6th Sunday after the Epiphany--Year A

The 6th Sunday after the Epiphany- Year A February 16, 2014 I have a vivid memory of the picture that accompanies this story from Deuteronomy in the picture bible that my parents read to us when we were growing up. The story tells of how Moses is told by God that he cannot accompany the children of Israel into the promised land. He has led them for such a long time, all through the wilderness, and now at last they have arrived at the edge, and Moses is telling them goodbye, giving them a few last instructions and teachings before they go forward into their future without him. “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." I was always both enthralled and troubled by the picture that accompanies this story in our picture bible because it shows Moses, with his back to the viewer—huddled in grayish, sepia toned wrappings on the edge of a cliff—beyond which we can see him watching the brightly colored children of Israel headed away from him toward a land that is clearly paradise—lush, green lands with waterfalls. I know now what I didn’t know as a child; this picture of Moses in my picture bible is the picture of heartbreak. Which makes Moses’s words even more powerful, if you think about it. It is generally pretty easy to choose life, love God, love each other, when everything seems to be going our way. But what about when it is not? What does it mean to choose life, choose blessings, when we are well and truly heart-broken? What does it mean to choose life, to choose blessings in the midst of disappointments, broken relationships, and even anger? In the portion from the Sermon on the Mount that is today’s gospel reading, Jesus is continuing to teach his disciples about discipleship, and he has something to say about how we choose life and blessings in the midst of hardship. Jesus tells us that we choose life and blessings when we make relationships with others our utmost priority. He uses hyperbole to show us that God cares about our relationships, and that God’s law is merely a tool that is used to help us deepen the bonds of our human affection and to grow in relationship with each other (and in that with God). Another writer gets to the heart of this by asking, “What if God cares that we keep the law for our sake—not for God’s sake?” Because for Jesus, in this particular passage, it is all about how we treat one another. And he is telling his disciples, he is telling us, that it is not enough to just follow the letter of the commandments. We are called beyond that, to following the spirit of them. It is not enough to refrain from murder, he tells us. We should also treat people with respect and that means not speaking hateful words. It is not enough to avoid physically committing adultery, he tells us. We should also not objectify other persons by seeing them as a means to satisfy our physical desires by lusting after them. It is not enough to follow the letter of the law regarding divorce, he tells us. We should not treat people as disposable and should make sure that the most vulnerable people (in that society—women and children) are provided for. It is not enough to keep ourselves from swearing falsely or lying to others, he tells us. We should speak truthfully in all our dealings so that we don’t need to make oaths at all. For Jesus, this is what it means for us to choose life, to choose blessings. So how might we do this, this very morning? How might we choose life, choose blessings, even in the midst of some very real disappointments and broken relationships and heartbreak? First, I invite you to take a moment and call to mind one relationship in your life right now that is the most important to you, the most healthy and whole and life giving, the relationship that sustains you the most regularly right now. Think about what it is that makes it such a good relationship, why it is important to you, and then give thanks to God for that person (or creature) and that relationship that you share. If you want, jot it down on a scrap piece of paper. Second, I invite you to take another moment and call to mind a relationship that is important to you but that has suffered some damage. You don’t need to try to figure out who’s to blame for the hurt but rather hold that person and relationship in prayer. (It may even be God, and that’s ok too). I invite you to offer to God your heartbreak and your disappointment and that damaged relationship as an invitation to God for God’s help and healing. I invite you to reflect upon what action you might take to move that relationship to greater health. You can jot that down on that same piece of paper also. If you choose to do so, as the table is being set for Eucharist, you may come forward and lay those two relationships and your prayers with them on God’s altar and offer them to God in thanksgiving and petition. No one will read your papers. In this way, we are invited to choose life, to choose blessing. Even in the midst of heartbreak. I follow a blog called the Painted Prayerbook. It is the blog of an artist and poet and United Methodist elder named Jan Richardson. This past fall, Jan’s husband Gary died suddenly after a routine surgery, and she has posted a couple of beautiful and real and heart-breaking posts as she lives in her own heart-break for this season. Just the other day, she posted a blessing that I want to share with you in closing today that gets to the heart of how we choose life, how we choose blessings, how we choose to continue to love, even in the midst of broken relationships, disappointment, and heartbreak. It is called “A blessing for the Broken-hearted.” There is no remedy for love but to love more. – Henry David Thoreau Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love. Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound when every day our waking opens it anew. Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this— as if it knows the only cure for love is more of it as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still as if it trusts that its own stubborn and persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom but will save us nonetheless. The parts of this sermon about the gospel were heavily inspired by David Loses's reflection on his blog: workingpreacher.org