January 26, 2025 – Third Sunday after Epiphany
Leviticus 19, selected verses
Matthew 5.38-48
Recalculating…
Third Sunday after Epiphany
From Psalm 72:
For the Lord delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper.
The Lord has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence the Lord redeems their lives; and precious is their blood in God’s sight. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.
Blessed be that glorious name for ever; may divine glory fill the whole earth. Amen and Amen.
Some time last fall Debbie and I were looking for a new restaurant to try. We’ve gotten to know the local restaurants pretty well, and have a handful of favorites, but we were itching to try something new, so I Googled “restaurants near me.” I was surprised by the results, because it looked as though there were a number we had never heard of before, and they were all within a ten mile radius. There is a place called Ellen’s that is right on the water that looked good, and another that really spoke to me is The Frisky Oyster. How could I miss a spot with a name like The Frisky Oyster? And less than ten miles from Old Lyme! So I looked for directions, and sure enough, the map drew a straight line directly to both places – right across Long Island Sound in Greenport, NY. If I were to drive, it would take three and a half hours to travel the 188 miles across the Throg’s Neck Bridge; alternatively, I could take the ferry from New London, which would cut it to an hour and forty minutes or more, depending on the ferry schedule, to cover the 53 mile trip; or I could take Google’s most logical suggestion and drive 10 miles straight across the Sound, which would get me there in time for brunch today. Waterlogged, but hungry.
Trip Advisor is filled with stories of GPS directions gone awry, and I promise, I will not be making that deceptively direct drive today. But the experience brought to mind a trip we took to Italy’s Umbria region in 2008 when GPS technology was still in its infancy. We had spent an afternoon exploring the shores of Lake Trasimeno – we were traveling with our British cousins Susan and Guy – and Guy had brought his brand new GPS, I think it was a TomTom, that helpfully spoke both English and Italian. Emboldened by our new-fangled technology we decided to take a rural route home to Piegaro, the small village in the Umbrian hills where we were staying. We were doing pretty well with our English/Italian GPS until we came to an old sprawling ranch and farmland that stretched out for acres. It was there that our GPS attempted to steer us straight up the driveway and into the farm, which was smack in the way of where we were headed. But the last thing we wanted to do was to be confronted by an old Italian farmer demanding to know what we are doing driving through his olive trees and livestock, so we gave up, consulted the paper atlas we had wisely brought with us, and took the long way home. To this day I can hear the TomTom chastening us, “Ricalcolando, ricalcolando!” Which, of course, is Italian for “Recalculating…”
Wouldn’t it be nice if more things in life came with their own GPS to helpfully remind us when have gone off route, when it is time to stop and recalculate, to provide a kind of a reset that would help us adjust the events of the past few minutes or hours or days or weeks and put us back on the road we wanted to take all along? Maybe it’s because we took a wrong turn a few miles back, or maybe it’s because the road wasn’t clearly marked, or maybe it’s just because we’ve discovered we are on the wrong road and we need to find a better way to get where we know we are supposed to be. It happens. It happens to us as individuals, it happens to us as families, it happens to us as a community of faith, it happens to us as a municipality, as a nation, as a world. And when it does, we often turn back to the familiar, to tools and ideas that have gotten us through times like these before. Think Atlas vs GPS in 2008. For me, as a person of faith, I often reach for those tools and ideas where I have found direction before, tools and ideas that have provided clarity and inspiration and moral and faithful grounding. For me, as a person of faith, I turn to places like the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament and the Holiness Code in the Old.
We heard some familiar words from both sources this morning. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount occupies three chapters in Matthew’s gospel, and I could have read the entire sermon this morning. It is a rich description of how we live together in the presence of God, how we live together with love and regard for one another, how we take special care for those who do not have all that we have, who live on the margins of our communities, who are too often unseen and unremarked and therefore neglected or disregarded or worse. “If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” These are not happy platitudes spoken to let us feel good about ourselves. These are difficult words in difficult times. But they provide a road map, a way of moving forward in difficult times. “You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, for you are the children of God in heaven.”
We need to find ways of living together in community, and God provides them. The verses Jennifer read from Leviticus this morning are part of a larger section of Leviticus the Hebrews refer to as The Holiness Code. It consists of ten chapters, 17 through 26, words that call on the people Israel to care for one another, and to take special care for the alien and the sojourner, the poor and the stranger and the immigrant in their midst. “You shall leave the fallen grapes” – that is, you shall leave a portion of your own harvest – “for the poor and the alien, for I am the Lord your God. “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself, for I am the Lord your God. When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself… for I am the Lord your God.”
Because the Lord is our God, we are expected to be welcoming, to show hospitality, to show mercy. It is not very often that the notions of welcome, hospitality and mercy make the news, but this week they made the front page. The Right Reverend Mariann Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, spoke at the inaugural prayer service in Washington’s National Cathedral on Tuesday. And with the voice of the prophet, she called for a national reset, a recalculation of the road we are meant to travel instead of the one we see before us. Rev. Budde lifted up the grace and mercy found in both the Holiness Code and the Sermon on the Mount, the Torah and the Gospels, not to mention similar passages in the Quran, the Analects, the Rig Veda and the holy scriptures of multiple world faiths. “In the name of God,” Rev. Budde said, “I ask for mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now… people who pick our crops and clean our buildings, who labor on farms and in factories… the vast majority of immigrants… are good neighbors.” Shades of the aliens and sojourners who live outside Israel’s gates, those for whom God reserves the leavings of the harvest. “I ask for mercy on those in our communities who live in fear…” Budde continued. And she closed with these words: “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. [The] good of all people in this nation and this world.”
I ask you: who could argue with this?
We can only applaud this vision of justice and mercy, of welcome and hospitality, of providing for those who have little, of treating the stranger in our midst as one of our own. And if we applaud it, we then must also embody it. “If you love [only] those who love you,” Jesus asked, “what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?” It takes no effort at all to live easily and comfortably among folks who look like we look, who live like we live, who believe what we believe, who have what we have. That part is easy, Jesus said, don’t hurt yourself trying to pat yourself on the back for that! This way of life accomplishes very little. You be different; you do the hard work of loving those who look and live and speak and believe and behave differently than you do. You love the unlovable, you show mercy to the alien, and the immigrant, you welcome the stranger and the sojourner, you provide for the poor, you do the uncomfortable and unfamiliar work of following Jesus. This is the road you are meant to travel. And if you are not, it is time to recalculate.
Ricalcolando! As it turns out we should have listened to our Italian TomTom. By the time we went all the way around that sprawling farm safely skirting its crops and meadows, we saw something we hadn’t noticed before. Just inside the fence that marked the farm’s perimeter was an old dirt road that traversed the property and let you out on the other side. In fact, when we finally made it to the other side we saw a couple vehicles both entering and exiting the gate. That old dirt road was there for folks to drive through and not have to make the long, out of the way drive through unfamiliar country. If only we had followed the directions. If only we would pay attention to those familiar words of the Sermon on the Mount, to the roadmap provided by the Levitical Holiness Code, and numerous other directions in the scriptures of the world’s religions, we just might find ourselves on the road to justice and mercy and peace and, above all things, love, love for our neighbor which is the landmark of our love for God and of God’s love for us and for all God’s children.