A Sermon for Feb. 12, 2023, 6th Sunday after the Epiphany

The Rev. Deborah Hawkins

Wiggle Room

“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” 

So last week Jesus told us he came not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them. To fully live into them. To embody them. This week the psalmist says, “You laid down your commandments, that we should fully keep them.”

Law, commandments — those words can get us into trouble in English. It helps to remember their meaning is not only rules to follow but even more teaching, instruction, mitzvah – which includes a sense of ‘good deeds’. God desires for us abundant life and gives us the law as part of a way to live abundant lives with one another. 

There is an old ‘Zits’ cartoon — that’s the one with 2 parents and their teenage son. In this old cartoon the mother asks her son to take out the garbage, you know, to take out the kitchen trash. The son grumps over and takes the bag. In the next scene the mother has opened up the back door and there on the step, right outside the door, is the bag of trash. When she looks at her son he says, “What?”

It is safe to say the son in the cartoon was not living fully into the rules of the household nor is he considering he is a part of household that is reliant on one another. Instead he is focused on finding wiggle room in the rules that (hand to forehead) weigh heavily upon him. Have you ever done that? Or had it done to you? ‘But all you said was…” 

When it comes to the law and the prophets, especially when things get specific, I’ll confess I’m often on the lookout for a little wiggle room.

In today’s gospel portion Jesus says, you have heard you shall not murder but I say do not even be angry with your brother or sister.

Amy-Jill Levine says the rabbis call this building a fence around a law. Make it harder to get close to a law so it is harder to break it. If you don’t get angry at your brother you are less likely to murder him, or he you, for example. 

Could be, but it feels like more commands that have gotten even more restrictive and are binding me even tighter.

Notice Jesus does not say never get angry (Ah, maybe there is some wiggle room). He says if you are angry at a brother or a sister beware, be very careful. For all you think it is fun to be all self righteous and angry you may not like where that takes you (Oh, dear).

The other person is created in the image and likeness of God and worthy of respect no matter how you might be feeling about something they said or did. When you are angry it is easy to forget that. 

When it comes to insults, to name calling, words do wound, words can kill.  There may be far less wiggle room than we like to think. 

I don’t think Jesus is saying anger has no place in our lives. He got angry on occasion. Some things — hate, bullying, defrauding, discrimination, abuse — somethings should not be tolerated and anger can be the right response when we find ourselves face to face with them. But we must also always be mindful that the person we are dealing with is a beloved child of God, just as we all are, and target our anger appropriately, however hard that can be sometimes.

What he is telling us is less a matter of what we can get away with or get out of and more a matter of how important it is to pay attention. It is all tied together: our relationships with each other and our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us.

First, Jesus says, first we are to strive to be at peace with one another. Actually, to be picky Jesus said if you remember someone has something against you go take care of it. So I guess there is a little wiggle room in forgetting, but if you remember — and if we are paying attention we should notice or remember now and then, anyway — and if you remember you can’t pretend to forget, that doesn’t count.  

There is not much wiggle room there at all. Some issues are quick and easy to resolve leaving everyone is happy, but others, they can get really messy. You can’t control how the other person is going to respond, either, which just adds to the messiness. 

In those cases the work of reconciliation with someone or some group can stretch out over a lifetime.  Each day, all you can do is the best you can at any given time and maybe that is okay as long as the work is ongoing? Otherwise what are we to do? We would forever be stuck at ‘first’ and never get to ‘then.’

Our custom of the passing of the peace is often tied to this saying of Jesus. Before we approach the table, we pass the peace with one another.

Before we come to the altar to bring with gladness the offerings of our lives and labors we are turn to the people near us to offer them the peace of Christ. The peace of Christ.

My peace is kind of thorny and fractured even on the best days.

So God says here let me give you a little wiggle room. You can offer my peace while you keep working on yours. That way we can bring all of our messiness and thorniness and brokenness fully into the presence of God and into the presence of each other, really or virtually, for rest and healing and transformation and encouragement to keep working and living abundantly.

Thanks be to God

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