No Retaliation

a Sermon for Epiphany 7A
Text: Matthew 5:38-48

GOD of Hope and Wonder, you give us the tools of great change and the opportunity to make the choice. Help us to see your ways for us as the right choice. Amen.

Retaliation and escalation
Jesus begins the gospel with a familiar phrase: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'” Now, I know that you know where this comes from and what it is about; I am just reminding you. To do that, we’ll have to go back thousands of years, long before Jesus and even the Torah (from where this phrase comes). Long before all of this, there was a different law of the land. A law, unwritten, but understood universally:

If you do something to me, I do something to you.

It is as simple as that. OK, not just as simple as that, because we didn’t just retaliate, we had to do more: we had to teach them a lesson. They had to know that they shouldn’t have done it, and won’t do it again. So if they hit you, you maimed them.

If you do something to me, I do something bigger to you.

Sometimes that lesson wasn’t actually for them, but for other people. So if someone stole your goat from you, you would kill them. You had to show what happens when someone messes with you. If they insulted your wife, you killed them, and their wife. If they went after your kids, you killed them, their wife, and their kids: you wiped the whole family from the face of the earth. That was just what you did.

Besides, they were clearly evil people, anyway.

You can see how this thinking has persisted throughout history. Look at mafia movies:

“Eh! He disrespected me, so I shot him in the head!”

And every week (I guarantee it) there is at least one movie at the theater that encourages over-retaliation. At least one movie that glorifies vengeance. The first one that came to my mind was from a few years ago: Taken with Liam Neeson; a movie in which a man’s daughter is kidnapped, and he proceeds to kill all the people involved in the kidnapping. And we want him to! We watch him get his bloody vengeance and we don’t want to see him show any mercy! He has a movie out this week, Unknown, which appears to have a similar vengeance plot.

Enshrining Evil
There seems to be something in us: something that wants to seek vengeance, to retaliate violently. Something that is in us at a truly base level. Which is why it was so remarkable that GOD would instruct the people with this teaching: “An eye for an eye,” because he tells them not to over-retaliate, to not teach people lessons. If someone steals your goat, you steal it back—you don’t burn his house down or anything else.

But, Jesus recognizes the problem: it actually enshrines violence. It makes retaliation OK, and He isn’t OK with that. Because we love vengeance, so we seek out the most “appropriate” retaliations. If someone messes with us a certain way, we desire to mess with them back—to hurt them in the very way they hurt us.

In the immediately preceding passage, Jesus makes a similar claim about oaths. He says that when you swear an oath, when you pinkie-swear with someone, you are saying that you will be honest and not steal or you will do what you say you will do. At the same time, you also communicate that the rest of the time, you don’t have to be honest. You communicate that it is OK to lie and cheat and steal all the rest of the time. So don’t swear any oath. GOD sees you—even inside your head—and knows when you lie or cheat or steal, so be a person who never lies and cheats and steals and you will never need an oath.

Oaths enshrine evil just as “an eye for an eye” enshrines violence.

Jesus’s way: The Love Revolution
Jesus offers us a different way. But for some reason, we don’t understand it. It has to do with our reptilian brains—the oldest part of our brain—that is hardwired with two options in response to adversity: fight or flight. Either we retaliate, or we run away. This is also the way of the world. The part we’ve inherited from thousands of years ago that yearns for violence. The part that says that the most preferable option is to fight back. That good people fight and cowards run away.

So when we hear Jesus say “But I say to you Do not resist an evildoer,” we hear that as cowardly—as encouraging us to run away. We have to make it fit in that ancient paradigm: it is either one or the other: we have two square pegs and two square holes. And the peg Jesus hands us is round.

To make sense of this, Jesus gives us these three, very visual examples of this third way; and we might mistake them because they are so different from the world:

In the first he says, If somebody hits you on the cheek, offer him the other. Look at this: this is what turning your cheek looks like. You are giving them another shot. That is not running away and that is not retaliating.

Then he says, If somebody sues you for your coat, give them your cloak as well. Imagine the courtroom scene. You are the defendant and the charges are being read and you stand up, and start taking your clothes off. You just take them all off, including your shoes, and you ball them up and walk them to the other desk and you hand them over. Then you walk back and sit down. That is not running away and that is not retaliating.

The third one is awesome—but we screw it up so badly. We misunderstand it. Jesus says, If someone forces you to walk a mile, walk a second one. We hear that phrase, go the extra mile as if it were the ultimate do-gooderism. Good job! You did a little extra! That Protestant Work Ethic thing really suits you! But here is what Jesus is really saying. A Roman soldier would come across a Jewish peasant force him to carry something like 120 pounds of gear. And if the peasant valued his life, he would do it. Now, the image hits home at the important juncture at the end of that mile. Imagine the soldier, chuckling with his buddies about this guy carrying his stuff. He turns to the peasant and says:

“We’re here. I’ll take my stuff back.”

And the peasant responds:

“Actually, I want to keep walking. I’m good.”

This isn’t weak-kneed flubberings and it isn’t work a little harder, either. It is a different kind of option.

Jesus wants us to get that this is a love revolution.

We’ve been reading The Secret Message of Jesus each Sunday, and last week we covered the idea that violent revolution is not revolutionary. That overthrowing a violent regime with a violent revolution is just perpetuating a cycle of violence: it is replacing violence with violence. And more, it enshrines a cycle of violence. Our own revolution enshrined a culture of violence for us. It told us that it is acceptable and there are times to fight fire with fire.

That is the way of the world. Not the way of Jesus.

Jesus encourages us to fight fire with water. To violence, love is the water.

It Begins Here
This whole arc, Matthew 5, the first third of the Sermon on the Mount builds from the Beatitudes to this moment. We learn that we are to be and live a certain way, not act a certain way. We are to love. When Jesus says to love your enemies, I think he really intends to say that when we have a love revolution, there are no enemies. Everyone gets loved.

In the last year, we’ve seen bitterness and anger at St. Paul’s.
That is the way of the world, not the way of Jesus.
Anonymous letters, backbiting, potshots from the peanut gallery, back room conversations about people and their families.
That is the way of the world, not the way of Jesus.
People have even used our youth as weapons.
That is the way of the world, not the way of Jesus.

This ends today.

When St. Paul’s is on track, it is the epicenter of the love revolution. We might track evil in, like mud on our shoes. Just tap your shoe, and knock it off. This is a new place, not of this world. Something new.

Here and now—we love. We are a new creation built on love.

Blessed

a Sermon for Epiphany 4A
Text: Matthew 5:1-12

[Note: the original sermon was preached from sparse notes. What follows is a fleshing out of those notes as best as I can.]

GOD of Hope and Wonder, you gave us Jesus as Messiah and Lord. Open our hearts to love as he loves, our imaginations to dream as he dreams, and our eyes to see the world as he sees it. Amen.

The first five words of the gospel give us an interesting way to see this very familiar gospel of the Beatitudes:

“When Jesus saw the crowds.”

We don’t know what he sees, or what he makes of it, but this symbol is very powerful; Jesus saw them.

Who we are not talking about
Jesus gives us a pretty good description throughout each of the gospels of the people to whom we are to minister. In many places, it is the outsider, such as…

1. People from another tribe—like the Samaritans,
2. Traitors to the tribe—tax collectors were seen as traitors because they were Jews that taxed other Jews on behalf of Rome, and of course,
3. The ritually impure within the tribe—prostitutes and other “sinners” whose very livelihood kept them from being considered one of the “normal” people.

In other places we get a glimpse of those that fall through the cracks: the destitute and the desperate—the poor, the sick, the disabled.

Through all of these stories of Jesus talking to, eating with, advocating for these groups, we start to harmonize them and see any of Jesus’s teachings about others as being about this faceless group of outsiders, condemned by Jewish society. We make the relevant translation to our own world and see the homeless we’ve met or the people we’ve helped in the words of the gospel. But today, let’s not do that. These might be the people Jesus really is talking about in this gospel, but for today, let’s not think about them. Let’s say that this has nothing to do with others. In fact, this has to do with us.


9 that are blessed
The way the Beatitudes are set up is as nine blessings. The first is telling: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. We often jump to the other with this one. We think of the depressed, or the doubter, or the one unhappy in church. If we were Evangelicals, we call these “the unchurched.” Instead, let’s see this as people that look out the window and see the trouble in the world. People that are hurt by the pain they see through that window, and are made sad by destruction and evil.

The next is “Blessed are those who mourn”. This isn’t simply widows, but all of those who grieve what they or others have lost: all people that know loss and are pained by what is gone.

“Blessed are the meek” isn’t just talking about the weak or the timid, but all those who refuse to watch one more person get hurt or abused—and we also refuse to be the one who does it.

These first three are more or less passive, or receptive. What is seen affects their outlook and begins to affect their action. The next three are increasingly active.

The fourth, and I love the way this is described, is “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”. Think about those descriptors: how do we feel hunger, but as the very seizing of our stomachs—a pain that rises from our bellies. Thirst is similar: our throats get itchy and irritated, our tongues and mouths get dry and scratchy; our entire neck and heads scream out for relief. For those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, it is the very body that feels and reflects the pain of injustice—compelling us to relieve that pain.

The fifth, “Blessed are the merciful” are those who reject vengeance and hatred, because there is already too much of that, and instead respond to everything with compassion and love.

The sixth, “Blessed are the pure in heart” are those who do not respond out of intellect or tradition, but out of GOD’s righteousness.

Each of these “blesseds” builds up to the seventh; the crux of the whole thing, and the most active: “blessed are the peacemakers”.

And the last two are what happens in response to how we act, seemingly bringing us back to the receptive beginning:

8. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake
9. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Christ is the Beatitudes
This entire conversation isn’t a list of tasks for Christians. It isn’t simply an ethic.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

“Action in accord with Christ does not originate in some ethical principle, but in the very person of Jesus Christ.” (Ethics 2005, 231)

Jesus is the center of the Beatitudes.

Notice that the gospel’s description is not simply what would be if we did this, but the future that will be when we are this.

Remember? “Blessed are the meek”—not “you will be blessed when you choose to be meek”.

The Two Most Important Words
This gospel uses two really important words that we should look at.

1. Blessed: We take the word blessed to mean blessings in life—some of you (not me) have been blessed with good looks or wealth or talents. In other words, the stuff we get from GOD. A more ancient and appropriate understanding would be sanctified or consecrated or holy. ‘Holy are the meek’.
2. Peace: The 21st Century American English word is so inadequate to describe Jesus’s intentions for us. All we know about peace is the absence of war or conflict. Jesus meant, and would have used the Hebrew word Shalom. Shalom doesn’t simply mean the absence of war or conflict, but

Safety…
happiness…
justice & truth…
Wholeness, completeness…
The well-being of others.

This is why the seventh Beatitude is so important to the whole gospel: “Holy are the Shalom-makers, for they will be called children of God.” We know that it is our job to bring wholeness and completeness to the world. That we are the ones that transform this gospel about other people into a gospel about us in this world. That these Beatitudes are, in fact, about us.

The Jesus at the center of this gospel, longs for us to make this world complete in the hear and now. He has given us a vision of the Kingdom and about who we are to be. We are invited to be reconciled and to reconcile, to love and to be loved. To share in the sanctified as poor in spirit, mourners, the meek, righteousness seers, mercy bestowers, lovers, and shalommakers.

May we be receptive to the world, moved and inspired by righteousness and love, that we seek mercy instead of vengeance, hope in the face of despair, and justice when we feel pain; and may the world be so transformed that we see one another as blessed. Amen.

The view from up here

a Sermon for Epiphany 4C
Text: Luke 4:21-30

Please Pray with me: God of Hope and Wonder, we long to be part of your vision for the
world; help us to see you at work in the world and within us. Amen.

Remember, this story is about the cliff.

We came to church this morning feeling that this was an ordinary Sunday. We thought that some semblance of normal was being restored to the world and we could begin to go about our lives as normal. And our first two readings might even seem to reinforce that thinking. And then we get to the gospel.

The Gospel itself looks straightforward or simple enough. Jesus says something, people get excited, then Jesus makes the people mad, so they try to kill him. We might even think that Jesus himself gives us the message of this story: “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” OK. You can’t go home again. Got it. Time to move on!

Except that we can’t move on. Moving on would mean that we ignore the real cause for the outrage. It would mean that the reason for collective violence would be swept under the carpet. That isn’t the gospel. So what caused these family friends, this home congregation, to not only get upset at Jesus, but cause the collective body to intend to murder him?

He told them that they don’t get to be first. That God likes some other people better. And that many of those people would gain power and influence at the expense of the faithful. He put the mirror up to the people and said, in essence:

“When I read from Isaiah these words:

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

I didn’t mean that you are the captives or the blind or the oppressed, but that you get the short end of the stick.”

And when Jesus said this, the crowd was going to kill him as a blasphemer by stoning him to death in a way—by throwing him off of the cliff and onto the stones below.

The key, of course was his choice of examples. As long as the poor, the blind, and the oppressed are nameless, “we’re all good”. But when he names gentiles that were given favor over Jewish people in the same boat, they became outraged.

It seems as if we have a hard time with this notion, too. We like the idea of “bringing good news to the poor” as long as we still get to be wealthy (or at least middle-class—which is wealthy by international standards). We like the idea of releasing captives—if they haven’t done anything to us or aren’t considered our property. We like the idea of giving sight to the blind—as long as they don’t see something we’ve overlooked. We like the idea of letting the oppressed go free—as long as they don’t have it as good as we have it. We like to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor—except that we don’t actually want that to happen, because then we all get to move to the back of the line. And after a while, our feet start to hurt because that line looks really long from back here. It seems as if, deep down, we believe that we’re the ones who are oppressed and need saving from the current state of affairs. So when Jesus’s words are only words, we feel good. But when we are asked to live them as the oppressor, we balk.

The truth is that Jesus could walk into most any church in America and grab a Bible, read that passage and say that the people chosen for salvation and authority in the new age aren’t Christian, but are homeless or displaced, are hungry and malnourished, haven’t had access to safe drinking water or doctor care in who knows how long. And the people would be furious. He’d be called a false prophet and run out of town. He’d hear the people shout “That isn’t Biblical” as they drive him away.

But remember, the story is about the cliff.

The location for the story is “the brow of the hill on which their town was built”. Luke gives us an image of a people who live on a hill. This would no doubt be the scene of some wonderful childhood stories of Jesus running through the meadows down in the valley, of clothes hung on lines in the breeze of the hilltop. The town itself could be seen from some distance away—a vision that might cause a weary traveler to want to set down some roots in this beautiful location. From the hilltop itself, an observer could get a wider view of the countryside than anywhere else. Even in military terms, the elevated location would serve as a tactical advantage. In every way, this town is in an idyllic spot.

But this hill also has a cliff—a source of danger for children running around and a temptation for the town’s more malicious members. The cliff may be the hill’s darker side—the drawback for the benefits the people get in living there.

For Luke, the location is the visual and most explanatory part of the story, because Jesus comes up from lower ground and tells the people that they’ve got a great view, that they are great people, but their position also gives them blindspots. That they can’t see everything from this hill. That this hill doesn’t help them see themselves any better or one another any better. The outrage didn’t come out because Jesus said good things about Gentiles, but that Gentiles, even Gentiles that had oppressed Jews, could better know the mind of their God.

That message is Good News, isn’t it? Jesus tells us that God’s vision for the world is bigger than we are. That to be a part of the vision doesn’t require joining an exclusive club with membership dues, name tags, or offices to be held. It merely requires relationship and participation with the vision.

It also means that we don’t have to have all of the answers—and even better—that we don’t! That we can learn from other people and other cultures. That we can gain insight from people that we don’t even know. That we aren’t all that there is, and we aren’t “the best”.

Most important, though, is that it sheds light on the inner darkness. That we like feeling special. We like knowing that someday we’ll each get a chance to give Jesus a hi-five. And we like knowing that our hard work will pay off in some way. That we like being different and we’re worried that if the outsider can have what we have, it won’t be as good.

For us, in this Epiphanytide, the cliff is the source of our great vision and our great hubris. It is the place in which we endanger our own understanding of God by squeezing it too tightly and dashing others to the rocks. But it is also the place in which we can realize that problem—our hard hearts transformed into forgiveness by the grace of God. It is the place of the revelation made blind by our own insecurity—the place in which our innersight may be restored to match or even better our physical site.

May you find yourself awakened and given new sight this day by a God that longs for your collaboration in vision and may that cliff be the site of your greatest triumph.

Being called through signs

a Sermon for Epiphany (C)
Text: Matthew 2:1-12

God of Hope and Wonder, as you gave these Magi signs, you give us signs that we might follow. We will listen as you keep calling us to service. Amen.

I have to confess that I always assumed that I would be watching cartoons as an adult. Since most of us love them as children, I assumed that would continue, and thanks to the Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, adults can like cartoons. What I didn’t expect is that I would spend 30 minutes every evening watching Nick Jr., the cartoon network for preschoolers. Over the last couple of weeks, they have been advertising a new Dora the Explorer episode: “Dora Saves Three Kings Day”. Now, I’m not a big Dora fan, and I didn’t watch this particular episode, but the title points out how we often envision the day. Three kings, travel from the Orient, carrying gifts solemnly to be delivered to the baby born 12 days earlier. A fascinating story, if not altogether accurate.

Much of the story, as we remember it, has the spaces filled in by tradition. Matthew doesn’t say how many Magi there are, but we think of three—one for each gift given. The word magi has the same root as magician, but we take these individuals as men and as royalty, naming them kings. A more accurate title might be stargazer or astrologer. They are also likely to have come from Babylon, not the Orient. In other words, Three Kings Day this is not.

So let us instead consider what the original version of the story might mean for us. The word magi in other parts of scripture is actually derogatory and suggests a charlatan, like a snake-oil salesman. That Herod would enlist such a group is interesting. They were already tracking an astrological event and were looking for something or someone, the new king of Israel. Whatever the case, these were a collection of people covering a long distance with attendants and a caravan following them, traveling a long way to visit God’s son. The Jewish authorities just down the road didn’t make the trip, but people from a foreign land did.

And they came because of a prediction. They saw a sign in the place they look for signs—the sky, and specifically among the stars, it took the form of a single star.

We tend to think that signs come to us like a paddle upside the head or a loud booming voice from the heavens—kind of like the one Jesus gets at his baptism. Something big and bold and flashy. We think that is how it all works. But signs can be much more personal and elusive. They come in the places you look, but not necessarily the form you expect. This is more like the form of God’s messenging service than direct visits from angels or in natural disasters.

This morning, we celebrate the Epiphany, derived from the Greek epiphaneia which means ‘manifestation’. In common terms, we think of having an epiphany—a moment of realization or clarity—or perhaps more literally, the manifestation of incredible insight. Considering that definition, we might be tempted to go back to Dora’s ‘Three Kings Day’ and call it good. But for us, epiphany isn’t simply about the visit from the magi. The other gospel reading for today is the baptism of Jesus. Next week is the wedding at Canna and so on, concluding with the Transfiguration. These passages cover not only the beginning of Jesus’s earthly ministry, but include actual manifestations of the Spirit and a new vision of things to come.

And because of all of the fireworks in these passages, we might overlook one simple truth: God spoke. And he directed the Magi to the Son.

We’re often challenged by God’s speaking in our lives. Sometimes we don’t like the timing. Sometimes we don’t like the challenge given us. Sometimes we don’t think we’re worthy. But we’re all here today because, in some way, we were called to be here, coming from all over the place. It is all the more special because we are about to demonstrate our faith and commission some wonderful people to service, to respond to the call that God has given to them. Today, one of the traditional days for baptism, we will have two, Alexander and Francesca. We will commission them to lifelong service and witness of God’s love. And we will all swear to lift both of them up and raise them in a healthy and spiritual way. In this way, we are all called to this service, not only as witnesses, but as guides and supporters of a new life in faith.

We also will commission our new vestry. These leaders, called from within the church will be given responsibility for much more than the financial health of the parish, but the direction and leadership of our ministries and our future. God has touched each of them for leadership at St. Paul’s and in the Diocese of Atlanta.

It may be easy to see these baptisms and the vestry commissioning as simply public acts—things done in front of the community. In this view, the gathered people are passively witnessing the events as they unfold. But for us, and for our theology, these are powerful moments, representing the collective voice of the congregation. WE are baptizing these two beautiful Christians and vowing to stand with them and hold them up. WE are commissioning this vestry to serve this year with dignity and honor. WE are responsible for helping these magi find God’s son, in a strange town, in a strange place, by the light of a brilliant star. This is our calling today. Let us follow Him.