With Valentine’s Day coming up this
week, our creative energy turns to poetry…
“Roses are red, violets are blue, my heart is full of love for
you.” “I loved you yesterday, I love you
still, I always have, I always will.” Likewise, our stomachs turn not only to
the Sweetheart Brunch after worship today but also to heart-shaped boxes of Whitman’s
Samplers and Godiva Chocolate. In short,
we are coming up on the day of love.
Now - I do not want to put a damper on
this upcoming special day of candy, flowers, and sweethearts. However, just for a moment, think back to the
very first time that your heart was broken, and love did not turn out as
planned.
Maybe it was when the fellow you had a
crush on in high school never asked you out – or worse, turned you down when
you finally got up the courage to invite him to a Sadie Hawkins dance. Maybe it was the
girl who excused herself to go to the restroom at the junior high semi-formal
when the band slowed it down and began playing a slow romantic song by the
Lettermen. Maybe it was not a person at
all who broke your heart that first time, but a beloved pet that died.
That was the case with one blogger I
read this past week who had this to say about the death of her cat. “I wept bitterly and was inconsolable for
some time. Friends gave me advice, simple advice: If it hurts so much to lose a
cat, don't get another cat! A few weeks later I went to my uncle's barn, saw a
sweet ginger kitten, and fell in love again.
(And here comes the part of this story
that is important for us this morning.
Our blogger continues.) Turns out that the balm for a broken heart is to
open it again to love. There is no such thing as a safe heart. Taking a chance
and loving leads to a pain in my heart. Lesson learned. But loving with all my
heart is worth it. Better lesson learned.”
Those lessons learned lie at the heart
of these verses from the Sermon on the Mount that we just read, and this
passage does not contain the gentle refrains of the Beatitudes either. The words are
shocking at first glance – and hardly seems the stuff on which a sermon should
focus so close to Valentine’s Day.
First of all, if you take Jesus
seriously, this part of his sermon is patterned on some rather disturbing
phrases – “You have heard….but I say…” Similarly, it is filled with loaded
words – adultery, divorce, lawsuits, anger, lust. On top of all that, surely at least some of
these verses hit us deeply. Not only is
Jesus stern, he is really raising the bar and upping the ante. We find nothing gentle about these teachings;
they are downright harsh. As Lutheran
pastor Amy Kumm-Hanson notes, “These words of Jesus sting, because they hit us right
in our broken hearts.”
“You
have heard it said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you
that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of
murder.”
“You
have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you
that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with
her in his heart.
“It
has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of
divorce.’ But I tell you that
anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the
victim of adultery.”
“Again,
you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your
oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But
I tell you, do not swear an oath at all.”
Surely these words of Holy Scripture make
us squirm and feel all creepy inside, for there is not one among us who has not
felt a bit of road rage or at least serious irritation toward yet another
person running a red light right in front of us. It may be easy not to murder, but, wow, is it
ever difficult not to hold a grudge or to do the hard work of forgiveness.
There is not one among us, I would bet,
who has not at some point along the way cast a quick glance at a pair of
shapely legs – or well-hewn biceps either.
It may never cross your mind to actually commit adultery, but a wee
fantasy every now and then, well, that may be a different story.
Some of us come to this faith community
divorced – or contemplating divorce. All
of us come as oath breakers, another term for downright liars. Each one of us comes with a heart that has,
at one time or another, been broken. We
all come as followers of Jesus, but, just the same, we come wondering what
exactly we are supposed to do with his hardcore language in these verses.
As we did a couple of weeks ago with
the Beatitudes, let’s look first at what these verses are not. Kumm-Hanson writes about two such
interpretive errors. First, she notes that they are not simply lessons in
morality. “Well, Jesus said that divorce is prohibited, so you simply
must stay in a relationship at any cost, because to marry again or enter into
another relationship after divorce would mean that you are committing
adultery. And we can see what happens to adulterers.”
Such
a misplaced rationale leads to profound unhappiness in a relationship at best,
and at the worst, can create an environment that perpetuates abuse and
effectively closes off escape routes for those who experience abuse. It puts up
a barrier between the “righteous people” (which is where we would like to see
ourselves) and “those other people” (those who are not quite as righteous as we
think that we are).”
Second,
she notes that these verses are not some sort of history lesson and illustrates
her point with this interpretation:
“Jesus lived in a patriarchal society. Women had no way of
providing for themselves and needed to be cared for by men, so divorce would
cause a woman to become destitute. And Jesus didn’t want that, so he
decided to prohibit divorce. But since women are perfectly capable
of providing for themselves now, we can just ignore what Jesus is
saying.” If we dismiss the text as an ancient legal prescription for
how to live, we do not have to hear how it speaks to our lives now.”
Though
Kumm-Hanson only points to two errors interpreting this passage, a third one
would be to see Jesus as being terribly passive aggressive and, in a backhanded
way, putting us in our place. When we
look at these verses from that perspective, we are in danger of falling into
the trap of knowing that we will never measure up – even if we have the very
best of intentions.
After
all, we are only human and do not have complete control over our thoughts and
emotions. That being said, then, how
easy it would be to conclude: Why bother to even try? Let’s just move along to some easier Biblical
verses to live by.
But….Roses are red, violets are
blue, my heart is full of love for you.”
“I loved you yesterday, I love you still, I always have, I always will.” Whitman’s Samplers and Godiva
Chocolate. We are hard up against the
day of love. However, real love is not a
solitary thing. True love always
involves another.
These verses then are not about YOU and
only YOU. These verses are about YOU
living in community. These verses are
about YOU and your relationship with others.
It is like the beginning of John Donne’s poem:
No man is
an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of
the main; if a clod be washed away by
the sea, Europe is the less…
What Jesus is telling us in no
uncertain terms is that our relationships matter. God cares deeply and passionately about our
relationships and how we treat one another.
Why? Because God loves each and
every one of us – Christian, Muslim, gay, straight, Latino, African, rich, poor,
Mayflower descendent and illegal immigrant – all of us.
·
It is not enough to avoid physically committing adultery. We
are called to also not objectify other persons by seeing them as a means to
satisfy our own needs and desires.
·
It is not enough to follow the letter of the law regarding
divorce. We are called to also not treat people as disposable and therefore
must make sure that the most vulnerable among us are provided for. It is not enough to keep ourselves from swearing falsely or
lying to others. We are called to also speak and act truthfully in all of our
dealings so that we do not need to make oaths at all.
When Jesus takes the ancient Mosaic law
and both broadens and deepens it as he does so handily in this passage, he is telling
us that God does not care if we keep to the letter of the law for God’s sake. What God really cares about is our keeping
the law for our sake. Why? Because when we do, that is when we have
chosen life – as our Old Testament reading directed us to do. That is when we are at our best.
At the heart of these verses is Jesus’
deep concern for the strength and love that binds together our relationships
with others and draws us into community.
He is more concerned about us becoming whole persons and our broken
hearts mended than he is about our unthinking and sometimes unfeeling
compliance with the letter of the law.
Right relationships built on respect,
authenticity, and trust in the context of community are key to our being
citizens of the kingdom, participants in God’s dream for the world. Because we are followers of Jesus, because we
are his disciples who are challenged to be in community with the whole world, we
embrace a different understanding of life itself, and these verses we just read
bring that important point home.
What damage can be caused by our anger
toward others? What happens when we abuse
or even defile those relationships that ought to be precious to us? What harm are we causing when we compromise
serious trusts and commitments? Those
are the questions we ought to be asking ourselves as we reflect on this passage
rather than failing to see beyond the black and white statements that anger is
always wrong and divorce a sin.
Each week of this worship series, we
have said that, if we are indeed following the path Jesus illuminates for us,
it is not enough to say simply that we believe.
We are called to live out Jesus’ teachings. For us today, that means that we are called
to understand and affirm the importance of right and healthy relationships.
"In each of the scenarios Jesus is
calling for an entirely new way of viewing human relationships," as New
Testament scholar Charles Cousar writes. "Behind the prohibitions lies the
vision of a restored humanity."
This passage challenges us to look deep
inside our own hearts and see the world in a new way – and then ask ourselves
the difficult questions of how we might be contributing to the breakdown of
relationships and also how we can strengthen and mend them. Do we have a vision for justice that will
bring about healing and equality? Do we have a vision for reconciliation that
will provide a hope and a future for those who are down-and-out? As UCC pastor
Karen Georgia Thompson said, “The text takes us to hard places that involve
looking at our hearts and creating newness within.”
When our hearts crack and are broken
open out of love, we acknowledge that our relationships matter. We affirm that we must not live isolated from
one another. When our hearts crack and are broken open, we
embrace the realization that we touch the lives of those whom our culture has chewed
up and spat out – just as they touch our lives.
And so we are not really fed until those who hold out their bowls to us
are fed as well. We do not rest easy
until all have a place to call home. God
means for us to exist and flourish in community, in a community that keeps expanding
until it embraces the whole world.
My prayer for us then as we head toward
Valentine’s Day is that we will remember those first lessons learned about
love: That the balm for a broken heart
is to open it again because there is no such thing as a safe heart. That taking
a chance and loving may lead to pain, but loving with all your heart is worth
it.
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