Love the Lord your God

A sermon for the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, October 29, 2023

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

It is fairly common for Christians to think because Jesus says this in a controversy with the Pharisees, that he came up with it, or at least that he was saying something that they disagreed with. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus’ answer was from the scriptural text that is most important to all Jews, and certainly the Pharisees. From the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, it is known as the Shema: “Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

Jesus is telling these figures of the religious establishment that he fully shares and agrees with the most essential point of their belief: that it is God and God alone that deserves reverence and obedience.  In fact, in the Gospel of Luke, a young lawyer asks Jesus about how to attain eternal life, and Jesus asks the lawyer what the law says and it is the lawyer who tells Jesus exactly the words that Jesus repeats to the Pharisees. It’s not complicated, it’s not secret, it’s not innovative—it’s just very serious business.

In Luke, the young lawyer tries to justify himself, asking, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. You’ll have to wait until that text comes up for a sermon on the Good Samaritan, however.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Note that he doesn’t say, “Act like you love the Lord with all your heart” or “be really showy with how pious you are” or “tell everybody if they don’t believe and act just like you do that they will be damned to hell.” The command is to live in God’s love—always—at all times and in all ways.

Most people have a god that is far too small, a mascot god that does what they want, makes them comfortable, helps them feel justified in however they do things. That is not the One God of Scripture. The true and only God is no one’s mascot. I once calculated approximately how far a particle traveling at the speed of light would have travelled in the 13 billion years since the Big Bang—80 sextillion miles and change. All of that distance, in all directions, could fit in the palm of God’s hand. God’s love is likewise infinite and it is not subject to manipulation—by magic, or self-serving rhetoric, or use of power over others, or by any attempt to turn the Gospel upside down.

We like to duck out of our responsibility to the one God, who created everything that is and who loves even the poorest of god’s creatures, and find some kind of religious expression that will confirm our prejudices and privileges. It’s always a temptation. The Pharisees answered Jesus’ question about God’s anointed by looking back to when David was the monarch of Israel, a thousand years before. Jesus interprets that scripture by saying that the Kingdom of God is infinitely more and more immediate. Jesus came to hold people to the truth, and ultimately, his speaking the truth was what led to his crucifixion.

That seems like a big jump, but it’s not. Because it is not a matter of words or philosophies or discussion groups. Jesus really meant it and he held people accountable to loving God in their lives and actions.

And what Jesus says after the Shema, wasn’t a controversial or unusual thing to say in his time either. “And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That quote comes from our reading from Leviticus today—it’s from the holiness code which lays out how the holy people of God are supposed to behave. Thus, it interprets what it is to love God with all your heart in terms of a person’s behavior. Loving other people and valuing their welfare every bit as much as you value your own is living the love of God.  The God of heaven and earth leads us beyond what is good for us and into what is good. Abundant life is life for others, living in generosity, living in God with our entire heart, soul, mind and strength. Living this way is not a matter of being more religious or better than ordinary people—actually it is very ordinary. And it isn’t optional at all.  Being connected in love is what gives life—being focused only on ourselves and our immediate community is what causes life to shrivel.

We live in a country that has spent far too much of its energy encouraging people to focus on maintaining themselves and disregarding their neighbors. It’s clear to anyone who has eyes to see how this has damaged our country and what a frightening place this has made of our body politic. Honoring God as Scripture directs is essential for the prosperity of a people; elsewise the selfishness of the arrogant undermines those who are ever poor or weak—and that is every one of us at some time or another—the selfishness of the arrogant destroys us all.

In the years that I have known you here at Trinity I have seen how you love and respect one another, reaching out to the sick and shut in; those who are bereaved and those who need encouragement. Trinity has reached out into this neighborhood—a neighborhood which includes many new immigrants and many whose resources are severely limited—and provided a thrift store with free or very low-priced clothing and other articles. From that we gathered a community to share a meal around the table and find spiritual support. It is in such generosity of spirit, in humbly welcoming and supporting the humble that this country—this world even—can survive and thrive. It is not just our family or those we know that are the neighbors—it is all those, poor or wealthy, whom God has called his children.

Our first lesson, from Leviticus defines the treatment of our neighbor—which Jesus observes is the same as our love of God. I’ll conclude by reading a little more from this passage:

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.

You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

Leviticus 19:9, 17-18

Whose Image?

A sermon for the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, October 22, 2023

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?

The Gospel this morning is a question about conflict. In the story of the Gospel, this occurs shortly after Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and cleansed the temple by driving out the money changers and all the dealers in religious goods. These chapters of Matthew explain the heightening conflict that resulted, a few days later, in Jesus being betrayed, arrested, and put to death.

As Matthew tells the story, the people who initiated this confrontation were Pharisees who sent some of their disciples along with some Herodians to bring their question to Jesus. This is an interesting combination of groups. The Pharisees were the devout. Those who were concerned for the purity of the faith of Israel: faithfulness to the God of scripture, to the observance of the teaching of the Torah, and the customs of the Jewish people. While there is a lot that’s known about the Pharisees, the Herodians are a less well-defined group. It’s pretty clear, however, that they are partisans of the Herods, a family that was in political power in Judea and Galilee during this entire period. The thing that characterized Herod the Great and his descendants was that they found ways to accommodate to the Roman Empire, ingratiating themselves to the emperors and their representatives, and doing political favors for them, even when that involved compromising Jewish traditions and faith. So lots of the Pharisees and others saw the Herodians and their supporters as sell-outs and collaborators.

But on this occasion, leaders of the Pharisees reached out to the Herodians for the purpose of entrapping Jesus. Like John the Baptist, Jesus made both the Pharisees and the Herodians uncomfortable. The form of their trap gives a pretty clear indication of why. The disciples of the leaders of the Pharisees come along with a group of Herodians, and those Pharisees start out with a soapy and flattering introduction: “Rabbi, we know you are sincere, and show deference to no one … teach the way of God in accordance with the truth …”  As if they honored him and valued his opinion, which was obviously untrue—they were saying these things to manipulate him, to try to corner him with their pious pronouncements. We see a good bit of that nowadays from people who claim to be the best kind of Christians, and claim to be persecuted whenever they don’t get their way, don’t we?

Jesus asks them about it, and they admit: It is the emperor on the coin. These Pharisees, for all their religious purity were participating entirely and comfortably in the economic and political world of the Roman emperor and yet they are bringing this question about whether paying those taxes is in accordance with the religious law to Jesus. They are only pretending it is a question when really it is a snare.

“Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Butter. Would not. Melt. In their mouths. So Jesus looks at these super-religious guys who don’t want any disruption to their worship and he looks at the political realist guys who definitely don’t want any offense given to the Romans, and he says, “You hypocrites! Why are you putting me to the test?” Jesus, like John the Baptist, was serious about what people did in the real world—not just about interior attitudes or going along to get along. So these groups were posing a conundrum—either go along with the collaborators and pay the tax to get along, or hold to the sovereignty of God and deny the validity of the tax and endanger the life of any of Jesus’ followers who refused to pay the tax. Jesus knew that none of the people talking with him were speaking in good faith, so he says, “Show me the coin used for the tax.” So one of them, probably one of the Pharisees, pulls a denarius out of his purse. A silver coin, worth a day’s pay, kind of like if one of us pulled a fifty or hundred dollar bill out of our wallet. These guys weren’t poor if they were carrying around money like that, rather than spending it for daily bread and hiding the change where it would be safe. Jesus looks at it.  It is a Roman coin with the image of the emperor.

What I think Jesus is doing in his response to them is pointing out that they are the ones in the trap. They were the ones living their lives for Caesar and in thrall to Caesar. Their trap was doing the work of Caesar, the work of death as would become clear a few days later. Then Jesus answers with an answer which perhaps would be typical of a rabbi, a wise teacher of Torah: “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God, the source of Life, that which is God’s.” They were astounded and went away. Lots of people interpret this as the Pharisees and the Herodians being impressed at how facile Jesus’ response was and going away because he had fooled them. I read this differently. They are astounded because of how Jesus called them out—“you have Caesar’s thing there in your pocket and that’s how you’re going along; render to God what is God’s due.” Jesus said this another way in the Sermon on the Mount, in the sixth chapter of Matthew:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, and what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Matthew 6:24-25

Serving Caesar and serving Mammon were the same. For Jesus, the question wasn’t the taxes or parsing out what was required and what was allowed for people who were trying to survive and get by. It was about the entrapment his adversaries were bringing, entrapment in death by serving Mammon and the occupying armies of the Romans rather than serving the God of life. I think Jesus’ adversaries understood this—he wasn’t backing down and that amazed them. They went back and continued to plot and Jesus continued to teach the Kingdom of God. The conflict continued until Jesus was crucified … and the God of Life raised him from the dead.

Nowadays, there is a lot of service of death, a lot of religious people working with the modern Herodians to use power and wealth to secure quiet and privilege for the rich and powerful at the expense of those who are poor and oppressed. God calls our country to repent of this way of death. Jesus invites us to the Way of Life. It’s not simple, it’s not the way of the politics of this world. The Way of Life requires courage in the real world, denying alliances with the selfish and living in compassion—the way that Jesus lived, including his resurrection.

ALMIGHTY God, our heavenly Father, you declare your glory and show forth your handiwork in the heavens and in the earth; Deliver us, we ask you, in our several callings, from the service of mammon, that we may do the work which you give us to do, in truth, in beauty, and in righteousness, with singleness of heart as your servants, and to the benefit of our fellow people; for the sake of him who came among us as one that serves, your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

1928 Book of Common Prayer, p. 44 alt.

The Peace of God which surpasses all understanding

A sermon for the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, October 15, 2023

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Paul wrote this letter to the Church at Philippi from prison. The word that is translated here as “Rejoice,” is Chairete. There is a footnote in my Bible which says it could also mean “Farewell.” It is a word that was frequently used for a greeting – it means joy, but also connotes peace, quite similar in usage to the Hebrew word Shalom. As Paul reaches this last section of the letter where he sums up and bids his farewell, he emphasizes this by saying: “Farewell in the Lord, but I mean, really, Rejoice.”  Paul rejoices in this community which he had come to love, and he rejoices in the love of God. He rejoices in the ability to live for others, and he encourages the Philippians to rejoice, not in what they have received for themselves, not in any comfort or material well-being, but in their ability to serve others.

St. Paul gives thanks for the ministries of two women in the congregation, women who had struggled along with him in his work—he encouraged them to continue steadfast and enjoined the congregation to support them in that work. He rejoices in the opportunity to serve, and to see the service that others extend to others in the love of God. His words of thanksgiving and encouragement are all the more potent because he was not serving himself, but the Kingdom of God.

“Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” The Greek word meaning “gentleness” refers to flexibility and reasonableness, the opposite of rigidity or harshness—everyone should know that when they approach you, you will be humble and listen.  In this, Paul is reminding each of us that our interactions with one another require flexibility and reasonableness.

Then he says, “the Lord is near, do not worry about anything.”  Usually when somebody says that, the smart and worldly answer is, “Easy for you to say.”  But that discouraged and cynical response comes up short against the fact that Paul was in chains when he wrote this. When he says, “Do not worry about anything,” he means it, and he’s not whistling in the dark. He’s not talking about ignoring his chains or things that have gone wrong in our lives. What St. Paul is saying is exactly what is not easy to say: the outcomes of our planning, and the vagaries of human existence may not be what we envision, and our comfort may be intruded upon, but God remains present and his mercy is with us—encouraging us in our gentleness of spirit to rejoice rather than to worry.  It is not that our physical wellbeing and our presence in this world does not matter—Paul encourages all of our desires and needs and concerns to be expressed in prayer to God. But note, each of those prayers is to be with thanksgiving. It is the same thanksgiving that Paul gives for the generous and helping spirit of his congregation, of their concern for others and beyond themselves.

As we are bound in the network of prayer into the body of God’s love we discover the peace of God. That peace is not from material security—it is the peace that comes from the prison—the peace of rejoicing in the generosity of God known in the love and generosity of God’s people.

It has been almost nine years since I first met you at Trinity Church. At the end of my first Sunday service, a young boy came up for a blessing. He asked to be blessed for Bosworth Joseph Barrett, his grandfather who was ill and couldn’t make it to church that Sunday. It was only later that I learned that JoJo was the only person who referred to Joe Barrett by the full name on his birth certificate. Since then Joe has regaled me with many stories and I’ve seen the concern and help he’s given to others. Joe and Chang have been faithful in attending on Zoom even while living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And that’s just a typical example of the people of Trinity, bound by mutual respect and care. God is present in this network of care and prayer and will continue, despite all that may happen. People have reached out to me over the past few weeks—and amid their concern and sadness—what comes through above all is the gentleness and mutual concern within this community. People thank me, and I do appreciate that, but the truth of that is that I have been accepted into this community of mutual care, this church, and we thank one another.

In the coming months, we need to reach out to each person of this church, especially to those who have a hard time getting out, so that we are sure that the care of the church continues for them. Not everything is resolved, certainly not set in stone, but God remains, and God’s love remains in all its gentleness and adaptability.

We rejoice in God’s gift of one another, even when being with each other is limited or not possible at all. Being church at a time like this requires much of that gentleness—flexibility, kindness, and peace in the knowledge of God’s love. As constrained as our lives have been and as uncertain, we know that God’s love for us in Jesus Christ is here.

Primarily it is that peace of God, that Shalom of God, which surpasses anything we can understand, figure out or worry about—it is that peace that guards our hearts and gives us opportunity to rejoice.  Let us listen to Paul’s final words of farewell, that is, rejoicing—you can see that in the farewell is the beginning of an ongoing path of abundant life:

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:8-9

You shall Not make for Yourself an Idol

A sermon for the nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 8, 2023

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

You shall not bow down to them or worship them…

Today’s lesson from the Old Testament is the beginning of the law as God gave it to Moses—it is the Ten Commandments. They are worth memorizing, and certainly that was one of the virtues of the old-fashioned way of doing things—such texts would be absorbed into people’s minds, their way of doing things, into their hearts. They can be found at Exodus Chapter 20 in your Bible, or at pages 317 and 318 or page 350 in the Book of Common Prayer. It wouldn’t hurt to refresh your memory.

I noticed something in looking over the text, however. The text of the first four commandments is more than three-quarters of the text of the ten commandments. Why is that? The law is not a set of rules that we can use to protect ourselves by obeying them. The living God is far too free and dangerous for that little fantasy of ours to be true. The law is the statement of the relationship between God and God’s people.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” God’s mercy brings his people out of the house of slavery. God is the God of compassion, justice and life—no other God is acceptable. A God who does not bring life and freedom is no true God.

The next three commandments—about idols, making wrongful use of the name of God, and about the Sabbath continue to define who God is in relation to God’s people. The other six commandments define our relationship to God as well—being accountable to living a responsible life in God’s community. But let’s consider the longest of the Ten Commandments:

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…

Exodus 20:4-6

 …and it continues for thirty-six more words. God has defined our relationship according to mercy, compassion, justice, life. Bowing down in worship to things of the world changes that focus to things like power, wealth, personal success. To win any of those things is not intrinsically merciful, compassionate, just or life giving. In ancient Israel, idolatry referred to what anthropologists might call “magic,” which is to say using things of this world to manipulate powers in the world. This was done, largely, for individual advantage, or the advantage of one’s close associates.

In the Old Testament, it wasn’t really that this magic or those powers didn’t exist but rather that bowing to them violated the relationship with God—it could mean worshiping death, or the means of death for others rather than devotion to the God of Life, of Compassion, of Truth. The true God, the ultimate God is the God of life and mercy. The powers of death are not an alternate God, they are powers and things within this world which take advantage of the fears, selfishness and dishonesty of human beings. We moderns tend to think that we have outgrown such things, but they are very much real and very much with us.  That is why the first question in presenting a person for baptism is: Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

Think about this world, all the systems, organizations and ideologies that pressure and manipulate people’s decisions and feelings. The almost magical way that Google or Facebook presents you with ads that are tailored to your own very needs, the ways in which we ourselves conclude derogatory things about members of groups that we aren’t part of—based on—repeated rumors that we might hear on our favorite radio station, or things on our twitter feed, or the feelings and attitudes of parents, friends and relatives. These things have precious little to do with the God of mercy, justice and compassion. The God who freed the slaves and brings his children to safety.  Worshiping forces in this world—be they the internet, or political party, some idea of the power of science (other than the real truth of science which is that it is supposed to be about trying things out and being honest about mistakes and when hypotheses need to be changed) or social pressure—worshiping any of these things and bowing down to them breaches the relationship of faith in the Living God. Often people do not see how they are drifting into the worship of death until it is too late.

A few years ago, a priest that I know became very concerned when a girls’ softball team in a neighboring town advertised a raffle of an assault rifle to raise money to go to a tournament. He offered to pay their expenses instead, but that couldn’t happen since the raffle had been announced already.  So he bought most of the tickets and won the rifle.  He announced that he would have it destroyed and turned into a work of art.  This had some notoriety for a while and he received all sorts of messages.  He shared one of them with me. The person took him to task for destroying the gun. Like me, Fr. Jeremy has had plenty of experience with the rough language that filled the message, but what was striking was what he said, “how dare you destroy that beautiful weapon? How would you feel if someone smashed an image of Jesus Christ?”

I’m sure he would deny it, but in his message this man put a gun on a level with the Word made Flesh, God come amongst us. Note that the man had no claim to the gun, it belonged to Jeremy, a machine made of metal, wood and plastic. But its symbolic function was powerful enough to trigger his outrage—to call the destruction of this machine made from the earth, an act of blasphemy. Holiness, reverence and worship was invested in this machine, whose design was solely to cause death.

There are many such symbols, systems and ideas in this world, which serve a God-given purpose but which become idols, controlling the allegiance of people and turning them to the worship of death.

Idolatry is commitment to powers that are contrary to life, contrary to God—gaming this world by using the power of death to get an advantage.

It is the God of Life who brought the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. It is the God of life that brought Jesus into this world to proclaim his mercy and compassion. If is the God of life that raised Jesus from the dead and who makes life, compassion, justice and peace possible for all his people. Do not join with those who make idols in our time, and do not bow down to them.