The Time is Always Right

I have often found that taking smaller portions from the scriptures can help me to focus and understand them more clearly. I can get easily put off by the language, tone, etc. and kind of give up on them pretty easily or find them hard to comprehend.

So I took a small part of today’s passage from Isaiah and found these gems right in the middle:

Put away your misdeeds…learn to do good. Make justice your aim: redress the wronged,hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow. Come now, let us set things right.

I think of the words of Martin Luther King when he said that change “comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals,” and that they “realize that the time is always right to do right.”

If you have been thinking of a change in life, why not start today?  What day could be better to set things right than the present day?

Well I guess tomorrow could be better if you are comfortable with the status quo and the way things are! And that’s where our gospel picks up today.

In the Christian scriptures, Jesus is often at odds with the scribes, Pharisees and Saducees – two of whom are specifically mentioned today.  A little background might help.

For starters, we can’t forget that Jesus – and all Jews – were living under Roman occupation. We probably do not emphasize this enough.  Jews in Palestine, while they were tolerated, were not considered citizens of Rome, and had few rights.  And where there is a system of oppression, the oppressed are always trying to find ways to literally stay alive and to try to gain some access to power (whether in the form of economic power, social power or political power).

The Saducees were from the Jewish upper class and were the priestly class.  Rome let them run the Temple in Jerusalem and the economics of the temple (sacrifices, purity rituals, etc.).  While they may not have liked Rome, they were allowed to benefit economically in the arrangement.

The Pharisees, however, were usually rabbis who felt that the Torah, not the Temple, was the most important thing.  They favored the decentralized synagogues and were more focused on the laws and prescriptions outlined therein.  The Pharisees were also generally from the lower classes and lived very poorly under Roman rule.  They generally held a silent contempt for Rome but probably thought that resistance would bring even more harm.

The scribes, like the Pharisees were focused on law, not the Temple.  They were the people who made handwritten copies of the Torah.  They, too, knew the Law inside and out and tended to focus on that as the one arena where they could exercise power.

I hope that helps.  I know it helps me to keep remembering this, in part, because so much of Christian history has demonized these groups.  And while people like the scribes and Pharisees certainly did impact Jesus’ life, they too were oppressed peoples trying to live in an oppressive framework.

And so Jesus’ cautions his listeners not to be like them.  They liked the spotlight.  They wanted to be seen. They told people what needed to be done but did not do it themselves. They liked the little power that they could grab.

And they tolerated the status quo.

Instead of trying to change the system – as the prophet Isaiah says, “let us set things right” – they worked to establish a place for themselves in it. I think that’s what frustrates Jesus so much.  He knows that the Pharisees and scribes are just pawns in the system, but somehow they are jockeying for position in it and seeking out petty power over their own people.  From a framework of oppression, we call this a form of “lateral violence.”

I think Jesus is inviting all of us today to think about where we are in systems and how much we work to defend those very systems that we KNOW are hurting people. We still have widows and orphans in our midst. They may not look exactly like they did in the time of Jesus, but they are here. (And if we’re honest, we know that two thousand years later it is still women and children who bear the brunt of poverty and structural violence…)

As Assata Shakur said in a quote that I posted the other day, “are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger. to sacrifice to end colonialism. to end neo-colonialism. to end racism. to end sexism.” This is what disappointed Jesus so much about the Pharisees and scribes.  Instead of sacrificing to do right, they gave up on that ideal and decided to find a comfortable place in an uncomfortable system.

We see this so often in systems of oppression. People kind of give up or get tired of change or get tired of resisting. So they accommodate and acclimate to it.

We don’t have to change it all or change it all at once. But we can “make justice our aim” and work to “redress the wronged” as often as we can because the time is always right to do right. Hold this in prayer today, and ask God to nudge you somehow.