Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 22B, October 4, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

So how about those readings? One of the things that my clergy colleagues and I often do when we see each other in the week before particularly troublesome readings is ask one another, “are you preaching on Sunday?” And if the answer is no, the response is, “lucky!” If the answer is yes, the follow up question is, “What are you going to do with those readings?” This past week one of my friends gloated that she had decided to celebrate the Feast of St. Francis and to use the readings assigned for that celebration. I thought, “huh, I’ve never wanted everyone to bring their animals to church on a Sunday so badly!” And I thought of the ways that colleagues turn to one another for perspective, guidance, sympathy, insight. Debate is often a part of that engagement.

You know, it’s plausible that that’s what the Pharisees were doing with Jesus. Perhaps you’ve heard Rabbi Berman assert that Jesus’ teaching, both style and content was Pharisaic. In Jesus’ time, Pharisees weren’t the bad guys any more than Episcopal priests are bad guys – or maybe I should say they weren’t any less bad than Episcopal priests! I can imagine that some Pharisees were saying to Jesus, “what do you tell people who want to divorce?” What do you do with Moses’ teachings? They all knew what Moses’ teachings were, but debates about what was permissible in first century Palestine included whether women as well as men could initiate a divorce, what legitimate reasons were and were not. It wasn’t that different from debates in the last century in the United States. What do we do with Moses’ teachings? What do we do with Jesus’ teachings? Well, we don’t use them as blunt objects to hurt one another – that is just the opposite of how they were intended to be used. Moses’ teachings and Jesus’ teachings were intended to protect the community, particularly the most vulnerable members of the community. About this particular passage, Biblical commentator Sharyn Dowd has written, “It is no less than blasphemous to use the Markan prohibition of divorce to encourage terrified people to remain in abusive relationships that should not even be dignified with the term “marriage.” [1]

What did Jesus do? Jesus did what he always did. He answered the question with a question. It was a question that asserted that he thought his colleagues were asking the wrong question. Jesus interprets the question as being a version of the question, “how much (or how little) can one do and still be considered faithful?” Wrong question. In reminding them of the creation story, I think Jesus was saying to them, “I want everyone to remember who made you and how you were made.” You were made by God (who is Love) with Love for Love. Jesus was saying, “Remember to whom you belong and why you’re here.” Jesus is saying, “Remember God’s joy in creating you and in creating others.” He reminds them of Divine intent for the dignity of every human being.

You belong to Love and you are here for Love. You are here to companion others – to be helpmates, partners. Your hardness of heart is keeping you from remembering that. Indeed, Jesus was saying, the law permitting divorce was written because of hardness of heart – to create order and protection for people, one from one another.

We don’t always feel God’s love so abundantly, do we? We don’t always like to give – in the give and take of life. We don’t always even know that we have anything TO give, especially when we’re in conflict. So here we have the Pharisees testing Jesus on the lawfulness of divorce. What they’re really driving at is, how much (or how little) can I do and still be faithful?

Jesus’ emphasis is always on the fullness of life – on the full part of lawful or faithful. Ironically, spiritual fullness is materially spare. According to some people who count such things up, in the Bible there are only 272 references in the Bible to believing, 371 references to prayer, 714 references to love and loving, and, get this, 2,171 references to possessions and giving. [2] ions and giving – nearly 10 times the number of references to believing. It gives you a pretty good idea of what the writers of the primary narratives of our faith, thought was most important for our relationship with God, doesn’t it? And it gives you a pretty good idea of how hard it must be for people of faith to get it – if the writers had to keep writing about possessions and giving.

Theologian Walter Brueggemann asserts that the Bible story is a narrative of God’s abundance as an alternative to the culturally dominant theme of scarcity. The Bible story, he says is the drama of “more than enough” in the face of fear that there won’t be enough. Brueggemann says that the cultural narrative of scarcity “posits that the past is barren of miracles and the only way to get anywhere is to invent yourself and scramble for whatever you can get. A past without gifts and a future without hope gives a present as an arena for anxiety–an anxiety endlessly stirred by those who generate the great theology of scarcity – a theology which says our neighbors are a threat; which creates more suicides, murders and prisons…. We must help people know that the narrative of abundance is ours, that the true story of our lives is an ‘invitation to the wilderness where there is bread.’” [3]

Some of you were here a few weeks ago when Mary Beth Mills-Curran from Episcopal City Mission visited to talk with us about the many ways we employ our building here at 15 Newbury as a mission asset. In the forum following the service, she asked each person in the gathered group to name one favorite spot in this building. I’d love to invite you to think about what your answer to that question is. Not long after, I was reading a reflection written by one of the ten transitional deacons ordained in this sanctuary last June, who wrote about not being able to stop smiling at the statue of Jesus in the center of our reredos – arms extended in a gesture of ongoing kindness and welcome, pointing to the communion table. The kindness and welcome of Jesus is carved in stone at Emmanuel Church. Receive it as a little child – with a capacity for wonder and imagination, whole heartedly, with joy! This IS the kids’ table! The grace of God, the realm of Love, is always being offered to you again and again.

The last two weeks I’ve read poetry to you from the pulpit. In the immediate aftermath of our nation’s latest episode of mass murder by guns, I have another poem to read. It’s from Naomi Shihab Nye called, “Kindness.” It goes like this:

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

 

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian

in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

 

Before you know kindness as the

deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as

the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

 

Then it is only kindness that makes

any sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters

and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend. [4]

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