The Law of Love: How Compassion Can Change Your Life. Sermon Fifth Sunday After Pentecost.
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost. The Law of Love.
By The Rev. Rian Adams – Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Church
Have you ever wondered how to spot a hypocrite? It’s possible to spot them in their natural habitat… hiding behind religious rules instead of living the law of love.
That happened in today’s Gospel lesson. It mentions three religious leaders who all chose the rules over compassion. A lawyer, a Levite, and a priest. A Lawyer was a scholar of the Law of Moses. He taught Jews the rules of purity preserved from earlier generations. A Levite was a person of a specific genealogy who served as assistants to the priests in the temple. Then, a priest who performed sacrifices and rituals to appease God through keeping God’s rules.
So, a lawyer asked Jesus how to interpret a certain subject about the law.
He didn’t ask hoping to learn; he asked trying to trap Jesus with the Law of Moses. If he did he could prove, once and for all, that Jesus was a heretic and should die for denying the law of Moses.
This is one of the most well-known parables around the world. The message is that religious laws should not derail compassion and love. That’s my sermon today:
“The Law of Love: How Compassion Can Change Your Life.”
There are two contrasting laws in the passage; The law of purity (or as I call it “The law of being right”), and the law of love that brings compassion.
So first let’s look at the law of purity.
Moses said God spoke to him and gave commandments, laws, and rules. Their purpose was to keep the Jews pure in God’s eyes. Fast-forward 1500 years and the religious leaders in Jesus’s day were consumed with the rules.
They wanted to appease God instead of please God. And they didn’t was to be like “those people” across the border.
The lawyer said, “The essence of the law is to love God, and love our neighbor.” Well, who is my neighbor?”
It’s a loaded question because they considered others unclean. The lawyer thought his neighbor was only a God-fearing Jew.
Jesus answered with a story, “A man went toward Jericho, while he walked robbers and thieves beat him and threw him beside the road in a ditch. A priest and a Levite walked past him because if the man was dead the priest was “unclean.” Then a Samaritan walked by and saved his life.”
Then Jesus flipped the Law of purity upside down, “Who is the man’s neighbor?”
It was a scandalous story because a Samaritan was nota Jew’s neighbor. In fact, the feud between the two was over a hundred years old in the time of Christ. They both claimed land, and they both claimed to be the true descendants of Abraham.
It was so tense that Jews wouldn’t walk through the land of the Samaritans for risk of uncleanness in the eyes of God. They walked fifteen miles out of the way just to avoid “those people.”
The Samaritans were not their neighbors.
Nothing chokes compassion like a man armed with a rule from God and the political power to enforce it.
In 1stcentury Judaism the priests were the politicians.
What I call “being culturally right” was a battle Jesus fought. And, we still fight it today. We see it in today’s culture wars. Our “political priests” separate us into factions and parties instead of uniting us through mercy and compassion.
We especially see it in the media when they back a certain “political priest.” They tell us there is only one pure and right way to think. Research shows that news starts with a story, then evokes a sense of fear, then tells you how to interpret the story based on what is “right” in their minds.
Researchers and mental health professionals noticed an exponential increase in anxiety over the past twenty years.
A top scholar in the field of anxiety, psychologist Graham Davey, found out why the numbers of diagnosis and prescriptions continue to increase. His research led him to TV and internet news. He says that those who watch and read the news over fifteen minutes a day are substantially more negative. It gets worse. Their potential for generalized anxiety disorder skyrockets as does the chance for other health-related disorders.
It’s not healthy to allow those with singular agendas manipulate us into fear in the name of “being right in the culture’s eyes.” We don’t have to be right in the eyes of the priests, the Levites, or today’s politicians.
We can choose The Law of Love
There’s a contrast… the Law of love is the way of Christ, and it leads to compassion. It rescues the outsider and cares for the starving child in the ditch. Love doesn’t need to be politically correct because it doesn’t use hungry children as an agenda, it has mercy.
Jesus told the lawyer, “The priest, and the Levite passed the man to keep the rules.
So what makes this man the good Samaritan? The Samaritan helped the man because compassion compelled him to choose mercy over Samaritan nationalism. As a matter of fact, we’re called to stand above nationalism and name sins that oppose the Law of Love.
We need to own how this country treated/treats minorities and listen to the Holy Spirit when the Law of Love compels us to repent.
Jesus was the Law of Love. He was the outsider to the priestly politicians. They claimed he was unclean, but he still stopped and saved the man’s life. They tried to kill him because he broke the rules and healed on the sabbath. Love still compelled Jesus, and he broke the rules to heal people who were sick.
Researchers recently noticed a link between compassion and physical health. Stephen Cole of UCLA tested the levels of cellular inflammation in people who describe themselves as happy.
They had a positive outlook on life, and a life purpose to help those in need. Then he evaluated those who were angry and angry and blamed “the system” for holding them back. That group had high levels of cellular inflammation. The research scholars realized that people with a positive outlook, are in better health.
Here’s the bottom line:
If you look at Jesus you’ll see
A few decades ago, social scientists at Princeton did a test to see if students were compassionate. So, they chose seminarians as the test subjects.
They gave the seminarians an assignment, go across campus to a lecture hall and preach an extemporaneous sermon. They gave the future priests the scripture text and the subject. Then they told them to hurry because they were already late.
When the seminarians walked across campus, they faced a man in raggedy clothes bent over and coughing, as he fell to the ground and apparently passed out. The sick man was an actor.
They wanted to know if the seminarians would stop to help him. Only 10% of the students stopped.
90% did not because they were too worried about God’s work to take time to help the man passed beside the sidewalk.
I think it’s safe to say they met the rules, but they missed the Law of Love. Ironically, each student got the same sermon text and subject before they left… The Good Samaritan.
Amen.
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Sermon: Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
Rian Adams Sermon “Shield: Carrying the Weight of God.” Second Sunday of Lent, Year C
A shield normally has one job… the difference between life and death can be how well a shield does that job. A shield’s job is to protect. In the Genesis passage God identifies as a shield – protector – to Abram… Gen 15:1 “Abram, I am your shield.”
It’s clear from the beginning of the story, God desires a relationship with Abram where God protects and guards him.There are many layers in God’s announcement, “I am your shield.” In the original Hebrew, shield (Mah-gane) is usually in masculine form. It means “to protect.” It’s a picture of God’s mighty arm holding a heavy shield that prevents arrows from nicking our vulnerable places.
But interestingly, it has a feminine use too, “to gather under” is one possible translation. God gather’s us under wings of protection. Another, far more enlightening feminine use, is “the thick hide of a female crocodile.” I wonder… can that expand our understanding of shield to include something we wear and not simply something we hold. It’s a powerful image of mother God shielding us with her thick skin. The blows reach her skin, they pummel her, she feels the pain, but it doesn’t breach her.
“Abram, I am your shield.”
When arrows try to puncture our soft hearts, her skin is the shield that absorbs the spear.
The shield imagery doesn’t stop there.
If you google “shield” the first shield you find, in search and images, is the shield of Captain America. I find it interesting to note: The most popular shield on the internet belongs to a super hero.
That hero is the archetypal warrior who is the pillar of justice, good, and morality. Our culture instantly equates a shield with a hero. It’s telling that our association with shield is one made from the strongest metal on earth. If you’re a comic geek you’re probably aware that Captain America’s shield was created by accident.
The shield’s creator worked with mythic Wakandan Vibranium. But the shield’s creation is not without misunderstanding… The metallurgist worked long hours and fell asleep before the final metal blend was complete. He took no notes, so the shield’s contents are a mystery.
The image creatively suggests that the God who shields us will always remain a mystery. We will never fully figure out how, or why, or even when God shields us.
The writer of Ephesians says to take up the shield of faith… There is some kind of mystery to God that we will never fully understand and we must simply hold sacred space for faith.
God protects us in ways that are mysterious. My guess is we can point to pivotal moments in our lives when God shielded us from injury, deceit, or distress. We probably didn’t noticed it then but hindsight, combined with spirituality, helps us see the mystery of God at work in many things.
However, as with any metaphor, it always offers a holy invitation to listen for deeper meanings.
As the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung says, we learn to listen by “cultivating the creative art of inner conversation.
That imaginative conversation reminded me that a shield is weighty.
While I served as a soldier in Afghanistan, my body armor, my shield as it were, was roughly 75lbs of gear. I carried these body shields on my chest and back. Each day I shouldered the weight of my vest, attached the Velcro, buttoned the snaps, and prayed that I wouldn’t need it.
I wore these shields for months on end. What stands out to me is how quickly my body normalized the weight. The armor merged and became one with my body. I wore it like it was a second layer of skin. One post-deployment struggle was feeling naked without body armor. My body familiarized the weight of its shield and it found comfort knowing it was there should it ever be called upon.
But it was not without its difficulties.First, it was heavy. My shoulders are still tense from the weight because it was a constant burden. To this day I get 5 CCs of steroid in my right shoulder every 120 days. The pain is so that I welcome the cold steel of an 18 gauge needle as an old friend who visits for dinner and tells good stories.
Second, the sand in the deserts of the Middle East and South West Asia work their way between the collar bone and the shoulder strap. Hour after hour it rubs and grinds. You treat it with cream and band aids, it doesn’t do much. Every day I was reminded that my body shield was a double edged sword.
The body that it protected was the same body that it injured.
New medical studies say the same. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the number of military personnel who retired with musculoskeletal damage increased 1000% between 2001 and 2010. Military physicians now make the direct connection between the weight of body armor and chronic injuries.
It appears that carrying the weight of body armor for prolonged periods inflicts a harsh toll on the body. That leads me to a curiosity… I wonder what the weight of a shield teaches us about God?
I wonder if people feel like God is a heavy weight to shoulder? “Abram I am your shield… to carry.”
The weight of faith, in a world filled to the brim with governmental tyranny and human suffering, must be a reality we are willing to own. If God is like a shield then we need the spiritual freedom to admit when our arms tire. Although it’s scary to admit we need help, its essencential to grow into our vocations.
Even Jesus tired under the weight of his calling, the Gospels tell us another helped him carry his cross.
The psalmist understood the tension of God as shield.
In Psalm 33 he balances the protection of God with the need to patiently wait. He says, “We wait in hope for the Lord, He is our shield and our help.”
Maybe C.S. Lewis was on to something when he said that God’s glory is a weight to carry. I have friends who wear the weight of God. They shoulder the difficult joy of Christ’s ministry of mercy. But they grow tired carrying the God who protects them.
That’s why Jesus calls us to be a shield to our sisters and brothers! Jesus said,“Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.”
In the original language, mercy literally means a surrounding of compassion. Jesus asks us to be like God… and shield one another with mercy.So when I buckle under the weight of church imposed perfection, love me like a soldier and pull me out of harm’s way. When I’m exhausted, hold up my hands like Aaron and Joshua did for Moses, and when I’m attacked, be Paul’s shield and quench fiery gossip.
Be my shield. Have mercy on me, surround me, as I attempt to wear the wdeight of the God who protects me.
Amen.
Note: This sermon was prepared and preached at Sewanee as part of a doctoral program.
Note: If you’d like to check out my other writings, you can find them here.
Reimagining the Ministry of Jesus
by The Rev. W. Rian Adams
I’m going to be direct here, as long as there has been religion there have been people using it to create rules. These rules often damage others psychologically and spiritually. I propose a reimagining of the ministry of Jesus in light of the suffering around us and thereby offering the love that has so popularized the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Michael Curry.
In this lectionary reading, Mark teaches a valuable lesson: it’s healthy to go against the grain of religion in order to heal humanity. In the Gospel lesson Jesus heals a man with a lame hand.
To me the hand is a symbol of our creative power. Some mythology suggests the right hand as the creative and the left as destructive. No matter, it seems the man’s ability to create, hold, caress, and express was restored to him. Rather than be happy, the religious leaders were upset that Jesus healed him on the sabbath. In essence, Jesus broke the rules.
As you read these two stories note: They are about the mentality of the Pharisees contrasted with the driving force behind the ministry of Jesus.
Look for it in the text, you’ll see it.
Lectionary Gospel: Mark 2:23-3:6. Proper 4, Year B.
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”
Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.
He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.
Pharisees and persona
The Gospel writer makes it clear that the Pharisees are the main opposition to Jesus. They were a first century conservative sect of Jews. The Pharisees were popular on a grass roots level (although the religious power of the day rested with the progressive sect, called Sadducees). Jesus encountered Pharisees often because his ministry occurred among the people.
The Pharisees present a contrast to the ministry of Jesus in the Gospels. They keep the rules, while Jesus discards rules in favor of humanity.
Honestly, the Pharisees are low hanging fruit. They are easy to critique. I’ve beat up on them quite often in sermons over the years and used them for straw man arguments to make good points. The main point is that we shouldn’t try so hard to serve God that we can’t see our neighbor starving to death.
Yet the truth, as John Sanford points out, is that “there is a Pharisee in all of us.” Sanford went on to connect the religious persona of the pharisees to an “outer mask that inflates the ego.”
It’s easy to see others as Pharisees and hypocrites but the raw truth is that the Gospel calls us to see ourselves in the archetype.
I know American Christians who think Jesus is a Republican. I know American Christians who genuinely believe in Democrat Jesus. Both opinions are absurd.
Any and all attempts to see the Pharisee as “other” misses the point of internal spirituality. We become Pharisees when we fail to own the shadow side of the self that’s a judgmental rule keeper.
The human question vs. the institutional question
In his book Falling Upward (shameless plug for a very influential book in my life), Father Richard Rohr explores some of Carl Jung’s spirituality on the two halves of life. To boil it down, Fr. Rohr says that the first part of life is lived where structure and rules provide safety and sanctuary for development.
When we apply this first half of life spiritually, it means that spirituality begins with learning moral rules and ecclesiastical structure. The problem is when someone assumes that the institution of the church equals a spiritual arrival.
As we have seen, the Pharisees were a religious sect whose confidence in their rightness was only eclipsed by their disdain of differing opinions. This is what Jung and Rohr would consider a “first half of life” problem. We all know these people – they worry themselves over perception and are to claim moral high ground.
If we are brave enough to admit it, we not only know Pharisees but we can often be Pharisees. We can parrot creeds or political passions as if they are Good News. This misses the mark.
The second half of life is quite different. Jung would say it’s more of a deconstruction that pulls us away from our need for institutional validation. Instead, we fall into a difficult transition where compassion and mercy are hallmarks of faith. Spiritual growth in the second half of life occurs in letting go, not in validation. Love and mercy were the hallmarks of Jesus’s ministry to those in need, never rules or accountability.
A reimagining of Jesus’s ministry for today’s church implies an honest look into the way of mercy, healing, hope, and compassion.
Rules and wounds
This does beg a question… how should we care for those wounded by the Pharisee? I’m not sure there is an easy answer but it must begin with restoring the lame hands of creativity and expression.
A friend recently confided me that she was completely finished with Church. I asked why because I’m the curious type. “Because baby boomers control most churches.” she said. “And that generation, more than any other, cares about how they look. My parents didn’t care how they looked at home in front of their children, but they gave a sickening amount of energy to their public face, especially in church.”
Obviously she made some valid points about generation gaps in our churches. She also pointed out some of the challenges facing millennials who seek integration into church that expresses values of previous generations. But what she really said is, “I’d really love some second half of life spirituality, but the churches I visit seem hung up on first half of life issues.”
People ask me all the time how to get Millennials in church. Millennials are very spiritual. As such we do not want to be part of something that has even the faintest stench of inauthenticity. So, the fact is that we will come to church when the church tends wounds instead of creating rules.
The message of light
However, I do not propose to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The ministry of Jesus can and should grow into maturity in local parishes through spirituality that embraces the second half of life.
The wound is where the light enters you. – Rumi
The ministry of Jesus is a ministry of light entering our human brokenness. His ministry was not about Phariseeism and rule keeping.
The challenge is incarnating, with our active imaginations, a model of ministry that shines light onto pain. However, we do not simply expose it, we heal the hands and liberate their creativity and passion.
That is Good news. Or, as the Archbishop of Canterbury recently said in an interview with Presiding Bishop Curry, “There is nothing conventional about Christianity.” The ministry of Jesus is Good News… the ministry of Jesus is Mercy! That’s an unconventional message from a Pharisee.
Additionally, if my poetry can be of any use, please click here.
Pax,
Rian+