Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

February 6, 2011

Matthew 5:13-20

I come to you on this Super Bowl Sunday with what I’m sure will come as good news to many of you. I’m sure many of us are wondering, after hearing Jesus talk about the law today in Matthew’s gospel, how we could in good conscience watch the game tonight. I know it was troubling me. I mean when Jesus says that every letter and stroke of every letter of the law still counts the implications get kind of personal and pervasive. Of the over two hundred laws laid down in the pentateuch only one seems to apply to tonight’s game, but it sure sounds like a stopper. The book of Leviticus tells us clearly that it is an abomination to touch the skin of a pig, so the thought of cheering on a bunch of guys whose goal is to not only touch the pigskin, but to take possession of it, hold it tight, steal it from the other guy and even lie on top of it every chance they get seems a bit over the line. Knowing that those who observe the law faithfully might feel a bit uncomfortable about watching the game tonight I have done a little research. No, I didn’t go back to the Torah to look for loopholes. I simply googled footballs and pigskin and I find that footballs haven’t been made out of pigskin for many years so enjoy the game. Just make sure the hot dogs you’re eating while you watch are Kosher. Or you might want to skip the hot dogs and look in Leviticus a few verses before that one about the pigs. There you will find a list of which flying insects you can eat and which are forbidden. You’ll be glad to know that locusts, crickets and grasshoppers are all on the ok list.

“For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” These are some of the most troublesome words in the gospels. They are problematic for many reasons.

First, no one follows them. No one even tries. Once in a while some preacher or debater will haul these words out to support the importance of one of the Levitical laws they like, but Jesus’ words about not one letter of the law passing away are always used selectively by such folk. The laws don’t allow any work on Saturday or the wearing of clothes made of two different fabrics. We too often debate which of the laws Jesus must have been talking about while we stand there in our hush puppies wearing cotton, wool and polyester. We don’t live these words. We really couldn’t.

They are also problematic because they are a part of scripture and we are supposed to take scripture seriously. How can we just dismiss such unambiguous teaching?

And maybe most confusing aspect of these words is that while Jesus seems to be saying here that all the old rules still apply, he will, in next week’s reading and the next, cite one of the old laws and then go on to say that there is a better way. “You have read in the law, you shall give an eye for an eye, but I tell you to love your enemies.” Today’s lines are a problem because they don’t seem to fit what we will hear Jesus say next. Some commentators think the lines we hear today are offered to help us know that Jesus is not just tossing out the ancient laws when he starts saying “you have heard this, but I tell you this.” But there seems to be more going on here.

Jesus and his followers were a problem for the Jewish community. They were seen as violating the sabbath since their day of worship was not the last but the first day of the week. They were accused of being lax about keeping fasts and rituals--the kind of accusations we hear in the story about the disciples picking corn on the sabbath. And they associated with the ritually unclean, and with outcasts. Jesus answers these concerns by saying he has not come to set the law aside, but to live it, to accomplish it. And then he goes on to say that he expects an even greater adherence to the law than that expected by the pharisees and the scribes, those who were most concerned with conscientious observance of the law. Jesus, like the prophets before him, like Moses who gave the law, was not calling for anything new, but for the a return to the foundation of the law, a covenant of love and respect for God and neighbor.

The first law in Moses was just that. I will be your God and you will be my people. We will walk together. In the lesson from Isaiah today we hear that the fast God requires is not sack cloth and ashes but justice and deeply held and acted-upon concern for the needy. Jesus speaks of those who follow the letter of the law when he calls for a righteousness that exceeds that of the pharisees. As always, Jesus calls for changed hearts that live out love of God and neighbor without having to focus so much on the rules, and that sometimes trumps the rules.

Learning to love our neighbors is like learning to ride a bike, or to paint or play an instrument. There are all kinds of rules and principles and good advice on how to do those things. There are scales to learn, music theory, color principles, keeping your feet on the pedals, looking down the road and not at your feet. Behind all of those simple-yet-complex activities are deeper principles of physics, logic, science. And yet doing any of those things well means at the moment they are happening, all the details are forgotten. Fingers fly over strings, colors fill canvas, spokes sing as we fly down the hill.

Jesus does not discount the principles by which we are shaped into people of God. He affirms today the importance of those laws. But Jesus won’t stop there. He brings us to the place where we have to forget about our feet and about pedaling and just trust centrifugal force and our sense of balance and go.

This week in the class on Marcus Borg’s Embracing an Adult Faith, Borg said at one point he didn’t have to believe in God he said he knew God. As he said that, heads nodded around the room. He spoke of having come to know God through experiences of God. I am pretty sure Jesus is suggesting not just in today’s lesson , but throughout the gospels, a new way of coming to that kind of knowing.

At some point we are just supposed to know what it is to love God and neighbor. To know. Not necessarily to understand, but to know. To have it just flow from us because it is in us. Jesus seems to be saying again and again that learning love…..that coming to know God living in us around us and working through us...is something we must come to through experience.

And what kind of experience will bring us this kind of knowing?

Practice, says Jesus. Feed the hungry, house the homeless, free the prisoners, forgive each other, heal the sick, help your neighbor carry their load, turn the other cheek…...the list goes on.

It is clear from the gospels themselves that Jesus’ was passionate about opening up his audience to a new level of participation in the God life, the life for which we were born. Amen

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Epiphany

January 23, 2011

Matthew 4:12-23

I just attended my 17th annual diocesan convention, which in VA is called the annual council. Whatever you call it, a convention is a convention.

Lots of friendly conversation in the corridors outside the main assembly hall, and usually at least some grinding and gnashing of teeth on the inside.

Council is a chance to meet and greet friends from the far corners of the diocese, and to network, to speak in this web-lived age face to face with people you may have known for some time but never met. I think I enjoyed the company of my colleagues in ministry this year more than ever as we made our way through annual council. That may have been because I have gained some understanding at long last about that grinding and gnashing of teeth part of council I just mentioned. There was a lot less heated debate about issues this year than most other years, and the debate has shifted a bit so that this year the debates were at least on new topics.

All in all it was a good event, and before it was over, I found myself remembering my very first diocesan council and something that happened there that I had completely forgotten about. It comes back to me now as a sign whose meaning and gift I may at last be ready to comprehend. I think it came to me during bishop Gulick’s sermon at the eucharist on Friday. He said something about having to give up our nostalgic view of the past as we move into the future and it kind of set me to thinking. He sent me off as preachers sometimes will into a whole line of thought that may or may not have had anything to do with what he was preaching about. Before I knew I had gone back 17 years and there I was, watching Marie’s long walk to the microphone that fateful morning.

Now before I explain to you what happened, let me just say that I do have some appreciation for the pitfalls of wearing a skirt. It’s the sort of thing you just kind of discover, even if you are a guy, when you go to seminary. At some point you begin to wear a long flowing robe and to discover what kinds of things can happen if you aren’t careful. Many a seminarian has stepped on his skirt and stumbled headlong up the steps and into the pulpit at VTS. I had a friend whose beautiful, long, billowy English surplice inflated one day while he was leading prayers in front of two hundred students. He was kneeling at the prayer desk at the front of the chapel when the heat cycled on. Somehow his robe had positioned itself right over the vent, and when it filled with air he looked kind of like a large black and white bowling ball with a tiny head reading suffrages A from morning prayer. It was a memorable moment. Kind of surreal. These sorts of robing pitfalls I know, but what happened to poor Marie that day just seemed very unfair.

Marie and Edgar had been fixtures in the diocese as long as anyone could remember. Edgar was a vocational deacon, and Marie was very involved in diocesan business. Marie had gotten to the point where she moved kind of slowly, but slow or fast she was still a moving force in that little diocese and she didn’t mind speaking her mind. So no one was surprised when Marie got up to move to the microphone to weigh in on whatever resolution was being debated that morning. What did surprise pretty much everyone as she made her way to the front of that auditorium was that somehow--maybe she had just returned from a needed break, who knows, but somehow, the bottom back edge of her billowy, flowing skirt had ended up tucked into the waistband and the view from behind as she walked down the aisle drew the attention of everyone in the room. That may have been the quietest moments of the convention.

In those days the women at convention were badly outnumbered by the men, and the men were cowards. Not one of them was about to tackle the problem of Marie’s skirt. She made it all the way to the front before a couple of her friends managed to fall in behind her and deliver the necessary tug. Marie, thank goodness was a class act. She bore the story well, though it did linger for a while.

So there I was yesterday, taking in the proceedings of this latest convention wondering why that image had popped into my head. I was wondering too what I would preach about today. (There is often time for some personal reflection during committee reports.) I thought about the gospel for today and wondered if I still wanted to preach about the Zebedee boys and the others leaving everything behind to follow Jesus. I had been thinking about that all week. I had been thinking about asking you folks what you had left behind to follow Jesus, but I wasn’t real sure what my answer to that question would be, so I didn’t know if I wanted to go there. I thought about the business and the debates at every one of the church conventions I have attended, and about how those debates always involve leaving something behind and taking on something new. I thought about how when we debate which relationships we should bless, we are standing at a crossroads where we are being asked to head off in a new direction we don’t know much about. That seems to be true for other debates too, like how to fund the diocese, or whether to take a stand on some social issue. There always seems to be a tension between what has been and what might be. I used to wish we would come to the end of those debates, but I have come to understand that that will never happen.

Those of us who have chosen to walk with Jesus will always have to struggle with what we are called to leave behind. When Jesus calls us a part of answering that call involves figuring out what we can’t take with us.

I was struck in today’s gospel by the leaving behind. The disciples left nets, boats, even their father. This leaving an old life behind in order to take up a new one is a theme running through all of scripture. Adam and Eve, Abraham, Israel, The prophets, Jesus, Peter, James and John, all of them took to the road with God, leaving behind everything they had known. They all set out to follow the one who would lead them to a place they had never been before. With few exceptions there was no looking back. Israel in the desert complained about the good old days in Egypt, which, if you remember the story, were not good old days at all. The message of all the great stories in our tradition is that we are called to take up the path and move forward with no thought for what is behind us. ……….which of course, brings me back to Marie. Called forth into the debate, she pressed forward with no thought about what was behind her. If only we could all be so single-minded in our discipleship.

I think what changed for me in council this year is that I came to understand that we will never finish the work of learning how to leave some things behind in order to take up the new path. We are, I think, called to live in the tension between the call and our desire to hold on to what we have. It is in that tension that Jesus speaks to us, works with us, helps us learn what really matters.

I think we are probably called daily to leave something behind, and maybe part of being on the road with Jesus is learning to recognize that ongoing call in our lives. Maybe you can name some of the thing you have left behind to follow Jesus. Maybe you have a sense of what you will have to leave behind if you want to travel farther. Anger, resentment, love of comfort, the need for control, security, fear of not having enough, the need for approval, the belief that maybe we aren’t really worthy of Jesus’ companionship, the fear of discovering our true selves, those are just a few of the possibilities that come to mind. We may have to wrestle with some of those all our lives. We may also be able to look back from time to time and realize that some things have been left behind and forgotten. There is a joy and freedom that comes from realizing we have forgotten about some things we didn’t think we could get along without. In those moments we can give thanks to our companion in the way whose call has set us free. In those moments we find hope that on this path we will learn to lay down even more of our burden.

This leaving something behind to take up the new path isn’t only for individuals. Bishop Gulick was talking in his sermon about congregations. He said one of the things congregations often struggle with as they try to move forward is a nostalgic memory of the good old days. The call, even for congregations is to go toward a place we have never been. The workshops I attended this weekend had to do with meeting people where they live, with taking the church into the world, into arenas like facebook and twitter. This cradle Episcopalian is being called to leave behind some perfectly good, but outdated ideas about what church should look like. Maybe that’s my answer to the question I was going to ask you. I am called to leave behind at least some of what I have held sacred about church and worship over the years. And now that I have an answer I don’t feel so bad about asking you. You can take the question home with you. Think of it as homework, or even your life’s work. Put simply, the question is this. What do you have to leave behind in order to follow Jesus?