June 26, 2022: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
Where to start? At the end? At the beginning? Somewhere in-between?
The last six weeks have been an avalanche of news across the nation. Men, women, and children shot dead in church, while shopping for groceries, while in school. Legislation was finally passed to do something – anything – about this gun violence epidemic, in the same week where the Supreme Court determined that restrictions on carrying guns are unconstitutional. War continues to ravage the nation of Ukraine. We have come to learn just how close we all came to losing our democratic republic to those with a desire for power at all costs. And yesterday, the Supreme Court did what was leaked months earlier, and removed the right of women to make decisions about their healthcare, while one of the justices made it clear that marriage equality and access to contraception should be the next targets of the court.
“And in the streets, the children screamed, the lovers cried and the poets dreamed, but not a word was spoken. The church bells all were broken.”
For some reason, those words from the iconic song “American Pie,” came into my heart yesterday while praying about all that has been, and what may be. The lyrics speak to the loss of innocence and the turbulent changes of the 1960s – something that seems familiar today.
Yesterday’s decision by the highest court in our land brought shock, pain, and fear, to many, and joy, relief, and hope to others. All of it mixed in the streets of the nation, and is layered on top of all the other emotions we have been feeling from all that has happened these past weeks, really years. I think many of us can resonate in any month with the opening parts of that pop song, “But February made me shiver. With every paper I’d deliver. Bad news on the doorstep. I couldn’t take one more step.”
Taking steps just seems so much harder to do with each passing day. How then do we, as followers of Jesus, make our way in this world where it seems that cruelty and hate reign supreme, where division threatens to tear us at our core, and where bad news on the doorstep seems a daily occurrence that makes taking a breath, much less a single step, a monumental effort…if we even try?
When looking over the readings for today, I took heart from the letter of St. Paul to the Galatians. He begins this part of the epistle with “Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” St. Paul is talking about what it means to be a follower of Jesus at a time when some were teaching that these earliest converts needed to be circumcised and follow the dietary restrictions of the Jewish faithful.
But Paul wanted them to understand that those laws are for the people of the covenant, not for non-Jewish followers of Jesus. For they were to follow the law of Christ, which he reminds them is very simple: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” To be clear, St. Paul – a good and faithful Jew (as were all the earliest apostles) – was not trying to denigrate Judaism, so let’s not go down that anti-Semitic rabbit hole of hate. Rather, Paul wanted the people of this early church to understand that that their identity is marked, not by dogma, doctrine, tradition, or law, but by what he calls “the fruit of the Spirit” – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
This is what sets us free, as St. Paul makes clear…but why, and why do we need to hear this now?
In ethics discussions, there is said to be a choice of what is most important: right outcome, right rules, right relationship. Which one you prioritize determines the answer to your ethical question. For followers of Jesus, there is only one choice: right relationship.
And in understanding that we are called into right relationship – relationship rooted in Christ’s love – we, as a people of the church, are called to love, first, last, and always.
To be clear, this is not easy to do, nor is it easy to figure out how to do it – this loving one another thing – especially when we feel that the other is the reason we are in the pain we feel. Yet this love doesn’t mean we have to like what others do or say. If that were true, many of us would not love our families, nor they us. No, this love instead is rooted in humility. Humility, as I have noted before, isn’t about beating oneself up, but recognizing the truth of who we are…and who the other is – both children of God – both deeply flawed in our humanity.
And with this latest bit of news dropped on our doorstep, that of the decision to remove a woman’s access to abortion as a constitutional right, we find in the position of the Episcopal Church, just that type of humility and love that recognizes that there is no easy answer that provides a right set of rules or a right outcome. Instead, it is once again right relationship that must triumph over all. So, we stand on the side of love.
By that I mean that the Episcopal Church has affirmed both that life is precious, and that a woman’s healthcare decisions are hers to make. “In a series of statements over the past decades, the Church has declared that “we emphatically oppose abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection, or any reason of mere convenience.” At the same time, since 1967, The Episcopal Church has maintained its “unequivocal opposition to any legislation on the part of the national or state governments which would abridge or deny the right of individuals to reach informed decisions [about the termination of pregnancy] and to act upon them.””[1]
Some may see the our very Anglican via media – or middle way in this – but really it is about being focused on one thing – loving our neighbor as Jesus commanded – our child neighbor and our mother neighbor. For while we can easily understand that all of life is created by God, and therefore must be respected and protected, we also understand that we don’t get to pick and choose which life is most important, or for that matter, which parts of God’s creation.
There are two stories that someone shared with me, and with their permission, I now am going to share them with you. The names are made up to protect their identity. I share them that we may perhaps come to see why there are no easy decisions here.
This first is about a woman I will call Janine “who…at her first ultrasound she and her husband were so excited to see their baby for the first time – then they realized the technician was staring at the monitor with a look of horror on her face. Further testing revealed a serious genetic anomaly and multiple severe deformities. “Not compatible with life,” the doctors said; there was zero chance the baby could even be born alive, much less survive afterwards. The doctors expected a miscarriage before the third trimester, [and added that] it was a miracle she hadn’t miscarried in the first. Now, Janine was beginning to show, and strangers were beginning to congratulate her. Already in great anguish about losing her first child, the thought of spending another month or two going about her life “with my belly growing with death,” she said, while unknowing people continued to congratulate her, simply was more than she could bear. For their part, her doctors were united in saying that an abortion at 4 months was far safer for Janine’s health and future fertility than a miscarriage at 5 or 6 months. Janine was induced at the local maternity hospital, which she described as a nightmare – she labored for 24 hours before finally delivering a corpse. This grim story does have a happy ending: Janine and her husband underwent genetic testing, which ruled out their being carriers of any genetic issues – their first baby’s issues were a total fluke – and they went on to have two healthy children.
The second story is about Angela, who was in her 4th month when she discovered a lump in her arm which turned out to be malignant. The tumor was removed but she urgently needed further treatment. The doctors told her chemo would kill the baby outright; radiation was a possibility, but so risky that no one wanted to attempt it for fear of a malpractice lawsuit. Her doctors strongly urged an abortion so she could receive full treatment immediately. Angela, [having the right to make her own decision,] chose to risk her life to give her child a chance. She searched until she finally found a radiologist willing to treat her, with a thick lead shield over her belly; this was to buy time for the baby to be delivered before she started chemo. At 8 months, her doctors judged that chemo could no longer be postponed, and Angela was induced. Tragically, her baby died hours after birth of a cause unrelated to her cancer or the radiation. Again, this sad story has a happy ending: Angela’s cancer was treated successfully, and she and her husband went on to have two healthy children.
I share these stories to underscore that all life is precious – the born and the yet to be born – the pregnant woman and the child – and being in right relationship with one does not negate our responsibility to the other. There are no “right rules” or “right outcome,” only “right relationship” with God and one another. We believe in the sanctity of life because all life comes from God, which I hold as a very pro-life position. Yet we also believe that we cannot be pro-life and force women to carry a child that will kill them, or was conceived out of rape or incest, nor can we restrict her access to contraception to prevent that pregnancy and then claim she decided to get pregnant and therefore must “pay for her choice.” For that matter, we cannot be pro-life and put kids in cages on our border, or value gun ownership more than the lives of children in our schools. We cannot be pro-life and turn our backs on racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other ways we oppress children of God, nor can we pollute the very air and water our children need to live.
Jesus calls us to love – unconditionally – and that type of love will not be easy. The only path forward is to always consider right relationship above all other things – and yes, to be pro-life in all the ways we are called to be. Yet that also means we are called to love those whose values, opinions, and actions we find abhorrent. And we will not always succeed.
We will find our anger rising up against another child of God rather than injustice itself. That is why we have the Peace and the Confession. The Peace is not a mini-Coffee hour, but a time when we are to reconcile to all others in the church before coming to this table to receive the gift of grace found in the very real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Do we do this, or do we greet joyfully only those we like?
And the confession in our liturgy is not a thing to be read without feeling, but an acknowledgement of our nature to sin against one another and therefore against God. Likely we all can say that on any given day we have not loved God with all our heart, and we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. Yet the church recognizes that there are times when a deeper moment of reconciliation is needed, and for that we have private confession – called reconciliation of the penitent in our Book of Common Prayer – a liturgy that all should come to know, because within it is a path to the healing grace that comes from God alone.
In the days and weeks to come, as we process the latest news dropped on our doorstep, as we cry and dream, rise up and resist, rejoice and hope, let us remember St. Paul’s exhortation that because “Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” And that yoke, as Paul makes clear, is broken by the gifts of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And the greatest of these is love.
That is our clarion call – the bells of our faith – and despite what that song will tell you – our church bells are not broken, but ring loudly today – through us – through our voice. They ring out to proclaim that we may not be in full agreement with one another – we may feel the music of our heart has died, while others are singing a different tune that is dissonant to us – we may find our “hands clenched in fists of rage” at the evil on display before us – yet we will stand firm in our unconditional love.
For we know that we are bound up in chains whenever we hate, and are freed by the transformative power of love.
Love that defies common sense.
Love that is courageous in the face of hate.
Love that builds up, not tears down.
Love that finds its beating heart in the grace of God – the source of all life.
Amen.
For the audio, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here (also available on Audible):
[1] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ogr/summary-of-general-convention-resolutions-on-abortion-and-womens-reproductive-health/
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
June 26, 2022
Third Sunday After Pentecost – Year C – Proper 8 – Track 1
1st Reading – 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20
2nd Reading – Galatians 5:1,13-25
Gospel – Luke 9:51-62
