TWENTY SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Leviticus 19:1-2,15-18

Psalm 1

I Thessalonians 2:1-8

Matthew 22:34-46

Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, you are the holy lawgiver, you are the salvation of your people. By your Spirit renew us in your covenant of love, and train us to care tenderly for all our neighbors, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

 “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40.

“You like to quote all the lovey dovey passages in the Bible to convince me that the Bible is all about God’s love. But you overlook the passages about God ordering the slaughter of Cannan’s women and children, the stoning of people caught in adultery and the killing of those caught worshiping other gods. If you look at the Bible honestly, you have to agree that it is full of barbarism and violence.” So says one of my atheist acquaintances.

“You like to quote all the passages about what God loves. But you never talk about parts of the Bible that describe what God hates-like sin. You never talk about judgement and eternal punishment. That’s in the Bible too. You need to teach and preach the ‘whole counsel’ of God.” So says one of my conservative evangelical acquaintances.

Both critics are correct in one sense. I do not consider that all sections and passages of Scripture have equal weight. Neither did Jesus. He, as well as his opponents, recognized that the whole of scripture must be interpreted through the “Great Commandments,” that is, to love God with all one’s heart, soul and mind and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. On these two commandments, says Jesus, “hang all the law and the prophets.” In truth, the two commandents are one. There is no other way to love God than to love one’s neighbor. As the Apostle John points out, one who does not love the sibling that one has seen, cannot love God who cannot otherwise be seen. I John 4:19-21. John’s gospel, a portion of which you will be reading if your congregation is celebrating Reformation Sunday, takes this proclamation to its ultimate conclusion. Jesus says, “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” John 8:32. And we know that, in the final analysis, the truth is not a single fact, doctrine or philosophical principle. The truth is a person. “I am the way, the truth and the life,” says Jesus to his disciples. The truth is found in “abiding” with Jesus in his life giving mission for the world. John 15:1-11.

My critics also point to a potential pitfall. While disciples of Jesus interpret the scriptures through the lens of Jesus, they do not interpret Jesus apart from the scriptures. Jesus is a First Century Jew steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. His heart and mind were formed by listening to readings from those scriptures, praying the psalms, observing the feasts of Tabernacles, Passover and Atonement. It is impossible to understand rightly the life and teachings of Jesus and the preaching of the early church without reference to Hebrew Scriptures. The New Testament, best understood as an interpretive commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures, represents the earliest witness we have to Jesus. It consists of documents the church, chiefly through the practice and experience of its many congregations, ultimately found to be faithful and reliable in their testimony to Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims and therefore authoritative for the church’s witness and teaching. Extracting Jesus from the biblical environment in which he understood himself and was understood by the early church leaves us with little more than a phantom.

I sometimes worry that those of us who identify as mainline protestants work too hard at smoothing off the rough biblical edges that offend our progressive white, ever polite and culturally squeamish sensibilities. In many instances, the common lectionary omits (frequently without notice) words of Jesus, sections of the prophets and passages of the epistles that offend our liberal sensibilities. I am not suggesting that all biblical material belongs in the lectionary and I am not a fan of presenting Bibles willy-nilly to Sunday school children. See The Bible: Handle with Care and Keep out of the Reach of Children.  But I think it is a mistake for us to ignore biblical material that is offensive, troublesome and out of sync with what we believe to be true and salutary.

The Bible is as messy, complicated, contradictory, shocking and offensive as the world we live in. It is the world in which Jesus lives and from which he comes to meet our own. We need to get to know Cain, Hagar, Tamar, the anonymous sex slave of the Levite in the Book of Judges who was brutally gang raped and murdered as much as we need to learn about Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, Ester, Ruth, Ezrah and Nehemiah. We will surely meet them in our mission and ministry. We need to hear the vengeful and angry words of the psalmists living through the savage destruction of their land and cruel exile. Doing so will shed light on the tragedies we are witnessing in Palestine today and similar conflicts throughout the world. To be a disciple of Jesus is to know and to feel the anguish, outrage and trauma of injustice and oppression. Love that flees from the hard human realities revealed in the pages of scripture is hardly capable of taking shape in the real world of today. It is nothing more than a sentimental ideal.

It takes more than commitment to an ideal to love our world. It requires instead an abiding allegiance to the One who is love and who does love the world-with all its unlovable cracks, crevices and perverse faults. Real love must be strong enough to reach out the hand of friendship, even when it gets a nail driven through it for its trouble. It must outlast the hatred, indifference and resistence it invariably meets in a world such as ours. That is the love on which everything in the Bible hangs.

Here is a poem by Norman Dubie narrating love within a community of lepers that approximates the hard nosed love God has and desires for the world, the love on which hangs “all the law and the prophets.”

The Pennaceese Leper Colony for Women, Cape Cod: 1922

(for Laura)

The island, you mustn’t say, had only rocks and scrub pine;
Was on a blue, bright day like a blemish in this landscape.
And Charlotte who is frail and the youngest of us collects
Sticks and branches to start our fires, cries as they burn
Because they resemble most what she has lost
Or has little of: long fingers, her toes,
And a left arm gone past the elbow, soon clear to her shoulder.
She has the mouth of sea perch. Five of our sisters wear
Green hoods. You are touched by all of this, but not by us.
To be touched by us, to be kissed! Sometimes
We see couples rowing in the distance in yellow coats.

Sometimes they fish with handlines; we offend
Everyone who is offended most
And by everything and everyone. The five goats love us, though,
And live in our dark houses. When they are
Full with milk they climb the steps and beg that
They be milked. Their teats brush the steps and leave thick
Yellow trails of fresh milk. We are all females here.
Even the ghosts. We must wash, of course, in salt water,
But it smarts or maybe even hurts us. Often with a rope
Around her waist Anne is lowered entirely into the water.
She splashes around and screams in pain. Her screams
Sometimes carry clear to the beaches on the Cape.

For us I say so often. For us we say. For us! We are
Human and not individual, we hold everything in common.
We are individual, you could pick us out in a crowd.
You did. This island is not our prison. We are not kept
In; not even by our skin.

Once Anne said she would love to be a Negro or a trout.

We live without you. Father, I don’t know why I have written
You all this; but be proud for I am living, and yet each day
I am less and less your flesh. Someday, eventually, you
Should only think of me as being a lightning bug on the lawn,
Or the Negro fishing at the pond, or the fat trout he wraps
In leaves that he is showing to someone. I’ll be

Most everything for you. And I’ll be gone.

Source: The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems 1967-2001 (c. 2001, Copper Canyon Press). Norman Dubie (b. 1945) is an American poet born in Barre, Vermont. He is the author of twenty-eight collections of poetry. Dubie is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry Magazine and the Modern Poetry Association and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Award. He currently teaches in the graduate Creative Writing Program of Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. You can read more about Norman Dubie and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

¹  In 1905, Penikese (spelled by the poet “Pennacesse”) Island in Buzzard’s Bay off Cape Cod was designated as the site of the first (and only) leper colony in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Throughout its sixteen years of operation, thirty-six victims of Hansen’s disease, commonly referred to as leprosy, lived on the isolated island with a handful of caregivers. The onsite doctor, Frank Parker, M.D. and his wife, Marion, went to great lengths to make their patients comfortable. Their small staff provided good food, fresh air, exercise, entertainment and nursing. At that time, the disease bore the curse of stigma and social ostracism, largely due to public belief that it was highly contagious. The Penikese colony closed in 1922.

TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 45:1-7

Psalm 96:1-13

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Matthew 22:15-22

Prayer of the Day: Sovereign God, raise your throne in our hearts. Created by you, let us live in your image; created for you, let us act for your glory; redeemed by you, let us give you what is yours, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

 “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Matthew 22:21.

This text has often been a springboard for discussions about the role of government vs religion; faith and civic responsibility; patriotism and discipleship. Jesus is heard to say that paying taxes is a legitimate exercise of public duty. The state, kingdom or empire, as the case may be, is owed a duty of loyalty and support-unless and until the state’s demands encroach on those made by God. Thus, one must carefully weigh the requirements of the state against what God demands of us. Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.

The emperor, however, demands a great deal. Roman emperors were worshiped as gods and their imperial cult was inseparable from civic displays of national loyalty and patriotism. Refusal to acknowledge the emperor’s divinity was considered treasonous. The religious leaders in Jesus’ day walked a fine line between placating the government of Rome whose legions occupied their land and controlled their nation while trying to remain true to the affirmation made by God through the Prophet Isaiah in our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures: “I am the Lord, and there is no other.”  Isaiah 45:6.

I am not so sure we American Christians are free of that tension. We like to emphasize the “separation of church and state” in proclaiming our freedom from government influence and control. Yet while our government does not legislate any particular religion as such, it surely makes godlike demands. The most significant of these is the mandate to kill. The state alone is entitled to take life in order to uphold its laws, maintain civil order and protect its national interests. The state has the right to conscript its citizens, you and me, to use lethal force to protect its borders, defend its strategic priorities and fight its wars. Of course, just war theory would point out that this power to kill comes from God who establishes civil authority for these very purposes. But that seems to me a tacit admission that the power to kill is outside the scope of human authority and can only be justified by invoking the support of a “higher power.” That “higher power,” however specifically forbade his disciples’ from using lethal force. Thus, taking up the sword is an example of rendering to the emperor the things that belong to God.

A couple of things are worth noting about Sunday’ gospel. First, Jesus does not have a coin. To make his point, he must ask his questioners to produce one. Second, the coin itself is a clear violation of the second commandment forbidding the making of images. Not only so, but the image is that of an imperial figure demanding worship as a god. That Jesus’ opponents actually had such a coin in their possession put the ball squarely back in their court. Theirs is the problem of squaring allegiance to the emperor, whose image they carry on their persons, with their confession that God alone is God. Jesus did not have to respond to their question. As soon as they produced the denarius, they answered it for themselves. They demonstrated that they belong to the emperor. Jesus’ final word to his opponents was not meant to be a response to their question to him. It is rather a wry observation of their having been caught red handed with an idol: “Guess you folks have to figure out how to ‘render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are Gods.'” Of course, Jesus’ opponents knew that all things belong to God and nothing of God’s can belong to the emperor. They cannot explain away their possession of the denarius and so depart in silence.

Once, when I was serving as an assistant to the pastor, I came into the sanctuary on Sunday morning to find a troop of girl scouts practicing a ceremony planed for the beginning of the service. The plan was for the girls to march in formation behind the American flag which would be placed in a stand directly in front of the altar. The congregation would then be invited to stand and join in the pledge of allegiance. I told the senior pastor I wanted no part in this part of the service.

“Why?” he asked in an exasperated tone. “What’s the harm in it?’

The same question was asked of bishop Polycarp prior to his being burned alive for his allegiance to Jesus and his refusal to worship the emperor. “Look,” he was told by some of his companions. “We all know the emperor is not really a god. What’s the harm in burning a little incense on the altar in his name? It’s more a patriotic than religious thing.” Polycarp didn’t see it that way. He would not allow the emperor to inhabit the sacred realm of worship owed to God alone. I am quite sure, he would not have welcomed the flag of the United States into that space either. So it was that I spent the first half of the service that day sitting in the sacristy. My relationship with the senior pastor was a little frosty for a couple weeks after that. But that discomfort hardly compares with being burned to death.

I believe we American Christians would do well to ask ourselves a few fundamental questions: Why do we countenance the presence of a national symbol in sanctuaries dedicated to the worship of the God who shows no partiality among nations? Why are we so easily co-opted into blessing our nation’s wars, honoring its acts of violence and glorifying the taking and sacrificing of human life? Have we become spiritually schizophrenic? How else to explain our singing hymns of God’s gentle reign and the Prince of Peace Sunday morning and then on Sunday evening singing of bombs bursting in air with gusto as war planes stream overhead? What will it take for us to recognize all the things of God we have surrendered to the emperor?

Here is a poem by Ada Limón reflecting on the National Anthem and its dark underside that should give disciples of Jesus pause.

A New National Anthem

The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National

Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good

song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets

red glare” and then there are the bombs.

(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)

Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw

even the tenacious high school band off key.

But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call

to the field, something to get through before

the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas

we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge

could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,

the truth is, every song of this country

has an unsung third stanza, something brutal

snaking underneath us as we blindly sing

the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands

hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do

like the flag, how it undulates in the wind

like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,

brought to its knees, clung to by someone who

has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,

when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly

you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can

love it again, until the song in your mouth feels

like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung

by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,

the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left

unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,

that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,

that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving

into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit

in an endless cave, the song that says my bones

are your bones, and your bones are my bones,

and isn’t that enough?

Source: The Carrying (c. 2018 by Ada Limón; pub. by Milkweed Editions). Ada Limón (b. 1976) is an American poet. Of Mexican-American descent, Limon grew up in Sonoma, California. She attended drama school at the University of Washington, where she subsequently studied theatre. She went on to receive her Master of Fine Arts from New York University in 2001. In 2022 she was named the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States by the Librarian of Congress, the first Latina to be so honored. It was announced on January 30, 2023, that Limon will be writing an original poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper. Scheduled for launch in 2024, the Europa Clipper will be orbiting Jupiter and Limón’s poem will be engraved onto the craft. You can read more about Ada Limon and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.