• Daniel 7: 1-3,15-18

Taken from the text that is generally regarded as the touchstone of all biblical apocalyptic writings in both Testaments, this excerpt “interprets” Daniel’s nightmare.  His dream includes four “winds,” and “great beasts,” which are somehow linked to “four great kings… out of the earth.”  Together they represent natural and human-made chaos, which is inevitable.  “But the holy ones of the Most High…” shall know God’s reign “forever– forever and ever.”

• Psalm 149

The psalmist provides a “new song” which is to be sung to the accompaniment of percussion and set to dance because the Lord favors “the lowly” and “the faithful.”  The lyric turns both joyful and militaristic, encouraging violence– “Exaltation of God in their throat/ and a double-edged sword in their hand.”  The goal is “to exact justice.”

• Ephesians 1: 11-23

This “letter” to Ephesians in the tradition of Pauline letters opens with an emphasis on the church as the locus of God’s praise for those “who were the first to set our hope on Christ… and “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit….”  This is your “inheritance,” into which, God willing, you will grow.  God put this power to work in Christ when he was raised from the dead and seated him on his right hand in the heavenly place….”  From there God also “made him head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

• Luke 6: 20-31

Luke’s version of Jesus’ manifesto is presented as four “blessings” and four “woes,” or warnings.  The blessed included the poor, hungry, mourners and the vilified “on the account of the Son of Man.”  Contrariwise, those who are currently rich, satisfied, laughing it up and enjoying the approbation of others are warned that their fate can be reversed.  Jesus then goes further than conventional notions of moral behavior: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you….”  If you get hit on one cheek, offer the other.  If anyone steals your coat, give him your shirt, too.  Do not ask for your stolen property to be returned,  “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

These readings and gospel  are anything but subtle, meek or reticent.  The interpretation of Daniel’s dream of natural and human-made chaos and destruction considers the prospect of annihilation, but also recalls a promise that “the holy ones of the Most High” will know God’s reign “forever.”   Luke’s version of a “sermon” by Jesus uses black and white language: those who are currently poor or pay a price for their loyalty to the “son of Man” are/will be ‘blessed;” those who are lost in their own self-indulgence now should brace themselves to lose it all in a flash.  The admonition that follows is stated in absolute language: return hate with love and take offenses passively and even offer yourself up for more offenses!  This is not human language that accommodates human nature.  This is divine language that shows no concern for ‘practicality’ in everyday life.  We can easily ignore such language as utterly impossible or try to take it seriously and respond in some way.

Jean-Louis Chretien considers such absolute language an expression of pure “beauty.”  Such a pure expression of “beauty,” he writes in The Call and the Response, “calls us to ourselves, to truly become ourselves.” (p. 13)  He also acknowledges that when this pure “beauty” is understood as God, who is also creator, i.e. “Uncreated, ” we creatures always fail “utterly,” because “there is no possible correspondence between the finite and the infinite.” (p. 17)  This discrepancy between the finite and the infinite issues a “call” to us, a “call” to “become truly ourselves.”  

But the “call,” Chretien continues, is completed only in our response to it.  “That to which we respond gives itself to us only in the response that we give it.  Whoever fails to respond simply does not hear and has not heard.  But whoever responds  is exceeded by that which calls forth his [sic] response.”  (p. 25)  Therefore, such black and white, absolute language as Luke’s rendition of Jesus’ “beatitudes” issues a “call,” which we can ignore or to which we can respond.  Chretien finds in our response a potential for our humanity we discover in no other way.  However, he insists, “Whenever we start to answer the call, we have already answered; when we embrace it as a call it has already embraced us and circumvented us.” (p. 12)

The church came into existence and developed in response to such absolute language from Jesus, worshiped as the Christ that invited human beings to be more than they would be otherwise.  The church keeps that language going, in her liturgy and the pronouncement and interpretation of Scripture in words and deeds.  It must always be admitted that its lofty, “absolute” goals will never be fully achieved by any individual or community.  Yet, any “response” enables humanity to flourish.  Baptism includes every person–“marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit”– in this peculiar activity, which Chretien describes this way: “The act of listening, insofar as it belonging, and speech, insofar as it is a retelling of what we have let ourselves be told, means that every utterance… responds and corresponds.” (p. 28)

All the church’s baptized from the beginning till now “inherited” this outlandish language of white and black absolutes.  The unbridgeable chasm between it and us issues a “call” to be more than we would  have imagined ourselves to be on our own.  To “become truly ourselves.”  This is what we share with all saints, known and unknown; a crowd so large no one can count it except God.