Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany Yr A
February 16, 2020
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
The Rev. Canon Michael J. Horvath
Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Matthew 5:21-37
I’ve been blessed to have been a graduate student twice in my life. Once as a seminarian, obviously, but I also went to law school and subsequently practice law for many years. Law students all go through a very similar pattern of being during their three years in law school, and lasts for about the first year after graduation, into their first job.
The pattern is this: In the first year, law students are overwhelmed by the fact that they either know nothing or very little about the study they are embarking on. In the second year, with a few classes under their belt, they start to think they know everything about the law and being a lawyer. And in their final year in law school and first year on the job, they again realize that they, in fact, know very little about legal practice. (To be clear, I fell shamelessly into this pattern.)
So, why is this? After all that time studying and reading, after all those legal memos and exams, and after all the money spent on school, why would they end up having learned so little.
Well, it’s not that these new lawyers didn’t learn anything. But their education was only half baked. It’s only that what they learned in school and now stake their professional reputation on is black letter law knowledge. They can cite relevant tax code provisions by heart, pull up case law precedent at the push of a button and tell you the four elements that constitute larceny. But that is only a small part of the full plate of skills they need to have as a lawyer.
One cannot be an effective lawyer by citing black letter law, because life is not black and white. Equity courts developed because it’s not enough to look at a statute and determine that one party is wrong and one party is right. Sometimes both parties are wrong or both parties are right, and the court seeks to figure out instead what is fair and reasonable, rather than simply what is right.
The concept of mitigating circumstances allows our criminal courts to understand the backstory of choices that people make that might simply look like an action borne out of self-interested malice, but which may be the difference between murder and negligent homicide.
And it’s about choices and how we make them that Jesus is focusing on today. In today’s gospel, Jesus gives us a revised version of some of the commandments that the Israelites followed and over which some were being literalists: you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not swear falsely, and the law concerning divorce, a law that can be summarized as ‘You shall give your wife a letter of divorce if you find fault with her’ – a law was interpreted very broadly.
But Jesus was giving the crowds more than a mere recitation of black letter law. Some have taken this passage, as well as similar laws Jesus critiques in the Gospels, as a rejection of God’s laws as practiced by the Israelites, of which he is one. But that’s not the case – he affirms them and then expands them, much like the Talmud in which the rabbis over centuries have dissected, expanded and found new ways of understanding God.
What Jesus adds to the laws is a deeper meaning through the lens of life. He’s trying to move us away from being able to simply say whether or not we are following the letter of the law, towards following it in a way that is life-giving. He is harkening back to what Moses said in the reading from Deuteronomy, “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.” The alternative reading to Deuteronomy today is from Ecclesiasticus, a part of which reads “Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given.”
That’s what is before us today – life and death. Do our choices and our adherence to laws and rules and regulations bring us closer to God or lead us to death? Are we making choices that bond us to one another in love, or do our choices diminish the possibility of deep and meaningful relationships?
How easy it would be if we were simply judged by whether or not we are living by the plain language of the law. I suspect that many, if not all, of us have never committed murder. But the effect, Jesus says, of anger, insults and the dehumanization of others is as if we have actually committed murder. I don’t think Jesus’s focus on divorce is so much about the act of divorcing but whether we have treated someone we love as disposable, as if they had no inherent value? Have we acted as though the relationships with our partners or spouses don’t need nurturing and tending to?
I said that Jesus is not denying these commandments and we should not either, but are we complying with them in ways that support, sustain and nurture life for ourselves and one another? It’s all about intention, isn’t it? And our intentions matter – not just at the times when we are about to comply with or break the law.
It’s one thing to go through life with the intention of not breaking rules. But what does it look like to go through our days with the intention of choosing life for us and for others through the things we do and through the words we speak? Pick a day this week, any day, and as you go through that day ask yourself if the words you speak are loving and life-giving. Ask yourself if your action towards someone you are engaging with is creating a more meaningful relationship with them? If the answer is “no”, you’ve got a choice to make right then and there. You may not be breaking the law, but as you go to sleep that night will your heart be bigger, and your mind at ease and content? Are you satisfied that you have chosen life for you and for others? In other words, will you be right with God?
Building up life can take on so many forms. Here are a few examples from the last week. In Spokane, Washington, 29-year-old Seth Stewart and his brothers deliver red roses on Valentine’s Day to the homes of women who have lost their spouses or had their significant others deployed overseas. They have been doing this for the last eight years. In Hawaii, St. James Episcopal Church holds a community meal every Thursday that feeds over 300 people. But we’re not simply talking about homeless or low-income people who need assistance. The rector of St. James said an overwhelming segment of the guests come to the community meal for relationship. He said, “There is a lot of lonely eating on the island,” and invoked Mother Teresa, who once said that loneliness is the West’s greatest disease.
Actions and speech that diminished life were just as abundant this week. A week ago, our government announced plans to roll back school lunch standards which would have provided a healthier menu to our children in schools. The rules would significantly reduce the serving size of fruits and vegetables, which would, nutritionists argue, pave the way for greasier, unhealthier choices such as French fries and burgers. That action may be egregious, but the President’s speech this week also misses the mark Jesus is trying to point us towards today. It was a week in which he, yet again, publicly bullied others as being “losers”, “racists” (oddly enough), and mockingly questioned the spiritual faith of others, including Episcopalians, with impunity. He has yet again shown himself angry, insulting and prone to dehumanizing others. These actions fail to nurture life, in my view.
For each of the positive examples of choice-making, I encourage you this week to outdo them. For each of the negative examples that I just cited, make your life different. Speak and act lovingly to others because the reality is that the darkness, the lack of a moral compass, the lack of integrity and the division-making exhibited by the president are simply a reflection of our larger society and the relationships we have failed to breathe life into. Let’s not dig a deeper hole for ourselves and others. Jesus tells us that it’s not enough to simply not harm someone. Love is not a passive state of being. We need to constantly choose it. Choose love, choose life, choose goodness for one other. Because in those choices we will see the face of God. And in those choices, we will see the light that darkness will never overcome.
Let Moses’s words fill your ears this week - “… I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.”
Amen.
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