“Love does no wrong to a
neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
This morning’s Gospel
reading has a very familiar ring to this recovering lawyer. It lays out
a 3 step procedure for resolving disputes within a church. The process is
designed to reconcile differences which hopefully will result in the
reintegration of those who have run afoul of the community. Failing that, it
provides a means for communities to police their ranks and remove those who
disrupt them.
And so the writers of Matthew lay out a procedure to resolve the conflict within community: Try talking with the wrongdoer along with two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, bring them before the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, kick them out.
Those familiar with Hebrew Scripture will readily recognize this legal procedure. The requirement for three witnesses is right out of the Torah. As is often their custom, the writers of Matthew have dipped directly into the inkwell of Jewish scripture to write their gospel, this passage coming directly from the book of Deuteronomy.
A Pattern That Transcends Time and Culture
If you’re thinking this really doesn’t sound much like Jesus, you’re right. And there is a good reason for that: This simply isn’t Jesus talking to us. It’s the early Jesus movement speaking to itself.
The key giveaway here is the reference to a church. Jesus was not a Christian and there will be no church as we know it for another couple of centuries after Jesus has died. The gospel of Matthew is a work of the second generation of the Jesus movement living in the period following the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple by the Romans in 70 CE.
What had begun with Jesus of Nazareth as a Jewish messianic movement had become an increasingly Gentile body which was now evolving into a separate religion. Not surprisingly, this evolutionary process was marked by conflict.
The Jesus movement would find
itself increasingly at odds with the Jewish synagogues from which they were
emerging. Before it was all over, the Jesus followers would find themselves
expelled from those synagogues and alienated from their former coreligionists.
The Gospel of Matthew is rife with the bitterness which marks this parting of
the ways.
So why did the canonizers of the Christian scriptures include these passages in this gospel? If Jesus did not actually say these words, why attribute them to him? And why continue to read them in our lectionaries all these years later?
I suggest that the
reason this passage is included is because Matthew knew it had something to say
to people of faith in every age that we need to hear. Despite the myth that
Reformers spun of a golden age before the Catholic Church corrupted it when all
Christians believed the same things and got along famously, in fact a wide
range of understandings of what it means to follow Jesus has marked our tradition
from its very beginning. And so, not surprisingly, divisiveness and schism have
also been an important part of our history from its outset. Indeed, we need go
no further than our own parish’s long struggle with the local diocese to know
that first hand.
Moreover, such conflicts are hardly relegated to churches. We live in the most fiercely polarized time in our nation’s history since the Civil War. Many of us have stopped speaking to those whom we have confronted privately to no avail and then publicly with as many witnesses as might encounter our exchanges online. Our social media these days is rife with urgent messages to “unfriend me if you disagree.” So there is a reason that this passage from Matthew was included in the Christian canon. It speaks to a very human pattern of behavior that exceeds both time and culture.
St. Paul knew those conflicts well as the reading from his letter to the Romans today reveals. It is consistent with much of what we hear from St. Paul in his letters to the developing Christian communities. His repeated message often boils down to something like this: Be nice to one another. Act like you love one another even if you have to work at it. Show others respect even if you deeply disagree on issues you both consider to be fundamental. And, remember, others are watching.
Bear in mind that if
St. Paul felt the need to tell his communities to act like mature adults, you
can bet it’s because they were failing to do that.
His words today are striking: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments… are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
That last line is worth repeating: Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefor love is the fulfilling of the law. When love of our neighbor is our ultimate concern, it supersedes any differences we might have with them. The dignity of their person becomes the bottom line in the way we will respond to them.
Love That Runs Deeper
Than Differences
It was only after a couple of visits that I suddenly realized one night that my Dad had begun to mute the TV when I was there. It was a small concession on his part. But it spoke volumes about the two of us. What we both had realized was that our political differences were less important than the loving relationship we had shared with one another for 63 years. And that became more and more true as he neared the end of his life. I look back with gratitude for that time we had together. And I believe it holds a lesson for my life and for others as well.
Two Possible Paths
Whatever the result of
the election in November, the deep divisions within our nation will not
disappear overnight. Much like Matthew’s embittered synagogue exiles, the
resentment and rancor that arose during the period of separation of our competing
groups will not go away overnight. Indeed, it is in part the failure to
reconcile the differences of the first Civil War in our nation that have led to
the current cold civil war that threatens the ongoing existence of our nation
today.
Our lessons today present two options available to us. We can, like Matthew, go through all the procedures of divorcing ourselves from one another and going our separate ways, demonizing the other in the process. Or we can take St. Paul’s advice to the Romans. We can look past our differences on the surface to the deeper relations to one another we share and let love of neighbor inform our responses to them.
Let me be clear here.
That first path is dangerous. Abraham Lincoln recognized a similar danger when
he said at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield, that the question of
his own time was whether his nation, or any nation conceived and dedicated to
democracy, could long endure as a house divided against itself. Lincoln was
clear that the deadly path of tribalism with its mutual anathematization of the
other would not lead in the direction of endurance. The same is true in our own
time.
Lincoln also provided us with some advice on how to avoid that fate that sounds a lot like what St. Paul is telling us today. In his Second Inaugural Address, with an end in sight of the war which divided them, Lincoln begged his countrymen and women to act “with malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.” Lincoln called on his listeners to “[S]trive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.”
That calling is our calling today.
Lincoln believed that human beings could call upon their better angels to find the way to transcend their differences. While I agree, I believe it will require more than that. Clearly it will demand the humility to recognize that each of us, no matter how assured we are of our own understandings, could be wrong. And it will require that we engage in ongoing self-examination as to what motivates our interactions with others. As St. Paul said, if love of neighbor is that foundation, everything else will fall into place.
But if we are being honest with ourselves, we will admit that we cannot live into such a challenging calling alone. If there has ever been a time when we needed G-d’s guiding presence in our lives as a people, it is today.
It’s important to remember that there are two parts of our responses to our Baptismal Covenant. The first part is “I will” but the second is equally important: “with God’s help.” Our recognition of our urgent need for G-d’s guidance, strength and healing presence in this time of testing of our nation’s soul is reflected in the collect appointed for today and so I close with it.
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
A sermon preached at
St. Richard’s Episcopal Church, Winter Park, FL on September 6, 2020.
14th Sunday
after Pentecost, Propers 18
Texts: Romans 13:8-14, Matthew
18:15-20
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando,
Florida
Those
who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For
what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to
walk humbly with your G-d? - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do
not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love
mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but
neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom
of the Jewish Sages (1993)
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