“Perverse Sword of the Kingdom”

Christ Episcopal Church, Bastrop, 18 August 2019

So last week I preached about “stuff and treasure,” a fun sermon to write because I knew many would identify with the problems of having too much stuff and how to sort out the treasure from the dust collectors. Moreover, that sermon enabled me to talk about a couple of my treasures, specifically “Rock with a Heart” and the glass ibis given to me by my sister.

 

"I Don't Sell Jesus," by Bette J. Kauffman

I made the point that true treasure is our relationship with God, manifested through our relationships with each other, that the artifacts in our homes and hands and pockets represent. And I mentioned, kind of in passing, that although family relationships come pretty naturally to us, we are called to more than that, even to the possibility of leaving our family behind.

In fact, here’s a direct quote from that sermon: But Jesus told us, you have to be willing to leave your family behind. Jesus modeled for us a different way, a way contrary to our instincts…

Please know that when I said that last Sunday, I had NOT YET read the lessons for today! Imagine what went through my mind when I sat down last Sunday afternoon to read the lessons for today and begin thinking about today’s sermon! If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was God’s revenge on the preacher for having mentioned something so important “in passing”!

So… what are we to make of this? Surely this is one of Jesus’ most difficult teachings. He sounds downright un-Jesusy. He sounds harsh, strident. He sounds like he wants to burn the place down: I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

The next sentence is a clue to at least part of what is going on here. Jesus says, I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! So Jesus is kind of strung out because he knows what’s coming.

But there’s more to it than that. Jesus is warning his followers that his way, the way of love of God and neighbor is going to get them in trouble. He is saying that the revolutionary message of unconditional love that puts God and neighbor even above self and nation, the selfless Love that he, Jesus, not only teaches, but lives and breathes and IS in his very being…

That Love is counter to every norm of civil society. It upsets the apple cart. It turns things inside out. It shows the superficiality of everything else, including the cherished “family values” on which our political system loves to base appeals for our support and vote.

So often that term, “family values,” becomes code for generating warm, fuzzy feelings of identifying with families that look and act like ours, but also for excluding those who do family differently or whose families don’t look like and act like ours.

Every time I hear that appeal, whether a politician or a salesperson or an acquaintance on social media, I immediately want to ask: What do you mean by that? What are “family values” to you? That’s a hollow term until you tell me what you mean by it.

So many aspects of our political and economic and social and cultural systems–all of which I mean when I say “civil society”–so much of that is designed precisely to create “in groups” and “out groups,” to divide the human family into categories based on wealth, status, political opinions, cultural practices, religion, and more.

And then to pit those groups against each other to determine who wins and who loses, who merits help and who doesn’t, whose labor is worth a living wage and whose isn’t, who gets to “rule the roost’ for what period of time.

Love that contradicts and flies in the face of all of that is subversive. And civil society will strike back, as it did against Jesus.

Jesus told us more than once using a variety of parables and teachings that signing on to the subversive Love he lived and breathed and WAS in his very being would cause problems, indeed even in families.

I am reminded of the story of the prodigal son. Author Timothy Keller says we really should call it “The Prodigal God,” and he’s written a book with that title. It is the generosity, the over-the-top prodigious love of the father in forgiving and welcoming home the younger son that drives a wedge into that family. Because the older son, the moral, upstanding older son who had followed all the social norms and honored the family values of the day, cannot accept the unconditional, selfless Love, the forgiving, gracious and merciful Love of the father.

Another author, Suzanne Guthrie, calls this subversive Love that overturns societal norms “the perverse sword of the kingdom.” In her reflection on this Gospel lesson, she features the story of Edith Stein, a story I did not know before last week, but find compelling, powerful and worthy of our attention.

Edith Stein was gassed by the Nazis at Auschwitz, most likely on August 9 of 1932. She had a Ph.D. in Philosophy, but was also known as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Carmelite nun, writer and theologian.

Stein’s intellectual curiosity lead her at an early age from Judaism to atheism to psychology and philosophy. Many of her friends were Christians, but it was the autobiography of Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun, that captured her heart. She later recalled that upon finishing the book, she said to herself, “This is the truth.” Shortly thereafter she was baptized into the Roman Catholic church.

 

Sr. Benedicta of the Cross

But Edith Stein was also the youngest daughter of a devout Jewish mother. The two loved each other deeply, and Edith’s Christianity tore her mother’s heart.

For a time, Edith continued to go to synagogue with her mother when visiting. On one occasion at the synagogue together while saying the Sh’ma, the Judaic statement of faith, Edith’s mother turned to her and said, Do you hear that? The Lord our God, He is ONE!

On another occasion, Edith’s mother said to her, He (Jesus) was a good man – I’m not saying anything against him. But why did he have to go and make himself God?

Indeed, Edith understood that dilemma. She knew it from her own intellectual travel from Judaism through atheism to philosophy. Yet her heart had been captured by the story of a Carmelite nun, and she felt the call to become one.

Here’s where Suzanne Guthrie asks: What kind of perverse sword of the kingdom sets a devout mother against daughter and daughter against mother?

I can’t answer that question, but I’ll come back to it in a moment. Edith Stein became Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. When she moved to Carmel and made her final vows there, her mother died at that very hour. At least she did not live to see her daughter gassed by the Nazis!

Suzanne Guthrie concludes her reflection with these words: When I pray with Edith Stein, I include her mother. For what kind of “peace” can there be, one without the other?

Now back to Guthrie’s question: What kind of perverse sword of the kingdom sets a devout mother against daughter and daughter against mother?I not only can’t answer that question, but I have more like it. What kind of perverse sword of the kingdom leads people of good faith, devout people, people of prayer, Bible-reading people… to exactly opposite conclusions on so many “hot button” issues of our lives today?

From economic concerns like taxes and minimum wage to questions about access to healthcare and all the way to big moral issues like gun violence, abortion and human sexuality. You would think that God who is Love would lead us all to the same conclusion, right? So we could just love each other and not have to contend with each other over these divisive questions!

But, of course, like I said last week, it’s not that hard to love people who are like us in appearance, beliefs, opinions, all of that. But Jesus calls us to more. Jesus calls us to love even our enemies. Jesus calls us to the Way of Love. Period. Full stop.

In the name of God, father, son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.