Ophelia Hu Kinney

This is Jesus speaking to a crowd in Galilee, a small town with everyday people. He says:

“You have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago, Don’t commit murder, and all who commit murder will be in danger of judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with their brother or sister will be in danger of judgment. If they say to their brother or sister, ‘You idiot,’ they will be in danger of being condemned by the governing council. And if they say, ‘You fool,’ they will be in danger of fiery hell. 

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go. First make things right with your brother or sister and then come back and offer your gift. Be sure to make friends quickly with your opponents while you are with them on the way to court. Otherwise, they will haul you before the judge, the judge will turn you over to the officer of the court, and you will be thrown into prison. I say to you in all seriousness that you won’t get out of there until you’ve paid the very last penny.

“You have heard that it was said, Don’t commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a person lustfully has already committed adultery in their heart. And if your right eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to fall into sin, chop it off and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body go into hell.

“It was said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a divorce certificate.’ But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife except for sexual unfaithfulness forces her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Perfect! Divorce is just what we want to be talking about this Sunday, after a week of senseless chaos and terror. On a surface read, it sounds like Jesus is condemning divorce. And half a dozen totally normal human thoughts, like anger.

As a reminder, what Jesus is saying here is a part of his Sermon on the Mount, which includes his beatitudes – his blessings on the people living in poverty there. And he goes on, as C said last week, to tell them that they already are, just the way they are, the salt and light of the earth. 

But it sounds like Jesus’ sermon has taken a bad-cop turn in today’s scripture. Let’s break down what he’s saying.

How do we love after loss and change?

Right before these “you’ve heard it said’s,” Jesus told the Galileans: when it comes to all of our community laws about how we love God and one another – look to me as the most perfect demonstration of how we live out those laws.

The laws Jesus is talking about come from Jewish scriptures written 400 years prior. (For reference – the United States has only been a nation for about 250 years. And the people who wrote our first laws back then had no internet to censor or semi-automatic rifles to ponder.) 

And not only were they written so long ago, but they were written under totally different circumstances. The Torah recounts the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt, their flight from slavery, and their long, painful journey to a homeland. 

Jesus is writing from that homeland four centuries later, now occupied by the Roman Empire. All that time, the Jewish people wrestled with how they’d interpret the spirit of their laws for their contemporary setting.

And what is the spirit of these laws? Jesus argues that it is to recognize in one another the sacred image of God.

He acknowledges that their ancestors wrote 400 years ago, “Don’t murder people! Don’t cheat on your spouse! Don’t divorce your wife unless you sign some legal documents!

And then, he argues, “Not only that, but recognize the danger of your anger. The danger of objectifying someone else. The danger of trying to rack up points with God when we’ve got problems to work out with our neighbors.”

Jesus says, “That was then. A whole America-and-a-half ago. But today, times are different, and we’ve gotta use our imaginations. We have to learn to love each other meaningfully and differently now.”

We’re in the midst of our series, The Upside-Down Kingdom, and we’ve been talking about how we’re trying to replicate an upside-down kingdom here at HopeGateWay. 

S talked about inclusivity two weeks ago. And C wove together a message about service. Today we’re talking about community.

The question Jesus is provoking in the Galileans is: how do we love and look after each other when so much has been lost and changed?

Marriage as a Covenant of Care

So, let’s focus on the last part of this scripture. 

“It was said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a divorce certificate.’ But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife except for sexual unfaithfulness forces her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

At this time in Jewish history, and for many peoples, marriage was primarily an economic agreement. Many biblical scholars believe that, at that time, women had fewer opportunities than men had to be financially independent. Men could divorce their wives for any reason, which would leave women financially vulnerable. 

What Jesus was saying to the Galileans was that men had a responsibility to their wives. And those who abandoned their wives for any reason other than infidelity were causing serious harm.

In other words: take care of each other, he said. You don’t get to abandon each other just because you woke up one day and felt like it. 

The kingdom of God is right here, he said, in a little rural town full of regular people. And to be the kingdom of God, we have to hold on to each other. Even when people and communities change. 

And, I daresay, especially when people and communities change.

Sometimes, we’re the ones who change, and we self-select out of community. Thoughts might intrude like, “They won’t love this new version of me.” Or “maybe who I am now won’t get what I used to ‘get’ out of this community.” So we cut and run.

Oftentimes, we don’t stick around long enough to find out that love is possible.

Paging Dr. Murthy

Recently, I read the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s prescription for America. Dr. Murthy has served two presidential terms in his post, and he implores us from his medical and civil-servant perspective to beat back the tide of loneliness. 

You can read his whole prescription online, but the short of it is that he’s prescribing community. There are three core components of community that he wants us to pay attention to: relationships, service, and purpose. And one core virtue: love.

In a way, he echoes Jesus’ words to the Galileans.

“To build community requires love. Love not as sentimentality, but as a commanding force with the power to build, strengthen, and heal. Love as generosity and kindness. Love as hope and grace. Love as courage. The love required to build community must not be reserved only for close family and friends or those who share our beliefs and life experiences; it must also be extended to neighbors, colleagues, people of different backgrounds, people with whom we disagree, and even people we consider our opponents. It requires recognizing something deeper and more fundamental that connects us.”

I want to add to Dr. Murthy’s prescription that building community isn’t like building a fortress. It’s more like building muscles in a body or building a body of knowledge. A community that changes is a community that is alive. And it’s made of people who change and who therefore show proof of life as well.

If we want community, then we have to see it through its changes. We have to participate and be a part of the redirection when the winds change and we need to learn how to love each other again.

If you’ve ever had the fortune of being loved through an injury or a chronic illness, or if you’ve ever just been loved through adolescence or childhood, or if you’ve ever come out as a queer or trans person to your loved ones: then you know the treasure of being loved through different projections of yourself. 

Love like what Jesus modeled for us doesn’t pin us to a board like a specimen. Love is a force of migration, taking us in constant motion in the direction of the Spirit’s beckoning. 

Love requires us to continually revisit our contracts of care. The question knocking on the door today is the same one Jesus asked the Galileans 2,000 years ago: how do we love and look after each other when so much has been lost and changed?

The world is not the same as it was last month. I cannot give a whole lot of assurance. Whatever national leadership we had has left the building, and our leadership is purposefully sowing chaos and terror. So, we’re going to have to draw up some new contracts of care now.

Bishop Mariann Budde prayed for us, too

And quickly, on the subject of leadership: it’s hard to get through a message this Sunday without touching on the prophetic voice of Bishop Marian Budde.

In case you missed it, she used an opportunity during the National Prayer Service, part of the inauguration pomp and circumstance, to urge the president to have mercy on the most vulnerable people of this nation.

I think it can feel exhilarating and encouraging to see someone speak truth to power like she did. And yet, it may be that her message was for all of us, in the way that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount not to the Empire but to the everyday people of Galilee. 

You – he tells them – you are the site of the kingdom of God. It’s here, in the electricity of the way you tend each other. The holy and ordinary way you make loaves and fishes a feast for each other.

Back to Dr. Murthy’s words:

There are many ways we can cultivate community in our lives starting right now. As individuals, we can build a practice of taking one action each day to help someone. We can join or start a service program in our community or be a part of a faith community. We can commit to gathering with friends and neighbors on a regular basis over food, music, walks, books, sports, faith, and other shared interests; and we can be proactive about using these opportunities to learn about each other’s stories. We can be more intentional about having conversation with peers and our children about how we cultivate purpose that is rooted in contributing to the lives of others. These actions may seem small, but they are powerful acts of community that can build trust, create belonging, and renew our faith in each other. 

Later, Jesus has choice words for the rulers over his people. But he wastes no opportunity to push ordinary people into the current of love.

To invoke Bishop Budde’s prayer:

• May God look with compassion on the whole human family.
• Take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts.
• Break down the walls that separate us.
• Unite us in bonds of love.
• And work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish God’s purposes on Earth.

We are not excluded from the beatitudes – from God’s blessings.

But neither are we exempt from the responsibility of kingdom citizenship: to stay in this, to belong, when change happens, because it will. To reap the fruit of community when we’ve stuck around long enough for love to take shape.

An upside-down economy for an upside-down kingdom

I wanted to talk about how we need an upside-down economy in an upside-down kingdom. But I’ve been talking for too long, so instead, I’ll encourage you to read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s new book, The Serviceberry. 

In it, she talks about how the serviceberry tree is just one example of how the natural world operates by a different economy from ours. That how so many species deal with abundance is to give it away. And how the currency of the earth is relationship. And that these aren’t so foreign to humans that we can’t participate.

In an upside-down kingdom, we need an upside-down economy. Something very different from what’s been handed to us today. And that can be petrifying, but we are better at change than we think we are. Our context, our communities, are different now, and we need new ways to take care of each other. 

But that means we have to stick around in community long enough to be a part of that change.