Loading...Sermon February 12, 2017
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen
Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
Michael Nailor
Look Who Is At Our Table!
"Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. 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 or sister, and then come and offer your gift." Matthew 5:21-25
Grace, peace and forgiveness to us all from Jesus Christ, our Lord! Amen!
Knowing and keeping God’s laws runs through all of today’s readings. Rabbi Sirach makes it sound so easy when he says: “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.” Sure thing! The writer of Psalm 119 has more resonance for me when he observes: “Oh, that my ways were made so direct that I might keep your statutes!” I can identify with that cry. Oh God, if you can just make things a little clearer – I’d have a much easier time following your laws! So, we as Christians end up with a double burden. Discerning what God’s ordinances actually are – then trying to shape our lives in way that fulfills them.
Jesus doesn’t make things any easier in this section of Matthew’s Gospel. He gives us about a dozen statements that all follow a similar pattern. (Don’t worry! We are only going to look at the first one today.)
First -- Jesus states the conventional wisdom – the law of tradition. In this case he says, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder.’” Hard to disagree with that! I know what God wants and I can try to avoid killing people (most days!).
Second – Jesus calls our attention to things that we do that end up trapping us – that capture us and distract us from God’s love. It’s more than just avoiding murder. Jesus says: “But I say, if you are angry with anyone… if you insult others… if you call other people “fools” – you are also liable to judgment.” Jesus cannot really mean that, can he? Sure I can avoid killing people – but earlier today on the drive down here – I didn’t like the way that guy cut me off on 11-15 – and I am not supposed to call him a fool? How can I live like that?
Third – Jesus describes the transformation that he wants to see in our lives. “Be reconciled with your brother or sister – come to terms with your neighbor.” That’s the hard work of our Christian living.
This discernment of the nuances of God’s will and our decision to follow it in our lives is, unfortunately, not a “once and done” event – but rather it is the daily struggle of walking with our God. I been on such a journey and I thank you for inviting me here to share it with you. I don’t speak for anyone else; I am not trying to tell anyone else’s story or, worse yet, trying to tell you what to do. This is just my story and mine alone.
Conventional wisdom is that a person like me (in the “prime” of life!) should be preparing for retirement – not shaking things up by seeking to serve the Church through ordained ministry. Lord knows there are lots of my friends who are just shaking their heads. But I’ve spent the last five years or so in discernment and in preparation for the role of a Deacon in our church. My best metaphor for thinking about my call is the image of the stone threshold in front of the church. It is the barrier that separates the concerns of the world from the concerns of the church. And it is the deacon’s role to facilitate communication over that stumbling block in two ways… As the Prayer Book says it is the deacon’s job “to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns and hopes of the world” and likewise, “to make Christ and his redemptive love known” to the world. For the last 18 months I have pursued a degree in Public Leadership at the Lutheran Seminary at Philadelphia. In this process I have come to understand more about God’s intentions for my life and I have tried to shape my life in ways that live out that call.
Truly, the most difficult parts in this change process for me have been my encounters with economic inequality and racism in our society. I, along with Rebecca, grew up in Mechanicsburg. I never knew a person of color until I went to Philadelphia to attend college when I was 18. I was active in my West Shore church – service projects were a big thing in the 70’s in our community – but I never interacted with people who were really poor, homeless, or even unemployed. Although 4 years of college in Philadelphia changed my perspectives a bit, my entire professional career in public education was spent in the Sunbury/Danville area. I knew I had students who “didn’t have much” in their homes but I still expected them to achieve in my classroom and tried not to treat them any differently from anyone else. Towards the end of my career, with the changing demographics in the Central Susquehanna Valley, there were more and more students of color in my classes – but again – for all the “right reasons” I thought I was serving them well by treating them the same as everyone else.
I thought I was following God’s law as the prophet Micah articulated it: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. And then five years ago this month I realized that I wasn’t. An African-American boy about the age of my students - was returning from the store with Skittles and flavored iced tea - and was shot by a man that feared him. Even after the police told the vigilante to stand down, Trayvon Martin was killed – and I realized that there was something deeply wrong in the way I was understanding racism in our society. Clearly we are not color-blind. Everyone is NOT treated in the same manner by the American justice system of which I had been so proud. If Trayvon’s killer could be acquitted and then glorified for “standing his ground” and lionized by the media, I needed to understand more about why we reacted in this way. I had a feeling that there was a difference between God’s laws and our laws and in order to follow Jesus, I needed to reshape the way I thought about race in our society.
As I read and studied – I noticed that God always chooses to be helper and savior – not to the powerful in society, not to the comfortable – but to people who are oppressed and who are powerless. I encountered God in the words of a black theologian, James Cone, who said “…whoever fights for the poor, fights for God; whoever risks his life for the helpless and the unwanted, risks his life for God.”
I encountered God in the words like “love thy neighbor” and “welcoming all of God’s children” – but when I looked around my church – the children and the neighbors all looked pretty much the same to me.
I encountered God in a call to question this concept of “color-blindness” as the best way to achieve justice in our society. Is ignoring our differences the best way to “love our neighbor as ourselves”? I wouldn’t want the qualities that make me special to be ignored by others. Ignoring is not, for me, how we are reconciled.
In a few minutes we will gather around a table to remember Jesus, his death, resurrection and ascension. Transformation happens here. Not just to the bread and the wine. But to the people who gather around this table and share this meal. We literally become companions at the table. Who are our companions? If they all look like us, dress like us, speak like us, vote like us, are we doing God’s will to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” I can only tell you that I see a need to bring different faces to God’s table.
So Jesus in today’s Gospel tells us to be reconciled. What does that mean? Doesn’t it tell us more about how we treat folks who are different from us than it tells us about how we treat our friends? Being reconciled to our friends – to people like us - is not the hard part. Next week in the Gospel of the mass we will hear Jesus say, “If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have?” He is going to ask us to do the very hardest thing of all – to love our enemies. The percentage of significantly interracial churches – communities in which no more than 80 percent of the membership identifies as the same race – is amazingly low: only 7% of American congregations qualify. The statistics on economic class distinctions in our congregations are worse. If we truly seek to understand God’s will for us and live it out – can we do it around a table that is racially defined or defined by economic status?
We are tangled together in this society – we as Christians, I believe, are called to live into that complexity. We are called to reconcile how we are and how we hope to be. Discerning God’s will for us as Christians in this time, in this place is difficult work. Poet Marcia Shoop sums up my thoughts about my journey in her 2014 poem:
Bodies matter
Christ’s body, broken for you and me
Our bodies, broken and born
Into layers of ambiguity and promise
These bodies feed on connection
They languish in isolation
And they simultaneously inherit and create worlds
Unique and shared, brutal and promising
