forgives Haiti’s debt, Haiti will be able to contribute to the sustainability – even wealth – of the nations.

This week, the Planet has supplied yet another example, this time of the corollary: “to have and have not.”  Chile is close to joining the club of fully developed nations.  Some of the Chilean earthquake experts, now needed in Santiago after the 8.8 Richter cataclysm 21 miles below Concepcion, were still in Haiti, advising that government how to rebuild.  The President of Chile at first declined the need for international assistance, but then changed her mind.  Chile has much more to offer in terms of expertise, wealth, and resources than Haiti, and will receive far more in both economic and infrastructure assistance as a result.  Already the world price for copper has gone up by $7.  Aid groups are now pulling out of Haiti because there is nothing more they can do for a country that has nothing.

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Wild Feminine

Text:  Luke 7:36-8:3; 1 Kings 21:1-21; 2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15; Galatians 2:15-21

The woman with the alabaster jar appears in all four gospels.  She is unnamed in the three synoptics, but the writer of John’s Gospel says she is Mary the sister of Lazarus and Martha.  Doctoral theses have explored every aspect of the four different stories told about her in the New Testament. Best-selling novels and feminist theological treatises have been written about her.  Who was she really?  Was she “Mary, the one from Magdala, from whom seven demons had taken their leave,” as Luke puts it? Was she one of the rich women who may have supported Jesus and his followers on their itinerant ministry from Galilee to Jerusalem?  Was she married to Jesus?  Was she his lover?

Luke’s version of her story is usually read for Proper 6 of Year C (Revised Common Lectionary), shortly after Pentecost.  In those readings, the woman with the alabaster jar is associated with the notorious Queen Jezebel, and David’s affair with Bathsheba.  Why the Elves who constructed the Revised Common Lectionary suggested those three stories be considered together is a question that likely cannot be answered without deconstructing dogma, tradition, patriarchy, misogyny, legend, and archetype.

Meanwhile, at least three levels of spiritual struggle are found in the combination of readings.

On one level is human ego gratification.  In the story from 1 Kings, Ahab’s Queen, Jezebel, organizes a campaign to kill Naboth, who owns a vineyard coveted by Ahab.  Ahab thus is in violation of three of the Ten Commandments: you shall not covet your neighbor’s house and goods; you shall not bear false witness against another; and you shall not kill.  The reading from 2 Samuel brings us in at the end of King David’s arranged murder of Uriah so that he can take Uriah’s wife Bathsheba for himself.  Covetousness and murder are the order of the day.

A second level of spiritual struggle is the confrontation with blatant injustice.  The prophet Nathan seems to speak on behalf of God for both Old Testament stories.  When David is rightly outraged by Nathan’s parable, Nathan declares “You are the man!”  But if we read on in the Elijah saga and complete Ahab’s story, we find that both Nathan and Elijah essentially “forgive” their respective Kings because they repent of their sin.  Nevertheless, the prophets exact payment from future generations because these are not just petty trespasses, but cosmic breaches of sovereign trust.

At a third level of spiritual struggle, distributive justice-compassion squares off against retributive justice.  In the portion chosen from Galatians, Paul says that “no one will be justified (made righteous or just) by doing the works of the law.”  In his later letter to the Romans Paul goes so far as to say that “the strength of sin is the law.”  The phrase seems incomprehensible so long as “sin” means petty trespass such as using the law – the authority of the King – to accomplish selfish ends, and feed bully egos.   But the stories of Kings Ahab and David are not only about such petty trespass.  Their abuses of power break trust with the people, forming a trilogy of sin:  David and Ahab betray their own integrity, confound the laws of the land, and break the laws of God.

In the suggested reading from Galatians, Paul is reminding them that if they accept the risen Christ as their Lord, they must reject the imperial rule of law, whether it is Jewish or Roman.  Otherwise, Paul says, “Christ died for nothing.”  Well then, the Galatians apparently argued, if we reject the law, but still sin – perhaps as Ahab and David did –“is Christ then a servant of sin?”  Don’t be ridiculous, Paul says.  If I reconstruct the unjust retributive imperial system after dismantling it, then I am indeed a transgressor because I have betrayed the Christ who reconciled me with God’s justice-compassion.  We are justified not by adherence to law, but by acknowledging the death of Jesus as an invitation to participate in restoring God’s justice-compassion to the world.  When we accept that invitation, we are made just because we become coworkers with God in that great work of justice-compassion, not co-workers with unjust imperial rule.

There is a difference between the short-term forgiveness extended to Ahab and David with the retribution exacted by God from future generations, and the free gift of grace (cosmic forgiveness) defined by Paul, won by the death of Jesus and extended to all who accept the invitation to the great work of justice-compassion.  “I do not nullify the grace of God,” Paul says, “For if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.”

In Luke’s hands, the story of the woman with the costly alabaster jar of ointment looks like a story about hospitality, and seems to become a story about earning salvation based on the level of forgiveness received.  But it may also be an attempt to convey the idea of grace.  Luke has Jesus say that “her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence (therefore) she has shown great love.”  Luke is saying that when one is forgiven, then one is able to love extravagantly (grace)?  Luke seems to contradict Paul’s insight that grace is the free gift from God.  Instead of being made just (justified) by trust (faith) in the death and resurrection of Jesus, Luke seems to put a value on how much “grace” one receives from the forgiveness of sins.  “The one to whom little is forgiven loves little” (NRSV).  The translation and the point become clearer in the Scholar’s translation: “But the one who is forgiven little, shows little love.”

Because the story has become saddled with sexual sin, the deeper meaning of the free gift of grace (charis) is lost.  Luke’s setting is one where a woman who is a known “sinner” crashes an exclusively male dinner party (symposium).  The Magdalene (if that is who Luke thought she was) is the penitent prostitute.  She is so guilty, so remorseful, that she sheds enough tears to wash the feet of one of the guests.  (One has to wonder why this basic hospitality was not extended to Jesus by Simon in the first place, but Luke was writing a novel, not a news report.)  Then the woman lets her hair down in public (clearly a breach of social propriety) and dries Jesus’s feet with it.  The drama is award-winning, and has proven over the centuries to be completely distracting.  If we lift the story out of that personal human relationship fraught with profligate sexuality and into present-day international relations, we may discover a better explanation of the woman’s action than the one Luke’s Jesus uses.

In 1804 the country of Haiti delivered itself from slavery to the French monarchy.  The French government decided that the people of Haiti had stolen themselves from their French owners, and therefore must pay restitution.  The yearly reparation extracted from the Haitian government is still in effect. The result has been 206 years of grinding poverty, corruption, and crime.  Here is the full force of imperial, retributive justice under the law.  If the government of France were to forgive this debt, Haiti would be free to enter the community of nations as a valuable participant instead of an international pariah.

As Luke’s Jesus asked, which debtor would love the master more?  The one who was forgiven much or the one who was forgiven little (or not at all)?

Was Mary Magdalene the woman with the alabaster jar?  Does Luke mean that Mary Magdalene loved the most because, as he reports later, “seven demons had gone out” from her?  Is Paul’s argument about the free gift of grace already so totally misunderstood by Luke that he reduces Jesus’ power from cosmic Christ to faith-healer?  Or is Luke – like all the patriarchs – struggling with the wild feminine – untamable, trouble-making – the lawless one – in Jungian terms, the dark anima?

Luke allows a grudging acceptance of the women with Jesus.  All but the one who crashes the dinner party are named, which means they were powerful and well-known.  But at the same time, Luke dismisses them as “some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna.”  He also mentions “many others, who provided for them out of their resources.” He does not name them however.  Had they also been “cured,” or was Luke obliged to mention them because they had the money?

The ultimate demonstration of sin in the suggested collection of readings is Jezebel’s perversion of the law in Ahab’s name.  Ah yes, Jezebel.  The Wicked Witch of the West Bank.  She’s a Pagan, a Priestess of Baal, and the personification of Evil in the Old Testament.  Her demise is apocalyptic – she predicts her own death by wild dogs, which is confirmed in the sentence against Ahab, and proclaimed by Elijah.  Curiously, this last part is never included in the lectionary (1 Kings 21:21b-29).

Jezebel is a mythical character, but nevertheless is a powerful female presence – otherwise, she never would have been named.  In the battle between the Hebrew God and Baal, Jezebel is a major force.  She is also the anima – the dark feminine – for Ahab, and perhaps for God as well.  When Ahab can’t bring himself to really act on his selfish desires, he projects it onto his wife, who acts for him.  Have we heard this before?  Didn’t Adam do the same with Eve?  What is it with these patriarchs? 

Acting outside the law is not the same as perverting the law, as Paul makes clear, and Jezebel’s fate illustrates.  If sin (injustice) is indeed a product of the law, then the wild feminine outside the law must be the pure spirit of justice-compassion: grace, free gift (charis), the woman with her alabaster jar of precious essential oil.

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On the Plain Part 3: Rocks, Sand, Word, and Dance

Text:  Luke 6:39-7:35

“Can the Blind lead the blind?” prefaces the rest of Luke’s version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount.  “Students are not above their teachers,” Luke’s Jesus says.  Then the lecture becomes sarcastic: “Why do you notice the sliver in your friend’s eye, but overlook the timber in your own eye? . . . each tree is known by its fruit.  Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from brambles.”   Finally, he ends the sermon – by now close to a diatribe –  with “Why do you call me Master, Master, and not do what I tell you?”  Do what Jesus says, and your life will be like a house built on a rock, not on shifting sands.

But what are we supposed to do?  As though in answer to that implied question, Luke sends Jesus into Capernaum, where he performs two miracles.  The first is healing a slave who is ill and about to die.  The slave’s owner, a Roman officer, turns out to have more trust in Jesus than “all Israel.”  The other miracle is a resurrection.  In a scene reminiscent of Paul's description of an imperial visitation, a large crowd accompanies Jesus to the gates of the city of Nain, where they meet another crowd coming out of the city, carrying the dead son of a widow.  Jesus tells the widow to stop crying, touches the bier, and commands the man to get up.

Immediately afterwards, Luke says that in the crowd with Jesus were two of the Baptist’s disciples.  John the Baptist – now in prison – has sent them to find out for sure whether Jesus is the “expected one.”  Luke’s Jesus repeats the words from Isaiah, which he had read in the synagogue back in Chapter 4: “Go report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind see again, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news preached to them.”

If we follow the Revised Common Lectionary, we may not notice the underlying motif in this section of Luke.  The RCL breaks up the sequence, and scatters the verses from Epiphany to after Pentecost.  The RCL does make sure that the healing of the Roman officer’s slave and the resurrection story known as “the Raising of the Widow’s Son at Nain” are covered in Year C.  But Luke’s placing of the visit from the Baptist’s disciples and Jesus’s ambiguous praise for him are never read.  Instead, Matthew’s version of the story is read on the Third Sunday of Advent of Year A.

When Luke’s story is read in sequence, we see that he describes crowds moving out of the city (the funeral procession of Nain; the crowds hoping to hear John the Baptist), and into the city with Jesus.  Is this a foreshadowing of Jesus’s Palm-Sunday demonstration that counters the visitation (parousia) of Rome’s imperial representative to Jerusalem?
Is this an illustration of the Apostle Paul’s theology of resurrection, spelled out in 1 Thessalonians?

Biblical scholars generally agree that the story of the raising of the widow’s son at Nain evokes Elijah’s raising of the widow’s son at Zarepath (1 Kings 17:17-24; see also Luke 4:25-26).  Sure enough, the Revised Common Lectionary pairs both widows’ stories for Proper 5, Year C (after Pentecost).  Biblical scholars also generally agree that Luke/Acts is a continuing saga written by the same person.  Richard I. Pervo  has proposed that Luke “conforms the stories of Jesus’ passion to the story of Paul in Acts 21-26” (“Dying and Rising with Paul,” The 4th R, vol. 23, number 1, pp. 3-8; see also Richard I. Pervo, The Mystery of Acts Polebridge Press 2008).  While the idea may not necessarily follow from Professor Pervo’s theory, if the writer of Luke was familiar with the letters and travels of Paul, the metaphor of crowds and parousia may not be off track.

In a continuation of the parousia reference from 7:11-15, Luke’s Jesus asks the crowds what they thought they would find when they went out to the wilderness to see John the Baptist.  “A reed shaking in the wind?” – like the usual official leadership that goes whichever way the political winds might blow?  “A man dressed in fancy clothes?  But wait!  Those who dress fashionably and live in luxury are found in palaces” not at the edge of town, ranting among the graves and the trash dumps.  He says that no one is greater than John the Baptist, but then adds a devastating caveat: “the least in God’s domain is greater than he.”  Is this the rival Jesus movement damning with faint praise?  Is Jesus suggesting that, try as he might, John the Baptist does not “get it” about the realm of God?  That all he can be is the messenger?

Maybe“the least in God’s domain” are all the people who had been baptized by John and “justified [defended?] God’s plan.”  (The NRSV says “acknowledged the justice of God” or, alternatively, “praised God.”)  But the “Pharisees and legal experts subverted [NRSV: rejected] God’s plan for themselves.”  Those fashionably dressed leaders, living in luxury, turned it around to suit their interests.  It seems the 1st Century was not so different from the 21st.

Suppose that John Dominic Crossan and Marcus J. Borg (and others) are correct, and Luke’s purpose was to show that Jesus the Christ/Messiah was Lord and not the Roman Emperor.  Suppose further that Professor Pervo is onto something when he finds parallels between Luke’s version of Jesus’s death and resurrection and Luke’s version of Paul’s spiritual journey through earthquake, storm, and shipwreck.  What are Christians to make of all this today?

We can be fairly certain that none of the incidents Luke writes about actually happened.  Some of the words Luke’s Jesus says may have actually been said by the historical Jesus.  We know that because many of them are found in Mark, the sayings Gospel Q, and lifted sometimes verbatim from Matthew.  The problem is, that “Q” gospel was never written down.  It was part of an oral tradition, preserved by rote memory, and circulated among the followers of Jesus’s Way for perhaps two generations (30 years) from the time of Jesus’s death.  So the best we can do is treat Luke’s gospel story as another parable about Jesus.

Luke’s story tells us who Luke and his non-Jewish community thought Jesus had been.  Luke – according to Crossan and Borg – was interested in preserving a non-Jewish, Christian way of life in the midst of Roman culture.  Luke’s readers and listeners were far more likely to be rich than poor, educated than not, and part of the Roman elite.  What is most important about the healing of the Roman officer’s slave is not the healing from a remote location.  Jesus does not enter the house, let alone touch the slave.  The important point is that the Roman officer trusted Jesus to “say the word and let my boy be cured.”  Jesus responds, “Let me tell you, not even in Israel have I found such trust.”  Luke was writing from Syria, not Palestine, to gentiles, not to Jews.

The Emperor during the time Luke was writing his story was probably Nero – not the most reliable in terms of mental stability and political tolerance.  Still, Luke manages to maintain some of the radicality of the original Jesus.  “The one who listens to my words and doesn’t act on them is like a person who built a house . . . without a foundation. . . it collapsed immediately, and so the ruin of that house was total” (6:49).  Luke’s Jesus is very clear that lip service is not enough.  Outside the city of Nain, Luke’s Jesus breaks through convention, touches the coffin, and liberates both the son and the widow from death. Without action (Paul’s works?) Christian life collapses.  And what is the action that Jesus has in mind?  “The blind see again, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news preached to them.”

Clearly, meaning cannot be found by cherry-picking verses out of context.  Perhaps some clue for 21st Century followers of Jesus’s Way can be found by going on to 7:31-35: Luke’s Jesus asks, “What do members of this generation remind me of?  What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to one another: ‘We played the flute for you, but you wouldn’t dance; we sang a dirge, but you wouldn’t weep.’  Just remember, John the Baptist appeared on the scene, eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He is demented.’  The son of Adam appeared on the scene both eating and drinking, and you say, ‘There is a glutton and a drunk, a crony of toll collectors and sinners.’  Indeed, Wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”  But the people “could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke” (Acts 6:10).

A parody of an official procession would be difficult to pull off in the 21st Century.  Paul’s argument in 1 Thessalonians is mind-boggling.  Who is going to meet the conquering hero outside the town gates and accompany him into the City today?  Who is going to meet Jesus and be raised from the dead?  If this is indeed where Luke is taking us, who is going to follow Paul’s metaphor, meeting Jesus in the sky, and accompanying him back to earth for a second coming?

The Roman officer trusted Jesus’s word, and when his emissaries returned, they found the slave had been cured without Jesus being physically on the scene.  The word to be trusted is not only Jesus’s word.  It is our word.  When Paul talks about the second coming, he means the return of the risen Christ to an already transformed earth, not that Jesus will come again to finish the job.

“[T]he blind see again, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news preached to them.” If Jesus is seriously dead, the ones who are going to do all that are the ones who hear the flute and join the dance.

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Evolution (Transfiguration) Sunday

Text: Exodus 34:29-35; 1st Cor. 15:35-58; 2nd Cor. 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

This is the first year since the Clergy Letter Project began that Evolution Sunday and Transfiguration Sunday (last Sunday in Epiphany) are the same.  The theological implications, as the “pre-theos” at Albion College used to say, are noteworthy. 

The transfiguration of Jesus undoubtedly ranks right up there with the virgin birth and the resurrection for eye-rolling among atheists, Unitarians, scientists, and those former “pre-theos,” now liberal Christian clergy, who follow the Revised Common Lectionary.  Traditional Christianity teaches that the story of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah on the Mountain with Peter, James, and John is a pivotal moment for Jesus.  John the Baptist (who baptized him, according to Mark and Matthew – Luke fudges it) is now dead.  This is a new incarnation, demonstrating that Jesus is the new Moses.  In Luke’s scene, Elijah and Moses are conferring with Jesus about his “imminent departure which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.”  Elijah’s presence confirms that God’s final judgment is imminent.

Throw in Paul’s circular language about resurrection from 1st Corinthians and the eyes are not only rolling, they are glazed over.  Add the implication of anti-Semitism in 2nd Corinthians 3:15-16, and the justification for abandoning the Transfiguration as metaphor (what else could it be?) is complete.

But “transfiguration,” whether it is Moses on Mt. Sinai or Jesus on a Galilean hill, means a profound change in form or appearance.  For the apostle Paul, the transformation of human life on earth had begun with the resurrection of Jesus.  In Paul’s view, it was an ongoing process of deliverance from the injustice of Rome’s Empire to the distributive justice-compassion of God’s Kingdom that would be complete within his lifetime.  So in 1st Cor. 15:50, he sets up his discussion of what the spiritual body might be like when the process is complete.  “What I am saying . . . is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God . . .[but] Listen, I will tell you a mystery!  We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye . . .”

Transfiguration happens whenever anyone comes into his or her inheritance in the kingdom of God.  To come down from that lofty theological mountain peak for a moment, in 21st Century language, transfiguration is what happens once anyone chooses to participate in the ongoing, evolving struggle to establish God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion on earth.

Paul’s argument is that if Jesus was not resurrected, then the general resurrection that Pharisees like Paul believed in could not be happening.  For post-modern Christians, Paul’s argument means that if Jesus had not died in defiance of the Roman Empire, and if Paul had not interpreted that death as a counter to the divinity of Cesar, who would stand against the normalcy of civilization?  Just as Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is here, now, within you, if you will only open your eyes and ears and look and listen, the trumpet sounds, and we realize that we can choose to live and participate in that Kingdom, which has nothing to do with Cesar’s empire, and everything to do with non-violent distributive justice-compassion.

Violence is anything that results in the invalidation of life.  Empire is what keeps that invalidation in place.  Whenever a child is prevented from asking questions, or pursuing her natural talent, because of governmental or social rules about what is necessary to be mastered in a classroom, empire prevails.  Whenever another life form – whether an intimate family member or a portion of an ecosystem – is used or abused for a purpose other than its own, it is subjected to violence.  All human systems are prone to violent empire.  That is the struggle.  That is what is meant in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians – who apparently did not get it the first time around – when Paul says, “We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word . . . And even if our gospel is veiled [it is because] the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

Who is the god of this world?  Not so-called “Satan,” and certainly not the interventionist, exclusive "god" of triumphalist Christianity.  Who are the unbelievers?  Emphatically and unequivocally not “the Jews” – which is inferred by cherry-picking Bible verses out of context.  “The god of this world” is commercial and social normalcy:  Meister Eckhart’s “merchant mentality,” which cannot participate in the Kingdom because justice-compassion is bad for business and a detriment to political power.  “The sting of death is sin,” writes Paul, “and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” To sin is to not participate in God’s justice-compassion, and therefore to be dead to God’s Kingdom.  It is not physical death, but the law of Empire that cuts us off from justice-compassion.

Readings for Transfiguration Sunday may stray far from any possibility of meaning for 21st Century, post-modern Christians.  In years when the Revised Common Lectionary uses Matthew’s version of the story, the accompanying Old Testament reading is from Exodus 24:12-18.  Moses is summoned to the mountain to receive the 10 Commandments.  At the end of the suggested reading, the narrator tells us, “Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.”  That is either a non-sequitur (as usual, with the Elves), or it reminds us of the pillar of fire that guarded the Hebrew people in the wilderness by night.

But the scene we never read, which sets up that image, is primal – archetypal (Exodus 24:1-8).  The Hebrew people agree to abide by God’s law by first sharing a sacrificial meal of roasted bulls; then God’s High Priest Moses seals the deal by throwing the bulls’ blood first over the altar representing God and then over the people.  This kind of commitment is incomprehensible to sophisticated 21st Century folk who have trouble keeping New Year’s Resolutions.  This God is not going to listen to lawyers’ arguments about how the contract becomes invalid as soon as things get tough.

Nevertheless, the new Covenant is indeed validated in blood.  In the 21st Century, with God reduced to an epithet, and Jesus seriously dead and unlikely to come again, transfiguration has little to do with auras of holy light and basso-profundo pronouncements from fog-shrouded mountains conferring supernatural powers on God’s chosen one.  Power is not supernatural magic conferred by an interventionist god; nor is Power to be appropriated or claimed through deliberate, ego-driven action.  Despite the messianic claims of world leaders – political or religious – Power is a true Covenant, consummated in the life blood of each individual, which comes from the realization of each person’s life purpose.  Transfiguration is the change in appearance and form that allows us to recognize that Power, and it comes about in two ways: 1) through a pivotal experience such as surviving something against all odds; or 2) a long evolutionary slog through the difficulties of letting go of who we think we are, and what we think we are supposed to do – i.e., Life.

Because of the often truncated liturgical year caused by the Roman method of determining the date of Easter, this last Sunday before Ash Wednesday often falls at a time that is full of applicable metaphor.  Scientifically, this is the time of year in the northern hemisphere when enough light has returned to cause chickens to begin laying again.  The first hoofed animals are born and there is milk again.  Some of the birds have remembered their spring songs – even in the midst of blizzarding snows.

Astronomically, the Sun reached 15 Degrees Aquarius on Thursday February 4.  The Planet has made one-half of one-quarter of the return trip around the Sun.  This year, the New Moon will rise the day before Evolution Sunday, just a few days before Ash Wednesday.  The month began with St. Brigid’s Feast Day, February 1; Candlemas (the purification of the Virgin, 40 days after giving birth), February 2; and the Celtic celebration of the return of the light at Imbolc (which means “pregnant belly”), also on February 2 (the original feast time appropriated by the Roman church); not to mention the corruption of all this in Ground Hog Day, when the shadow prompted Punxsutawney Phil  to scurry back into his den, leaving us with six more weeks of Winter.

Transfiguration as holy light is inevitable in the natural world, where the kenotic God  rules wherever there is justice and life.  Only humans seem to prefer the unnatural world, where God is dead and injustice holds sway.  Jesus was forever reminding everyone he talked to that the Kingdom of God – God’s Imperial Rule – God’s Realm – is within us, and all around us.  All we have to do is look and listen.  God’s Covenant of non-violent justice-compassion may have originally been consummated in the flesh and blood of the best of the herd, eaten in a meal shared with God through a roasting, consuming fire – an elemental meaning that repels post-modern people.  But Matthew’s story makes two points that still resonate despite our post-modern divorce from God’s natural world.  The first is that God says, “This is my Son.  Listen to him.”  The second is that Matthew’s Jesus says to his freaked-out disciples, “Get up.  Do not be afraid.”

Like the Groundhog, who is frightened by his own shadow – so much that he dives back into his safe home, leaving the rest of the world to the deprivations of winter – we are terrorized by the shadow: the spectres of war, famine, disease, and death, and also by our own shadow selves, whose purpose eludes us, and whose nature we are afraid to look at.  But Jesus tells us to get up – don’t be afraid.  Have the trust in the rhythms of the natural world that the grass has – which is here today and tomorrow is tossed into the oven.  Get up – don’t be afraid.  Those who hunger and thirst for justice will have a feast.  Get up – don’t be afraid to do what you know you are supposed to do.

The human spirit evolves.  Life in all its forms is delivered from darkness into light.  God’s Realm – as always – offers yet again the free gift, charis – grace – another chance to renew the Covenant.

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On the Plain Part 2: Enemies

Text:    Luke 6:27-38

The cluster of sayings about dealing with enemies probably goes back to the historical Jesus as a whole: “Love your enemies”; “When someone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well”; “When someone takes away your coat, don’t prevent that person from taking your shirt along with it.”  Luke ends the series there, and adds: “Give to everyone who begs from you.”  Luke then offers explanations that generally soften the original.  Luke’s Jesus expands on “love your enemies” with“do favors for those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for your abusers.”  The admonition to “turn the other cheek” is associated with “pray for your abusers.”  This is all good advice for getting along in your local community, and collaborating with the foreign army that has taken over the town square.

But Matthew’s Jesus tells his listeners, “Don’t react violently against the one who is evil; when someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other as well.  When someone wants to sue you for your shirt, let that person have your coat along with it.” Matthew’s version is vintage Jesus (Matthew 5:39-42a), beginning with the suggestion that violence be countered with non-violence.  One theory about the “right cheek/left cheek” dichotomy certainly would undermine the Roman occupiers.  A back-handed slap (which is the only way to hit the left side of someone’s face with the right, dominant, hand) was a demonstration of master-slave contempt.  To then offer the left cheek as well transformed the insult into an encounter between equals.  Jesus’s next suggestion would leave most folks falling out laughing – the age-old counter to oppression.  In a society where most people had only one or two garments, giving up both coat and shirt would leave you naked.  Finally, Matthew’s Jesus advises subversion.  Walk a second mile when conscripted by a Roman soldier and force your captor to break his own law.  The JS Scholars suggest that Luke left that part out because Luke was highly likely to have been attempting to make Christianity look safe and legal for Roman consumption.  It would be politically expedient not to be too critical of his Roman readers, as represented by his mysterious friend, Theophilius (the “god lover”).

Luke’s version removes the radicality that corrects the imbalance of power.  The commandment to love your enemies has been reduced to a suggestion.  Luke’s Jesus goes from turning the other cheek to “give to everyone who begs from you, and when someone takes your things, don’t ask for them back.”  The immediate objection among Luke’s readers would be, “but then I won’t have anything!”  In God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion, which the historical Jesus demonstrated, individual possessions are meaningless.  But outside the kingdom, in normal civilization, adjustments to God’s radical fairness must be made.  A fascinating quotation from the Didache of the 2nd Century, c.e., could have been written to the editor of any local newspaper just last week:  “Remember, if anyone accepts charity when in need, that person is blameless.  BUT if such a person is not in need, that person will have to answer for what and why he or she accepted it.  He or she will be imprisoned and put to the test for every deed performed, and will not get out until the last cent has been repaid. . . . Let your contributions sweat in the palms of your hands until you know to whom you are giving” (The Five Gospels, p. 295).

In that spirit, New York Times conservative pundit David Brooks wrote, “Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.”  The historical, social, and political realities that Brooks ignores and misrepresents have been discussed elsewhere.  The point here is that Brooks not only blamed the victims, he trotted out the usual “cultural” argument, which barely passes the racism smell test.  That his article advocates some kind of “tough love” treatment for marginally viable nations like Haiti does not redeem Brooks from his own culturally based disdain for Haitians (and presumably anyone else) who does not live up to Western standards.  He seems to have forgotten Luke's version of the Golden Rule. “Treat people the way you want them to treat you,” Luke’s Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that?  After all, even sinners love those who love them . . . Even sinners lend to sinners in order to get as much in return . . . do good and lend, expecting nothing in return . . . and you’ll be children of the Most High.  As you know, [God] is generous to the ungrateful and the wicked. . . . Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. . . forgive and you’ll be forgiven . . . For the standard you apply will be the standard applied to you.”

Careful readers may be feeling a bit confused by this point.  Wait a minute!  Aren’t we mixing metaphors here?  We started with subverting an enemy, and now here we are talking about compassion toward the poor.  Indeed.  That is precisely what Luke apparently did with the tradition.  Luke was creating his gospel for non-Jewish “God-worshipers,” 30 years after the sacking of Jerusalem.  His readers were highly likely to have been part of the richer classes of villa owners, artisans (such as Lydia, whom we have met before and will meet again in Acts 16), merchants, and traders.  Most were citizens in good standing with the Roman empire.  Just as today, most Western citizens are in good standing with the global “Pax Americana.”

The tables have indeed turned, and the metaphor has become mixed.  Today, to speak about non-violence in the face of terrorism is close to treason.  Bringing it all back home, up close and personal, 21st Century Americans would rather continue water-boarding Khalil Sheik Mohammad than give him a fair trial by a New York jury.  Of course, the expectation that the jury will convict and impose the death penalty is hardly showing love to an enemy.

Jesus’s radical indifference to the consequences of literally giving away everything so that others can live is considered detrimental to the poor, who ought to be able to save themselves with a few micro-business opportunities and surplus food from NGO providers.  As if that weren’t enough to illustrate the breath-taking lack of compassion of U.S. heroism, medical evacuations from Haiti were stopped for two days, while the Governor of Florida argued with the feds and other states about who would pay.  Apparently no one in any of the layers of administrative leadership realizes that the failure to provide food, clothing, shelter, education, and medical care to those who cannot get it on their own leads directly to the kind of reactionary despair that feeds terrorism.

The metaphor is not mixed.  The poor and disenfranchised, the oppressed, the disrespected, are all enemies of unrestrained business-as-usual.  The twist to Jesus’s original prime directive has been lost in familiar glibness.   Love your enemies and you have no enemies. 

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Sermon On the Plain Part 1: Blessed are the Telegenic??

Text:    Luke 6:17-26

For the past three years, these commentaries have followed the Revised Common Lectionary. This year, because the commentary will be concentrating specifically on the Gospel of Luke, in its entirety and without regard to the Christian Liturgical year, Luke’s version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount can be fully explored.  Both the Year of Matthew (Year A, 2008) and the current Year of Luke (Year C, 2010) shortened the season of Epiphany, thereby eliminating from the lectionary readings both Matthew’s and Luke’s liturgical setting for the heart of Jesus’s life and teaching.   (See No Time for Justice )
All that remains are a couple of carefully cherry-picked verses during Lent.  The reason for this is that back in the 7th Century, at the Council of Whitby, Roman Easter got tied to the Northern European Spring Equinox instead of the Jewish celebration of Passover (with which the Eastern rite coordinates its Orthodox Easter).

The Jesus Seminar’s Five Gospels discusses in depth the differences between Matthew’s and Luke’s versions of what is known as the Beatitudes (pp. 290-293).  Without quoting extensively from that essay, it is important to point out that the JS Scholars are of the opinion that Luke’s version is closer to the words of the historical Jesus than is Matthew’s version.  The reason is that Luke more closely follows what appears in the reconstituted Q gospel and the corroborating form in the sayings gospel of Thomas than Matthew does.  Matthew edited his version to reflect concerns of Matthew’s early Jewish-Christian community.

It is also important to realize that Jesus probably did not sit down on a mountaintop, or on “a level place” and deliver the sermon in any form in which it appears, whether in Q, Thomas, Matthew, or Luke.  The sayings were part of an oral tradition that circulated among the people who had known Jesus, and who may have been part of a “kingdom movement” that developed after Jesus’s death.  Matthew organized the sayings into his great Sermon on the Mount.  Luke reduced Matthew’s Sermon to a relatively brief discourse, delivered to his disciples after he had called them, and during a lull in teaching and healing.  Luke then scattered much of Matthew’s collection throughout the rest of his gospel.

The first three Beatitudes quoted by Luke are the sayings that most likely do go back to the historical Jesus.  They are:

        “Congratulations you poor!  God’s domain belongs to you.
        Congratulations, you hungry!  You will have a feast.
        Congratulations, you who weep now!  You will laugh.”

Luke follows these three with a fourth that says “Congratulations to you when people hate you . . . because of the son of Adam!  Rejoice on that day . . . Just remember, your compensation is great in heaven.  Recall that their ancestors treated the prophets the same way.”  The JS scholars are of the opinion that this one may go back to Jesus, but it more likely reflects the conditions of Luke’s community after persecution of the Christian movement had begun.

Finally, Luke includes a series of condemnations: “Damn you rich!  You already have your consolation.  Damn you who are well-fed now! You will know hunger.  Damn you who laugh now!  You will learn to weep and grieve.  Damn you when everybody speaks well of you!  Recall that their ancestors treated the phony prophets the same way.”  Luke may have found these in the Q source, but it is just as likely he made them up as a literary counter to the blessings listed in the beginning.  The JS Scholars are convinced that Jesus’s life and words were non-violent, non-apocalyptic, and non-judgmental.  Therefore, these sayings from 6:24-26 were probably not Jesus’s words.

Matthew’s softened version is the most familiar.  Matthew waffles the blessings to the poor “in spirit,” and to those “who hunger and thirst for justice.”  He effectively dodges the injustice bullet by adding a few extra blessings to the exclusive list from Q, perhaps on behalf of the members of his community who were gentle (meek); merciful, with “undefiled hearts,” and “who work for peace.”  But Luke meets distributive injustice head on.  Careful readers will remember that Luke’s Jesus announced in his home synagogue on the Sabbath day that the scripture he read had been fulfilled (4:14-19): “[God] has anointed me to bring good news to the poor . . . announce pardon for prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s amnesty.”  Luke’s sermon on the plain confirms all of it.

Luke’s Jesus congratulates the poor and says that God’s domain (realm, kingdom) belongs to them.  Then he condemns the rich in no uncertain terms.  This portion of his “sermon on the plain” reflects Mary’s song – which of course Luke created (1:46-55):  “[God] has pulled down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”  Mary’s song in turn echos the song of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-10), celebrating the dedication of her son Samuel to serve the Lord as a prophet: “Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil. . . . [God] raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap . . . .”

Thousands of sermons have been delivered over the past two millennia on these passages.  The fourth principle of Catholic social teaching on the obligations of Christians in today’s society is, “We are called to emulate God by showing a special preference for those who are poor and weak.” But Jesus was not calling for a “special preference.”  In God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion, the rain falls on the just and the unjust.  In his letter to the Romans (2:6-11), Paul talks about the judgment of God that shows no distinction among people regarding the consequences of justice or injustice.  “There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil . . . glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good.  For God shows no partiality.”  Interpreting this phrase in the light of what scholarship suggests, if we are to participate with the risen Christ in the establishment of God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion, then what is required is not “partiality,” but radical inclusiveness.

The outpouring of assistance to the desperately poor citizens of Haiti after the worst earthquake in memory has been criticized on a number of appalling points.  One that is popular and self-serving is to ask why are U.S. citizens still displaced from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina?  Shouldn’t we help them first?  A public forum published daily in the Martinsburg Journal included  these two comments: “. . . We’ll give and take from foreign countries and we don’t even take care of our own people”; and “I don’t recall if the Haitian people helped the United States when we had September 11.  I think this charity thing is getting way out of hand . . .”

But the most unsettling argument is the one discussed on National Public Radio on January 20.  “Reporters who are MDs find the Lines Blurred in Haiti.”  Journalists are not supposed to become personally involved in the stories they cover.  Journalists who also happen to be trained medical professionals who have gone to Haiti to cover the story have been caught actually helping people instead of just taking pictures and writing words – as though the reporter was supposed to allow the person s/he was interviewing to bleed to death, cameras rolling.  Instead, several individual Haitians have been helped, if not saved, by the intervention of medical personnel who were supposed to be reporting the story, not creating it.  Perhaps they should have turned off the cameras.  But the criticism is much more serious.

        “What disturbs me about the media doctors is that they are basically pulling telegenic people out of the queue and giving them exceptional resources,” says Dr. Steven Miles, a medical professor and bioethicist at the University of Minnesota.

If that is the case, it is not only merely “disturbing.”  It is exploitation at its most cynical – aiding victims in order to win the ratings game.  Surely American journalism has not devolved to that level?

The NPR report continues:

        Miles says viewers are unaware of the distortions caused by the intervention of the doctor-reporters. “We don’t see the impact of that in terms of soaking up staff time, in terms of the people who are working on the ground, and also the diversion of resources to these patients who are selected for television portrayal,” Miles says.

“Soaking up staff time” along with the blood is somehow unethical for Dr. Miles. 

But beyond that, Miles says the stories that focus so much on heroic Americans undermines the support of the U.S. viewing public for helping Haitians help themselves build a functioning civil society and public health system. He says by far the greatest number of people aiding Haitians are their fellow citizens.

This is cynicism at its worst.  Unfortunately, this is not the first time that victims have been expected to get themselves out of their own predicament.  In a blog post from February 13, 2004, Daniel Pipes reported:

        Gen. John Abizaid, the head of Central Command and the man running the U.S. effort in Iraq, . . . declar[ed] that "We have to take risk to a certain extent, by taking our hands off the controls…. It’s their country, it’s their future. Our job is to help them help themselves." In a direct application of this approach, an Associated Press report explains, "Abizaid responded sharply when a battalion commander of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment described his frustration at getting the Iraqis to adopt a way to dispose of trash. ‘It's their problem, not your problem, Abizaid told the officer.’”

Of course, the Iraqis would not have had these problems if the U.S. had not overthrown their government, thereby destroying the economy, and eliminating infrastructure and public services.  As for present-day Haiti, how can a people even begin to think about building a functioning society when their arms and/or legs are missing, and they haven’t eaten for 10 days?

        If reporters who are also physicians want so badly to step out of their journalistic role to help, [Dr. Miles] argues, they should volunteer instead with relief agencies in Haiti — and set aside an hour a day to grant interviews to their network employer.

A scene from the master of social commentary, Charles Dickens, illustrates the problem with Dr. Miles’ attitude:

        “At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
        “Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge. . . . “And the Union workhouses? . . . Are they still in operation? . . .The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?”
        “Both very busy, sir.”
        “Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”
        “Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”
        “Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
        “You wish to be anonymous?”
        “I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. . . . I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there."
        “Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
        “If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population . . .”

God forbid we should “bring good news to the poor, announce pardon for prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, set free the oppressed, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s amnesty.”  Luke’s Jesus is well justified to throw up his hands in frustration. “Damn you rich!  You already have your consolation” along with all the other false prophets who assume that salvation depends on who is telegenic.

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