A reflection on the Lectionary readings for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
I was walking down Market Street in Ely the other day and a man had stopped a group of three women and asked how to get to the post office. They told him and he argued with them saying there had to be a way to cut through rather than go around. They assured him that would be a longer route and that if he’d just turn around and go back the way he came he’d get there (he really wasn’t that far from the post office). He then walked in the opposite direction of what they had said, stopped a man, asked the same question, received the same answer, exclaimed “well, that’s what they said” pointing to the women who were still standing where he had stopped them watching him ask again, and then followed the man’s directions.
My first thought was that if he’d asked a man to begin with he wouldn’t have argued, but honestly, I don’t know this man and don’t know if he regularly dismisses what women say. He approached the group of women to ask directions, so he must have thought they appeared to be locals who would know. Maybe he was just against the idea of going back the way he came or didn’t want to give up his idea of finding a way to cut through the numerous alleyways. Whatever his inner motivation, he asked a direct question, “how do I get to the postoffice” and was given a direct answer, “turn around, go to the end of the street …” and then didn’t accept the answer the first time and was shocked by the same answer a second time.
Our gospel reading for today is part of Jesus answering his disciples when they asked him “who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.” Jesus begins with a child and saying that unless we are as humble as children we will not be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He then moves to cautioning them about causing others to sin and God seeking to find one lost sheep among 100 before giving us this method of holding each other accountable to living in the way he’s just described.
It’s an ongoing conversation throughout Jesus’ life and ministry with these disciples. Even with all that Jesus has shown them and said to them, they struggle to let go of the desire to be seen as the top-dog in the room. It’s a continuous struggle for us today, 2000+ years later. Our culture tells us we have to do all we can to show we are the smartest, the coolest, the strongest, the most admired, the most perfect, the most helpful, the most knowledgeable, the most loyal, or the most most liked. Jesus says we are to be humble like children; to know that in God’s Kingdom, the concepts of greatness and success are not what they are in this world. As heirs in God’s family, we are all God’s beloved, no more and no less.
The way we build and nurture our relationships with each other are to be grounded in this belovedness. Jesus knows that because of our humanness, we will get it wrong from time to time and that we will cause hurt and harm to others and so he offers us some guidelines on how to live relationally in the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. Jesus says that we are to see those who cause hurt and harm as gentiles and tax collectors. Which leads to the question: what did Jesus teach us about gentiles and tax collectors? He showed us we are to love them and to love them means to want for them what we want for ourselves, to treat them as we’d want to be treated. In other words, this isn’t a lesson is excluding others but in holding people accountable for their behaviours with love and kindness. It is a lesson about living relationally rather than competitively.
Just to make sure we understand the descriptors Jesus is using here, gentiles are those people outside the Jewish laws. Jesus regularly challenged the idea that only those of Jewish heritage were God’s people. From the time when God entered into a covenant with Abraham, the purpose of being God’s people was to share with all the nations of the world who God is and invite them to into the same covenant. This was never meant to be an exclusionary thing or a way to elevate one people group over another. Jesus reminds us all that every human being is made in God’s Image and that God seeks to be in relationship with all of us.
Tax Collectors were people who took advantage of others for their own gain, using loopholes in the Roman tax laws to pad their own pockets. They became a stereotype for someone who can’t be trusted to be honest or authentic. Among the disciples, Matthew was a tax collector. And Jesus called him with the same invitation of “follow me.”
To let people be as a gentile or a tax collector to us is to hold them appropriately accountable for the harm they cause without slamming the door on the possibility of their repentance and ability to change for the good. We show them the love of God by our behaviour and actions toward them. We don’t revile them, dehumanise them, or refuse to interact with them. There are those in our communities with whom we have to hold strong boundaries for the good of everyone but boundaries don’t exclude. Boundaries aren’t walls to keep others out but guardrails of behaviour that keep us all safe and help us all to be more like Jesus. Healthy boundaries help us all live relationally rather than competitively.
So often in our Gospel stories the disciples struggle to hear and see what Jesus their Rabbi taught them. The man looking for the post office struggled to hear and see what was said to him by the women he had given the authority of knowing by asking them. How often do we behave the same? We can read this story as a justification to see others as less than ourselves or as the exhortation to do the hard work of relationship building on the foundation of our belovedness. Can we hear it with the humility of a child, one who is teachable and accepting of others?
When we move through life attempting to prove we are better than others, we exclude others. When we move through this life seeing ourselves and others as Beloved, we invite and include others, even when they’ve lost the way. If we define someone by the last bad thing they’ve done, we lose sight of the image of God in which they are created, binding ourselves in the trappings of hate, anger, and bitterness.
Learning to love our neighbours as ourselves as we follow Jesus enables us to live in the freedom of the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven.
Keep lovin’ louder than the hate, Y’all!
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