Tag: Torah

Several weeks ago, I arrived here at Trinity too early for the late service, but too late for the education offering, so I sat down in the nave and watched the sacristans setting things up. I noticed that the Gospel Book for a while was not placed squarely on its stand, but was off to one side. Now, to be fair, it didn’t remain that way: it was soon picked up by the acolyte who carried it in the procession and, when she later replaced it on the stand, it was centered. Nonetheless, it reminded me of the director of the Altar Guild in the first church I served as a priest, a lady named Jackie.

Jackie was a stickler when it came to the set up of the altar. The candles’ bases had to be placed exactly two inches in from each end of the altar, exactly two inches back from the front edge; the linens had to be placed just so; the chalice had to be centered; the veil on the chalice had to be draped evenly; the orphrey band on the veil had to be centered and, if it had a directional design, that design had to be running the proper direction.

With Jackie, there was no other way. There was no easier or more relaxed way to do things. No middle ground. No compromises.

Jackie could spot something out of place, out of balance, or off center at a hundred paces. And if it was, she’d let you know. Not in a mean way, though. She never raised her voice; she was never snarky. She would just mention the error … with just a hint of disappointment in her voice.

I only worked with Jackie for two years, but 40 years later if I notice that something in the way an altar is set up for worship is out of balance, the voice I hear in my head remarking on it is Jackie’s. So that morning, sitting here in the nave of Trinity Cathedral, when I noticed the Gospel Book not placed squarely on its stand, I heard Jackie saying, “The Gospel is off center.”

Now, as I know you are all aware, we are in the midst of a midterm election, a time of national decision-making. For months we have been treated not only to the various candidates’ signs, emails, texts, phone calls, and broadcast media ads, but also to the predictions, pronouncements, and unsolicited advice of pundits and prognosticators. They seem to have increased in volume and frequency as early voting has gotten underway. And the great majority of those advisers seem to promote what they call “moderation” or “centrism.” “If [a certain party] want[s] to win, they need to start driving in the middle lane,” advocated one headline.^[1] “Moving to the center is the way to win,” echoed another.^[2] “Americans favor compromise,” proclaimed a third.^[3]

But when I read those news items, Jackie’s voice keeps repeating itself in my head, “The Gospel is off center.” And as I pondered today’s lessons, the Gospel story of Jesus’ conversation with the lawyer who asks about the most important commandment and the 19th chapter of Leviticus from which part of Jesus’ answer is drawn, that observation – “The Gospel is off center” – kept resonating with me.

When asked about the commandments, Jesus quoted two verses from the Torah: Deuteronomy 4:5 which says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”^[4], and a part of Leviticus 19:18 which (as we heard in the lesson today) reads in full, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”^[5]

The 19th chapter of Leviticus has been called a “sort of a one-chapter summary of Jewish values, laws, and ethics,”^[6] a kind of Cliff’s Notes encapsulation of Torah. After a section on religious ritual, it is organized in “pentads,” groups of five precepts relating to diverse duties which the law of holiness requires from person to person. “[T]he diversity of topics covered [demonstrates that]… Holy living is a comprehensive way of life. It touches on every aspect of … experience.”^[7]

Our lesson from Leviticus 19 this morning combines the first two verses of the chapter with one of these pentads which concludes with the admonition to love one’s neighbor and the reminder that God is Lord.

In the first two verses of the chapter, Moses is instructed to teach this summary of the Law to the Israelites beginning, as we heard, with God’s statement: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”^[8] This is not simply a blessing or a promise. The original Hebrew makes it clear that it is an order, an imperative admonition. This is not God saying that God will make the Hebrews, or us, holy; God is saying that being holy is our responsibility. That’s what the Law of Moses and the Gospel are both all about, being holy and –– and guess what? –– there’s no “moderation” about that, no “centrist compromise,” no half-way point between whatever is not holy and holiness.

“The Gospel is off center!” As Dr. John Bishop of the Roman Catholic organization FOCUS has noted, the Christian faith “does not allow us to compromise. And it requires us to be radical.”^[9] Similarly, the late Presbyterian urban missionary Tim Keller said

Christians should never seek a middle ground for its own sake. *** [Christian] doctrine is not a middle way. It “diagonalizes” the alternatives. It “subversively fulfills” the alternatives. That is, it fully critiques both and yet fulfills the best aspirations of both at the same time, without merely combining them or borrowing from them. The biblical position is not somewhere on a spectrum between alternatives—it is off the spectrum yet acknowledges the concerns of all the positions.^[10]

When Jesus is asked in today’s Gospel lesson what the greatest commandment is, he answers, “Love.” The most important part of being holy is loving our God and loving our neighbor. The two are inextricably linked, as the writer of the First Letter of John well understood. He wrote:

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.^[11]

Love them. Not “like them,” not “tolerate them,” not “get along with them,” not “put up with them.” Love them! “The Gospel is off-center.” It’s all the way to that extreme. We must go all the way: love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.

I don’t have to tell you what that looks like. You already know. I know you’ve heard it preached from this pulpit many times because I have sat here with you listening to the same sermons and hearing the same scripture. It’s in the 25th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel:

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.^[12]

Not “I was hungry and you gave me food stamps with restricted purchasing power;” not “I was a stranger and you made me go to immigration court;” not “I was sick and you gave me limited insurance coverage.” There’s no “moderation,” no “centrist compromise” about these things: “The Gospel is off center!” As Pastor Keller said, it’s not even on the continuum. It’s its own thing and makes its own demands.

But we live on that continuum. Every day we face decisions on the political spectrum and right now, as I noted, we are in the midst of an election. How we behave in the midst of the campaign, whether we are candidates or voters, and the positions we take and act upon, including our votes, ought to be influenced by our Christian beliefs. If they are not, something is wrong. As Pope Paul VI and the Roman Catholic bishops of Vatican II wrote in 1965 in the pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world entitled Gaudium et Spes, “Th[e] split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age.”^[13] Our Christian faith must be reflected in our ballots!

Now, I do not intend to tell you who to vote for nor how to vote on the issues. The IRS may have changed the rules about preachers endorsing candidates, but I continue to think that that is wrong, and I will not do it. What I will do, however, is tell you that my religion impacts my voting, and what I can do is share with you how the “off-center Gospel” informs my decisions, and you can do with that what you will.

For example, in Leviticus 19, fleshing out the love-your-neighbor rule, God additionally commands,“The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”^[14] So I ask which candidates are most likely to adopt policies that treat immigrants and refugees with dignity and respect, and which are likely to adopt policies that fail to do so, because when I vote for them, their actions and their policies become mine. Christian moral teaching is clear that, although sinful behavior is a personal act, “we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them,” especially if we do so “by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them,” which a vote for a candidate certainly does.^[15]

The prophet Micah told us that what God requires of us is “to do justice and to love kindness.”^[16] It matters to my politics as a Christian that I cast my vote in a manner that reflects this, so I ask, “Which candidates’ behavior and proposed policies come closest to doing justice and loving kindness?”

Jesus suggested that the Father blesses those who do the things I listed from Matthew 25 and turns away those who do not, so it matters to me which candidates’ and which parties’ proposed programs and policies come closest to accomplishing those things.

When Jesus was arrested, one of his disciples drew a sword and cut off someone’s ear, but Jesus said, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”^[17] So I want to know which candidates and which parties are less likely to make use of the modern-day equivalent of a sword in their statecraft and policy making.

I could go on, but I think you get my point. I need not vote for religion to have a place in American politics because like it or not, it already does. Religious faith informs the vote of many of the electorate, including me. I try to vote in accordance with Christ’s teachings because my religion has a place in my politics. And because “the Gospel is off center,” I am not a centrist.

Nine years ago, as the campaigning was getting underway for another midterm election under the same president who is now in office, Prof. Kevin Watson of Asbury Theological Seminary wrote an essay entitled My Struggle with Centrism. He ended it with these words:

For Christians, there is no inherent value in being centrist. In fact, centrism is by definition an unstable concept that is fundamentally bound to the prevailing winds of culture. To be in the center, or the middle of extremes, you first have to know what the extremes are. And they are constantly changing. And then you have to move your beliefs and values to the center. This means that one’s beliefs and values are not first informed by Scripture, or the deep riches of the Christian tradition, but by one’s cultural context, whether it is accountable to the gospel or not.

There is simply no way of knowing ahead of time that following Jesus will lead you between two extremes. And Christians should be committed to following Jesus, whether doing so means we receive the respect of the broader culture that comes from being a centrist, or whether we are despised by the culture we live within as radical extremists.

Put differently, I cannot imagine a reading of the Gospels that could convincingly argue that Jesus was a centrist. Centrists, after all, are rarely crucified.^[18]

He’s right. Centrists are rarely crucified, but holy people often are, and “You shall be holy, for … the Lord your God [is] holy.”

I’m confident that the people of Trinity Cathedral, if you have not already done so, will vote in this election, that you will do your part in the important work of national decision-making. As you do, I encourage you to contemplate today’s Gospel lesson, the two greatest commandments –– love God and love your neighbor –– and to consider carefully how they may inform your vote.

Remember, the Gospel “does not allow us to compromise. And it requires us to be radical.”^[19]

The Gospel is off center! Amen.

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This homily was offered by the Rev. Dr. C. Eric Funston on the 25th Sunday after Pentecost, October 25, 2026, to the people of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio, where Fr. Funston was guest preacher.

The illustration is a picture of the “off center” Gospel Book on the altar of Trinity Cathedral.

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Notes:
Click on footnote numbers to link back to associated text. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Scripture are from the New Revised Version Updated Edition.

^[1] Douglas Schoen and Carly Cooperman, If Democrats want to win, they need to start driving in the middle lane, The Hill, October 27, 2025

^[2] The Editorial Board, The Partisans Are Wrong: Moving to the Center is the Way to Win, The New York Times, October 26, 2025

^[3] Daniel Miller, Americans favor compromise from politicians to get things done in government, poll shows, Live Now Fox, September 29, 2025

^[4] Deuteronomy 4:5 (NRSVUe)

^[5] Leviticus 19:18 (NRSVUe)

^[6] Rabbi Richard Address, K’doshim (Leviticus 19:1-20:27) A Holiness Formula, Jewish Sacred Aging, May 9, 2024

^[7] Rebecca Hancock, Commentary on Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18, The Text This Week, October 25, 2026

^[8] Leviticus 19:2 (NRSVUe)

^[9] John Bishop, Catholic Social Teaching and the New Evangelization, FOCUS, July 23, 2020

^[10] Tim Keller (1955-2023), X-thread, Oct 8, 2021, citing Christopher Watkin and Daniel Strange. See, e.g., Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Zondervan Academic, Grand Rapids:2022), and Daniel Strange, Strange Times: It’s Not Rocket Science … Even If It Is, Themelios, Vol. 48, No. 2 (August 2023), p. 273

^[11] 1 John 4:20-21 (NRSVUe)

^[12] Matthew 25:35-36 (NRSVUe)

^[13] Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes, Paragraph 43, December 7, 1965

^[14] Leviticus 19:34 (NRSVUe)

^[15] The Proliferation of Sin, Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part 3, Section 1, Chapter 1, Article 8, Paragraph V (1993)

^[16] Micah 6:8 (NRSVUe)

^[17] Matthew 26:52 (NRSVUe)

^[18] Kevin M. Watson, My Struggle with Centrism, Kevin M. Watson Blog, September 7, 2017

^[19] Bishop, op. cit.