Considering that we are still some ten days off from the beginning of the penitential season of Lent, this morning’s readings, and especially the Gospel, are…bracing. The few paragraphs of Matthew we heard just now are taken from the first third of the Sermon on the Mount, better known, and certainly better liked, for “Blessed are the peacemakers…[and] the poor in spirit” than Jesus’s commendation of eye gouging and amputation as methods of avoiding sin.
And many people, possibly including some in this room, have
experienced Jesus’s words on divorce as a weapon. Marriage and divorce is not
the primary topic of my sermon today, but I can’t let Jesus drop a bomb like
that and then just pretend y’all didn’t hear it.
So to be crystal clear about what our church’s teaching on
divorce is – and you can find this in Title I, Canon 19 of the canons of The
Episcopal Church – “When marital unity is imperiled by dissension…it shall be
the duty of….the clergy to act first to protect and promote the physical and
emotional safety of those involved, and only then, if it be possible…labor that
the parties be reconciled.” Prior to remarriage, clergy are to instruct
divorced spouses on their continuing duty of “concern for the well-being of the
former spouse, and any children of the prior marriage,” a sign that the
lifelong spiritual commitment of marriage is not altogether nullified in its
legal end. And the legitimacy of children is never to be questioned.
I think the key to unlocking the good news in this text is
in verses 23 and 24: “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you
remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift
there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother and sister,
and then come and offer your gift.”
These verses are in fact one of the options the Book of
Common Prayer suggests for the offertory sentence – you know, the thing the
priest says right after the announcement and before the collection plate goes
around. If you want to find all the suggested options, they start on page 376
of the Prayer Book.
The one that begins, “Walk in love as Christ loves us,” is
most popular in my unscientific experience. This one is long and harder
to commit to memory. And besides, it’s kind of a bold move, at the moment a
church is prompting and expecting people to give generously, to remind them
that they may have a good reason to be doing something else first, instead.
But there’s a higher ethic at work here, namely that a life
of faith is not an individual enterprise. It is a life lived in community; we
need companions in the way. Moreover, it is insufficient for the life of that
community to be characterized by only the most basic principles of
civilization, like, for example, the one Jesus brings up first, refraining from
murder? I mean, that’s a pretty low bar…I hope.
Jesus demands that his followers go further by refusing to
nurture anger, grievances, and grudges, the things that, left to fester, can
give rise to greater harms, violence included. Rather, we are to dig into the
hard work of repentance and forgiveness, acknowledging our faults and all the
ways we hurt each other, and committing once more to living in right
relationship with God and our neighbor. Or to put it another way, paraphrasing
our Baptismal Covenant, when we fall into sin, with God’s help, we repent and
return to the Lord.
Apparently the church in Corinth is having some trouble with
this. That congregation is so riven by jealousy and quarrels that Paul feels he
is unable to teach them the depths of the Christian faith. Factions have formed
pledging allegiance to Apollos or Paul, so disrupting the unity of the church that
he has to remind them of the remedial concept that neither he nor Apollos are
anything more than servants of the Gospel, laborers in the field. It is God in
Christ alone who is the giver of life, and growth, and who is the world’s
salvation.
That’s a necessary and important thing for a Christian to
understand, but it’s just “milk,” as Paul puts it, a fussy toddler’s prelude to
the solid food of the deeper mysteries of the sturdy eternal vine, of which we
are but branches. Rivalries and fights, then, are more than things that make
life in the Corinthian church unpleasant – I mean, who wants to join a church
like that? Worse, they are actual impediments to developing a deeper
relationship with God.
Some of you have participated in the College for
Congregational Development, an intensive summer course that teaches how
congregations of any size, whatever the resources at hand, can be more healthy,
vibrant, and sustainable communities, faithful to the unique call God has given
them. One of the things we teach there is that conflict, whether in
congregations or really just in life, is as natural as breathing. We’re in
benign low-level conflicts all the time – things like figuring out what to have
for dinner or where to go on vacation, simple problems to be solved.
But who among us hasn’t been involved in more intense
conflicts with higher stakes? Ones where our primary objective may shift from
solving a problem or resolving a dispute to insistence on being right, or
discrediting or destroying an opponent.
Jesus knows that’s going to happen to us, which is why his
instruction is not to avoid conflict or sweep it under the rug, but to confront
it. To seek the one with whom we are in broken relationship, and to forgive, or
ask forgiveness, as the case may be. There are limits to this teaching. Victims
of abuse are not obliged to be in relationship with their abusers, for
instance. But in general, the practice of vulnerability in admitting
wrongdoing, and the practice of mercy in forgiving those who have wronged us,
is a core part of the Christian life. And the case may be that might
mean literally standing up and walking out of this church service right now, if
something weighs that heavily on your heart.
There’s no question that Jesus has harsh words for us today,
and I make no effort to sugar coat them. But I encourage you to hear them with
a vision for what the world would look like if we took them seriously, if not
quite literally. Common life where forgiveness abounds and the truth sets us
free, where each individual is known as a whole person and never just someone’s
object of pity or desire, where lifelong vows are honored through good times
and bad unless and until they are damaged beyond repair, and where sworn
statements aren’t necessary because we tell the truth and keep our promises. That’s
a world worthy of our longing and our labor.
“See,” Moses says to the Israelites, “I call upon heaven and
earth to witness against you that today I have set before you life and death,
blessings and curses.” The hellfire and severed limbs of today’s Gospel sure
look like a whole big heap of curses. But then, crucifixion looks like a curse, too. And
on the other side of that curse lies Resurrection, life for Jesus, life for us,
if we’ll have it.
Jesus’s harsh warnings remind us that daily before us are
the same choices Moses set before Israel. It is the peculiar nature of a fallen
world that in the contest between the death-dealing ways of anger,
dehumanization, falsehood, and betrayal – and the lifegiving belovedness God
intended not only for each of us in creation, but for all of us, together – the
temptation toward death is so strong.
But don’t do that, church. Don’t choose that. Choose the way
of Jesus. Choose companions for the whole way, across green pastures and
through shadowed valleys. Choose love. Choose truth. Choose the path of life.
--
Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 12, 2023
Good Samaritan Episcopal Church, Brownsburg, IN
Readings: Deut. 30:15-20, Ps. 119:1-8, 1 Cor. 3:1-9, Matt. 5:21-37
Image: James Stencilowski, distributed under a CC-BY license
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