Rev. Myra Brown preaches about Jesus’ response to violence and his call for us to not respond with judgment. Rather, judgment is the problem and instead we need to repent. To turn our thinking around, and to love.
Homily Transcript
Last week, we gathered with our extended staff for a leadership day where we got to know each other better, we discussed the vision for Spiritus, and played leadership Family Feud. In the game we posed lots of leadership questions like: What were the five most important things Jesus said? What are the top 8 qualities of a good leader and what 8 things should the church speak out on? One of those 8 was violence! When violence happens in our world it is often heart wrenching. It hits you at your core and at so many levels is shocking to the mind. Especially, religious acts of violence.
There are a lot of places that we anticipate being unsafe. Church and religious spaces aren’t generally at the top of the list. And yet in the gospel today is a story of religious violence and where Jesus takes up the issue of violence when approached.
The gospel begins by saying some people told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.
They tell him a story of religious violence. Of Galileans who went to the temple to pray and offer sacrifices in Jerusalem, while in the process they lose their lives in the temple at the hand or order of Pilate while offering sacrifices.
As in any community, the word on the street was that these were a group of folks who perhaps resisted Pilate’s authority, his way of doing things, maybe refused to pay taxes and homage to him and just had a different understanding of how to live out their faith. Their beliefs were different than his!
Now we don’t know if these people telling the story to Jesus are fellow Galileans, or people of some other faith tradition and we don’t even really know why they decide to tell Jesus this story.
Is it to warn him because he is a Galilean and should avoid going to Jerusalem for fear that he could encounter the same fate?
Is it to incite him, to avenge the deaths of these who lost their lives, because he is a fellow Galilean?
Is it to inform him of a rebellion they plan to lead because of their loss of life and they want him to hook up?
Or is it to imply to him that as horrible as their deaths were, they may have been culpable at some level and deserving? Otherwise, why would God allow it to happen to them?
Notice Jesus doesn’t avoid Jerusalem, he doesn’t take up violent revenge, and he doesn’t hook up with a violent rebellion.
Does God allow these tragedies to happen as some act of Judgment or are the acts of religious violence and evil in the world a matter of something else?
Perhaps these questions you have thought of or heard others ponder in the face of violence.
It is precisely these questions that Jesus attempts to put to rest and answer in this gospel today and how timely it is when we think of the religious violence we experienced in the Muslim community in New Zealand, the Jewish Community at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg and at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston South Carolina!
First, Jesus responds to the question he knows they are pondering of whether what happened to the Galileans is an act of God’s judgment for some wrongdoing on their part. Jesus responds with a question of his own to them that tells us that this is the judgment they were making and gives us a clue as to where the telling of this story is coming from.
He says, “ Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? He puts that judgment to rest! No they weren’t and then he tells them to repent of that kind of thinking or they will perish from it.
He then tells them about people who lost their lives in Jerusalem when the tower of Siloam fell on them. Again, he poses a similar question to address their judgment on whether they thought these folks deserved this and were more guilty than any one else living in Jerusalem. In both cases, he makes it clear their judgments are wrong and says, “ They were not”.
In other word, violence in our world is not an act of God in repayment for some sin or different religious belief system. So, stop judging them is his message!
Jesus realizes that the problem is the judgments they are making in their hearts and he tells them that the remedy is to repent- to turn their thinking around, and to love.
Jesus knows that judgment is often the staring place of violence and evil in the world. We see this win we judge each other, other nations, and other religions. All we have to do is look at the tragedies of our religious history of war, and violence that stems from judgments made of each other. The fighting over which religious practice or tradition is the right one.
Is it Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism or Atheism! Once you make a judgment and comparison, the others by default begin to lose their value, or feel like a greater threat to your own religion and pretty soon, that judgment will lead to attempts to annihilate each other and we are seeing that play out over and over again in our past and in our present! But Jesus didn’t come to set up a religion and pit us against each other, he came to love us and teach us how to love each other and to not judge each other and create comparatives that fuel violence as we have in religion.
Then Jesus tells a story of a person who plants a fig tree in an orchard and comes looking for figs. He finds none and becomes frustrated and makes a judgment that if this tree couldn’t provide figs for him after coming for three years looking, it should be cut down! Annihilated! Why should it exhaust the soil? Jesus asks the gardener!
But the gardener says, Sir, leave it alone for a year and I shall cultivate the ground and fertilize it so it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.
Jesus knows that it is important to wrestle with the judgments we carry and transform them!
Jesus remedy to judgment that cuts down and can lead to annihilation is to cultivate, fertilize and nurture. Instead of taking life through rash judgments, to instead ask how can I contribute and nurture, offer love that sustains; that sustains the life of a different religion, a different person, or a different group than my own, that I may hold some judgments about, and restrain the temptation to perpetuate violence against them. Judgment can lead to all forms of violence and devaluing.
Sometimes, we even judge ourselves and need to turn from it. Recently, Fr. Jim and I attended the Sr. and Jr. High youth retreat where they were tackling self- judgment by choosing the theme of self-love.
In this parable of the fig, Jesus invites us to give life to each other and not judgment.
A parishioner told me that she was sitting in the social security office and in walked a woman who went up to the window and said. “ I need a paper to prove that I am not dead! Look at me! Do I look dead! I got a letter from Motor vehicles saying that they got a letter from you saying I am dead. Well, they apologized and gave her a stack of papers and she left seemingly satisfied only to return 5 minutes later frustrated. As she walked back to the window she yelled. “ These papers have my husbands name on it “. So sometimes the effort to give life won’t work perfectly, but we should still try!
What we know is that if we are going to have more peace in the world and in our own lives we must be willing to wrestle with our judgments Jesus says, repent, and nurture life! Who better to teach us this than Jesus who when they brought the woman caught in adultery to him, he helped the crowd repent and turn from their judgment by asking a powerful question! You who are without sin, let them cast the first stone! They realized, they were in the same boat with her and they weren’t perfect. They dropped their stones. Violence was averted!
In the black church tradition there is a lot of worry about people going to hell when they die. The focus on judging their destination is connected to a fear based theology that says that God is interested in judging us and condemning us at the end of our lives if we don’t live perfectly. God isn’t looking for perfection. This distorted belief system about God often finds its way in how we use judgment in our own lives. Bad information matters, and just about every family system have been affected by bad information! In my family, we used to practice putting butter on burns. It was a common practice in the South and for generations black people grabbed butter for first aid to put on burns. It wasn’t until I went to nursing school as a teenager, that I learned that butter made burns worse and you should use ice instead. The first time, my mother sent me for butter after that and I told her you should use ice instead, she looked at me like I was crazy and said, girl go get that butter! Why because, my family had developed a whole belief system on using butter, just as we have developed a whole belief system on using judgment!
Jesus understood that judgment has become a belief system in our world, and like the folks who brought him this story, we need to turn from it and live in understanding and in Christ love instead of fear! Fear is what judgment is connected too!
I buried my cousin this Friday and at the funeral I invited my family to let go of judgments and fears about God and where my cousin was headed as his final resting place. I reminded them that my cousin Roy was in a beautiful place with God and that they didn’t have to worry about him.
I reminded them of God’s deep love for us and that love is always more powerful than fear and judgment!
I learned about this depth of God’s love from my father. One day, I had gotten in trouble and my mother was going to whip me. My dad told me to stand behind him and that he wouldn’t let any harm come to me. My mother came wielding her extension chord and told my father to get out of the way. He refused. She said Leroy if you don’t get out of the way, I am going to whip you. And he said, whip me then I will take her whipping. My mother whipped him with all the strength she had until she ran out of breath and when she finished he looked at her and said. Are you done! Yes she said. And with love in his eyes for her and for me and said. Now go somewhere and sit down and leave this girl alone. I learned that day how love was much more powerful than fear and judgment. So when you struggle with judgment in your heart either about yourself or others remember to offer nurture and love as Jesus does.
My favorite passage of scripture is John 3:16 God so loved that world that God gave Gods only son. Whosoever believes on him will have everlasting life. My favorite line is that: The son came not into the world to condemn it but through Jesus we might be saved. As we return to the question of how do we address violence and evil in the world? Repent and drop our judgments, and live in God’s love! Know that God’s love is a love that comes to hold us, save us, to protect us, to guide us through life’s journey and give us abundant life!
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