Episodes
Sunday Oct 26, 2014
Loving Matters
Sunday Oct 26, 2014
Sunday Oct 26, 2014
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC October 26, 2014, the nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Matthew 18:15-20
“The small man / Builds cages for everyone / He / Knows. / While the sage, / Who has to duck his head / When the moon is low, / Keeps dropping keys all night long / For the / Beautiful / Rowdy / Prisoners.”[i] I have been praying with this poem of the Sufi mystic poet, Hafiz, as I wrestled with our scripture from Matthew.
In that passage, we hear Jesus say, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Mt. 18.18) This is the second time in Matthew that Jesus speaks of “binding” and “loosing.” The first is when Jesus names Peter as the rock upon which he will build the church and gives him the “keys to the kingdom of heaven.” (cf. Mt. 16.19) This past week at my Yale Divinity School Convocation, I heard Dr. Margaret Farley point out that these texts have often been interpreted as giving the church the authority to judge others, particularly regarding whether a person would be given entrance into heaven.
If you look at what appears just before the passage we have heard this morning, you’ll find teachings about welcoming the vulnerable and powerless (children) into the Kin-dom of heaven; you’ll hear about not putting stumbling blocks in the way of those who would enter; you’ll hear that it is not God’s will that any of the “little ones,” the lost sheep, be lost. Just after our passage, we hear Jesus teach about forgiving seventy times seven and then he tells a parable about what happens when those who have been forgiven by the King don’t offer the same to others. So while some might interpret our text today as giving the church authority to kick people out or keep people out, it seems that the context of the passage tells us that to “bind and loose” has something to do with bringing people IN to the Kin-dom, not kicking them out, of forgiving people, not making them pay even more. It seems that Jesus isn’t giving the church authority to build cages for people or to be the gate-keeper of heaven, but rather is giving out keys to set prisoners free. As Dr. Farley suggests, Jesus’ real question is: “If you, my followers, don’t care for the vulnerable and forgive people then who will?”
In order to more fully understand what is going on in our text today, it is helpful to know that “binding” and “loosing” are rabbinical terms for “forbidding and permitting.” And the power to forbid or to permit was, in Jesus’ time, claimed by the Pharisees. Further, “‘to bind’ and ‘to loose’ [refer] to a practice of determining the application of scriptural commandments for contemporary situations… Jewish rabbis ‘bound’ the law when they determined that a commandment was applicable to a particular situation, and they ‘loosed’ the law when they determined that a word of scripture (while eternally valid) was not applicable under certain specific circumstances.
Matthew's Gospel is commonly understood as reflecting a close connection to the world of Second Temple and post-Temple Judaism. [During this time,] debates over [how to apply] the law to specific situations were common… For example, the question was raised whether one might be guilty of stealing if one finds something and keeps it without searching for the rightful owner. When is such a search required, and how extensive must it be? The Talmud states, ‘If a fledgling bird is found within fifty cubits of a dovecote, it belongs to the owner of the dovecote. If it is found outside the limits of fifty cubits, it belongs to the person who finds it’ (Bava Batra 23b).
To use Matthew's terminology, the decision was that the law (‘Do not steal’) was bound when the bird was found in proximity to its likely owner; one who keeps the bird under such conditions has transgressed the law and is guilty of sin. But the law is loosed when the bird is found at a distance from any likely owner; the law against stealing does not forbid keeping the bird in that instance.”[ii]
Throughout Jesus’ public ministry he got into trouble many times because other rabbis thought he “loosed” the laws in inappropriate ways…Like the time Jesus healed the bent-over woman on the Sabbath and the leader of the synagogue became indignant that Jesus had broken the law of keeping Sabbath holy. Jesus’s response was to point out that everyone cares for their animals on the Sabbath (leading them to water) so why in the world would it be wrong to care for a daughter of God on the Sabbath? (Luke 13.10-17). In this story, Jesus shows that the law, interpreted and applied the way the leader of that synagogue perceived it, was “bound” in such a way that the suffering woman would, herself remain “bound” (just like the animal would remain tied up and thirsty if not cared for). Jesus “looses” the law in order to “loose” the woman from her suffering. Jesus doesn’t ignore the law or dismiss scripture or counter its authority. The issue that Jesus highlights has to do with interpretation of the law, with discernment of the law’s intent, and the sphere of its application. Jesus’ primary interpretive tool is love. When asked, Jesus was clear that “all the law and the prophets” hang on two commandments: to love God and to love neighbor. (Mt. 22.37-40) Paul puts it this way in Romans 13.10: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Today we hear Jesus give the authority that had always been claimed by the Pharisees to his own disciples, granting them power to “bind and to loose” just as HE did. To bind or loose a law for the sake of love and justice is the point. And yet, it seems the church in every age must wrest itself free from the temptation to use the power given by Jesus in the very ways that Jesus spent and lost his life critiquing. It is so tempting to hold others hostage instead of to set them free, to punish instead of forgive, to do only what “works for us” instead of sacrificing our comfort for the sake of making room for another. Whenever we make anything more important than the liberating love and forgiveness of God, whenever we place a barrier between a person and their ability to receive and enter into the freedom of life in God’s love, we find ourselves standing with those whom Jesus judged again and again. Jesus, after all, is not in the business of doling out cheap grace. Jesus does judge the self-righteous, the arrogant, the selfish, the hypocrites who lay heavy burdens of expectation upon the backs of others but do nothing to help them, the gate-keepers who presume to say whom God has deemed worthy to preach or teach or pray or lead or love.
Today we await word of the outcome of the Judicial Council’s deliberations regarding the fate of Rev. Frank Schaefer, the de-frocked and re-frocked United Methodist pastor whose crime was to perform the marriage of his son and his son’s partner who happened to be a man. This is one very painful and current example of the ways that scriptural interpretation and the issue of “binding” and “loosing” the law continue to challenge the unity, community, and integrity of the church. Many believe that our stance here at Foundry of full inclusion for all persons in the life and ministry of the church and for marriage equality is “loosing” the law of scripture and church law inappropriately. I say that it is fulfilling the law of God’s love, loosing only those bonds that have kept sisters and brothers from being able to take their rightful place in the Body of Christ and to be supported by the church in the truly human work of being and becoming and celebrating fully who they are created to be.
The tensions and disagreements among a diverse Body of Christ will not go away. But it is our responsibility to prayerfully and courageously take responsibility for the ways in which we apply the law, both in Christian community and in the public square, knowing that others will land in a different place. We are responsible to account for whether or not love guides our decisions and actions toward others and whether Christ’s love is our guide in discerning what policies and systems we create or support. How do we “bind” or “loose” the commandments of God so that the commandment is followed in the way that it is intended—which is always going to have to do with health, life, mercy, liberation, and loving, mutual relationships? If the baseline is “do no wrong or harm to another” how does this teaching affect the ways we might think about tax policy? Immigration? The death penalty? (just to name a few) How does this teaching affect the ways we apply the Mosaic law? How do we “do no harm” to those who continue to do harm to us? Jesus gives an example of putting the law of love in action in our passage today, showing how to deal with conflict, how to deal honestly and directly with one who has hurt you in some way (as opposed to bad-mouthing them all over the place). And if you are wondering about the admonition to treat those who will not amend their ways as “Gentiles and tax collectors” I believe it is instructive to consider how Jesus treated those folks (a tax collector was among the twelve). In our relationships and communities we have the responsibility to discern HOW to love others. “When Jesus talked to the Pharisees, he didn’t say, ‘There there. Everything’s going to be all right.’ He said, ‘You brood of vipers! How can you speak good when you are evil!’ (Mt. 12.34) And he said that to them because he loved them.”[iii] We too have to discern what the loving response will be in every situation. Anyone who is a parent will understand this well. There are times when love means discipline and there are times when love calls for embrace.
These days, battles rage over laws and their interpretation and applications—both in the secular community and within the community of Christ’s followers. But even when it is tricky to figure out the most loving word to speak or action to take, for God’s sake let the love of Christ be your guide and then take a stand and do something. Because loving others as Christ loves us is what matters most of all. LOVE is the key to the Kin-dom. Jesus’ love is the key that sets us free, that opens the door to life in God’s Kin-dom. And as those so liberated, Jesus gives us the joyful responsibility to go about dropping keys for other beautiful, rowdy prisoners…
[i] Hafiz, “Dropping Keys,” in The Gift:Poems by Hafiz, The Great Sufi Master, trans. Daniel Ladinsky, Penguin Compass Press, 1999, p. 206.
[ii] Mark Allan Powell "Binding and loosing: a paradigm for ethical discernment from the Gospel of Matthew". Currents in Theology and Mission. FindArticles.com. 02 Sep, 2011. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MDO/is_6_30/ai_111696785/ COPYRIGHT 2003 Lutheran School of Theology and Mission
[iii] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, p. 65.
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