Month: February 2011

Epiphany 7, Year A, 2011

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I have a confession.

I have a big problem with our Gospel lesson today.  Rather, I have a problem with the way this text has been used in the Church.  This gospel lesson has been used as a justification for people staying in abusive relationships and I have to address that before I can move on and preach the text.

Domestic violence is a huge problem in the world and in our community.  Domestic abuse—whether verbal or physical—is not limited to other classes or races.  Some of the worst domestic violence cases I’ve encountered were situations in which both partners had multiple degrees and extremely high incomes.

There is almost certainly at least one couple in an abusive relationship here today.

Historically, the Christian church has not done a great job of helping victims of abuse leave their partners.  Passages like the one today have been quoted to victims—often women—and these women for generations have been told to turn the other cheek and to stay faithful to their vows.

I want to be very clear that I, with great confidence, do not believe Jesus was addressing people in abusive domestic situations here.  Remember, last week we read verses 21-22 of this same chapter,

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.

What is domestic abuse if not a violent combination of anger and condescension as described here? Jesus unequivocally condemns abusive behavior.

If you are currently in an abusive relationship, or you are not sure but you think you may be in one, please contact Father Paul or me. Our conversation will be confidential and we will try to get you the help that you need.  You can also contact the organization Woman Space, who are experts in these matters.  Their web address is womanspace.org.  Their chaplain, Susan Victor, is wonderful and will be leading our adult forum next Sunday.

Okay, moving on to the text.

We are still hearing The Sermon on the Mount and Jesus is still referring to Hebrew Law and then upping the ante.

The old law, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was developed to stop people from trying to right wrongs with disproportionate violence.  This way, if a sheep was stolen, the sheep needed to be replaced, rather than the other farmer’s farm being burned to the ground.  The law was designed to rein in our impulse for revenge that escalates our conflicts.   It’s a pretty good law!  It’s sensible!

But Jesus turns the tables and tells his audience that if they are slapped on one cheek to offer their other cheek!  And if someone steals their coat, they are to give them their cloak as well!

At first it appears that Jesus is encouraging victimhood, that the Christian’s role in the world is to be pathetic and taken advantage of.  But Jesus knows that the power of God is not going to be shown through spectacular acts of revenge—anyone can enact revenge.  The power of God is shown through strength of character and through love.  And really, what shows more strength then calmly and steadily turning one’s face to receive a second blow?  And imagine if a Roman on a horse came by and stole your coat, how better to illuminate the bad behavior of the Roman than by offering him your cloak, which was the only garment you had left to keep you warm.

What shows more strength than loving your enemies?  It does not take much character or will power to hate your enemies.  If your upstairs neighbor plays his music too loudly, and won’t turn it down when you ask politely, it’s much easier to call the police than to bake the guy some brownies and ask him nicely one more time.

Walter Wink, a professor of biblical interpretation at Auburn University, supports the view that Jesus is not asking his followers to be victims. He believes the word for resist—antistenai—is mistranslated here, since the same word is used to describe warfare in other parts of the Bible.   He believes Jesus intends to communicate that his believers should not resist evil violently. Wink argues that Jesus resisted evil all the time, whenever he encountered it, so it would not make sense for him to tell his believers not to resist evil.  Wink believes Jesus is trying to stop the cycle of violence. [1]

Martin Luther King, Jr. understood the power of this point of view.  Rather than interpreting “turning the other cheek” as blind acceptance of the abuse of power, he used the text alongside Ghandi’s teaching to help create the peaceful protests of the Civil Rights era.  In 1964, Gunnar Jahn, who was presenting King with the peace prize, quoted King as saying,

If you will protest courageously and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written [in future generations], the historians will [have to pause and] say: “There lived a great people – a black people who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.” This is our challenge and our overwhelming responsibility.[2]

King demonstrated to us that turning the other cheek, refusing to respond to violence with violence, can change an entire country.  We saw similar protests earlier this month in Egypt, which also affected great change.

And maybe the great large scale non-violent protests do have something to say to us about our personal struggles.

Maybe there is something to be said for maintaining one’s dignity and continuing to act in a kind a loving manner when someone is trying to dominate or take advantage of you.  Of course that does not mean we have to yield to the demands of the person with power.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue, because I’m hearing from more and more of our kids about bullying in school.  Even our little second and third graders are trying to figure out what it means to stand up for yourself, but still be a kind and loving person.  How do we teach kids about the injustice of the world?  That people behave in rotten ways, even people who are not inherently rotten?  How do we so root them in God’s love that they can move confidently through life, knowing their valued place in the world?  How can we help prepare them to be non-violent resisters, who don’t accept bullying as the status quo and help to change the culture in their schools?  Seriously, if you figure this out, please let me know!

In the meantime, those of us who are adults can start to act out resisting evil in a way that show the evildoers that we are different.  Yes, we will stand up for ourselves.  But we will conduct ourselves with the highest ethical behavior.  We will not bully back, or slander, or slash tires, or gossip.  We will not throw a punch or destroy someone’s credit rating.  We will protect ourselves and our families, by distancing ourselves from the evildoers, or by going through appropriate legal channels, but we will also treat the person who torments us with dignity and we will pray for them.

This may seem difficult when our blood is boiling, but Jesus is looking out for us when he ups the ante on these laws.  He knows that perpetuating the cycle of violence only brings harm to everyone involved.  He knows that living a life of dignity and restraint will help us not only be more faithful Christians, but be happier, to boot!

When we learn how to lovingly and firmly resist evil; when we find a way to see the humanity in our enemy; we are given a kind of freedom.  Jesus shows us a way to live our lives in which our identity is so rooted in being children of God that our enemies’ behavior does not define us.  We may not feel stronger than our enemies, but God is always stronger than evil and we belong to God.

Thanks be to God.

[1] http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/wink_3707.htm

[2] King, Martin Luther as quoted by Jahn, Gunnar in his 1964 speech presenting King with the Nobel Prize.  http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/press.html

Epiphany 6, Year A, 2011

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Preached at the evening service of the Episcopal Church of Princeton University.

I am a rule bound person and have been ever since I was a kid.  My parents had very clear rules for my sister and me and I had very little problem following them.  We did our homework before we played.  We went to bed at 8:00 PM.  We had to eat at least one bite of everything on our plate.  No motorcycles, no tattoos, and strangely, no pierced ears.  Life was ordered and made sense.  I even liked imposing rules on others.  When I was eight and in the school play, before the play started, the only person you could hear from the audience was me hushing my fellow actors saying, “Shhhh.  Shhhh.  The play’s about to start.”

I became a Christian my last year of high school, through an evangelical group called Club Beyond.  I continued my life as a Christian in college through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  There, too, the rules were very clear.  Being a Christian meant going to large group meetings and bible studies, being kind to others, not drinking, smoking or having sex, and telling your friends about Jesus.  As a new Christian my brain really liked the clarity.  I was told what to do and what not to do and my rule-following mind was calm.

So, I have some sympathy for Ben Sira, the author of Ecclesiasticus, who tells us in our Old Testament lesson today that “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.”   At first, this seems plausible.  The commandments are laid out throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, so there is no mystery.  We don’t have to guess at what the commandments might be.  Hypothetically, it’s entirely possible to follow the commandments to the letter.

And Jesus seems to be reinforcing this message on the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus has been doing all kinds of radical things and people are starting to wonder if he is going to tell them that the Hebrew Law is invalid.  Instead he tells his follower that they need to follow the Law even more diligently than the scribes and Pharisees!  And the scribes and Pharisees were serious, serious rule followers.  Not only that, but in our passage today, Jesus raises the stakes.  Jesus raises the stakes considerably.

Jesus clarifies that according to the law, you weren’t supposed to murder someone.  But now, you’re not even supposed to insult anyone.  Even idiots.

Jesus clarifies that according to the law, you were not supposed to cheat on your wife.  But now, you’re not even supposed to check out a hot girl’s boobs, even if she’s wearing a low cut top!

You’re not supposed to divorce, you’re not supposed to promise to do something you don’t intend to do.  The rules are getting stricter and stricter.

And our reading today is not even the end of the list.  You’ll be hearing more about the high stakes that Jesus wants from his followers next week.

Suddenly, Ben Sira’s words don’t seem that easy.  I can go through a day without murdering someone without much a problem. But, going through an entire day without insulting someone behind their back is much more challenging.  There are so many bad drivers and generally inconsiderate people in the universe that deserve my scorn!

And if a really handsome guy walks into the room, I might check him out before I even realize I’m doing it!

Jesus is getting at something really uncomfortable.  Jesus is telling us that living a holy life is not just about following rules.  Living a holy life is about the content of our hearts and minds.  We can follow rules to the letter and be hateful, mean spirited people. We can follow rules and completely miss the spirit of what the rules mean.

I ended up leaving the evangelical church for a variety of reasons, but partly it was because the rules started to not line up with the Jesus I was getting to know.  Now, I am not talking about the explicitly stated rules of the community, I am talking about the implied rules.  We were not supposed to be gay or have gay friends. We were not supposed to have normal dating lives: we were supposed to pretend like everyone we dated was going to be the person we would marry, and court them.  We were not supposed to be Democrats.  We were supposed to be really concerned about middle class values.  We were not supposed to have non-Christian friends unless we were actively trying to convert them.  We were not supposed to believe in Evolution.  If we were women, we could have leadership roles in the campus groups, but not in the churches we attended.  And we were supposed to be happy all the time, especially when worshiping.

These rules started to chafe at me a bit.  They did not line up with the Jesus I was getting to know.  The Jesus that seemed to really enjoy the company of outsiders.  The Jesus that seemed to flout convention.  The Jesus that seemed much more concerned with the content of people’s hearts than their outward behaviors.  The Jesus that loved and respected women.

A friend of mine invited me to the Episcopal church around this time and I fell in love.  Sermons were not just about conversion—they were about how to live in a complicated world while still following God.  The music expressed a whole range of emotions—light and dark.  One of our priests was a woman–a brilliant woman.  Another volunteer priest was a world-renowned geneticist, who saw the wonder of God in his work as a scientist.   The intellectual life of the community was rich and vibrant.

I knew I was in a whole new world one Wednesday night when I first went to a church supper before a catechesis class.  At the dinner, they served wine.  I about fell over.  There was wine. . .at church. And not just at communion.  What kind of rule breaking church was this?

At first I was giddy with the freedom the Episcopal Church offered me.  But soon, my interior rule follower started to get really nervous.  I realized, I did not know how to follow Jesus if I did not have a rule book to follow.  I did not know how to be faithful if the priests were not going to tell me what to do about dating or sex or drinking.  I was a little freaked out!

Finally, I realized that I needed to pray.  About everything.  If no one was going to tell me what to do, I needed to study Scripture and bring my life before God and use my own reason and instinct to make decisions about my own life.  Rather than follow a cookie cutter pattern of what it meant to be holy, I needed to be actively engaged in my own life and take responsibility for my choices.

I also needed to come to terms with the fact that I was never going to be perfect.  There were parts of my personality—like my anxiety and my tendency to be swift to judge—that I was going to have to wrestle with my entire life.

As Episcopalians, we live in tension.  We know the dangers that come with strict rule following, but we also want to follow God.  We know that the Bible is not an instruction manual, but we still seek wisdom about our own lives in its pages.  We know that Jesus’s primary rule for us is to love God and love our neighbor, but we also recognize in ourselves a congenital inability to love consistently.

And thankfully, this is where grace enters the picture.

God did not choose to be incarnate so that he could come to earth and give us a list of rules in person.  There are more efficient ways to get that done, even before the days of email and facebook.  God chose to be incarnate so he could deepen his relationship with us and rip the veil that separates us into pieces.  He tried for generations to give us solutions to deal with our own sin. He gave us rules and leaders and prophets, but nothing seemed to make us any better.  We’re still not any better.  We still shoot up fraternities in Ohio and send  men with camels and whips into crowds of peaceful protesters.  We still betray our lovers and snap at our best friends.  We still use alcohol and drugs to dull our boredom and pain.  We’re still pretty rotten in a lot of ways.  Rules or no rules.  We even got so irritated with God-incarnate that we killed him.

But Jesus came back.  Even at our murderous worst, God decided he still loved us and wanted to be in relationship with us.  He resurrects his murdered Son.  He continues to pursue us and love us, even at our most rotten.  He defies the rules of logic and physics and biology for no other reason than to show us that he will pursue us and be in relationship with us no matter what it takes.

Being a Christian is not about being good.  Being a Christian is about being loved.  Being a Christian is about acknowledging that there is a God who created the Universe who, inexplicably, wants to be in relationship with us.  He wants us to pray, to ask questions, to challenge, to argue.  He wants to show us the parts of us he created and the parts of us that are broken.  He wants to heal us and use us for good in the world.  And when we’re done in this world, he wants to be with us forever in eternity.  Rules or no rules.

Grace can free us from our anxiety about following God’s rules perfectly, yet somehow free us to follow the ultimate commandment—Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.  As we realize that God’s grace extends to all of our icky and broken parts, we begin to be gentler and less judgmental about other people’s icky and broken parts.  As we realize God wants to reconcile with us after we stray from him, we begin to seek reconciliation with others.  Grace offers us freedom to accept ourselves in all our glorious messiness, so we can begin to accept others.

Grace allows us to be in a free, loving relationship with God and with our neighbor, which is what the rules were supposed to do all along.

Thanks be to God.

Epiphany 5, Year A, 2011

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

When I was little my family spent a lot of time with good friends of ours—the von Hendys.  The von Hendys also had two children, Vanessa and Stephan.  Vanessa was just a year or two younger than me and Stephan was just a year or two younger than my sister, Marianne.  At the time, I was a huge, huge fan of Solid Gold.  For those of you who were too tasteful—or young–to watch such things, Solid Gold was a TV series that aired on Saturday nights from 1980 until 1988. I don’t think I was actually allowed to watch it that often, but when I did I was totally entranced.  The premise was pretty simple:  extremely sexy dancers danced to whatever Top 40 songs were popular at the time.  They wore extremely high heels and often wore gold lamé.  They were awesome.

My favorite game to play with the von Hendys was a much more tasteful version of that show.  Basically Vanessa and I, as the older siblings, would make Marianne and Stephan hold a flashlight on us while we danced around to Starship songs.  You should have seen our artistic interpretations of We Build This City.  Our dance involved a lot of leaping back and forth across the room, but in a very elegant way, of course.  Eventually Marianne and Stephan would get bored of shining lights on their elders and wander off to do something more interesting and the game would end.  I was always a little sad when they wised up that their turn in the spotlight was never going to come, because I loved being in the spotlight.

And its no wonder I loved being in the spotlight—our culture is built around spotlights! Movie sets!  The flashbulbs of paparazzi!  You tube videos! Culture teaches us that the ultimate success is to be famous and to be caught in the glare of those lights.  I’ll confess that a remnant of my love of the spotlight is that I still love celebrity culture.  I love reading gossip columns and seeing movies and I watch the Golden Globes and Oscars every year.  This celebrity culture is so prevalent on television, on line and on newsstands we can begin to think that light was developed just to shine on these people!  And we’re left with the hope that maybe, one day, the spotlight will shine upon us.

Our Gospel reading today challenges our whole understanding of our relationship to light.  After all, this passage was written thousands of years ago, before neon signs, before flashbulbs, before marquees.  After the sun set, light was a rare and remarkable commodity.  People might have light from a fire, or some kind of lamp or candle, but that light was treasured and used sparingly. Light broke through the darkness with subtle illumination, inviting rather than commanding attention.

Our reading today is part of what is called the Sermon on the Mount.  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus calls his disciples, travels around, gets famous and soon hundreds of people are following him, hoping to get healed.  He sneaks away to a mountain with his disciples and starts to talk.  And talk.  And talk.  The Sermon on the Mount starts with the Beatitudes, which Fr. Paul read to us last week, but the rest of the sermon goes on for three more chapters of the Gospel of Matthew.  In fact, we will be reading bits from the Sermon on the Mount Sunday mornings until Lent begins!  The sermon is a framework that the author of the Gospel uses to collect all the famous sayings of Jesus in one place.  By the time Jesus is done in Matthew’s version of the story, the crowds have found him again, so he goes from speaking to just his disciples to hundreds of followers.

Our passage today about salt and light comes pretty early in the Sermon, right after the Beatitudes.  Jesus uses the imagery of light to describe how his followers should interact with the world.   They are, we are, to be the light of the world.  We are to be beacons on a hill. We are to let our light shine in the darkness so that others will know about our good works and give glory to God.

Note here that Jesus does not say, “You are in the spotlight of the world.  When the light shines on you, you seem really, really fabulous.”  There is a huge difference between being in the spotlight, and being a source of light.

When we’re in the spotlight, we are drawing attention to ourselves.  We are showing how beautiful or graceful or talented we are.  We are seeking to be admired.  Now, some celebrities who are stuck in the spotlight whether they like it or not have gotten clever and have been able to use the spotlight that is constantly on them to point out injustices of the world.  Think of George Clooney’s work in the Sudan, or  the Pitt-Jolie’s work in New Orleans.  But even that kind of good work is not the same thing as being the light of the world.

Jesus is not talking about us being in the spotlight.  Jesus is talking about us generating the light.  We become the source of illumination, not the object of it.

And we do not become a source of illumination because of our beauty, or our amazing Starship dance moves.  We become a source of illumination because we follow God and do good works.  A life of following God leads to the kind of illumination Jesus wants us to have.  And that illumination always points toward God.

God calls all of us to bear his light into the world.  To learn how, we can seek role models.  To find role models, we don’t follow the spot light. People who light up and point us toward God are not the same people who seek the spotlight.  In fact, those who bear God’s light are often the quietest in the room.  They would rather listen than speak.  They would rather serve than lead.  They have deep lives of prayer.  They listen with patience and empathy.  They are slow to anger and quick to forgive.  When you are with them, you sense the presence of something holy. It’s also entirely possible that you walk by these lights every day and do not notice them.  All the other bright lights of our culture make it hard to see the slow, long burning light of God.

I and the other 3000 students at University of Richmond walked by one of these lights every day.  The year before I graduated from college, one of the postal workers that served the University of Richmond retired.  Normally, this would not be a big deal.  To a group of self-absorbed students; postal workers were pretty interchangeable.  So long as your mail showed up in your mailbox, there was no reason to pay much attention to who put it there.

However, this particular postal worker had an incredible story that came in out in local papers that made us realize we students were entitled idiots who were so absorbed in our own spotlights we did not even notice the true light among us.

Thomas Cannon was a postal worker who had a 7th grade education.  He never made more than $30,000 a year.  In his later years, he took care of his ailing wife.  So far, this is a fairly common story.  What made Thomas Cannon unique is that over the course of his life, he donated more than $150,000 to charity.  This was not a man with a large savings account.  He lived a bare bones existence and put any extra money towards donations to others that needed the money.  He read the Richmond Times-Dispatch with a prayerful eye.  When he came across a story of someone in need or someone who had been courageous, he would send the author of the article a check and ask him or her to pass it along to the subject of the article.

This is a man who lived out God’s light.  Remember last week, when Fr. Paul talked about the foolishness of Christ?  Thomas Cannon was a giant fool for God.  He lived the upside down life of the Beatitudes—giving away money instead of hoarding it, thinking of others instead of himself, helping instead of hurting.

Even when the word got out about his actions, and the spotlight started to shine on him, he made it very clear that he did not want any buildings named after him or permanent memorials—he just hoped his actions would inspire others to give.

Thomas Cannon was letting his light shine.

As we mature in our faith, God’s light in us will shine brighter and brighter.  Our path will not look exactly like Thomas Cannon’s.  Each of our lights will shine in its own way.  What we have in common is that we will become beacons in the dark—inviting others into a life that is filled with the true light of God.

Thanks be to God.