TODAY'S Catholic lectionary has this for today's Gospel:
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches others to do so
will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.
But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:17-19
The first thing to notice is that, by this, Jesus accepts and insists on the truth of the Jewish religion and to insist that it is eternal and an eternal requirement on those who would follow him. Would that the entire history of Christianity had followed that part of his teaching, the world would be a different and better place if it had.
The first temptation for me is to first wonder exactly what Jesus meant by "The Law" and "The Prophets" as a way of narrowing what we had to avoid breaking, how much we could get away with. Not even the priests and rabbis of his time agreed on that, though I think it's obvious that Jesus was of the side that Hillel represented, if not explicitly then according to the substance of his teaching. My temptation boils down to wondering what we have to obey and, hardest of all, advocate for other people. I think the rest of the Gospels and the earliest writings of those who had a direct experience of Jesus or who knew those who had had that experience can give us some real hints as to what that meant.
As Christianity has been obsessed primarily with matters of sex, and only secondarily with other things, it's necessary to point out that Jesus didn't seem to be as obsessed with what Walter Brueggemann sometimes refers to as "pelvic theology" (I can't remember who it was he quoted when using that phrase) as just about the entire two-thousand years of Christianity was.
He did seem to have the deepest compassion for those who were abandoned by a marriage being broken up which he related to the ban on adultery quite strongly. I suspect that just as in him using the phrase "Our Father" in the Our Father, that what to us might seem a far simpler and more restricted category of life and experience and fascination (who's having sex with who) was, in the context of the classical Mediterranean cultures, a far more extensive treatment of life support in its broadest terms.
I've mentioned before how John Dominic Crossan noted how surprised he was when he realized how much of the New Testament was taken up with talking about food, what Jesus ate, what his disciples ate, the context of them eating what they did, with whom they ate, etc. One of the main fractures in earliest Christianity was about the issue of Peter and Paul and whether or not they ate with the uncircumcised, the gentiles. And it's not just in the New Testament, the entire history of the Children of Israel starts with Abraham providing hospitality of The Lord (who, interestingly enough, seems to come in three persons, something I don't think I've ever read anyone comment on) telling Sarah to make some bread for them.
In current affluence, which may be a lot more temporary than the experience of just about anyone reading this would lead them to expect, we don't really understand how much The Law and The Prophets is motivated by the desire to have poor people, those who are excluded, those who have not an have what they have taken from them have food and those other necessities of life provided to them on the basis of giving them a decent life, a life that is sufficient for them to experience the love of God. You can compare the appalling idea of providing the most meager sustenance for the "deserving poor" in the obsessions of the British Fabians and how that alternate, rationalistic, would be scientific ersatz replacement for revealed religion on which the Poor Laws were reformed and then transformed into the British Welfare state, one of those things which, along with the French Revolution, English language lefties and liberals are supposed to genuflect to and admire. That materialistic and phony replacement ALWAYS devolves into and hinges on the utility of those so sustained for the state or, under the disgusting British class system, the rich, something which American Republican-fascists want to be the law here as their slave-holder and Jim Crow predecessors, those who ran paid American industry under wage slavery had it for most of our history under the United States Constitution.
As noted last week, Paul's obsession with matters sexual, when read in the wider context of the letters he said those things in, his entire writings accepted as authentic, the wider context that includes the rest of the New Testament, The Law and the Prophets does not mean the same thing, that the extent to which Paul condemns or cautions against sins of sex he puts those in a wider context that includes the luxury of the affluent and those who aspire to be affluent - things which at no time I'm aware of were viewed or treated in the same way though Paul certainly mentioned sins of sexuality in no harsher terms. Paul, in his presumed chaste celibacy - Elizabeth Johnson and Susannah Heschel both noted that it's hard to imagine anyone being able to live with him and his perfectionism - could not imagine the possibility of LGBTQ relationships of committed faithfulness that included sex which was not exploitative, was responsible and mutually respectful, that did not include all of the destructive inequalities and exploitation and legal supremacy that characterized and still does characterize even faithful straight marriages. I will point out that even many LGBTQ people have a hard time imagining them, some of the loudest voices that demanded "marriage equality" denied that gay men were biologically capable of forming such faithful marriages. So why should a presumably straight Paul have been expected to be able to imagine them two thousand years ago?
The matter of creating mutually supportive, mutually enriching relationships in life is the center of The Law, The Prophets, The Gospel, etc. Jesus, joining with the tradition of Hillel, said it in the Golden Rule which he clearly identified as the summation of "The Law and The Prophets". And it is still, in its full meaning, extended as to cover those who the sun comes up on and the rain falls for, is, in every way, a larger obligation than even the most legalistic of would be champions of "the law" would ever hold themselves to. It would certainly not make them money from the "faithful" or keep them on good terms with billionaire and millionaire patrons. Though it certainly would be as unpopular with even many of those LGBTQ people who might identify as of the monotheistic tradition who want marriage with outside benefits.
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Totally outside of this, I think we need the ability of two adults to form civil unions with the legal benefits extended to married couples, I recall back in the 00's during the brawl over marriage equality I said I wished the state would totally butt out of questions of marriage, instituting something like civil unions on top of marriage which would, then, be a private matter.
The limitation of such recognized, protected, privileged unions among consenting adults to those who have sex with each other leaves out many people who need the protection given to people who have sex with each other (even when they have sex with other people, as well). I remembered reading that in France which recognized such civil unions, the largest numbers of those were between mothers and unmarried daughters who lived together in mutually supportive households.
That's something I really wish would move on the state and national level. Worrying about my old LGBTQ and other musician friends who are in a leaking, sinking boat that I could soon be in myself has made this newly relevant to me.
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