Jesus said:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 23:27-28 – July 11, 2012)
The Pharisees are crawling out of the woodwork! After the vote yesterday by the Episcopal Church’s 77th General Convention to give bishop’s authority to permit a “provisional rite” for the blessing of committed same-sex relationships (it’s not a marriage rite – keep saying that!) the Twitterverse has erupted with some nasty stuff from detractors and supporters alike. We humans are always so much more likely to see and criticize what we consider the sinful foibles of others than we are those of ourselves. This is what Jesus addresses here. ~ The image of a “whited sepulchre” is so evocative. In an earlier verse, Jesus has accused the Pharisees of only washing the outside of their drinking cups. And elsewhere he reminded his disciples of the unclean mess inside every human being: “Whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer . . . Out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.” (Matt. 15:17,19-20) The tweets coming from General Convention (and from those of us observing from afar) on all sides of the many issues facing the church are certainly demonstrating the truth of this! The insides of many “whited sepulchres” are being exposed to public view. ~ I’ve been thinking about the Letter of James and how it might have been written differently if today’s communication technology had been around back in First Century Palestine . . . . Perhaps we might there have read something like this:
“The tweet is a fire. Twitter is placed among our apps as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole of communication, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tweet – a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same smartphone come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” (Apologies to James 3:6-10)
My brothers and sisters, I’d like to suggest that there’s really no place for sarcastic and snarky tweets in, from, or around the counsels of the church. In them, much to our shame, the insides of our “whited sepulchres” are on public display.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
Disclaimer: I adore the Summary of the Law! If there was one thing in the liturgy of the Episcopal Church that just grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go when I first encountered it as a high school freshman, it was the Summary of the Law. And if there is one thing that disappoints me about the 1979 American prayer book, it is the removal of the Summary of the Law from the standard Sunday service of Holy Communion. So this is an admittedly biased suggestion. ~ A few days ago I responded here to the Episcopal Presiding Bishop’s proposed budget for the church’s next triennium, noting that she had created it around the Anglican Communion’s five “Marks of Mission.” That’s a good idea. My response suggested that something lacking in the five marks is any specific mention or theological reflection acknowledging that those marks are based in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A reader took me to task noting that at least the first two imply a Christian basis, and I agreed. But the third, fourth, and fifth do not; I think the church should explicitly say how those marks contribute to the spread of the Gospel. ~ Here’s a simple suggestion for testing the ministries of the church, its structures, its programs, everything it says and does: test them against the Summary of the Law. For example, let’s say the church budgets $500,000 to promote “environmental justice”. Fine, that seems to fit the fifth mark of mission, which is “to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.” Next question: In what way does a program to promote “environmental justice” evince the church’s love for the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind? Or how does it encourage and enable the church’s people to do so? And if it doesn’t . . . let’s move to the second question: In what way does such a program enhance our love of neighbor as self? ~ In parishes, especially as parishes develop vision and mission statements, set goals, and adopt budgets, we are often encouraged to test our programs against our goals. Does this parish activity support the vision, mission, and primary goals of the congregation? If not, can it? And if not, can it! It seems to me the national church could test its budget and programs in the same way, not against some vision committee’s product, but against the vision and mission set by our Founder: the Summary of the Law together with the Great Commission. Unless someone can lay out a simple apologia for a budget item, making it plain how that expenditure gives witness and support to love of God or love or neighbor, or contributes to the making of disciples, that item ought to be challenged. ~ Structure the budget around the five marks of mission, good idea. But test the structures and programs in the budget against the vision and mission of the Founder: love God, love neighbor, make disciples! A summary of the budget ought to pretty well track the Summary of the Law.
Don’t the words of the priests and elders ring false? “We don’t know.” Matthew doesn’t tell us that they did know, but I think they did, or at least had a pretty good idea. I think they knew (or had a pretty good idea) that John was indeed a prophet, that his message of baptism and repentance was “from heaven” as Jesus puts it here. ~ I don’t think there’s anything wrong with answering “I don’t know” when that is, in fact, the case. I once had a parishioner who (it seemed to me) was constantly asking, “What will happen when we die?” My answer was always, “I don’t know, Martha. I haven’t been there yet. But here’s what our faith teaches . . . .” If the priests and elders truly didn’t know, they could at least have answered in this way: “We don’t know, but this is what we think . . . .” But they didn’t even do that. ~ Jesus constantly calls the religious authorities out for hypocrisy. He plays no favorites, either. Pharisees and Sadducees, priests and scribes, elders and rabbis, Jewish authorities of every sort feel the sting of his condemnation. A lot of books and blogs on the practice of ministry say, “It’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know’.” And it is when that is truly the case; in fact, if you don’t know, it’s better to say so than rely on some hackneyed-and-probably-inappropriate cliche or to make up some BS on the spot. But Jesus here is suggesting that it’s not OK to say “I don’t know” when you do know, or you have a pretty good idea; in that case, it’s rank hypocrisy. 
Our first reading this morning is from a little book from the Apocrypha called The Book of Wisdom. At one time church tradition ascribed authorship to King Solomon, but it is now believed to have been written sometime in the first or second century before Christ by a Greek-speaking Jew of the Diaspora. It is found in the Greek-language version of Jewish scriptures, not in the Hebrew version, and is therefore not considered as canonical scripture by Jews or by Protestants. Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox do accept it, and we Anglicans take a middle course, saying that we read them “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet [we do] not apply them to establish any doctrine.” (Articles of Religion, Art. VI, BCP 1979, pg. 868). Well, here’s an example of life, then:
The end of June and we’re reading about Jesus’ triumphal entry? OK, whatever . . . . ~ At this time of year and at this particular time in the life of the Episcopal Church (just before the General Convention), my attention is drawn to the last sentence of today’s gospel lesson, the fact that people told one another about Jesus. ~ A couple of days ago, I mentioned a 
We all know how this one goes. The owner hired more workers at various times throughout the day, finally hiring some who worked only one hour. At the end of the day, he paid all of the workers the same wage regardless of the time they worked. The earliest hired thought that was unfair and complain, to which the owner replied, basically, that he paid them what they agreed. Jesus ends with the famous aphorism, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” ~ Every time I read this passage the words that strike me most are “I will pay you whatever is right.” The definition of “right” in this circumstance, it seems to me, depends on who one is in the story, especially if it is set in our modern capitalist society. Perhaps not in Jesus’ time and place, but in our time and country with religious pluralism and economic disparity the definition of “right” is a variable thing. For the employer, a “right” wage would be that which maximizes his profit. For the supervisor in the vineyard, a “right” wage might be a perhaps larger amount sufficient to keep the workers happy and working. For the worker, a “right” wage would be enough to support his or her family with some for saving and a little left over for discretionary spending. For the government, a “right” wage would be at least enough to keep a worker off the public dole and to allow the worker to pay sufficient taxes to fund necessary public services. What is “right” is a hard thing to know. ~ In fact, I can’t imagine a modern worker accepting an employment contract that simply said, “Worker will be paid what is right”! Can you? Most employment agreements need to include a set starting wage in dollars-per-hour and a description of non-salary benefits including health insurance, pension or profit-sharing plan, vacation allowed, and so forth. Whatever is “right” needs to be carefully laid out. ~ Why should that be? Why isn’t there at least some universal notion of “rightness”? Shouldn’t there be some normative standard for the moral treatment and compensation of employees? Shouldn’t workers be able to trust their bosses to do what is “right” for them? I think there should be . . . but the truth is that human nature is “fallen”, that humans (both workers and employers) are greedy, that (as I’ve said) “right” is not always obvious. That’s why we have laws. That’s why we have regulations. That’s why government in a world where corporations are multi-national or trans-national or global (or whatever term you want to use for “great big and humungous”) cannot be “small”. Government needs to be big enough to lay down rules for how “whatever is right” can be determined in a pluriform society. ~ And the church and her members need to be “big enough” to speak up for what is “right” when others in our society – whether individuals, or big corporations, or the government – would do what is “not right”. If something is “not right”, speak up and say so! Be the first to do so, not the last.
Our first reading this morning is from the Book of Job, which in the Jewish organization of Scripture is part of the Ketuvim or “Writings” and is considered one of the Sifrei Emet or “Books of Truth”, which is really quite interesting since it is generally acknowledged to be a work of fiction. It tells the story of Iyyobh (“Job”), who is described as a righteous man and who becomes the subject of a wager between a character called “Satan” and another character called “God”. I put it that way to underscore that this text is not relating to us any historical facts about God, or Satan, or a man named Job; it is, rather, telling a story in which characters representing God, Satan, and human beings in general help us to understand something about reality.
Job wants answers about justice but God goes into a rant about the creation: the sea, the stars, the sky, the earth, the whole shebang! As the speech goes on for several chapters, God will talk about all the wild animals, even the ostrich, who is incredibly foolishness but very very speedy. What are we to make of this? Job wants fairness; he wants what’s right! And God’s answer is, “Hey! Look at that ostrich I made! It’s stupid but, wow, is it fast!” What’s the point?
Okay . . . . This makes me very uncomfortable on a Saturday morning! Jesus says this after condemning divorce and saying it would be better not to marry. The description of “eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” is usually understood as a metaphorical statement of dominical authorization of clerical celibacy. I mean, really, can self-castration be anything other than a metaphor for voluntarily abstaining from marriage, family life, and sex? ~ Jesus’ description of the first two sorts of eunuchs is squarely within Jewish tradition. The Hebrew word usually translated “eunuch” (saris) describes two categories of sexually impotent persons: those born impotent and those subsequently rendered so. In Deuteronomy and Leviticus, men who are sexually impotent as a result of birth or of accident are denied certain rights and obligations and considered to be of inferior social status. Jesus, thus, uses of the word “eunuch” twice in a literal sense familiar to Jewish tradition, would he have suddenly changed gears and use it in a metaphorical sense meaning something quite different? This would not be typical of his style. ~ So who are those in the third category? I find it troubling that Jesus speaks in the present tense, referring not to some conditional future but to men living at his time: “there are eunuchs who have made themselves . . . .” Who are they? In Jesus’ society, deliberate castration was repulsive to all social instincts, contrary to the Law, or associated the idolatry of foreign religions. So one must ask: To what phenomenon could Jesus possibly have been referring? ~ Here’s the kicker . . . we don’t have any way of knowing. Jesus might have been familiar with the castrati priests of pagan cults, maybe that’s the reference. He was surely familiar with the ascetic Jewish sects such as the Essenes, maybe that’s the reference. There’s been a suggestion that because of his own celibacy (and that of his followers) that “eunuch” was tossed as them as a taunting jeer, maybe this is a response to that. There’s little, if any, biblical support for any of these suppositions, so it’s a toss-up! ~ My point is this: I don’t know what Jesus is talking about, but whatever it is it makes me squirm very uncomfortably! And guess what? That’s true of a lot of Scripture; there are a lot of things in the Bible that I don’t understand and that make me squirm. I read recently that any exegetical hermeneutic should include “a clear sense of the impossibility of closure.” This is one of those times when “closure” about the scriptures is simply not possible.
In an alternative reading, Jesus tells Peter to forgive “seventy times seven times.” Whether seventy-seven or 490 times, Jesus’ point is that forgiveness is continuous. It isn’t a once-over-and-done sort of thing; it is something that must go on and on and on. ~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a man I greatly respect, once said this about forgiveness: “To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. It is also a process that does not exclude hatred and anger. These emotions are all part of being human. You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things: the depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger. However, when I talk of forgiveness I mean the belief that you can come out the other side a better person. A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood, making you almost dependent on the perpetrator. If you can find it in yourself to forgive then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator. You can move on, and you can even help the perpetrator to become a better person too.” ~ Note that the archbishop refers to forgiveness as a “process”. Again, a process is not a single instant. The dictionary tells us that a process is “a systematic series of actions directed to some end” or “a continuous action, operation, or series of changes.” Changing the other person, or getting him or her to change actions, behavior, or words isn’t the point of forgiveness; forgiveness is about changing oneself, one’s own life. As Archbishop Tutu said, “It is the best form of self-interest.” ~ Nor is forgiveness reconciliation. Forgiveness can lead to reconciliation, but not always; sometimes (for example, if the offender is dead, absent, or unwilling to communicate) reconciliation is impossible. Forgiveness, however, is always possible, even when reconciliation is not. ~ Do you need to forgive someone? Take the first step: move away from your role as victim. There are only 489 more steps to go!
This is Jesus at his organizational problem solving best. Some really good advice about settling internal church conflict: talk it out. Talk it out individually; if that doesn’t work, talk it out with a couple of other people; if that doesn’t work, talk it out in the larger community. And if that doesn’t work . . . here’s where I believe people misunderstand Jesus. ~ The last instruction is that if the obstreporous member remains unmoved, let him or her “be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector.” This is usually read to mean that we should ostracize or excommunicate the offending member. But I think this may be a misreading! ~ The word here translated as “Gentile” is “ethnikos“, a derivate of “ethnos“. This is the very word Jesus uses in the Great Commission: “Porenthente oun mathetensate panta ta ethne . . . ” – Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. ~ And tax collectors? Jesus sat down to dinner with them (Matthew 9). Jesus said they would get into the kingdom of God before the chief priests and the elders of the people (Matthew 21). Jesus praised the tax collectors for believing John the Baptist (Matthew 21). He called Matthew the tax collector to be one of his central party. ~ So how are we to treat “a Gentile and a tax-collector”? By shunning . . . or by dining with them? By excommunication . . . or by calling them to closer communion with God in Christ? 
