Happy
Valentine’s Day everybody! Ok, I’m a
little late… and truthfully, I
usually avoid any acknowledgment of Valentine’s Day like the plague. But my parents surprised me by telling me
they were going to renew their vows on the beach where they are vacationing in
Georgia, and so I couldn’t ignore it this year. They have been married 35 years – it will be
36 in October. What about the married
couples we have here in our congregation?
In the interest of Valentine’s Day, let’s have the couples married for
at least 1 year stand up. What about
those married 5 years? 10? Stay standing if you’ve been married 20 years… 30?
I’ve heard some of our couples have some milestones passed
recently. – 40 – 50 -60.
It
occurred to me last Sunday, in the middle of Jared’s teaching on Mach’kloket –
the concept of constructive disagreement for the sake of heaven – he said this
interesting thing about the two Rabbis that were always at odds with each other
but were cited as an example of constructive disagreement – do you remember
this? He mentioned the Beit Hillel, Beit meaning ‘house of’, as in the people
who followed Rabbi Hillel, and Beit Shammei, those who followed Rabbi
Shammai. He mentioned once, briefly,
that these two houses didn’t really have too much of a dispute, because
there was a strong history of the students of Beit Hillel intermarrying with
students of Beit Shammai.
Did
you catch that when he said it? I did,
and I thought…. There’s got to be a
marriage joke in there somewhere.
Constructive disagreement for the sake of heaven… I’m guessing that a lot of our married
couples of 40, 50 and 60 years know something about constructive disagreement
for the sake of heaven….for the sake of the marriage, definitely, but also Love,
for God’s sake.
I
think this is something marriage – and all relationships that we prioritize –
has to teach us. The kind of nurturing
and caring a good marriage requires; the acceptance, respect and effort to
understand the another person’s deepest ambitions, motivations and fears; and
the concern for another’s hopes and dreams as much as their well-being… and to do all that while hopefully
holding onto your sanity and humor – these are the elements that we aspire to
apply to or special relationships. But
truly, as we can see in our text, this is similar to what God asks of us in all
relationships in community.
The
book of Leviticus – our Hebrew Bible reading this morning –is known as the
Holiness Code. It is the book in which
the most commands come directly from the mouth of God.
·
you shall leave [your harvest and grapes] for
the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.
·
you shall not steal, you shall not lie, you
shall not swear falsely by my name: I am the LORD
·
you shall not defraud your neighbor or your
worker, but you shall fear your God: I am the LORD
·
you shall not be unjust, or partial, slander or
profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD
·
you shall not bear a grudge, but you shall love
your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
…. I mean, we get it already!
Why does God feel that it needs to be repeated so frequently?
Perhaps
it’s because God hopes for us to keep our eyes trained on Him. God begins this verse with, “You Shall be
Holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy.”
And in some ways this sounds like an impossible and imposing command… but in other ways, it is a promise. You shall care for the widow, the orphan, the
poor, the foreigner, the alien, because God cares for them, and what it means
to be holy as God is Holy is to live into these words. If we truly believe that God is Lord, the one
to be obeyed and followed, than these are the things we will do. Because our faith is not just a theological
belief – our faith is a verb. Our faith
in God, who commands all these things, demands that His desires are evident in
our works. It’s as if God says, “In
company with me, you shall grow to be like me.”
One
of my favorite theologians talks about this a lot. Gustavo Gutierrez is a Catholic Priest form
Latin America who has written many books about how we are to live
together. Gutierrez describes God as the
creative force of life because God initiates a relationship with us, His
people. But to be in relationship with
God is to live with, and live for, God, and to live with, and to live for
others. In Hebrew, ‘to live’ always
means to be present to others because life implies community. For Gutierrez, Sin is to refuse to love your
fellow human, and death is utter isolation from community. This idea is echoed in some of the laws in
the Book of Leviticus and in the Gospel - where punishment for Sin or illness
is removal from community.
God
has called us to be Holy, and we have responded to that call. And so in doing, we strive to live as a compassionate community of mutual caring
for each other.
In
the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is concluding the Sermon on the Mount - that which
began with the Beatitudes and, like our Leviticus passage, ends with loving our
neighbor. Throughout this sermon, Jesus
echoes these requirements to be Holy and declares that, rather than abolish the
law, he will fulfill it. Jesus is
detailing his vision of the law by talking about the kind of community the law
imagines – a community of integrity, in which people are not taken advantage
of, but are trustworthy and fair to one another.
Jesus
even goes so far as to say you should love your enemy. Your enemy!
But who is our enemy??
In
Jesus’ time, there were clear abuses of power and might. Historians tell us that he soldiers of Rome
had the authority to do any of what he referenced – they could slap you around
with impunity. Draft you into servitude
without provocation. Sue you, based on Roman taxes and property laws, for the
last shirt you owned. There was a lot
of justified anger, a lot of humiliation, a lot of rage in his audience. They were already being stripped of their
identity, of their property, and now of their dignity. Their enemies were clear.
But
who is our enemy? Is it the neighbor,
acquaintance or distant Uncle that you just can’t get along with? Is it fans of
the opposing sports team, or opposing political party, or citizens of a
different nation, or a different religion?
How do we know someone is an enemy? How do we persevere with respect and
mutual caring when we are fairly certain someone is out to get us, or rooting
for our demise? How do we attempt to love them?
This
is where I double back to some of the words of Jared and Mach’kloket, -
Constructive Disagreement for the sake of heaven. On Thursday afternoon, during our interview
with
the Hastings Tribune, the reporter asked him if he feels safe in Israel because
of his faith in God. Jared responded,
“as a very religious person…not at
all. I feel safe living in Jerusalem
because of the people I know. Because I talk to Jews and Muslims, Arabs and
non-Arabs, and I know that they don’t want to hurt me.” Perhaps the way we can
strive to love our enemies is first to learn, do we have enemies? And that may require being able to hold their
story and our story within our hearts, at the same time, in tension but in
love.
With
our eyes trained on God who is holy, maybe we do it for the sake of heaven –
for God’s sake. Jesus seems to be
telling us to dig deep, and find the will to respond to greed with generosity,
to abuse with resilience, to anger with forgiveness. When someone takes something from us, he’s
challenging us to respond by giving twice as much rather than retaliate. Because
if someone desires something of you, and you give it readily and more – you are
taking that person’s power over you.
Because
Jesus is ushering in new era of love, an era that prioritizes caring and fair
relationship between individuals. And
when Jesus lives within us, no one has any power over us.
With
Christ, a radically new era of God is being inaugurated to our world… an era where love comes first. God’s great purpose for the human family is
being realized with his life, death and resurrection, demonstrating that love
is in fact the greatest power in the world.
Jesus
ends his sermon with the instruction to be perfect, as God is perfect. Perfect seems kind of impossible to me – how
about you? Compared to God’s promise in
Leviticus that we shall be holy as God is Holy, perfect does not have the same
ring. But there may be reason for
that.
In
Greek, the word used for perfect is Telios.
Telios means perfect, but it also means to be brought to it’s end, it’s
maturity, it’s completion. Perhaps Jesus
is saying that with this, loving our enemies, this process for completion, this
wholeness in loving others, is finally on our doorstep. We are able to work towards the goal of God’s
family; a community of mutual caring and love.
And if we are faithful, and are living into those beliefs, then no one
will have any power over us but God.
God
is perfect, yes, but in following Jesus’ teaching we can strive to also be
wholly complete in love for our brothers and sisters, our spouses and children,
our friends and even our enemies.
With
Jesus, God’s power is complete. It has
matured to full and whole love and reconciliation.
Let
us strive to be perfect in our love for each other, in our actions, in our
disagreements, and in our faith. Let us
strive for completion of Love for God’s Sake.
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