Instead of relying on the ever reliable Walter Brueggemann today, I'm going to go with the Catholic scripture readings for today in the lectionary cycle. Or, rather two of them. One thing is certain from the start, I'm no Brueggemann, so I'm going to keep my commentary on it to a minimum. One is two verses from one of the most maligned and misunderstood books of the Jewish Scriptures, Leviticus, 9:1-2 and 8-11, the other one of the most beloved passages from the Gospels, Matthew 25: 31-46. Together they prove something that even the atheist-materialist Noam Comsky has said, The Gospel is radical, and as Marilynne Robinson has pointed out, the much maligned Law of Moses commands political-economics more radical than even the most radical of quasi-socialist Christian theological manifestations of recent times, Liberation Theology, and I'll add that Liberation Theology is already far, far ahead of any secular leftist economics.
Here, from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition:
The LORD said to Moses,
“Speak to the whole assembly of the children of Israel and tell them:
Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.
“You shall not steal.
You shall not lie or speak falsely to one another.
You shall not swear falsely by my name,
thus profaning the name of your God.
I am the LORD.
“You shall not defraud or rob your neighbor.
You shall not withhold overnight the wages of your day laborer.
You shall not curse the deaf,
or put a stumbling block in front of the blind,
but you shall fear your God.
I am the LORD.
“You shall not act dishonestly in rendering judgment.
Show neither partiality to the weak nor deference to the mighty,
but judge your fellow men justly.
You shall not go about spreading slander among your kin;
nor shall you stand by idly when your neighbor’s life is at stake.
I am the LORD.
“You shall not bear hatred for your brother in your heart.
Though you may have to reprove him,
do not incur sin because of him.
Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your fellow countrymen.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
I am the LORD.”
I will note that elsewhere in Leviticus and, even more so in the Gospel of Jesus you are to treat the Stranger among you, the alien, the foreigner who resides among you, your enemy and those who persecute you as you would "your neighbor". In fact, in this very Chapter, verses 33 and 34
When an alien resides with you in your land, do not mistreat such a one.
You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt.y I, the LORD, am your God.
No matter what you'll read in the antisemetic science of evolutionary psychology as popularized by pop-atheism, that was always as much a part of the Jewish Law as the Golden Rule is and Jesus taught a particularly radical form of it. And, in terms of political-economy, these aren't even the most radical of the Laws guaranteeing equality.
I will note that there are passages in Leviticus, in this very Chapter, too, that are rather troublesome, calling for the death penalty for various crimes - they always fixate on those from South of the belt, for rather obvious reasons of distraction - Clearly not all of what comes down to us in those scrolls stands the test of even their own internal teachings. The Law as passed down to us in these Scriptures have passages that make no sense to us today or probably were ever carried out. A lot of them were clearly put there to prevent the ambient, surrounding, floridly anti-egalitarian pagan cultures around them from swamping the small country of the Children of Israel. You can understand how sex would be an obvious venue for that to happen.
But certainly any genuine egalitarian, democratic leftist or even anyone who didn't want their country to fall to the rule of gangsters could get behind the Laws set down in the verses for Today. A society governed by those would certainly be more radically egalitarian and paradisaical than anything any atheist-materialistic socialist-Marxist-anarchist has ever proposed to be left untried as they deny, discredit and defame the source of the more radical vision of life. Imagine, just for a start, how long the Trump regime would last if just the prohibition on lying were taken seriously even by those who profess to believe that.
Jesus said to his disciples:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory,
and all the angels with him,
he will sit upon his glorious throne,
and all the nations will be assembled before him.
And he will separate them one from another,
as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Then the king will say to those on his right,
‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father.
Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me,
ill and you cared for me,
in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous will answer him and say,
‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you,
or thirsty and give you drink?
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you,
or naked and clothe you?
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’
And the king will say to them in reply,
‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did
for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Then he will say to those on his left,
‘Depart from me, you accursed,
into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
a stranger and you gave me no welcome,
naked and you gave me no clothing,
ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’
Then they will answer and say,
‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty
or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison,
and not minister to your needs?’
He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you,
what you did not do for one of these least ones,
you did not do for me.’
And these will go off to eternal punishment,
but the righteous to eternal life.”
The first part of that, with the happy ending for those who were good is more popular than the second half that warns the rest of us to get over ourselves.
Taken together there is nothing in any secular political theory that can match these readings for the boldness of their claims, the ultimate completeness in their reach and the liberating effects that they would have. Taken together, in so far as it lies within human ability, they would renew the face of the Earth. I am convinced that any progress that has ever been temporarily made in egalitarian democracy has come from the influence of such texts in that religious tradition and it's obvious why it would have to be believed because the one saying that is, as Leviticus keeps repeating, "I am The Lord" the one that more familiarly is asked by the sheep and the goats when they ever saw him in Matthew's Gospel. I don't think it is possible for anything but that kind of forceful belief to have the power to put such radical requirements on us across a whole society. I have every expectation that in a post-Christian United States that any ersatz sciency-materialist-Hegelian substitute will a. fail to attract adherents, b. will fail even if somehow it managed to gain power. The alternative for such a "left" that fails is violence and oppression as the history of Marxists with power has uniformly proved.
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