A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Ledlie I. Laughlin

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Shema Yisrael

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Ledlie I. Laughlin

Matthew 22:34-46 ~ October 29, 2017

In recent months, I have named five practices that nourish and equip us to exercise our Christian faith in our daily life. The five are these, in no particular order: daily prayer, reading scripture, discerning our own gifts, serving others, and telling others about our faith. Life is challenging. In our relationships at home, at work, in our communities – the choices we make on a daily basis may reflect our faith in God and desire to live as a follower of Christ, or not. St. Columba’s is a place that honors and takes seriously our intention to be faithful. As a church, we come together for nourishment and strength. Rather like the basecamp for a mountain trek, here we share stories of hardship and hope, sing with joy, and are fed by Christ and one another; then, we set out once more into the unknown, on adventures of discipleship.

We each come to church for any number of different reasons on any given day. I pray today you receive what you seek, trusting that God will provide what you need. My intention is that we provide one another with five practices of Christian faith for daily life. Not that we each take on all five, or not all at once; we each practice one, and then one more: daily prayer, reading scripture, discerning our own gifts, serving others, and telling others about our faith. How does that sound to you?

In the forum this morning, we will talk about one practice: reading scripture, the Bible. When you hear or read scripture, what are you listening for? What do you ask of it? From it? At the risk of oversimplification, I see two distinct strands running all through the Bible. One has to do with purity and obedience in which salvation comes through proper adherence to the law, proper confession of the faith. The other has to do with inclusion in which salvation comes through surpassing human divisions and ever-widening circles of love.

This distinction is at the center of Jesus’ encounter in today’s Gospel.Which is the greatest commandment? What is the organizing principal for you and your life? What is the primary lens through which you view all else?

Two religious sects, the Pharisees and the Sadducees have been taking turns, taking their best shots to trip up this renegade teacher Jesus. First, the Pharisees, then the Sadducees. In today’s passage, “When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.”

Context matters. Whenever we read the Gospels, the story has at least three layers. First, there’s the actual narrative – in this case, Jesus being tested by the Pharisees. Second, there’s the Gospel writer’s interpretation of that narrative; here, we are reading Matthew’s Gospel; hence, we must note the editorial choices Matthew made in his context, for his audience, his agenda. Third, there’s the reader’s interpretation – that’s us, whatever questions or presuppositions we bring to the text.

Matthew composed this Gospel to share the Good News of Jesus with a Jewish community in approximately 70 AD or 70 CE – in the Christian Era – which is after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire. That’s important because Jerusalem’s destruction was not just a physical and political crisis; it was an existential, theological crisis as well. The received and hallowed vision they had of themselves as a chosen people, a holy nation, a gift to the world, was in jeopardy, hung in the balance.

The former things had passed away. Different sects and parties stepped into the vacuum, sought to claim the hearts, imaginations and, ultimately, the allegiance of the people. Perhaps Matthew’s context foreshadows our own.

The question, “which is the greatest commandment?” was really a parlor game of “gotcha!”The Torah – the Five Books of Moses – contain 613 commandments, of differing importance and weight. Each rabbi sequenced them in his own way, to establish the priorities of his teaching.

Which is correct? A then B? Which is better? C or D?

Which is the greatest commandment? Jesus doesn’t play their game. Jesus responds by reciting the Shema. The Shema is the center piece of daily morning and evening prayer in Judaism:

Shema Yisrael.AdonaiEloheinu Adonai echad.

Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

By going to the Shema, Jesus is not debating or persuading. Jesus is saying, you know this; you know what’s important. Jesus is calling them back to their best true selves, as he always does.

Which is the greatest commandment? What is the primary lens through which you view all else?

It was a Thursday afternoon when I got word that on Sunday members of Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka Kansas were coming to protest at St. Peter’s Philadelphia, where I was then serving. Westboro Baptist is known for it’s offensive, venomous antics, proclaiming that God hates those who are gay, lesbian, or transgender – ostensibly citing scripture. The year was 2003. Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed’s Religious Right were still ascendant. 2003 is also when the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire elected and ordained Gene Robinson, the first openly gay person as bishop.

The Gospel text that day was not “which is the greatest commandment.” It was Pilate asking Jesus, what is truth? That’ll work. Tossing aside whatever I had intended to preach, I found an interview with preeminent Biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann*, reflecting on the use of Scripture in the debates on human sexuality.

Asked to what extent he perceives that Scripture is the chief authority for people of differing views, Brueggemann responded: “I incline to think that most people … probably make up their minds on other grounds than the Bible, but then they are uneasy if it collides with the Bible or at least they have an eagerness to be shown how it is that the Bible coheres. I don’t think, on most of these contested questions, that anybody – liberal or conservative – really reads right out of the Bible. I think we basically bring hunches to the Bible that arrive in all sorts of ways and then we seek confirmation.”

When asked if the gay and lesbian struggle for full inclusion in the life of the church was a justice struggle, Brueggemann responded: “Yes. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said that the arc of history is bent toward justice. And the parallel statement that I want to make is that the arc of the Gospel is bent toward inclusiveness. That’s a kind of elemental conviction through which I then read the text. I suspect a lot of people who share this approach simply sort out the parts of the text that are in the service of inclusion and put aside the parts of the text that move in the other direction.”

“And what do you do with those other parts?”

“Well, I think you have to take them seriously. I think that it is clear that much or all of the Bible is time-bound and much of the Bible is filtered through a rather heavy-duty patriarchal ideology. What all of us have to try to do is to sort out what in that has an evangelical future [i.e., is about the Good News] and what in that is really organized against the Gospel. For me, the conviction from Martin Luther that you have to make a distinction between the [Good News of the] Gospel and the Bible is a terribly important one. Of course, what Luther meant by the Gospel is whatever Luther meant. And that’s what we all do, so there’s a highly subjective dimension to that. But it’s very scary now in the church that the Gospel is equated with the Bible, so you get a kind of a biblicism that is not noticeably informed by the Gospel. And that means that the relationship between the Bible and the Gospel is always going to be contested and I suppose that’s what all our churches are doing – they’re contesting.”

Each of us begin with some initial hunches about the issue at hand, some preconceived ideas and notions, regardless how open-minded or objective, or how scripturally literal we may claim to be.We each have lenses – an “elemental conviction” – the essence through which all other matters are filtered. I share Brueggemann’s emphasis on inclusion, which I would name love.

In this season of political and theological global disruption, many put forward competing narratives, sequencing commandments as suits their agenda. And you, Jesus, what do you say? What you already know in your heart:

Shema Yisrael. Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Oh, and Westboro Baptist? As Ramer Simpson, John Guenther and the sacristans can tell you, I get to church early on Sunday mornings to prepare. And I did that day, I and my associate, with his husband – both priests. Protesters were already out on the sidewalk, but not who I expected. They were students from Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr colleges, waving large rainbow banners, joined by members of our choir and congregation, singing songs of love. Westboro never made it; the tens of thousands of runners and the road closures for the Philadelphia marathon that day all conspired in an arc that bends toward love.

* Walter Brueggemann is the author of several dozen scholarly books. This interview was with Julie Wortman, editor of The Witness Vol.85, Number 11, November, 2002. “The Episcopal Church Publishing Company, publisher of The Witness magazine and related website projects, seeks to give voice to a liberation Gospel of peace and justice and to promote the concrete activism that flows from such a Christianity. Founded in 1917 … The Witness claims a special mission to Episcopalians and other Anglicans worldwide, while affirming strong partnership with progressives of other faith traditions.”