We’ve had a lot of really hard readings the last few months, and today is no exception. In the four readings for this weekend, we get comparisons of Jerusalem with adultery. Our psalm speaks of mourning, rage and finally vengeance, ending with a wish that the children of Jerusalem’s invaders have their heads bashed against rocks. Our gospel selected by the great people behind the Revised Common Lectionary once again omits the verses that would HELP preachers make sense of these four random sayings of Jesus.
It is so bad that, and I don’t know about Sally, but I have broken out in a cold sweat every time I have struggled with how to find the good news in some of these passages. Of course, not everything always has to be good news—we’re not children. There is something to be said for the fact that Psalm 137, for instance, is brutally honest in expressing human emotion in the face of an overwhelming, catastrophic loss.
Let’s face it—that’s exactly the narrative some people are pushing all over the world as a path to “power.” I am convinced we live in a time when those who seek power more often do it through a strategy of “divide and conquer,” rather than working for the noble notion of the common good. We live in a time where “fear and rejection” has replaced “E Pluribus Unum” in too many hearts, that great Latin motto of our country that means “From Many, One,” reminding us that coming from many races and religions and nationalities we are strong because we join together as one people.
When our Psalm writer mourns, “How can we sing a song of the Lord on alien soil?” perhaps, though, people of faith all know what that’s like.
In all of our readings, people are trying to live in times of loss and challenge, a time when keeping the faith can seem either foolish or impossible. Our gospel omits the preceding verses where Jesus warns his disciples about creating stumbling blocks for new Christians that might cause them to lose faith. Jesus outlines the serious responsibility we all bear as disciples who claim the name of Jesus for our identity. As disciples, we have extra responsibility to first of all model the utmost charity and gentleness to those they lead, and cruelty or haughtiness that causes the “little ones” to stumble when they make mistakes draws harsh condemnation from Jesus.
As people of faith in a faith-scorning time, we know what it is to be on alien soil. We struggle to find our voice and sing the Lord’s song. When the face of God that is presented most commonly by people who claim to be Christian is one that declares God to be a God of vengeance and smiting, we KNOW that in many ways we are in an alien land. Maintaining the Christian community and singing the Lord’s song requires that members treat each other with ethics, love, forbearance and integrity—which are now viewed as being countercultural. Jesus reminds the apostles that they can’t be good leaders if they seek any opportunity to break the hearts or the faith of those who are learning from them what being disciples means. In our Greek manuscripts, the term translated here as “stumbling blocks” is skandalon, or scandal.
Thus all of us as disciples are warned against calling ourselves Christian and yet behaving in ways that scandalize the gospel of Christ. Jesus then states that if anyone DOES sin publicly so as to cause a scandal, they should be approached and led to repentance. However, here’s the catch: if someone DOES repent, we are called to accept that repentance and forgive, even if it happens seven times a day. No wonder the disciples then begin our actual gospel passage for today with a plea for Jesus to “Increase our faith!” They very much doubt that they are strong enough and faithful enough to be able to do this much forgiving every day. Jesus insists there are no limits to this requirement of forgiveness—even if the offense is repeated.
We can never give up on the one who offends, for that is exactly how God treats us, and the entire point of being a disciple is to emulate as much as humanly possible the example set by our Savior himself. Thus the apostles here are asking for the faith to forgive even if the offender continues to offend, and so that they themselves will not become stumbling blocks to others through error.
I think we can all understand that the apostles felt the same disbelief that we feel contemplating the breadth and depth of forgiveness that is required. “No way!” the apostles instinctively react, and they ask for more faith in response. How much do we struggle with this, if we have anyone in our lives for long enough that their habits, quirks, and flaws begin to irritate us or provoke us to forget any good qualities they may have?
It’s a truth in this life they we often only see what we are looking for. Once we concentrate on the flaws of others in the community, on times perhaps when they have let down their guard, and their weakness or broken humanity is put on display, sometimes that’s all we can see. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Look for people to fail, and that’s all you will ever see them doing. Even if it looks like they are succeeding, the observer looking for failure, for sin, for imperfection will find some flaw or error or mistake to obsess about. And that is a terrible, terrible place to get to in your own head and your heart, friends.
The response disciples make when dealing with forgiveness and repentance is crucial in modeling God’s kingdom-- founded on true, steadfast love, forgiveness, and above all grace. It helps if we pause and honestly assess our own flaws and failures first—and remember how good God and others have been to us in offering us grace. For those of us who have not felt showered with grace from other in our lives, though, this can be a reminder to break the cycle of retribution under which we have lived, and as children of God to determine to take a different path.
“How can we sing a song of the Lord on alien soil?”
Here’s a story that illustrates what I mean. Bo Jean was a dutiful son who left his native land to gain an education and a chance at a successful life. So he left the tiny island of St. Lucia and came to America. The son of a pastor, he chose a small evangelical Christian college for school, where he excelled. He was a leader in his church as well as in school, and when he graduated, he worked as an accountant for a huge, well-known accounting firm in Dallas. Neighbors often heard him singing gospel hymns or songs by Drake.
Bo was sitting at home late one night after work, eating a bowl of ice cream and watching TV, when suddenly he heard his front door open. There was shouting, and confusion, and within seconds, he had been shot in the chest as she stood in the hallway—a wound that would later prove fatal. I doubt he ever knew what had happened to him. The person who shot him was an off-duty Dallas police officer coming off of a long shift, who claimed she thought she was entering her own apartment one floor above, in a building known for its confusing layout.
Three days after Bo’s death, this officer who killed him, Amber Guyger, was arrested but released on bail in a few hours. Three weeks later she was fired by the Dallas police department for her failure to follow procedures, such as calling for backup. Last month she went on trial on charges of murder, and she was found guilty.
It’s a terrible tragedy- an unarmed young black man upon the cusp of success, 26 years old, college graduate, living in a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood, shot and killed by a confused person with a badge and a weapon who was an intruder in his own home.
We’ve seen too many times when these kinds of incidents end with being swept under the rug, or with the victim later being turned into an accused criminal somehow deserving of their fate. Thanks be to God, that did not end up being the narrative that prevailed, although it was attempted.
Yet it’s not the trial and the conviction that has me telling this story right now. It’s what happened at the sentencing phase that I want to talk about.
Numerous people spoke on behalf of Bo Jean and of Amber Guyger, including close family. The bereaved family explained what impact Bo’s death was having in each of their lives. However, it was when Bo’s younger brother Brandt took the stand that things took a turn. Visibly grief-stricken and tugging periodically at his collar, 18-year-old Brandt Jean talked of his brother, and then profoundly about faith. He stated that his brother had loved everyone, and it was clear he saw his brother as a role model. Brandt then stunned the courtroom by saying that he wished no ill to his brother’s killer. He stated that he loved her, and hoped that she would find Christ. He then turned to the judge and asked if he could hug the defendant. The judge granted permission, and the brother and his killer embraced and held each other, whispering and coming apart occasionally to embrace again.
It was an incredible scene. It showed a depth of forgiveness that most of us have to be honest enough to admit that we probably could not embody ourselves. And that’s a caveat I want to put into this. This young man was at a stage in his grieving and in his spiritual life where he felt he was ready to forgive. He felt that’s what his brother would do, and what Jesus would have done. It was a beautiful thing.
However, I don’t think any of us, if we were really honest with ourselves, also wouldn’t have understood if Brandt had reacted as our psalm writer did at the end of Psalm 137 to shocking loss and betrayal, by wishing for the destruction of those who had stolen all that was precious from them. But he didn’t.
That forgiveness also was instantly controversial in some quarters—as people who had previously held that his death was justified suddenly held up the brother’s forgiveness as being beautiful. So let us be clear: Brandt Jean’s forgiveness does not ameliorate the consequences of those terrible actions of that September night when his brother was killed. And it’s impossible to praise Brandt’s forgiveness of his brother’s killer after first remaining silent on the terrible wrong she has done. You can’t be silent about the crime of the death of Bo Jean, and then praise the act of forgiveness. We can’t have it both ways.
One of the issues that brought them to that courtroom and to that sentencing was the fact that his brother’s killer, while expressing regret, also believed she was justified in what she did—even though she violated department policy which would have avoided this entire terrible event. At its basis her defense maintained that she was, even as an intruder, legally allowed to shoot an unarmed man in his own apartment even though what brought her there was her own confusion and mistake.
Brandt Jean forgave Amber Guyger even though she has not yet moved from regret to repentance. He has faith in her ability to get there—and that’s a gift far too many defendants and even suspects do not get in our current justice system. He forgave her so that she could be urged along that journey. But he also forgave her as a gift to himself, because ultimately that is what forgiveness is—it’s a gift to yourself that allows you to be true to your calling as true disciples and witnesses of Jesus. It frees you from allowing those who have wronged you to live in your head and heart, rent-free.
No one should ever demand that this young man or others in his situation, laboring under thousands of acts of oppression and aggression and anticipated injustice throughout their lives, should be expected to dramatically forgive someone who has taken something precious from them, especially so soon in their grief. And Brandt Jean’s forgiveness does not take away from the fact that since this was a shooting by a police officer on yet another unarmed black man that justice was far from certain to be served.
His forgiveness doesn’t mean that she still does not have a debt to repay and consequences to face personally besides her sense of remorse. The path to repentance begins with understanding how our actions and our roles in systems of oppression have led us to hurt others and to literally turn aside from that path. That’s the gift Brandt Jean is offering Amber Guyger-- and all of us. Even as she admitted that she killed Bo Jean and claimed it was justified, Brandt Jean saw that she was still beloved by God—and she is.
As everyone is, inside and outside the criminal justice system, even if they don’t know it yet.
That mercy and that incredible grace was Brandt Jean singing the Lord’s song on alien soil.
Beloveds, I want to call those of us who celebrate and hold up this brave young man’s example of Jesus’s command to forgive to not do it cheaply. I call on us to realize what great spiritual strength he has displayed in the midst of a great and terrible loss that occurs to all too many families all over this country every single year. Brandt Jean displayed mustard seed faith, and Bo Jean displayed mustard seed faith, and Brandt ordered that tree of vengeance right into the sea.
This is all the more remarkable because they displayed that faith and lived that faith—all the while in a system that all too often jumps to fear and suspicion of them as young black men.
Psalm 137 asks, “How can we sing a song of the Lord on alien soil?” Brandt Jean shows us how. As he stood on the foreign soil of grief and mourning, he sang the Lord’s song anyway. He sang it with tears streaming down his cheeks and his heart breaking. He sang his song out of his deep faith, and sings it so that we can see and be awed by that faith, and try to emulate it: to try to see everyone, even those who have harmed us, those who are different from us, those who approach us in need, those who ask us for shelter, as beloved, precious children of God. WITHOUT FAIL. Without asterisks.
Singing the song of the Lord on alien soil is the challenge of the Christian life, especially in our current time which too often elevates devious behavior, lying, contempt, and talking advantage of the weak and the poor for profit. We are called to sing that song of the Lord even in the face of evil, as an act of resistance to the soul-sickness that pervades too many in our time. Let us be brave enough to embrace each other in a spirit of repentance and true kinship. Let us be brave enough to sing the Lord’s song wherever we are.
Amen.
This sermon was preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville at the 505 on October 5 and at 8:00 and 10:30 on October 6.
Readings:
Lamentations 1:1-6
Psalm 137
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10
Notes:
1. Overview of the Botham Jean case from Time Magazine here.
2. Photo from NPR.
3. Painting by Gebhard Fugel, "An den Wassern Babylons"
4. Illustration by Ephrem Moses Lilien, "By the Rivers of Babylon."
5. Photo from CNN.
6. Video from Abcnews.go.
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