Fulfilling the Law - Epiphany 6A

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill it.”

I’ve been having some interesting conversations with #JTwitter lately. For those of you not on Twitter, #JTwitter is short for “Jewish Twitter” and is a loose community of folks who are Jewish according to the Law but who span a wide range of religious praxis. Some are atheists but who are “halakhic” Jews – halakhic meaning “according to the Law of Moses.” Others are very observant religiously and most are somewhere in between. It’s both a birthright and a faith tradition. This separates Judaism from Christianity as Christians have no birthright definition but rather a mystical definition of being “in Christ.” While I’ve had many Jewish friends and rabbis as clergy colleagues, I’ve gained an insight as to how difficult it is to be Jewish in a dominantly Christian culture here in America. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in our country and acts of violence, from vandalism of synagogues to the Tree of Life massacre, are tragically becoming common place; but there is also a more subtle and insidious form of anti-Semitism done when Christians appropriate Jewish symbols and rites for their own purposes. This is an act of supersessionism – the idea that what comes after supersedes what came before.

In the history of Christianity, there has always been a vein of supersessionist belief that Jesus came as the “new and improved” form of Judaism to supplant or supersede it. These ideas rise from our very own scriptures. Consider the way John’s gospel repeatedly speaks disparagingly of “the Jews” and how he sets up “the Jews” as those who killed Christ. In truth, when you read John with a discerning understanding of history and context, his use of “the Jews” (capital “J”) references only the religious authorities, it doesn’t mean the Jewish people as Jesus and his disciples were all Jewish. Misreading our texts has led to those who consider themselves Christians justifying pogroms, banishment and even the Holocaust. There is much of which we need to repent and repair.

That said, there is also some mutual misunderstanding regarding repentance and forgiveness. I had an interaction with a JTwitter member who said they studied with the Jesuits and came to an understanding that Christians “forgive by proxy.” Their understanding was that because we ask Jesus for forgiveness, he provides forgiveness and we Christians are let off the hook for making personal amends when we sin against another person. They offered how the Jewish faith differed because the Law commands personal moral accountability and that amends must be made directly not by proxy. I found this both a fascinating and deeply troubling insight! I shared how Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Law, but I could see how there is a strain (especially in more Protestant corners of Christianity) to believe that asking God’s forgiveness is enough and we can ignore the moral precepts of Torah. I also offered that Jesus taught against ignoring the Law and gave us clear instruction about making personal amends. Today’s readings underscore this message.

In the Apocryphal book Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus), we hear “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.” This underscores the deep understanding of the Jewish tradition which comes to us through Jesus, that we are moral people with moral agency. We have choices to make. We can listen to God’s ways and choose them or not. As Christians, we do modify this somewhat in that we understand the power of Sin is a power outside our control which leads us away from God’s intentions. However, just because this is true does not utterly strip you and me of our moral agency and your obligation to make choices in keeping with God’s ways rather than follow human ways. We still maintain moral and ethical obligations to do God’s will and not our own.

Jesus even said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” We heard that sentence as the conclusion to last week’s Gospel reading but I think it really should be the opening to this week’s because it leads into Jesus’ teaching. Jesus constructs his teaching on the law with a contrast: “you have heard that it was said … but I say to you …” In each case he takes a point of the Law: murder, adultery, divorce, and swearing falsely. He quotes the conventional teaching but then pushes his hearers to go deeper. Let’s just consider one of these teachings: the one on murder. Jesus says we need to go deeper because it’s not just about overt, premeditated, bodily killing – it’s about carrying anger and resentments which murder relationships. He urges us to make direct, not proxy, amends with those with whom we are at odds. He flat out says we are not to approach the altar of God with our gift unless we’ve made peace with others. Consider this observation from author Michael Hardin, in “The Jesus Driven Life,” on this teaching:

…the way of the Kingdom of God means that the way we relate to everyone changes. Not just our friends, but also those we despise and those who can’t stand us. It is not easy to love the unlovely. When we are attacked, we attack back, when we are threatened, we threaten. Our natural posture is defensiveness. This is true not only on a personal level but also on a political one. Have you ever noticed that when someone attacks you it is always unjust but when you ‘attack’ another it is always just?... Jesus says that to be angry is the same as murder. When you get angry the first thing you do is to have this sort of inane conversation in your head. They said this, I will say that, they will respond thus, I will have that response, etc. Notice how you always win this battle!

Jesus says that the Christian life does not consist of these mental battles. Instead we are to make peace in every way for “Blessed are the peacemakers.” More than that, retaliation is not an aspect of Christian existence. When Christians (not people in general) are hassled or persecuted, it is not part of their calling to "get them back." Christianity is not a gang where if one member is suffering at the hands of rivals, it sends out its members to get the other gang. Instead we are called to "love our enemies." How different would the world be today, if so-called Christian America had, instead of announcing war after 9/11, offered forgiveness?

How different would it be? Jesus’ teaching reinforces our obligation to make hard, moral choices and live the Law at a whole new level. We dare not presume to shirk our responsibility to the Law by presuming God’s grace will automatically absolve us of wrongdoing. The twin cosmic powers of Sin and Death which doom us to annihilation have been broken through Christ’s saving work on the cross, but this does not give a Christian a “free pass” to do whatever they want and ignore the Law’s call to live reconciled lives. You and I are called to be more, to go deeper, and to do the hard work of laying aside our easily bruised egos and make peace with each other. This is our moral and ethical responsibility and call which comes to each of us through our baptism. Will we have the courage to “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being”?

The Games God Doesn't Play - Epiphany 5A

Epiphany 5A - Isaiah 58:1-9a, Matthew 5:13-2

Oh the games people play now
Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean.

And they wile away the hours
In their ivory towers
Till they're covered up with flowers

In the back of a black limousine
La-da da da da da da da
La-da da da da da de
Talking 'bout you and me
And the games people play.

Some of us are old enough to remember this top of the pops 1969 song from Joe South, "Games People Play". It’s been my ear worm this week as I returned from the Gathering of Leaders conference in Albuquerque. Our theme this year was “Stewardship: Money in the Missionary Church” and we had a number of presentations about money following mission and the challenges of the 21st century. One of our members, the Rev. Paul Fromberg – rector of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco, gave a presentation that caused me to remember this song. In that presentation he talked about the human games God doesn’t play. What does that mean?

In an intersection between sociology and the Gospel, he talked about our assumptions as humans that how we live is how things have always been believing our current reality is eternal instead of recognizing how much is made up human stuff. We even confuse how we think it’s always been with God’s blessing – especially when the systems we invent are working in our favor. That got me thinking about Walter Brueggmann's work on the common good and how our belief in our human made up systems become closed ideologies. When we carry closed ideologies about how things are based on our experiences, members of a society can be very defensive when you challenge those ideologies. Brueggemann defines the work of a prophet as speaking truth to closed ideologies so their lies can be exposed, and the Holy Spirit can enter and remake us anew. One of the major human games we play is the money game. In America, our closed ideology is that our money game of capitalism has always been the way economic things are and it is the best economic system – even blessed by God.

The reality is capitalism is not “how it’s always been” – as an economic model humans made up! It’s only about 450 years old. Prior to that and overlapping its development was the system of barter and trade which was highly relational. The growth of capitalism as a dominant economic engine came in the early 16th century on the heels of Pope Alexander VI issuing the Papal bull “Inter Caetera” which initiated the Doctrine of Discovery. This doctrine provided the spiritual, political, and legal justification for colonization of lands not inhabited by Christians. As European countries colonized the world, they claimed land for exploitation and enslaved native populations all in the name of wealth and fueling a nascent capitalistic economy. Capitalism worked very well for the European conquerors, but it relied on the enslavement of Black and brown bodies for labor – and it still does. Even here in the United States, human labor trafficking is big business and the continued legal system of slavery of incarcerated persons allowed by the 13th Amendment in the Constitution has continued the disproportionate enslavement of African Americans and Hispanics.

Many of us are beginning to hear the term “late stage capitalism” as what we are experiencing now. It describes a form of capitalism where large, multi-national corporations are dominating the economic systems around the world and controlling more and more of the resources, to the neglect of people and the environment. Paul shared how this impacts his context in San Francisco where there is a huge homeless population while simultaneously the city has 30,000 vacant housing units. Those 30,000 vacant housing units are owned by corporations and absent owners who are disconnected from the community and don’t care about the neighborhood. In truth, capitalism is a human money game which one day will collapse. This money game is one God doesn’t play.

Now, some of you may be thinking I’ve gone from preachin’ to meddlin’ but I’m going to take a risk of going just a bit farther on the matter of our closed ideologies and talk about another game God doesn’t play: God doesn’t play our governance game of representative democracy. Right now, we are experiencing a period of deep anxiety about the future of our republic and whether our democracy will remain intact. We’ve all be raised with “God Bless America” and the belief that our democratic form of government is the best way of guaranteeing freedom. Well, I’m not so sure we are as free as we like to think we are. When I look around and see active, blatant voter suppression robbing people of their agency, that doesn’t look like freedom. When I see young people saddled with student loan debt that’s the size of a home mortgage and even with a good paying job, there’s no way they can pay off their student loans, that looks like economic oppression not freedom. When unarmed Black men are gunned down by police, that doesn’t look like freedom. When our elections are subject to foreign interference and their integrity not secured, that doesn’t look like freedom. When corporations are considered “persons” who can make huge donations and buy the candidate of their choice, that doesn’t look like freedom, or democracy for that matter. Democracy is a human made construct – it’s a game God doesn’t play.

Here’s one more: God doesn’t play the game of religious rituals that don’t change and transform us into doers of God’s will. Doing whatever we want and then engaging in religious rituals hoping God will bless us is exactly what Isaiah is talking about in today’s lesson from the 58th chapter of his prophecy. In relaying God’s voice, Isaiah tells the people:

“Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.”

God is not playing human games. Fasting and the wearing of sackcloth don’t mean anything if we continue to follow our ways and ignore God’s priorities. It’s as true for us as it was for the Israelites. God doesn’t care if you go to church and take Communion if that isn’t changing you.

So what is God’s game? Isaiah lays it out quite clearly:

“to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

The righteousness of God has everything to do with relationship, regardless of the human money, political or religious games in play. Breaking down injustice, releasing the oppressed (no matter what the form of oppression is), feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless poor, clothing the naked, building relationships across our divisions – this is God’s game.

It’s the work we are called to when Jesus speaks of us being salt and light for the world. When Jesus speaks of the salt losing its saltiness, we have trouble understanding what he’s talking about. But in his day, salt was used as a catalyst in the community cooking ovens to keep the fires burning. When that salt’s catalyzing capacity wore out, it was taken out of the oven and thrown out. Jesus’ point is we are to be the catalyst to keep the vision of the kingdom burning and alive. Isaiah names the signs of the kingdom and God’s priorities, Jesus tells us we are to be the catalyst that ignites the work of the kingdom on earth no matter what human games surround us.

In Baptism, you and I were claimed and marked as Christ’s own forever. Each week in the Eucharist we are reoriented to offer our lives as living sacrifices to embody the signs and work of God’s game and not our own. God’s call to a different kind of fast in Isaiah is a call to fast from the human games that hurt, oppress and exploit God’s beloved. It is a call to trust we are beloved of God and that we have been given everything to be the catalyzing salt to bring the light of Christ to the world in real tangible ways for the healing of the world.