19. Sunday after Pentecost, 10/11/2009

Sermon on Matthew 22:34-46, by Marlene R. Lorenson

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." He said to them, "How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, "The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet?"

If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son? And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. (English Standard Version)

Overcoming the chasm

We are taking part in a dialogue today. We are overhearing a conversation. We ask questions and we try to understand.

During the service we have several conversations crossing in on each other. During the opening prayer we pray that God will open our hearts so that we can hear his Word. We listen to his Word to us in the readings from the altar. We answer by singing hymns together accompanied by the tones of the organ. In addition to these prayers, readings and singing there are dialogues going on inside each one of us. We think about those we love and those we are having a hard time with. We interpret what we hear during the service as helpful or provocative regarding the situation we are in right now. The many dialogues of the service might even initiate a new conversation when we leave the church and go out into the streets and sounds of Copenhagen.

The dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisees becomes our dialogue with each other and with God. We listen and we ask questions. We rejoice, we wonder, we are provoked, we become silenced and we respond. We hear the Word of God through human words. We do not have the voice and words of Jesus on a CD. We cannot rewind a tape and have him repeat what he actually said. We must hear the words of Jesus through other people. Some re-narrations make us listen attentively, ask for more. Other stories provoke us, so that we must answer back. Sometimes the claims appear so absurd, so remote from what we believe is the core of the Gospel that we cannot relate to them.

Prior to the sermon today, I met with a dialogue-group talking about the impact of this text on us today. The group is made up of a couple from the vestry, an employee and a couple of people who don't usually come to this church. The many different ways in which we each understood and reacted to the text illustrated quite well how many different dialogues a little printed conversation can initiate. The many dialogues between the individuals and the text, the many different reactions on the words of Jesus in the text evoked a new conversation within the group. This new dialogue made many of us understand the text differently than we did before.

We become involved in a dialogue, we overhear verbal tests and disagreements, and we ask questions to try to understand.

Suddenly, we are struck by silence. We are muted. We feel estranged from what we thought was going to be an assuring lesson by our favorite teacher.

We overhear a verbal combat between Jesus and his opponents. We are pleased to hear him confirm that the greatest commandment is to love God and our neighbor. But then he poses a question: "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" which he follows up by a description of the Lordship of the Christ, claiming;"The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet? Some of us are muted by disappointment; others become angry because the one we thought we knew so well suddenly comes across as wholly different. Can we call him our Lord? This one who proclaims: "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet?"

In the Swedish childrens' story of "Ronia the Robber's daughter"^¹ we hear of two clans of robbers fighting each other. Ronia is the only child of Chief Mattis and is expected to become leader of the clan after her father. On the night of her birth, however, their castle is split in two by lightning and the competing clan of robbers, led by Chief Borka, occupies the other part of the castle. Ronia is forbidden to have anything to do with the other robbers, who are separated from them by the deep chasm that splits the castle. One day, however, she discovers Birk, son of Chief Borka, the only other child in the forest otherwise inhabited by the aging robbers. Birk challenges her in a game of jumping across the chasm which continues until Birk falls but is saved by Ronia. This becomes the beginning of a deep friendship in which Birk also saves Ronia from the wild creatures in the forest. One day Ronia's father, Mattis, however, returns from one of his raids bringing home the ultimate victim which can make him crush the competing clan. Triumphantly he raises the bruised captive, Birk, in order to show Ronia, that from now on she is guaranteed the seat after him as the mightiest chieftain of the forest.

Chief Mattis brings the two clans to confront each other on each side of the chasm. In his hand he holds a leash tied around the neck of Birk, as if he were holding a dog. Mattis commands the Borka-robbers that they better get out of that castle immediately if they want to see their heir alive. Until then Birk is destined for the dungeon. Ronia knows that Birk won't survive the dungeon for long and beside herself in anger towards her father and compassion for her friend she jumps the chasm away from her father's clan into the arms of his opponents. Chieftain Borka, father of Birk is astounded and does not understand anything, but he quickly grasps Ronia and proposes a trade-off. But Mattis does not respond, "as a wounded bear, he stood there and rocked back and forth with his heavy body as if to relieve an unbearable pain." "Give me my son back and you'll get your daughter", Borka yells, but Mattis replies, as in a trance: "Take your child...I don't have one anymore." (Lindgren 1984: 122)

Mattis is in shock over his daughter, rejecting all the values of his family. He feels betrayed as she jumps away from his safe haven and her future as leader of the clan. From that day on he cannot be in the same room with her. He cannot bear to listen or speak to her. Ronia runs away in grief and settles in the forest with Birk. The mother of Ronia, Lovis, does not understand her daughter either. She tries to reconcile the two but with no luck. In spite of her lack of understanding, she visits Ronia in the forest. She brings her food and she sits by her silently, letting her know of her faithfulness and hoping for a reunion.

In our preaching dialogue-group we reacted quite differently towards Jesus citing the psalm, having the Lord say to "my" Lord: "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet?" As one said;"this passage illustrates quite well why I often have a hard time with Jesus: the church is full of beautiful words about loving God and our neighbor and then suddenly, slam! - tables are turned!"

In relation to both God and fellow-human beings I believe we are right at being critical, asking if it really can be our God talking about "laying your enemies under your feet." Is it really our God who binds and keeps his opponents as a dog on a leash? However, if we keep the story of Ronia in mind, it is our Lord who jumps the chasm to the enemy's side of the castle! Against all reason, with his life at stake, he jumps over the chasm separating friends from enemies. The opponents are not our fellow human beings but the root of the evil which Jesus sacrificed his life for, in order to save both friends and enemies.

We can react towards the strange otherness of Jesus like Mattis refusing to carry on a relationship with someone who destroys our expectations. Or we can take a position like that of Lovis, the mother of Ronia, who, although she does not understand, comes out to the strange land, sits patiently waiting to get a glimpse of the different kind of reasoning taking place inside the beloved. Lovis is confident that whatever action her daughter may take, what ever surprise might occur, they are bound together in love and mutual respect. And without revealing the whole story I can say that the two clans are united in the end, due to Ronia's unexpected action.

We are struck by silence. We don't know what to say when the tables are turned. Yet if we wait patiently, we will always discover that our God is love.

"You shall love the Lord your God". You may love God. You can love God.

Some of us have heard, time and again, that we are God's beloved. We can love our neighbor because God loved us first. The love of God is traditionally perceived as a one-way affair; agape; God loves us and we can share this love with our neighbors. Yet, love, the other way around; eros, us loving God, why do we need that as a commandment? Isn't it enough if we receive the love of God and pass it on to our fellow human beings?

We can experience the genius of love in human relationships, although its source comes from God. We can experience how eros, as desire, and agape, as unconditional love, do not have to exclude each other, but rather they mutually determine each other. Love is an interaction between giving oneself and receiving oneself. Love makes us go out of ourselves, forget ourselves in order to find our selves in the arms of another. The German theologian, Eberhard Jüngel, claims that one of the basic differences between God and humans is that God IS love whereas we are given love. This is why God can endure becoming human, whereas we cannot endure being made divine.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Some of us have had a shock at some point in life when we realized that we were not quite as altruistic as we thought-- that we have a hard time loving our neighbor unconditionally. We too often discover that second thoughts sneak in on our attempt to be good. We do not have to despair, though. We can find ourselves, by another, when we discover that the difference between God and us is that he IS love, and we only get to pass love on. We are not the source of love, we cannot produce it ourselves. Yet we are given love in the encounter with our neighbors. Like a new mother, feeling more exhausted than a marathon runner after having been in labor and giving birth, we suddenly discover that the body, at the encounter with a little new creature, starts to produce milk and is filled with energy.

Recently, we had a large group of rejected Iraqi refugees seeking asylum, here in the Cathedral of Copenhagen. When some of the vestry first heard of the uninvited guests they had quite mixed feelings about the whole situation. Yet one of the vestry members told me how she totally changed her mind after her first meeting with the Iraqis. Something happened in the personal encounter between them. Suddenly they found themselves bound together in compassion and an attempt to understand each other in spite of the many differences. Few of us can love unexpected foreign refugees unconditionally, in self-sacrificing ways like we love our children. However, we don't have the privilege to decide who is and who is not a neighbor.

What we can do, like the good Samaritan, is to care for their wounds, provide them with shelter and food until they are strong enough to walk again. We can help them a little distance along the way. We become the neighbors of refugees as they appear on our way. Others become their neighbors after us. The Iraqi women and children are now staying with families at different locations in Denmark and we pray that others become the neighbors of the men who have been sent back to Iraq.

We have become part of a dialogue. We have been stunned by silence. Yet we have tried to understand in the belief that our Lord has jumped the chasm separating us from our enemies. We have been given love from the One who IS love. We become his body as we nurse the newborn until they can eat for themselves, as we shelter homeless and refugees until they have a home of their own. Together we constitute the body of Christ, each at a different time and with a different function because we are given love.

1 1984 by Astrid Lindgren, the author of Pippi Long Stocking and several other children's books.

The Rev. Marlene R. Lorenson
Preached in the Cathedral of Copenhagen, Oct. 11, 2009
E-Mail: mrl@teol.uk.dk

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