Sermon: February 12, 2023, Sixth Sunday After Epiphany
Preacher: Rev Ryan Slifka
Scriptures: Matthew 5:17-20
Today I want to start with a story of a man named Marcion. Marcion was born roughly fifty years after the death of Jesus. He lived in Anatolia which is in modern Turkey, was the son of a bishop, a ship-master by trade. And he was an extremely influential early Christian theologian.
Marcion is best known for preaching and teaching that the God of the Hebrew Bible—which Christians call the Old Testament—the God of Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Isaac, Jacob etc. is completely different from the God of the New Testament, the God of Jesus. Whereas the God of Israel as depicted in the Old Testament is wrathful, belligerent, and obsessed with law and punishes humankind for breaking it; in the New Testament, Jesus’ and his teachings depict a heavenly Father, one who loves, and looks upon humanity with benevolence and mercy. Old Testament God bad. New Testament God good.
So incompatible are these two gods, thought Marcion, that when he published a Bible he dropped the whole Old Testament. He also dropped most of the New Testament except for ten of the Apostle Paul’s letters, and a shortened version of the gospel of Luke, just to make sure there was consistency. That the god of law and punishment was wiped away. Leaving only the god of compassion and love. His Bible certainly made for lighter reading.
As you may have guessed, Marcion didn’t win out in the end. Despite his popularity, he was condemned by several other early Christian leaders as a heretic, and was eventually excommunicated.
Folks we now call “early church fathers” like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, all argued that the Old Testament was absolutely necessary for a multitude of reasons. This is one of the reasons why if you pop open just about any Bible today and it starts with the book of Genesis. Marcion lost. Old Testament for the win.
Now, even though Marcion lost out, he did bring voice to an issue that many of us are confronted with when reading the Bible. It’s full of bad stuff. Especially the Old Testament, but not just the Old Testament. Murder, incest, rape, attempted genocide, war, betrayal, adultery. Sometimes committed by the quote “good guys.”
But the most disturbing, it seems, is when God is the one caught up in the bad stuff. People are people, but God is, well, God. Wiping out the world’s population with a flood—save Noah and his family. Burning Sodom and Gomorrah to the ground despite Abraham’s pleading. Pronouncing the death penalty for a variety of sexual indiscretions, dispossessing the Canaanites of their land, and ordering the total annihilation of the Amalekites, man, woman and child. How do we reconcile these images of God with the suffering Saviour who takes on the sins of the world, whose last words from the cross were “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”? No doubt about it… Marcion kinda had a point.
Marcion had a point. What do we do with this stuff?
Well, according to today’s scripture passage we know at least what Jesus thinks we should do with it.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets,” Jesus says. “Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
When Jesus says “the law or the prophets,” it’s shorthand for the Hebrew Scriptures. The law being the Torah, the five books of Moses. And the prophets being the prophetic books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and minor prophets like Amos, Micah, Malachi etc. Torah also often includes all the books between, like Samuel, Kings, the Psalms, Proverbs etc. Jesus himself says that he didn’t come to discard any of that at all. In fact, the came to fulfil it, to complete it. “Until heaven and earth pass away,” he says. “Until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”
Instead of dropping it, Jesus actually takes the law and prophets, the Old Testament, incredibly seriously. He’s rather hardcore, in fact.
“Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
All that law stuff in there that Marcion took his scissors to, Jesus says, it stays in. And not only does it stay in, he says, but if you want a decent place in God’s good future, then there’s no dismissing any of it. Not a jot or tittle, as the King James Version puts it, can be left out. In fact Jesus says, if you wanna follow me, your righteousness needs to exceed that of the Pharisees. You need to take it even more seriously than the people who take it seriously. Out-nerd the Bible nerds. Gotta be more hardcore than the hardcore. Because the whole thing still stands. In its entirety. Like Eugene Peterson puts it in his Message translation: “Trivialize the smallest item and you will have only trivialized yourself.” It probably goes without saying that this passage didn’t make it into Marcion’s Bible.
If we wanna follow Jesus, we’re stuck with the Old Testament. That’s what Jesus says, anyway.
Of course this does nothing to solve the problem. What do we do with it? The hard stuff, the bad stuff, the sometimes disturbing character of Yahweh?
The clue is in Jesus’ own words in our same passage. “Do not think I have come to abolish the law and prophets, but to fulfil.” I have come to fulfil the scriptures. Not erase them.
What does that mean, exactly? Well, on one hand, Jesus says that what he’s doing can only really be understood in the context of the scripture. God’s creation of the world in grace, the fall of humanity in sin, the call of Abraham with promise, the glory of exile and homecoming, the promise of the prophets for creation made new on the Day of the Lord. Jesus isn’t coming out of the blue to do a completely new thing. But he’s part of that early story of that same God.
On the other hand, though, Jesus says without him the story isn’t actually complete. The Bible, Old Testament and new reveals who God is, but Jesus is the fullest revelation of God. The Word made flesh. God’s self-communication. He’s about as close as we’re going to get to knowing who God is and what God’s like. Meaning that Jesus is protagonist, the main character, the centre, of the whole Bible. That’s why at the end of Luke’s gospel, Jesus—after being raised from the dead, teaches all about himself in the scriptures. The meaning’s there, but it’s hidden. And reading it without him is like watching Star Wars and not knowing that Darth Vader is Luke’s father (spoiler alert).
And I’m not just making this up. It’s not a new-fangled thing, it’s the most ancient way of reading. This is why those early church fathers cast their votes against Marcion. [i]They understood that without him you only get part of the picture. Without the Old Testament, we have no idea what Jesus is up to. But without Jesus the Old Testament doesn’t make full sense. The great church father Augustine of Hippo said that on account of Jesus the only reading that is possible is the one that increases love of God and love of neighbour.
For example:
· In the light of Christ, the flood of Noah is transformed. Rather than flushing humanity down the drain for its sins, it points us to Jesus, who is submerged in death on the cross, and drags the power of sin down with him before he’s raised in a rainbow of resurrection. To which baptism is a sign of our own daily dying and rising to new life.
· In the light of Christ, sentences of death and genocidal orders are transfigured. Jesus has loves his enemies rather than stoning them. Jesus himself has born the consequences of all of our sins. Our failure to keep every “jot and tittle” of the law. He’s taken punishment rather than doling it out. Which now are signs not of our destruction, but of the power of God’s grace, the depth of God’s love, even for enemies, and the freedom of forgiveness.
· And in the light of Christ, the flaming inferno like the one that consumes Sodom and Gomorrah is converted into the refining fire of the Holy Spirit. That holiness doesn’t hinge on our ability to keep the law, to be virtuous and to refrain from vice. But is the promise of God at work in us, burning away all that is cruel and inhuman in us by the power of his love. Until nothing is left but our true humanity. The full, true image of God in Jesus Christ.
We’re stuck with the Old Testament, because with him whole thing, beginning to end, is a testimony to the Good News, to the endless mercy, forgiveness, the lifegiving strength and life-changing power of the love of God in Jesus Christ. As a live wire to bring the electricity of God into our lives. Jesus did not come to abolish and start fresh. But he came to fulfil, to complete the whole grand drama—creation, fall, covenant, redemption, salvation and consummation. God’s insistence on saving, healing, redeeming and being with us forever.
It’s why we keep it around, and put it front and center. Because this book, this whole book is a gift to us. A gift given, not to keep us up at night, to excuse violence or hatred. Nor or make us more prideful, judgmental or self-righteous. But this book is given as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. This entire book is given for the sake of our salvation. Jesus loves us, this we know, for the Bible tells us so. The whole thing, from beginning to end.
Which means that we have no need to worry about it or be afraid. We can struggle with it, yes, wrestle with it, absolutely. Interrogate it, question it, turn it upside-down to see if it still works. But we have no need to drop it or cut it out, Marcion-style. Instead you can make friends with it. You can read it, meditate on it, inwardly and spiritually digest it, and fall in love with it. Trusting that in it, you will encounter the God of grace. That you’ll be met by no one less than Jesus Christ. And in doing so you will be blessed. Growing in love of God and love of neighbor.
And for this, thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] This sermon was more or less inspired by this video of Catholic Bishop and Evangelist Robert Barron. It is a very good summary of this way of reading https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A65Wfr2is0