February 24, 2019: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
It is great to be back after a brief rest, but it would seem the news – inside and outside of the church – did not take a vacation. If only, but I will get to all of that in a minute.
I so very much wanted to jump into that story about good old Joseph and his band of brothers. But since the lectionary folks drop us at the end in the lesson from Genesis we heard this morning – right at the epic plot twist reveal moment (think like the “I am your Father, Luke” in Star Wars – “Hey big bros – guess what…) it robs the story of its deeply profound message. But, not to fear, as it is also a message we hear in our gospel today, and given the news, this message is something we really need to pay attention to.
It’s the sermon on the plain, not a mount, mountain, high place or any such thing. That’s only in the gospel of Matthew, where that author was constantly connecting Jesus to Davidic Kingship for his Jewish audience. But for Luke, who is writing for gentiles who could care less about that, Jesus is not visited by kings at his birth, but by shepherds, he begins his ministry with a proclamation about being there to “bring good news to the poor” and “release to the captives,” and, he doesn’t stand on a mountain above the people when speaking about who is blessed, but speaks to them eye to eye – at their level.
What is important, and connected to not only the Joseph story, but also the Psalm we heard today, is what he said on that plain, and it is likely as familiar to us as Joseph’s technicolor dream coat. Jesus says a lot of things, but the basic point is this: Love your enemies, do good to everyone regardless of how they treat you, do not judge and you will not be judged, forgive and you will be forgiven. And of course – do to others what you would have done to you – because, well, karma – you know, what you put out in the universe is what you reap back ten fold.
All of this is inherently good teaching – of course it is, right? I mean, it is Jesus our Lord and Savior after all. It is also not easy to do, is it. Especially when it is the church who is the one harming others…harming those you love…harming you.
As I said, this has been quite the week of news related to the larger church – not only in our Anglican Communion, but for our Roman Catholic and United Methodist sisters and brothers too. If perhaps you have been busy with other things, or also on vacation, let me just do a news recap:
In the Roman Catholic church they are rocked once again by allegations of a history of sexual abuse by priests and bishops against children, seminarians, and women in monastic orders, as well as the sin of failing to take action to protect those they were called to love and to serve once they were made aware of this abuse. The pain of those who have suffered as a result, and the pain of those whose trust in their church has been wounded once again, is deep and difficult to bear.
For our United Methodist sisters and brothers, they are meeting over the next several days to determine if the call to full inclusion in the life of the church for LGBT people will result in a split of their denomination. Do they stay united, but deny the full dignity of every human being in the process? Or are there times when a people are called to value justice over unity? The hope of those on both sides of that issue is mixed with pain at what is happening, and despair at what might be.
We in the Episcopal Church know that story well, and we are still experiencing it. Just this week we learned that the spouses of bishops in same sex marriages are not invited to the 2020 Lambeth Conference, the worldwide meeting of bishops in the Anglican Communion to which we belong. The hypocrisy could not be more glaring. The organizers said “the invitation process has also needed to take account of the Anglican Communion’s position on marriage which is that it is the lifelong union of a man and a woman” yet the second spouses of divorced bishops, as well as the multiple wives of some in countries for which that is a custom, are invited.
Some can rightly argue, and I do, that “biblical marriage” is a slippery slope – multiple wives, Levirate marriage (where a woman is expected to marry her dead husband’s brother), and concubines, as well as a definitive declaration against divorce, are all part of the biblical marriage picture if one actual reads the scriptures. If you are going to insist that marriages be biblically based before you include a spouse in a church event, then it should be applied evenly to all people – so, if one or both in the marriage have been previously divorced – they should have to stay home too.
Ahhh, but you see, it isn’t really about the bible is it. It really is about exactly what the United Methodists are struggling with now – exclusion of a part of God’s beloved community from the table. And exclusion is a form of abuse that is not centered on love, the very core of all that Jesus teaches us, but on our ability as humans to fear what we do not understand, what we do not know, what we cannot control. We just use the bible to justify our bigotry – just as we did with slavery, and we still do today with gender and LGBT full inclusion.
This ability for us to lose our way is the reason that Jesus is so very focused on loving our enemies is. He knew that the biggest enemy lies within each of us. Last year I shared with you a story, and it bears repeating now. It is about aCherokee elder of the tribe walking in the woods with his grandson, and he said to him, “My son, there’s a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It’s anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, and ego. The other is Good. It’s joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth.” The grandson thought about it and asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?” The grandfather simply replied, “The one you feed.”
The one you feed.
Well, the first step in feeding the right wolf is to understand that they are both there – both darkness and light – within each of us. Jesus is asking us to recognize in ourselves, and in others, this duality that we might make a conscious choice toward love, forgiveness, and grace.
But we must be clear about what we are being called to in this choice, because if we are not, then we run the risk of causing great harm to those who are already suffering. Part of forgiveness and loving ones enemies is letting go of the idea that the past can be changed, but to be clear, it is NOT about allowing them to continue to abuse you or forgetting what happened. That wound must be honored. The remaining scar will never go away, but it will be a sign of healing. Forgiveness is about loving oneself enough to allow the grace of God to be present within you to fill those broken and wounded places – a healing, not a forgetting. It is about allowing yourself to be released from the bondage of hate, anger, bitterness, and despair – to stop feeding the wrong wolf. It should never be pushed on anyone, but just offered as a door, a path, from the darkness to the light. And finally, it is not something easy to get to for most of us, and in some instances, for egregious circumstances, even those of us most faithful cannot get there…and yet we must try.
So why is this love and forgiveness so important – enough that Jesus hammers it home all the time, enough that our scriptures are filled with reminders about it. Well, first of all the truth is that forgiveness is really just another form of love – love of God who created us, by loving what God created, including our neighbor, and perhaps most of all – ourselves. And love is about relationship – God’s desire for relationship with us, and God’s desire for us to be in relationship with all of God’s creation. And here why it is so important to God that we do this, that we love deeply, because when we fail to love, we feed the wolf of evil, and that wolf will devour us from the inside out, and in the wake of that spiritual death, feed the wolves of evil in others. So God calls us to love deeply and unconditionally.
And it is this kind of love that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote about in his letter from a Birmingham Jail – written to clergy, including some in our own Episcopal Church, who were trying to tell him to slow down in his pursuit of justice, to not get people all riled up, to not be such an “extremist” disturbing the peace of the status quo. If that sounds familiar, then you have been paying attention to all that news about our church, the United Methodists, and the Roman Catholics.
In that letter, King wrote, “Was not Jesus an extremist in love? — “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice? — “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” … Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? — “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.”…” So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?”
Indeed. What kind of extremists will we be? Which wolf will we feed?
Today the body of Christ is wrestling with disturbing injustice and how we will respond to it. – in our church and around the world. We need only see in the secular news to see what hate can do – a man arrested this week before he had a chance to take his hate into the world in a plan to kill as many people as he could.
We must be agents of love, of justice, of forgiveness, and of peace, because there are far too many feeding the wolf of evil. We have the food of God’s grace that can change the world, but that change must begin within ourselves and within our faith communities.
So getting back to what is happening in our larger church, I want to make something clear. Christian unity is important, but we cannot stand united on the backs of others – those abused and marginalized by our indifference, our neglect, our unwillingness to love fully, deeply, and without judgement. But we must also go a step further – we must also love those with whom we deeply disagree. And if we are to truly be the body of Christ, we must find our way toward forgiveness, and repent when it is we who have been the ones harming another part of God’s creation.
None of this is easy, but it is our life in Jesus Christ, who called us to be an extremist for love. All of it is vital to our being a part of the dream God has for us, a people rooted and bound together as a beloved community.
And so I believe we must pray for our sisters and brothers in the Roman Catholic church – and our own too. All parts of the larger body of Christ must all commit to protecting the innocent, to safe guarding our children, and to loving all people – no matter their gender, race, place of birth, or how they love – unconditionally and without exception.
We need to pray for our Methodist sisters and brothers that they find a way forward that respects the dignity of every human being, and allows all to walk in love.
And, we need to push back and make it clear in our own denomination that everyone should be welcome – no matter what. The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, President of the House of Deputies, said it best when she spoke this week at the meeting of the Executive Council, the governing body between General Conventions of our Episcopal Church:
She said, “If we are not yet able to hold a global meeting of Anglican bishops and spouses to which everyone is invited, then I think we should not be holding global meetings of Anglican bishops and spouses. But that is not at all the same thing as saying that we should not be in relationship with the rest of the Anglican Communion. Let me say that again: that is not at all the same thing as saying that we should not be in relationship with the rest of the Anglican Communion.”
She is right. We will not agree, but we are the via media, and we will always strive to come together around this table – as the body of Christ united in his love – united in his body and blood -the food for the wolf of love inside us. Yet we cannot allow this desire for unity and a middle way to prevent us from standing against injustice. We cannot allow our sisters and brothers in the world, or any part of God’s creation to be marginalized and abused in the name of unity. We must instead be extremists for love – of those who love us, and those who do not. We must always strive to love one another as we love God – and that includes those whose very words and actions stand against all we would spend a lifetime to defend.
We will do this, not only for others, but for our own souls. Jesus knew that those two wolves existed within us, and was imploring us to feed the right one – the one of love. Because one will lead you to life, and the other will lead you to death.
Which one will our church feed?
Which one will you feed?
Your answer will determine the outcome – for you, for the church, and for the world.
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here:
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
February 24, 2019
Seventh Sunday After The Epiphany – Year C
1st Reading – Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42
2nd Reading – 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50
Gospel – Luke 6:27-38
