Grace Lutheran Church

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+ In Nomine Jesu +

The Rev. Evan Gaerther
3rd Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 5]
"Breaking the Cycle"
June 5, 2005
Matthew 9:9-13

In our world today you and I will often find ourselves in the midst of a vicious circle. It is not a matter of beauty. It is not a wonder. This is a circle that you and I participate in and in fact fuel. This circle of life I am describing is endlessly leading us towards greater and greater frustration.

You have a half-sheet of gold paper in your bulletin that includes two circles and a different set of letters inside the circles. I would like to start with the top circle. It is a closed circle and notice that it is closed with a heavy band, which demonstrates its strength and sense of permanence in our lives. It has the letters A, H, and V.

This top circle represents a vicious cycle. It is a spiral of violence that does not have an ending. In the ancient world this spiral of violence was seen within the context of a code of honor. You kill my brother, I will kill you.       Now if your brother is an honorable man he would be bound to kill me. Now I know that my other brother is honorable and so he would understand his duty to find a relative of yours to kill. Well anyways, modern times we could see a caricature of this vicious circle of violence in the Hatfield and the McCoys. But is this vicious cycle all that different today? Is it just a matter for a cartoon.

With the letter "A," I would like you to consider with me the word Anger.

When people get angry it is often rooted in feeling wronged. We could be possibly being harmed physically or mentally ourselves. We could also know about the sin that another person has committed and feel like a social contract has been broken and take it personally. We respond to sin with anger. In many ways we should be angry when a sin, a violation, a trespass against God and humanity that has been committed.

It is what comes next that really perpetuates and fuels this vicious cycle of violence. The "H"on the handout is representative of Hatred. When Jesus was walking and passed a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, Jesus said to him, "Follow me." Matthew rose and followed Jesus. Later that day as Jesus reclined at table in the tax collector's house, he was surrounded by other tax collectors and sinners and also his disciples.

When the Pharisees saw this, they spoke to his disciples saying, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

The reality for the Pharisees was that this gathering of tax collectors and sinners was a wrong for a teacher of Jesus' power and authority. They were angry and were sharing with the disciples their hatred of these outcasts. These outcasts were meant to remain just that, cast out of society and separated from all that was holy.

There was no welcome, no party, no community in this vicious cycle for the Pharisees. The remarkable thing about anger and hatred is that if you are able to isolate it and stare at it you might become overcome by vertigo. Anger and hatred have the power to draw you in. You will get the sense of everything going downhill and the solution of continuing to divide, conquer, and hate, will develop into a deep foreboding sense of hopelessness.

I see this vertigo of disillusionment sometimes in the way people talk about the city of Niagara Falls . In our community there is a perpetuating cycle of anger and hatred that is feeding the violence we witness.

The "V" in your circle stands for the violence that will erupt when we are organized in a community that is centered about anger and hatred. Anger, hatred, and violence will only breed more violence. This violence is witnessed not just in the police beat of the Niagara Gazette, or in fact more personally sometimes right down your block. This violence is witnessed in Father's being absent from their children's lives. This violence is witnessed in the breakup of marriages.

This vicious cycle is not just about violence but ultimately describes the hopelessness that this is as good as it gets and I better protect myself from getting hurt. We build borders in relationships. Dividing husbands and wives, dividing communities between urban and suburban, dividing countries between the haves and the have-nots  The Pharisees had built a border around everyone that did not fit their concept of perfect and kept them out.

When Jesus went to the temple and overturned the moneychanger's tables, he cried out, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you make it a den of robbers." Jesus was not simply talking about the economical theft that was occurring at the money-changing tables. The House of the Lord was to be a house of prayer that brought all the nations to worship the one true God. The House of the Lord, the temple of the Lord was to be a matter of outreach, expanding out into the world the family of God. But instead of being a beacon to the world it had become a fortress against the world.

The people responded to Jesus entering into their lives with anger, with hatred, and ultimately the violence of the cross.

Eventually when we get pulled in so deeply into this vicious cycle we either burnout or we cry out. We burn out like the thief on the cross next to Jesus and the crowds that saw Jesus on the cross who mock him and ridicule him saying, "Prove it, show us you are the messiah by stepping down from that cross." Or we cry out for mercy, "Lord, remember me when you come into the kingdom." We seek to find our lives in his hands and no longer in our blood-stained hands of anger, hatred, and violence. But we know we don't deserve this kind of love. But in repentance we die to the idea of victory, of finding a way out. We cry out for mercy from our Lord God.

Repentance is not simply stopping an action but it is turning to Christ and him alone. For he alone in this world stands apart from, outside of this cycle of anger, hatred, and violence.

He stood apart from it in heaven. Our Lord Jesus Christ is holy, righteous and perfect. But he became flesh and dwelt among us, being born of Mary, he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. But he rose again on the third day. He entered into our vicious cycle of anger, hatred, and violence and broke it.

Life is not hopeless. Jesus entered into Matthew's life that day. Matthew had taken a lousy job where he handled everybody's stuff to look for what should be taxed, picking up and spreading any uncleanness he encountered. Because of his contact with the Roman Empire and secular society he was shut out of respectability. He was in the middle of a downward vicious cycle that appeared to divide him from God, his people, and his country.

Then Jesus invited him to his table, to his companionship, to his friendship -- even to his vocation, to come with him as a disciple. Jesus embraced someone seen as untouchable, and in doing that, he showed that oddly enough, the purity of God's people is best protected not by shunning the unclean, but by embracing them. God's perfection is shown most fully not in flaws noted and shut out or scores kept and settled, but in extravagant embraces of flawed people and the end of all scorekeeping.

Our Lord God is angry about sin. The first "A" in the second circle stands for anger, just like the "A" in the closed circle above it. The difference that Jesus makes is what happens next. We respond out of our human sinfulness to anger with hatred, dividing and separating and excluding, creating a society of violence.

Jesus responds with grace, the undeserved love of God. The "G" in the second circle stands for the response of God to our sinfulness, GRACE. Where we deserve only the hatred and violence of God's wrath he reaches out to us with grace, the undeserved love of God. Jesus breaks into our world and breaks the cycle of violence offering instead of division, welcoming and embrace. This grace brings about, instead of violence, redemption. The third letter in that second circle which is at the foot of the cross, is REDEMPTION.

Break the cycle of anger, hatred, and violence. Cry out for mercy in this world. Join your heart to Christ upon the cross and find yourself no longer dragged down but lifted up. Jesus rose from the death and violence of this world on the third day. He was victorious, breaking the cycle Jesus has given you a new option in your life. Through Jesus Christ you have been given an opportunity to reach out with grace where others only know to expect hatred and violence. Respond in this world like a fool, not with the wisdom of this world that is spiraling us into more and more violence, but with the wisdom of Christ on the cross. Be a fool for Christ, be a fool and share the grace of God.

Soli Deo Gloria

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