The Giver & the gospel, part 3
Love
is a (subversive) verb
Jesus, the man who had preached love of
enemy, is condemned,[1]
both as a nationalistic freedom-fighter (i.e. a rival to Roman power) and to
die the death of a rebellious slave (à la Spartacus). A few days previous, Jesus had foretold the
destruction of the Jerusalem temple by enemy armies within a generation, the foregone
conclusion of the revolution that was, even then, in the air. As he dragged his cross to the crest of
Calvary, Jesus told the watching women to weep, not for him, but for their own
sons who would grow up to become the very thing that he had been condemned as
being – insurrectionists – and also, to share his fate (cf. Lk. 23.28-31). Unless, of course, these young men were to
grow up hearing the story of what happened to Jesus and take it to heart as a
summons to lay down their swords and thus be saved… As Jesus expires on Golgotha, the son of the
empire who had overseen his execution echoes the heavenly voice which had
spoken at Jesus’ baptism as he exclaims “Surely this man was the Son of God!”
(Mk. 15.39). This pagan soldier, as he
acknowledged Jesus’ claim to kingship over both Israel and the nations (cf. Ps.
2.1-9), was a sign of yet more incredible things to come…
Jonas, the boy who has now become a man,[2]
he who “remembered” what love is, finds himself compelled to improvise and act
precipitously, staging a night-time operation to spirit Gabriel away from the
community whose moral numbness had mandated his “release”. Jonas and Gabe, now fugitives, undertake a
perilous journey to Elsewhere, first by bicycle and then on foot. Suffering from exhaustion, hunger and
exposure, the young man and the baby struggle forward, mile after excruciating mile,
day after endless day. At long last, in
the midst of a December snowstorm, Jonas carries Gabe through ever-deepening
drifts all the way up a steep hill, at the crest of which is a red sled, as if
waiting for them. This recalls one of
the first memories Jonas had received from the Giver and holds the promise of
warmth, welcome and love for him and Gabriel among people who, every December,
celebrate the birth, back and back and back, of a child[3]
who had grown into a man who had broken the rules of his community and thus
ensured the future which had now embraced the generation of Jonas.
[1] After
having performed subversive, prophetic and deeply symbolic actions in the
Jerusalem temple; cf. Harrisville, Roy A. Fracture:
The Cross as Irreconcilable in the Language and Thought of the Biblical Writers,
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006, pp. 12-14.
[2] Jonas
leaves the community just before the Ceremony which would have marked the
beginning of his 13th year, the moment, in Jewish tradition, when
boys undergo their bar-mitzvah and are received into the community as men.
[3] At
first blush, for the Christian reader, The Giver seems to end with a
Christmas scene; however, the tree decorated with lights may well be a Hanukkah
bush, i.e. a Jewish version of a Christmas tree. In Europe, some Jewish communities celebrate “Chrismukkah”,
due to the “December dilemma” of Jews living in historically Christian
societies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah_bush (accessed December 14,
2024). If the closing scene does indeed
intend to evoke Hanukkah, it sheds light on the whole story in that Hanukkah (a.k.a.
the Festival of Lights, “…of Rededication”: cf. Jn. 10.22) was inaugurated on
December 25 (!), 164 B.C. (1 Macc. 4.52), following the cleansing of the Temple
by the Maccabees to purify it of the desolations of the Seleucid king Antiochus
IV Epiphanes. The Maccabean Revolt had
been provoked by Antiochus’ program of forced assimilation to Hellenic culture
(cf. the “sameness” of Jonas’ community), which had included the banning of
circumcision and the observance of both the Sabbath and the kosher laws (cf. 1
Maccabees 1—4). The fact that the Jews
had (successfully) fought to defend their “right” to observe the Mosaic Law
just a couple of centuries before Jesus’ baptism (c. AD 30) goes a long way
towards explaining the Pharisees’ attitude towards strict observance of those conventions
for which blood had been shed during the Maccabean Revolt. The Jews have always succeeded, against
enormous odds, in preserving their distinctive identity, even when they have
found themselves, as they often did, to be a minority within totalizing
imperial contexts; cf. Richard A. Horsley, ed. In the Shadow of Empire:
Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance, Louisville: WJK,
2008. The (possibly strictly) Jewish
nature of the story’s ending is an apt analogy to the way that knowledge of
Jesus’ Jewish identity and second-temple context sheds new light on the story
told by the NT Gospels. The fact that
Hanukkah (usually) coincides with Christmas – the date of December 25 was probably
chosen for the celebration of Jesus’ birth in the 4th century AD
because of its proximity to the Winter Solstice – appears to be a (felicitous?)
historical accident.
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