A priest is excommunicated for marrying and abandoning his chastity vows, while a pocket history emerges of a priest whose sins were covered.
A group with “Church” prominently in their name responds to a shooting which the nation called tragic by protesting at a young victim’s funeral, using scripture to assert that the act was divine retribution for any number of unconnected “errors”.
Discontented bishops from alternate denominations reunite, finding common ground in their want to preserve “tradition” by excluding some from Christian community.
Someone from one religion stones another because of a perceived abomination; someone from a religion beats another within their religion for an assumed breech with faith.
We hear such stories exhaustingly often. We hear the people who make such decisions defending them by quoting the Bible, or other holy texts; we hear them say they aren’t at fault, they’re just protecting the law, just upholding God’s word. And at times, because of them, the idea of Christianity as a just religion becomes difficult to prove.
But our readings this week remind us that such readings of the scriptures are neither natural nor pious. Whether you consider the Bible the unfiltered word of God or an account of God’s interactions with the world, there’s a disconnect when someone attempts to utilize the divine story to quash and humiliate others, or to, with great aplomb and self-righteousness, put people in their place. It’s upsetting to note how infrequently we hear references in the public discourse to God’s word which are comforting or which encourage love; instead, it’s “God hates--!” or “God is coming to judge you!” or “God’s word condemns the following people.” Why don’t we report verses like those in this week’s readings to one another? When did we stop wanting to proclaim the good news?
In Matthew, Jesus enjoins us not to let our verve, or the “saltiness of our salt,” fade away; rather, we’re to be a burning light for all the world, are to evidence God’s love: “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). We are to be good, we are to be righteous, we are never to discourage observing the “letter of the law”—but we know that the heart of the law, in Jesus’ understanding, is pure, agenda-free love for one another.
When we observe people behaving cruelly to others in the name of God’s love, it probably strikes us as false; it certainly isn’t coherent in light of Jesus’ message. What light, what burning truth, is detectable in “hate the sin, love the sinner” equivocations? Jesus doesn’t ask us to be a “sort of” light, and in fact tells us not to dim the light of love with obstructions—Matthew 5:15--; he demands that we love boldly, that we shine in plain view. Doing that requires shelving what we presume to know about other people’s relationships with God; it requires allowing spiritual privacy.
Our Isaiah passage perhaps articulates this best. In it, the prophet responds to the inquiries of those who ostentatiously yield to the law and wonder why they aren’t reaping rewards for those “good” deeds: “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high” (Isaiah 58:3-4). Obedience for show is empty; shouting about righteousness without confronting actual injustices leaves one at a spiritual impasse. Do we allow our neighbors to starve, beg and scrape while we campaign, instead, to outlaw “behavior” we don’t like, or “choices” we don’t understand? If we do: how can we claim to be doing God’s work?
Isaiah, knowing that empty obedience is not faithful, but a vice, clarifies what the law actually requires. Fast days don’t exist so that we can individually prove how tough we are, or so that we can brag about how much we “give up” to God; fasting, Isaiah says, isn’t about the fasting individual at all. We forget our insular needs and are to concentrate on a whole people: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (Isaiah 58:6-7)
It would be so wonderful if we could enact this, particularly in light of approaching Lent, during which Christian communities actively encourage fasting with increased volume. More powerful than denying ourselves meat or other amenities would be making sure that someone who needs food has it; more powerful than hours prostrate in prayer would be participation in movements which seek justice for the marginalized. There’s certainly profundity in giving ourselves over, lovingly, to God, and in self-denying to do so; but beyond the personal and the private is a dimension wherein we could do the same God-focused work to the benefit of others. That’s the space the scriptures encourage us to occupy.
To an extent, the clamoring crowds of those who do hurtful things in God’s name are right: our world is rife with spiritual dangers. But it seems that we’re most at peril when we preemptively determine that those dangers lie strictly on the shoulders of others, that because we are “saved” we know better than to do ill. The opposite seems true: believing that because we love God we don’t err against God blinds us to the realities of God’s people still in need. We need to examine issues we can affect with heightened concentration: if our neighbor’s can’t afford medical services, what does their suffering cost God? If our neighbors are reviled and belittled for loving people we would not choose, how does that limit the notion of heavenly love? What do tyrants abroad do to God’s communities; what does prejudice here cost them?
There are no easy answers, and we have to be wary of people who attempt to give them. The constant struggle to do what is right, to seek and mirror God’s light, is the hardest requirement incumbent upon Christians. It necessitates “fasting” from our personal inclinations and placing love above judgment, so that we can truly respond to the needs of others and be “like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail,” whose “light shall break forth like the dawn” (Isaiah 58:11, 8). We have to simultaneously reject the claims of those who call themselves God’s own but encourage petty cruelties and constantly refine our own sensibilities; we have to argue for justice and be justice, too. No small task; certainly no containable one.
What the scriptures knew of true light is this: contained and limited, it burns out quickly; tended and fed, it grows and illuminates, and eventually attracts the attention it warrants.
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