A Sermon for the last Sunday before General Synod ...
St Luke’s West Holloway
Sunday 12 February, 2017
Deut 30:15-20
Matt 5: 21-37
If you happen to have Jewish friends, or you’ve spent any time visiting synagogues, you may know some of the stories that Jews tell about themselves – for example, that ‘where there are two rabbis there are three opinions’, or the one about the rabbi who was rescued after having been marooned on a desert island for years. When his rescuers found him, they discovered that he’d built two synagogues. When asked why there were two, the rabbi answered that one was the synagogue he went to, and the other was the synagogue he wouldn’t be seen dead in!
What these stories have in common is that they reflect the importance of the place of conversation, debate and disagreement in Judaism. Although it is tempting for outsiders to think of Judaism as a religion about law and obedience, in fact argument and heated engagement are at the centre of what it is to be faithful, and to love the God of Israel.
I will come back to Judaism and argument in a moment, but for a moment I want to focus on an argument that is very, very current for Anglicans. This week the General Synod of the Church of England will meet here in London, and the hot button topic will be sexuality, and in particular ordination and marriage of gay and lesbian people and blessing of same-sex unions. You may have seen something about it in the news, and if you haven’t yet, you certainly will this week. It is shaping up to be an explosive few days. You might know that over the last three years the Church of England has been engaged in “Shared Conversations”. All over the country Anglicans have come together for intense, highly personal, and often painful conversation about these issues, in the light of biblical teaching, church tradition and the lived experience of LGBTI people. The process climaxed, so to speak, with three days of conversation between General Synod members last June. At the end of those conversations the Bishops heard the feedback and retired to prepare a paper about the next steps. That paper was released a fortnight ago and it has been a huge disappointment to many people. Instead of offering a range of options for moving ahead, the bishops have confirmed traditional understandings of marriage and said that for the moment there will be no change at all in church teaching or practice on marriage, blessing or ordination. In effect, they have closed down the conversation. The General Synod will be given the opportunity to discuss the report in small groups on Wednesday afternoon, and then to participate in a debate where the only motion before the synod is that it ‘take note’ of the report. Take note debates are usually mild affairs – they are rarely opposed. That will not be case on Wednesday, however, and I have been receiving emails and letters all week urging me to vote NOT to take note of the report. Encouragingly, I haven’t received a single letter encouraging me to support the report.
Against that background, I want to get back to Judaism and argument, and eventually to this morning’s readings. There is another story told in Judaism that gives you a real sense of the importance of conversation and argument for Jews. It is a story about an argument between two rabbis, each of whom represents a different approach to responding to law. Rabbi Eliezer is representative of a view that once the law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai its meaning was fixed for all time. Rabbi Eliezer was confident in his interpretation of the law and so when he could see that his arguments weren’t being accepted he set out to prove them by a series of miracles – a tree walked, a stream of water flowed backwards, walls inclined. The miracles worked, but Eliezer didn’t win the argument. It was won by Rabbi Joshua who is representative of an approach which says that the meaning of law is not fixed – instead it must be debated fresh in every generation. Interpretation can come only through that debate. He even maintained that if God were to come down and intervene He would not succeed alone. The meaning of the law can only be fixed through the process of discussion and debate. The law, or Torah, therefore, is a blend of divine and human voices.
Now this focus on argument, and interpretation afresh, is not only a feature of rabbinic Judaism, but also of the Bible. Biblical law is not fixed and static; on the contrary, it is easy to see how even in the biblical period it underwent a continuous process of revision, refinement and interpretation. Let me give you an example. Exodus 21 provides that when you buy a male Hebrew slave he may serve for six years, but you must send him out in the seventh year as a free man. Deuteronomy 15 adds that the same applies to Hebrew women, but that if either a male or female slave comes to love you and your family during their period of service they may choose to remain, in which case you must have their earlobe pierced with an awl and they must remain your slave until death. Leviticus 25, however, almost certainly the latest of the three laws, says that you may not keep Hebrew slaves at all. You may only enslave foreigners. Not completely enlightened, but on the way!
At the same time as all of this revision and interpretation was going on, it is clear that the biblical writers felt strongly that the law they were recording and interpreting was God’s law, and because God had made it, you couldn’t just change it. And so, at a number of points, they added in statements to that effect – statements saying that the law must not be changed – it could not be added to or subtracted from. Coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally at all, these statements tend to appear very close in the text to the places where the most significant revisions, or even 180 degree changes in direction, are to be found. The biblical writers are having it both ways – honouring the immutability of God’s law, while at the same time changing it to reflect new circumstances.
And that is exactly what is going on in this morning’s gospel reading from Matthew. Matthew 5 has a major conundrum at its heart. In verses 17-20 Matthew’s Jesus says something very like the kind of statement you might expect to find in the Old Testament, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” This was part of last week’s gospel reading. And then this week’s reading begins immediately afterward, and in the light of what Matthew’s Jesus has just said it comes as a huge surprise. “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment’. But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment …” Four times in this morning’s gospel Jesus says “you have heard it said that … but I say to you …”, before setting out some new and more demanding interpretation of the law in question. How does this fit with “not one letter, not one stroke of a letter”? (You might remember the King James Version which has “not one jot or tittle will pass away.”) Matthew’s Jesus is honouring the law and the prophets, and the tradition that they must not be changed, and then going on to offer his own interpretation, which in each case apparently makes the reach and meaning of the law more onerous and demanding. Jesus here is doing something new and distinctive, he is saying “follow me”, not the law and the prophets. “Follow me”. Jesus is doing something distinctively un-Jewish – he is putting himself in the place where the Torah should be. But he is doing it in an inherently Jewish manner, and following in a well-worn path trodden by those whose responsibility it was before him to review and interpret the law.
In our own world, or course, we have engaged in our own revision and interpretation of the law and the prophets as circumstances and contexts have changed and where a too-literal application of biblical law would cause injustice or oppression. The Church of England, for example, was at the forefront of developments that saw the abolition of slavery, despite the fact that slavery was an accepted part of the biblical world, as we’ve already seen. Yet we have dug our heels in about homosexuality. The argument that Old Testament law about homosexuality is immutable, that it was handed down on Sinai and that it cannot be changed, despite rapidly changing cultural understanding and prevalence, has been enormously influential. Such an understanding of biblical law has never, however, been part of biblical self-understanding, or of Jewish or Christian tradition, properly understood. The rabbis know that God’s law is alive, that it bubbles and eddies like the waters of a living stream. It does not rest as a stagnant pond.
The debate will happen on Wednesday. I will be representing you by voting NOT to take note of the Bishops’ Report, and I will be boycotting the group discussions, along with LGBTI members of Synod and their supporters. These have not been easy decisions to make. It will be obvious from the above that I think that conversation is crucial. However, my lesbian and gay sisters and brothers have spent three years as part of the Shared Conversations essentially taking their clothes off in public. Still we have not listened to them. It is not safe to continue until something changes. I expect the week to be difficult and painful. I know, however, that whatever pain I feel will be small compared to the pain that some of you will feel this week, and the pain that you have already carried for many years or even decades. Please hold each other in prayer this week, and please pray for all members of the General Synod, as we seek to take our place in the long tradition of interpreting God’s law, and as we seek to follow Jesus. It is just possible that despite the pain, and the disappointment, this will be a moment of hope and that we will, in the immortal words of ‘Wham’ and Deuteronomy, ‘CHOOSE LIFE’.