Teaching love

We sometimes see Jesus presented as an outlier, some guy who is going up against authorities on behalf of the common man.

No Scribe, no Pharisee, no Sadducee or Hagarite could ever match Jesus’ intellect or reasoning.

So, it becomes too easy to characterize Jesus as not Jewish, but something different.

And believing that Christ was somehow different, readers of scripture and followers of Christ and believers in Christ would get carried away.

The message they received from their beliefs was one of hate and division.

And from this belief grew more hatred and more division.

They blamed the authorities for Christ’s death, yes, but they also took their message too far.

For while we can read very plainly that Jesus had constant run ins with all types of authorities in the gospels, those Sadducees for example or Pilate, where we see Jesus’ ministry being a perceived threat to those authorities, we do not read in any part of the gospel where all of Israel rose up against God and supported the murder of God’s only son.

And that is where those who would read hate and division into scripture take Jesus’ arguments against the authority figures in the bible and confirm their beliefs, their biases, their hatred and point all of those things against all Jews.

In fact, they claim, Jews killed Jesus.

Not just the Jewish authorities, which would still be incorrect.

Not just all the Jewish people in Jerusalem, which would be even more incorrect.

No, the folks who read hate and division into the gospels, the folks who would rather have their own biases confirmed than to understand that we are all of God’s people, would have us believe that all Jewish people are responsible for Christ’s crucifixion.

This idea is called Jewish deicide and it is a particularly gruesome sin because we’ve seen in fairly recent history just what the repercussions of such thinking will be.

Just a few years ago, an avowed antisemite bombed a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Before that, white nationalists marched in Charlottesville screaming that Jews would not replace them.

We are just two generations from the holocaust.

People were removed from communities, towns, cities, or even entire countries throughout history just because of their Jewishness.

And a major part of the reason for all this having happened is because people read hatred and division into the greatest story ever told about God’s love for God’s creation.

Ann Lamott, the spiritual writer and Episcopalian or so I am told, once wrote: “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

And those who would read hatred and division into the bible are looking to confirm their own biases and build up their own idols if only they can justify their antisemitism as being confirmed by God and by God’s law.

In order to do that however, in order to have God justifying the continuation of our own biases, then we would have to ignore the fact that much of our biblical text is holy scripture to the Jewish faith as well.

More so, we would need to overlook the fact that Jesus was Jewish as well.

There are a great number of mental gymnastics routines that one must perform to convince themselves that Jesus’s ministry should culminate not in the salvation of all God’s people but in the salvation of some lower number that does not even include the people of Christ’s own lineage.

And so, I bring this up today because it is important to note just how sinful antisemitism is and also, to show how ludicrous a notion it is.

You cannot read the bible truthfully and find a call to antisemitism as part of it.

We cannot read the bible honestly and through the lenses of our hearts and feel called to be an antisemite.

At least, if you read it honestly and truthfully, you will not find Christ calling on any of us to bring such evil into the world.

But again, it is also ludicrous.

Because listen to these two passages:

A single witness shall not suffice to convict a person of any crime or wrongdoing in connection with any offense that may be committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained. If a malicious witness comes forward to accuse someone of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days, and the judges shall make a thorough inquiry.

Followed by,

You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the Lord.

Is this starting to sound familiar?

What did we just hear Jesus say in our gospel lesson this morning?

“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church…”

That first quote?

That was from Deuteronomy and the second was from Leviticus.

These thoughts on judgement that Jesus is stating are so clearly influenced by the texts he grew up with, the texts with which he was raised.

These thoughts are continuing on the law already given to Moses by God.

Now, in later history Christianity and Judaism would split, not over Jesus’ words necessarily but over a sincere disagreement about the true nature of Christ and whether he was the Messiah or not.

Yet that split is not an invitation to hatred or division.

There are times in the gospels when Jesus argues with the authorities over scripture, about purity laws, about what taints the body, but there is not once when Jesus calls for the attempted elimination of an entire peoples.

Those thoughts, those actions, are not divine and Jesus is constantly asking us to accede to the divine.

The very fact that Christ’s words are born from his foundation in scripture should be evidence enough that Jesus is not calling for a separation from his very own people, but along with that, let us look at why he is saying these words.

If someone sins against you, talk to them.

If someone harms you, make right the relationship.

Try to live together in harmony and in doing so you will be honest with each other.

Closed thoughts lead to misplaced anger.

Shut down voices will invite only heartache into the silence.

To be in relationship with each other, we must communicate.

And sometimes, two parties will be in conflict with one another, and sometimes those two parties won’t see eye to eye and so Jesus gives instructions for that, too.

Seek out help.

Seek out elders or clergy or lay leaders; tell them of the issue, tell them what’s going on.

And don’t give up.

Because those lay leaders or clergy or elders will listen to your story and to your witnesses.

Only if the wronging party, the party committing the sin refuses to listen then they will be asked to move on.

Does this sound like the words of a man who wishes to create schism?

Is this Jesus saying he wishes to place a fence between peoples?

No, even a person who sins will be welcomed back into the kingdom if they work to make amends, if they work to do the listening and not the finger pointing.

As Paul wrote in Romans this morning: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments… are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And to love your neighbor takes work, it takes commitment, and most of all, it takes the strength of character to say I am sorry when we are at fault.

It is easy to run from our sins and break relationships.

It is easy to cast aspersions on a whole group of people because we are unable or unwilling to overlook our own faults, own hatreds, and our own phobias.

It is hard to love.

It is hard to love and here Jesus is saying that you’ve got to do the work.

We’ve got to do the work.

To love each other.

Because as Paul writes, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

And the law, to us, through Paul, through Christ, through Moses, has been constant and consistent all along.

Moses passed on God’s teachings.

Jesus, being God, passed on God’s teachings.

And those teachings are all about love.

Never about hate.

Never about division.

Only about love.

Forever.

Amen.