A sermon about fear, and relief of fear
"We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in search of truth, and both have helped us in finding it"
--Thomas Aquinas
July 3, 2016 - Curing the Leper
June 26, 2016 - The most offensive thing Jesus ever said
June 19, 2016 - Where is your God now?
June 12, 2016 - Law and Grace
Law and Grace
Scripture Readings:
1 Kings 21:1-10, (11-14), 15-21a
Psalm 5:1-8
Galatians 2:15-21
Luke 7:36-8:3
Back when I was teaching, the end of the school year always brought to a head the dilemma that I in fact faced throughout the year, which can be thought of as the tension between law and grace. I always put a lot of thought into my syllabus and spelled out clearly at the beginning of the semester what the rules and grading standards were going to be, and I still do believe that students learn important things by the rules we set and the ways that we enforce those rules. But invariably circumstances would raise the possibility that I might be able to teach some really important lesson by applying those rules and standards with some flexibility, tempering justice with mercy. So I could teach by means of “the law” that I laid down, and I could teach by instances of mercy in applying it. The main thing was that I wanted students to learn, and so I had to make judgments about how best to let that happen.
The danger in doing that, of course, is that students might come to disregard the rules and standards: to think, so to speak, only in terms of grace and not of law. In parenting it’s the same dilemma. How do we convey to our children the message that they are beloved by us, and forgiven for their misbehaviors, without implying that they have license to continue misbehaving? A similar dilemma also exists between married partners and between nations and citizens. Any time there’s a covenantal relationship between people, a relation of promises and obligations and allegiance, we’ll find that it’s important to spell out what those expectations are.
It’s no surprise, then, that God the Teacher, God the parent, is both a lawgiver and a merciful judge. The reason those two can both be present in God is the same reason they can both be present in us: God as lawgiver isn’t some punitive sadist who delights to send people to hell, but a teacher who delights to bring people to heaven. God as gracious and compassionate isn’t a pushover whose people can do no wrong, but a demanding teacher who understands and sympathizes with our errors but insists that we learn.
Because there really is evil in the world, and it really does harm both us and our neighbors. Where we can see that most forcefully, perhaps, is in politics. Consider our Old Testament lesson. There’s a man named Naboth who owns a vineyard. King Ahab of Israel wants to buy the property, which is next to his own, to plant a royal vegetable garden. The setting of the story is the town of Jezreel, which at the time was in the heart of the northern wine country. Jezreel is not very big, around 14 acres (a little bigger than a couple city blocks), most of which was occupied by Ahab’s palace. Actually the palace at Jezreel wasn’t even Ahab’s main one; that lay two arduous days to the south. Jezreel is Ahab’s version of Martha’s Vineyard or Camp David, a nice spot in Israel’s most fertile region to get away from it all. Ahab asks, fairly enough, to buy Naboth’s property at market value. But Naboth turns down the offer because it was his ancestral property.
In Israel, “ancestral property” had religious connotations, because they believed that God had distributed the land to each of the families and that it was important to keep it in family hands. We could hope that the story might end there, with the king reluctantly accepting Naboth’s answer, but it doesn’t. Ahab goes back home to Samaria, where Queen Jezebel is waiting. She is the real villain of this story, and she decides to help Ahab acquire the property he covets. Now there are all kinds of overtones here that have to do with Jezebel’s foreignness and with her idolatry. There’s also the overtone of Ahab’s following in the footsteps of the other northern kings by rebelling against the Davidic kings in Jerusalem. But I want to focus on the abuse of power in the story.
How Jezebel gets Naboth’s vineyard for Ahab is by using the legal system. She hires some professional liars to bear false witness against Naboth, accusing him of blasphemy and sedition.
It isn’t unusual, in our world or in ancient Israel, for people to use the good law, twisting it to do evil deeds. When they do that, it doesn’t mean that the law itself is bad; it means that the law is a tool and what makes it good or evil is what it’s used to do. Indeed it’s worth noticing that Ahab’s covetousness and the professional liars’ bearing false witness violate two of the ten commandments. But it is Naboth who is quickly condemned and stoned to death, and his property is added to the king’s holdings. Evil has triumphed, as usual; end of story. Except that it’s not the end of the story, which goes on to tell how God sent the prophet Elijah to pronounce doom on Ahab and Jezebel and how, eventually, they were punished for their murderous acquisitiveness with death and disgrace.
As we do with so many of the stories of the Old Testament, we might tend to hear in this story a reinforcement of our notion that God is a judgmental, legalistic God who metes out reward and punishment. But when we do that we’re missing the point of telling the story, which is to be taught by it that we must learn to apply the law in ways that preserve people’s livelihood. As concerns Ahab and Jezebel, God condemned them for doing evil to their neighbor. From Naboth’s point of view, God’s judgment came too late to help his case. But from our point of view, as readers, we have this marvelous story in which a corrupt judicial system and a corrupt ruling establishment only appear to be successful, and in which God makes things right in the end. In other words, we’re invited to reflect that evil’s triumph is merely temporary, which is a very hopeful thing.
What would it have been like to be one of those bystanders at Naboth’s trial? Would we recognize that there was more at work than a simple charge of blasphemy and sedition? Would we be critical of the judgment? Or would we join our neighbors and throw stones of condemnation at the innocent man? I suspect that most of us would do as they did given the same circumstances. But we readers realize we’d be wrong to do so. We can see what the townspeople could not: the scheming of Ahab and Jezebel, the innocence of Naboth, the falseness of Naboth’s accusers, and eventually the judgment God pronounces through Elijah. So what do we learn from our readerly perspective?
Maybe we can remind ourselves that law is meant to teach more than it’s meant to punish, and that we also need mercy to really teach effectively. Did you notice in the gospel story how, when the woman who was a notorious sinner came to Jesus, he might have condemned her sinful behavior? He’d have been correct to do so. But instead he graciously accepts that marvelous gift from her hands and uses the opportunity to teach everyone around him — the woman herself, the Pharisee named Simon who was Jesus’ student and host, everyone else who were at table with him, and indeed to teach us who read the story now. We all learn from this incident not that the woman wasn’t really a sinner, but that her sins had been forgiven and she had been saved because of her faith. We learn that there is more to her than her sin, and that more part is worth loving. We learn that sometimes we should be merciful rather than stringent, in order to teach the lesson that needs to be learned.
I think we have to keep working for a just society, to be active politically and using the legal means we have, in order to instruct and be instructed by others about our obligations to one another and to God. But let’s remember that the law, and our standards of all sorts, exist to make people better, and not for their own sake. In this vitriolic political environment, this world in which it’s so easy to demean as stupid or immoral anyone who is different from us; in this judgmental society that is so ready to condemn racists and bigots, cheaters and haters, liars and smugly self-satisfied pontificators, Republicans and Democrats, true believers and those who are disenchanted; let’s remind ourselves of our own sinfulness — our own racism and bigotry, and the whole list of evils we see in everyone else. Let’s remember that all of us fall short of God’s glory, that all of us are being trained by God’s law, and all of us are in need of merciful treatment from God and from one another.
April 17, 2016 - 4th Sunday in Easter - Shepherd Sunday
Photo by Ppvanderlee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30692309
April 10, 2016 - 3rd Sunday in Easter - By the Charcoal Fire
I know that we are here on the Third Sunday in Easter, but I am hoping you would indulge me for a moment and go back in time a bit with me. I want us to go back a few weeks to Holy Week. Imagine with me that last night of Jesus' life before he was crucified. The meal he shared with his disciples. The foot washing. The bread. The wine. Judas rushing off to betray him. Jesus giving his new commandment that they love one another as he has loved them. Jesus telling Peter that Peter would deny him three times before morning. Jesus taking a few of his disciples with him across the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane up on the Mount of Olives. Jesus praying there. The disciples falling asleep. The back and forth. Jesus in agony. Asking God to let the cup pass from his lips. But not my will be done, but yours, O God. Judas coming. Betraying Jesus with a kiss. The arrest. Peter and the Beloved disciple following as the soldiers took Jesus away, but at a bit of a distance. Do you remember all of this? Can you step away from the Easter joy and get your mind back into that Holy Week mindset with the darkness and the fear and the sorrow and the confusion?
The soldiers at this point would have taken Jesus back across the Kidron Valley to the house of Annas. And there, Jesus goes in, held prisoner. Perhaps there might have even been a prison cell there. The Beloved Disciple knows some of the guards, so he gets himself and Peter into the gate, a little bit closer, into the courtyard, but still, they are keeping some distance. It's late, late at night. On the threshold of morning really. Nights can be chilly in Jerusalem, especially in early Spring. And so, the servants and the guards, the police, they make a fire there in the courtyard: a charcoal fire more precisely, at least in John’s telling of the story. The word here in John's version is not the standard word for fire, which is pyr, a word used 71 times in the New Testament, and is used by both Mark and Luke when they are telling this part of the story. Rather John uses a very specific word, anthrakia, meaning a fire made with charcoal, and it is rare, only used twice in the New Testament (with a derivative of it being used once by Paul). This all may seem a bit detailed, a bit off track, but hold with me. So by this charcoal fire, by the anthrakia, Peter is asked if he is one of Jesus' followers. And Peter, denies it. And a second time. And a third time. Just as Jesus had said. Peter, you will deny me three times before the cock crows. And then the cock crows. Peter has denied Jesus three times, his master, his teacher, the one he loved and the one who loved him. Peter has denied the one whom he had confessed as the Messiah, the one he had confessed as the Son of God. Peter has denied the one for whom he had said he was willing to die. By this charcoal fire, he has denied Jesus three times.
So, come back with me now to today's Gospel. Also taking place in a similar time of day, at that moment between night and day, that sort of moment when a rooster crows to usher in the sun And again, we have a an anthrakia, a charcoal fire, the only other time this word is used in the New Testament. John is a highly symbolic writer; the odds that this is just coincidence is nearly zero. John is using this charcoal fire to link these two stories together. And again we find Peter by the charcoal fire. But this time Jesus feeds him by this fire. And three times, Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Once for each of the three denials. The three-fold denial is met with the three-fold restoration. By the charcoal fire, in the early morning, Jesus restores Peter. In mercy, in grace, in love, Jesus undoes the horrible thing that Peter had done by betraying him. And he invites Peter to follow him all over again.
This is what the resurrection accomplishes. This is Easter. In Christ, through Christ, by Christ, we are restored. We are brought back into the fullness of relationship with God. And it is done through love. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Is the restorative question that Jesus asks. This connection to Maundy Thursday that the charcoal fire and the three-fold denial and restoration invoke, Should also remind us also of Jesus' new commandment that he gave at the last supper, that they love one another as he has loved them, that we love one another as he has loved us. Love. It really all comes down to love. God's love for us. Our love for God. Our love for each other. It's all intertwined. And of course it is when we think about it. For God is love as we later learn in the First Letter of John. And we, who were made in God's image, as we learn in first chapter of Genesis, the first chapter of the first book of our Scripture, can only be who we truly are, who we were made to be, when we acting in that love, living in that love, when we are dwelling in that love. And so to restore Peter, it has to be about restoring that love. Jesus has to ask, Do you love me? And Peter has to say, yes, of course, I do.
The question for us today is: What part of us is needing to be restored? In what ways are we disconnected, from God, from each other, from ourselves, internally disconnected from who we are, who God made us to be? How have we denied Christ in our lives and in this world? How do we need to love and to be loved? I don't have answers to these questions. These are the questions that each one of us has to ask for ourselves. These are the questions with which each one of us has to sit and maybe wrestle and struggle. This is the deep interior work that we need to do. It's not easy, but it is the work we have to do if we want find that restoration. We have to recognize how we ourselves are like Peter by the charcoal fire of Holy Week - a people who succumb to fear and anxiety and darkness and confusion, a people who have some of those elements in our lives. And then we have to recognize how Jesus is inviting us by the charcoal fire of Easter, by the Paschal light, into a full, restored, life-giving relationship of love. It is not easy, but the work is good and transformative and ultimately joyful as we walk the Easter journey. Amen.
