The Imperative to Love

Readings: 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15; Luke 17:11-19; Psalm 66:1-12; Jeremiah 29:1-7.

I once knew a pastor who was ruined by his accent.


Actually, that’s scapegoating: it was not the accent that destroyed him, but his congregation’s reaction to it. As national debates heated up surrounding issues of citizenship versus illegal residency, his congregation began to complain, with increasing fervor, about his Columbian accent. They couldn’t understand him, they claimed, and so he couldn’t possibly really understand them. The communication gap, they believed, was too great.

Oddly enough, these complaints hadn’t really existed in years previous, and so it came to seem that their problem with him was not really that they couldn’t understand what he was saying; it was more that they didn’t want to. He came to represent the Other, the foreigner, the person against whom they must rally. They forgot he’d been their trusted spiritual leader. And, sadly, the overarching leadership caved, and the pastor in question was relocated to an area more likely to react favorably to the fact that he was Hispanic.

I’ve been very angry at his congregation over this for awhile now. It seemed self-evident, to me, that a Christian community should not react this way to someone, particularly a spiritual leader, based on negligible, even imagined, differences. They let themselves get too caught up in the ideas of proper “citizenship” and nationality, and in the process lost a really good pastor, one who had cared for them and done his utmost to exemplify Christian ideals. His “other”ness was not the problem; theirs was. By rejecting him based on his origins, they made themselves “other” to the Scriptures.

Our readings this week are full of aliens, sojourners, foreigners. They are not what we’ve come to expect from people shouldered with such terms. Indeed, the common rhetoric here, in our time, is that he who is the Other must be villianized and kept at a distance. “Other” is considered dangerous. But in biblical contexts, “others” are those who often surprise established nations or groups by being more faithful, more committed to God’s message, than those charged directly to live it out.

In 2 Kings, Naaman, a chieftain of another nation, is encouraged by an Israelite to go to the king in Jerusalem and petition the king’s prophet to have his leprosy cured. Doing so means deviating from all which he’s always known to be true. Yet he listens to the Israelite child and goes before the Israelite king. He is told to perform a simple act of faith—“wash seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean”--in order to become well (2 Kings 5:10).

Naaman wrestles with himself internally, but eventually decides to show this faith, and is rewarded by becoming healed. And, the text tells us, “he returned with his whole retinue to the man of God. On his arrival he stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel’” (2 Kings 5:15). A hefty concession for any Israelite whose faith was daily tried; a grand one for a foreigner, of whom belief was not required.

In Luke 17, we read again of an afflicted foreigner, this time a Samaritan. He goes before Jesus as part of an ailing group. They beg to be healed. Jesus, never one to put too much stock in silly boundaries, of course heals them—as an act of love, as any creator would do for his created. And the Samaritan who is cured, one of many cured, the only foreigner among the cured, is the only to offer thanks: “realizing he had been healed, [he] returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him” (Luke 17:15-16). Jesus comments on this, affecting perhaps not entirely genuine surprise that this devotion comes from one not bound, by covenant, to Israel’s God: “Ten were cleansed, where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” (Luke 17:17-18)

The message that can be derived from these readings is not that sometimes, some foreigners surprise us by being better than we’d expect; rather, it’s that the notion of “foreigner” is entirely absurd in the context of faith.

Anyone can live out Christian principles. As such, we are required to love all people as our neighbors, not just those who “officially” belong to our communities. The communities mean nothing unless they’re built on values of inclusion.

We cannot rest in notions that, because we have been privileged, because we live in times and locations which are very blessed, we are ourselves blessed over and against other peoples. God loves all; he hears all petitions. And if we fail to welcome into our communities the “foreigners,” those who outwardly seem to be “Other”, we fail to do the work of being like Christ.

Before God, we are all slightly “other.” It is not until we begin the work of faith, of living out Judeo-Christian principles, that we become more of what God envisioned and designed us to be. By appropriating faith into all aspects of our lives, we begin the cautious approach towards accepting God’s grace. It waits us always, regardless of our locations—as the 66th Psalm tells us, shouting “joyfully” to God is a task enjoined of “all…on earth”, who “fall in worship before” God, singing and worshipping. The events in the land are evidence of this love; the mercy and favor they represent is available to all, in all lands.

We are charged, as were the Israelite exiles, with the responsibility of living amongst our neighbors with love. Even if they seem different from us. Even if their “ways” aren’t always easy for us to understand. They, too, are God’s—this is what binds them to us, what makes loving them an imperative. We are to “build houses to dwell in; plant gardens, and eat [shared] fruits,” and the welfare of the ground which we share is essential—our own rests upon it (Jeremiah 29:4, 7). We’re promised joy if we do this—not the joy of living without tumult, in a state of sustained tolerance, but the joy of living truly well, in the borderless community envisioned in scripture.

I worry for us, travelling along these paths we’ve designed. Our communities become less and less hospitable to those who we deem unlike us. This has not become a place where it is easy to be the “Other”. If we’re truly invested in the notion that we’re a nation built upon Judeo-Christian principles, continuing to alienate “aliens” does our foundations an inconceivable injustice. It becomes, in fact, absurd.

We cannot refuse to engage in spiritual communion with people who have different accents, or are differently acculturated; we cannot reject human beings without having even tried to understand them. A Christian community which is only open to some is, it would seem, closed off to Christ. We must counter such trends by doing work which is Jesus-like, which starts at the most basic levels of human communication. We must seek to engage one another, on ground which we find is shared despite our resistance, from a position of faith. All are beloved by God; living in his image, so must we love all.

Photo Credit here

January 24 -- The Body of Christ

This week's lectionary texts: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, and 8-10, Psalm 19, First Corinthians 12:12-31a, and Luke 4:14-21.

I recently returned from a week-long trip to Ecuador with a group of divinity, theology, and business students. During our time in South America, we learned about issues as diverse as globalization and debt, food sovereignty and ecology, indigenous spirituality and refugees. We also had incredible opportunities to meet a variety of Ecuadorian women, men, and children, and were often overwhelmed by the hospitality we encountered.

On one of our last nights in Ecuador, we were invited to a church service held in a tiny chapel in a tiny mountaintop village near Guamote. The service was attended by many local families, our entire group, and a few people from Guamote (as well as a kitten who kept darting in and out).

Since I speak neither Spanish nor Quechua (the indigenous language spoken by most of the village's residents), I rarely understood exactly what the celebrants were saying. But as we all got up to take communion, I marveled at what a beautiful moment we were sharing: men and women from all over the world, coming together in one of the oldest rituals of Christianity.

This week's texts also emphasize the importance of coming together as the body of Christ. As Paul writes in First Corinthians,

"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free -- and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:12-13)

Paul wants to make clear that every single person is important for the body of Christ to work together; nobody is any less critical than anyone else. We are inextricably linked, he radically writes: "If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it" (1 Corinthians 12:26).

Both the readings from Nehemiah and Luke, for their part, offer examples of the faithful coming together to listen to God's word. In Luke, Jesus stands up in the synagogue to read the words of Isaiah, saying, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:18-19).

It seems important that Luke records, "The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him...All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came out of his mouth" (Luke 4:20, 22). Jesus's declaration, which comes near the beginning of his ministry, was not made alone, or to a select few, but to his whole synagogue -- he was inviting his community to share in his announcement of hope and salvation.

In Nehemiah, we hear the story of Ezra bringing God's law to the people: "The priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly...in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law....And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people...Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, 'Amen, Amen,' lifting up their hands" (Nehemiah 8:2-3, 5-6).

But Ezra does not simply read the book of the law to the people. Rather, his peers then "read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading" (Nehemiah 8:8). It was important to Ezra that everyone, not just the elite, could have the chance to fully understand God's word -- the community was stronger for it.

Indeed, coming together in community is essential for our walk with God. It is in community that we learn and grow, question and have our questions echoed or answered, build relationships with people like and unlike us. The psalmist writes, "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1). This is a beautiful, incredible world that God has given us to share. How important, then, that we seize opportunities to explore it, improve it, and seek to strengthen the body of Christ, a body whose members are scattered throughout the globe.

September 7—Discipline and the Disciple

"If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” –Matthew 13:15-20

When I was in college, several friends of mine went to a large and very popular church near campus. I remember hearing a story once about how their church had used this passage to handle an incidence of adultery within the congregation. The church leaders attempted to talk with the man in private, and when he refused to give up his affair, they brought him before the entire church one Sunday and publicly cast him out of the congregation. There’s no doubt that they took this passage seriously.

I remember feeling rather ambivalent about the whole thing at the time. Certainly I’ve never been okay with adultery, and kicking people out of the community for sin is found in scripture—in addition to this passage, there is the common refrain found in Deuteronomy, “ So you shall purge the evil from your midst” (Deut. 13:5, 17:7, 19:19, etc.), and Paul’s rhetoric on the contaminating effects of sin in 1 Corinthians 5. At the same time there seemed something rather harsh to me in simply throwing the man out of the church. Granted, I didn’t know this situation from the inside, and perhaps pastorally, such strong consequences were necessary for the person to acknowledge his own behavior. But I wondered how likely it was that this man would ever begin to address the broken relationship and hurt that his actions had caused if he were summarily cut off from his faith community. If the lines of dialogue were closed, how would the offender ever grow? How would the offended ever heal?

When I looked again at today’s lectionary passage in Matthew, a passage upon which many such protocols are based, I realized that Jesus’ rules for church discipline aren’t about punishment or rejection. Nor are they meant to preserve unity in the church at the cost of disagreement or diversity. Rather, they are all about relationships within the community. Notice how, in verse 15, the question is posed as “If another member of the church sins against you…” (italics mine). Now, those two little words set the tone for the entire passage. If they are not there, then the passage can be taken to address generic activities that contradict the church’s moral or ethical code. In some ancient sources, these words are indeed missing from the passage, suggesting such a general interpretation.

But if the two words are part of verse 15, as other ancient sources attest, then the entire passage becomes all about holding my Christian sibling accountable when her actions have broken our relationship. For in this the Apostle Paul is right—“a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough” (1 Cor. 5:6), and the bitterness and anger that results from an open wound between two people eventually poisons the whole community. So in this interpretation, Jesus’ plan sets up a way for the community to address broken relationships so that justice and reconciliation can take place. For when the community comes alongside one who has been wronged, confronts the breach, and calls for justice, it is not about enforcing uniformity of doctrine or belief. It is about being a disciple of Jesus—for just as Jesus came to heal humanity’s relationship with the Creator, members of his church are called to heal relationships with one another. And that healing cannot take place if we don’t address our brokenness with honesty and authenticity.

Yet what if someone refuses to acknowledge his wrong and try to mend fences? Is that the point at which we cast him out? In the past, when I’ve read the words, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (v. 17), I assumed that this was meant as a rejection of the offender. But as New Testament professor Mark Allan Powell points out in his commentary on Matthew, Jesus is saying quite the opposite—Gentiles and tax collectors were the outsiders of the Jewish community, to be sure, but they were also some of the people Jesus most persistently reached out to during his ministry. Treating someone as a Gentile and tax collector is not a call to cut off the wrong-doer, but a call to deeper and more persistent engagement with that person. For ultimately, the goal is unity—a reconciling unity, in which Christ himself is present among us (v. 20). And that requires not uniformity of opinion, but uniformity of loving, grace-filled care toward one another.

Our business as a church, then, is not about casting out and cutting off. But at the same time, it isn’t about discreetly overlooking the broken relationships within our community—from the petty fights and painful betrayals buzzing within local congregations to our failure as a Christian faith community to love and serve all humanity. Reconciliation cannot happen without justice, just as justice is empty without healing and reconciliation. And in Jesus’ discipline for the church, he gives us a practical, everyday starting point for practicing both.

Kelsey

PS-- The image above is of the Zaccheus story, one of the most famous stories of Jesus reaching out to a tax collector to bring him to discipleship.