Luke 6:27-38
Psalm 37
Genesis 45:3-15
If we learned nothing else from the Ken Burns and Kim Novak documentary series on the Vietnam War, we certainly learned that the body count of enemies killed was a political fiction. Generals and politicians wanted to convince the American public we were winning a misguided war that we were losing, and badly. Even if they had been tempted toward integrity, they would have still faced the challenge of knowing who was and who was not an enemy in any particular hamlet, for dead bodies are even less likely to give up their secrets than living prisoners. War is by definition chaos and confusion, and while we can pretend to have an exact number for our own dead, a wall of names, the Defense Department still considers 1600 to be missing, and that after an additional thousand remains have been returned to the US since relations with Vietnam were normalized.
If it is hard to count our own dead, impossible to count enemy dead, it is even harder still to calculate civilian casualties, especially in the regions where wars tend to take place, regions with poor infrastructure and poor records. Take, for example, the invasion of Iraq, a war that was questioned by my predecessor from this very pulpit, a war that many continue to question in light of the results. In October of 2006, a team led by an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins and a physician at Baghdad’s Al Mustansiriya University published a paper in The Lancet, a medical journal, estimating the number of excess deaths as a result of the war, that is deaths above the normal mortality rate, at 650,000 in the three years to that point. It created a firestorm at a moment when public opinion was already turning against the war. The World Health Organization would do a survey of its own two years later, drastically reducing that number to 151,000 excess deaths during that same period. While some might say, “Well gosh, 499,000 less deaths, so we’re alright then…†me, not so much, for even if the WHO was right, that is still 151,000 deaths that would not have happened, 151,000 sons and mothers and best-friends. Dr. Riyadh Lafta, the Iraqi physician who co-authored the study, has refused to play a formal role in subsequent studies because of death threats. He is worried about the safety of his family. But lest you should write that off as the result of living in a lawless war zone, you should remember that members of the country music group The Dixie Chicks received death threats right here in the US for speaking out against the war, and saw their careers effectively ended.
The mortality information for Iraq comes from the February 7th issue of Nature, the premiere journal in the sciences. Specifically, the article looks at the science and controversy around mortality after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, and at efforts by scientists to continually improve the accuracy of mortality data after any disaster, natural or human-made. The US government released an official death count of 64 after Maria, ignoring those who would die as a direct but secondary result of the storm, for example, those who could not receive dialysis as most of the island went without power for months. Research scientists, facing the same challenges as everyone else in Puerto Rico, widespread lack of food, water, power, transportation, internet and phone, were still able to complete survey studies, eventually estimating 2,975 excess deaths at the low end, and as many as 4,645 deaths at the high end, the latter from a Harvard study that made the headlines and raised the ire of some politicians. But good data is needed if we are going to deploy aid, resources, and boots on the ground effectively. Efficient use of aid and resources should be a goal of both conservatives and progressives. There are many, and I am among them, that believe that the official numbers are low because some consider the lives of brown-skinned Spanish-speaking citizens as worth less than the lives of other Americans.
I have no doubt that the authors of these post-Maria mortality studies have also received death threats, after all, we live in an age where a gunman invades a pizza-parlor because an internet fraud spreads rumors about sex-slaves in the basement. We live in an age when the dogwhistle incites violence, but those who blow that whistle are rarely held accountable for their actions, in which a PAC can publish an image with a gun sight over Gabby Giffords’ district, in which a political operative can endanger a federal judge, in which the term “enemy of the people†is thrown around with reckless disregard.
This all may seem an odd start to a sermon about forgiveness, but I want to disabuse you of dangerous notions of text out of context. It would be easy to forget that the ancient Hebrews hearing the story of Joseph and his brothers also knew the story of the inhospitality in Sodom and Gomorrah and the terrible consequences that followed, knew that there would be a price to pay when Egypt turned on the descendants of those refugee brothers, knew that when Pharaoh turned on the Hebrews, even targeting children, that God responded with plagues and the horrific night of Passover. They also knew the story of Moses denied entry into the promised land, knew the prophets who spoke continually of consequence. It would be easy to forget or ignore the fact that today’s reading from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain comes immediately after those uncomfortable woes from last week. It is easy to forget that Jesus speaks of a day of judgement, gives us a parable of sheep and goats, lets people walk away who are not willing to go all in for the gospel. It is easy to forget that Jesus holds people accountable, though he always offers forgiveness, and that Paul, in forming the church, creates standards for acceptable conduct and procedures for accountability and reconciliation.
The life and ministry of Jesus occurred a specific context, the overwhelming brutality and might of the Roman Empire. In that context, love was an act of resistance. In an atmosphere poisoned by greed, generosity was an act of resistance. In a system where bodies were routinely destroyed as a warning to others, where women were stoned in the street, where corpses were left on a cross, non-violent protest was an act of resistance. Non-violence, love, generosity, these things are not meant to paint the Jesus follower into a corner of passivity. Instead, they serve to highlight the evil that exists around those on the Way, a contrast to our vision of another way of being in the world that is not driven by the gossiping scribes and Pharisees with their conspiracies, by the mob whipped into a frenzy by the few. Those who seek division rarely understand the evil they are doing, the harm they are causing. Just ask the British as they hurtle toward a no-deal Brexit.
Following Jesus is not anything goes, and a Christian community is not a zero-expectation gathering where anything goes. Paul warned about this precisely, about the notion that since grace covered all sins, we could do anything and expect our sins to be covered. He says that is not so.
That is not what grace is about. That is not how forgiveness is intended. Jesus says that he did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. The Law is full of standards, many that we rightly disregard today as specific to that Ancient Near Eastern context, but many that still stand, that are universal, norms around integrity and decency. Paul’s church, something emerging from nothing with all of the growing pains that come from the space in-between the old and the new, a system overcharged with tension and creativity, set standards for what it meant to be community, for how to mediate and reconcile in that community, but also for how to say goodbye to those who could not or would not be healthy parts of the body of Christ.
Forgive does not mean forget, it does not mean tolerate the intolerable. We are not asked to ignore the splinter in our neighbor’s eye, we are simply called on to be mindful of the plank in our own, and maybe work on that first. Jesus saves a special fury for the self-righteous, parading about in their holiness and looking for the sins of others. But we are charged to call all out of aimlessness and sin. Humility is not a gag. Some of our greatest saints were painfully aware of their own flaws.
The good news is not that we have abandoned over six hundred ancient laws, but that we have adopted a smaller code that is far harder, that it is a mark we can never truly hit, and that salvation works precisely because God has what God calls us to have, a surplus of love and a willingness to always forgive.
Joseph is not a model of passive wimpy forgiveness. Before we get to “I am your brother,†we get mind games, Joseph framing his brother for theft I invite you to go back this week and read the whole story, from spoiled little Joseph to the crossing of the Red Sea. Jesus who calls on us to engage in generosity, forgiveness, and love as acts of resistance, also throws over tables. He is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to show that the very worst humans can do cannot defeat the power of love. He doesn’t sit around in the hills of Galilee, passive, waiting for the authorities to come for him. He goes to Jerusalem. When Judas breaks covenant, the community does not collapse. They replace him with a new and healthier companion in leadership.
Some early Christians thought that as long as they believed, they could get away with anything. Not so fast, Paul says. It matters how you act as well. For all of the talk about faith versus works in Paul’s theology, he preaches both, as does Jesus, as does Isaiah, as does Amos, as does … well, you get the idea.
It matters how many people lost their lives after Hurricane Maria, because every needless death was an act of negligent homicide. It matters when we whip the marginal into a frenzy of hate so that they walk into a bible study with intent to kill. It matters that scientists are afraid to do their job. It matters that the grieving parents of children slaughtered in their classroom receive death threats because purveyors of hate spread the lie that the entire attack was staged.
It matters when we sit back passively and allow evil to run amok.
Whoever told you that this was going to be easy and comfortable and polite lied to you. Jesus never promised that.
That is the hard news and it is the good news, for it takes something powerful to change a life, it takes something powerful to believe we can change the world, and that is precisely the business we are in if we are true to the gospel. And if we can not model accountability, humility, reconciliation, and forgiveness within the Christian community, what hope is there for the rest of the world?
This is terrifying and very hard work, but we can do it because we do it together, in prayer, in covenant with one another and with the wider church, our own United Church of Christ and the church universal, at least those parts of the church universal that are still faithful to Christ’s call of an overflow of love, a river of justice, a surplus of forgiveness.
It is not okay that we live in a world where scientists, grieving parents, and public servants receive death threats. It is not okay that hatred and bullying are on the rise in our local community, at least if we are to take the letter in this week’s Packet and the sporadic appearance of racist imagery seriously. Our job is not to ignore wrongdoing. We follow a man who was killed because of gossip, slander, jealousy. We follow a man who forgave the wrongdoers, a man who offered a path to salvation for all who would repent.
If there are no standards, then we never have anything to forgive. But we do have standards, incredibly high standards, our call to Christ-like love, to humility, to justice.
What his brother’s did to Joseph was wrong. He forgave them, for they were family. Jesus insists that we widen that circle, that when people do wrong, that we offer forgiveness. May we be the people Jesus calls us to be. Amen.