I was joking with Julie earlier in the week that it’s too bad Steve isn’t here to preach today because I always seemed to accidentally give him all of the more difficult Gospel readings up to this point! It’s safe to say that this week’s readings are some of the most challenging ones that we will wrestle with, and it comes on a hard week in our household. So, as I read and reread the Scripture readings, I kept asking, where is the good news in this?? And, I also kept asking God for guidance on what to say. This doesn’t feel like the Jesus that we have been taught about throughout the rest of Scripture. Yet, despite the desire to, we cannot shy away from the fact that this does appear in our Bible. As one of my Hebrew Bible professors always said, God doesn’t need us to defend God and God’s actions, so I’m not going to try to do that with Jesus’ today either. Yet together we can continue to explore what these passages might be saying to us today. There has to be a reason why they keep showing up in our lectionary, right?!
Now before we get started, I want to preface this by saying that I’ve been thinking about the Gospel reading similarly to how I teach theology for my students right now; I don’t think there is one right way to talk about this, but I do think there are some wrong ways. Those might be some stories for another time though. But I’m not going to say that I have it fully right either. The challenge with difficult passages like the one today is that it seems like there are so many ways to interpret them and none of them feel quite right, at least to me. There are so many complexities and layers to understanding some of Jesus’ teachings. And if I were to talk about all of it today, the sermon might lead into the Superbowl! I’ll spare us all that, but I still want to share a few things I was thinking about this week.
For example, I think we are called to understand the historical context in today’s Gospel, especially in relation to marriage and divorce. And, we need to understand that these verses have been used to harm and shame people for centuries. It has kept spouses in harmful life situations and led to much fear, guilt, and shame. Readings today often do not take in the nuances of daily life, here or in the time of Jesus. Again, I’m not going to try to defend Jesus’ actions, or the actions that the church has taken because of Jesus’ words because different interpretations of it have caused so much damage over the years, but I genuinely think he is saying these things to try to offer more protection for women at the time. Divorce really only seemed to have an impact on women’s lives, as they were considered essentially tainted and were unable to remarry, which meant they were often without financial support, and were often left for various reasons, valid and less so. But they also didn’t really get a say in if they would be divorced. This was not the woman’s decision to make; she had very little autonomy over her own life. It isn’t like today where people are able to continue on with their lives, split finances and property or custody of kids, etc. While there can still be complications with divorce today, in the time of Jesus this likely would have left the woman without many prospects of how to keep living. If we’ve learned anything from the writings of Paul, it’s that we cannot just take Scripture for 2,000 years ago and try to use it as in all-encompassing guidebook for how to live today.
I have also always read the verses about removing body parts after they have sinned as hyperbole on Jesus’ part because sin is inevitable. We had a conversation about this in my theology class last week too because even the idea of sin has changed over time. It has moved from something that was largely individual to our understanding today that we have both individual and communal sin, as we live in a world of full of systems created and maintained by people. I bet even today when I say sin, everyone has a slightly different image that pops into your brains, because we all think about it differently. When I talk about it today, I am thinking about sin being a turning away from God and neighbor, so the actions and thoughts that cause us to do so. But that is much more broad than some historical understandings of sin. I think Jesus is saying the things he does today because he knows that it is impossible for us to be without sin. It’s like a catch-22, where removing the offending limb, etc. would be causing harm to something which God created good, which I also don’t think God desires. It gets us to think about the deeper meaning behind his words because Jesus doesn’t usually give all or nothing condemnations.
So, the more I sat with these readings, the more I felt like Jesus couldn’t possibly mean these things literally; perhaps we’ve just been influenced by all the decades of Evangelical social commentary? I mean, Jesus worked with these people and knew their flaws. It would be like sending someone out to do a dangerous task alone, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to accomplish it. So, maybe it’s trying to take an easier way through this reading, but I can’t help but think of things like how I responded when I was ordained: “I will and I ask God to help me.”[1] Or to think of the hymn, “Be Thou My Vision.”[2] The good news in today’s reading, for me, is that we need God’s help to be able to live in this world according to God’s will. God didn’t create us perfect; Scripture doesn’t say that, but God did send Jesus into the world to be in relationship with us especially amidst all of our imperfections; to freely offer us grace through faith alone. To offer us a way back to God for guidance instead of venturing through life by ourselves. I needed to be reminded of that this week, as I have tried to have grace for myself in the grieving process, and as I continue to trust that the Holy Spirit will work through the words that I preach; for us to hear at least something about the good news of God.
So, while I don’t have a great solution for how we are supposed to understand the Scripture readings for today, I am reminded that we do not live for ourselves alone. The harsh words of Jesus are drawing us back to think about our neighbor, and highlighting the ways that sin is a turning away from God and a turning in on ourselves. I think that is why there is so much bodily language today, because Jesus is trying to emphasis how in sin, we only think about ourselves. Yet, even in the midst of that, we still have God who is calling us back to God’s self and to the world around us, even if Jesus felt the need to use violent imagery to get the point across. I’m still trying to understand that one… Yet, it is a return to the bodily, humanly created nature of existence. So, as we continue to wrestle with the readings today, may we be reminded that we can be guided by other theological voices too, include the hymn writers, as we think about what it means to ask God to guide us through our daily life, to remain centered on God instead of ourselves. And to remember that we are God’s created, perfectly imperfect, working on figuring it out together.
[1] Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Evangelical Lutheran Worship Occasional Services for the Assembly, “Ordination to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament” (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2019).
[2] Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, “Be Thou My Vision” (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006), 793.