Reading the Sermon on the Mount as an Invitation, not a Condemnation

Epiphany 6

Ecclesiasticus 15:15-20
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37
Psalm 119:1-8

During the season of Epiphany, our readings from the gospel draw our attention to two things.  First, we confront the claims of who Jesus was.  The visit of the Magi, The baptism of Jesus, Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, the beginning of Jesus’ preaching.  All of these point to Jesus as the light of the world, the hope and messiah of Israel, and the messenger of the Reign of God.

Second, as a result of the way our lectionary assigns readings, we are confronted with Jesus’ proclamation of the coming reign through the Sermon on the Mount.  We've been hearing portions from the Sermon on the Mount over the past few weeks.  The sermon starts out pleasantly enough:  Blessed are the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, the mourning. You are salt and light!  Be salty!  Shine out for the entire world to see!  Have hope in a future!  This is good news for a world in which evil conspires to destroy the creatures of God!  Your comfort is in the promise of God!

But then the Sermon on the Mount gets difficult!  Jesus gets all unreasonable!  It’s easy to listen to the Gospel today and have a sense of panic, anxiety, and perhaps shame.  Jesus takes moral stances on actions that by their frequent commission prove that they have historically been difficult to uphold.  Murder is not done away with, adultery still occurs, divorce breaks relationships, swearing oaths is considered necessary so that what we say carries some credibility.  Removed from the context of the rest of Matthew’s Gospel, today’s passage simply reads as throwing more rules and responsibility on an already burdened humanity in a high-stakes game of life or death, both temporal and eternal.  Refraining from killing someone is not enough; we have to forego any expression of anger.  Avoiding adultery is not enough; we have to avoid lustful thoughts.

We are left with no room for compromise.  We feel undercut. Condemned.  If this is what God requires of us, who can stand as righteous before God?  No one.  Certainly not me.

Wait. Stop.   

Before the proclamation of the God News of God in Christ is swallowed in self-pity and shame, or before we dig in our heels to prove our own righteousness, let’s take a step back and look at the whole Gospel of Matthew.

If you were to search for a phrase that defines the essence of the Gospel of Matthew, the phrase “righteous perfection” would do the trick.  In Matthew 5:48, Jesus says “Be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”  In fact, you will hear this in the Gospel reading next week.  Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew is announcing the impending reign of God and he almost always takes the ethical demands of the Kingdom of God to their most strict reading.[1]  

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus as the messiah is the one who is tasked with revealing the perfect will of God by interpretation of the Torah—the teaching of the Will of God.  This is what Jesus meant when we heard him say in the Gospel last week "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  Jesus as the messiah discerns what God had in mind all along in the law and the prophets.  But more than teacher, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Torah as Emmanuel, God with us, the word of God made flesh.  The life and teaching of Jesus is the definitive ruling on what the reign of God looks like. 

And even more than that, at the conclusion of the Gospel of Matthew, at Jesus’ ascension, we are assured by Jesus that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him.  “The making of disciples, baptizing, and teaching which the risen Jesus authorizes still involve the practice or observance of  all we have been commanded to do, but this is not simply a new code of behavior to be followed in the absence of the Messiah. For Jesus tells us that He is with us, even to the end of the age."[2] The conclusion of the Gospel of Matthew is the announcement of the continuing presence of the Messiah and Lord.

Back to the Sermon on the Mount. The starting point for Christian interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is the good news of who this Jesus is who speaks to us. Separating the proclamation from the Proclaimer or abstracting a code of moral maxims from the whole vision of divine blessing and ultimate dominion will pervert the Sermon into being one more moral agenda.[3]  If we forget that we are forever accompanied and empowered by the one who proclaimed this vision, we would indeed have reason to despair.  But we are not alone.

What the Sermon on the Mount presents to us is a vision of a Kingdom whose realization in the here and now is begun and yet incomplete.  What Jesus speaks so forcefully about in the Sermon on the Mount is the vision of the future.  The vision is a promise; it is not merely a prescription to follow, as though it could be achieved if all of us only tried harder.

And in this vision of the future, no compromise is possible because it is not so much a program for behavior as a manifestation—an epiphany—of the reality that we catch glimpses of as we seek the reign of God in its fullness.

So we return to our particular gospel lesson for today.  Our distance from the Kingdom is here highlighted by the light of Christ thrown over the failures of human relationship.  It is abundantly clear that our relationships to one another matter to God.  To say otherwise would be to miss the point of God's entire project with the world.  And what we are meant to understand is that the motive of the heart laid bare is just as important as an act that comes from our bodies. 

In Jesus’ interpretation of the Torah, gone is the recourse to self-righteousness—to judge and condemn others who do in one situation that which we have wished we could have gotten away with in another.  Gone is the supposed sanctuary of the hidden parts of our hearts in which we would harbor hate and the desire to use others for our own purposes.  Gone is lie that life is ultimately a fight of self-interested conquest.

“These persistent words [of the Sermon on the Mount] confront us with a dire diagnosis of our human condition so that we may no longer live out our days in the anxiety of trying to work out some arrangement and in the denial of the truth which we know in our hearts [and in so doing, we end up living a lie]. Only the [Christ] whose righteousness suffices for us and whose announcement of the kingdom has filled our lives with light and hope would dare to expose the deadly lie of our lives so baldly.”[4]

We instead have to challenge our impulses to live free of our neighbors, and confront the desire to pursue our own projects as though God and the rest of humanity make no claim on us.  We must say ‘no’ to the lie that denies or cheapens our interconnectedness.  We are asked recognize that our wills and our desires have consequences for our relationship to others, even if no action takes place.  We must remember that human dignity is a nonnegotiable trait of all the children of God.

In short we are asked to obey, but the uncomfortable truth is that doing so requires a vulnerability and accessibility to God so intimate that we shy away from it.  And it is no wonder we shy away, given how often we hear these passages as mere moral condemnation, and not as a hopeful promise of a future God moves us toward.

But what if, beloved of God, what if we took these words as more than a moral measure—as more than a way to measure our shortcoming.  What if we considered them signs of the Reign of God?  What if they became not the marks against us on the tally sheet we imagine God carries forever, but the lens through which we pray that God would enact the Kingdom through our lives?  

And what if, beloved of God, we were willing to bring our shame and discomfort and pain to God in prayer, and possibly private confession through the rite of reconciliation?  The grace of God is free.  The forgiveness of God is unreserved.  The love of God passes all understanding.  What if we could risk that level of intimacy with God, and receive peace and strength?

Beloved of God, the Kingdom to come that we seek is a gift, not an achievement.  Remember as you hear the Sermon on the Mount that you may feel conflicted, you may feel convicted, you almost certainly will be challenged, but you are not condemned.   You are invited to join in the proclamation of the truth concerning Jesus and a “vision of the Christian life which only God can bring to perfection.”“Filled with a hope that is not born of human ambition or effort, the Sermon on the Mount is an epiphany of the will of God, fulfilled and embodied in Jesus who proclaims and grants it to his followers out of the largess of the kingdom to come.”[5]  We are invited to participate in ever greater measures.  Will we take some steps further into the Kingdom?

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[1] One notable exception is divorce.  Mark, writing earlier than Matthew, does not permit divorce at all.  Matthew allows divorce on the grounds of unchastity.  In this case, Matthew records Jesus loosening an ethical precept where it is elsewise stricter.  But it is not clear if he means on grounds of adultery or according to relationships among family members that were forbidden in Leviticus but probably common in Greek converts’ lives.

[2] (Matt 28:20).

[3] I am here indebted to the work of DAVID L. TIEDE (“Let Your Light Shine: The Sermon on the Mount in Epiphany”) Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, Word & World 4/1 (1984)

“TEXTS IN CONTEXT”.  Copyright © 1984 by Word & World, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Retrieved from http://wordandworld.luthersem.edu/content/pdfs/4-1_1984/4-1_Tiede.pdf.

[4] Tiede, ibid.

[5] Portions of this paragraph appear in Tiede (Ibid).  This sermon is in large part dependent on his work cited above.  And I am particularly grateful for his words.

"Just Love," Condemned.

It’s not every day that a book on my shelf is condemned by the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).  It turned out to be the case last week, when the CDF condemned the book Just Love. A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (New York: Continuum, 2006) by Sr. Margaret A. Farley, R.S.M.  You can read the condemnation here.  A flurry of activity followed:  Yale Divinity School, where Farley is Professor Emerita, gathered an impressive list of theologians and ethicists to defend Farley’s work; Farley responded to the notification; and 24 hours after news broke of the Vatican censure, the book was propelled from an Amazon ranking of 142,982 to 16, and #1 in Religion. 

I had conflicted feelings about the entire story.  I was disappointed but not surprised by the censure.  It is no secret to anyone reading the book that Farley arrived at conclusions contrary to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.  Still, I have a great affinity for Farley’s book.  Since coming across the book in 2009, I’ve used it as my primary frame of reference for discerning responsibility and truth within my personal relationships.  I think considering Farley’s work has made me a better human being in relationship to others, especially my wife.  And while I’m not perfect, Farley’s framework gives me the ethical and theological language to speak of success and failure in relationships shaped by a concern for justice, duty, virtue, and my Christian faith, as well as giving due consideration to current social science research.  I would recommend the book to anyone, Christian or not, seeking the same goals in their relationships.

Being the people-watcher that I am, I’ve been observing the reactions to the Vatican censure filter through a couple of different sources and circles for the past week, from Facebook to the New York Times to blogs, and from Christians of varying denominations to those who profess no particular tradition.  To my dismay, it became clear that conversations about the censure were actually not about the censure, but opportunities to give litanies of everything one considers wrong with the Roman Catholic Church.

To take one incredibly hyperbolic example, Maureen Dowd’s op-ed piece “Is pleasure a sin?” throws a lot of un-careful rhetoric around and makes the Catholic hierarchy a monolithic entity that it is not, which managed to turn a piece I could agree with into something not worthy of careful consideration.  For instance, equating the CDF to the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in terms of hostility to women is the kind of thing that should not be treated as self-evident, and certainly not as a throw-away comment in an op-ed.  Dowd also says that “The Vatican showed no mercy to the Sister of Mercy.”  That sounds like a very clever phrase; but while the censure was surely hurtful to Farley (and ill-advised in my opinion), the book was censured without any disciplinary action taken personally against Farley; that shows that the CDF had some restraint. 

Dowd then attempts to link the censure of the book (occurring in Rome) to the cover-up of sexual predation of children in the U.S., as though the workings of the USCCB---or individual bishops---and the CDF were one and the same.  Dowd suggests that:

 “The hierarchy should read Sister Farley’s opprobrium against adults harming vulnerable children and adolescents by sexually exploiting them; respect for the individual and requirement of free consent, she says, mean that rape, violence and pedophilia against unwilling victims are never justified.”  

Dowd’s rhetorical tactic is to implicitly say that the hierarchy is completely uncaring toward children, or to suggest that because the CDF condemns the book the hierarchy is not concerned about sexual abuse.  My guess is that, since the CDF didn’t mention that part of the book in the censure, they had no problem with Farley’s statement condemning the harm of children, and most likely agreed with it.  And since they are not the entity (in a huge institution) dealing with the sex abuse scandals (where more to bring perpetrators to justice indeed could be done), I don’t expect the CDF to make reference to the scandals when talking about sex.  But if one is keen to disagree with the Roman Catholic Church, it’s easy to pass over or relish in rhetorical phrases that seem to cut opponents deeply.  The unfortunate thing is that op-eds like this do nothing to hold open a place for any type of civil conversation; instead of dialogue, opponents entrench themselves.

Now, that is the limited defense I will give to the CDF.  I think Farley’s book is brilliant; it is certainly not a risk of “grave harm to the faithful” (some of the things Farley is concerned about are graver harms to the faithful:  like injustice or oppression which affect both one's material and spiritual well-being); and the CDF missed an opportunity for fruitful dialogue on the subject of sexual ethics.  I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Because of my appreciation of the book, I’m also disappointed that the media missed an opportunity to go deeper into the divide over sexual ethics. Farley’s book is about what the basic level of justice in romantic and sexual relationships should be; it isn't simply---as the New York Times put it--a book of "theological rationales for same-sex relationships, masturbation, and remarriage after divorce." There is much more to this story.  The book is not simply a reworking of what is permissible that was not permissible before.  The book Just Love takes as its central question:  "With what kinds of motives, under what sorts of circumstances, in what forms of relationships, do we render our sexual selves to one another in ways that are good, true, right, and just?"  Farley's answer rests on the fundamental notion that morally appropriate sexual relationships, heterosexual as well as same-sex, must be characterized by justice.[1]  This is a different sort of project than simply overthrowing traditional Catholic teaching.  This is the project I wish the media would focus on, and the propagation of the project of promoting justice in relationships is what I hope the increased book sales will allow to happen.

Still, perhaps it is understandable that the book was short-changed in the media.  Reporters probably did not have time to read the book before reporting on the censure, and the media’s reporting reflected the CDF’s censure’s priorities.  And---it must be noted---the censure’s priorities also missed the point of Farley’s book.  As Farley noted in her official statement:

“I can only clarify that the book was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against this teaching.  It is of a different genre altogether…. I only regret that in reporting my positions on select “Specific Problems” in sexual ethics, the Notification does not also consider my arguments for these positions.  Nor does it render my positions in terms of the complex theoretical and practical contexts to which they are a response.  Hence, I fear the Notification–while clear in its conclusions–misrepresents (perhaps unwittingly) the aims of my work and the nature of it as a proposal that might be in service of, not against, the church and its faithful people.”    

It’s worth noting here that there is a fundamental difference in what the CDF does and what Farley does.  The CDF determines whether something matches the prescribed answers to sexual questions according to established Church teaching; Farley is suggesting an ethical framework for discerning answers in one’s own context:

"This book was designed to help people, especially Christians but also others, to think through their questions about human sexuality.  It suggests the importance of moving from what frequently functions as a taboo morality to a morality and sexual ethics based on the discernment of what counts as wise, truthful, and recognizably just loves.  Although my responses to some particular sexual ethical questions do depart from some traditional Christian responses, I have tried to show that they nonetheless reflect a deep coherence with the central aims and insights of these theological and moral traditions." 

There are a few ways of thinking about the divide between the CDF and Margaret Farley’s work.

1. The CDF has already determined the morally acceptable answer to actions and situations that is true in all times and in all places based on the moral tradition of the Church.  Margaret Farley is providing a framework for examining one’s own life and the answer is not necessarily a given. This is a divide over the process and the end result of moral deliberation. 

2. Another major difference is that the CDF is critiquing Farley from an understanding of ethics based primarily on the Natural Law, and Farley is not really working in that tradition in the book.  There were bound to discrepancies between the two systems.

3. A matter of genre, which Farley mentioned above.  The CDF notes that the book cannot be used as a reflection of Roman Catholic teaching.  Farley notes that she was not attempting to write such a book. 

4. Different pastoral concerns are evident.  The CDF wants to be clear on what the Church’s teaching currently is, and sees Farley’s work as an aberration from that teaching.  The Roman Catholic Church has an interest in being correct morally (whether one agrees with their positions or not) and enforce a clear teaching that can unify Catholics across time and cultures.  Margaret Farley is responding to the on-the-ground realities of gender oppression and injustice.  Her framework offers a way of thinking through what justice would require in personal and social relationships regardless of one’s status as religious or not, and in careful consideration of modern research. 

5. Others are noting that the CDF’s censure is happening in the context of a crackdown on American women Religious. I’m certain that plays some role, but I’ll refrain from trying to quantify or comment on this aspect.  I’ll leave that to others more capable, except to say that it does represent a divide in motive between Farley’s writing and the CDF’s censure.

In the end, I recognize the CDF acted within their ability, but I think it is a shame that the CDF will not interact with the book in dialogue, or with more clarity and depth in conversation.  There was an opportunity to speak of the promise of seeking justice in relationships, to affirm parts of the book that are in accord with traditional Church teaching.  Instead the CDF took an easier (and a bit lazier) way that showed them reticent to engage modern ethical conversation from one within their own tradition.  To those not within academia or the Catholic faith, I have seen that this left the Roman Catholic hierarchy looking unnecessarily dismissive of modernity and disconnected from reality.  Within academia, the hierarchy appeared anti-intellectual and dismissive of excellent scholarship.  This could have been avoided...it should have been avoided.

And regardless of whether the Roman Catholic Church chooses to engage Farley’s work in ethics, I hope her project of advocating a framework that will help people continually discern the just and unjust in their own relationships will continue.  To that end:

A quick, quick review of the framework in Just Love

(That should leave you wanting to buy the book for the massive amount of awesome detail I do not add)

The framework moves through six principles.  Farley is proposing a standard to which individuals could hold themselves and measure their partners.  These duties are: doing no unjust harm, free consent, mutuality, equality, commitment, fruitfulness, and social justice.

Do no unjust harm.  Given that Christians (although certainly not only Christians) tend to see themselves as having both a body and soul and that the two are closely linked, the concept of doing no harm holds two meanings:  do no unjust physical harm (rape, battery) and do no unjust spiritual/mental harm (deceit, betrayal, disparity in committed loves).[2]  This is presented as a duty, but the prohibition on unjust harm requires, and in many ways may inculcate, the virtue of (at least) nonmaleficence when dealing with others.

Free consent  Those in the relationship should respect the other as an end in himself or herself.  This also reinforces the above duty of not harming the other, since lying/deceit truncates the ability of the other to make informed decisions about the nature of the relationship; free consent asks that we beware of forms of coercion.[3] 

           

Mutuality  Farley speaks mainly of sexuality when enumerating the characteristics of just relationships.  She sees both giving and receiving of both partners as necessary (contrast with the image of the active male and the passive female).[4]  Still, the concept of mutuality in relationships extends well beyond sex and into the everyday requirements of living in relationship.  Consider division of household chores—there can be agreement of who performs what duties, and they can be divided among lines of traditional gender expectations, but no task in itself is beneath a man or above a woman to do.  The very nature of life together makes it a project in which there must be give and take.

Equality  This is a radical equality that goes beyond merely saying that one is equal to the other.  One must be mindful of power differentials in play throughout the relationship and try to mediate the differentials in order to keep from treating the other as property or commodity, not to mention endangering the others’ autonomy and sense of self by the inordinate use of power by one partner.[5] 

Commitment   As Farley says, sexuality is something that needs to be “nurtured and sustained, as well as disciplined, channeled, and controlled.”[6]  Sexuality is an important part of human identity and constitutive of our nature.  Sexuality is also powerful, given its procreative potential and intimate nature.  What commitment offers, then, is an outlet for partners to know, and be known, by each other and deepen that relationship.  The advantage that commitment offers over the novelty of seeking many sexual partners is that seeking other partners runs the risk of treating others as a mean to a selfish end instead of ends in themselves.  

Fruitfulness  This has traditionally been associated the procreative nature of sexual relationships and marriage but there is another way to think about fruitfulness.  Those who are in relationships are not only responsible for the creation or raising of their own children; wider community also makes a claim on couples.  American culture holds individualism in high regard and to a certain extent rightly so.  However, humans are social and need relationship. Those in relationship (a couple) offer nourishment to a larger community by providing avenues for resources, just as the community provides resources to the couple.

Social justice   The respect for persons as sexual beings in society.[7]  Since humans are always in relationship to one another, humans must realize that their personal decisions have consequences that affect others in a ripple effect.  As Farley puts it, “at the very least…social justice requires of sexual partners that they take responsibility for the consequences of their love and their sexual activity…No great love, is just for “the two of us.””[8]  Certainly this includes children who are born of such relationships.  Social justice expands even further outwards in hope of addressing global sexual and gender injustices.  People contribute to realizing this global social justice by acting in such a way that their relationships, characterized by virtue and duty, become a standard to which they hold themselves and others.

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[1] Taken from http://notesfromthequad.yale.edu/response-vatican-reproach-fellow-theologians-rally-support-margaret-farley.

[2] Farley, 216-17.

[3] Farley, 218.

[4] Farley, 221.

[5] Farley, 223.

[6] Farley, 224-225.

[7] Farley, 228-231.

[8] Farley, 229.