June 8, 2008
(Fourth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 5)
Unintended Consequences
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Genesis 12:1-9 • Psalm 33:1-12
• Romans 4:13-25 • Matthew
9:9-13, 18-26
(From
The Lectionary Page)
Well the great backyard landscaping project is underway at the Sommer household. Our deck has been demolished and a retaining wall built. And if we can actually have two consecutive days without rain falling, drainage tile, stone pavers, and new plantings will soon follow. As with any project that involves tearing down and building up, we expected that something Previously Unforeseen would manifest itself as the Painfully Clear. Turns out, we didn’t have long to wait. Portions of the siding on the house where the deck was tied in show signs of rot. So in addition to installing a new patio and lovely landscaping, it appears that we also will be doing some repair to the north side of the house, thanks to the unintended consequences of some deck builder who took a few too many shortcuts.
Unintended consequences. They are a reality that transcend time and culture. In fact, in the gospel passage for today, Jesus confronts some unintended consequences of first century Jewish life -- the exclusion of those considered unclean. Now as we know, the Torah, the Law of Moses, provided boundaries for a people whose religious practices were very different from their neighboring cultures. There were laws around the cultic practice in the Temple, but there were also laws about what one could eat and with whom, what clothes one could or could not wear, who was commanded to pray and how often, what could ritually defile a person and how that defilement was to be cleansed, and so on. This was serious business to the Pharisees. After all, they believed -- and parts of Scripture seemed to back up this belief -- that the Temple had been destroyed, the people taken captive, and their nationhood lost to Babylon 500 years earlier because the people of Judea had grown lax in their obedience to the Law. It was absolutely crucial, the Pharisees believed, to observe the law with rigor because their very survival as the People of God depended on it.
So for Jesus to eat with tax collectors, whose vocation put them in constant contact with unclean Gentiles, meant that he was in a constant state of defilement. For him to talk to a synagogue leader who had just been defiled by the death of his daughter made it worse, and for Jesus to be touched by a hemorrhaging woman was simply beyond the pale. To the Pharisaic tradition, nothing was more important than faithfully observing the Law of Moses, even if that meant that a good portion of the population was routinely excluded from religious life.
Jesus, of course, saw it differently. The heart of the Torah, Jesus believed, was God’s tender love, hesed in Hebrew, sometimes translated as mercy. To lose sight of the heart of the Torah was to miss the point entirely. Jesus is not subordinating the Law of Moses or taking a pot shot at Temple worship; he is clarifying what is most important. The Pharisees may not have intended for so many people to be society’s throw-aways, but nothing in their system particularly empowered those cut off to be reconnected. To Jesus, that unintended consequence was simply unacceptable.
The decisions that we make day in and day out carry consequences, some of which we intend, some of which we do not. This is true in our private lives and in the public sector. It is true in the realm of policy making and it is true in matters of faith. But the real challenge we face is when the unintended consequences of our decisions are revealed. Once we gain an awareness of our own complicity in a system that perpetuates injustice, we find ourselves facing moral decision-making. Having discovered, for example, that the meat packer that sells the lowest priced chicken in the grocery stores has been cited numerous times for knowingly hiring and thus exploiting illegal immigrants, what does one do? How economically inconvenienced am I willing to be by this information? Little wonder that the Pharisees moved heaven and earth to shut Jesus up. Little wonder, as we move through the gospel of Matthew we find increasing hostility from the religious leadership toward Jesus. Agents of change are seldom welcomed with open arms by those who have been benefiting from the system. That was as true in first century Judea as it is in America and, I daresay, in the Anglican Communion today.
Jesus saw clearly the unintended consequences of a religious system that sought unity with God through living a rigorously righteous life, and he modeled a different way. “Go and learn what this means,” he said, quoting God via the profit Hosea, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” He drew in those on the margins, he extended kinship bonds to the stranger, he healed the sick and the suffering and restored the dead to life because God’s default setting is always hesed, mercy, for all – ALL – whom God created.
And it remains our task, as Christians, to see as Christ himself saw. All around us, in every sphere of our private and public lives, we see that we routinely create a sense of identity by singling out, demonizing, and excluding others. The Pharisees were not the first and they surely are not the last to engage in a scapegoating ethic. Theologian James Alison reminds us that it is only as we identify with the "righteous just" of the story that we realize how "good" their procedure was, how careful, scrupulous, law-abiding, they were, and thus, how catastrophic our goodness can be, if we don't learn a different way of [being with one another.] [James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, p. 20.] A way that refuses to exclude. A way that refuses to be complicit with the forces without our complex world that lead to injustice, however unintended.
