Homily for Sunday, June 26, 2016
“The
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” [Paul’s words in Galatians 5: 22.]
“Do not judge, and
you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive,
and you will be forgiven.” These
are the words of Jesus [in Luke 6: 37].
When
asked how many times we should forgive our brother—our fellow human being—Jesus
responded, “Seventy times seven.”
When
the woman caught in adultery was brought to Jesus by the authorities, scribes
and Pharisees who hoped to prove this prophet of Nazareth to be a hoax, they
challenged him: “The Law of Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do
you say?” [John 8: 4-11] Even though surrounded by a crowd of people and
authorities who had stones in their hands, Jesus had the courage to stand up to
the would-be executioners. Jesus said to them, “ ‘Let anyone among you who is
without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ When they heard it, they
went away, one by one.”
We
live in a wonderful country, where people are protected by laws that promise
them due process, trial by jury, and a status of innocence until proven guilty.
We live in a country that is predominantly Christian—and often proud of it. Our
judges are selected for their wisdom, and the penalties we assign in due
process are intended to match the gravity of the crimes committed. Capital
punishment exists in many states, but it is reserved for the worst of
crimes—murder. Since we can trust in the rule of law and our judicial system,
we are not called to take the law into our own hands.
The men who
brought the adulterous woman to Jesus not only took the law into their hands,
judging her to be guilty of a sin worthy of capital punishment, but they also
were prepared to be her executioners. The challenge Jesus made to the
authorities is a challenge He makes to us: “You who are without sin, cast the first stone.”
Unfortunately,
as much as we have a long and beautiful history of generosity, patience,
kindness, and justice, we Americans also have a long history of throwing
stones.
America, our beloved
country, has used Christianity itself at times as a basis for accusing,
judging, and condemning people. Some of the early and very striking examples
occurred in Massachusetts. As a
nation, we enjoy our celebration of Thanksgiving every November, and when we
are children, we may draw images of the Pilgrims sitting down to a bountiful
table with their Native American neighbors. The Pilgrims came to this country for religious freedom, to
found a Christian community. They also helped to found a largely Christian country. As we honor the Pilgrims, we often
forget how they slaughtered most of their native American neighbors, the very
people whose kindness had helped to keep them fed and alive during their first
harsh winters on this continent. Why?
The Pilgrims considered the Native Americans to be infidels who stood in
the way of their conquest of the land God wanted them to possess.
We
also forget the witch trials that centered around Salem, Massachusetts, in the
late 1600s. If you read a history
of the witch trials, the term “mass hysteria” is often used to describe what
happened, but few historians can offer a reasonable explanation for HOW it
happened. Remember, the Pilgrims
(also known as Puritans) were part of a very strict Christian sect that
believed in predestination.
According to their beliefs, only a select few of their own number would
be among those chosen for the rewards of heaven; the rest would be condemned to
hell (along with the Natives). They
believed that those who were chosen would demonstrate their worthiness by good
behavior. Beginning from that basic premise, it became an easy matter (and a
desirable thing since it improves one’s own odds) to accuse others of sinful
behavior and consign them to Hell.
Those
first accused of witchcraft were those perceived to be the obvious sinners
among the Puritan community: the habitual drunks, women who had children out of
wedlock. Then, when some of the wiser and more compassionate members of the
community objected to the accusations that such people were witches, they were also
accused of witchcraft. The only
way to avoid execution was to admit your guilt and sign a document stating you
were a witch. Some of the 200 people accused did sign such a statement, but
many, who were true to their Christian faith and would not sign a lie, were
executed. In all, 200 people were accused. Twenty were executed. Awaiting
execution, five, including children, died in prison.
In
subsequent years, history revealed that some of the accusations were most
likely made out of greed or resentment—an accuser wanting a piece of land that
belonged to someone else or resenting the prosperity or status of a
neighbor. No matter what the
motivation behind these accusations, all were made in the name of Jesus
Christ. Somehow, the oft-repeated
command made by our Savior—“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged”—was
conveniently overlooked by the Puritans.
They judged the everyday sins of ordinary people—public drunkenness, the
pregnancy of an unmarried woman—as offenses worthy of capital punishment.
How Jesus must
have wept! Our Savior died a
humiliating death by execution, and like the executions of the Salem witches,
his death was completely unjustified. The purpose of his death was to end
death. As Christians, we believe that Jesus died so that we, as sinful and
selfish as we may be, do not have to fear death. Trusting in Jesus, we have faith that our sins—and the sins
of our brothers and sisters—are forgiven. Our Lord promises mercy to all.
I
have had all these things on my mind since June 12th. On that day,
we awoke to learn of another horrible mass shooting in this country. In
Orlando, Florida, forty-nine mostly young men and women were gunned down at a
nightclub. The shooter, an
American-born Muslim citizen, seems to have had many of his own issues. He
judged the people gathered in the Pulse nightclub to be sinners worthy of
execution, and he killed them. But Omar Mateen is not the subject of this
sermon.
On
the evening of June 12th, at a Baptist church service in Sacramento,
California, a preacher stood in his pulpit and said these words to his
congregation: “Aren’t you sad that 50 sodomites died? …The tragedy is that more
of them didn’t die. The tragedy is…I’m kinda upset that he didn’t finish the
job!” He went on to say, “If we lived in a righteous nation, with a righteous
government, then the government should be taking them…I wish the government
would round them all up, put them up against the firing wall, put a firing
squad in front of them…”
I
really do not have the heart to quote any more of the hate-filled words of this
so-called Christian pastor. I do
know, without uncertainty, that the Lord who forgives seventy time seven, the
Lord who himself suffered the painful horror of capital punishment, would never
condemn anyone to death for his or her perceived sinfulness. This California
pastor took it upon himself to judge as sinners the 49 who were
slaughtered in the Pulse nightclub. Like the scribes and Pharisees who brought
the woman caught in adultery before Jesus, this pastor believed that those he
considered to be sinners should be executed.
I am
not here to address the issue of homosexuality. I know there is wide
disagreement among Christians about that issue, although I am glad most
Americans demonstrate acceptance and tolerance for members of the LBGT community.
What I do want to say is that our Lord and Savior would never condone the mass
execution of any group of people. He would not condone any kind of intolerance.
He would not condone any behavior other than mercy on the part of a
self-proclaimed Christian. Jesus said there were only two commandments his
followers needed to know: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love
your neighbor as you love yourself.
In each of these commandments, the word love
is a verb. To love is to act in a specific way. Love is a behavior—not just a
feeling or a thought or an idea. Love is only truly expressed through our
actions. We are not called to cast a stone, either by our hands or by our
thoughts. We are called to lay down our stones, remembering our own sinfulness
and need for mercy. We lay down our stones as an act of love—and obedience to
Jesus. As Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, “The fruit of the Spirit
is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness,
and self-control.”
May
our all of our actions illustrate the way we bear these fruits of the Spirit on
behalf of our Lord and his Kingdom.
AMEN.
