Since September of the past year, a faithful group of us have been reading through the whole Bible. Actually something of a Reader’s Digest version of the whole Bible, using a book called The Path. So if you’ve been scared to join us, know that you are welcome anytime—each weekly zoom class stands on its own—and the reading load is not too heavy. But then there’s today’s Gospel. That’s pretty heavy, no? Liable to fires of hell; cutting off body parts? For sins like anger and lust and lying that we’ve all probably committed? Yikes! This is the Gospel that wise cathedral deans usually assign to their associate clergy to preach. Deacon Kathey would you be willing to take it from here?
But back to Bible study. In preparing for our Wednesday evening classes, I’ve found myself thinking even more than usual—and I confess I think about this a lot already—about how we read the Bible in the Episcopal Church. Or better said, how we hear the Bible in the Episcopal Church. Because ours is really a listening tradition. Dating back to our Jewish and earliest Christian origins, our sacred stories and wisdom and laws have been told aloud and recited in community far more frequently than they have been read silently from a book by an individual.
Which profoundly impacts the way we experience and internalize the Biblical texts. When we listen to ancient texts read aloud in a voice not our own, we can hear the voice of the living God through them in fresh ways. Over the coming months, we’ll be using a spiritual practice called “dwelling in the word” as part of our congregational vitality and growth efforts. I myself have been startled—time and again—when we read familiar very texts out loud, and then listen to our neighbors responding to them. It’s as if God is speaking to me anew each time.
And how do I know when God is speaking directly to me through Bible? A pretty reliable measure for me is when the scriptures call me up short, and demand that I change my thinking or my actions. That’s an uncomfortable business, and surely not something I would choose to do on my own, except that I trust the God whom I know to be challenging me. And while this Gospel does offer plenty of challenge—much of which has to do with historically and culturally-specific practices—this first thing to remember when listening to hard texts is that God always teaches us in love, in order that we might become a more loving people. That’s the whole Biblical story—beginning to end—troubling parts included.
So what might Jesus be teaching us here, all we who have committed one or many of the sins mentioned in today’s Gospel? Recall that we’re still hearing portions of the Sermon on the Mount, which began with beatitudes—a vision of the blessed community of God—and then reminds us of the Jewish ethical teachings (the law) that were intended to make such a community possible. But at this point in the sermon, Jesus doesn’t just ask for just or righteous actions; he expands the scope of the law to cover intentions. That is to say, it’s not enough just to refrain from murder, we also have to avoid even the thought of doing harm. It is not enough to avoid physically committing adultery, we have to forego objectifying people altogether. It is not enough to follow the letter of the law regarding divorce. We have to make sure that the most vulnerable—who in Jesus’ culture were unmarried women and children—are provided for. It is not enough to forego swearing falsely or lying to others. Our words and actions must be transparently truthful.
Jesus is not asking just for changed behavior, he’s now asking for changed hearts. Which is a genuinely hard ask: not only because it’s virtually impossible to effect this kind of spiritual transformation by force of will, but also because the behavioral rules—even the hard ones—are actually kind of comforting. If we just do the right thing or avoid the wrong thing we’re good, right? And those who get it wrong? Well, be on your way to that hell of fire. Done and dusted! Except Jesus is explicitly telling us not to categorize or blame one another. Listen again. He’s telling us to “be reconciled.” Christian people, that is our calling. Which is—as our catechism reminds us—to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
Reconciliation is not for the faint of heart, but God’s grace makes it possible, and practice makes it easier. There are a couple of helpful clues about how to practice reconciliation in this otherwise challenging Gospel. For example, when we hear words like “you have heard it said” we might consider the times we’ve heard or said things like “people are saying.” That’s almost always an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for our own frustrations. Jesus asks us to do otherwise: to listen for ourselves and speak for ourselves. In the first person. It may feel risky to say vulnerable things like “I’m sad, I’m sorry, or I wish things were different,” but that’s how we make space for reconciling relationship. Because the truth of the matter is that we are all hurt by something, we’re all mourning something, we’re all lonely and we’re wondering why things aren’t the way they used to be. We can let the painful aspects of our common humanity be a cause for conflict or a cause for connection. That choice is always ours to make.
Today we mark 214 years since the birth of Abraham Lincoln. A man who, among other extraordinary leadership gifts, was profoundly conscious of the need for God’s reconciling grace. Within himself as much as in the nation. And from that stance of humility, he delivered his second inaugural address—to aggrieved belligerents in the waning days of a devastating war—without blame or triumphalism. I like to reread it every year at this time. Both sides dreaded and sought to avert war, Lincoln reminded Unionist and Confederate alike. “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes [God’s] aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.”
In our own conflicted local and national communities, I suspect a lot of us are wondering about unanswered prayers right now. If you are, for example, upset over raising the debt ceiling or safe injection sites or the Google Village plan, take a moment to look around you. I assure you there is someone sitting not far from you who is upset by the opposite possibility. And all of us have real and valid reasons for the positions we hold. We want to be safe. We want to honor our sovereign integrity. We want our children of all colors to have a chance. We may disagree profoundly about the strategies necessary to achieve these ends, but we still have something to learn from each other’s deep longing for what is good and right.
Each of our life stories, and the hopes and fears contained within them, are holy texts in our own right. And, like our sacred scriptures, they are a mixture of the good, the bad and the messy. That doesn’t mean we can’t hear the voice of God in and through each other, but it may mean that we have to listen in ways that are uncomfortable. But remember, this kind of work gets easier with experience, and the blessing of a community like Trinity is that we can be a laboratory for practicing the discipline of holy listening.
This was the deep hope of Abraham Lincoln, when he gave voice to the vision that combat-weary Americans most needed at the end of the Civil War. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
