Karl Barth is quoted as saying that preachers should approach their sermons with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. I’m pretty sure this sermon is not what Barth had in mind when he said that. The news story that’s captured my attention this week is the unexpected passing of Joan Rivers. Not news I ever thought I’d share in a sermon. Mainly because, truth be told, I never found Joan Rivers all that funny. I guess I’d known of her before, but most of my exposure came from watching Fashion Police with my roommate in LA. She liked it, and I liked watching bad TV with my roommate more than other, more productive, things I could have been doing. But I found Rivers’ humor too caustic, and I really could care less about celebrity fashion.
Because I’d mainly associated Joan Rivers with red carpet fashion criticism, I was at first amazed this week when everyone from NPR to 20/20 covered her life. Then as I listened to some of these stories, I was amazed again, this time to discover that Joan Rivers was a comedic icon. Turns out, and maybe you all knew this but I most certainly did not, that Joan Rivers was a trailblazer. In an industry that had been completely male dominated, Joan Rivers really paved the way for female comedians. And she was not just a pioneer for women in comedy but for comedy itself. Her crass, caustic style created stand-up comedy as we know it today, as a means of social commentary and a forum for social change.
In one of the NPR interviews, Rivers shared how when she started in comedy there were all these subjects that couldn’t be talked about. But instead of shying away from these taboo subjects, Rivers came out and made jokes about them. And, I’ll give you, many of the jokes were insensitive and probably inappropriate. But what she discovered in doing this was that by talking, by joking, about issues, it really deflated the power that they had. Suddenly these subjects that had been “off-limits” were able to be discussed openly and worked through in healthier and more productive ways. Through Joan Rivers and people like her, comedy became a form of power, a tool for embracing social issues and taking some of the mystery out of them so they could be dealt with and healed.
But what, you might be wondering, does any of this have to do with our readings for today? Well, I’ll tell you. At its very core, what comedians like Joan Rivers discovered was that our words have power. What we chose to say, but sometimes even more so what goes unsaid. When we don’t talk about something, when we ignore it, push it to the side, hope it goes away, that very act of not bringing something to the light can give it even more power than if we had done the initially harder work of dealing with it upfront.
Unfortunately, that’s not how our Gospel reading for this morning often tends to be read. Instead of offering a framework for conversation, “Matthew 18” becomes a slam text to justify bullying. Have you ever heard this? When Matthew 18 gets used like a verb, a way to justify ganging up on someone we disagree with? I think you’re a sinner, so I tell you that. And if you don’t agree, I bring some buddies, and we tell you you’re a sinner. And if you still don’t agree, we get the church to tell you you’re wrong. And if you still don’t agree, we shun you. Right, that’s what treating someone like a tax collector or a Gentile means? I wish I was exaggerating; I’m not. So often the Bible gets used as this tool to tell people that they are wrong or bad, and that God doesn’t love them, and we don’t have to either.
But here’s the huge, glaring problem with that way of reading of this scripture. The Canaanite woman from the story last week, she was a Gentile. And Matthew, the guy for whom this Gospel is named, he was a tax collector. See the trend here, Jesus didn’t shun tax collectors and Gentiles, he ate with them. He healed their sick. He invited them to travel along with him, to learn from him, to be in relationship with him. He loved them.
Sounds like our Epistle reading from Romans, where Paul talks about how the Roman community is to relate to each other. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another,” Paul wrote. All the commandments, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, all of them can be summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself. Paul goes on to say, “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, [let us] put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Which is great, right. Love each other, don’t hide things in the dark, but bring things to the light. Right, it’s an excellent method for living in community and for being in relationship, just love each other.
Of course, this is like way harder than Paul tries to make it sound. It’s one thing to say we need to love each other, but it’s a totally different thing to actually do it. Especially when the other person seems so darn unlovable.
So I think this Gospel reading is really less about setting up a set of rules regarding how to keep conflict out of our communities, and more about creating a space so open, so full of light, that the darkness that hides within us has no place to flourish. I think maybe, believe it or not, Jesus is encouraging his disciples to be a little bit more like Joan Rivers, a little bit less afraid to say hard things, even if they might be misunderstood, because there is power in speaking truth, because our communities, our relationships are stronger, if we are willing and able to be open and honest with one another.
Here’s the thing. God loves us like crazy. Like more than we can even imagine. And so great is God’s love for us, that this love cannot be contained in a relationship between God and us, it spills out into communities. So much does God love us that God wants us, needs us even, to experience love through each other. And the power in this mutual accountability is that the sin that resides within us, the sin, the pain, the brokenness, that can fester in the darkness of isolation, has nowhere to hide when we come together in communities. When we love one another, when we lift each other up, when we support each other, when we give words to our pain and we hold the words of each other’s pain, that brokenness is driven away in the grace and the love and the forgiveness of God.
That, I think, is the lesson Jesus had for his disciples in this text. That we are stronger together, we are lighter together, that we are more powerful together. That in the love and the grace and the forgiveness of authentic community, the powers of darkness have nowhere to go. It’s hard. We make mistakes, we break relationships, we hurt each other. We’re human. God knows that. But God also knows that only by bringing these hurts to the light of forgiveness can we receive healing, not just for each other, but more importantly, for ourselves. So thanks be to God for people who are willing to speak truth to power, even though it hurts. And thanks be to God for loving us so much that God gave us each other. Amen.
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