Epiphany 5A, 5 Feb. 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

• Isaiah 58:1-12. You will be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
• 1 Corinthians 2:1-16. Those who are spiritual discern all things.
• Matthew 5:13-20. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

O God of mercy, salt and light, 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.

As tempting as it is to preach about salt and light, I am so struck by Jesus’ teaching that he has not come to abolish the law (that is, Torah) or the prophets (that is Isaiah and the others). Jesus says, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away [which, by the way, has not happened yet], not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law.” Just last week a visitor was marveling at the fact that a parish and a synagogue share this sacred space as well as sharing teaching, pastoral care, and outreach. The person said, “But Jews are waiting for the Messiah, right? And Christians believe the Messiah has already come.” I replied that Jews are waiting for the first coming and Christians are waiting for the second coming. We’re all waiting and wondering how (and whether) we will recognize the Messiah. Meanwhile, at 15 Newbury Street, we’re doing what we can to repair the world, which we all agree is in desperate need of healing. [1]

This morning we’ve heard two of the most beautiful passages in the book of Isaiah and then again in Mason Bynes’ motet. In Chapter 58 of Isaiah, the prophet points out the gap between the intention of the worshipping community and the actual behavior of the same community during the post-Babylonian exile, when people were experiencing confusion and disappointment; they were a community in deep conflict. Back in the olden days, according to the prophet Isaiah, there was a desire among the people for worship that felt and sounded good, a desire to experience a sense of right-relationship with God in worship, to experience transcendence. But, according to Isaiah, their beautiful worship lacked integrity because of a deep and dishonest inconsistency between the ritual practices and the daily lives of the people when they were out in the community, between the intention of the words of their lips and the meditations of their hearts, and the impact of the ways they were living their day-to-day lives. 

According to Isaiah, this was a matter of life and death: thus, the command to sound off like a trumpet call, like the shofar. Cry out that worship that is eager for the nearness of the divine but self-absorbed, self-interested, or self-satisfied is false and will never result in the long-term well-being of the community. According to Isaiah, the Holy One desires our work to loosen the chains of economic and political injustice, undo the bindings of exploitation in the workplace, let people who are oppressed go free, cancel debts, and make reparations. And if that’s not clear enough, Isaiah says, it’s about sharing our food, our shelter, and our clothing and about not hiding ourselves from people who are our own kin by virtue of being human. In the Biblical terms, it’s never about what we can spare or afford; it’s about sharing what we have.

In his fiery commentary on the book of Isaiah, Walter Brueggemann says that to spend any time arguing about whether this means “face-to-face charity or refers to public policy…is to miss the urgency of the mandate.” He asserts that the three requirements of sharing food, shelter, and clothing speak against a selfish preoccupation with one’s own needs and passions, against individualism, in order to assert that we are members one of another. [2] We are members one of another, in here and out there. 

The best part of this passage in Isaiah, though, is the assurance of what happens when we live as if we understood that we are members of one another, as if we went about our days sharing our food, shelter, and clothing. Then our light would burst through like the dawn and healing would spring up quickly. Our vindicator would smooth the way ahead of us and the presence of God, Who is Love, would have our backs. Then we would be like a watered garden, like a spring whose waters do not fail. Our ancient ruins would be rebuilt and our foundations, restored. We would be called repairers of the fallen walls and restorers of desirable places to live. Personally, I can’t think of anything I would rather have us be like than a watered garden and a spring whose waters do not fail. I can’t think of anything that I would rather have us be called than repairers of the breach or restorers of blessed inhabitation. How wonderful it would be to have the reputation of being able to fix what is so broken, to be able to make the community livable again!

Regrettably, the reading by ending at Verse 12 misses the conclusion: 

If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on that day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of God honorable, then you shall take delight in God and God will make you ride high and will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob.

Isaiah‘s prophetic word is to remind the people of the ethical demands of the love of neighbor and the love of God. Keeping the Sabbath holy is essential to the wellbeing of the community. In Chapter 60, Isaiah calls out to the community to rise and shine because the glory of God has risen upon them, not because of their faithfulness, but because of God’s faithfulness to them.

The apostle Paul was writing from Ephesus his letter that we call First Corinthians to the congregation in Corinth, a gifted congregation experiencing conflict about ethical issues of worship and praxis: how to pray well and how to live well in community. It was not just a disagreement, but a power struggle that Paul was addressing. Although his response to the church in Corinth is sixteen chapters long, we only hear the second chapter, a piece of his argument to them about what matters. The cause of the problems in the church in Corinth is clearly stated later in Chapter 11: “The contempt of the rich for the poor…those who have houses and plenty to eat despise and humiliate those who are hungry and have nothing.” [3] Paul reminds the congregation that the power of Love is so much stronger than death; and the centrality of Love is the essential ingredient in all things good: Love at the beginning, at the end, in all times and all places along the way. Love at the bare minimum requires sharing the food, shelter, and clothing we have.

The Gospel of Matthew has some things to say about hypocrisy and conflict as well; and, the scribes and Pharisees are often Matthew’s punching bags. They should not be our punching bags, however, since Episcopalians are far more like scribes and Pharisees than Jesus’ earliest disciples ever were.  Jesus was speaking directly to his disciples, not to the crowds in this passage. To our ears, Matthew can sound anti-Jewish when nothing could be further from the truth. Matthew was most likely a scribe himself; and, Jesus was likely trained by the Pharisaic Movement. In the Gospel of Matthew scribes and Pharisees are righteous; and, they get blamed for weighing others down with heavy burdens, for not lifting a finger to help, for trusting in the money on the altar but not the Holy One, and for tithing while ignoring God’s call for mercy and justice. The accusations are like one Episcopal parish calling out another  for not living out the Gospel. It’s not that the accusations aren’t apt, but it’s an inside-the-family argument; and, according to Matthew, it is also a matter of life and death.

The scribes and Pharisees were righteous and devout. So what might it mean that, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”? Following Jesus certainly doesn’t mean that you don’t have to pay attention to the commandments or the Law, or the Torah, also known as The Way. What does the kingdom of heaven (aka the kingdom of God) mean in the Gospel of Matthew? He never says exactly what the kingdom is, only what it is like. But we can be clear that, for Matthew, the kingdom of heaven is not a territory or a place of God, but the power or rule of God. The term kingdom of heaven is a deep metaphor or a way of thinking about the meaning of life with these four essential ideas, which are outlined by Second Testament scholar Eugene Boring: [4]

1. The Holy One is without a superior and without a peer.
2. Anti-Love forces are real, and they try to disrupt Love’s power, not just by failing to live up to an ideal but by giving allegiance to other competing authorities, like economic, or political or military power. People are victimized by anti-Love forces.
3. The Holy One has given kinship (that is, special status with special obligations) to those who accept the discipline of a life devoted to compassion, mercy, and justice (right relationship; that is, the commitment to love neighbor as self).
4. The consummation of the realm of heaven (the realm of Love or God) is present and ongoing, but not complete.

Not being able to enter this way of being, this meaning of life, is beyond tragic. In her book Grace Eventually, Anne Lamott writes that she realizes that we are not kept from the kingdom of heaven for not forgiving, we are kept out by not forgiving. [5] We are not kept out for not going above and beyond basic righteousness, we are kept out by not going above and beyond it. Jesus’ point in the Gospel of Matthew is not so much theological as it is ethical; his purpose is to answer the question, “So how shall we live?” And the answer is justly, mercifully, and compassionately, no matter what, no matter where, no matter who.

1. Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66, in the Westminster Bible Companion series (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), p. 186.
2. Ibid., p. 189.
3. Laurence L. Welborn, “On the discord in Corinth: 1 Corinthians 1-4 and ancient politics,” Journal of Biblical Literature 106 no. 1, March 1987, p. 93.
4. M. Eugene Boring, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).
5. Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually):  Thoughts on Faith (NY: Riverhead Books, 2007).