ST MATTHEW-IN-THE-CITY
ANGLICAN CHURCH AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND
Where Does Scripture Take Us?
February 16, 2020
Cate Thorn
Ordinary 6 Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Matthew 5:21-26
Video available on YouTube, Facebook
I want to begin by asking you whether, when you know you’re listening to scripture it changes the way you listen. Whether it changes what you expect of the text.
Scriptural text is most often the foundation, sets the theme, if you like, for someone such as me to pay attention to. From which a sermon, a reflection, a wondering, perhaps a sharing of mutual not knowing is spoken. Often preparation includes a closer examination of the scriptural text. Using biblical criticisms in their various guises a studious dissection of the linguistic, historical, cultural and/or religious influences on the text takes place. As if, by doing so we will disinter a deeper meaning, uncover what was really meant.
Yet, at the same time we speak of scripture as a living word not fixed in meaning and form. Rather of scripture as a relational companion, a source of inspiration forever revealing new insights of how to live as those beloved and called to speak this into life. It’s as if on one hand we want to pin scripture down, be able to set it apart, admire it, and also have it handily available to dissect, determine and control it. On the other hand we delight that scripture eludes our capture, a living word it speaks freshly to us and draws us deeper.
I recall, when at theological college, one of the lecturers in biblical studies inviting us to consider when we read or hear scripture that what’s significant in the text may not be what the text says but where it takes us. As if to suggest a scriptural text has integrity that we might discern as we pay attention to our response. Maybe this is what it speaks to us; perhaps we take the text apart to fulfil our own needs.
Today’s gospel we’ve heard only in part, the lectionary includes a longer passage. For some reason, and I suspect I can imagine why, a choice was made to omit verses from the full gospel text. I want now to read the omitted verses. Remember today’s gospel verses and their admonitions follow closely Matthew’s beatitudes. Immediately preceding them is Jesus’ declaration he’s come not to abolish the law or the prophets but to fulfil them. That not one letter or stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished. As you listen I want to ask you to notice what arises in you in response, just watch your inner landscape and notice.
The gospel continues thus, “You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.
‘It was also said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
‘Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.” But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”
On hearing this text, where have you been taken? What response or responses have arisen? Where have you gone in your inner landscape?
Upon hearing it, do we find an urge to go into the text?
We can do this of course. We can go into the text, unpack it, pull it apart and put it safely in context. That would help to distance it from us. That would give us space to consider the content more objectively, be perhaps curious and more wondering than reactive. It also might mean we can choose to disregard it. See it as outdated and no longer relevant, applicable perhaps in its time and place. Or, perhaps we choose to gain perspective by following Jesus directives. Spoken first in the beatitudes and then that the law and the prophets would not being abolished until all is accomplished. It causes us to look deeper, to the heart of what the law demands – more costly to us than negotiating relationship contractually even if correctly, according to the letter of the law.
But I invite you to resist the habit of burrowing into the words in the text. Instead, let’s ask why we’d exclude these verses from today’s gospel. It was their exclusion that attracted my attention. Was it to protect ourselves and/or those among us who’ve had them used against them/us, who’ve found themselves abused by such verses? Is that because such texts have been misused by the institutional church? The church who claims to stand in the lineage of this Jesus who insists the vulnerable, most powerless has priority of care. A text misused within the walls of church institutions and as the church has influenced opinion in wider society.
The law and prophets of which Jesus speaks arise from a hierarchical, patriarchal context. One we inherit and largely still inhabit, inside and outside the church. Taking such scriptural text literally, the institutional church has chosen and still chooses in many places, to perpetuate a legalistic application of such literal interpretation. An interpretation and application that continues to privilege those with power, (and this is still mostly men), to the enormous cost of those this makes powerless. The very thing against which Jesus speaks, acting against the very ones with whom the church proclaims it stands.
Like it or not we, here, are part of this lineage. Is it easier for us to simply stop reading these bits so we’re not reminded of this, made uncomfortable or accountable? Or maybe we should ditch the idea of being answerable to some notion of a God who commands, declares through law and prophets there are ways we can live well together and there’s repercussions for not. Ways we so fallibly enact in edicts to keep those with power safe from threat of change. Maybe we want to avoid the difficult bits, prefer to keep only the good, reassuring bits of scripture.
Keep bits like the passage from Deuteronomy, which is one of my favourites. One I often use in marginally religious occasions, but when I do I take out the God bits. It makes it comfortable but what does this passage mean if it’s without conditions? Are we able to know which choices lead to life and which to death for the generations yet to within the limit of our few years?
We need only look at our world stage to see how easily and quickly truth’s become a negotiable ideal. Commenting on Trump’s avoided impeachment, Andrew Gawthorpe of the Guardian writes, “If [the Republican party] stuck by the president through the Ukraine affair they will stick by him through anything. They have acted like the totalitarian functionaries who Hannah Arendt said view the difference between truth and falsehood as something which “depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it … [and further] those who use their power to construct a world of falsehoods for their supporters eventually have to destroy the power of those who would challenge it with the truth.” [1]
“Such phenomenon”, George Monbiot, also writing for the Guardian proposes, “is not confined to the US. … A culture of impunity is spreading around the world. “Try to stop me” is the implicit motto in nations ranging from Hungary to Israel, Saudi Arabia to Russia, Turkey to China, Poland to Venezuela. Flaunting your disregard for the law is an expression of power.” [2]
What has this to do with listening to where a scriptural text takes us? Do we avoid certain biblical passages because they offend or because they confront? Maybe this is one of the places today’s scripture takes us – to confrontation. It confronts us with religion – how humans, human religious institutions such as churches use or misuse the power of holy writ to control. It confronts us with the notion of a God of accountability with expectations. Expectations of relationship that we’re to enact live out in real time. What we do makes a difference if there’s to be life and a future.
Human constructs or no, religions that have stood the test of time tend to be confronting. Not because of what they do to us but because of what they cause us to recognise. Life is a gift and we are vulnerable. A fearful proposition! We prefer religion that’s nice, consoling, perhaps comfortingly disturbing. But religion’s not always nice, it’s often confronting. Maybe that’s part of its point. But religion as we know it’s been colonised for so long and we’ve been colonised for so long have we forgotten? Do we even want to know we’ve responsibility to enact this religion of expectation that confronts and reveals how we can live well together?
Today’s scripture confronts us with the notion that we know how to choose for death or for life as we live in fidelity to expectations of living in ways that enhance relationship. In risky, vulnerable ways that have curious integrity with our real – that life is a gift and we are vulnerable. Confronts us with the notion we’re accountable for the consequences of our choices and actions. Whether we, one another, our world have life now and into the future depends on the choices we know how to make. In light of the dis-ease that’s besieging our world at the moment it seems to me we do not protesteth too much, neither do we proclaimeth enough in word and deed.