Year A - Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 12, 2023
Reconciliation and Social Justice
All glory be to God, “who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation” (II Cor. 5:18), in the name of the Undivided Trinity, Amen.
In Matthew’s Gospel, this is the third week that we have heard portions of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In this gospel, Jesus seems to have left the crowd behind and has gone up the mountain with his disciples for an intimate setting for this infamous sermon. I imagine that up the hill, they relaxed and enjoyed one another’s company, perhaps escaping the heat of the town of Capernaum, near the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus had made his home.
And in today’s portion of the Sermon, Jesus dedicates a lengthy conversation to reconciliation. Jesus does something interesting in today’s verses.
He starts with a general statement, something that is easy for everyone to agree upon, saying, “You shall not murder.” The disciples who heard this would have looked around and said, “Easy. I can commit to that.” But then Jesus breathes life into the heart of his statement, saying that someone who even insults their sibling will be liable to the hell of fire. Jesus saw that human brokenness leads to injury, bringing pain rather than healing. When Jesus refers to “hell” in these verses, he uses the term Gehenna, and his listeners would have understood this as the Geh Hinnom Valley, just South of Jerusalem. I will spare you all the details of the absolutely devastating things that happened in the valley of Geh Hinnom, but they did include sacrificial burning, which contributed to correlation between Gehenna as a place of burning.
Jesus continues in his sermon on reconciliation, ending with a conversation on divorce, which was a hot topic specifically for the first-century Jewish community. For the first-century Pharisees, two primary schools of thought were led by Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai, both contemporaries of King Herod.
Now, if you think that our politicians and religious leaders have disputes, wait until you hear more about Hillel and Shammai! Ancient Jewish texts from these schools record as many as 350 disputes between them! And one significant topic of dispute was divorce. You see, according to the Jewish law found in the Mishna, the school of Shammai, or Bet Shammai, restricted divorce and valued the testimony of women, while Bet Hillel favored a permissive stance on divorce, allowing men to divorce their wives even if she burned his food. Imagine being a first century woman, not only discarded by your husband at the drop of a hat, but also torn apart from your children, as children of divorce almost always lived thereafter with their father.
Jesus said to this first-century issue – absolutely not! Do not treat others in such a divisive and harmful way. Do not treat women, who are among the vulnerable, as disposable. It all comes down to Jesus calling his followers to be people, not of injury but of healing, not of despair but of hope, and – as Dean Vanessa said last week – not of darkness but of light.
What are our hot topics in our culture today? What communities of people feel the brunt of our human brokenness here in Omaha?
I cannot preach this sermon today without calling out one of our biggest hot topics– racism. Racism still thrives all around us. Our denial of it is its own heartbeat. For example, racial group behavior is fictional! How many times have we heard accusations of a whole race of people being violent or lazy, or what have you. Black activist and author Ibram Kendi explains that “racism manipulates us into seeing people as the problem, instead of the policies that ensnare them.” He goes on to say, “Racist ideas make people of color think less of themselves, which makes them more vulnerable to racist ideas. Racist ideas make White people think more of themselves, which further attracts them to racist ideas.”
We – as a society, as individuals – are not always racist, and we are not always antiracist. So this gives each one of us an opportunity to learn and grow, opportunity to evaluate what we are hearing and what we are saying. We do not want, what theologian and liberationist James Cone calls the Christianity of the slaveholder, but rather the Christianity of the enslaved.
We want to identify with the faith that empowered the Israelites when they were in bondage. We want to identify with the Christianity that seeks liberation, brings healing and reconciliation, and equips and empowers those around us. James Cone said that a Christian, therefore, is one who strives for liberation.
For decades, antiracists have called for the end to police brutality, more jobs, better schools and drug-treatment programs, while policy has conveniently focused on the war on drugs and other priorities that continue to empower those who are already in power, and do not value people as the individuals that they are.
To the first century Christians, Jesus said about unnecessary and harmful divorce, “absolutely not.” And to us today, about issues such as the racism that runs rampant around us, injustices of classism, and anti-LGBTQ+ agendas, Jesus says, “absolutely not.” We have all heard both racist and antiracist ideals. And so we must do two things:
We must identify the racist ideas that we have been socialized to believe that are now within ourselves, always treating others as God’s beloved children and as representatives of Christ. and
We must identify the racist policies, practices and procedures that surround us, so that we can replace them with antiracist policies, practices and procedures.
I have a little personal story about practices and procedures that demonstrates that changing the system, changing the way we do things, is not always hard. In fact, if we’re paying attention, it can be very easy.
I had the wonderful privilege of being with my children during the day on Friday, since they had the day off of school. So what did we do? We made the most of it, and went skiing at a lovely little ski resort in Sioux Falls, SD, which has much more snow than we do.
As things go, on his last run of the day, James took a hard fall. He rode the ski patrol’s snowmobile to their little office, where a very kind PA took a look at it and said it was probably a strain and not a break. But, at 2 am at the hotel, James woke up crying in pain, so off I went to look for Childrens liquid Tylenol. The front desk didn’t have any, and so I drove to the only place that was open – a gas station which also didn’t have any.
The gas station attendant apologized, and mentioned that this was a problem, and that others had come in looking for things like baby formula in the middle of the night. Back at the hotel, a kind person working in the lobby said that she would mention it to her manager, and that if she had to, she would go buy Childrens’ Tylenol herself so it would be available for future guests.
After all this happened, I was thinking about how both people I encountered said, “This is a problem!” and they instantly began thinking about how the system could be improved.
Now, I’m not saying that I had any indication that my race played a role in how I was treated, but I am fully aware that People of Color are not always treated with the same respect, kindness and care.
Opposing white privilege does not mean asking to be treated less than, but rather advocating that People of Color receive the same level of respect, care and kindness that white people receive.
Both the gas station attendant and the hotel staff member were looking to change the system, to make it better because of my situation, for which I was grateful.
You may be asking, haven’t we strayed far away from today’s Gospel reading? Actually, this is the exact same thing.
In the first century, it was women that were sometimes treated like property, divorced at the drop of a hat, and subsequently torn away from security, safety and the children that they had given birth to and breastfed. In the same way, society, today, tends to dismiss, disregard or outright target certain groups of people, such as People of Color, the LGBTQ+ community or people who face the challenges of addiction or homelessness.
The heart of Jesus in this portion of the Sermon on the Mount is about reconciliation.
With whom do you need to reconcile?
What relationships can you make right?
I challenge you today to seek reconciliation in your personal life, and strive to make right broken systems around you.
It’s never all or nothing. We cannot defeat racism or injustice in a day. But we can call for one healing interaction at a time. We can strive to challenge one policy, or to lift up one person, or to bring healing to one of our own perceptions that is broken.
This work, siblings in Christ, will bring you joy, as the Psalmist tells us, will bring liberation, and as Jesus reminds us and will bring life. For when you seek liberation, you will find freedom, when you seek right relationships, you will find healing, and when you seek God, you will discover joy. Amen.
The Rev. Lisa Aguilar+