Grace to you and peace from
God our father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
I am a big Jane Austen fan.
I’ve read her books, I’ve seen the movies, multiple times, so I was both
surprised and delighted when last year it was announced that one of her
little-known novellas made it onto the big screen. Imagine, the first big Jane
Austen hit in YEARS! It was a BIG DEAL! (At least for me!)
It’s called “Love and
Friendship,” based on Austen’s short story “Lady Susan,” a widow who uses ever
person and situation to her own advantage. Not even the 10 Commandments are
safe from her. She tried to convince her daughter to marry a very silly but
very rich farmer by using the fourth commandment. Which is……? Take a wild
guess? That’s right, “honor your father and mother.”
But this rich farmer-gentleman,
named Sir Martin, has his own opinions about the 10 commandments. While on a
visit to Lady Susan’s family, he hope to impress them by talking about “the old
prophet who came down from the mount with tablets bearing the Twelve Commandments.”
When he is told that there
only 10, he exclaims, “Really?? Only 10 must be obeyed. Excellent. Well, then,
which two to take off? …Many of the ‘thou shalt nots’ – don’t murder, don’t
covet… one simply wouldn’t do anyway! Because they are wrong.”
Yes, Sir Martin, they indeed
are wrong. I think that many of us, myself included, can tick off most of the
10 commandments and think “well, this week I didn’t murder anyone, I didn’t rob
a bank, I didn’t go on a date with someone who is married, and I haven’t
wrongfully used the Lord’s name. All things considered, I think I’m actually doing
pretty well.”
The Atlanta Falcons in last
week’s Super Bowl game might have gone into half time thinking the same thing,
when the score was 21-3 in their favor. That they had this “winning the Super
Bowl thing” locked in, in the bag, and for the rest of the game they could sit
back and phone it in. But we all know what happened in the second half. The
lesson of that game was clear – you gotta show up for the second half of the
game.
The last two weeks in the
Sermon on the Mount were the wind up, believe it or not. You are blessed. You
are salt and light. And now, this week Jesus is really digging into the hard
stuff, the kind of topics that would have make most people walk away if he had
started his sermon here. This is the second half of the game, where the rubber
meets the road about what it means to be a disciple. Following Jesus doesn’t
give us a pass. In fact, the standards will be higher and the stakes will be
greater, and our actions under more scrutiny.
After I bought my car last year,
I got a Luther Rose magnet to put on the bumper. When that went on, and
especially now that I have the official “Family of God” sticker on the back
there too, I find have to check myself while driving. Just the other day,
someone cut me off to get into the left turn lane, only to notice what I could
already see: their lane had been blocked off by a police officer. I admit, I
had some very not nice thoughts about them, and I almost didn’t let them back
into my lane. But, not only was it the right thing to do, but I also knew that
I had to do it because of who the back
of my car advertises – Jesus and Family of God. Did I want to let them in?
No way. But successful driving not just about what is lawful. It’s about what’s
best for the flow of traffic as a whole. In other words, how would Jesus drive?
The rules of the road that
God gave us is the 10 Commandments. But it seems that even these 10 are not
enough for us. We always seem to find our way around following the rules.
Squeaking through at the end of a yellow turn arrow because we know there is
time buffer between lights. Parking crooked because we’re in a hurry. Following
a little too close to the car ahead of us. Been there, done that. But…
technically NOT illegal.
So Jesus takes on a couple of the well-known commandments
that we might feel pretty confident about, and – surprise! Jesus ups the ante
for those of us who claim to follow him. Which is not very nice of Jesus at
all.
“You have heard it said you
shall not murder.” But, according to Jesus, it turns out that if we are angry
with any of our fellow human beings, if we insult them and call them names, when
we convince ourselves that this is acceptable behavior, we have made them into
less than people. When we reduce the humanity of any of our neighbors, forgetting
that they too bleed and have feelings, we are putting our own lives
above theirs. It is as if we have killed them in our minds. Been there, done
that.
In Martin Luther’s Small
Catechism, Luther provided explanations for each of the commandments. For the 5th
commandment, “you shall not murder,” Luther writes: “We are to fear and love
God, so that we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but
instead help and support them in all life’s needs.”
Keeping the 5th
commandment is NOT about NOT killing, pardon the double negative. Truly keeping
the 5th commandment in the Jesus Regime also means not labeling people or not insulting
them and their families. AND, as Luther adds, it also means living together in
unity and helping our neighbors out when they are in need.
The same goes for Jesus’
take on the 6th commandment – “you shall not commit adultery.” Luther’s
explanation reads: “you are to fear and love God, so that we lead pure and
decent lives in word and deed, and each of us loves and honors his or her
spouse.” Jesus takes it a step farther and says this shocking statement that is one of the banes of preachers
everywhere this week: “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already
committed adultery with her in his heart.”
It could have been worse,
folks. This could have been my FIRST week with you instead of my THIRD. But
bear with me. This is not the first time that Jesus goes into some pretty
uncomfortable territory, and it won’t be the last.
When a man looks at a woman
in this way, he sees her only as function of what she can give to him, he denies
her autonomy as a person, and he reduces her to commodity be acquired. Take a
look at any magazine in the grocery aisle, every billboard, every commercial on
TV.
When a half-dressed, photo-shopped female body is used to sell a product, she
too becomes an inanimate object rather than a person with hopes, dreams,
desires, and a will of her own. And so it has been throughout human history,
before advertising was even invented. Women’s bodies have always been feared,
shamed, and controlled.
With this additions to the 6th
commandment, Jesus isn’t telling women to cover up because “boys will be boys.” Jesus is instead
calling boys to be men, to put an
end to centuries of blaming and shaming, and to remind them that God created
women to be people too.
Jesus lived at a time where
women could not have a career, make a living, or live independently from her
husband or male relatives. Marriage provided financial stability and the
assurance of a future through children. The idea of romantic love, or our
obsession with a holiday that celebrates romance and couples would be
completely foreign to them.
So imagine divorce at this
time. Divorce is a traumatic, life-shaking event no matter what the context. Imagine
though, that a woman in Jesus’s time is divorced by her husband – because it is
the husband who initiates this, not the wife – what are her options? She would
either be homeless, or go back to live with her family of origin in shame and
disgrace… or she could get married again. All pretty bleak options. All leave
her with even less value in the eyes of her culture.
Imagine the kind of man who
would pursue such a woman at her most vulnerable, after her previous husband
had used his societal advantage to cast her aside. Such a man is taking advantage
of this woman when she is at her most defenseless. He participates in and condones in the first
man’s sin for his own gain.
By calling this a sin, Jesus
is affirming that, in the words of a colleague of mine, “Each person is sacred
and deserves to be treated that way.” In Jesus’s time, and in ours, the
sacredness of each life is threatened when anyone is treated as less than
human. In Jesus’s time, Jesus said that meant for men to be faithful to their
marriage promises in a world where women had much less power and choice than
they do now. In our own time, I believe that Jesus would
say divorce is the most loving option when it is the only way that the sacredness
of human life can only be upheld, and that remarriage between two consenting
adults who respect the sacred humanity of one another is never wrong.
Love in its truest form is
more than just red hearts and a nice dinner. Love is seeing the needs of the
other as important. Love is living in a relationship built on mutual kindness. Love is seeing every person as sacred and
deserves to be treated that way. Love is how we were created to live with one
another.
God is love. And God created
us to love. Love gives us life. Jesus is the love of God with skin on,
literally love fully fleshed out.
Love is hard. It calls us to
do difficult things. Love asks us for our words and our deeds to be
life-giving, not life-limiting. Love calls us to walk the truth path of who we
were created and called to be: no more and no less than beloved Children of
God.
As it turns out, silly
Farmer Martin from the movie “Love and Friendship” was right all along. When
Jesus was asked which commandments were the greatest, Jesus actually gave us
two more, clever man: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and
first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor
as yourself’.” (Matthew 22:37–39) Ten plus two equals twelve. There you have
it. The Twelve Commandments. Only, we don’t get to “leave any of them off.”
When we leave here today, as
we brush the crumbs from coffee hour from our coats, we’ll hop in the car, and
I know I’ll probably break at least three commandments on the way home. But we
keep driving, knowing that we don’t believe in a God of Rules. Our God is a God
of Love and Friendship and Forgiveness. So don’t worry about trying to keep at
the commandments all at once. Just keep the one that’s right in front of you.
Take it one day at a time. We got this. And God’s got you. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment