Yesterday the letter turned to the imperative and gave us seven ones. Today it explains how a thing that is one can also be many — and it does it with a quotation that has been altered, and a sentence whose punctuation has divided churches.
What happens
"Grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says: He ascended on high and took prisoners captive; he gave gifts to men… And he gave some as Apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of Theos, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ, so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching… Rather, living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole Body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, with the proper functioning of each part, brings about the Body's growth and builds itself up in love."
What to notice
The quotation in Ephesians 4:8 is Psalm 68:19, and one word has been changed. The Hebrew reads laqachta mattanot ba-adam, "you received gifts among men." Ephesians reads edōken domata tois anthrōpois, "he gave gifts to men."Received has become gave, which is the opposite direction. This is not a slip and probably not an invention.The Aramaic Targum on Psalm 68 also reads "you gave gifts to the sons of men," and applies the verse to Moses ascending Sinai and bringing down the Torah — so the author is following a reading tradition that already existed, and using it to say that what the ascended Christ brought back down was not a law but people.Ta katōtera merē tēs gēs, "the lower parts of the earth," is grammatically ambiguous and the ambiguity is enormous: read as a partitive genitive it means the regions beneath the earth, a pillar of the descent into hell; read as a genitive of apposition it means "the lower parts, that is, the earth" — the incarnation. The Greek does not decide, and the tradition has held both. Then the word governing the gifts: pros ton katartismon tōn hagiōn. Katartismos is a repair word from three trades — in medicine the setting of a broken bone; at sea the refitting of a ship; and in Mark 1:19 the verb describes James and John mending their nets.The task is not to supply something new but to put back into working order. And now the comma. Ephesians 4:12 has three prepositional phrases in a row, and Greek manuscripts have no punctuation.The King James put a comma after each: the ministers perfect the saints, and do the work of ministry, and build the body — three clerical jobs. Most modern versions drop the first comma: the ministers equip the saints so that the saints do the work.It hangs on a mark that is not in the text.Mēketi ōmen nēpioi — and nēpios is the word from October 3, where the Father is praised for revealing things to infants.Infants receive well and are steered badly. Two words name what does the tossing: kybeia, literally dice-playing, the cheating of a sharp with loaded dice; and methodeia, from which English gets method, but in Greek a stalking, a systematic scheme. Alētheuontes en agapē is a verb: "truthing in love." And the closing image returns to yesterday's ligament, with growth "according to the working, in measure, of each single part."
Psalm 122 is one of the Songs of Ascents, the collection pilgrims sang going up to Jerusalem for the festivals. On a morning whose epistle quotes an ascent psalm about a man going up, the responsorial is a pilgrim song about a crowd going up.
The selected verses
Psalm 122:1–2."I rejoiced because they said to me, 'We will go up to the house of Yahweh.' And now we have set foot within your gates, O Jerusalem." Psalm 122:3–4ab."Jerusalem, built as a city with compact unity. To it the tribes go up, the tribes of Yahweh." Psalm 122:4cd–5."According to the decree for Israel, to give thanks to the name of Yahweh. In it are set up judgment seats, seats for the house of David."
What to notice
Psalm 122:3 is the verse the lectionary wants and English struggles with: Yerushalayim ha-benuyah k'ir she-chubberah lah yachdav, "Jerusalem, built like a city that is joined together to itself."The verb is chabar, to bind, to couple, to join — used of the tabernacle curtains being coupled to one another in Exodus 26, and of a fellow, a chaver, a companion. And that is exactly what Ephesians 4:16 says about the body: synarmologoumenon kai symbibazomenon, fitted and held together.A city joined to itself, and a body joined by every ligament — the same architecture.Psalm 122:2 has a lovely concrete detail: omdot hayu ragleinu bi-sh'arayikh, "our feet have been standing in your gates" — the psalm is sung on arrival, not on the road. And Psalm 122:5 names what a joined city is for: ki shammah yashvu khis'ot l'mishpat, "for there the thrones for judgment sat" — the city is where cases get decided, which, after yesterday's advice about settling on the road, is worth registering.
Somebody brings news. Two disasters are put in front of Jesus — one political, one accidental — and what is really being asked is whether the victims had it coming.
What happens
"Some people told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. He said to them in reply, 'Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means!…' And he told them this parable: 'There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard… "For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?" He said to him in reply, "Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down."'"
What to notice
Neither incident is recorded anywhere else, and both are entirely plausible. Pilate's record for this sort of thing is well attested — Josephus reports him slaughtering Samaritans at Gerizim and setting soldiers among a crowd protesting the aqueduct — and the detail mixed their blood with their sacrifices means it happened in the temple courts, during an offering.The pairing is deliberate and covers both categories: the first is atrocity, somebody did it; the second is accident, a structure fell.Between them they exhaust the ways people die badly, and the question underneath both is Job's friends' question. And the answer is a flat, twice-repeated refusal: ouchi, legō hymin, "No, I tell you."He does not qualify it, does not say only Theos knows, does not leave the possibility open.And then the sentence that is not a comfort:unless you turn around, you will all perish in the same way.The logic is not that suffering proves guilt but that the absence of suffering proves nothing. Then the fig tree, where the three years are a legal number: Leviticus 19:23–25 forbids eating the fruit of a newly planted tree for its first three years, so the fourth is the first in which a harvest could rightly be expected. The owner is not being impatient.Hinati kai tēn gēnkatargei, "why should it also render the ground useless?" — katargeō being the verb from Galatians 5:4 on October 13. And the gardener's reply contains the word the parable turns on: kyrie, aphes autēn, "sir, leave it this year also" — and aphiēmi is the New Testament's ordinary verb for forgive, the one in the Lord's Prayer on October 7. The gardener is asking for a remission. And what he offers is not sentiment: skapsō peri autēn kai balō kopria, "I will dig around it and throw on manure."The reprieve comes with a year of being dug up and covered in muck.And the parable does not end.Luke leaves the tree standing, in the middle of its extra year, and says nothing about how it turned out.
How They Fit Together
Three unfinished things, and the interval offered as mercy
Leave it this year also — one more year, and manure
Three readings about things that are unfinished, and about what you do with the interval.
Ephesians has been describing a body, and today it says the thing the metaphor was always going to require: the body is not grown yet.Mechri katantēsōmen hoi pantes — "until we all arrive" — at the unity of the faith, at andra teleion, a mature adult, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. The destination is stated and the arrival is future, and everything in between is described as growth, which is a process that cannot be hurried by wanting it.
And the mechanism is the most deflating and most encouraging sentence in the chapter: kat' energeian en metrō henos hekastou merous — "according to the working, in measure, of each individual part."The body grows at the rate of its parts doing their own small measured jobs.No part can do another's, and none can do more than its measure.
Which is why the word for the leadership gifts is katartismos, a repair word — the setting of a bone, the refitting of a ship, the mending of nets.Nothing new is being manufactured; what exists is being put back into working order so it can be used. And whether the apostles and pastors do the ministry or equip everyone else to do it hangs, in the received text, on a comma that nobody wrote.
The psalm gives the same idea a skyline. Jerusalem is she-chubberah lah yachdav, "joined together to itself" — the verb used of coupling the tabernacle's curtains — and the tribes are still going up.The city is finished and the pilgrimage is not.Our feet have been standing in your gates — arrival and continuing journey in the same psalm, which is precisely what Ephesians means by a body that is already one and not yet grown.
Then the Gospel, which starts somewhere else entirely and ends up in exactly the same place.
Two disasters are laid in front of him and the question underneath both is whether the dead had it coming. It is the oldest question in the book and Luke's Jesus refuses it twice, flatly, without leaving a door open: ouchi, legō hymin — no.The Galileans butchered at their own sacrifice were not worse Galileans. The eighteen crushed at Siloam were not worse Jerusalemites.The calculus does not work, and anyone who has read Job for the last month has already watched the friends try it.
And then he refuses the other comfort too.Unless you turn, you will all perish in the same way.The absence of catastrophe in your own life is not evidence about you either.The whole retributive frame — good news about the survivors, bad news about the dead — is taken away from both ends.
And what is offered instead is the fig tree, which is more merciful and more uncomfortable than it first looks. The owner has waited the full three years the law prescribes before a tree owes anybody a harvest. And the gardener does not argue that the tree is fine. He says aphes autēn — leave it, let it go, forgive it — this year too, and then proposes a year of digging and dung, which is the least dignified treatment in scripture and the only thing that will help.
And Luke does not tell us what happened. The parable stops with the tree standing, the reprieve granted, the manure not yet spread. Every reader is inside the extra year.
Which is the day's whole argument. Ephesians: not grown yet, growing at the measure of each part. Psalm 122: the city is joined and the tribes are still on the road. Luke: one more year, and the outcome is not reported.Nothing today is finished, and the unfinishedness is presented as mercy rather than as failure.
A Question to Sit With
He was asked whether the people crushed by the tower had deserved it, and he said no, twice, without softening it — and then took away the other half of the comfort as well, because if disaster is not evidence about the dead, safety is not evidence about the living. What is left is a tree that has produced nothing for three years and has been given one more, with a season of digging and dung attached. I would like to know how the story ends. It does not say. What would I do differently in an extra year I did not know was the last one?