"Perfecting Imperfection"

The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A

The Rev. Joshua Rodriguez

Matthew 5:38-48; Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Does it ever seem like Jesus is just setting the bar too high? Be perfect? That’s the standard I’m supposed to live up to? Couldn’t Jesus have given us something more realistic? How about, be a nice person? You know, don’t cheat on your taxes, give some money to the church, don’t kill anyone. That sounds like something that I could do. But I don’t think I can be perfect. How about you?

For the past two weeks, we’ve heard Jesus explaining the ins and outs of the Law of Moses to his followers. Each of the “You have heard that it was said”s from the past two Sundays introduces a direct quote from the Old Testament Law, which was, at the time, the definitive guide on how to please God. But Jesus doesn’t seem satisfied with the commands of the Law as written. He keeps intensifying them. Not just “Thou shalt not murder” but “Thou shalt not hate.” Not just “Thou shalt not commit adultery” but “Thou shalt not lust.” Not just “Thou shalt not swear falsely,” but “Thou shalt not swear.” Not just “Thou shalt limit thy revenge,” but “Thou shalt not take revenge.” Not just “Thou shalt love those who love you,” but “Thou shalt love everyone.” And as if this hasn’t already gotten hard enough, he ends with that kicker:“Be perfect.”

On the surface, this is all pretty simple. I mean, what Jesus says today is so simple that our Sunday School lessons for today  didn’t have to do anything to make this lesson age appropriate. Kids get this. When I’ve used this Bible story in preschool chapel, four-year-olds had no question about what this meant. They got that they were supposed to be nice and kind. But where this gets complicated is when we start making excuses. I mean, Jesus can’t just have meant what he said. After all, this business about turning the other cheek can’t be about not retaliating at all. Can it? From pretty much the moment when Jesus said these things, his followers have been trying to find the out. We say things like, “For Jews in Jesus’ time, it was considered demeaning to backhand someone. So if someone slapped you, and you turned the other cheek, the person couldn’t hit you again or else he’d dishonor himself.” That is so nice and comforting and so very remote from the world we live in, so it can’t apply, can it? Can it? For two thousand years, people like us have been trying to find the out, because, when you get down to it, it’s not just that we can’t live this way, it’s that we don’t want to.

What if, just for a minute, we considered the possibility that Jesus meant what he said. Really meant it, and there aren’t any loopholes, because he intentionally closed them up. If I’m honest, I’m really scared that that’s the case. Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, says, “The law is about … the fact that God loves your neighbor and wants to protect them from you.”^[1] That’s abundantly clear in our reading from Leviticus today, which is full of commandments about how not to cheat your neighbor. That’s where the Law of Moses gets us: it curbs our human desire to look out for ourselves. But it doesn’t make us love our neighbors. It gives us lots of wiggle room for that. There are lots of exceptions, and it gets us to a place where if we’re not actively harming someone, we don’t have to like them. But what Jesus does in the Sermon on the Mount is to close up all of those exceptions. And, in doing so, he leaves us with a set of demands that he knows that we can’t meet.

When we’re left with Law, with a set of “thou shalls” and “thou shalt nots,” we convince ourselves that we can, on our own, without any help, live up to it. But we can’t. Even with the Law, I would find lots of ways to be a bad neighbor. What Jesus does is ratchet up the Law to the point where he boils it down to a single, impossible command: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Now, Jesus doesn’t mean perfect like we think he means perfect. Jesus tells us to be perfect like God, our heavenly Father. And the way that God is perfect is that God is Perfect Love. Jesus doesn’t want us to be free from error. Jesus wants us to be overflowing with love, the way that God is overflowing with love. But this doesn’t really help me, because I’m not much better about being loving than I am being perfect. Jesus takes away all the loopholes and the exceptions in the Law, so that we’re forced to admit that we can’t keep it.

           

But Jesus can.

That is grace. That is good news. The good news of Jesus Christ is that I cannot be good enough or loving enough on my own, but Jesus has fulfilled the demands of the Law on my behalf. Through Jesus, God reaches in to my chest and pulls out my heart of stone, which is always trying to figure out a loophole and find one person who I don’t have to love, and God throws away that hard heart of stone and replaces it with an actual beating, loving heart. The Gospel is about God loving us so much that God doesn’t want us to just not be jerks to our neighbor, God wants us to actually love them. And the space that God makes in our lives when we are freed with our obsession about being perfect allows God to love us into wholeness, so that we can be loving, as our heavenly Father is loving. Amen.

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^[1] Nadia Bolz Weber, “Sermon on Jesus Rolling His Eyes (and also divorce), <http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2014/02/sermon-on-jesus-rolling-his-eyes-and-also-divorce/>

"The Acceptable Fast"

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A

Isaiah 58:1-9a

For the record, if you ever want to make a curate break out into flop sweats, just tell her or him that one of the lectionary texts begins like our Old Testament reading did this morning:

            Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.

I had a conversation this past week about the Hebrew prophets, and I mentioned that I found them deeply comforting and deeply disturbing. Comforting, because they always end as our reading does today, Then you shall call and the Lord will answer… Disturbing, because they always require a lot of soul searching to get there. As a Christian, the fifteen books of the prophets in the Hebrew Bible are some of my favorite texts of Scripture, texts in which I always find something new, texts which make me grow in my walk with God, especially Isaiah. But as a priest, I often cringe when they come up in the lectionary, especially Isaiah, because they are so difficult and so hard to hear. And it would be so much easier to preach this morning about salt and light, wouldn’t it?

That’s where all of you come in, thank God, because you keep me honest. Every time I’ve tried to take the easier road and skip over the difficult lectionary text, many of you ask me about it on your way out the door after services, so I have to preach an impromptu second sermon. So, given the choice of Isaiah with notes or Isaiah without, I choose with.

By all accounts, the people of Judah to whom this section of Isaiah was addressed were doing things right. They’d come back from exile in Babylon, and they’d put aside the idols and false gods that they’d previously worshipped. They were worshipping the Lord their God alone, and they were even rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem. They were doing things right, living by the Law of Moses, keeping kosher, dotting all their Is and crossing all their Ts. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough because it was purely external. Nothing they were doing actually affected their hearts. They were the same old people with the same old hearts of stones, they were just trying to put a better spin on things. In fact, it sounds like they viewed religion as a form of magic: if I do this God, then you have to do this. So they fasted, and they prayed, and they conducted elaborate, beautiful worship before God. And God sent Isaiah to them to say, “You’re doing it wrong.”

I don’t know about you, but I can sympathize with the people of Judah. My second year of seminary, my class was required to go on a four-day silent retreat. I didn’t want to go, because I had a lot of important things that I needed to do. It didn’t help that, once I got there, one of my classmates shared the flu with all of us. So I was sitting there, silent except for coughing and blowing my nose, and feeling pretty sorry for myself. And my retreat director told me that I should meditate on the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel. In that story from 1 Kings, the prophet Elijah is feeling pretty sorry for himself too. He’s on the run from the wicked Queen Jezebel, who is trying to kill him, and he runs to Mount Carmel, the mountain of God. And there, God causes a great wind, and an earthquake, and a fire to pass by, but God comes to Elijah in the sound of sheer silence. So I meditated on this passage of scripture. And as I began to imagine myself in the story, I found myself saying Elijah’s words to  God, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts…” In the story from the Bible, Elijah gets to say a lot more before God cuts him off, but in my meditation, God stopped me right there. God said, “No you haven’t, Josh. You have been very zealous for the church, and that’s a different thing. You have been very zealous for bishops and commissions on ministry and standing committees. You have been very zealous for impressing seminary professors. But you’ve forgotten why all that matters.” Now, part of me wanted to reply that I was an Episcopalian, and that Episcopalians don’t expect God to talk to us, but I didn’t feel like this was wise. Maybe it was the flu, or the silence getting to me after a couple days, but I did need to hear that word from the Lord, just like the people of Judah needed to hear the word that Isaiah brought to them.

It’s hard to hear, but it’s easy to let our religion become external, a matter of observing the right rituals. It’s even worse, sometimes, to let our religion become internal, something private between ourselves and God. The people of Judah did both of these things. I’ve done both of these things. And in response, Isaiah tells us about the fast that God chooses. It’s not giving up chocolate for Lent. It’s not something private between ourselves and God designed to draw me and only me closer to Jesus. It’s a fast from self-obsession, which is what happens when we let our religion become too external or too internal. The fast that God chooses, Isaiah says is: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. And oh, this is a hard fast.

It’s hard because it changes us. It’s hard because it tells us that the way to love God is to love the people around us. And that’s hard. And it’s hard because, as you know, loosing the bonds of injustice can seem like an impossible task. But there’s a quote from Mother Teresa that is a touchstone in my own spiritual life: “You can do no great things. You can only do small things with great love.” When we do small things with great love, God does amazing things through us.

Glennon Doyle Melton, a blogger, author, and Ted Talk presenter, shared a story about her son’s fifth grade teacher recently. Glennon had gone to the teacher to ask for help understanding the new way long division was being taught—her son understood it, but she didn’t. What started out as a parent-teacher tutoring session ended up becoming a deeply meaningful conversation. It turned out that each Friday, the teacher passed out ballots to every student in the class. Each student was supposed to pick four students they’d like to sit with the next week and to nominate one classmate as citizen of the week. The teacher wasn’t especially interested in help in coming up with her seating chart or honoring good citizenship.    More than these things, she was looking for patterns in the responses. Who had suddenly gone from popular to unpopular? Who couldn’t name four friends? Who was never nominated for citizen of the week? The teacher made notes of those names, and she singled them out for special attention, for more love the next week.

Glennon asked how long the teacher had been doing this, and, with weary eyes, the teacher answered, “Every Friday since Columbine.”

This is the fast that God chooses.This is loosing the bonds of injustice, and letting the oppressed go free. How will this fast look in your life? It’s hard, sometimes, I know to figure out how to start. This is a big question to attempt to answer. It’s about ultimate importance. But, on Saturday, March 8, our Outreach Committee is offering a Listening Day as one way to begin to understand what God is calling you to do. This fast is big, and it’s scary, and it will change us. But we need to be changed. And our world needs to be changed, too. And God will bless us with enough foolishness to dream impossible dreams and enough strength to accomplish them, so that, through God’s grace, our fasts to loose the bonds of injustice will accomplish what others say cannot be done. Amen.

The Feast of the Presentation, Year A

Luke 2:22-40                                                                                                   

   

Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed-- and a sword will pierce your own soul too." (Luke 2:34-35)

This morning’s gospel is really part two of the Christmas story.  You may remember that last week we had Jesus all grown up, an adult and calling to his first disciples to get out of their boats and get to work.  But now we’ve jumped backwards 30 years and are again with that cuddly swaddled baby.  Will Ferrell of “Talladega Nights” would be pleased.

That’s because it is the Feast of the Presentation, which rarely falls on a Sunday.  In most Protestant churches this story is told on the Sunday after Christmas, as the next action of the family.  But we Episcopalians – being Protestant and Catholic – on that day, we always hear the prologue of John.

So here we are a month out from Christmas and Jesus hasn’t called his first disciples or even taken his first steps.  And the action of the story is Jesus being presented to God – but the good news of the story comes from the actions and reactions of the supporting cast.

Perhaps you noticed that word – law – repeated several times in this passage.  Mary and Joseph are following the law, the prescribed rituals of their Jewish faith.  After a woman gives birth she is to go to the temple for purification.  After a male child is circumcised he is to be presented in the temple in a symbolic action that gives the child to God. (We kind of do that in baptism, but it’s different) The author is combining the two to make the point that Mary and Joseph are devout.  They do what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it. 

And we learn something else.  What you are supposed to bring to the temple for this, is a lamb.  Unless one is too poor to do so in that case, the sacrifice of the turtledoves and pigeons will suffice.  We are again reminded that Jesus was born into poverty.

And it’s kind of interesting that Mary and Joseph even follow through with this whole ceremony.  Because if we think back to Christmas Eve when we hear part one of this long passage, you know when they are on a hillside in a region where there are shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night – when an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone ‘round about them to announce – Good news – don’t be afraid – for to you born this day is the Messiah – and suddenly there is a heavenly host of angels proclaiming – Glory to God in the highest and peace to God’s people on earth!

That’s a pretty big deal, yes!  That sort of holy proclamation that their baby is a Messiah!

Why, do they bother with taking the baby to the temple when they got that?  I mean, have you ever been to a church service on a Saturday, like for a wedding and thought – eh, I don’t need to go on Sunday – Saturday/Sunday – that’s pretty close. 

So we learn something else, the mountain top experiences don’t seem to keep Mary and Joseph from following through on the ordinary ones.

Now a few weeks ago on the Feast of the Epiphany, you heard Josh preach about the wacky Magi, also known as the wise men, and their very strange gifts for a baby.  Imagine, he said, you’re at a baby shower and the expectant mom opens a gift bag of spices, on top of a bar of gold.  That would be a very weird gift.

Well, now imagine you’re at a baptism and a strange old man, comes over, takes the baby, lifts him high and starts singing, “Thanks be to God – now, Lord, I can die! Now I can go in peace because I have seen the salvation of all people in this child, prepared in the presence of the whole world!!”

If that happened at a baptism here – awkward silence, before I started rambling in an attempt to move it along.  So I guess we can only assume Mary and Joseph are just used to strange gifts, and very strange things happening around their child by now; for they are filled with wonder and amazement. 

And in their amazement they accept Simeon’s blessing but it is attached to a warning.  This child is destined for amazing things – but mom, you are destined to know pain in your soul because of it all.

There is something I hear so often, and I’ll bet many of you do too.  When I tell someone what I do, or that I go to church, or believe in God – a response I often get is, “Well, I can’t believe in God.  There are just too many horrible things that happen in the world.”

I tend to keep silent and just nod my head.  The correlation of these two things just doesn’t make sense to me.  Did Mary and Joseph go to the temple and fulfill their religious obligations because they believed to do so would protect them from the challenges and difficulties of life?  Do we?

I hear echoes of Simeon’s words at every child’s baptism.  For we all know loving – particularly loving a child – will bring pain to our hearts, whether or not they are a Messiah.  And isn’t it in the temple, in the church, when we come before God with our prescribed words that we acknowledge God is the constant.  God is with us in times of joy and in the times of sorrow. 

Since God’s children share flesh and blood, Jesus himself likewise shared the same things – we heard from Hebrews.  This scene in the temple is all about God’s humanity.  Mary and Joseph didn’t disregard what they were supposed to do because Jesus – was, well – Jesus with all that accompanied his birth.  But because he was a boy, a baby, flesh and blood.

When people say, I don’t believe in God because there’s too much bad stuff in the world – what is the god they picture?  A magician?  A super-hero?  Or genie from a fairytale?  Do they imagine a god who floats above us on a magic carpet in the sky withholding some magic power that would solve all our problems and all the world’s issues?

That’s not the God that gave us Jesus.  A person who did not fix every problem he encountered.  Who did not answer every question he was asked.  Who did not heal every hurt that crossed his path.  Jesus, flesh and blood – fully human – who presented himself before the whole world – not the king of glory triumphant – but accused, alone, broken and ashamed – nailed, flesh and blood, to a cross – saying, Father forgive them, it is finished.  And leaving the forgiving business to us.

But not, leaving us alone.  We cannot forget Anna – the prophet.  Surely, she was homeless because it says she lived at the temple, a widow who relied on the generosity from people like Mary and Joseph.  She completes the scene because she sings about Jesus from then on.  To all who enter looking for redemption she points to the person of Jesus as the living answer to what they seek.

We are the flesh and blood people who point to God through Jesus.  We too follow the rituals, say the prayers, do what it is we’re supposed to do when we’re supposed to do it.  Not because we believe it will protect us from the many swords that will pierce our souls – but to help us remember God constant.  God is always there yearning to help us see the light shining in the midst of any darkness. 

And every day, we present ourselves to God.  As we do I pray we follow the example of Mary and Joseph’s devotion and humility.  I pray we we risk the craziness of Simeon’s song of praise and joy.  And I pray we remember we are prophets like Anna – who can say to all we meet – you have got to meet this guy who transformed my life – Jesus.  The real-life, flesh and blood Jesus who longs to be with us, not to fix all our problems, but to walk the walk beside us; helping us see that love, that acceptance, that redemption that all of us are longing and looking for.  Amen.

- The Rev. Arianne R. Weeks