Proper 8C, 26 June 2022, The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz.
1 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14. You have asked a hard thing….(Keep your eyes on me as I am taken).
Galatians 5:1,13-25. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Luke 9:51-62. Follow me.
O God our help and our hope, 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.
Buckle up. On Friday, I was listening to a recording of Mahalia Jackson singing the African American spiritual “Keep your hand on the plow, hold on,” when the news came that the Supreme Court of the United States had overturned Roe vs. Wade, eliminating the Constitutional right to the bodily autonomy of people who are pregnant. It hit me like the news of a loved-one’s death after a prolonged illness. The news seemed sudden and felt devastating, even though I expected it. It’s like a gut punch or, to put a finer point on it, for some of us it’s a uterine punch. The majority decision that reproductive autonomy, when it comes to pregnancy, is a states-rights issue rather than a human-rights issue, will immediately eliminate access to legal abortions in 20 states, for about 25.5 million people with a uterus who are of reproduction age (which starts at about 12, by the way, and can go beyond 50).
The authors of the Constitution, and constitutional amendments since, have never explicitly provided for people with uteruses to have autonomy over their own bodies. (But Benjamin Franklin included a recipe for potion for inducing abortion in his mathematics textbook according to author Molly Farrell, who writes, “To colonial Americans [pregnancy] termination was as normal as the ABCs and 123s.”) [1] To be sure, when the original authors of the Constitution said people, they meant white, property-owning men. Later amendments abolished slavery (and simultaneously provided for mass incarceration, so we exchanged mass enslavement for imprisonment). In 1870, the 15th Amendment gave all citizens the right to vote (except women, that is). It took another 50 years for women’s suffrage, but women’s suffrage never meant equal rights; and it still doesn’t. The 1972 Equal Rights Amendment failed to be ratified by the necessary majority of states. I know you already know this, but being pregnant means considerable personal risk of death, physical disability, mental illness, life-altering interruption of education or career, and financial hardship. Pregnancy and childbirth can be particularly punishing for poor people. Healthcare decisions about whether to continue a pregnancy should not be made based on the personal beliefs of people who are neither the patients nor their medical providers; and, they certainly should not be made based on a distorted version of history.
If you’re wondering whether I am going out on a limb, preaching about rights for reproductive health as fundamental human right, I can assure you I am not. On record since 1967, the Episcopal Church honors an individual’s right to make an informed decision about continuing pregnancy. We are a pro-choice denomination; but of course, that doesn’t mean everyone agrees. The Episcopal Church belongs to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. We acknowledge that whenever there is a decision to end a pregnancy, there is loss; but there are many circumstances where this loss may be for the greater good. It’s not just that an abortion can be the lesser of two evils; abortion can be a blessing. The Episcopal Church unequivocally opposes “any action that would abridge the right of a woman (or anyone with a uterus) to reach an informed decision about the termination of her (or their) pregnancy, or that would limit the access of pregnant persons to a safe means of acting upon their decision.” If you want to learn more about the Episcopal Church’s theological position about reproductive rights, see its webpage for Government Relations. [2]
Do you know what the Bible says about abortion? Nothing, but that’s not because nobody had ever heard of it. The earliest written evidence of induced abortions is from an Egyptian papyrus from 1550 BCE. [6] There are ancient extra-biblical writings and teachings both in Judaism and in early Christianity that indicate priority for the life of the mother. Life in the Bible never means mere survival; it means well-being. What if, however, the Bible forbade abortion? What if early Christians considered women subservient to men? What if the punishment for a woman caught in adultery was death by stoning? What if the New Testament of the Bible endorsed slavery? Oh wait, it does. So, we know what to do when Holy Scripture describes or prescribes things that are wrong or unjust. We understand that we have a moral obligation to do better; we have a moral imperative to stop weaponizing scripture and trust that new truths are always being revealed by the Spirit of Holiness. We have a moral responsibility to help those in need and love our neighbors, and that includes neighbors who happen to be people of color or poor, or who happen to have uteruses.
All three of our scripture readings have things to say about the costs of eschewing injustice. Injustice in the Bible means the uneven or uncompassionate distribution of resources and mercy. All three of our scripture readings are about the cost of being a seeker of greater truth. You might have discerned by listening to the prayer that I pray before preaching to you, that seeking always and everywhere after truth can be costly; and I’m not just talking about money, although money will probably be involved. Being a seeker of truth is costly in terms of all kinds of resources, reserves, and reputations. According to the Apostle Paul, it will cost our self-indulgence, our pride, our enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, drunkenness (or druggedness) and carousing; it will cost our immoralities and our sorceries (if we have any), and it will definitely cost our idolatry, whether we are worshiping power, wealth, or the Constitution of the United States.
What inspiration might we glean from our sacred texts for figuring out how to move forward at a time like this? In 2 Kings we learn about how Elisha got the capacity to carry on Elijah’s work after he was “taken up.” Elisha had been traveling with and learning from Elijah for many years. He had burned his farming equipment and slaughtered his oxen, thereby destroying his means of income, his livelihood; and he left his home so that he could travel with Elijah. (Many years and a lot of miles have passed in the story of Elijah since our reading from last week about Elijah hearing the voice of the Holy One in the cave asking, “What are you doing here, Elijah? Come out and get to work.”) When Elijah asked Elisha what he could do for him before being taken up, Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. It’s literally the mouth or edge of Elijah’s spirit that Elisha is hoping to inherit. Elijah’s response is, “Oh, that’s a hard thing that you’re asking for.” Elijah knows that “twice his mouth, a double edge” is going to be a hard way to live! Elisha did go on to perform twice as many wondrous deeds as his predecessor; and he is revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In the days to come, we could be so bold as to ask for some of Elijah’s spirit to speak truth to power, to come out more and more as people of faith, who support civil rights and well-being for the already born.
In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he’s writing about the cost of freedom. He’s arguing that the Galatians were free from the burdens of conditions of membership that others were trying to place on them. They were free from behavioral codes that other Jesus-followers were asserting. (This isn’t a Christianity v. Judaism argument – it’s one of a group of Jesus missionaries arguing with another group of Jesus missionaries. Paul was asserting that codes and conditions that the others were trying to impose don’t count. The only thing that counts is faith working, or made effective, through love of one’s neighbor. “Neighbor” in both Testaments of the Bible, means any person encountered in everyday life, or someone with whom one shares a boundary, or someone with whom there is an intimacy, or a fellow citizen. [3] But lest you think that that definition excludes anyone, the Torah instructs that anyone who resides in your land must be treated as the citizens are treated: you shall love the alien as yourself as well as your neighbor as yourself. In Galatians, Paul is asserting that it’s all for, and only for, the purpose of loving one another that we have been made free in Christ. Loving one another is the great benefit and loving one another entails great cost. In the days to come we could extend and expend our love even more in every way we can, especially to those in great need.
And then there’s our reading from Luke. In Luke’s account, Jesus had begun his journey toward Jerusalem where he would be “taken up” (just like Elijah). He was looking for some hospitality along the way, and when he encountered hostility instead, his associates enthusiastically offered to annihilate the people who did not receive Jesus. Now we’re not talking about a lack of hospitality like they didn’t invite him in for tea. This lack of hospitality in biblical times was a matter of life and death, and offering hospitality to travelers was a fundamental obligation. (It still is.) The disciples were right to be incensed. Still, Jesus must have been thinking, “how many times do I have to tell these guys that violence only begets more violence?”
It seems that the lack of hospitality and the disciples’ knee jerk response to retaliate put Jesus in a very bad mood because next, as they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Rather than expressing his gratitude, Jesus’ response echoes Elijah’s response to Elisha, a warning not to be naïve. Jesus warned that following him would not be at all comfortable or safe. Another person came along, and Jesus said, “Follow me.” The person said, “First let me go and bury my father.” In other words, “I have a family obligation, then I’ll get back to you.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the realm of God.” This sounds shocking and downright rude. I don’t want to make excuses for Jesus, (he certainly had reasons to be grumpy) but I am persuaded by the opinion in the Greek lexicon [4] that this saying is an idiom, that means, “the matter in question is not the real issue,” or “that is not the point.” Just like we might say to someone, “that’s apples and oranges,” meaning, “you’re talking about two different things.” In our idiomatic conversation, we don’t mean literally that someone is talking about fruit. The lexicon suggests that Jesus is not talking literally about dead people burying other dead people. Jesus was saying, “your family obligations are not the real issue…[That’s] not what’s keeping you from following me….go and announce the justice and peace of God.”
And a third person said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the realm of God.” Who can be fit, then? Who among us doesn’t look back from time to time or wouldn’t want to say goodbye to our family before we embark on a journey? But Jesus likens saying goodbye to looking back while operating a plow. A plow in Jesus’ time required constant focused attention. Diverting one’s attention from oxen even for a short while could lead to disaster. The modern-day analogy might be driving down the Mass Pike while fixing one’s eyes on the rear-view mirror.
When Jesus is saying “follow me,” he wants a commitment to the good news for the poor. He wants a massive change – a revolution in our lifestyle, a seismic shift in our attention and focus on the well-being of those who are not faring well at all. But in case we hear those accounts of folks who aren’t fit to follow and wonder how we could make the cut, in the very next verse, Luke writes, “after this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. That makes me think that maybe it’s hard to be fit to follow, but the standards for going out ahead to prepare a place for the Lord are not impossibly high – you just need a buddy! Maybe what we are fit for is being the advance team, the warm-up band, the roadies. Maybe our version of the question, “what would Jesus do,” can be “where does Jesus need us to be?” What would Jesus want for the people that we encounter in all of the places he intends to go? Probably in addition to love, it’s mercy, and healthcare, food and clothing, shelter and friendship — come when it may and cost what it will. The Good News is when you spend down everything that you have, then the grace of God covers the difference. Just keep your hand on the plow and hold on.
- Molly Farrell, Slate, May 5, 2022.
- https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ogr/summary-of-general-convention-resolutions-on-abortion-and-womens-reproductive-health/
- Michael Fagenblat, “The Concept of Neighbor in Jewish and Christian Ethics,” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 541.
- Louw – Nida Lexicon.